With all the options that you can find in the market today, strategy is key in getting your product ahead. And what better way to go than being the first? In this episode, Ryan Armistead brings us the story behind the first line of fresh juice and functional wellness shot made with heirloom produce sourced directly from sustainable family farms: Happy Moose Juice. He talks about the challenges of starting up and the importance of being innovative in coming up with something new and being different. He also shares some tips on the right mindset when pitching to investors and how finding the right retailers saves you marketing costs and takes your product directly to the consumers. Tune in and find out how you can build your identity and make your brand stand out. 

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Listen to the podcast here

Wellness In A Shot With Ryan Armistead Of Happy Moose Juice

We are continuing in the series of having cool conversations with interesting entrepreneurs about the journey itself, the good, bad, ugly, funny, sad, or whatever comes to mind. Joining me is the man who dances his way through Instagram and others, Ryan with Happy Moose Juice. He’s got a cool story great entrepreneur and doing it for all the right reasons. He is a giver. He’s somebody that shows up and offers his input, feedback, and support, time and time again. Ryan, thanks for doing this with me. I love having you on and looking forward to the conversation. Why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about you and Happy Moose?

Thanks so much for having me. Happy Moose Juice started out of a passion for making fresh juice. I was extracting fresh juices in my kitchen at home in San Francisco when I first moved to the city. This is back in 2011, 2012, or around that time. More than anything, I love making fresh juice. I never intended for it to be a business at first. I was visiting a local farmer’s market here in San Francisco to set up on the outskirts of town. I got familiar with all these different types of heirloom varieties of produce by local farmers to learn how the family farmers were growing their stuff. That got me interested in making all different fresh juices with their harvest.

Now Happy Moose Juice is the first line of fresh juice and functional wellness shot, made with heirloom produce. It is sourced directly from sustainable family farms. The vast majority of the products that we use are oddly shaped or cosmetically imperfect. About 70% of it is rescued from the coming compost waste and it comes to us directly from the field to our GC facility, which is down on our primary farmer’s farm in the Central Valley. Being in business for as long as we have been since 2013, we have been able to build out an effective supply chain that helps us make super fresh, delicious juices from these family farms. That’s what we’re doing.

First of all, it’s a cool mission and way. As you reflect back, knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently? Anything?

I would have done things differently. I think the first thing was to try and capital on a business a little bit better. When we first started out, I had a couple of hundred dollars in my bank account. I had been living abroad, in Europe. I had blown through my life savings. We didn’t have the intention to build a wholesale CPG brand at first, but, as we got there, I was like, “I wish that we had a little more financial resources to do this well, to invest in different things, to make our business a little bit better position to be successful.” That’s one thing for sure.

Another thing I would have done is, I would have been a little more thoughtful about how we structured the company in terms of the equity and stuff. When I started, I had another friend who was my operating partner. My cousin gave me the initial investment that we use to start the company. From the very beginning, I had 1/3 of the business. For me, that was cool because I wasn’t expecting it to be what even where it is now. I probably would have been a little more thoughtful about that.

You can’t be greedy when you are starting a company with partners, but having raised the money from my close family members, some money in it myself, and then my cousin, I would have been a little bit more careful to protect and make sure that I had more control over the destiny of things. Those are two things that are off the bat that I would have been a little more thoughtful of, but I had no plans to be where we are now when we were starting.

You are not alone in that. That happens a lot. In the early days, it’s not a big business that you are building, you are not looking downfield and the sweat equity has been put in. You had the nights of worry, stress, and all that. It hadn’t been put in yet. It seems like a fair division of responsibility and equity. Suddenly it’s 5 and 7. In your case, nine years later, and you are like, “I didn’t think that one well.” As you look to the future, you are in a competitive category. You have approached this uniquely. You didn’t rush right to retail grocery like so many. You build a lot of businesses, offices, cafes, and so forth. What do you see as the future for the brand?

Especially in the beverage, the category is changing so much, and evolving so much with functional, being a big focus for new developments and things like that with brands and businesses. For us, it’s continuing to invest in our positioning and stay innovative as a juice company, because it is fresh fruits and vegetables. In my opinion, fruits, veggies, and herbs are true functional ingredients. Finding new ways to introduce consumers to unique ingredients and new flavors experiences, whether that’s through a unique variety of a piece of produce, like an orange or a piece of citrus or creating flavor experiences that surprise and delight them.

