True Made Foods (Sauce) Founder Abraham Kamarck | How to Get Your Product Into Stores | Why Eating Most Ketchup is Like Eating a Cookie with Your Meal

Audio Transcription

Speaker 1:
The guest we have on today’s show, Abraham Kmart has put his product in 1,200 Walmart stores, 320 sprouts grocery stores, and many other retailers that you would know. And he joins us today to share how he did it and how you can too.

Speaker 2:
You’re going to kill, you know, so much. And uh, it wasn’t really talking to that you can’t do it. We want them to deal with the pettiest stupidest thing conference that are people just screwing up, deal with investigators for asking all kinds of questions, no question. Everything about, and you need to be able to [inaudible] you just put up with a log. You need to be able to like check your ego at the door just to keep out of it. So, um, you can’t just get upset, upset, calm down.

Speaker 1:
On today’s show, he also shares how to find the time to start a successful startup business while managing the demands of having a family. Why you should keep your day job while starting a startup business. While you must be prepared to give away a ton of free product to wow retailers. He explains why he wakes up at four 50 in the morning every day. He explains how to find product creation partners known as co-packers. The importance of following up with retailers and how to get your product in store. There’s all this and more on today’s edition of the thrive time show

Speaker 3:
ready to enter the thrive time show

Speaker 1:
yes, yes and yes. Thrive nation. If you love Saracha, this is the show that you got to watch ya Abraham. Welcome onto the thrive time show. How are you sir?

True Made Foods Founder:
Excellent. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:
Hey, you are a man who is changing the food landscape in many ways. You’re the founder of true made foods. Tell, tell us about this company. True made food.

True Made Foods Founder:
So we’ve tackled some of the worst junk food in your refrigerator. Most people don’t know this, but the ketchup barbecue sauce Saracha uh, all of them have more sugar per ounce than ice cream. No, it’s worse than putting an yeah or some putting a chocolate chip cookie on your burger or on your burrito or whatever using it for, um, it’s basically probably the worst source of sugar out there that’s very hidden. People don’t think they’re using a lot of it, but you are. Um, if an average family goes through a bottle of ketchup a month, they’re eating the equivalent of about 150 donuts a year in sugar, which is about a donut every other day, basically. So, so what you’re looking at, uh, and ketchup is, uh, barbecue sauce is usually the worst you’re looking at. Typically the barbecue sauce, like super grains have more sugar than soda.

True Made Foods Founder:
Um, so it’s basically [inaudible]. It’s very thick, right? Um, where sugars, sodas, water down. So Raj is the next biggest offender and then catch up, um, all the more sugar per ounce than ice cream. So worse than his or every stamps. Um, and what we’ve done at Tremaine foods is we’ve gone back to more natural way of cooking, uh, more something that the way people used to cook it back before sugar and corn syrup and everything. And that’s a, we use veggies, veggies and fruits to naturally sweetened everything. And we used terrains. So we’re not using a juice, we’re not using a powder. We’re using a puree. So that means you’re getting all the fiber and nutrients, um, from the carrots and butternut squash and other, uh, fruits and vegetables that we put into these products. Um, but the best part is it tastes metallic, like a really, really tastes good.

True Made Foods Founder:
Uh, we wouldn’t try to settle and try and sell it if it didn’t pass five-year-old test. And, uh, you know, that’s a key thing is I’ll tell him I’m a dad with four kids. And that’s the reason I got into this because I was once a story I parent thinking that, you know, my kids weren’t going to eat sugar and it definitely wants me to catch up and I failed obviously miserably at that. Like try having an argument with five-year-old over ketchup, you’re going to lose. So every parent, how’d that get pushed point where they’re like, okay, I can argue about the ketchup. Marketers love to get them to eat their dinner in a sketch. We’ve got some dates at dinner then that’s fine. And problem is of course that there was a regular ketchup. Like I said, they’re pouring sugar all over their food right there.

True Made Foods Founder:
So it’s kind of a lose lose for the parents. So that’s why I kind of invented Tremaine foods and started doing these natural catch-ups made with just veggies. We started with the low sugar casual, recut, the sugar and coffee. Now we have the no added sugar ketchup, so no added sugar whatsoever, like all pure, whole minimally processed ingredients. But the best part is like my kids can’t tell the difference. Uh, now most kids can’t tell the difference between our tests and our regular ketchup. And our barbecue sauce is incredible too. It’s really on point. We’ve partnered with a Pitmaster at Mitchell who is probably the greatest Pitmaster in America. Um, he’s a legend out in North Carolina and I’m about to open up a new barbecue restaurant down in rally. And he’s, uh, we put his face on all our barbecue sauce cause he is in love with what we’re doing. And so we started taking his barbecue recipe too and you know, making them healthier. And so we have these very healthy, amazing and incredibly authentic ketchup and barbecue recipes and a fantastic book Serrato which we call Verragio with a V because it’s all veggies. So that’s the bowl syrup to um, add kind of what we do in a nutshell.

Speaker 1:
Oh. So I,

True Made Foods Founder:
we do everything we tell passengers, the five year olds because they’re the most honest theaters out there, right? So

Speaker 1:
I have a lot of clients I work with in the health and fitness space and they always talk about how, uh, Gary Tobbs produced a book called why we get fat. And essentially that sugar causes people to gain weight. That’s, that’s the end of they sugar causes. So if somebody out there is on a lean diet right now, right, and they’re just eating nothing but lean grilled chicken sandwiches, but they’re putting some barbecue sauce on there. Are you saying that that’s the equivalent of having like a, a, a lean sandwich and then putting like a candy bar on the side of it or on on top of it?

