Founder Feature: Spencer Hoddeson, Gay Water

In this bonus episode of the Startup CPG podcast, Grace Kennedy sits down with Spencer Hoddeson, the CEO of Gay Water. They delve into the inspiration behind creating Gay Water, a mission-driven brand that is aiming to increase representation for the queer community in the alcohol space. With a rich background in media and tech, Spencer shares his journey of developing Gay Water, highlighting the personal experiences and meaningful conversations that shaped the brand.

They explore the challenges of entering a competitive market and how Spencer's commitment to vibrant packaging and purpose-driven marketing has struck a chord with millennial and Gen Z consumers. Spencer candidly discusses overcoming founder-related stresses like imposter syndrome through prioritization, stress management techniques, and the power of positive customer feedback.

Discover how Gay Water is making waves in the beverage industry through strategic branding and a deep commitment to community representation. Tune in now!!

Listen in as they share about:

• Product Details of Gay Water
• Brand Inspiration, Mission, Development and Impact
• Challenges and Learnings
• Marketing Strategies
• Sales and Distribution
• Growth and Expansion
• Future Plans

Episode Links:

Gay Water’s Website

Gay Water’s Instagram

Don't forget to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you enjoyed this episode. For potential sponsorship opportunities or to join the Startup CPG community, visit http://www.startupcpg.com.

Show Links:

• 
  Transcripts of each episode are available on the Transistor platform that hosts our podcast here (click on the episode and toggle to “Transcript” at the top)
• Join the Startup CPG Slack community (15K+ members and growing!)
• Follow @startupcpg
• Visit host Daniel's Linkedin 
• Questions or comments about the episode? Email Daniel at [e-mail]
• Episode music by Super Fantastics
  
  

Creators & Guests

Host

Grace Kennedy

What is The Startup CPG Podcast?

A podcast from Startup CPG - highlighting stories from founders working towards a better food system and industry insights from experts to give you a better chance at success.

Spencer Hoddeson
The brand is what's going to differentiate you and really create that connection with your customer and keep them there. Because I think we all have experience, like there's a bunch of hard seltzers, there's a bunch of vodka sodas as a bunch of espresso martini in the cans. I think the brand at the end of the day is what is keeping consumers interested and sort of grabbing for that first.

Grace Kennedy
00:09 - 00:31
Hello and welcome back to the start of CPG podcast. My name is Grace. I'm the sort of CPG editor, and I am joined here today by Spencer, the founder of Gay water. And I will let you introduce yourself, Spencer, and what gay water is.

Spencer Hoddeson
00:46 - 01:10
Yeah. So I'm Spencer Addison, the founder and CEO of Gay water. Just a quick background on the water. Gay water's a mission driven business. So we have a mission to create representation for the queer community in these kind of traditional spaces that you don't really see a ton of representation, like bars, liquor stores, restaurants, concert venues, places where queer people both work and shop.

Spencer Hoddeson
01:10 - 01:37
But aside from maybe a pride flag during pride Month, these spaces don't signal safeness or inclusivity to both those employees as well as consumers that shop through those spaces. Gay water itself, though, is a colloquial ism for a vodka soda and the queer community. So that is exactly what our product is. It is a canned vodka soda, 4% ABV, 80 calories, three ingredients so super light, super fruit, forward, and flavorful.

Grace Kennedy
01:37 - 01:47
Yeah, it's so fun. And I was lucky enough to try some of Spencer's gay waters and they are delicious and so light. And I think my favorite was the grapefruit.

Spencer Hoddeson
01:47 - 02:00
I feel like, yeah, I've gotten definitely mixed on that specific flavor. It's are like, we have four flavors line grapefruit, peach and watermelon. And grapefruit is usually like, you know, the most polarizing, actually.

Grace Kennedy
02:00 - 02:04
That's so funny. I well, I guess I'm just special.

Spencer Hoddeson
02:04 - 02:05
No, I like.

Grace Kennedy
02:05 - 02:06
What is the most popular.

