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Explore your curiosity - Interesting people with fascinating stories.
Life consists of three things:
-The stories we tell others
-The stories others tell us
-The stories we tell ourselves.
Steven, welcome aboard to the show. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:I am going to transport you sixteen years into your past. You are about to do what?
Speaker 2:Sixteen years ago.
Speaker 1:So sorry, more. Sorry, sorry, sorry. We're talking twenty years ago. My bad. My bad.
Speaker 1:Okay. Twenty years ago. Twenty years ago. 2005. You were about
Speaker 2:to be graduating college, and I'm about to go into the army.
Speaker 1:Yep. What? Okay. Explain. I just graduated college.
Speaker 1:What in your right mind made you go into the army?
Speaker 2:Well, are you familiar with something called ROTC?
Speaker 1:No. Tell us about it.
Speaker 2:So ROTC is called the Reserve Officer Training Corps, and it was instituted, I don't know, probably more than a hundred years ago as a way to have kids who, you know, wanna get their education paid for and then have a job afterwards to essentially make those ends meet, right? So it's a scholarship opportunity that high school kids can apply for. It is very competitive to get it, but if you're able to do it, you can get essentially your entire tuition paid for. And then you have a guaranteed job, not just as a private in the army, but actually you go in as an officer. And so you're much more highly paid, much more responsibility.
Speaker 2:You're getting real life skill sets that translate to management afterwards. And so it's an opportunity to both get your education for free and then set yourself up for success in the future. Just so happened that right after I went into high school, I'm sorry, right after I went into college is when nineeleven happened. And so the entire world, you know, shifted my first semester in.
Speaker 1:Was were you already in the ROTC program once okay. Yeah. Describe that moment in time when you turn on the news, somebody walks into your room and say the Twin Towers have been hit.
Speaker 2:I remember I will never forget that moment. I I had just sat down in my seat to take a calculus test. Our professor rolls in, you know, rolls the TV, everybody's watching. I mean, I'm sorry. The TV was already there.
Speaker 2:Right? We're watching. And then he walks in, turns it off and hands it up the test. That is the craziest thing. I can't believe, I mean, this is a world changing moment for the first quiz of the semester.
Speaker 2:But anyway, that changed the whole world. Yeah. You know, I mean, at that point in time, you know, you're you're reevaluating your whole life.
Speaker 1:So this is surrealistic, but okay. You take the test. Somehow you do that, which is ridiculous. Finish the test. Happens next?
Speaker 2:I I think at that point, you're processing things. You're talking you're you're first, you're get trying to get I mean, this is before cell phones. Right? So you're you're you're or I'm sure very rich people probably had them. But as a high school kid, I certainly I certainly didn't.
Speaker 2:Or if I did, I think I did actually, but it had it had like 30 it was $30 thirty minutes emergency only. Right?
Speaker 1:So get back to my dorm room, I call a kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Because I remember it. But but yeah. And then, and then you're, you know, at that point in time, the biggest thing for me was evaluating what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it.
Speaker 2:And it was a very different world back then. And I was, I was, it was a, what's the word I'm looking for? Like a chemical reaction type of a moment, right? Where everything is just kind of colonizing together to get this, it's hard to describe the feeling, the patriotic feeling that was swelling in the country at that time. And I was upswept in it, you know, and frankly at that time, best friends are already in ROTC.
Speaker 2:You're developing that community, that camaraderie. And I had a decision to make, you know, could have pulled out at that point technically in the first year with the scholarship type that I had, I had about a month or two where I could have left. And I remember there was maybe 25 or 30 kids in our unit, you know, so to speak. And there was one or two that did leave. And yeah, that was a tough decision.
Speaker 2:I mean, that was a really, really, I'm frankly, that was probably one of the biggest life changing decisions, you know, in terms of bifurcating, you know, fork in the road type of a situation.
Speaker 1:You talked about your why. What changed in your why after nineeleven?
Speaker 2:It was My why was still I don't think I had I don't think I'd figured it out yet. In fact, I don't think I figured out my why until probably like last year, to be perfectly honest. I mean, was extremely Fair successful. I'd lived multiple lives, had multiple careers, but I was always still searching for what is the reason for all these skill sets that I had been acquiring through different things. At that point in time, you know, I'd already been an Eagle Scout and I really did feel this like the sense of duty and honor to, and I was extremely like patriotic and this, I think that just galvanized it even more, I think is what ended up happening at the time.
