#169 - "How to Take Advice" with Nikhil Arora

In this episode of the Startup CPG podcast, host Daniel Scharff engages with Nikhil Arora, co-founder of Back to the Roots, an innovative organic gardening company now selling $100M at retail. Nikhil shares the inspiring journey of how he and his co-founder, Alejandro Velez, transformed their initial idea of growing mushrooms from coffee grounds into a successful urban farming business.

Nikhil opens up about the various kinds of advice he has received along his startup journey - the good, the bad, and with an overall focus on the perspective founders should have when hearing or giving advice, acknowledging that companies have very different paths, and what works for one person may not work for another. They delve into the essential qualities of resilience, focus, and adaptability in entrepreneurship, emphasizing that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to building a brand.

Nikhil and Daniel explore the complexities of decision-making in the startup world, referencing Jeff Bezos’ "one-way" and "two-way" doors framework and contrasting it with Steve Jobs’ focus on product innovation. Nikhil opens up about the emotional challenges of entrepreneurship, including the pressures of comparison and the importance of a strong co-founder relationship in sharing the burdens of startup life.

Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion filled with valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned business owners alike.

Listen in as they share about:

• Background and Origin of Back to the Roots
• Key Growth Stages
• Challenges
• Networking and Serendipity
• The Nature of Advice
• Finding Value in Experiences
• The Role of Trust and Collaboration
• Susceptibility to Bad Advice
• The Importance of Having a Co-Founder
• Organizational Structure and Financial Insights

Episode Links:

Website: https://backtotheroots.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aroranikhil/ 

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:

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• Visit host Daniel's Linkedin 
• Questions or comments about the episode? Email Daniel at [e-mail]
• Episode music by Super Fantastics
  
  

Creators & Guests

Host

Daniel Scharff

Founder/CEO, Startup CPG

What is The Startup CPG Podcast?

The top CPG podcast in the world, highlighting stories from founders, buyer spotlights, highly practical industry insights - all to give you a better chance at success.

Nikhil Arora
Every single journey is unique. Just like everyone's life journey, everyone's name it, health journey, relationship journeys, everything is unique. And so there's a reason why a lot of times businesses don't work because if there's one playbook everyone would use it. There isn't, unfortunately. You got to figure out for your path, your category, your industry, your experience level, what it's going to be like for you. And so you got to absorb and take it in. But also know that you're on your own journey. And that is the challenge.

00:33
Daniel Scharff
Hello everybody. We are going back today. Back to the Roots. Recently my friend Nick larora wrote on LinkedIn about the topic of taking advice and it really resonated with me. Nik Hill is co founder and co CEO of Back to the Roots which is an organic gardening brand. They launched it from a $5,000 grant they got in college to now becoming a hundred million dollar retail brand. And for him it was always about really focusing on the North Star and there's just no unique one right way to grow a brand. There are so many different paths and he feels like anyone who tells you with certainty there is just one right way to do this has their own journeys. Blinders on I see this a lot in our startup CPG Slack.

01:16
Daniel Scharff
Everybody wants to help, but sometimes advice is thrown out there without the proper context or with somebody's personal bias of what they do or what they've been through. And I just really want everybody to be aware of when can advice really help you, when can it hurt you and how can you think about taking it. So on today's episode, Nikhil goes way deep into this topic. I think you are just going to love it. Thank you so much to Nikhil. Enjoy. Hey friends, as you know the Startup CPG Podcast has become a top 0.5% world podcast thanks to your reviews. I wanted to shout some out here. Mugsy Bake says we are emerging CPG brand approved.

01:56
Daniel Scharff
They shared they found their food scientist through our Slack channel which you can [e-mail] Barbara from Uncle's Ice Cream says the podcast and Slack channel are a must. She loves the top notch guests and the special offers we bring. Morning Night Marketing said this podcast is a must listen for all facets of the industry. Thanks a lot. If you can rate us go to ratethispodcast.com startup cpg. Thanks. All right Nikhil my friend, I'm so happy to have you here on the podcast. Do you mind starting with a quick intro of yourself and back to The Roots.

02:29
Nikhil Arora
Yeah. Daniel, so good to be here with you and congrats on the community you built, man, through startup cpg. It's awesome to see. My name is Nick Hill. I'm one of the co founders of Back to the Roots along with Alejandro Alex Velez. And we have started off as crazy idea. In fact, we learned in college that you could grow mushrooms on coffee grounds. Turned into an urban farm in Oakland and has since transformed into now America's leading organic gardening company. We have a whole line of organic seeds, soils, fertilizers, grow kits, and just trying to reconnect new generation back to their food, back to the land through gardening.

03:07
Daniel Scharff
And some of those early products that I was really aware of were. Yeah, grow kits, which you mentioned, which is like, you can start with like, at home, you can have this little thing of, you know, mushroom grounds or whatever, water it, and magically all of a sudden, you have awesome veggies in your house, Right?

03:22
Nikhil Arora
Yep. Yeah. It started off with actually the first, like four years. We were just farming like every day. I mean, 6am Till 10pm Seven days a week. We had this warehouse in Oakland, and Alex and I were growing organic fresh mushrooms. And then along the way, kind of realized, like, we want to kind of condense that into these experiences that teach people how to grow their own food. And that's what turned into a whole line of indoor grow kits. And along the way, then, you know, figured out that there's so many more things we can help people grow by expanding that assortment to seeds, soils, fertilizers, and really just kind of no matter how you want to grow, where you want to grow, we want to be that organic solution for folks.

03:56
Daniel Scharff
And these things were beautiful. You could grow your own mushrooms on your kitchen table, and it was easy. And you probably all saw some kind of video about the magic of this, and they're delicious, and it was so cool. But, like, if anybody who's watching the YouTube, Nikhil does not maybe look like he comes, like he's been a farmer for, you know, years. Like, Nikhil, you're young and, you know, you look like an entrepreneur. You've got your Patagonia vest on with your logo on it. So, like, you didn't come to this from a farming family, I believe, Right? So, like, where did the idea come from?

04:28
Nikhil Arora
Yeah, not at all. So, I mean, this is the. I mean, we. We were both undergrads at Berkeley, Alex and I, and we, you know, it's funny, we're four years in to college. We were in the Same classes. I was an undergrad business pol major and Alex and I were in the same class and somehow like never connected. Never actually, like, talked to each other. And then the last semester, a few months before graduation, we're in this business ethics class and a professor brings up this random fact that you can grow mushrooms on coffee grounds out of about 200 people in this lecture. We were like the two, I guess, crazy kids who thought that was a kind of an interesting idea ended up individually reaching out to them, emailing our professor for more information. And he actually connects the two of us.

05:05
Nikhil Arora
I don't even remember where I read this fact, but you guys should probably meet up. And we just hit it off right away and just love this idea of our growing food off of waste. And over the course of the next three months, started watching every YouTube video about how to grow mushrooms on coffee grounds and got, you know, experimented in Alex's fraternity kitchen, grew a little test bucket of mushrooms, got a $5,000 grant from our Chancellor two weeks before graduation. And I still vividly remember this moment, this day. We were on top on Piedmont Avenue in Berkeley. We had just gotten this grant and Alex and I were just sitting up there on this little cement bench and we both just said, hey, if you're in, I'm in. And we both called up the companies we're going to work for.

