Poppi: Allison and Stephen Ellsworth. From Farmers Market Vinegar Drink to $2B Soda Sensation

0:11 Expo West is a really big event in CPG, especially in Better For You. Yep, it's a big convention, Anaheim. Yeah. We Using this temple event as being our launch.

0:25 So we had spent a lot of our money on I think like almost$90,000 on building a booth. uh you know you have to pay for the space you have to get product out there it was like our big bet And we ship out. to launch Poppy March 3rd, 2020, the first week of COVID.

0:43 And then a day into it, they canceled the entire thing. And at that moment it was just so devastating for us because We're like, oh goodness, this was our moment. Where do we go from here? Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. I'm Guy Roz and on the show today how a Mom and Pop Beverage Made with Apple Cider Vinegar got remade as Poppy, a soda sensation that sold to Pepsi.

1:22 for nearly two billion dollars. Okay, I'm gonna tell you about something I do every morning, and I'm gonna qualify this by telling you that I have zero standing or expertise or academic training to give any advice on what to put into your body. All I know is what works for me, whether it's real or imagined or just witchcraft, it works. So every morning after I get a little morning sunlight, thank you, Andrew Huberman. I pour water into a tall glass and drop a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar into the water.

2:04 And then I drink it. It's supposed to be really good for regulating blood sugar, and all I know is that I think it makes me feel pretty great. But That's just me. For a lot of people, the taste of diluted apple cider vinegar is a non-starter. Which brings us to today's story. Because about 10 years ago, Allison Ellsworth was doing a version of what I do as well. In her case, it seemed to help with digestion and chronic stomach issues.

2:33 The problem though, at least for Allison, was the taste. So she started to add fruit juices to her vinegar and water mix, and eventually started to share her concoction with friends. And soon Allison's husband Steven joined to help out as well. Now you probably know what happened next because as these things go. Enough people liked what Allison was making that it occurred to her she might have a product and a business. So Allison applied to a local farmer's market in Dallas.

3:04 and started bottling her homebrew vinegar drink and called it Mother beverage. Doesn't quite slip off the tongue, but it was a start. One day, Allison and Steven found out that Shark Tank was coming to Dallas looking for prospective. Now, I'm not gonna unravel this whole story here because you are about to hear it, but This is the story of how a farmer's market vinegar drink.

3:27 became poppy. A prebiotic soda that eventually sold to Pepsi. For nearly two billion dollars. Think about that. In less than ten years, the brand went from a mom and pop curiosity at a Texas farmers market.

3:42 to a two billion dollar sensation. As for Steven and Allison, they didn't start their careers in the beverage industry or even in the health and wellness space. They both grew up in the 80s and 90s, Allison in Texas, Steven in Wisconsin. After attending the University of Utah, Steven worked briefly in the corporate world, including a stint at Wells Fargo, but He didn't like it all that much. Yeah, that's right. I um

4:11 I'd like to say that I was Unemployable in the corporate world. I've always had the ability to earn money from a young age. I got a paper out when I was eleven and that's very autonomous. Mowing lawn, shoveling driveways.

4:24 And I never had to go work for someone to to get that. I just had a really difficult time. Taking direction when I just had such a clear idea of what I wanted to do and the way in which I wanted to do it. Better.

4:39 than what my boss was recommending. And Alison, when you graduated, um You I think pretty much right out out of college went to go work in

4:50 The oil and gas industry. If I'm not mistaken, tell me what you did. Well when I graduated college in two thousand nine I didn't want to go like Steven was saying, go work for the man or some corporate job making thirty thousand a year. So

5:05 I was like, okay, my dad has these resources. I can go work in oil and gas. And so he did work in oil and gas and you start off at a really young age making like five hundred bucks a day, right? Is really good money. You're working seven days a week. You're working from dawn to dusk, though. It's really, really not the easiest job, but for me the hustle was there and I love just making money. Honestly, I think that's a big driver of that self starting mentality that just kinda was instilled in for me from a really young age. I love that you say that because um you know uh a lot of people are uncomfortable saying that, right? Because it it it I think there's a perception that saying I money was important to me, it sounds like it's greedy, but actually

5:50 I'm assuming that from your perspective is freedom, like you didn't grow up with anything. Yeah, I I didn't grow up with a lot of money, even though my dad had money I love him to death, but we didn't really reconnect until after college and so I never knew I didn't have money, but I knew I didn't have as much as everyone else. If that makes sense. So for me, it was really big piece was the freedom.

6:12 And working in the industry it wasn't like you were working on drilling rigs or right like you were tell me what you were actually doing. Yeah, so it's kind of similar to what people call as like a landman, obviously as a landwoman, but I would go into courthouses in these small towns of about three thousand people, and I would research basically ancestries of where the government or the United States or the state gave land to that settler back in the 1800s. And then I would track that forward and I would just see who owns those minerals. And then you would go and track those people down. You would negotiate with them on whether or not we could drill for oil on your land or do research. We did a lot of surface research and seismic activity and water research.

6:58 So it's very self-starter. No one is actually there with you. So I'd be in this town in the middle of nowhere by myself. And you have to be very on top of it and hit your deadlines. So you're do you're doing this work and Steven, you don't last that long in the corporate world, uh, but you're in Utah and you and I guess you would eventually go work at a ski and snowboard shop. Yeah, so

7:26 I guess it was a sabbatical from the corporate world. When I went to school, I was a good student. Uh I tried to rearrange my schedule so that I could ski as much as possible, snowboard as much as possible. And so I went and was a you know a buyer and a manager at this snowboard shop. And so Got to test out all of the latest gear, got to buy the gear for the shop. Um, and ultimately got to do what I was super passionate about. So this store that you would go eventually work for, this was in Salt Lake City.

7:55 It was. It was in Salt Lake City at the Gateway Mall. And One of the projects when I was working was in Utah and I happened to be at the mall walking in to that snowboard shop and that's where me and Steven met. What were you doing there?

8:11 I actually do enjoy snowboarding as well, not as hardcore Stephen. And I went in to buy a backpack. I think I was looking at some bindings and he was the one that helped me and I didn't know a single soul. I was living two hours outside the city in a teen town called E from Utah. And he Said to me, Do you can I get your number? I would love to take you to ice cream. Wow, that's that let's just pause for a sec,'cause Steven Was that uh something that you would normally do? Like just a ask a customer out? Uh no, so that was honestly it was the first time. And I was actually pretty

8:45 uh pretty intentional about not doing that'cause I felt it sort of Broke the professional barrier. Uh But I just couldn't pass up the opportunity when I saw Allison come in. Why what? I mean she was looking for a backpack.