Speaker 2:And I was an engineering undergrad and not particularly enjoying it. So it's not like I was like super hyped to like go spend twenty hour days at Boeing, you know, right after graduating like all my friends did. Not that I was excited to run run off to war either. Right?
Speaker 1:So it
Speaker 2:was this kind of it it was tough. It was a tough tough one.
Speaker 1:So you you spent six years in total in the army, six years and a few months. You're now day one on civilian clothing. What do you do? Was it scary or did you kind of have a plan?
Speaker 2:Oh man, that's such a it was it's it's actually a better question than you realize be or maybe you do, but because of the timing. 2008, 2009, we were, and you know, for somebody of my age, we've actually lived through a lot of really kind of paradigm shifting moments historically. And that was the timing of another pretty large recession, you know, the housing crisis and there was a lot going on. So I was in a situation where I didn't know what I wanted. I knew I didn't want to be in the army anymore because at the time I was, if not the, I was one of the most heavily deployed lieutenants.
Speaker 2:Had spent a, I had done a twelve month tour and I was home for eleven months and then I did a sixteen month tour. So I, it was actually 28 out of thirty seven consecutive months deployed. And I was like, I don't want to keep doing this. I can't raise a family this way and live the life that I want. And so again, another deciding moment.
Speaker 2:I wanted to have the opportunity to be treated based in a meritocracy based system. Okay, so it's not just, Oh, you do two months as a lieutenant, two months as this, then you're captain, blah, blah, blah. And it's just time and service doesn't matter how you do. I was a very highly rated officer and I wanted to be able to earn my respect, my pay, my time, my advancement and everything based on my performance and my results. But And, we didn't know if that was going to be a reality.
Speaker 2:And when I say we, it was the people of the same ilk that I was at that same year group and making the same decision at the same timing. I knew I wanted to get an MBA because I had the technical background. And then in the army, I was a logistics officer. So it was, again, it was a lot more technical stuff, program management, understanding supply systems, those sorts of things. But I also wanted to understand how business works.
Speaker 2:So I could kind of, you know, put those, all of those different things together. Because you can understand technology, logistics and business. Now all you're missing is legal and you really got something. I didn't, since I didn't know whether I'd be able to get a job right away, I also started prepping to do my MBA. And so I ended up doing a junior military officer recruiting program where they take like the top 10%, train, kind of retrain you to go into the civilian life.
Speaker 2:And I ended up doing this matching game. It was like a speed dating event with like 10 or 12, you know, your Johnson and Johnson's all the way down to these like really cool tech startups. And I had never wanted to be in sales and marketing or anything similar to that. But I, and I had the engineering degree, but I was also like, I don't want be stuck behind a computer. So I was given this opportunity with a really cool tech startup that was trying to like, and if it should I keep going with a story?
Speaker 1:Yeah. No, no, no.
Speaker 2:Keep going.
Speaker 1:I'll stop. Yeah.
Speaker 2:They were taking cameras and trying to essentially do chemical detection with them. Okay. And not to get too deep into that technology, but I ended up matching with them. That was the company that ended up recruiting me out. And I spent ten or twelve years with them taking what was a PowerPoint slide and turning it into a $20,000,000 a year business.
Speaker 2:And then, and that was in the defense sector. And then we turned that off and said, we want to go into civilian world. So I redid it in the civilian sector with kind of a different product line and we can get into all that technology and everything
Speaker 1:But that you me ask you.
Speaker 2:But the point of matter is I was looking, I was still looking for kind of my purpose there. I really found one with entrepreneurship, business development and and and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:So before we get to that, you're on your first day with, keep me honest here, is that is this, Chem Image? Is that the
Speaker 2:correct That was Chem Image. Yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yep.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:So you're on your first day in ChemImage. You're basically a and, you know, you know, you're an officer no longer in uniform, and you're carrying with you six and change years of military training and culture. That must have imploded at some stage. Like, what was the moment where you're like, you know, you're not in the army anymore and this is a little different? And then my follow-up question to that is what are the things that you took from the army that actually did work and did make sense and did help you succeed?
