Entrepreneur Intel

In the highly competitive beverage industry, differentiating your product is key; a strong story paired with an even stronger omnichannel strategy is a recipe for success. Here to help entrepreneurs refresh their strategy is Co-Founder of Key Sparkling Water, Mike Pilkington!

Mike and Wes sit down to crack open the secrets to success in the food and beverage world. Mike shares his lessons learned from Deathwish Coffee, the importance of hiring a HR partner early, and why you need to know your brand’s story. 

 
Takeaways: 
  • Success in entrepreneurship is all about the people. It’s one thing to have a vision, but it’s another to take that vision and bring others together around it. A good team that drives greatness is crucial. 
  • Extending your passion to your employees is the secret to scaling a small business. When your employees are as passionate about the mission as you are, they feel ownership of results and work hard. 
  • An HR partner is an essential early stage hire. When your HR partner is aligned on mission, they will hire people who are stronger fits, and will help make a cohesive company culture. 
  • Every company needs to have a culture of accountability. Whether it’s about owning client deliverables or taking out the trash, you want employees who say “I’ll do it” rather than ask “who will do it?”
  • In a crowded market, knowing your brand story is what will set you apart. Understanding what makes you unique, why a customer would buy your product, and the problem that you are solving for them will help differentiate your company. 
  • Understanding where your customers are is key to your distribution strategy. While many consumers buy beverages off a store shelf, DTC allows you to better control your narrative, and platforms like Amazon give you a wide reach. 
  • When you are running an omnichannel strategy, it’s important to stay consistent across all channels. While messaging can vary by channel, it’s best to keep pricing and promotional details consistent. 


Quote of the Show:
  • “We weren't selling coffee. We were selling a way you felt every single morning. We were selling a movement. We were selling camaraderie.” - Mike Pilkington



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Ways to Tune In:

Creators & Guests

Host
Wes Mathews
KC
Producer
Kyle Conover

What is Entrepreneur Intel?

Welcome to Entrepreneur Intel, a podcast where we discuss the most important strategies for success from amazing entrepreneurs. Host Wes Mathews sits down with business owners to learn about how they got started running their own business, what helped them succeed and the biggest lessons they learned along the way.

Be sure to catch new episodes every Thursday morning, and to make sure you never miss out on any insights, don’t forget to subscribe to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, You Tube or wherever you get your podcasts.

This show is sponsored by Stealth Consulting, your Fractional CMO. Stealth provides the roadmap and accountability to reach your business and marketing goals. Learn more at https://stealthconsulting.com/

Wes: So I'm super excited for today's guest. Uh, he is a food and beverage industry founder who knows how to create brands consumers love. His corporate days, he spent time as VP of sales, leading sales teams to over 600 million in sales. Then moving on to two, uh, two companies as president, he helped grow Death Wish Coffee to the top 20 coffee brands in grocery stores and Amazon.

And grew revenue 4. 25 times in three years, uh, resulting in a nine figure company of Death Wish Coffee. He is now co founder of Key Sparkling Water that he started up July last year. There's a lot here that we want to touch on. Corporate, entrepreneur, founder. There's so much to dive into. Welcome Mike, Mike Pilkington.

Mike Pilkington: Thanks for having me, Wes, looking forward to talking with you.

Wes: Oh, happy to have you, man. Thanks for taking the time. And so Mike, before we jump in, I got to ask you, uh, reading your intro, you you've had massive success on both sides of the coin, right? I think there's only a couple of paths people can take in their life, which is corporate, entrepreneurial, and now you're in startup.

So let's say three, which is pretty awesome. But, uh, So far in this life, like what's the most important lesson you've learned thus far?

Mike Pilkington: Well, I will tell you that is a fantastic first question. I don't think I've ever been asked such a heavy hitting first question. So I appreciate the challenge right off the bat. But I think to articulate in the most simplest way that it's all about people. And I have found that you cannot have success in spite of people that has any level of sustainability.

So whether I was working at an operating company where we had. You know, 400 people. Or when I started with Death Wish, I was employee number 30. I think that theme resonates throughout. So I've seen people, and I've been very fortunate to be around a lot of spectacular leaders. And I've, I believe, consider myself equally as fortunate to be around leaders that I would have done things differently.

And I think that if you have the ability to have a vision and you can bring people along with you in that vision, and then therefore you don't have that ego to think that it's the greatness is going to come from you, that it comes from the amalgam of the people you surround yourself with. I think you have the opportunity to have success in any, in any path you choose to take.

Wes: So what's crazy? Well, I don't think it's really crazy, but I think I've, I've been fortunate to have some really cool guests excited to have you here today. And I think one of the common themes that I keep hearing from everybody, it always goes back to people. And, you know, but I want to go back with you because you're really interesting because you hit that trifecta to me, corporate, entrepreneur.

Um, and now like startup, I mean, it's crazy. I mean, in my experience, typically people kind of go down the traditional, they want to go work for somebody, go to college, get that good job. Right. And it's kind of go down that path. You know, at some point you made a massive shift with that, but what kind of, like, I guess I want to dive into the, what made you switch gears?

