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Every country has their challenges, and every country has their opportunity. If I'm thinking about it from my experience with Mr. Lee's and trading globally, you know, we literally went from nothing to Australia, set up the business out there, and had to set up the relationships out there. You're of the same thing in America.

Actually, in Australia, most of them said, yep, come and meet me. We met them, yep, we want these skews. We've seen something completely new.

We're really interested in it, and we want to help you grow your brand. That's before we even started in the UK. And then we launched in France before the UK.

Then we launched in Ireland before the UK. And actually, we're really not really doing much in the UK. And now we're in America, and we're launching with people kind of every month.

So I think there's two sides to it. If you have the money to play ball in America with the retailers, you'll win a lot of business. And funding is important.

Being smart and strategic with your money is important. Knowing terms and conditions within America is hugely important. More important than any other country I've worked in.

That's the barrier of being able to trade in America is purely cash, I would say. Other than that, I think it's a pretty fair game. When you come to the UK, the competition for space, that's the barrier.

Are you ready to learn more about how what works in other countries can help you in the US? Let's start the show. Hello, and thank you for joining us today.

Welcome. I spent a lot of time talking about our broken food system and what we can do to help fix it. And what I mean by that is we need to reduce the barriers of entry.

We've got to make it easier for small brands to get their product onto more store shelves in the hands of more consumers. And in addition to that, we've also got to figure out a way to make it more affordable for the consumer to buy those products, those unique products that you're producing. That's why this episode is so important, because we're going to talk about what works in other countries and what you can leverage here in the US and beyond.

Before I go any further, I want to thank you for listening. This show is about you and it's for you. In appreciation for your time, there's a free downloadable guide for you at the end of every podcast episode.

I always include one easy to download, quick to digest strategy that you can instantly adopt and make your own. One that you can use to grow sustainable sales and compete more effectively with. This week's free downloadable guide is my simple solutions to maximize broker effectiveness.

I constantly get a lot of brands reaching out to me and asking me, how do you maximize your broker effectiveness? What are the best strategies to maximize your sales by leveraging the strength of your broker? Details on how to instantly get it are at the end of the podcast episode.

Remember, the goal here is to get your brand under more star shelves and into the hands of more shoppers, including online. And don't forget to go back and listen to prior episodes where I might solve some of your most pressing bottlenecks. You know the things that keep you up at night.

When Expo West was canceled, I leaned in to launch a free weekly webinar series where I invite leading industry experts to answer questions you send me. See the complete list on the events tab on my website. One of the upcoming webinars is going to be with Charlie and we're going to talk more about how do you leverage strategies that we find globally to help you grow and thrive.

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Now here's Charlie. Hi Charlie, thanks for coming on today. Can you please start by telling us a little bit about yourself and your journey to where you're at today?

Yeah, no worries. Nice to meet you, Dan. It's an absolute pleasure to be on.

So, as you can tell from my accent, I'm from the UK. And I've been in FMCG for around 10 years now. Started at big companies like Twining's, if you know those, the tea company.

Moved into consumer and sporting consumer goods, which was Adidas. And then I just had this huge urge to start with startups, I suppose, to get involved in those side of things and help launch a healthy ice cream company, which is a competitor to, say, Halo Top. They were called Oppo Ice Cream, and we launched around the whole of the UK and a couple of places in Europe.

I then went to a company as head of sales for Itsu Grocery, who are very much, they've actually just gone into New York. They're kind of a restaurant style company. They do lots of sushi and things like that, but they do go into supermarkets.

And then I found myself at Mr. Lee's Noodles. And Mr. Lee's Pure Foods now is because we've got more than just noodles going in there. And we trade globally.

So when I first joined, we had a product and a dream. And thank God, we've managed to open up around the world, Australia, Europe, America, everywhere. And I'm the sales lead there.

Well, I'm the sales director there. So all for the dream of starting my own company, I suppose, which is kind of well known within the industry. But we've got so many more years to do it, Mr. Lee, before I do anything like that.

So that's where I'm at.

The reason I wanted to have you on is because yesterday we were talking about the differences between doing business in the UK and doing the business in the US. And I made the comment that our food system over here is broken. And you were surprised by some of the things that you are expected to do when you come over here, things that you don't have to do over there.

And the point being is that it's a lot easier for a starting brand from emerging brand to get on to a retailer shelf in the UK than it is in the US. And the other part of that, the component of that is the amount of money that it takes, it gets passed on to the consumer, which makes it more difficult for these smaller brands to compete. So let's start by talking a little bit about what is the retail environment look like in the UK first?

So we get a good understanding of what it looks like traditionally. And if you could throw in some, a little bit of information about what it's like in other countries as well. Is it similar to what you see in the UK?

Yeah, no worries. I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? Because as soon as you grow up in your own country, and you believe that that's probably what it's like around the world, and until you actually trade globally, you, it's very eye opening as to, you know, how different people trade in different countries.

So when I, just an example, when I went to the US to work with distributors and brokers was really, really new to me and really misunderstood, I didn't think I fully understood it. So from everything from, you know, a budget to trade marketing to forecasting, all that sort of stuff was just completely new to me, just changes everything. So how it works in the UK is we will have lots of people to call different, would dissect the market in different ways.

But essentially you have traditional retail, and there's six big players and retailers within the UK. And we would work directly with those guys. So it will go from our manufacturing company to our 3PL to our logistics company, third party logistics company, and then as and when a retailer, Tesco, St. Louis, Morrison, Asda, they want our product, they order it, and when we deliver it straight to them.

So we will have our production unit straight into a warehouse, warehouse straight into the retailer warehouse, and away we go. It's not like it would be in UNFI where it goes from our production unit into UNFI and then it just disperses out to whoever. We have a bit more control over which retailer that goes to and we have probably a closer relationship I would think with the retailer.

That's how the retail side of it works. We then have convenience side of things which is probably quite similar to how you would work in the US as UNFI into independence. So it's a franchise model.

We would go through a distributor as you would call it. We would call it a wholesaler or cash and carry like a Costco sort of thing. And then we would set the service into them and we may or may not get that information as to where it goes out to from there.

So it might go to the corner shop who's owned by one person or it might go to someone that owns 10 stores. We don't really know as much with the convenience side of things. We then have out of home or how I call it out of home which is think what you guys would call food service.

So you would have hospitals, universities, colleges, offices, things like that. And then finally, you would have your travel side of things, which would be trains, planes, etc. So that's kind of how the market is cut out, I would say.