Speaker 1:So what what was the shit show, the horror story, and then what was the stuff that really helped you go?
Speaker 2:So the really unique part about this is, and a lot of times I used to tell people, okay, in BD. What the hell does that mean? Especially twenty years ago, what does BD mean? So I'd say, okay, well, I'm an English to English
Speaker 1:translator. You know,
Speaker 2:my undergrad is engineering, so I can understand what these techies are saying. And when I was hired in that company, it was a sea of old white dudes, right? As you might imagine, like lab coat type of thing, but you're talking 60% were PhDs. They don't speak the same language that I've been speaking for the previous, like you said, four or five, six years. That's where the engineering degree really, really helped, right?
Speaker 2:So being able to take, and even some of the, like being able to understand like logistics, systematics, programs, operations, that was very, very helpful. But their problem and the reason they weren't being successful at the time is they couldn't speak to the government and they were trying to take all these ideas and actually go get government contracts with them without being able to speak normally to a human. I mean, essentially, I mean, it was kind of frankly that simple. So I brought a level of, I don't know, just normalcy of What's the word I'm looking for? Not charm, but it's the C word.
Speaker 2:Anyway That's I was relatable. Right? Somebody who who who you could talk to. So I was able to, like, understand their PowerPoints and their their their, you know, their systems and stuff. And even though it wasn't even a real idea yet, it was just kind of a concept, I could take that and essentially boil it down into simple words, go talk to the soldiers who might end up use it or technicians or whatever.
Speaker 2:But then I was also polished enough that I could go and as a 23 year old, remember in the army, had two forty people reporting to me. I had to wake up and dress blues at six in the morning and be able to talk to the general when one of my soldiers got drunk and crashed into the command station and knocked over a fire hydrant or got arrested because he pulled a knife on, you know, not to air people's dirty laundry, but there was crazy stuff that happened. And as a 22, 23 year old, you're dealing with all that with law enforcement, with officers, with CEOs. So those experiences really, really helped me in being able to, yes, talk to an engineer or a scientist in the morning, be able to have beers with a decision maker in the evening after walking the halls of the Pentagon or Capitol Hill in a suit during the day, you know, and that was really kind of helpful.
Speaker 1:Were there any conflicts kind of you know, I'm sure you did well working with the military on that side of it, but were there any conflicts with the PhDs, engineers where you're like, okay. This is not this is not the military. This is something slightly different.
Speaker 2:There was probably a few times where I maybe wasn't as polished.
Speaker 1:Nah. Let's let's
Speaker 2:start. Remember one So that's story. Specifically yeah. I was was frustrated. I had done a lot for the company.
Speaker 2:I'd already brought probably about 30 or 40,000,000 in and I had been promised some things, a raise, they were sending me to get my master's degree, which I really appreciated, right? That was very, very big plus to get paid for, but I also owed them time and it was supposed to come with a promotion and certain things. And somebody got hired over me, which was a friend of the CEO. And of course, I didn't think he was doing a very good job. And I, we had a group outing to the local professional baseball game.
Speaker 2:We had a big suite and everything, and I may have had a few too many. And I confronted our CEO during the seventh inning stretch and basically told him how fucked up everything he was doing was that he would do something like that when and frankly, not only that, but how poorly the guy he brought in was doing and no nobody like liked him. And he essentially was making decisions that had kind of fucked a bunch of stuff up. I suppose you want to know how that turned out.
Speaker 1:No, I do. Not just me, our audience as well.
Speaker 2:I definitely got a call to come to the CEO's house the following Saturday, you know, showing up, you know, and and meeting the family and stuff, which is not the first time I've been there. I was, I, you know, I had been being groomed for some bigger things. And so, and that was like my first time really, you know, doing something that crazy. I was kindly reminded, you know, that that's not the appropriate situation to do something like that. And then I was out of line, but six months later he was fired and I was given that raise and it turned out to be really good for the company.
Speaker 2:So it, you know, it I'm not suggesting that that's the way to do things, but
Speaker 1:Yeah. You gotta
Speaker 2:be very aware of the political capital that you have in an organization before you pull some shit. Like and I like
Speaker 1:Let let me ask you this. In in retrospect, right, sure. You know, would you have done it that way or, you know, let's say you looking at, you know, Steven, you know, to almost twenty years ago, what would you advise him? How would he play that?
