July 29, 2024 • 39 mins
Kyle Cooke, CEO & Founder of Loverboy | CEOs You Should Know
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 2 (00:00):
Everyone.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Steve Dollison and welcome to this week's edition
of CEOs you should know. I am joined by Kyle Cook, CEO,
founder and creator of lover Boy.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Kyle, thanks for coming in today.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
Thank you, good to see you again.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
You too.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
A lot of probably our listeners know you from reality TV,
right but after getting to talk to you, learn a
little bit about you. Obviously entrepreneurs something is that you've
had for a lot of years right way before lover Boy.
Why do you tell our audience a little bit about
that mindset and really what brought you to that field.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Yeah, as you kind of point out, most people know
me from Bravo. So I've been on Summer House since
day one. I kind of helped kind of make that
first scene to have it off. Yeah, but but yeah,
I kind of got the entrepreneurial It's very early on.
You know, in high school I was kind of taking
odd jobs, whether it's landscaping. I helped build a house
(00:51):
one summer. But then I found Cutgo and I was
my own boss. I made like ten grand selling knives,
and that was cold calling. That was you know, managing leads.
It was following up and what I realized very early
(01:11):
on is I don't care what you end up doing,
but if you planned me in business, if you've never
sold anything, you're not going to be able to relate
to how a business actually works. Like I think there's
just so much value in cold calling and kind of
knocking on doors and doing the groundwork, doing the hard work.
And so that was my first foray. Then in high
(01:33):
school I'm sorry, college, I ran a contracting business. Okay,
was at undergraduate school. A flyers on my desk, Hey
do you want to run your own business this summer?
And I'm like, yeah, All my friends are like going
off the wall street for internships. And I ran a
painting company. It was a franchise. I was the franchise e,
and it was wild. I mean, at any given point
(01:56):
in time, when I was twenty years old, I had
you know, five or six pinting cruise with like fifty
or sixty painters all throughout the state of New Hampshire
where I'm from, where I'm from, And I mean that
was like Cutco on steroids, right, you know, a lot
more complicated trying to make someone happy by you know,
working on their most valuable asset, their home, and so
(02:16):
the end result. Yeah, and so oddly enough, I was
actually at a liberal arts school for undergrad and so
all of my business and and entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship like acumen,
was from kind of you know, my jobs on the side.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Real life experiences.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I know.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
We talked a little bit about when you first moved
to New York, right, that was taking a leap of
faith and something that was also risky and a risk
at the time.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Yeah, in two thousand and seven, I joined a college
buddy to to help them start a commercial real estate
finance brokerage. I knew nothing about any one of those words,
but I knew I could sell again going back to CUCO,
and he needed someone who could really manage relationships. We were,
you know, helping real estate owner operator developers try to
(03:05):
seek out alternative financing. And things got crazier and crazier
and crazier, and then boom the Great Recession, and you know,
I can't I didn't have a salary. I came down here,
like I said, leave of faith, and it was a
wild learning lesson those two years. But you know, you
kind of have to put yourself out there to learn
(03:25):
what you're made of. And learn what you're interested in.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
What do you think you learned from that experience.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
That you can only fake it till you make it
to a point. So I could talk to talk, but
I couldn't walk the walk in the sense that I
had no idea what I was talking about. I mean, like, yeah,
talk to me about your cap table, Like let's talk
about the waterfall. You know, what's the debt service ratio?
I had no idea what I was talking about, but
I'm a quick learner. So at that point in time,
(03:53):
my buddy decided to move the business to Arizona due
to everything was happening on Wall Street. He refocused on
smaller small business loans, but when I was working with them,
we were like trophy hunting, for lack of a better word,
huge real estate projects one hundreds of millions of dollars
with a one percent chance of closing. And so he
(04:13):
moved to Arizona. I was just like, I want to
go to business school, Like, I don't want to fake it.
I want to learn the basics and look, business school
is not for everybody. I did the two year full
time MBA program, but what I did was go to
the school known for Entrepreneurship Babson. It's been number one
for thirty one consecutive years. I actually just looked it
(04:33):
up before coming here, and I knew that I would
go there, probably get tempted to go to a big
company because I'm going to rack up a bunch of
student debt, but you know, having an entrepreneurial kind of
route to my graduate studies was really important to me.
So I went there in two thousand and nine, graduated
(04:53):
twenty eleven. So again that you know, you know, you'll
learn a lot when you put self out there. Yeah,
and I learned. I was like, all right, undergrad for
me was a big party. Don't get me wrong. I
worked hard, but you know, I wanted to invest in myself.
I know there's all sorts of opinions on grad schools
(05:14):
these days, like Peter Teel in particular, has all sorts
of thoughts on like, you know, student debt, whether it's
grad or undergrad. Right, So it's not for everybody, but
it really helped me kind of find myself.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah, and I think it's important.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
You said you had that foundation from the school, right
that you didn't have prior to it, So it definitely
paid off.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
In the long run. Yeah, what was some of your
verse ventures out of grad school?
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Well, this is actually something I like to talk about.
I mean, particularly if you know your audience aspiring entrepreneurs people,
you know, they might have the itch, or they're they're
trying to weigh their options, or they're just listening in,
you know, out of curiosity. In grad school, you know,
like I said, there's a lot of temptation to go make,
you know, a big, high paying job when you leave.
(05:56):
But I was paying very closely close attention to the trends.
And at that time, companies like groupond and Living Social
were kind of changing the face of like brick and
mortar retail in terms of how these businesses acquire customers,
but not in a really good way, right, So restaurants
were the number one focus, and a coupon cutters coming
(06:19):
in at eight o'clock on a Friday is not how
you want to fill seats. And I was just like,
my god, Okay, here's a trend. But the number one
business utilizing these these you know, these deal sites, it's
actually destroying their business. So I focused on a yield
management tool much like Hotel tonight. So actually it was
(06:41):
called reservation tonight, I rebranded it and it was helping
people find last minute reservations at a distreet a discrete discount.
So it's curation meets you know, deals. And it wasn't
like a you know, buy this and use it whenever
you want. You were filling empty seats at the shrawn,
much like a plane that charges people different prices, you know,
(07:03):
depending on when you book. But it was it was
a wild ride because A I wasn't passionate about it.
B I wasn't a technical co founder. I didn't have
a co founder and see, uh, you know, I kind
of forgot one of the big magic ingredients, which was
(07:24):
like is this something not only am I capable of executing,
but is it am I passionate about it?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yep?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Is this going to make a difference in my life?
Is this going to make it a difference in other
people's lives? So it was a learning lesson. I put
a lot of my own money in I like, I
literally maxed out my student loans to start the business
because I had to, you know, pay for developers. And
one of my friends was like, Kyle, you pulled the
(07:51):
cord so early, and I was like, dude, I saw
the writing on the wall. This is completely dependent on
venture capital. Like most marketplace is. When I say marketplaces,
I'm talking Airbnb Uber. It's a winner takes all strategy.
Usually takes tens hundreds, if not billions of dollars to
win those marketplaces. And I'm like, yo, Open table is
(08:11):
going to figure this out or somebody else that already
has everything lined up in a row. And all the
vcs already made bets on the daily deal sites that
had no technology whatsoever. And it was just bad timing,
you know. I chased the trend, and by the time
I was ready to go to market, all the vcs
had made their bets and this was a business model
(08:32):
that required venture capital. So I hung up my cleats.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Yeah, but I mean the experience probably tell you a
lot and got you ready for the next one. I know.
One of the other experiences we talked about prior was
with bird dogs and the lessons you learned there.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Would you share with the listeners a little bit about
that one?