Or were you kind of like, I think I'm an entrepreneur, but I went down this, uh, you know, traditional path first. Or what, what, what did that look like?

Mike Pilkington: So I think it's been for me a journey of kind of self exploration, trying to figure out who I was and growing up in the Midwest. You know, you have this mentality that you work to get into one of the big three auto companies and you put in your 35 years there and you have a fantastic life for you and your kids.

And frankly, I started out to some degree on that path, getting in with Cisco very right after, as I was finishing my MBA. And I did that for 15 years and I realized that I felt like I had more to give. And I felt like in that corporate environment, And this isn't a negative statement to me. It's more of a statement of observation is that, uh, you were limited by the amount of yourself you were able to give into this huge organism and see, see the, the benefit coming out of the other side for yourself and for others.

And when I had the opportunity, uh, to, to. work with Deathwish, it was one of those things where I looked myself in the mirror and said, I wasn't going to be that person in 10 years that saw this amazing brand on shelves at every grocery store in the company and have to wonder to myself, what, what could have been if I would have taken that leap?

And through that journey, I I'm on record saying a few times that Mike Brown, the founder of Deathwish, who's a spectacular man, But, uh, him and I are very different in, in almost every way. And I'm on record saying that, you know, I can't do what Mike can do. I don't have the ability to be that founder, but what I do have the ability to do is I have the ability to build world class teams, empower them to extreme success and hold them accountable.

Like I can do that. And what I found through this journey of self exploration, mostly through, you know, Death Wish is that, You know, I do have the ability, like it is in me, not only functionally to start my own thing, but also, um, I have the passion, the drive to want to better myself and to create things that the world can enjoy.

So if like, if you would have asked me in 2000, February 28th, 2005, when I started with Cisco, if I would be talking to you today about my career journey, that has taken me in these three different, uh, verticals, I would've told you, you were absolutely crazy.

Wes: So just to be clear, cause there's Cisco like computers or whatever. This is Cisco food, food distribution company. Uh, I think hub data Detroit. So you look like a relatively young guy. Like how old are you when you take this position at Cisco in the corporate world?

Mike Pilkington: Oh man. I was 2025. I was 24 years old when I started with Cisco and I was able to have success very early in my career. And I really attribute that to really two things. The least of which was my ability to, you know, I had the ability to learn. I had the desire. I had the work ethic. I wanted to be whatever my version of great was at the time, but really what allowed me to achieve certain levels of success early in my life was I was surrounded by people that understood that their success came from developing others to be great.

So I had a list I could name off the top of my head, 10 mentors that were extremely impactful to who I became as a professional. So, um, I, I, you know, I mean, succinctly reiterate, I had the capacity and I was aware enough to know that I didn't know everything. And I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by people that were great developers with humans.

Wes: Well, I think it was really cool how you explain, you know, just like you're building a team, the systems and process. Because I think in the entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial world, the world I live in. Yeah. You know, when entrepreneurs go out to start their company, they typically have an idea, they kind of have passion, but then you have to build the thing.

Right. And all these things have to come together. And what I learned kind of took me a while to learn was like, you need that number two, or like that COO, somebody who does the systems. So it's almost like. All great visionary entrepreneurs need that partner to kind of help that company kind of get to the next level.

And, and, you know, from my experience, it's like, you know, you hear this adage of, you know, an entrepreneurial company needs to become professionally managed at some time, uh, because a visionary entrepreneur can only take it so far. Um, so that's really cool that you were able to identify and know that, but then also have the visionary entrepreneurial mindset.

So thank you for that. But going back like Cisco food. So you see the inside of just, I mean, from my perspective, I mean, Cisco is everywhere, like any restaurant, any food, it's like Cisco trucks are everywhere. Like this is a pretty large company. Um, I would imagine globally, or, uh, at least in the United States and

Detroit.

Mike Pilkington: Yeah, it's huge. Last time I looked, it was a 65 billion company. I haven't looked recently, but I think, you know, what Cisco, okay. So if I think about transferable skills, what I'm able to use today that I learned from that extremely rigid corporate environment. Cisco is extraordinarily complex, S Y S C O, in that it's extremely transactional.

And I could go into that forever. But what it allowed me to do was compartmentalize that business into five pillars. Which then I always knew that if I always had leverage pressed against those five pillars, if I was always working to solve these five aspects of the business, I was able to move this entirely complex machine forward.

In an environment where, by the way, you know, you can go look and see what they make, but if you were making, you know, you're making single digits, if you're making high single digits from a pre tax earning perspective, you're doing something great, right? So you really learned really two things for me was.

Really how to functionally set up those pillars and lever against them to make sure that you had strategies applied or executable, but also the ability to manage an extraordinarily tight P and L I think is so valuable from an entrepreneurial mindset where every single dollar matters.

Wes: So how did Deathwish coffee come about? Right. Was this something that, you know, like a vendor partner or somebody you kind of met with that you found interesting along the way, or like, how'd you, how did that come about?

