Men, when we leave the house, it's phone, wallet, keys, how's my hair look, but if you're experiencing hair loss, you may not be so confident when you step outside your door. It's time to get that confidence back and restore your hair with hymns. No man wants to lose his hair, but for men, it's actually very common and now with hymns, the solution is simple. By hymns hair loss solutions, you'll be joining hundreds of thousands of subscribers who got their flow back. Men, real talk, the only thing worse than losing your hair is waiting forever for it to grow back. That's why you need hymns and you can start seeing your hair grow back in as little as three to six months. Hymns provides access to a range of hair loss treatments that work all from the comfort of your own couch, hymns makes treating hair loss simple with Dr. Trusted treatment options and clinically proven ingredients that can regrow hair in as little as three to six months. They offer personalized chewable, oral, spray, serum treatment options, all of it. You name it, whatever works for you, they got it over there. The process is simple and 100% online. Just answer a few questions and a medical provider will determine if treatment is right for you. For scribes, your treatment is sent directly to your door. Hymns has hundreds of thousands of trusted subscribers, so if you feel like you're losing a part of yourself with your hair loss, get hymns and get your confidence back. Start your free online visit today at hymns.com/drinkingbros, that's himns.com/drinkingbros for your personalized hair loss treatment options. Got to read this at the end. Results may vary based on studies of topical and oral, minoxidil, prescription products require an online consultation with a health care provider, but will determine if a prescription is appropriate. Restrictions apply, see website for full details and important safety information. Welcome to Drinking Bros, presented by GoSpent.com. Sit back, relax it, grab a fucking drink. Yeah, welcome to Drinking Bros Kids. Couple times a month, we have some of our favorite business owners on the show to kind of show us and you guys how to start a company, what the trials and tribulations of it are today. We've got one of the founders of Beatbox right here, you got the new flavors, Justin Fentials on the show. Welcome, dude. How are you? I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me. I decided to share our story. I know, man, thanks for coming out. I know you're a super busy guy and for the audience, I'll get in the background of why we know you and why you're here. We hired your former CEO, COO, Tony, former VP of sales, Tony, that's right. And now he's our COO of RDF Seltzer, which rocked and he gave you as a reference. You were cool enough and I was talking to you on the phone like a Saturday for like an hour and I was like, yo, this guy rocks and I was like, hey, if you want everyone to come on the show, people would love to hear this story, because like I was telling you, my college roommates founded Forloco. You guys are another high ABV college drink that everybody parties with and it's an overnight success. Yeah, the 10-year overnight success. That's for everybody, really. I mean, it's amazing how widespread our demographic is, but yeah, no, it's been a wild ride excited to get into it. Do you get pissed off when people say that to you of like, hey, you're an overnight success and it's been 10, 12 years? I think, you know, it's funny. I think there are people that just discovered us, you know, at a festival last week that I think that this thing just came out, right? Or it came out of nowhere. It doesn't bother me. No, I think oftentimes when you hear stories of companies and you really dig into it, you're like, holy shit, that was 10 years. It's pretty normal how long it takes to actually build, you know, the right product, the right machine to sell it and the community of fans to get it to where it needs to be, but no, it doesn't bother me. It doesn't? I would be pissed off with them. I'd be like, bro, I mean, I'm a banging at this for years. I get mad when people thank God instead of the surgeon, for example, right, for saving their life. You're like, hey, he did some work too. I'm not saying don't thank God, but maybe give the guy some credit. Yeah. The surgeon needs a little help. Multiple parties involved. Yeah. I mean, like, come on now. Exactly. I'm sure everybody's covered. Well, let's start from the beginning of this. How did you even come up with this product in general? Because it's in a like a cardboard box, which is unique. Yep. I remember back in the day because a daddy party as well, wine in a box was huge, like Franzia, all that other stuff. We would bring it to parties as a joke and kind of carry it over our shoulder because it came in that huge square box. Yeah. Five liters. Yeah. Was that part of this? Yeah. Yeah. So, so absolutely. And you mentioned Chris at Forloka, who's a great guy and what a story that brand is going back actually. So I grew up in Southern California, I moved to Austin in 2011, but grew up in SoCal, graduated from college in the Inland Empire in the 909. And then, you know, Brad was a roommate of mine as well as a few other guys. And we were hosting a lot of parties. We were the weekend warriors, right? It's like you graduated college, you're living with your boys and you go to work hard on the week. And on the weekend, you party like you're back in college. And we would always buy beer, right? Beer was there. We're buying beer. But we were also buying a little bit less beer for alternatives. Products like Mike's Heart Lemonade, Lime Rita, Twisted Tea, Forloka, which came on the scene, right? Right around that time I graduated '06. So we're talking like '07, '08, '09. And also, Franzia, the five liter box, we're always there. I was in a kickball league, you'd see it at the kickball games, you'd see it at the beach. People would buy it. It was affordable. It was convenient. It was fun. You'd take the bag out. It was boring, like chillable red and sunset blush, right? It was like really boring, even Rose wasn't cool yet. We're headaches, by the way, in my life, too, on this. Yeah, it's just a bulk wine that they put into the bag, right? But effectively, so we noticed these things. And Brad and I have been best friends since '13, basically, we were actually at a wine bar in Santa Monica with some of my co-workers. And everyone's tired, it's Friday night, and Brad goes, "Hey, let's wake up. We need some winer-g, right? We want like, okay, whatever. We need some winer-g." And so we were all like, "That's kind of funny. What's winer-g?" So, banked that. I moved to Austin maybe a month or two later. Brad was switching jobs, and so he came out to visit me, and we were just riffing with another guy who ended up being one of our original co-founders, riffing on this concept of winer-g, and what would it be? And we had names like Call of Cab, Sin Fundel, Sauvignon Blonkout, like we were, you know, just coming up with these names. A big fan of Sauvignon Blonkout, which is a TTB wouldn't be a answer about that. Yeah, no, well, that was the thing. So, and it was going to be, basically, like, energy and stuff in a wine bag, almost like four loco meets Francia. Okay. So, that was kind of this concept. I met Amy, who is one of our co-founders. She was in the business school as well, and this guy, Jason, and we said, "Okay, let's riff on this winer-g concept." Now, first thing we were able to do, we were talking about our idea to everybody in the business school, and someone's like, "Actually, one of my friends had a, his sister had gone to law school with someone who was an alcohol beverage lawyer." So we call him, and we say, "Okay, we have this idea for winer-g, it's going to be caffeinated wine." And he was like, "Literally, in the first 10 minutes, it was like Billy Madison, like, we're all dumber for having heard what you just said." Like, he's like, "Everything you said is illegal. You are awarded no points." Because you can't, caffeine got ripped out of four loco. Caffeine was not allowed. You couldn't add any mix to a wine and call it a varietal. So I didn't know, like, if you buy a Cabernet Sauvignon, that has to be pure 100% cab grapes. Well, it's going to be at least 70%. 70% correct. There's a number there, and if you mix it, dilute it down, you can't call it a cab. You can call it a red blend. That's why you have the red blend inside of that. I didn't know that. Yeah, so that was interesting. So, we couldn't do that. But then, you know, another product that was on the rise then was Skinny Girl. Now, we're in, like, 2011, right, in the 2012. So there was a product called Skinny Girl Margarita. That was-- Was Skinny Girl the girl from Real Housewives? Real Housewives. That's Bethany Frankl. That's right. So that product exploded onto the scene, this low-calorie Margarita, which really was just marketing. At the end of the day, a shot of alcohol has the calories it has. They had a 30% vodka that they said only has 60 calories. Well, that's because it was 30%. Not 40%. Exactly. It was just math. But anyway, we were like, "Let's do a vodka in a box." And like, I used to make Crystal Light and Vodka, which was a great pregame mix to go out and-- Well, that's super-white trash book. Well, also, there's no carbs and sugars in it, so that's why everybody did it at the time. I understand. Yeah, yeah. It was a great pregame drink. You could put it in the blender, make frozen. It was just easy, right, before going out. So we were like, "Let's do that." And then really, that's when the-- so now we're still talking in a big box. This was the idea, a five-liter box like a Franzia, only with a vodka mix drink. And then it was about what is the brand going to be? Winergee was obviously dead. And we landed on this feeling of music festival. So in 2009, I went to my first music festival. It was Bonnaroo in Tennessee. If you had a chance to go, that festival is awesome. I then went to Electric Daisy Carnival, which is a big electronic music show in LA. Yeah. ADC, in 2009, amazingly, like a decade later, we're sponsoring-- we sponsored ADC and seeing it where it was kind of born was just like unbelievable. So if you've ever been to one of those music festivals, you know, I remember being 25. You're working hard. You go there and you walk into this field and there's 100,000 people and you're looking around and like-- everybody is getting to be authentically who they are, no matter what age you are, who you voted for, what race, sexual identity. You are just coming in. You are meeting new friends. You are celebrating with old friends and you are having this amazing time. And if the world could be more like that, we would just be in a better place. And that was the basis of this concept was, okay, it's going to be this party version of wine in flavors in a box that looks like an old school boom box centered around that feeling of being at a festival and nothing starts a party like music in a boom box and it was meant to share. It was 34 servings. So that was the idea. Now that was like the easier part. And it's like, we have no alcohol experience, how do we actually get this to reality? And so what we did is applied some of the lean startup principles. There's an old book by Eric Grease called Lean Startup and it's basically how do you create an MVP, a minimum viable product? How do you get a product to your customers in the real world, not behind a computer, as fast as you can and as cheaply as you can to get feedback so you know if this is actually going to be something that will work? And so for us that meant buying boxes of Fransia, buying cheap bottles of vodka, emptying and crystallite, just like we would make emptying out the Fransia bags, refilling them with vodka, crystallite and food coloring. And we went on one of those crowdsourcing websites, designcrowd.com. And we had hunt for 250 bucks was the prize we gave for our logo. And we said, it's kind of like if four logo meets Fransia at electric daisy carnival. If they had a baby at EDC, I think is what we said. And we got amazing submissions for logos. And actually the guy that