BRAND SECRETS AND STRATEGIES

PODCAST #22

Hello and thank you for joining us today. This is the Brand Secrets and Strategies Podcast #22

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: Hello and welcome. I have a question for you. Have you had an opportunity to listen to episode 10 of this podcast? Episode 10 was Retail Horror Stories. The reason I ask is because I shared several real life stories about costly mistakes that brands make. For example, packages that don't stand up on the shelf or packages that won't even fit on the shelf.

Imagine this, you're a brand, you spent a lot of time and energy developing a product. Your goal is to get it in the hands of more consumers, but in your haste you overlook something. Perhaps something as important as making sure the product will fit on the shelf. This story's a lot like that, only more importantly this story goes to the heart of your brand. Let me explain. You've taken the time to search out the best ingredients to provide the best value to your customers. Next you want to sing the praises of your brand all over the packaging and on any marketing material you have, but can you make that claim legitimately?

This story is about how to help you identify what you need to know so that when you make a claim you can stand behind it proudly without any concerns of anyone questioning the integrity and the efficacy of your product. Today's story is a road map to help you identify, before you start building the product, what you need to know so that you can set yourself up for future success. I'm pleased to introduce Risa with Tap~Root. She's a well known author and advocate for natural products. Here she is. Welcome Risa. Thanks for joining my show today. I'm really thrilled to have you here. We had a great conversation before the show. Could you start off by sharing with us a little bit about yourself?

Risa: Sure. Well, first of all thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be on the podcast with you. I really love the work that you've done.

Dan: Thank you.

Risa: You're welcome, and I'm grateful to be able to address your audience, so I'm sure ... Big fans of you.

Dan: Have a lot to talk ... I know you do. Thank you.

Risa: So, a little bit about me. I've been in the industry for 20 plus years now. I first got into it because I really had a passion to "separate the wheat from the chaff" is the way I always put it.

Dan: I like that.

Risa: To look at those ingredients and products that really do have efficacy, really do have good science behind them and to help weed out the ones that don't. And 20 years ago, as many of you know, the industry was a lot less up to standard than it is now. So, I really felt that I could make a contribution there because of my background in science, and as I got into the industry I also became an expert in regulatory, so that's been the flag I've been carrying all along. Both of those ... Two key cornerstones of any great product, any great company, and of our whole industry to have great science, great regulatory, and efficacious products that make a difference.

Dan: Perfect. Well, can you go into that a little bit deeper, and what I'm really getting at, Risa, is I think there's a lot of misunderstanding around science versus what's natural. Because a lot of people think that science is artificial, versus natural first, and then secondly, when you're talking about efficacy what does that mean to you and what does that mean to the brands that you work with, and more importantly, why should they care?

Risa: Okay, two fabulous questions. So, first one first is ... A lot of people think science is artificial. Do you mean that people feel that science is ... I don't know, you've gotta put stuff in a test tube or get a bunch of people to try the product and get the right numbers out and what does it really mean?

Dan: Well, I mean ... Put it this way, our parents grew up on what is organic today, so organic ... A lot of people think organic's a brand new trend. It's not. It's just seeing a resurgent, if you will. So, I remember back in the '70s, not trying to date myself, where all of a sudden the mantra was, "Better living through chemistry," where they would take something ... And you alluded to this, they take a grain, bust it apart, take out all the natural nutrients and chock it full of a bunch of synthetic ingredients. And then we started processing foods and it was all about production versus the quality of the food we're eating. So, my question really digs into how would you define science from the standpoint of why this matters versus what you would see in a big brand where it's highly processed and there's a lot of synthetic ingredients in it, it's not natural at all?