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Yeah? So, you know, I think one thing that I
encourage everybody do is have as many experiences as possible,
working as many industries as possible. I had no interest
in going into apparel, no interest in consumer for that matter,
like consumer goods. But one of my good good buddies
(09:06):
started bird Dogs and he offered me, you know, come
on as a co founder. And I gave it a
lot of thought, and I was like, first and foremost,
you've been at this a year. You provided the seed capital, right,
this is always going to be your baby, even if
I got you know, fifteen twenty percent, Like, this is
going to be your baby. And I'm the kind of
(09:27):
guy I've already had that little taste ye, going way
back to my teens and twenties. I kind of want
to be in control of my own destiny. But I
want to help you because I think this is a
phenomenal business. It's a phenomenal product, and it's fun, and
fun is often overlooked in business. What we were making
were shorts with a built in liner, and we were
(09:49):
basically saying like death to underwear, death to wedgies, death
to like, you know, the fabric bunch around your you know,
your family jewels. And so we in twenty fifteen started
creating content that looked nothing like anything else out there,
Like if you think about the average Bonobo's or J
Crewe or you know, fill in the blank brand trying
(10:11):
to you know, appeal to men. It's so boring, so bland,
and it usually requires a thirty percent discount just to
get you to stop scrolling. And this is in a
heyday of Facebook. Mind you, We're like, yo, let's make
our content funny, duh, Like, let's make our content shareable
like and by doing these things, we realized to kind
(10:34):
of take a page at a Gary V's book back
in twenty nineteen, twenty two thousand and nine. Excuse me,
crush it. Content is king. If you can figure out
a way to make content that people want to consume.
And oh, by the way, it's advertising a product discreetly
or in some cases in a hilarious manner, you're gonna
(10:55):
win because you're gonna lower your cost of customer acquisition.
Right Like, if J cru is running I'm picking on
J Crew, I don't know why, But if J crew
is running an ad on Facebook and the hook is
thirty percent off, are they even breaking even on a
first purchase? Well, guess what, when you're running a startup
and you don't break even on your first purchase, you
better go be prepared to give away ten twenty thirty
(11:18):
fifty percent of the business to venture capitalists. No one
wanted to give us money back then, So we use
content and that opened my eyes. I was the guy
on camera making people laugh. And this is pre Summerhouse.
And so when the Summerhouse opportunity came around, I already
knew content is king. Yeah, cash will always be our lord,
(11:41):
and say ye like the true king, but a close
second is content. And so you know, again, you don't
get anywhere in life by saying no, and you certainly
don't figure out how to kind of like navigate your
own path without having some true life experiences. And at
this time, I'm thirty three or thirty two to thirty three,
(12:04):
you know, and I'm like, all right, this is gonna
be my baby. I'm not going in full time, but
I'm gonna help my buddy have a lot of fun
in the process. I'm gonna learn a lot. That's exactly
what we did.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I think that's an important message for everybody listening.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Like all of the background, all of your journey, right,
it enabled you to get that foundation to be the
success yard today. Right, Like all those different experiences you
learned something from and you were able to take stuff
away that was able to set yourself.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Up for the next journey.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
And I love the word foundation, right, Like we're so entrepreneurs,
and particularly young aspiring entrepreneurs, whether they're in college or
debating on whether to go. Our reality field is like
so distorted by the Elon musk is. Let's actually take
like the college dropout yeah, stories like a Zuckerberg. Right,
I don't need college, I don't need foundation. I don't
(12:50):
need life experiences like I'm going to break the internet.
Guess what, those opportunities don't evenally exist today, right, Very
few eighteen year olds are starting, you know, the next
wave of you know, web three point zero. I'm sorry
to say it, like it was a different era. And
(13:13):
even then he was one in a billion. So let's
get real. You do need a foundation, one hundred percent.
I love that word.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And I think that you said this earlier, right when
you're talking about getting into sales. The foundation is also
getting yourself ready to be the CEO, to know all
the different roles underneath you. Like it's it's a better
way of being able to manage and lead and coach
those different individuals because you sat in their shoes.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Exactly, and you have to be able to relate to
the people you're going to manage and to go a
little deeper on the sales side of things. Right. I
worked in between my own startups, I worked at a
heavily venture backed start up here in New York. It
was actually the most valuable startup in New York City
at the time. It's called ZocDoc and it was an
incredible experience. Yeah, we went from four hundred to eight
(13:56):
hundred people in the eighteen months I was there. And
not to pick on anybody, but they all of upper management,
including the founders, were all McKinsey. And that might work,
but when you have people running sales departments that have
never sold anything, you have a massive potential for a
culture problem because if your boots on the ground, your
(14:16):
your your sales reps know that this guy has never
been in their shoes, that's that is not how you
garner the trust. Yeah, and like that that mindset of
like the you know your what do you call them? Like?
You know when you're dialing for dollars? Like, oh, you
(14:37):
never cold call anybody?
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Cool?
Speaker 3 (14:39):
I don't respect you. If you're gonna try to manage
me having zero experience.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I have the same exact mindset.
You have to be in the trenches with your team
and you have to know what those highs and lows
of sales feels like to be able to coach and
manage somebody with that field.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
So we talked a lot about the background.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Let's talk about the present, right, Yeah, what inspired you
really to start lover Boy?
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Personal experience? You know, look, I know this is going
to sound ridiculous, but in twenty sixteen, you know, when
we were starting to film Season one, I looked at
the brands sending us alcohol products and some of these
things had not changed for twenty years, and we would
(15:20):
wake up with gnarly hangovers. And look, they understood the
value of product placement, just like I understood the value
of product placement. So, you know, the producers wanted us
to pay for our groceries. They wanted us to pay
for our you know, various beverages and that can add up.
And we're like, we're no dummies. Were a cast of
hustlers in New York. We're like, yo, let's get other
brands to send us free products so we don't have
(15:43):
to pay for it and they'll gain exposure. But these
these products were in some cases archaic. And what I
realized in alcohol, and this is as someone at the time,
I was actually working on a nutrition coaching app. I'm like, yo. Somehow,
some way, the alcohol industry has avoided having to put
(16:03):
a nutrition label in the ingredients on the product, which
is absurd. Like if you go through any other aisle
at the grocery store, all right, let's check this out.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
What do you do?
Speaker 3 (16:13):
You flip it around and look the better for you
movement and the sugar reduction and an emphasis on higher
quality ingredients that's been going on for twenty years. And
somehow alcohol was immune to much needed innovation. And so
when I talk today, people are like, dude, there's a
(16:33):
thousand seltzers, there's a thousand cocktails in again, guess what
when I started, there wasn't. A lot has happened in
five years. This industry has seen twenty years of innovation
in about two to three. But the inspiration behind lover
Boy was like, listen, very few consumer categories are dominated
by one brand, and I don't like to stay them
(16:54):
by name. But the hard tea that's been around since
ninety nine was controlling ninety plus percent of the hard
team market. The product hadn't changed. And I used to
joke and I would say, it's like diabetes in a bottle, yeah,
because like if you have six of them, look at
the back, you're on that path. Well, no, you can't
look at the path. You can't look at the back.
There's no label. You have to dig around, and even
(17:16):
on the Internet there's mixed you know, people are trying
to figure out the calories, they're trying to figure out
the sugar, they're trying to figure out the carbs, and
there's no like you know, Bible for that. There's no
like my fitness Pal has one number, this other site
has another, and it's very confusing. And I was just like,
(17:37):
why can't we use better quality ingredients that these big
alcohol suppliers are just too cheap to use. Let's make
better tasting, better for you products using a fraction of
the sugar. And in fact, we figured out how to
make a hard teat that tastes great was zero sugar,
So we use monk fruit. Some people don't like the aftertaste.
(17:58):
Some people don't like the after taste of stevia but
I'd much rather, you know, use those ingredients than sucralose,
which is what you find and everything from Prime to
some of the new hard tease in the market to Celsius.
Not to throw these brands under the bus, but like
how much superlose aka artificial sweeteners do you want to
be consuming? And there's a lot of studies out there
(18:18):
that suggest you don't want to consume any So that
was the inspiration. Like I looked at an industry that,
in my mind was like the last was like the
Wildwile West of consumer package goods CpG. And then you
you segment that down to beverage alcohol, and then you
segment that down to what we call the fourth category,
(18:39):
which is kind of like ready to drink. Whether you
call it flavored beer or you know, there's a lot
of different names for it, but it's it's not beer,
wine or spirits. It's this fourth category that's taken off
since hert Seltzer's. So that was like a long winded answer, no,
but I just cannot believe as a consumer that I
(19:00):
get zero transparency and there's very limited options on the shelf.
The big guys control everything. Yeah, and it kind of
made me disgusted because people were asking, Hey, Kyle, what
you drinking And I'm like, I actually feel guilty telling you.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah, No, it's awesome.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
It's a cool challenger brand now entering the marketplace, right
And I think you guys have a really unique positioning
on what makes you guys different Outside of obviously the ingredients,
what else do you feel like helps the Lover Boys
stand out?