9:00 And what I mean, it it could have been just been an ordinary transaction and we would never even be having this conversation. Like she got in and I didn't even buy the backpack. I'm a terrible salesperson. Honestly, when he gave me his number and said, Do you want to go to ice cream? I thought to myself, obviously He's probably Mormon and I grew up Seventh day Adventist, which is also kind of a stricter religion and so it's, you know, similar no drinking and you know work. Very healthy lifestyle also, right? Yeah. And um no, it was it was great because I think we had a lot of those similar values, right? So that fur so when he first asked you to go for ice cream That was not you weren't like oh yeah, you were thinking

9:44 Okay, he's clearly um a member of the church'cause he's not asking me for coffee or for a beer. Yeah, that's right. I'm from a big happy Mormon family. And I don't say that uh Chically. Right. Uh you know, you get

9:59 religion's such a huge piece of of dating and I The second we hung out, I realized that he was very different and it wasn't such a big thing. Like it just moved really quick. And then we got engaged seven months into it and just

10:17 I don't know, it's just like when you know, you know. Yeah, for sure. All right, so you guys get married in twenty fourteen and and I guess Steven um you wind up quitting your job at the snowboard shop and and going on the road to work with Allison doing uh similar work, like oil and gas work, right? Correct. And so w where were you guys actually living at this point? We ended up moving into a teeny motor home for a few months. And um we moved to Wyoming and we're working on all of these different things. And honestly, this is why I started

10:48 Poppy because on that road I kind of felt ill. And let's back up back up a little bit. You'd be feeling ill like Like stomach issues, digestion, like what what were you what were your symptoms? Yeah, I just look back at pictures and I w my whole body was inflamed. So red Puffiness, my skin, horrible acne, horrible tummy problems. I was allergic to all perfumes, all makeup, shampoos. My eyes would swell shut. Horrible. You're traveling, you don't have access to

11:19 Be able to work out consistently, you're not sleeping consistently, and then you don't have access to good food. And I think that was a huge piece. of why I didn't feel good and s and going to doctors that just kept writing me off saying, You're fine, like women problems, right? Yeah. Alright, so you guys um are working, and Alice in the meantime, you're dealing with just this frustration about not feeling well. And I guess at a certain point maybe you Found something online.

11:47 Um, you started to experiment with apple cider vinegar. Like to take to I guess t t to dilute it in water and and See if that would make you feel better. Yeah, I ended up doing a full lamination diet where I cut out sugar dairy, gluten.

12:06 all the things and then I slowly started introducing those foods back into my diet and the consistent thing when you're doing that to help with the cleansing what they call process was drinking apple cider vinegar every day. And so going through that process It was just life-changing. Before I gave up all the food, within two weeks of just having the apple cider vinegar, I felt 50% better. And I just discovered that food can really affect the way that you feel. And the only problem with the apple cider vinegar is it's just a really harsh taste. And so I was putting it in this big Huge thing of water, adding lemon and cayenne pepper to it, and just like almost choking it down daily, knowing I had to do it. I wasn't like looking forward to it.

12:50 And um I just like was like I gotta make this taste better. There just has to be a better way. Yeah, I mean it's and I guess we should pause and talk about apple cider vinegar for for a moment,'cause I I take it every day and I uh I take a shot of it and dilute it in like eight to twelve ounces of water. You're not supposed to drink it straight. It's not actually it's not actually it can c it could snuck for your throat. But um There's a lot of research that shows that it does have an impact on

13:16 uh on insulin sensitivity which lowers Blood sugar. It's a really great and people, right? There's people have been using it for a long time. Yeah, and at the time I had no idea about any of the research or anything behind it other than maybe my grandma told me to take a shot when I was sick, right? Yeah. And growing up and I just knew I just

13:36 It's all different. But I was also trying to get Steven to drink it. I was like, you have to try this. And he's like, You're crazy. I'm not drinking that. And I was like, Okay, I'm gonna make it taste better. Uh like goal, I will make you try this somehow, some way, but And creating it, I didn't want to take away from those health properties where I could have just added orange juice or a ton of sugar or a lot of other things. So for me it was really important to try to keep the sugar really low and then the ingredients, basically ingredients that you can love and pronounce and Uh, just the ingredients people could know. All right. So you are this is having an impact and and like any time people find something that starts to really help them, they get really passionate about it.'Cause I've I've been in this

14:18 position too and I'm sure you're just like talking up apple cider vinegar to anybody who would listen, but but to some people they might be like, U uh that's weird. That sounds weird. You're doing what? Everyone thought I was weird. I remember I'd one neighbor. Who she was having some health problems as well. And then she started knocking on my door and I was making her mason jars of it weekly. It was this thing where I was like, wait, this is interesting. Other people are interested in it. And then soon after that, we went home for Thanksgiving to Texas, and my sister and brother in law, and my family, like everyone's there, and I bring it with me. And I just think everyone's gonna be s just as excited as me. And I set it up as like a tasting in the sun room. And the only person that shows up to try it is my brother in law. Nobody else would even try it. They're like

15:03 Apple cider vinegar, like no, thank you. I have want nothing to do with it. And they all called me crazy. And and All right, and as you're doing this, like what are what are some of the other things that you're doing to make it more palatable? Like I actually love the taste of apples. I buy like um I buy those giant bottles of Costco, you get like three or four, you know. Yeah. But it sounds like you did not love the taste of it in water, that you were trying to mask it somehow. I'm trying to mask it and You know, you're a rarity. Not a lot of people like it, right? Like you're a little crazy. No, with the with the process, and I'll be honest. I remember

15:40 Trying all sorts of things. I remembered, like it was yesterday, simmering raspberries to make pureees. I tried essential oils. Um But really what we landed on in those early days was I used to infuse the vinegar. So I would get like real raspberries, real rose petals, and I would put the vinegar in it and I'd put it on the table and it would infuse. So it would take on the flavor of those, and then I would literally use sparkling water soda stream. And then the main sweetener at the time, Stevia, and um some of the first flavors that I made. I honestly one of them we still have today, which is raspberry rose. I remember doing an orange cinnamon with like real cinnamon sticks. lavender lemons, right? So really just flavors that I thought would go really well together and some worked and some didn't. Alright, you're making this. This is like two thousand Fifteenish.

16:31 Tell me how what even get'cause T making it for yourself is one thing, but deciding to pursue this as a business. is another thing. You and oftentimes you need outside validation. You need people who are who are telling you, hey, you have something here. So was that happening? Who was saying that? Yeah, so I remember going through this, I was really passionate about it.

