If you have been tuning in to this show, then you’ll know Elliot Begoun as the man behind the microphone, bringing to you founders who have been riding the waves of the COVID world. But do you really know Elliot? In this episode, we will get to know and understand who this man is who has been introducing us to so many great people and ideas. It is time to switch things up as Elliot sits in the hot seat. Taking the show over, he is interviewed by Michael Giudicelli, the co-founder of Read The Ingredients, and Gregory Struck, the founder and CEO of Noops. Together, they help peel back the layers of Elliot Begoun—who he is on and off-air, what he enjoys doing, and what he thinks about entrepreneurs these days. He then offers some great insights and advice on how entrepreneurs can overcome the challenges of this time and become the change agents this world needs.
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Peeling Back The Layers Of Elliot Begoun With Michael Giudicelli And Gregory Struck
We’re going to do something a little bit different. This was the brainchild of one of the guests, who will soon be one of the hosts. That was a bit of turnabout. Instead of me being the person leading the interviews with your questions, I am going to be the one interviewed. The thought was that I would have something interesting to say and I’m here to prove that to be wrong. This is a great episode for those of you who are contemplating a night, you’re worried about not sleeping or need some relative boredom in their lives. Before I go any further, I’m going to stop and I’m going to turn it over to Michael. He’s going to introduce himself and he’s the cohost for this episode. Michael, it’s all yours.
Thank you, Elliot. As always, you never give yourself enough or too much credit. I’m still trying to figure out which one is the truth. My name is Michael Giudicelli, I am the Cofounder of a company called Read The Ingredients. We are a better-for-you breakfast alternative. I have been working with Elliot and the team at TIG. Quite frankly, I’m honored to be the guest host with Gregory. I’m sure many of you who work with Elliot, and some of you who don’t work with Elliot will know that he has far more knowledge than he ever lets on and more than we can ever cover in an hour show, but here we are doing our best. I’m excited to be doing this with Gregory, and I’ll toss it to him to give himself an introduction.
Thank you, Michael. I appreciate it. Elliot, thank you for having us on. It’s always exciting to do a bit of a switch here and I jumped at the opportunity to be on this. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Gregory, I’m the Founder and CEO of Noops which makes wildly delicious plant-based snacks. The idea is to take everyday comfort foods and reimagine them with better-for-you ingredients. Our first product line is better-for-you pudding. It’s a bit about me and my company. Let’s jump in.
Thank you to Michael, first of all, for delving deep and putting together a great set of questions with my minimal input. What I want to do here, Elliot, is peel back the layer of Elliot Begoun. Oftentimes, many of us experience Elliot in the professional sense, especially now in a post-COVID world, we may have not had the opportunity to meet you in person and have an understanding of who you are. I’m excited to jump in here, put you on the hot seat, and hopefully, give our audience a bit of insight into who you are. In terms of getting to know you, I would love to know what you do when you’re not working. What are your passions and what do you do to let off steam?
First of all, thank you guys for doing this. I was a little uncomfortable with turning the tables but it’s cool and I’m happy to do it. I’m a workaholic so that’s a challenge for me. It’s not something I admit with pride. It’s something that I wish I was better at, but believe it or not, I do have quite a bit of outside interests. I love to hike, cycle, and be out in nature. I am an amateur musician so I love to pick up the guitar, play the piano, and do that. I’m an avid reader. Our kids are grown, but when they’re available in town or around, I’m hanging out with them or Juliet, that’s the other great joy in my life.
If we at all had any doubt that you’re a well-rounded individual, clearly you’ve proven that. With that in mind, I’ll this over to Michael. Please, go ahead and jump in on the next question.
There are a couple of things you mentioned there that I want to touch on. The first one is you like to cycle in your free time. I won’t go deep into this because this will turn off every one of your audience members if we were to talk about cycling more than we need to. I’m only asking this question because I know your history of being physically competitive in personal endurance sports. Why do you think that many entrepreneurs or C-level executives find themselves striving to compete in these types of sports?