designed our first logo was from Toronto, which in 2011 was pretty cool that you were like crowdsourcing this idea. And we had all these stickers on the box and we would print them out and we put them on the boxes with this makeshift thing. And we did like an 8%, a 10%, a 12, a 14, a white box, a black box of blue, like all these different things. And we went to the parties where we thought the product would do well. So a tailgate, a kickball game, a pool party. And you know, people would come by and you'd say, okay, you know, go to the one you think looks the coolest and people would go, okay, well, why did you choose that one? Right? Yeah. Oh, cause I thought this color scheme, whatever it is. Okay. And then you'd say, okay, go back to the one you think tastes the best. And then after doing that, you know, people would come by like trying to give us $20 bills for something we had made in our bathroom. And you get confidence to be like, holy shit, like this would be big. Like people like, holy fuck, it's a blue bag. Yeah. Like what is that? What we did in 2016 was a frenzy of bags. And we actually trademarked slap the bag through that process because, oh, you own that? We own the trademark on slap the bag. Do your bags still have the hand print on them? So we, we, it's a not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but we ended up switching to the smaller boxes and not making the big boxes anymore. But they did used to have the hand print on them, which we stickered ourselves in the little era. So, so we had now we have our vodka base. We know it's going to be this blue raspberry flavor. That's what everybody liked. And we knew it was going to be 11%. And we went to call, we call the alcohol beverage lawyer again, we was like, hell yeah, we've just spent three, four months, we've got this dialed in. It's going to be this fuck a thing and this assistant, he's like, guys, you can't put hard liquor in more than 1.75 liter. Nope. Nope. Yeah. A half gallon is the biggest handle, you know, right? So we're like, Jesus Christ, like how many, like every step of the way, we're like, fuck, can we even do this? But he said, there's some good news. He said, there is this wine that we know, this flavor company that specializes in this wine. It's an orange wine and not like the fancy orange wine that's like all the rage these days, but it's actually from upcycled fermented orange peels. And it's a 21.9% alcohol wine that he sent us samples and it tastes, we were like, this tastes just like a flavored vodka almost. It was very neutral. And we went to the flavor company and we said, can you recreate this, you know, wine with this, with this vodka tasting drink and the samples were great. And so that was about $10,000 to partner with this flavor company at the time, the five of us originally put in about 60 grand. And so then we go and Amy and I interned for beatbox as part of the business school at UT. That's why, you know, again, I moved to Austin and we go to the Texas alcohol beverage commission. Now we're all excited because we've got this concept. We've got a flavor there. They found a coat packer who can make it and we go to them and we say, this is our plan. They're going to make it. They're going to send it to us and we're going to drive it to stores ourselves, right? And they looked at us like, are you fucking nuts? Like, you need a distributor. Yeah. And we said, what's that? Like, that's how little knowledge, you know, we had. Holy shit. Didn't even know that you needed an alcohol distributor to sell, right? So they said, what, if you were a winery, you can self distribute in Texas. And the winery term was very loosely defined. It could be just a commercial warehouse space and we weren't like growing grapes. You know, we were just blending, blending on site. So I remember driving home and calling Amy because we were so dejected, we're like, fuck, we can't do it. I can't do this. There's no way. But I called her and I said, fuck it, we're going to make it ourselves. Like how hard can that be? Well, it was pretty fucking hard, but we figured it out. We actually rented an 800 square foot facility up in North Austin. It looked much more like a scene out of Breaking Bad than a winery. But we were able to buy like a tank stand, a tank, actually, we didn't buy the tank stand. We got cinder blocks from Home Depot because it was way cheaper than buying the tank stand. For 12 grand, we put together this facility and we had a stainless steel pump and we had a tangential inlet thing and a flow meter. I'm like, I was in finance. I don't know any of this stuff, but you just learn it and figure it out. And we had our classmates from business school, like in the operations folks, like a lot of ex military guys in grad school coming in, like, we're going to optimize this place. It's like this 800 square foot facility. You're going to produce it here and move it here and we're going to save you minutes. But we were able to get our first batch off the ground in March 2013 and self-distributed. So we got it to some stores by, you know, UT and San Marcos and just driving around. We probably opened up like 30 stores and it started, you know, we would just every weekend, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, sampling, sampling, sampling, go. That was all we did. You'd get, we'd make it, we'd go to class, you'd go to the store, drop it off, you know, take, get the check, stand there, sample it out, go back to the facility, make more. It was crazy. And eventually we were, we were, we got our big break. We got picked up by a big distributor. Really credit to the UT here in Texas. Yeah. So we were. Do you mind if I ask who it is? Well, back then. Yeah, we got picked up by our Republic National Distribution Company. Okay. That was our original distributor. And the story there, again, a credit to the, the Texas alumni said, we were actually asked to present on behalf of the entrepreneurship program at UT. We had a product that was, that was actually from like idea to in the market. And so we talk about entrepreneurship. We talk about how amazing UT is. And this guy comes up to us afterwards. Now we're in like March 2013 and he says, you know, I think I can help y'all out. And we look at his business card and we Google it and we're like, holy shit, it was, this guy's name was Alan Dribin, who was the owner of Republic National Distribution Company. They're based out of shirts, Texas, just about an hour south of here. And so he invited us down and got with their wine team and he's like, we're taking this, we're going with it. But they couldn't even send a truck to our manufacturing facility because they couldn't fit into the little warehouse. And there was no lift gate and they're like, we can't pick up your product. So we're going to wait until you have an actual facility. But now that we had a distributor, which again, we didn't know we needed, but now we have one of the one of the biggest, we were able to get a manufacturer who was actually in Carrollton, Texas. That's pretty good leadership on behalf of the gentleman that you ran into, though. It's like, hey, we'll work together, but you got to get your fucking shit straight too. Yeah. Like, we're not, I'm not picking it up out of your garage, asshole. Yeah. You know, by a real building, you guys are making money, go buy a real building and then we'll fuck you. Yeah, go figure out how to actually make it. And they were like, that's good though, because some dudes would just be like, fuck, these guys are nobody. They're not right before. Especially in the distributor world, it is difficult to deal with these folks. There's a number of times where this guy, Alan, who actually sadly passed away earlier this year was such a freaking awesome guy, because there's a lot of not awesome people in the alcohol space. Yeah. And this guy was all class, like from later on, when we needed to switch distributors out of which I'll get into, like switch from the wine and spirits network to the beer networks, he was usually that can be a total nightmare. And he just like let us out, no franchise, which means you're basically contracted for life. You absolutely need to switch on the president of the beatbox fan club and you will get out of these deals, which was amazing. He was incredible. And you need people like that. Yeah. You're just starting like, you know, you work your ass off and you know, like to quote Rob Dear Deck, or he's not the first to say it, you make your own luck, but like those moments you need them. When you're grinding and you're grinding and then you get that break that like, okay, we can keep going because now we have a distributor like that's a big deal. And then we got into our first grocery chain. So now like we're in January 2014, we've got a couple flavors, we got a manufacturer, we've got the distributor, and we go, okay, like this is no longer a class project that we're self-funding here. Like let's go raise some money. So we start to talk to people in town, not getting too much, but there's been interested folks. And then of course we applied for season six of Shark Tank and ended up Mike Cuban gave you guys a million dollars. Yeah. Yeah. And in June 2014, and it aired October 2014, boom, there you guys are right there on screen. Look at you guys. Yeah, 10 freaking years ago on believable and forgive me. So me and my wife are huge Shark Tank fans. I did not see this episode behind the scenes because we've had some guys from Shark Tank on the show before. What actually happened behind the scenes? Like how long is the presentation? I heard it's close to like four hours. The longest one is four hours. Okay. Time limit. So basically, you know, there was 80,000 companies that applied, they air 108. So it's not, it's like crazy, right? So, so if the 80,000 that applied, they cut it down to about 800. And then you make it to the next round. And then of the 800, you get assigned to producers and there's like 30 something producers on Shark Tank. So every week you meet with the producers and you're like crafting your pitch and they're asking you updates on the business. But every week they're like, we'll let you know if we're going to talk next week and they're cutting all along the way. And so that started in like February of 2014. So we're like trying to manage this brand new distributor, this brand new manufacturer and watching every single, and try and do tastings and everything and watch every single episode, read all the Sharks books. I mean, we had business school professors grill us. So like every week we check in and we're like, by the time we got to April, May, we're like, I think that we're going to get on here because they kept, the producers were very excited. They actually can't have beer or spirits on Shark Tank, but wine you could have. Interesting. Yeah. And we were like this millennial fun party wine that kind of was like drawing a younger audience into Shark Tank, but also was wine. So it was interesting. But well, the obvious follow up here is, was Cuban helpful? Yeah. No. I mean, so he's been super helpful. His brother's still on our board of directors, but just to finish up the behind the scenes of, they fly you out, they flew us out on a Friday, you pitch to all the producers and they film the whole season in two weeks. So you're there with like, I don't know, 50, 60 other companies and you can't say a fucking word to them. I mean, you have to just be what's the weather? You know, it's like you can't, you've signed your life away for this thing. And then they, you do a dress rehearsal Friday with the producers. And then Sunday they call you and say, you're going to film. You might get cut then. They're still cutting people. I mean, if they don't think you're going to make good TV or, you know, whatever it is. So Sunday they call us, they said, you're going to film Monday. We get to our like little trailer on the, in the Sony Pictures lot at, I think like 8am. And you're nervous as hell. And then we didn't film till noon. So for four hours, you're just the three of us are in there just like, what the fuck is going on? And like, and, but we were super prepared. And then of course at noon, they're