SPEAKER_04: 0:40

Oregon Media.

SPEAKER_01: 0:43

Look at what we're eating, look why we're eating it, and think of the consumers and why we're doing what we're doing instead of just shoving another um sauce into a crowded category. I don't want to be another product in a crowded category. I don't want to be white noise. I want to look at why we're eating the way we are and um how to make it modern so we're hitting modern consumers that these categories haven't been um innovated or modernized in 10, 20 years. Why not? We don't need the you know huge bottle of sauce in the door when you got two people living there and you end up throwing it away in six weeks, and it's mostly why is that sauce okay in two years? It shouldn't be okay in two years. When you open our product, it's gonna expire in a few weeks because it's healthy, clean ingredients that are in it. You shouldn't have a sauce in your door that's okay after being open for two years. What's in that? Why does it still look the same? Like it's not cool.

SPEAKER_04: 1:39

Every brand you love, every product you admire started as just an idea. Sparked by a moment, shaped by a person, nurtured by a community. The Circling Podcast is proud to introduce Birth of the Brands from Oregon Media and Bend Magazine. I'm Adam Stort. Join me as I sit down with founders from across Central Oregon and beyond. On this series, we follow seven brands that participated in the 10th annual Bend Outdoor Works Startup Accelerator Program. Commonly referred to as BAO, Bend Outdoor Works' primary mission is to help outdoor startups scale and achieve their wildest dreams. On the fifth episode in the Birth of the Brand series, we sit down with Melanie Jenkinson, founder of Howl at the Spoon. A creative director turned consumer package goods and food entrepreneur, Melanie left agency life to reimagine single-served eating with bold flavor, real ingredients, and minimal waste. After 15 years in the creative world, from Nike campaigns to cookbook authoring, Melanie began asking a bigger question. Why can't quick meals taste better, be good for you, and good for the planet? That question led to Howl at the Spoon, an innovative brand that started with Artesian single-served sauces born in the backcountry. Her single-served sauces and other products are less about trend and more about purpose, helping people eat real food without the waste, clutter, or compromise while on the trail or at the office. We talk about launching during COVID, testing her recipes at over 500 markets, navigating the challenges of being a founder, and why she applied to the Bend Out Doorworks program, and where she's headed next. It's a story about courage, creativity, and the perseverance it takes to build something real. One market, one customer, one step at a time. So you guys drove over f uh yesterday after work? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And and where from? Portland?

SPEAKER_01: 4:02

Uh Beaverton.

SPEAKER_04: 4:03

Beaverton. And you've you landed there after coming back from Ireland. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 4:09

Yeah. So we um got flights here because my husband was with Intel and he was doing training in Portland at the well, actually in Hillsboro. And when we were here, we were here for six weeks. And I decided that I wanted to stay here. So um I forfeited my flight back to Ireland and I found a job while I was here. And Dave went back to serve a year contract for Intel and finish it up, and then he wrapped and came over here.

SPEAKER_04: 4:37

What was it about Oregon that like hooked you so quickly?

SPEAKER_01: 4:40

So I am by nature a hiker and backpacker. So I did some, you know, uh guiding down in Arizona where I met Dave. So I'm a super outdoors person. Ironland's a lot of fun, but there's not a lot of like uh open land to go hiking on. It's a lot of asking farmer permission to walk across lands.

SPEAKER_04: 4:58

I think we do take for granted, especially when you grow up in the states, um, a lot of things. But one of the things is access to public lands and just nature and it it's it does not exist in a lot of the world. Yes, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 5:13

Yeah, I mean, I'd love to live in Switzerland. I think that's more my vibe over there. But um Ireland's gorgeous, but it's a lot of wind and rain as well. So I had two-hour commute in between walking and trains to where I was working. So I worked for a European-funded project that was doing marine work off of the coast, and it was uh hour of train, hour of walking, and then on the home way back home, it was an hour of walking, hour of train. So it was I would get there and I'd just be completely soaked. And it was like four hours of travel just to get there. So it was uh it was they're pretty big on the elements there with the wind and the rain.

SPEAKER_04: 5:47

Yeah, I believe that. That's what I think about when I think about Ireland for some reason.

SPEAKER_01: 5:52

Very windy. Yeah. Well, my husband's a kite surfer, so it matches him.

SPEAKER_04: 5:56

Yeah, that's uh I've spent most of my life trying to get like avoid wind. I can't, I can't, I can't get into the wind sports. It just makes me anxious.

SPEAKER_01: 6:05

Me too, yeah. I sit off the side. We went um, we did a great trip a couple weeks ago where he was doing some kite surfing in kind of a quieter place in Washington, we found, and it was just us out there, but I was sitting up on the bank, he was having the time of his life, but I was just getting blown over by wind and just mad because everything I'd set down would just take off. And like it's not my jam. It's my least favorite element. So, like in Ireland, I was just mad that he loves it. Like, that's his thing. So, but he we moved here also because uh Hood River is a huge kit surfing. Sure, yeah, and he's a big kit surfer and snowboarder, so he uh he feels pretty good here.

SPEAKER_04: 6:38

Yeah, and and learning about you and talking with friends and family, like I kind of walked away going, I think I know like Melanie's pretty passionate about kind of four things and maybe more, but the thing, the themes that kind of kept coming up that I see kind of like this continual thread are the are what you mentioned a nature, the kind of the your creative efforts, your love for good healthy food. And it seems like you find um fulfillment in doing hard things.

SPEAKER_01: 7:13

Yes, for sure.

SPEAKER_04: 7:14

You know? Yes. So, you know, like I I guess um where did your kind of uh because nature seems to be kind of an overarching kind of theme that's uh you just talked about it, you know, part of why you moved to Oregon was was the natural beauty of the landscape and the outdoors. Um where'd that come from?

SPEAKER_01: 7:35

So I grew up in a uh Youngstown, Ohio. Okay, and uh we have one of the best urban parks outside of um the New York Central Park. Like we have a park that's called Mill Creek Park. So anytime I was feeling anxious or I was feeling upset or I wanted to, you know, I was trying to burn off energy, me and my friends or just me solo would spend the entire day wandering through Mill Creek Park. And that is where I started with my love of nature. So if I was mad at the parents, if I was mad at the friends, if I was having a hard day, I'd spend the entire day just trudging through the park. And it's funny to look back on it now because um, like you go so hydrated with camel backs and everything now. But when I was younger, I would spend eight hours in the outdoors, and I I now think like I don't know how I survived because I would not have any water with me. No snacks, no water. I'd just be walking for eight hours a day through the park, whether it was with friends or you know, by myself. I just don't know how I survived it. I think now it's much more hydrated and like I think about things a lot further, but yeah, I would just wander and wander and wander.

SPEAKER_04: 8:38

I love that, man. Well, it speaks a couple things. A, you're comfortable with yourself, you know. Um, there's I can relate with getting out and and nature and just this creation of I mean, it's gorgeous and um it it taps into and fills uh like it provides a level of mental health that I can't find other places. That's right. Yeah. Um, you know, I was poking around on your um uh trail fork. Yeah, trail fork trail for that.

SPEAKER_01: 9:36

Yeah, I haven't touched that in a bit, but yeah, that was um where the all the blogging and recipes and development came into play.

SPEAKER_04: 9:42

Right, which which I don't want to jump ahead too far, but but at the end you had a quote uh from Lord Byron.

SPEAKER_02: 9:49

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, there is a rapture on the lonely shore. There is society where none intrudes by the deep sea and music in its roar. I love not man the less, but nature more.

SPEAKER_04: 10:15

I just love that dude.

SPEAKER_01: 10:17

Yeah, it still holds true today.

SPEAKER_04: 10:18

Yeah, yeah, I just know like it's I I had never read that quote. I've heard a Lord Byron, but um yeah, I just I felt like it communicated, just listening to it and kind of this um like solidarity found in solitude, you know. I heard that like there's like I can relate with people, you know. Like I always try to like when I approach these podcasts, you know, it's like find common ground with people, get them on board, and let's go on a journey, you know. Like, and and I can definitely relate to that like value of being by yourself in nature.

SPEAKER_01: 10:56

Yes, yeah, I'm not a religious person, but um I think that is my church. Sure. So I feel like the place I'm most at peace is when I'm overlooking a massive cliff off a trail by myself and just pondering.

SPEAKER_04: 11:09

So and you think that came from kind of that those childhood experiences?

SPEAKER_01: 11:13

I think so, yeah. So whatever manic was going on around me, we grew up in a a big family. I have me and my sister, you know, would go to blows a lot of times because we're too close in age, probably. But um, I it was just like uh that was like the quiet. Like if I wanted to get away from the chaos, like just go either. I do remember spending somebody gave me a um Sir Edmund Hillary tent because I was begging for it, and I do remember um spending uh summer outside in the tent. So it was uh yeah, just being like alone, even if the nature was my half acre of my bow my mom's backyard, like just spending that time out there and like uh just in quiet.

SPEAKER_04: 11:54

Totally. Yeah. Where do you like what it what what are what adventures have you been on this summer? I know you're hustling with Hallet the Spoon.

SPEAKER_01: 12:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 12:02

But are you still finding time to get outside and and go on hikes?