It’s the mindset. Entrepreneurialism in and of itself is an endurance sport. It’s the adrenaline high of the success and the long-continued struggle. It’s not much different than being a distance cyclist, ultra-marathoner, or any of those kinds of similar sports. It’s the same dopamine response that you got. There’s a bit of suffering that’s involved in all of those. That sounds strange to those who don’t understand but there’s a degree of pleasure in suffering and being able to prove to yourself and know that you can because it also makes you more resilient. It ebbs and flows over your life. When I was in my 30s and 40s, that was a big part of who I am. It’s not any longer. All you have to do is look at me to know that but it used to be. It’s the same desire to persevere, push and challenge yourself, and succeed when others don’t and quit.
What I heard you say there were two things. One, being an entrepreneur isn’t mentally tough enough that we have to then go find another way to punish ourselves. Secondly, entrepreneurs are masochists. Is that right?
Entrepreneurs are absolutely masochists. The other reason is a thing about endurance is it’s very hard to be in multiple places mentally at once when you are in endurance and that you become very focused. It’s one of the few times that your mind is quiet. That’s one of the things that entrepreneurs struggle. In my experience, they’re ruminators. They’re always wondering, thinking, questioning decisions, and so forth. When you’re pushing yourself a bit physically, it’s a little harder to make that headspace so there’s a bit of reprieve from it. I do think it’s a combination of physical suffering and mental relaxation. I know that sounds odd that the two are going on concurrently.
For those that don’t participate in these kinds of sports, it’s hard to understand. I will digress from that because I don’t want to alienate your audience. Another one of the things you mentioned that is an important one to touch on is you like to spend time with your family and specifically, you mentioned Juliet. A lot of people would have a tough time working with their significant other. How have you found success in doing so?
It’s not always been easy. It was something we spent a lot of years not doing. Part of it is growing to know one another after many years and being comfortable with that. Although we work together, what Juliet does is to build and foster a community. That’s something she’s done her entire life. She was an educator, a very active mom when the kids were young, and a community builder anyway. She comes by it naturally.
It’s her expertise and I do my best not to get in the way of that. For a long time, we didn’t want to do that. We wanted to give each other space, and each of us have our own calling so to speak. The reality of our lives is we love to travel and do the same kinds of things. Working together makes all of that much easier because there aren’t any restrictions. We do it at the same time. We’re still learning. It’s not perfect. There are moments that aren’t pretty but for the most part, we do it well.
One of the things you mentioned is something I wanted to touch on in terms of what TIG offers, and that is community. You guys have done such a fantastic job in harboring or welcoming the community. Me and Bobbi, who’s my mom and also cofounder of Read The Ingredients, have appreciated working with you and working with the team at TIG, but in a bigger sense, working in the better-for-you food space. There have been very few brands or founders that we’ve spoken with that haven’t been more than open and welcoming to the idea of working together and sharing knowledge. What is it about this space, in particular, that harbors such welcoming people and people who are willing to share experiences?
I don’t know that I necessarily have my finger on the exact reason why but I share the sentiment. To me, it’s one of the magical things about this industry. It’s why I’ve stayed in it for many years. Many other industries even within the food, beverage, natural products industry, and large corporations have a different view than entrepreneurs. The reality is everybody feels like they can relate to the other person because they’ve all been there at some point for almost to a person. The reason people are doing what they’re doing isn’t the money, it’s because they’re trying to make a difference. They’re trying to make either the world better through health, wellness, comfort, environment, or all of the above.
The mission that is shared is to spread goodness. It’s the adage of Ben Franklin. It’s about doing well by doing good. That shared universal call-to-arms is why there is that collaboration. I don’t know why it exists but I know that it does. I’m thankful for it every day because it’s amazing what happens. Gary Hirshberg and I spent a lot of time talking about this. Commerce, when harnessed for the right reasons, is the biggest change agent, period. When I look up and down the natural products industry at the entrepreneurs and the teams here, to me, that represents commerce at its best.
