Best of: Seth Goldman Brews Another Success

Hello everyone. Welcome to the 21 Hats podcast. I'm your host, Lauren Feldman. It was around Memorial Day in 2022 when Coca-Cola stunned the beverage world by announcing it was shutting down production of Honest Tea. No one was more surprised than Seph Goldman, who had co-founded the brand and sold it to Coke. But within 2 weeks, he decided to do it all again. And by that Labor Day, bottles of his new venture, Just Ice Tea, were already landing on store shelves. And now, three years later, Just Ice Tea has exploded from $1 million in annual revenue to nearly $24 million to rank 88th on the latest 85000, more than two decades after Honest Tea first appeared on the list. Which makes this the perfect moment to revisit the conversation I recorded with Seth right before Just Ice Tea launched. In it, he shares how he processed Ko's decision, why he sold to Coke in the first place, what compelled him to get back into the business, and what he learned working inside the world's largest beverage company. And yes, I asked him whether he could imagine selling this brand to Coke, too. Even in good times, owning and running a business can be a lonely pursuit. Our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges. In fact, that's the whole idea behind the 21 Hats community, engaging with other owners to get the kinds of insights only another owner can offer. If you're interested in learning more, you can sign up for a free trial of the Morning Report newsletter, which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners and shows how other owners are confronting challenges and seizing opportunities. Just search the 21 Hats Morning Report to subscribe. You might also try our monthly Zoom mastermind where owners from around the country gather to compare notes. It's a lot like this podcast except you get to be part of the conversation. Shoot me an email at lauren@21house.com to get more information. Joining me this week on the podcast is Seth Goldman, CEO of Just Ice Tea, which is based in Bethesda, Maryland. The episode is titled Seth Goldman Bruise Another Success. Welcome, Seth Goldman. Thanks so much for doing this. It's great to talk to you. >> Thank you, Lauren. Great to be with you. >> I think we first spoke maybe 20 years ago when you were fairly early in the honest tea journey. It's so unusual for someone to have the opportunity to kind of get a second chance. You know, I imagine this one is getting started a little bit differently just because you're smarter and more experienced. Can you tell us a little bit about that? >> Sure. So, just to update you on the timing. So, we found out May 23rd that Coca-Cola was going to be discontinuing Honest Tea. And the first two weeks were kind of just shock, disbelief, and a little bit of mourning. Uh, but by June 6, we said, "Well, we're going to go launch our own iced tea brand." We getting enough interest and support from not just consumers, but even suppliers and and fans and retailers. So, June 6, we announced >> So, so that took about two two weeks. Is that right? >> Two weeks to get over the initial shock. we couldn't do anything. And on September 6, we're confident by September 6, we'll have sold our first bottle out in retail. So, uh, three months from decision point to commercialization. I've never heard of anyone moving that quickly, but this is not a rush job. This is actually a I call instead of calling it a, you know, a startup, this is a jump start. Meaning, we had the whole supply chain in place. We had the team in place. And so um and frankly I think the product we just did a tasting yesterday against the honest tea varieties and I actually think on every item we're our taste is cleaner uh and better. So, uh, this was, you know, not rushed just getting to market. It was done with building on, you know, two decades of experience. And I just did a little calculation because we have a team of 12 people, but within that more than half of that 12 people are honest veterans and so we have over a 100red years of uh, experience, collective experience among on our team of people, you know, building an IC tea brand. So, we are ready to go. When you say you had the supply chain in place, do you mean mean that you were were you actually buying tea? >> No, it's I guess the relationships. Yeah, it was just the relationship. So the folks who manage the tea gardens and you know our supply chain there, even if I weren't going back in the tea business, they're now close personal friends. You know, my family has been to these tea gardens. And so they literally reached out to me when they heard the news because by the way, they didn't hear the news from Coca-Cola. they learned of this news from my LinkedIn post that shared the announcement. So, um they were very concerned because for their economic livelihood and also for the decisions they've made, you know, that their decision to commit to organic and to commit to fair trade certifications, there's a price to that and they were worried that this, you know, they they didn't want to come to regret those decisions. So, they were super eager to, you know, work with with me again. and the bottling plant and the bottle suppliers and in many