16:56 At the same time, I was feeling better, right? I talked about just the the way I personally felt. And both Steven and I looked at each other. We'd been married for a little bit. We're like, maybe we want to start having a family. And so I remember sitting at the table one night, it was me, my dad, and Steven And we were just like, What are we gonna do next? Like if we wanna start a family and we don't wanna be on the road, maybe Stephen could stay on the road while I'm home, but then nobody wants to live that life either. And my dad goes, Why don't you sell your hooch? And I remember him calling it hooch. And it kind of hit us like, wait.

17:27 Could this be a business? It was still a hobby at that point. Um So we got up and we bought a place, we moved to Dallas. We moved in December.

17:37 And I got pregnant right away in January. It was a lot quicker. But I think like it was really interesting as you sort of talk about fate and some of these things that really A line. Um Thankfully we had a long project that we had been working in Wyoming.

17:53 And the project was sort of winding down. And so Allison was gung ho. She, you know, we finished the project. She didn't go back to work. She started doing this. I found a local job. In Dallas.

18:05 To to pay the bills. And so this is what I would do during the day and then at nights and on the weekends Allison and I would work together. We just started buying equipment. We started maxing the credit cards out pretty early and just kind of putting our life savings into What we just wanted to do. So I remember our guest room, right? I'm like three months pregnant at this point. Our guest room on the bottom floor had

18:28 like four vats of vinegar that were what fifty to a hundred gallons. So our entire house smells like vinegar. We have upstairs on our main floor, we have a table that we've basically make shifted this bottling unit together. I mean, I remember like when we first started doing it, it was exploding on the roof of our brand new house. It was this whole thing. And we would Literally measure the vinegar With um just like these I don't know, what do you call it? Syringe. A syringe. And we would put it into them, each one, and we'd measure the exact amount, and then we'd fill it with water, and then we'd cap it. Fill what? A bottle?

19:04 Yeah, just bottles at that time. We had no labels. We were working through like what is the name? What what do we call it? What do we wanna say? What are our values? So I'm just Wanna understand this. First of all How did you

19:18 even learn how to I mean, it's not a good thing. Th right, there's like a science to it and the pH levels and obviously you trial and error with the exploding bottles, but how did you know what to buy and and and how to make it? Was it j just Purely Like Google Research.

19:37 So that's I I'm kind of a a a science nerd and my brain is is really linear. And so I I dug into the science of it. And so I had an understanding of what A little bit about fermentation. I was really into kombucha. Even in college, I think I started drinking kombucha Like in two thousand and six. We would brew uh beer in college and so I had an idea of like fermentation and

19:59 you know, sugars and yeast and these other things is what ultimately caused fermentation and so It was honestly trial and error. We had really rudimentary understanding. And um And we just gave it a whirl. Well you you would buy and these are what like So really funny story.

20:17 Is we're Filling these. One by one. The equipment we had was essentially like what the inside of like a soda fountain looks like. You've got this little machine that takes in water. It's gotta be at a at you know, a temperature. Uh that took a little bit to to find out. It has to be around forty degrees in order for like the carbonation or the CO two to really

20:37 sort of dissolve within the water solution. And it would shoot out as carbonated water. So think about a more efficient soda stream. And so we were doing this and and I remember Allison we we got these bottles, they were square, they were really They they looked great. They were amazing. And we put it in there and we sealed it. And you know, maybe the next day we were taking some photos of it with some fresh fruit around it and start bringing the the brand to life. And

21:02 Probably like 10 minutes in, the bottle just blew up. And we're like from the pressure of the carbonation. Carbonation. Yeah, exactly. And so that's what led us to discover that not all glass bottles can handle carbonation. Can handle carbonation. And so so we we ended up just getting a standard sort of twelve ounce soda bottle. So how much m initially in that the first sort of six months of twenty sixteen would you estimate you invested in equipment? Like w was it that expen was it really expensive or was it relatively cheap? I think it was it was relatively cheap, um looking back at I think the pallet of bottles was probably the most expensive thing that we bought.

21:42 But the the equipment that we had purchased was maybe a couple thousand dollars. Yeah, I wanna I mean How did you I mean is at that point You need some money. Did you go around asking people to invest in your business.

21:58 Yeah, so I went to my sister who's always been a really big believer in me, and she ended up giving us$30,000. My dad gave us thirty thousand dollars and then we put thirty thousand dollars in of our own money. So Basically a total of ninety thousand dollars, which was everything we had. Yeah. Alright, so Tell me about the name that you came up with and and

22:22 And even the sort of the look of it. Then'cause you called a mother beverage, right? So that was the first Tell me about that name. Yeah, so we named it mother beverage after the mother of vinegar. So there's this like floaty stuff.

22:36 in the bottom of vinegar kombucha has something similar called the scoby, but in vinegar it's called the mother of vinegar. A lot of people are like, Oh, it's'cause you're a mother yourself. No, not really, but we do love calling it mother beverage at the time. All right. So you uh by the summer of twenty sixteen, you are ready Or I guess maybe even even earlier than that, you're ready to kinda debut this. at a farmer's market in Dallas, um And and tell me tell me, Allison, what was the plan? I mean you would just set up a table and

23:07 put them there and what was the what was what were you selling people. What were you what was the promise that you were making that it was gonna f make them feel better, like it made you feel better? Yeah, I think a little bit of that, but the beauty of apple cider vinegar is Almost everybody's heard of it.

23:25 There's not a lot of edit education around that as an ingredient. So people see it, they've either tried it, someone's told them they need to drink it. Or they drink it for years and they do it every single day like you. So they like immediately got why we were doing it. And so I didn't really have to sell like my story. It just was an easier way to consume apple cider vinegar and people just related to it and got it right away. Yeah. Yeah. And and you and you keep on talking about this plan.

23:53 There wasn't really a plan, it was just it was just one foot in front of the other. And this is also at the time where kombucha is is on the rise. And so as we think about sort of marketing or positioning ourselves adjacent to kombucha, it was a a beverage or a product that had similar attributes to kombucha. But with less sugar. Right. Like a sort of a soury taste that people were already kinda used to. And and so when you when you put like you set up a table at the farmer's market in Dallas. I mean w w who was buying it? Who who I mean, uh w was it just curious people who were like I'll try this and or what? Like who who were they?

24:33 Uh the farmer's market is a place of discovery that people are more willing to just try things that they typically wouldn't do. I think that people going there are seeking those type of products. So Some people actually did not get it. And they thought we were crazy and they didn't buy. And then we get the people that immediately got it. And I will say we We're selling out.

24:56 Like Every week we'd make it, we would sell out. The next week we'd make you know, that and a half we would sell out. So we were like, Okay, something's working. And how much was a bottle? It was pretty expensive. It was four dollars a bottle. Four dollars a bottle. Three ninety nine. Three ninety nine a bottle.