And if we try to deep down, dig down into retail side of things, will you mention there that we spoke yesterday, and you're absolutely right in the sense that as a startup company in the UK, there's probably less upfront costs, but actually it's probably more difficult to get into retail in the UK, from my experience, than it is to get into the US. So to get in touch with buyers and agree a listing with that customer, the way to get in touch with those guys, the US buyers are a lot more forthcoming, whereas in the UK, you might never get in touch with those guys. You might never get a conversation with them.

But the fact in other countries I've found that you can actually do that, that the barrier in the US that I'm finding or have found, and we've overcome, so Whole Foods is an amazing customer of ours, I can't speak highly enough of those guys, is probably outside of that is just the terms and conditions within the US is a lot stronger than it is in the UK.

Let's break that down. So first of all, when you go to retail, do you have to have a merchandiser in every store or do they do that for you?

No, exactly. Yeah. So that's one thing that's quite interesting that we so say, I give an example, say if we work with Sainsbury's, probably one of the biggest, I believe they are second to Tesco, but probably the one that we would want to work with the most.

We would agree a deal with the buyer, and they would tell us how many stores and how many skews that we would go, how many stores and how many stores. And they'd have to tell us two months out of the go live, as I would call it, so going on to shelf. We would then be able that process that would be taking place, and what would happen is they would order from us, we would deliver it into their warehouse.

FAnd essentially, very, very basically, that's all we need to do. It then goes into their warehouse, it gets distributed out into their stores on the planogram that they have, which is very, very strict. So in certain places, I know in America, things move around, but the planogram is as it would show on the system, and then it goes on there.

And essentially, they have stock management company, stock management part of their business, which would say whether that's the rate of sale and this is the supply, this is the week's cover that we have, and this is how much we need to order from you guys. So in a long-winded way, we don't need merchandises, but actually, the smarter or the more experienced sales guys would know that we actually have to do some form of, we call it field sales, but yet merchandising to make sure that it's on the shelf to start with. So you would like to think that it's going to be on all shelves, but you can't guarantee that.

Do you have any control or any say, or can you make recommendations on the schematic, on the planogram?

We certainly don't have a say. The way that you pitch, sometimes you can influence that, I suppose, but actually, it's completely their decision. It used to be in the old days that you can actually pay for certain parts of the planogram.

You can't really do that as much anymore. So what they would do is they would tier it by a good, better, best. And you'll find if you come to the UK, the most expensive product, so it's always an eye-liner, which I don't think is too dissimilar to America.

Well, but how do you, when you present a product, if I am you and I'm going to a UK retailer for the first time, then how do I do that? What's involved? Do I just basically hand a deal sheet to them or do I have any, is there any relationship, any sort of a partnership between you and the retailer?

Can you offer information, insights, et cetera?

So the very, very simply put, I get asked this question a lot in the UK, actually, how do you get in touch with buyers, full stop? You know, I do a lot of talks in the UK around this. And I'm really, if you're a big company, you have an existing relationship.

That's just the way it is. But if we're talking startups, like we are, you've got to be really creative. You know, I've heard, so traditionally, you know, if it was done by a traditional route, it would be going straight to their website.

You want to become a new supplier, fill this form out, go to the relevant buyer. But I think we all know that that's not, that's not everything you can do. And also a buyer will probably want to see a little bit more energy from you guys, because actually, you know, a startup is built on mainly energy, really, you know, a bit of funding, a lot of energy, a lot of passion.

And so if I was a buyer, and I have a few buyers there, my friends, they would say that nine times out of ten, it's the person pushing it, it's the brand, it's the people behind the brand that actually push that sort of stuff. So if you were to say, your first impression is just going through a website and then hoping, hey, you know, just open up the doors, here we go. It doesn't really work like that.

I suppose I very rarely have I heard that. So I use things like LinkedIn quite a lot. I will speak to as many of the buyers or people that I think are the right buyers, because I, you know, you never know which one is the right buyer to start with.

And you go on LinkedIn and you speak to them on there. I talked to you yesterday about we have a community called the Young Foodies. Young Foodies are a collective of brands, a community of brands, smaller brands like myself, Mr. Lee's.

FWe're probably a bit bigger now, actually, which is, I don't know if that's good or bad to say, but we have lots of sort of start up brands that would speak to each other and say, hey, you know, this is the right buyer or this might be the person you want to speak to or whatever. And it's really common, just the way, you know, whether it should or shouldn't happen. It's nothing illegal.

It's just something that does happen in the UK. Trade shows are quite important, so they're the ways that you would get in touch with the buyer initially. Normally, and this seems to be quite common in the US, you would just send samples and they would say, we'll be in touch if we like samples.

We tried to in the UK, we will send samples, but we tried to book in a meeting with them directly with those guys for an hour and present, you know, the brands, the story, the products, the marketing plans for the year. And then we may or may not, I don't usually do the commercials at the end. I would say, I would talk about the, you call it SRP, but RRP, the consumer price.

And then we would ask for, you know, what's your margin expectations? When are you looking to launch? How many, how many skews do you think?

And it's all very much a very open conversation. Ever have I, that's not true, once, I think it was in the UK, have I heard someone say to me, that someone has said to me, it was the ice cream company I was working for, and they said, yep, two skews, 400 stores, probably launch in four months' time. Doesn't, that's so unheard of.

FSo, so it is very much a stage process of getting in touch with them, whether it be LinkedIn or however you can. Maybe a small conversation over the phone, nine times at 10 minutes on email. You then go and have a meeting with them.

You try the product. You give them the brand story, et cetera, et cetera. And then from that point on, you're kind of going into negotiations, not only of price, but how many stores, how many skews, when that launches, et cetera.

Yeah, in this country, obviously, it's very different. I'm going to ruffle a lot of feathers on this episode, but that's okay, because that's what we're here for. Actually, no, the reason that I was so intrigued by what you were saying, and thank you for going through all that, is the way that we do things here is so overcomplicated.

And I made the comment to you that I'm working with a brand that has an innovative energy bar, and she's all in at 80 cents. And for her to make any money, because of all the layers of cost and inefficiency in our system, she has to sell that bar to the customer for $3.99 to give everyone their margin. And to me, that's insane.

Not only does it make it unbelievably difficult for her to get her product on the store shelf, but more importantly, that cost gets passed on to the consumer. And so it makes it that much harder for her to compete against the bigger brands with deeper pockets, one. And then two, because of all the inefficiencies in our system, it makes it a lot difficult, a lot more difficult for her to even have a voice on the shelf.