cases I'm now dealing with the second generation. You know, at the bottle supplier, I dealt with the father and now the son has taken over the business and he said, you know, it's such an honor for me to continue the work my father started on on this. Um, so it's just been a very gratifying experience. a little bit like being able to be at your own funeral without having to die. Just sort of hearing the appreciation and and and uh that's just been a very um real gratifying um experience. >> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that when KO made the announcement, they referred to supply chain issues. It would be kind of interesting if you were able to walk right in. What do you make of that? >> I think they did have supply chain challenges. I because I saw I during the pandemic I would go to stores and I would see shelf points where you know there should be 10 varieties of honest tea and I'd see either none or maybe one or two bottles. So there were challenges. I think some of it was around the glass packaging. Some of them may have been sourcing but that's also the difference between a large corporation and an entrepreneur. You know a large corporation says oh there's no inventory that's available. Okay well we just go make something else. Um I if I'm making and we saw this because we have to move so quickly when it comes time to do our first production run. If an ingredient's not there, we're going to find a way and literally if it means driving the ingredient to the bottling plant, which has happened more than once or we're making a personal call to the owner and explaining that this is critical for our success. And you know, the the entrepreneur is not going to be denied. A large corporation has got so many different things. they're just going to move to whatever else, you know, is is occupying their mind. So, we haven't had supply chain challenges getting this line launched and and we have locked in uh and made our suppliers aware of our bold ambitions for this for this product line. So, I don't anticipate uh any challenges in that dimension. >> I think you bought quite a bit of tea from China the first time around. Is that going to be possible this time? >> Sure. Yeah, we bought we buy tea from China, India, and Africa. And uh we have already uh purchased a great deal and have you know expect to continue to buy more. It's all certified organic and all certified fair trade as well. >> And there there aren't the supply chain issues associated with China that were you know so prominent early in the pandemic. >> Not with respect to tea. We have good good suppliers who can you know handle the brokerage. We want to make sure everything is landed in the United States. So there's a long lead time on those purchases. Technology has changed a lot in the last 20 years. Is there anything that has an impact on your business doing it this time as opposed to last time because technology has evolved? >> Yeah, it's so funny. The the the bottling plants are very much the same bottling plants. They've got a little more mechanized. They may use a you know a robot palletizer, but the the bottling technology is is pretty basic. And so where technologies, you know, has an impact on us is around social media and how we communicate with people. But the basic science of taking tea leaves, brewing them, bottling it, putting it in their truck, getting it to a store, all of those things really those have those haven't changed since 1998. Uh it's just the the way we market and create awareness that's going to will have to be a little more um innovative than we were. Back in 1998, the marketing was giving out samples and we'll still do a lot of that, but we have to find additional ways to get get uh people to be aware about what we're doing. >> Is that marketing plan in place and something you're ready to talk about? >> In broad strokes, I mean, it's going to be very much based on the ingredients we have, the ethos around the the the sourcing and um you know, certainly working with retailers who were very excited to have this line. I mean the loss of honesty wasn't just a you know something consumers will miss but retailers will miss having you know this kind of offering on their shelves both for the dollars but also for the the values that it epitomized and so we've gotten great support from retailers and several um national retailers who who have committed to launching the brand and already have plans to give us you know high visibility in in their end caps and in their coolers and and on other places in the What's different this time because you have more money to spend from the beginning. >> Well, it's not about the money. What's different this time for me personally is the level of fear. Uh, you know, I I had a a a lot of worry. I was not just launching an ICT company for the first time. I was launching a company for the first time and I had had no experience in the beverage industry, no experience in the food industry. And so uh it was all very um intimidating and and uh worrisome and you know my whole kind of my livelihood and our how everything was on the line. this time um I have the not and and the other thing that was so hard back in 1998 was trying to convince distributors