Gregory Vetter, innovator & disruptor in the Clean Food Movement and author of "Undressed", founded Tessemae’s after being inspired by his mother’s homemade dressing recipe.
Greg and his family, primarily brothers Matt & Brian, grew the business and in 5 years became the #1 organic salad dressing brand in the refrigerated space, as well as innovating manufacturing on a mass scale by inventing the only gum-free bottling process. That process led to the creation of the “fresh condiment” category.
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Greg and his family, primarily brothers Matt & Brian, grew the business and in 5 years became the #1 organic salad dressing brand in the refrigerated space, as well as innovating manufacturing on a mass scale by inventing the only gum-free bottling process. That process led to the creation of the “fresh condiment” category.
Winning Business Radio is broadcast live Mondays at 4PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Winning Business Radio is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
Winning Business Radio Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/winning-business-radio--3075598/support.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The topics and opinions express in the following show are
solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not
those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We
make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
or products mentioned on air or on our web. No
liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W four
CY Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or
comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you
(00:20):
for choosing W four CY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are
condemned to repeat it. Kevin helen N believes that certainly
applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at
W four CY Radio.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
That's W four.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Cy dot com and now your host, Kevin helen N.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Thanks everybody for joining in once again. I'm Kevin Hallanan
and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio on
W four cy dot com. We're streaming live on talkfour
tv dot com, and of course we're on Facebook and
that's at Winning Business Radio, and we're available after the
live show in podcast form wherever you get your podcasts,
(01:12):
that's you who you who know? YouTube iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple again,
everywhere you find podcasts, we are there. The mission of
Winning Business radio and TV, as regular viewers and listeners know,
is to offer insights and advice to help people avoid
the mistakes of others, right to learn best practices, the
how tos, the what not tos, the what toos, to
(01:34):
be challenged and hopefully to be inspired by the successes
of others. Those are consultants, coaches, advisors, authors, founders and
owners and entrepreneurs, people with expertise. But you know, virtually
every successful person I've ever had a chance to talk
to has said some form of failure in their lives
and careers. So I say it every week. While we
all have to get our knee skinned once in a while,
(01:54):
I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery.
Let's endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat.
I've spent the better part of my career equipping businesses
to grow, and those are from solopreneurs to small and
medium sized companies all the way up to the Fortune fifty.
I've seen some of those companies win into varying degrees.
I've seen some fail I've had the opportunity to rub
elbows with some of the highest performing people around, and
(02:17):
frankly with some who probably should have found other professions
and my own businesses. I've had lots of success, but
some failures too, So I like to think I've learned
a lot from those experiences. So of course you're going
to hear from me my opinions and insights, but more importantly,
you're going to hear from those experts that I refer to today.
No guests, no exception, excuse me. My guest is Greg Rivetter, innovator, disruptor,
(02:39):
and author of Undressed. Gregor Yvetter is a well established
innovator and disruptor in the clean food movement. The oldest
of the Vetter brothers, he had the brilliant idea of
launching Tessames after Tessames, after being inspired by his mother's
wildly popular homemade dressing recipe. What Greg knew in the
American consumer base was soon to discover was that the
(03:01):
idea would soon resonate wildly and give rise to an
entirely new food category. Gregan has broader family, primarily brothers
Matt and Bryan, cultivated the business and in a mere
five years translated their vision into becoming the number one
organic salad dressing brand in the refrigerated space. The emergence
of Tessames paved the way for clean manufacturing on a
(03:23):
mass scale by virtual of inventing the only gum free
dressing bottling process. Ultimately, that manufacturing process led to the
creation of the fresh condiment category and similarly the first
whole thirty approved bottle dressings and condiments in the nation.
With the wind clearly at their back, Greg and his
brothers launched alta fresh food company, and that has since
(03:44):
pioneered a better way to get great tasting salads to
the masses through the innovative master kitting process and break
through R and D T. After the triumph as Sam's
Club Supplier of the Year resulting from their master kitting process,
Alto was prepared to the forefront of the fast fast
food solutions industry. More recently, Greg elected to take his
(04:06):
lessons learned from his sustained success in the food industry
and launched Homegrown brand Accelerator. Homegrown was developed with a
singular purpose in mind to empower the next generation of
brands by making the playbook available to whomever had the
desire to build the next great American brand. In addition,
he's authored the best selling book Undressed, The Unfiltered Story
of my failed American Dream and how it led to success.
(04:28):
I love that title. Greg winner of Ink Magazine's Entrepreneur
of the Year Award, Ink Magazine's thirty five hundred thirty
ey Entrepreneur of the Year finalist, ted X Talk Speaker,
Nielsen Design Impact Award for Packaging, and Sam's Club Supplier
of the Year. Greg spends time with his wife and
four kids on their farm in West River, Maryland. He
holds a bachelor's in business management from Washington College. Greg,
(04:51):
welcome to Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
No problem. I appreciate you taking the time. So I
want to go to your background. But as I like
to do on this show, tell us you know where
you grew up, and well, I actually start with wife
and kids. Tell us about your family.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
I met my wife in college at Washington College. So
you know, people are like, oh my god, you know,
how do you stay married with such a wild guy?
And she'll say, well, you should have seen him in college.
So I've met Genevieve in college and we have four
beautiful babies fourteen, thirteen, eleven and nine, two girls, two boys,
(05:31):
and they're all active in sports and wonderful human beings
and a pleasure to be around. And then we have
a bunch of dogs and Texas longhorns and some alpacas
and some goats and some chickens. So we're getting it
done over here.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, we have four also they're
a little older, but two and two as well, So
that's fun.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
All right.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
Tell us where you grew up and what it was
like to have grown up.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
There, Annapolis, Maryland. I grew up in Epping four it
swimming in the Severn River and went to public school,
so Rolling Noles Bates Middle and Annaple Senior High School,
and it was it was great, normal, wonderful childhood, full
of getting in trouble and trying to figure out the world.
(06:19):
And so my primary sport that I chose was lacrosse.
A bunch of them, and my dad's from southern Ohio,
so he didn't he had never even heard of the sport. Yeah, yeah,
and it was amazing. I mean, it was a great
outlet for my aggression. I played defense, and so you know,
I liked whacking people, and I ended up going to
(06:42):
college to play, which was really fun, and then ended
up playing professionally for a couple of years. And you know,
the next thing I know, I'm in the salad dressing business.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
That's pretty cool. Yeah, I mean it's first Actually, I'm
sure it's what you wanted to do when you were eight, right,
all right, So why did you choose Washington and a
business management degree?
Speaker 3 (07:02):
That's funny? Well, I chose Washington College because I did
not really care in high school as much as I
should have, and I got recruited by a bunch of
kind of big, smart d one schools that I could
not get into without taking a post grad year, which
I didn't know what that was, and neither did my parents.
(07:25):
And so Washington College said that they would get me
in and I would start as a freshman, and that
seemed like a win win to me, and so I
went to Washington College and wild experience, exposed to great
amounts of wealth, exposed to kind of like the concept
(07:47):
of tradition, which was really interesting, and it was an
amazing experience for me to come into the man that
I would eventually be. And I did that through primarily,
but also just kind of trying to figure out the
world on my own, trying to figure out what I
wanted to do with my life after college. Being exposed
(08:12):
to really kind of wealthy families and seeing what's possible
really piqued my interest in curiosity, and so I started
interviewing all of the dads on.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Cross Team that's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Figure out how did they make their money? And so
I would just you know, at tailgates, be like, hey,
mister so and so so, like talk to me about
living in Darien, Connecticut. How did that? What's going on there?
And so some were very complicated and beyond my scope
of what I thought was possible for me at the time.
You know, someone was talking about being a hedge fund manager,
(08:50):
and you know that I wasn't going to be doing that.
But then others seemed realistic, which was you know, one
guy just kind of like bought and sold death. I
was like, I didn't even know you could do that.
Another guy was in commercial real estate. I was like,
well what does that mean. They're like, hey, you know
you either sell buildings or your buybuilding. I'm like, okay,
(09:11):
I understand that. And so it was interesting because it
showed me that the wealthy were not magic. And so
I was like, okay, So now I'm curious because I'm
a very competitive guy. You know, I'm very competitive in athletics.
(09:31):
If I put my mind to something, I'm willing to
sacrifice anything to get it. I'm very focused. I can
just grind until the end of time. And so now
it was really a matter of like, well, where can
I direct my energy to potentially put myself in a
situation long term where I can potentially be successful. And so,
(09:55):
you know, I started trying to figure that out. And
the next thing, I know, selling insurance over top of
a bodega looking over a cemetery.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Again, very sexy business. You should others should try it
out exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
And I'm just cold calling all day, you know, I'm
in the cubicle by six point thirty. I'm cold calling
until people stop picking up in the evening. And now
I ended up making it a game, very competitive with
myself about it, closing a couple large customers, and that
(10:30):
brought me to again being competitive. I went to the owner.
I'm like, hey, you know, I brought in three of
the largest customers we have. I'm only twenty five years old.
I'd like to be a partner, and he was just like, no,
that's not happening. You're never going to be a partner.