SPEAKER_01: 12:05

I know you you guys have a dog that you do a lot with, and so I do um this year has been a bit of a step back for me with the bow program. I decided to focus on uh where my company was going, and then I went straight into um hip replacement. Oh, you that's right. Yeah, so I've done it's from too much hiking in this lifetime. Yeah, I forgot that you have your hip done. So I'm five weeks out, um, and I just knew I was gonna have to chill and like force myself to be calm. We are doing camp trips on the weekend, like this is we're camping in Ben this weekend. Cool, but I am trying to force myself to like take a step back and like it feels unnatural to me to not be so manic in the business right now and really trying to like just do a million sales calls and push stuff, but I needed to take a step back from everything to like figure out where I was going and now I feel a little more comfortable starting up again for fall and winter. But yeah, I think in a few weeks I'm gonna go all Lindsay Vaughn on my hip and get back into it just like she did her skiing career. So I fully intend on that. I'm doing slow work now, but um Yeah, it takes time.

SPEAKER_04: 13:09

I see a l I mean I work in orthopedics and I see a lot of people after hip replacements, and uh you know it's a process that you can't rush. It it requires patience um and kind of trusting the process. And once you kind of, you know, you you get over that hump of the first six weeks, um, on average people tend to progress pretty rapidly and you know, days turn into weeks and weeks to months, and before you know it, you you got your life back to when you're not when and I'm not a patient person and I've had injuries in the past, and it it it it it's an opportunity to grow, man, and in the virtue of patience because you don't have a choice.

SPEAKER_01: 13:49

Yeah, I think it was very I I was watching the marketing videos on the website, and of course they were very sugar-coated, like everybody's like, Oh, it was a great surgery, I was back to it the next day. And I just did not like I uh underestimated getting the top of your leg sawed off because I just didn't understand like how bad it was gonna be that first week. Well, it's traumatic. So it was bad.

SPEAKER_04: 14:09

I tell people every day of my professional life, surgery is controlled trauma by definition. And getting a hip or a knee replacement's kind of the equivalent of getting hit by a boat propeller in terms of the damage it does to your tissues. Yes. I mean, it's controlled, but like your body doesn't know the difference, and it takes time to heal from that, you know. Yeah, and and we live, I think, uh and and I've noticed this over the last 15 years I've been practicing is this ex this false sense of expectation um just from kind of societal norms of like things should happen quick and instantly. That's what I was thinking. And it's just it's not, it doesn't line up with reality when it comes to certain aspects of surgical healthcare.

SPEAKER_01: 14:50

Yeah, I have a rosy outlook on most things, so I think I was a little too rosy. My husband keeps saying, What did you think was gonna happen? I was like, I just thought it was a couple days down and I'd be back on the trail. And like, but what happened was last year for my birthday, I did a 20-mile backpack on in March, and my hip had gotten so bad by this March. I do a backpack for my birthday. Um, and I couldn't even finish three miles, and I was just in agony. So I was like, All right, now I need to get it done. And yeah, it's um, I mean, I'm in mid-40s and I'll have to get the other hip replaced in a couple years because it's on the same path. But um, I feel like I'd rather do it now instead of just dragging my leg around for the next 10 years.

SPEAKER_04: 15:28

It's uh it's a very common experience. The old tread wears off the tire, you know, it it happens.

SPEAKER_01: 15:34

Too much hiking. Yeah, I was also in a lot, like I did a lot of running and tracking marathons, full marathons. Yeah, so uh half marathons. Yeah, so it was all too much.

SPEAKER_04: 15:44

Like I said, you like doing hard things. Yeah, I love that. I think they called that like type two or type three fun. Yeah, you know, it kind of sucks ass in the moment, but it it creates fond recollection moving forward. Yes, yeah. Well, I mean, obviously, like the whole point of this and sitting down and and thanks for coming in to do this and making the trip over from Beaver Two. Thanks for having me. Yeah, you're it's been so fun getting to talk with all of our classmates and learn their stories, and and um you know, I've been uh incredibly impressed with you from the very first day I met you and learned about Howl at the Spoon. And I feel like I know your brand really well. Uh and a lot of the listeners of this will know um of Hallet the Spoon, but a lot won't. Um so you have, I mean, you have a consumer packaged good product. Um you've recently, I think it was recently, you're kind of expanding. You have a presence in market of choice now. So say I bump into you at one of your outdoor markets or at a demo of market of choice and and ask about your business. How do you explain Howl at the Spoon?

SPEAKER_01: 16:55

Yeah, so we launched um, I launched a single serve artisan sauce that's like a condiment pack for foodies. Um, I did it when I was writing a cookbook and I was sitting in a national park and I had um single-use um nut butter in one hand, and then I was thinking, why can't people just put easy flavor in these things that's healthy? So I sent myself to get your recipe to market course and figured out how to package it. So yeah, we are making the first market line of single-serve artisan sauces, great for camping or backpacking. But when I launched it, um I came to realize that it had a much bigger demographic. So it's doing really well for meal planning and meal prep. So people that have smaller households don't end up in your fridge door um as food waste. Uh recently we've launched um another brand for fruit dust. So all it is is freeze-dried fruit powders, and you could sprinkle it on your oatmeal or yogurt, use it on your lattes, put it on ice cream, anything. So um, right now we're doing those in shakers, but we'll be doing smaller packs for backpacking as well.

SPEAKER_04: 18:30

If if I were to ask you why howl the spoon exists, what would you say?

SPEAKER_01: 18:36

Um it's making um healthy, brighter food more convenient and accessible um and is affordable. Um, whether you're in a food desert or in the backcountry on a trail, uh, we're making packs of sauce that you could just put on bowls or salads, use it as a marinator dip. So we're just making healthy food more accessible. Um until now, we've all you can look at a bowl of rice and chicken and it's just think of the work behind making that flavorful. So this is just putting all those healthy, bright flavor things into one pack, put it on there. Um people should be using more of their time to do things that they want to do, not if you don't want to be a cook or a chef and that's not something you find interest in, there should still be healthy, accessible options for you. So that's where we come in.

SPEAKER_04: 19:22

Yeah, it's and and I like kind of learning about you and kind of your history and your your food blog trail forked and just kind of seeing like one thing I like about social media, I guess, is you can use it as almost like a timeline. It tells a story, you know. Like when you look at a brand and you kind of go over their timeline of posts and you look at the very first post, you know, like your very first post of Hallet the Spoon. I don't know if you remember it or not, but it's it's you know, it's a simple, you know, demo table. It it looks like a community market, and it's just like and to see where you've come, and I think that was 2019.

SPEAKER_01: 20:03

Right, end of 2019. It was uh um end of Get Your Recipe to Market course. They put us in the red and they invited buyers and um other foodies and customers, and and that was my first table.

SPEAKER_04: 20:15

Yeah, and and it just it tells a story, and then to see kind of you know, your you're out your blog, and there's you know, massive amounts of really rad photos of you know you preparing really good looking, healthy meals while on a backpack or camping, and and you just like I you start seeing uh these stepping stones that in hindsight you like obviously it led you to kind of howl at the spoon, but in the process, and then with your cookbook and where where did your kind of um passion for good food and and flavor come from?

SPEAKER_01: 20:51

So I grew up in an absolute foodie family, everything we do is centered around food. Back to childhood.

SPEAKER_05: 20:56

Yeah, yeah, I love it.

SPEAKER_01: 20:58

So I mean we just had massive family gatherings and there'd just be a spread for 80 people, even though there's only 20 of us. Um so everything that my aunts and my mom and everybody has done has been centered around good food. Um, we have a background of a lot of our foods are Polish and Ukrainian. We have a Ukrainian background, so we eat a lot of um pierogies and we eat a lot of Eastern European foods. Um also uh Youngstown, Ohio has very deep roots in the Italian community. Um it's uh the founding of it was probably a lot of um immigrants from Italy. So we have incredible pizzas and Italian food. And we just grew up around like so much good food that it's been since I've moved all over the country and abroad, it's been hard to kind of replace that abundance I had as a child.

SPEAKER_04: 21:46

Yeah, the standard was set pretty high. Yeah, I was really that's always a good thing.

SPEAKER_01: 21:50

It's always nice to go back home and um get all the food again that you love.

SPEAKER_04: 21:54

Yeah, that's cool. That's really cool. So so you grew up in Ohio and then uh you you shared with me that I think we're you were like 18 and you split.

SPEAKER_01: 22:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 22:04

Yeah. Tell me that story.

SPEAKER_01: 22:06

Um, so yeah, I knew I love Youngstown and I love my family there, but it was not um the extreme seasons are not for me. So it's a lot of slushy, cold, brutally cold up on we get lake effects snow. Okay. So it's um it's not fun play in snow, it's brutal. And when you walk outside, you're gonna freeze your face off of cold.

SPEAKER_04: 22:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 22:28

Um, and then the summers are very hot and sticky, and the extreme seasons just weren't something that I want. I I wanted big wide open skies. I always dreamed of like living in Montana when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_05: 22:38

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 22:39

So when I was 18, um, I left home with$75 in my pocket and I moved to Florida um with somebody I'd met. I joined this is a silly story, and I've heard some another celebrity that has like a celebrity that has the same similar story, so it sounds like I'm making it up. But I joined a magazine crew because there was an ad in my paper locally and it said, Do you love rock and roll and making money?

SPEAKER_05: 23:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 23:06

I was like, I do love these things. So I answered this ad and they were like, All right, well, uh come to this hotel and bring your bags with you. And in my head, I was gonna be a roadie on some band. But when I got there, I quickly realized that I was joining this traveling magazine um group that you had to go door to door and sell magazines. And it was uh, they put you in these white vans and they took us out of the city. I think they took us to Detroit. We were in like Flint, Michigan.