Risa: Ah, so you're really talking about using science to create something new in terms of whether it's synthetic ingredients or combinations or even extracts. Is that what-

Dan: Exactly. I mean, yeah. If you eat an orange and you get a really healthy dose of vitamin C, then that's what your body needs and why does your body need that, et cetera ... Versus if you go to the store and you buy a generic supplement that says, "Vitamin C," and it doesn't metabolize in your body. Why is that? Not necessarily get into the weeds as far as that's concerned. The brands that listen to this are gonna be more focused on why do I need to understand this and why is it important for me to be able to communicate this beyond the edges of my label to the end consumer, and that's where you come in, as I see it.

Risa: Okay. Super. There are a lot of distinctions to be made here, and I'm gonna try not to get into the weeds. But it's almost a case by case basis when you're looking at either an ingredient or a product to say, "This is artificial," and it really is artificial in a way that most people will not want to get involved with that product, or it's processed, let's put it that way, in some kind of way. It's not coming out of an orange or eating an orange. It's processed in some kind of a way, but it actually is almost the real deal, or it's bioequivalent, that's the word we use, to the real deal, and everything in between. So, I don't think there's an easy answer to that. I don't think there's a general answer to that. I think it's a, "Let's look at exactly which ingredient or product you're talking about." Of course on the other side of that, once you've done the "processing" there is some level of checking that has to be done to make sure that the new product does the same thing as what we know the natural product does.

Dan: So, when you say, "Checking," how do you do that? What do you mean by that?

Risa: It's clinical trials. You have to make sure that ... So, let's say ... Let's not take vitamin C because that ones a little simple, but how about something else that would come out of oranges like bioflavonoids. So, let's say that you've extracted them from the orange, or maybe even built them in a lab, which is not a small thing. I'm just gonna say this for Simple City's sake, and now you've got a product and you want to put it on the shelf and you want to say, "This works." Hey, this is x grams of bioflavonoids, the same as eating 10 oranges. Something like that, so how do you know that that's true.

Dan: Good question.

Risa: How do you know that's true. First of all, as a claim itself that it does the same thing ... How do you know 10 oranges does that in the first place? How do you know that it wasn't that the person ate the fiber in the orange and that made a difference? Again, I'm just making very simplistic examples here. That's number one. Number two, how do you know that as an extract and a purified substance that the compound actually gets into the body and into the bloodstream in the same way as it does when you eat a whole orange. We don't know that. You have to check on that, and then the next level ... How do you know that as an individual substance that it has the same benefit in the body. Does it work the same way? Maybe you need compound three, four, and five at the same time and they work synergistically to make an effect. All those are questions that I'm thinking of off the top of my head. This is the role of ... You're talking about science and meaning really laboratory processing or extractions and things like that, which is really analytical, chemistry type stuff. I'm talking about trials and science that helps us understand the answers to all these questions.

Dan: So, if I'm a brand, a natural, organic brand, and I create a product that has the components that you were talking about, an orange, and I make an energy bar or a drink or a smoothie or whatever the product is and I make that assertion, how do you validate that it's true, one, and is that important that you do that. And as a consumer, because you're a natural, organic brand maybe you've got a really good reputation hopefully. I would trust you more than I would, say, a big brand. So, what is the ... And I hope I'm not getting too far into the weeds, but what is the distinction and how would you communicate that, and then how do you help the brand support that claim?

Risa: Huge question. This is the work of product development and launching a product, so to start with first you ask how do you know that this thing works, and then how do you communicate that to the consumer. Is that the gamut of it? I think you mentioned one other thing.

Dan: Yeah, I know we're getting into it now and we're gonna eventually get-

Risa: To me these are the plants, not the weeds. This is what I spend my all day doing, and they're very, very important questions and very good questions. So, the efficacy question that you earlier asked me, what does efficacy mean to me ... What it means is does this work, plain and simple. We can all get very excited about it and sometimes people get very married to their own product. We say, "They drank the Kool-Aid," and all those kind of things, so I think what people are referring to there is people do get enamored with their own products and they feel it's the be all and end all. As well they should if the product really is great and it really does work and you're a passionate and engaged employee or owner or stakeholder who's involved with this product. But we can't let that cloud facts and empirical evidence, or cloud the need for that. The need for empirical evidence, and sometimes even when there isn't empirical evidence we say it's not that this doesn't work. It could be that this works but we don't know that from an evidence point of view, a scientific evidence point of view.