That’s what we are focused on doing. Juice has been around. It’s going to continue to be around. It’s still a growing category, at least in the last few years with the pandemic. Find new ways that we can do things a little bit different from a lot of the big brands out there because we are a little more nimble, have the ability to innovate, try new things quickly and introduce new products in the market. Finding ways to bridge the gap between function and the category of the juice itself is always going to be something that we want to do well, and find ways to communicate our points of differentiation of the brand and product benefits and features that the consumer and better ways.

It’s not very many ambitions. You wake up and go through the motions. It’s not that you have been doing it for as long as you have this. The audience is our fellow founders and folks in the industry. We know the truth. Everyone has shit days, but on most days, do you still wake up as energized, years later as you did when you first started this business?

I wake up a little more energized because I’m getting more sleep because I’m not tied up in the operations and the day-to-day labor of the business. It’s hard to stay focused and excited about the forefront, especially since growth can be slow, and sometimes there are a lot of noes if you are not this new, exciting alternative meat or like plant-based note that has a ton of exploding growth in its category. You have tapered your expectations a little bit over time and you learn to get settled in, but I’m still bullish on what we are doing. I still see a lot of joy in the products that we are crafting and the consumers’ experience when they get to have them.

That keeps me focused. Instead of trying to grow the business as fast as possible, it’s more about finding sustainable growth and sales channels that we can hopefully, in the very near future be profitable and be building a smart, intelligent business brick by brick. It’s a little bit different mindset now that where we are, we have got something to lose, but at the same time, we are not trying to be the next plant-based milk or speeding to get on the shelves at breakneck speed.

You have earned the opportunity to be patient and disciplined. I am so much shocked by the fact that you are saying you are getting more sleep because last I checked, you are a new dad. That’s contra to sleep.

She’s about to smash some food. She’s an eater.

Let’s talk about balancing that new component of life, being now a family man, and having to figure out how to be an entrepreneur, a business leader, and make time to be a dad. How has that transition been?

When I started Happy Moose Juice, I was single. I wasn’t married. You could pour everything into it and not have to worry about somebody back at home or having a family. I could work 18 or 20 hours a day if I needed to especially have a family. I feel that I’m in inside and that there are more important things, and that’s special. It helps you naturally figure out how to balance work and life at the same time because if your family needs something from you, that comes first every time. That’s where I’m at. It’s beautiful. It’s a lot of fun and it is a whole other being a founder in a different way, but with this other life thing. I love it, but having Happy Moose Juice at times, it’s taken a little bit more of a backseat than it has had to in the past.

In my experience, as a long-time husband, father, and now grandfather. There are some benefits of making the time to be with your family and doing it all. There’s the benefit of having that pull to take you away from the business because when you are all in all the time, there are diminishing returns. You become less effective. Sometimes you get mired in the minutia and you don’t concentrate on the big things.

When you are having to do a better job of bifurcating your time, you wind up choosing to jump in and deal with the important shit, take on things that matter in the business and spend less time worrying or agonizing over the small things. In some ways, what I find is that the entrepreneurs who have a more complete set of responsibilities in life are the ones that perform better because those that are so consumed by the business and the business only get blinders on and also get more, run-down, and exhausted.

You have to prioritize better for yourself.

There’s nothing more refreshing or reenergizing than coming home and having a little someone to see, who’s excited and it only gets better over time.

When she drinks the juice, that’s special. You are like, “This is what I was doing it for,” even though you didn’t know that you were doing it for that, to begin with, but it is special to see them enjoy it too.

Let’s talk a little bit about fundraising. You mentioned in the beginning about how you wish you had capitalized the business differently and better. What’s that journey been like? Being out there, raising money, and putting pitch decks together. Let’s talk about your perspective there.

If I’m being honest, I don’t love this part of the job.

This is what they started it for. They just built a product and a business because they wanted to spend their entire day being told no by investors. That was the dream. You are the only one I have ever heard that from.

It’s part of it and I realized that I still like learning, even though we are going into fundraising, it’s going to be our seed round. That’s going to be probably the first true round of fundraising that we have had to do that takes work, time, and a lot of communication, organization, and management. It’s a part of it. The beverage is an expensive category and place to play. We have historically not pursued retail at least primarily or as a priority in our sales strategy.

