BRAND SECRETS AND STRATEGIES

PODCAST #40

Hello and thank you for joining us today. This is the Brand Secrets and Strategies Podcast #40

Welcome to the Brand Secrets and Strategies podcast where the focus is on empowering brands and raising the bar.

I’m your host Dan Lohman. This weekly show is dedicated to getting your brand on the shelf and keeping it there.

Get ready to learn actionable insights and strategic solutions to grow your brand and save you valuable time and money.

LETS ROLL UP OUR SLEEVES AND GET STARTED!

Dan: Welcome. As you know, the underlying theme of this podcast is that it's about you and it's for you. It's about helping to identify resources to help you grow your brand or help you compete more effectively as a retailer. In today's story, we talk about an entrepreneur that almost by accident created a special niche in the industry. His secret sauce is being able to bring young entrepreneurs into a room together with top thought-leaders in the industry, essentially providing a mastermind group for anyone looking to grow a brand.

Today's guest is John Craven, the Founder and CEO of BevNET. I've had the privilege of knowing John for quite a while including being a featured speaker on BevNET Live supporting some of his tabletops where young brands can get expert advice, and participating in FBU University, now called Project NOSH.

In episode 32, I had a great discussion with Phil Lempert, The Supermarket Guru, about how brands need to be walking the store shelves, and more importantly they need to know what's going on outside of their market. They need to be paying attention to trends in the marketplace and what different retailers are doing. John and his team at BevNET provide this information in an easy to digest format, with expert commentary. Here's John.

Good morning John, thank you for joining us today, I'd like to start with you sharing with the audience a little bit about yourself, and your journey to BevNET.

John: Sure, and thanks a lot Dan for having me on your podcast here. BevNET is something that I founded back in 1996, via what seems like the dark ages now, when the internet was just getting started. Honestly I started it, there's a funny story, as with many entrepreneurs, but I was a college student, had this love for beverages, from growing up on Long Island where Snapple and Arizona Iced Tea were born. I was a scrappy college student literally trying to figure out how to get some free stuff. The internet was this new buzz word, this was like pre dot-com bubble and all of that.

Literally just set out with this goal of trying to connect to some of these companies, and just, again, try to get them to send me their product. One thing kind of led to another, talking to CEOs of different companies, and it amazed me at the time, and it's still true today, just how willing people in the beverage industry are to talk to other people who are just starting out. I was talking to people who were running these brands that now seem like legacy brands, Clearly Canadian, and Stewart's Root Beer, Mystic, and Sobe, and one thing led to another and I kind of turned into a blogger I guess, before the word blogger existed. From there eventually the ball started rolling, and now we're 20 years later, a media company that's focused on all sorts of B-to-B food and beverage related industries.

We've got BevNET for non-alcoholic beverages, and a little bit of spirits in there. We've got Project NOSH for natural, organic, sustainable, and healthy foods, and we have our Brewbound for the beer industry. We're really focused on different categories of food and beverage, where there's a lot of entrepreneurial activity, a lot of new products, and that's really what we do.

Dan: That's great, in fact I'm kind of laughing a little bit, imagining your garage being full of free stuff, I wonder what that's like. I bet you were popular in your neighborhood.

John: Well, it's funny, when this started in the dorm room, initially when I really figured out how to connect with these companies, I was having the UPS guy dropping off all these boxes of liquid, and one of the first run-ins that I had was the residence assistants, the RAs, of the dorm I lived in, were like, is this just some idiot kid who thinks he can get beer delivered to his room and sneak it under the radar. I had this one RA banging on the door, thinking he's got this bust, and I'm like no, it was Snapple and Mountain Dew that I had in my room. It's kind of funny how that worked.

Yeah, I guess we're pretty good at the free stuff still, I'm not doing it for the same reasons as 20 years ago, but we get a ton of products in our office here and it's really great for our team to be able to try all the stuff. I always encourage companies to send us their products. It's certainly beneficial to have your products in the hands of people whose job it is to cover the industry, it's honestly a lot of what becomes inspiration for the stories we create, the podcasts we do on our Taste Radio Podcast, or even at our conferences. I definitely would encourage any of your listeners out there who are brands that haven't yet sent us product or engaged with us, to do so.

Dan: Very good, I'm glad you said that, and as a side note, Mountain Dew is what got me through college in a lot of ways. I keep just imagining how popular you were.