05:45
Nikhil Arora
Alex had an apartment lease signed in New York and six figure investment banking job offer. You work your tail off for four years trying to get this thing. This is an 09010 heart in a financial crash. So to get that job was a big deal. And we both just said, you know what, let's do this. And yeah, we literally had a tiny 5000 bucks in the first 1200 bucks on this old, old minivan. We spent a few hundred bucks at home, like racks from the Home Depot. Had a tiny little 100 square foot warehouse by the Oakland Airport and just started trying to figure this thing out.

06:14
Daniel Scharff
So. And I know from there you were like going and getting the coffee grounds from Starbucks and using that, like, you know, some of the original upcyclers. And you guys, I know to be extremely scrappy and smart about how you do things, but what were some of the things that unlocked some of the biggest growth stages because you've grown into this hundred million retail brand. That's crazy. Like, what was the thing that got you from those first couple things to then, let's say like seven to eight figures and then eight to nine?

06:41
Nikhil Arora
Yeah. You know, Daniel, I don't think there's actually like one secret sauce. And a lot of it I think is one staying really true to your North Star, right? Your why you got to be consistent on that. The second thing I think ideally is it's just consistency in your who, which to me that means like, who you're doing a wet. And I'm so blessed to have Alex and my co founder. I mean the relationship we have is incredibly special. Can kind of go into that as well, what that co founder relationship is like. But a lot of our leadership team too, you know, our CFO or director of ops, director of sales, and what is for all nearly a decade now and did that kind of consistency of going through the trenches.

07:19
Nikhil Arora
It starts to create such an amazing space of trust where you can move fast and learn. But you know, the other piece around that too, I think it's honestly, it comes down to resilience. Daniel, I'm sure you mean, you know, it's better than most. You see so many companies, like, it is not easy. And Andre, you will get punched in the face. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong. And also is like, are you willing to stay in the game long enough for you to unlock things? And like, you're constantly opening up doors, closing doors, opening up, closing doors. Most people will quit the moment the first door they open up doesn't work out right. But like, can you stay in the game and survive long enough? And it's just.

07:52
Nikhil Arora
I think it's just this relentless resilience to kind of wake up the next day and keep on trying and trying to keep on figuring it out until. And it doesn't sound easy or sexy, but I think that's the truth of it. I think too many people think, oh, it's this one thing, you know, and it's just. It's trying so many different things. And it goes back to this whole theme too, but there's not one way to do things right the guy. There's not one path. It's just like you have to find your own path. And that just takes tremendous amounts of repetition, repetition. And you either enjoy that or you don't. And you know, and the other piece of it too is like, once you start seeing something working, it's just having this ruthless almost focused on it.

08:31
Nikhil Arora
And how do you say no to a lot of other things? And you're constantly. I feel like in a startup there's so many things happening. It's just the world's trying to pull you in different directions and this opportunity pops up this Person emails you like oh that's interesting. And it's like once you see something just like it's just a constant game of trying to, you know, narrow your focus when the world's trying to make you focus on other things.

08:50
Daniel Scharff
So you know, one thing I want to ask is you guys didn't know much when you started out, right? So like did you know that and were you just kind of being relentless and kind of figuring it out along the way or were you actually actively seeking advice from people other than that?

09:05
Nikhil Arora
Professor we knew we didn't know what were doing. I'll tell you, we had. We knew nothing about retail, about food, about ag. Like every piece of this was just has been a learning curve and I think we tried to put ourselves early on and in as many places as possible to meet folks and create serendipity to just to learn and absorb. And it's changed now we're actually thinking now it's the opposite of it right early on in the first handful of years trying to go to every trade show, every conference, every place we could just to kind of absorb and soak up and figure this industry out, you know, of consumer goods and retail. So yeah and I think we've been overall I would say very one that's helped us out is not being afraid just to email folks.

09:53
Nikhil Arora
And I think most people will be surprised how many people actually want to help in this world and want to support folks who are chasing a dream or chasing an idea. And you know I get so many stories I can share but like sometimes you never know where a cold email will go. I mean I'll give you an example which is one of the folks I was so were so blessed to meet. We were. I remember I forget what year this is now but 2013, 2014. But I just finished reading the Steve Jobs biography that Walter Isaac was so inspired by it and this chapters around Jony I've and his and Steve Jobs relationship and Alex and I on a Sunday afternoon 2pm just tried cold emailing Jony I've and said hey love reading about your story. I'd love to introduce ourselves.

10:35
Nikhil Arora
We're working on this new product. We were just trying to launch a second product the Water Garden and it's a home aquaponics kit. And 3 minutes later 2:03pm also my inbox pings back from you know this is Sir Johnny I the most renowned designer. He's basically designed all of our modern life right. And like love to meet but you never know it turned into just an incredible mentorship where, you know, him and his team and we got to bounce off so many ideas with him. And even the way we got in Home Depot was a cold email, you know, and first name. We sent like seven emails. First name, dot, last name, first name, underscore, last name. Just the first time were trying to get off the guy in college, still one of the most renowned in my college is getting Paul Stamets.

11:12
Nikhil Arora
People who are kind of interested in fungi might have heard of him. And we ended up cold emailing him, told him what we're working on, and he wrote back and sent up some spawns, sent us his new book he was working on that had a lot of how to's on how to grow mushrooms. And I just, you know, I think worst case, people don't respond, but if someone does respond, it can change your life.

11:27
Daniel Scharff
So I love it. I feel like that is literally taking a page out of Steve Jobs playbook too. Right? I think in his book, it actually gives the example early on, like his first job of him just picking up the phone and calling someone. Crazy, right?

11:38
Nikhil Arora
Yeah, that's right. I think I forgot.

11:40
Daniel Scharff
I could be misremembering that it's been since 2013, but I think that's right.

11:44
Nikhil Arora
Yep.

11:45
Daniel Scharff
All right. So inspiring in many ways. I love it. Okay, so, Nikhil, the reason that I was really excited to have you here on the podcast today, in addition to, obviously just one of the most impressive ongoing feats of you and Alex building this business into something so innovative and impactful, is you are one of the people that I go to for advice. And, you know, like, I've called you to talk about career stuff. And I just, you know, see you as one of my friends who has the most reasonable perspective on things. And so I pay attention to, you know, stuff that you put out there. And I recently saw a LinkedIn post that you did that I. It was just on the topic of taking advice.

12:26
Daniel Scharff
And I've been thinking about this a lot lately because our Slack community has grown so much. We're at almost 25,000 people. And it's great. It's everybody who's there to help. Sometimes they have their own agendas as well. But in general, people do like to help. I've learned this. People like to give advice. They like to share from what they're doing. Sometimes it can be very unproductive. And it does actually make me worry when I see a kind of a new brand, maybe. I don't know, maybe they're naive. They're like two young kids with a great idea. They're coming in and they're just like looking for help and asking a question.