like, we got to go. We got to go. You got to, who's making the drinks? And they just rush you, rush you, rush you. And you go in there. There's no sharks on the side. There's no music playing, right? It's a studio and you walk out there and they tell you where your mark is and you get there. And then the most awkward moment is there's a full minute before you start talking where they're getting the camera angles and everything. Sure. So you're just, that you feel like you're in an alternate universe because you've watched from the outside every episode. And now you're in it looking at them and it's very weird and uncomfortable because you're just staring and Mr. Wonderful's got his hands like this and, and then they go begin. And then there's no cuts. No edits. There's like, you just go. You do your, the only thing that's scripted is your kind of first 90 second pitch. I don't know exactly how long we were in there. There's probably about 45 minutes to an hour. Okay. It's just hard to know. We were just like, so yeah, I mean, you're like, holy shit. But what was cool is that they all were interested and they all made offers. Barbara started and then Mr. Wonderful made an offer. And then Lori and Robert were about to, but Mark was pretty quiet the whole time, which we found out later meant that he was like really into it when he, because he's worth so much more than all, if you want something, he can get it. And we wanted Mark, he, you know, he, so, so Robert goes to, to Mark, like, what do you think? And he's like, guys, you don't sell wine. You sell fun. And like, that's it. Right. And we were like, yes, you get it. Like that's what we're about here. It's not about the wine to the fun. And then the conversation got turned and when we asked for 200,000 for 10% of the business, Barbara offered 400,000 for 20, Kevin, 200 for 20, Lauren, Robert, or drawing. Mark says, look, I think you need more money. I'll give you 600k, but I want a third of the business and you got to tell me what you want to do. Right. And so we had a little bit of conversation and then it was like, you know, Mark, like we didn't think we were going to give up, you know, a third of the, he's like, well, then just tell me what you want. And we countered. I said, what would you do it? No, from no position of strength, like just like, would you do a million for a third? And he looks down and he's like, yeah. And that was it. No shit. That was wild. Absolutely insane. Like, it was so surreal. And then you walk out of there and they actually send out like a psychologist to talk to you in your trailer. Cause like a lot of people that they come in and they have their idea that they've wanted to do their whole life and, and Mr. Wannell shattered. Yeah. Mr. Wannell was like, you should be killed outside of a barn and they go and then they go to their trailer and like, I hate everything. And so they, they came out and they, and we were like dancing in there, you know, and actually got kicked out of a, a karaoke bar on Monday night for pop and champagne. It was the gas light, which is this little dive barn Santa Monica. Yeah. I know the gas light very well. I love that place. Opens at 6 a.m. Yep. But yeah, it was a, it was a great time. It was super cool. So surreal. And then, you know, it took us like three months to close it cause it's, it's just a handshake agreement. Mm hmm. And then they do all the diligence and, and we closed it in September, aired in October. And then it was like, holy shit, seven million people just see you on national TV. We were in Bentonville, Arkansas a month later with the Walmart team who was like, how fast can we put you in 2000 Walmarts? We're like, we're in a hundred accounts in Texas. We don't have any permits even to sell anywhere. Do you even have enough product to that point? Well, that was like, it was crazy because like it took two to three months to close it. We were out of money, but we're just like pushing things and pushing things. And we had other people that were ready at this. Of course, they're like, I'll give you money now, but, and Mark had some bars he was invested in and we had to structure things a certain way because of the three tier law, which is the whole other thing. And finally, we said to Mark, like, Mark, if we don't do this, and his lawyers, you know, as lawyers or gatekeepers and we said, Mark, if we don't do this now, like we got to move on and we gave him, we had the best TABC lawyer in the whole state write this whole thing about why it's going to be okay and all that. And we wrote and he said to with his lawyers on, do the deal. And that was when we got the money to produce because we were like, we have to produce. We don't know when we're going to air. Yeah. They give you two weeks notice. Holy shit. Or when you're going to air. So like, we needed the money to make product for when it aired, although we're not as much of like a, you know, the squatty potty is a direct to consumer QVC type product. Yeah. We have to sell through retail. We could get some wine permits to sell online, but yeah, it aired. It was nuts. And then our NDC, our distributor in Austin, Texas was like, so excited and wanted to go big with us. And so we, we're just like, there's three of us in our intern Spencer. And we're like, uh, you know, fuck it. Let's go launch this thing in Walmart. And like we opened up 30 states, you know, we're traveling all over the country, trying to get this thing off the ground. And it's a $20 box, $25 box. It's confusing as hell. It looks like a boom box. We, we, we think we've made it, but then you get, you know, you're trying to manage some of the biggest distributors in the world. Yeah. And we, it was like, it would work in pockets, uh, where it would do well, not in, you know, but Walmart had just failed. And once it failed at Walmart and the distributors were like, if, if, if shark tank in Walmart doesn't work, then this thing's dead. Yeah. Like it's never going to work. So we just couldn't get any more attention from them. But during that time, we had enough like traction where we're like, okay, there's something here, we just need to figure out a different tweak to the business model, which is where the single serve kind of came in. So these smaller boxes are the ones that I'm holding up here to camera. Yeah. That's where these came in. Gotcha. Because, uh, so Bob, our producer back there worked for TFM. Oh, yeah. Uh, I wrote your promotional articles on TFM. I totally recognized you. Yeah. I was like, that guy looks super familiar. Yeah. It's probably because he's the rainy street ripper. Yeah. He's the one murder. That's what's done. Or he's the one. He's going to be a victim. One of the two. Because you know, they're killing bros like Bob down there. Yeah. So likely be the day. Yeah. I remember I was so pissed. I, uh, you guys invited me to, uh, you're having like a South by party and Cuban was, I guess there or whatever out of town. They're like, but if you want to stop by, you totally can. And I was like, fuck. Yeah. Yeah. It was cool. Cause during South by he's always in town and he would just like pop it. He's like, what bar he is wanting to get new and we were like the blind pig on six street would be awesome. Cool. And he pops in and we're selling boxes behind the bar, like full boxes for like 80 bucks. With him? Yes. With him. It was incredible. That's great. He did it tasting with us at Indiana, Indiana University where he went to school at Big Red Lickers. He goes back every year for, he played rugby there. So he goes back for the rugby reunions and like, again, stood there in the store for three hours, signed every single box. I mean, there was a lot, he's a legend at IU around the corner and we ended up having a meeting with him in the little like janitor's closet in this liquor store afterwards just to talk about an inventory loan, which he ended up giving us. But we're like, Mark, like everyone was like coming up to you and they're talking to you and chick. And we're like, how do you like do that? And he's like, guys, this is a blast. He's like, if I'm not having fun, I don't do something. And so he just loved it. And then we went out to kill Roy sports that night and had a great time and like, man, those are like, those moments are just like, you're like, what is my life right now? And now the business was failing, it was like, we couldn't scale it, but you had a cool night. Those were really cool times. Yeah, no, lots of really cool nights along the way, but and then yeah, so we're like, we need something smaller. We need something that people cannot spend like that's 1.3 gallons in the big box. That's a lot. And if you don't like one, that's not that many occasions where you need that much, maybe a huge party or you're floating the river or something like that. But, you know, it's not for mass market occasions. And so we were like, okay, it's also not shareable, which is like the thing now. I think I think it's become deeply rooted in human psychology now after social media for the last 20 years to not engage in something if it's going to be alone, right, like the things that do the best right now at digital marketing are things that you can hand to another person. Yeah, it's community. Yeah, yeah. That's a big part of it. You went from the television set with three channels a couple of times a week with the family to individual servings, right? Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. It makes sense. Right here where you're like, cool. It's a phone. It's a laptop. It's streaming versus like a scheduled programming. It's single serve alcohol. It's all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So we looked at everything. We looked at cans and pouches and bottles and we're like, no, like we're beatboxed. It's about the portability, the eco-friendly, the fun, the resealability. And so we landed on the Tetra pack, which is the name of the package that that is. Yeah, because the first time I had this was in school, you know, with like chocolate milk. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And muscle milk. Well, but if you grew up in Canada, you would have had milk like that your entire life. Like regular milk. Yeah. Did you grow up in Canada? No, no. We have friends. And friends are. Yeah, yeah. My wife's from Toronto. So we love, love, love Canada. It was, it was popular, but in very different coconut water, you also milk. Oh, yeah. And it was just kind of emerging in wine. You would see again, just like we saw with Franzia, there was black box and boater box. They had the three liter boxes. That's right. And they were doing single serve Tetra pack wine. But again, it was Cabernet, Chardonnay. It was boring red and white and we said, well, okay, well, why can't we do the same thing we tried to do in the big box and kind of did do in the small one. And so we ended up, and thankfully because of, you know, Cuban, a million dollars doesn't get you very far in the alcohol. Like it was, it was for all of our inventory, finally paying ourselves 60 grand a year and like, you know, all of our marketing that Annisor Bush will spend a million bucks, you know, on one ad Facebook ad. So, so we had to be, you know, we had needed more money very quickly, but Mark, you know, from coming down to Austin and like, a lot of people we had met when you're traveling the country that were like, oh, how do I get involved? I want to invest. So, people always ask like, how do you raise money? It's like, there's no silver bullet, you just got to be out there. I know, dude. I, some of the people I've met have a rich uncle who wrote a check for five million. Yeah. Then there's others like us who, you know, we're friends with Pors, so we go to WeFunder.com like, you know. We did that too. Yeah. No, but like, that was kind of it. We went to Tallahassee and there's a guy there who was like hustling and had his dad want to do invest. And then his dad had a neighbor who they're, they've become our biggest investors. So like, you just got to be out there, living your dream, selling your dream. And you never know. You might be doing a tasting and a store and someone says, oh, I do investments. How do I get