Having an identifiable brand is evidently an effective way to grow a business. A great example of that is Famous Soda Co, a beverage brand offering healthy alternatives to your classic sugary soda drinks. On today’s episode, Elliot Begoun sits down with Founder Michael Pillon to discuss the brand-centric strategy that helped them break into the already saturated food and beverage industry. Michael narrates his entrepreneurial journey from starting the business in Australia with his mother to now expanding the brand in several markets. He shares the ups and downs of their journey along with lessons on how to navigate entrepreneurship and deal with inviting investors in the picture. Plus, get valuable tips on how to build your brand and make it stand out. Don’t miss the incredible insights from this episode by tuning in.

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Growing Your Business Through A Brand-Centric Strategy With Michael Pillon of Famous Soda Co

I’m excited to have a chat here with Michael from Famous Soda. Before I turn it over to him, there are just a couple of things. What we are trying to do in these kinds of conversations is paint a realistic picture to what it is like to take this entrepreneurial journey. There are some great upsides to it and great wins, but there are also some dark days, tough times, and struggles.

We are going to hit on them all. We are going to talk about it casually and remind each other that we are all in this together. It’s one community, and at the end of the day, we are all trying to bring good products to our respective shoppers. Michael, we’ll have you introduce yourself a little bit about you, your background, about Famous Soda, and then we’ll dig in and also invite those in the studio audience to shoot their questions up on the Q&A, and then we’ll dig into those as well.

Thank you for having me. My name is Michael Pillon. I’m CEO and Cofounder of Famous Soda Co, a sugar-free all-natural soda brand based here in Australia. We have been around in the market for a couple of years now. It’s been an incredible journey, with lots of ups and lots of downs, which we’ll be touching on through this conversation. We are now launched in the US and joined forces with two other brands, which is very exciting for us.

We confidently can say we are probably the leading sugar-free or natural soda brand here. We are exporting to a lot of southeastern Asian markets. There’s a real focus on better for you down here, especially in the bed space as we use globally. It’s super exciting times for us. The last years have been rocky, but we are in a good place now and looking forward to the journey ahead.

Let’s start with the genesis of the idea. Your co-founder is your mom Julie. You guys had done this before successfully in the wine business. You decided to take on the next hardest category you can think of. Why and where did the idea for Famous come from?

We were looking for the next opportunity in beverage because that’s where our expertise lay after our successes in the wine business and creating a millennial wine brand here in Australia. It went to good hearts as well. We went on a deep dive and did a bit of traveling. We went to different pockets of the world, and sugar-free seemed to be the big thing on everybody’s lips in the media. It is what people are talking about that was a big sugar-free movement. At that stage, 22 to 24 countries had somewhat of a refined sugar tax imposed. Some countries are remarkable and you would have thought that’s the last place you would have thought a refined sugar tax would have been, but you can say the real focus on no sugar.

We thought, “Let’s look at this market a little bit closer. Were in a bit of wide space where we think we can add some value.” We saw a lot of sugar-free soda brands out of that. We thought in our hearts and it hit the mark from a brand or a flavor perspective. We then went deep dive into that business and looked into different suppliers of sweeteners and flavors. I want to say where the level was and see if we could put something in the market that tastes like any traditional soda brand that didn’t sacrifice on flavor and brand.

We spent about eighteen months in R&D. We employed some incredible biochemists. We work with some of the best specialists around the world and the best flavor houses. We were comfortable when we went to market that we had a sugar-free natural soda brand that tastes like anything traditionally out there in the market without sugar. We thought we could be competitive up against those bigger brands and put something healthier in the market. That’s something that we are proud of.

Talk to me a little bit about the start of it in Australia. You have a very different category from wine. Where did you start? How did you kick this off?

We took a similar strategy in the sense that we thought, “Let’s find the better end retailers to go and focus on,” and they were your whole organic food, natural grocery chains that we call here in Australia. We called about 180 to 190 stores on the Eastern seaboard that we thought were a perfect fit. The first process and builders were about sales and distribution, but it’s also about brand equity and driving velocities in those stores.