to carry our product because the dominant brand at the time was Snapple and so anyone who was carrying Snapple just wasn't to be bothered with honest tea because they didn't think that you know that wasn't the taste that was the the mainstream taste what's so exciting now is that the marketplace has been built and frankly I you know the team and I spent 20 years building it so I have no doubt that there's a place for this on the shelves of the grocery stores and just because Coca-Cola is pulling out doesn't mean the category is over. So have a lot more confidence and a lot more willing partners uh both within our company who know the opportunities there because they built it but also our distributors and our retailers. So we've had you know I used to have to spend well back in the day it was you know weeks and months just trying to call somebody to get them to answer the phone. Now it's emails and and when in many cases the retailers are reaching out to us but when I do reach out to a retailer you know the calls are getting uh or the emails are getting returned and that's that's really gratifying. >> I guess when I was asking about the money I was thinking about you know the difference between a you know a scrappy bootstrap kind of startup uh which I believe you started in your kitchen to you know a more professional operation right from the go. How does that feel different to you? >> Not too different, frankly. We, you know, we always want to have that challenger mindset and that's a phrase we use all the time inside the change is that challenger mindset is just a key way to do business because a challenger mindset knows things aren't given. You know, you've got to go out and earn them. Even the day for our first production run, we went to our bottling plant and they in Pennsylvania and my co-founder Spike and I shared a hotel room because in in the Hampton in like we're not we're not just because we've raised money doesn't mean we're going to go spend it on ourselves. We've got to we still got to be lean and and entrepreneurial and and have a a gorilla marketing mindset. So, we're not going to go advertise our way to growth. That's if if we can spend money on an ad, so can a big company. And a big company's got a lot more money to spend. So that's not going to be the way for us to compete. We've got to be resourceful and creative and and and lean and scrappy. And so that challenger mindset, frankly, I hope we never lose it. I I never I I've been around companies that don't have it. And I can tell you that's not a it's not a path to growth. And it's also not a path to disruption. It's not where it's not where change happens, you know. It's it's where status quo is maintained. You mentioned that Snapple was the dominant brand uh back then and that you know they weren't nobody was looking for uh anybody in your lane. Are are there other big differences in the beverage industry today? >> Well, yeah. Certainly the big one is the sweetness level, right? When we started back in 1998, we were the only people try trying to sell a less sweet tea and it was a little bit like crickets, right? Nobody, no one even understood why we would try to do that because the Snapples of that time or Arizona iced tea were much closer to soda from a calorie and even from a ingredients perspective. But now that's all shifted. Somebody said to me today, you know, you guys were ahead of your time 20 years ago. Now it is your time and so uh we can avoid the the the pretty grueling learning curve that we had to go through as a company, but also that we had to take consumers through. Um, so that's a big change. The other one of course is organics. When we started in 1998, we had some organic ingredients, but there wasn't a national system for administering a organic seal. Now there is a USDA certified seal and fair trade as well. There was not a chance to use fair trade ingredients in a national brand both for scale and and then for marketing reasons. And now there is as well. So it's wonderful that all of those are have advanced and and can be relevant for us. You said you can avoid the learning curve uh that you went through as a company, not just in terms of teaching uh consumers. What were you referring to in terms of the internal learning curve? >> How do we work with distributors? How do we make the product? I mean, you may remember cuz when we met back in early 2000s, Honesty still had like an inch of sediment on the bottom because we were using real tea leaves, but we didn't know how to filter it. But, you know, our first production run we we've already done here and we've got this beautiful clean tea. Uh, it's still very much got all the right tea notes. It just is much cleaner filtration. So, you know, some of this stuff we just had to learn and was painful. We we've already been able to to leaprog all that. >> When you raise money, um, and I think you've raised more than $14 million if, um, the reporting I saw was correct. You know, that that's a responsibility. you're you're um when companies go into public markets, they disclose risk factors. They talk about what could go wrong. Did did you warn your investors of anything that could go wrong here? >> Oh, always. And any accredited investor