involved? Right? You never know. Never know. And something similar happened to us with a Miami Marlins deal when we first launched for hard AF Seltzer, it was, we got it in the stadium there because we wanted it to be visible and people to see it. And the president of Total Wine happened to take his kid to the second game. Dan was throwing out the first pitch that night. They saw it hard AF Seltzer all over the stadium and the thing. And it was something we were trying to get into. And he called on Monday morning and he goes, hey, sorry, I didn't know you guys were this big of a brand. Yeah. I'll put you in the chain nationally because we love it. And I was like, oh, shit, great. It works. Yeah. Yeah. But again, that's like, it's the hustle and the hard work that puts you in those situations and then are you ready to capitalize when that moment comes. Yeah. And that's kind of how it goes. There is no silver bullet solution to growing and raising money. People are like, and so, so when we launched it, we raised a series A about a year and a half, two years after Shark Tank, starting with convertible. And what year is that? That's like 2017. Okay. So we started in 2016, raising on a note, convertible note, then finalized the A, which allowed us to hire our first VP of sales, who actually came from the Wine and Spirits world because that's all we knew. We were with Wine and Spirits distributors. And then the single serve launch in January 2017, and it starts to really do well in Austin, especially in the convenience store channel. But it wasn't being restocked or merchandise. And I called the sales rep for Republic National, who covered, you know, the independence. And I'm like, dude, like, why aren't we getting restocks here? He's like, we're selling out. They're selling out, right? It's doing okay. And he's like, Justin, I cover 300 of these thousand Austin independent stores myself. Like I barely get to 30 of them. Like I can only focus and then, and then this, you know, you realize that. So Wine and Spirits distributors sell Casamigos and Tito's and high end wines and whiskeys. And they're used to $400, $500 cases and no shelf life issues. And they sell to the total wines and the specs. But they don't, they're not built for 7/11 in Circle K because they're just not selling any spirits there in most of the country. And they're not selling that much wine. So we ended up meeting a guy who was the VP of sales at Deep Eddy Vaca, which was another great office. Love Deep Eddy. They're right up the street. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Dripping Springs. They're great. Amazing, amazing story as well. That's still my favorite vodka to this day. When that grapefruit vodka hit Austin, I think it was in 2013 and it just took the city by storm. You'd be at like a bar and like, people are just doing shots at Deep Eddy grapefruit and you're like, this is delicious. Like it is so good. I was shooting a movie in 2011 and I had it at a bar downtown. And I was like, I think it was the lemon version of it. Yeah, the lemon, the ivory flavor was so good. Everything was so good. And it was, it's still to this day, my favorite vodka. Yeah. And they exited, they exited for several hundred million dollars to heaven. Oh, did they really? Yeah, in 2015. Yeah. So, so one of the guys that was the VP of sales there ended up doing some consulting and we got introduced to him through Clayton, who was the founder of Deep Eddy and he said, you know, got, he, and John Potts was the guy, the VP of sales at Deep Eddy and he said, he worked at R&DC for 15 years. So he knew all the high ups and he said, guys, like, they love you three, but they will never service this brand like you need them to. So I want to invest, but I, you're going to have to switch to the beer networks. And again, we were like, what's the beer network? Like, we were horse blinders on, just running, like, we didn't have time to stop and think, is there a better path? It was just like, R&DC in Texas, Shark Tank, National Distribution, Walmart. We made it. We made it. No, wait, we didn't make it. We're out of business. We can't pay ourselves. Make the single serve, raise some money. And then we get this investment from John and that's when we went down. So we made the first switch, we hired a VP of sales. This was the guy before Tony, a guy, Jeff Chasner, who worked for Sweetwater and Miller Coors and he lived in Georgia. We get him, him on in middle of 2017 and we make the switch and Georgia was our first state in early 2018 with the single serve with a beer network. And we sold more cases in the first, like, three, four months of the year in Georgia than we did in the entire year almost with 30 states with R&DC, with the big box. So it was like very clear the future was single serve beatbox through the beer networks. And that's when we went down to shirts to talk to Alan and say, hey, like, we've got to make this switch, you know, which was a big deal to unwind 30 distribution deals across 30 states. Some of them are lifetime deals. And that's when he said, I'm the president of the beatbox fan club and he let us out of all those deals. And we kind of just relaunched the brand starting in 2018 through the beer networks and have double at least doubled sales every year since then, Justin, you've been on podcast before, you know, we got some sponsors to put the shit wagon on the air that we got to read first and foremost, go sped.com forward slash drinking, bros, still 50% off. Now with the election coming up, if Papa Trump gets in, he might, he might say, Hey, dude, we're all good. We're going to get rid of the inflation. We're going to get rid of all the bull shit there and then go sped, it'll take away the 50% off sale. But right now it still exists. So pop in the promo code drinking, bros, a check out for 50% off all mattress sheets, pillows, adjustable bases, weighted blankets, mattresses for RVs. You name it. The massage toppers are 50% off the Venus Williams collection is 50% off. All you got to do is pop in that promo code drinking, bros, a check out doesn't matter how many items you put in the cart. Plus when you check out, you're going to see a three year pay as you go program, no interest as long as you have decent credit. So stretch it out, brother. Over three years, get yourself a brand new bedroom set at go sped.com forward slash drinking bros. Next up, we got first form.com forward slash drinking, bros. I restart off with the micro factors. I'm not going to today. Dan, then you tell us about the protein over there protein to building block of life. If you don't eat protein, you're going to die. Slow death. Well, sometimes maybe a quick death. You think Joel's going to die? He's back there. He's doing the ones in two. I don't think he'll make it much longer. No, he doesn't drink water. Yeah. He can do protein. Well, he's cleaned up his act quite a bit. Food wise, he has. But yeah, you need to get a lot of protein in your diet, no matter what you eat, no matter what your level of exercise is. It can be difficult sometimes to get enough. I recommend, the protein powders are great. I use a variety of different flavors. They have two different styles. One is formula one for pre-workout, not a lot of fat, not a lot of carbs. Then there's level one. It has more of that stuff. It's more of a meal replacement. But a big problem that people have, keeping weight off is also snacking, just eating stupid shit in between meals. I'll tell you, you're going to have a hard time eating enough protein to make yourself fat, right? Yeah. So if you have level one protein bars or the first one meat sticks around, then you're going to be doing quite a bit better than if you had bread and chocolate and shit like that. Yeah. Stuff with a lot of sugar or simple carbs in it. Now I love the multivitamins over there. I love those micro factors, 30 individual pouches, got the big six in them, the antioxidants, the Cocutans, multivitamins, fruits and veggies, EFAs, and the pro-biotics. Also a big fan of their energy drinks back there. Love first form energy drinks. Best in the biz. Go to firstform.com/drinkingbros today where you're going to get free shipping on orders over $75 over there. And that's spelled with a one, one STPH, O-R-M firstform.com/drinkingbros. Next up we got Lucy, our good friends over at lucy.co/drinkingbros. What is Lucy? It's 100% pure nicotine, always tobacco free, Lucy isn't like every other nicotine pouch company that's owned by Big Tobacco, they're like the mom and pop shop of pouches. Pouches come in a variety of strengths from four milligrams all the way up to 12 milligrams. Lucy offers a unique variety of flavors including apple ice, wintergreen, mango and espresso. If you're not a pouch guy or gal, Lucy gum is available in two milligrams, four milligrams or six milligrams. Set yourself up with a subscription and have Lucy delivered straight to your door. Another flavor, I'm old school dude, wintergreen, grew up on it. I was a Kodiak boy in high school and college and I still stick with it. When you throw a Lucy in, good morning coffee, midday slump at the golf course. Whenever you're feeling like you need a little boost, pop in some Lucy. I love it better than most of those gas station brands over there. Your flavors are better and it's a nicotine routine that you can feel good about. Let's level up your nicotine routine with Lucy. Go to lucy.co/drinkinbros and use the promo code "drinkinbros" to get 20% off your first order. Lucy offers free shipping and has a 30-day refund policy if you change your mind. It is lucy.co promo code "drinkinbros" to get 20% off and as always, free shipping. Here comes the fine-print Lucy products, only for adults of legal age and every other order is age verified. Every single order is age verified over there for Christ's six. Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Last but not least, we got our own heartafseltzer.com. Two store locators up, brand new shipping company because of everybody that's invested over on WeFunder.com/heartafseltzer, two bucks a can. So you can get it shipped right to your house for 48 bucks. We sell 24 cans, 48 bucks shipped right to your house over there. Also, we're live in Texas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Eastern Seaboard in North Carolina, Ohio, Illinois, Central Illinois is open, Michigan is now open next month. We've got Montana, Idaho, and Oregon. Anthony and I will see you at that Oregon, Ohio state game coming up. Support us and support the show by going to heartafseltzer.com today and in your city or zip in the store locator and then buy a 12-pack near you. There's a ton of grocery stores over there, HEBs in Texas, Pigly Wiggles down in Alabama in Georgia, Kroger's in Huntsville, Kroger's in Houston and every single total wine that's available in all these states because we're there nationally, buy a 12-pack, support us and support the show. Holy shit. Yeah. It's an amazing success story. And when we were looking for people, once we got our first big, big round of funding, Tony had popped up and I said, "Well, hey, shit. I see this everywhere. I knew about how much money you guys are making and all the other stuff." And I was like, "This could be the guy for us." And you know, I'm sure Tony will be watching this, but the thing is when you start interviewing guys like this and you finally get the big check and you can really afford guys like this, the problem is a lot of them are suits. They want to sit in an office. They don't want to get their hands dirty and everything else. So I'd interviewed six or seven people and then Tony was like, "Hey, dude, I listened to the show. I'm going to be in Champaign, Illinois, where you guys are launching the University of Illinois and you're on the Lestadiums and stuff because how about we meet for launch?" You know, I was like, "Perfect. We'll be there and we got a live show at four. We'll see you at noon." Yeah. He picked a dive bar, which even better knowing who we are and it was like, "Very much a dive bar guy, Tony." Which is great. Yep. That's what we need to be in. So like, that was a part of it, too, where it's like, "Great. We need to be in these