I have one more question then, Gregory, I’ll let you get some questions in. One thing you mentioned there was we’re all doing this to make the world a better place. We are all living by that, at least the small sample size of a community that we have here at TIG. Can you expand a little bit about what was the problem that you were solving and how TIG is making the world a better place?
Elliot Begoun: Entrepreneurialism in and of itself is an endurance sport. It’s the adrenaline high of the success and the long-continued struggle.
I hope it is because that’s how I measure success. To me, it’s about making a real impact. That’s what motivates me to get up. That sounds woo-woo and bullshit but it isn’t. The reason I started TIG was I was always an entrepreneurial wannabe but I didn’t have chutzpah or courage. I found myself in my career doing what I thought. What I was taught by my family was the right thing. You go to college, grad school, get a good corporate job, and provide for your family. It lulled myself into that was security, freedom, and opportunity.
At the same time, I was always struggling with the fact that I felt like a pariah because I wanted to break things, challenge things, see things work differently, and try new ideas. For those of you who’ve worked in big companies, that is not embraced behavior. It was Juliet who finally pushed me to do this. I was about to head off to the office, she looked at me and she said, “If you think you’re faking it, you’re wrong. I see how miserable you are every single day you go to work. Why don’t you do something different?”
This was years ago when we had two kids in college and one going into high school. This was the time where we’re having a bankable executive salary. It felt the most secure and safe. She wouldn’t let me off the hook until I ran out of reasons to say no. When I thought about what it is that I wanted to do next, I sat back and was honest and said, “There are two things that I have to be real about.” One is I am a misguided, misplaced college professor. That was my calling. That’s what I thought I was going to do as an undergrad.
If I were to look at my career, I’d have to admit that at that point, I had amassed almost 25 years of hard-fought lessons and mistakes. The best entrepreneur I can be would be to come alongside those who are the real innovators and change agents and help them try to avoid some of those mistakes and hard-fought lessons. I thought that I would be spending the vast majority of my time as a teacher which now, in hindsight, was totally arrogant because the reality is, I spend far more of my time as a student, which I’m so thankful for than as the teacher. I get to cross-pollinate all the learnings that I take in.
That was the mission, which was for TIG to come alongside entrepreneurs and help them win. I’ll end the answer to this question with the way I kept looking at it. I kept looking at the amount of market share that had shifted from the largest CPG companies to emerging brands. From 2009 to 2019, it was something like $18 billion. Yet 80% to 90% of CPG brands that start are gone within two years. It’s not because the founders and products are terrible. Oftentimes, they didn’t have somebody shepherding them around the obstacles, challenges, and things that are thrown at them. If I can help increase that success rate even a little bit then I would be happy to do it.
I can speak in saying that certainly, you have already been worth the time that we’ve spent with you in shepherding us from some of those mistakes. I can attest and I would be willing to speak for the majority of the community in saying that that rings true for them as well.
Thank you. I will say that a lot of those navigations come from what you all teach me.
Gregory, I’ll give you some time now.
Thanks, Michael. I appreciate it. I was going to ask a question in terms of where your deep knowledge in how you’re such a shoo-in for a candidate to be working on his brand versus being on the service side of the industry but you answered that for me.
I’ll add to it a little bit, Gregory. When I came at the stage of my career, there are elements of what it takes to be a CPG founder that I knew I didn’t have in me anymore. There are elements from being on trade show floors for hours to doing those kinds of things and I had to be a realist too. What you all are choosing is hard as hell. For anybody whose reading and on the cusp of wondering if this is what they want to do and are ready to take the next step forward, know that this is hard. I had to be honest with where I was in my life and recognize that there were some things that I didn’t have in me anymore. I’ve done that to some degree.
We touched on briefly about entrepreneurs being inviting physical punishment in terms of racing and physically doing things. The other side of the coin is the spiritual side. What I would love to know is what does Elliot do for spiritual exercise? What is your “regimen” that’s not physically-driven but levels you had on the mental and spiritual playing field?
