August 24, 2023 • 45 mins
Michael Bowen is co-founder and COO of Speakeasy, the platform that's revolutionizing the world of online alcohol and e-commerce. He shares his journey, from working with digital first companies to e-commerce startups, and how his passion birthed Speakeasy. Learn about how his move to Shopify entirely transformed their business, allowing them to manage a staggering 300+ brands more effectively and enable these brands to tell their own story.
We unravel how challenging the 'old guard' can create opportunities in the digital world. Michael unpacks the power of Shopify's network effect and how it aids alcohol merchants in customer acquisition.
Michael shares insights on the power of collaboration, the importance of execution, and the benefits of sharing your playbook. He also gives us a glimpse into his experience of working with large agencies and the impact it had on customer experience as he scaled his business.
So, pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink, and prepare for the blueprint on disrupting business of online alcohol.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey everyone, thank you for listening to the
drinkscom podcast, the businessof online alcohol.
I'm your host, brandon Amoroso,and today I'm talking with
Michael Bowen, the co-founderand CEO of Speak Easy actually a
very close partner of Drinks.
Thank you for coming on theshow, michael, really excited to
have you here.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Yeah, likewise, brandon.
Thanks for having me.
I know it's been a work inprogress, but we finally made it
work, huh.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
You know, scheduling is always the biggest issue with
these things and I've got thewhole like podcast and studio
set up back in Miami.
But when you're only there 40%of the time because you're
traveling for work and not whatnot, it makes things difficult.
But I appreciate yourflexibility.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
So at some point we're going to have to get you
down to San Diego.
It's part of some of thatpercentage.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I need to come back.
I definitely miss it, and Imiss some of my favorite
restaurants too.
So we jump into things, though.
Can you give everybody justbackground on yourself and Speak
Easy?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, 100%.
So you know Michael Bowen, colco-founder, and my background
has really been digital first,everything from car parts in the
automobile days of the firstfast and the furious I'm sure
that probably predates some ofthe people watching this podcast
right now and listening to itto the digital ad space and ad
(01:20):
age through San Diego.
From there I committed to a fewe-commerce startups and a lot
of people said that alcohol wastough to ship and I didn't
believe them because one of mye-commerce startups was actually
in flooring.
So that was a wake up call inthe LTL and FTL world.
But yeah, I've been workingwith Speak Easy now with my
business partner, for close toseven years.
(01:42):
And that quick elevator pitch onwho and what Speak Easy is.
We're really a technology andlogistics platform and we help
work with all three tiers at theend of the day and our goal is
to really help be adifferentiator in the space to
offer centralized fulfillment.
So every brand that we workwith, we help them go beyond the
bottle, whether it be limitedreleases, open box pieces,
(02:06):
things that are unique to anexperience of telling their own
story At the end of the day,anything we can do to help
empower brands and get them totake back the storytelling.
That's kind of been our focus,so very excited about it.
We're over 300 brands now andlooking to bring on more.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
And I know you made a decision I can't remember the
timing on that, but you've gotall of these brands platformed
on Shopify.
Now, what made you?
What did it look like to start?
And then how did you sort ofend up here where you're like,
yeah, we're going to go all inon Shopify as the platform to
manage for our brand.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah Well, this could be a bad word these days, but
we started off with Magento as amassive storefront and it's
interesting.
We felt that we needed theflexibility to just build
everything for ourselves on theground up, and we had our own
Magento developers and we gotprobably a good 160, 170 stores
(03:05):
and it just got to the pointwhere it was very difficult to
manage.
You're doing a multi-storeimplementation and you have
eight different servers runningMagento instances and it just
didn't become scalable.
And then, all of a sudden,server maintenance is on who
it's on us, right.
And so there came anopportunity to really leverage
Shopify, which a lot of peoplewould consider best in class,
(03:27):
and being able to take thingslike server redundancy and
support it, take that off of ourplate and really focus on
design, conversion, marketingand getting our brands off the
ground really became key to thatdecision.
So at the end of the day, itwas a no-brainer, but on a
different podcast we can talkabout some of the battle wounds
from the Magento piece.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yes, I can imagine that your day-to-day is probably
significantly more streamlinednow that you're on Shopify 100%.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I will say the biggest thing that's helped my
day-to-day has been us growingand being able to hire people.
I was originally helping design, build out QA, get test orders
in.
Now I get to work with a greatteam internally and externally
to get all that stuff off theground.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Yeah, have you seen, and remind me, when did
Speakeasy get founded or wasfounded?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Do I have a second for a quick story on that,
because I think people will beblown away.
So we've been around for a whilenow I want to say eight or nine
years.
My business partner, josh,hates the fact that I don't
remember dates.
Say with my girlfriend.
I can't remember dates to savemy life.
So that is a check on thenot-good side of Michael.
(04:45):
Speakeasy started as a craftcocktail box.
Think of a blue apron back inthe day.
I'm not sure how many peoplestill use blue apron, but the
idea was to send cocktail boxes.
You had ingredients.
You had everything you need tomake drinks, something to share
with your friends.
Create like a community.
Right, I'd order it and you'dcome over, brandon, and we'd
hang out and we'd make theseawesome craft cocktails.
(05:07):
Well, I had interviewed withJosh and his previous business
partner to be a CMO of thatcompany and went through the
whole process.
I got ghosted for three monthsbefore I got a call back say hey
, all right, we decided to keepgoing forward, but shipping
fruit sucks.
I don't know how anybody dealswith produce.
That was one of the worstexperiences ever, but our brands
(05:32):
at the time loved it because itwas a great marketing vehicle
for them.
Right, they were able to knowwho was getting the boxes.
They could put cool littlecards and inserts and could
really speak to these customersmoving forward.
We said, okay, great, let'shelp them build another vehicle.
We started off with a very smallmarketplace.
Then they said your marketplaceis the same as everybody else's
.
This isn't what we want.
We're not getting.
(05:52):
I'm paying to send people toyour site where they can go buy
other products.
We're working very closely withone of our early partners.
And then in a moment hit wherethey said why don't you just
build us a website?
You own it, you manage it.
And then that's where the lightbulb turned on.
At that point we quicklypivoted my e-commerce background
previously from building thingsfrom the ground up, including
(06:14):
the technology and fulfillment,for flooring really helped us
triple charge all of that.
And so going through thatthat's how we kind of got to
where we are today was westarted one place, somebody had
a need, they came up with anidea and we were just quick
enough to work through it.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
I feel like that is a I mean it's not just for this
industry, but I think in thisindustry, more so than most a
lot of the companies I talked to, they started off doing one
thing and then they ended updown another path, and it might
have been they tried two orthree different paths before
they finally got to theircurrent iteration because of, I
(06:51):
think, all the nuances andcomplexities that come with
Beverdahlgall.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
So when I started this company, or when I was
eventually made founder withJosh, I didn't have gray hair to
give you the idea of thecomplexities and how difficult
it's been, and so it's been alearning experience, and I would
say this for anybody that's indigital or an entrepreneur, and
I'm sure you could speak to thisas well don't get so hung up on
making something perfect.
Perfect doesn't exist.
(07:17):
It's always gonna grow, it'sgonna build and it's gonna mold
itself, and I think a lot ofpeople try and get the perfect
product out there as opposed tosaying, okay, here's where we're
at right now, let's getfeedback, let's create
iterations right For those thatwent to college your MVP, your
minimally viable product,getting that out there and
running and moving to getfeedback.
I think a lot of people arelike, no, it needs to be perfect
, and that was something weactually argued about initially
(07:40):
early on, and then finally, weput it out there and got
feedback and really helped usget to where we are today.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, I think that helps a lot with product market
fit.
And if you're just building ina vacuum and then you bring
something to market, you have noidea whether or not people are
actually not like it.
You know, would they have donethis or that?
And that's why I think you haveso much access to data now in
today's age with all thetechnology Even for us, as an
(08:07):
example from more of a B2Bstandpoint, with the drinks app,
you can install in optimizelyor something onto your app so
that you can see.
You know, it's one thing tohear from the merchants, it's
another thing to actually watchrecorded sessions or heat maps
of how they're actuallyleveraging and using the
solution.
And you're like even littlethings.
(08:29):
Oh my God, they've clicked thisarea like I don't know 50% of
the time, but it's not actuallyhyperlinked to something Like
let's fix that.
It's not even a button.
Yeah, like the little minutiaof that is all the way to.
You know more broader, generalthings that can be implemented
and updated, but you can't getany of that no one can by just
creating something in a vacuum.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, and you know you, bringing up data is a very
interesting piece because eventoday, I think so many brands
within alcohol and things ofthat nature they're behind on
data.
What to do with data, how toaggregate it.
Once I have it, what am Isupposed to do with it?
It's like great, I have thisFacebook pixel.
How does this help me?
And that's been a reallyinteresting side to see how far
(09:13):
behind alcohol really is onleveraging that right.
Coming from the digital adspace, everything that a lot of
brands are executing now hadbeen key to business strategy
plans 10 years ago.
If you were to look at theautomotive space or lead
generation and some of the moreout there, digital executions
that existed.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Yeah Well, coming into the alcohol industry as an
outsider, as am I, what wouldhave been your biggest gotchas
or things that?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Everything.
Everything has been a gotchabecause both my business partner
and I we have no alcoholexperience, right, we jumped
into this thinking, oh, this iseasy, let's just build it and
just go, and we always joke.
If we were to know all the hoopsthat we had to jump to just get
(10:10):
to this point today, would wehave done this back in the day
or would it have been ingeniousenough?