25:12 I mean How quickly'cause a farmers market was once a week, right, I'm assuming. Every Saturday. Uh start in Austin now, of course. And a a buyer comes to the farmer's market. Mm-hmm. Kelly Landry. Well what does she say to you? Does she say I mean w was it at that moment where she says, would you guys be interested in coming to Whole Foods? Yeah, and it's not as simple as that, right? She gave us her card and said, There's nothing like this in Whole Foods. You guys have to be in Whole Foods. But

25:43 We didn't have good labels. We didn't really have nutritionals and done the testing to where you have to be at the level to be in a grocery store. One, you can't make it in your house to be in a grocery store. So we thought, Oh my gosh, we got this card. We made it. Little did we know, we weren't even on shelf till 10 months later. Yeah. And she was she was she was offering you what one whole foods or two whole foods or what? No. We we thought it was n national whole foods. She was offering you a few whole food stores.

26:12 We didn't even get into the planogram. So we from the moment we got the card from her. We at that point went and got a lease. We opened up our own manufacturing facility thinking we were gonna be nationwide Whole Foods, for them to say, no, no, no, no, you don't even have Dallas, we've given you a license to go hunt for it. And what that means is you actually now have to go store to store and sell in your product. to every single store at that time and it was fourteen whole foods, Dallas Fort Worth. And so we went all in thinking, oh my gosh, we've made it, we're gonna get all this. Little did we know we didn't get anything, we still had a lot of work to do.

26:49 Well we come back in just a moment. Allison and Steven are told that their branding Totally sucks. Stay with us, I'm Guy Roz, and you're listening to how I built this.

27:14 Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 2016, and a buyer at Whole Foods has encouraged Steven and Allison to ramp up production of mother beverage. And you'd think that they'd find a bottling plant to partner with. But they don't. They end up renting their own warehouse because no Copacker wants to work with them.

27:38 So there was one big hurdle. We were totally unpasturized. We wanted to have raw Unfiltered. Apple cider vinegar. In our product.

27:48 And so there's there's many reasons why co manufacturers don't want to do that. There's many reasons why Um, even craft breweries who were smaller and you know were more willing to to maybe do something at a smaller scale for us were unwilling to do it. you know, raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar. Unfiltered, you've got the floaty stuff in there, so it can get in their lines. It could potentially contaminate other products of theirs. the raw factor, it's got a Cetobactor in there, and so That can cause their beers to sour. That can cause other issues and

28:20 in um in other products as I mentioned. And so Being unpasturized, being raw and being unfiltered, there just weren't Co manufacturers that were Honestly willing to take us on and take that risk. But really for this first initial run at Whole Foods, maybe even the first

28:37 Year so. It's all being made by hand, basically. You were like Pouring vinegar into vats and Uh and what, pouring fruits into the vats? Like what tell me w about the process of of d working in the warehouse. It was kind of crazy. I remember like being on on the bottling line

28:56 And It's it's really difficult. To bottle a carbonated drink. It seems like such an easy thing, but if you think about it, you go to the soda fountain, what happens? You pour it in your cup, the bubbles.

29:08 you know, foams over it it goes everywhere. And so we were just like We're racking our brains like how like how does this how does this happen? And it was really interesting. It was probably one of the most frustrating sort of experiences and journeys for me to like get the carbonated product into the bottle without it foaming over in a timely manner. Yeah, how I mean, how were you doing that? It was like it was like a soda fountain, like we uh you go to a a burger place and you've got your Yeah.

29:34 Soda fountain and you just Put your Cup under it. Was it a version of that, but with bottles? Got like a forehead filler. Right. Like a professional forehead filler where you put all of the glass bottles underneath it supposed to sh suction it so tight that you feel it and the air doesn't get in it's supposed to fill. And you had that.

29:53 We did. We bought we had two of those. So we could do eight bottles at a time. We had two lines set up and we would just try to figure out a way to get this, but it would work. For like 20 minutes and then not work for three hours. And we would be there for hours just filling. product to maybe get, you know, a couple hundred bottles out the door. It was It wasn't scalable, even I I would say that was the hardest part of the business was the filling, the making it, the manufacturing you know the the steeping, the s quote unquote syrup was the easiest part of it.

30:25 All right. You're sort of working on this for many, many months, and now it's time to go into Whole Foods. And and did you start with just one Whole Foods in Dallas? So we we were able to to sell them in to I think we got into maybe eight. Of the stores.

30:41 Yeah. From the beginning. Correct. But the beauty getting into Whole Foods opened up a whole other avenue. uh on the distribution side. So you can't just

30:53 self distribute to someone like a Whole Foods. So it opened up Unify, which then opened up other than it's a Unify is a is a distributor. And they required you to work with a distributor like Unify. Yeah, and it's hard to even get into them. It's like the chicken or the egg, like get into Unify. If you don't have a retailer, if you don't have a retailer, you can't get in. So it was kind of nice for us right from the beginning to kind of have Whole Foods that they took us in, but then that opened it up to be able to get into other accounts around the Dallas area. So we got into the Royal Pew Blues of the world, which is like a Dallas uh grocery store we were able to get into some natural groceries. And you know, just local sandwich shops. And so we we had a good presence in Dallas, not just the eight to fourteen whole things. And when you were in okay, so when you started out

31:39 Whole foods right you got a distributor,'cause that's part of the the requirement. How did you then get people to be aware of it? Would you go in? I mean By the way, you're you're also the two of you also have a baby. A brand new baby at home. So tell me how y what you were doing. You were going in and setting up a table and just U asking people if they want to try this new product?

32:01 Anything. We were doing Instagram posts. Gain followers, I think we had like 10,000 followers on Instagram. We had a little website. We were selling the product on our website as well, which was really difficult if you think of how do you ship glass bottles that are liquid through the mail. Yeah. Um, we did that. I mean it was just like anything and everything, but we didn't do any paid media or have any know how to do anything like that. We we also had no money. Yeah. How about employees, Steven? I mean I mean both of you guys are

32:34 Running this business together and then But I m ha have to assume you could physically We do everything and load the Bottles into the car into the cases and all this stuff like d did you hire temporary people or did you start to hire like

32:50 full time people to help. Yeah, so we had yes, we we we started to hire Folks that would uh manage the farmer's market. Stands on the weekend.