John: It's one of those things that I'm almost ashamed to admit, that the beverages I drank to start this, Mountain Dew, and Snapple, and stuff like that, are things I probably just wouldn't ever touch nowadays, I'm much more into the healthy and natural stuff. Yeah, back in college, for sure, I had like a limitless supply of sugar, definitely didn't have trouble getting people to come over and share in that.

Dan: Well, in fairness, it was a much different product than it is today, or that it matured into, yeah, it's funny, so thanks for sharing that anecdote, I love that, that's great. Okay, the idea of having you run a store out of your dorm room, and I was director of a college, so I'm just visualizing the traffic, the lines for your door, and fire exits, anyhow. We could spend days talking about that alone.

Okay, now getting into what you're talking about, a lot of organizations, a lot of companies that write content, do a lot of writing because they heard about something, or someone told them something. I love the fact that you're actually encouraging people to send you the product so you can taste it yourself. To frame this a little differently John, and the audience, that putting something into a container, or a bottle, or a can, is a lot more difficult than putting it into a box. Giving it to a group of experts who has a fundamentally understanding of how this works is critically important.

Could you go into a little bit more about maybe why people should do this, give a little more depth, maybe some of the pros and cons behind it, some of the things that you don't want to see. I imagine some people send you things that aren't properly packaged, and you probably get broken bottles and stuff like that.

I used to be a grocery manager at Price Club. We were the first liquor store that was in a club store, and I remember the fruit flies and stuff like that from the broken container. As a side note I imagine you guys probably have your horror stories as well.

John: Yeah, we definitely have horror stories. At this point we try to do our best just to instruct people how to pack boxes of bottles, which if you're a company making something in a glass bottle, it's a pretty quick lesson to learn is how to pack a box full of glass bottles. But, for sure, we still get some stuff that's broken, frozen, whatever.

Dan: What do you do with it, how do you assess it? What's your strategy, what's your process?

John: If it's broken it goes right to the dumpster, unfortunately. I think to answer your question of, is there a downside or anything like that, just to take a step back even further, a lot of the companies and entrepreneurs that we deal with across all of our platforms, they're at different stages. Some are at the stage of like, gee whiz, over the weekend I had this crazy idea, kind of hard to help those people. The ones that I think are most interesting, and where we can help the most are people who, they have the idea, they've done some research, they've got a little bit of a plan, a strategy of use some of our tools to just learn the ropes of it. Maybe they're at a point where, all right, I've got a couple of sample ideas, I've got some mock-ups, those are the ones that are the most fun to help, and again, where I think we can add the most value, in that they haven't actually produced anything yet.

I think, as much as I would encourage companies to send us their products at any point for feedback, and again, this is totally free, we're not a consultant or anything like that. It's a lot harder when you're giving advice to someone who made 10,000 cases of the stuff, right.

Dan: Right.

John: It's kind of like that information would of been helpful a couple months ago. I think the earlier that people can engage, the better, and we do a lot of stuff just off the record, confidential, it's not like we're going to go and take some product that's being developed and go write some negative story about it, that's not what we do. I think we're someone who, since we're not selling consulting services, we're not selling anything in the supply chain, for better or worse, a lot of times we're one of the first places that people are really getting unbiased, honest feedback. We don't really have anything to lose by telling you something that might be hard feedback to swallow.

I think that's something that, again, it's hard to get within the industry sometimes. People are either too cautious to say it, or maybe their business is they want to sell you stuff, they want to sell you your flavors or packaging, whatever it might be. Again, we're just going to tell you the honest feedback. Ultimately we don't want to see anyone fail for some obvious flaw or mistake or something like that, so we're really just doing it to help these entrepreneurs out.

But, again, I would encourage people to engage with us at whatever point they're at, it certainly won't hurt.

Dan: Well, and good advice, it's so important, as you said. I work with a lot of brands from all levels, or all stages of development, including, like you said, pre-revenue, they hadn't put it in a box, et cetera, and then to be able to tell the entrepreneur, look, just because your mom loves it doesn't mean everyone else will. They look at you like, what do you mean, this is the best, I revolutionized the category.

Your point being that ... Yeah, you get it. That if you do it right from the beginning it's a lot less costly than it is to go back and fix it later. Those are, perhaps, the most difficult conversations I have with any brand, because to go back and recall the stuff, or to change the packaging because they didn't disclaim something correctly, or maybe they put it on the shelf and they didn't realize that it doesn't stay consistently ... the quality's not there, it loses it's whatever over time. Especially in a bottle or a can. Thank you for sharing that.