Now that we are looking to grow outside of our local markets and we have some opportunities right in front of us. It’s the type of thing where it’s going to be super helpful if we can bring in some additional capital to ensure our success, make sure that we are getting the product in people’s hands, and that we have the resources to continue to invest in those channels to be successful over time. I’m trying to get comfortable with it.

You continue to hone your pitch and at least where I’m at in the process, every time I have a meeting, I’m like, “There’s something that could have said better, done better, been more articulate or eloquent how I presented the business.” It’s the nature of it so hopefully, I get better at it and we can raise some money.

One of the things that are a truism there is that you will get better at it. By getting better at it, is you can meet with 100 investors and you will get 100 different pieces of feedback because it’s still human and perspective. For a lot of you out there who are reading, when you get no, in most cases, those noes have nothing to do with you or your brand. It has to do with timing, money, their perspective on the category, what else have in their portfolio, the time horizon of the fund and the investment, and all of those things. Those are all beyond your control.

What you can control is being able to prosecute a good case for investment. The more you do it, the better you will become because it will become more reflexive and second nature. If you think about your first, conversations or “pitches” to those that you are doing now, what changes have you noticed in the way you bring, talk about Happy Moose to investors?

In a category that’s mature like juice, it’s important to know how you are different, how you are going to win in the long-term, why someone’s going to pay more for your products, and putting numbers behind it. Sometimes you don’t have them. From a retail grocery standpoint, we have been in natural organic co-ops in Northern California. We haven’t had a chance to find the data that we need to tell the story.

We are in the process of doing that while we are starting our fundraising at least for that side of our sales strategy. I think that if you don’t have the proof in the pudding to put right in front of them and make it clear on how you are already winning and scale that, from where you are, then you have to find a different way to say, “Here’s what we are doing. Here’s how we have been able to make it to where we are.”

Investors want to see something that’s replicable and predictable. They want to see the trend already happening. Being able to say, “This is what we have been able to do consistently over the last few years that we have been doing what we are doing.” Saying it concisely, not mucking up the story by trying to do too much. Leaving room to see what they’re interested in and asking questions that have been important. Not say too much. Say 1 or 2 things and let them ask you questions about it and take it from there, see where their interests lie so that you can address those things instead of what you think they might care about.

The goal of any investor meeting isn’t an investment, but another meeting. That’s what you want. If you have enough meetings with the same investor, pretty often it leads to investment. The way to get that done is to be interesting and interested. Be interesting enough that they want to ask questions and dig deeper. Don’t try to over-talk them or make every single point because what happens is you bombarded an investor with too much information, hyperbole, and all that kind of stuff. My kids used to do whenever I would talk to them and they would glance over and totally to now.

You want to show them that you have got an investible business, a case and that you have got a vision for what it’s going to take, but you want to invite them in. You want to look for entry points presentation that is inviting for questions or exploration because that’s how you move the process forward. The other is to be interested because first of all, you want to understand what’s important to them and be able to tailor more of your conversation.

Asking them the investments you have made, what were some of the things that drove you to that decision for yes, “What did you see in either that opportunity or that entrepreneur? If I were talking to your portfolio companies, what were they tell me working with you is like?” What you are hearing from them are things that you can bring into the conversation later and understand, but you are also potentially learning, even if they say not yet. What you don’t want to leave an investor meeting with is ambiguity. Either a yes in the next meeting or restraining order. That’s what you want to get to.

Even if there’s a no, there’s something to learn from them in some way that you can set yourself up better for next time. That’s my goal going in. I think they are interested in you can get yourself ahead and be like, “This is going to happen.” Remaining grounded and being like, “This is probably not going to happen.” It makes you work a little bit harder and relaxes you more so that you assume that it’s probably not going to work out. Be confident in yourself and your business, but don’t get too high hopes because it’s another conversation and you can make the most of it.

I don’t mean this to be tongue-in-cheek. Investors all go to the same school and learn how to say no without saying no. They’ll say things like, “We like you, Ryan. You are awesome. It’s a great opportunity, but you are a little too early. We think you are great, but this is a category that we are not quite sure on and need to watch.” Press them further in that kind of situation, “For a little too early, what is not too early? Where do I need to be and why do I need to be there? What changes for me getting there or not?”