You make enough money for your age. That's the end
of it. And in that moment, I realized that I
(10:54):
was not in control of the future. And so I
started thinking about, Okay, well what am I going to do.
I know I can work hard, I know I can call,
I know I can go to a meeting and close it.
What does that mean for me long term? And so
every day at lunch, I would go home with a
(11:15):
journal next to me, and I would stand on my
head in the dark, waiting for an epiphany, and one
did not come. But I would then go downstairs and
I'd make myself lunch, and then I'd go back to
my cubicle and I'd co call all day. And one
day I walk downstairs to make myself a big se.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
I love this story, keep going you.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
And to make myself a big salad protein on it.
And this two liter bottle of salad dressing that my
mom had made for me was missing, and you don't
misplace a two liter bottle of salad dressing. So I'm looking.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Everywhere for it, especially one that your mother made.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Exactly, And I'm looking everywhere. Every cabinet is open, every
drawer is open. I cannot find this stuff anywhere. And
I call my wife and I'm like, hey, did you
take the salad dressing to work. He's like, no, I
didn't take the salad dressing work. Why don't you open
your eyes and find it. I'm like, I have looked everywhere.
(12:16):
I cannot find it. And she goes, maybe someone broke
into our house and took it. Probably really, someone stole
salad dressing from our house. I'm like, that's insane. She goes, well,
I don't know what to tell you, Greg, and she
hangs up. And I go to prove a point, I'm
going to call some people that I know. You know,
(12:37):
no one broke in, and so I call the guy
that I think is the least likely person to have
stolen this dressing. And so I call him and he's like, hey,
what's up. I'm like, have you random question? Man? Have
you seen my salad dressing? And he's like, yup, woke
up this morning was Jones and for it, hopped on
the scooter, knew the code to your house and now
(13:00):
crushing a salad, and I'm like.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
What that's all riot?
Speaker 3 (13:04):
What kind of man steals another man's salad dressing? But
then I thought to myself, what kind of salad dressing
is so good that someone would steal it? So I
called my wife back. I go, hey, you were right.
So and so stole the salad dressing, and I'm going
to quit my job and start a salad dressing company.
(13:26):
Dead silence.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Yeah, she said yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
And then she goes, that's the greatest idea I've ever heard.
I have a weird feeling this is gonna work. And
so then I took the only business skill I had
at the time, which was cold calling, and I started
cold calling grocery stores to try and get a meeting.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
And it was before you started making this stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
We weren't a thing.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
Yeah, I was just like, idea.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
I go, I'm gonna see if anybody wants this stuff.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
This is before quitting the job.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
This is before the job. I want to see if
there's intro. I want somebody to try it. That's not
anyone that I know. And so, day in and day out,
two weeks straight, I called twice a day every grocery
store in town, and eventually a guy picked up and goes,
(14:16):
it was a Friday. He goes, yes, bring it to
me today at noon. I'm like, all right, So I
call my mom. I'm like, I need you to make
the greatest batch of salad dressing that has ever been made.
She goes, why, I go, I got a meeting. I'm
(14:36):
going to get us into a grocery store. We're going
to be a thing. She goes, what are you going
to put it in? You're not a company, there's no name,
you don't have a bottle. I go, I don't care.
I'm going to figure it out. So I ended up
walking in with a tupperware container with a red lid,
crunchy romaine lettuce dressing on top. Walk in, this boxer
(14:57):
comes to me. He's my size, He's like six three,
missing half of his teeth. And I'm like, this is
a salad dressing buyer. And he's like, where's the product?
And I just hold up this little container. I'm like,
it's lunchtime. I brought you a salad. So he takes
this piece of wet let uce out of this tupware container,
(15:19):
licks the dressing off, looks at me, and goes that's
the greatest salad dressing I've ever had in my life.
You need to call the regional office. And so went
to the regional meeting. They gave me two hundred pages
of paperwork. I googled my way into becoming a food manufacturer,
(15:40):
and we officially launched actually today May fifth, Yeah, two
thousand and nine. Wow.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
All right, hold that thought, perfect time for drink. We're
gonna come back. We'll take our first break right here.
Everybody will be back in about one minute with Greg Better.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene on
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And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene
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he's Kevin Helene.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
We are back with Greg Vetter. So how did you
start manufacturing? You needed labels, you needed containers, you needed brand,
you needed logosh, we needed everything. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
I googled a lot of stuff. You know that the
name came from my mom's nickname. So I was trying
to think of good names.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
And I hope I pronounced it correctly. I don't know
if I did.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Well. You'll hear the story in a second. You can
and you can know. So initially, I'm thinking the names
are all really stupid. You know, Greg Zone, Lemon Zingers,
you know, three brothers. I'm trying to bring everything. It's
all dumb. And then I say Tessie Mays' like that
(17:55):
sounds real, that sounds official. So my dad's from southern
Ohio and he took my mom to a wedding when
they were dating. Her name's Teresa, and I think Mary
Henry was being married, you know, his cousin. And my
mom walks up and is like, Hi, I'm Teresa, and
(18:17):
my dad's older brother goes not in these parts, you're
not You're Tessie May. And then when email came out,
she was always Tessie May at whatever you know dress was.
So that's how we got the name. There was a
guy I played lacrosse with was a graphic designer and
I can draw, so I kind of sketched out what
(18:38):
I wanted the label to be. He did it. I
ordered these like really expensive eight and a half ounce
rectangular bottles with quarks, thinking it was gonna last me
a really long time, which it did not, which is
another funny story in the book. And really it was
(18:59):
just someone not taking no for an answer until the launch.
So it didn't matter what obstacle came. It didn't matter
what document I didn't understand, it didn't matter. Literally nothing
stood in my way. I was committed that, at a minimum,
(19:20):
I was going to try and launch this thing to
see if a regular guy with no money, no food
manufacturing background, no history of business in the family could
take any product it happened to be a really dumb
one like salad dressing, and could do something with it,
(19:42):
you know, Could I actually live the American dream? Could
anybody do that with a concentrated amount of effort and
focus and desire and an unwavering spirit. And it turned
out that that is possible. It's not it's very painful,
but it works. And so yeah, it was just full
(20:08):
commitment to get it done no matter what.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
When did Matt and Brian get involved? Did you ask them?
Did they see it and say we want in or
tell us about that?
Speaker 3 (20:15):
I made him help me a little bit in the beginning.
They everybody was kind of looking at me, going, you know,
let us know if this works, you know, and if
it does work, will help. So in the beginning stages,
you know, we were making it at a rib restaurant
at night.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
When they closed, right, that was my next question.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, yeah, so we had to find a certified kitchen
to get our main factoring license. There aren't really a
lot of places to do that. There are now, right,
there's Union Kitchen in DC that's literally built exactly for
this situation. I mean, talk about too little, too late.
(20:56):
I mean I could have used that No nine, he
was I think he was still in college at the time,
the guy that ended up being a founder of that.
But I convinced the owner of Adam's Ribs in Eastport
to let me use his kitchen when they closed, And
initially he didn't want to do it because he didn't
want the health department, the safety whatever, and they're kind
(21:20):
of doing additional audits and stuff. But I offered him
freestyle addressing for life, and I stalked him every day
until he said yes. So he eventually gave in and
let me do it. So they would close at ten,
we'd be in there by ten thirty. We'd lay out
all of these metal bowls we were making it and
(21:42):
literally small batches, pouring it into the bottles, funnels in
the bottles, hand labeling it, hand sealing it, putting it
back in the boxes, loading it up, driving it into
grocery stores every day. And so I did that for about.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
A year how many stores? And was the volume like?
Speaker 3 (22:01):
So we were actually crushing it for the grand opening.
This is how I knew it was meant to be.
So we set up a demo. The store opened at
like ten am or something, and the buyer told me
to make four cases for the month. He's like, that's
(22:21):
all we'll really need. So I set up a demo.
I'm handing out samples. Four cases are gone in thirty minutes.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Holy cow.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
So I go to the guy. I'm like, hey, man,
all that dressing is gone. He's like, there's more in
the back. I'm like, no, it's gone. Because you sold
four cases in thirty minutes. I'm like yeah. He goes,
go get more. I said, I have to make more.
This was for the month, and so that night I
made more, brought back six cases. The next day, sold
him in forty five minutes. Wow. And so for that
(22:51):
week we ended up setting a national sales record, and
we sold six hundred and sixty bottles in five days
of one flavor.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
And that really showed me. Okay, people love this. If
they try it, they buy it. Let's see what we
can do. I still had a full time job. I
was playing professional acrosse, so I was very very busy.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
Married.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
I was married, no kids yet. And that year we
got into another three stores, so we were in like
four stores total.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
Grocery store like Krogers or whatever.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Yeah, we're in Whole Foods.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
Yeah, oh yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
We started with Whole Foods and it just got to
the point where I'm like, I don't know, I don't
know if I should actually quit my job. For this,
I don't know. I definitely can't do it alone. I
wonder if my brothers want to help. I wonder if
my wife wants to help. And so I sat down
with my brother Brian and my wife and I said, Hey,
(23:51):
here's what's going on. We either need to fully commit
to this thing and put every dollar into it, quit
our jobs and do it, or we need to shut
it down because whatever this fifty percent in that I'm doing,
it's not working. And so my brother quit his job.