But I think that's what made usunique, and you've probably
dealt with this, brandon, whereyou have the old guard out there
, you have a lot of the oldpeople not old people, but
people that have been in theindustry long enough, the
seasoned professionals and theyjust say no, you can't do it
this way, you can't do it thisway.
(10:31):
And our job is to say we'regonna try this.
Okay, we can't do it this way,let's think about it this way.
How about this way or this way?
And we constantly challenge itbecause I don't think we have
the hard-coded roadmaps thatsome of these grizzled veterans
have out there, right, and Ithink that makes us unique.
It makes everything you guysare doing and drinks unique as
well.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Yeah, I mean we can ask questions and I think it
holds true in any industry evennot alcohol like an outsider's
coming in testing assumptions,and alcohol is unique in that
there's quite literally likerules and regulations, whereas
in a lot of other industriesit's more such assumptions that
you're testing.
But I think that's what makesit fun.
(11:13):
But what are you most excitedabout within the alcohol
industry this year, going intonext year?
It feels like there's a lot ofmovements and acceleration
around what you're trying to dowith helping brands generate
(11:34):
more of a direct relationshipwith the customer, especially
spirit brands that historicallyhave been boxed out of doing so,
unlike wineries.
And what are some of the thingsthat you're seeing in the
market and what are you mostexcited for?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
I would say this I think the market is interesting.
I think right now you could seea lot of collaboration with
people that are doing this.
A lot of our brands are nowstarting to open up their roll
of decks in their book to say,hey, for example, we worked on a
collaboration with Whistlepickand Pit Viper, right, and they
did a really awesome box, a coolstory behind the product.
(12:12):
You got a bottle and you got thesunglasses.
And I think seeing more of thatout there and that opportunity
for people to say, okay, now wecan cross-pollinate our brands,
we can integrate each other'sproduct and really push
something out there that'sunique from the consumer
standpoint.
Our they're used to the liquorstore experience right, I go
(12:33):
into Bob's liquor, I go buysomething and I take it home, as
opposed to, oh, I can go findthis limited release, I can
actually get access to it now,and there's a cool poker chip or
a scratch off or some othertype of experience that allows
these brands to communicate andtell their story better.
I can see more and more brandsgetting comfortable with doing
(12:54):
that.
I think initially, when brandskind of got into e-commerce,
everything was just like, okay,our site's up, people can buy
product and that's it.
What do you mean?
We can advertise.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
We don't wanna do that.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
I don't know if you're too young for this.
You ever watched that movieField of Dreams.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
I mean I've heard of it.
I don't think I've watched it.
I'm gonna look it up right nowthough that's fair.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
there's a famous line .
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Oh, 89.
Yeah, that was a little bit.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
What year were you born?
Do I even wanna know?
Speaker 1 (13:25):
It depends on what year you were born, but I was
born in 97.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Shit.
I don't know if I'm allowed tosay bad words, but I'm an 81
baby and so I remember seeingthis movie and their famous line
is if you build it, they willcome.
It's talking about buildingthis baseball stadium.
A lot of people in the alcoholspace had that perception.
Hey, if we build it, our brandby itself is gonna be strong
enough and people are gonna come.
They forget there's otherpeople that are saying the same
(13:54):
exact thing.
And when you have thate-commerce, e-co-spirit, like
you're not differentiatingyourself, you're not giving
yourself a reason to stand outfrom the crowd or just stand out
with the consumer, with yourregular product.
And that's something I thinkit's gonna be a big change this
coming year is I think brandsare really gonna start
differentiating their offeringsand what they're putting out in
the digital world to drivecustomers to their sites and to
(14:17):
purchase their product.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Yeah, it's not enough to just throw up a website.
I mean, that's what most havedone up until this point.
If you look at most winerywebsites as an example, they're
just there for the sake of beingthere.
It's not a concentrated effortaround.
How are we pushing visitors tothe website?
How are we converting customers?
How are we nurturingrelationships?
But I think that's part of thething that I'm most excited
(14:41):
about with Shopify is how muchthey're investing into helping
their brands with customeracquisition and the shop sort of
ecosystem and the networkeffects that you get, whether
it's the shop app, the shop cashoffers, like the ability for
brands to say you know what, I'mwilling to pay $10 for a new
customer and then Shopify goesout and figures out how to
(15:02):
acquire customers within thatShopify audiences.
Pushing the audiences back toFacebook for them.
I mean the whole thing is.
It's important to them becauseof the fact that more GMV means
more you know process.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
They can take their cut Exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
It's in their best interest to help their brands
acquire customers.
And that's, like my biggestthing when talking to these
alcohol merchants, like whichplatforms out there right now,
aside from Shopify, are gonnahelp you do that?
It's not Magento, it's notSalesforce, it's not big
commerce, it's definitely notthe point solutions that are
currently servicing the alcoholindustry.
(15:41):
It is Shopify.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah, no, agree to 100%, and that was in full
transparency.
I don't think we understood howbig of a partner Shopify was
gonna become for us.
You know, when you come onboard.
For us it was originally justall right, we get the tech stack
, that's all we really need,that's all we really care about.
But they've actually beenextremely encouraging with
(16:06):
regards to app recommendations,us helping figure out how to do
certain implementations andsolves and things of that nature
, and I will say they probablyturned out to be a bigger
partner than we anticipated andwe're super stoked about that.
And you don't get that fromanyone, I mean, unless like
Magento, and you're gonna spenda shitload all the time all over
the place and hire your owndevelopers, maybe, but then it's
(16:28):
on you and again the gray hairsstarted somewhere and I think
it goes back to that.
But I would agree that Shopifyis definitely the platform
everybody looks up to and it'seasy.
And I'm not gonna say it'sperfect Nothing's ever perfect
out there but it's got thebiggest upside for a lot of our
partners.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Even just the other day we had a winery that's my
reading over to the drinks appand they had a question that
they needed to update on theirproduct page and two years ago
that would have taken a coupleof hours of development time
Right.
But with Metafields that theyjust recently released, I was
(17:09):
able to help them and do it forthem in like in five minutes and
I have no development skillswhatsoever and I thought that
was just pretty cool to see likethat quick of an evolution.
Like this product continues toget better and better and more
user friendly and I think it'ssignificantly easier to build
products for SMBs and work yourway upmarket than to go the
(17:33):
other way.
Like I don't think I've seen atleast not in commerce.
Like you don't see Magentogoing downmarket, you don't see
Salesforce going downmarket, butyou have companies like Shopify
who built very user friendlysolutions and now they're adding
on the extra bells and whistlesand the extra flexibility and
like checkout, composability andthings like that that services
the enterprise merchants.
But then the enterprisemerchants are like wow, this is
(17:55):
so much easier than you know thesolutions that I'm used to
having to deal with.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, no, I agree, and I think that's probably
something that surprised us thisyear, because we've been able
to take advantage of a lot ofthose additional upgrades.
Right, it's all, right, we'regonna make it.
Here's the everyday Joe likecup of coffee, and then here's
your espresso, and then here'syour cappuccino.
I'm sure there's some coffeepeople that are like dude, you
got it wrong.
(18:21):
It's the other way around.
It's always cappuccino thenespresso, but you can get what
I'm saying, and I'm lookingforward to that, also for this
coming year, as it relates toShopify and some of the cool
stuff we're gonna be able to do.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
So let's say, I'm a naysayer, like I'm a brand who's
like.
No, I just sell through, youknow, my standard retail channel
, and I don't want an onlinepresence.
What's your rebuttal?
What's your, what's your,what's your-.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Oh see, that's this is when you wanna interview Josh
.
So really quick, between mybusiness partner and I, we
always call you.
Know, josh, I always refer toas the shiny dress shoes.
You know he's a salesman.
He understands everything thatwe're doing.
He's the front end.
He handles outsidecommunication on purpose.
You know I'm the dirty workboots, I'm typically behind the
(19:08):
scenes and I don't normally getto talk to a ton of people,
brandon, so I'm very excitedjust that I get let out today.
But what I would say is this youknow, as we've worked with
brands, it's we're not foreverybody.
Digital isn't for everybody.
You know already.
By that response I would saythat you're not necessarily
(19:29):
ready to take the jump right,because ultimately, we wanna
work with brands that say look,we wanna differentiate ourselves
, we wanna be the premier insertalcohol brand in the space.
We know that digital can be astrategy for telling our story,
getting content out there andhelping us grow Boots on the
ground, in store and onlineright.
(19:49):
I think a lot of people forgetthat you can leverage digital to
drive in store sales 100% rightfrom the neck tags that are
used to drive a show proof ofpurchase and get a sticker pack
or something of that nature todrive, leverage, digital
advertising to put people on theground for special events that
you're doing on top of gettingpeople in those events and then
use QR codes and ultimately,hopefully, buy online at some
(20:12):
point.
And so for me, somebody, that'sa naysayer and they're like, oh
, I'm just stuck in my ways, I'mlike cool.
Well, when you're no longerstuck in your ways, you know,
feel free to get the call,because that's you're gonna get
passed up at that stage and wedeal with that on a regular
basis You'd be surprised, yeah,that's always, it's always
(20:32):
refreshing to see you knowsomebody who you spoke with.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
They sort of have to come back around and they
learned it the hard way.
And yeah, and you know it's notideal, but the it's Not in the
it's not a perfect example, butI mean there's.
There's companies I've reached,I reached out to back in like
2018.
Well, still in school, I waslike you know, put them in and
(20:58):
put them in, putting them intomy cold outreach email sequences
.
You know, not a, not a single,not a single response from them
and then, three or four yearslater, like there they are in
the inbox.