A lot of people miss the market, and they worry about doing a machine gun distribution model, where they try to put it everywhere and try to be successful. We honed our strategy in the Eastern seaboard, where we knew the majority of our healthy, better-for-you clients were positioned in the right stores that we knew could drive brand equity and sales. We made sure that we drove strong philosophies in those stores.

That was the first and only goal and nothing else. We didn’t want to do anything outside of that. We focused on getting at least 80% distribution in those stores and good run rates. As I’m sure it is in every market in the world, what we might experience is there are pivotal and key stores that drive influence, especially in the bigger chains. That’s for those chains over a five-year period.

In Australia, there are some similarities and dissimilarities. It is controlled by two primary retailers, Coles and Woolies. When did you decide you were ready to make the jump there, and how did you know you were ready?

We were knocking on door with 1,100 outlets within fourteen months of operation because we’d made such a big network on lane or route if you like to. We said no to Woolworths for two years which is incredible and uncommon. We have a very small marketplace. We have about $23 million, and about $8 million of those are probably our real market in terms of consumer.

It’s very imperative for beverage brands to make the jump to be successful and to do volumes. We did say no for a year or two. We knew that we could control our message and our price point and get in the right space. The first opportunities are usually not your impulse fridges where you want to be. They give you a back corner fridge space where you know you are not going to drive velocity. You are probably not going to be successful. You have to have deep pockets to market out of that fridge. We also wanted to control our commercial value as well. We didn’t want our natural food grocery guys to turn their backs on us. We knew that’s where we lived in-breath and until we could control that price point.

We said no to them and decided to make the jump in both Coles and Woolworths. At the same time, once we got canned format and bottle format over three years after the operation, we are still in them. We are still successful and managing our price points so that our general route trade of grocers. Our food service industry is not affected by them slashing the price and the guts out of the product.

How did you muster that discipline? That’s hard and scary, especially when you’ve got two retailers that control the majority of the mass in the market to say no to one of the big boys and have enough confidence that that’s a good decision. Where did that come from? Did you and Julie sit together and go, “Are we making the right decision?” Walk me through that for a second.

It’s a little bit of cute preference with brand builders. As we are so brand-centric, we don’t like anybody outside of the brand or controlling our brand message because we think that that’s our real strength. That’s Julie’s real strength. She’s worked with people in the world and she’s credible. We knew if we got in there too early, they controlled us to control the narrative. We are going through a whole brand extension and brand into sugar-free.

I see goals for a long-term strategy and think about our strategy from the get-go and what we could potentially do with his brand after twelve months. We knew by getting it into the bigger change early, then being able to somewhat bastardize our rollout strategy and our growth hypothesis in a sense. We thought that’s more detrimental to us because we are more the long-term supplier. As I said, we are brand-centric. It’s because we come from that background and it allowed us to be a little bit more standoffish with the majors in the beginning.

When you went in, were the positive results immediate or was it a slow burn?

We got put in the impulse fridges. Early impulse fridges, I think you guys refer to them as cold boxes over there. We put in the kombucha better for you juice category, prebiotic bev category. Very successful because we were 1 of 2 brands only executing a sugar-free all-natural space. Sugar-free all-natural soda brand, whereas most people focus on that which you channel that prebiotic channel.

From there, we created a lot of interest and we drove a lot of interest to that category, which was great for us. At Coles was a bit of a hit or miss because we designed a can for Coles. Unlike in the US, cans here aren’t very popular and people like that bottle format and that more premium format. Woolies was very successful. Coles has little time to build and a little bit of promotional activity with a lot of external branding. We did a lot of co-branding with other better-for-your brands as well, which drew people to that category. We teamed up with some other brands in that category to try and drive consumer behavior and people to the category.

We discussed coming to North America for a long time. What was the signal that you were ready?