SPEAKER_04: 23:37

And what like timestamp this?

SPEAKER_01: 23:39

What you this was like uh 97. Okay, 90, yeah, 97.

SPEAKER_04: 23:43

That's the year I graduated high school. Oh, me too. That was my graduation year.

SPEAKER_01: 23:47

Yeah. So I answered this ad. This was before you can really look up anything on the internet.

SPEAKER_05: 23:52

Sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 23:53

I said, That sounds amazing. So I got there and there was other people my age, and I my mom said, You don't, you're not gonna do this. And just to, you know, stick it to my mom, prove her wrong. Because that was my entire life, was just prove her wrong. If she says I can't do it, I'm gonna do it. So she was very right in, you know, in retrospect. So I joined this traveling magazine and they would take us into like terrible, like if you were bad at sales, which I was, and I still don't think I'm great at sales, they would drop you into the worst neighborhoods and you had to make a certain amount of sales by the end of the day, or you would get three people in a hotel room and one would have to sleep on the floor. Whoever would make the worst sales, and these are like bad hotels. So whoever made the least amount of sales would have to sleep on the floor, which was me every day. So I would just loss it and like I didn't know how to sell anything because nobody trained me how to sell anything. So I would go up to doors just crying and saying, please buy a magazine or I'm gonna have to sleep on the floor. So they would drop me off in like section eight housing of like Flint, Michigan, and tell me to make 10 sales that day. And I would come out every day with like the least amount of sales. So we stopped in one city. I I think I only did this for like a month or two. So we stopped in one city, and they said, Well, you can't leave until you've made enough money to get your ticket home, and I was never gonna make enough money to get a ticket back home, right? So I was almost like some sort of weird hostage situation. So I finally made it to a city where I called my mom and she found a way to wire me money where I was at, because this was pre-internet, you can just wire money. So she wired money to I think like a grocery store or something and got it, and then I ran back to the hotel and I said, I found my own money, I want to go back. So they got me a Grayhound ticket back. Damn, dude.

SPEAKER_04: 25:35

That's like on the verge of abusive.

SPEAKER_01: 25:37

Yeah, I mean, there was I'm thinking the guy that's in um yeah, I won't get into there. There's another guy that has a similar story. He's a main guy in uh Parks and Wreck the Silly Guy that was with Aubrey Plaza, but now he's a major star. Yeah, I forget his name, but he has a very similar story.

SPEAKER_04: 25:53

Is that right?

SPEAKER_01: 25:54

Yeah, so it was like, but he I think he was really good at sales, so he was he was kind of like thriving in it.

SPEAKER_04: 26:00

That's a sink or swim scenario. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 26:02

So I met anyway, the I met two twins there, these guys, and they were my age and they were fun and they were from Chicago. They dropped off at the same time I did and went back to Chicago. I went back to Youngstown, and they said, Hey, we're gonna go down to Florida. Do you want to go with us? And I said, Okay. And I said they said, We'll come pick you up in Youngstown, then we'll take a bus down together. And I said, All right, that's fine. So, like the day before, I didn't think they were serious. So the day before I remember they were like, Well, we're almost there. And then I was like, Oh no, now I have to tell my mom I'm doing this now. So I was like, Hey, mom, I'm going to Florida. She's like, Excuse me. I was like, I'm just gonna go to Florida and live there. So I went with like$75 in my pocket and lived in Florida for a year, year and a half, maybe. Yeah. Fort Lauderdale.

SPEAKER_04: 26:47

And this is all right after high school. Yeah. And and this is before, like, um, I mean, did you have like a creative itch when you were a kid? Like, were you or like because I mean you've had a from what I've it sounds like like a a really fascinating, diverse career uh as a creative director for multiple different brands, including Nike.

SPEAKER_01: 27:09

Well in Nike I was on two-year contracts, so I was doing uh design management and communications design, and that's what I left. But yeah, but all creative. Well, I moved from Florida back to Ohio and then I went to San Diego. So I went to San Diego and I had applied to an art school that was in Arizona, and this sounds like another pyramid scheme. So I applied to this art school in San Diego while I was in, I was working on the beach in Claremont in San Diego.

SPEAKER_04: 27:37

Um what drove the interest in art?

SPEAKER_01: 27:40

I've always been into art, I've always did a lot of painting and drawing, and like it's always like I if if any studies in school that I thrived at, it was arts, whether it was industrial arts, because I do a lot of um welding and industrial stuff as well. Yeah, or whether it was like pure graphic design photography, yeah. I would ace those classes, and that was like my full interest was in those classes, but like nothing else, like math and science.

SPEAKER_04: 28:04

For sure.

SPEAKER_01: 28:05

Yeah, yeah. My dad did a lot of photography. I think I get that from the creative side from him, and I my aunt is really into photography. So um, I think I definitely get that from that side of the family's really creative. So um, yeah, I was in San Diego, applied to an art school. This art school said, we'll accept you in Tempe, Arizona, um, but you have to be there in like in a month. And I was like, all right, I guess I'm packing my bags again. So I quit my job, packed my bags, moved by myself over to Arizona, started into that college, and then I just did back to back. I went through the associates, did really well. I was top of the class, and I said, if I don't do this bachelor's, I'm just never gonna finish this because I know I have a separation of anything. So I just back to back in three years and didn't take any summers off, doubled up classes and went through and did the bachelor's. So then I got a job right out of there.

SPEAKER_04: 28:55

Doing hard things, man.

SPEAKER_01: 28:56

Yeah. Well, I knew if I got out of there, I wasn't gonna go back.

SPEAKER_04: 28:59

Yeah, well, that's that again speaks to your um level of knowing yourself, you know, which is rare at that age. Yeah, you know, because what are we talking? Early 20s.

SPEAKER_01: 29:11

I think I was like 22 at the time, yeah, when I finished.

SPEAKER_04: 29:14

Yeah, that's that's insane. And and that's where you met Dave?

SPEAKER_01: 29:19

Yes, well after that. So I didn't meet Dave until I was about 35.

SPEAKER_04: 29:24

Oh, okay. So you guys met in Arizona?

SPEAKER_01: 29:26

Yeah, I was in Arizona for 12 years. Okay. So I was there, I did creative direction, or maybe it was about 10 years. Anyway, I I came out of college, got a few really good jobs, um, had a pretty big circle of friends, did a lot of backpacking, uh, camping, hiking, all that was kind of my jam out in Arizona. And then I met Dave through I think it was match.com or something. Yeah, he was like a an uh one of those match things. I said, I'll go on six dates. If they don't work out, they won't work out. But he was like the sixth. So I met him on there, and then he had to go back to uh Ireland. Uh I was only with him for nine months, and he said, I have to go to Ireland and um they're not letting me stay here because they sent everybody from Ireland back to the um fab in Dublin. So I said, he said, Do you want to go with me? And I said, Okay, pack the bags. But Arizona was too hot for me, like I didn't love it, and I was always wanting to go back to San Diego. Yeah. So I said, All right, I'm just gonna pack it up because um it just was it was just so hot and brutal in Arizona. I missed the seasons for sure.

SPEAKER_05: 30:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 30:26

So I thought, okay, well, uh, Ireland's green and it's got the coast there, and I'll head over there and see what's going on over there. So we stayed there for like a year and a half before we came to Oregon.

SPEAKER_04: 30:37

Yeah, yeah, it's cool.

SPEAKER_01: 30:39

Yeah, I just learned that I have to be by open land, I have to have wide open skies. I can't be in anything covered in brutal seasons where you're locked indoors. Even I camp all winter long here, so it's not brutal enough that I can't camp. So I like the fact that it's by the beaches, you've got the mountains. I mean, we have everything here. So I just fell in love with it as soon as I came here. I spent a couple weeks hiking and I was like, nah, this is it. This is I just you know, you feel it in your bones where you're supposed to be. Yeah, no, and I just knew this was it. There was so much to explore here.

SPEAKER_04: 31:08

Yeah, yeah, it's it it it makes a lot of sense. Um during Bow, it was very clear to me that you and Tim both had a lot of experience in creative design. Like everything from your branding and your imaging and your presentations, and and you know, you you get good at that by doing that a lot.

SPEAKER_01: 31:29

Right.

SPEAKER_04: 31:30

Right. So like you've you spent fifteen years in kind of the the advertising creative agency world.

SPEAKER_01: 31:36

Well, is that right? Here's the thing. Like when you when I when at the time, when you come out of graphic design school, 70, 65 to 70% were women. And at the time, only um three percent of creative directors were women.

SPEAKER_05: 31:51

Is that right?

SPEAKER_01: 31:52

So I thought, that's it. I'm gonna go for that, you know? So like where are the women going? It wasn't that the women weren't there, they're working, they're just not getting hired into these uh creative direction positions, right? Like the leadership positions. So every time I would start a new job, I would have to, and even in when I moved here in Oregon, I had to start at the bottom and I had to work my way up to prove myself. So time and time again, I would start a job and I'd start as designer, go to senior designer, maybe art director, and then get to creative director. So I have probably four times over had to work from the ground up.