You know we want to work withelectric and you know it's not
like a I told you so type ofthing.
It's it's more so, just nevergratifying to see that.
You know, over the course ofthat time, now it's all come
(21:20):
full circle and you know theythey sort of led themselves to
that decision.
So I think is that's the bestplace to be, like not having to
do like a hard sell.
Like you know, yeah, like we'lltalk to you like a year or two.
We're gonna go focus oneverybody else who understands
that this is an opportunity andand you know, maybe we're wrong?
I don't think we are, but youknow, you can never, you never,
(21:41):
yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
There's.
There's a terrible Well, it'snot a terrible sentence.
I guess a lot of people usethis sentence right, and I guess
you could use this in thatsales pitch for anybody that
comes back right.
It's like the best time to plana tree was 20 years ago.
The second best time is to doit now.
It's like cool.
We talked about it a while ago.
Now you're ready to do it,let's go, let's hit the ground
running.
And you know good news for youwe're even better at what we're
(22:03):
doing now than we were back then, so we can help supercharge
what you're trying to activate.
But yeah, it's.
It's always gratifying whenthey come back.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Speaking of that, I know you, you raised your your
seed around earlier this year.
How has that helped youAccelerate all the work that
you're you're currently doing,and what was that decision
process like?
Because you obviously are abootstrap for For many years and
you know raising money comeswith its own host of you know
fun things to deal with so Ihave the beard here.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
The reason I'm balled up the raise no, I have to give
my best partner a ton of crediton that.
Josh really led a lot of thethe raise with the seed round
and Getting those funds in andwhat I?
What I would say is, especiallyearlier on the, the money that
you bring on, you want to makesure it's coming from people
that you trust and that arestrategic to help you grow.
(22:56):
One of our earliest investorsgoat rodeo they're still
involved now have been afantastic resource for us as
we've worked through everythingyou know from there.
You bring in trog holly, youknow rise of the rest and best
bev and what you find early on.
If you bring in the rightresources and the right investor
, they all jump to help you.
(23:18):
Now, of course, they have moneyinvolved and they want to see
their their money work out, butthey've genuinely been awesome
to work with because they're wesay, hey, we're struggling with
this or we have these ideas.
You know Josh and I like we'renot getting along, we can't
solve this thing, and then youknow they're very good at saying
, hey, have you thought aboutthis?
If you thought about this,here's an external resource we
can recommend that can help youwork through that, and I think
(23:40):
that's kind of been the thebiggest win through all of this
Is that they've helped usidentify where and how to scale
and the proper priorities whereagain, josh and I come not from
the industry and there's a lotof things we don't know.
We'll be the first to tell youthat, and that's kind of been
the big learning through all ofthat as well.
Now how have we used thosefunds?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
teams scaling technology, working through
building out warehouses and thengetting things off the ground
to help support our brands andpartners as best as we can the
thing that I enjoy the most fromyou know, the companies that
I've invested in is the, youknow, either monthly or
quarterly sort of investorupdates.
(24:21):
And I think, like, if you havea solid group of strategic
advisors, investors or whatever,and they see that and you just
know you're open, they're allthere to jump in and help you
out.
But then there's like the flipside of the coin where you have
some companies who don't do thatat all and then maybe they're
having a Big issue and then theycome at like the absolute last
possible second to get thatsupport and it's like, well,
(24:44):
this is too late, like thisshould have been.
There's been three monthsbefore that there's.
There's nothing wrong withbeing transparent and, you know,
leveraging the resources thatyou have and Never surprise your
investors with anything goodnews or bad news.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Keep them in the loop and keep them stoked about
stuff, because Typically if it'sa surprise, it's a bad thing
and it's not gonna go over well.
So for anybody that's buildingsomething right now, better to
over communicate than to undercommunicate.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Well, can I think that would apply to
relationships, everythingoutside, as well?
Well, in terms of one thingthat I wanted to Know, really
dig in on, is actually how, ifsomebody listening is a, an
alcohol brand, like, how do theyactually, you know, start
(25:36):
working with speak easy, whatdoes it actually look like for
them Outside of you know?
Now they get the Shopifystorefront, what is, what do
they actually have to do to beenabled?
Speaker 2 (25:49):
They need to be all in man.
Like the one thing Brandon, I'msure you've worked with these
brands.
You know winery spirits, youknow wherever it may be, you you
can't Play with the system likethis.
Like you have to be ready for aroadmap, you need to put the
time in, you know it's gonna be,it's gonna cost.
Like you have to invest in yourbusiness it doesn't just grow
and you have to be ready tocreate the content that's needed
(26:11):
.
You know, and I think a lot ofbrands that come on board with
speak easy.
We're very upfront.
It's like look, we're cool toget our fees, but if you're not
willing to invest a minimum ofthirty, five hundred dollars a
month in advertising, you're notgonna win.
You're not gonna gain thetraction or the sales that
validate working with us in thefirst place.
And those are kind of the big IDon't call them slaps in the
(26:35):
face with the, the big wake-upmoments for a lot of brands.
And we've actually gone as faras to now really implement that
very early on in our salesprocess to say, hey, but this is
what you need to expect.
Your costs are not just speakeasy in the platform and having
our account management team.
It's you need to invest inadvertising or you're not gonna
go far.
If you don't invest in tellingyour story, your mezcal brand is
(26:59):
gonna be the same as theirmezcal brand and You're gonna
lose because no one no one has astory to follow and then
they'll end up just churninganyways.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
So I think you know, yep, it's fascinating digging
into that and really knowingyour, your like ideal client
profile, because you could getcarried away with just trying to
onboard as many merchants aspossible to like show that
growth.
But then you got a leaky bucketbecause none of them were the
right ones to come on board tobegin with, and and the most and
the Worst is you're servicingthe wrong brands, right?
Speaker 2 (27:32):
We've all done that.
I'm sure you guys have donethat through Everything you've
done to learn and get where youare, where you realize, well
shit, I've been working onJohnny whiskey over here.
We've been investing tons ofhours, yet they don't sell more
than 10 bottles a month.
It's not worth our effort to dothat.
And that's where the importanceand the value of that proper
(27:53):
partner coming on board.
And that's why I mentionedearlier when you talk to a brand
, if they don't say that digitalis part of their bigger
strategy, they're probably notgoing to be the right partner or
succeed with us, because it'skey to success with speaking.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.
One thing I want to cover aswell is this upcoming
opportunity, as we talked aboutcustomer acquisition with
Shopify a little bit, and thenwe have the merging of two
things here.
You have what Drinks has donehistorically, which has turned
(28:27):
any merchant into an alcoholmerchant, and then you have
Speakeasy, who's able to enableall these brands, especially on
distilled side, with their owndirect-to-consumer presence.
I'm looking forward to the daywhere let's say what's one of
your top whiskey brands?
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Oh, we can put Whistle Pig out there.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Great.
So Whistle Pig, when WhistlePig can be like and you, as well
as the other, actually hold on,let me take a quick step
backwards.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
I'm going to love Whistle Pig.
They're great.
I'm actually drinking uhproduct promo for a ranch, one
of our partners.
So I would love to switch toProRange because they're up and
coming and they're kicking a lotof ass and so I want to give
them some screen trade right now.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
I see you have your dog in the background there as
well.
I have mine currently.
They're cruising aroundsomewhere.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
If they weren't so big, I'd pick both of them up to
give them some screen time, butthey're too heavy for this old
man.
They're 65 pounds each.
I'm like, yeah, I can do it the.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
uh, what kind of dogs do you have?
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Australian shepherds.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Okay, awesome.
Well, you're in Cinebio, whichis the best place ever, I feel
like for a dog.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
They're a little furry, uh, but quick little
story.
Uh, my oldest pup is named Mia.
My youngest pup is namedWallace.
I'm a big Pulp Fiction fan, soMia Wallace is Uma Thurman's
character.
Took me a while to put ittogether, but yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Um, well, back to your product placement.
I mean it'll be reallyinteresting to see when those
stores are able to start sellingtheir products on other Shopify
stores, which isn't a novelconcept.
The ability to, you know, dolike cross-store selling or
whatever, but there's a lot ofcomplications when you try to do
(30:14):
it with alcohol for all theaforementioned reasons around.
You know rules and regulationsand whatnot, but I see that as
being an absolutely ginormousdriver of growth and also a huge
selling point for brands whoare looking, you know, or
actually it's almost an entirelynew channel for them to sell
their as opposed to direct toconsumer, as opposed to going
(30:35):
through retail, you can now gothrough, you know, other online
storefronts and give visibilityfor, for your company.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
So really quick.
I think you jinxed me, becausenow that you mentioned the pups,
now Wallace is over here.
He's like, okay, I need someattention.
But to get back to that, tothat point, I think this is
where a partnership andcontinued growth between Drinks
and Speakeasy and other partnersout there is key, because what
happens is when you get, whenyou get people playing nice
(31:04):
together, all of a sudden we cansay, hey, Drinks, you have a
lot of implementations, we havea significant amount of
inventory and we have theconnections of product to say,
great, somebody plugs in, theyinstall this app, they can build
their own online marketplaceand maybe they're great at
digital marketing and they cancreate an online retailer and
we're able to do the fulfillment, provide the product and do
(31:25):
some of those instant thingsthat a lot of I mean, let's be
honest, go back years.
Affiliate marketers that's whatthey did.
Right, they created theirarbitrage sites, they did
everything they could toduplicate and replicate and if
you could make that easier, Ithink a lot of these craft
brands Frey Ranch, for examplecould take advantage of.