Speaker 2:What I would have done is I would have asked for a one on one meeting with him and
Speaker 1:and and I would still have done the
Speaker 2:same thing, ended up at his house having a conversation, but I would have asked for the opportunity in a much different way. And frankly, I probably like, those things would have ended up happening maybe even earlier had I done that, you know?
Speaker 1:Right. Right. The here's the thing that I've noticed. Right? When there's when you take the war path and then it's you against somebody else and then a bunch of execs looking at it, looks like two people fighting, and then the execs are kind of like, okay.
Speaker 1:These guys are don't play well. But when you take the path of here's the yellow flag, here are the risks to the company, and here's how I would like to help. But if this if this shit don't solve itself, then we're gonna need to make some hard choices. You don't put yourself in that position of like, oh, I'm one of the two techies fighting over shit that nobody else understands or, like, that's one of the situations. So I I appreciate that that context.
Speaker 1:And you know what? I was I've made many of these similar mistakes, I'll tell you. I was you know, we took a company from from 13 employees to an $80,000,000 exit and the company is now worth a billion dollars many years after I've left and I did the pivot that, you know, with the CEO and the American CEO that led to this billion dollar company. There was a lot of politics involved. There was a lot of, you know, people who I perceived to be, you know you know, again, a friend of the CEO who is not really doing shit right.
Speaker 1:And I kind of I I he was working on this thing. I won't say his name, but I was working for he was working on this thing for almost three years. And I came in, I fired the whole team he hired, and I got it done in three months, which led to it was, like, $2,500,000 in revenue per quarter. So and then we did the back calculation how much money we lost because of his idiocracy. I can tell you I earned myself an enemy that day, like a long term enemy, and I didn't even know what I was getting into.
Speaker 1:I was such a young idiot at the time. So, you know, you you gotta learn your lessons the hard way in in many cases, unfortunately. So I I appreciate that. And and I just wanna say thank you so much for sharing that story. It's not easy to, you know, share our failures, but it's Oh, man.
Speaker 2:It's think that way I used to think that way probably for my first thirty years, but now it's like, a lot of them I'm proud of because it, like, you know, it it has put you where you are, you know, and and and now when you when you when you say something, it's coming from a place of of experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And Here's the thing. Right? You hear the the the stories about the CEOs. They always tell their successes.
Speaker 1:What the stories that we don't tell is that half of the stuff that we do gets completely fucked up. The companies, you know, don't always succeed when you're on the path of entrepreneurship. And if if half of your companies succeed that you took from from nothing, right, the seed stage Yeah. That's pretty good, actually, statistically, if you kind of benchmark that. It's
Speaker 2:actually pretty good.
Speaker 1:You know,
Speaker 2:what you just said is actually the central to why I started coaching entrepreneurs. There are so many consultants out there that are like, oh, well, I was an accountant for thirty years. I can help you be an accountant. I'm a lawyer. I'm a former this.
Speaker 2:I'm a former that. What about the people who are trying to do something that have never been done? Yeah. Who who's there to help them? You know
Speaker 1:what So I tell me, what's the biggest, like, what's the biggest thing that you wanna kinda make a mindset shift, you know, to help these people succeed?
Speaker 2:Well, my focus my focus is on people that are really doing something that is highly disruptive or or never been done before. So so going into it, we already know that your your your likelihood of success is probably 10% or less. Like you just said, right? Fiftyfifty, you're doing really, really well. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm going after the stuff that is way, way more risky than that. So from a mindset shift, you have to come from a place of like essentially being okay with failure. Right? And that's really, really hard for people that are used to being very, very good at things.
Speaker 1:Yeah. How do you coach them when it comes to if they have families or girlfriends or like, what what do you talk to them when it comes to the second circle of second and third circle of their environment and how this journey is going to impact them?
Speaker 2:If you have that many people that rely on you, don't take the leap until you have your systems in place to make sure that you're not going to cause anguish for people that are counting on you. Right? Because at that point, if you're single, right? If you're single and it's like all you and your business becomes your baby, that's okay, right? You're taking those lumps and, but if somebody else is depending on you, you have to be very honest with them and have that conversation about how it's going to impact them and then let them make that decision for themselves as well.