Anecdotal evidence gives you a clue, but it's definitely not sufficient to be able to say this is efficacious. What science does is it helps us to tease out factors that could ... We say the term "could confound" our conclusions. So, going back to the orange example I gave earlier. How do we know that the benefit from eating the orange is not from something other than the bioflavonoids or the vitamin C. How do we know that it's not because the fiber or because of something else. Again, very simplistic example, but the point being that we don't want to make a mistake. We don't want to basically jump to a conclusion that ... "Oh, of course this is causing the effect," but we don't really know that, and it's so important in this industry that we do know that. That's what so many, many of the good, good people, ethical people, believers in what we do are working so hard towards in the pushes towards transparency and trust. Because up until now there were fewer people who were committed to that and going back more and more years ...

Sometimes it's not even just the nefarious players. Sometimes it's people who really believe in it and really think that it does work but in the end they're just ... They just don't know the whole picture. They really mean well, they think they understand it, but they just don't know the whole picture and they don't know how else to look. They don't understand what science means or how to take things to a more rigorous level, and so it's not because they're trying to pull the wool over people's eyes or just make their buck and get out, it's just because they just don't have enough of an understanding of what it takes to show something really works.

Dan: Gotcha, and I make this statement a lot, jokingly it sounds. Just because your mom likes it doesn't mean that everyone else will, so taking that to the next level ... You've got a product, you're doing your best to be authentic, to be ethical, et cetera ... You build that ingredient into your product then you put it out there, so how does a brand communicate that and do they need to be able to go into the deep science thing, so many parts per billion or whatever, however you would word that, or can they say that just as much quality ingredients ... Has the same effect as eating an orange.

Risa: Right, so it really does have to rest on pretty rigorous science. It's just the bottom line of it.

Dan: Now, is that only for supplements. I mean ... And I think anyone would agree that supplements have to be extremely precise in the way they communicate. Well, what if I put this ingredient in an energy bar or in a snack or something like that, do I need to go through the same process, if you will, to be able to make that claim, and then I guess the follow up question is what happens if I don't make that claim. What are the downsides of not involving someone like you in this process, and then the next question's gonna be when should I involve you. So, a lot to unpack and we'll get to that, but I guess my question is from the journey of the consumer why does it matter, what should I look at from the journey of the brand working for the consumer and supporting the consumer ... How should this work, what should it look like?

Risa: Yeah, so if a company wants to make a claim then they have to have the science to back that claim, that's just the bottom line. That's legislated in DSHEA and it's also legislated through FTC, advertising laws, you have to be truthful and not misleading, according to FTC and according to DSHEA you have to have preponderance of the evidence, of the scientific evidence supporting your claim. Sometimes that means very sophisticated studies and sometimes it means less so. It depends on your claim, and that's why you need to involve somebody, either like me or somebody else who knows science, who knows regulatory, to be able to tell you what that is. What do you need in order to say something, or conversely, "Here's the science I do have, what can I say?" What is substantiated here, where am I gonna be on the correct side of the line and what's my risk level. Because it is kind of a dance between how do you turn that science into something that is real words and it's a dance routine making it scientifically accurate, regulatory compliant, but also compelling to the consumer.

So, that's the goal and getting somebody involved early on, I think you can start to understand, is critical. I just ... It happens all the time that I get called in on products that are ready for launch or all the marketing is 80% there, people have licensed it or they've sold product in various places, and they say, "Could you just take a look at the claims, make sure we're good," and then it's not as good as they thought and we've got a problem now with the product platform, with the communications, et cetera ... If you involve someone early on then they can help you to assess what you've got, what you can say with what you've already got, and talk to about ... This is where we are, what would you like to say, are you good with this, do you want it to be stronger. If you want it to be stronger, if you want to broaden the claims you're making here's the kind of research we need to do here. This is how long it will take. And there's a lot of permutations and ways to pull it together based on the time horizon you have, the amount of money you have, the population you're trying to reach, all those decisions should be made early on for obvious reasons.