33:02 And then I hired a crew of maybe Six or seven. Sort of um uh production members. They were most of them were 1099. There was a few W-2 employees, but they would they would do everything. So they would come in, we would probably work

33:17 Nine to twelve hour shifts. Five days a week. Yeah. But we weren't paying ourselves, so to keep in mind Quote unquote, yes, we quit our jobs, but Steven found a job that he could do at night to pay our mortgage. So he was still working a second job, basically this whole time. Yeah. It was really what allowed us to

33:38 To reinvest everything that we were making at the time. All right. You're this just sounds like a crazy Life, right? Because you are trying to expand the business. You're trying to get people to buy the product for and how was it doing? I mean, was it a hit at Whole Food? I mean, hit is a relative term, right? Because you

33:58 you know, uh it's not like all of a sudden, you know, there's a windfall of cash, but was it successful More or less at Whole Foods right away. Yeah, I I I honestly think we had some some really great traction. Right. It wasn't at this massive scale, but

34:13 Every week, every month, our sales would continue to increase. We would get more notoriety, we'd get better shelf placement in in Whole Foods. We would move from the dry shelf to the grab and go coolers at the front, or we would get an N cap or something like that. And so You know, we were starting to really see that progress and people started to notice So much so that um There was a there was a segment called Shaping DFW. And ABC actually reached out to us. They said, I love what you guys are doing. I really think that you guys are on the forefront.

34:42 You're helping to really shape this new wave in in DFW, Dallas Fort Worth area. Of better for you, um sort of health and wellness. Like a local TV uh like news channel? Yeah, it was a seven minute segment. Honestly, that was a really beautiful piece for us to be able to take that and say, Hey, this is gonna be on the networks. Give us more shelf space, give us more whole foods, right? And so I think the category review was coming up. And they had basically accepted us into more of quote unquote whole foods, what would be called like a global rollout, where each individual region has to accept you. And I think we ended up getting into seven regions across the US. So obviously something was working.

35:29 And this was like the next step where we're like, okay, we're gonna go into nationwide. Um We need money. And so we kinda were looking at each other like we need

35:39 to figure out manufacturing, we need money. It was crazy. What kind of uh sales were you doing in the first year, like over half a million dollars? I wouldn't say it was that much. I think when we when we went under Shark Tank I think it was we had done about a half a million dollars in revenue. in the previous I don't know, twelve to eighteen months, something like that. So we were putting together like you know a couple hundred thousand dollars. Alright, see the the the product really launches in twenty sixteen.

36:06 And I wanna talk about Shark Tank'cause this happens we your episode appears and twenty eighteen, I don't know when you filmed it, but tell me about the shark tank. I strategy I'cause clearly this was a strategy to get attention and maybe to attract some investment and to kind of supercharge the brand. How how did that w was it a conversation that the two of you had that you thought, hey, let's Let's try our hand or shark tank.

36:30 No, we actually had someone approach us who was a fan of the brand Wanted to invest and it was he was gonna give us around two hundred thousand dollars. And Had no resources. He didn't know anything about CPG. He had no employees, no retailer connections, nothing. And it just didn't quite sit right with me and Steven. And he just had money just had money. And I think like as any entrepreneur, the the saying of like don't take dumb money was always something I think most people know, right? That's not anything new.

36:59 And I was on my phone, I think like two days later, after him offering this money, and I saw Shark Tank was coming to town. And they had open casting calls in three days. So we went and stood in line. Hundreds of other people. It was an eight hour ordeal, and we just pitched our hearts out. And immediately after pitching our product, which you only get two minutes to pitch.

37:22 Elevator pitch. Um, they were like, This is a fantastic product. You guys are definitely gonna make it to the next step. And then it goes dark. And you're like, we're gonna make it on Shark Tank, and then you don't hear anything for a few weeks, and then they're like, Oh, hey, fill out this paperwork, and then they go dark. And it's just like a very long process, but at that point, even the thought of getting on Shark Tank, we did tell that other investor. Hey, we have to see this through and see if we can get a deal on Shark Tank. And so we said no to him. And so you find out. That you are gonna go uh to LA. And appear on Shark Tank.

37:56 And usually the way I I w I it works based on conversations we've had on this show with other people who've been on it, is that you film it and then A few months later it's it it it airs and you're not always sure whether you're gonna be on it. I mean usually they kinda give you a heads up that you're gonna make it on But they do cut people out. Um, I guess twenty eighteen you both fly out to LA to film.

38:20 Your episode. So I was pregnant with our second. I was three months pregnant with our second when we did that elevator pitch. And then it basically took six months for us to go through that process for them to finally say, Hey, you guys are gonna be on Shark Tank. So I ended up being nine months pregnant on Shark Tank. And the thing is they wanted us

38:40 to be match up with a certain shark, right? The end of the day, the show wants you to be successful. They want you to get a deal. And so through the ups and downs and learning through all that, we fly out to LA. you know, the night before they tell us who our sharks are, and then we go in the next day and we pitch. You go on you go on. I I know that you know, you don't normally meet the sharks until the screen opens and you walk on stage and and you start pitching. And one of the sharks was a guest shark, Rohan uh Oza. who had been involved in in branding around Co for pr Coca Cola products and and he was involved in buy and he

39:18 been involved in other I think vitamin water. I can't remember exactly what. Um, tell me a little bit about so you give the you make the pitch and people can see it. Um, and were they did you feel like so'cause you know, sometimes they're not always so nice. Did you feel like they were Nice to you guys.

39:34 No. No. Mr Wonderful called this an apple cider vinegar roach? They didn't get that we were an apple cider vinegar drink. Like what were we doing? Who are we? Um Someone else that was on was Bethany Frankel, who kinda has some beverage experience as well. And we're really excited about her, even though she was. Screaming at us the whole time, um, because we made her take a shot at apple cider vinegar and she wasn't too happy about it. And they didn't like it.

40:02 No, they don't like it. Beverage is also very difficult. It's very capital intensive. You don't if you don't know how that world works, it's hard to find the right investor. And honestly, the right investor for us was Rohanosa. Was it clear to you right away that he was He was interested that his questions were different from the others.

40:25 You know, it's it's a It's hard to it's hard to track that on on whether or not he was asking serious questions. But I also know sort of looking back, he was definitely playing it cool. Right. He was definitely not trying to show his cards. Yeah, he leaned in and he was basically like

40:40 You know, the pr the product is great. You know, he's like, I'm interested in this thing, but he's he's like it's it's gonna cost you a lot more than what you're asking for. What were you guys hoping for? I think we initially went in there asking for four hundred thousand dollars in exchange for ten percent of the business. So you were Uh you were um b valuing your business at four million dollars.