bars. We need to be on campus because it was on campus, too." Yep. And then the other thing is, it shows up t-shirt shorts, not in a suit or anything else. So I knew I go, as soon as I asked him, I go, "I bet you're here meeting distributors and, you know, shopping the product." He goes, "Yeah. Yeah, I am." And I go, "That's the way it should be." So I knew that was the guy from that. Yeah. No, I think you can people fall into the midst of just like the name on the resume, right? And you see like a big company and big experience. And sometimes those folks are used to a lot of resources, like it's because when you get into the startup world, you're like, "Listen, we don't have access to all the data that you had access to. We don't have--" I mean, now we're getting there, right? But like, when you're coming in, and so can you, you know, even Chasner, the first VP who worked at the distributor that we ended up going with for 10 years, was like, "This is an easy money. I'm going to call him." And the first answer was, "No. We're not interested." Yeah. You've known this guy your whole life, right? And it was like shocking because when you work for Miller Lite, it's like just as how much are you going to take, not yes or no. So yeah, it's a totally different mindset. And you have to think creatively. You have to think differently. You're not going to outspend the big companies. You have to outwork them and outsmart them. And you have to be a jet ski in a world of cruise ships and navigate quickly and be able to pivot. You know, I remember in 2019, we get our first chain account because we were all independents. Like, no chain would take us. And in 2019, we get a 50 store test and a Circle K in the Carolinas. And we get an email up from one of the store managers who said, "Hey, I moved this little 5K shipper of beatbox to close to the register and I sold it out in 72 hours." So we get that email and we're like, "This is the new sales model. Get the shipper and put it by the register." And like, we went all in on that. And in fact, like, we just were like, "This is our KPI, you know, key performance measure. It's like, how many racks do we have by the registers?" And you just like can be super focused on it. It would take a larger company two years of meetings and, you know, to get to that point. So it's, you have to be lean and Tony was great. He started with us, I think September 2020 and was with us for a couple of years. So. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, bigger jobs come up and all that other stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And Phil, our EVP of sales is a rock star and we've got a great team. We're, you know, we, four or five years ago, I think we were like 12 employees. Now we're 210. You know, we have 300 amazing distributors across the country, all 50 states and hit 100 million in revenue last year, tracking a 175 this year and making money now. So it's a, it's been a, everybody that's been a part of this journey. We are grateful for because, man, it's been some of the darkest days, some of the best days. But I will tell you, there is nothing more fun than doing your, building your own company. That's your baby. That like every decision, everything that happens is it's from decisions that you have to make and it's, it's liver dye and man, you just have to appreciate and enjoy all of it. Cause it is all consuming. And I don't think people always realize that about entrepreneurship. They're like, I hate my job. It seems so cool to just have your own company and, you know, I'm just going to go do that instead. Not realizing that like that is not how it works. No, not at all. And even when I walked in today, he goes, Hey, you should get on my talk to you. You look like shit. And I was like, Hey, are you serious too? And he goes, no, no, no, I'm fucking with you. But there's like three other people this week. They're like, Hey man, it looks like you lost weight. And it was like, no, man, I've been so fucking stressed out that like, I think the only thing I ate last night, cause you have, you know, we have the podcast, obviously, and then the hard AF seltzer. Yeah, it was ass. Wasn't it? No, it wasn't. And why I wish it was. Don't lie to me. I wish it was taking my kid to football and it was an act he left an extra three nuggets and four waffle fries in the bag from Chick-fil-A. And then I had to go to soccer practice for the other child afterwards. And I realized, well, that was all I ate. Once I went to bed that night and I was like, Holy shit, dude, you're exhausted. And then you're just hoping to get to the other side. And with you, now that you're on the other side, the last thing in that phone call, I go, Hey dude, are you going to sell this? Because that's usually everybody's goal ourselves included. And I had told you that. But you said you're having so much fun with the brand and you don't want anybody else to ruin it. If you could talk about that side of it because Dan and I know some people too, who wish they would have held on to their company. Yeah. That's the trickiest part, like there's when you, so just taking a step back in the alcohol kind of startup game, it's very, the classic model is you create the company, you break through some of the barriers, you get distribution, you get to 10, 20 million in revenue. And someone says, I can take that to 100 million and you flip it, right? And you make, you know, it's a great outcome and you can do that. And that's what we thought would happen. Like when we started and we're like this thing, and we always said, like from day one, we're like this, we can, we want to be the, the Red Bull of the alcohol industry, this lifestyle product that's not just in the US, all over the world. So we felt we had huge dreams for it. But you're like, if someone wants to write us a big check, like you're going to take it. And especially after Shark Tank, you have investors and, and then you get into the days of 2015, 16, 17, where it was like sleepless nights, not paying ourselves for months, worried about funding, banging our head against the wall. We just went on national TV, got the bit, one of the biggest checks in Shark Tank history. Are we going to be that company that goes out of business after that? Here's an update. Yeah. Here's your, here's the shark. Yeah. They are back to their jobs. They are putting on the fast food. Um, so yeah, we didn't want that, but, but we, you know, we, we would have that we were like, please, someone take this off our hands. Like we just want to sell, but then like sparks hit and you go and you go and, um, and now, you know, we are almost at the, at the dollar size we're at, you get to a point where you're, you're out of the traditional kind of world of where the acquirers want to be. Yeah. Is it like a billion dollars then at that point? Just based on, I mean, Buzzballs, if you know that product, I do, they, they're, you know, another incredible story, a high school teacher out of Dallas, Texas, Merley, uh, in 2009 was like bringing little makeshift cocktails in tennis ball holders for her teacher friends. And it works with someone to patent the technology. They, they, when I moved to Austin, I see these Buzzballs in the convenience store. I'm like, this is wild. It's so cool. Yeah. Uh, and they over the last, you know, 15 years grew too close to, you know, 300 million revenue and they, they, they're tracking to that this year and they sold a Sazerac earlier this year for a billion plus. Holy shit. That's, I mean, that, that to be honest, it depends on the type of, uh, booze or selling but, um, stuff with, uh, uh, with solid distribution networks can go as high as a 10 and a half multiplier and either. Right. Um, and the booze industry is kind of unique in that regard. Well, deep Eddie went back in the day for 10 times revenue. Yeah. But those multiples have come down. Yeah. Spirits can go if the, if a six and a half is about average though for a good, for like a strong, like aviation when they sold, uh, aviation gym, they sold it at that mark at a six and a half. Yeah. It was about, uh, cost amigos but it was three and a half billion dollars. So I'm guessing it was. Cost amigos was like, they were doing like 40 or 50 million and sold for a billion with a 600 million plus the year now. So it was like 20 times really. Yeah. Yeah. So there are some huge ones. Um, I, you know, not to say that, that we would get that but it's, you're talking in that range potentially. You have to be. Right. Like, cause when, when we hung up the phone, I was working out the math and I was like, shit. And I have to be over a billion dollars if potentially, right. So, so that's wild, right, but, but, you know, who's the right partner? And then you say, you look at guys like Jim Cook at Boston beer, who's been there. He's, you know, I think he's in his seventies and he is loving it. He's still running the company. Yeah. And Anthony Von Mandel who created Mark, Anthony brands who launched Mike's Heart Lemonade and then came in Jack and then white claw. He's still there loving it. You look at the monster co-founders, Rodney and Hilton, oh, they're still there. They're still there. Rodney just announced. Punching holes through drywall. Yeah. And I saw them talk, you know, earlier this year and it was like so inspiring these guys that, that built this thing for 30 plus years. So you look at those stories and you're like, why can't that be us? But we also have, you know, a couple hundred investors that have been in it for a long time. Yep. They want to know when they're getting their money back. So we're, we're, you know, you're always kind of raising money and recapping and looking at things, you know, all the time. And so we are kind of looking, is there an opportunity to find a new partner that, that kind of sees the five year vision because we, we're still in the way you define is like ACV, right? How many stores are you in and how much distribution do you have? We're at a 32, right? And you look at like a mic star lemonade is going to be up in the nineties. So we have a lot of runway. So when you, when you talk about like the culture we have, the people we have, how much fun we're having combined with all the white space we see ahead of us, you say, okay, maybe we, maybe we run this thing for another few years and get to 400, 500 million in revenue with 20% EBITDA margins. And now this can do a lot of things. And then you could talk about, you talk about internationally, talk about a second brand or a third brand or so many different options. So we're, we're just evaluating it all. Like I think you got to have optionality, you got to be open when it's timing is everything. You don't want to miss the window where you're in this hyper growth and then it slows and now the multiple comes down. So you got to look at all of it, but we're just very grateful to be where we're at and then we can kind of control our own destiny in a certain way. We don't have to do anything we don't want to do, which it was not the case. I mean, you'll take money from anybody. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like if you got a check, we're listening. So yeah, no, we're super grateful. It's been a one of the most craziest, amazing rides that I, and so fulfilling and full circle to like, again, when you, when I can remember myself at 25, standing in this, in electric Daisy Carnival, having the most amazing time of my life. And then a decade later to be back there, flying in on the helicopter with live nation and watching so many people drinking this product where it was born and being like, Holy shit. Yeah. This is fucking cool. This is what it was about. And be able to do that at scale and it is just like, wow, what a dream. That's the way I felt at University of Illinois a couple of weeks ago when we were there, and just seeing kids and everybody drink it that we didn't know, you know, like just people that you don't know, because sometimes it's like, all right, friends and you know, we leave the doors open to the studio every single week. So everybody can come in and watch live shows. This is one of our investors over here and a listener from, from WeFunder and yeah, we're like, Hey, cause we don't want to let anybody down, but come on in, drink rage, do everything. But when it's strangers that you don't know, drinking your product and enjoying it and having fun, it's pretty rad. That was, that was one of those, go, if you go back to like 2013, you know, every, every box that we sold was us hand selling it, right? It was like, we were in the store selling it. And I remember the first time driving around near the University of Texas campus and I see someone walking out of a store with a box. I'm like, okay, like it wasn't us selling it. It could work. Hey, someone paid $20 and we didn't make them out of tasting. That was really cool. Yeah, those, those moments, you, and you just got to appreciate every part of it all on the way, right? You have to. It's hard. I'll tell you that because there's, there's some times you're just like, Oh my God, dude, lawyers and things and we'll get into that now because, you know, I'm sure people have tried to sue for beatbox, the name beatbox or things like that. Like how did you get the trademark? Actually the very first name we wanted to call it was Boombox beverages. And we, so we, we, we go on, we, we paid, I think 200 bucks for legal zoom to get them to like try and file the trademark in the classification for wine. And one of their lawyers calls us back and says, Hey, I think you're going to have a problem with this because there's already a Boombox trademark in your classification for wine. And we're like, what? And we look it up and it's this winery out of Sonoma County gun lock bunchu wineries. And, and, and, and I call the winery and I'm like, can I talk to Jeff Bunchu, you know, like, and they're like, what no, I can't get ahold of them. But I saw in 2013, he was coming to Austin for a South by Southwest event. They were hosting to launch, not Boombox, but like a bunch of other wines. And he was a USC music grad. He was like big alternative rock guy. He had like an alternative rock band playing, it was a Fleming steakhouse. So I go there and, you know, just kind of slow play it. I'm like, I casually work my way into the conversation and I shake this guy's, it's a sixth generation winery. They do like reaslings and giver streamers are like, like really nice winery. And he wanted to enter the next generation with this like lineup of rock star wines. He had like raucous, Bacchus and bright light and so, so I go up there and I, I'm like, Hey, you know, I'm a student at UT and we got this idea for, you know, we were part of this class project and blah, blah, blah, and, and we had a trade market as part of the class project. And we saw you had the, the trademark and it sounds like an awesome idea. What are your plans with it? And he's like, oh, you know, we thought it was a cool name. So we trademarked it, but we don't really have any, any plans for it. And so I get, and I pull out my phone and I'm like, well, here's like our prototype. Like this is what we were thinking. And he's like, Oh, that's really cool. Like he gets my number, I call him, leave a voicemail, don't get, he doesn't, he finally calls me back. He leaves a voice and he's like, you know, because in my head, I'm like, we don't know anything about wine and distribution, like we know the marketing side, maybe we can partner, you know, I don't know, you're trying to think of every which way you can get this thing to market. Sure. And so he, he called and left this long voice and we're like, yeah, we talked to our board and we think the, you know, that's cool, but we have no interest in giving up the name and no interest in partnering. So I wish you the best, you know, that's why I was pretty bummed out. And like it's like, you, you, I don't know, you, you, you, you hyper focused on so many things when you're just starting, like it has to be called this or we can't do it. Yeah. Like you're just like boom box, it's in a boom box. And I was taking law for entrepreneurs at the business school and I talked to my professor and I was like, man, I'm so fucking bummed. We can't call it boom box. We're done. We can't make. He's like, Justin, just changed the name, you know, we're like, Oh my God, what a light bulb moment. Like, I guess we should change the name. And so we tested out a bunch of different things and landed on beatbox, which I couldn't imagine it being called anything else now. Um, but I don't know if boom box would have worked. Would it? It's, it's too like literal. I think. I don't know. Beatboxes had a little more cache. It was fun. Um, and it, it rolls out the tongue well. So yeah, we're, you know, I don't know. There's, we haven't, we, we, we sued most in course one time. I wouldn't recommend doing that. No. Wow. Why? What happened? So we got into the seltzer game or in 2018. This was when like white claw had just come out and we had just switched to the beer distributors. And they were like, wow, this beatbox thing is really cool for us. You don't, it's incremental. It's different. Like, and we're like, okay, we can make kind of what they call beyond beer, like not beer products for the beer networks. And so seltzer, we're like, this thing, seltzer is going to be massive in 2018, 2019. So we, we, we launched a, we created and launched a product. We launched it in kind of like late 2019 called Brizzy. It was called Brizzy hard seltzer. And four months later, most in course announces a product called Visi hard seltzer. Yeah. And we were like, the logo looked the same. A lot of it was the same. We were like, and we were with a lot of Miller course distributors like, what's going on? Visi Brizzy. Like, that sounds very similar. And there was confusion at the distributor level. They were shipping in the wrong things to the grocery stores. And so we, we tried, we sued them and, and then co then like, I think we sued them like February 2020. And then like, they were, they were like at the table and then like a month later COVID hits and it was like, then it dragged on for two years. So we, I think we settled for far less than we paid in legal bills. So the lawyers, all one in that one, that's the lawyers always went. The lawyers always went. Nobody ever wins this shit. The lawyers always. The lawyers always win. Yeah. No, so, but it was a, it was a lesson learned one about make, trying to not focus on one thing and also not to get into a legal dispute with a global behemoth. With anybody though, I mean, if you can avoid it, avoid it. To be honest, people steal my shit all the time. Yeah. Merch wise. I've got a million designs. I stop trademarking stuff because as soon as it goes on at my site, it's on Etsy and Amazon. Yeah. Right away. Um, cause he does the designs for like all of our merchants stuff and, uh, it's gone. It's made new shit. Yeah. Yeah. I'm better. I'm better than you. That's why you're copying me. Yeah. No, we see. And we finally have seen now with beatbox like we had our own lane for so long. We always used to say we're the leaders of the party punch category, but we were also the only ones in the party punch category. So that was easy to say. But now we've seen some big suppliers come in with tetrapack, you know, flavor drinks. Usually it's the wine companies, which is interesting, but because they have the one, they have the supply chain for this. Um, so they're, they're creating knock offs, but people want to say, yeah, I saw them. So like in all these states we go into, I'll go and meet with the stores and the GMs and then anybody I can while we're there. Yeah. And, uh, and for the first time ever, I saw a couple of your competitors there right next to you. And that was the first time I'd ever seen them or heard of them. Yeah. And I was like, well, success is going to breed. It happens in every industry. As you've seen in clothes apparel is far worse than anything else. The barriers to entry are, are, are much lower. But yeah, I think that's what the big companies do. They're, they're not the best at innovating. So when they see something in their data and they're like, Oh shit, this is taking share from what we're doing. They just, they're really good and quickly replicating that and then using the muscle of their distribution to get it on shelves very, very quickly. I think like what I, what I like to think, and I think it's true, is that we've reached escape velocity, right? Where we have, we're, we're too far in front and have got, have spent seven years building authentic community around this brand that all we see when big suppliers are talking to their retail partners, like, Hey, there's a market for blue raspberry Tetras and they look at it. Well, there's only one other company in it and they're, and like we're the leader there. So the buyers come around and you don't want to have a private label when you could have the, the brand, the, you know, the Red Bull. So I think, and I keep saying Red Bull, but I, I'm going to say ghost going for it. It's not our, it's not our advertiser. We, we just, a state somebody had sent us a pack in, ours is first form on here. Oh, nice. Yeah. Diehard first form fan, but say, yeah, somebody drops a case of that off the other day, but some, but yeah, with that, what's the best piece of advice you've ever gotten? The best piece of advice I've ever gotten man, I think it's just be, be who you are, be yourself. But I think my advice to anybody that's trying to start something that's currently in the grind or struggling with it is you got to be real with yourself. But if you truly believe in what you're doing and you see that it's, there are areas where it works and you are passionate about what you're bringing to the world. Just find a way, there's, there's always a solution. Don't give up on it. Now if it's, if it's clearly not working and you're wasting money, like you got to be real stuff, but like man, so it's so easy to say like, this is too hard. This is too much. I'm having the worst, you know, week of my life. It gets better on the other side when you make it. So just don't, don't stop. Yeah. I, and I talked about this in the show, the, I got, I got two that I really enjoyed. One was an investor and he said, look. Once you reach a point, he goes, do you have a number in life that you're good on? And I said, yeah, yeah. And he goes, what's that number? And he goes, just think about it in your head. You don't have to tell me out loud. Okay. So I thought about the number and he goes, uh, you got it? And I go, yeah. And I got the number. And he goes, don't go above it. So he goes, if somebody offers you this and you've been working your ass off and everything else, you got wife, kids, um, you know, when you have fun doing podcast every day and, uh, and it goes, take that number, be happy with it and don't chase after that. Yeah. And people that really struggle in life or the ones that are like, oh man, but I made this, but there's a bigger house. So there's a bigger boat or a bigger there will always be right someone with a, with a little more. Always. Yeah. Always. And you're seeing it now with the, the, the ditty thing that's going on, uh, in my opinion, like, um, I think once he started soon, Diagio, that's, you know, it was like, Hey, bro, we got a little more money than you. We're going to, we're going to dig into this and, uh, and see what it's like on the back end. There's always somebody bigger than you. Yeah. Always. Yeah. Even Cuban the other day was talking about buying Twitter and he goes, well, I'd love to buy Twitter and, uh, Elon kindly reminded him, Hey man, I can't afford Twitter. Like, so there's always somebody bigger, no matter what. Yeah. The other one was our buddy from the burb is, um, Scott. Yep. Love Scott. And, uh, we did a gig there. Him and I did a live show at the Redskins field. What's the name of the field? Fuck. I don't even know. FedEx field. FedEx, that's right. Um, so we're doing it. Uh, the game's going on in the background and him and I are doing interviews the whole time. I think we only got, we only got to catch like the last three minutes of the game. Um, because we were doing shows from the, from the suite and I was asking him about investing and everything else and he goes, look man, I love you and he goes, I believe