SPEAKER_05: 32:26

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 32:27

Now I think there's a much bigger presence, I think, because times have changed. I'm not sure of the stat now, but like um at the time it was just unheard of to have female creative director. So I it was just such a passion of mine. So like, oh, I'm gonna get that. Like it wasn't a question, it was like, I'm just gonna work as hard as I can, be as creative as I can, and I'm just gonna um work my way up to that. So and I've done it over and over again. So it's um it's frustrating to just not be taken seriously when you're interviewing. So yeah. So I was turned away for hundreds and hundreds of creative director positions, and um, it's really frustrating to go onto my LinkedIn and you'll read reviews and they're like best creative director I've ever worked with, best design, you know, like I have the power behind me of the people that I've worked with, but it just isn't being taken seriously when you're up against four guys, and I'm sure that's changed now because I hope so. Yeah, I'm sure it has. But at the time, um I came from a background where I was also a welder and I had to quit being a welder, which I really loved. It was this hands-on thing that I absolutely loved, but I had to quit it because I was just absolutely harassed out of the position. Like they just could not take a woman seriously that was a welder. So in my head, when I was like 18, I went through four years of welding and I became a welder and worked on online. But I was so absolutely harassed in those like six to nine months that I just ended up like quitting because I couldn't take it anymore. But it I saw the same challenge when I saw Creative Director. And this leads into I'm in a position now as an entrepreneur running a company, and um, someday I will probably need venture capital. Venture capital is held by 2% of women in this country. Only 2% of all venture capital goes to women. And it's so absurd that I see this whole challenge again playing out. It's like, okay, we're going back to like the creative director thing. Like, and I am ready for it and I'm pushing towards it. But it's like you're also, you have to know that you're up against this incredible wall. So it's like, how do you jump this wall?

SPEAKER_04: 34:20

Yeah, how do you?

SPEAKER_01: 34:21

Well, I have friends who have put their companies in their husband's name to get venture capital. And it's so absurd to me that I would never even consider it. I just feel it's such an insult. But you do know that you're gonna have to be up against this one day when you're talking, and you just have to be better than everybody. You have to be that 2%. And I I will be that 2% if I get to that one day.

SPEAKER_05: 34:40

Oh, you will.

SPEAKER_01: 34:40

I mean, per personally, I've been bootstrapping this company, so we haven't gone into that conversation. I'm doing bootstrapping, I'm going through angel rounds right now, but the trajectory that I want to be in is my competitors have gone VC and they've immediately picked up VC and they've gone, you know, bananas and they've had exits and they're, you know, doing the thing. But I could see what I'm up against.

SPEAKER_04: 35:03

So there are and your competitors primarily being male-owned businesses. Oh, for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 35:08

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're all all of my competitors. Oh, well, there was an exit with um non-disclosed numbers, but Om Sum was a competitor of mine and they did an exit, but I'm not sure how that went. But they're the others were all male.

SPEAKER_04: 35:24

Well, I can tell you with a high degree of confidence, and I I'm I know I'm not the only one, but during during your final kind of presentation uh and with Bao Bend Outdoor Works, like it was I mean, if if I was a venture capitalist, I would have been all in. Because it and and I and we're gonna I want to talk more about kind of your experience in Bao and why you were there and how serious you took it, um, and and its experience over other business cohort development programs you've been in, uh how it compared and and you know, but it was so clear that like you're gonna I it's only a matter of time. Like it it was it was next level professionalism and and across the board, everything from the product, the creativity, the branding, the communication style, you know, the messaging, um, you know, it it just it it's just so obvious. So it it's it's really rad stuff.

SPEAKER_01: 36:24

Thank you. So most of my career I've spent in pitch and presentations for other people. So I've closed a lot of uh large deals, like the largest hotel portfolio deal in Europe when I was working over there with the pitch and presentation work that I do for people. So part of the reason I wanted to do my own thing was I've been making so much money for so many people for so long. Part of why I wanted to do this was like, well, what are you building as a legacy for yourself? You're just making so much money for all these other people. Not that they're not brilliant brokers and whoever I was working with, and they deserve every bit of it, but it's um, it was like, okay, this is time for you to take all these skills that you've learned over the last 15 years and put it into something that you can leave as a legacy or you know, something for myself for once.

SPEAKER_04: 37:09

Yeah, and you know, I one of the goals of this podcast series is that, you know, people in that um you know, the the the venture capitalist entrepreneurship uh space hear about all these different brands, you know, because you can really only learn so much about getting on someone's website or by getting on someone's website or going to a pitch contest or you know, so like taking an hour or so and hearing a founder's story, it tells you who the person is, which tells you what the brand is. You know, so like I I hope that um and I know that you know raising capital as being one of your future goals, I hope this helps with that.

SPEAKER_01: 37:51

Yeah, that'd be amazing.

SPEAKER_04: 37:53

You know, because I I I think that um I think that I I think that your story is very authentic and your experience and your level of expertise is uh will will be recognized by the right people.

SPEAKER_01: 38:07

I hope so, yeah. We're um we're doing angel rounds now. Angels are a lot uh more accessible and um in a lot of ways easier to deal with and they hold less um less tightly on your brand than when you do jump into venture capital. Venture capital is a whole different beast, definitely not at that point yet, but like it's gonna it's gonna be the future path, but it's just to me such a scary concept of like two percent going up.

SPEAKER_04: 38:31

It explain to people kind of the different levels of investment, ain starting with kind of I mean bootstrapping, right? Right. You know, that's basically you're funding it, and then you angel investing is how would you describe that?

SPEAKER_01: 38:44

Yeah, so I'm not I'm definitely I'm not a financial guide, but you don't have yeah, like so from my experience. Math was never my strong suit, by the way. So um what I've learned so far by just listening and um talking to people and what I've done is I started the company as a bootstrap company. Um, from your bootstrapping when you can't do that anymore and you're hitting a ceiling, um, you're gonna want to do a friends and family round of funding, and that is just gathering in people you know and um, you know, negotiating what you they're gonna get back out of it.

SPEAKER_04: 39:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 39:19

Next round is when you're going to a broader base of angels, which is the phase that I'm in now. I do have a pool of angels for the beginning rounds, but um, it's getting to a broader base of angels and a lot of organizations that are good with that. Um uh Ty, Oregon is amazing round of, or they're an amazing group of angels, and they can help you and kind of walk you through what all of that means. Um, OEN, uh Kara, who's brilliant, uh does a lot of work in angels and um teaching folks what that means and what that is for the company. They do a lot of good work. So I've kind of grasped onto these local um resources and I just listened to death of what they're saying, you know, and also listening to a lot of like gyras of how I built it. Sure, yeah. I listening to that podcast all the time. Yeah, I love it so much. But like you're I'm just gathering bits and pieces and kind of like piecemealing it. I I wish I had uh money for um financial coach or some kind of operations financially in the company where they could, you know, take that on because they have high experience in it. But right now, like everything else is an entrepreneur, like I've had to teach myself food manufacturing, which most companies don't do their own manufacturing. They outsourced Copac, but I've taught myself from ground up how to do uh food manufacturing, and I've taught myself operations and like I think the hardest for thing for me is like those proformas and like doing like the um estimations of what you're gonna be making, and you know, it's all I I've tried to take what my competitors did and how fast they grew and use that as a guide of saying if I have X amount of money I could grow to X amount if I hire these teams on. Yeah, so I've kind of tried to reverse engineer what they're doing backwards.

SPEAKER_04: 40:59

Which is really hard work to do. It's so hard, yeah. Especially when it's not like a an intrinsic interest. Yes. Like some people really find satisfaction in diving into that.

SPEAKER_01: 41:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_04: 41:10

I like you am not that person. Like I'm not either. And like my business model is is relatively simple compared to you know, a consumer packaged good industry where you're talking about, you know, ingredients and supply and packaging and you know, like the regulations on the stuff. And it's yeah, man. I mean it's off to you.

SPEAKER_01: 41:30

Well, it's um it's gotten me this far, but I definitely like I'm so looking forward to the day when there's like a team of people to throw things out. Like my husband is so sick of hearing about sauce company. Sure, yeah. I don't know. You're asking the wrong person. Poor guy. Like I pull him into way too much. He's like, I don't know. So it's I am looking forward to the day where there's a team of people that I can throw ideas off of, and you know, a team of people working in our manufacturing. And um, but yeah, for me, it's just been like a learning curve. And actually, I feel like at this age, it's it really helps your brain when you're having to learn these things that you, you know, otherwise I would just be sitting at my desk doing PowerPoints and design work for other people and listening to their commentary about it. And it was just like not as fulfilling as like, oh, okay. Like, I do get a lot of FOMO of like how big other brands are growing, how fast I feel like I have a really strong brand and um a really strong product. So I get a little FOMO but when I watch, but then when you take that like step back and you look from like the mile high down, you're like, oh geez, look what I've done from like from like, you know, I've sold now 125,000 packages without distribution. That's me just standing in front of people asking them, hey, you want to buy a sauce? Try this. Do you like this? And like then they come back and it's getting that repeat business. So without any ad spend and without any uh national distribution or anything, I've just stood in front of that many people and have asked them, like, hey, do you want to buy a sauce? So now, you know, we're we're heading towards a quarter of a million dollars. And it's so I I just used to think of my days of watching a shark tank. There was, I remember a gal who a woman, I should say. Sorry. Uh, there was a woman on there and she was selling barbecue sauce, her family's recipe. And she said, Oh, I've sold$30,000. And I squealed, like, I could not believe this lady was so brilliant. She sold$30,000 worth of sauce. Like, how did you do it? Amazing. And then I remember the next thing was like the sharks kind of like pushing back on that, like, oh, that's not good, you know. And I thought, what? She's amazing. How could she possibly say anything negative about this lady? She's incredible. She sold$30,000 worth of sauce bottles. So now I look back, I'm like, okay, you should just not be so hard on yourself. Like, your journey is different. Just remember the sauce lady. She sold$30,000 of sauce and you squealed and just could not believe like her luck. Like, just could not believe it and like how hard she must have worked to get to that.