Okay, great, there's a ton ofpeople out there that think
(31:46):
they're great at advertising.
They'll sell our product andyou make a commission on
something based on the site, oryou just price it outrageous and
if you can get it to convert,you get it to convert and I
think everybody wins at thatstage.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah, the playing nice is something that I
benefited a lot from in buildingand scaling the agency, but I
think it's a newer concept tothe alcohol industry, playing
nice Very much, so it feels likecoming in and it's like we
don't talk to anybody elseexcept ourselves.
(32:20):
We're in our own organizationand I don't want to live that
way.
I feel like it's better, justin general, if you're
collaborative and, at the end ofthe day, if you need to be that
guarded over your company is itreally that great of a company
or a product offering that youhave?
So that's sort of my thought onit.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah, no, I agree, and I think that everyone thinks
there's such a unique secretsauce to everything and I
honestly think it comes back toexecution at the end of the day.
Now, I'm not going to say so.
Remember the Titans?
I think it was.
Remember the Titans.
Wait, is that movie too old foryou as well?
Speaker 1 (33:01):
That was 2000.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
You're Googling it right now, aren't you?
I did.
You're Googling it right now.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
I watched it when I was three.
No, I haven't seen that one.
No, I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Well, there's that scene.
I think Denzel Washington'scharacter says look, I'll give
them our playbook.
I don't care if they know whatwe're going to do, because we're
going to execute better, and Ithink that's how a lot of people
should build their companies.
I'm not saying definitely giveyour playbook out there, but
there's a lot of ways to get tothe finish line and I think
everyone thinks they do itbetter than everyone else, which
(33:29):
is fair, and I guess that'skind of what I'm hitting at by
saying we can execute better.
But I'm not going to say thatit's significantly different,
and it's one of those thingswhere the plain-nice mentality
of hey, there's billions andbillions of dollars out there as
it relates to e-commerce,especially from the spirit side
that there's a lot that we cantap into, and both my business
(33:51):
partner I, josh, we're firmbelievers that all ships can
rise with the tide and we don'tneed to worry about sinking
anybody at the moment.
I really think it's aboutbending together and creating a
better experience for theseconsumers.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, I mean it's a rapidly growing category and
just one that has lagged behindgeneral e-commerce adoption.
You see, it's like 10 yearsbehind, but it's growing just as
quickly as E-com was 10 yearsago for other types of products.
So the writing is on the walland those that get out ahead of
it are going to benefit.
(34:26):
Last question I have for youbefore.
I have two fun ones, like whathas the?
And not to make this acompletely ridiculous
self-promotional plug, but whathas your experience been like
leveraging the drinks app withinShopify?
What are some of the headachesand pain points?
(34:47):
All right, we're going to cutthis in post-production.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
No, no, I will tell you this.
Have there been a couple bumps?
Sure, everybody within a newpartnership.
I think what a lot of peopledon't know is that we were
exploring a new path and a newroute to market with what we
were offering as a combinedsolution, especially on the
speakeasy side.
But your team, the drinks team,has been amazing to work with,
because any issue we've had,anything we've worked through
(35:13):
integration, everyone's beenlike cool, we can solve for it.
This way, we can do this, wecan do this.
And the collaboration bit, Ithink, has been extremely
encouraging and positive forboth of our teams and I'm
looking forward to identifyingthose additional hidden
landmines of opportunity.
You step on it all of a suddenit explodes and I'm like, oh
crap, it cost me a leg.
(35:33):
But I think there's a ton ofopportunity here and we can
learn from a couple of things,and I think that's probably
where we're going to get to herereally soon and we're super
stoked on the partnershipoverall.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Yeah, I think it's invaluable as a software
provider to have those partnerswho are willing to dig in and
also have the volume where we'reable to iterate across all of
your storefronts, which allowsus to test and learn a lot
faster than if you're doing on aone-to-one basis.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yeah, definitely agreed.
Question for you when are yougoing to grow a beard?
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Whenever I can transplant the hair on in my
face I don't have the ability todo so, unfortunately I just
look very scraggly.
There's a spot right here thatit just doesn't even come in.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
It's still hair.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Yeah, so I'm only going to be able to lose the
hair on the top of my head fromthe beverage alcohol industry,
not the gray beard you got me onthat one.
Before I ask my two funquestions for you, do you have
any questions for me?
Let's turn the tables.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Why alcohol?
What got you here?
I fell into it on accident, sothat was my excuse.
But what got you this deep intothe bed of the Alk Space?
Speaker 1 (37:01):
So I started electric .
It was just Shopify, whateverother matter, category, anything
, and we did everything, like awebsite, seo, content, ads, you
name it.
We did everything.
Over time I continued to becomemore and more refined and then
eventually got to the pointwhere it's just purely customer
(37:21):
experience and retentionmarketing for Shopify plus
brands, and we were at about 40,45 people at the time and
there's sort of like a decisionto make Do I want to continue to
try and grow and scale this?
Do I want to look at potentialmergers or roll up opportunities
to become an even larger agency?
(37:42):
But I felt like that was sortof the number where you were big
enough to be dangerous but youweren't so big where your
quality was just really poor.
Because one of the main reasonswe grew to that point outside of
tech partnerships and justtaking a little bit of a
different approach to things isbecause the agencies that were
the 200, the 300, the 500 personshops they were, you know,
(38:06):
churning through clients leftand right, because you know,
let's use an example like maybeone of them was paying one of
the big guys like 20 grand amonth For them.
That's probably, like you know,your C list client.
For us that was the A client,so they got our A team or is
there getting the C team fromthe large agency?
And so I had to make a decisionaround whether we wanted to you
(38:28):
know, turn into that or not.
And we had opportunities inearly 2022 to do those things do
a roll up, get acquired byanother agency or a couple of
aggregators, but the drinksopportunity with Shopify and
then also the ability to comeover onto the software side,
sort of take all the learningsfrom working as a top partner
(38:50):
with Klaviyo and recharge andShopify and then get to build
out our own sort of go to marketwith a Shopify app With the
past 10 years of drinks workwith, I mean, like Fortune 20
businesses.
I mean they have, like thestamp of approval from Walmart.
I can't even imagine you knowthe grind that it took to get to
that point.
And so we're coming in.
(39:11):
We get to do all the fun stuff,like now that you know it's in
market and we've put it into theShopify ecosystem.
It's sort of the best of bothworlds, because I've always been
really passionate about wineand software and now I get to
take all the experience fromShopify and merge those two
together and that's really thepoint of this podcast as well,
too is to, you know, bring thesetwo divergent, you know, I'd
(39:33):
say industries together.
You have a lot of like commerceexperts, you have a lot of
alcohol experts, but you don'treally have anybody sitting in
the middle to help bridge thegap.
And so that's where I saw theopportunity for Electric is to
act as that conduit, thateducator, that enablement arm
for an entire industry and dosomething that's never been done
before, which is no knock toyou know, the agency, but
(39:59):
there's a lot of marketingagencies.
There's only one, drinkscom.
And so that was really whatexcited me and, you know,
dragged me into this, and nowI'm getting to learn a lot.
I mean, it's I catch myselfsometimes because people ask me
you know, describe the drinksapp or describe this, and like I
just start rambling on and onand I'm like they have no idea
(40:22):
what you're talking about, likeyou need to reign yourself in.
Just alcohol is complicated.
There's a lot of rules, all theway down to the zip code.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Like let's just end it there and we solve it.
That's it and we solve it.
There you go.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Yep, you don't need to know anything else.
Yeah, that's sort of how I fellinto it.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Awesome.
No, appreciate that.
I actually never knew any ofthat stuff, so that's cool to
hear that background.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Yeah well, fun question for you what's your
favorite wine memory?
Or could be alcohol memory?
Speaker 2 (40:53):
I'll say I don't have a wine memory.
If it comes to wine I'm a bigpin on the war fan, but I think
that's like a default for a lotof people as well, just like
dirty and earthiness.
But one of my favorite alcoholmemories, I wanna say it was
probably 11 or 12, and it wasthe first time I drank with my
dad and it was.
(41:13):
I don't think I have it anymore.
I'm not sure how many peopleremember St Pauli's girl.
I think St Pauli's girl isstill out there.
It's the bottle and it's got alittle white goat and that was
the first beer I ever had withmy dad and I carried that white
goat with me all the way throughhigh school and it was just on
my key chains and wenteverywhere.
And then you know, as one doestoo many parties and you lose it
(41:34):
, he's gone.
But that's probably my favoritestory because, as much as I was
a troublemaker, growing up likedrinking was always with my dad
because I always got to drinkcool shit.
I always got to hang out withhim and he would tell me stories
about being a kid and making mefeel not as bad about my
Troublemaker issues, and so thatwas always cool.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
That's awesome.
That's been the common themeamongst you know most on this
podcast is their favorite memoryis around.
You know the people or theperson that they were with not
necessarily know the actual, theactual product.
Yeah, I can really if you couldshare a bottle of anyone, who
(42:19):
would it be and what would youdrink?
Speaker 2 (42:26):
It would be with my grandmother, but in her 30s, so
I think this was probably before.
So my grandmother's fromNicaragua, half of my family's
from Nicaragua, and I think thisis before she she crossed over
and came over to the States andI would have loved to.
Just my grandmother is just alittle spitfire and I feel like
(42:51):
the trouble that she probablygot into and all the stories
especially some of the storiesI've heard about her sisters and
what not have always beenentertaining and it would have
been cool to be there.
Being from Nicaragua.
Rum would be the drink that mygrandmother and I would probably
share and it more than likelywould be Florida decana, which
(43:11):
is the, the Nicaraguan rum thatthat comes from there.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
That's awesome.