You want to press to know ambiguity. You want to get either yes in the next meeting or, “If you ever call me again, I’m going to court.” You need to, and then always have a second or third ask because it’s hard to get these meetings. You have presented all of those kinds of things. I thought this is a great example. I got an email from one of the VCs. It was simply a message that they sent out to a lot of folks in their network saying, “We met with this founder. They are too early for our fund, but they asked us to introduce people that would be interested and they provided us with the attached information. As a favor to that founder, we are sending it out.”

I know that investor. They don’t do that often. The reason they did it is because this founder probably continued to beg, plead and push to get that done. Who knows that person on the receiving end, whether it’s one of their LPs, an active Angel, or just somebody? Always pushed for that other ask. It doesn’t always have to be the check.

If they know you are a bulldog, then I feel like even the next time around, they might be more considerate too. They might be more excited to hear from you because they saw the fire and the determination the first time around. Even if it’s a nuisance at the moment, they know that you are committed to the cause. That always bodes well for the founder if they are a little bit of a bulldog and bite their ankles.

Chihuahua nipping at the ankles. The other reality is that most investment is made between investors and entrepreneurs that know each other. Even these, “Not yet. You are too early,” conversations, I would encourage everyone to view that as the beginning, the nurturing of a relationship, because you may not be “ready” for them or them ready for you for another couple of years. If you go dark on them and two years later show back up on their doorstep, you are starting from scratch.

If you use those two years to stay in touch, reach out, ask advice, offer if there’s anyone that you can help them, make a few introductions for them of brands that maybe founders, peers that you know, and so forth. Stay top of mind and on the radar and try to nurture the relationship that when that time does come, you are going to be at the top of the queue, and that’s important.

That’s hard to do because you get busy. It’s so true, but I feel like even if you have got to calendarize it or something like that, or when you are doing your monthly or quarterly investor updates, take the information that you have crafted and the chance to put that in front of somebody else too.

What I would recommend is if you don’t have the time, then setting up a sequence email, where maybe every 3, 4 to 5 weeks, whatever that is in an automated email coming from your inbox, it would go out and say, “Just shooting you an email. Checking in things are going well. Here’s a link if you are interested in our last update.” That’s all it takes. You can automate that and have those running in the background, and just know that you are doing the job to nurture.

If you continue to do that, I promise all of you that you are increasing your chances of those meetings. Even out of the woodwork, things have changed. I started watching the category, they have been watching syndicated data, or they are seeing what you are doing, and suddenly they say, “Maybe I should have another conversation.” Staying top of mind is important. Let me switch topics away from this and talk about we are in this period of time where there’s a lot of hyperbolic talk around the economy, inflation, and all of those kinds of things. How’s that all sit in with you?

It’s tough. The impacts on the margins and things like that are hard because they start to add up at a certain point. You have to adjust and figure out how you are going to offset anything that you are losing on the margin side. With the investor conversations, it doesn’t make it any easier. You just have to know your position and how you are going to come back from that. For us, we scooted through the pandemic, and there are still some repercussions that are beginning to surface now that have taken a few years to make their way for the economic impact to the surface. It is what it is and there are things that are out of your control. You can’t lose sleep over it.

You have to figure out how you are going to deal with it. Getting comfortable and knowing that we are where we are. Right now is the time for us to raise money. We can kick the can out a little bit. We try and control the burn, but it’s also going to delay some of the opportunities that are in front of us. For us, it doesn’t change too much other than maybe, harder to justify the evaluation that we may have hoped that we’d be able to convince someone that the business is worth beforehand. Being flexible and open to what other people say, but also knowing what your business is worth and sticking to some of that to a certain extent. Be confident in what you are building.

There are some realities obviously to cost of goods, inflation, and all of that. As an industry, we have a track record of being relatively recession-proof. We tend to weather the storm pretty significantly. A lot of it has to do with the category and prop, but for the most part, most of the natural products, because people tend to be more discerning and recognize stress. They are giving up either their big ticket items or some of the more superficial items, but they are day in, day out, or not. From a fundraising standpoint, an important thing to keep in mind for everybody who’s reading all of this, the way a VC fund works is LPs commit capital to that fund.

It’s committed. That fund is closed. If they are deploying capital. Those commitments are made. The fund managers need to deploy that capital to get their management fee. Their management fee is what pays for their employees, offices, healthcare, and so forth. There’s still that same amount of money to be deployed. It’s there. The two things that do change in an economy like this is one, they’ll hold some of that back to make sure that they can come back into their existing portfolio companies to make sure they can weather any challenges. Some of that is true.