Mike Pilkington: So full disclosure, the day I met Mike Brown, I had never spoken to another company about potentially leaving Cisco. Mike Brown came into my building here in Albany, New York, and he was exploring the opportunity to distribute his newly founded, uh, RTD, uh, beverage through food service distribution. And at the time it was pretty evident to me that his company wasn't at the right spot in their evolution to enter into that world.

And I told him that very directly and in a way that was constructive to allow him to build his company up to a point where it did make sense. From that point, he got in touch with me six months later and he's like, I don't know if you remember me. I'm like, of course I remember you Mike. He's like, I'd love to talk to you.

So about, for about a year after that, we, we met at night in the corner of bars and we put plans together and we thought about how we could make this work together. And it got to the point where I think both of us were like, um, you know, he said, I'll never forget, he goes, I'm in a position now to make you an offer that won't embarrass either of us.

And I was at the point where I had, I had seen enough and could see the future well enough to know that this wasn't an opportunity that I was going to pass. So by meeting Mike, uh, while I was at Cisco, exploring the opportunity to partner together in a whole different venture is how him and I kind of came together.

Wow.

Wes: that? Right. I mean, I, I think I have some friends that are, you know, friends I'm an entrepreneur. They're not, I think we're very different, but to kind of take that safety or that paycheck, right. Cause it's either you kind of start as an entrepreneur at some point along the way, destiny kind of positions you like with your, with your example, but that's kind of scary too, right?

Cause you're like, Hey, I'm leaving this, you know, I don't know if I want to call it a cush job or a great paycheck, but. You know, you're kind of getting pulled. I mean, I think you did the smart way where you're kind of like, you really vetted it out and spent a year of your time, but if you, you know, and that was what year when you did that? So 19, so you're talking about four years now, like, I'm going to ask this question. I know the answer, but like, you don't regret it. Do

Mike Pilkington: Oh, not for a half a second. So here's a kind of, so you're talking about risk, right? And so. This is a semi controversial thought that I have. So you have a significant faction of people, especially entrepreneurs and extremely motivated people, that have that burn the boat mentality. We landed on that island.

We're burning that boat. We're never going back. So we got to find a way to make this work. My brain works differently. My brain says, And one of the things I think I'm good at is I can calculate risk really quickly in almost any scenario. And then what my brain says is that if I can live with that worst case scenario, if I can live with it, I'm going, I'm like, I'm going, it's almost like you ever hear Jeff Bezos talk about the one way versus two way door concept.

Like that, that's kind of what it was for me. It was like if I know what that worst case scenario is and I can live with that outcome, I'm going for it. So for me, very directly with Cisco, what was the worst case scenario? I had spent 15 years building a reputation of having success in extremely difficult environments.

I worked in the environments that nobody else wanted to work in. And that was kind of my way to, you know, cut my teeth and show that I could do things. I knew that if I failed at Death Wish, the worst case scenario was I'd go back into food service, make a great living and not want for anything. Like I knew what that was.

And so I was like, all right, let's go.

Wes: you had that mental safety net, right?

Mike Pilkington: safety net, yeah, that's a good way to think about it, Wes.

Wes: so why like Deathwitch coffee or like what turned you onto that? Right. Cause again, it's coffee. I look at it, right. 2019, this is pre COVID. But it's coffee, right? Like you've got Cisco, you've got probably multiple brands of coffee. You've seen a lot, but you've got this guy, Mike Brown, who you think is a good guy, that's got this vision idea.

Like what, what move, what, what finally like moved you over that finish line to like, go, I mean, were you just, yeah, I'm really curious.

Mike Pilkington: I didn't drink coffee at the time. But we weren't selling coffee. Like, we were selling a way you felt every single morning. We were selling a movement. We were selling camaraderie. We were selling I mean, go look at the Facebook page that just follows a coffee brand. Like we were selling a way to feel about yourself, a way to feel with others, and then functionally a way to get going.

I think what Mike Brown did differently that no one had done it, coffee's been around for 450 years and he was the first person to differentiate coffee by caffeine content. As crazy as it is on any level of scale, as crazy as that is to think. So, um, for me, it was way more than coffee. It was, frankly, it was a badass brand that had its own vibe.

It had its own pulse and our vehicle to reach consumers just happened to be coffee.

Wes: Did you see in that, in that moment, like there's obviously some infrastructure within that organization or like. Was he like, man, I just, I I'm hitting a ceiling. I just don't know where to go. And just like the light bulbs went off for you. Like, man, this is right in my wheelhouse. And like the puzzle pieces just came together and the stars align.

Or

Mike Pilkington: Yeah, Mike has a lot of strengths and one of them is self awareness. He is extraordinarily self aware and he knew that he took the company as far as his skill set could take it because, you know, functionally him and I have opposite skill sets. So, uh, you know. I looked at myself in the mirror and said, what he needs, I am extraordinarily qualified to do.