13:02
Daniel Scharff
And maybe it isn't Sir Johnny who's actually giving them that, you know, 100 level advice, but it's somebody who has their own agenda and they give them a piece of advice or, you know, it's just. So I really want to hear your perspective on advice. What is the right way to hear advice so you know how to take it. What's the right way to give advice? Because you had such a great perspective on this on your post. So handing over to you. Yeah. What is your take on just this topic of advice?

13:33
Nikhil Arora
I appreciate that. And first of all, that's really cool that you just hear the growth of the community. So congrats, man. That's awesome what you've built for this ecosystem. And I think first on how to give advice, I'll maybe start there. I think just. It sounds maybe trite, but I just really encourage folks if you're ever sharing advice is try to preface it with a reminder because you never know who you're speaking to, might or may not know this. It's just like this advice is from my journey and my perspective. Just preface it. Because I think too many times we try to all speak from this position of such certainty that this is the way. And it's like this is just what I did that got me to here. It's one perspective, one journey. Add this into the rest.

14:13
Nikhil Arora
And just reminding folks to do that because it takes the pressure off of the advice. It can help when you're giving. I just urge everyone just to always have that. The humility of knowing that any of our paths, no matter if you think it worked or not, is just one path. And then the flip side of that too is for folks who are receiving advice, you know, it's. There's this, you know, my dad told me this one thing. It's actually a Guy Kawasaki quote. My dad kind of changed it up a little bit. He says like eat like a bird, poop like an elephant, you know, which is this idea of like, how do you like constantly be eating, like taking and stuff, right? That we have to. We're all, we're young in our journeys, I think.

14:46
Nikhil Arora
So I read some stats like hummingbirds eat like 50% of their body weight per day. I could be misquoting that. But this absorb, absorb. But then let most of it go. Like, let's let. You got to like Figure out. And that, and that honestly, is like entrepreneurship, right? Because there's a reason why 90% of businesses fail. Because if there was one playbook, everyone would do it. And there's a reason there is not one playbook. Every single journey is unique. Just like everyone's life journey, everyone's name it, health journey, relationship journeys, everything is unique. And so there's a reason why a lot of times businesses don't work. Because if there's one playbook, everyone would use it. There isn't, unfortunately. You got to figure out for your path, your category, your industry, your experience level, what's going to be like for you.

15:25
Nikhil Arora
And so I just, you know, there's such a just you got to absorb and take it in, but also know that you're on your own journey. And that is the challenge of like, how do you piece together all the pieces out there into what works for you? And, and the main thing, I would just say also, like, ultimately we go back to what we're talking about earlier. What is going to be the biggest key to stay in success and scale? It's resilience and it's staying in the game. And the only way you're going to stay in the game when you get figuratively punched in the face day after day because you make a bet, you put yourself out there and it doesn't work. You get rejected. Get rejected is because you believe in your North Star.

16:03
Nikhil Arora
You believe in whatever that purpose is that's driving you to make you wake up and go through that entrepreneurship pain. Don't let someone take you off of that because that's like, and I would say absorb everything on the what on the how to do things. But like, there's a reason you started something because there was something inside of you which was a purpose of the North Star and just try to hold true to that and let everything else change and shift, you know, And I think for us, we constantly, like at our journey too, like how we've gotten, we've, I think our why has stayed the same, Daniel. Our who specifically, like our co founder relationship, you know, it's been since day one has stayed the same, but, you know, it's better than so many. You've been around our journey since so early on.

16:43
Nikhil Arora
The what that we do has changed dramatically, right? We've sold everything. We sold so many different things. And that's because of advice and learning and this and that. Even how we go to market has changed so much. And so it's like, it's okay to like, let I Guess the other piece is like a. Taking advice is just to have that same humility of like, whatever I'm doing right now is like, I know I'm going to look back. We tell our team this every single year, Dan. We have an off site coming up. We get a whole team together once a year. It's coming up now. The same refrain I've said every year to offset. We know we're going to look back a year from now and be like, wow, we made this and this mistake. Like we know we're gonna make the mistakes.

17:18
Nikhil Arora
The game is now not. It's just being like, how fast in the next year can we catch those mistakes? So like we're all always making mistakes. Most of the assumptions we're making are gonna be wrong. No matter how great your business plan is, it's probably gonna be wrong. So that humility hopefully helps you. Like just listen with both ears. Right. And I think this other piece of advice, and this is just advice and mentorship and it could be board members. It's a skill we have to develop. And how do we speak like we're right, but listen like we're wrong. Right. And I think that's what you have to kind of have like develop that going through this journey so that you're open to new ideas and figuring it out and. And you know, said otherwise too.

17:53
Nikhil Arora
I think to me like one of my definitions in my head and I just think the other day of like, this is a new framework to kind of. It was this idea that like leadership is conviction times curiosity, meaning you have to have a conviction around where you're going. But as a leader, as an entrepreneur, a founder, you also have to have this curiosity of knowing that I don't know what I don't know and how else can I do things and constantly try to marry these two what seem like conflicting things. And that's where I think advice and learning and mentorship comes from. Because you're trying to, you know, you have that conviction, but you also have the curiosity, humility to know that there's different ways of doing things and do I need to change? So I don't. That makes sense to you.

18:31
Nikhil Arora
But I'm does that's what's top of mind to me as. Yes.

18:33
Daniel Scharff
Yeah. I mean it starts with like, yeah, you have your North Star, which I totally agree with. And that is helped me so much with startup CPG of like, what are we doing? If we always just go back to what is the thing that helps the brands, the Most. It makes me make every decision much easier. And so I definitely do that. And then. Yeah, so then you have your conviction, but then, like, the curiosity for me is, like, part always playing true or not true, like, with every, like, as you're moving forward with it, taking in new information that, like, confirms what you're doing is right or tells you maybe we need to tweak this. But, like, you know, you're moving forward and trying to explore it and then, yeah, like, getting inspiration and new ideas and.

19:08
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, I like how you put that a lot, I think.

19:11
Nikhil Arora
Yeah.

19:11
Daniel Scharff
I mean, it's a balance, right, between, like, we're talking about when you are one of these journeys and how do you learn and evolve and get as much information as you can from people and have that inform as you're moving forward. So I think that is very helpful for people. And then I think also just, like, how do you know if it's good advice or bad advice? Is it that, like, how it's actually presented to you? If it's presented in the right way and you hear those great cues, like, hey, this is off my experience, but you should look into this or that. Or are there other cues that should raise your alert of, like, this might be bullshit?

19:50
Nikhil Arora
Yeah, that's a great question. And you know, one hand, it's like, I think it's hard if you put everything in the framework of any advice is just someone's own story, right? Advice is really just someone's story of how I got to where I am. That's ultimately what advice is. So therefore I don't think it's like, good or bad advice. Like we talked earlier, advice can be delivered poorly by, like, just giving with such conflict. This is the only way ever that can happen. That's a bad way to give advice. But, like, advice itself, I think is almost agnostic. Right? So it's like just someone's perspective and journey of what they did in their life. And that's.