True Made Foods Founder:
Yeah. Or at least the junk was your cookie. I mean, you’re, you’re basically ruining everything you’re trying to do right there. Um, and that’s why it’s, it’s so hard to end today’s world to, you know, to eat a healthy diet because of the sauces hidden things, especially if you go out to eat anywhere. So you go get a barbecue burger, um, at your local burger place here. You think you’re eating some healthy grass fed or you know, plant based burger. And the barbecue sauce was important. Although I mean nighttime. Kevin’s either Cattleman’s ranch brand or three baby raids, both of which have 16 grams of sugar per tablespoon. Uh, sorry for two tablespoons. So eight grams of sugar per tablespoon. It means if they’re putting a tablespoon and puppet on your burger and getting eight grams of sugar. A typical chocolate chocolate chip cookie, a home baked chocolate chip cookie has three REMS a server. So just do the math there on how much your debt

Speaker 1:
you, uh, let’s say right now if you have just absolutely freaked us out and you, you don’t have three quarters of our listeners are like, Frick, I’ve been eating grilled chicken breasts and barbecue sauce for years. Ah, where can they buy your stuff if they want to, you know, start having sugar-free stuff. And Devin, let’s, let’s buy some right now using our Amazon account if it’s possible, where, where can we buy these things? Their brother Abraham?

True Made Foods Founder:
Well, you can definitely find it on Amazon if you go to amazon.com backslash to read through it so you can find all our products are skewed. Fantastic. And if uses, use the, uh, the cone gratitude 25, gratitude all caps 25, and you can get a 25% discount from there too. Um, I know you can [inaudible] and then also of course, if you want to go to the store, cause you said better pricing the store and she’d weren’t sprouts. Um, our lotion is in Walmart. Um, and then we’re on the East coast and a lot of different stores, uh, you know, giant food stop and shop, um, ShopRite, Wagman’s and uh, you know, Safeway, places like that. Uh, by this time next year, or hopefully just in a few months, within, in 2020, we should be in a lot more stores, including Kroger, um, Safeway on the West coast, railings on the West coast and other places like that.

Speaker 1:
So did, did, did your wife come up with the idea for this or did you come up with the idea for this? Where did the idea for this healthy w w when did the idea come about to make this healthy, sugar-free, uh, you know, ketchup and sauce and that kinda thing?

True Made Foods Founder:
Well, ironically, somebody who was actually incredibly, I do it was actually incredibly unhealthy. Gave me the idea. Um, I had known this guy and he was actually my co founder briefly when we first started the company. He, uh, he had tried putting vegetables in the ketchup before because, uh, his wife had tried hiding vegetables in his food and things like that. Um, the problem is neither one of them knew how to cook and they, the products they were making were awful. Um, but when he told me about it, it was like a flash of lightning. You want to crush a blue flash lightning clay flyovers for me because I would say the exact solution to a problem I’ve been fighting with, with my kids over the ketchup and with barbecue sauce as well. And uh, cause I knew how much sugar was in those products.

True Made Foods Founder:
And, uh, I knew that I could probably make this work because, you know, and grew up cooking in my house with my mom as the oldest child, always helping out the kitchen. And one of the earliest things she taught me to cope was pasta sauce on a Southern Italian. She’s disoriented and she taught me cook pasta sauce really early and we always use Karen or natural sweetener. My mom always said the way the Italians use or so we never used sugar in any of our cooking at home. And so I was looking at it, I realized that, you know, that’s the way, if you look across a lot of different cuisines, that’s the way people used to use to sweeten soups and sauces and things like that. So it was always like carrots or some type of squash or something, or an Apple to sweeten these products. And then, you know, a sugar got cheap. It replaced the fruits and vegetables. So that’s where we got the idea and telling you what kind of work can, luckily it did.

Speaker 1:
How do you, uh, did you just get a blender and start making stuff? I mean, did you make a bunch of terrible tasting prototypes? I mean, how long did it take you to come up with something that passes the five-year-old test?

True Made Foods Founder:
Yeah, yeah. We had a, we had a bunch of [inaudible]

Speaker 6:
several different part. Really. You said my cofounder had tried to start this before and he had it failed miserably. It uh, cause products were awful. Um, so I had to, because they knew when you’re cooking sauces. Luckily I had a little bit of experience in the fruit industry when I started this and uh, so I knew what we needed to do with debt into a co-packer, somebody with industrial size cattle, small kettles, but it’s still industrial kettles because the difference between doing something like this, like a sauce on your stove and doing it in a facility is pretty significant. So you want to make sure you have a scalable recipe. So we just basically we went to this co-packer and we took the idea of the rescued the vegetables and we just kept increasing the veggies and decreasing the sugars until we got to a point where it was really starting to not taste like ketchup anymore. And then we kind of have adjusted it back and just kind of played with that sugar level right there. And luckily, you know, that was, that was our first product where we got down to 50% less sugar, which is still out there. Um, and then, uh, once we were able to raise a little bit of money, I hired a food scientist, um, as a consultant. And because she has a lab, like we can test recipes out there, it’s like that. And so that helps a lot. Makes a big difference.

Speaker 1:
So how did you, uh, explain it, explain to the listeners out there that don’t know what, what is a co-packer?

True Made Foods Founder:
Oh, yeah. So what’s great about that food industry in the U S is when you’re starting a food company, they’re all nice. Um, but you call it co-manufacturers. Our co-packers, um, Coleman is for sure is, uh, there is a bunch of these industries, these other companies that they do, they do nothing but produce other people’s products for. So they usually, sometimes they produce some of their own products, um, but for the most part, a lot of them, they find it, it’s just a lot easier and better for them. And if you own a warehouse and you own a facility, you just easier to produce other people’s stuff. Now it’s no turnkey solution and you still have to work with them really closely. You got to stay on top of it. You got to make sure it aligned. You got to make sure that they, you know, they, they treat you right and that they keep to keep your recipe honest. Things like this. Um, but, uh, you got find a good partner. Uh, but there are a lot of them out there and there’s more on growing. Uh, there needs to be born as a huge demand for it. That was the, uh, the, and especially in better for you to spacious and food are booming right now. So everybody starting new companies and looking cool production.

Speaker 1:
So

True Made Foods Founder:
some of the big companies have started using man. So

Speaker 1:
how did you find your co-packer? Did you just cold call a whole bunch of different options there or did you have a referral from somebody?