I know that's cool.
I didn't know that about you,yeah most.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Most people don't, most people don't, and so that's
always a fun one to share andlike oh, your Nicaragua, like
well, half and half the car ago,and half German, if anyone's
really interested to know so.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
You have an interesting 23 and me.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Very much to you know .
It's funny.
You mentioned that I've beengetting yelled at by my
girlfriend because I have twoboxes of 23 and me sitting on
the dining table and they'vebeen there for like six months
because we just haven't done thelike.
Spit in the thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
It's like probably does it want to go after we get
off here.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
No, I want to be a mystery, brandon I want to be
the man of mystery.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Well, thank you so much for joining me today and
Before we hop off, can you leteverybody use listening know
where they?
Can, you know, get in contactwith you or find you all online?
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Yeah, 100%.
I mean, speak easy code calm isthe easiest way to find us.
We're throughout LinkedIn,instagram and whatnot.
The handles change.
I'm not sure which handles iswhich anymore, but also feel
free to email me directly ifanyone's got questions or wants
to chat.
Business Just Michael at speakeasy code calm.
Brandon, any spam I get I amgonna forward to you, buddy.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
I I've already put it out onto the I don't know the
clickbait websites.
You're gonna be like thousands.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Fair, fair, at least I'll feel important now, exactly
.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
We'll hear everybody listening.
Thanks, as always, forlistening.
This is Brandon Murrow, so youcan find us at drinkscom.
Don't email me, I won't giveyou my email.
I won't give you my email, butit's very easy to guess.
So you know, I guess I'mprobably gonna get some spam too
, but we will.
We will see you next time.
Hey everyone, thank you for listening to the
drinkscom podcast, the businessof online alcohol.
I'm your host, brandon Amoroso,and today I'm talking with
Michael Bowen, the co-founderand CEO of Speak Easy actually a
very close partner of Drinks.
Thank you for coming on theshow, michael, really excited to
have you here.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Yeah, likewise, brandon.
Thanks for having me.
I know it's been a work inprogress, but we finally made it
work, huh.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
You know, scheduling is always the biggest issue with
these things and I've got thewhole like podcast and studio
set up back in Miami.
But when you're only there 40%of the time because you're
traveling for work and not whatnot, it makes things difficult.
But I appreciate yourflexibility.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
So at some point we're going to have to get you
down to San Diego.
It's part of some of thatpercentage.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I need to come back.
I definitely miss it, and Imiss some of my favorite
restaurants too.
So we jump into things, though.
Can you give everybody justbackground on yourself and Speak
Easy?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, 100%.
So you know Michael Bowen, colco-founder, and my background
has really been digital first,everything from car parts in the
automobile days of the firstfast and the furious I'm sure
that probably predates some ofthe people watching this podcast
right now and listening to itto the digital ad space and ad
(01:20):
age through San Diego.
From there I committed to a fewe-commerce startups and a lot
of people said that alcohol wastough to ship and I didn't
believe them because one of mye-commerce startups was actually
in flooring.
So that was a wake up call inthe LTL and FTL world.
But yeah, I've been workingwith Speak Easy now with my
business partner, for close toseven years.
(01:42):
And that quick elevator pitch onwho and what Speak Easy is.
We're really a technology andlogistics platform and we help
work with all three tiers at theend of the day and our goal is
to really help be adifferentiator in the space to
offer centralized fulfillment.
So every brand that we workwith, we help them go beyond the
bottle, whether it be limitedreleases, open box pieces,
(02:06):
things that are unique to anexperience of telling their own
story At the end of the day,anything we can do to help
empower brands and get them totake back the storytelling.
That's kind of been our focus,so very excited about it.
We're over 300 brands now andlooking to bring on more.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
And I know you made a decision I can't remember the
timing on that, but you've gotall of these brands platformed
on Shopify.
Now, what made you?
What did it look like to start?
And then how did you sort ofend up here where you're like,
yeah, we're going to go all inon Shopify as the platform to
manage for our brand.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah Well, this could be a bad word these days, but
we started off with Magento as amassive storefront and it's
interesting.
We felt that we needed theflexibility to just build
everything for ourselves on theground up, and we had our own
Magento developers and we gotprobably a good 160, 170 stores
(03:05):
and it just got to the pointwhere it was very difficult to
manage.
You're doing a multi-storeimplementation and you have
eight different servers runningMagento instances and it just
didn't become scalable.
And then, all of a sudden,server maintenance is on who
it's on us, right.
And so there came anopportunity to really leverage
Shopify, which a lot of peoplewould consider best in class,
(03:27):
and being able to take thingslike server redundancy and
support it, take that off of ourplate and really focus on
design, conversion, marketingand getting our brands off the
ground really became key to thatdecision.
So at the end of the day, itwas a no-brainer, but on a
different podcast we can talkabout some of the battle wounds
from the Magento piece.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yes, I can imagine that your day-to-day is probably
significantly more streamlinednow that you're on Shopify 100%.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I will say the biggest thing that's helped my
day-to-day has been us growingand being able to hire people.
I was originally helping design, build out QA, get test orders
in.
Now I get to work with a greatteam internally and externally
to get all that stuff off theground.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Yeah, have you seen, and remind me, when did
Speakeasy get founded or wasfounded?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Do I have a second for a quick story on that,
because I think people will beblown away.
So we've been around for a whilenow I want to say eight or nine
years.
My business partner, josh,hates the fact that I don't
remember dates.
Say with my girlfriend.
I can't remember dates to savemy life.
So that is a check on thenot-good side of Michael.
(04:45):
Speakeasy started as a craftcocktail box.
Think of a blue apron back inthe day.
I'm not sure how many peoplestill use blue apron, but the
idea was to send cocktail boxes.
You had ingredients.
You had everything you need tomake drinks, something to share
with your friends.
Create like a community.
Right, I'd order it and you'dcome over, brandon, and we'd
hang out and we'd make theseawesome craft cocktails.
(05:07):
Well, I had interviewed withJosh and his previous business
partner to be a CMO of thatcompany and went through the
whole process.
I got ghosted for three monthsbefore I got a call back say hey
, all right, we decided to keepgoing forward, but shipping
fruit sucks.
I don't know how anybody dealswith produce.
That was one of the worstexperiences ever, but our brands
(05:32):
at the time loved it because itwas a great marketing vehicle
for them.
Right, they were able to knowwho was getting the boxes.
They could put cool littlecards and inserts and could
really speak to these customersmoving forward.
We said, okay, great, let'shelp them build another vehicle.
We started off with a very smallmarketplace.
Then they said your marketplaceis the same as everybody else's
.
This isn't what we want.
We're not getting.
(05:52):
I'm paying to send people toyour site where they can go buy
other products.
We're working very closely withone of our early partners.
And then in a moment hit wherethey said why don't you just
build us a website?
You own it, you manage it.
And then that's where the lightbulb turned on.
At that point we quicklypivoted my e-commerce background
previously from building thingsfrom the ground up, including
(06:14):
the technology and fulfillment,for flooring really helped us
triple charge all of that.
And so going through thatthat's how we kind of got to
where we are today was westarted one place, somebody had
a need, they came up with anidea and we were just quick
enough to work through it.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
I feel like that is a I mean it's not just for this
industry, but I think in thisindustry, more so than most a
lot of the companies I talked to, they started off doing one
thing and then they ended updown another path, and it might
have been they tried two orthree different paths before
they finally got to theircurrent iteration because of, I
(06:51):
think, all the nuances andcomplexities that come with
Beverdahlgall.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
So when I started this company, or when I was
eventually made founder withJosh, I didn't have gray hair to
give you the idea of thecomplexities and how difficult
it's been, and so it's been alearning experience, and I would
say this for anybody that's indigital or an entrepreneur, and
I'm sure you could speak to thisas well don't get so hung up on
making something perfect.
Perfect doesn't exist.
(07:17):
It's always gonna grow, it'sgonna build and it's gonna mold
itself, and I think a lot ofpeople try and get the perfect
product out there as opposed tosaying, okay, here's where we're
at right now, let's getfeedback, let's create
iterations right For those thatwent to college your MVP, your
minimally viable product,getting that out there and
running and moving to getfeedback.
I think a lot of people arelike, no, it needs to be perfect
, and that was something weactually argued about initially
(07:40):
early on, and then finally, weput it out there and got
feedback and really helped usget to where we are today.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, I think that helps a lot with product market
fit.
And if you're just building ina vacuum and then you bring
something to market, you have noidea whether or not people are
actually not like it.
You know, would they have donethis or that?
And that's why I think you haveso much access to data now in
today's age with all thetechnology Even for us, as an
(08:07):
example from more of a B2Bstandpoint, with the drinks app,
you can install in optimizelyor something onto your app so
that you can see.
You know, it's one thing tohear from the merchants, it's
another thing to actually watchrecorded sessions or heat maps
of how they're actuallyleveraging and using the
solution.
And you're like even littlethings.
(08:29):
Oh my God, they've clicked thisarea like I don't know 50% of
the time, but it's not actuallyhyperlinked to something Like
let's fix that.
It's not even a button.
Yeah, like the little minutiaof that is all the way to.
You know more broader, generalthings that can be implemented
and updated, but you can't getany of that no one can by just
creating something in a vacuum.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, and you know you, bringing up data is a very
interesting piece because eventoday, I think so many brands
within alcohol and things ofthat nature they're behind on
data.
What to do with data, how toaggregate it.
Once I have it, what am Isupposed to do with it?
It's like great, I have thisFacebook pixel.