Spencer Hoddeson
02:06 - 02:30
Either peach or watermelon. In our customer surveys, it actually split pretty evenly between peach, watermelon and line with the first two kind of slightly edging out line. But like I said, grapefruits actually our most polarizing line. So it usually is ranked as the least favorite. But I think taste is so subjective, and I feel like grapefruit is almost like a cilantro, where you either love it or hate it.

Grace Kennedy
02:30 - 02:51
So that's so true. Actually, Patty, who is the head of our community at sort of CPG, she hates grapefruit. So there we are. So I love her story. I love the mission. What inspired you to dive into this world? I know you were coming from the CPG beverage world, so what inspired you to kind of dive into it?

Spencer Hoddeson
02:51 - 07:53
So my background is in media and tech. I spent most of my career between NBC and Yahoo, and towards the end of my time at Yahoo, I was starting to just feel sort of stagnant. I've always been like a voracious learner. I think that's what drives me in life, is to just constantly be learning and constantly be picking up new skills, new hobbies, new experiences. And I had I had been running the brand marketing team at Yahoo towards the end and just gotten to this place of like, stagnancy a little bit where I didn't feel like I was learning new things. It was kind of rinse and repeat, which I think a lot of folks probably empathize with and have experienced in their career. Right? Like you get into a certain place and one of your roles and it's been like operationalized. So I had started to interview at other tech companies and thought about, do I want to stay in the tech space? Do I want to go back to media driven and try something different and concurrent to like that happening? I had also, over Covid, just built a platform for myself, like my personal brand, just content creating very much within the queer community. And I had never really seen myself kind of going there out as becoming a content creator, but knew that I wanted to kind of diverge that platform, to create something for meaningful and really add value to kind of the community that I had curated, which, again, was mostly a queer community, like add as much value to their lives. So those things were kind of happening concurrently. And I was thinking, you know, do I want to do something else in tech, in media? Do I want on to go back to business school? Or maybe there's this like third door, which would be to start something. So a lot of that was scrolling concurrently. And I went on a trip with a very close girl friend who's had been in food and beverage for over ten years and was sort of unemployed, starting a new role at a big beverage company. And we got into so many conversations around the beverage industry and her new role and organic, it was just the two of us on a trip. So you can imagine, like it just like or the excitement around her new role. It just like organically came up quite a bit. And this topic of queer representation in the beverage space came up and we talked about it pretty extensively.
Her single experience as like a cis woman in the beverage industry, like, not really coming across a lot of queer people. Usually when she did it was in marketing or partnership roles on like a brand side. But aside from not really coming into contact with queer people, not seeing any queer products in the space, which is surprising because when you step back and this was later, a lot of the research and insights that I did into the space, like this is a community that is growing the queer community is doubled in size in the last ten years, which is pretty remarkable And I don't think the size of the community is going down anytime soon. I think it's going to continue to grow. The queer community is now bigger than the Asian-American population in the US, which is really I always kind of say that to people to contextualize, like it's not a niche and small community in the same way that I think historically, people just looked at the queer community as like, this is something that is small and exists off to the side. And so that was really staggering. And then on top of that, it's a community that drinks more than the sort of regular heterosexual community at a 2 to 4 times rate. And I always say anecdotally, that's that's probably because the spaces that are available to the queer community are typically bars, restaurants or bars, clubs, lounges, like spaces that, you know, naturally facilitate drinking, maybe to take the edge off with some people's uncomfortability. Spencer Hoddeson
Is that a word? Like maybe he's right there, the fact that they're in a space and they might not know people, or they might have just come out and not feel super comfortable. So it helps sort of open people up and take the edge off a little bit. But yeah, as I sort of had had these conversations on this vacation, I then dove into like the research and insights, which really sort of opened up the opportunity for a mission driven brand to really exist in this space and sort of redefine, hopefully for the beverage community, the fact that queer consumers are there, they exist that we're all just looking for representation here. And frankly, and there aren't products on the shelves that support the community. So beyond our mission, we work with dozens of queer nonprofits and community organizations, donating product Co-marketing events with them, really making sure that we're in the ways that we can as a small group business. We're alleviating, like any sort of costs that they may incur when it comes to events that they have, for example, like donating product alleviates the need for them to go out and pay for alcohol Co-marketing driving traffic to those events, raising awareness for campaigns they're doing. I think that opening up the opportunity for a queer brand to exist in the space, but going beyond just creating a queer branding space, but also supporting the community, really the folks who are on the ground actioning and driving change for the community beyond just our mission, which is representation. And it's of course so important, but kind of lives up here. So I was a long winded answer, but hopefully that kind of gave you a little bit of insight into the origin story.