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Well, we saw very early on that most of the
marketing and most of the products in alcohol were made
by men for men, and meanwhile, seventy percent of alcohol
purchases at retail are made by women. That's probably the
case for most consumer categories. And I'm like, wow, huge disconnect.
(19:55):
The big you know, old gray haired white dudes that
are controlling the products that you see on the show
don't really understand today's consumer. They sure don't understand what
women want. Yep, and I happen to be on Bravo,
which is like the number one rated network for women,
So that was like another light bulb that went off.
I'm like, hey, I can I can reach a consumer
(20:16):
that these big guys are a kind of ignoring b
don't understand and see really can't resonate with based on
the products that they're churning out. So that was like
another aha moment.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
We talked a little bit about obviously content earlier with
the bird Dogs experience and then utilizing the Summerhouse platform.
How have you felt those two things have really elevated
the lover Boy brand.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Yeah. I think the word lifestyle brand is thrown around
a lot so so much because guess what, Yeah, every
brand would love to be a lifestyle brand. And when
I say lifestyle, I don't mean like me running a business,
you know where I'm putting in ten twenty hours a
week and it's just like on cruise Control. I mean
lifestyle brand where you have people that are die hard
(21:03):
loyals or loyalists that will go out of their way
to buy it, and a community kind of builds up
around it. And you know, for me doing it on
a show that sure, there's drama, there's petty bickering, you know,
there's everything you need to expect out of out of
(21:24):
a Bravo show, but we're doing it as New Yorkers
that you know frequent the Hamptons, which, like I don't
care where you live.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
It's like I'd love to do that absolutely.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
So it's the key word when season one dropped was
aspirational and I kind of laughed because I'm from New
Hampshire and I never thought that word would be used
in a sentence describing a show that I'm on or
I never could imagine being on a show. But that helps, right,
It helps drive home the aspirational aspect of it. And
we wanted to make sure that we didn't get pigeonholed
(21:56):
within one product category. We wanted to make sure that
Boy was kind of like a casion base when it
came to the product itself, but also was a true
lifestyle brand that people wanted to like support, And so
merch has become one way to do that, right, You
sell millions of dollars of merch and people love it.
They eat it up. You know. Most alcohol brands literally
(22:18):
have to give away their T shirts and whatnot, like
please please, like if you hold this at the bar,
I will give you a Heineken. Not so with with
Lover Boy. We constantly sell out of merch and I
think that's, you know, one way to think about how
we've built this lifestyle brand and look, other people can
(22:38):
do this you don't need a TV show, you know,
I'm very fortunate, I'm very well aware that's a bit
of a cheat code here from a customer acquisition standpoint
and the ability to kind of accomplish, you know, building
that lifestyle brand. But I see so many brands that
kind of give people a look behind the scenes and
are building it in public. It doesn't have to be
(22:59):
on Bravo, can be in YouTube, it can be on Instagram.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
On social meid and anybody.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
You can do it literally, like, find something you're passionate
about where you think that there's you know, a target
audience they would also be passionate about it and build
it in public.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Yeah, I think that's one of the key points that
you can learn from that experience too, Right, what are
some of the biggest challenges you've had? Obviously, I know
that on the show you share a lot about different
challenges that arise, right, and I think that's part of that.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
We share too much building in public.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
But what are some of the challenges that you faced
in the current role, and like how have you overcome those?
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Well? Industry specific you know, when we were having our moment,
because like in alcohol, you need your wholesalers and your
retailers and your consumers all kind of on the same
page at the same time. When we were having our moment,
you know, when we were like the shiny new toy,
we couldn't buy enough cans. There was a ten billion
(23:50):
can shortage in twenty one and twenty two. It started
actually in twenty and so when everybody wanted it, we
couldn't supply it. And that wasn't unique to us. I mean,
even the biggest beverage suppliers in the world were coming
up short, like I said, ten billion cans. So that
was a huge challenge because now you know, when we expanded,
(24:11):
you know, we gave our distributors product, we didn't really
have a big enough team to support them after that
initial launch, and then you know, our wholesales and retailers
they're kind of naturally off to the next shiny new
toy toy. And so I think I underestimated. All right,
we're like this new age brand, a challenger brand. Like
you said, we're kind of like writing our own playbook,
(24:34):
writing our own go to market. We expanded ten times
faster than is basically advised in this industry, and now
we've kind of had to realize that there's nuances of
this industry, that it is what it is. We're not
going to change how wholesale has worked in this country
for the last hundred years. Right, the three tier system
(24:56):
that people talk about in alcohol, it's the supplier, it's
the wholesale, and the retailer. You can't legally sell our
teas direct, so that's been a huge challenge just trying
to maintain the mind share of our distributors. It's funny
like when our brand popped off, our brand had probably
one third the awareness as it has today, but our
(25:16):
distributors gave us three times the attention two years ago, right,
So the show continues to kind of break through to
mainstream popularity. Our brand has three times as many followers
as we did when we launched all these markets. So
there's just a huge disconnect between what the consumer wants
and what they end up getting because of this three
(25:36):
tier system, and it's out of my control. I can
only play the game, yep. I think the other big
thing on the on the kind of like building in
public side, is when I'm too honest and a sound
bite gets used and all the context goes missing, Like
last year, I blurted out to make a point that
(25:57):
lover Boy is tanking. In reality, lover Boy was going
through some growing pains. But we've accomplished like so much
in so little time that I'm so proud of what
we were able to do. But last year we were
for the first time ever, we were not profitable, and
we were having to grow our team to hold those
(26:18):
distribers accountable faster than the revenue is coming through the door.
And ironically, that is probably what every single fast growing
not just alcohol brand, but any consumer packs a good brand.
Brands like experience. That's why raising money in this industry
is so common. In some cases, these brands are hemorrhaging
(26:40):
cash right up until they either A get acquired or
B go belly up. So I was experiencing again kind
of like, hey, this is welcome you to the new normal. Yeah,
post COVID, where you know you have to build up
your resources and you might be unprofitable a period of time.
(27:00):
And I was just freaking out and I wasn't able
to like articulate the complexities of this industry. And I've
worked in healthcare, real estate, finance, you name it. Nothing's
more complex and archaic than alcohol, and I struggle to
get my wife, my friends, my cast members to understand it.
(27:22):
And then when that gets whittled down to like forty
two minutes of television every week, there's no way like this.
This isn't on Bloomberg. This is on Bravo, so I
can't bore people.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Can get to talk about the business aspects.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
So we'll get exactly so the little so the highlight
that gets that actually makes it into the edit.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Is we're going belly up.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Look where we are taking And I kind of shot
myself in the foot on that one, but I you know,
I was I was struggling, I was stressed out, and
I just felt like none of the closest people around
me understood what was going on.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Yeah, but I think it also is you know this
from your past experiences, right there always is going to
be It's not all highs when you're a CEO. It's
not all highs when you launch a new brand. You
know it's gonna be those ups and downs. And maybe
that moment was one of those downs and you came
out of it. You so like the long game in
the future of the company and the brand. So let's
talk about more positive right. What has been some of
the more inspiring moments of being the CEO, founder and
(28:17):
creator of lover Boy.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
There's something to be said about doing something tangible. Like
I said, I was in tech, you know, when I
went to business school, I was like fascinated with tech marketplaces,
you name. It turns out those are like the hardest
businesses to actually launching gain traction. On the flip side,
lover Boy is tangible and there's an immediate ROI there's
a buzz. So there's something to be said about putting
(28:43):
a product that has a fraction of calories and sugar
in someone's hand. It still tastes amazing, and it's a
brand with a story behind it, And like you start
checking off things that are rarely checked off in alcohol.
And I'm just so proud when I can just catch
someone's first initial reaction. And I also think I'm doing
(29:04):
some good here, Like transparency is much needed in alcohol, right,
All these big suppliers with these products that are so mainstream,
they're hiding all sorts of crap because they don't have
to put the ingredients on the label. And I think
it's completely whack, Like people should they have a right
to understand what they're consuming. But for whatever reason, the government,
(29:26):
the lobbying, the big suppliers, the three tier system, they've
prevented transparency. And you know, so I do feel like
we're doing some good in that sense. It's still alcohol.