True Made Foods Founder:
Yes, the very first one we found, uh, was in upstate New York and I did that by, we joined the specialty food association. So I joined the specialty food association early on SFA and they had a list of code man by state. Um, based on the type of product you were looking for. Uh, it wasn’t always a great list. It was sometimes out of date, but yeah, basically I kept calling down until I found a good fit. Um, found three or four that looked like good sets of and kind of visited those facilities, um, and made the decision to go with that one. And then, you know, we kind of said something that you always kind of forward to or better co-packer because curious if you’re growing, there’s always going to be outgrowing or smaller ones or if you’re lucky you can find a great one that’ll take you on and you can grow with them.

Speaker 1:
How did you get in into stores? Because right now, from what I could tell, um, after having a research, do you guys, I mean you have 410 Walmart locations that you’re, you’re in. I mean, are you used, you mentioned sprouts, you say 1200 Walmart and I, uh, Devin, I’m not sure if you’d agree with me on this, but I believe 1200 is a larger number than 410. I, I did go to college, uh, for mathematics and I believe that’s accurate. Okay. There we go. So you’re in 1200 Walmart stores. How did you, what was the process like of getting your product into stores? Cause so many entrepreneurs out there have a quote unquote good product that people like, that they have a prototype for, but they don’t end up in 1200 Walmart stores and sprouts and all these kinds of things. How did you get in the stores?

True Made Foods Founder:
Yeah, I see you start out small. Um, clearly like if you’re, when you’re first getting started, you start out with local stores. Uh, and a lot of some people are, some of the bigger stores, even Kroger has like a local program for the stores, uh, for a Metro market or for a steak. Um, so try to find those. And if you can find, usually your state’s agricultural association, um, or you know, agric department or, um, commerce department, we’ll have links and help you set up meetings. What’s kind of like, if you’re, and so say if you’re in Atlanta and you want to try to get into Publix, Publix might have a local program just for Atlanta, which look at Gates here. You know, the stores around there. Um, it’s getting a little bit harder because it used to be, they used to be the key way.

True Made Foods Founder:
Like if you’re in 2010, 2012 if you were starting a natural or better for your company, you could just go to your local, whole foods, pitch the idea again into your one or two region. Then, you know, just kind of keep growing from there. Whole foods change, you know, regionally in the past few years, it’s not an easy to get handling and more than, they don’t really take on a lot of local companies anymore either. So it takes a lot longer. To get into whole foods is not an easy, um, but basically you, you know, you want to start small, um, start local, stay within your region so you can support your own stores. Um, and then, you know, as you grow up, you’re going to be able to find your appeal, figure out the system, and you’ll figure out the category reviews. You’ll understand how to contact the buyers. As you get bigger, you’ll, you’ll be able to hire a broker who should be able to help with getting meetings, setting things up and stuff. And, uh, you know, you’ll learn the, you know, learn the industry and learn, um, the contacts of who the different buyers are, the different stores and when their revenue cycles are. And when you can set up meetings and stuff.

Speaker 1:
Do you, uh, with the terms with these stores, are they doing a, a net 30 or a net 90? Cause I don’t think a lot of people realize that. I don’t think of a lot of entrepreneurs are aware that most retailers, you know, they don’t pay you the same day that your product sells. Can you kind of explain how that works for somebody out there who’s listening, who’s not aware of how the process of actually getting paid works?

True Made Foods Founder:
Yeah. It’s one thing to really consider when you’re getting started looking at, especially when you’re considering going e-commerce versus in store. You know, you converse, anytime you’re on your commerce, even on Amazon, your sales were almost immediate right there. You’re capturing that dollar that those owners right away. Um, were anytime you go into stores it’s a much further or you’re so much further from the actual sale and especially for the consumer. So not only are you just not getting paid by the store, but eventually usually going through a distributor. Once you get big enough, um, they’re going through their distributor and then the distributors sell to the store. Um, most contracts are a, what they call a 2% 10 net 30. So I mean, if the distributor pays you within 10 days of receiving the invoice, they take 2% off something that consider right there.

True Made Foods Founder:
And then everything else has met third. Uh, now this is a big thing in our industry where you really have to stay on top of them for the payments and pay attention to it because, you know, they’ll say that they gotta you’ll send the invoice on the person amount, they’ll say they received it on the 20th of the month, they’ll pay you on the 29th of the month and take 2% off. So that happens a lot. There’s not always the lie you could do about it except for bitch and moan. It’s one of those problems being a small company and we start up in this industry. Um, so you’d say if you can plan for it to do

Speaker 1:
so. [inaudible] what advice would you have for a listener out there right now that, uh, aspires to be the next, uh, true made foods and, and they have a product that actually tastes good. They’ve found a co-packer, um, that’s making it so they have that part nailed down. Um, as it relates to getting in those stores, would you recommend just, I mean, did you just pick up the phone and cold call people or did you email people or how did you get in those first a few small local stores?

True Made Foods Founder:
The first few small local stories. First of all, if you got out in a lot of products that you’re willing to give away for free, um, cause everybody wants samples and everybody wants to pre-fill a, so it’s a key term in the industry, which means, uh, they want a free case of the product and uh, to get started. Um, cause they don’t want it. They don’t want to take on the initial risk of buying it right away. Uh, and so we usually, you can walk into these stores and say, Hey, listen, I’m going to give you a free felt. Let’s see how the product sells and the self development and you know, they’ll start paying products after that. Um, the challenges of course up they sell the product. You got to stay on top of it and keep revisiting the source, make sure that the product is selling, um, helping doing demos or whatever you need to do, handing out coupons or helping help, um, creating awareness about around the product. And then also, you know, as following up with the retailing and make sure that they’re reordering cause they will completely forget to reward too. So you have to stay on top of them. Um, so that’s why it’s very important to start out locally and start out, you know, with neighborhood stores or things that are close to you that you can visit pretty easily on a regular basis. Um, that’s always the easiest thing to do.