Grace Kennedy
07:53 - 08:32
Yeah, I love it and it's so true. And it definitely is sort of a thing that other brands have done where they'll have like a pride month, you know, themed product. But it's really cool to have a product that actually just is a year round, loud and proud. We are a queer owned business for queer people is really exciting to have on the market. So super fun to hear about. so when you decided, okay, I want to do this thing, what were your next steps in actually creating gay water and developing this vodka soda drink and your branding? You know, I know there's so many elements that go into creating a brand and creating a beverage brand. So what were some of your first steps when you were like, okay, I'm going to do this now.

Spencer Hoddeson
08:32 - 12:13
Oh my gosh, a really fun, challenging process was getting started, especially not coming from like the CPG food and beverage space. I would say I almost became like an intern in our college student again, where you you feel like you have that credence to ask anyone for advice or help. So I went back into kind of networking mode, really starting to just understand my foundations of the industry. Again, that was part of like a little bit of the origin story. It was like I was looking for something that would challenge me and kind of push me to continue learning and growing. So I went back to just sort of networking, putting it out there. I think a lot of people now are talking about manifestation, right, like manifest this idea and then it'll come to fruition. I lean much more into the school of thought, of socialization. Right? Like I had this idea I had come up with gay water at that point. I had secured the trademark and I was like, let me just tell as many people as possible about this. Like, I'm not going to sit on this. I think long gone are the days of like, keep a brand and then have like that big launch day where the brand drops and there's a ton of buzz around it. I think we're past that, honestly. I think that there's no longer like tabloid culture in the same way where you do a big drop in, like everyone covers it. It just doesn't happen anymore. So I was kind of in this swirl thought of like socialize. I talked to as many people as possible and actually a really fun story. I had kind of started talking about it on, on TikTok because I was a platform kind of grown for myself, personally and crazily enough, someone who lived in my building recognized the mirror in my bathroom, and they had renovated the building and put the same mirror in every bathroom. So I got a DM on the side from this guy, and he was like, do you like that? Insert our building here. And I saw that. And then like, I had in the past, gotten a lot of kind of cukier DMs that I bet I can't answer or didn't answer. And I saw that one. I was like, this is going to be awkward when I run into him in the hallways. And I didn't respond to that. So I responded to it and we ended up meeting for coffee. And it turns out he was also queer. He had started beverage company he had done on Shark Tank. They gotten acquired. Mark Cuban had invested in them on Shark Tank, and that person ended up actually being like our founding foundational like, operations person. And he connected us to a formulator to a Co-packer really kind of got the wheels turning on that in terms of. So that was like really how from an operational and supply chain standpoint, we got started was working with this guy Max, who was incredible, who's still an advisor today to the brand. From a brand perspective, though, I actually worked with a queer Japanese Hawaiian designer who I had worked with in a past job at Yahoo! Another funny story was like, I was on the brand marketing team and he lead design for our pretty RJ ad, Yahoo! And a lot of our interaction was me having to like, bring the brand guidelines into play and be like, well, you actually can't go this colorful. You actually can create a new icon on or use the Yahoo logo in this way because as you can imagine, Yahoo is a very like legacy brand. And there were strict guidelines around, you know, how the brand was used. And when I had this opportunity come up, I was immediately thought of and I was like, this is actually a place where all of the things that I said no to, I can say as to now and we can actually create a really fun, colorful, bright change logo up like let's go crazy kind of brand. And here we're still working together. Today is incredible. But so Ryan actually helped build out the brand identity and and designed it. And I am so thankful for him because he is a genius.