The government still says it's a poison. So I can't
legally say these products, these products are better for you.
But I think you know, if you think about obesity
(29:46):
and diabetes, there is an absurd amount of sugar in
almost every alcoholic beverage out there. And when you're drinking
that tequila and you're like, yo, but there's no sugar
in here, it's so small. Well, it has additives. So
like the list goes on.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yeah, you know, you think.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
You're being I don't really know what you're drinking the exactly,
And I just to me, if I can, you know,
bring some change to an industry that I think desherally
needs it, I'll feel good about it.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Yeah, it's awesome.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
You guys are transforming the industry. I love asking this
question for every CEO that sits down with me. How
do you balance the demand of being a CEO with
your personal life?
Speaker 3 (30:26):
I have no idea. I think balance is one of
those things that is you strive for it. But if
you're I don't have kids yet, and you know, much
to my wife's dismay, like, I'm like, this is the
time in my life where I am going to grind
day and night. Sixty eighty eighty plus hour weeks are
(30:49):
the norm. They have been the norm for me for
the last five years. And then you factor in that
I film one, two, sometimes three different TV shows in
my spare time. There's been zero balance. But I feel
like if you're not willing to have a period of
your life that is completely out of balance in order
to accomplish something and build something like for me, I'm
(31:10):
building financial freedom and financial independence for my future family.
And sometimes my friends forget that, sometimes my wife forgets that.
But that's what this is all about. And for me,
it's just carving out forty five minutes a day for
some exercise so I don't go absolutely insane.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
No, I appreciate.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
I appreciate the honest answer, and I think that's important
though I'll look at it in the long run.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
And for the future.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
So we're speaking of the future, where do you see
lover Boy in the next five to ten years.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
I've often been told that it takes ten years to
build a beverage brand. Take Celsius. I think they went
public in like two thousand and eight. I hadn't heard
about them until the pandemic, right, So for me, it's
just staying focused, keeping our head down. Yes there's competition,
but most of the competition won't be here in a
(31:59):
year or two. Like that's the norm in this industry.
Whether you're a small startup or you're a big supplier
throwing you know what at the wall, most brands don't
make it eighteen months or two years and are then
on life support. So for us, it's about kind of
powering through some of these very macro and external, you
(32:21):
know cycles in our industry and then in the economy,
and just making sure we're still here and listening to
our consumers, listening to our retailers, and listening to our
wholesalers to make sure that we're turning out products that
are continue to set trends. And that's what we're going
to be doing at lover Boy. We're going to be
setting trends, not following trends. I learned that, like I said,
(32:43):
out of business school and you know, just continue to
add transparency to an industry that I think needs it.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
That's awesome. What's on the horizon?
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Is there anything you could share in terms of new
flavors coming out and collabs in the horizon?
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Yeah, So we kind of hinted at a THHC product.
So thanks to the twenty eighteen Farm Bill, HEMP derived
THHC as long as below a certain percentage, it's zero
point three and it's delta nine. Not to get too
technical here, you know, you can launch products that historically
(33:21):
were impossible or had to go through, like the dispensary
system in some of the states that had legalized it.
So we're about to launch, hopefully by the end of August,
a THC infused social soda. And why I say social
like this is an alcohol replacement and we're putting things
in there in addition to THHC that give you natural
(33:42):
boosts of energy and clarity. And it's a new age
soda in the sense that it's low sugar and tastes amazing,
but it still pulls on nostalgic flavors like grape, orange cola,
et cetera. So I'm super excited about that because I
really do believe people are going to be drinking less,
drinking better. But when they're not grabbing a lover Boy
(34:04):
tea Sprits cocktail, I'd love for them to be grabbing
one of our non elks or one of our TT
products because again, we're building a portfolio around occasions, you know,
different occasions for different kind of products. So that's kind
of like I think on the short term horizon, and
then again just looking at what consumers want that they're
(34:25):
not getting on the shelf. You know, simple things like
an incredible margarita that isn't loaded with sugar that doesn't
really exist right now, even like a cut water is
about the same amount of sugar as a soda, which
is disturbing, right There's better ways to do it, So,
(34:46):
you know, we're always innovating, and we're you know, we're
fortunate to have some unbelievable customers that will pay a
premium to ship a direct if we make it wine based,
so we can kind of test it out and see
if it's prime time for retail.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
That's awesome the innovation going. Is there anything a bat
lover Boy that we did not cover?
Speaker 2 (35:03):
The wanted listeners to.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Know, no I think. I think we talked about transparency,
We talked about the fact that, you know, we're not
just a hard tea company, you know. I think one
of the things that I'm probably most thankful for is
the Bravo fan base. Trust me, they give it to
(35:26):
me when I screw up. But there's no better audience,
and every good brand needs a good audience. So we're
very fortunate there. We've been able to do all of
this without a traditional marketing budget, which is one of
the reasons why we were so profitable, which is one
of the reasons why we didn't raise a bunch of
money when we could have and probably should have, you know,
(35:49):
because now it's a different era. You know, things have
changed a lot. But I just feel so fortunate to
let me, shoot, we're going to be filming season nine
in a couple of days, and you know, I think
that what I could say to everybody else it doesn't
happen to have the fortune of being on TV, is hey, like,
(36:09):
just look at what's going on in these other Creator brands,
Like there's other you don't have to be on TV.
But I do think my Bravo fans.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yeah, my wife is one of them, she purchased the
express of Martine. I think as soon as you get
a young nine, so she's definitely part of that. In closing,
any final advice you want to give anyone that's really
the kind and inspiring entrepreneur, anyone that wants to take
a brand or create a brand new idea that they
have in their head.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
Yeah, Look, I think one of the things I want
to leave people with is if you have an idea,
if you're searching for an idea, there's there's all sorts
of people out there that say you got to be
all in, right, particularly if you're looking to raise venture capital, which,
by the way, I would focus on business models that
don't require venture capital, and if you happen to raise money,
(36:56):
it's on your terms and it's icing on the cake.
But what I would say to people is that going
all in on something that's so nascent that bringing a
product or service or whatever it is to market is
so far away that between then and now, you're going
to be stressing about how you're going to pay your bills.
Don't lose sight of the fact that you can't be
(37:18):
a successful entrepreneur if you are literally incapable of you know,
covering the cost of living. Go get a job, Go
get those life experiences, build that foundation, and hustle on
the side. Have a side hustle, have something that like
you burn the midnight oil to explore and vet and
(37:38):
if it doesn't work, you know, you didn't just shoot
yourself on the foot by quitting your job. And I
just encourage people, like, if you're not willing to work
a day job and then come home and try to
get that side hustle off the ground. You you're not
going to be cut out for entrepreneurship anyway, So don't
cut off your support line aka your income too early.
(38:00):
And you know, have some line of sight as to like,
all right, if you're going to raise money, get it
as far as you can. It's not a power point
at this point. You need revenue, you need customers, You
need a product in hand to go raise serious cash.
So build in that timeline and then you know, if
you're not raising money, have a line of sight towards like,
all right, when can this throw off enough revenue where
(38:23):
I actually could draw a salary? Yep, because now you
can start to do the math. So you know, go
all in, but only go in when it makes sense, like, yeah,
don't stress yourself out by quitting your job prematurely. That's
all I can say.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
No, I think it's great advice. I think sometimes people
just think success happens overnight.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Selsa's is a great example, right, Like I know that
the CEO of Celsius. A lot of people just don't.
They can't believe me when I say that Selsia's been
around since the late two thousands. Right, So there's no
such thing, like you said, as an overnight success, and
you have to be willing to put in the work.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
If our listeners wanted to find out more about lover Boy,
what is the easiest way for them to do so?
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Yeah, just you can find us on all socials at
drinklover Boy and drinkloverboy dot com you can find me.