(24:12):
He wasn't really making any money anyway, so we paid
him a whopping five hundred dollars bi weekly. Oh yeah,
and my wife took on all of our procurement, supply
chain planning, and the next thing we know, we got
into all the stores in Maryland, d C in Virginia,
(24:33):
and we were off to the races. So it was once,
once everybody fully committed, we grew aggressively.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
What were some of the innovations you talked about no
gum and all. I mean, I think it's all fresh ingredients,
but there was one other I read. What were some
of the things that you innovated?
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Well, my mom only gave me one piece of business advice.
And she said, Greg, do you remember Schlitz b And
I said, well, not really, but yeah, I know of Schlitzpeer.
And she goes, everybody used to love Schlitzpeer and then
they change the ingredients and it sucked. Don't do that, yeah,
(25:15):
And I go okay. So after that initial success and
everybody's just buying it, I go, well, we can't add gums,
we can't add citric acid, we can't use dehydrated garlic
instead of fresh garlic. How can we keep the formula
exactly the same and figure out how to kind of
(25:35):
re engineer the manufacturing process that they'll have to re
engineer the physical product. And so that's what we did.
We invented clean manufacturing. So we were the first people
to be able to mass produce basically a handmade product,
and we were able to do it to every grocery
store in the United States.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
So what did that look like?
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Well, initially it looked like one hundred bowls, and then
it moved into a gallon little kind of areas, and
then it was five gallon gatorade containers, and then it
was one hundred gallons stainless steel containers. And so we
were just basically retro fitting little things for each product
(26:24):
so that the product came out perfect. It wasn't any
one thing outside of a complete commitment to not ruin
the product.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
Was it still one flavor?
Speaker 3 (26:36):
It was one flavor for probably three years, and then
we just started asking our customers, hey, you know, what
else do you want to see? And someone goes, you
should put balsamic in it. We go okay. And someone
said you should put pepper in it. We go okay.
And then somebody said, you know, you should make an
(26:57):
Asian dressing and we go okay, And so that's what
we did. Then for the next probably five years, we
kept coming out with like variations to the core offering.
But then we decided to get into the creamy dressing
(27:18):
game once we bought data and we realized that sixty
eight percent of salad dressing sales were ranch dressing and
we didn't have one, And so we then invented the
first ever dairy free, clean, healthy, whole thirty keto or
(27:40):
again blah blah blah.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
I mean right now you can buy everything I've got celiac.
So it's and I was only diagnosed about five years ago,
thank god. But prior to that, it wasn't a lot
of variety. You guys were early on.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Yeah, we were the We were really the first clean
bottled product on the market. So the whole thirty diet
was a thing ever that so we were the first
approved product on the whole thirty diet. And because it
was only you know, five ingredients, six ingredients, so everything
(28:13):
was gluten free, everything was sugar free, everything was vegan
until we came up with the Rams dressing. Everything was
everything was any food tribe.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
Whatever they needed because it was simple.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
We were it because it was so simple, so we
got to participate in every trend, which then made us
really the leader of the clean eating Wow. Yeah all right.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
So then, so talk about how you got into Sam's Club.
I mean that's that's when growth must have just been crazy, right.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Yeah, I mean getting into Sam's Club was gigantic. Getting
into Kroger nationally was gigantic, Getting into Walmart nationally it
was gigantic. Sam's Club was giant because we were just
trying to sell them Caesar dressing and they go, well,
we're not going to put great dressing on a crappy salad,
(29:08):
so why don't you make the entire salad.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
All right, this is the Aultar Fresh Foods.
Speaker 6 (29:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Yeah, And so we created this master kitting process so
that we could ship them everything that they needed to
make chicken caesar salads or whatever. We ended up making
multiple different salads with no food.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
Waste, minus the protein or was the protein.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Everything was in there. So an employee at one of
these stores would get a box it would make twelve salads.
There was an instruction on how to make everyone containers
to put it in. It was direct from We're in
the Salinas Valley in California. So the shelf life was great,
and then they tasted amazing because we were making the
(29:57):
dressing and putting packets of the dressing in there. And
so if you went into, you know, a Sam's Club
and bought a chicken caesar salad for a family of four,
you were literally having the best chicken caesar salad you've
ever had. And so it really kind of opened our
eyes to the applications of what we were capable of
(30:20):
from a dressing perspective. So we started then getting into
other things that aligned with clean food for everybody. That
was kind of our concept. That's why we kept our
price point where we did. We wanted it to be
accessible to everybody.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
We're going to take our second commercial. I just noticed
the time. Everybody will be back in another minute with
Greg Better.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene on
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Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up
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Speaker 2 (31:38):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin helenan
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again
is Kevin.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
Helena we're back with Greg Vetter in a disruptor, author
of Undressed. We'll get to that shortly. But now you're
at scale, or you're really at scale before relative to before,
more employees, bigger process investors.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Yep, lots of friends and family, lots of friends of friends.
Never really got into kind of the venture world or
the equity world. We did have some high net worth
individuals that had home offices, but yeah, lots lots of
(32:34):
small checks, some big, but a lot along the along
the way. Because again this was before organic was a thing.
We're talking to buyers in your product was organic. They're like,
it's a fad, and you're like, I don't think it
is a fat you know, clean eating. They're like it's
(32:56):
a fad. I'm like, it tastes better. Don't even worry
about organic or cleaning or whatever. It just tastes better.
People like food that taste good. No one's going to
select something that tastes worse. It's not a thing.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
It is the refrigerated category, by the way, right, Well, it.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Was kind of everywhere at the time, but yeah, I
mean salad dressing specifically, and so we really were just
kind of trailblazing the situation, and uh yeah, lots lots
of investors. We ended up I think at the end
having fifty three.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Wow at your height. How big were you in terms
of sales and staff?
Speaker 3 (33:41):
We were doing seventy million and we had a hundred,
probably between one point fifty and two hundred in terms
of manufacturing workers, salespeople, back office stuff.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
And this is a next I think this question is
somewhat humorous your rocking and roll in national awards. When
did it get difficult? I'm sure it was difficult at
many stages along the way, But when did it become problematic?
When did things become problematic? What did that look like?
Speaker 3 (34:12):
It really came down. So we navigated COVID really well.
We had our own manufacturing plants, and we took care
of our people and they loved working for us, so
it was all good. The supply chain crisis really started
making everybody squirrely. We had just kind of made it
(34:33):
through COVID. Everybody's investments are wacky and some are going
down in a fiery blaze, and we're still plowing through
and things are going great, and then the supply chain
crisis happened, and that's really when everybody just started, you know,
giving their two cents of where we should be going,
(34:54):
what we should be doing. Investors had differences of opinions
to each other, so there started to be a lot
of infighting. They're starting to private but you have a board, Yeah,
we have a board. Yeah. Yeah, So we're navigating that
whole process. People start suing us, you know, to try
(35:15):
and gain control or change board seats, and the next thing,
you know, you know, we had to hire a professional
negotiator to try and results stuff. And we came to
the conclusion like, hey, let's sell it. And I didn't
think the timing was great because of the supply chain
(35:35):
crisis and you just didn't know what was really happening.
But then we hired an investment bank and they valued
the business at between three hundred and five hundred million dollars,
and so everybody really started they go, Okay, this is
how much I own. If it sells for three hundred
this is how much show going to make. And then
the sales process did not go well. So when that
(35:58):
didn't go well, all hell broke loose and everybody just
was basically positioning themselves to take over the entire thing
and then the next thing, you know, we're spending three
hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month on four different
lawsuits and we're just fighting the good fight, and we
(36:19):
had to restructure. And then the restructuring process didn't go
well at all because a couple people in it were
experts and kind of ruined that process as well. And
the next thing, you know, this one just freaking rocket
chip is just nose down on fire. And I'm sitting
(36:41):
there in a conference room handing over this business to
a private equity group for four and a half million dollars,
thinking to myself, how did I get here? What is
going on here?
Speaker 4 (36:58):
You probably didn't answer it that moment, but what did
you figure out?
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Well?
Speaker 4 (37:03):
I wrote a whole book on it, available on Amazon.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Yeah, yep, and I read the audio book hold On.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
The full title is Undressed, The Unfiltered Story of My
failed American Dream and how it led to success. All right,
go ahead.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
What I reflected on was we did a lot right.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
It sounds like it, but we also did a lot wrong.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
And you can really boil it down to trusting the
wrong people and not trusting your gun. And so I
can go back to all of these critical points, these
forks in the road, and I had an opinion of
which way we should go. The board had a difference
(37:48):
of an opinion, or an investor had a difference of
an opinion. And you know, I thought kind of as
hard as I thought was reasonable. But in retrospects go
back and it's like, well, that was the moment. That
was the moment we let them into deep. That was
the moment we allowed that negotiating point to go their way,
(38:12):
thinking that they would be reasonable and you know, give
us something in return. And in reality, I learned a
lot about human behavior that I don't know if I
wanted to learn, but I know a lot about now.