The other is they are looking for deals or bargains. You do have to put that into consideration. It shouldn’t stop you from raising money, but it may cause you to rethink your valuation or value cap. If you have to rethink that, you may rethink, “Do I want to traunch some of this money, raise a little bit less now, and get what I need and get a little further along so I can command it better?” It should be part of the strategy and conversation, but it shouldn’t be something that terrifies you.

Let’s switch to marketing and trial. One of the things that we have said a few times in this conversation thus far is that beverages are crowded, crazy category, and expensive. You have a very different proposition using produce. Your flavor profiles are very different. How do you communicate that? What are you thinking about doing to make that happen?

The first thing is figuring out the sales channels where your product can be aligned with your retail partner. Especially, the coffee space, for example, has been one where the juice is primarily morning or early afternoon. The Bay Area is full of this 3rd, 4th, or however many waves you want to call them, coffee chains that are focused on the best cup of coffee that they believe can be made. For us, it’s been aligning and identifying partners like that, where the product market fit is great, where there’s a qualitative focus where we believe that we are creating the best possible juice out there for a variety of reasons, then finding a way to piggyback on their brand gives the product on the shelf.

Many people discover us at Peace coffee shop because there are 200 of them just here in California. Many people go to Peace. Anytime that we can get the product on the shelf where we are not having to give it away, or we can make some money at the same time, but also be a part of that consumers and brand experience at Peace. That’s a win-win for us. That’s the first thing because if you don’t have tons of dollars to throw out there, try and make a big splash by capturing people’s attention, whether it’s digitally, in print, or with a billboard, you have to do it with your product and packaging. That’s the first entry point for most consumers.

For us, it’s getting that communication down. We have a beautiful product package. We hear from many people that they love it, but there are some communication points missing. We are going through a minor brand refresh to optimize that and make sure that people know why Happy Moose Juice is going to taste better when they look at the product in the first few seconds. Always trying to improve things, like figure out what’s working and do those things more. You only have so much time and so few resources as an emerging, startup brand. Don’t let your tension get diverted to work on things that we think might be an opportunity or a squirrel chasing the nut. Find your lane, what works well for you, and try to do as much as possible until you can’t do it anymore.

Find the next best thing where you can be a winner or your brand and what could be the right space for it. There are a ton of juice companies out there, but we are in the San Francisco Bay Area where we make sure that if there’s a coffee shop, that people are stopping in where they want to start their day, that has a beautiful space, we are the juice on the shelf. There are things like that that a brand can do to stand out, create and build their identity from those points. That’s what we are doing.

What always impresses me is the fact that you do remain very disciplined. We are Americans. We love a good car crash. Let’s talk about a mistake that you feel you made, one that you wish you could walk back. What would an example of that be?

Back in the day, the cannabis space in California has been on a roller coaster ride, but this is before back when everything was on the black market and you had to have a medical car and go to the dispensaries. We had done some partnerships with cannabis brands like one in particular called Global Canna, which was heavily invested in. They were the most natural outdoor-grown cannabis, but they had a lot of investment money. They were doing a great job of building their brand in the cannabis space. They had invited us to come to their events and press juice. We were putting cannabis flowers in this fresh pressed juice at these events.

One time we got to a place where we could have this cannabis juice on the side that we were creating. This was back before the legalization in California. We quickly found out that we did not have the dollars required to invest in the legal ambiguity that was coming down the pipeline. We raised a separate chunk of capital and identified another person to run a separate brand that was going to be a cannabis brand. When the legalization happened, the legal costs went through the roof. We were like, “Let’s pivot to hemp CBD.”

It was too much focus diverted from what we had built and created with Happy Moose Juice. We learned quickly that this was a major distraction, “Let’s shut this down.” As a founder and being entrepreneurial, you see things coming and you have a tendency to want to jump on the bandwagon and be like, “I know beverage. I can create the best cannabis beverage. I create delicious juices,” but at the same time it was too far away from what we were doing and to not be able to leverage the brand that we had already created, built and spent so much, heart and soul on creating. It was a major distraction. That was one thing for sure. For better or worse, we learned a lot, but it prohibited us from building Happy Moose Juice in the way that we should have for those 10 to 12 months.