We got to a point here where we thought we’d saturated the market within two years quicker than what we expected to do so. We felt comfortable with you. We’d been here for years because we have been referred on by a colleague and a friend, and you made us comfortable. We were very cagey with making the jump over the pond because we know it’s a big animal to tackle, and there is a lot involved.

You have to have deep pockets. It’s another 5 to 6 years added to our journey. We think we know that we have an incredibly strong brand offering and probably have the strongest format in that sugar-free or natural soda space. Globally, we got that self-belief and we thought it was time. We did such incredible things on this side of the pond that we thought, “Why not? It’s time. Let’s do it.”

The balance is holding us aside because it was trying to find that window of when you felt like the market was already here. Also, you had gotten to the point, I would assume, that you have some maturity there. The business was stable enough that you could bifurcate your focus and put the appropriate focus here in the US as founders because founder-led brands are going to perform better. You are going to have to be a stakeholder and make the commitment to being over here. How are you going to balance that? Talk to the people about how you keep that base business, all sorts that are going, have the energy and the focus here in the US.

You’ve got to have passion, drive, and belief. I’m in the process of putting on some good strategic partners here that can run my business. We are building a KPI and a growth strategy for the next 2 to 3 years while my focus is going to shift to the US. It’s about being honest with yourself. I have got an opportunity and the leading brand in 25 million people here in Australia in this side of the world and to be a key brand with 300 million people on the other side of the pond.

I’m chasing the money, value, and opportunity, and I’m moving when the market is telling me to move. I’m moving because I can see the uplift in this category in the US and we can be a real pivotal brand with the right investment, hand-holding, and the strategic team over there. It’s a matter of timing, and you need to be honest with yourself and say, “What am I doing this for?” I’m doing this because I want to be successful and spread this message. I want to have a successful sugar-free or natural soda brand that goes global and we do some exciting things. For me, it’s a personal choice, but it’s driven by self-belief, desire, and passion. I was honest with myself that I have still got 5 or 6 years where I can go over and give it a red, hot shape. That’s a personal choice for me.

I have talked about this, but it’s an interesting dynamic when your co-founder is your mom. You guys are at different stages of your careers. Were you aligned on that or now is the time? Was there internal dialogue around that because there have been any different views? Did you both feel like, “Now is the time. let’s do it?” You didn’t do this with the wine business, so this is a big jump. You are jumping halfway around the world to build the business in a market beside.

We are incredibly aligned because one of the secrets to success of our businesses is we are both in two separate pockets. I drive the business sales and the strategy and Julie drives brand strategy, production, brand development, and so forth. We are not in each other’s pockets every day. We are very similar in the sense that we see the value of this brand. We see what it can do and the success that we have had in nine other countries outside of Australia that we are exporting to. The uptake and data are all saying the opportunity is now. The data is leaning towards that this is a great opportunity. This is a great time to jump into the states and have a real crack at it.

In short, we are aligned. We are in different stages of our career, but I’m also conscious of the fact that she’s coming to the tethered at the end of her career, and the opportunity is now. She’s such a pivotal part of what I do in our success that these next years are pivotal for me to take advantage of having her by my side to do this. Without her, it’s a tough task. While I know that she wants to dedicate another five years of her life to her career and this opportunity, that’s interesting.

It’s a cool thing to be able to be doing it together and to recognize where each of you fit in. That’s something we have the privilege of watching and admiring. What has surprised you as you’ve begun to learn more about the US market? What would have been some of the surprising revelations that you’ve learned about doing business here comparatively to doing business in your homeland? Give me your top 3 or 4.

I will give you the ones that will give you real shocking value. I thought the distribution model was quite different. I have spent a little bit of time in trade over there now, and we have had incredible success, which is cool. The whole commitment process prior to DC’s opening and putting your stock in, you then go sell your stock back into a potential retailer or potential store. It’s a very unique model to us, whereas we don’t have that model. We can sell wherever we like through a wholesaler at any given time.