Grace Kennedy
12:13 - 12:43
Yeah. And I love your branding. I love how colorful it is. It really stands out. And I could imagine seeing it on a shelf. And I would absolutely. My eyes would be drawn to it because of how colorful it is and how it doesn't really look like anything else. And I think I read in another interview you did or something where you were saying it reminds you of like childhood cartoons or something like that. And I do love that element too, because it's this like adult beverage, but you feel like the sort of fun child energy from it, which really brings an element of just like, joyfulness. Definitely.

Spencer Hoddeson
12:43 - 14:54
Obviously it's alcohol. So we tell the line, I'm like, we're obviously are not targeting or marketing to Ken, but it was inspired by like 90s Nickelodeon, I would say. So in that respect, like millennials who grew up in the 90s. And so I actually have and this is from my, my childhood, this 90s Nickelodeon clock right here. And I stare at it all day. So, as you can probably see with our logo, is definitely inspired by, like, the Nickelodeon Splash and pop Art and vintage candy. We had a lot of references, but in that respect, yes, like those millennials who grew up in the 90s that I grew up with, Nickelodeon right there now of legal drinking age. And there is a nostalgic flair, I would say, and the logo. But yeah, I think part of coming up the food and beverage space with glass experience is being able to look at industry trends and standards with more of like outsider's perspective. And I do think to your point, especially in alcohol, a lot of brands shy away from like embracing color, embracing like fun playfulness. I'm not sure why. Maybe they're worried they're telling the line between it appealing to children or not. That's obviously not our intention. Our intention is creating a brand that represents the community, right? And it is a community. I mean, the rainbow flag is sort of the moniker for the queer community. So I do think where we do have that credence to telling them to color a little bit more. But yes, I wanted to create something that like, popped off on shelves. Right. Like that really drew attention. I think my personal experience in aisles when picking alcohols is that a lot of the brands are like typically two tone, maybe three tone, and their packaging is just very, very clean, very simple. I think that's great. But when you're trying to create a like human, 1 to 1 connection with your consumer, you aren't really able to do that when your brand is limited. And I think that was something that I learned in, in sort of past lives. Working on brand teams at big corporate jobs is that when you do have like stringent brand guidelines, of course consistency is important. But at the same time you do lose that sort of playfulness and connection with your consumer. When you do go down the route of like, let's just be like a pretty esthetic brand that leans into a couple colors.

Grace Kennedy
14:54 - 15:20
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm definitely one to go to the liquor store and like, choose a beer can because I like the branding or I like the design on it. So I think that is also like a way of connecting with your consumers for sure. Is just like, do you connect with our branding personality wise? So in other terms of your launch, this is a more like nitty gritty founder question, but how did you funnel starting this business? How did you what resources did you pull from in order to start a water?

Spencer Hoddeson
15:20 - 18:13
Yeah, we did like a friends and family pre-seed round, which was pretty small. I would say, relative to a lot of other beverage founders that I've talked to. It was definitely built in a pretty like, equitable way. I think we're past the time like 2 or 3 years ago, where you could go and raise like a massive pre-seed round and money was just flowing. I think the climate of consumer funding has unfortunately or fortunately for investors is like shifted quite a bit. So we did a small pre-seed round and really just focused on building the brand as organically as possible, which it was super heartwarming to see. A lot of the brand was built on organic social media, like to date. Past month was our first month we actually ever did paid advertising, and we had built a community of over like 125,000 followers and email across followers, email subscribers. It's our traps. Before we even invested a dollar in paid marketing, which I think goes to the climate of today, the fact that there's so many platforms with comprehensive smart algorithms that can get your product in front of people, and if it's, again, back to you, sort of I have to quickly explain. But I have an ideology like there's brand and there's product, and then the ones that do it the best are at the intersection, right? That's what we're trying to be is have a great product, but have an awesome brand that really brings people in. Because I think to your point, earlier, like, people will see the brand on the shelves and hopefully like migrate towards the brand and pull it off shelves, whereas I think the brand is that first step in the door, because if there's 20 Espresso Martini and a can brands all lined up together, I think consumers get a little bit paralyzed. And that to me is like the product, right? The brand is what's going to differentiate you and really create that connection with your customer and keep them there. Because I think we all have experience, like there's a bunch of hard seltzers, there's a bunch of vodka sodas as a bunch of espresso martini in the cans. I think the brand at the end of the day is what is keeping consumers interested and sort of grabbing for that first, but I lost my train of thought for a second, but that's kind of my ideology around it. So I think building your brand, especially as an emerging brand in the space, is so much more important at this point in time because there, from a product perspective like the differentiation is not crazy, right? Like unless you're completely launching a new product category like the folks at Crooked Owl launching. Hard to say, right? Like that's a completely new product like to us, but not hard to poach, right? So I think like they're more product focused. They have a lot of education around the product to do. But I think from an industry perspective, there's not a ton of like product innovation happening. So it's more how can you build a brand and have a great product side by side with that? At this point, that's kind of our school of Fire.