What you do I think is so valid, it's so important, and so I really appreciate the fact that you guys are out there as the leading voice doing this, and I've had the privilege of being on your side and you're working with some of your tabletops, and being a part of BevNET Live, and part of your Project NOSH, you guys do an amazing job, and it's such high caliber content, and the way you guys put it together. To your point it's unbiased, so thank you for doing that.

John: Appreciate that.

Dan: Well, yeah, I really appreciate it, you guys are so unique in the industry because of that, and because of the way you do it, and by the way, as a side note, I'm always referring people to your site, and now that you've added the job part, that's even better.

Let's unpack this a little bit. Can you talk about BevNET, its focus, what it does, and its purpose, primary reason for being?

John: Yeah, I think our primary reason for being is ultimately to be someone who is a central hub for the community. I think you touched on a lot of the different things that we have to offer. We're just trying to provide value to the community wherever we can. The most obvious areas that we do that are certainly the news coverage that we're doing day in and day out, keeping people informed on what's going on, keeping them up on the latest trends, covering the interesting companies and products that are out there.

We're doing things like our conferences, which are a little more strategic in nature, in terms of their content, as well as providing in person networking that is very different than what you get at say in Expo West, where it's like too many people, hard to have a conversation. This is, everyone is there to just focus on a strategic thinking, and making new connections. They’re not there to close a new retailer, or something like that.

Then there's other stuff that we do that you touched on. Job boards, we've got a bunch of different product databases. We've got our own podcast, which I mentioned earlier. I think we're just looking for places and ways to, again, just drive this community, and ultimately we want to make sure that whatever we're doing is adding value, not something that is maybe a roadblock or whatever.

The beauty of what we do is that those needs change over time. The things that we're doing today are not the things that we were doing 10 years ago, and I'm sure that will continue to evolve as the industry evolves. I'm very excited just with the level of activity that's going on right now, the number of new products, and new companies, and investment money. I'm sure that will continue to create opportunities for companies like BevNET as well.

Dan: That's all very important. Let me unpack this a little bit, one of the things that you mentioned in your news coverage, to stay on top of the different trends, I had a really great conversation with Phil Lempert, The Supermarket Guru, and this is what we talked about. To frame this, having someone else be your eyes and ears.

I remember early in my career working for a manufacturer, I used to walk stores all the time, that's where I got to learn about the product, the categories. Now, I can walk into a store and I can pretty much figure out, who did the schematic, what was the strategy behind the way they did what they did, et cetera, and, as a small, young entrepreneurial brand, if you don't understand those things, you're at a serious disadvantage, and, more importantly, since you're only probably able to get into the stores in your local market, you can't possibly see what's going on in a different state, or a different community.

The fact that you provide those insights across the entire beverage platform is so valid and so useful. Can you touch on that a little bit more, because I think this is perhaps, one of the most important things you do because it ties in so nicely to all the other content you put out there. It gives you a stronger voice, and it validates, not only what you offer, but it validates the support that you're able to offer any brand.

John: Yeah, I think if you're talking specifically about searching for new products and covering those, for sure, I think that is ultimately the hub of all this information. People are constantly tracking, and want to know what the new stuff is. I think, to your point, you could go out there and walk all these stores, but even with that, nowadays, just people's paths to market are so fragmented. There was probably a point in time, even recently, if you walked into, let's say, a Whole Foods in whatever city you're in, maybe three years ago, that was probably the place to go and see the leading edge stuff. You'd probably be pretty comprehensive at that point.

I think now, just given where that retailer's at, as well as things like direct to consumer, and other retailers kind of opening up their doors for more entrepreneurial, younger brands, I think it's pretty hard to do that. I find even for myself, some of the stuff that I used to do to go check in at retailers has changed quite a bit.

Dan: Absolutely.

John: I think even when I do it there's stuff that still flies under the radar, that will end up getting here in the office, or someone will tell us about, that it's just that much harder. Look, we have a whole team of people that are out there day in and day out doing that across food, beverage, and beer, and honestly there's still stuff that we miss with a whole team of people doing that. It's pretty tough. Again, that gets back to certainly encouraging companies to engage with us as opposed to leaving it up to us to find them. Certainly always would rather be dealing with a company directly versus, and we still do this, picking up products off of store shelves and that being the first interaction that we have of them.