in you guys and everything else. And he goes, uh, selling my company was so fucking hard and he goes, I have zero interest to get back in another meeting again, an email, a phone call, whatever and he's got kids and all that other stuff. Yeah. And I was like, no shit because that's how hard it really is. Yeah. Because for you, and I don't know if beatbox was your only idea, um, but if you're one idea that you've been focused on your entire life, doesn't hit, then what do you do? Yeah. No, it becomes, you have to be careful not to let it be your whole identity. But I do wonder like if we did have to, if we sold this company, a piece of you would be, it's like a loss, you know, like in a lot of founders, a lot of founders have a really hard time, they have all this money, but they pat the, their passion is like, you know, now with a lot of money, you can probably find other things, but you will never have this again. Yeah. I mean, you have friends like that. Uh, shit. One of them was Hunter and, you know, my buddy Chris Hunter, who was on the show a few months back for, for Koya, um, who created for LoCo and all that other stuff. And I was like, well, what about afterwards or whatever? And he goes, you know, it's fun. And you take a couple months off and then you realize you're a young dude. What are you going to do the rest of your life? It's almost like an athlete. Yeah. Who, who retires it, you know, tires early and 35 years old and you're like, well, shit, what do I do for the next 40, 50 years of my life? Yeah. And, and I said, so what happened? And he goes, well, I took a vacation to Italy, uh, was there for a couple months, wife, kids and all that stuff. And then two months go by your board, you're starting another company. And that's it. Start another drink. Start another thing. Yeah. You're not going to lose. Like you have to, I have to be doing something. What it would be. I don't know. Yeah. It's hard to think about life without beatbox at this point because there's like so much of my 12 years, you know, 13 years through the ringer. But you know, it's not just me. You know, there's a lot of other people in the room and investors and of course, and you got to take care of them. And like my biggest fear is not letting anybody down. So when we did this, when we did the We Funder initially and it, you know, it, we did it, I think in, I was like just under four hours, we raised the 1.235 million. Yeah. Incredible. Right. Then you look at how many people are there and I'm looking at it now. It's like 1600 and change that are, you know, people that are invested, most of them listeners. And I don't want to let them down where I take these meetings seriously and all this other shit because it's like, God damn, dude, I don't want to lose money for anybody. Like, thank you for believing in us, people to part and, you know, people that have a lot of money, people that don't have a lot of money and they all trust you with their hard earned money that they have and yeah, it's terrifying the idea of letting all of them down. Yeah. I don't give a fuck. It's $80. Like there's a point that, you know, yeah, I mean, I had my former jobs. I had two different jobs. Both of my former bosses, you know, invested 50 grand back in 2015, 16 when we were, they were just like, you know what, I, you were, you know, I must have been a decent employee. And, and like, yeah, like what a, it could have gone terribly. It could have been like, man, I'm so sorry guys. And use like that, that, making that phone call, you just don't want to make now it's a great phone call. You know, they look what we're doing now, did great for you. But no, for sure. I think as any founder, you, when you take other people's money, there is a pressure there. I don't know. There is. And I've been on the other side of it too, cause I did movies for, you know, years and years and years and you're raising funding for these movies and then one didn't do well. And you got to call these people and say, Hey, you're, you're not getting your money back. And you're like, well, what the fuck do you mean? And I'm like, well, the movie didn't do well. And I was like, I can't predict this, you know, and if I could, well, they would all be hits. You know, you had a formula that, that most things were working and then this one didn't do well. And I remember sitting on those calls and then one person just kept calling over and over again. I was like, Oh my God, dude, like I, what do you want me to tell you? I can only tell you so many times, but they were like, no, but you know, you could do it. And I was like, no, no, no, the movie came out and that's, that's it. It's dead. Like I apologize. And you know, fuck dude, I felt awful. Well, we're with hard AF Seltzer. I mean, you guys are getting going. What's the next for you guys? So we're getting going. We're in, as of the end of next month, we'll be in 12 States. We, you know, it's interesting. You look at the Seltzer market, for example, and Dan, you can speak on the coffee here in a second, but with Seltzer, we got in people like, Oh, that market saturated. And it was like, well, no, no market is really saturated, good branding and something that tastes good. Yeah. It's cut through the market. It doesn't matter. Like commodities have been commodities since the beginning of time. Yeah. Seltzer. Everyone was like, Oh, Seltzer is a bubble. I'm like, it still does $3 billion. It's definitely not a bubble. Yeah. That's, that's silly. Yeah. That was back in 2020, 2021. Yeah. Yeah. It had bubbles. It had bubbles. Yeah. Exactly. Well, and then you saw thousand and then it washed out. Yeah. Now it's like, okay, who are some real brands that can enter into this? Well, that's how, that's how it works, man. I mean, there's always shakeups in market, whether it's economic modalities changing or creative destruction or anything like that, but good, good product and branding will always persist. Right. And sometimes you just got to wait and it's, it's, I think it's an interesting thing for the consumer. You talked about coffee earlier, right? Coffee got popular in the 90s in the Pacific Northwest for some fucking reason. I don't know why there's not an Italian that lives anywhere near that fucking place. Yeah. That's super popular up there. And then you started to see like a bunch of, it wasn't just Starbucks. There were a bunch of companies that started in the 1990s. There were coffee companies and coffee is one of, it's, it's, it's an old commodity until since what the 1000, I think is when it was discovered in Yemen or some shit like that. Yeah. A long time ago, but or something, something like that, I don't remember exactly the exact date, maybe it was the seventh century actually, but it's been a commodity in America since our founding, basically, right? Like we went from tea to coffee pretty quick. And still there are new companies that pop up all the time that are successful in that market. Yeah. Right. Like one of the difficult things to do, and I'm sure you guys experienced this is build a market for something where it doesn't already exist, right? Yeah. Your product, your, being a category of one is a good thing if you're already popular, right? But if you're starting out as like, hey, I got this new thing and people are like, that's not part of my life. Like you, you're, you have to connect with people branding wise to open up that part of their life. Like here, this is something that you need. Here's wine. Your value proposition is multiple layers, whereas if you make coffee, it's like, it's good coffee. Taste it and see you'll either like it or you don't. And it was like 63% of Americans drink at least one cup of coffee a week. And for me, like, that's a big old, bigger, total addressable. Market than any other non food category. Yeah. And you take me, for example, like, I'm the, I, I'm probably the best example of this is I don't like coffee. I don't like the taste of it, but I can't get up and start my day without it. Therefore, if I'm going to buy it, I'm going to buy it from a brand I believe in, and it was black rifle coffee. And those were my best friends. We're on the show and created it and was in Evan's bathtub and all this other stuff, because it is about the branding. It is about the community. Yeah. It's community. It's a healthy, I drink, but I want to support somebody I believe in and that I love, right? And it's the same thing with, with hard AF seltzer, where you look at the market and you're like, all right, cool. I think the seltzer was washed out. If you make something great that tastes good and it's about the community, and then it's an 8%, which is, you know, essentially double everything else on the market and treat it like a craft beer, which is where the category needs to go rather than a sunny day or, you know, somebody other one, the quick cash grabs, like a sonic or something like that. Yeah. You can break through the marketplace and there's hope at the end of it, because right now, you know, it's not seltzer. It'll move on to something else quickly, right now it's tea. So when I go to these markets, everybody wants a fucking hard tea. Yeah, there's a lot of them. A lot of them. And I had yours last night over here and it was incredible. Yeah. You got the lemonade in there and all that other stuff. But it's different. Yeah. I think it's not like a twisted tea or something like that. Yeah. I mean ours is, you know, the product itself, right? It's 11% higher ABV, it's wine. It's a wine base. All they do have a mall base. It's very the number one thing customers care about the most in any segment is taste. It has to taste good. And so we are hyper focused on taste. And then after that, in alcohol, it's taste, it's price and it's out ABV. Yep. And if you can be, if you, and then, and then it's the brand experience. What does this brand mean to me? And so if you can, but the, but the basics of anything, taste, price, ABV, right? And then the brand can win you over the top of for us, non carbonated, resealable, great nostalgic flavors that when you taste it, you're like, I know exactly what that's supposed to taste like, like our blue raspberry, I was, it's like that blue otter pop you had growing up. The fruit punch is like that two liter bottle of wine punch that you had as a kid. We have our brand new orange that tastes like the orange McDonald's high sea. So like flavors. So I haven't had them. I'm going to drink it live on air here. That's nice. Did you chill it down? I did. I'd show you down. I'd show all your, all your products. It's brand new. It's mine. It's fucking delicious. Actually, I take that. You can freeze all these. And I put it in a blender with some Torani vanilla syrup and it was like a creamsicle blended up. It was awesome. Yeah. So, and I think, you know, creating a new category that that didn't, it makes it very challenging because retailers don't understand it. They still don't understand it. Why, you know, people want it so much, but yeah, they don't understand us either pocket, like talking to distributors, like we've got a podcast, it's got a lot of people. Yeah. I get Jillian listeners. Like, so you do a little show from home, I'm like, no, we can send a couple thousand people out here if you'd like a little tomorrow. We can sell your stores tomorrow. Yeah. And that's what like Michigan just opens. Yeah. You guys have a great setup here. Right. And they order. But trying to explain that to a 55 year old Joe at the distributor, he's like, Oh, what the hell? What is that? What the hell's a pocket? I heard TikTok's popular. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Sure. Like, you know, it's, it's hard. The buyers don't get it and that, but they all want, you know, the next generation of consumers. They say they do. And then like, take Michigan. We just opened up Michigan as we got the university and all that stuff. So they ordered 300 cases for everybody at home that's six hundred twelve packs and got the, I said, look, just send me the list of stores. I'll read them on air and boom, they're gone in 20 or 48 hours. Yeah. So going and how did this happen? I was like, I remember that conversation we had six months ago where I said, we had this little podcast, you know, that you didn't understand. That's how it happened. That's how it happened. And then you take that win and you go to the next one, right? It's about finding those little, and Tito, who's a mentor of ours in early, you know, just an advisor and an amazing guy gave us so much of your advice. One of it was, and maybe I should have used some of his quotes in my, who gave me the best advice, but he's like, you, you start little fires, right? You start a fire here. You start a fire over there. And then all of a sudden you start a fire here and you see, holy shit, that, that one's really going and you go, okay, let's fan that flame and move everything there. And, and we asked him to, like, what do we do when competition comes in? Talking about that. And he says, you rip off the rear view mirror and you step on the fucking gas. So, you know, that was, that was that. But I think, you know, you talked about like how connected, we're so connected as, you know, millennials, Gen Z, we're more connected than ever before. We're also like more alone. A lot of people are just feel alone. Yeah. Then more than ever, they're on social media there, but they, they feel alone. And I think having a product that makes people feel a part of something bigger and brings people together, like, like, that's when you can really build that passionate fan base. And for us, like we have, it's all about empowering the different communities. And like, for example, we have a discord channel, which is really rare with alcohol companies, but we have over 10,000 people in it. And there's, it's like a self running, we have two community managers that are running like that are Facebook family are all sorts of things. And, and they're, they've set up channels of like their pets. And there's a mental health channel. And there's like beatbox channel, and then there's a festival channel. And so you'll see people say like, Hey, I'm going to Loslands, which is going on this weekend in Columbus, Ohio. And, and, and we'll sell like 10,000 cases there this weekend. Right. And so, but they'll say, I'm going to Loslands and someone will also say, Oh, I'm going to Loslands. Now these people have never met before in real life, but they're both going. And because of the beatbox community, they're, they have flags and they were doing a meet and greet and meetups and they get to, and then you'll see them, you know, whether it's on, on Twitter or on Instagram, they're like, I just met my new best friend that I didn't even know existed before. And if you like big companies can't buy that. Now that's been the key to all of our success, actually, from black rifle to this show to hardy F now, it's always been the same thing. It's like, and it just, it's funny. It just happened to me two days ago, a friend of mine is moving. And I just put a message, we have private Facebook groups in like 200 different cities and bigger ones. 800 subgroups total. Yeah. Oh, it's incredible. And you're empowering them to be a part of it. Yeah. One of my friends moving, and I'm like, just make a post and somebody's there helping her now. Right. Yeah. It's like, isn't that cool? And then we get stories all the time from people like fucking sell, they'll post in the group hand broke down on the side of the road here. Can you come fucking? He's from Germany. That's serious. Yeah. But that's when the brand becomes bigger than just seltzer in a can or party punch in a box. Anybody can do that. Well, that's the thing. It didn't matter what we decided to sell. Right. So that's why we focus on making it the best. You make it taste great. Yeah, make it make everything. Doesn't matter if it's an energy bar or a seltzer, whatever it is. But that tastes great thing is a spectrum too. Right. Because there's a lot I think in the early days, you only got to hit one thing. Like there's the taste and then there's the aftertaste. That's a big problem in alcohol, which is right. You have to find the right. Yeah. Yeah. Because if you use with artificial flavoring and stuff like that, which we we're all natural flavoring for us, but even with all natural flavoring, if you use the wrong mixture or anything, you're going to get some weird aftertaste or something like that. And people will tolerate that for a couple, maybe. Yeah. Right. But it's I feel like you got to get out of that as soon as possible. Like a full spectrum of good taste and booze. And that's why all the either 8% keep going away because they taste like shit. Yeah, it's terrible. Yeah. There's there's a few that try. Yeah. Surge is terrible, but light and have a good. No, no, you know, most of course, next year, their whole strategy is taking their brands like Blue Moon and Topo Chico and making them 8%. So you guys were on to something. Well, we all were. And they all yeah, they and they, a lot of people have copied too. Like we had original flavors and then all of a sudden white cloth starts doing those flavors and you're like, Hey, man, where'd you get that? Yeah, you know, you know, it happens. It does. It does. Like you can you do what you're doing and build in the community and it's there is no one single thing that anybody that you'll do that'll be like, That was the that was the thing that took us to the top, but it's just small wins, relentless effort compounded over for us 12 years and and making the right decision and not making the final wrong decision because you can't, you know, and that's, you know, allowed us to do what we do today. So it's awesome. Last question for you here. What's the future of beatbox? Well, we are, you know, we are growing like crazy. As I said, we're in 110,000 accounts across the country. Damn, we're in like 3000. That feels like a lot. Yeah. No, I mean, we added over 40,000 accounts this year and 30,000 last year. So we were in 25, 30,000 two, three years ago. Wow. So for us, you know, we, we, we had our first ever distributor conference where we brought out all of our wholesalers, hosted them with our whole team. We had the owner of the Savannah Bananas there, which by the way, that guy is incredible. I just, yes, we met with them maybe a month and a half ago. Cool. Yeah. His story. He friends with Sarah or some shit. Sarah. And then also we have a sports agent who does this for us. And he goes, Hey, dude, what about the Savannah bananas? Like, yeah. Yeah. It's fucking great. Yeah. His, and he did a keynote. It was so amazing. And then we had Dirk's family do a show. So like what we talked about is we believe the future of alcohol is flavor. We think we're the Gatorade generation. We grew up on a drink that is driven by millennials, driven by Gen Z. It's driven by Hispanic Latino. There is such a tailwind for flavor. And we believe we are the leaders in flavor. And so for us, it's, it's this concept of a flavor wall and building that at retail, where you can't think of us as a traditional beer where you put two skews on the shelf and you're done. Some people love blue raspberry. Some people love lemonade. I see some people love orange. Some people love, you know, pink lemonade. So you, you have to have variety. So we're really focused on that next year of like, how do we go from an average of five flavors per account to eight, nine and build these full shelves? We also have the multi packs, the six packs, which are brand new for us this year. Yeah. And you also got the, yeah, we did the, we did the, we did a blue razz fruit punch, our top two with a brand new cherry limeade flavor that you could only get in the variety pack. The cherry limeade like took off. So now we're doing that as a single, but the variety packs are a different occasion, right? It's like a third of our customers. It's, they work their ass off during the day. They want to go home and watch sports center, play video games and they're unwinding with a beatbox. You can have some. You can close it up, put it back. Um, that's a third, but there also is, it's a big part of people's pre games. It's a big part of people's tailgates, but like the, the, you see people walking out of a store. It's hard to carry 10, 10. And they do, they do, but like it's way easier to pick up two six packs. Um, so that's a big push for us. We're just now getting into like Walmart and Kroger and Target. So we're not even in some of the biggest retail. We're not in Costco. So like I saw you at HGB of the street. HGB is a, HGB was our very first grocery retailer in 2014. They're like, this is cool. You guys are local. We want to support. It was amazing. They're an incredible organization. They are. We're in every single HGB. Yeah, they're, they, and if you give love to them and you're local here, they will give you a ton of back. They've been great. Um, so it's just more accounts, more flavors, international. We're launching the Caribbean, which is super cool. Holy shit. And Q four. Um, and we were looking at other opportunities internationally. Of course, like we don't want to, you got to be measured because you have so much runway in the US. So you're like, we don't want to distract ourselves, but that's on the horizon. And then, you know, we're just going to keep riding this rocket ship and, and we'll be just fine. So that's awesome. Well, now's the point of the show. We get to the drinking bro of the week, which is someone who has inspired you or helps you become the person you are today. Who would you like to give the drinking bro of the week to? My dad tried and truly. So he, you know, he is amazing. Uh, got fired from his job when I was like 10 was doing a side hustle at the time. Uh, diverting clothing to club stores, when all in, took a home loan out at our house and van eyes and, um, over the last 35 years has built it, built it, built it to this incredible logistics company, watching him as a kid, uh, do what he did and like, and just the advice. I'm so grateful. He's still around. I call him all the time has helped me with so many things, personal and business wise. Uh, without my dad, I don't know that the, that beatbox, uh, gets to where it is. So that's awesome. A lot of people come on the show and think they're dead, by the way. Yeah. Um, so, yeah. And it's my mom's birthday today. It's September 20th. So I've got it. It's her 70th birthday. So I'm going to give her a shout out. My mom's on the 22nd. All right. I'll give my mom a shout out too. She's a, I don't know if she's drinking, bro, but a drinking mom. Bro, bro, bro, there we go. There you go. Well, Justin, congratulations on the success. Really appreciate the time today. Glad your wife is pregnant. Yeah, well, you had some time due date in 10 days, September 30. So I'll be a father the next time we see you. It's the best, is that your first one? First one, baby girl. Oh, it's the best. Baby girl. It's the best. I got two boys and a girl and couldn't imagine life without the girl. Yeah. For real. It's totally different. Yeah. All my, my buddies that are girl dads are just, and Brad, my co-founder, just had a baby girl two months ago. They're like, man, there's nothing better than being a girl. Dad, I 100% agree. It's great. Nothing. My two boys aren't great. Yeah. Yeah. You love your boys too. But different. Beat the shit out of each other. And I'm like, hey, there's that power dynamic of a boy versus a man. It's like, and I just watch them bash each other into the ground and I'm like, holy Christ, my daughter doesn't do any of that. So I'm like, wait, whoa, whoa. She's. Oh, that's true. Your daughter's a fucking psycho. Well, you saw your house. She picked up an apple, not a cocaine, but off the pool table and then rifled it. It's at one of the brothers. So yeah, we'll see. We'll see how she turns out. As for now, she's OK. Thank you, Justin. We appreciate you being here. Appreciate you guys tuning in. Go to iTunes, rate the show of five star and leave a quick review. Also head on over to Spotify. It's just a five star and you can walk away. If you're out and about here this weekend, want to buy some beatbox. Maybe grandma 12 pack a hard AF cell to do. So thank you, Justin. For Dan, today, Anthony Holloway, I'm Ross Patterson. This is the drinking bros podcast. Good night, everyone. [MUSIC]