How does this help me?
And that's been a reallyinteresting side to see how far
(09:13):
behind alcohol really is onleveraging that right.
Coming from the digital adspace, everything that a lot of
brands are executing now hadbeen key to business strategy
plans 10 years ago.
If you were to look at theautomotive space or lead
generation and some of the moreout there, digital executions
that existed.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Yeah Well, coming into the alcohol industry as an
outsider, as am I, what wouldhave been your biggest gotchas
or things that?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Everything.
Everything has been a gotchabecause both my business partner
and I we have no alcoholexperience, right, we jumped
into this thinking, oh, this iseasy, let's just build it and
just go, and we always joke.
If we were to know all the hoopsthat we had to jump to just get
(10:10):
to this point today, would wehave done this back in the day
or would it have been ingeniousenough?
But I think that's what made usunique, and you've probably
dealt with this, brandon, whereyou have the old guard out there
, you have a lot of the oldpeople not old people, but
people that have been in theindustry long enough, the
seasoned professionals and theyjust say no, you can't do it
this way, you can't do it thisway.
(10:31):
And our job is to say we'regonna try this.
Okay, we can't do it this way,let's think about it this way.
How about this way or this way?
And we constantly challenge itbecause I don't think we have
the hard-coded roadmaps thatsome of these grizzled veterans
have out there, right, and Ithink that makes us unique.
It makes everything you guysare doing and drinks unique as
well.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Yeah, I mean we can ask questions and I think it
holds true in any industry evennot alcohol like an outsider's
coming in testing assumptions,and alcohol is unique in that
there's quite literally likerules and regulations, whereas
in a lot of other industriesit's more such assumptions that
you're testing.
But I think that's what makesit fun.
(11:13):
But what are you most excitedabout within the alcohol
industry this year, going intonext year?
It feels like there's a lot ofmovements and acceleration
around what you're trying to dowith helping brands generate
(11:34):
more of a direct relationshipwith the customer, especially
spirit brands that historicallyhave been boxed out of doing so,
unlike wineries.
And what are some of the thingsthat you're seeing in the
market and what are you mostexcited for?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
I would say this I think the market is interesting.
I think right now you could seea lot of collaboration with
people that are doing this.
A lot of our brands are nowstarting to open up their roll
of decks in their book to say,hey, for example, we worked on a
collaboration with Whistlepickand Pit Viper, right, and they
did a really awesome box, a coolstory behind the product.
(12:12):
You got a bottle and you got thesunglasses.
And I think seeing more of thatout there and that opportunity
for people to say, okay, now wecan cross-pollinate our brands,
we can integrate each other'sproduct and really push
something out there that'sunique from the consumer
standpoint.
Our they're used to the liquorstore experience right, I go
(12:33):
into Bob's liquor, I go buysomething and I take it home, as
opposed to, oh, I can go findthis limited release, I can
actually get access to it now,and there's a cool poker chip or
a scratch off or some othertype of experience that allows
these brands to communicate andtell their story better.
I can see more and more brandsgetting comfortable with doing
(12:54):
that.
I think initially, when brandskind of got into e-commerce,
everything was just like, okay,our site's up, people can buy
product and that's it.
What do you mean?
We can advertise.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
We don't wanna do that.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
I don't know if you're too young for this.
You ever watched that movieField of Dreams.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
I mean I've heard of it.
I don't think I've watched it.
I'm gonna look it up right nowthough that's fair.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
there's a famous line .
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Oh, 89.
Yeah, that was a little bit.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
What year were you born?
Do I even wanna know?
Speaker 1 (13:25):
It depends on what year you were born, but I was
born in 97.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Shit.
I don't know if I'm allowed tosay bad words, but I'm an 81
baby and so I remember seeingthis movie and their famous line
is if you build it, they willcome.
It's talking about buildingthis baseball stadium.
A lot of people in the alcoholspace had that perception.
Hey, if we build it, our brandby itself is gonna be strong
enough and people are gonna come.
They forget there's otherpeople that are saying the same
(13:54):
exact thing.
And when you have thate-commerce, e-co-spirit, like
you're not differentiatingyourself, you're not giving
yourself a reason to stand outfrom the crowd or just stand out
with the consumer, with yourregular product.
And that's something I thinkit's gonna be a big change this
coming year is I think brandsare really gonna start
differentiating their offeringsand what they're putting out in
the digital world to drivecustomers to their sites and to
(14:17):
purchase their product.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Yeah, it's not enough to just throw up a website.
I mean, that's what most havedone up until this point.
If you look at most winerywebsites as an example, they're
just there for the sake of beingthere.
It's not a concentrated effortaround.
How are we pushing visitors tothe website?
How are we converting customers?
How are we nurturingrelationships?
But I think that's part of thething that I'm most excited
(14:41):
about with Shopify is how muchthey're investing into helping
their brands with customeracquisition and the shop sort of
ecosystem and the networkeffects that you get, whether
it's the shop app, the shop cashoffers, like the ability for
brands to say you know what, I'mwilling to pay $10 for a new
customer and then Shopify goesout and figures out how to
(15:02):
acquire customers within thatShopify audiences.
Pushing the audiences back toFacebook for them.
I mean the whole thing is.
It's important to them becauseof the fact that more GMV means
more you know process.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
They can take their cut Exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
It's in their best interest to help their brands
acquire customers.
And that's, like my biggestthing when talking to these
alcohol merchants, like whichplatforms out there right now,
aside from Shopify, are gonnahelp you do that?
It's not Magento, it's notSalesforce, it's not big
commerce, it's definitely notthe point solutions that are
currently servicing the alcoholindustry.
(15:41):
It is Shopify.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah, no, agree to 100%, and that was in full
transparency.
I don't think we understood howbig of a partner Shopify was
gonna become for us.
You know, when you come onboard.
For us it was originally justall right, we get the tech stack
, that's all we really need,that's all we really care about.
But they've actually beenextremely encouraging with
(16:06):
regards to app recommendations,us helping figure out how to do
certain implementations andsolves and things of that nature
, and I will say they probablyturned out to be a bigger
partner than we anticipated andwe're super stoked about that.
And you don't get that fromanyone, I mean, unless like
Magento, and you're gonna spenda shitload all the time all over
the place and hire your owndevelopers, maybe, but then it's
(16:28):
on you and again the gray hairsstarted somewhere and I think
it goes back to that.
But I would agree that Shopifyis definitely the platform
everybody looks up to and it'seasy.
And I'm not gonna say it'sperfect Nothing's ever perfect
out there but it's got thebiggest upside for a lot of our
partners.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Even just the other day we had a winery that's my
reading over to the drinks appand they had a question that
they needed to update on theirproduct page and two years ago
that would have taken a coupleof hours of development time
Right.
But with Metafields that theyjust recently released, I was
(17:09):
able to help them and do it forthem in like in five minutes and
I have no development skillswhatsoever and I thought that
was just pretty cool to see likethat quick of an evolution.
Like this product continues toget better and better and more
user friendly and I think it'ssignificantly easier to build
products for SMBs and work yourway upmarket than to go the
(17:33):
other way.
Like I don't think I've seen atleast not in commerce.
Like you don't see Magentogoing downmarket, you don't see
Salesforce going downmarket, butyou have companies like Shopify
who built very user friendlysolutions and now they're adding
on the extra bells and whistlesand the extra flexibility and
like checkout, composability andthings like that that services
the enterprise merchants.
But then the enterprisemerchants are like wow, this is
(17:55):
so much easier than you know thesolutions that I'm used to
having to deal with.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, no, I agree, and I think that's probably
something that surprised us thisyear, because we've been able
to take advantage of a lot ofthose additional upgrades.
Right, it's all, right, we'regonna make it.
Here's the everyday Joe likecup of coffee, and then here's
your espresso, and then here'syour cappuccino.
I'm sure there's some coffeepeople that are like dude, you
got it wrong.
(18:21):
It's the other way around.
It's always cappuccino thenespresso, but you can get what
I'm saying, and I'm lookingforward to that, also for this
coming year, as it relates toShopify and some of the cool
stuff we're gonna be able to do.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
So let's say, I'm a naysayer, like I'm a brand who's
like.
No, I just sell through, youknow, my standard retail channel
, and I don't want an onlinepresence.
What's your rebuttal?
What's your, what's your,what's your-.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Oh see, that's this is when you wanna interview Josh
.
So really quick, between mybusiness partner and I, we
always call you.
Know, josh, I always refer toas the shiny dress shoes.
You know he's a salesman.
He understands everything thatwe're doing.
He's the front end.
He handles outsidecommunication on purpose.
You know I'm the dirty workboots, I'm typically behind the
(19:08):
scenes and I don't normally getto talk to a ton of people,
brandon, so I'm very excitedjust that I get let out today.
But what I would say is this youknow, as we've worked with
brands, it's we're not foreverybody.
Digital isn't for everybody.
You know already.
By that response I would saythat you're not necessarily
(19:29):
ready to take the jump right,because ultimately, we wanna
work with brands that say look,we wanna differentiate ourselves
, we wanna be the premier insertalcohol brand in the space.
We know that digital can be astrategy for telling our story,
getting content out there andhelping us grow Boots on the
ground, in store and onlineright.
(19:49):
I think a lot of people forgetthat you can leverage digital to
drive in store sales 100% rightfrom the neck tags that are
used to drive a show proof ofpurchase and get a sticker pack
or something of that nature todrive, leverage, digital
advertising to put people on theground for special events that
you're doing on top of gettingpeople in those events and then
use QR codes and ultimately,hopefully, buy online at some
(20:12):
point.