That was that’s a little bit strange because obviously, we were walking into a store, we get a commitment, they love the product, brand, and flavor. They want to get it in, and then you go through a twelve-week coding process to get into a DC. It still can draw down your stock. I thought that was very strange to me.

We are about to hit it, get it in, get it moving, get it rocking and rolling. In the US, there are a lot of levels within an organization where you need to work with individuals. Here in Australia, because of the nature of our population and the size of our businesses, there are a lot of people holding a lot of hats, including myself, being CEO. I also head up my sales team here in Australia and offshore. We have sales agents in Asia as well. We wear a lot of hats here where in the US, we deal with a lot of different people in a lot of different businesses holding a specific hat. For me, it creates a little bit more work, especially on this side of the world. I find it’s a lot more organized and professional, but there’s a lot more red tape.

It’s a lot slower. Part of it is because there are so many interests by brands and so many brands find limited real estate and so many new products. There’s a necessary filter mechanism, and it’s slowed the pace of innovation. Why do you think famous sit well on the shelf here? What is it that it’s delivering that’s missing in the market?

If I can be frank, flavor and brand. I spent a lot of time in the market trying all our competitor’s products or what you would consider a competitor. From a flavor perspective, I do think Australia is very advanced in that natural space in terms of ingredients and products. I thought from a flavor perspective, we absolutely knocked it out of the park. We are obviously very confident in our brand ability and famous the brand itself.

One of the main reasons we are successful here is because a lot of people in the sugar-free space were quite boring, not brand-centric, and not offering consumers a cool, funky brand with confidence. A lot of them are using cheap sugar replacements and nutritive sweeteners. I believe in the US, we are offering a superior product in terms of flavor, and I’m very confident in Famous as the brand. It’s got home run potential in any market that it seats. It’s flavor and I still think that we are one of the stronger brand offerings there as well.

I’m going to change the topic and shift a little bit if I may. When did you realize you are an entrepreneur?

I was doing my Economics degree. I went to work for somebody in real estate for three days, and I thought, “This is not for me.” I was 22 years old. I still remember I had three months left to go my Economics degree, and I thought, “I’m not built to work for anybody. I need to go out and see what the world is all about.” I went and traveled for six months, and I thought I wanted to put my stamp on the world, own my brand, and follow in those footsteps. My parents were both entrepreneurs as well. It was bred in me, and it was somewhat genetic. I always had the bug to build my own thing and leave somewhat of a legacy.

You’ve been doing it a while, and if you could pick a time in your career in this trajectory or growth that you could go back to and let yourself know something that you now have learned, when and what would that be?

I had a business that failed when I was younger. I was very driven by the want to succeed financially. I made some pivotal mistakes because I was holding on a little bit too long. When you’ve been in business a little bit longer, you’ve somewhat done your penance and understand when to let go, when to pull, and not to pull the trigger.

Being young, a lot of bravado wanting to be successful back in the day. There’d be a couple of pivotal times back in my youth when I had my first business where I would have told myself to let go, sit back, and take a breath. Now is not the time to invest and roll the dice. Now is the time to sit back and listen to people around you with more experience and hold your space a little bit. That would have been probably in my late twenties. That’d probably be the biggest thing I’d tell myself back then.

Patience and aligning with a bigger purpose is something I hear a lot. Sometimes people get caught up in the allure of the quest. Not even for the money but just for the end and you missed the journey along the way. Let me switch a little bit about going back to something we touched upon early in the conversation, which was around discipline.

You had that inflection point where Woolies came to you, and you knew you weren’t ready and the offer wasn’t the right offer. As I look at the business and the growth, that’s been true to form from the beginning. You guys have been very disciplined doing a lot of this bootstrap and being very focused on economics.

Is that because that’s the way business is done in Australia or is that something that you believe in? Now you are coming here to the US and you recognize there’s likely going to be a need for outside capital to all those investors reading. I will hook you up if you want a connection. Talk to me a little bit about that mindset that you’ve had.