Speaker 1:
Did you show up in person or did you pick up the phone and cold call? The first few stores

True Made Foods Founder:
I’ll use showed up in person. The only reason you really want to cold call is to find out who’s there. If you think about a store or restaurant or anything like that that are very operationally intensive, people are running around. Um, you know, they’re dealing with stuff out on the store floor. The managers aren’t necessarily just sitting in an office and have time to talk on the phone, right, or checking email. So the best way to do it is to grab them in person. So the only reason we really want to call is if you want to do a little bit of recon and find out who the manager is, what his name is, his or her name is, and like what time they’re usually in. So then when you drop in, you have a better chance of finding or asking the person on the phone, Hey, when’s the best time to kind of drop in? When did you know, when is it least busy? Typically if you drop them in on a store, you know, something like a Monday morning or something like that, you know, when it’s not too busy, not a lot of customers in the store. That’s been fine. If you come in with a lot of customers in the store, they’re going to blow you off. They’re not going to talk to you. So you need to be empathetic of what the manager’s going through too.

Speaker 1:
What, what, what’d you say when you showed up and you just kind of knock on the door and say, Hey, I’m a brother Abraham here and I’ve got some, uh, life-changing ketchup I want to talk to you about or what, what did you say?

True Made Foods Founder:
Yeah, pretty much. They’re used to seeing new products. They’re used to being fixed in your products all the time depending on where you are and looking up store manager. It is. So, um, you know, especially if you go into your local food co op or natural store, something like that, they’ll probably use to seeing local products all the time. And they may give you advice about like, you know what to do, there’s going to be some push back if you’re not in distribution already very, you know, you want to, so you want to find the ones that are willing to take on and work with you directly for your curly stores. Uh, and that, that may mean, you know, connecting in with, other than the food entrepreneurs in your region. And so that they can give me some advice, none of which are the best source to going to start with. Uh, you know, like here in Washington DC, like Glen’s garden market, uh, and DuPont circle is a fantastic sort of start and they love supporting local entrepreneurs to do a great job with it. And you know, it’s a great place to help, you know, get your name out and made recognition off Peter Brant.

Speaker 1:
So D C is where you call home.

True Made Foods Founder:
Yeah. DCM in Northern Virginia.

Speaker 1:
Now you is, this is a family owned company if I’m correct. So I think you and your wife, you guys work together am correct there?

True Made Foods Founder:
Uh, no, I mean it is, it’s my company. Um, you know, my wife puts up with me.

Speaker 1:
Okay. I, I respect that.

True Made Foods Founder:
I would explain it though. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
So you now, how are you raising money or how did you raise money to, to scale it? To what, what does, what does that look like? What’s the method that you went through to raise money?

True Made Foods Founder:
Well, you want to start grow. What we got. What I did is I, um, I went through an accelerator to help launch this company, um, that, that’s not always gonna be an easy way to do it. Right. When you started, we got, I got lucky in that there was a new, um, food accelerator starting in, uh, New York at the time that we joined when we first launched, uh, we didn’t have anything but an idea, um, because this was a new accelerator and they didn’t know what they were doing. They, they let us in. So we got a luck. Um, typically with the, you know, these parts start with food accelerated. I want to see a little bit of traction. They want to see some growth, um, before they let you in. Uh, these fluidics aren’t as though they’re going to be something like 50,000. They give us $50,000, and this one investment.

True Made Foods Founder:
And of course they connected us with other investors to student space and that was key because now as a former Navy pilot, um, I lived overseas after getting on the Navy for eight years. So I was, you know, used to working in emerging markets. I didn’t really have an investor network and not having an investor network can be a killer when you’re starting a new company. Um, it’s very hard to find early stage investors and food. Uh, and in depending on your region to like, like Washington DC for example. Here there’s a lot of investor networks here, but you know, nobody invested. They’re investing in the bigger areas of industry here, like cybersecurity, things like that. So yeah, if you’re in a great place like Boulder or Austin said, have kind of thriving food chains or uh, you know, Santa Monica parts of the Los Angeles sort of lot more local industries.

True Made Foods Founder:
Here again, if you want to get a good community, you want to talk to people, you want to find local networks. Like here in D C we have union kitchen in the mess hall, which are incubators, kind of shared kitchens and they have a ton of resources and they know who the investors are in the area and help you connect to you and tell you when you can, they can help you tell you when they’re ready, if you’re ready for investment to your company’s ready, if the industry’s in [inaudible]. Um, so finding those kind of networks in your area to help connect you is key.

Speaker 1:
How did you find the time? I get asked this all the time from people who are new to entrepreneurship, how did you find the time to invest in your startup while also managing the demands of your family?

True Made Foods Founder:
Yeah, I mean, you kind of have to be stupid about it, right? Yeah. You, you go in, um, one, you know, when you’re first starting, if you’re smart about it, you’ll, you know, you’ll keep your day job for a little bit while you work on this and you’re just going to have to carve out time, um, some of the rest of the week to be able to work on it. Um, I kind of went into this full force right away cause I always, I had just been laid off from my last job, works for a charity and they ran out of money. Um, so I, you know, kind of went to, uh, with the, with a crazy attitude that wanted to get to the doctor. Um, I think what you have to do with the family is like you patiently and I’m giving up everything else. Um, you know, I’ve got work and I’ve got my family and I, you know, and I carved out some time early in the morning. Nope. Yep, that’s about him. Um, you know, we don’t see friends and often, um, I definitely don’t have any hobbies and, uh, I couldn’t tell you what’s good. I couldn’t tell you what’s going on in the news

Speaker 1:
time. What time do you wake up? Like what, what, what, what does the first four hours of a, of a typical day look like for you?

True Made Foods Founder:
Uh, typically when you come to your, just before 5:00 AM like four 50, four 45. And I, uh, I go into the gym and I try to make it home by six 30 and my wife leaves for work at 6:30 AM and so usually I make breakfast for the kids and get the kids up. And then, you know, parent takes over around seven 30 and that’s when I start working.

Speaker 1:
So let’s talk about the, the future of, of the company now. Um, you’re in 1200 Walmart stores. Um, you’re in sprouts. How many do you want me to sprout stores you’re in?

True Made Foods Founder:
I work on all of them. So I think there are three 2325.

Speaker 1:
Oh, this is so cool. I’m going to go there tonight to buy some of that. Saracha okay. Uh, what, what other stores are you in?