And so for me, somebody, that'sa naysayer and they're like, oh
, I'm just stuck in my ways, I'mlike cool.
Well, when you're no longerstuck in your ways, you know,
feel free to get the call,because that's you're gonna get
passed up at that stage and wedeal with that on a regular
basis You'd be surprised, yeah,that's always, it's always
(20:32):
refreshing to see you knowsomebody who you spoke with.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
They sort of have to come back around and they
learned it the hard way.
And yeah, and you know it's notideal, but the it's Not in the
it's not a perfect example, butI mean there's.
There's companies I've reached,I reached out to back in like
2018.
Well, still in school, I waslike you know, put them in and
(20:58):
put them in, putting them intomy cold outreach email sequences
.
You know, not a, not a single,not a single response from them
and then, three or four yearslater, like there they are in
the inbox.
You know we want to work withelectric and you know it's not
like a I told you so type ofthing.
It's it's more so, just nevergratifying to see that.
You know, over the course ofthat time, now it's all come
(21:20):
full circle and you know theythey sort of led themselves to
that decision.
So I think is that's the bestplace to be, like not having to
do like a hard sell.
Like you know, yeah, like we'lltalk to you like a year or two.
We're gonna go focus oneverybody else who understands
that this is an opportunity andand you know, maybe we're wrong?
I don't think we are, but youknow, you can never, you never,
(21:41):
yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
There's.
There's a terrible Well, it'snot a terrible sentence.
I guess a lot of people usethis sentence right, and I guess
you could use this in thatsales pitch for anybody that
comes back right.
It's like the best time to plana tree was 20 years ago.
The second best time is to doit now.
It's like cool.
We talked about it a while ago.
Now you're ready to do it,let's go, let's hit the ground
running.
And you know good news for youwe're even better at what we're
(22:03):
doing now than we were back then, so we can help supercharge
what you're trying to activate.
But yeah, it's.
It's always gratifying whenthey come back.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Speaking of that, I know you, you raised your your
seed around earlier this year.
How has that helped youAccelerate all the work that
you're you're currently doing,and what was that decision
process like?
Because you obviously are abootstrap for For many years and
you know raising money comeswith its own host of you know
fun things to deal with so Ihave the beard here.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
The reason I'm balled up the raise no, I have to give
my best partner a ton of crediton that.
Josh really led a lot of thethe raise with the seed round
and Getting those funds in andwhat I?
What I would say is, especiallyearlier on the, the money that
you bring on, you want to makesure it's coming from people
that you trust and that arestrategic to help you grow.
(22:56):
One of our earliest investorsgoat rodeo they're still
involved now have been afantastic resource for us as
we've worked through everythingyou know from there.
You bring in trog holly, youknow rise of the rest and best
bev and what you find early on.
If you bring in the rightresources and the right investor
, they all jump to help you.
(23:18):
Now, of course, they have moneyinvolved and they want to see
their their money work out, butthey've genuinely been awesome
to work with because they're wesay, hey, we're struggling with
this or we have these ideas.
You know Josh and I like we'renot getting along, we can't
solve this thing, and then youknow they're very good at saying
, hey, have you thought aboutthis?
If you thought about this,here's an external resource we
can recommend that can help youwork through that, and I think
(23:40):
that's kind of been the thebiggest win through all of this
Is that they've helped usidentify where and how to scale
and the proper priorities whereagain, josh and I come not from
the industry and there's a lotof things we don't know.
We'll be the first to tell youthat, and that's kind of been
the big learning through all ofthat as well.
Now how have we used thosefunds?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
teams scaling technology, working through
building out warehouses and thengetting things off the ground
to help support our brands andpartners as best as we can the
thing that I enjoy the most fromyou know, the companies that
I've invested in is the, youknow, either monthly or
quarterly sort of investorupdates.
(24:21):
And I think, like, if you havea solid group of strategic
advisors, investors or whatever,and they see that and you just
know you're open, they're allthere to jump in and help you
out.
But then there's like the flipside of the coin where you have
some companies who don't do thatat all and then maybe they're
having a Big issue and then theycome at like the absolute last
possible second to get thatsupport and it's like, well,
(24:44):
this is too late, like thisshould have been.
There's been three monthsbefore that there's.
There's nothing wrong withbeing transparent and, you know,
leveraging the resources thatyou have and Never surprise your
investors with anything goodnews or bad news.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Keep them in the loop and keep them stoked about
stuff, because Typically if it'sa surprise, it's a bad thing
and it's not gonna go over well.
So for anybody that's buildingsomething right now, better to
over communicate than to undercommunicate.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Well, can I think that would apply to
relationships, everythingoutside, as well?
Well, in terms of one thingthat I wanted to Know, really
dig in on, is actually how, ifsomebody listening is a, an
alcohol brand, like, how do theyactually, you know, start
(25:36):
working with speak easy, whatdoes it actually look like for
them Outside of you know?
Now they get the Shopifystorefront, what is, what do
they actually have to do to beenabled?
Speaker 2 (25:49):
They need to be all in man.
Like the one thing Brandon, I'msure you've worked with these
brands.
You know winery spirits, youknow wherever it may be, you you
can't Play with the system likethis.
Like you have to be ready for aroadmap, you need to put the
time in, you know it's gonna be,it's gonna cost.
Like you have to invest in yourbusiness it doesn't just grow
and you have to be ready tocreate the content that's needed
(26:11):
.
You know, and I think a lot ofbrands that come on board with
speak easy.
We're very upfront.
It's like look, we're cool toget our fees, but if you're not
willing to invest a minimum ofthirty, five hundred dollars a
month in advertising, you're notgonna win.
You're not gonna gain thetraction or the sales that
validate working with us in thefirst place.
And those are kind of the big IDon't call them slaps in the
(26:35):
face with the, the big wake-upmoments for a lot of brands.
And we've actually gone as faras to now really implement that
very early on in our salesprocess to say, hey, but this is
what you need to expect.
Your costs are not just speakeasy in the platform and having
our account management team.
It's you need to invest inadvertising or you're not gonna
go far.
If you don't invest in tellingyour story, your mezcal brand is
(26:59):
gonna be the same as theirmezcal brand and You're gonna
lose because no one no one has astory to follow and then
they'll end up just churninganyways.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
So I think you know, yep, it's fascinating digging
into that and really knowingyour, your like ideal client
profile, because you could getcarried away with just trying to
onboard as many merchants aspossible to like show that
growth.
But then you got a leaky bucketbecause none of them were the
right ones to come on board tobegin with, and and the most and
the Worst is you're servicingthe wrong brands, right?
Speaker 2 (27:32):
We've all done that.
I'm sure you guys have donethat through Everything you've
done to learn and get where youare, where you realize, well
shit, I've been working onJohnny whiskey over here.
We've been investing tons ofhours, yet they don't sell more
than 10 bottles a month.
It's not worth our effort to dothat.
And that's where the importanceand the value of that proper
(27:53):
partner coming on board.
And that's why I mentionedearlier when you talk to a brand
, if they don't say that digitalis part of their bigger
strategy, they're probably notgoing to be the right partner or
succeed with us, because it'skey to success with speaking.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.
One thing I want to cover aswell is this upcoming
opportunity, as we talked aboutcustomer acquisition with
Shopify a little bit, and thenwe have the merging of two
things here.
You have what Drinks has donehistorically, which has turned
(28:27):
any merchant into an alcoholmerchant, and then you have
Speakeasy, who's able to enableall these brands, especially on
distilled side, with their owndirect-to-consumer presence.
I'm looking forward to the daywhere let's say what's one of
your top whiskey brands?
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Oh, we can put Whistle Pig out there.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Great.
So Whistle Pig, when WhistlePig can be like and you, as well
as the other, actually hold on,let me take a quick step
backwards.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
I'm going to love Whistle Pig.
They're great.
I'm actually drinking uhproduct promo for a ranch, one
of our partners.
So I would love to switch toProRange because they're up and
coming and they're kicking a lotof ass and so I want to give
them some screen trade right now.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
I see you have your dog in the background there as
well.
I have mine currently.
They're cruising aroundsomewhere.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
If they weren't so big, I'd pick both of them up to
give them some screen time, butthey're too heavy for this old
man.
They're 65 pounds each.
I'm like, yeah, I can do it the.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
uh, what kind of dogs do you have?
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Australian shepherds.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Okay, awesome.
Well, you're in Cinebio, whichis the best place ever, I feel
like for a dog.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
They're a little furry, uh, but quick little
story.
Uh, my oldest pup is named Mia.
My youngest pup is namedWallace.
I'm a big Pulp Fiction fan, soMia Wallace is Uma Thurman's
character.
Took me a while to put ittogether, but yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Um, well, back to your product placement.
I mean it'll be reallyinteresting to see when those
stores are able to start sellingtheir products on other Shopify
stores, which isn't a novelconcept.
The ability to, you know, dolike cross-store selling or
whatever, but there's a lot ofcomplications when you try to do
(30:14):
it with alcohol for all theaforementioned reasons around.
You know rules and regulationsand whatnot, but I see that as
being an absolutely ginormousdriver of growth and also a huge
selling point for brands whoare looking, you know, or
actually it's almost an entirelynew channel for them to sell
their as opposed to direct toconsumer, as opposed to going
(30:35):
through retail, you can now gothrough, you know, other online
storefronts and give visibilityfor, for your company.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
So really quick.
I think you jinxed me, becausenow that you mentioned the pups,
now Wallace is over here.
He's like, okay, I need someattention.