Speaker 2:I mean, I just, I think you have to, you owe that to that person if they're that important to you.
Speaker 1:It's such an important point. I mean, becoming an entrepreneur, So I've got multiple exits. I'm a Techstar alumni. I mean, there's a bunch of shit I did. Anyway, becoming an entrepreneur is not a decision that affects you.
Speaker 1:It's a decision that affects everybody around you Mhmm. Including your your significant other, your kids and whatnot. So I really appreciate that comment. In fact, when I kind of became smart enough to understand this, when I would bring on the co founders, the wife or whoever was right there, and I'm like, this is what you're getting into. I want to make sure this is a joint decision because shit will go south.
Speaker 1:And you'll need to, you need to be prepared for that. So I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Honestly, that's probably, I can't say the number one, there's lot of reasons that I'm marrying my fiance in a few weeks here, but that's one of them is I've started two companies from scratch while we've been dating and planning a wedding and she
Speaker 1:And she's still marrying you. And she's yeah. And she's still there. Like, and
Speaker 2:you know how you know that's like crazy hours.
Speaker 1:You you you that's not trivial. And what I can tell the audience, and you can tell me if I'm if I'm correct, that included a lot of ups and downs on that road. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's Not much sleep. Not much sleep, but also, like, when you're in that mode of working your ass off, stressed, you know, got a million things going wrong, and then you're also dealing with this person that you deeply care with, you're not always on your best behavior. Right. And sometimes your best behavior is reserved to the employee or or investor or whatever because you don't wanna piss them off. Then when's the moment that you can be like?
Speaker 1:So so, yeah, it's it's a rough deal. I gotta gotta say on behalf of my wife and children. Thank you. Yeah. Let me let me say this.
Speaker 1:We're not we're not making a great ad for entrepreneurship today, but that's okay. Whoever does it is is mentally ill anyway. So Being
Speaker 2:an entrepreneur, you can't go back to like, there is something deeply satisfying.
Speaker 1:It's it's I I say that it's a mental illness that you opt into. Yeah. And it's really the closest thing that describes it as bipolar. One day you're on top of the world and elated. The next day you're depressed.
Speaker 1:And sometimes that cycle happens twice a day in the same day. Yep. So there's that as well. Okay. So so this week, right, or last week, you had your fair share of excitement as well.
Speaker 1:Tell tell us that story. You're getting married.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And, some other shit fell apart as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. So I yeah. I was I was on my bachelor party a couple days ago and and one of, and if you don't know what a VA is, it's a virtual assistant, right? A lot, a lot of entrepreneurs are heavily reliant on them.
Speaker 2:You get a lot of capability at a much more affordable price. The downside is they require a lot of oversight, a lot training and a lot of systems in order to be operational. Otherwise you're just on the phone with them all day. And so I had one who I put two years into and is probably, probably like the best designer I've ever worked with. Oh wow.
Speaker 2:And I, and he, and we had, and, and you know, I have four companies I'm running. I also have three clients and the wedding I'm planning, right? So very, a lot of workload for it, for my essentially best designer. And he quits. He like, he hasn't shown up all week.
Speaker 2:Nobody knows what's going on. And he has his own mental health stuff that he's, you know, that he's been dealing with that I'm somewhat aware of, but not to just go completely silent for multiple days on end. So at this point, you know, it's got to make some decisions. It's, I still got to run a company here. And yeah, so I'm, I ended up finally, you know, I had to cut off his access to certain things and all of a sudden he immediately pops up on the net and he's like, Hey, am I still working here?
Speaker 2:Essentially didn't even call me, called one of my other VAs. And he's like, You better get on the phone with Steven. And I'm actually, I missed half of one of the days of my bachelor party dealing with this, you know, basically just on the phone back and forth. But yeah, that was that was the the nightmare of this week is
Speaker 1:I had an employee because
Speaker 2:we had to get a bunch of deliverables out for the client. So if that, you know, if you lose somebody, you gotta jump in. At the end of day, the buck stops with you. There's no there's no backup plan to the owner.
Speaker 1:I had an employee disappear for a few days. You know what he was doing? A developer. Right? Cody?
Speaker 1:Knows what he was doing? He was he was playing World of Warcraft.
Speaker 2:Yep. Yep. See?