So when you're working with a retailer there, it sounds like you can have more of a one-on-one relationship with them, and it sounds like they're more receptive to you as a brand and to what's unique about your product. Is that true?

That's a very difficult question or statement to agree with. Every country has their challenges and every country has their opportunities. So if I'm thinking about it from my experience with Mr. Lee's and trading globally, we literally went from nothing to Australia, set up the business out there, and set up the relationships out there.

You're of the same thing in America. Actually, I'll come back to your point as well, but actually, in Australia, most of them said, yeah, come and meet me. We met them.

Yeah, we want these skews. We've seen something completely new. We're really interested in it, and we want to help you grow your brand.

That's before we even started in the UK. So we were in the UK and developing the concept for two years. Down in Bournemouth in the UK.

And then we launched in France before the UK. Then we launched in Ireland before the UK. And actually, we're really not really doing much in the UK.

And now we're in America and we're launching with people kind of every month. So I think there's two sides to it. If you have the money to play ball in America with the retailers, you'll win a lot of business.

And funding is important. Being smart and strategic with your money is important. Knowing terms and conditions within America is hugely important, more important than any other country I've worked in.

But do I think that that's the barrier of being able to trade in America is purely cash, I would say. Other than that, I think it's a pretty fair game. When you come to the UK, the competition for space, that's the barrier.

And really, I always think it's because the country is so big in America that everything is more expensive. So it adds on because we always say the amount of people, however many times someone touches your product, it adds money, it adds sense on to it. Whereas in the UK, that's really slick because it's a smaller country.

But with that smaller country also becomes smaller shelf space. So we do the buyers in the retail space in the UK right now doing a lot of range rationalization. So they're basically saying, you know, we've got so many products that are pretty much the same.

We'll just rationalize the range, have less of a range. People still buy the same amount of product, but they'll just do it through one or two lines rather than 10 lines. So for the big companies in the trade in the UK, it's easier for them because they can actually give you a good price point.

The product's still okay. And people at the moment don't have a lot of money, so they can't buy a more premium, more innovative product. So that's the challenge that we have in the UK.

So every country has its challenges. In the US, in Australia, I would say marketing is probably our biggest barrier in terms of getting people for awareness of the product, et cetera. So everything has its barriers.

So I wouldn't say that it's broken in America, personally. I can only speak for myself. But I can say that, yeah, it's really expensive.

And yet, to be a smaller brand, a one-person brand, that's going to be incredibly difficult in America and probably would be easier in the UK.

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. What I meant by broken is just all the layers of cost, the inefficiencies. I think from what you've shared, actually, I think you have some of the same problems.

So let me frame it this way. Retailers today spend more time trying to sell us the stuff that's on their shelves rather than asking us what we want to buy. If a retailer wants to remain relevant, let me back up.

So consumer loyalty, shopper loyalty is something that's earned, it's not bought. Contrary to what all the quote unquote experts say, I've got a plastic card that I can get airline miles or discounts at other stores. Those are coupons.

That's not true shopper loyalty. And the challenge here is that those retailers want and need to remain relevant, meaning give me the customer a reason to come back to the store again and again and again. So retailers, like I said, they spend more of the time trying to sell us what they think we need, rather than focusing on what we really want.

So trade marketing is kind of a drug in this country. It includes everything to get your product in the hands of the shopper and the way I would define it. You've probably got a little bit of that too.

And the point being here is that everything that you've got to put into your product to be able to get it into this consumer's hands, the promotion, the pricing, you know, paying down the pricing, all the slotting, all that other stuff, that adds to the cost. Well, the challenge is if the retailer wants to remain relevant against someone like an Amazon who doesn't make a company pay for a merchandiser and all that other stuff, then that retailer needs to do more to go out of their way to have those innovative products. You made an interesting point.

I'm glad you did. A lot of retailers think they know everything about everything, their customers, the products they sell, etc. When you do what we would call skew rationalization in this country, then they're taking a leadership role, trying to decide what products make sense from their bottom line standpoint, as opposed to understanding what does the consumer want.

The reason that I see that's dangerous is because in terms of their overall mix, is that when they eliminate certain items, they eliminate certain customers. Even though it might be similar or something like that. I did a project a while back for a Canadian company, where they were looking at putting an innovative sunflower-based milk on retailer shelves.

And the retailers were thinking because that product doesn't have a lot of volume, they got rid of it and they put on more almond milk. Well, that just confuses the consumer. But instead of focusing on what's unique about that product, those attributes that drive those sales, meaning that in this example, sunflower is really good for pregnant moms, it's really good for athletes, you can use it to kind of regenerate your system the same as you would a Gatorade or something like that, which those aren't that good, but that's beside the point.

But the point is that there are different use cases for it, there are different consumers that buy it. And when you alienate that consumer base, then you become, in my mind, less relevant to the customer. And then you're constantly spending time chasing after that same customer, trying to re-invite them to your store.

So what I'm getting at is I had a conversation with the marketing director for the Whole Foods, the marketing director for Whole Foods, and she said that they spend $270 to reacquire a customer. To me, that's insane. Instead, if the retailers were focused on what we want and focused on making us, the consumer, happy and giving us a reason to come back again and again and again, then that would help them remain more relevant and would reduce the amount of money that they need to spend to reacquire the same customer.

Your thoughts?

Yeah, I don't disagree. I think that's just such a huge change. I can probably liken it to, from the brand side, you know, to be innovative.

If you're a smaller company, you can turn quicker. If you're a Coca-Cola, you can't turn as quick. And it's no different in the retail space.

It's exactly the same, just happens to be bricks and mortar rather than just a traditional product. And, you know, I know there's some really, really cool new stores that are coming out in the UK. There's a company called Simply Fresh.

They're really, really good. And they can act quicker because they don't have this bureaucracy of, you know, got to go up to the top or... I had this conversation with my parents just today.

It's the same thing. It's the same way it's always been. And I think that just frustrates anyone that's a bit entrepreneurial, which is, well, it doesn't have to be like that.

But you've got to flip it on its head and say, okay, well, I understand it because it's such a big company. You know, whoever it may be, Whole Foods writes to Walmart, you know, it's the same in Sainsbury's. People try really hard to be forward thinking, innovative, be able to spin on a tempent.

But it's really difficult for a big company. So, you know, I'll give you an example. In the UK, we used to have what you call slotting fees.

We call them listing fees here. It's the same thing. And what that did is it made it very, very difficult for smaller companies to actually play ball with these guys.