41:03 We knew it was high, but I mean we had worked with the producers to basically say, Hey, listen, like y you can't go in asking for the number that you think you're gonna get, you gotta start a little high. And so ultimately I think it was uh we we ultimately landed on what I think was a was a fair valuation and definitely gave Rohan enough skin in the game to be Energized and excited about. uh being helpful. So Looking back, that's not normal to walk in and ask for that amount of money. Usually people ask for fifty, hundred thousand, two hundred thousand. It's a lot easier for a deal to get done. So us walking in asking for four hundred thousand dollars is is quite high.

41:41 And so he did come up to the twenty five percent. And I'll be honest, we looked at each other and we immediately said yes, because we just knew he was the right partner for us to really take it to the next level. So When he he offers you four grand. for twenty five percent of the company. But w the other thing, I guess, was is that Rohan says to you guys, hey

42:04 Um This has to you need a complete overhaul, a complete rebrand. Tell me about what he said to you and how you re s reacted to that initially. He basically said, look, you have a fantastic story, you have a fantastic product, but your branding is shit. And honestly, it didn't offend us because we knew we had spent so much time on the product. We'd never

42:29 thought about the brand or the marketing piece of it. And it was such a piece that we were so desperate. to kind of figure out That we were like, Yep, let's do it. We we were like, let's change the name, let's do the whole rebrand. We were so here for it. And what did he say needed to change?

42:48 Everything. We were okay with that because we had already decided that we were going to change everything. We wanted to change the name, the positioning. At this point, it was apple cider vinegar drink. And he was like, No, this is so much bigger. This is soda. And

43:03 At the time we were like, Well, we don't know for soda, like that's a big word to like chew on. That's a huge category. So let's play in this functional soda space, which is like a whole new category that no one had really been able to figure out. And Kombucha had tried to take on soda, sparkling water had tried to be an alternative to soda. No one had quite figured out this. disruptive soda space, right? And so we're like, let's play adjacent to soda and be better for you soda. So we took about nine months and we did a huge branding exercise. Like, what is um if we're a car, what kind of car are we? If we're a girl at the party, are we the cool girl or we the girl dancing on the table? Like what what is the personality behind us? Are we approachable? Are we funny? So we did all of this work. It was me, Steven Rohan, and Rohan's partner, Stevie. And it was just us four for about nine months. What what are we changing the name to? We landed on Poppy, which is a a playoff of soda pop. We weren't sure if we were gonna do white cans or colored cans, right? Because white.

44:07 creates this like healthy halo. It's clean girl aesthetic. It's it's you know clean and fresh, whereas color kind of screams flavor, it screams fun. And we wanted to approach health and wellness from a fun lens versus a niche better for you lens. Um is probably one of the bigger disagreements at the beginning Me and Brohan were leaning more on the white side because I was like a purist, and then Stevie and Steven wanted to do colored cans. We ended up printing the cans and we took them to the grocery store and we we placed them on the shelf and we stood back and we were like which one looks best and hands down I will say I was wrong colored cans were the way to go. It just popped off the shelf and No one was doing better for you with color at the time. So okay, I want to get to that, but but in the in this long period of time be between the time you signed an agreement or uh got got rolling on as a as a investor and you relaunched it, you were still selling mother beverage and

45:05 I'm assuming when the Shark Tank episode There was a lot of interest in mother beverage. We did have a spike, but You know

45:13 On the on the back end, we started to do road shows at Sam's Club. We we the business continued to grow. Um, you know, so we so we really had to do both. We had to to rebrand, reposition, do all of that all of that great work while you know, s sort of keeping the core business in steady state. We still had bills to pay, we still had a warehouse, we still had overhead. Well we went through all of That stuff of Whole Foods had taken mother

45:39 From the The fourteen Dallas Whole foods. We were in the local shops. Now they've accepted mother beverage into seven regions of Whole Foods. So then we basically had to go back and say, Just kidding, we're changing the name, we're changing the packaging. Will you guys still take this? And so there was a lot of risk to that to basically

46:01 Have the grocery store that kind of give you your start saying, like, we love what we did, but we're gonna give you guys something completely new. And then we realized like. If we're gonna call ourselves soda, we can no longer be in glass bottles. We 100% have to be in 12 ounce soda cans. And so we had these manufacturers set up. And basically what, we were like two days away from our renewal and you had to call'em and basically cancel the whole PO it was it was For the glass bottles.

46:29 Yeah. Yeah. We ultimately decided To go twelve ounce soda cans. colored labels.

46:37 But the tricky part about that was is we had a national sprouts roll out. We had a you know almost national roll out at Whole Foods. With no manufacturing. So we basically had six weeks' worth of inventory to basically sell through our mother beverage, keep our current customers happy. While setting up a new supply chain with new co manufacturers learning

47:04 That whole thing within six weeks to get ready for a launch. When we come back in just a moment, Poppy's big launch in March of 2020? is completely derailed. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz.

47:34 So it's March of twenty twenty and mother beverage is rebranded. as poppy. and it's ready for its maiden voyage at one of the biggest trade shows in the country. Expo West in Anaheim, California. We

47:49 We're using this temp pole event as being our launch, right? So we had spent a lot of our money on I think like almost$90,000 on building a booth. uh you know, you have to pay for the space, you have to get product out there. It was like our big bet to come out and like meet retailers and really put Poppy at the forefront of everyone's mind.

48:10 And we ship out To Anaheim. And we are one of the brands out there, half of the people don't show up because I think on our flight to Anaheim There was ten cases in the US and we're like, Oh, this is gonna blow over in a week. Like we're we've put

48:27 A year into this and you know, years past with mother like we're doing this. And so we get out there And then A day into it, they canceled the entire thing. And at that moment it was just so devastating for us because Where they go? Goodness, this was our moment. Where do we go from here?

48:44 Um, we pack up the booth, we get back on our flight, and on our flight home, there was hundreds of cases, right? It just had escalated really quickly within COVID and We were so thankful that we had loaded in a ton of product into Amazon. Um Grocery stores basically told us We're not gonna cut you in. We're more concerned with putting toilet paper on the shelf. So we kinda just focused on Amazon. We didn't

49:11 do anything on our own website for the first little bit. And it was the first time everyone in the world was thinking about their health and wellness. They were thinking, hey, how can I pantry load on things that are shelf stable and that they taste good. And so we just really leaned into that that thinking for the first you know, month and a half of business before everyone kind of started figuring out this whole Covid thing. And But w I mean imagine initially you were really nervous. You were worried. We were devastated. I think w Allison and I were talking about this. I think one of like the

49:45 Un entrepreneurs are slightly delusional. Right. Maybe we don't have uh we're we're delusional optimists. And so I think it was it was We were in a good position'cause we didn't have a ton of overhead. We didn't have a a ton of employees to support You know, we were we were a a really lean team.