True Made Foods Founder:
Uh, we’d say we are, like I said, we’re in bagman, we’re in Safeway East out here in the DC area. Giant stop and shop, uh, ShopRite, wait for tops market and in the Midwest where Mariano’s in Chicago area, um, as well as a festival Sunday and a Woodman’s over in Wisconsin. Um, and, uh, it’s battering and we’re in central market, Dallas area as well. Sprouts. I’m in California where a license, a sprouts, um, and the Gelson’s.

Speaker 1:
And, uh, so as you fund this thing, uh, I’m not gonna ask you, you know, how much revenue you’re making or anything that would paint you into a corner, but are you to a place now where it’s no longer scary or does it still feel scary at times?

True Made Foods Founder:
No, it’s definitely still scary. Um, so that’s good. Don’t really think about it. Um, yeah, you’re really, when you’re doing a consumer product like this, especially something low cost like ketchup for barbecue sauce. Yeah. You’re really only, you’re making sense and you know, some CNTF you’re making sense. You’re making your gross profit is, you know, 50 Tufts right, per bottle or something like that. Um, and you’re losing a lot of that to, uh, you know, promotions and marketing to in store to drive those initial sales. So yeah, your gross profit is nothing and you need to, um, it’s a scale business. The volume doesn’t, right? Nobody’s going to make money selling a thousand bottles of ketchup a year, right? You, you need to cap to millions and so you need to scale, you need to scale fast. And that’s why you need investment. Typically you need an investment or a lot of patients and a lot of time.

True Made Foods Founder:
Um, and that means you need to start talking off, you know, when did you break even? Well, you know, for a category like mine, there’s a potential to break even at, you know, $5 million in annual sales. Um, but if we keep up a really strong growth trajectory and we started launching new skews and investing in the company that way, then, you know, we might, may not break even. We’re tied to an EBD dot positive and tore up like 10 million in sales. Um, if you’re doing a beverage or a salty snack, which are easier product for launch early because they’re faster return and you get sort of a lot more dollar sales per store, um, it’s easier to scale up in that first five, $10 million in sales. Um, but you’re not looking at a break even until you get to 50, maybe even a hundred million dollars in sales because the, uh, it’s such a competitive marketplace where you’re, you know, you’re competing in that grabbing globe.

True Made Foods Founder:
If you’re competing in that grab and go average, um, uh, refrigerator right there on the front of the store, which is the cutthroat place to be. Um, and you’re competing as all these big players with lots and lots of money. You’re, you know, you have to spend money on merchandising. You guys spend money on promotions, cost and promotions where you’re practically giving away the product early on to stay on that shelf and keep that place. Um, and you’ve got to spend money on people going to the store and making sure that other people aren’t living your product around X like this. So, you know, so there’s always these give and takes and that’s why it’s really important to kind of start to figure out the economics of your particular category within your industry very early. Um, as you getting started so you can have realistic expectations or when you know, you think this is going to be a steady state, that

Speaker 1:
w w why, um, I guess not why, but what is the profit margin? Let’s, let’s just say that I’m not asking for your margins. Let’s just say that I have a, a product that I want to sell to Walmart and I think it should retail that the price that the consumer should pay should be $3. How much does, does the actual original manufacturer of this product, how much does a guy like you, I’d have to charge and then talk to us about the markup layer. It’s, I don’t think people realize all the different markups that are going on.

True Made Foods Founder:
Yeah. That’s the biggest complication and big surprise to a lot of people when they’re first getting started. Investors, if you, um, so Walmart’s a little bit easier cause sometimes you can go direct to Walmart and Walmart takes actually a really low uh, um, gross margin. They’ll, they’ll take 25% sometimes. Um, but the average grocery store makes a 40% gross margin on every product that sells in the grocery section and you know, whole foods. And one of the other natural stores, they make, you know, 40 to 43%, especially on a new item. They’re no longer, maybe even 45%. So can you imagine what that does to your price? Right. Um, and now if you’re using a distributor to get to them, there is a whole nother level right there. And cause the distributor has got awesome needs to make, you know, 15 to 25%, um, on that as well.

True Made Foods Founder:
And there’ll be marking it up 15 to 25, sometimes 30%. Cause there’s a distributed that do DSD, which is a direct service delivery. And they, you know, the distributor stocks the shelf, so they charges the store more. So they Mark up your product. So it will be marked up 30 to 40% sometimes. So there’s a lot of buildOn right there. So you’re looking at giving away, say if your product is selling for $3, you know, you’re giving away probably almost $2 of that to the distributor and the retailer. Wow. Um, as you’re going in, you need to be prepared for that and you need to, um, you know, at least a dollar 50 and you need to be prepared to that and you need to do the calculus on that and you’ll have the spreadsheets out running that, uh, to see what’s gonna happen. Um, but your gross margin, a healthy growth margin that you should be targeting or shooting for and Shahade the path to is to get above and 40% gross margin.

True Made Foods Founder:
Um, you know, again, if you are a higher velocity product or that’s more competitive area like assaulted pack or a beverage, especially grabbing go beverage, you know, you need to be above 50% or even prior because you’re again, off promotion all the time to compete on the shelf. So you’re always doing sales, doing coupons, second stuff. Um, but you even have a regular grocery area, like a boring category like cutoff. We need to be at, you know, a 40 bone, 40% gross margin is healthy. And then you know, if you can get to 45 or so you end up ideal.

Speaker 1:
So you’re saying like if somebody out there has a fast as a food product and it costs them a dollar per unit to make, they need to be planning, they need to plan on charging a dollar 40 for that two to the actual retail stores.

True Made Foods Founder:
Yeah, I mean that’s a markup. I think if you did the math, math for gross margin would be a little bit more. Um, but the uh, yeah, basically.