SPEAKER_04: 43:55

Yeah, that's really wise perspective. Yeah. You know, it it is. Yeah. I mean, I and um and I think it's and I do the it communicates a couple things. A, you have high standards of yourself, and and you know, it's it's easy to get lost in the successes of the last, I mean, in this case, it's been six years you've been on this. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 44:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 44:18

You know, but but you know, going back to your Instagram reel, you know, you look at the progress and where you are now, and that that's a big number in my opinion. Yeah. You know, for when you're a one person. Yeah, one person show doing all of it. Yeah. You know, I mean, you're not you're sourcing ingredients, you're coming up with recipes, you're uh, I mean, your husband was sharing how a lot of your days are spent in the kitchen. Right. Yeah, yeah. And their 4 a.m. starts and 11 o'clock arrivals at home. You know, I mean that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01: 44:52

It is, yeah. So we I had this thing, it was a it was a wall, but it was a good wall. And looking back on it, but at first I was like, oh, you know, so I launched in March of 2020 with COVID. Me and COVID launched at the same time. So I had all these sales conversations with all these grocers, and I was just gonna do this huge launch and I was gonna do all this advertising. So I was doing press, everything, and all these conversations just came to a head, and everyone said, Listen, I know you have a great product, but we don't know if our grocery store is gonna be in business in two weeks. Nobody knew what was going on. And I thought, well, nobody's buying no group, no buyers from grocery are gonna buy anything right now. So I have to figure out something else. So I had to spin the company into um, my husband has kidney disease, so I can't be doing events for those first two years because there was no vaccine. So my husband has autoimmune disorder where if he would get sick, his kidney's going to fail. So I said, I can't be bringing that home to him, and I can't go out and do these events, and I can't do demos, and stores aren't buying anything. What am I supposed to do? So the first two years I feel like were kind of a gift because I stepped back. I reset my packaging, I made a path forward of what I was going to do when I could get back out there. Um I made the calls I needed to make. I started having people test the product, give me feedback. If I had launched into everything I wanted to launch um when I first started talking to people at the start of COVID, I would have failed. Like my marketing was bad, the design was bad, I had faulty packaging. Like I just had so many issues that I wasn't even aware of that when I took those two years to like work into RD, I mean, I made like 8,000 the first year, 20,000 the second year. Like it was nothing, but it was like um good enough to like start RD and like get feedback and okay, these have been out there for six months, how are they holding up? Do some testing. So if I didn't have that, like it would have been a completely different story. So it actually now I look back and I said that was a gift because I didn't know that I was launching this camping and backpacking brand that was going to go a little more viral for like meal planet meal prep. I didn't know any of that. I was talking to the, you know, a very small niche, which is still a huge consumer of ours, but there was such a bigger need for this product when I did start getting out to events and like handing them out to people. And they said, Well, I don't camp, but I would use this because I, you know, I'm meal prepping. Sure. So like I redid everything, and I'm grateful that I didn't hit those 200 shelves in that first year because they would have failed. I would have just ruined my reputation and it would have been a failed product. So it worked.

SPEAKER_04: 47:23

Again, it's wise. I mean, you get one one chance to make a first impression, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 47:28

And it would have been a bad one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 47:30

Well, you know, it's it's recovery, you can recover from it, but and you like doing hard things, but that that those that's a big lift, you know, especially in in that category. Yeah, I mean, you've mentioned it a couple times, but but like the the demos and the markets, and like you shared with me like how valuable customer feedback has been and kind of the the evolution of Howl at the Spoon. Yeah. Talk a little bit about that. Like what's your process? What have you learned?

SPEAKER_01: 48:00

Like so I didn't start off as an event company, but it's the path I took for a couple years. So I have done over 500 events, I've handed out 150,000 samples, which means I've told my story as many times. So every customer that I talk to, I've gotten valuable feedback. You know, they say stuff about the recipes, so we've redone recipes for the broader um audience, taken down some of the spice levels, taken up some of the spice levels. Um, but we've gotten an overall feel of what consumers want and um what they're looking for and how to speak to them. So, you know, if you're getting deer in the headlights look when you're saying certain things to customers, it's not working right. So I've did it so many times over so many years that now I feel like we have all of our consumer data nailed for the recipes, uh, where we're growing to um and what our product is, uh, the taste of it, all of it. So I think now we've nailed that. So now we're, you know, in uh in between like 60 to 80 retailers in any given time, and we're looking to scale to 300. But I have so much more confidence now after testing the product so hard and getting so much feedback that I know if I scale, it's gonna be successful. So we've redone the packaging design. Um, we've done our point of sale boxes, our display boxes to now talk to the consumers with their talking points. A lot of times you're like telling customers you feel preachy because you're saying, Oh, well, you should not eat sugar. And like it's less about how healthy our product is and more about it tastes good and like and it's so easy to use. So we are all those health aspects, but um, people don't listen to that as much. You know, if they eat a certain way, they eat a certain way, and they don't want to hear you lecture them about why they shouldn't be eating sugar. So now we have pulled out uh different things on the displays and packaging and um what they're seeing in advertisings and that. And I think it speaks better to our consumers. So I know that it'll be I feel more confident going into buyer conversations. I feel more confident going into angel conversations of like, hey, we've won from here to here, you know. And if I would have done that from the start, it just would have been a dead end. So yeah, and we've with my work through BAO, I've moved from being just a one-off product, shoving something on the shelf and hoping it um hits consumers, to being an umbrella brand where we're creating products that are fighting food waste. We are doing things like you know, keeping fruit out of your produce drawer that's going bad with our fruit dusts and um our perfectly apportioned sauces. You're not ending up with the food waste that is the sauce graveyard in your fridge door. So I've built now an umbrella brand where we can launch more products into more spaces. And um, I am consumed and absolutely dedicated to just launching first-to-market products. And that that's hard. It's hard, but it's like, look at what we're eating, look why we're eating it, and think of the consumers and why we're doing what we're doing instead of just shoving another um sauce into a crowded category. I don't want to be another product in a crowded category. I don't want to be white noise. I want to look at why we're eating the way we are and um how to make it modern so we're hitting modern consumers that these categories haven't been um innovated or modernized in 10, 20 years. Why not? We don't need the you know huge bottle of sauce in the door when you got two people living there and you end up throwing it away in six weeks, and it's mostly why is that sauce okay in two years? It shouldn't be okay in two years. When you open our product, it's gonna expire in a few weeks because it's healthy, clean ingredients that are in it. You shouldn't have a sauce in your door that's okay after being open for two years. What's in that? Why, why does it still look the same? Like it's not cool.

SPEAKER_05: 51:44

You're making me nervous about the refrigerator, right?

SPEAKER_01: 51:46

Go in there and read, yeah. But I mean, if it like, why is that okay? It's not okay. It's like if it's tomato, if it's ketchup and it's tomato, shouldn't it go bad? Like it should go bad. Like it just should not be okay for two years.

SPEAKER_04: 52:00

So we've talked a lot about kind of the brand and and we've touched on some of the products, but just so people who aren't familiar with your product line, like this you have, I think you have four different sauces right now.

SPEAKER_01: 52:13

Yeah, we have a line of um single serve artisan sauces. It's Al Pastor, chimicherry, lemon dill, and a savory marion berry. So you could put them on bowls of rice and chicken, rice and beans, use them as a salad dressing or marinade. And then we have a fruit dust line, which is new. Yeah. So over the last month, I've launched a fruit dust line, and we have um our three mainstays are going to be wild bloom, which is um all berries with a bit of uh vanilla bean and a bit of um hibiscus, which is really fun, brightens it up. And then, yeah, and the next one is uh Lush Tropics, it's gonna have your coconut and it's got um pineapple and kiwi in it. And then the third one is Golden Glow, and that's a turmeric-based one. So that's got more um healing properties in it, and it's um it's got um, I think that has uh mango in it too. So anyway, you could put them on bowls of like oatmeal and yogurt instead of like sitting there dicing up fruits and like figuring out how to make these morning staples taste really good, just shake it on. So um I've actually I've loaded it up twice and I've sold out twice. So now I'm waiting for ingredients this week for the three to launch because I had only launched Wild Bloom and it sold out twice. So this week or next week, which I'm not sure when this is airing, but um, it'll be up on the website by the time people listen to this.

SPEAKER_04: 53:30

But this will probably be coming out sometime in mid to late September.

SPEAKER_01: 53:34

Uh they'll all be out by then. Yeah. So this week I'm launching the three flavors to go out, which I was a week or two behind, but I have suppliers and other countries, and there's weird things going on in this country of how to get suppliers from other countries. You think?

SPEAKER_04: 53:48

Yeah. I just I just had my first personal experience with terrorists. I'm now working with a Scandinavian company. Yeah, and it's uh frightening. Yeah, man, to say the least.