Grace Kennedy
18:13 - 19:09
Yeah. No, I mean, I think it's so true. And there are plenty of canned drinks on the market. And so people, I think especially millennial consumers, Gen Z consumers want to buy a brand that also aligns with their ethos that aligns with who they are. And so I think it makes sense for brands to really lean into, like who which customer is going to buy your product because your product is also a hard seltzer or is also a vodka soda. So why would they buy yours over X, y, Z brand? And I think Gay water has a very specific mission and community that it's, it's pointing towards. So I think that, you know, as a really successful marketing tool and in terms of getting gay water into people's hands, what has been your approach to leveraging this community of belt to get people to really buy gay water and like, where can they buy it? And I know there are so many rules and regulations around alcohol. So how have you been navigating just. Yeah, actually getting the product out there.

Spencer Hoddeson
19:09 - 23:10
Yes. first, to your point on purpose driven and mission driven brands. Absolutely. And I want to say this for the community and everyone who's listening, millennials more than ever, were a purpose driven brand. Gen Z is even more than millennials. I think it's something like 70 plus percent of Gen Z are only buying from brands that align with their values and and are more focused on purpose driven brands, which I think particularly in the beverage space right now. Like there are very few purpose driven brands. I mean, the only others that I really have come across are like, good Boy vodka. I don't know if you've seen that one, but they donate to organizations that support, I believe, like adopting dogs and support the hunt. But there's very, very few in the space. I mean, even the new and emerging ones like Kylie Jenner just launched sprint are right and that there's no societal impact. There's no purpose behind it. I think her PR bite was like, I wanted to create Ivanka, sort of that. Me and my friends would drink, right? Not disappointing to me that there's no sort of like purpose driven societal impact. And I don't know, we'll see whether or not I'm a little bearish, whether or not that sort of connects with like Gen Z and millennials. But yeah, just want to touch on that. I think purpose driven and mission driven is so important. And having a story behind her brand incredibly important. But to your question, sort of like sales and distribution. So navigating that was definitely a challenge, especially in alcohol. I probably picked one of the hardest, if not like the hardest spaces to learn and navigate, which as you can imagine, I absolutely love because I love learning and I love a challenge But yeah, it has definitely been difficult. We launched day one with Direct Consumer Partner. We actually were the first like we were actually the biggest first brand launch that they've ever had. So quite a bit of growing pains, I would say with that, because they were not sure how to successfully facilitate order fulfillment. So we had a couple delays with some folks and a lot of managing the community and me personally emailing a lot of people. But I think that direct consumer was an interesting channel because in alcohol we you don't see a ton of direct to consumer. And I think what we've learned since then is like it kind of just exists in the background and is always on to it to be accessible and inclusive. And especially as a brand like water, we have to be as inclusive as possible, but learned very quickly that direct consumer was not the way to build a business. It's really around what your sales and distribution footprint look like. So today we have about 70 retail locations were distributed in New York, new Jersey and California. We're in all of the total wines. We actually expanded from like seven stores to 11 to, I think now close to 50 with them, which is awesome. We have a couple big retailers that just green light us that I can announce. So we're definitely hitting that sort of stride. I would say after being in market for about eight months. Yeah, I would say in terms of our footprint, that's kind of on what it looks like. And we are we're really focused right now, particularly with this product lines. Hopefully we'll have future SKUs and whatnot on off premise, because the way it was packaged out and just like consumer behavior, because it is a lighter product, it's a lower calorie, it's much more conducive to like grab and go bring to a party, picnic, being at the beach, more attention based. So off premise makes more sense to us as well as more about 60% of alcohol sales actually happen off premise versus on premise. So we've been a little bit focused more on off premise, bigger retailers. While we're a small team, if we're able to get into kind of larger retailers with more locations and have last point of contact that we have to day to day work with, especially again as a smaller team, it really helps us out. But we have a ton of plans for like we have a whole growth strategy for on premise, for independent retailers, for events and festivals. so hopefully as we continue to grow, we'll be able to build out and execute on those.