Dan: Well, and on that note, to go one step further to kind of bring this into some of the other areas you talked about, the in-person networking, they're so unique and so different than other programs I've been associated with. It's not, hey, I'm competing against you, but yet you felt like you're in a room of masterminds, of people that were willing to give honest feedback and advice. It was a lot friendlier than a lot of the other venues that I've been to, and a lot of other things I've participated in. Can you talk about the structure of that?

The reason I wanted to bring this up is because, back to what we were talking about earlier, you know, just because your mom likes it, right, but to have other industry experts talk about it and evaluate it, and it's not a game show where you're voted off or whatever, but it's good feedback that these brands can take, and use, and develop, and really make it their own.

John: Yeah, I think, certainly at our events, if that's what you're talking about.

Dan: Yes.

John: We try to create an environment where people have access to all sorts of different people in the industry, and in our case, with BevNET Live and NOSH Live, both events follow a similar structure of talks, networking type things, social events, as well as both have built in sampling showcases, which basically gives the companies, to answer your point, a place where they can put their product and have it on display, which helps foster those conversations. Instead of having to go up to somebody and pull your product out or your bag and that's the first time whoever you're talking to sees it, we give these brands an opportunity to have their product at BevNET Live, for example, like in our coolers that we have. That's something that we offer to everyone as part of attendance at the event.

It's funny, it might not seem like a significant thing, but I really think that that, let's say there's an investor at our event, allowing them to discover your product in our sampling coolers, and then connecting with you later in the day. It certainly creates a different conversation then, again, you take at Expo West, where these people are just walking around booth, to booth, to booth, trying this, trying that, it's almost like that garbage disposal in your stomach, right?

Dan: Oh, yeah.

John: This is just a different thing that, we think it ... it's not necessarily better, it's just different, you know, and I think it does create a different kind of conversation, that we see a lot of interesting stuff come out of our events, and news come out of our events. People finding investors, or finding new hires, or getting some new idea. That's stuff that just happens within the environment that we've created, we're not there forcing that or anything. I guess it works.

Dan: Oh, I think so, absolutely. In fact, I would go one step further and say that most trade shows, and I used to, again, working for a manufacturer, I used to work trade shows all the time. They can be pretty inefficient, very expensive given what you're doing. They're expensive in the sense that you're not actually making a sale, you're not making a connection with someone, but to have a venue like yours John where someone can come and try the product and you don't feel like you're being sold, or someone's trying to shove it down your throat. Not to say that that's what always happens, but it's a more relaxed atmosphere, and you're able to actually have a conversation with the founder, the inventor, to learn a little bit about the history of the product, why they came up with it, why they think it makes sense, and then to get feedback from other people within the room that have tried things, been in the industry for a long time, I think that's invaluable. Thank you for doing that.

John: Yeah, it's fun, I mean they're fun to put on too, a lot of work. Looking forward to our next one in New York this June.

Dan: Yeah, and that's a great event. I was going to say real quick, kind of as a segway, it's a little bit like taking you back to the dorm room, right. But your events and ... That is funny, it just keeps cracking me up. Your events that you've got, your BevNET Live, and again, thank you for allowing me to participate in that. What an amazing event. I think that you guys do a phenomenal job, really well put together, very well structured, bringing a lot of talent, and you provide a lot of great insights and a lot of great advice to young brands trying to navigate this difficult path.

I started by saying that it's a lot more challenging and a lot more difficult to put something into a bottle or a can, especially if you're putting it under pressure. Then, to put it into a oversaturated category, because let's face it, everyone's got a different beverage, I mean how many different flavors of tea can we have by each brand, and to try to squeeze it onto a retailer's shelf and tell their story behind it, that's challenging. To be able to bring all this together to help the brands figure out how to navigate retail, how to navigate the industry, how to navigate using co-packers, and the supply chain, et cetera, is so beneficial. Can you talk a little bit about what you see as the opportunity, and how would you recommend a brand leverage your resources, both in print and your conference, et cetera, to really help guide and drive their journey, their discovery, to get their product onto a shelf?

John: Yeah, I think, just to address the first part of what you said too, of it being so hard, and it being oversaturated, I think that in itself could probably have a 45 minute podcast right there-

Dan: Oh, yeah.