20:24
Nikhil Arora
And so I think part of it is then for the recipient to just try to marry that up to, like, is the outcome that this person got to what I aspire to or. And if so, you should probably listen with, you know, a lot of ears or if that's not what I aspire to, that could go in anything, in personal relationships and health and work. Like, because all of us are kind of constantly trying to improve ourselves and get better. And you're trying to basically look at all the examples around us and be like, I like that. How do they do it? Right. So I think the advice is not good. It's not good or bad in and of itself. It's like, is that end game.

20:58
Nikhil Arora
For instance, someone could give you advice, but maybe that what that advice is, doesn't like it would take something that doesn't match with what you're looking for. Personally, I'm just making maybe someone's advice. Oh man, you gotta go out there and do. I grew my brand by doing 5,000 demos for three years straight at farmer's markets. Right. But maybe you speak, you say that to a new parent. They're like that cool. But like that doesn't match what I have my time for. So I need to find someone else who did it a different way that matches what I. So, you know, it thinks our job then to match their end results with what we need.

21:30
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, I think it also, it may depend on what kind of advice you're getting. Like, okay, take the example of you reading the Steve Jobs book. There's a lot of stuff in there. Like you're reading it to learn, which is the same reason that you're asking for advice or listening to it. Right. Is to learn. And you're not getting his playbook on how to launch a business. Exactly. But there's inspiration that you're getting from there. There might be some learnings, like pick up the phone and call somebody if you need something. And I mean, I think sometimes advice can be like that. Like, yeah, oh, this is how I did it. And okay, you're like learning some stuff. But it also can be extremely tactical advice, like, oh, you want to grow in that retailer, then you must do demos.

22:08
Daniel Scharff
Like, okay, yeah, that worked for you. And then there's that curiosity that might lead you to be like, what kind of a product was it? What kind of store did you actually demo in? And what kind of time was it? Was it like my product? Were you doing it this way where that would have actually applied for me? Or like, actually, no, it doesn't even work because that's not our consumer. There are like so many questions you would have to do to get to the answer. But in the end you're still learning a lot of information that could help you at least adapt your strategy.

22:36
Nikhil Arora
Yeah, it's so true. And it goes back to point. I don't think there's no bad advice. It's our job then as the entrepreneur to connect dots. Because you might pick up one nugget, be like, oh, that's interesting. But the demo I make, I did X amount of demos of this Timeframe. But maybe I have a more expensive product. I have to connect the dots with someone who I know is a much more expensive product. Like, I think with a Vitamix in Costco, that's a different kind of demo than maybe demoing like a 399 salad dressing in the store. So how do I start connecting? And I think that's just part of the job of going back to, like, creating your own journey, is that we have to pick and choose. And that's ultimately, I think, what define success.

23:08
Nikhil Arora
Can you put together the, you know, can you connect the dots to create your own journey? But.

23:13
Daniel Scharff
And by the way, both of us should qualify. All of this advice that we're giving people on how to take advice with. This is just in my experience, but something else might work for you.

23:22
Nikhil Arora
Totally.

23:22
Daniel Scharff
All right, check.

23:24
Nikhil Arora
Thank you. Thank you.

23:25
Daniel Scharff
And save us both from.

23:26
Nikhil Arora
From our. Yeah, thanks.

23:29
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so. But, you know, honestly, even just for me, like, man, if I'm giving advice, like, I do give, actually advice in a very public way on the Slack Channel, and there are people who know a lot more than me about a lot of things, but I want to help and give my experience, but pretty much like, someone can call me out if I didn't do this one time. But I'm always like, oh, for your question. Okay, here's what I think. But there are people who know more, and here's a person that might have a different perspective on it because the truth is almost never in, like, one exact answer, but, like, maybe in the middle of a bunch of different perspectives, and it's almost never one gatekeeper that has all of the answers locked up, that can give those to you.

24:07
Nikhil Arora
That is so powerful, Daniel. If everyone could do that, it changes the game. If you're like. And society needs what you just said, Daniel, like, just like, as in, hey, this is what I think. But here's someone who did a different way. And there's probably some truth in that. Right? Imagine, I mean, it's true. Imagine if our political discourse was like that. This is what I believe. This is why they believe that you figure out your own decision. Right. Versus saying, this is the way. This is the one truth. And I think there is. Life is great. I love that. Yeah.

24:32
Daniel Scharff
And I just love people who acknowledge the complexity of things, too. I did a podcast with Jamie Valenti Jordan, who's an ops consultant, and he was like, yeah, look, if you're talking to a co manufacturer and they tell you, we can do that, it's no problem. We'll Just deliver this. Like, maybe worry about that. If on the other hand, they're like, yeah, look, there are always issues. We think that we can deliver this based off this, and then there are going to be problems and we'll solve those together. Like, that's a more reasonable person who acknowledges they don't have all the answers. Like, that, for me, is the kind of person I want to work with and learn with and partner with.

25:06
Nikhil Arora
Yep.

25:07
Daniel Scharff
I know you've been through your fair share of road bumps.

25:10
Nikhil Arora
Yeah, yeah. There's anyone who promises a straight path is, Has. Hasn't gone down the windy roads themselves. So there is no straight path. And I mean, the one thing we. Man, you go back to the journey. It really is. So much of it is just this humility of like just continually being like, what am I doing wrong? What could be missing and trying to figure out and getting ahead of it before those mistakes and unknowns put you out of business, you know, and. Yeah.

25:35
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so let's talk about good advice. What is some good advice that you've received along the way? Do you remember specific people just hitting you with some truly epic advice at any of these stages? And if so, like, who were they and what did they tell you?

25:51
Nikhil Arora
Oh, man. Yeah. This is a. So much, so much. I'm trying to even try to bucket some of these. Some of them are delivered specifically. Some are more by example, you know, if you. I'll round off a few that come top of mind, just I think starting from the why, you know, when I've been fortunate to call him, you know, went to Brucey Berkeley, friend, mentor, Michael Pollan, who's just really pushed us on our North Star. Always like not deviating from that and making sure we stay true to that. And I've always really appreciated that advice and push from him of just like questioning and digging into how we're doing things and you know, and. And then that's much more like a nuanced push and conversational advice. Right.

26:33
Nikhil Arora
Then I think of, I mean, John Fork or, you know, former CEO of Annie's now Once Upon a Farm. I mean this is much more specific and tactical, but it really shaped how we thought about development for a long time as he shared this product development framework which was just this idea around like a pyramid around optimizations, extensions, big ideas and their cadence, by which how they thought about obviously companies with huge SKU counts and multi category how they thought about the cadence between frequent optimizations, you know, extensions, big ideas. And I remember just like that was so tactical, so Clear. And it just stuck with me. Like, it's literally imprinted in my mind as we think about, hey, like what are we working on for each of these lines from these three perspectives?

27:11
Nikhil Arora
And that's an example of just like a conversation and specific advice. I think of more general advice, like a framework. I go back to the. You know, to Jony I've. And he remembers questions. Okay, what do you consider what drove so much of your success and Apple success? And he's. You know, I remember his answer so clearly. He's like, it was the power of focus. But then he said. He said most people were able to focus by saying no to bad ideas. That's easy. He says, when you can. What really got us here is saying no to really good ideas that you really want to do. Because, like, you can only choose a couple of things. Remember, even early on this just like a steel deal. She was a former might still be the CEO of Urban Center.