Grace Kennedy
23:10 - 23:25
Yeah. Oh my God, I'm so excited to hear you're in the total Wines in New Jersey. Because now when I go down the Jersey shore this summer, I can pick up my water at the total wine. So it works out for me. I'm in Philadelphia, so you know, it can't get you here yet. We're in area.

Spencer Hoddeson
23:25 - 23:26
Which is not too.

Grace Kennedy
23:26 - 23:52
Far, not far. And Pennsylvania has some crazy strict liquor laws. So, you know, I don't even know if you. Yeah, it's a tough state to to sell or buy it, but so speaking though, your growth strategy is how have you been managing the small team versus getting into all these stores, being in California, being in new Jersey, being in New York, how have you been balancing? I mean, such a hard word balancing, but how have you been balancing that growth now?

Spencer Hoddeson
23:52 - 25:41
I'm like a big proponent of like write everything down, make checklists, know a lot of it. I would say there's a fair share of like building the plan while we're flying it. Right. So definitely have been multitasking and late hours and whatnot, which goes into any founder's experience, I think not learning, but like the way my biggest way of managing that has been prioritization, right? It's like why ranking things out? Like, what do I need to get accomplished? What would be like a nice to have? And then what can I push off for for a little bit later? And just making sure that, like, I'm focused on the things that are actually paramount to the business right now because it's very easy to get distracted and want to, like, build this thing over here or run this campaign over here. And at the end of the day, if you're not prioritizing and staying focused, like you're probably going to end up spending too much time on something else that's not going to help or move the needle. So I would say, yeah, that's probably my biggest takeaway, is just making sure that I'm staying on track and prioritizing what's important and what's going to actually help grow the business long term. And in terms of like managing, we have a couple of like sales folks that we just brought on very recently, a small like fractional team designer ops, part time CFO, I don't know. Yeah. Just maintaining like connection points with them maintaining I think again, back to prioritization. That's like prioritizing what they should be working on given their part time. And I have limited resources. So being like, here's five projects. This is the most important. This is do at this time. This would be a nice to have to start working on background. Like I do think life is like. It's all about making sure that you know you're staying on track. I don't know how many times I've said prioritization, but yeah, we're in pretty.

Grace Kennedy
25:41 - 25:42
That's okay.

Spencer Hoddeson
25:42 - 25:47
Whoever is listening would be absolutely wasted.

Grace Kennedy
25:47 - 26:03
Well, you know, it's important and whatever works is great. And how did you decide it was time to bring on this like fractional team or to bring in some people to help you out? And then how did you decide who you wanted to work with?

Spencer Hoddeson
26:03 - 27:22
How did I decide I would have love to bring people on earlier? I think it was just a byproduct of like, honestly, finances. Like we started to raise more of a seed round and money had come through in that respect. And basically for the first like seven months, it had been a full time sales team of one. In addition to operating the businesses, operating our social channels, doing all marketing, production, managing our production run. And so it was very important that I brought on salespeople because sales is also admittedly more of a blind spot for me. I'm not an actual salesman. It is more of a forced function for me. I'm very much the type of person of like, I will pitch you and if you're not interested, like, I'm not going to convince you. I'm not going to like, try to telegraph to you the value of having. I was like, bringing in the customer and sort of making that connection point. All right. I'm going to pitch you. And if you don't see it, then I'm not going to like, twist your arm to make you pick up, you know, queer on queer focused brand. Right. But I also recognize that that is not good, right. Like especially as a founder, like you need to be a salesman. You need to be going in and being like, well, you don't like you don't want to pick up the brand this way. But like, what about this one? And like, what about this deal? And so I was always interested in bringing on salespeople, and I was more a function of just like where we were in terms of the business.