So, you know, a big company say, well, you can either have that small company that no one knows, or we'll give an extra amount of money to be on that shelf. That got eradicated, which now means that, okay, we have a better, you know, smaller brands have a better chance to work with those guys. And I think that's probably something that could be useful in the US.

So you're absolutely right. I think the US is different in that respect, and it makes it the barrier to entry for a smaller brand is far higher, because before you've even started, you've got this big bill of however much it is for a slotting fee, or giving a new, a free case in. That would be a really useful thing to maybe review.

But yeah, incredibly difficult to do to start with. And it only takes one to do it, and then the rest of them do it.

Well, I wish that would be that simple. But again, it's part of that addictive. It's that drug.

Let me back up a little bit. So when I was talking about skewer rationalization, there's a little retailer in this country, maybe you've heard of them, called Walmart. And many years ago, they did that.

And they got rid of every brand, with the exception of the top two brands in their private label. It was the greatest gift to Kmart, I mean, to Target, because customers wanted specific products and they couldn't find it at Walmart, then they went to Target. And the point being that instead of focusing on the product, the margin, all that other, instead of focusing on the margin and the amount of money that they should be able to get from the manufacturer, like you were saying, instead, let's focus on what does the consumer really want in your store?

How do they buy? Why do they buy what they buy? When they buy, what do they buy?

What are the other products they buy with it? So, to your point, slotting, I think slotting is a horrible thing. To me, it doesn't make sense.

If you are in other businesses, they're not paying slotting to put a screwdriver on the shelf, etc. Maybe some retailers are because that's part of the model, and I think that additional cost makes it more difficult for smaller brands to survive. But if you think about it, in this country, if I walk by a can and knock it off the shelf and it gets damaged, well, that's a guaranteed sell to that retailer.

They're not losing any money. Everything that they sell is guaranteed. And the point being is that instead of paying slotting and all those other fees, if they just focus on the margin that they would get from the product, or better yet, let's focus on the market basket.

And this is where we're really getting to. So when you're talking about an organic ice cream or something innovative like that, gluten-free, whatever it is, then when you're working with a retailer and saying, hey, nice guy, got a cool t-shirt, great slogan, all that other stuff, we've got a really cool package, instead of saying, here's what I can offer you in terms of slotting and fees, or listing fees, whatever, or margins, etc. Here's a unique customer that my brand attracts.

And I'm going to leverage my brand, the strength of my brand, the consumer that buys my product, to drive them into your store. Oh, and by the way, when they're in your store, they're going to buy a lot of the other things that you care about, the other super premium items. You made the comment that people don't have a lot of money to spend on products.

And I understand, but conversely, the reality is, is that if you buy the products that will help sustain you, satiate you, you're actually spending less money. So I use this example a lot, Charlie, where if I go in and I eat the generic bread, I'm hungry almost before I finish eating it. If I eat the best mainstream bread, I may be satiated for three or four hours.

However, if I am what I eat and what I eat matters. And if I eat the organic bread, and the organic bread provides the nutrients my body needs, then even though I pay a few pennies more a shelf, I eat less bread. Therefore, that bread is less expensive.

And I think that in the market basket piece are the two conversations that we need to get retailers to think about in terms of if you want to remain relevant, how do you get that customer to come back in your store again and again and again? And how do you provide real value, not gimmicks in terms of paying, you know, putting a ton of money toward promotions to drive the price down on a product that doesn't satiate or doesn't give a customer a reason to come back in your store? Your thoughts?

Yeah. You pulled me both sides there when you said that. I agree with both things.

So the first thing you said, one of the things you said there, which was, you know, it's a drug. And I'll give you a story, actually, which is probably a good way to describe kind of where my head's at. And when I was at the ice cream company, it was a really, really premium product.

And as the sales director there, you know, it's very, very difficult to sell it into a store, into a retailer if the RRP is at least 50p, maybe 75 cents more than what it would be for the nearest one to us. I was getting fairly frustrated and said, hey, you know, people can't buy this product because it's too expensive. And, you know, we need to drop the price to make it a little bit more accessible for the consumer because it's a better product all around the bread scenario that you're talking about there.

He said, no, no, no. So we kept it at the same price and we weren't really getting into many retailers. Now, one day we went into, and this is the guy that said, no, we want to keep it premium.

We don't want to promote it that much. You know, it's worth what it's worth. And I'm thinking, yeah, no, you're right.

It is, you know, you get what you pay for. Absolutely, you completely get that. And that's what you're saying there with the bread side of things is you get what you pay for.

If you buy something good, you put it in your body. I'm a huge believer that food is kind of medicine really. I mean, I'm a sports person.

I'm big into my food and into my nutrition. So I get it. We then go off to go for have lunch together and we go to the retailer with the Sainsbury's that I was talking to you about.

And they were two products side by side, and they weren't too dissimilar. And one was on promotion, one wasn't. He picked up one that wasn't on promotion, saw the one that was on promotion, put that down, and picked up the one that was on promotion and bought it.

And I said, why did you do that? He said, it was cheaper. So, no more than an hour ago, we were talking about his brand, the brand that he owns, no promotions, got to be at the right price.

Hey, I completely get it. And I agree with you on that. But then we go and his behavior in shop is to go and buy the one that's on promotion.

So, I know, I absolutely get what you're saying. I always try and look at things from two points of view, which is wholeheartedly agree with you that retailers should be selling stuff that consumers want full stop. That's how the world goes round.

Unfortunately, I think there's some barriers to get products that consumers really want. They don't even know that are available because they can't get past the first hurdle, because it's kind of pushed by companies that can afford to do that. So, they might take, you know, they might strip out all the goodness in the product to make it a really cheap product to actually be able to buy, to put it onto the shelves.

I completely get that. I just find it very, very difficult to kind of get my head around how that can change in America. In the UK, we have some really, really cool products, some really nice products, from packaging to how they taste and everything like that.

But I work in that industry, and even sometimes I go there, and I know the guys that own these brands, and there's part of me that still say, yeah, but I'll go buy that because it's cheaper. And that's me, the person that's like the huge advocate of health, of startup brands, of innovative brands, etc. etc.

FNine times out of ten, I do try to back these guys, but actually I'm a consumer as well, at the end of the day, and sometimes you do just think, oh, that's slightly cheaper, or I don't see the difference between those two, so I'll just go with the cheaper one. There's a really difficult one to get your head around, I think, but I do think that education for consumers is hugely important, and to be able to get that product that makes sense for them to buy, which may be a little bit more, is actually as expensive to market them to understand that. So it's a whole kind of, do you put your money into making the product as cheap as possible so people buy it at the price point, or do you make it more expensive and you use half that profit to educate the consumer to buy it?