27:50
Nikhil Arora
She just talked about priorities one, two and three. Once you get to number three, don't go number four. Go back to number one. You have three things you can only focus on so much as the business. And we've really tried to like I think some of the mistakes we've made is when we try to do too much as a company and we. I think what's the. In recent years if we've gotten built much more muscle memory around and weekly agenda on our leadership. Weekly leadership is what are we saying no to? What are we saying no to? And sometimes there's things you really want to do, but they're just. It's not worth it. It's not takes. This takes time. I mean Gary Hberg from Stony Field Farms, he was one of our angel investors. He constantly was just. All he cared about was cash.

28:24
Nikhil Arora
What's your cash position? What's your cash position? What's your cash? And just kind of burned it. Cash is king. It's queen. And like that kind of feedback. So, you know, I share some of these as in, like, there's different ways to give advice. Whether it's through a relationship and constant questioning if something is direct. Like, here's how we did it. As in like, you know, John's product development kind of framework. And some are just lying to just stick with you. Like beating something in your head about just cash, cash, cash. Nothing else matters. I don't care. Anything else is where you guys at. And so yeah, so many like that. But there's. There's some that come top of mind.

28:55
Daniel Scharff
Daniel all right, well let's now get into the juicy stuff which is what's some bad advice that you've gotten along the way and we don't have to name any names but do you remember any time somebody is just done it the way that you don't believe people should give advice and has actually led you to do something that you regret, whether it was like a marketing investment you ended up making or a business strategy or you know, a dynamic about the culture of your business or how you would work together. Just anything that you remember.

29:25
Nikhil Arora
Yeah. I think probably the worst advice I've gotten glad we didn't take was one of you guys have to be CEO. There's Alex and I heard that a lot early on and I think now it's become one of our my guiding playbooks for who was the kind of energy one around us people who understand this is one. This is our secret sauce and something that's so such a special relationship or don't but if early on I mean it was unique model. So that's probably the number one and most important thing we did not listen to ever.

29:51
Daniel Scharff
And just maybe you could explain to everyone how that works for you guys being co CEO.

29:55
Nikhil Arora
Yeah, we're both. I mean we're both co founders. Co CEOs. Which means, you know, while we both have unique responsibilities for the brand, for instance sales and finance which Alex oversees product development and marketing on my side operations we kind of touch in different ways myself on the commercialization side, his side on the S and OP processes. But ultimately if there's a decision has to be made for the company, we have to both agree on it. Right. So that means we have to. It's just very unique. And I think up to now it has been the single most important thing in this journey is the relationship we have in the way and I think it is.

30:29
Nikhil Arora
So when you can create space I think what is so rare and I realize is when you have to create the space with somebody which you have both respect and vulnerability. Respect meaning trust. Vulnerability. Respect me. Alex is the smartest person I know when it comes to it just curiosity his intellectual and you marry that though with trust around shared intent. And like I know he wants the best for me and this brand. And then you layer on just a relationship that creates space for vulnerability. It creates this really cool space where like you're always. You can disagree and debate ferociously but you know, you're never actually debating the person or the and it lets you. When you marry like respect then every time we Disagree. I'm not trying to convince them. I'm asking myself what am I missing?

31:20
Nikhil Arora
Because he's the smartest person I know and I know you the same intent. So what am I missing? And it creates such a cool space for just debate. I'm sure some of our team people who join early on, they'll see us debate things and they probably think we hate each other because how fast we're able to like bounce things off and communicate. But it's because we have this relationship of trust and let's just say they think move so fast as a team and it's very rare to have that. So I know longer answer but like if you could find that to somebody who's starting something right now, if you can find a co founder where you have that respect and that trust to create this like really cool space of vulnerability and openness, my goodness, it is the most powerful unlock for you. So.

31:54
Nikhil Arora
But yeah, it's a unique relationship but that was one which early on a lot of people questioned along the way, especially as you're raising our first capital like our angel in series A. I think as we've grown I think enough people now realize that this is, it's a team here. But you know, I think other than like that's probably the worst advice because that's the one thing I hold most dear and true that I know as a fact. Everything else is different ways again of doing things right. Like we, it's just so many like. I mean the first advice we had to disagree with. There was a really big name entrepreneur who was interested investing back to the roots.

32:25
Nikhil Arora
Early on we just had our farm and were just launching our mushroom kit and I remember were thinking we wanted to go out there and go from a farm to creating kits and this person was just dead set that is a terrible idea. No one wants these. You guys should instead open a farm in every major urban metro. And again, it's not a bad advice. It just is. It was bad in the thing in sense of it didn't fit with our aspirations for how we wanted the brand to be accessible and be in every. Because we knew that path would take some X journey of time. And were like this thing, this brand can.

32:56
Nikhil Arora
So again that was probably the most the first time early on when were like man, this is someone who has tremendous experience opened up hundreds of retail locations telling us that we're doing something wrong. And we had to eventually kind of listen to our guts which was like we don't we just don't. We enjoy this more than that. So ultimately like we have to enjoy what this is. And that's not bad advice. It's just like we had a challenging piece of advice, but not bad advice.

33:16
Daniel Scharff
You know, it's like, yeah, it's funny to think about because like, yeah, you could have done that and then who knows, you could have had a billion dollar company. But like, you never know. And I mean, obviously it's easy to say like, well, you guys have been so successful that what you decided to do was the right advice. But also like what you did was not always destined to work out as well as it did. Like, okay, we're going to do these grow kits. Like, well, yeah, those got you part of the way. But then you had some incredible like, the way you did it was excellent. You guys are just so focused on execution and data and like, you know, just making, ever maximizing everything.

33:49
Daniel Scharff
But then you did some incredibly interesting pivots and expansions, you know, maybe using that framework you were mentioning that like none of that could have been considered in that original advice and which way you went, it just was like you guys being the entrepreneurs that you are and then just like being in the barrel of the opportunity and you know, exploring it.

34:11
Nikhil Arora
Yeah, no, yeah. And one door opens up to doors you couldn't imagine. So it's just that you just got to. And there's, you know, there's, it's such a balance, right, of like long term planning versus just executing on the operating ahead of you. Because at our size, companies in this ecosystem we're talking about, every new door is going to open up doors you can't even see yet, you know, no matter how much you try to force, you know, how much foresight. So it's this balance of like, you know, you can't fully. I mean even Jensen from Nvidia talks about this. He's like, I tell my team like three, five years out, like, you just execute now and let's see where it takes us to. And it's this balance, right, of like there's such so.

34:49
Daniel Scharff
And also being the kind of person to recognize those doors when they do open and knowing how to take advantage of them. Right?

34:55
Nikhil Arora
Yeah, that's one of my favorite frameworks actually. It's not advice I've been given personally, but that I absorb as I'll talk about other piece of advice. We're such a cool space now. There's so much information available to us, right. And people you can learn from. And this information is so out there. But I know one I love reading Jeff Bezos letters. One of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time. And he basically puts his framework, his mentality out there once a year he did until his last letter. And you know one of the frameworks I just, it's totally stuck with me was the one way and two way doors. This idea that too many entrepreneurs get stuck making decisions because they think it's a one way door. And 99% of things are two way doors.