An important part of my life is I am culturally Jewish and a practicing Buddhist. Those are affectionately known as Jew-buds for those who weren’t aware of it. It’s an interesting thing because my brother is an Orthodox rabbi and my wife is Catholic. It created a lot of interesting opportunities as our kids have grown up over the years to talk about the importance of having a spiritual practice, whatever it is. To this day, I get up every morning and one of the very first things I do is sit and meditate for 30 minutes. I have been doing that forever. That’s one of the great things anyone should do. My tongue and cheek comment has always been one of my favorite places to go on vacation is inside my head.
When you have a regular meditation practice, you go from being in the middle of the stream of your thoughts, the rapids to standing on the shore, watching them go by, and realizing how batshit crazy we all are. How so many of these stories that we put energy to and tell ourselves that we believe are something real and lead us astray. It’s a big part of who I am. That’s a hope that I have for everybody and our kids that each of them finds their spiritual practice and path because it’s a very important component of being an entrepreneur. It’s having some way to nourish yourself and spirituality is one way to do that.
For the longest time, I’ve always said to myself, “I want to do two things. I want to read more because I believe knowledge is power and it’s fundamental. I want to partake in meditation.” I finally conquered reading by making that time sacred and meditation has been the hardest thing for me to wrap my head around because in my mind, I’m so restless. In five minutes, I’m thinking something is talking to me.
That’s one of the biggest misnomers of meditation. Not to take this for everybody, but the premise of meditation is not to quiet your mind. That’s a fool’s errand. It’s difficult, especially in the entrepreneurial moment. As I said at the beginning, we’re ruminators. Our minds are going 1,000 miles a minute. To think that we can sit somewhere and get it to all stop is leading yourself to frustration. What meditation is especially Vipassana insight or even Zen is to recognize that there’s a difference between being your thoughts and watching your thoughts.
It’s the opportunity to sit, be introspective and become instead of the participant of your thinking, to be present and be the observer of it. This is my experience about the premise when you do that, what you soon realize is how to take yourself a whole lot less seriously and also to understand when others get caught in their thoughts that that’s what they’re doing and take them a little bit less seriously. It takes some of the tension it makes out of the world if you can do that. It’s a practice that can be included in most religions as some form of meditative practice. I didn’t mean to make this episode on that.
The reason why I wanted to jump on it is because many times, entrepreneurs think the key to winning is to follow a business playbook. It’s guided around P&L and distribution. The health of the entrepreneur takes a back seat. The spiritual awareness and recognizing how important that is, as important as physical awareness, is fascinating to me. In the near future, we’ll have Elliot School Of Zen.
Elliot Begoun: The reason people are doing what they’re doing isn’t the money; it’s because they’re trying to make a difference. They’re trying to make the world better through health, wellness, comfort, environment, or all of the above.
Being an entrepreneur is one of those things where I say, “Do as I say and not as I do.” There are a lot of things that I haven’t figured out in my own self-care. We talked about the challenges and the stressor of being an entrepreneur. If you don’t have a self-care regimen or at least some effort against it, you can look down the road suddenly and wonder how you got there in terms of your health, stress on the family, all of those kinds of things. When you make the commitment to be an entrepreneur and build a business, one of the most important assets to invest is yourself. Not only the knowledge but then also making sure that you’re taking care of yourself.
It’s such a counter-culture because a lot of ex-corporate guys and girls make the leap into being entrepreneurs in the food business that connect with their passion. That’s how these businesses are started. They come from the schools of, in order to be of value, you have to work 100 hours a week. I would venture to say those types of climates, the emphasis on mental health and spiritual development is not there. It’s the throughput of a system. It’s refreshing to hear you say that and certainly empowering. A lot of new entrepreneurs come in and they don’t recognize how important that side of your business is. It’s not about Excel sheets and distribution. It’s about you waking up every day. There’s passion, nutrition, physical activity and spirituality. You’re spot on. I wish I would’ve learned it sooner. I wish I would’ve known what I know now at 29.