Speaker 1:
Okay. Okay. That makes sense. I’ve tried to break it down for the listeners. Now I have three final questions for you cause I totally respect your time. Um, I want to just three final questions. Um, kind of lightning around here. Um, a lot of the people we’ve had on the show, um, you know, whether it be the founder of honest tea, uh, we had him on the show and this guy, I mean, he went through just absolute hell and back, I mean T to build his, uh, Seth Goldman to build honesty. Um, and now he’s doing that beyond meat or, or a guy Kawasaki or a or a Wolfgang puck. They all, they all have like an idiosyncrasy that it actually is like a superpower to most, it looks like an idiosyncrasy or something kind of weird, but it ends up being their superpower. You know, Steve jobs wore the same thing every day. A guy Kawasaki likes to learn a new skill all the time. He likes to go surfing all the time to kind of clear his head. Um, talk to me, what, what does an idiosyncrasy that you have that you may be perceived to be a superpower?

True Made Foods Founder:
I can turn off the ego pretty quickly. So it was maybe part of being, going through Navy flight school where they’re yelling at you all the time. Um, you’re gonna hear no so much and uh, people are going to be telling you that you can’t do it and you got to really deal with the pettiest stupidest things constantly that are people just screwing up angel investors who are asking qual kinds of ridiculous questions and you know, questioning everything about you and you need to be able to just put up with a lot of that stuff. Um, especially in the food industry, things like that. And even talking to grocery buyers and who are just gonna approve who you and blow you off, um, you need to be able to like check your ego at the door and just kind of keep coming at it. So, um, you can’t let little things get upset, upset. You constantly just go stay focused on the big picture.

Speaker 1:
Don’t let the little things upset you. That is just awesome. Awesome advice. Does it take you out two seconds to get over a rejection now? I mean, when you get someone tells you no or you’re like, okay, or does it take you two minutes or two weeks? Or how long does it take? Is it two years? Is it a dark place?

True Made Foods Founder:
It’s not a dark place if it depends on the rejection. Uh, so no. Yeah, I usually don’t get things don’t up so, and I always have multiple contingency plans cause then I almost expect that though. So when the yes comes through, it’s much better. Um, yeah. So I was planning allow them to know. So you know, I try to lock in the gas. Uh,

Speaker 1:
this is so good.

True Made Foods Founder:
Yeah, we get, but yeah, no, I can usually get over it pretty quickly. Usually two minutes or so.

Speaker 1:
I absolutely love this. This, this interview here is one of my highlights. I absolutely, this is just so much, if you’re listening right now and you’re hearing this side kind of knowledge, this is the knowledge you do not get in college. And whether it’s working with a client like the grill gun to help them get their product, their product in stores back in the day or working or seeing my friend Lori Montag get her zany bands into big box retail stores and she sold $60 million of those zany bands. You know those bracelets in the shape, the rubber band bracelets, and the shape of pirate ships and that kind of stuff. This is the kind of stuff that I would hear from these people that you don’t hear anywhere else. So you need to listen to this show twice. If you’re out there listening today, listen to this show twice. Take notes. It’s so good. Um, what is a book or a couple of books that you would recommend for all of our listeners as it relates to, um, getting your products into, or maybe the mindset you’ve learned. Is there, is there a book or two you’d recommend for our listeners?

True Made Foods Founder:
Uh, there’s a new one that’s just come out, um, called ramping your brand. It’s literally just launched. Um, I know the author is a great guy. He’s one of the few people in this industry that actually uses a lot of data, um, behind, you know, race. Everybody’s got opinions in this industry. Not very many people use data or use data smartly. So he’s got a great stuff out there. Um, it wrappings your brand by, of course, no name. Uh,

Speaker 1:
I’m going to Amazon right now. You said ramping your brand, pull it up right now. Um, would this be by James F. Richardson? PhD?

True Made Foods Founder:
That is him.

Speaker 1:
Okay. And do you have, let’s put a link to it on the, on the show notes over our listeners can easily find it. Um, my final question for you, what advice would you give your younger self? I mean, cause you, you, you, how long were you working on this project before you actually sold anything?

True Made Foods Founder:
Uh, you know, we, we actually, we have a weird story cause that, cause I dove into this whole force like in 2014, 2015. Um, we, we actually sold it pretty quickly, like we’ve walked into, we ramped it up really fast, walked into the fancy food show, had a booth at the fancy food show in June, 2014 and no, yeah, 2015, sorry, June, 2015. And we never sold a product and walked out with $10,000 in POS and that first day. Wow. And, uh, after that, after that, I was obsessed, you know. Um, I think the biggest mistake I made early on was thinking that I could scale this thing overnight. Um, and, uh, I jumped in, was way too excited way to do the attic and, you know, again, I can not sleep and just build something nonstop. And that’s what I did for the first year. And actually that was, I should have gone slower.

True Made Foods Founder:
I should have taken my time more. Um, because we just, I scaled too fast, almost killed the company cause you know, we ended up pushing, you’re not getting the labels right now until we really had the perfect product. Um, and getting into the where some of the, not really learning the industry enough to be using a bad broker, getting into the wrong stores and, uh, you know, ended up getting kicked out and wasted, get wasted a lot of money and, uh, almost killed the company. And I had a bad co-founder too early on and jumped in with this co-founder thinking, you know, I just wanted somebody to work with. And, uh, I was working so hard and so fast that, you know, that I missed some things that were, you know, key indicators that this person was not a good person to work with. And uh, you know, having to kick your cofounder up to after a year there can also come to help scale the company. So we had to kind of reset and revamped and kind of, it’s, I’ve been like the last two and a half years that the company’s really taken off and they think they’re really starting to click.

Speaker 1:
Is the fancy food show. That’s an actual name of a big trade show.

True Made Foods Founder:
Yeah, the, uh, the big trade shows, there’s the fancy food show, there’s one in New York in June and one in, uh, uh, San Francisco in January. And then there’s a natural product expo, East coast, um, natural pocket product expo West on and, uh, Anaheim, California every year in March. And, uh, uh, those four shows are kind of afford big shows in the industry. Um, trade shows, which are great ways to get exposure and do your brand. They’re really expensive. Um, so I wouldn’t recommend doing them until you’re really kind of a little bit one. We had a great luck that doing the fancy food show right away. You’ve read the beginning, but you know, I wouldn’t always recommend doing them right away. There’s other ways to test your product now as much as your tests or product out and test your, she will kind of demand you get it online by setting up an Amazon account during the time where it’s a lot less, uh, less cost intensive, a lot less risk. And a, you can test a lot more to see how much more direct consumer brand demand you have.