John: But I think, what's interesting to me is that people who are new to these industries, and I think it applies to food as well, not just beverage, a lot of times they think the real hurdle is actually ... they're trying to build that better mousetrap, right, so they put all their effort into creating that, and they finally are like, we've figured it out, maybe we've patented it, or it's proprietary, they'll use all these words to sort of showcase the hard work that they've done. I don't mean to diminish that in any way, but that, in a lot of ways is like, that's just the first hurdle.

Dan: Absolutely.

John: The bigger one, which is way more challenging, because it's not as technical, and it's more of an art form, is the actual brand building, and I think that's something that I would just advise to any entrepreneur, which is, leave some fuel in the tank to do that. I think that's something that's often overlooked by people who are new to the industry.

I think on, kind of the oversaturated and crowded, it's funny, that's another one, it's like damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you go into a crowded category, let's say you're the 500th beef jerky, or iced tea, right, well, you know what, that's right, it's super duper crowded, but at least there's a market for that, and there's established place of retail for that, there's retail dollars for these products, people actually buy them.

On the other hand, if you're creating something totally brand new, it's just so different, I don't know. I don't know what thing to make an example of, but there might not be demand for that, people might not know what it is, retailers don't have a shelf for it.

I think, with any of these things, it's just picking the right path that both you as an entrepreneur are going to be comfortable going down, and creating the right product for that. I think that's something that ... it's tough, and, again, I think for entrepreneurs, to pull it back to interfacing with us, that again, these are some of the things that we can help entrepreneurs talk through when they're trying to figure this stuff out. Conversations with us are just the first part of that, as you pointed out. Certainly once you've decided to get into it, attending one of our events is a great way to test the water, to start building your name.

I think one of the things that we often here is, oh, I'm not ready yet. It's funny, I think, like many things in life, it's sort of people want to wait to do things until they really need them, and to use this space and how people interface with us, it's like, well, I'm going to start going to your event when I need to raise money or something, right. Do you want to go to an event, or pitch an investor when you are trying to go from, hey, nice to meet you, to, write me a check, or do you want to start building awareness now, so that when you do need to raise money they're like, oh, gee, I've known about you for a couple of years, I've met you at a couple of events, I've read about you on BevNET or NOSH.

Dan: Right.

John: Certainly, I would say the latter part of that is a more effective approach. I hope that answers your question.

Dan: Oh, yeah.

John: It's kind of like, I think as soon as you're in the industry you should start trying to figure out how to use a resource like us, and certainly coming to an event is great, but I don't mean that as a sales pitch either, I think there's plenty of stuff out there, you should be going to Expo events, you should be just trying to connect with other brands in the space, all of that stuff.

Dan: It's all critically important, and on that note, the focus of this podcast, all the content that I put out there, and what I do, is to change that paradigm of brands having to get out their checkbook all the time to buy that shelf space, to buy their way onto the shelf, it's designed to help brands understand, or help them leverage what makes them unique. We have them become experts in their product, their competition, their category, so that they can help tell a more effective selling story to the retailer to help the retailer drive sales within their store. The point being that retailers cannot be experts in every category and every item they sell.

With that said, how would you recommend a brand leverage all of these valuable resources so that they start early, which I think is so valid that you said that, thank you, and start earlier in their development and their evolution to leverage all this so that, to your point, when you get to retailer shelves, you're going to be a lot more successful.

John: Well, gee, I think if I knew the answer to that, or if it were that simple I'd probably be running a brand, not a media company. No, I think in all seriousness, it's just I think one of those things that varies based on the product type, and the category, and what your own strategy is.

I feel like one thing ... I'm going to answer the question a little differently, which is just, I think focus is part of it.

Dan: Makes sense.

John: I think for a lot of brands, you come into something like, let's say you're drinking the Koolaid of what I'm saying here, and you're going to our events, you're going to Expo West, you're reading sites like ours, and listening to podcasts and all that, there's a lot of stuff out there, and you can't do it all. I think that's another thing.

Dan: Good point.

John: That you see a lot of companies taking all of this stuff and they're like dipping their toe in, I don't know, like e-commerce, they're dipping their toe into Whole Foods, maybe they're exporting overseas, they're just doing all these different things and you end up with this hot mess that's really complicated to run.

I think, I would just suggest that, whatever you're going to pick as a startup company, you just really try to focus in and figure out places where you can have repeatable victories, as opposed to doing a little over here, and a little over there. I don't know if that answers the question.