I'm Kyle Cook the letters, i am Kyle Cook with
an E. And one of these days I'll get some
type of podcast or YouTube channel about the ground so
we get a little more behind the scenes than what
you get on Summer Else.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Awesome, Well, Kyle, thank you for coming in. Thank you
really enjoyed hearing your background all about your experiences and
life lessons. So I think it's a great perspective for
all of our listeners to have, so I really appreciate you.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Thank you for having me, Thank you, Cheers everybody
Everyone.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Steve Dollison and welcome to this week's edition
of CEOs you should know. I am joined by Kyle Cook, CEO,
founder and creator of lover Boy.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Kyle, thanks for coming in today.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
Thank you, good to see you again.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
You too.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
A lot of probably our listeners know you from reality TV,
right but after getting to talk to you, learn a
little bit about you. Obviously entrepreneurs something is that you've
had for a lot of years right way before lover Boy.
Why do you tell our audience a little bit about
that mindset and really what brought you to that field.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Yeah, as you kind of point out, most people know
me from Bravo. So I've been on Summer House since
day one. I kind of helped kind of make that
first scene to have it off. Yeah, but but yeah,
I kind of got the entrepreneurial It's very early on.
You know, in high school I was kind of taking
odd jobs, whether it's landscaping. I helped build a house
(00:51):
one summer. But then I found Cutgo and I was
my own boss. I made like ten grand selling knives,
and that was cold calling. That was you know, managing leads.
It was following up and what I realized very early
(01:11):
on is I don't care what you end up doing,
but if you planned me in business, if you've never
sold anything, you're not going to be able to relate
to how a business actually works. Like I think there's
just so much value in cold calling and kind of
knocking on doors and doing the groundwork, doing the hard work.
And so that was my first foray. Then in high
(01:33):
school I'm sorry, college, I ran a contracting business. Okay,
was at undergraduate school. A flyers on my desk, Hey
do you want to run your own business this summer?
And I'm like, yeah, All my friends are like going
off the wall street for internships. And I ran a
painting company. It was a franchise. I was the franchise e,
and it was wild. I mean, at any given point
(01:56):
in time, when I was twenty years old, I had
you know, five or six pinting cruise with like fifty
or sixty painters all throughout the state of New Hampshire
where I'm from, where I'm from, And I mean that
was like Cutco on steroids, right, you know, a lot
more complicated trying to make someone happy by you know,
working on their most valuable asset, their home, and so
(02:16):
the end result. Yeah, and so oddly enough, I was
actually at a liberal arts school for undergrad and so
all of my business and and entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship like acumen,
was from kind of you know, my jobs on the side.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Real life experiences.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I know.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
We talked a little bit about when you first moved
to New York, right, that was taking a leap of
faith and something that was also risky and a risk
at the time.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Yeah, in two thousand and seven, I joined a college
buddy to to help them start a commercial real estate
finance brokerage. I knew nothing about any one of those words,
but I knew I could sell again going back to CUCO,
and he needed someone who could really manage relationships. We were,
you know, helping real estate owner operator developers try to
(03:05):
seek out alternative financing. And things got crazier and crazier
and crazier, and then boom the Great Recession, and you know,
I can't I didn't have a salary. I came down here,
like I said, leave of faith, and it was a
wild learning lesson those two years. But you know, you
kind of have to put yourself out there to learn
(03:25):
what you're made of. And learn what you're interested in.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
What do you think you learned from that experience.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
That you can only fake it till you make it
to a point. So I could talk to talk, but
I couldn't walk the walk in the sense that I
had no idea what I was talking about. I mean, like, yeah,
talk to me about your cap table, Like let's talk
about the waterfall. You know, what's the debt service ratio?
I had no idea what I was talking about, but
I'm a quick learner. So at that point in time,
(03:53):
my buddy decided to move the business to Arizona due
to everything was happening on Wall Street. He refocused on
smaller small business loans, but when I was working with them,
we were like trophy hunting, for lack of a better word,
huge real estate projects one hundreds of millions of dollars
with a one percent chance of closing. And so he
(04:13):
moved to Arizona. I was just like, I want to
go to business school, Like, I don't want to fake it.
I want to learn the basics and look, business school
is not for everybody. I did the two year full
time MBA program, but what I did was go to
the school known for Entrepreneurship Babson. It's been number one
for thirty one consecutive years. I actually just looked it
(04:33):
up before coming here, and I knew that I would
go there, probably get tempted to go to a big
company because I'm going to rack up a bunch of
student debt, but you know, having an entrepreneurial kind of
route to my graduate studies was really important to me.
So I went there in two thousand and nine, graduated
(04:53):
twenty eleven. So again that you know, you know, you'll
learn a lot when you put self out there. Yeah,
and I learned. I was like, all right, undergrad for
me was a big party. Don't get me wrong. I
worked hard, but you know, I wanted to invest in myself.
I know there's all sorts of opinions on grad schools
(05:14):
these days, like Peter Teel in particular, has all sorts
of thoughts on like, you know, student debt, whether it's
grad or undergrad. Right, So it's not for everybody, but
it really helped me kind of find myself.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah, and I think it's important.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
You said you had that foundation from the school, right
that you didn't have prior to it, So it definitely
paid off.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
In the long run. Yeah, what was some of your
verse ventures out of grad school?
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Well, this is actually something I like to talk about.
I mean, particularly if you know your audience aspiring entrepreneurs people,
you know, they might have the itch, or they're they're
trying to weigh their options, or they're just listening in,
you know, out of curiosity. In grad school, you know,
like I said, there's a lot of temptation to go make,
you know, a big, high paying job when you leave.
(05:56):
But I was paying very closely close attention to the trends.
And at that time, companies like groupond and Living Social
were kind of changing the face of like brick and
mortar retail in terms of how these businesses acquire customers,
but not in a really good way, right, So restaurants
were the number one focus, and a coupon cutters coming
(06:19):
in at eight o'clock on a Friday is not how
you want to fill seats. And I was just like,
my god, Okay, here's a trend. But the number one
business utilizing these these you know, these deal sites, it's
actually destroying their business. So I focused on a yield
management tool much like Hotel tonight. So actually it was
(06:41):
called reservation tonight, I rebranded it and it was helping
people find last minute reservations at a distreet a discrete discount.
So it's curation meets you know, deals. And it wasn't
like a you know, buy this and use it whenever
you want. You were filling empty seats at the shrawn,
much like a plane that charges people different prices, you know,
(07:03):
depending on when you book. But it was it was
a wild ride because A I wasn't passionate about it.
B I wasn't a technical co founder. I didn't have
a co founder and see, uh, you know, I kind
of forgot one of the big magic ingredients, which was
(07:24):
like is this something not only am I capable of executing,
but is it am I passionate about it?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yep?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Is this going to make a difference in my life?
Is this going to make it a difference in other
people's lives? So it was a learning lesson. I put
a lot of my own money in I like, I
literally maxed out my student loans to start the business
because I had to, you know, pay for developers. And
one of my friends was like, Kyle, you pulled the
(07:51):
cord so early, and I was like, dude, I saw
the writing on the wall. This is completely dependent on
venture capital. Like most marketplace is. When I say marketplaces,
I'm talking Airbnb Uber. It's a winner takes all strategy.
Usually takes tens hundreds, if not billions of dollars to
win those marketplaces. And I'm like, yo, Open table is
(08:11):
going to figure this out or somebody else that already
has everything lined up in a row. And all the
vcs already made bets on the daily deal sites that
had no technology whatsoever. And it was just bad timing,
you know. I chased the trend, and by the time
I was ready to go to market, all the vcs
had made their bets and this was a business model
(08:32):
that required venture capital. So I hung up my cleats.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Yeah, but I mean the experience probably tell you a
lot and got you ready for the next one. I know.
One of the other experiences we talked about prior was
with bird dogs and the lessons you learned there.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Would you share with the listeners a little bit about
that one?