The honest answer, and this is something I'm glad we're talking about, I think the biggest failing in our industry is you take a product and you give it to a retailer and you expect them to sell it and you expect to just sit back and collect the cash. That's not right. The selling never stops.

And so to answer your question, the way that we do this, the way we solve this problem, is that we build a community of evangelists around our brand, have our own tribe, and we leverage that tribe, that community to drive sales at shelf. So if you communicate the value of your product, and I understand and I appreciate what that means, and as a result, I choose your product over the other product that's slightly cheaper, maybe it's because of your mission, maybe it's because of how you're aligned with things that are important to me, etc. Or you're organic, the other one's not, whatever, not getting into the nasties, I love the way you guys say that, the ingredients in our quality.

But the point is, if we can establish the true value of the products that we sell, and we can leverage that at retail, that's the win. Now, the other thing is that a lot of unfortunately short-sighted retailers and etc. are thinking about is that it's the premium products that are driving the profits in the store.

If I'm a big brand with deep pockets, I can buy shelf space and I can buy velocity. Velocity meaning if I go to, if I give you a canned ranking report, look, I'm number one on the shelf. Wow, aren't you impressed?

No, because what that means or what that could mean is that I'm pulling a lot of dollars profit out of the category. And that the only reason the customer comes in to buy my product is because of the price. They don't care about your store.

They're not loyal to the other products you sell. And so those are some of the conversations we need to have. So going back to where we were, if you're a super premium product and you don't promote very often, then you're providing more profit to the retailer.

And the term for that is contribution. And contribution is what they take to the bank. And then if I can take your contribution and add it to the contribution of all the other products they sell, that customer buys when they buy your product, that means your customer is a lot more valuable.

And so instead of chasing after the margin, the price, etc. to answer your question, we need to have a community that understands the true value of our product and respects and appreciates who we are, aligns with us, will go out of the way to spend their money on our product. Then we need to drive that unique customer into the store.

But the point is that we need to educate the retailer as to why that's better for them than getting sucked into that, the flywheel or whatever you want to call it, what they're doing, the hamster wheel, where they're just chasing after the price, they're chasing after the products that sell the most, they're chasing after the greatest margin. And when I say retail is broken, that's what we need to fix. We need to make it easier for smaller, innovative brands to get on the shelf because those are the ones, Charlie, that are driving sustainable sales across every category and across every channel.

And by the way, I proved this several years ago. I wrote a feature article for the 2016 Category Management Handbook, and that's on every single podcast episode page. And the point was that organic products were driving sustainable sales across every single category, driving the growth, the profit.

And when you remove that small sliver of organic, then every category would be flat or declining. Now, when we talk about plant-based, gluten-free, some of the other important attributes that consumers are looking for, very clean ingredients, et cetera, that's even more impactful. So to answer your question, that's where I think we need to be helping these brands, help the retailers understand what matters.

And it gets back to that conversation we had earlier, where if you've got an opportunity to work and collaborate with a retailer and help them drive sales, help them remain relevant in their market, and help them drive your unique customer and store, that's the win-win.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the thing is, you know, some of the retailers that we work with around the world, so that's how we sell. We sell on, hey, look, cash margin is higher.

Like, you will get more contribution, you'll get more profit by selling our product than you will do any other product. And in our industry, in our category, sorry, it's really interesting because it's naturally a very low-priced product. That's what instant cup noodles are, and that's what, you know, porridges are.

They're just as cheap as possible. I don't care what's in there, and I'm not really sort of health conscious. So from our point of view, not a barrier, but an opportunity for a buyer is, hey, look, you've got your consumer that doesn't really care too much about health.

And that's your consumer. That's the guys that come to your aisle, that's who buys your product. I completely get that.

But then you do have this other customer that's never going to come past your aisle. So by using us, profit higher, new consumers coming in, you'll make more profit each time you sell and you'll have a new customer going in there. So it won't cannibalize any of the sales.

And that's how we sell our product. And some people around the world get that, and some people don't. And I suppose the thing is, it's really interesting actually, because we have been knocked back so many times in the UK for that.

We have been lauded and praised for that in Australia. They love all buyers, all consumers. It just worked so well there.

And we've used that as a case study back to the UK. And they're still like, you know, it's still a risk. It's still a risk.

I'm going to be here for 18 months, two years in my role. Do I think I'm going to benefit from listing you, helping you grow it, and then afterwards I leave and someone else gets the benefit of me listing that product. But then there's certain places in the US that, I mean, Whole Foods, again, I cannot speak highly enough of Whole Foods.

I love my buyers. So if she ever listens to this, I want her to know that. They completely get that.

And they know that we're a new proposition. We bring in a new customer. We bring in a better profit, etc.

And we're really innovative. And I think there's something around a product going in there, but there's also something about a brand being listed over a product. So the overarching brand is, okay, cool.

So you've got four skews of noodles. They're going to burn out. Naturally, they're going to burn out in a couple of years.

Maybe people get bored. What have you got coming out next? And we have an MPD team.

We have more innovation going into different categories. We've got a congee, which is like a rice porridge. Asian rice porridge is going into Whole Foods.

We've got snacking rage coming out. We've got drinks range coming out. And so your point about creating a tribe is not a tribe for the product.

It's a tribe for the brand. And once you've got the tribe for the brand, it doesn't matter where you go in the store, you know, food to go front of store, food to go area, or in the snacking aisle or in the drinks aisle. People will say, hey, I love that brand because I love the noodles or because I love the mission or I love, you know, whatever it is

So I completely agree with you. And as maybe I was sounding a little bit, I'm just trying to play two sides of the fence here. But actually, as someone that owns Mr. Lee's as well and is the sales director, obviously, I wouldn't be at the company if I wasn't part of the tribe.

You know, I'm part of the tribe. I think that some buyers are very forward thinking, innovative, and they fit our values because we're forward thinking and innovative. So they get why we're saying it.

They get that we're going to bring someone new in and you're going to get better profit. That's why we're in existence. And so it's a really interesting.

One and one that I've been battling for five or six years. I try to think about it from the buyers' or the retailers' point of view. I try to think from the suppliers' point of view.