Dan: No, I think it makes tremendous sense, progress, not perfection. In a lot of brands they wait till they get everything exactly perfect, thinking that they're going to knock the ball out of the park, and the reality is is that they've missed something, they've overlooked something. It's a lot better to course correct early on in your development by getting true, good feedback from quality resources, than it is to learn that painful lesson after you've spent a lot of money to get slotting and get it on a retailer's shelf. I think that makes tremendous sense.

On that note, can you talk a little bit about the school that you offer, and the educational platform that you have?

John: Sure. Our educational platform, which exists as Beverage School on BevNET and Bootcamp on Project NOSH, is offered, essentially in two forms. One is like an on-demand subscription service, it's video based, and really that's designed for the evergreen kind of nuts and bolts content. We tried to create it so I think there's a lot of people that just get into this space and they go, I don't know, maybe they go direct to a consultant, or direct to a flavor company, and we're not trying to compete with those people, but at least give you the primer of these industries. So when you call these people up and they start talking about co-packers, or, I don't know, DSD, or something different things that you won't know as a consumer, that you've at least had a resource that has brought you up to speed on those.

We also offer those as a pre-day to our conferences. For example, if you attend BevNET Live, the day before we have a half-day beverage school that you can attend, the same sort of thing. You paid this money to go to our conference and you hear all these acronyms, and all this lingo, we have a forum that just gets you up to speed, hopefully fast, and usually we're covering topics that are, again, pretty evergreen, things like some of the financial investment, legal and regulatory, package design, product development, co-packing, stuff like that. Again, we do that for NOSH as well.

They've been well received, we've been doing those for about eight years now, and it's interesting to see some of the brands, not going to name names, but brands that eight years ago were sitting there as newbies, that have gone on to be really successful. I'm sure they would have been successful regardless, but it's nice that we've been able to create something that at least it helped speed them up a little bit in the beginning. That's all we're trying to do, is just help people avoid the repeatable mistakes, at least with Beverage School and Bootcamp, that's what we're trying to do. Yeah, definitely check that out if you're someone who's looking for that.

Dan: Well, and I think it's so valid and so important because one doctor may give you opinion, another doctor may give you another opinion, and yet if you get informed decisions before you go under the knife, or before you do something, especially something as critical as launching a brand, essentially birthing your baby, if you will, your baby being your brand, then it's all those good insights, and the feedback that you get from the variety of people is so beneficial. I would encourage anyone listening not to put all their eggs in one basket. There are a lot of really good consultants out there, but they may overlook something, a trend in the marketplace that you might be able to shine a light on, either through your written content, through your video blog, the other content you've got out there, and your school.

On that note, can you talk a little bit about Project NOSH, what's unique and different about it, and how do you differentiate it from BevNET?

John: Project NOSH is basically our platform for food, packaged food mainly. BevNET is essentially ready to drink liquid, that's the most obvious distinction. Really we're focused on the business aspect of natural and organic packaged food. There are other resources out there that talk about other things, maybe they're more cause driven or something like that. But ours is really focused on the things that drive these categories, which one of the key things is certainly fundraising and investment type news. Also, following on that, acquisitions, stuff like that, we do cover new products, we're focused on new products where there might be some sort of trend, as opposed to BevNET we're covering ... we're trying to be as comprehensive as we can, so if something really obscure, super-duper bleeding edge comes out, we might cover that on BevNET. On NOSH there's just too many food products out there that we can't do that.

We're trying to look at categories that are showing traction, either in retail sales, or the number of product introductions, or where investment money is going. I think that's the main focus of it. As you mentioned before, and we were talking about before, it also has other things that we're trying to develop as resources for that industry, job board being an example. Project NOSH is about three or four years old, it's still relatively new, but gaining traction fast, which is great.

Dan: Well, and you've got an excellent staff, and they do a phenomenal job of working with people, and interviewing people. Okay, now we need to get in the weeds. Do I need to be named John if I want to work for you?

John: Yeah, we have four people out of the 30 that work here that are named John, but they seem to be the ones that maybe are dealing with the most companies. No, we definitely are not requiring you to be named John. Yeah, I think we have a pretty interesting and somewhat diverse staff.

Dan: You do.

John: In terms of their backgrounds, interests, and, you know, look, at the end of the day you have to be into this stuff. I don't mean that like you've got to be some food snob or something like that, and we definitely have some people that fit into that, and others that are far from it. But you've really got to be driven by this whole entrepreneurial spirit, and innovative spirit, of these categories. If you're not into that, then you can't do what we need to do here.