should be familiar with the risks, but most companies don't make it. And and you know, it's easy for someone to look at my track record and say, "Oh, there's not a risk." But of course, there's risk here. I'm curious if there were any risks that you highlighted that might be worth talking about. >> I mean, I always make a point of sharing the risks. So, I mean, it's still, you know, even with all our advantages and the funding and our team, it's still an uphill battle. We're we're challenging established interests and, you know, it's certainly worth noting that Coca-Cola exited the space because they didn't think it was worth going into. So, that that should raise some questions. We'll certainly assess those risks, but obviously we decided it's a risk worth taking. >> Do you have a uh a national retail deal in place? >> We have several we have several we haven't announced them yet, but yes, we have uh several national retailers who are already ready to go and have given us the commitment to launch this in the coming weeks. I believe at one point we spoke about why you decided to sell the business uh to Coca-Cola and I think the the main thing you emphasized to me was the need for better distribution and that you didn't think uh you could get there as a small business which I I think honesty may have been around $20 million in in sales at the time when you first sold to Coke Um and that that's what CO was bringing to the deal. >> Yeah, we've always had the mission and it it continues through today to democratize organics to make healthier foods available not just to the healthy and wealthy or just to people on the coasts but to everyone. And so, you know, uh, when Coca-Cola, uh, arose as a potential partner, we thought, who better to democratize organics with and and what who better to make a change, you know, in a in America's diet with than the world's largest beverage company. And so, I still stand by that decision. I I think it was the right decision. I what I would have done differently now in retrospect is I would have made sure honesty got to be larger um before turning over ownership to Coca-Cola. Um it was still too small. The scale wasn't there. So it was easy for them to say okay well you know we got a lot of priorities. This will not be one of those priorities. Um and uh but you know here at Eat the Change, our goal is to take planet make planet friendly food available and help change people's diets and the way they think about their diets. >> You did get some backlash at the time of the sale from people who thought you were selling out and not remaining true to your your principles. >> Yeah. I mean the idea that we didn't stay true to our principles is is just ludicrous. We when Coca-Cola invested um only 40% of our product was uh fair trade certified um by two they invested in 2008 by 2011 all of our products were fair trade certified and organic and by 2015 we even converted all the sweetener the sugar over to fair trade as well and and and the drinks net calorie profile went down as well. So, um, they may think of we, you know, didn't stick to principles because we sold a Coca-Cola, but one of the things I was proud of and I'm still proud of is that the Honest brand was more more quote unquote honest, you know, um, when it uh, in 2019 than it was in uh, 1998. So, um, you know, if the idea of partnering with a large company means betraying your principles, that that I just reject. I think we have to a missiondriven entrepreneur has to have the aspiration to make impact happen at scale. And so I love I the greatest respect for the small craft entrepreneur but that's that's not a an aspiration I have. My goal is to make uh change happen at scale. And in order to do that, you either have to become one of the world's largest companies or you have to work with the world's largest companies. And that's exactly what we did. And you know, to talk about the impact, we brought honest and and honest kids by the way, which is not being discontinued is, you know, carried in McDonald's, Wendy's, Subway, and Chick-fil-A, you know, some of the world's largest restaurant chains. And so that democratization of organic is absolutely happening for millions of people around the world. honest the honest brand is is their first exposure to organic and not just to organica it's also their first exposure to less sweet taste profiles and so what we're doing here at Ether change also we're we're excited to bring organic food and present it in new forms and and make it available to people in a way that we hope will become part of their daily diets. >> Do you have a sense of why honest tea wasn't more profitable for Coke? It wasn't on the inside, so I can only speculate, but I do know they did not invest in honest tea the way they invested in their other tea brands. So there you you know, so then you weren't going to see the same level of growth. Uh and then um during the pandemic, as you know, they had supply chain challenges. So then when they get to uh after the pandemic and it's obviously shooken up the whole business, they go through they went through a process called fewer bigger bets, meaning fewer brands betting on bigger ones. And so honest tea as they look at the numbers