SPEAKER_01: 54:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 54:01

I mean it's it's complicated, I get that, but like it's just overcomplicated.

SPEAKER_01: 54:06

It's it doesn't have to be that complicated. Yeah. So we do have um some supplies coming down from Vancouver, BC, which is right over, you know, it's right up there. Just should be able to just get them, but it's like um, I'm not sure how that's gonna process. And then um some of our packaging comes from a brokerage in uh Singapore. Oh, is that right? So yeah, so um it's these aren't things we can make in the US and I can have this conversation all day long. But I don't, I'm not a packaging manufacturer. I can't just roll out packaging. So where it is has to be food safe and regulated. So where I can get food safe regulated product that can follow my process and uh manufacturing process is with this one person, and we've tested it for two years, so it's not a jump I'm willing to make, but um that is another challenge.

SPEAKER_04: 54:54

Yeah, I mean, Dave was saying too, um, he's been enjoying that fruit dust on coffee.

SPEAKER_01: 55:00

He he's very proud he got a new latte machine.

SPEAKER_04: 55:03

Yeah, nice.

SPEAKER_01: 55:04

He's been very into like the lattes with the foam and you could sprinkle it on. And we do have a couple um coffee shops in Portland that are going to buy it and keep it at the counter. Yeah. So I do think that yeah, it's conversation where some coffee shops and bend. Yeah, I could put them up at the counter and you could shake them on. Um, they could add whatever flavor they want.

SPEAKER_04: 55:21

I know a couple people. We'll have to be great. Yeah, I'd be happy to make that introduction.

SPEAKER_01: 55:25

Yeah, and it's another thing where I launched this and I didn't think of like, oh, this could be really good for like um working B2B with like coffee shops and like selling into them wholesale. Also, like um ice cream shops doing a collab. So big, I won't say names yet, but like big ice cream, they could take that freeze-dried and mix it through and make ribbons of it or whatever it is. Um, so our yeah, our three flavors are the Wild Bloom, Golden Glow, and um Lush Tropic, but for fall, we're launching Fireside Apple, which would be amazing on your like fall ciders or your lattes there. And then we're doing a citrus crush for winter because the citrus fruits, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 56:03

Yeah, when you when you first shared with me the fruit dust idea, I was like, that is brilliant. And that is innovative. And you know, because there's my wife buys this stuff, it's like a a sprinkle that she puts on apples that helps it not um help them helps it not brown as well. Oh, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01: 56:22

But it's a lemon or something, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 56:23

Yeah, like I haven't ever seen anything that's that's a dust flavor it that's that's m you know with clean ingredients.

SPEAKER_01: 56:31

Yeah, it's all it is is freeze-dried fruit. Like um, like when you buy freeze-dried fruit that you could snack on, it's just is basically the powder at the bottom. Yeah, so it's like that yeah. So we also like I didn't expect the coffee side of it, but I also didn't expect um kids. Like, yeah, kids are like, it's like sprinkles, like fruit, but it's so healthy for them, it's just fruit. So like to add, like people are buying it at the markets because I took it to Cannon Beach a few times, and they're buying it to put on their kids' yogurts in the morning, but they're like, Oh, bright colors, like exactly well, your your your packaging and branding is like it's very fun.

SPEAKER_04: 57:04

Vivid, yeah, it's vivid, bright colors, really cool graphics. Yeah, the you know, the everything speaks to not only adults, but like sure very much. I there's a a style there where younger people I can see being into it.

SPEAKER_01: 57:21

Yeah, we actually this year I had to raise my booth up and do a custom booth um that has a tall bar because when I had lower booth at the markets, the kids would just grab everything because like it does, it looks like candy packs almost, even though it's like super healthy sauces or whatever it was, but the kids would always be grabbing all that.

unknown: 57:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 57:38

So I did have to raise it up to like um bar size this year.

SPEAKER_04: 57:41

Yeah. So I I guess getting back to your story just to kind of close the loop on your kind of your previous career and in professional creative spaces, like w what was the moment where you kind of knew this I this isn't what I want to do anymore?

SPEAKER_01: 58:00

Oh, working for corporate?

SPEAKER_04: 58:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 58:02

Um just honestly sitting in an office where you're just waiting for somebody to come over and give um their thoughts on your work. Yeah. Because a lot of what designers do in creative director and art director is like take your work, pass it off to people that don't necessarily have any background in design or art or anything, and then they give you their feedback, and it's just like it just beats you down after a long time. You're like, Yeah, okay, lady in um ops. I thank you for telling me to make it brown because you don't like the color purple. So like my entire career, and I have really thick skin now because my entire career has been built off of positive critiquing of my teams that I'm working with. If I'm putting together big marketing teams or um passing vendor work off, like it's just been a lot of relationships of like, how do you positively talk to these teams but ask for you know higher standards, you know? But um as the creative director, you're just getting a lot of like maybe not so qualified critiques of what you're doing. Plus, I saw just like, oh, well, your presentation has won us this, um, won us this contract or won us this work. And they're like, why just don't I do these things for myself? And like, what am what legacy am I leaving behind that I've worked like a hamster for so many years for all these people? What legacy? And my name's not on anything because you're just doing work for other people. What legacy am I leaving behind that is my stamp on it? Because it's never fully like my creative work I'm passing off anymore because it's had so many rounds of like revisions and like people's thoughts and commentary on it. Sure. That it's just like devaluing your own work. Sure. So I just think, well, why can't I just do something where I don't have somebody coming to me and say, Oh, change that color or change what you're doing, or you know, I don't like this. So now how let the spoon to me has been I'm all in. I'm just gonna take all that energy and I'm gonna do what I want to do. And I don't have anybody in my ear saying, like, oh, I don't like the color brown because I crashed a brown car before, you know, like that's this is actual commentary from like people. Like, I don't, I have oh, I'm superstitious and that's not my color. Like, and now I just have no limits. I just, I mean, other than like ODA and food safety and manufacturing, but like creatively and with the brand, it's like, no, this can be anything you want it to be.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:22

Yeah, less noise, more signal, man.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:24

Yeah, more work getting done for sure.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:28

Well, you put me in touch with your get very good friend and and colleague uh uh Barry Cadish. And um I like that guy a lot, man. I was talking with you, I think we bullshit for like a half hour, and it ended with him, you know, like, hey, next time I'm in Ben, let's get a beer. And uh it was he's a he's he's a great guy, but um I just wanted to play some audio from him because I think it'll give you as well as listeners kind of just a cool perspective on on this story.

SPEAKER_03: 1:00:58

The thing is, she makes it you know look easy. You know, it's like the Cirque du Soleil circus performers that do these incredibly hard feats and they make it look easy. Um, but you don't realize behind the scenes they're practicing, you know, for hours and hours and hours um every single day. And you know, Melanie works her butt off, you know, every single day. She was my boss, she was a graphic designer. And one of the most talented designers, most creative, and most organized designers I've ever worked with. And I've worked with probably hundreds of my career. I was a copywriter for big agencies, small agencies, and as a freelancer. We lost our biggest client uh at the time. So I was laid off with about 400 other people. And um Melanie was very visibly upset by this, not only by me being laid off by everybody else, and within a couple of months, she left. And um before I knew it, she had this Howl at the Spoon website where she was selling products, and um, I was just blown away by the creativity, by the product itself, and and um, you know, I followed her journey for the last several years, and she's done really well, and I'm really proud of where she's come. Creative people are unique in that I think we we think differently, we look at the world differently. What I like about Melanie is she she's marches to her own tomb. She'll take her dog and she'll go out in the woods for three or four or five days. And um, and I think out there, you know, by herself, you know, you have a lot of time to think. And she thought about, you know, what do you need out here? Um, and you gotta eat, and you want things to taste good. And so she had this idea of making these um sauces that were easily packaged to make camping food taste really good. I don't camp, but I've tried every one of her sauces, and they're all good, you know, on their own. So you don't have to camp to take advantage of eating good food and eating um things that taste good and they're you know easy to prepare. I mean, the nice thing about her hell-the-spoon sauces is they're they're convenient, they're easy. You just you know rip them open and put them on food. And so um, for people who either don't like to cook or don't have time to cook, um, that's a that's a niche that you know she felt. And so she was really good at tapping into something that did exist. So that was just amazing to me to see her her drive and her fact that she knew that the market needed a product like this, and she was off and running. I think people get the mistaken impression that oh, you just do a website and everything will take care of itself. And you need to do more than that. She goes out and she does the um the weekly food uh markets um all across Oregon. That's exhausting. And a lot of people will they'll do a few and they'll realize how much work it takes, and then they'll say, Oh, I got a website. I'll just let the website take care of everything. Well, it doesn't, and it won't. And I think um for entrepreneurs, you know, you gotta, you know, you're not working nine to five, you know, you're working all the time, and that's what it takes to be successful. And Melanie knows that, and that's why she's successful. We visited her at the food markets that she would go to, and and we would see a lot of people, you know, gathered at her booth, and she was very unique. I mean, we would look at all the different vendors at these food markets, and they kind of had very similar things, you know, different sauces and you know, barbecue sauces or hot sauces. Um, but Melanie was the only one that had this these sauces that were easily packaged, um, ready to go, and they just, you know, not only did they look inviting, but once people tasted them, she would usually put them on Orzo. We would watch people, and every single person liked the sauces, and most people would buy them when they would see them at the shows, and that's impressive, you know. You don't see that very often at these at these food shows. People would just taste the samples and then they move on. And that wasn't the case with Melanie's product. A lot of times, entrepreneurs are so busy with building their business that they um I don't want to say ignore their friends, but um but maybe the friendships aren't as important because they're so focused on the business. And Melanie hasn't lost sight of that. Um, you know, we get together. Um, we're supposed to get together in a couple weeks to go over to her house for dinner. Um, you know, she's maintained the friendship, and and she does that with all of her friends, and and that's what I value. I value her friendship, you know, her camaraderie. You know, we always have a good time um when we get together. My wife and I are somewhat older than Melanie and her husband Dave. And so we appreciate the fact that um we can count on them as friends and that they count us on us as friends. So that really what stands out to me is is the friendship. This is Barry Cadish. Uh I'm a former advertising, marketing, and copywriter. Melanie, I just want to say I'm really, really proud of you. You've come a long way since our days um in the corporate world, which we don't miss. And uh just keep doing what you're doing, and you're gonna really blow away the competition, and uh your products are going to be talked about now and for years to come.