Who's your niche market, that's an early on decision made as a business plan decision, and alongside with that should be can we talk about this to that population in a compelling way based on the science we have. Does that give you a little bit of a feel for why it's so important to ...

Dan: It does, and let me throw a little anecdote out there for everyone who's listening. Many, many years ago I worked for a brand that came out with a product that was revolutionary, and it was tested to be one of the best products on the market and this is a big brand, and we're getting ready to put it on the shelf and the marketing team came out and showed it to all of us and everyone's really excited and jazzed and pumped, and then they gave it to the sales team to try to get it into the stores. Here's the problem, the product was physically too tall to get it on the shelf by an inch or so. And this sounds really stupid and really silly, but this is the exact same thing. So, here the company spend millions and millions of dollars to develop a product, spends millions of dollars to promote and distribute it, buy the packaging, fill the packaging, get it in the hands of retailers, and the retailers can't use it.

A brand that was projected to be a half a billion dollar brand by the end of the second or third year basically went away and cost the brand who made this stuff many, many, many hundreds of millions of dollars because they did not ask the basic question, "Will it fit on the shelf," before they'd started. So, the exact same thing you're talking about and I, too, run into this when I'm working with startups, where they go through the process of putting the product together, they get it in front of the buyer, they get people excited about it, and oops, they forget to put something on the packaging that is required by law. Or they forget to understand what the retailers' needs are.

So, this again is why I wanted to bring you on The Store, so thank you for sharing this. So, regulatory compliance ... This is a dry subject. No one wants to talk about it, but again, this is one of the key components of every successful business. So, you alluded to some of the brands you into this a lot that have issues with regulatory compliance. So, let me ask you, Risa, when should they involve you and ideally what questions would a young brand ask you, because honestly this is something that I don't really see covered in the business school. So, how would you differentiate what's right versus what people are doing?

Risa: Well, people should involve a regulatory expert, like we talked about earlier, very early on in the process. Definitely by the time you start fleshing out what is your unique selling proposition, who's your market, what's your messaging gonna start to look like, and all of that ... It doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's part of your whole business plan, so that would be a time to involve people. Another time would be when you start putting together your communications materials, and that includes the label, the website, any collateral you have, sale sheets, or even your dog and pony show if you are licensing. Let's say you're an ingredient supplier or you're a startup and you're looking to partner with someone to keep you going, get an influx of cash and of intelligence and help you push this thing out. You need your dog and pony show. Well, one of the things ...

I'm going into this because I've seen this very often, too. One of the times people fail to involve a regulatory expert where they should is when they're putting together that slide show, that PowerPoint that tells their story, which is how a potential partner is going to look at them and judge whether or not they want to do business, and they haven't fleshed out some of these problems. Particularly if you're looking for someone who's more savvy than you are to get certain aspects of the product development done for you, they're gonna know all the questions to ask already, and if you don't have those answers, you haven't thought those things through it's terrible to get put on the spot right in the meeting. Well, what about this, this is par for the course. Did you work that out, and you didn't even know it was an issue. You didn't even know to ask the question. So, having someone involved early before you get into talks, that's what I'm talking ... Really early stage startups or even ones who have been doing their development for a couple of years, but they haven't started the commercialization process.

Dan: Gotcha. In fact, it reminds me that a lot of times I'll work with startups and I'll work with potential investors for those brands, and there's a stigma around investors, around wanting to invest in natural brands because they don't understand the products, they don't understand the science, they don't understand the industry, the categories, et cetera ... So, I can help with that, but where I'm going with this is that, like you said, a lot of the brands struggle to communicate not only their value proposition, but also the claims that they make for their product.