Wait until you’re 53 and you’ll say the same thing but realize it even more so.
I’ve got one more question and then I’ll pass the baton back to Michael. You spoke a little bit down a path of spirituality and emotional health but let’s switch it to the business side. In a digitally enabled world that we live in and being where we are, what places do you look to for business information like podcasts or websites? Where do you go to keep up on your educational side of things or what are you listening to?
For those who know me, this won’t be surprising, but I’m a voracious consumer of information. Fortunately, by luck, I’m somebody that can process a technical term, a shitload of information relatively and assimilate it fairly quickly. I try to keep it as diverse as possible. I’m a podcast junkie. I love podcasts when I’m out walking or on an indoor bike. I know Michael listened to it. When I’m riding on the road, I listened to the road record. The more mainstream, I still love Guy Raz on How I Built This. I listen to a lot of the industry podcasts as well.
I like the show that Robin and Wayne do with Unfinished Biz. Steve Claire does a great job at Next Level, so I try to stay on that. One of the other things I do is I’m on a few boards. One of my goals that I set a few years ago was to try to be on at least one board in an industry I know nothing about so that I would come to it with a beginner’s mind. It’s easy when you’ve been in a business, you get comfortable.
It’s like you have this playbook. The board I was on until they had a successful exit was the largest carwash chain in California. I knew nothing about car washes. Now, I know quite a bit about car washes but it’s a way to make sure that you’re not thinking group think or get sucked in. I try to look at information along those lines. I would say I’m somebody who knows a little about a lot, not somebody who knows a lot about a little. I’m a 30,000-foot person when it comes to information. That’s why I consume a ton of it.
You know a lot about the consumer, but that’s what I’ll say for having dealt with this.
Fake it until you make it.
A burning question I had that you mentioned about all of these different spiritual and religious beliefs in your family, what event does that leave for everyone to get together for dinner?
All of them. That’s the coolest thing. A funny story. When Juliet and I were newly married and having kids, we sat down with both sets of parents. My Jewish parents were practicing Catholic parents at the time. It’s ironic. My mother-in-law now is more of a Buddhist after all these years. It’s interesting. We sat down with them. We said to them that we had decided that when we had kids, we were going to expose the kids to our spirituality our way and let them be inquisitive and choose their path and so forth. The only thing that we would allow them is to fully understand how the in-laws felt. The only thing that we asked was that they didn’t push by giving gifts that were religious or do that stuff.
They all immediately shook their head and like, “We’re on board. No problem.” First Christmas after Sarah, our oldest, was born, we get two gifts. From my parents, this beautiful Hanukkah menorah and from Juliet’s parents, this handcrafted manger set. That means that neither parent didn’t listen at all to what we’d asked them to do. At first, I was pissed, and then we thought, “Let’s embrace it.” For all those years, what we do in our house is that the manger is backlit by the menorah. The symbol is, “Let’s be open about it. Give anyone who wants an opportunity to express how they do it.” It’s fun and easy.
Growing up, I can relate. We had a menorah close to the Christmas tree but not too close because none of us were firefighters. Certainly, both religions were present in one way or another. You mentioned you’re a podcast junkie and you mentioned some of the business podcasts you listened to. Can you list some of the personal podcasts you listened to outside of business?
They come in and out. I find cool things that strike my interest. On Being is a cool one. I find that interesting.
What’s that one?
It’s a little bit on spirituality and holistic help. My son and his girlfriend got us addicted to Crime Junkie, which is fun. We’re in a car and we want to hear what’s all screwed up in the world. A couple of political ones that I got into that were short ones which were great is Slow Burn, which was Watergate and Nixon, which is fascinating. There was another one soon after that was done by Rachel Maddow is called Bag Man, which is on Spiro Agnew. Those were fun. As those things peak and come in, I grab on to those.
One of the topics Slow Burn had was Clinton.
Elliot Begoun: When you commit to being an entrepreneur and build a business, one of the most important assets to invest in yourself. Not only the knowledge but then also making sure that you’re taking care of yourself.