It stems from our wine brand. We never played with the majors and the wine brand, but the problem is they are two different business models in the sense that sodas are a volume game. Whereas the wine brand wasn’t necessarily a volume game. It was enough independent bottle shops and a little bit of offshore business that sustained a healthy business. It is a discipline thing but we build our growth hypothesis with you for the US and here for Australia. We build it out with a real mindset of what we want to do with a brand and where we want to be in 4 to 5 years.

As I was thinking, I noted before we are very brand-centric, and we know here the two major supermarkets because they play such a huge role in driving that volume. It can also be the biggest killer of your brand and that longevity. I think we have been in business and built brands before and having that brand-building mindset of building brand equity versus sales, revenue, profitability, and so forth. We know how to play that line because we know our strategy and where we want to be in 3, 5, 7, and 10 years. It’s a discipline that’s built within us. Between us, my mother and myself, we have a lot of businesses that have had some success and some that haven’t had success.

Let’s explore a little bit about this brand builder’s mindset. How would you describe that? How would you characterize what the brand builder’s mindset is?

We’ll move into the sugar-free space. We moved into that market. We got a lot of data on where this market could be, where it’s going, where it is, and how it’s grown over the last 5, 6, to 7 years. All the signs were going towards sugar-free is going to be the next thing. Sugar-free is going to be the new normal. Let’s run into COVID or health-based pandemics that are happening now. It even fast-tracks healthier choices and purchasing. We know if we put the right foot forward initially, we don’t squander on flavor or brand and enter into the market until we meet all of the requirements we have as a brand.

What is a visually incredible commercial product where we are not far off those everyday brands we are trying to tackle? We start out with a very cold focus of things that we want to nail and that allows us to be very brand-centric because we don’t squander on anything and skimp on anything in the beginning.

We go to market with something we are incredibly proud of. We are also willing to play the long game. Obviously, being a mother and son team and a family-based business, there’s an extra motivation there to be successful and want to make it work. You got somebody by your side that’s got your back. You’ve got an incredible amount of belief in your brand in what you are doing. That’s where it stems from.

The aesthetic of the brand is very bold, different, and fun. How did you decide this is the brand that can take this product forward? Give me some of the thoughts or thinking that went into that with you and Julie.

One brain was called Two Italian Boys. It was a very fun Millennial in-your-face wine brand that shifted that 25-something drinking market here in Australia to over the wine, which they weren’t drinking. Off the back of that, we had some concepts for famous Italian and rolled out all these pivotal cool wine brands under that famous label.

We need to do big, bold brands to drive people or age groups to the wine category at that time. We thought if we take that same philosophy into the sugar-free space. At that time, the sugar-free space was very recycled cardboard. It’s like no brand was screaming off the shelf or had any personality. We thought we got to take that same mindset. We are going to do something super loud and funky.

We have got to change that narrative that was in the market of people. It was poor brands that were using cheap ingredients. We thought we needed a brand that was going to drive trial and people’s space. We could then turn it into a lifestyle brand. It could extend into a lot of other categories and would work globally. One of our brand parameters, in the beginning, is whether it’s got to work globally or it doesn’t work.

That was the base was we needed something loud and was going to scream off the shelf, and it was going to drive people not to think about no sugar but to drink this because it was an incredible-looking soda. We wanted to have a moment when they turn the bottle around because no sugar is not advertised all over our stuff. It’s small, writing down the bottom. People don’t see it until after they consume it, and then it’s a moment when they drink the product and think, “This is delicious and it’s got no sugar.” We wanted to move away from looking like every other sugar-free brand.

What’s your personal favorite flavor?

It’s tough, to be honest. It’s probably a combination, depending on what data. It is between the passion fruit and the blood orange, for sure.

I dig the blood orange. They are all great, but I do like that. We have talked about all the things that you’ve experienced and so forth. How about a mistake? What have you blown so far in building this? If there’s something that you did or you wish that you hadn’t done, what would that be? Other than engaging with me. That’s a regret that most everyone feels and we’ll hold that one aside, but in general. There are whole support groups for that.