And it's interesting to really kind of see what people
(38:34):
are willing to do for greed and ego. I always
kind of had this, you know, you see movies and
you're like, nobody's.
Speaker 4 (38:43):
Really that bad, greed is good.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Yeah, Well it's like yeah, yeah, And it turns out,
you know, people are willing to do anything.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
Which and these are people you had, you had some
relationship with, whether it was first agree or second degree
or maybe third agree, but people that you knew pretty well.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Yeah, that knew my family and I'm into their Christmas
parties and you know, had a boatload of conversations with
and it was that that was bizarre, you know, because
they knew the impact not only to me but to everybody,
and they just didn't care. And I think that part
(39:22):
was after it all happened, you look back and you go, wow,
that's that's something. And so that's why my beard is gray.
Speaker 4 (39:36):
Just for the audience we shared. We shared a little
moment before a moment. Yeah, we chatted briefly before we
came on air. So it must feel good to know
that those products are still out in some way.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
Right, It's it's nice to know we don't make it anymore, right,
So I don't know how the quality is. I don't
buy it anymore, but it is cool, especially now during
this like massive you know, make America Health again and
they're dominating dies and they're talking about thickening agents for
(40:10):
the first time, and they're talking about natural flavors and
and I'm like, yeah, we were, we were doing that
and uh, you know a little too early, I guess
for that stuff.
Speaker 4 (40:23):
But maybe you could consult with RFK who knows RK Junior,
excuse me, all right? So then you decide. All right, First,
before we get to the book, I wanted to how
long did it take you emotionally, physically even to land
after that?
Speaker 3 (40:38):
You know, I didn't really I didn't dwell on it
too too long. I remember watching an interview of Ross
Perrot talk about Steve Jobs when he got fired from
Apple and why he invested in Steve Jobs' next business,
(40:59):
and he was talking about how here's a guy that
was the most famous, wealthy young guy in the country
was just embarrassed beyond belief and did not go into
his basement and cry about it. For three months, he
picked up the phone and he called me for an
investment for his next business. And I thought about that,
and I go, okay, yeah, like, there's no time to
(41:23):
sit there and cry about it. I've got four kids,
I'm coaching their sports, i have a wife, I have
you know, other things that need to be done right now.
And so I really didn't sit there and dwell on it.
I think complete forgiveness though that came a little later.
(41:45):
That took me a while. I really had to work
through that.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
So I have a similar story. I'm not going to
get into it because this is your show. But I
have a much smaller scale. But I had a bankruptcy
and I didn't even want to go into that town
where the business was just because I took me along
time time to get over that. But yeah, I can
hear what you're saying. So you get to the book
you decided to write, the book, tell us about it
and sort of the lessons you learned and that you
(42:10):
want to share.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
Well, I wasn't even going to write a book, so
I hired a performance coach to help me think through
where I should be spending my time. I actually was
getting a lot of opportunities. People were coming to me
saying like, hey, I know it didn't work out, but
I mean, you grew this thing to a giant, wonderful
entity and we want some help. And so this guy's
(42:34):
super high level. You know, his clients are pro athletes,
edge fund managers. Bon Jovi is one of them, and
some telling them the stories and he goes, are these
stories real? I'm like, yeah, He's like, you need to
write a book, Like why would I want to write
a book about my greatest failure? Yeah? And he goes,
(42:58):
because your outlook is unlike anything that I've seen, Like
you're still positive, you're still healthy, your kids still love you, your
wife still loves you. Like you have some insights through
this pain that I think other people would really appreciate.
And if you write it while the wounds are fresh,
(43:19):
I think it will be more impactful for people because
nobody's out there doing that. Everybody either writes their story
when they're at the end of their career and they
romanticize the pain, or they haven't lived through anything like
this and they just are just basically telling you, you know,
buy my program, or do this or do that. And
(43:41):
so I still wasn't convinced I should write a book,
but I just started randomly putting words down on paper,
really for my kid's sake, And next thing I know,
I had three hundred and fifty pages written, and here we.
Speaker 4 (43:56):
Are a lot to take.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
It took me about a year to write it, it
took about a year to edit and publish it self published.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
Yeah, so I was the homegrown.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Yeah so I got a bunch of I was looking
at the hybrid publishing route just for the ownership, kind
of an increased ownership and intellectual property. And then I
realized that the publishing process is very similar to just
launching a product, and I wanted to own all of
the intellectual property for it, and so I just went
(44:34):
through the publishing process and it was really interesting, and
I found a great custom book publishing group where everything
was basically a la carte and I project managed it
myself and it turned out great. An editor, multiple editors,
so I had an editor kind of for the actual
(44:55):
creation of the book. Then I had a grammatical editor
and that whole workflow, and then I had a legal
editor to make sure I wasn't yale ye.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
So yeah, and obviously a professional photographer, because I'm guessing
you didn't stand behind that little box or whatever that
you're holding there.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
No, I actually did.
Speaker 4 (45:18):
All right, that's good. I love it even more than
than Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
So my creative director modeler, uh, he took the picture
and we actually broke all of those bottles in my barn. Wow,
I didn't stand, you know, in a sock on the
physical broken glass.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
Yeah, but yeah, no, we uh cool, very creative. All right,
it's available on Amazon. I'm going to give the title
more time than I got. A couple other questions here
undressed The unfiltered story of my failed American dream and
how it led to success. What success are we talking
about now?
Speaker 3 (46:00):
So I took all the principles and everything that I learned,
and I wanted to see if it was right. I
wanted to see that principles would work. I didn't want
to just be talking about stuff that couldn't translate. And
so we applied them to the fresh food business and
grew that exponentially. We applied it to one of the
(46:25):
companies from our brand Accelerator, which is a portable toilet business,
and so that's been growing exponentially, and we're launching a
line of consumer packaged goods with it, so wipes and
other things like that. We've we've done it with a
vodka business with and then we're also doing a bunch
(46:48):
of joint venture work with people that have developed companies
or products and they just can't get it done and
they want us to come in and basically just grow
the whole thing. And so there's three or four of
those and it all works, you know. So I think
(47:11):
the part of the success that's so interesting, and I
don't actually really like to use the word success, but
everything that I ever wanted happened after I failed. And
Joseph Campbell has this beautiful quote, the cave you fear
to enter holds the treasure you seek. My cave was failure.
Speaker 4 (47:37):
I saw that, and it was a question I skipped earlier,
fear of failure. Yeah, is the well, so many lessons there,
but go ahead.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Yeah, And that's what fueled me. That's why I worked
so hard, Like, yeah, everybody is ambitious, everybody has goals.
Mine was a mixture of Yes, I want to be successful,
but I think I'm more scared of being a complete failure.
And so it was interesting because in being pushed to
(48:08):
the actual limit, you understand what you're capable of. Right,
anybody can win, but I want to see how you lose.
Speaker 4 (48:21):
Mindset. So we teach, again, not trying to make this
about me, but we teach in our sales consulting behavior
attitude and technique. Behaviors make the dolls. Technique is way
should sound like. Attitude is our belief system. Confidence. That's
probably seventy to eighty percent. Yep, Yeah, I'm with you.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
Yeah, I mean it's all in between the ears. And
I coach kids sports and I've done it since I
was twenty three years old, before I had kids, and
all those guys ended up being unbelievably successful and stay
in touch with me to this day, which is really cool.
But what you see is talent skill. Yeah, it's important
(49:01):
to a degree. The greats work this muscle out right here.
They are working the brain. It is the mental discipline,
it is the focus. It is the ability to metabolize
pain and turn it into fuel. Learn from your failures,
(49:22):
don't make the same mistake twice, and keep moving forward
against all odds.
Speaker 4 (49:27):
That is awesome. That is awesome. We have to end
right here. Who in the listening and viewing audiences should
reach out and that's Gregoryvetter dot com. Who should reach out?
Speaker 3 (49:36):
And why anybody that has a dream that they want
to follow, because my story is about business, but it
was really about following a dream.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
Yeah, And the easiest way to reach out is the
website Gregory vettor Gregoryvetter.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
Dot com, or on social media. I'm on Instagram, I'm
on TikTok, I'm on LinkedIn. I have a social media
team that checks everything. So if you send an I
literally get it and.
Speaker 4 (50:01):
I'll respond fantastic. I'm sorry we went short. We didn't
go short. It just was a good really good conversation.
Thank you for your time and we appreciate you being here.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (50:11):
Great, my pleasure, my pleasure, and thanks everybody for listening
and watching. Once again, this is a show about business
and business challenges successes too. If you've got concerns about
the sales effectiveness or company of your company, whether your
sales team is you or small or it's large, feel
free to reach out to me or you can drop
me a note Kevinatwinning Business Radio dot com. Our company
(50:32):
is Winning Incorporated. We're part of Sandler Training. We developed
sales teams at the high achievers and sales leaders into
true coaches and mentors. We're not right for everybody, but hey,
maybe we should have a conversation. Thank you as always
the producer and engineer one, Thank you one for another
job well done. Be sure to join us next week
Monday May twelfth. My guests will be entrepreneur and rising
(50:52):
star architect Matthew Arnold, founder of the boutique architectural practice Arnold.