SPEAKER_04: 1:08:46

He's a good friend, man.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:48

Oh my gosh, how lucky am I? Yeah, Barry is just the best. We're thick as thieves, can't say enough good things about him. He's just such a good guy. Sometimes you meet people out in the corporate world and you just instantly know, like, oh, this is a friend for life. Like, you've got co-workers, and then you just meet somebody and you're just like, yeah. We just vibe on every level. He's just the coolest guy. He's got the stories. He travels the world. If you heard his like travel adventures, like you would just be floored. Him and his wife are still Melissa. I shouldn't say his wife, Melissa and Barry are just constantly traveling. Like they're their travel schedules, bananas, they're doing the um the Providence bike ride next weekend out on the the bridge tour. Like, they're just so fun and they've just got such interesting stories. Like they're just the coolest people. Yeah, I like that. We have so much fun with them.

SPEAKER_04: 1:09:35

I like people that get after it, man. You know, they're they're taking advantage of life. Yeah, it's it's it's it's inspiring. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:43

That are so much fun, yeah. Yeah, he's just and he never ceases to surprise you. Like, you're just gonna hear so many things come out of him, and you're like, wait, what, you did what? Like his story is just incredible. So I'm just so lucky to have met Barry.

SPEAKER_04: 1:09:55

Yeah, and I mean he comes, uh, you know, it's not like his professional background sounds incredibly impressive. So, you know, he knows what he's talking about when when he talks about entrepreneur entrepreneurship and uh what it takes and the full-time job it is. And you know, that's one thing that um I've been thinking about a lot lately is like my wife and I were we went uh out to the beach last weekend and prior to me starting story booth, like we just with my medical job, like if I was out of town, like I wouldn't think twice about work. But now, like I I the last thing I think about when I go to bed and oftentimes the first thing I think about and most of the time kind of anxious worry about is your business. Yeah and it just it's a totally different relationship with how you're trying what you're doing with this life, you know, how you're support trying to support yourself and provide for you and your family and kind of it's just it it it really does um no one's ever no one ever really told me that, or if they did, I wasn't listening, or maybe you don't really understand it till you're in it, it'll be one of those too. But you know, I I I I he mentioned that that it it being a full-time job and and that resonated with me when we were talking. And he also talked about you know, and I and I have hats off to you because I can I can relate with this as well, is like it's easy to get so consumed with your um uh objectives and goals that you know some of the relationships in your life, if not intentionally maintained, can start to drift. And some of those can tolerate that based on history and time, and but oftentimes some can't. So like just that kind of that concept of of being aware of kind of the the you know the the ripple effect of of entrepreneurship. Yeah and not necessarily a bad thing, but just the reality of it. You know, it's it's I it's it's a learning process. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:58

I mean, Barry's being very generous. I definitely go down my rabbit holes where um last year I was doing five markets a week, so I just wasn't talking to anybody because when you're when you're talking to uh 500 to a thousand people a day, by the time you get home, you just want to hide under the covers. And I'm actually like a major introvert. I am not an extrovert by any means, but this company has forced me to be in front of people and to tell my story, so it's gotten a little more comfortable. But to after I'm talking to, you know, uh 5,000 people a week or whatever it is, like I just want to go into a quiet corner. So Barry's being very generous by saying that I'm still being social, but like I I've gone into holes where I've just been quiet and not talked to anybody for months on a time because I'm just in this like funk. And Barry is usually the person that can pull me back out of it. Like, okay, yeah. Barry's just yeah, Barry's just unbelievable. Yeah, he's just such been such a great friend. He actually um him and Melissa went out to my wedding in um 2018 in Pittsburgh. So they went, they went all yeah. So I they were the only people that I was working with on that big team there that like got on a plane and went to the wedding and like showed up, like they're just always going to show up, and I just hope hope for him that he feels like I'll always show up for him as well. Like, I mean, outside of his travel schedule because he's constantly traveling around the world.

SPEAKER_04: 1:13:20

Yeah. Have you appreciated that kind of force into um more kind of forward-facing public interaction uh kind of requirements that this bit like versus your natural tendency as an introvert?

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:37

Like, do you Yeah, as a creative, like I'm just naturally more quiet. I think that's why I spend so much time in the backcountry. Like, I just to get out of the noise and not have to talk to anybody. And uh my husband understands that and he lets me go off for like Barry said a week at a time. I'll just be in, you know, in at a campsite or you know, I went on a six-week camp trip through national parks with my dog um to write the cookbook. Um, but um, I feel like I'm forced more into being an introvert, but I feel like I'm so proud and so much more secure in the product that I have now than maybe when I first started, that I want to tell people about it. So I feel really good about it. Yeah. Um, I do know that like I do a lot of pitch competitions um over the last few years, and like the first pitch competition I did, um I think the first one was West Side Pitch. It was last spring or something. And I was up at the podium and I had I was doing my pitch, and behind the podium my knees were just shaking, but I could project myself enough that nobody knew that because I said when I got down off the stage to my husband, did you see how bad I was shaking? I'm just not a public person, like public speaking person. So it's something I have to keep practicing at when we're going in front of these crowds for pitch competitions. So pitch competitions bring you a lot of like um recognition with like angel funding communities or like they are good for networking or they're good to like meet new customers and you'll get lifetime customers through these things. Plus, it's a good way to bootstrap and fund your company because these pitch competitions have money attached that's um no strings attached. So they're not equity jumps, they're like um just uh dollar pitches.

SPEAKER_04: 1:15:12

Yeah, so some capital infusion.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:15

Yeah, so it I did okay, but like it's not natural for me by any way. And I hear a lot of like famous actors or singers or musicians say that they're still so nervous before they go on to stage, so it doesn't make me feel as bad. But yeah, it's not natural for me at all. Like I'm not a salesperson, but I've had to force myself to be. Yeah, my dad's been a salesperson for 30 years, and I feel like maybe I got a slight bit of that that holds me together, but he was like the best salesperson in the region and like this state or whatever it was. Like he was brilliant at sales, but I am not that person. Like I wish maybe there was maybe less of like a age gap where I can get my dad in to make some calls.

SPEAKER_04: 1:15:51

So yeah, I I think you're doing better than you think.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:55

Thank you. That's nice.

SPEAKER_04: 1:15:57

Let's talk about Bao a little bit. Like you what made you apply kind of for for the Bend Outdoor Works Accelerator Program? Like, what stood out about this group that might have been missed and some of the other kind of business development cohorts that you've been part of?

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:12

Sure. So I met Scott with White Summers at the Bend Venture thing where I was pitching for early stage.

SPEAKER_04: 1:16:19

And j just pause you real quick for context. Scott um uh is an attorney that volunteers, him and his firm that are based in Portland volunteer um uh their time and talents to work with the participants of the Bend Outdoor Work cohort, all the startup founders, and give you massive amounts of advice and help and uh hold your hand through and have held my hand and helped us massively everywhere from you know partnership agreements to intellectual property and uh just all the legal requirements of starting a business. He's their team's amazing.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:02

Yeah, he's been actually really good to me as well. His team worked on some IP stuff for me early on. Um so I had a networking lunch and I got sat, we get sit with random people like a lottery, and I got sat with Scott at lunch for a networking lunch, and he turned out he worked on the built team, which I was um part of the built cohort last year, and then he was telling me about the Ben Venture, and I said, Oh yeah, I've heard of it, but I haven't applied for it yet. And then I went on the ride home from Ben Venture, and as I was in the car, I applied for it because I remembered I met Meg at the PCT days where she was manning the booth for Tough Cutie in the middle of like wildfire season. So we were at PCT days in Cascade Locks, and there was just smoke in the air. And I just met this lady who said she was mentoring Tough Cutie and she worked through battle. And I thought, where can I pick up a mentor that's like manning my booth that is like so invested in this gal's story and like just so happily telling customers about that? I said, I need that. Like I have a lot of mentors, but not one would like jump into my booth and sell some sauce.