50:03 And we were growing, right? And so we didn't have a ton of things to support. And so it really left us in this. uh opportunistic situation where we were able to be agile and disruptive in our approach to market and how we interacted with consumers. It was a lot of pressure, but it honestly like forced us to To to think really outside of the box. Alright, so

50:24 Th there's an update uh on Shark Tank, I think that airs in April of twenty twenty, just kind of an update on on what's going on with your your brand. And that I'm think I think instantly you get a boost, right? And and on most of your sales at this point are through Amazon. Yeah. Yeah, so we were mostly on Amazon and then in April Grocery store shelves for starting to do the load ins kind of had gotten their feet underneath them. We were kinda starting to hit the retail shelf. And we had filmed an update on Shark Tank about Poppy and the brand and it aired Friday night.

50:58 Second week of April and it just blew up. So we hit Number one on Amazon's hot new product list. We're doing like three thousand on Amazon quickly over the next few months, doing two hundred and fifty thousand on Amazon a month. It just like absolutely blew up our business. And really, it was really eye-opening for us to have a national commercial month too. Basically. National commercial is the shark tank. Shark Tank. A free commercial, basically.

51:26 You know, so this was really the the big spike in our business. And and as Allison said, we were thankful that we had onboarded Amazon, we had shipped in what we thought was a lot of product into Amazon. I think we honestly sold out of that. It might The first couple hours after Tell me about

51:43 I mean uh that you know when and We've heard this before, which is A Shark Tank episode can really boost sales. But then it can slow down. Then things can slow down and people stop ordering.

51:55 Um I think for you guys what really helped in some ways because it's still uh covet and people are still not you know, people are going to grocery stores but not not, you know I think for you guys, social media really became a lifeline, especially TikTok. Tell me a little bit about

52:16 how you started to use TikTok and yeah, how that began and how did how you used it. Well For us at that point, I remember At the update shark tank, there were some TikTokers dancing in the Whole Foods that we were filming in, and some one of them grabbed my phone and downloaded TikTok on my phone. And I remember getting on it and playing with it, and it really was no brand's No brands were on TikTok at this time. A lot of people were introduced to it through COVID and kind of were bored at home and started creating. So it's like this creator platform. And I just in my head kept thinking.

52:50 There has to be a way to market to people on here. There's hundreds of thousands of people, now you know, millions on there, and it's free marketing. So I remember being like you guys TikToks the next Wild Wild West, we gotta do it. Rohan and Stevie, including like Steven, he was like, I don't know, sure. Like no one really got it. And I just was like, okay, I'm gonna get on, I'm gonna spend my nights and my weekends, and I'm just gonna start posting. So I started doing recipe videos, I was dancing, I was doing transition, I had my kids running around in it, I made Steven B and him with me. And I was just trying literally anything and honestly. One night I sat down.

53:25 on the couch and I just told my story. I did it in one minute or less of Started this in my kitchen. Gotta deal on Shark Tank. It's five grams of sugar, it's apple cider vinegar, it's this, da da da. And I posted it and went to bed, and when we woke up, we had sold a hundred thousand dollars on Amazon that night and everyone started calling. Where did this spike come from? And no one thought to look to TikTok.

53:50 And so I was like, you guys, we went viral on TikTok and then everyone's eyes were open from that moment. That's amazing. I mean, the growth of the of the product really just kind of kind of explodes after after the launch, the the rebrand and the launch in twenty twenty. you know, um by twenty twenty three it's a hundred million in sales and then, you know, it's like Yeah. the next year I think it's five hundred million sales. I I wanna oh I'm curious what were you Were you thinking that

54:20 that regular soda was your competition, or did you think that sort of better f quote unquote better for you drinks or less sugar lower in sugar drinks where you're Your com your competition. Look, I think we created a brand new category. So when we had Poppy going to grocery stores, they didn't know where to put us. So in the early days, they put us next to sparkling water. They put us in the enhanced water set, next to the buys and the vitamin waters and the coconut waters. You know, just a little bit of a higher price point because if you were to put us at that point with a product that was kind of not quite proven, not a lot of consumers knew about it, and you put it at two hundred dollar and fifty.

54:59 can dollar can next to a ninety nine cent soda can, there would have been a disconnect. So for the first few years, we worked with the retailers figuring out What is Poppy and what category does it? live in even though on our end we always knew our mission was to revolutionize soda for the next generation. And so

55:19 As we grew, as our awareness grew, we We slowly started to carve out space. within the soda sets. And now we have an entire new set called the modern soda set in retail and in grocery stores that did not exist five years ago. Yeah, and I think it's really interesting. It goes all the way back to the the positioning work. We were the first ones in the functional you know, sort of modern soda to actually call ourselves a soda. We call ourselves a prebiotic soda.

55:45 We were the first ones, and at that point in time it was Crazy. Because soda was At the pinnacle of of a dirty word. Right. It was sparkling water. It was like, ooh, who drinks soda? Like that's so bad for you. Like why would you ever do that?

56:00 You know, so it was really a bold decision for us to put prebiotic soda. on the front of the pack. And as and as Allison said, I think it was just building on uh building year after year Month after month as we as we gained a bigger audience. I I'm curious, I mean better for you is a tricky word because you know, a lot of people clean and other terms that are they're not, you know, sort of technically sort of defined, but but Obviously, poppy has considerably less sugar than a can of Coke, right? Can of Coke has what, twenty-five, thirty grams of sugar, maybe more.

56:35 poppy on average, I think it's five grams of sugar and and and it's got a little bit of two grams of fiber. And so H how would you identify the people who were buying it? Were they buying it because they felt like it was healthier, or were they buying it because they liked the taste, or Like what did you f start to find out like about the people buying it. Were they buying it for its for for what its perceived functional benefits or or for completely different reasons? Well

57:01 Basically, we were able to lean into the brand versus Hey, drink this'cause it's better for you. Nobody likes to be told to do that. They wanna We we were intentional with the consumer journey. We wanted someone to see the can and be like, that's so cute. We wanted them to sip it and say, Wow, this tastes amazing. And then we wanted them to flip around and read the nutritional and say, Whoa, this is better for me, too. So when did it start to become clear to you guys? that You know, and I'm assuming when you know, when Rohan got involved, part of the conversation was, Well, there's gotta be an exit here.

57:37 Right? And I'm a ma I imagine that I mean once you hit five hundred million, maybe even once you hit a hundred million in sales. You start to get interest in potential acquirers. Yeah, I think um You know, we've we've had one of the fastest

57:56 Like the fastest journeys in sort of beverage history. We we grew triple digits Year over year until we sold. Once we re rebranded from Poppy. You know, I think that We were in a really interesting period of time. We were operating in a covet supply chain. You know, cans now cost eleven cents. We were paying 40 cents for a can during COVID. We were shipping containers.