Clinton was the follow-up. The very first season of Slow Burn was on Watergate. It was so well done.
There’s no great segue into this question, but it is one that I wanted to get out there. What do you actively do to make yourself uncomfortable? The reason I asked that is because we learn a lot about ourselves but also can learn a lot in general about putting ourselves in uncomfortable positions and understanding what we are then capable of in doing so.
It’s something that I struggled with for a long time because I was somebody who did everything possible in my life not to feel vulnerable or uncomfortable. It wasn’t until I started doing TIG that I realized that that was such a bad way of looking at life that I recognize that I feel uncomfortable. That’s usually a damn good signal I’m doing the right thing, I’m doing something cool. I look more intentionally to do it.
The thing I’m still most uncomfortable about doing is anything that suggests self-promotion. I’m uncomfortable with that. This is one of those things, for sure. Even this show is one of those things. When I share the show and when I promote an episode, it’s hard for me to do that. I’m not saying this but it’s so not about me. It is, to some degree, and it makes me uncomfortable but I do it anyway. I am a relative introvert. Sometimes, it’s hard for me to push myself out of that shell a bit.
Everything you’ve said points to being an introvert as well as self-reflection, meditation, and spiritual views. A lot of that is more likely to be explored by an introvert than an extrovert. One of the things that you always talk to us founders about in marketing is, the most successful marketing is polarizing. We’d want to open our arms and say everyone is welcome necessarily but putting a message out there, you want to be polarizing. Is that a good position for TIG to take? If so, where do you feel that you guys are polarizing?
First of all, there’s no need to be polarizing just to be polarizing but the best marketing is when you put a stake in the ground and stand for something. When you do that, that means people who don’t agree with that stance are turned off by that and you have to be okay and embrace that. For me, we try to do that every day in a non-confrontational way. The number one rule I have with TIG is that we have a no asshole rule. I’m not going to work and support assholes. You guys should both take comfort in the fact that you are not yet.
The other is the reason has to be bigger than the box. It has to be about doing right for people, planet and profit. Being a capitalist is fantastic. Everybody who’s doing this, being an entrepreneur, taking on this workload and the stressors that come with it deserves to have the opportunity to meet a great end result. The bigger purpose has to be about doing right for people and the planet. The other way we do it is I’m somewhat the contrarian because I don’t celebrate the unicorn.
You’ll find very few brands that we’re working with who are unicorn-only focused, who are looking for that overnight success which doesn’t happen and only concerned with getting the big exit. A lot of our brands that are working with us that are wanting to exit and that’s fantastic. It’s a pleasure to help prepare them to have that fantastic result but it isn’t the only driver. We talk about that a lot by talking and celebrating the tardigrades. I think all of those things.
You mentioned the no asshole is welcome, which is fantastic. I wish more people would live by that motto. That raises the question of how important is a personality or culture fit in working with you and the team at TIG relative to a belief in the brand where you don’t so much connect with the founders?
The latter doesn’t work. It has to be both, quite honestly. We have to have a belief in the brand, the opportunity for the brand, and the white space in the brand. We also have to have an equal belief, even a stronger belief in the founder. The founders have to have an equal belief in us. It is an absolute trust relationship. Our meetings are very much like this show. There is a very blurred line between what is business and what is personal. We are nurturing and trying to foster the success of both because one does not happen without the other. We are dealing with things that are deep.
Sometimes, being an entrepreneur can be taxing on a family and sometimes we’re talking about that. It’s a belief in each other that is the number one predictor in a successful relationship between a brand that we’re serving and a brand that chooses to work with us. There’s a belief in each other. It’s one of the reasons why in our agreements, we don’t have something that says you need to give up your firstborn in 360 days’ worth of revenue to get out of the agreement. We have a mutual ripcord that either side can pull it anytime with a simple 30-day notice. The reason we do that is because both sides know that the only reason we’re working together is that there’s the value being added.