Grace Kennedy
27:22- 27:47
Yeah. That makes I mean, of course, you can't hire anyone until you have the money to pay them. Unfortunately, no, that works for free. Nobody works for free except for the founders. Correct. So thinking of all of the many challenges that come with being a founder, what would you say has been the biggest challenge and how are you working to overcome it? How did you overcome it as you move forward?

Spencer Hoddeson
27:48 - 29:41
I think I've said this before, but I think my personal biggest challenge has always been the the like unsexy part about being a founder that no one really talks about, which is like the crazy amount of stress and anxiety and pressure that is sort of self that like you put on yourself, I am like prior to starting a business, I was like a late sleeper. I was like, I will sleep until the last possible moment. That's not possible anymore simply because this morning, for example, my anxiety woke me up at 630, like my brain was swirling on my cure. All the things I need to do. I'm chatting with Grace today. I have to get prepared for that interview. And that's just, I think not no one. But it's very infrequently talked about like emotional and mental stress. That and pressures that like are self-inflicted as part of being a founder, sort of like the imposter syndrome. This act that I wake up like every other day being like, is this a good idea? Like, is this business going to succeed? Like the fact that I have to constantly like, question that and then also hate myself out part of that, I think, is the byproduct of being a sole founder. So I don't know the experience of having co-founders that, like, you can lean on when you're having moments like that, we can pump you up and you're not doing it yourself. But I would say like the biggest challenge is definitely like this sort of mental gymnastics that that happen that no one else really sees except for you. And you kind of just have to like, be at war with yourself and hype yourself up and convince yourself out of those, like, negative places. I think that I can't emphasize enough, like how much of the experience that it is, unfortunately, because most people shut off at 6:07 p.m. when they're done with work. But as a founder, when it's your business, like you're never shutting off, right? So you can be out with friends and like suddenly start thinking about it and I get stressed and start panicking, and everyone else is laughing and having fun, and you're kind of just standing there being like, why make a game out this? Yeah, definitely.

Grace Kennedy
29:41 - 30:11
Yeah. Definitely challenge. Absolutely. And I think it's such a common experience among founders. And so I appreciate you talking about it. And I think everybody who's listening, who's a founder is probably thinking to themselves, yep. I felt that this morning or yep, I woke up this morning at 6:30 a.m.. And do you have any and maybe you don't. And that's okay too. But do you have any advice for your fellow founders who might be listening to this and resonating with the fact that anxiety of being a founder, the stress of being a founder? Is there anything that's helped you move through some of those moments?

Spencer Hoddeson
30:11 - 32:14
Yeah, I think two main things. One exercise, whether that's like going to the gym or like I call them stress walks. Like I will carve out time in the middle of the day and just go on a stress walk and just like, aimlessly walk somewhere. I'm in I'm in New York, so it's very much an accessible walking setting. I'll just like walk around and like take in the sights, like look at the advertisements that are happening on Near Me on Broadway and really just like, hopefully de-stress myself by the action of walking and also like seeing the world and grounding myself a little bit. And then the other thing I do is like when I have about a crazy anxiety of like, I see this is a I just sit down and create a checklist for myself. And I think pen to paper is one of the strongest tools that you have in your disposal, which is like once you take it out of your mind and put it on paper like it truly is taking part of it out of your mind. So I'd say those are two of the tactics that I use to kind of like get myself out of that place in terms of the like imposter syndrome and like all this fall or the succeed. I think naturally throughout the day, frankly, the more meetings that I have, the more people I talk to it. That reminder that there's excitement around this product and brand kind of naturally shines through. And I think it's hard for us as founders to see. Right. Like I literally have a account that sits right here that I stare at the logo all day and stare at the product all day. So like, there's a natural inclination of not fatigue, but kind of that same idea where like I've looked at the brand and the product for almost two years now, right? And even though it's only been in market for eight months, there is that level of like fatigue. But then, you know, I get an email from a customer or feedback from a customer or I jump on a meeting and someone's super stoked about the product. And I think those are the ways that I'm able to, like, remind myself. Like, there is so much love for k water out there and like, don't feel imposter. Like there are those like points of validation, I think. I mean, more than the person probably saying it or expressing enthusiasm now.