We went a little bit too early with the likes of a 7/11 nationally in a P&C. We created a format for them. I’m going to speak from rural. Hopefully, some other bev entrepreneurs that they get some value from this. We went a little bit too early into what we call a Euro Sleek can here, which we designed exclusively for 7/11. We have 723 outlets here and we went into all their outlets. It wasn’t on-brand for us to move into that Euro Sleek at that time. We went into all their stores because they wanted the product, but they wanted a different format to Coles and Woolies, which is an experience.

Something that we experience here a lot. They all want to have their piece of the pie but do not want to be aligned in a format and price structure. It’s a very hard balancing act with a smaller market. We went into all 720 stores. We did it from a branding perspective as well as trying to peel out whether we could be successful in that P&C format. We went a little bit too early and we went outside our glass bottles, knowing our glass bottles were the best format to go into those stores. We designed their own skew and format. We let them drive the opportunity and they promised us the world and didn’t deliver on any of those promises.

I was getting spread quite thin. We were exploring nine markets. We are key focuses on the US and I was worried about sustaining. There were some poor relationships prior to my focus shifting to the US. That was probably a mistake I made that I didn’t need to do, but I did do it, and it was good learning as well.

One of the things that you guys are doing is also channel expansion with that and clubs. Let’s flip it around if there’s something that you did. A calculated bet that you made that you are so glad you did, what would that be?

I want to say this without saying corny. My calculator bet is always to believe in myself to keep going. Always drag yourself after those tough days where you feel like the world is throwing everything at you, keeping you in the guts, and knocking you around. The calculated bet for me always believes myself to get up and keep driving every day.

I don’t think that’s corny at all. There’s a lot of talk about this. Gary Hurst coined the phrase that entrepreneurs are pathologically optimistic. If you just, on the surface, allow common sense to dictate, no one would be doing this. It’s crazy. How do you find that internal strength or belief in yourself on the days when you’ve been knocked down your ass a few times?

I surround myself with a lot of good people. That’s one of the things that keeps me going. I have got the love of a great family, a beautiful partner, and some incredible friends and people. I’m an avid martial artist. I have been doing jujitsu for many years. I have got a sport that I can go from being a CEO. I’m doing incredible things with a brand to go into the jujitsu mats and getting my ass kicked. It’s very important to do something that keeps you humble and level-headed. It’s important to surround yourself with incredible people that inspire you every day. That is my two keys to success, and I like to stay fit and healthy too. That’s a real pivotal part of mentally saying strong as well. They are the three big things for me.

Let’s explore your self-care a little bit. This is a stressful thing that you are doing. It pulls on you all the time. It’s not like so many other professions where you might go fall out during the day, but you come home and check it at the door. How do you balance everything? How do you compartmentalize? What do you do to ensure that when you do show up for work to engage in Famous as co-founder CEO, you are showing up with the best version of yourself?

I have learned to practice meditation and to take time out. As an entrepreneur or business owner, your mind is continually racing. Eventually, that takes a toll on your body and everything. Meditation has been a big thing for me. I step away and take a twenty-minute breather at a time in the day when the day is still incredibly calm and I can calm my mind and my nervous system. Once I learned to do that, it helped me with perspective and approaching things a little bit more ease and open-mindedness.

That was the pivotal thing for me. It was making sure you take twenty minutes for yourself every day with no distractions and no want and need from anybody. As an entrepreneur and running a business, people are pulling at you left, right, and center. A lot of people are probably reading this doing it on their own or even if you are not doing it on your own, you’ve got a big outfit of staff. There’s always somebody that wants something, and there’s always a problem to solve and an issue that needs addressing. It’s very important to take 20 to 30 minutes for yourself every day and be still.