And so it was, it was, it was a perfectly, it was a perfect marriage. And through that, you know, I was able to kind of grow my understanding of this CPG space. So I think for everybody involved, uh, from an organizational perspective, it was a positive outcome.

Wes: you guys had massive growth. I mean, so if I, if I look at it again, my brain only computes visionary, entrepreneur, passionate, has an idea, gets company to a point. Hopefully at some point they have a realization that they've only got it thus far. I mean, I actually went through the same exact thing, but then you have to bring in a number two.

I hate to say number two, cause it's not really number two, but you're bringing in somebody polar opposite that you get along with that has obstability, uh, team growth, like all this stuff that most visionary entrepreneurs lack. And then you see this company just catapult. Like, I think it's so important for entrepreneurs at any level to understand that.

This goes back to the original thing you commented on about people. It's always about people, and you can only get things so far yourself. And that's been a common thing on the podcast, my life. So what Like, do you, do you remember going back to that moment? Like, what were some of the first things you did?

Like you, you start day one and you're like, let's go.

Mike Pilkington: Oh, that's an amazing question. And, um, you're not going to believe my answer. The first thing I did, like the very first thing I did, and there's a group of Death Wish people that can attest to this. Uh, I walked into my first day of work at Death Wish. It was seven o'clock in the morning and the ceiling caved in above my office.

Entrepreneurial life, right. It had been raining and the people we rented it from didn't keep up on the roof. So I spent the first half of the day with my brand new teammates, right. I was the new scary guy, and together we cleaned up ceiling tiles all over the floor all day long, so can wet. So that was the first thing we did.

Um,

the, the, the second thing I did was. And to some degree, this is the benefit of scale, but I spent time with every single person in that company and I tried to understand why they were there. And what I learned was, is that Mike Brown was able to extend his passion and everybody assumed the same level of passion for this brand.

Like if I brought you into a meeting, you wouldn't be able to tell if you didn't already know who owned the company. Because everybody cared about it so much. Everybody worked so hard. Everybody lived it. Everybody wore it. So, I mean, like literally wore it. So, it's like, um, the first thing I did was try to under, after I cleaned the floor up, was try to understand what made this company tick.

And I realized really quick that I had magic in front of me and it was my job not to break that cultural magic.

Wes: Well, it sounds like you came in with the right attitude too. I mean, on one hand I could see a COO coming in and being like. Yeah, you, you pick that up, right? But if your team sees you in there getting nasty, cleaning this up, they're like, all right, this guy will go to war, um, and, and really help us grow the company.

So as you start to kind of project that, I mean, you guys had crazy growth, crazy scale. I mean, was it just, you know, I'm really curious around that because. You guys have massive growth, like so fast, you know, and that's, that takes infrastructure.

Mike Pilkington: So, I think what we, like, how would I articulate it is, is that we had. Composed chaos. So the first hire that I made Like I said, I was employee number 30, but effectively 20 of those people were working down in our production facility, making coffee every day. So really running the business, there wasn't that many people.

So the first hire that I made was for an HR business partner because I realized is that we were going to need to scale up in an extremely authentic way from a people perspective that didn't break this cultural gem that we had. So making sure that we found the right HRBP to help us scale was extremely important.

And we did, we did find that. From that point on, we, uh, hired, I don't want to use the word professionals because that's disrespectful. We hired people that, um, spent the majority of their careers, In the disciplines, in those verticals, whether it be operations, whether it be sales, whether it be marketing.

And one of the things that I asked them very directly to do was these people that were originally there, there were five people, four people, Mike plus four, that really started the company. One of their main roles was to continue. To develop those original people to be the professionals they want to be.

So we didn't bring people in saying, hey, like they're going to come in over you and they're going to run this. No, no. We brought people in that have done this before, that have the ability to develop those people to where they wanted to go. So, And I, and I think we had a lot of success doing that. So, like I said, the first hire was the HIVP because I knew that, you know, this person was going to have to sit right next to me.

And, and, and we were extraordinarily prescriptive with every single hire as we went down. And, you know, when we think about what it took for those people to come on board is that, you know, they had to have, A scrappy mentality. Like, I don't care if you've been at Cisco for 15 years, running, um, running operating companies.

If the ceiling collapses, you have to pick up the floor with the team. So if, you know, we were looking for people with the right type of egos, with the right team mentalities, with, you know, human beings that didn't take themselves too seriously, human beings that got their professional enjoyment out of developing other people and watching other people succeed because understanding that that's how they succeed.

So we literally built this team prescriptively piece by piece with culture, scrappiness, the ability to develop others, you know, this, this, these criteria that we felt were very important to maintain the culture as we grew rapidly. Because I think if you do that, That controlled chaos, that composed chaos, it doesn't feel like it.

It's just what we did. We just grew. That's what we did, Wes. We just grew.

Wes: So it sounds like you, you had some home runs with people. Like, is there any like tips and tricks that you were able to implement to make sure that you got the right people in the right seats? Cause it seems like that's one of the most important things

that you did to help grow the scale of this company.