And until then, this is Kevin Hallan. In you have
been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host Kevin Helenan.
If you missed any part of this episode. The podcast
is available on Talk for Podcasting and iHeartRadio. For more
(51:13):
information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio dot com
or check us out on social media. Tune in again
next week and every Monday at four pm Eastern Time
to listen live to Winning Business Radio on W four
CY Radio w four cy dot com. Until then, let's
succeed where others have failed and win in business with
(51:34):
Kevin Helenan and Winning Business Radio
The topics and opinions express in the following show are
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(00:20):
for choosing W four CY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are
condemned to repeat it. Kevin helen N believes that certainly
applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at
W four CY Radio.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
That's W four.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Cy dot com and now your host, Kevin helen N.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Thanks everybody for joining in once again. I'm Kevin Hallanan
and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio on
W four cy dot com. We're streaming live on talkfour
tv dot com, and of course we're on Facebook and
that's at Winning Business Radio, and we're available after the
live show in podcast form wherever you get your podcasts,
(01:12):
that's you who you who know? YouTube iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple again,
everywhere you find podcasts, we are there. The mission of
Winning Business radio and TV, as regular viewers and listeners know,
is to offer insights and advice to help people avoid
the mistakes of others, right to learn best practices, the
how tos, the what not tos, the what toos, to
(01:34):
be challenged and hopefully to be inspired by the successes
of others. Those are consultants, coaches, advisors, authors, founders and
owners and entrepreneurs, people with expertise. But you know, virtually
every successful person I've ever had a chance to talk
to has said some form of failure in their lives
and careers. So I say it every week. While we
all have to get our knee skinned once in a while,
(01:54):
I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery.
Let's endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat.
I've spent the better part of my career equipping businesses
to grow, and those are from solopreneurs to small and
medium sized companies all the way up to the Fortune fifty.
I've seen some of those companies win into varying degrees.
I've seen some fail I've had the opportunity to rub
elbows with some of the highest performing people around, and
(02:17):
frankly with some who probably should have found other professions
and my own businesses. I've had lots of success, but
some failures too, So I like to think I've learned
a lot from those experiences. So of course you're going
to hear from me my opinions and insights, but more importantly,
you're going to hear from those experts that I refer to today.
No guests, no exception, excuse me. My guest is Greg Rivetter, innovator, disruptor,
(02:39):
and author of Undressed. Gregor Yvetter is a well established
innovator and disruptor in the clean food movement. The oldest
of the Vetter brothers, he had the brilliant idea of
launching Tessames after Tessames, after being inspired by his mother's
wildly popular homemade dressing recipe. What Greg knew in the
American consumer base was soon to discover was that the
(03:01):
idea would soon resonate wildly and give rise to an
entirely new food category. Gregan has broader family, primarily brothers
Matt and Bryan, cultivated the business and in a mere
five years translated their vision into becoming the number one
organic salad dressing brand in the refrigerated space. The emergence
of Tessames paved the way for clean manufacturing on a
(03:23):
mass scale by virtual of inventing the only gum free
dressing bottling process. Ultimately, that manufacturing process led to the
creation of the fresh condiment category and similarly the first
whole thirty approved bottle dressings and condiments in the nation.
With the wind clearly at their back, Greg and his
brothers launched alta fresh food company, and that has since
(03:44):
pioneered a better way to get great tasting salads to
the masses through the innovative master kitting process and break
through R and D T. After the triumph as Sam's
Club Supplier of the Year resulting from their master kitting process,
Alto was prepared to the forefront of the fast fast
food solutions industry. More recently, Greg elected to take his
(04:06):
lessons learned from his sustained success in the food industry
and launched Homegrown brand Accelerator. Homegrown was developed with a
singular purpose in mind to empower the next generation of
brands by making the playbook available to whomever had the
desire to build the next great American brand. In addition,
he's authored the best selling book Undressed, The Unfiltered Story
of my failed American Dream and how it led to success.
(04:28):
I love that title. Greg winner of Ink Magazine's Entrepreneur
of the Year Award, Ink Magazine's thirty five hundred thirty
ey Entrepreneur of the Year finalist, ted X Talk Speaker,
Nielsen Design Impact Award for Packaging, and Sam's Club Supplier
of the Year. Greg spends time with his wife and
four kids on their farm in West River, Maryland. He
holds a bachelor's in business management from Washington College. Greg,
(04:51):
welcome to Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
No problem. I appreciate you taking the time. So I
want to go to your background. But as I like
to do on this show, tell us you know where
you grew up, and well, I actually start with wife
and kids. Tell us about your family.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
I met my wife in college at Washington College. So
you know, people are like, oh my god, you know,
how do you stay married with such a wild guy?
And she'll say, well, you should have seen him in college.
So I've met Genevieve in college and we have four
beautiful babies fourteen, thirteen, eleven and nine, two girls, two boys,
(05:31):
and they're all active in sports and wonderful human beings
and a pleasure to be around. And then we have
a bunch of dogs and Texas longhorns and some alpacas
and some goats and some chickens. So we're getting it
done over here.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, we have four also they're
a little older, but two and two as well, So
that's fun.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
All right.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
Tell us where you grew up and what it was
like to have grown up.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
There, Annapolis, Maryland. I grew up in Epping four it
swimming in the Severn River and went to public school,
so Rolling Noles Bates Middle and Annaple Senior High School,
and it was it was great, normal, wonderful childhood, full
of getting in trouble and trying to figure out the world.
(06:19):
And so my primary sport that I chose was lacrosse.
A bunch of them, and my dad's from southern Ohio,
so he didn't he had never even heard of the sport. Yeah, yeah,
and it was amazing. I mean, it was a great
outlet for my aggression. I played defense, and so you know,
I liked whacking people, and I ended up going to
(06:42):
college to play, which was really fun, and then ended
up playing professionally for a couple of years. And you know,
the next thing I know, I'm in the salad dressing business.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
That's pretty cool. Yeah, I mean it's first Actually, I'm
sure it's what you wanted to do when you were eight, right,
all right, So why did you choose Washington and a
business management degree?
Speaker 3 (07:02):
That's funny? Well, I chose Washington College because I did
not really care in high school as much as I
should have, and I got recruited by a bunch of
kind of big, smart d one schools that I could
not get into without taking a post grad year, which
I didn't know what that was, and neither did my parents.
(07:25):
And so Washington College said that they would get me
in and I would start as a freshman, and that
seemed like a win win to me, and so I
went to Washington College and wild experience, exposed to great
amounts of wealth, exposed to kind of like the concept
(07:47):
of tradition, which was really interesting, and it was an
amazing experience for me to come into the man that
I would eventually be. And I did that through primarily,
but also just kind of trying to figure out the
world on my own, trying to figure out what I
wanted to do with my life after college. Being exposed
(08:12):
to really kind of wealthy families and seeing what's possible
really piqued my interest in curiosity, and so I started
interviewing all of the dads on.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Cross Team that's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Figure out how did they make their money? And so
I would just you know, at tailgates, be like, hey,
mister so and so so, like talk to me about
living in Darien, Connecticut. How did that? What's going on there?
And so some were very complicated and beyond my scope
of what I thought was possible for me at the time.
You know, someone was talking about being a hedge fund manager,
(08:50):
and you know that I wasn't going to be doing that.
But then others seemed realistic, which was you know, one
guy just kind of like bought and sold death. I
was like, I didn't even know you could do that.
Another guy was in commercial real estate. I was like,
well what does that mean. They're like, hey, you know
you either sell buildings or your buybuilding. I'm like, okay,
(09:11):
I understand that. And so it was interesting because it
showed me that the wealthy were not magic. And so
I was like, okay, So now I'm curious because I'm
a very competitive guy. You know, I'm very competitive in athletics.
(09:31):
If I put my mind to something, I'm willing to
sacrifice anything to get it. I'm very focused. I can
just grind until the end of time. And so now
it was really a matter of like, well, where can
I direct my energy to potentially put myself in a
situation long term where I can potentially be successful. And so,
(09:55):
you know, I started trying to figure that out. And
the next thing, I know, selling insurance over top of
a bodega looking over a cemetery.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Again, very sexy business. You should others should try it
out exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
And I'm just cold calling all day, you know, I'm
in the cubicle by six point thirty. I'm cold calling
until people stop picking up in the evening. And now
I ended up making it a game, very competitive with
myself about it, closing a couple large customers, and that
(10:30):
brought me to again being competitive. I went to the owner.
I'm like, hey, you know, I brought in three of
the largest customers we have. I'm only twenty five years old.
I'd like to be a partner, and he was just like, no,
that's not happening. You're never going to be a partner.
You make enough money for your age. That's the end
of it. And in that moment, I realized that I
(10:54):
was not in control of the future. And so I
started thinking about, Okay, well what am I going to do.
I know I can work hard, I know I can call,
I know I can go to a meeting and close it.
What does that mean for me long term? And so
every day at lunch, I would go home with a
(11:15):
journal next to me, and I would stand on my
head in the dark, waiting for an epiphany, and one
did not come. But I would then go downstairs and
I'd make myself lunch, and then I'd go back to
my cubicle and I'd co call all day. And one
day I walk downstairs to make myself a big se.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
I love this story, keep going you.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
And to make myself a big salad protein on it.