Risa: Yeah. They struggle for sure because what are you basing it on. If you're not basing it on knowledge of how to translate your science in a regulatory compliant way ... What do people do, they surf the internet, they look at their competitors, what are the competitors saying, and I always say great if you're copying the A student but not if you're copying the D student.

Dan: Good point.

Risa: Yep.

Dan: So, in other words just saying that your mom likes it is not enough.

Risa: And of course not. And also, why do you want to copy your competitors. How are you differentiating yourself, you're just saying what they're already saying. Now you're a me, too. What's attractive about that. So ... I'm sorry, I just lost my train of thought a little bit ...

Dan: Well, one of the things I think that-

Risa: Oh, right. Struggling to put together the claims. I apologize.

Dan: No, no, no.

Risa: Yes.

Dan: No, that makes sense. I mean, because it's ... I think a lot of brands think of their product as being one dimensional. Again, they created the thing, they made the thing. Okay, now we're gonna sell it. We're gonna make billions of dollars, literally. Everyone's gonna buy it. But a lot of companies stop by looking at, and I think they've been taught this, that whatever's on the package, that's all that needs to be there. And what you're talking about there goes well beyond the four corners of the package, so what strategies have you seen or would you recommend, Risa, that a brand could use to help communicate the value of the claims that they're making, not only on the package but beyond the package. Because that's where the trust really lies.

Risa: Absolutely, and is often part of a broader marketing plan anyway.

Dan: Right.

Risa: A marketing plan, a peer plan and an online presence is going to be unique to each company and each product for all kinds of reasons, but it's actually simpler than you might think to expand your label communications out into all those other forms of communication and education. What I've always done with companies is to help them put together a portfolio of approved claims.

Dan: Good idea.

Risa: It lists out all the substantiation in as detailed a way as is necessary. I always customize it for the needs of the company that's using it, but I make it ... Instead of it just being a document that you could archive, like if somebody comes knocking about our claims we could take out this file. It's great for that and for peace of mind in that area, but I like it to be a living document and a dynamic document that can be used by all of the different departments and individuals who are helping to promote the product, whether that's marketing, sales, PR ... People working at trade shows, whatever it is, that everyone's working off the same set of language, and it can be as comprehensive as need be. It doesn't just have to be the, "May help maintain healthy heart." It could be all the different ... Even two and three sentence paragraphs, different combinations of words, different ways of telling the story that have already been gone through and approved, and so everyone is telling the same story. That's why I say it's simpler than most people might think. If you have your messaging, your message points and your ... Just the ways you're gonna tell your story already down, then you can keep repurposing that and tailoring it to different kinds of media.

Dan: Well said, and in fact I love the fact that you're getting into this because this is something that I talk about a lot. Imagine this, if you had a cake recipe and I make it and you love it and you think it tastes fantastic, and then I verbally say, "Well, here's what's in it," but say I miss something. Well, it's not gonna taste the same, and then when you take it to your friend to share it with them it's not going to be the exact same flavor or whatever. It's not gonna resonate as much, so having that cake recipe be consistent and being able to share it among everyone that would use it, the retailers, your entire sales team, et cetera, is the recipe for success.

I find that a lot of the brands that I talk to really don't take this part seriously. They give the product to a broker or a sales team or a retailer and they hope that they will figure it out. So, I really love the fact that you really focused in on having the same language and the consistency. What else would you like to add in terms of what are the things that brands should be looking at to really take advantage of or rather get you involved right away in the process, and then again, do you have some success stories, maybe some anecdotes about something that you did that helped a brand, say, avoid a lawsuit or helped a brand avoid a recall or helped a brand really expand their selling message because they were able to make a claim that maybe their competition wasn't able to make.