isn't growing. Uh and so it's easier to to say well this this and they didn't have an internal advocate like me there explaining or making the case for why it was important for the world's largest beverage company to be future forward in its thinking. So they just weren't the same internal advocates there. And that um you know made it easier to decide to to cut the brand. And I when they called me to tell me I I thought at first they were saying it was just going to move off the bottler trucks, but I thought for sure they would keep it in the natural channel where Honest Tea is and has been the top selling bottle tea brand. And and they said, "No, we're cutting it there, too." And that that was just I had just been in the whole food store the week before for a new store opening and honesty had two full shelves of product. And so as soon as I heard news about this, I'm like, "Oh my goodness, th that's some amazing shelf space that's going to be available pretty pretty soon. Who else do you think is competing for that shelf space? >> I'm sure there's lots of folks who want it, but if you if if you talk about organic, fair trade certified, less sweet bottled tea, I don't know another brand out there. And that's why uh Just iced tea, which you know we've already now made and are going to start shipping out um is ready to capture that opportunity. When I was at the New York Times, we did a case study where we talked to you about a decision you made where I believe Coke came to you and said they did not want you to use the language no high fructose corn syrup on any of your products. Oh yeah. >> And you fought them and said, "No, this is part of our brand. We insist on keeping it." They obviously didn't want it there because they were selling other products that did use high fructose corn syrup. I I'm curious. I was I was always amazed that you were willing to talk publicly about this in the New York Times, no less. Did you get any push back as a result of that? >> Sure. Well, from Coca-Cola, not from a consumer, but yeah. >> No, that's what I meant. That's what I meant. >> Yeah, they were not thrilled with that. and but it was real and it was honest and um it certainly uh continued that language continued to be on the honest kids package even when Ko bought the brand. So even though they um had a a bit of a a hard time understanding it, they eventually recognized that what I was saying was relevant for the consumer. And I think the other piece that the meta way to look at this is brands have to have their own voice. You can't uh people don't want just a mush. They want a brand with an edge. They want a brand that stands for something. And so there's an impulse or an urge and a tendency in large companies to try to make everything harmonize and and that just becomes the least appealing most, you know, vanilla image and it's just not something that it creates loyalty or passion among consumers. >> You stayed on at Coke for a little while as CEO of Honest Tea even after Coke owned the whole business. >> Not just a little while, by the way. How long was it? >> Yeah, so KO invested in 2008 and then they bought the brand in 2011 and then I through 2015 continue to work in a full-time role. Then in 2015 I shifted to halftime uh with Coke and halftime with Beyond Meat as executive chair of the board. So I was with Coca-Cola longer than I was with Honesty as an independent brand. And uh you know I for me it was always clear what my job was. It wasn't to go out and sell busy brown liquid. It was to go and build on his team and and everyone knew that. I I never pretended I was going to be I mean I did my best to be diplomatic and I was I was very well I was treated very well by everyone inside the company from the leadership down. I was well you know respected and and and uh and I appreciate that. and they, you know, whether it was launching Honest Tea in Europe or, um, in these major chains, they recognized that Honesty and Honest Kids offered them something valuable they didn't have. So, um, I, you know, those were not painful years. I also made it clear I I continue to be based up in Bethesda and I said um I can come down for once a month and I can spend you know a day one day inside of you know those conference rooms but you ask me to do that too much you're going to just you know take away all the the passion and joy I have for this business and so you know they respected that. Did you feel as though you still had an an entrepreneurial side to what you were doing or did you feel was it that you felt comfortable being more of an employee? >> I definitely had the mission element to what I was doing. It clearly became less entrepreneurial u because as we got more integrated into Coca-Cola, we had less discretion over where we could go for new opportunities. One example is uh we had developed a really um great organic sports drink, but we could never get the funding for it. And if I had gone out on my own, I'm confident we could have raised, you know, millions of dollars from investors to launch this organic sports drink. We were trying to do it under the honest name. So that meant we needed to do it inside Coca-Cola. And they just within the portfolio part of the business we were in, which