Mike Pilkington: On the way in, I think we had conversations like you and I are having right now. We had very honest conversations. The analogy that I used with every person that I brought on that came from a more traditional corporate environment was there's going to be many times when you look around this building and you say, who's going to take out that trash?

No, I'm going to take out the trash. Who's going to go clean that? Oh, I'm going to go clean that. So if there was any fiber of your being that thought you were beyond these activities, you didn't have the ability to be part of this, uh, wonderful rocket ship. You just didn't have that ability. And frankly, um, and here's the beauty of hiring the way we did with the attributes in mind that we did.

We made mistakes. When we made mistakes, we didn't have to call them out. The rest of the team held us accountable for not having the right person in the right seat. And so the adage of failing quickly, I think, um, as you're building a business that is, you know, from an entrepreneurial perspective, that small, these small little tiny ecosystems are so extremely fragile that small little ripples create tidal waves.

And so the adage of failing quickly, I think is so important. Because you can break the entire machine if you don't bring the right people on and then if you realize you made a mistake If you don't fix it quick enough

Wes: So earlier on, when you're sitting in the court of the bar, writing a plan, I mean, did the entrepreneur, Mike Brown guy from death wish, was it always a goal to like, let's, let's scale this in three years and sell this company like, or did that naturally just kind of happened because of you guys grew or was it very clear on the onset?

This is, this is what we're doing.

Mike Pilkington: The number was eight years The number was eight years and we had all of these things lined up that We're gonna tip over and one of the things that we want to do is make sure that everybody it was able to share in The success and what happened was is that we grew so fast And the PE world was so aggressive that, um, it was a situation would have been foolish to not take risk off the table.

So essentially instead of eight years, we did it in two. Uh, so

Wes: I love the fact, like in my experience working with COOs, cause I'm like a crazy entrepreneur and I just want to grow, grow, grow, shove more at it. Right. And they're like, well, we'll pump the brakes. If I'm like, Hey. It's going to take eight years. I want to do in three. Normally COs push back because they're like, we're not ready.

Or we have to follow a process. How was your mindset? That's probably where you're very entrepreneurial. And you're like, Hey, like, let's just figure it out.

Mike Pilkington: Well, we saw where we weren't like we, we, like we had so much data and we did the right things. We, we were a data driven business and we made really good decisions and we could see what was out there in front of us. And we're like, all right, how fast can we go forward? Bye. Bye. that was responsible enough that we wouldn't break other parts of the machine.

Because you think about the word, I mean, I don't love the word omni channel, but we were a true digitally native omni channel business. And we started getting into the world where if you start messing with pricing over here, pricing matters over there. And we were a unique, unique brand. Whereas, um, uh, we were able to, we were able to behave in retailers.

In very large retailers in way other CPG companies didn't have the ability to. So it was really important for us that when we had our Amazon strategy, that it married our D2C, married with our D2C strategy, that married with our retail strategy. And they were three very different parts of the business that we were managing at the exact same time, trying to keep the whole thing together.

Wes: How hard, how hard is that product space? I mean, I guess, I don't know. I guess I don't really have a clear thing of what I'm kind of asking it against, but to me, Man, there's a lot of noise in product, Amazon, I mean, Kroger, like, I look at my family, like, my wife's got stuff coming from Costco, Target, like, how do you, how do you even compete in that space, especially coffee?

My dad still drinks, like, the instant dissolve stuff, like,

Mike Pilkington: That's an interesting question. So, uh, the answer is that it's Great coffee, by the way. The answer is that it's extraordinarily difficult. And really what you're competing for is you're competing for attention. And, uh, the interesting part is, is that Working with Deathwish, we were able to participate in, uh, an extremely large study with one of the, uh, largest consulting firms in the world.

And what they did was they looked at what they called insurgent brands over the previous four years. And they had certain criteria. They had to grow X times category. They had to be 40 million in sales and a few other criteria. But what they did was they found that there are five pieces of DNA that are present in all consumer based.

Businesses that have the ability to disrupt categories and then ultimately win. And I think that was check those boxes. But, you know, the first one that comes to my mind as you talk about, think about how hard this space is, is knowing exactly who your consumer is. All of these companies that disrupted, they targeted this person.

They knew their name. They knew what they did on the weekends. They know everything about them. And they didn't worry about all the noise and all of the shiny objects. They were extremely focused on that core consumer. And I think, you know, starting with focused on your core consumer, what problem, what unique problem does your product solve for the consumer?

You know, there's, you know, I think there's a roadmap out there that if you pay attention to people that have done it well, it's repeatable and that's really what we're trying to do with QI. Yeah,

Wes: so much, like, I'm, I'm gonna turn 43, but if I re like, I just went to Vegas, two, three weeks ago, the week leading up to the Super Bowl, and I'm with a group of guys. And one of them brings a non alcoholic, right? It's like, you got to try this. It tastes like a real beer.

And I'm like, bullshit. Like I was younger, tasted old

duels and stuff. Tastes like rat piss, right? Or whatever. Sorry if anybody's an old duels, but I tasted this thing and I'm like, oh my gosh, like I'm not a big IPA guy. Like I just, it gives me a headache. I don't really like it. And this was an IPA, like non alcoholic beer.