Risa: Absolutely. Really this kind of happens all the time for me. When a company comes, and they could be at any stage of development. They could already have product on the shelf even for years and all the way to just figuring out what they're gonna say and anywhere in between. I'll come in, I'll review their literature or existing literature on their science, and I'll find that ... It's great to have happy news. Sometimes the bad news is sorry, we can't say these things. We have to configure this whole thing, but it does happen, and not rarely ... It does happen that their claims have been left on the table. Things that they didn't know that they could say.

Dan: Wow. I bet brands don't think about that.

Risa: Absolutely.

Dan: That's like leaving half of your pack ... I don't know. I can't think of a good example, but that's like leaving your bestselling attribute on the floor, or the cutting room floor, so to speak. So, thank you for sharing that. So, what does that look like? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to derail your story, but that's really significant.

Risa: I think so, especially in this day and age where because there are so many products out there that differentiation is the name of the game and you might've had a value add there that differentiated you all along and didn't even know it. I really do think that that's the way of the future is using the science to help you create a niche that's your niche, that makes you different, that makes you interesting, that brings you perhaps to a different niche population or the same one but in a better way, and so I've done this a lot where companies say, "We didn't know we could say all these things. Our customers didn't know if it's an ingredient. Our customers didn't know we could say these things," or the brand's like, "Wow, our sales guys are gonna go nuts, this is great. They're looking for something new." So, again, it always goes back to let's see what you've got inside the box.

Dan: Right.

Risa: So to speak. What is your product, what is your ingredient really made out of and how can you leverage that.

Dan: Fantastic, and I'm always saying to anyone who listens to the podcast or consumes any of my content, retailers don't need to know that you're ranked number five and you grew by one percent or whatever. Retailers already know that. Retailers want insights, they want to know how they can grow sales in their category by leveraging your brand, and if you've got a story that you did not include in your messaging that the retailer can help use to connect with their end consumer and sell your product and grow sales in their category, that's the holy grail. That's what sets apart the small brands from the big brands, and again, it's the small disruptive brands that you're talking about, Risa, that are responsible for the growth across every category and across every channel. It's those brands that are really driving, if you will, the ripple in the pond in terms of really making the impact long term down the road. So, I love the fact that you've put it that way. Anything else that you want to share today?

Risa: Let me think ... Yes, actually. Just to expand on the ideas that we've been discussing all along here today, we haven't talked that much about ... We talked a whole lot about the science and regulatory. We haven't talked a whole lot about how that interfaces with the marketing just in terms of people that you have working on all of these ideas and all of this development. Here's a tip, especially to growing businesses who need to outsource or bring in consultants to help them with some of these things, or if you're hiring, it's great if you have people who are cross-functional in these areas. It will just help things go smoother because rather than having a meeting where you've got your regulatory guy, your science guy, your marketing guy, your legal guy, and each one ... It's a little bit of a tug of war, and rightly so. It's not that people are trying to step on each other. Each one of them is doing their job.

The legal person is supposed to be making sure that you're legal. The marketing person's supposed to be making sure that you have a compelling message, et cetera, et cetera ... Each one is really just trying to do their job best and they're doing it from the frame or reference that they have and the training that they have because of the area that they're in. If you can get a little bit of cross knowledge, the marketing person understands some regulatory, the regulatory person understands some science, even marketing people who understand science, even if just a little bit, that is a huge boost. That really, really helps because instead of everyone kind of pulling for their own ... I don't want to say agenda because it's a blatant. They're just trying to do what they've been charged to do, but they have a broader understanding and a broader approach to the whole project and you're gonna get a more solid outcome and you're gonna get a more compelling outcome if there's that kind of cross-functional understanding.

Dan: Very good point. In fact, I think again, going back to small brands, the strength of a small brand is that it's nimble and it's able to make changes, and to your point, working with people who have tunnel vision ... That's kinda tough. I run into a lot of people like that, fortunately unfortunately. But to be able to look at the broader picture, that's fantastic. It makes such an important impact in the success overall of the brand. So, I guess I don't know if I've ever said this on the podcast or in my content, but it's sort of a pay me now, pay me later type mentality in the sense that I can help you avoid a lot of problems and snags down the road if you do these things, versus later we've gotta clean up a bunch of stuff. And going back to what you just said, being able to have people that are thinking really from a much higher vantage point are able to provide so much more value to that discussion and provide insights that probably would be overlooked. So, how would I identify who those people are and where do I find them?