I think that the really the Internet is quite noisy and to get to create a tribe it used to be, you'd be able to get some people on board through Instagram. But now people realize that as soon as you put hashtag add in there, it loses all of its genuine appeal. Then I think people are trying to figure out now another way of getting the tribe and getting people to love your brand.

How is that? That's where I'm starting to try to understand it. You asked me five years ago, I'd say, get some really forward thinking influences, and given your product, they'll sell it to their crowd, and you do really well.

I've seen brands like, I don't know if they got that, Hules, I think is in America. It's a B2C meal replacement company that have gone from, they're going from, I don't know, I think they grow like 100% each year for the last five, six years. They're huge.

And a lot of what they did was influence the campaigns. And it worked well in that space of time, but things move on now. So I think that's something that's really interesting for a smaller brand.

How do they get that tribe when it's so noisy right now?

You made a comment. I answered that question a second. You made a comment that I don't think a lot of people are aware of.

And I'm glad you made it. 18 months. One of the challenges with a lot of the bigger brands, especially the bigger brands and a lot of the buyers, the retail buyers, and some people call them category managers, etc.

at retail, is to your point, they only stay in a position for about 18 months. They've got a specific objective, and their objective, if they want to get paid or earn their bonuses, whatever they need to do, depending on the company, is they need to cross a certain threshold, and it's usually pretty low. And the point being is that you working for a company being part owner, you're going to work a lot harder.

You're going to go out of your way to be innovative. You're going to be scrappy. You're going to do a lot of things that some people won't do.

And because of that model that we have in terms of rotating through people, putting them on different desks, et cetera, that actually pulls a lot of the innovation, a lot of creativity out of companies. So one, definitely an opportunity for you to capitalize on that. In terms of focusing again on the consumer.

Now, to your question, one of the things that I would recommend, I'm not a huge big fan of influencer marketing in the traditional sense. If you find the biggest name in the industry to buy your, you know, go out and talk about your product, but micro influencers are even far more important. And so you're a noodle.

Well, name a college kid that doesn't live off ramen noodles or something like that in this country, you'd be hard pressed to find one. And yet if you could find college students that want a healthier product, and you leverage that, get involved and integrated into that community, and they become your micro influencers, that's far more impactful than to hire the biggest name on TV or whatever to go sell your product. It's about, if you know your...

I created my Free Turnkey Sales Source Strategies course. The whole idea behind it is getting to understand who your customer is. Not the generic female, had a household, 2.3 kids, etc.

But what does your customer really look like? And what I mean by that, Charlie, is that if you've got some really good friends and you know them really well, what encourages them to make one decision over another is a decision? If you can understand that about your customer, why they buy your product, how they buy your product, how they celebrate it when they get it home, etc.

Getting back to the point that the selling never stops. And then you can leverage that in your marketing strategy. And so back to that sunflower product that I was talking about before, we found those groups of expecting mothers, of high-performance athletes.

And we got the product in their hands. We got them talking about it. And they built awareness around it.

And it was great. When you can leverage your customer at that level, that changes the conversation. And so even though we've got to trip over a lot of the issues within the industry, the buyer dust changing, etc.

it still needs to be more about the customer. You said you had great success in Australia, which is cool. In this country, there are a lot of people willing and able to ruffle a lot of feathers to write a check on your behalf to get your product on the shelf without understanding how that impacts the brand.

So I am a firm believer that brands need to own their go-to-market strategy and leverage their brokers and other people that they work with, agencies, distributors, etc. to execute on their behalf. And the point being is that if you've got a central hub making decisions and everyone's at lockstep and everyone's working together and you're leveraging all the stuff we've talked about, your loyal tribe that committed consumer, etc.

and your message is consistent, that's how you win at shelf, any place. And then once you're able to do that, the next biggest challenge is how do you get in front of the retailer? And the way you get in front of the retailer is that you have your loyal community go into that store and say, where is my Mr. Lee's?

Or how can I get that? Or why don't you sell that? Or can you order me a box or whatever?

And eventually, they start picking up on that. So when they're thinking about skew rationalization, you probably are not going to be the highest volume product on the shelf. So in that mindset, you deserve to be gone.

But if people are begging for your product, hey, you're future proofing your brand. What are your thoughts?

Yeah, I do. I agree. I think it's always two-pronged attack, which is in terms of marketing, we do a lot of consumer marketing.

So we want to make sure that people love our brand. And lots of the time, we've got a pretty good tribe in the UK. But then there's other things that come inside with that, which is, is there enough people out there to knock on the doors of these customers and say, on these retailers, sorry, and say, hey, you've got to list us.

Hey, you've got to list us. And I think that takes a long time. So I do think that you've got to be knocking on the door as well at the same time and be saying to these buyers, hey, look, this is our tribe.

This is what they're doing. This is how we get in touch with them. This is how that's going to benefit you.

Because the last thing is the most important thing to them. So how is it going to benefit me? It's going to hit your bonus and blah, blah, blah.

So I completely agree with you. I think that we talk about building our tribe all the time. But mainly we do that through our direct-to-consumer model.

So you then dilute it by going into the direct-to-consumer model. It becomes quite difficult. And I would say sometimes there's nothing, there's no better marketing than having distribution, having it on shelf.

That's at the point of purchase. You can do a promotion as a permission to trial. And then you try to promote less and less and do more and more marketing to people to buy at full price.

So from my side of it, there's two prongs to tap. You've got to make sure that your tribe is loud and proud, knocking on the doors, trying to sell for you. The selling never stops.

I completely agree with that. And we can talk to them via all sorts of social media side of things, or when they buy a product, they get something free or whatever. We want to keep them loyal.

But then there's nothing. For me, there is no better marketing tool than for it to be on shelf. But I would say that because I'm the sales director.

No, no, that's true. You're absolutely right. And I'm not saying one or the other.

You've got to be everywhere your customer shops. And so you're absolutely correct. And again, it goes back to selling is hard work.

And it's not something that you get. You know, a lot of people, unfortunately, they think that the product, the selling ends as soon as the truck picks it up off your loading dock. Not true.

It extends to after they take it home and share it with their friends. And a lot of people need to change their mindset around that. And unfortunately, that's taken them easy way out.

I don't want to say it's lazy, but a lot of people think that way, unfortunately. So what I'm saying is, yeah, you do both. Now, as far as your trade marketing is concerned, you know, your promotional dollars, well, there are more effective ways to promote your product through your tribe to reward them for being loyal and not spend as much to lower the price down at shelf at retail.