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Yeah? So, you know, I think one thing that I
encourage everybody do is have as many experiences as possible,
working as many industries as possible. I had no interest
in going into apparel, no interest in consumer for that matter,
like consumer goods. But one of my good good buddies
(09:06):
started bird Dogs and he offered me, you know, come
on as a co founder. And I gave it a
lot of thought, and I was like, first and foremost,
you've been at this a year. You provided the seed capital, right,
this is always going to be your baby, even if
I got you know, fifteen twenty percent, Like, this is
going to be your baby. And I'm the kind of
(09:27):
guy I've already had that little taste ye, going way
back to my teens and twenties. I kind of want
to be in control of my own destiny. But I
want to help you because I think this is a
phenomenal business. It's a phenomenal product, and it's fun, and
fun is often overlooked in business. What we were making
were shorts with a built in liner, and we were
(09:49):
basically saying like death to underwear, death to wedgies, death
to like, you know, the fabric bunch around your you know,
your family jewels. And so we in twenty fifteen started
creating content that looked nothing like anything else out there,
Like if you think about the average Bonobo's or J
Crewe or you know, fill in the blank brand trying
(10:11):
to you know, appeal to men. It's so boring, so bland,
and it usually requires a thirty percent discount just to
get you to stop scrolling. And this is in a
heyday of Facebook. Mind you, We're like, yo, let's make
our content funny, duh, Like, let's make our content shareable
like and by doing these things, we realized to kind
(10:34):
of take a page at a Gary V's book back
in twenty nineteen, twenty two thousand and nine. Excuse me,
crush it. Content is king. If you can figure out
a way to make content that people want to consume.
And oh, by the way, it's advertising a product discreetly
or in some cases in a hilarious manner, you're gonna
(10:55):
win because you're gonna lower your cost of customer acquisition.
Right Like, if J cru is running I'm picking on
J Crew, I don't know why, But if J crew
is running an ad on Facebook and the hook is
thirty percent off, are they even breaking even on a
first purchase? Well, guess what, when you're running a startup
and you don't break even on your first purchase, you
better go be prepared to give away ten twenty thirty
(11:18):
fifty percent of the business to venture capitalists. No one
wanted to give us money back then, So we use
content and that opened my eyes. I was the guy
on camera making people laugh. And this is pre Summerhouse.
And so when the Summerhouse opportunity came around, I already
knew content is king. Yeah, cash will always be our lord,
(11:41):
and say ye like the true king, but a close
second is content. And so you know, again, you don't
get anywhere in life by saying no, and you certainly
don't figure out how to kind of like navigate your
own path without having some true life experiences. And at
this time, I'm thirty three or thirty two to thirty three,
(12:04):
you know, and I'm like, all right, this is gonna
be my baby. I'm not going in full time, but
I'm gonna help my buddy have a lot of fun
in the process. I'm gonna learn a lot. That's exactly
what we did.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I think that's an important message for everybody listening.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Like all of the background, all of your journey, right,
it enabled you to get that foundation to be the
success yard today. Right, Like all those different experiences you
learned something from and you were able to take stuff
away that was able to set yourself.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Up for the next journey.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
And I love the word foundation, right, Like we're so entrepreneurs,
and particularly young aspiring entrepreneurs, whether they're in college or
debating on whether to go. Our reality field is like
so distorted by the Elon musk is. Let's actually take
like the college dropout yeah, stories like a Zuckerberg. Right,
I don't need college, I don't need foundation. I don't
(12:50):
need life experiences like I'm going to break the internet.
Guess what, those opportunities don't evenally exist today, right, Very
few eighteen year olds are starting, you know, the next
wave of you know, web three point zero. I'm sorry
to say it, like it was a different era. And
(13:13):
even then he was one in a billion. So let's
get real. You do need a foundation, one hundred percent.
I love that word.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And I think that you said this earlier, right when
you're talking about getting into sales. The foundation is also
getting yourself ready to be the CEO, to know all
the different roles underneath you. Like it's it's a better
way of being able to manage and lead and coach
those different individuals because you sat in their shoes.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Exactly, and you have to be able to relate to
the people you're going to manage and to go a
little deeper on the sales side of things. Right. I
worked in between my own startups, I worked at a
heavily venture backed start up here in New York. It
was actually the most valuable startup in New York City
at the time. It's called ZocDoc and it was an
incredible experience. Yeah, we went from four hundred to eight
(13:56):
hundred people in the eighteen months I was there. And
not to pick on anybody, but they all of upper management,
including the founders, were all McKinsey. And that might work,
but when you have people running sales departments that have
never sold anything, you have a massive potential for a
culture problem because if your boots on the ground, your
(14:16):
your your sales reps know that this guy has never
been in their shoes, that's that is not how you
garner the trust. Yeah, and like that that mindset of
like the you know your what do you call them? Like?
You know when you're dialing for dollars? Like, oh, you
(14:37):
never cold call anybody?
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Cool?
Speaker 3 (14:39):
I don't respect you. If you're gonna try to manage
me having zero experience.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I have the same exact mindset.
You have to be in the trenches with your team
and you have to know what those highs and lows
of sales feels like to be able to coach and
manage somebody with that field.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
So we talked a lot about the background.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Let's talk about the present, right, Yeah, what inspired you
really to start lover Boy?
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Personal experience? You know, look, I know this is going
to sound ridiculous, but in twenty sixteen, you know, when
we were starting to film Season one, I looked at
the brands sending us alcohol products and some of these
things had not changed for twenty years, and we would
(15:20):
wake up with gnarly hangovers. And look, they understood the
value of product placement, just like I understood the value
of product placement. So, you know, the producers wanted us
to pay for our groceries. They wanted us to pay
for our you know, various beverages and that can add up.
And we're like, we're no dummies. Were a cast of
hustlers in New York. We're like, yo, let's get other
brands to send us free products so we don't have
(15:43):
to pay for it and they'll gain exposure. But these
these products were in some cases archaic. And what I
realized in alcohol, and this is as someone at the time,
I was actually working on a nutrition coaching app. I'm like, yo. Somehow,
some way, the alcohol industry has avoided having to put
(16:03):
a nutrition label in the ingredients on the product, which
is absurd. Like if you go through any other aisle
at the grocery store, all right, let's check this out.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
What do you do?
Speaker 3 (16:13):
You flip it around and look the better for you
movement and the sugar reduction and an emphasis on higher
quality ingredients that's been going on for twenty years. And
somehow alcohol was immune to much needed innovation. And so
when I talk today, people are like, dude, there's a
(16:33):
thousand seltzers, there's a thousand cocktails in again, guess what
when I started, there wasn't. A lot has happened in
five years. This industry has seen twenty years of innovation
in about two to three. But the inspiration behind lover
Boy was like, listen, very few consumer categories are dominated
by one brand, and I don't like to stay them
(16:54):
by name. But the hard tea that's been around since
ninety nine was controlling ninety plus percent of the hard
team market. The product hadn't changed. And I used to
joke and I would say, it's like diabetes in a bottle, yeah,
because like if you have six of them, look at
the back, you're on that path. Well, no, you can't
look at the path. You can't look at the back.
There's no label. You have to dig around, and even
(17:16):
on the Internet there's mixed you know, people are trying
to figure out the calories, they're trying to figure out
the sugar, they're trying to figure out the carbs, and
there's no like you know, Bible for that. There's no
like my fitness Pal has one number, this other site
has another, and it's very confusing. And I was just like,
(17:37):
why can't we use better quality ingredients that these big
alcohol suppliers are just too cheap to use. Let's make
better tasting, better for you products using a fraction of
the sugar. And in fact, we figured out how to
make a hard teat that tastes great was zero sugar,
So we use monk fruit. Some people don't like the aftertaste.
(17:58):
Some people don't like the after taste of stevia but
I'd much rather, you know, use those ingredients than sucralose,
which is what you find and everything from Prime to
some of the new hard tease in the market to Celsius.
Not to throw these brands under the bus, but like
how much superlose aka artificial sweeteners do you want to
be consuming? And there's a lot of studies out there
(18:18):
that suggest you don't want to consume any So that
was the inspiration. Like I looked at an industry that,
in my mind was like the last was like the
Wildwile West of consumer package goods CpG. And then you
you segment that down to beverage alcohol, and then you
segment that down to what we call the fourth category,
(18:39):
which is kind of like ready to drink. Whether you
call it flavored beer or you know, there's a lot
of different names for it, but it's it's not beer,
wine or spirits. It's this fourth category that's taken off
since hert Seltzer's. So that was like a long winded answer, no,
but I just cannot believe as a consumer that I
(19:00):
get zero transparency and there's very limited options on the shelf.
The big guys control everything. Yeah, and it kind of
made me disgusted because people were asking, Hey, Kyle, what
you drinking And I'm like, I actually feel guilty telling you.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah, No, it's awesome.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
It's a cool challenger brand now entering the marketplace, right
And I think you guys have a really unique positioning
on what makes you guys different Outside of obviously the ingredients,
what else do you feel like helps the Lover Boys
stand out?