Speaker 1:
So there’s a,

True Made Foods Founder:
I’m not really ready to scale. Start doing the shows.

Speaker 1:
So there’s a, a fancy food show in New York and then one in Austin, is that correct?

True Made Foods Founder:
Yeah, sorry. San Francisco.

Speaker 1:
Oh, San Francisco. And then there is the, the other one is the natural products expo. Is that correct?

True Made Foods Founder:
Yeah. And that’s robotics though.

Speaker 1:
Cool. You, you know, you are a wealth of knowledge and your website’s looking good. I unfortunately see a lot of entrepreneurs that have great products and hideous websites. You know what I mean? Where the product is good, but the website looks hood. How long, how long have you spent on this website? This looks gorgeous. This is a true made foods.com T R U E true made foods.com. I mean, how long did it take you to build this beautiful thing?

True Made Foods Founder:
That’s great. I appreciate that. Um, but yeah, I mean we changed the website multiple times. I mean, luckily I have a lot of experience with WordPress prior to this building, my building sites myself. And then you had even launched a few sites and BHP, when you’re doing a food product, really your website is a billboard more than anything else in information site. It doesn’t need a lot of interactive and you don’t, you want something that’s secure and that easy, uh, easy to maintain, easy to deny. And then also, you know, when you’re ready, you know, get a good designer, you know, find a good designer and spend the time and the effort to work with them too. It makes a big difference. We’ve been through a couple of different designers and now we’re redesigning again. But, uh, I mean, I think that makes a big difference.

Speaker 1:
Well, at least the least, at least as you go through each designer, at least they’re expensive. We can hang our head on that at least for creating jobs for people. I mean, some of these designers, I’m not asking you to share how much you spend on them, but I mean, some of these designers can set you back, you know, dozens of thousands of dollars. I mean, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve heard people coming in here, uh, for some business coaching after they’re, you know, $100,000, $120,000 deep into a and graphic design and they’re still not happy with it.

True Made Foods Founder:
Yeah. I think, I mean, it can be dangerous. I’d be very, uh, I would not spend that much almost ever until you’re a fortune 500 company, uh, on design or lesser. You know, you’re the designer. You’re working with better come highly recommended from people you really trust. Uh, and again, I think that one of the problems with working with a designer is you really don’t know what they’re going to do for you until you actually start working with them, right? So it’s key to kind of, again, ask around and find people that you trust who really recommend to somebody

Speaker 1:
you have been, uh, seriously. I, we’ve had now a, I don’t want to make up a number here. Let me pull it up real quick on the show. I just want to read this off so that way I’m making sure I’m making an accurate a statement here. But so far on, on the, on the thrive time show, we have done a total of, um, 1,830 shows and we’ve had, you know, everybody from Seth Goden on here to David Robinson to, you know, all of these big, big folks. This right here, my opinion, it’s been the most practical show we’ve ever done. So I don’t know if you, if you need a round of applause, but, uh, I would say great job. That right there, I’m telling you that right? This right here sets the record and therefore you get a mega point which is redeemable at sprouts, I believe for a discount on some of your uh, sugar-free. Sir Roger,

True Made Foods Founder:
thanks so much. Really appreciate that.

Speaker 1:
No, seriously, I, I appreciate you so much and I hope you have a great rest of your evening.

True Made Foods Founder:
Awesome and happy new year. I’ll do you have a good one?

Speaker 1:
Thrive nation. I am fired up and I don’t know what it is, but I feel like there’s somebody listening right now to this show who is going to have their life changed as a result of what you have just learned because you now know the proven steps that you need to take in order to turn your idea into reality. I remember when I was at the dresser mansion, it’s a, it’s a wedding facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was at, I was at the dresser mansion in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Everybody look it up. Dresser, D R E S S E R, the dresser mansion in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And I was, this is about two years before I sold DJ connection.com and one of my good friends, Lori Montag always told me that one day she would become a multi millionaire and her name is Lori Montag, L. O. R. I. Montag, M. O. N. T. H. E. her son and I were best friends growing up and during the summers I used to travel down from Minnesota to Oklahoma to stay with the Montana family during the summers, and Lori always told me that one day she would be a multi millionaire.

Speaker 1:
Well, long story short, she created this product called the slap watch. A lot of you’ve seen maybe some of you have owned the slap watch, L, S, L, a P slap watch, the slap watch, or you might have seen a her product, they’re called the zany bands. They’re like the rubber bands that the kids used to wear in the shape of pirate ships or different things like that. Anyway, Lori invented the slap watch and these zany bands and through just diligence and perseverance and implementing the specific moves that you just learned about on today’s show, these exact same moves that you just learned, she was able to get her product, the slap watch onto the view. And some of you probably even saw this show.

Speaker 7:
And then I love these. This is a watch you can give them to anybody.

Speaker 8:
[inaudible]

Speaker 7:
the face comes out there, 1795 each, so you could buy slightly Barbara, just just slap, watch her look it up.

Speaker 8:
[inaudible]

Speaker 1:
and then using these same moves, uh, using the dream 100 moves that we talk about. We have so many shows about the dream 100 system created by Chet Holmes, but it just, just do a Google search for thrive time show dream 100 and you can find the, the shows about Chet Holmes and the, and the dream 100 system. But as a result of implementing the proven moves, Laurie then got her product, a slap watch featured on the Ellen show,

Speaker 7:
right? Here’s something else that I found that is actually really, really cool. These things. Have you seen these things? These are called a slap watch and what you do, cause sometimes you don’t have time to buckle a watch on. You just got to go and you just do that and then it just gets right put on your hand like that and that. Cool. And it comes to nine colors and they have removable, removable faces so you can mix and match. So it’s nine co colors and then 81 possibilities. And the coolest thing is all of you are getting all nine of them.