And that is a more effective way to leverage your trade spend to invite new customers to try your product, which is the only reason promotions exist anyhow, ideally. So that's where I would go with that. But let me go back to a couple of things that we were talking about earlier because I'm looking at the clock and I know we've been talking for about an hour now.

One of the things that you were talking about getting on shelf and things that really ruffled my feathers was we're talking about distribution and how you get the product on a shelf. And I'm not trying to pick on UNFI, but in the papers yesterday and all the bunch of the emails I get from newsletters and stuff, UNFI announced record profits at the same time that a lot of brands are going under and struggling. To me, that's just, that's not good.

That to me is really frustrating because it says that we're not working together as a community. Again, we're not making it easier for these products to get on store shelves. And that's another area where I think we in this country need to fix it.

So when you're talking about terms, you know, getting onto a store shelf, where you get on the store shelf, how you get your product into that store, that should all be part of that conversation. And unfortunately, a lot of retailers say you've got to use this distributor and you've got to use this broker or this company to promote your product and store demos, etc. I understand that from a cost standpoint, if I've got blinders on, I'm not thinking about the total picture, why that makes sense.

But all those added layers of cost add up. I do not think, and again, this is the point I was trying to make yesterday, is that distributors should be in the business of promoting your product. I think that that's not what they're designed to do.

They're good at getting a product from your back warehouse into the store, period. Now, if you're promoting to independence that you don't have line of sight to, maybe that. But in terms of where your product gets sold, how your product gets sold, etc.

that needs to be the brand's responsibility. And if the distributors really wanted to help maximize their commissions, they would make it easier for a brand to come in and work with them and help them close whatever distribution gaps are there and help them make it easier to sell their products. And what I mean by that, Charlie, is this country, if you've got a product and you're selling it through a distributor and you want to know exactly where that product is being sold, you need to pay in many cases an upcharge, a price, a premium for a report that tells you who's buying your product.

And sometimes it's masked. Well, that's ridiculous in my mind because if you're trying to sell your product, if they get a commission for selling your product and you can help them close those gaps, they make more money. So to me, it's those not forward-thinking, waste-of-money type expenses that we need to pull out of the system.

So when you're talking about coming in this country and we're talking about being in the West Coast and on the East Coast and then working toward the middle, the challenge today is that some distributors, some brokers are going to put you wherever they can put you because they make money selling your product. But they don't think about whether or not you can properly support that brand in that particular retail, etc. And I think I made the comment that there's another brand I'm working with that is in California.

She's got an amazing product. Distributors said, Hey, I love your product. I'm going to get it in distribution.

So they put it in Florida and Indiana, a couple of stores in Louisiana. Now, there's no way she can support those retailers properly. There's no way she can be cost, her prices can be competitive price-wise because of the added cost, etc.

And then on top of that, the distributor is asking her to pay for promotions for them. So if she pays to promote her product, she's paying for promotions that will never happen in a lot of retailers that will never carry her product. And that's an unbelievable waste of money.

So when you're talking about your system being closer to the retailer, that's really where we need to be. By the way, that's why the big brands in this country go direct to the retailer and they don't go through... We used to go through distributors, Kimberly Clark Unilever, and the reason they're gone is because of that.

So when you're thinking about coming to this country, I would align yourself with those retailers, those brokers, those distributors that can execute your strategy on your behalf and not try to put you places where you can't support the brand or you can't... It doesn't make sense. I mean, you don't want to be in a brand and you don't want to be in a retailer that doesn't sell to your kind of consumer, etc.

Your thoughts?

Yeah, I completely agree that it makes... I mean, it's almost like saying the type of consumer that you sell to, the type of distributor you sell to is important as well, because it's going to be the right one. I can only talk around how that works for the UK really, which is, you know, we would work with the right distributor, the right wholesaler, we call them, because they would go into the right stores themselves, you know.

And I'm kind of old enough and experienced enough to know now that, although not too old, but that I could, you know, you find the right consumer, you find the right distributor, you find the right retailer to sell, and you'll be successful. And nine times out of ten, the industry just bashes you into that, into the area you should be in anyway. So it's almost just time-saving device really, to know which areas to sell.

And I get what you're saying with UNFI and with the retailers, is that, you know, in the UK, we go straight to the retailer, that's done. If you want to go into smaller independence, you go through a distributor, but everyone's fully aware that the commercial chain is going to mean that someone has to give. And the commercial chain in the UK for that makes it very achievable for me as a brand to make money, the retailer to make money and the distributor to make money.

It's fine. The issue is if that happens for a distributor going in to retailers in the UK, we would have the same situation as you guys have in America. We just don't have that, so we're quite lucky.

So yeah, it's a really interesting space. And you know what? We've just done some fundraising because we need to trade in America.

And we want to be a really kind of big, big brand. You know, that's what we want to do. And I suppose my advice to anyone trying to get into the US is just know that you've got to have kind of deep pockets to play ball with those guys.

And you've got to be really energetic and, you know, passionate and energy cells. So in the UK, you can get away with being at every trade show. You can go and knock on every single door.

You can ring absolutely everyone up. And you'd probably be able to kind of master up a pretty good brand. In the US, you need Bunny to open up the door.

And that's something that we weren't aware of at the start. And my word, we're aware of it now by working with a couple of the retailers.

It's tough. Well, and the other thing is, you know, if you listen to the people, certainly in the natural channel, they're going to tell you, you've got to get distribution in this retailer and you've got to do this and you've got to do it this way because this is the way we've always done it. And I believe, Charlie, that your go-to-market strategy should be every bit as creative as the ingredients in your package, which is contrary to the way a lot of people think of things.

But what I'm getting at is, if you've got that strategy and you understand who your customer base is, etc. then I certainly am a supporter and a huge fan of the independents. But to get into distribution in them and to be successful and drive the kind of volume you need to be able to get to the level you need to be at, that makes it very difficult to go that channel.

And so what I recommend to brands is, there are a couple very progressive mainstream retailers that cater to your ideal customer. And I recommend that you go into their different, scattered throughout the country, specific retailers where you can get the volume, you can drive the sales, you can drive the awareness. And then as you start building up your sales and your profit, and by the way, you're also selling online, so you've got more runway from that.

And then you're leveraging your trade spend, so you're maximizing each and every opportunity. And then you go to the independents, because we definitely need to support them. But to your point, it costs a lot more money to put a product on a shelf if you've got to touch it a thousand times and being a little facetious.