35:32
Nikhil Arora
If they're two way doors like that's leadership is recognizing it's a two way door. And if it is like let your team run and run with pace to try to figure that out, you know. And our job is to figure out what are one way and two way doors. You can't mess with a one way door. But if it's too like you gotta be able to open up doors and quickly check but also have like the ruthlessness of not being attached to things to close them right away. And I think he's killed so many things right that they've launched. Amazon's launched so many products that they've killed even at Apple which is just known for being the opposite side.

36:01
Nikhil Arora
I always think of how I think Alex can talk about this back to the reason we're trying to actually be this in between a Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos from a mindset where I think of Jeff Bezos as a million products they've launched. Steve Jobs is enjoying one thing but I think we don't have the capacity to do one just that limited like a Steve Jobs because that's a big bet that if that goes wrong you're out of business. Apple can obviously, you know they just did that with their whole car project on how much billions they spent 10 years and they just killed their car division. Right. Like we can't afford that but you also don't can't afford this total spray and pray that's resource sucks.

36:33
Nikhil Arora
So it's like what's the right media between these two mindsets that we try to always like ask ourselves and but yeah there's also this advice doesn't have to be something given to you personally. It's also what do you absorb.

36:43
Daniel Scharff
You know it's really interesting to think about that like in the case of Apple where they don't make a lot of new stuff especially at least from a hardware perspective but when they do it is likely to expand your pocket because like oh I didn't used to have to carry headphones everywhere but now they have AirPods and I do want them in my pocket at all times. And then. And the iPhone, obviously. And then, oh, now I need to have the watch and I need to have that all the time because it's so useful. And I don't know, maybe they miss occasionally. We'll see about like the Vision Pro or whatever. How much. I haven't seen that adopted too much yet, but maybe I don't know a lot about it. But yeah, whereas, yeah, I mean, yeah, testing and learning quickly. I love that.

37:24
Daniel Scharff
I love that concept of like, yeah, maybe we'll do that if it doesn't work out. Maybe we're not in too deep where we can't just learn from it. So. Okay, Another question I wanted to ask you is what kind of people or founders do you think are the most susceptible to bad advice? And I'll tell you, at least from my perspective, the stuff that's been the most damaging is like, I think, okay, I worked for somebody who I think they knew a lot about, let's say the space, but didn't have a lot of specific experience. And somebody that they really revere said, you have to do it this way. They told me that, okay, I just trusted that we had to do it that way and it cost us so much money and was a terrible strategy.

38:07
Daniel Scharff
And so I think it was sort of a trickle down of like, of people who didn't know what they didn't know and like, not really seeking the other perspectives and just kind of blindly following the advice of somebody that they respect. What do you think? Other. Other examples of people like that who might be really susceptible to just, you know, taking bad advice and acting on it.

38:28
Nikhil Arora
I think two types of things to be conscious of. One of them is if someone is in it not for like a true purpose, but just chasing money or they want that excitement, you know, like, because if not, you're gonna be pulled to so many different directions so quickly. Right? So like, you really gotta, like, have you. I go back to that North Star of like, why am I in this? Because if you don't have that fully, and I've seen folks who don't really, they're kind of, they're curious by the little thing. They're doing it here and there. They think it could be something fun, make a few bucks, you're gonna get pulled in every different direction and you're gonna get whipsawed and it's not gonna last.

39:03
Nikhil Arora
Like, you have to have the conviction around why you need to exist and why this has to exist. In the world. And because I think no matter what do we say, Dan? Like, you are going to get whipsaw in different directions. You're. Because by. When you're starting off, like you're gonna go this path, it's not gonna work and go, oh my gosh, I should have done this. I should, I should've been dtc. No, I should've gone to retail. No, I should have gone to like national retail. No, I should have gone to farmers market like you were. It's gonna happen. And so that's. That will drive an entrepreneur crazy. If you don't have something steadying you to be like, this is why I'm like waking up every morning, you know, because you can't sugarcoat it. You're gonna.

39:33
Nikhil Arora
Whatever your business plan is, whatever advice you take is gonna be probably wrong. Because most companies go through multiple iterations of business plans to figure out what works. Then you're gonna try the other thing out and try something else out. So like, it's almost, you gotta have something steadying you number one. And number two, it's like you have to, there's too much. You have to have some ability for long term thinking and steadiness in a world that is increasingly trying to make you feel FOMO and like, I mean, the CPG space, you're gonna see, oh my God, this brand just raised at this valuation. They've been around for one year. I've had these feelings, oh my God, what are we doing wrong? They just came out. And two years later, it's this valuation, this sales. You don't know what every brand's going through. Right.

40:17
Nikhil Arora
I mean, you've seen this enough now where brands can come skyrocket two years later, out of cash, out of business. I see enough of this now where I've kind of gone. Some of that experience, like you just got to stay your course, take what you're going to believe and keep on going. But I think if you're, if you get distracted by that kind of things and that goes back to like all this. It's this fine balance of taking advice, taking inspiration, taking example, but knowing you're on your own journey. And that is just, I don't know, it's like you have to really feel that and embody it. Because if you, it's so easy to see like, oh my God, how come I'm not like that brand or that company or look what that founder is doing.

40:53
Nikhil Arora
And it can drive you crazy and you can start chasing things that aren't true. To you. And so it's, I mean, I feel like this call and all this discussion we're having, Daniel, actually like boils down to the core of what makes someone a good entrepreneur or not, right? Like, can you, I go back to the idea of like, can you balance some kind of conviction, long term thinking, steadiness with that curiosity and example, pulling and inspiration, you know, because. And that's just like the challenge and just try to land that plane every single day of like, am I the conviction to do what I'm doing, but the humility to know that I don't know what I'm doing and I need to learn from other people?

41:29
Nikhil Arora
Maybe you have to pivot and change and it's just like it's a fine tightrope you're trying to balance. And I think it is that tightrope that is why so many startups don't make it in so many things. Because it's so hard. Right? And you. And every day, like right now we're looking at some other, you know, we're looking examples out there of trying to figure, hey, should we be doing this like them and trying to pull examples but not change who we are? I don't know. It's just, I feel like that I'm not trying to make it feel not clear, but I think it is in that uncertainty where entrepreneurship lies of conviction and curiosity for doing something a different way.

42:05
Daniel Scharff
I know what you mean and I can relate to this with thinking of so many examples. And I guess maybe this is an unrelated question, but it just occurred to me, which is when you've been a solo founder, solo entrepreneur, you inevitably will come across a profound sense of loneliness when things are going tough where you're like, I'm the only person who cares about this thing this much. Even if you have, you know, friends around, employees, whatever it is, like ultimately it is you and you will feel that way, especially when things are tough. When you have a co CEO the whole way and a partner in it, does that help you not feel that way or do you guys feel that together about the rest of the world?