Speaker 8:
[inaudible]

Speaker 1:
well Laurie went on to sell over $60 million of products, over $60 million of products and it’s not because she’s the smartest person in the world, although she is very smart. It’s because she decided to become a diligent doer and an implementer of the systems that she was learning. She implemented the proven systems and you can too. That’s what this show is about. This show is about diligently implementing the proven systems that we teach on a daily basis. Thomas Edison who could not be here today because he is dead, said that vision without execution is hallucination. So stop hallucinating and take some action. Come on, baby. Reach out today. Book your tickets to attend our in-person thrive time show workshop or schedule a one on one consultation with my self, but do not be a bystandard. Do not be somebody who just looks at other people’s other people’s success within V. be somebody who has decided to participate in the conversation about how to dramatically increase your compensation.

Speaker 1:
My name is clay Clark and I would humbly ask that you would join me in ending today’s show with a boom because boom stands for big, overwhelming optimistic momentum and that’s what it’s going to take to make the amount of money that you want to make, but don’t spiritualize this idea of becoming successful. Don’t emotional eyes. It don’t make it weird. It’s a linear path. It’s step one plus step two plus step three. That’s what you have to do. And at TD Jakes, my favorite minister, he just gave a sermon called, it’s not for sale, which you can watch on YouTube. It’s not for sale by Bishop TD Jakes. It just came out December 29th of 2019 I want you to hear what he has to say about what happens when people try to make the path to success overly complicated and overly spiritual as opposed to as opposed to being linear and step-by-step. When people try to remove the laws of cause and effect from becoming successful and they tried to replace it with, with luck, with superstition and random feelings of pseudo spirituality,

Speaker 8:
our mentality is we need a miracle. I believe in God for a car. I believe in God for a house. I believe in God for a coat. I believe in God for a house. I believe in God to send my kids to private school. I hate to tell you this, there are atheists at sitting their kids in private school. There are drug dealers that have a car. That’s not a miracle. You don’t need God. You need a good job. You need to come to work. You need to save your money. You get you a car. You don’t need to call on heaven and provoke the angels to get a car. That magical mentality is killing the church. We are asking God for stuff that we can do ourselves. Oh God, help me

Speaker 1:
if you want a proven path to business success. We have the proven playbook. My partner, dr Robert Zellner, and I have been able to build 16 multimillion dollar companies because we know that today is the day that you can learn these proven systems. We know the proven systems. We know we can teach them to you. We know you can implement them, but nothing works unless you do so. I would ask you this today. What is stopping you from choosing to have success? Success is a choice, a choice to make the trade offs a choice. To get up early, a choice to to skip lunch, to hit the deadline, a choice to push through. Fear a choice to work on the weekend and to get ahead. A choice to turn off the TV and to open a book, a choice to yourself, accountable. A choice to hold others accountable.

Speaker 1:
Success is the choice I make every single day. What is keeping you my friend? What is keeping you from deciding to be successful today? So when we wrap up this show, we bring the boom, the big of whelming optimistic momentum. When we bring that big overwhelming optimistic momentum, I would ask you, what is stopping this from being your day where you will turn your dream life into reality? What is standing in the way of you just barely surviving? And what is keeping you from thriving? It’s time for you to take action, whether it’s to attend a conference, whether it’s to become a one on one coaching client, whether it is to subscribe to our online school. Today is your day to thrive. And now without any further ado, free two one, boom.

Speaker 9:
Hey, how’s it going on with Thomas crossing a owner and founder of full package media and Dallas, Texas. Uh, I’ve been a coaching client with clay Clark since the beginning of our business. Um, we started about a year ago, August of last year and I had no clients, no idea what we were doing, no clue. Uh, really what was going on. And now we’ve grown to where we’ve got six photographers. I’ve got office space here. Um, I have admin sales person that works for us full time, uh, developing an online system and a lot of that growth we attribute to clay helping us. And there’s so many things that, Nope, I mean his stuff is not revolutionary. It’s not this crazy walk on hot coals and all this stuff. Uh, it’s just real real stuff. And like group interviews, we were totally against group interviews. Uh, we were like, no, we’re different and we’re, we’re special and we need to, you know, do one on one interviews so we can find good quality candidates and not just kind of do this group interview thing.

Speaker 9:
And we tried that and failed miserably. Uh, we did group interviews and then we do them every two weeks. Uh, and it’s, it’s awesome. It works good. We always have kind of influx of new people that we can train and get going. Um, he’s helped us a lot with our website. Uh, graphic design. SEO. SEO is another thing that I thought before I started this business and before clay that was, it was kind of a, a joke or you know, some that only your apples of the world and Amazon can get to the top of Google. Um, but clay said, no, just do these things. Um, follow these steps and you’ll get there. And I think now he’s, look today we’re a number two for Dallas real estate photography. You don’t believe that you can look. Uh, so we’re getting to the top of their, that’s really cool.

Speaker 9:
It’s, it’s really awesome to get leads that people that call you and say, Hey, found you on Google. Um, you know, we want to hear about your services. So that’s really great. Um, I’d say there’s nobody out there that’s not a good, uh, coaching client for clay. Uh, I mean, you’re anyone regardless of the business, it’s not about what the business is, what the specialty is. It’s about following the steps, um, doing what he says. Uh, you know, it’s, it’s a good thing an hour a week and it gets you on track and keeps you kind of in line of what you’re doing and what you shouldn’t be doing. Um, and it’s good to kind of give you some flow and future goals of your business. And I remember our first meeting when we set our goals and our goal was to just do 16 shoots a week. Um, and at the time me and my business partner slash girlfriend Gretchen were like, Oh, that’s, we’re never going to do 16 a week. That’s just like crazy. Uh, and today we’re doing

Speaker 9:
nine, uh, and we did about 54 last week. So, uh, he’s helped us grow. You know, we’ve put in a lot of hours, a lot of hard work as well, but if you follow his steps and do what he do, what he says, there’s a lot of principles that he’s kind of taught and still in us, uh, that help us. So, uh, yeah, clay Clark, he’s the way to go. I want to venture out to find someone else. They’d be more expensive and a lot more fluff and no, no real actionable work and things to get your business growing. So, uh, that’s the way to go. Thanks.