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Well, we saw very early on that most of the
marketing and most of the products in alcohol were made
by men for men, and meanwhile, seventy percent of alcohol
purchases at retail are made by women. That's probably the
case for most consumer categories. And I'm like, wow, huge disconnect.
(19:55):
The big you know, old gray haired white dudes that
are controlling the products that you see on the show
don't really understand today's consumer. They sure don't understand what
women want. Yep, and I happen to be on Bravo,
which is like the number one rated network for women,
So that was like another light bulb that went off.
I'm like, hey, I can I can reach a consumer
(20:16):
that these big guys are a kind of ignoring b
don't understand and see really can't resonate with based on
the products that they're churning out. So that was like
another aha moment.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
We talked a little bit about obviously content earlier with
the bird Dogs experience and then utilizing the Summerhouse platform.
How have you felt those two things have really elevated
the lover Boy brand.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Yeah. I think the word lifestyle brand is thrown around
a lot so so much because guess what, Yeah, every
brand would love to be a lifestyle brand. And when
I say lifestyle, I don't mean like me running a business,
you know where I'm putting in ten twenty hours a
week and it's just like on cruise Control. I mean
lifestyle brand where you have people that are die hard
(21:03):
loyals or loyalists that will go out of their way
to buy it, and a community kind of builds up
around it. And you know, for me doing it on
a show that sure, there's drama, there's petty bickering, you know,
there's everything you need to expect out of out of
(21:24):
a Bravo show, but we're doing it as New Yorkers
that you know frequent the Hamptons, which, like I don't
care where you live.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
It's like I'd love to do that absolutely.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
So it's the key word when season one dropped was
aspirational and I kind of laughed because I'm from New
Hampshire and I never thought that word would be used
in a sentence describing a show that I'm on or
I never could imagine being on a show. But that helps, right,
It helps drive home the aspirational aspect of it. And
we wanted to make sure that we didn't get pigeonholed
(21:56):
within one product category. We wanted to make sure that
Boy was kind of like a casion base when it
came to the product itself, but also was a true
lifestyle brand that people wanted to like support, And so
merch has become one way to do that, right, You
sell millions of dollars of merch and people love it.
They eat it up. You know. Most alcohol brands literally
(22:18):
have to give away their T shirts and whatnot, like
please please, like if you hold this at the bar,
I will give you a Heineken. Not so with with
Lover Boy. We constantly sell out of merch and I
think that's, you know, one way to think about how
we've built this lifestyle brand and look, other people can
(22:38):
do this you don't need a TV show, you know,
I'm very fortunate, I'm very well aware that's a bit
of a cheat code here from a customer acquisition standpoint
and the ability to kind of accomplish, you know, building
that lifestyle brand. But I see so many brands that
kind of give people a look behind the scenes and
are building it in public. It doesn't have to be
(22:59):
on Bravo, can be in YouTube, it can be on Instagram.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
On social meid and anybody.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
You can do it literally, like, find something you're passionate
about where you think that there's you know, a target
audience they would also be passionate about it and build
it in public.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Yeah, I think that's one of the key points that
you can learn from that experience too, Right, what are
some of the biggest challenges you've had? Obviously, I know
that on the show you share a lot about different
challenges that arise, right, and I think that's part of that.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
We share too much building in public.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
But what are some of the challenges that you faced
in the current role, and like how have you overcome those?
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Well? Industry specific you know, when we were having our moment,
because like in alcohol, you need your wholesalers and your
retailers and your consumers all kind of on the same
page at the same time. When we were having our moment,
you know, when we were like the shiny new toy,
we couldn't buy enough cans. There was a ten billion
(23:50):
can shortage in twenty one and twenty two. It started
actually in twenty and so when everybody wanted it, we
couldn't supply it. And that wasn't unique to us. I mean,
even the biggest beverage suppliers in the world were coming
up short, like I said, ten billion cans. So that
was a huge challenge because now you know, when we expanded,
(24:11):
you know, we gave our distributors product, we didn't really
have a big enough team to support them after that
initial launch, and then you know, our wholesales and retailers
they're kind of naturally off to the next shiny new
toy toy. And so I think I underestimated. All right,
we're like this new age brand, a challenger brand. Like
you said, we're kind of like writing our own playbook,
(24:34):
writing our own go to market. We expanded ten times
faster than is basically advised in this industry, and now
we've kind of had to realize that there's nuances of
this industry, that it is what it is. We're not
going to change how wholesale has worked in this country
for the last hundred years. Right, the three tier system
(24:56):
that people talk about in alcohol, it's the supplier, it's
the wholesale, and the retailer. You can't legally sell our
teas direct, so that's been a huge challenge just trying
to maintain the mind share of our distributors. It's funny
like when our brand popped off, our brand had probably
one third the awareness as it has today, but our
(25:16):
distributors gave us three times the attention two years ago, right,
So the show continues to kind of break through to
mainstream popularity. Our brand has three times as many followers
as we did when we launched all these markets. So
there's just a huge disconnect between what the consumer wants
and what they end up getting because of this three
(25:36):
tier system, and it's out of my control. I can
only play the game, yep. I think the other big
thing on the on the kind of like building in
public side, is when I'm too honest and a sound
bite gets used and all the context goes missing, Like
last year, I blurted out to make a point that
(25:57):
lover Boy is tanking. In reality, lover Boy was going
through some growing pains. But we've accomplished like so much
in so little time that I'm so proud of what
we were able to do. But last year we were
for the first time ever, we were not profitable, and
we were having to grow our team to hold those
(26:18):
distribers accountable faster than the revenue is coming through the door.
And ironically, that is probably what every single fast growing
not just alcohol brand, but any consumer packs a good brand.
Brands like experience. That's why raising money in this industry
is so common. In some cases, these brands are hemorrhaging
(26:40):
cash right up until they either A get acquired or
B go belly up. So I was experiencing again kind
of like, hey, this is welcome you to the new normal. Yeah,
post COVID, where you know you have to build up
your resources and you might be unprofitable a period of time.
(27:00):
And I was just freaking out and I wasn't able
to like articulate the complexities of this industry. And I've
worked in healthcare, real estate, finance, you name it. Nothing's
more complex and archaic than alcohol, and I struggle to
get my wife, my friends, my cast members to understand it.
(27:22):
And then when that gets whittled down to like forty
two minutes of television every week, there's no way like this.
This isn't on Bloomberg. This is on Bravo, so I
can't bore people.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Can get to talk about the business aspects.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
So we'll get exactly so the little so the highlight
that gets that actually makes it into the edit.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Is we're going belly up.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Look where we are taking And I kind of shot
myself in the foot on that one, but I you know,
I was I was struggling, I was stressed out, and
I just felt like none of the closest people around
me understood what was going on.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Yeah, but I think it also is you know this
from your past experiences, right there always is going to
be It's not all highs when you're a CEO. It's
not all highs when you launch a new brand. You
know it's gonna be those ups and downs. And maybe
that moment was one of those downs and you came
out of it. You so like the long game in
the future of the company and the brand. So let's
talk about more positive right. What has been some of
the more inspiring moments of being the CEO, founder and
(28:17):
creator of lover Boy.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
There's something to be said about doing something tangible. Like
I said, I was in tech, you know, when I
went to business school, I was like fascinated with tech marketplaces,
you name. It turns out those are like the hardest
businesses to actually launching gain traction. On the flip side,
lover Boy is tangible and there's an immediate ROI there's
a buzz. So there's something to be said about putting
(28:43):
a product that has a fraction of calories and sugar
in someone's hand. It still tastes amazing, and it's a
brand with a story behind it, And like you start
checking off things that are rarely checked off in alcohol.
And I'm just so proud when I can just catch
someone's first initial reaction. And I also think I'm doing
(29:04):
some good here, Like transparency is much needed in alcohol, right,
All these big suppliers with these products that are so mainstream,
they're hiding all sorts of crap because they don't have
to put the ingredients on the label. And I think
it's completely whack, Like people should they have a right
to understand what they're consuming. But for whatever reason, the government,
(29:26):
the lobbying, the big suppliers, the three tier system, they've
prevented transparency. And you know, so I do feel like
we're doing some good in that sense. It's still alcohol.