Risa: Yeah, that's a great question.

Dan: Tough question.

Risa: A little bit, but I've had the pleasure and privilege of working with a number of such people. Sometimes they're just people who've been in the industry for a long time and they've had to wear different hats. Maybe they got started in startups and early on got training in a bunch of different areas. Sometimes they just have a personal interest in other areas. Let's say someone who's formal training was in marketing but had someone who's parents were both doctors. They happen to like science, so they just had a really much higher level understanding of science because they grew up in it, and that's a personalized type of a story or type of a person, but that's how it happens. It's somebody who used to be in sales and then decided they wanted to cross over into marketing and has been in marketing for the last five years or 10 years. Things like that. So, it's really ... You look at the resume, you look at a person's personal history, their personal passions, what lights them up, and how do you find those people ... I'm not a recruiter.

Dan: No. No, I didn't mean that literally.

Risa: You work with some of the really great recruiters we have in the industry.

Dan: Well, I mean someone like you ... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but someone like you is got a well rounded resume where they've done stuff like this. I guess what I'm getting at is that people like you are out there and there are a lot of passionate people that can provide different points of view. And I guess the big takeaway here is that brands should not try to go this alone. Brands should not try to create all the marketing and all the validation of the claims, et cetera, by themselves. They need to bring in experts, and the experts that they bring in, the caliber and quality of the experts that they bring in are what's going to help differentiate them and propel their growth long term. So, thank you for that. Risa, would you share a little bit about your company and who you are, what is Tap~Root?

Risa: Sure, thank you so much. Tap~Root is my consulting firm. We've been around for ... This is our eighth year and if you've gotten a good taste of what we do through the conversation.

Dan: Absolutely.

Risa: But we specialize in using the science and using the regulatory to help you develop a superior product and be able to have a unique and substantiated message. We also do a lot of strategic handholding, particularly for entrepreneurs. Helping them to be ... Because we're involved early on we can help with all kinds of development and directional decision making just because I've been in the industry for so long I have two others working with me. One master's level person and one PhD level person that have also been inside the product development world. I also have reach into the cosmeceutical side of the industry, which we didn't talk about today, but that's also an upcoming ... Beauty from within and that whole category. One of the things I also love is working with some of the other experts in the industry who help out companies, like PR firms for example. Just being the regulatory person on the team is great, or being on science advisory boards of companies. It's a lot of fun. So, we're ... We would really love ... I love this industry. I believe in it. I always have. I love the people in the industry, which is really ... The other 50% of what keeps me here and what keeps me going, and I think that we have a great future ahead of us but we also have a lot of work to do to generate that future.

Dan: Absolutely. I think that's extremely true, and thank you for sharing that. I know we've gotten a little bit nerdy at times. One of the things that I really appreciate about you, Risa, is that you're able to communicate this stuff to the average layperson so that it makes sense, and I think that's one of the challenges that a lot of the ... Going back to my first question, science versus natural, what does that mean, and I think your ability to be able to translate that and communicate that at a level that resonates with the consumer that's gonna pick up the package well beyond the brand that you may be working with I think is key. So again, I want to thank you for coming on today. Thank you sharing your time with us and I look forward to our next conversation.

Risa: Thank you so much. It's really been a pleasure.

Dan: I want to thank Risa for coming on the show today and sharing her time and her insights, her valuable insights. I'll put a link to her website on the show notes and on my webpage brandsecretsandstrategies.com/session22. Today's freebie is the merchandising checklist. You can download it on the show notes or on the webpage, or you can get it instantly by texting "merchandisechecklist" to 44222. Again, thank you for listening and I look forward to seeing you in the next show.

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