42:45
Nikhil Arora
We feel that together about the rest of the world. But I'm so grateful I have someone to share that off of. Right? I can't tell you, Daniel, how many calls. Alex, I would do this. Friday evenings or weekends are like, man, like what, a week? Or what? You know? And no matter who else is around you, there's a certain level of vulnerability, obviously you have with yourself if you're a sole founder or you have with a co founder, co CEO because you're on the same exact level. There's no different expectations of an investor or a team member. No matter how close you are, there's still a little bit of a different relationship. Right. And therefore vulnerability and space you can have. So to have someone you can totally just be so vulnerable with and let your guard down kind of takes the pressure off.

43:24
Nikhil Arora
And I go back to and I have full admiration hats off for those who can do it and scale it as a solo founder because it is hard enough with somebody else who you can trust to do a wed alongside. So I honestly like I so much respect and hats off to people. But I also will share that it is that much harder to do it by yourself. So if you're starting something off like try to convince somebody else to do what I often talk about. If you can't convince somebody else to do it with you, maybe there's something else. Maybe there's a bigger issue here. Right. If some no one else wants to kind of do it with you. So how do you like maybe make that your first stake in the ground to decide if you want to launch or not?

43:55
Nikhil Arora
Like hey, can I get someone else who I trust and respect who wants to kind of take this dive with me? I don't know. Just a thought but I so much respect man for people who do it solo. But you look a lot of the main brands I know around me, most of them are have at least co founded. Maybe they don't have co CEOs but at least have co founders who can share some of that burden. Whether I could, I understand the co CEO piece is very unique. That's even more you. But even just co founders, if someone might be a CTO or a CEO or whatever that relation but like there's a certain vulnerability that you can have with each other, you know.

44:23
Daniel Scharff
That's beautiful. Yeah, I love it. And so just kind of getting back toward like advice for early founders. First of all, I would love if you could answer this question of you guys have been incredibly successful. You know, you're 10 plus years in. You guys are just such a huge brand. You've worked so hard and creatively to get there. Looking back, are there a couple big mistakes that you really feel like you made along the way and maybe you had to make them to get to where you are, but if you really could just have gone back and just taken a completely different direction a couple times, are there a few places you can think of?

44:58
Nikhil Arora
Oh my goodness. Daniel. Yeah. So many, I think start the earliest. Earliest. I think were too inspired, let's just call it by the Steve Jobs approach of like, everything has to be perfect. Alex. I remember just like long nights trying to work on every little letter and comma on our packaging copy and this and that. I look back then like, whoa, I need that. You need that product market fit. No one even wanted this stuff that you're the first version of the mushroom kit. And I was here. I was. We were trying to obsess over. It would just like get things out there, like make sure people want it before you try to optimize things. You know, like, you can always spend a lot of time on that.

45:32
Nikhil Arora
I made the flip side of the mistake on our second product when we launched the home aquaponics system, the Water Garden on Kickstarter. We launched it too fast. And the member we had. We raised. Oh man, 250,000. We had $100,000 goal. Daniel in 30 days. We had 250k in that 30k window. Then did another almost 250k on our website in preorders. I mean as a small. We were ecstatic. And then we had put these goals out for Kickstarter. We have to. We were in deliver by this date and I think we just thought that everyone actually cared. You know, like some of you think you're more important than you are. You think people, you know, like. And looking back, we're like, we should have just pushed it back 60 days and no one would have cared. Like people lives go on, everyone's busy.

46:11
Nikhil Arora
And we just thought it was like, no, we got to deliver and we end up rushing the product. We almost went out of business because of that. Because our pump was overheating. We had tested long enough and the whole everyone like literally thousands of orders, 90% of them came back of like my users are working. And it was this massive just issue and cash suck. And like literally almost went out of business after this high of highs of oh my God, super successful 5x or Kickstarter goal to almost being out of business because of that. Like, because we rushed it too fast and thinking everyone, you know, so it's this balance of like I made both sides of mistakes caring too much and caring not. And so But I think I've learned a lot more just do it right.

46:47
Nikhil Arora
Most people like anyway this humbly stating we are not Coca Cola. And you know, if Coca Cola changes their logo, everyone freaks out. But we're not Coca Cola. You know, as in like people aren't living and breathing by. So, like, we should have waited. We should have waited. There would have been totally fine if we had pushed things back.

47:01
Daniel Scharff
And I wonder if you had taken that dilemma to somebody for advice, if they would have like somebody who you know has been through it before, they would have been like, it's cool. Just tell them it's gonna be a little late. What are they gonna do?

47:12
Nikhil Arora
It's chill. It sounds so obvious now. Actually. I've had so many people who've done Kickstarters and reached out for help. I'm like, just get it right. Get it right. No. 1 I wish, man. The other big one, I mean, you know this so well with this community. Just the true cost of going to business. We have lost millions over the years, right? Of on things that we did not expect. Going through distribution, margins, shelf life, write offs, trade spend, guaranteed. Oh, my goodness. Just amount of retail expenses that I didn't know. You try to account for them, but sometimes you don't know the true cost for them. I wish, I mean, looking back, if someone told me, whatever you think your margin is, cut it in half. Just business. Cut it in half. Don't. I don't even know how it's gonna happen.

47:51
Nikhil Arora
Just cut it in half. Because some. There's things that are gonna happen that you have no idea yet. They're about chargebacks. You can't even imagine product quality. You can't imagine everything. You've also learned, man, mistakes, just things always are worse in the real world. I become much more conservative, Alex. And I'm both in our planning and our forecasting, which the last few years, like, I think reflects on how we've done in our financials because we've become so much more conservative and assuming things will go wrong. I think before we had more of an optimism. This is. This is a very different example. But I go back to that Water Garden product. I go with some of these early products taught me so much. That's why I'm going back to some of these. Like, that was a foundation for a lot of this.

48:24
Nikhil Arora
But like I remember we had this issue on our first. We had launched the Water Garden from Kickstarter. We launched it into like the huge launch. Nordstrom, Petco and Whole Foods. The first time we had a grocer, a home store and like a pet store launching the same item at the same time. It's a really cool launch. We're super excited. Million Dollar Skew, you know, right out the gate. And we started getting feedback that the handle on it Pretty heavy unit was like breaking. We got all this feedback and like. And we're like, man, how did. And then so went back and did all this testing, redesigned the handle. I mean, I remember were walking around like a mile at a time in Oakland, twisting it, shaking it. We're like, all right, this is good. And then, like, it must be.

49:00
Nikhil Arora
It can't be this design then, you know, sure enough, it still breaks in the marketplace. And it's just like the real world is always 10x more insane from a than you think you can imagine from just like a ecosystem pressure, whatever that means. Right. Like what consumers are going to do your product and this and that and. And now we just had de risk so many products. I'm like, I am putting no more handles on anything because I don't care how well you try to design it and you test it out. Like, if it rips, no one's going to buy that product. Right. So how do we, like, design products now where there's like, I try to fix all those mistakes. Like, try to now design products that don't have to be perfect, you know, or experiences they don't have to be perfect.