was the tea business, they didn't have money to go supports drink. So that's just, you know, when when a company gets into silos, they they they'll miss a lot of opportunities. >> Well, that's interesting. Do you think you might pursue that going forward? >> No. No. We're doing tea right now. That's just iced tea is the focus. And of course, you know, Coca-Cola has scaled their brand body armor and that's done well. Um, but we've got our hands full with just iced tea. >> Did you make any attempt to buy the honest tea name back from Coke? They made it clear right away that they were keeping the name because they still had on his kids. And you know, I I understood they would not let a brand that they owned also be owned by somebody else. It would just make potential conflicts. >> You mentioned Beyond Meat. Could you tell us quickly what your role has been there? Yeah. So I was ex I um joined the board in 2013 and I was executive chair from 2015 through 2020 and you know helped that business grow and scale from really just around a million dollars in sales to you know going public and going international. Uh and now I'm chair of the board. So as a governance role I'm I'm very engaged but I'm not part of the management team. >> And tell us about eat the change. When did that start? So that started in uh 2020 just after I uh stepped away from my um management role at uh Beyond Meat. I felt there was an opportunity to u move people's diets towards planet friendly foods uh and doing it through snacks. And so uh I started this company with my co-founder, Chef Spike Mendelson. And our first product was a line of mushroom jerky. Uh and then we brought out some carrot snacks that are um delicious and more nutrient-dense than a lot of the snacks out there for both adults and children. And uh that business was growing and then then this iced tea opportunity got presented to us. And so just iced tea will be part uh will be offered under the eat the change umbrella but it will have its own name just iced tea. >> And will you continue to do other things with eat the change the other the snacks and the stuff that you would previously been working on? >> Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. What now happens is we can create a a a flywheel where the tea, you know, gets into the store and it can bring along the snacks or if we're doing a a sales promotion, we get end cap in a store and we'll have the bottle tea as a dominant offering, but we'll have our snacks alongside it. And that's that's wonderful because I I used to see honest tea, you know, on the end cap of a store, end of an aisle, and there'd be some other snack, you know, offered alongside it. Now we get to have eat the change, have the drinks and the snacks. >> You're also co-founder of a vegan fast casual chain. >> Yes. Uh well, fast I guess fast food. It's called Plant Burger. We have 12 uh restaurants, all plant-based, featuring uh burgers, shakes, and fries. And this is a fun one. It's, you know, I would say it's indulgent plant-based food. It's it's it's not a it's healthy in the sense that it's um plant-based as opposed to animal based, but it isn't positioned as a a health food store. It's it's a delicious burger concept. And and Chef Spike is a co-founder on this one as well. This might sound flip. I don't mean it to. Why are you doing this? I I I'm guessing it's you don't need the money at this point, but you're you're obviously working very hard at a time you don't have to be working very hard. >> Yeah. Uh, it's never been about the money for me. It really isn't. Back in college, I thought I was going to be going into politics. You know, I thought that would be the way to make change happen. And I obviously haven't gone that route. I don't have any regrets about that. So, for me, it's how do I make change happen? And >> that that was a good call, >> right? If we had a healthy population and we didn't have a climate crisis, maybe I'd be, you know, uh, enjoying different parts of life. But I, for me, this is work. This is work with purpose. It's work I care about. And um I really wouldn't want to be doing anything else. >> How many hours a week are you working? Uh it's easy to imagine a lot. >> I you know I I don't keep track. I just because it doesn't feel like work, you know? I mean I was on the phone last night, I don't know, 9:30 p.m. with our New York distributor and and of course this is someone I've worked with, you know, for decades and we're trying to solve some um issues and it's like, oh, this is important part of the work. You know, the wonderful thing is my wife and my family have been just incredible, incredibly supportive and they believe in it, too. You know, when we got the news about Coca-Cola discontinuing Honest Tea, I would say my three sons took it harder than anybody. So, they were they were really upset and angry about it. And, you know, we had to talk to them about why. >> What's their age range now? >> Well, well, then my oldest just turned 30 and my youngest is 25. uh and they're all in their own group, you know, doing entrepreneurial mission-based work themselves. I >> Is it easier this time because the work life balance thing with your family is less of an issue with grown