And I'm like, this is pretty good. And you know, and I just see like how my kid, like everything's so different. And things are changing and moving so fast. You know, you have all these like, uh, what was, I saw White Claw that tastes extremely terrible in my opinion, but then all of a sudden like High Noon comes out of nowhere, right?

And it's like, wow, like it takes off, like where before it seems like things would take 15 years to take root. Right. You see these charts where it's like all these old school companies and 30 years later, they start to grow. Now it seems like brands come in overnight and just like moonshot and kind of leads into the next kind of segment, right?

You got the corporate side, you know, working with death wish. So you guys do your thing. You guys exit. And then you are co founding a key sparkling water. Talk, talk, talk about that. You, you were like, Hey, let's grow your own.

Mike Pilkington: Yeah, it's pretty good. So I think what we did was because of, you know, like our learnings over the previous years, like we can see very clearly how to do this. Like we've seen what makes people successful. We've seen what that skate ramp trajectory of growth looks like, that many brands that we think are overnight successes actually ride.

You know, one of the, one of the brands that I'm a huge fan of. Dude wipes and they're huge and they're everywhere. Right. And they're competing in a, in a category where no one thinks that you can compete in. And they didn't happen overnight. Sean Riley and his team had worked their butts off to make that thing as successful as it is.

And so we've, we've kind of seen what great looks like and we feel like we have the ability to emulate great. And I think, you know, there's, there's a few why's for why we chose to go down this sparkling water road, but you know, Not the least of which is this is going to be an 80 billion industry in the next five years, and there's not enough people that are doing anything great to be able to fill that space.

But you know, I personally quit drinking two and a half years ago now, and my whole thing was I wanted to quit drinking before my doctor, my family, or somebody else told me that I had to. And I think that this whole, this um, sober slash sober curious I think Mintel or somebody said that something like 60 percent of adults are looking to at least cut back in their drinking.

And I fully predict that in the very least our kids lifetime, that alcohol is going to go the way of cigarettes and, you know, kind of be socially scorned because we're literally putting poison in our bodies every day. As an aside, just to be clear, I am not anti alcohol at all. I'm very pro alcohol. All my buddies still party their butts off.

It just wasn't for me. And, um, you know, when I think, when I thought about kind of my journey and all the problems that are particular, what Key Beverage solves for the consumer, it was like, oh yeah, the market needs this. There are still problems in a 30 billion industry. We think we're uniquely qualified to solve these problems for the consumer.

Wes: Now, being through, like, the big food service company that's just a massive giant in the industry, you're with Death Wish, and now you're entering the sparkling water space. Like, how do you go about doing that? I mean, are you looking, like Is that like seed capital? Do you look like for venture partners or, I mean, do you go into it?

Like you're going to do all this yourself or like, walk me through that thought process. We have so much experience on both sides of the coin, but I think a lot of people that are interested in starting something, like I got, I got good friends that own dealerships, car dealerships, and I've asked them like, could you do this again?

Right. Like if I had the capital, like, could I buy a dealership? And they're like, no way. Not happening, you know,

Mike Pilkington: so if your question is about, like, how we are doing this and how we are funding it, I think our situation is slightly unique, whereas, um, we've been very successful over time, so we're self funding the first portion of this journey. We're actually right now, um, meeting with our attorneys to put together kind of a more medium term funding plan, so we can really take this thing to the next level.

So, um, essentially we've done it ourselves, so we took out a lot of that complexity in the beginning. But I will tell you that, um, Should we not have wanted to go that route? We have found that through our relationships and just understanding, you know, really your local community, there are so many people that want to be involved financially in the business.

It's absolutely insane. And the amount of times we've had to say, you know, no thank you. And, or we'll talk to you in the future. Uh, again, gives us great confidence of our ability to scale this business.

Wes: so why water? I mean, you mentioned a little bit about like, there's, you just see an opportunity, but you know, you've got, like I said, like just for me as a consumer in general, regardless of the product, like there's a lot of noise in the space or there's nothing that's like great. Like I'm just drinking tap water out of the fridge.

You know, like I've tried the traditional, like, look, I like Perrier, like Perrier is kind of good, but. You know, like there's plastic bottles. I drink it. It's not good. Then it's good. And like a little can, but there's just so much out there. Like, what is, is it that you just know from a brand perspective and how to penetrate that intention, then water made the most sense or like

Mike Pilkington: Well, we felt like there's huge gaps. So I love conversations about crowded categories because I think we, we look at categories and say there are many competitors. Therefore we call it crowded without really thinking about what those, what differentiation those competitors bring to that space. So when we think about key sparkling water, we solve some very direct problems for the consumer.

The significant, uh, uh, the, the largest portion of sparkling waters are made with natural flavors. And a guy at a show we were doing last week told us that they all taste like you're eating a strawberry that's attached to a battery. I don't know how he knew that or like how he got there, but that's pretty good, right?