The government still says it's a poison. So I can't
legally say these products, these products are better for you.
But I think you know, if you think about obesity
(29:46):
and diabetes, there is an absurd amount of sugar in
almost every alcoholic beverage out there. And when you're drinking
that tequila and you're like, yo, but there's no sugar
in here, it's so small. Well, it has additives. So
like the list goes on.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yeah, you know, you think.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
You're being I don't really know what you're drinking the exactly,
And I just to me, if I can, you know,
bring some change to an industry that I think desherally
needs it, I'll feel good about it.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Yeah, it's awesome.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
You guys are transforming the industry. I love asking this
question for every CEO that sits down with me. How
do you balance the demand of being a CEO with
your personal life?
Speaker 3 (30:26):
I have no idea. I think balance is one of
those things that is you strive for it. But if
you're I don't have kids yet, and you know, much
to my wife's dismay, like, I'm like, this is the
time in my life where I am going to grind
day and night. Sixty eighty eighty plus hour weeks are
(30:49):
the norm. They have been the norm for me for
the last five years. And then you factor in that
I film one, two, sometimes three different TV shows in
my spare time. There's been zero balance. But I feel
like if you're not willing to have a period of
your life that is completely out of balance in order
to accomplish something and build something like for me, I'm
(31:10):
building financial freedom and financial independence for my future family.
And sometimes my friends forget that, sometimes my wife forgets that.
But that's what this is all about. And for me,
it's just carving out forty five minutes a day for
some exercise so I don't go absolutely insane.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
No, I appreciate.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
I appreciate the honest answer, and I think that's important
though I'll look at it in the long run.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
And for the future.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
So we're speaking of the future, where do you see
lover Boy in the next five to ten years.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
I've often been told that it takes ten years to
build a beverage brand. Take Celsius. I think they went
public in like two thousand and eight. I hadn't heard
about them until the pandemic, right, So for me, it's
just staying focused, keeping our head down. Yes there's competition,
but most of the competition won't be here in a
(31:59):
year or two. Like that's the norm in this industry.
Whether you're a small startup or you're a big supplier
throwing you know what at the wall, most brands don't
make it eighteen months or two years and are then
on life support. So for us, it's about kind of
powering through some of these very macro and external, you
(32:21):
know cycles in our industry and then in the economy,
and just making sure we're still here and listening to
our consumers, listening to our retailers, and listening to our
wholesalers to make sure that we're turning out products that
are continue to set trends. And that's what we're going
to be doing at lover Boy. We're going to be
setting trends, not following trends. I learned that, like I said,
(32:43):
out of business school and you know, just continue to
add transparency to an industry that I think needs it.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
That's awesome. What's on the horizon?
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Is there anything you could share in terms of new
flavors coming out and collabs in the horizon?
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Yeah, So we kind of hinted at a THHC product.
So thanks to the twenty eighteen Farm Bill, HEMP derived
THHC as long as below a certain percentage, it's zero
point three and it's delta nine. Not to get too
technical here, you know, you can launch products that historically
(33:21):
were impossible or had to go through, like the dispensary
system in some of the states that had legalized it.
So we're about to launch, hopefully by the end of August,
a THC infused social soda. And why I say social
like this is an alcohol replacement and we're putting things
in there in addition to THHC that give you natural
(33:42):
boosts of energy and clarity. And it's a new age
soda in the sense that it's low sugar and tastes amazing,
but it still pulls on nostalgic flavors like grape, orange cola,
et cetera. So I'm super excited about that because I
really do believe people are going to be drinking less,
drinking better. But when they're not grabbing a lover Boy
(34:04):
tea Sprits cocktail, I'd love for them to be grabbing
one of our non elks or one of our TT
products because again, we're building a portfolio around occasions, you know,
different occasions for different kind of products. So that's kind
of like I think on the short term horizon, and
then again just looking at what consumers want that they're
(34:25):
not getting on the shelf. You know, simple things like
an incredible margarita that isn't loaded with sugar that doesn't
really exist right now, even like a cut water is
about the same amount of sugar as a soda, which
is disturbing, right There's better ways to do it, So,
(34:46):
you know, we're always innovating, and we're you know, we're
fortunate to have some unbelievable customers that will pay a
premium to ship a direct if we make it wine based,
so we can kind of test it out and see
if it's prime time for retail.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
That's awesome the innovation going. Is there anything a bat
lover Boy that we did not cover?
Speaker 2 (35:03):
The wanted listeners to.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Know, no I think. I think we talked about transparency,
We talked about the fact that, you know, we're not
just a hard tea company, you know. I think one
of the things that I'm probably most thankful for is
the Bravo fan base. Trust me, they give it to
(35:26):
me when I screw up. But there's no better audience,
and every good brand needs a good audience. So we're
very fortunate there. We've been able to do all of
this without a traditional marketing budget, which is one of
the reasons why we were so profitable, which is one
of the reasons why we didn't raise a bunch of
money when we could have and probably should have, you know,
(35:49):
because now it's a different era. You know, things have
changed a lot. But I just feel so fortunate to
let me, shoot, we're going to be filming season nine
in a couple of days, and you know, I think
that what I could say to everybody else it doesn't
happen to have the fortune of being on TV, is hey, like,
(36:09):
just look at what's going on in these other Creator brands,
Like there's other you don't have to be on TV.
But I do think my Bravo fans.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yeah, my wife is one of them, she purchased the
express of Martine. I think as soon as you get
a young nine, so she's definitely part of that. In closing,
any final advice you want to give anyone that's really
the kind and inspiring entrepreneur, anyone that wants to take
a brand or create a brand new idea that they
have in their head.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
Yeah, Look, I think one of the things I want
to leave people with is if you have an idea,
if you're searching for an idea, there's there's all sorts
of people out there that say you got to be
all in, right, particularly if you're looking to raise venture capital, which,
by the way, I would focus on business models that
don't require venture capital, and if you happen to raise money,
(36:56):
it's on your terms and it's icing on the cake.
But what I would say to people is that going
all in on something that's so nascent that bringing a
product or service or whatever it is to market is
so far away that between then and now, you're going
to be stressing about how you're going to pay your bills.
Don't lose sight of the fact that you can't be
(37:18):
a successful entrepreneur if you are literally incapable of you know,
covering the cost of living. Go get a job, Go
get those life experiences, build that foundation, and hustle on
the side. Have a side hustle, have something that like
you burn the midnight oil to explore and vet and
(37:38):
if it doesn't work, you know, you didn't just shoot
yourself on the foot by quitting your job. And I
just encourage people, like, if you're not willing to work
a day job and then come home and try to
get that side hustle off the ground. You you're not
going to be cut out for entrepreneurship anyway, So don't
cut off your support line aka your income too early.
(38:00):
And you know, have some line of sight as to like,
all right, if you're going to raise money, get it
as far as you can. It's not a power point
at this point. You need revenue, you need customers, You
need a product in hand to go raise serious cash.
So build in that timeline and then you know, if
you're not raising money, have a line of sight towards like,
all right, when can this throw off enough revenue where
(38:23):
I actually could draw a salary? Yep, because now you
can start to do the math. So you know, go
all in, but only go in when it makes sense, like, yeah,
don't stress yourself out by quitting your job prematurely. That's
all I can say.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
No, I think it's great advice. I think sometimes people
just think success happens overnight.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Selsa's is a great example, right, Like I know that
the CEO of Celsius. A lot of people just don't.
They can't believe me when I say that Selsia's been
around since the late two thousands. Right, So there's no
such thing, like you said, as an overnight success, and
you have to be willing to put in the work.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
If our listeners wanted to find out more about lover Boy,
what is the easiest way for them to do so?
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Yeah, just you can find us on all socials at
drinklover Boy and drinkloverboy dot com you can find me.
I'm Kyle Cook the letters, i am Kyle Cook with
an E. And one of these days I'll get some
type of podcast or YouTube channel about the ground so
we get a little more behind the scenes than what
you get on Summer Else.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Awesome, Well, Kyle, thank you for coming in. Thank you
really enjoyed hearing your background all about your experiences and
life lessons. So I think it's a great perspective for
all of our listeners to have, so I really appreciate you.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Thank you for having me, Thank you, Cheers everybody
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