Grace Kennedy
32:14 - 32:39
So yeah, absolutely. And it's so hard to tell yourself that you're doing something meaningful. It's like our brains, for some reason, are unable to give ourselves such positive feedback. But I think that's great advice. All of the things you said. And speaking of people loving gay water, though, what can your fans counting me among them, expect from gay water in the year to come? And also where if people want to learn more about gay water, where can they find that?

Spencer Hoddeson
32:39 - 33:34
Yeah, in the year to come, we have a lot of exciting news. We have new products, we have new a lot of new retail locations, which hopefully we'll be able to announce and new partnerships. I'm trying to think, what else? Yeah, a lot of really exciting stuff. I'm trying to like cautiously be and like thinking of what I can say, right? I can't say not. But like I'm to my point earlier, I'm not trying to like, hold things off and have a big announcement, but I think there is something to say about keeping a little bit of excitement and build up. But yeah, you can learn more about Gay water on our website, Gay water.com or at Drink Water and all social platforms Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook threads. We are going to be launching a newsletter shortly, so that's exciting. But yeah, a lot of fun things to come.

Grace Kennedy
33:34 - 33:47
So exciting. And yeah, everybody should follow you, I guess, to learn more about all these exciting things if you're listening. But this was so much fun to chat with you, Spencer. And is there anything last minute words you want to say to our sort of CPG listeners?

Spencer Hoddeson
33:48 - 34:15
I don't know if this is breaking the rules, but always feel free if anyone's on slack to DM me. Glad to answer any questions about bevel or building community online or anything like that. Always an open resource for new founders. I think it's so important to like, pay it forward. Definitely not coming from a place of like, oh, I'm hardened. Like, I've been in this for so long, but I do want to help in any way that I can. So if anyone's listening and any sort of input, advice whenever always an open door policy.

Grace Kennedy
34:15 - 34:27
I love that. And that's definitely not breaking rules. That's the whole point of slack, is for people to connect and answer questions and learn from each other, and to have this community where founders don't have to feel like they're sitting in a room by themselves all the time.

Spencer Hoddeson
34:27 - 34:32
Sipping about cold DMing on the channel. So I was like, I don't know.

Grace Kennedy
34:32 - 34:42
It's no cold outreach like pitching your product or service. Oh, but you can cold outreach for questions. Amazing. Yeah, yeah. So reach out to Spencer as.

Spencer Hoddeson
34:42 - 35:15
Far as like, please don't Patreon any the amount of, inbound that we get from businesses, whether it's looking for something or not, looking for something, but through Linus, spend money on our platform and spend money on our service, especially as a queer owned business. Like a lot of times it's a non queer owned business asking us to spend money on our platform to reach queer people. It feels with Pride Month coming up, we get a lot of Pride Month related stuff. Sometimes it feels a little, little icky. So please only reach out for for questions.

Grace Kennedy
35:15 - 35:48
Yes, definitely. That is, I think that's important. And important to remember too, is you don't want to make anyone feel like you're just trying to use them to reach a community. That's not necessarily one you have supported. But so that's our call to action of that sort of CPG podcast. But yes, it was so much fun to to chat with you, Spencer, and to learn more about Gay water. And like I said, I'm a fan and I hope everybody gets to discover gay water as you guys expand. And I'm curious to see you know what happens next. But thanks everyone for listening and let us know what you think.

Daniel Scharff
35:48 - 36:10
All right everybody, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast, today would really help us out. If you can leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I am Daniel Scharf, I'm the host and founder of startup CPG. Please feel free to reach out or add me on LinkedIn. If you're a potential sponsor that would like to appear on the podcast, please email partnerships at Startup CPGs. Com and reminder to all of you out there. We would love to have you join the community. You can sign up at our website startup CPGs. Com to learn about our webinars, events and slack channel. If you enjoyed today's music, you can check out my band. It's the Super Fantasticks on Spotify music on behalf of the entire startup CPG team, thank you so much for listening and your support. See you next time.