You said something that’s true. As an entrepreneur, you see things differently and opportunities. It’s hard not to take that entrepreneurial mindset and apply it to other opportunities or challenges. You do have to ask yourself what’s the trade-off. That’s something I have learned in doing this for many years is that this is not a business where there’s an absolute right, wrong, yes, noes, or stuff like that. It doesn’t exist. It’s a series of trade-offs. Understanding, if we pursue something like this, what’s the trade-off? “The trade-off is we are going to be spending precious capital, bandwidth, and focus on this for all of that complexity and potentially not giving the right capital focus and attention to our core business. Can we do that?” You can ask yourself from a trade-off standpoint what’s the better.

I see that very commonly because I think entrepreneurs see the world differently. I believe being a student of entrepreneurialism that as entrepreneurs, we fall on the same spectrum of risk avoidance or risk tolerance. It’s not like every one of us is a base jumper or gets out and does crazy things. We worry about the same things. While most people see the risk in action, we see the risk and inaction. When you have got an opportunity like that, and you see this green rush happening, as an entrepreneur, the risk is sitting on the sidelines on this one.

“Somebody going to do this, why shouldn’t it be us? We know how to do it.” You start getting caught in that narrative. It’s a very easy trap to fall into. Sometimes it’s the right track because that’s where innovation happens and sometimes not. Let’s go back to Happy Moose for a second. You added the wellness shots. Another interesting thing that I have witnessed is that for many brands, what becomes their winning product isn’t necessarily their initial product. How did that come into play? Why the shots and how do they fit into the overall business now?

There are a couple of different things I would say to that. First of all, we started as a retail business, as a pop-up juice bar inside of a restaurant. We were doing juice shots back then. We had the juices in glass bottles. We were also pouring shots in these little shot glasses in the location. We would also bottle them up to go. One thing is you saw what happened in juice. The cold press phenomenon came and went very quickly. Juice lost a lot of dollars in shelf space to a functional beverage. Kombucha was what I felt disrupted the cold press movement.

There was this opportunity to create functional juices to be a part of the functional movement that was happening. Even like kombuchas or other products, they use fresh juices as a functional ingredient, whether it’s ginger or turmeric and all these things. For us, it was a natural fit. It is very close. We were already doing it. We had already developed these recipes that we knew people love. It is a different use. Somebody who drinks orange juice in the morning is different from somebody who drinks a ginger shot after lunch or when they get sick. The economics of working with a smaller product, we fit 7,500 shots on a pallet, whereas there are only 2,200 juices on a pallet.

Especially shipping things in the mail, we can get 48 shots in a small little box, whereas you can only get eighteen juices. When you start to see how the fundamental economics change with a smaller product, that was the writing on the wall. It’s been done. There are juice companies that are just shot companies, like Vive or Core. Those are actual juice companies, but they have only chosen to play in the shot space. We have done well with the fresh juices too, but in the shots, the margins are higher. A lot of it is because you are getting $4 at retail for a 2-ounce product. Whereas, a lot of times for the 12-ounce juices, people want to sell them for $5.

It’s a lot bigger product. It costs a lot more to ship it there. It made sense from a business decision standpoint to do it, and it’s being supported in our sales. It’s the kind of thing where we are keeping tabs. You have to focus when you are young. There are times when I have been like, “Should we be like a shot company and an orange juice company? Do we need all these other blends?” A lot of questions come up almost on a daily basis, but you have to make those decisions day by day and get to a point where you can justify them from a financial standpoint.

For us, it’s been a good one being in the shot space. I feel like the velocity, honestly for shots, especially in grocery, tends to be a little bit higher. It’s different for eCom platforms. When we sell direct-to-consumer, we sell more juices, but we are in a grocery store set. Sometimes the shots we will sell 3 to 4 times from a velocity standpoint and the juice as well. It depends where you are, but there are different consumers for different types of products. We are still learning, that’s all that stuff’s going to inform our overarching hire strategy over time. Both of the products make sense for us where we are.

That’s a smarter approach to it. My hunch will be over time that the shot format will probably drive more of the expansion and revenue. Just because you are not shipping heavy products, it becomes the economy of it. It serves as a gateway to introduce people to the brand and so forth. What have you learned about brands, telling the story and how to tell a story?