58:20 Of essentially air, empty aluminum cans all the way from China just so we could fulfill uh the demand. And so I really think that that was when, you know, we we uh thought that we had something as far as an acquisition goes, but I think Every year we just continued to see the business more than double. I mean, honestly, from day one we knew we're gonna sell. So like let's be real. So basically in the world of beverage and in particular soda.

58:50 You have two avenues. You can sell to a big strategic. Or you can go IPO. Well, IPO is great, but you don't gain distribution partner like Pepsi. So for us, we Let me just give you an example. We are the official soda of the Lakers and we're not allowed to be sold in that stadium. Because of contracts. So now us getting bought by Pepsi, which is incredible, we now can go from 50,000 locations to 350,000 locations, right? 'Cause they have massive distribution. We I think it's not a secret. Pepsi uh acquired Poppy in March of twenty twenty five for almost two billion dollars.

59:29 Um which was just incredible. I mean, we you know uh between the time you launched and March of twenty twenty five was essentially five years. Correct. And It's interesting. When we first started out, it was just us and our story and Poppy for the first few years. And then a really big tipping point for us was doing our first Super Bow ad. Where we really gained that cusp of we said we were a soda, the future of soda is now. We kind of put like our flag in the ground in our ad we said soda 17 times, and that we were the future of soda. And after coming out of that, our awareness tripled overnight. We started getting some interest from the strategics, which was always the goal.

1:00:11 And we kinda like went from mom and pop brand to challenger brand to establish brand, which is really and we did it really quick to your point in five years, which is absolutely unheard of. You know, we thought we were gonna double the business from twenty two to twenty three. uh and instead we forex the business. And in in large part it was because of the Super Bowl ad. We we planted our flag And we said, We're soda. And we had also been seeing that with how consumers were

1:00:36 We're repeat purchasing the products and the retention that we had. Um but it was really like our big coming out moment. When when Pepsi uh approached you with such a hu I mean approached the company with such a huge offer, I mean It must have just been mind blowing to imagine that that was gonna be the outcome. Honestly

1:00:57 When you go through these things a lot of people don't know is you spend Over a year, you meet'em. It's almost like a dating process. It's not like they just give you an offer and like two days later you say, Yes, let's do this. And their motto, which Consistently is what we're still hearing is let Poppy be Poppy. And I think as a founder, one of your biggest fears going through that is that the brand will lose itself or it'll change. Like I have all those fears, our consumers have all those fears. And Pepsi just I feel like the big strategics, they've done it wrong before.

1:01:29 And they didn't want to do it wrong with Poppy. And so we just kinda like got that from them. And so It was stress. I've never felt Sad, happy, stressed. Excited. Like All within the same day.

1:01:42 multiple days in a row for weeks, right? It it it's a toll. It does like a toll on your body, definitely going through something like this. I I'm curious, uh as you were Building the business, right? In the early days. You were a couple, right? And and a lot of times Um we've on this show, you know, I've asked people w would you work with your partner? And I I and there are different kinds of responses, but I would say and I work with my wife, but I would say a lot of people would say, I'll never work with my partner. I can't

1:02:09 You know, it's too complicated. Um I mean, d were there ever moments where your business relationship created tension, or do you think just your personalities are are just naturally matched to make the business side work too. Early on.

1:02:26 When So okay, early on when we We're really early in mother beverage days, and it was really hard with working multiple jobs, having a family, while scaling a business. I remember I used to get really upset when Steven wouldn't take time out of the day to get me flowers, or why do I not get chocolate on Valentine's Day? And we finally sat down one day and it was just like we gotta pick.

1:02:50 Right? Is it marriage, kids, or the business? And what do we like we this is killing us. And I honestly at that moment we looked at each other And said Our marriage is great. We love each other. We want to be partners. Let's focus on the kids in business and just know that we're good. And once we kind of let go of that expectation.

1:03:09 A lot of the pressure went away. So then when he did get me flowers, it was extra special. It wasn't because of a holiday. And so that was really ear on and just like understanding that it was okay and that just to show up where we could. And I wouldn't do it again without him. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely would would do it. um would do it over again. The biggest thing about Allison And I think why we work is because we're a hundred percent committed.

1:03:39 At all times. It was it was really hard. Like I said, there was dark days. We didn't have money, w like we didn't have we were technically unemployed, we weren't paying ourselves a salary, we didn't have health insurance. And I think that we've we've Done the best that we could and

1:03:55 Uh still very much in in love with Allison and very much excited to to do this in the future. Together again. about the journey you took and you know, I mean just you this was really started in twenty sixteen and here we are, twenty twenty five. And really started in twenty twenty, rebranded.

1:04:11 And it's been a massive success. I mean how much of of that and your journey do you attribute to to the work and the grind and how much do you think had to do with luck and timing and circumstances people being open to this product today. Um Steven?

1:04:29 Yeah, there's a quote that's always top of mind for me, the harder I work, the luckier I get. And so I I really think it was Um A recipe that required all of it. Timing, luck, hard work, grit, passion, intensity. Uh it required all of those all of those elements.

1:04:45 Yeah, and for me I s really struggle with saying it was luck. Because we worked really hard. I do think there were a lot of doors that opened. that maybe a lot of people would say were really lucky.

1:05:00 But I just know all the hard work that went into that. I think it was Us knowing where to push. Where to take the help and kind of where to step back. was a really big piece in allowing other people to come in and help, right? I think that it's

1:05:18 A lot bigger. Like Steven said of this once in a lifetime generational brand. Not a lot of people can say that they've created a product. that our kids and grandkids are gonna know As soda.

1:05:32 And I just think that's just so much bigger and cooler than uh saying we got lucky. That's Alison and Steven Ellsworth, the co-founders of Poppy. By the way, Allison is heading back to Shark Tank once again for its new season, but this time she'll be a shark. She's one of just two former contestants to ever appear in that role. The first one was also a guest on this show, Jamie Simenov of Ring, which is a great episode, by the way. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, please sign up for my newsletter at gyroz.com or search for gyros on Substack. This episode was produced by Ramel Wood with music composed by Ramtin Arablui. It was edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Alex Chung.

1:06:27 Our engineers were Patrick Murray and Jimmy Keeley. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Chris Massini, Carrie Thompson, Catherine Cypher, Carla Esteves, Sam Paulson, Andrea Bruce, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Roz, and you've been listening to how I built this.

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