They got these like chemically tastes and they're heavily carbonated. And it's like, they're trying to get, and they're all the same. And what we're seeing in the consumption data is that they're traded across, so there's no differentiation. You know, I mean, whether it's a bubbly or a LaCroix, I put those in cans and I do a blind taste test with you, unless you're an avid LaCroix or bubbly drinker, you don't know the difference.

And that's the majority of the waters, uh, the sparkling waters on the market. Very few of them are made with real fruit. Real fruit is more expensive to make. It's more complex because you're dealing with crops, but we believe that it, it, it brings a much better product to market. It is very different drinking a sparkling water that's flavored with real fruit than natural flavors.

So we feel like as people are thinking more about what they put in their body, you know, we can't in copy use the word Google, but like, we don't want you to have to Google what, you know, you're putting in your body and people are paying attention. The majority of the sparkling waters on the market are, Uber caffeinated.

Not some of the ones you mentioned, but like the ones I mentioned, as well, as well as the majority of the set, they are so caffeinated. While carbonic acid being introduced into water helps those flavors bloom in there, right? So they're using natural flavors, they're using a lot of carbonation, and what we're finding is, is that that's a turnoff for a lot of people.

It leads to bloat. For someone that quit, for someone that quit drinking, and all my buddies still do, like I need to be able to have something I can drink for an entire college football Saturday, right? So, um, We were very careful on how we crafted the carbonation to make it easy to drink, make it so you can drink all day without the bloat.

Like I want to be able to go to a party and drink more than one and still have room for food. This sounds like a commercial. It's not. What I'm sharing with you is how we think about differentiating ourselves from a very crowded space by most people's opinion. So we use real fruit. We have what we're calling, you know, the right amount of bubbles.

You know, what the heck are natural flavors? And then the other part is, is that like, my partner and I were standing in Target one day and we're looking at the aisle and we said, every single one of these are talking to the exact same consumer. Uh, the, the cans are all pinks and pastels and airy and bubbly.

And they're telling me it's like, Ooh, happy. Like every story. And there was very little differentiation between by, uh, through storytelling with any of the brands. That's why we said, okay, like I want brand, you know, I want a brand that'll speak to me. Again, going back to one of the tenets of DNA for Insurgent Brands is knowing exactly who your consumer is.

Because knowing exactly who your consumer is will allow you to market to them and bring around the people in their periphery. So when 55 percent of according to Mintel people, I think it's 55 percent of males consider themselves head of household in terms of shopping. Like we're trying to talk to them in a way that's nostalgic.

Like I want you to look at our can and I want you to think about a Pabst Blue Ribbon or some old school nostalgic emblematic branding beer company. I was at my daughter's softball game one time and there's this big burly man wearing a, um, Wearing a big Carhartt jacket, sitting there with a pink can.

And I'm like, man, there's so much opportunity in that one picture right there for me to tell a better story. So, um, not only, you know, do we, uh, drink our product like crazy, we had the need for ourselves. We very directly see a huge gap in this, in this market. And I think we're doing a good job of filling it right now.

Wes: So as a strategy, like, you know, I mean, Amazon's the behemoth, right. In my opinion, I order, I mean, I always default and go to Amazon first and search. I pretty much set my prime four and a half stars and above. You know, but then, you know, obviously like locally in Michigan, there's like Kroger, you have Costco, like what's, what's the strategy.

Is this to get it in as many households direct to consumer, or is this a business that, you know, you hook up through distributors and then they sell it through that way

Mike Pilkington: So yes, so we're solving this on three fronts. So for us to be able to get to scale, we have to be on shelves. This, this, this segment of consumer exists on a shelf. So getting us on shelf gets us scale, gets us our cogs in order and really allows us to fly. We began with our seven habits of highly effective people begin with the end in mind.

So we began with our cogs, our finished, you know, our cogs in mind. So we know as this thing continues to go, we can be extremely profitable at scale. So, but to get the shelf, you have to be able to tell retailers stories about why it is so successful. So we originally launched on DTC to allow us to control the narrative, build our email list, talk directly to our consumers and tell the story. A few months later, we launched on Amazon because that allows us to be in the world's largest retailer. People don't go to Amazon looking for fill in the blank sparkling water. They look for sparkling water. So you need to be. In that aisle, proverbially speaking, right? So that's why we're there. And those two things in conjunction.

Um, allow you to tell the story as you sit with buyers about why they should be compelled to put this on their shelf. Through our experience with both Cisco and with, um, with Deathwish, we've been able to forge some really good relationships over the, uh, over the course of that time. And Coburns is one of those relationships that we forced, uh, forged.

And what's awesome about that is, is that they're one of the banners out there, retail banners out there that Uh, want to be first to market with innovative new products. So they were willing to take a risk on us. So we're kind of out of order a little bit, Wes, in terms of how we're able to grow this brand.

Brands at our stage typically don't get to the shelf the way we have. Uh, but we, we found a retail partner that shares our vision, that, that loves to incubate and, uh, After a month and a half on the shelves with very little brand equity, we're doing spectacularly.