It's definitely challenging to go out there and figure all of this stuff out. I think you look at mainstream news, where a lot of the stuff that you read is presenting itself by way of press conferences, and people who are, I don't know, beat reporters at certain places, we're dealing with totally 95% of the stuff, we're covering our private small companies that the majority of them probably don't even have a really formal process for PR to the trade, out there like almost prying information out of people. Again, that gets back to like, it's just easier if we know you and we know your product.

Dan: Absolutely.

John: Again, it's just amazing the quality, and caliber, and diversity of people in this industry too. I think that's another thing that, since I started, has changed a ton, and it's really ... it's always neat to see entrepreneurs and where they came from. People aren't born or schooled to go and launch a food or beverage company, it's something usually like you've pivoted from somewhere else to get here. Again, lots of interesting people and backgrounds.

Dan: Oh, I'm just teasing you because when John asked me if I'd like to participate in FBU University, I called your main office and asked for John, I got a different John, and that was the wrong John, and so it was funny because it's like, well how many Johns do you guys have?

Yeah, what I really wanted to get to is the fact that the people that work for you, the people that are asking these questions, that are involved in this, have a very different mindset than your traditional journalist. Not to put traditional journalists down, but it's not someone who read a story and tried to write something about it. These are people that are immersed in the culture, and immersed in the technology, and in the category, and they're able to ask those very important questions. It's not an opinion piece from someone that wrote an article that has really no understanding of, or appreciation for what it's like to get onto a retailer shelf, or be within a store aisle. That's such a unique perspective, and I want to applaud you again for being able to put together a talented team that's able to communicate in a way that brands and retailers can feel like they're at home, that they're talking to their peers. I think that makes you unique in this industry.

John: Well, that's certainly what we're going for. It's always great when people notice that, for sure. There's obviously, again, just in this day and age, lots of, I guess I'll call them shortcuts, in terms of creating news and creating content, and at the end of the day look at us. If people don't say exactly what you just said, and people don't look at us as having a good, honest, credible, reputation, then we can't do what we're doing, and we can't serve the community the way we want to serve them.

I think it's important for this space to have a resource like ours, and there's certainly other resources out there that are doing similar things. Again, I think it's really critical for that stuff to exist.

Dan: Absolutely. Well, and that's our purpose for being, is to be able to help this community to really make a difference, and to be able to help them succeed. My mission is to help healthy brands get on more retailer shelves, and into the hands of more shoppers. It's a lot of what you're doing, you being folks in mostly the BevNET area, the beverage area, because that's such a unique space.

On that note, talk a little bit about Taste Radio. What is it, and what is the format for anyone who hasn't listened to it. I've listened to several episodes. They’re very informative, they're well done, well produced. How would you define it to someone that is listening for the first time?

John: Yeah. I think it's probably our most unique medium, in that one of the key components to what we're trying to provide, which is different than our other stuff, is we're also trying to provide a small level of entertainment to it. That's more of a style thing.

I think in terms of what we're doing overall, we're certainly trying to provide value and insight in a way that's different than if you say whatever person we're interviewing up on our stage, or if you saw them in a written piece. I think, similar to what we're doing here, it allows us to dive deeper with some of these people, or talk to them in a way that's different. We're not putting someone on our podcast because they have a news page. I think if you're seeing them on Project NOSH or BevNET, in the story, well, I don't know, they've probably raised money, or they hired somebody, or they launched some meaningful new product.

At Taste Radio, we're basically trying to talk to industry leaders and get this perspective to it. The format of our show is a little bit of a ball of clay in a variety show format. Usually it is made up of one or two interviews, some other segments, some discussion amongst the hosts, we talk a lot about the products that come into the office, or things that are happening in the week that we're producing the episode.

I guess all of us who are doing podcasts, we're all learning. This is a medium that I think is reminiscent of when blogging became a thing, and all of a sudden there were like a million different blogs, and over time, the people that remain are the ones that ultimately are really vested in content creation and community leadership. I think that's sort of what you'll see with these podcasts too.

Right now we're seeing brands, actual product companies that have a podcast, which I think is ... again, that's just sort of proves my point, I find it hard to believe that some of these will maintain that in the long run.

Dan: Yeah.