First I feel like you have to live it. You have to be about it not just when you are working but in your day-to-day. Letting the culture that you are building in the workplace, as well as the brand that you are projecting to the marketplace is one end of the same. You want to make sure that the values that you stand for are showing up in everything that you do, especially once you start to hire people and you expect them to adopt and share those values with you. For me, it’s been about trying to have fun, make something fun, or find happiness in the little places that we can along the way.

There’s always going to be tough times and like, “We are still a startup and there are tons of problems to figure out.” Start come from a service-oriented position where it’s like, “I want to make this person feel satisfied like I care about them, whether or not, they are moving the needle on my business.” If you care about relationships and doesn’t matter what relationship it is, whether it’s a big customer or someone who’s just being a pain in your butt, like who wants you to do something special or unique for them and you don’t have to, it still coming with grace.

Making them feel special is going to start to be seen and felt by people all around you. That’s a big thing when you are building your brand, it is making sure that the values that you want the brand to stand for, that you want people to see in your brand. You have to make sure that those are being reflected in literally your day-to-day actions and not just in the workplace, but at home, because otherwise, it’s not authentic and it doesn’t translate.

That’s interestingly articulated. That’s what makes an emerging brand special It’s the reason why $18 billion-plus of market share moved from the big 25 CPG brands to brands like Happy Moose. It’s because you embody the entrepreneur and the brand you are building. You walk the walk. It’s very authentic. You are not going to so many other brands that are built or run by large multinationals. They may have the veneer of that, but it’s pretty quickly as you start digging under the hood, you start seeing the inconsistencies in that and it falls apart. Consumers nowadays are very choiceful in brands and want brands that are transparent and authentic and so forth. I agree with that philosophy. You articulate it in a unique way.

You need to figure out how to add that to your investment story because I think that’s compelling too. You talk about what’s bankable. As an investor, often what we are looking for is some type of defensible space that makes it harder for somebody to come to knock it out and wind up being a race to the bottom in terms of who can get it cheaper. We want that defensible mode. A lot of investors start is with a product or IP. In this space, especially around beverage and so forth, it’s hard to have a defensible IP or something that is differentiated. What you described or articulated is the building of an authentic brand that has an authentic relationship and a real relationship with its shoppers and consumers.

That’s something that Elliot’s Juice can’t come in and just easily replicate. That’s a defendable space. It’s not only a smart approach to thinking about brand building, but it’s also a smart business strategy. That is, “I want to deal with brands that are cool and that make me feel cared for, heard, valued, and respected. If you can do that for me, I’m going to keep buying your shit day in and day out.” 15 or 20 years from now, would you want your daughter to be an entrepreneur?

Definitely.

What do you hope she takes away from watching youth on this journey?

That it’s okay to fail. One thing I always love to say is, “The best skateboarders, aren’t always the best skateboarders. They’re like the best at falling down and not cracking their head open or getting a career-ending injury.” Learning to fail, being comfortable failing, falling, and adapting your style along the way, like finding your uniqueness and always searching for that like, “How can I be more of myself?” Letting failure and missing the mark be a part of that identity because the truth is everybody’s going to fail. You are going to crash hard.

It’s how quickly can you get your car back on the road. How’s it going to drive differently the next time and make sure that you know it’s going to happen again and you are prepared for it?” Know that it might not work out and if it doesn’t, that’s okay. Give it all you got. At the end of the day, pursue it with all your heart.

It’s not even the failing. More importantly, it’s the second component of that. It’s the ability to get back up and knocked on your ass. Back in the day, we used to have these things called Bobo dolls. It’s an inflatable clown that had weighted bottoms. You would just beat the shit out of it and knock it over, then it would come right back up and so forth. What I always think of about entrepreneurs is that we take these body blows consistently, and we just go all the way down to the ground, then we come right back up with a big smile on our face. That’s what it takes.

You come back up. You internalize the lesson that you were just told and learned. You move on and keep going. Perseverance and persistence are key. The last question, for the readers, is whatever you want to let them know about Happy Moose, entrepreneurship, or whatever you want to share. This is your closing moment of wisdom and if also folks want to learn more about the brand byproduct, investors reading, want to write, you have seen a huge amount of money, let it rip.