I do that myself, and it’s not only restorative for me, at least. People think that meditation means you quiet your mind. To me, it’s more you become the observer of your mind, realize how many stories you tell yourself, and how much time and energy you spend worrying about things that are make-believe or created by your brain. If you were to be given the opportunity to go to a Uni and lecture a class of future entrepreneurs, what is it you would tell them? What would you want them to know about this choice and this vocation?

I’d have to be a realist. I have to tell them the truth. Don’t go in with blind passion. Doing your research is incredibly important. Most things have been thought of these days by most people. There are a lot of opportunities out there. There are a lot of smart minds and a lot of people executing cool things. Do your research, get your data, and make sure that your passion or idea has legs. Once you’ve done your research and due diligence, look to surround yourself with people that are better than you because you can’t run every facet of your business. Without colliding that data that says, “There’s a real opportunity here. This market is having a real big upswing. I can add some value here with a brand or whatever it might be.”

Understand that this opportunity or idea has longevity, and then make sure that you surround yourself with some pivotal people that can make it happen and complement your skillset. A lot of entrepreneurs or business owners jump out of the gate saying they can do everything, and then they become a prisoner of their business.

It never reaches any heights in it. It becomes a full-time job and headache. I’m a real big believer in data-driven. I make data-driven decisions down. I don’t make gut and passion-driven decisions anymore. When you grow up and you mature, it’s very important to get the data and surround yourself with some people that can make a dream come true.

Why don’t you think that you still have room for the gut? Sometimes, you look at data and you say, “If I only follow this, then that’s common logic.” How do you balance the two? How do you know when to veer right when the data seems to say go left?

You need a lot of guts to be an entrepreneur because it’s a tough world out there and it’s tough to make something happen. The data needs to tell you that you can make this a reality, but then once again, we go back to self-belief and passion. That’s what makes a great entrepreneur. Great entrepreneurs will walk through the trenches with that self-belief and passion.

I don’t go into anything blindly, which I see a lot of people do with new businesses going in blindly with no data and an idea and a concept but have no true data that says, “This could be something or be a reality.” There’s no real market for it. You need to have some data, but more guts, passion, and drive to see yourself through to the other end.

Let’s look forward now. Let’s say you and I are doing another show, and it’s years from now. What’s happened with Famous? Where are you guys in that run?

As I mentioned before, my business partner is my mother. She’s got five years left that she wants to dedicate to driving something. Let’s call it driving something home towards some potential acquisition stage or to a stage where we achieve that ultimate goal. Our plan is the same. My plan is to, in 5 to 6 years, accomplish successful distribution in the States in a pivotal brand.

We extended a few of our products there. To be quite frank and quite honest, we were building this towards a potential acquisition and getting the right party to come in and look at us. That’s why we are going after the US, and that’s what we are going after the rest of the world. That’s one of these 5 to 6 years’ journey to get to that point. That’s pretty raw and it’s not very romantic, but it’s honest.

That’s business and that’s what it’s supposed to be. It’s you who take risks and challenges. You see a hole in the market, you see an opportunity, you build it, and then you hand it. You take it as far as you can, and then you hand it off. There’s nothing wrong with that. Let’s talk a little bit about inviting investors in for the journey. How do you feel about that? What do you want from an investor? You want the dollars, but holding that aside, what’s the relationship you are hoping to cultivate? What’s the upside? Talk to me about as you think about that process.

I think it’s got to be strategic. We call it strategic money. We want people that add value, as I noted before. It doesn’t matter when the journey of your brand is, where you are at, and what stage. You constantly need to add value by adding great people to your fault. You can’t grow without great people, and the investment investor needs to sit in that category. They need to add value and not just money. That’s what we noted as strategic money. We would be looking for somebody that could add a lot of value to our framework, or is my mother, some of my key sales team, yourself affiliate, and somebody that could take us to that next journey and take us to that next step.

It can’t be money for us because our business is very personal for us. We have done incredible things on this side of the world with a leading brand. We know we have a great product, brand, and thing, but we’d have to lock the individual too. That’s important for us because it’s so personal for us, being a family business.