And this two liter bottle of salad dressing that my
mom had made for me was missing, and you don't
misplace a two liter bottle of salad dressing. So I'm looking.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Everywhere for it, especially one that your mother made.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Exactly, And I'm looking everywhere. Every cabinet is open, every
drawer is open. I cannot find this stuff anywhere. And
I call my wife and I'm like, hey, did you
take the salad dressing to work. He's like, no, I
didn't take the salad dressing work. Why don't you open
your eyes and find it. I'm like, I have looked everywhere.
(12:16):
I cannot find it. And she goes, maybe someone broke
into our house and took it. Probably really, someone stole
salad dressing from our house. I'm like, that's insane. She goes, well,
I don't know what to tell you, Greg, and she
hangs up. And I go to prove a point, I'm
going to call some people that I know. You know,
(12:37):
no one broke in, and so I call the guy
that I think is the least likely person to have
stolen this dressing. And so I call him and he's like, hey,
what's up. I'm like, have you random question? Man? Have
you seen my salad dressing? And he's like, yup, woke
up this morning was Jones and for it, hopped on
the scooter, knew the code to your house and now
(13:00):
crushing a salad, and I'm like.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
What that's all riot?
Speaker 3 (13:04):
What kind of man steals another man's salad dressing? But
then I thought to myself, what kind of salad dressing
is so good that someone would steal it? So I
called my wife back. I go, hey, you were right.
So and so stole the salad dressing, and I'm going
to quit my job and start a salad dressing company.
(13:26):
Dead silence.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Yeah, she said yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
And then she goes, that's the greatest idea I've ever heard.
I have a weird feeling this is gonna work. And
so then I took the only business skill I had
at the time, which was cold calling, and I started
cold calling grocery stores to try and get a meeting.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
And it was before you started making this stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
We weren't a thing.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
Yeah, I was just like, idea.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
I go, I'm gonna see if anybody wants this stuff.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
This is before quitting the job.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
This is before the job. I want to see if
there's intro. I want somebody to try it. That's not
anyone that I know. And so, day in and day out,
two weeks straight, I called twice a day every grocery
store in town, and eventually a guy picked up and goes,
(14:16):
it was a Friday. He goes, yes, bring it to
me today at noon. I'm like, all right, So I
call my mom. I'm like, I need you to make
the greatest batch of salad dressing that has ever been made.
She goes, why, I go, I got a meeting. I'm
(14:36):
going to get us into a grocery store. We're going
to be a thing. She goes, what are you going
to put it in? You're not a company, there's no name,
you don't have a bottle. I go, I don't care.
I'm going to figure it out. So I ended up
walking in with a tupperware container with a red lid,
crunchy romaine lettuce dressing on top. Walk in, this boxer
(14:57):
comes to me. He's my size, He's like six three,
missing half of his teeth. And I'm like, this is
a salad dressing buyer. And he's like, where's the product?
And I just hold up this little container. I'm like,
it's lunchtime. I brought you a salad. So he takes
this piece of wet let uce out of this tupware container,
(15:19):
licks the dressing off, looks at me, and goes that's
the greatest salad dressing I've ever had in my life.
You need to call the regional office. And so went
to the regional meeting. They gave me two hundred pages
of paperwork. I googled my way into becoming a food manufacturer,
(15:40):
and we officially launched actually today May fifth, Yeah, two
thousand and nine. Wow.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
All right, hold that thought, perfect time for drink. We're
gonna come back. We'll take our first break right here.
Everybody will be back in about one minute with Greg Better.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene on
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Speaker 2 (16:52):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again,
he's Kevin Helene.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
We are back with Greg Vetter. So how did you
start manufacturing? You needed labels, you needed containers, you needed brand,
you needed logosh, we needed everything. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
I googled a lot of stuff. You know that the
name came from my mom's nickname. So I was trying
to think of good names.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
And I hope I pronounced it correctly. I don't know
if I did.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Well. You'll hear the story in a second. You can
and you can know. So initially, I'm thinking the names
are all really stupid. You know, Greg Zone, Lemon Zingers,
you know, three brothers. I'm trying to bring everything. It's
all dumb. And then I say Tessie Mays' like that
(17:55):
sounds real, that sounds official. So my dad's from southern
Ohio and he took my mom to a wedding when
they were dating. Her name's Teresa, and I think Mary
Henry was being married, you know, his cousin. And my
mom walks up and is like, Hi, I'm Teresa, and
(18:17):
my dad's older brother goes not in these parts, you're
not You're Tessie May. And then when email came out,
she was always Tessie May at whatever you know dress was.
So that's how we got the name. There was a
guy I played lacrosse with was a graphic designer and
I can draw, so I kind of sketched out what
(18:38):
I wanted the label to be. He did it. I
ordered these like really expensive eight and a half ounce
rectangular bottles with quarks, thinking it was gonna last me
a really long time, which it did not, which is
another funny story in the book. And really it was
(18:59):
just someone not taking no for an answer until the launch.
So it didn't matter what obstacle came. It didn't matter
what document I didn't understand, it didn't matter. Literally nothing
stood in my way. I was committed that, at a minimum,
(19:20):
I was going to try and launch this thing to
see if a regular guy with no money, no food
manufacturing background, no history of business in the family could
take any product it happened to be a really dumb
one like salad dressing, and could do something with it,
(19:42):
you know, Could I actually live the American dream? Could
anybody do that with a concentrated amount of effort and
focus and desire and an unwavering spirit. And it turned
out that that is possible. It's not it's very painful,
but it works. And so yeah, it was just full
(20:08):
commitment to get it done no matter what.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
When did Matt and Brian get involved? Did you ask them?
Did they see it and say we want in or
tell us about that?
Speaker 3 (20:15):
I made him help me a little bit in the beginning.
They everybody was kind of looking at me, going, you know,
let us know if this works, you know, and if
it does work, will help. So in the beginning stages,
you know, we were making it at a rib restaurant
at night.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
When they closed, right, that was my next question.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, yeah, so we had to find a certified kitchen
to get our main factoring license. There aren't really a
lot of places to do that. There are now, right,
there's Union Kitchen in DC that's literally built exactly for
this situation. I mean, talk about too little, too late.
(20:56):
I mean I could have used that No nine, he
was I think he was still in college at the time,
the guy that ended up being a founder of that.
But I convinced the owner of Adam's Ribs in Eastport
to let me use his kitchen when they closed, And
initially he didn't want to do it because he didn't
want the health department, the safety whatever, and they're kind
(21:20):
of doing additional audits and stuff. But I offered him
freestyle addressing for life, and I stalked him every day
until he said yes. So he eventually gave in and
let me do it. So they would close at ten,
we'd be in there by ten thirty. We'd lay out
all of these metal bowls we were making it and
(21:42):
literally small batches, pouring it into the bottles, funnels in
the bottles, hand labeling it, hand sealing it, putting it
back in the boxes, loading it up, driving it into
grocery stores every day. And so I did that for about.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
A year how many stores? And was the volume like?
Speaker 3 (22:01):
So we were actually crushing it for the grand opening.
This is how I knew it was meant to be.
So we set up a demo. The store opened at
like ten am or something, and the buyer told me
to make four cases for the month. He's like, that's
(22:21):
all we'll really need. So I set up a demo.
I'm handing out samples. Four cases are gone in thirty minutes.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Holy cow.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
So I go to the guy. I'm like, hey, man,
all that dressing is gone. He's like, there's more in
the back. I'm like, no, it's gone. Because you sold
four cases in thirty minutes. I'm like yeah. He goes,
go get more. I said, I have to make more.
This was for the month, and so that night I
made more, brought back six cases. The next day, sold
him in forty five minutes. Wow. And so for that
(22:51):
week we ended up setting a national sales record, and
we sold six hundred and sixty bottles in five days
of one flavor.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
And that really showed me. Okay, people love this. If
they try it, they buy it. Let's see what we
can do. I still had a full time job. I
was playing professional acrosse, so I was very very busy.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
Married.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
I was married, no kids yet. And that year we
got into another three stores, so we were in like
four stores total.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
Grocery store like Krogers or whatever.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Yeah, we're in Whole Foods.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
Yeah, oh yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
We started with Whole Foods and it just got to
the point where I'm like, I don't know, I don't
know if I should actually quit my job. For this,
I don't know. I definitely can't do it alone. I
wonder if my brothers want to help. I wonder if
my wife wants to help. And so I sat down
with my brother Brian and my wife and I said, Hey,
(23:51):
here's what's going on. We either need to fully commit
to this thing and put every dollar into it, quit
our jobs and do it, or we need to shut
it down because whatever this fifty percent in that I'm doing,
it's not working. And so my brother quit his job.
(24:12):
He wasn't really making any money anyway, so we paid
him a whopping five hundred dollars bi weekly. Oh yeah,
and my wife took on all of our procurement, supply
chain planning, and the next thing we know, we got
into all the stores in Maryland, d C in Virginia,
(24:33):
and we were off to the races. So it was once,
once everybody fully committed, we grew aggressively.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
What were some of the innovations you talked about no
gum and all. I mean, I think it's all fresh ingredients,
but there was one other I read. What were some
of the things that you innovated?