Find people who can give you solid, critical advice and people that will listen to you. You always want people who will hear the full story and understand the full picture before they are telling you things that you need to do to change or do better. You always need a solid critic around you who can give you objective advice on what you are doing. Check your decisions with them. Always make sure that you are taking the time. This is a whole other thing but ask for help. Be a pain in somebody’s butt if they can help you. It’s not like a real pain in their butt, but be in their back pocket. I didn’t do it enough, like asking someone for advice, help, or things like that.

There are many folks out there that want to help and do things to help you along in your journey. Find those people. You can spend as much time asking for help. You will go faster if you are humble enough to ask people to help you out, as opposed to having to figure everything out on your own. You can spend as much time shooting people notes, being in their inbox or on their LinkedIn page, paying attention to what they are doing, and asking them how they do it, as opposed to being like, “I got to figure this out myself. I do everything myself.”

Being humble enough to ask as many people as you need to for advice or help along the way is so important. It will save you so much time on your business trajectory. That’s one thing that I would say. A founder can’t do enough of asking people in their community for help. Spending the time on building the community so that you can’t ask them for help. Those are the things that are very invaluable and they take time. There are so many rewards to doing that.

That’s tremendous advice. Something that you do naturally that I will add to that is as you ask, give to, and you do that a lot because there are a lot of learning and giving too. There are a lot of opportunities when you can offer somebody else help and you can bring some of what you have learned or acquired to bear to somebody else to help them in their goal. When you do that, oftentimes what you stumble upon is, “I have to rethink this. I haven’t thought about this in a while.” Giving and receiving are important. Is there anything else you want to let them know about you, the brand, if they want to reach out or want to buy a product?

You know an investor that is in early-stage businesses. We are an investible business. Happy Moose Juice is going to revolutionize the juice space. It’s not going to happen overnight, but we are here to stay. Put us in contact. Reach out. Connect us with them. We want to meet people. We want to have conversations. We want to hear the noes and yeses, but, as many nos as possible so that we can improve our pitch.

Please put us in touch with early-stage investors. That would be super helpful. We are just going into a fundraise. We are looking for like-minded investors who are interested in being part of a unique brand in the wellness space that is preserving family farming, heirloom farms that are nearing extinction and also addressing food waste. We are tackling some big food issues, but we are having fun doing it. We are creating a product that is fresher and tastier than it is on the marketplace. Get in touch. Shoot me a note.

My email is Ryan@HappyMoose.com. You can find my phone number on our website. Give us a call. We want to talk to people. Anybody that can put us in touch with early-stage investors would be great. We are at Naturally Bay Area’s Pitch Slam. We are going to be a part of that. I’m one of the finalists for that. We are excited. If you want to tune in and check out the Naturally Bay Area’s Pitch Slam and hear more about what we are doing.

Thanks for joining. To the investors reading, these are the kinds of entrepreneurs and opportunities that are out there. Let’s do it. Let’s make it happen. I will catch everyone the next time. Ryan, I’m glad we are able to do this. Thanks for stopping on the road. We appreciate it and we will talk soon.

Thanks so much. I appreciate you having me on.

Anytime. Bye, all.

Important Links

• Happy Moose Juice

• Ryan@HappyMoose.com

About Ryan Armistead

I’m a creative at heart and very passionate about everything I’m involved in. I grew up in a blue collar family, in small-town NC, where I learned to love hard and work hard from a young age. Helping my Dad in his small furniture business was my foundation for strong work ethic and craft. I attended Appalachian State in Boone where I had the chance to play Varsity Soccer and earn a degree in International Business & Spanish.

After graduating, I spent 2 years with Newell Co. where I was able to tangibly utilize my entrepreneurial spirit, while learning full cycle sales processes and big brand-building and marketing strategies in NYC and San Francisco. After leaving the corporate world, I spent 8 months in Spain, living and working on a family olive farm in Catalunya. I’ve since returned to San Francisco, where I’m currently working in the CPG natural beverage space, and founder and CEO of Happy Moose Juice. I’m a singer-songwriter & guitarist for the SF-based band Peggy Bunker & the bunkmates, which has released our first album, “Boogie-amos”.

Family, friendships, and relationships are most important to me and my dream is to one day inspire global change in agricultural and farming practices, the meat industry, and industrial food chain. I’m a person of faith that believes the whole universe is connected and that we have an vast opportunity to improve the way we treat the earth and everything within it.

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