John: I think it's a really a neat format for sure, it's disruptive, not that radio is really still a thing, but it's interesting that it's kind of like a low tech-ish medium that still serves a purpose. You're driving in your car, or going for a run, you're not watching a YouTube video, or reading an article, so it's just another way to reach people.

Dan: Well it is easy, convenient.

John: It is. I definitely love it so far. We’re always challenged with, if we have any piece of content or potential piece of content, where does it go? Is it going onstage, is it going on our site, is it a video. I think podcast is one that has been a nice format to play with.

We’re on our podcast I think, a little over 100 episodes in.

Dan: Good.

John: We've been doing it for two years, and we're still continuing to tweak and modify the format. Certainly if you do check it out, any of your listeners, we always appreciate feedback.

Dan: I like it, I think you guys have done a phenomenal job, and I go out of my way to not provide a commercial if you will, except toward the end of the podcast, but I view you as such a valuable resource to our industry that I was so thrilled that you wanted to come on, that you were able to come on and share this. Again, I am so happy that you guys provide so many rich resources, so many valuable resources to young entrepreneurial brands. We didn't even get a chance to talk about the brew brand yet. Do you want to talk about that for a minute?

John: Yeah, so brewbound.com is our platform for beer. We've been doing that for about seven years, eight years, something like that. That follows a similar format to NOSH and BevNET, in that it's focused on the business end of the industry, which that's certainly an industry that I'm sure your listeners have all heard about, in probably excess, and in mainstream media.

It's really an interesting, or fascinating space to me, as someone who's been focused on the just beverage and CPG space for so long, and that it's got this sort of sexy allure to it that doesn't exist really in any other food or beverage category right now. Case in point, when I say, gee, I met, or know, the CEO, founder of whatever brewery, it's like almost as if I know or met a celebrity. These people have this weird rockstar status in some cases.

Dan: They do.

John: Consumers will actually, in some cases, pay money to tour a brewery, which, I don't know, the first time I heard that I'm like, gee whiz, I could go down to any old co-packer and watch energy drinks being filled for free, nobody wants to see that, right? There's 7,000+ breweries in the US and counting, which is like a golden age of beer for sure. I think that's one we're, again, we're talking a lot about just the evolution of the industry from a business perspective. Certainly if anyone out there is interested in beer that's ... I guess to plug us, we're one of the only public, free resources for that. There are some great newsletters out there and such, but ours is a free one.

Dan: I think that's great. I'm in Colorado, and I don't know if we still are, but we were considered the microbrewery capital of the world. It's theater, and it's fun, it's entertaining, it's great to be able to go get a burger or something like that and watch them craft different types of beers. It’s an art and a science. It is a huge part of any event, if you like that. It is unique and there is a celebrity status to these people. Thank you for sharing that. Anything else you want to share that we haven't talked about already? At the end of the podcast I'll put a link to all your different resources, BevNET, Project NOSH, BrewBound. Anything else that you want me to cover, let me know. But is there anything that you wanted to share, any recommendations you have for a brand getting into the space?

John: No, I think your questions were great and led us down a couple of different paths that, I think, we provided, hopefully, some nice insight, and I'm sure you’ll put links to all of this here.

Dan: Oh yeah.

John: In the end, I certainly encourage anyone who's listening that has questions, feel free to reach out, my contact info's on our website in the about section, pretty easy to reach, and always happy to connect with people, or connect you with our team.

Dan: Fantastic. You guys provide such an awesome resource, and I'm thrilled that you've made time for us today, so thank you. I really appreciate your time John.

John: Likewise, and appreciate the invite.

Dan: Thanks. I want to thank John for coming on today and sharing his thought leadership and his expertise. More importantly I want to thank John for the resources that he provides to the industry, to you, the young entrepreneurs, and established brands. I'll put a link to BevNET, along with all the other resources that John mentioned, in the show notes and on this podcast webpage. You can reach them by going to brandsecretsandstrategies.com/session40.

In today's episode we talked a lot about merchandising, about getting your product on retailer shelves. My freebie for today is my merchandising checklist. You can get it instantly by texting "merchandising checklist" to 44222, or by going to the show notes. In addition to that I'll include a link to my free Turnkey Sales Story Strategies course where we talk about a lot of the strategies brand need to use to get on more retailer shelves. Thank you for listening, and I look forward to seeing you in the next show.

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Until next time, this is Dan Lohman with Brand Secrets and Strategies where the focus is on empowering brands and raising the bar.