Speaker 1:At and at the
Speaker 2:end of day, that's You're different type of not you're not you're you're not dealing with a whole bunch of people that have the same work ethic or passion, but most importantly, they don't care about your company quite the way you're going to. You know? It's just it's impossible
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:For them to.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That that can create a lot a lot of conflict if you don't figure that out pretty early. Yeah. So so you there's two pretty awesome things that you're doing now. I don't know which of them to die well, there's four, but there's two that I think are incredibly interesting.
Speaker 1:The two new stuff that you're working on. One is about imaging, and the one is about vodka.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:I wanna talk about the imaging one, but my audience is gonna give me shit if we do. So that's I I think it's incredibly interesting. But, okay. I'm gonna give in to popular demand, and we'll talk about vodka. So so There's
Speaker 2:a there's a lot of good science in both, to be honest. So
Speaker 1:That's my only redemption that there's that I we can get, you know, dirty on the science. Tell me about okay. You're not, you're not you're not Beyonce. Why would you start a vodka company?
Speaker 2:Man, so I've been in I've been in the tech space for for a long time, after the army and I love tech, right? I still have the tech company. I'm like, I'm still very much one fit in on that. But when I look back at my life and it's growing up, I was doing, I was the kid that was doing the AP classes, doing the extracurriculars, doing this, doing that, then ROTC while at school, while having a full time job. And, you know, I was like, I want to do something that's fun.
Speaker 2:I want, like, I want that release. And I want us, I also, I wanted to invent something that I had my stamp on it. So this was essentially a way to scrap some of those itches. This actually started, this started with, this was like my first client actually for my coaching services. And he was somebody who I was in the military with.
Speaker 2:So a lot of history there. And he was telling me about this and I had just recently started using cannabis because I had been in a pretty bad accident where I, you know, not to get into it, but broke my leg, ruptured all my ligaments, couldn't walk for five months and I didn't want to or use anything like that. So I was, I had turned to cannabis as an alternate solution. Realized the powers of it, to be perfectly honest, I, at the time I had been in a really bad relationship. There were some job issues going on with that one company and I had fallen into a bit of a bad situation, you know, with my own mental health and whatever.
Speaker 2:But bottom line is I had gotten depressed, I was in a bad relationship and I had put on a lot of weight. And cannabis actually helped me lose over a 100 pounds as well. So it was like, it was pain management and there was just, there was a mental aspect to it. I like kind of refound myself, reinvigorated myself, but I also liked to party. I'd liked, I used to brew beer as a hobby back in the day.
Speaker 2:And so I, you know, there was a, and then what I was doing at Chem Image, there was a lot of chemistry component, you know, with, the standoff detection aspect of everything. So this was a way where I was combining everything, coaching an entrepreneur, launching a business, which my expertise is new product launch. I was getting the science, the chemistry, the cannabis, the alcohol, the party, the fun, the social media, like all of these things that were a combination of lots of different skill sets I had, but also lots of things that I'd never even touched before because I'd been so deep in deep tech and defense and security. And so that's that's why it was intriguing and that's why I ended up getting like more and more passionate, you know, into it. And so we spent two years developing the bottle itself.
Speaker 2:So the bottle
Speaker 1:is Gotta show this. This is fun. Yep.
Speaker 2:So that that's it. The bottle is shaped like a joint. So we're the only, bottle on the planet that has this because we invented it. So we have a patent pending on that. And then that was about two years.
Speaker 2:And there was only one place that could actually manufacture it for us. And then of course, now that we have it, we can go and get some other sources, but we also went really, really deep into the science of what goes inside it. So I'm sure most of your audience knows what vodka is, right? It's as an alcohol and it can be produced from a lot of different things, grain, corn, potatoes, grapes, etcetera. But generally it's considered a, you know, an odorless flavorless kind of neutral grain type of spirit, which is really, really good for use for cocktails.
Speaker 2:But tequila and whiskey have been blowing up over the past couple of decades and they just frankly have more flavor and more flare than vodka. So they've been eroding some of that market share. And cannabis is certainly having its day as well. So we thought, there's a way for us to combine all these things. We've got the cool bottle, the bottle's going to bring them in, but you've got to have a good flavor to bring somebody back, right?