SPEAKER_04: 1:18:10

Yeah, so the lean and Meg Chen, she breaks the mold.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:14

I thought it like when I met Scott, it reminded me of meeting Meg who had mentioned this program. So I went on, and that was the closing weekend for applications. So I got it in like the day before it was due, and then I got accepted to it. And then I thought, um, all right, I see the names behind it, Hydro Flask Karen, uh, picky bars. Um, I saw the names behind it, and I said, You're never gonna have this chance again to be in the room with like these people that have built built movements and not just brands. This is what you want for your company. Take this seriously. Um, I talked to my husband and I shuddered my company for three months, where I just worked head down on where what am I doing with this company and where's it going, where's the path you're taking it, um, and how are you gonna get there? So I just took it incredibly seriously. And that is a luxury that I admit most people can't do. I'm working in this company full time, but I did take a bit of a break where I was riding off of the money that I didn't made through Christmas to keep the lights on. But um, I just said this is not my busy time, summer is usually my busy time. So I just put my head down and I just listened to everything everyone said, and I thought if these people have built these movements, then you need to pay attention to what they're saying. And um, I think that is a missing part of the past cohorts I've been in was that these people were service in service to entrepreneurs, but they've not built their own movements. So it was like you're never gonna be in the presence of this many icons in you know, in legends in one room. So it pick their brains, ask them all the questions, do what they're telling you to do. I mean, question when you have questions, but like just take it seriously. Because I have admittedly tuned out in some past courses and tracks that I've gone through because I just felt like this is not what I need, this is not helping. Um, it was more like cheerleader and like, oh, you have somebody to talk to now. I mean, I have a lot of people to talk to, I don't have time to talk to them. So it's like when I got into this, I said this is like they had an agenda, which most other cohorts don't have. They had like, you're going to be doing this on this day and you're gonna be doing that. Like, so the fact that they could just show me an outline and what we were gonna be working on, I thought uh there are some of these pieces that I do have together already, but um like let's take a deeper dive in it.

SPEAKER_04: 1:20:32

So I think that's that's a really good testimonial. Um, and I I would echo it and just very impressed with the structure um of of how they uh approach those both in-person and remote um classes. It's it's it's yeah, it's it's I I feel like it's worth its weight in gold. Yeah, you know, and and also the relationships that you build.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:20:59

You know, and knowing that you have these relationships that you can lean into moving forward, you know, not if but when the next problem comes up that you're solving for, you know, it's it's it's awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:11

Yeah, and I'm a very um project-oriented person where I have to have say, okay, you're gonna be working on this and you need to have this by this time. So if I have something I'm working towards, yeah, it's great. But a lot of the other cohorts I've been in is just like, well, I'm in my office if you have any questions, and I'm like, so you know, you don't know what to ask them or you know what assistants they're gonna be. But like in the bow, I feel like they you had an agenda, you had a project to work on and a due date for it, and then to present it and get feedback on it. And that's how I've worked my entire career. Like we have projects, we turn the projects in, we get feedback on the projects, we assess it, and then you know, you ask your questions. But um, I don't do well in a fly by the seat of your pants, like this is just an open agenda, there's no format. And some people do well in that, like, oh, if I have questions, I'll just go in and ask as they come up. But I'm not that person, like I have to have like a project and a deadline, and like so. I think that for me just really like triggered me up, like, yeah, that's more my speed.

SPEAKER_04: 1:22:07

Sure, man. So yeah, that makes makes complete sense. And again, I can relate, yeah. So I mean, what's next? You're what you're get you're recovering from your hip surgery, and are you're I mean, you're what's it what's your typical day been looking like lately with Howlett the Spoon?

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:24

Well, two weeks post surgery, I was already back at Canon Beach throwing up my tent and back on the beach. So um I'm hustler. Yeah. Yeah. So I still am I've I've toned down all of my markets because I want to scale in other ways. And markets are fun, but they're not sustainable, and I don't want to use it to keep the lights on, which is what I've been doing. And part of the reason I went into Bow was because I became this event company that was most like 75% of my sales were coming through events, which is you know part of the reason I had to have a hip replacement. And you know, popping up, I've done 500 events, popping up a tent 500 times, setting up display 500 times, um, is not sustainable. Like I was just absolute burnout. So um now I've built other channels and goals of how I have to meet those goals, and some of that is in the fundraising. So um after taking a step back, I feel like um have more of an outlook of where I need to go. So I'm just gonna start, you know, one by one ticking off those boxes.

SPEAKER_04: 1:23:21

So that's good.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:22

Yeah, and I'm using some of the past cohorts I've been watching what they are doing and how they're scaling. So like Rioca, and I just am really impressed with Ryokan. I met her at um the Tacoma winter sports show that we went through with Bao. Um, I met her and um I I see what they're doing, and I just really I like the way that they're scaling and they're incredible, she's very authentic, their team. So I I feel like maybe I've picked up a lot of pointers just by watching kind of like what they took out of the program and how they're scaling. So I think maybe I want to take some of that on with like influencers and um user-generated content in like UGC and scaling in those marketing ways that I haven't done in the past because it's been so grassroots for me. I haven't taken on a lot of funding or and I've been using my own cash. So I think okay, and the next next natural step is to go the influencer and UGC route and up through marketing. So I think now I'm ready to take those things on.

SPEAKER_04: 1:24:17

Yeah, because I mean, even just managing the Howl at the Spoon social media account is time consuming. Yeah. Like it's I'm horrible at it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:26

Yes, and I don't think that the um numbers are what they used to be when you're running through I uh Instagram, like their algorithm has changed. And um, I was just on a call yesterday with the algorithms of like Insta and like meta as a whole, those numbers versus what you're spending on ad spend aren't coming back the way that they used to. So uh for me it's pushing me into alternative channels. So I'm trying to rethink of like modernizing how I'm scaling versus what I was doing. Like I can't just be everywhere all the time. So I either need to like scale in other channels. So it's me like figuring out how what's my budget, where am I getting that budget and like where to go next.

SPEAKER_04: 1:25:06

So kind of applying a creative approach to to the marketing, yes, for sure. So yeah, that's great, that's good stuff, innovating. Well, this has been super fun. I mean, I is there anything that we didn't talk about that you want to mention? I guess where tell people where they can find your products.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:25

So we are on Amazon Prime and we're in all market of choice. And in Bend, we're also paired with Pacaya, who does incredible meal kits. So if you want to go camping, you put an order in of how many days you're going and how many people. They make really cool um yeti tubs of meal kits that you go pick up at their um space here in town. And um our chimichree has been part of that. I think it pairs with their sauce with their um steaks. Right. So yeah. Good feedback. Um, yes, for sure. Yeah. And then we're in about 80 retailers. A lot of our retailers are um boutique and small natural grocers. We do a lot with fishmongers on the coast. So a lot of like uh butchers and fishmongers carry us as like a staple on their counters. Um, we're pushing a lot into like city center urban space for like Luke's local in San Francisco, where you have um smaller stores and urban spaces for people to come grab and go. A lot of uh business professionals will grab them for like meal planning for the week of like bowls and rice to take packs with you to work. So we're doing really well in those stores. Um yeah, so we're making a push for uh more organics and natural space, um, smaller um specialized shops. Um, so you'll see us coming up through there. But you can always buy off our Shopify. So we ship anywhere in the US free shipping after$30. And usually that's the fastest way to get a hold of our sauce and the best deal. But we're also on Amazon Prime.

SPEAKER_04: 1:26:53

It's good stuff, Melanie. Thank you for coming in to do this.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:57

Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, this has been super fun. This is incredibly generous of you to do this and to give a voice to the companies that we came through with.

SPEAKER_04: 1:27:04

I it it's a pleasure, and I learn a lot, and you know, it's a skill set that like you, it takes reps to develop, right? So um I'm building a business around, you know, the concept of conversation and podcasting and creating spaces where f people feel comfortable to be vulnerable, and you know, I mean, it's uh so thank you for saying that, but it's it's a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:30

Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_04: 1:27:31

So yeah. All right. Um well, I guess uh if I don't see you soon, I'll see you in October at the pitch contest. Yes. Yeah, you're gonna be a force to be reckoned with. I'm nervous. All right, see you later.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:47

See ya, thanks.

SPEAKER_04: 1:27:48

On the next episode of Birth of the Brands from Bin Magazine and Oregon Media.

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:54

So one year we had a Skull Candy sales meeting. Skull Candy had just bought Astro Gaming, which is a um gaming headphone company. And so part of the part of the the meeting was to go into the Astro room, meet the the people behind the brand and learn more about the gaming industry. And so I go in this room and uh the Astro guys giving a pitch on their company and and the gaming industry as a whole. And he's like, Okay, this summer, you know, the big Hollywood blockbuster, uh, and I think it was the dark night at the time, I can't remember, but he's like, What do you think it grossed at the box office? And I, you know, I'm thinking 50 million bucks is a big number. And, you know, it was like a he shared that it was a$350 or sorry,$350 million movie in the first two weeks of the box office. And so then he's like, All right, same time frame, first two weeks of the newest Call of Duty drop. You know, what do you think it grossed at the box office? And I'm I'm still picturing gaming as this subculture, you know, guy in the mom's basement type of thing. Or and uh, and so I'm thinking, you know, 25 million bucks in two weeks would be a pretty big number. And uh, and he shared with us that that number was 1.2 billion dollars from one game from one uh video game maker in two weeks. And I was like, damn, I was like, that is a that's a that's a big number.

SPEAKER_04: 1:29:22

On the next episode of The Birth of the Brands from Ben Magazine and Oregon Media, we sit down with father and son Jack and Sanjay Green, founders of Ionize. This patented, clean, under eye energizer designed for the screen and so much more, is a story of curiosity, connection, and offering the world something new.