Wes: That's awesome. So you mentioned partner. So what does that look like now for you? Cause you have your corporate. You were the COO and now you've got a, are you, are you kind of the ops guy or what, what does that relationship look like?

Mike Pilkington: So my business partner is my cousin. His name is Evan Pilkington. And he's got a pretty interesting founder why story as well. Uh, he started, he's got a, you know, his master's in accounting from Michigan state. He's very well educated. He started working with one of the big four accounting firms and did very well and got into Cisco.

And by 30 he was responsible for a billion and a half dollar regional PNL as a finance professional. So this guy gets the finance world, the supply chain, the operations world. So between the two of us, we had, you know, kind of set up how we would structure the business in terms of our core competencies and getting those done.

We, we have since brought on a third partner, a third partner. Um, his name is Will Critcher, who is, uh, in e commerce. Uh, and everything that is digital, absolutely wizard, MIT educated guy that kind of understands that world at its core. So I think, um, the stage of the business that we're in now, we have third parties that help us quite a bit that we've contracted out and we have some other people that are helping us as well.

But I think what we've been able to do is we've been able to combine three people that all have very distinct skill sets that don't have egos, that have the ability to kind of, um, flawlessly execute their responsibilities.

Wes: And probably sweep the floors, no problem, right?

Mike Pilkington: Oh, we're good at floor sweeping. We got to get better at bathroom cleaning. Trash takeout, we're pretty good at.

Wes: So since this is recorded, this is awesome because you're just, you're in that. Initial stages, I'll call it. Like, where do you go from here? Like, where, where do you see this company in three to five years?

Mike Pilkington: Oh, man. I mean, I have one of the things that our company is great at is we're great at modeling. We found that out. But I think really, the three to five year question is an interesting one, because as I talk about those three areas, you know, we're working, you mentioned DSDs. And we're working with the DSD here locally.

So we're creating a strategy where we're growing really on four fronts simultaneously that we can manage. We're growing Amazon, D2C, Upper Midwest in retail, and locally here through DSD. And we have a plan where as we can see The business build out concentrically from those circles. So from a three to five year perspective, I like to think about in terms of more of the human capital that we have the ability to bring on and help us be great.

So we'll be, you know, uh, I think three to five years from now, if, if, if we're on, you know, 60 percent of the shelves in America, we'll feel really good about the impact that we've made in this country.

Wes: Well, I always say bet on the jockey, man. I think you have a huge opportunity, uh, with a great product and a great space. So just to clarify, it's called Key Sparkling Water. you come up with the name?

Mike Pilkington: Oh man, we were sitting there talking about the problems this solves for the consumer, right? And we were like, man, that'll be the key to fitting in when you're at a party. We had people tell us a lot that, uh, they would bring Yetis to parties when they quit drinking because they didn't want anybody asking them why they weren't drinking.

Well, this particular beverage would be the key to fitting in. Well, it's the key to making really good decisions, right? Putting really good things in your body. And we just kept talking about like the things that this would be great for the consumer for, and the word key kept coming up and we're like, holy shit.

We recently just, uh, our tagline is phone wallet key. And, you know, because you never leave the house without your phone, your wallet, and your key. And we just got that trademark, so we're extremely excited about that. But, um, but yeah, so it's, it's, it's the key to being a better version of yourself.

Wes: That's cool. So yeah. So where, where can people find Key Sparkling Water?

Mike Pilkington: So you can find it at keysparklingwater. com. You can find us on Amazon. If you happen to live up in Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, we're in Coburns. And here in upstate New York, we're starting to be found in, uh, In restaurants and markets. So yeah, keysparklywater. com and Amazon. Yeah.

Wes: Mike, how can people connect with you? I mean, I, I'm sure at some stage, I mean, people might hear this and. Your wealth of knowledge, like, can people look you up in LinkedIn or reach out to you? Sweet.

Mike Pilkington: Yeah. I, you know, I think, um, we didn't touch on this, but I think one of the things that entrepreneurship does to you is it makes you very giving of your time and your experience because you realize that everybody's kind of going through it at some point. So I'm extraordinarily willing to give my time to people.

So yeah, uh, it's, it's really easy to find me on LinkedIn.

Wes: And it's Can we, can you spell, just to clarify, that way when people search, they can find you.

Mike Pilkington: Yeah, my first name is Mike. My last name is Pilkington. P I L K I N G T O N. I believe it's like Mike Pilkington slash yes is my actual LinkedIn, uh, link.

Wes: No, that's great, Mike. I, I, I, I know you're gonna be successful. I can't wait to see in like, two, three years and see you grow this thing at a, at a massive level. It's really awesome. Uh, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate the time.

Mike Pilkington: Yeah, it's a pleasure speaking with you, Wes.

Wes: Uh, thanks to thank you to the audience. You learned something, which if you didn't learn anything, I don't know how else that, you know, Mike gave a lot of nuggets today.

Uh, we really appreciate it. Uh, thanks so much.