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Well, my mom only gave me one piece of business advice.
And she said, Greg, do you remember Schlitz b And
I said, well, not really, but yeah, I know of Schlitzpeer.
And she goes, everybody used to love Schlitzpeer and then
they change the ingredients and it sucked. Don't do that, yeah,
(25:15):
And I go okay. So after that initial success and
everybody's just buying it, I go, well, we can't add gums,
we can't add citric acid, we can't use dehydrated garlic
instead of fresh garlic. How can we keep the formula
exactly the same and figure out how to kind of
(25:35):
re engineer the manufacturing process that they'll have to re
engineer the physical product. And so that's what we did.
We invented clean manufacturing. So we were the first people
to be able to mass produce basically a handmade product,
and we were able to do it to every grocery
store in the United States.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
So what did that look like?
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Well, initially it looked like one hundred bowls, and then
it moved into a gallon little kind of areas, and
then it was five gallon gatorade containers, and then it
was one hundred gallons stainless steel containers. And so we
were just basically retro fitting little things for each product
(26:24):
so that the product came out perfect. It wasn't any
one thing outside of a complete commitment to not ruin
the product.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
Was it still one flavor?
Speaker 3 (26:36):
It was one flavor for probably three years, and then
we just started asking our customers, hey, you know, what
else do you want to see? And someone goes, you
should put balsamic in it. We go okay. And someone
said you should put pepper in it. We go okay.
And then somebody said, you know, you should make an
(26:57):
Asian dressing and we go okay, And so that's what
we did. Then for the next probably five years, we
kept coming out with like variations to the core offering.
But then we decided to get into the creamy dressing
(27:18):
game once we bought data and we realized that sixty
eight percent of salad dressing sales were ranch dressing and
we didn't have one, And so we then invented the
first ever dairy free, clean, healthy, whole thirty keto or
(27:40):
again blah blah blah.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
I mean right now you can buy everything I've got celiac.
So it's and I was only diagnosed about five years ago,
thank god. But prior to that, it wasn't a lot
of variety. You guys were early on.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Yeah, we were the We were really the first clean
bottled product on the market. So the whole thirty diet
was a thing ever that so we were the first
approved product on the whole thirty diet. And because it
was only you know, five ingredients, six ingredients, so everything
(28:13):
was gluten free, everything was sugar free, everything was vegan
until we came up with the Rams dressing. Everything was
everything was any food tribe.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
Whatever they needed because it was simple.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
We were it because it was so simple, so we
got to participate in every trend, which then made us
really the leader of the clean eating Wow. Yeah all right.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
So then, so talk about how you got into Sam's Club.
I mean that's that's when growth must have just been crazy, right.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Yeah, I mean getting into Sam's Club was gigantic. Getting
into Kroger nationally was gigantic, Getting into Walmart nationally it
was gigantic. Sam's Club was giant because we were just
trying to sell them Caesar dressing and they go, well,
we're not going to put great dressing on a crappy salad,
(29:08):
so why don't you make the entire salad.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
All right, this is the Aultar Fresh Foods.
Speaker 6 (29:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Yeah, And so we created this master kitting process so
that we could ship them everything that they needed to
make chicken caesar salads or whatever. We ended up making
multiple different salads with no food.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
Waste, minus the protein or was the protein.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Everything was in there. So an employee at one of
these stores would get a box it would make twelve salads.
There was an instruction on how to make everyone containers
to put it in. It was direct from We're in
the Salinas Valley in California. So the shelf life was great,
and then they tasted amazing because we were making the
(29:57):
dressing and putting packets of the dressing in there. And
so if you went into, you know, a Sam's Club
and bought a chicken caesar salad for a family of four,
you were literally having the best chicken caesar salad you've
ever had. And so it really kind of opened our
eyes to the applications of what we were capable of
(30:20):
from a dressing perspective. So we started then getting into
other things that aligned with clean food for everybody. That
was kind of our concept. That's why we kept our
price point where we did. We wanted it to be
accessible to everybody.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
We're going to take our second commercial. I just noticed
the time. Everybody will be back in another minute with
Greg Better.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene on
W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com.
Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up
right here on Winning Business Radio.
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Speaker 2 (31:38):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin helenan
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again
is Kevin.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
Helena we're back with Greg Vetter in a disruptor, author
of Undressed. We'll get to that shortly. But now you're
at scale, or you're really at scale before relative to before,
more employees, bigger process investors.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Yep, lots of friends and family, lots of friends of friends.
Never really got into kind of the venture world or
the equity world. We did have some high net worth
individuals that had home offices, but yeah, lots lots of
(32:34):
small checks, some big, but a lot along the along
the way. Because again this was before organic was a thing.
We're talking to buyers in your product was organic. They're like,
it's a fad, and you're like, I don't think it
is a fat you know, clean eating. They're like it's
(32:56):
a fad. I'm like, it tastes better. Don't even worry
about organic or cleaning or whatever. It just tastes better.
People like food that taste good. No one's going to
select something that tastes worse. It's not a thing.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
It is the refrigerated category, by the way, right, Well, it.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Was kind of everywhere at the time, but yeah, I
mean salad dressing specifically, and so we really were just
kind of trailblazing the situation, and uh yeah, lots lots
of investors. We ended up I think at the end
having fifty three.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Wow at your height. How big were you in terms
of sales and staff?
Speaker 3 (33:41):
We were doing seventy million and we had a hundred,
probably between one point fifty and two hundred in terms
of manufacturing workers, salespeople, back office stuff.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
And this is a next I think this question is
somewhat humorous your rocking and roll in national awards. When
did it get difficult? I'm sure it was difficult at
many stages along the way, But when did it become problematic?
When did things become problematic? What did that look like?
Speaker 3 (34:12):
It really came down. So we navigated COVID really well.
We had our own manufacturing plants, and we took care
of our people and they loved working for us, so
it was all good. The supply chain crisis really started
making everybody squirrely. We had just kind of made it
(34:33):
through COVID. Everybody's investments are wacky and some are going
down in a fiery blaze, and we're still plowing through
and things are going great, and then the supply chain
crisis happened, and that's really when everybody just started, you know,
giving their two cents of where we should be going,
(34:54):
what we should be doing. Investors had differences of opinions
to each other, so there started to be a lot
of infighting. They're starting to private but you have a board, Yeah,
we have a board. Yeah. Yeah, So we're navigating that
whole process. People start suing us, you know, to try
(35:15):
and gain control or change board seats, and the next thing,
you know, you know, we had to hire a professional
negotiator to try and results stuff. And we came to
the conclusion like, hey, let's sell it. And I didn't
think the timing was great because of the supply chain
(35:35):
crisis and you just didn't know what was really happening.
But then we hired an investment bank and they valued
the business at between three hundred and five hundred million dollars,
and so everybody really started they go, Okay, this is
how much I own. If it sells for three hundred
this is how much show going to make. And then
the sales process did not go well. So when that
(35:58):
didn't go well, all hell broke loose and everybody just
was basically positioning themselves to take over the entire thing
and then the next thing, you know, we're spending three
hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month on four different
lawsuits and we're just fighting the good fight, and we
(36:19):
had to restructure. And then the restructuring process didn't go
well at all because a couple people in it were
experts and kind of ruined that process as well. And
the next thing, you know, this one just freaking rocket
chip is just nose down on fire. And I'm sitting
(36:41):
there in a conference room handing over this business to
a private equity group for four and a half million dollars,
thinking to myself, how did I get here? What is
going on here?
Speaker 4 (36:58):
You probably didn't answer it that moment, but what did
you figure out?
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Well?
Speaker 4 (37:03):
I wrote a whole book on it, available on Amazon.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Yeah, yep, and I read the audio book hold On.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
The full title is Undressed, The Unfiltered Story of My
failed American Dream and how it led to success. All right,
go ahead.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
What I reflected on was we did a lot right.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
It sounds like it, but we also did a lot wrong.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
And you can really boil it down to trusting the
wrong people and not trusting your gun. And so I
can go back to all of these critical points, these
forks in the road, and I had an opinion of
which way we should go. The board had a difference
(37:48):
of an opinion, or an investor had a difference of
an opinion. And you know, I thought kind of as
hard as I thought was reasonable. But in retrospects go
back and it's like, well, that was the moment. That
was the moment we let them into deep. That was
the moment we allowed that negotiating point to go their way,
(38:12):
thinking that they would be reasonable and you know, give
us something in return. And in reality, I learned a
lot about human behavior that I don't know if I
wanted to learn, but I know a lot about now.
And it's interesting to really kind of see what people
(38:34):
are willing to do for greed and ego. I always
kind of had this, you know, you see movies and
you're like, nobody's.
Speaker 4 (38:43):
Really that bad, greed is good.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Yeah, Well it's like yeah, yeah, And it turns out,
you know, people are willing to do anything.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
Which and these are people you had, you had some
relationship with, whether it was first agree or second degree
or maybe third agree, but people that you knew pretty well.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Yeah, that knew my family and I'm into their Christmas
parties and you know, had a boatload of conversations with
and it was that that was bizarre, you know, because
they knew the impact not only to me but to everybody,
and they just didn't care. And I think that part
(39:22):
was after it all happened, you look back and you go, wow,
that's that's something. And so that's why my beard is gray.