We have a pretty small pivotal team that we are all in for each other. They had to add a lot of value, not just money. We’d have to like the individual and they’d have to be passionate about our category. I think that’s important because without having a passion for our category or bev, better for you, sugar-free, or all-natural, I would struggle to see how they would add as much value. We are not looking for money. This is my short and sweet of it.

I hear that a lot, and that’s the intent even though almost all investors, especially the larger institutional ones, they want to come to add value. It’s difficult to do that, and part of that is also knowing how to extract the value that they inherently have and building a game plan around those potential investors. Also, thinking about if we do consummate deal with these people. These are the things that we want, being clear on your ask. With the ask in mind, to the greater audience, reading without obviously divulging things you don’t want to. We’ve got fellow entrepreneurs, retailers, and investors reading this show. What could the ecosystem do for you? What do you want them to know about you, Julie, and the brand?

As I said to you, it’s incredibly personal to us. I’d want them to know that we are a mother and son team that is very committed. In our hearts, we believe that we have got an opportunity here to make an incredibly successful global sugar-free or natural soda brand. It’s something that’s very dear to our hearts and something that we are very passionate about.

I’d want to know anybody out there reading or is taking an interest in a brand or our journey or this show. I want to hear from them what their thoughts are and feedback on the product. I’d love to get the product to them. I’d love to get their thoughts and what they loved about it because it’s still a relatively new market to us running California in certain distribution points.

I’d love to reach out to anybody that loves to try it on the show. I’d love to get everybody’s feedback because that’s the most pivotal thing we can do is get consumer feedback, especially I’m sure some of the people on this show that are other entrepreneurs and so forth. I’d love to reach out and get people’s opinions on our product and our brand and go from there.

If you are interested in taking you up on that, how do they get ahold of you? How do you want them to reach out?

I have got to choose some details. They can send me an email to [email protected]. For anybody out there that’s heard what we have talked about and likes of sound of Famous, I’d love to get some product to you, your feedback, start some communication, listen, and growing our community from another entrepreneur level, potential investor level, or a friendship level which we are trying to break into the US. All feedback are much wanted at the moment and building one of our communities over there as well. It’s a big thing for us as well.

The last question for you, and I want to go back to something we talked about earlier. It’s about working with your mom. You mentioned the fact that you guys have very different skillsets and wheelhouses, and you stay in them. For the others reading who are working with a mom or a partner, what makes that work? How do you build that relationship but also separate that relationship? I’m sure there are moments where Julie is your business partner and then Julie is your mom.

Since she’s not talking to me at the moment, it’s a hard relationship. It’s a mother and son relationship. We had a little fight over a branding issue, but that’s because I walked into her wheelhouse about the success of our relationship. We have been doing this for many years together. This is our third brand. We stick in our lane, and only come together for the big decisions. It’s a very difficult thing to find because I happen to have a business partner, my mother, that’s incredible at branding.

I don’t have to question anything she does, except we make the final decisions together. I stay in her wheelhouse, getting a job done to the highest level, and coming together for the big decisions as being the key. Keeping our relationship as mother and son and also keeping our relationship as business partners.

Fruitful and fun. We also make sure that we come together as mother and son once a month, don’t talk about business, and do something social. We keep simple phones out on the table, whether it’s a light lunch somewhere or a glass of wine. We try to maintain that relationship because that’s by far the most important thing. Without that, nothing else works. That’s something that we try to maintain.

As a witness to it, what you guys do is remarkable. I see you give each other the room to do your respective things, but come together and have a good debate. It’s always with respect. I admire it. I wouldn’t last a second working with mine. That may be generous. Thanks so much for doing this. I appreciate it. It was a great perspective to hear and share. I wish you continued success and am happy to be a part of it with you. We’ll talk soon, and thanks everyone for joining. We’ll see you next time.

Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me.

Important Links

• Famous Soda

• Coles

• Woolworths

• [email protected]

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