That’s an important way to keep that relationship honest. That’s the only reason that it exists. It’s because there’s value. That’s what keeps me up at night. To be honest, that’s one of the things that I go to bed every night thinking through, asking, driving Juliet crazy. Charity hears it all the time, and Waven hears it all the time, “Are we doing enough? Are we communicating enough? Are we available enough?” That’s important to me because all of those working with us and have given us an immense amount of trust, I don’t want to let anybody down.
We’ll speak for the greater audience, we all feel and appreciate that and why we enjoy working with you. Gregory, I’ll ask one more question and I’ll throw it back to you. Elliot, you mentioned there’s a blurred line in our meetings and this show between personal and business discussions. Along with some personal discussions come bias or prejudice from previous experience wherever we may be bringing that baggage from. Are you conscious of trying to work around or suppress biases and prejudices in working with some of the founders?
We all have those blind spots and all of us have our prejudice and biases. There are very few instances in the brands that we work with and some of those are the kinds of things that we’re seeing societally and nationally. Even in the way we treat our businesses or the decisions that we make, the only way I know how to do that is to try at times to be a mirror and reflect back for the founders on how their decision-making, thought processes, and so forth are reflecting so they can see it for themselves. I don’t think it’s something you can tell somebody. At the same time, it’s always looking for them to be mirrors for us and to make sure that I’m not unaware of any of those. To make it something that isn’t difficult or taboo to talk about with each other. That’s what we try to do.
The only reason I asked that is we had an experience, Bobbi and I, at Read The Ingredients, where we had to make a tough decision based on somebody who we were potentially going to work with. It led back to two biases that we saw that would get in the way of a successful relationship.
That’s an important lesson in general, whenever you feel you are making a compromise from a relational standpoint, that’s the signal that you shouldn’t. That’s a hard thing to do when you’re running a business and being an entrepreneur. Sometimes you want to say yes to something because they’re highly effective, they can generate revenue, or any of those kinds of things whether it’s somebody you’re going to work with, saying yes to a buyer, or anything like that. When your moral radar is sending the yellow alarm signal, let alone the red alarm signal, I’ve never known in a single case where saying no in the long-term hasn’t been the right answer.
That’s the insight you shared with us. That was very helpful too. Thank you for that. Gregory, you go ahead with some of your questions. I want you to get some more in.
Elliot Begoun: There’s no need to be polarizing just to be polarizing. The best marketing is when you put a stake in the ground and stand for something.
Elliot, you touched on being the contrarian to the ideology of growth at all costs. Fundamentally, if we look at TIG and the foundational elements of building a tardigrade brand, it’s in contrast with the venture model. The idea of growth at all costs is making bets and there needs to be accelerated growth, etc. In preaching responsible growth and resilience, have you ever found yourself being the victim of venture capital backlash in terms of somebody pulling you over and saying, “What are you teaching these entrepreneurs? This doesn’t go well with what we need at all out of our funds and whatnot. We don’t want somebody to grow responsibly and regionally. We want blitzes.” It would be interesting to see if you’ve ever had any friction with anyone based on what you preach.
Not really. I still think at the end of the day, the best brands for venture are good businesses and good brands. Let me be clear too. There are certain cases that growth for the sake of growth and being as fast as you can putting that foot down and not paying attention to some of the fundamentals that we preach makes sense, but those cases are very rare. One of it is when you have something that’s disruptive and you have to take a flight because you have the first mover.
If you don’t capture it quickly, somebody else will, or it’s an open window in the marketplace that’s only going to exist for a narrow time. Those are 1 in 1,000 or rare. Truthfully, if you look at the brands and companies that tend to have the best exits, we did an episode with Nick McCoy of Whipstitch and Chris Fenster of Propeller. We looked at data. At the end of the day, it’s still the brands that have good, strong fundamentals, and so forth. The market also changed especially in this space, your venture has changed because people recognize what a great sector this is.