But when I was at Kimberly Clark, Walmart started something that was really cool, very innovative, and that's her claim to fame is getting a product on the shelf cheaper than anyone else. And so with a lot of brands, a lot of retailers, people don't understand this necessarily, is that we would have to take a product, bust the pallet, and split it into smaller pallets and then distribute it. And that's where the distributor comes in.

That's why they're such an important piece of the supply chain. But when bigger retailers like a Walmart or Kroger, etc. we would just cross-talk.

The product would come out of the Kimberly Clark truck and go directly into the Walmart truck. It would never be warehoused. Yeah, fewer people are touching it.

So we need to find creative ways, in my mind, to figure out a way to reduce the amount of wasted spending that we have, the amount of people touching your product, so that we can get it on a shelf cheaper. And then again, so that's why I suggest, you know, you go with a mainstream retailer that can support you, give you the kind of volume numbers you need, and then help you build out enough, you know, get enough cash in your wallet, so to speak, so that you can support the independents, vice versa go in the other direction. And so different model.

But I know that, what are your thoughts around that first?

Well, one thing you mentioned there was really interesting. Well, a few things. But when you're saying the strategy needs to be as innovative as the product itself, I completely agree.

And we're quite proud of the way that we are with our go to market strategy. So, in the UK, we accept that we don't have much of a marketing budget. So, we want people to try our product.

And we want people to try our product en masse. So, airlines and travel was the most important thing to us right now. And at that point, sorry, profit is there is no profit, you know, and actually you put a lot of your capital into the product.

So, it is an expensive way, I suppose, but also it's the cheapest way because you're selling the product and people are trying it. So, we were doing that quite a lot. We also have a vending machine which goes out to hospitals, universities, colleges, et cetera, et cetera.

It's a big touch screen, 42-inch touch screen. It's a massive bit of kit and people can see that. So, that might go into a service station which, you know, 100 million people will go back and forth there a year.

So, that's another way that people can see us. And then we were looking kind of the independence and stuff and that side of it because we want to keep the price point high. We want people to try it so that when it goes into retail, there's no problem with the pricing at all.

So, our go-to-market strategy, I completely agree with you. You know, it needs to be in the right places at the right time. And the right places is if you're a premium product, it needs to be in a premium retailer at the right time.

And then there will be a time for when, you know, in America, it's warm up. In the UK, it's probably someone like Tesco's or Morrison's or something like that. Something that's a lot more mainstream.

The price is going to be affected because it's such a big deal. So, yeah, I completely agree with you. The go-to-market strategy for me in every country is different.

So, we have France, they're all franchised. So, you have to have someone to knock on every single door. So, you accept that it's a bit more expensive.

Same in Ireland. UK is very cut and dry and it goes on shelf and you just try and get it off shelf through trial and promotions, etc. In Australia, it's quite similar.

And in the US, we're just learning now, you know, that you're going through distributors, you're working with brokers. And, you know, the way that you guys market it is predominantly, it feels like it's online. You know, a lot of it's online.

So completely agree with you. And if, you know, my advice to anyone that wants to be a global brand, one, if you're in America, that's, you know, that's the golden ticket. So everything else kind of would come secondary, I would say.

If you were looking to go into the UK market, I've had a couple of people get in touch with me to ask me how to get into the UK market. And it's a completely different way. So you just have to be very open-minded that, hey, you might have done 30 years in retail in America, you've done no years in the UK.

And I used to say that very early on, I have two consultants, a strategic advisor, Stephanie Lind, who was on your show not long ago, and one of my other consultants. And I say, look, I've done 10 years in this industry, but it's in the UK. I've done no years in America, so teach me.

And that's kind of, you know, when you do your go-to-market strategies in a different country that you're not aware of, just be mindful that you've done no years in that country.

That's a good point. In fact, a lot of people really need to think about that because, like you said, everything is different and there's so much we've talked about. And getting back to the strategy piece, I believe that your go-to-market strategy should be so robust that anyone could step in and run your brand for you on your behalf in your absence.

And unfortunately, a lot of brands don't do that. And a lot of brands, unfortunately, in this country adopt a cookie-cutter strategy. And it's not the same.

It's not going to work as well as if you had a clean, clear, precise, this is what we're going to do, this is how, you know, marching orders for your entire team. This is how we're going to get the product on the shelf. This is a consumer who sells to all of that kind of stuff.

And that takes a lot of work. So thank you for sharing that. I know that we're coming up on the hour.

I wanted to mention that you and I are going to be doing a free webinar in a couple of weeks. And the point means we're going to be talking more about this. And we're going to talk about more about how brands can leverage some of these strategies to get on shelf, not only in this country, but other countries as well.

So do you have any parting thoughts? Anything else you'd like to say? Do you have a bottleneck you'd like me to try to help solve?

No, I think from my perspective, it's really important. What I've learned in the UK, which I'm bringing over to the US, is it's important to have brand friends. It's important to have industry friends to help you.

You never know everything. So if I was in the UK and I needed some help, I have a really good network. And I can absolutely ask that question because things move on all the time and you just don't know what's going to come in the future.

I mean, for example, in the UK, Brexit, it's like no one really knows what's going on there and we're all kind of trying to work our way through it. So sometimes experience isn't what you need. You need someone that kind of knows what they think might happen in the future.

So now going into the US, it's nice to speak to yourself. And I've got kind of a few other people in the US that I can speak to. So in terms of bottlenecks, they come thick and fast and to have kind of a good network behind you in whatever country you're looking to trade in is really important.

Well, and that's why I do what I do. That's what this show is all about and all the content that I put out. And one of the things Stephanie brought out, we had a great conversation as she was talking about how you can get paid to sample your product.

What a concept. And the point being is that you could leverage food service to distribute your product, to build awareness and have people discover your product, which I think is a great idea, a brilliant idea. And so yeah, there are a lot of great strategies that we can talk about when we reconnect on the 16th.

So thank you so much, Charlie, for your time. I appreciate it. And I look forward to talking to you in a couple of weeks again.

Great. Thanks, Dan. Good to chat.

Thanks. I want to thank Charlie for coming on today. And I'll be certain to put a link to Mr. Lee's in the podcast show notes and on the podcast web page.

And don't forget to be looking for the webinar that we're going to be doing together in a couple of weeks. The details are on the events page on my website. This week's free downloadable guide is my simple solutions to maximize broker effectiveness.

I created this because a lot of brands are reaching out to me continually asking me how do you maximize your broker effectiveness? In other words, how do you leverage the strength of your broker to drive sales sustainably through every single retailer? And this is a topic that is extremely important now as brands grapple with the limited resources that they have now due to COVID.