kids? >> Uh it's mostly easier because I know more about what I'm doing, so I don't feel the same level of stress. Uh but I don't want to suggest it's easy. It's still hard work. You know, this is still >> um we're challenging the predominant diet. We're challenging the what's right out there on the shelf. So, this is not a layup. >> What's your biggest near-term concern? What What are you What challenge are you facing that you're not completely sure? >> Yeah, we've got to commercialize the tea. And then we've got to make sure we bring along the snacks with them. And then we got to create awareness. Like I said, we're not going to spend we're not going to do a national ad campaign. We're not going to be um doing, you know, buy huge media buys. And so we've got to make sure people know about these products and and discover them and of course enjoy them and tell others. But we want this to be a discovery brand. We want people to find it, love it, and share it with others. When you go into a national retail chain, to what extent do you feel the onus is on you to drive sales through your own marketing versus their um being in a position to to make sure that those sales happen? It's always on us, you know, everything's on us. And that's that's the challenger mindset that maybe uh that the the the non-challer things, oh, I'll just I'll just put it there and someone else will, you know, take responsibility. It's always on us. We always have to um control our destiny. So, um we have to earn the shelf space and then we have to earn the consumer's attention that moves it off the shelf. And frankly, look, when we sold Honest to Coca-Cola, that was the beginning of of an effort, too. And you could say we did succeed. I mean, we we certainly got the business scaled. We kept the mission intact, but the brand didn't ultimately survive, and that's that's a shame. So, it's it is nice to get this next opportunity. >> Could you imagine one day selling this one to Coca-Cola? >> I I all I can imagine is building something valuable. That's the goal. And I, you know, I never had, when we started on this back in 1998, there was never, oh, we're gonna sell this and flip it. It's it's build something valuable. And if you do that the right way, and one of the best pieces of advice I got from one of my board members was build a company like you are going to own it forever and like you want to own it forever. And and if you do that, you build it right, um, opportunities will emerge. >> Seth, did I miss anything important that you can think of? >> Here's the overriding lesson for me. um which is that whether you call it karma or just doing right um it really pays off there. It is a real thing and and what I mean by that is there's no way I could have launched a brand from idea to marketplace in three months if we hadn't treated the people right all along the way. employees who who came back and joined you know this effort, the retailers, the suppliers, all of them stepped up, most of them before I had the chance to reach out to them because they value the way they've been treated before. And so there really is no downside to doing right by people and right by your partners. And I think there's also no downside to acting in a way you believe because as upsetting as it was to see honesty discontinued even before we decided to get back into it, I didn't have any regrets. I mean, I I I had built the brand with integrity and it and those values stayed intact. Uh and so, of course, you know, to be able to go back again and in a sense double down on those values is is an incredible opportunity. But even if honesty had disappeared, it was just so gratifying to hear how much that brand meant to so many millions of people. Emerging entrepreneurs themselves, consumers, retailers, brokers, distributors, all really took pride in that brand. And I hope we're able to give them that same feeling with Just Ice Tea. >> My thanks to Seth Goldman. Uh Seth, I really appreciate you taking the time. Um best of luck with this. I hope uh we can talk again with you a little further down the road and uh we can hear how it's going. >> Thank you, Lauren. Great to be with you. >> One thing before you go, everything we do at 21 Hats is created by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs to help us all learn together. If you get something out of listening to these podcast episodes, consider joining the conversation. You can do that by joining the 21 Hats sounding board, a Slack channel where you can tap the wisdom of a very smart crowd or by becoming a founding member and joining our monthly Zoom forum where you can be part of conversations much like the ones we have on the podcast. You can sign up for both by subscribing to the Morning Report. If you have any questions, you can email me at lauren21hats.com. And if you get something out of this podcast or out of the morning report, please tell a friend, tell an enemy, tell every business owner you know. Your word of mouth owner to owner will always be the most effective way to build this community for all of us. Thank you. It means a lot. This episode was produced by another entrepreneur, Jess Stubberon, founder of Blank Word Productions. Thanks for listening, everyone.