The funds have got bigger and as funds get bigger, check sizes get bigger. That means for the early-stage brands, they have to make it further on less money or Angel money. The only way you’re going to do that with not terrible dilution is to focus on being capital efficient like good margin, understand unit economics, grow in a curated way that makes sense where you can succeed and discipline with good financial rigor, all of those kinds of things. That’s the only way you’re going to bridge that valley of death, that state between seed and Series A. The only way you’re going to show up as a potential institutional investor’s next big bet is to make it there.
We were fortunate to have good relationships with many of the VCs and talk about it at length, most of them don’t see this as a contract to their strategy and their needs of getting the big return. If a good, fundamentally sound brand shows up to them with traction with a proven model of being able to connect with their consumer, then venture does what venture does best. It puts the fuel in the tank to accelerate it down the track and the business is prepared to absorb that scale and acceleration.
I have one last question. What does 2021 look like for Mr. Begoun?
A whole lot better for all of us than 2020, God willing. I’m excited about 2021 because although this has been a bitch year, there’s no nice way to put it, I’m an optimist in the fact that I believe if you look over the course of history, the periods of the greatest change, our biggest steps forward, progress comes right after the periods of the biggest disruption. It could be argued that this has been the biggest period of disruption in all of our lifetimes. There’s going to progress. I see that there have been a lot of things come out of this in the way business is being done, the way people are thinking, the democratization of business, and understanding of the role that we play in our environment and society as leaders and brands and so forth.
I think it’s going to be a great 2021 and exciting for everybody going forward. That’s how I’m wired. I am a man with two brains. I have a scarcity mindset, so I’m a worrier but worry is one of the great guards against complacency there is. I’m also an optimist and I’m a big believer in all of you. This is from the bottom of my heart. All of the entrepreneurs that we work with inspire me every day. Even in the darkest moments of 2020, I have so much faith and belief because I know what entrepreneurs are capable of doing.
Thank you. I appreciate that response.
The one last question I’ll piggyback off of that one, which is a fitting follow-up is, based on what you see and being optimistic for 2021, what do you think that the consumer trend looks like for the next five years?
There are a few things. I would encourage that every brand needs to think about where they’re going to drive discovery and how they’re going to get found because that’s key. Every brand is different. When I talk about consumers, what I’m talking about is the approximate 50 million consumers here in the United States that are consumers of natural products. It’s a different subset of the broader constituency of consumers but the consumers in this space, for the most part, recognize that they have to take a stakeholder role in their own health and the health of our planet. They want to have a more intimate relationship with the brands that they buy.
Entrepreneurs have to understand who their consumer is, building a real two-way relationship with them, understand where they’re going to drive that discovery, and where that top of the funnel to start that relationship. That means you have to be closer to whatever problem you’re solving or to whatever need that you’re doing. You’re going to have to be creative, innovative, multi-pronged omnichannel and solve that. That’s the brands that win when you are going to do that. The brands that struggle are going to be the ones that are too reliant on the only old way, the typical way of being discovered, get on a shelf in the supermarket, in the door, run your TVRs and hope. It’s going to take double innovation. That’s going to take innovation in the creation of product and brand and then innovation in a way that you connect with the consumer and get your products to market.
Elliot, I want to thank you so much for inviting myself and Gregory to join you. As I only got through about 1/3 of the questions I wanted to ask, we left it open for a part two somewhere down the road potentially. I’m truly honored and I speak for Gregory when saying that. We appreciated getting to know you a little bit more. However, we only peeled back layer one of several layers that are to be peeled back. Hopefully, this will be helpful for others as well.
Thank you for completely embarrassing me and pushing me into my comfort zone. Thank you, seriously, for doing this and taking it so seriously. Michael, you came to me with the idea. At first, I scoffed at it admittedly, but this has been cool. You’ve asked me questions I haven’t thought about or put to words. I appreciate that for both of you. You guys are great champions and I’m blessed by that.
Thank you. The feeling is mutual. Michael, thank you again for organizing this and spearheading this along with Elliot. It’s great to be a part of it.
Thanks, everyone, for joining. Thanks again, Michael and Gregory for doing it with me.
Thank you.
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