Speaker 4 (39:36):
Just for the audience we shared. We shared a little
moment before a moment. Yeah, we chatted briefly before we
came on air. So it must feel good to know
that those products are still out in some way.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
Right, It's it's nice to know we don't make it anymore, right,
So I don't know how the quality is. I don't
buy it anymore, but it is cool, especially now during
this like massive you know, make America Health again and
they're dominating dies and they're talking about thickening agents for
(40:10):
the first time, and they're talking about natural flavors and
and I'm like, yeah, we were, we were doing that
and uh, you know a little too early, I guess
for that stuff.
Speaker 4 (40:23):
But maybe you could consult with RFK who knows RK Junior,
excuse me, all right? So then you decide. All right, First,
before we get to the book, I wanted to how
long did it take you emotionally, physically even to land
after that?
Speaker 3 (40:38):
You know, I didn't really I didn't dwell on it
too too long. I remember watching an interview of Ross
Perrot talk about Steve Jobs when he got fired from
Apple and why he invested in Steve Jobs' next business,
(40:59):
and he was talking about how here's a guy that
was the most famous, wealthy young guy in the country
was just embarrassed beyond belief and did not go into
his basement and cry about it. For three months, he
picked up the phone and he called me for an
investment for his next business. And I thought about that,
and I go, okay, yeah, like, there's no time to
(41:23):
sit there and cry about it. I've got four kids,
I'm coaching their sports, i have a wife, I have
you know, other things that need to be done right now.
And so I really didn't sit there and dwell on it.
I think complete forgiveness though that came a little later.
(41:45):
That took me a while. I really had to work
through that.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
So I have a similar story. I'm not going to
get into it because this is your show. But I
have a much smaller scale. But I had a bankruptcy
and I didn't even want to go into that town
where the business was just because I took me along
time time to get over that. But yeah, I can
hear what you're saying. So you get to the book
you decided to write, the book, tell us about it
and sort of the lessons you learned and that you
(42:10):
want to share.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
Well, I wasn't even going to write a book, so
I hired a performance coach to help me think through
where I should be spending my time. I actually was
getting a lot of opportunities. People were coming to me
saying like, hey, I know it didn't work out, but
I mean, you grew this thing to a giant, wonderful
entity and we want some help. And so this guy's
(42:34):
super high level. You know, his clients are pro athletes,
edge fund managers. Bon Jovi is one of them, and
some telling them the stories and he goes, are these
stories real? I'm like, yeah, He's like, you need to
write a book, Like why would I want to write
a book about my greatest failure? Yeah? And he goes,
(42:58):
because your outlook is unlike anything that I've seen, Like
you're still positive, you're still healthy, your kids still love you, your
wife still loves you. Like you have some insights through
this pain that I think other people would really appreciate.
And if you write it while the wounds are fresh,
(43:19):
I think it will be more impactful for people because
nobody's out there doing that. Everybody either writes their story
when they're at the end of their career and they
romanticize the pain, or they haven't lived through anything like
this and they just are just basically telling you, you know,
buy my program, or do this or do that. And
(43:41):
so I still wasn't convinced I should write a book,
but I just started randomly putting words down on paper,
really for my kid's sake, And next thing I know,
I had three hundred and fifty pages written, and here we.
Speaker 4 (43:56):
Are a lot to take.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
It took me about a year to write it, it
took about a year to edit and publish it self published.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
Yeah, so I was the homegrown.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Yeah so I got a bunch of I was looking
at the hybrid publishing route just for the ownership, kind
of an increased ownership and intellectual property. And then I
realized that the publishing process is very similar to just
launching a product, and I wanted to own all of
the intellectual property for it, and so I just went
(44:34):
through the publishing process and it was really interesting, and
I found a great custom book publishing group where everything
was basically a la carte and I project managed it
myself and it turned out great. An editor, multiple editors,
so I had an editor kind of for the actual
(44:55):
creation of the book. Then I had a grammatical editor
and that whole workflow, and then I had a legal
editor to make sure I wasn't yale ye.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
So yeah, and obviously a professional photographer, because I'm guessing
you didn't stand behind that little box or whatever that
you're holding there.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
No, I actually did.
Speaker 4 (45:18):
All right, that's good. I love it even more than
than Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
So my creative director modeler, uh, he took the picture
and we actually broke all of those bottles in my barn. Wow,
I didn't stand, you know, in a sock on the
physical broken glass.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
Yeah, but yeah, no, we uh cool, very creative. All right,
it's available on Amazon. I'm going to give the title
more time than I got. A couple other questions here
undressed The unfiltered story of my failed American dream and
how it led to success. What success are we talking
about now?
Speaker 3 (46:00):
So I took all the principles and everything that I learned,
and I wanted to see if it was right. I
wanted to see that principles would work. I didn't want
to just be talking about stuff that couldn't translate. And
so we applied them to the fresh food business and
grew that exponentially. We applied it to one of the
(46:25):
companies from our brand Accelerator, which is a portable toilet business,
and so that's been growing exponentially, and we're launching a
line of consumer packaged goods with it, so wipes and
other things like that. We've we've done it with a
vodka business with and then we're also doing a bunch
(46:48):
of joint venture work with people that have developed companies
or products and they just can't get it done and
they want us to come in and basically just grow
the whole thing. And so there's three or four of
those and it all works, you know. So I think
(47:11):
the part of the success that's so interesting, and I
don't actually really like to use the word success, but
everything that I ever wanted happened after I failed. And
Joseph Campbell has this beautiful quote, the cave you fear
to enter holds the treasure you seek. My cave was failure.
Speaker 4 (47:37):
I saw that, and it was a question I skipped earlier,
fear of failure. Yeah, is the well, so many lessons there,
but go ahead.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Yeah, And that's what fueled me. That's why I worked
so hard, Like, yeah, everybody is ambitious, everybody has goals.
Mine was a mixture of Yes, I want to be successful,
but I think I'm more scared of being a complete failure.
And so it was interesting because in being pushed to
(48:08):
the actual limit, you understand what you're capable of. Right,
anybody can win, but I want to see how you lose.
Speaker 4 (48:21):
Mindset. So we teach, again, not trying to make this
about me, but we teach in our sales consulting behavior
attitude and technique. Behaviors make the dolls. Technique is way
should sound like. Attitude is our belief system. Confidence. That's
probably seventy to eighty percent. Yep, Yeah, I'm with you.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
Yeah, I mean it's all in between the ears. And
I coach kids sports and I've done it since I
was twenty three years old, before I had kids, and
all those guys ended up being unbelievably successful and stay
in touch with me to this day, which is really cool.
But what you see is talent skill. Yeah, it's important
(49:01):
to a degree. The greats work this muscle out right here.
They are working the brain. It is the mental discipline,
it is the focus. It is the ability to metabolize
pain and turn it into fuel. Learn from your failures,
(49:22):
don't make the same mistake twice, and keep moving forward
against all odds.
Speaker 4 (49:27):
That is awesome. That is awesome. We have to end
right here. Who in the listening and viewing audiences should
reach out and that's Gregoryvetter dot com. Who should reach out?
Speaker 3 (49:36):
And why anybody that has a dream that they want
to follow, because my story is about business, but it
was really about following a dream.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
Yeah, And the easiest way to reach out is the
website Gregory vettor Gregoryvetter.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
Dot com, or on social media. I'm on Instagram, I'm
on TikTok, I'm on LinkedIn. I have a social media
team that checks everything. So if you send an I
literally get it and.
Speaker 4 (50:01):
I'll respond fantastic. I'm sorry we went short. We didn't
go short. It just was a good really good conversation.
Thank you for your time and we appreciate you being here.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (50:11):
Great, my pleasure, my pleasure, and thanks everybody for listening
and watching. Once again, this is a show about business
and business challenges successes too. If you've got concerns about
the sales effectiveness or company of your company, whether your
sales team is you or small or it's large, feel
free to reach out to me or you can drop
me a note Kevinatwinning Business Radio dot com. Our company
(50:32):
is Winning Incorporated. We're part of Sandler Training. We developed
sales teams at the high achievers and sales leaders into
true coaches and mentors. We're not right for everybody, but hey,
maybe we should have a conversation. Thank you as always
the producer and engineer one, Thank you one for another
job well done. Be sure to join us next week
Monday May twelfth. My guests will be entrepreneur and rising
(50:52):
star architect Matthew Arnold, founder of the boutique architectural practice Arnold.
And until then, this is Kevin Hallan. In you have
been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host Kevin Helenan.
If you missed any part of this episode. The podcast
is available on Talk for Podcasting and iHeartRadio. For more
(51:13):
information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio dot com
or check us out on social media. Tune in again
next week and every Monday at four pm Eastern Time
to listen live to Winning Business Radio on W four
CY Radio w four cy dot com. Until then, let's
succeed where others have failed and win in business with
(51:34):
Kevin Helenan and Winning Business Radio
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