Speaker 2:There's two parts of this, the branding, all that stuff. But we used terpenes. Terpenes, if you've never heard of them, they're the building blocks of essential oils. There's been 20,000 of them that have been discovered in existence so far. And they occur in literally everything.
Speaker 2:If you've eaten or drunk anything in the last week, even just terpenes, they're even used as flavor agents all the time. If you've had a La Croix soda, it's infused with terpenes. That's actually what they use as the flavoring element. So we have a proprietary blend that we spent about two and a half years developing, which mimics cannabis almost exactly, but it is And not the aroma, that's the important part. Cannabis was not taking advantage of the olfactory sense.
Speaker 2:It just wasn't. And you smell before you taste. That's right. That's just part of it. Normally when you smell vodka, you see a reaction that's kind of like that, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Now with ours, it's a very pleasant floral sweet. We've taken all of the best parts of the cannabis plant and left all the bad parts. So there's no ass grass burn, you know, bitter taste. We've kept all the sweetness, the smoothness, the smokiness, the earthiness, the floral punch. And so it actually acts kind of like a gin while still being a vodka.
Speaker 2:And because of the chirping's being all natural, they now enhance anything that you mix it with, without adding sugar, without other sweeteners. And we can even make a margarita with our vodka. We actually did it for a grand opening of a, of a place called, Barrios. It's a, it's a tequila and taco bar in Tampa, but we made a terpene based margarita. So just really, really adaptive and cool
Speaker 1:How did they respond to the drink?
Speaker 2:Oh, they love it. They love it. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's it's unique and you can go a lot of different directions with it.
Speaker 1:Wonderful.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So And then like I like I was saying to you earlier, we had
Speaker 1:One more thing. One more No. Yeah. No. That's what I wanted.
Speaker 1:Let's go there. Yep.
Speaker 2:Yep. So we have a conversion kit for it. You can turn it into a bong and then send
Speaker 1:it you. Those for those of our audience who are listening and not watching, the same bottle we saw a second ago that looks like a a joint is now a bong. How does that even work? I mean, it's a glass bottle. Does that happen?
Speaker 1:How does that work?
Speaker 2:So we have a conversion kit. It may it's actually super, super simple. We have so I can just basically show you right here. This is a you know, you can see the three m on the back, right? So this is just peel and stick.
Speaker 1:You
Speaker 2:find the logo, you go straight to the side on the scene, stick that on. We have a diamond coated drill tip.
Speaker 1:There it is.
Speaker 2:Dip it in water. That slides right through this. It's about twenty seconds. It'll punch right through. And then we have a little grommet that goes in there.
Speaker 2:You can see the grommet right here. And that you just dip it in that same water and then it and then it slides onto the ring. And then we have a this custom glass tube, which is designed for our bottle exactly. And then it it just kind of wiggles its way in. And then you just fill this with flour and pop it
Speaker 1:in there. And then put put a little
Speaker 2:bit of water in the inside.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So so I I I gotta tell you, I there's a story here to who your audience is, I gotta say. It makes perfect sense, but I you gotta love the continuity. Yeah. Steven, believe it or not, this has been delightful, and we're out of time.
Speaker 1:There's one question that we ask every single one of our guests. It's the only scripted question, but it's a difficult one because it's personal. If you had to go back to 20 year old Steven, what would you advise him?
Speaker 2:I'd probably tell him to be patient. Why mean, I was always in a rush to get to where I am, you know? Not to say I didn't enjoy the ride, I definitely did. And I experienced a lot of things, but I would say probably the patience and making sure to appreciate, you know, all the people along the way, because you don't necessarily know how long, in fact that that one hits home pretty quickly because probably one of the best bosses I've ever had, who's really young. He was my boss most of the time I was at Chem Image, the one that recruited me there.
Speaker 2:Out of nowhere, a couple months ago, stage four. Know, I was, he was going be one of my potential investors actually for the vodka. And in the middle of between my first pitch with him to our second conversation, when he stopped answering, I was like, what's going on? I finally get a text back.
Speaker 1:He's like, I can't call you basically. And
Speaker 2:I had to leave him a, no, I don't want get sad here, but yeah, it's the appreciation, gratitude, appreciate it along the way for sure. But the successes, the failures, and the people.
Speaker 1:Steven, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thank you so much, Ari. I appreciate the time.