49:35
Nikhil Arora
I'm trying to design with the worst. I've almost become much more pessimistic, Daniel, based on those mistakes. I'm pessimistic as in, like, things will go wrong and how do we chatting ahead of them. But yeah, I mean, those are just some of them that I could go on and on. But yeah, probably. I like.

49:47
Daniel Scharff
I like that. Yeah. Maybe that is also somewhat Apple inspired. I feel like Apple stuff almost never breaks. Like, something went wrong with my iPad the other day. I'm like, no, this must be a setting that I hit because this stuff never actually just breaks, no matter what I do to it. I remember also.

50:03
Nikhil Arora
Yeah.

50:03
Daniel Scharff
Our friend Jamie Valenti Jordan, he'll like, people are like, how do you test this stuff? Is it like through some lab and you like, really rigorously do it? He's like, put it in a box and throw the box across the room a couple times and see what happens.

50:15
Nikhil Arora
Totally.

50:15
Daniel Scharff
If it's good, you're probably fine. So, yeah, man. Some of those things you just can't predict too. Except you can predict that some stuff will go very wrong. Like whatever your budget is. Yeah. For your ops product, you're going to have to throw away. It's going to be more.

50:29
Nikhil Arora
It's going to be more and just assume it. And yeah, so those are something that come top of mind. But I can probably could probably go through every. I mean we over. I'd say I think early on we over hired way too many senior leaders before we knew what were exactly doing and had fit for. And I think now, you know, the flip side is we're a super lean team. Pretty flat organization and one of.

50:50
Daniel Scharff
But you like you. I know. I think you've talked to me about this before. You like it that way, right? A little bit leaner, tighter team. You feel like you can be more productive, more.

50:58
Nikhil Arora
Yeah. And I want to be more nimble. The part that has hurt the most in this company is when we make a decision and it doesn't work out. We want to do layoffs a few times throughout this journey. Like we make bets and they haven't worked. And that is the part that I beat myself up over the most. And I bring someone this team Alex and I like that is a commitment to us that we want you to be here for 10 years with us. We think like that's this you're going to grow here with us. And people are making big leaps or leaving jobs or sometimes moving locations and then to not have that work out and they can, Sorry, like we made the wrong bet. Like this role doesn't need anymore. Like that it sucks. And so we've tried to become much.

51:32
Nikhil Arora
We've gone through it a few times and now we're just trying to. We try to make sure like is the thing that we're hiring for repeatable. And we're seeing it repeat over and over again here. We're okay now when you bring this in house. So like right now we have a very. We do what we have work with a lot of consultants, a lot of agencies right now. Because I want to like until things become so repeatable for so long, I'm like, all right, this now has to become. This can become an in house thing that I know isn't going to dislike strategic. Because there's some strategic shifts going to go away tomorrow. Right. And I don't want to whipsaw people.

52:00
Nikhil Arora
So yeah, we err on the side of that now just to make sure we're leaner because our stage still your strategy can shift tactics and shift a lot. Sometimes you just, you know, just want to be able to stay nimble to the marketplace.

52:12
Daniel Scharff
All right, Nico. I think we've covered some incredible ground on this. This advice just for me personally has been super helpful. I thought maybe we could just end on kind of a fun personal note, which is one of my things, one of my favorite things about you is your birthday tradition. Do you mind just sharing with everybody what you do every year on your birthday? Which I've gotten to participate in a couple times. And I'm sad I'm no longer an sf so I can't join you for it anymore.

52:38
Nikhil Arora
I'm so happy you were able to join and hopefully one of these years you can join again. Just. Yeah. So it's a birthday tradition actually inspired by my grandfather. He had this idea about walking birthday miles where I think he. He was somebody who was always very optimistic and trying to get better every year. I think he was always just frustrated by this idea of like everyone gets older. Like woe is me, I'm getting older. And he tried to push himself and so he had this idea where he'd walk his age in miles and he walked his age in miles until 40 and then he switched to kilometers. And it's a story I kind of heard about as a kid growing up. But you know, sometimes you hear things isn't fully. And then I was very close to him. He lived india.

53:12
Nikhil Arora
I used to visit him a lot. He'd come out here and he passed away in January, five years ago now. My birthday was in February and I think just as I spent that time reflecting he was about his life and we had just passed. I was like, let me. Can we try to carry this on? And so I think I was. I walked 32 miles that year and had friends like you who joined for different legs of it and we've continued it. So last year we did 37 miles. Beautiful like all on SF like along the water, over the Golden Gate Bridge and back and started last year we started at a. This, I guess this February. We started around 4am I got two little boys now, so I have a new goal to get up, make it home before bedtime.

53:49
Nikhil Arora
So we started at like 4 and got, you know, down at 5 or 6 or something. And it's just a really fun chance to remember him I think, you know, shared time with family and friends, people who want to join for a little bit, just be outdoors and becomes strangely meditative somehow walking that many miles or after a while your mind just automatically clears and you just focus on the next step. The next step. And yeah, it's become a fun just tradition. Trying to inspire myself and folks around just health, wellness, trying to improve every year become, you know, I don't know, it's been fun. So I hope to continue it for a few more years to get to where he got to, which is 40 or 40 under 40 or 40 miles of 40. And then we'll see where it goes.

54:26
Nikhil Arora
Maybe go to kilometers like he did.

54:28
Daniel Scharff
Amazing. All right, thank you for sharing that with everyone. It's such a beautiful tradition. Thank you again for being on the podcast with us here today. Thank you to everybody for listening and probably doing some interesting reflecting on it. And please let me know what you guys took from this. Send me a message. Let me know if there's anything in particular that struck a chord with you or maybe helped you take some advice from other people. And I hope that all the advice givers out there please keep helping people and wanting to help, because we need way more of that. And maybe also just, you know, think about the impact that it can have and how can you best deliver it with all of these good intentions in mind so that it can have the effect that you want it to have.

55:09
Nikhil Arora
And Daniel, can I. I know we're wrapping up here. I'd be remiss if I did not say one thing, which is sending you a big thank you. You have given me so much advice over the years and did some. We've worked together on pricing and just go to market strategies. I remember even our seed launch. We spent a lot of time together. And that's how I appreciate you always being a sounding board, too. And just this, yeah, you've not just given people, this community so much advice, but what you've given Alex and myself a lot of advice too. And I'm grateful for that. So I appreciate you.

55:38
Daniel Scharff
Thank you. I appreciate that. I still think I learned more from you guys while I was trying to give you the advice, but I. I'll take it. All right, thank you so much, everybody.

55:49
Nikhil Arora
Thanks, Daniel.

55:51
Daniel Scharff
All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. If you loved it, I would so appreciate it if you could leave us a review. You could do it right now. If you're an Apple podcast, you can scroll to the bottom of our Startup CPU podcast page and click on Write a Review. Leave your company name in there. I will try to read it out. If you're in Spotify, you can click on about and then the star rating icon. If you are a service provider that would like to appear on the Startup CPG podcast, you can email us at partnershipstartupcpg.com lastly, if you found yourself grooving along to the music, it is My Band, you can visit our website and listen to more. It is super fantastics.

56:30
Nikhil Arora
Com.

56:31
Daniel Scharff
Thank you, everybody. See you next time.