But to get back to that, tothat point, I think this is
where a partnership andcontinued growth between Drinks
and Speakeasy and other partnersout there is key, because what
happens is when you get, whenyou get people playing nice
(31:04):
together, all of a sudden we cansay, hey, Drinks, you have a
lot of implementations, we havea significant amount of
inventory and we have theconnections of product to say,
great, somebody plugs in, theyinstall this app, they can build
their own online marketplaceand maybe they're great at
digital marketing and they cancreate an online retailer and
we're able to do the fulfillment, provide the product and do
(31:25):
some of those instant thingsthat a lot of I mean, let's be
honest, go back years.
Affiliate marketers that's whatthey did.
Right, they created theirarbitrage sites, they did
everything they could toduplicate and replicate and if
you could make that easier, Ithink a lot of these craft
brands Frey Ranch, for examplecould take advantage of.
Okay, great, there's a ton ofpeople out there that think
(31:46):
they're great at advertising.
They'll sell our product andyou make a commission on
something based on the site, oryou just price it outrageous and
if you can get it to convert,you get it to convert and I
think everybody wins at thatstage.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah, the playing nice is something that I
benefited a lot from in buildingand scaling the agency, but I
think it's a newer concept tothe alcohol industry, playing
nice Very much, so it feels likecoming in and it's like we
don't talk to anybody elseexcept ourselves.
(32:20):
We're in our own organizationand I don't want to live that
way.
I feel like it's better, justin general, if you're
collaborative and, at the end ofthe day, if you need to be that
guarded over your company is itreally that great of a company
or a product offering that youhave?
So that's sort of my thought onit.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah, no, I agree, and I think that everyone thinks
there's such a unique secretsauce to everything and I
honestly think it comes back toexecution at the end of the day.
Now, I'm not going to say so.
Remember the Titans?
I think it was.
Remember the Titans.
Wait, is that movie too old foryou as well?
Speaker 1 (33:01):
That was 2000.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
You're Googling it right now, aren't you?
I did.
You're Googling it right now.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
I watched it when I was three.
No, I haven't seen that one.
No, I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Well, there's that scene.
I think Denzel Washington'scharacter says look, I'll give
them our playbook.
I don't care if they know whatwe're going to do, because we're
going to execute better, and Ithink that's how a lot of people
should build their companies.
I'm not saying definitely giveyour playbook out there, but
there's a lot of ways to get tothe finish line and I think
everyone thinks they do itbetter than everyone else, which
(33:29):
is fair, and I guess that'skind of what I'm hitting at by
saying we can execute better.
But I'm not going to say thatit's significantly different,
and it's one of those thingswhere the plain-nice mentality
of hey, there's billions andbillions of dollars out there as
it relates to e-commerce,especially from the spirit side
that there's a lot that we cantap into, and both my business
(33:51):
partner I, josh, we're firmbelievers that all ships can
rise with the tide and we don'tneed to worry about sinking
anybody at the moment.
I really think it's aboutbending together and creating a
better experience for theseconsumers.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, I mean it's a rapidly growing category and
just one that has lagged behindgeneral e-commerce adoption.
You see, it's like 10 yearsbehind, but it's growing just as
quickly as E-com was 10 yearsago for other types of products.
So the writing is on the walland those that get out ahead of
it are going to benefit.
(34:26):
Last question I have for youbefore.
I have two fun ones, like whathas the?
And not to make this acompletely ridiculous
self-promotional plug, but whathas your experience been like
leveraging the drinks app withinShopify?
What are some of the headachesand pain points?
(34:47):
All right, we're going to cutthis in post-production.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
No, no, I will tell you this.
Have there been a couple bumps?
Sure, everybody within a newpartnership.
I think what a lot of peopledon't know is that we were
exploring a new path and a newroute to market with what we
were offering as a combinedsolution, especially on the
speakeasy side.
But your team, the drinks team,has been amazing to work with,
because any issue we've had,anything we've worked through
(35:13):
integration, everyone's beenlike cool, we can solve for it.
This way, we can do this, wecan do this.
And the collaboration bit, Ithink, has been extremely
encouraging and positive forboth of our teams and I'm
looking forward to identifyingthose additional hidden
landmines of opportunity.
You step on it all of a suddenit explodes and I'm like, oh
crap, it cost me a leg.
(35:33):
But I think there's a ton ofopportunity here and we can
learn from a couple of things,and I think that's probably
where we're going to get to herereally soon and we're super
stoked on the partnershipoverall.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Yeah, I think it's invaluable as a software
provider to have those partnerswho are willing to dig in and
also have the volume where we'reable to iterate across all of
your storefronts, which allowsus to test and learn a lot
faster than if you're doing on aone-to-one basis.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yeah, definitely agreed.
Question for you when are yougoing to grow a beard?
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Whenever I can transplant the hair on in my
face I don't have the ability todo so, unfortunately I just
look very scraggly.
There's a spot right here thatit just doesn't even come in.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
It's still hair.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Yeah, so I'm only going to be able to lose the
hair on the top of my head fromthe beverage alcohol industry,
not the gray beard you got me onthat one.
Before I ask my two funquestions for you, do you have
any questions for me?
Let's turn the tables.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Why alcohol?
What got you here?
I fell into it on accident, sothat was my excuse.
But what got you this deep intothe bed of the Alk Space?
Speaker 1 (37:01):
So I started electric .
It was just Shopify, whateverother matter, category, anything
, and we did everything, like awebsite, seo, content, ads, you
name it.
We did everything.
Over time I continued to becomemore and more refined and then
eventually got to the pointwhere it's just purely customer
(37:21):
experience and retentionmarketing for Shopify plus
brands, and we were at about 40,45 people at the time and
there's sort of like a decisionto make Do I want to continue to
try and grow and scale this?
Do I want to look at potentialmergers or roll up opportunities
to become an even larger agency?
(37:42):
But I felt like that was sortof the number where you were big
enough to be dangerous but youweren't so big where your
quality was just really poor.
Because one of the main reasonswe grew to that point outside of
tech partnerships and justtaking a little bit of a
different approach to things isbecause the agencies that were
the 200, the 300, the 500 personshops they were, you know,
(38:06):
churning through clients leftand right, because you know,
let's use an example like maybeone of them was paying one of
the big guys like 20 grand amonth For them.
That's probably, like you know,your C list client.
For us that was the A client,so they got our A team or is
there getting the C team fromthe large agency?
And so I had to make a decisionaround whether we wanted to you
(38:28):
know, turn into that or not.
And we had opportunities inearly 2022 to do those things do
a roll up, get acquired byanother agency or a couple of
aggregators, but the drinksopportunity with Shopify and
then also the ability to comeover onto the software side,
sort of take all the learningsfrom working as a top partner
(38:50):
with Klaviyo and recharge andShopify and then get to build
out our own sort of go to marketwith a Shopify app With the
past 10 years of drinks workwith, I mean, like Fortune 20
businesses.
I mean they have, like thestamp of approval from Walmart.
I can't even imagine you knowthe grind that it took to get to
that point.
And so we're coming in.
(39:11):
We get to do all the fun stuff,like now that you know it's in
market and we've put it into theShopify ecosystem.
It's sort of the best of bothworlds, because I've always been
really passionate about wineand software and now I get to
take all the experience fromShopify and merge those two
together and that's really thepoint of this podcast as well,
too is to, you know, bring thesetwo divergent, you know, I'd
(39:33):
say industries together.
You have a lot of like commerceexperts, you have a lot of
alcohol experts, but you don'treally have anybody sitting in
the middle to help bridge thegap.
And so that's where I saw theopportunity for Electric is to
act as that conduit, thateducator, that enablement arm
for an entire industry and dosomething that's never been done
before, which is no knock toyou know, the agency, but
(39:59):
there's a lot of marketingagencies.
There's only one, drinkscom.
And so that was really whatexcited me and, you know,
dragged me into this, and nowI'm getting to learn a lot.
I mean, it's I catch myselfsometimes because people ask me
you know, describe the drinksapp or describe this, and like I
just start rambling on and onand I'm like they have no idea
(40:22):
what you're talking about, likeyou need to reign yourself in.
Just alcohol is complicated.
There's a lot of rules, all theway down to the zip code.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Like let's just end it there and we solve it.
That's it and we solve it.
There you go.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Yep, you don't need to know anything else.
Yeah, that's sort of how I fellinto it.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Awesome.
No, appreciate that.
I actually never knew any ofthat stuff, so that's cool to
hear that background.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Yeah well, fun question for you what's your
favorite wine memory?
Or could be alcohol memory?
Speaker 2 (40:53):
I'll say I don't have a wine memory.
If it comes to wine I'm a bigpin on the war fan, but I think
that's like a default for a lotof people as well, just like
dirty and earthiness.
But one of my favorite alcoholmemories, I wanna say it was
probably 11 or 12, and it wasthe first time I drank with my
dad and it was.
(41:13):
I don't think I have it anymore.
I'm not sure how many peopleremember St Pauli's girl.
I think St Pauli's girl isstill out there.
It's the bottle and it's got alittle white goat and that was
the first beer I ever had withmy dad and I carried that white
goat with me all the way throughhigh school and it was just on
my key chains and wenteverywhere.
And then you know, as one doestoo many parties and you lose it
(41:34):
, he's gone.
But that's probably my favoritestory because, as much as I was
a troublemaker, growing up likedrinking was always with my dad
because I always got to drinkcool shit.
I always got to hang out withhim and he would tell me stories
about being a kid and making mefeel not as bad about my
Troublemaker issues, and so thatwas always cool.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
That's awesome.
That's been the common themeamongst you know most on this
podcast is their favorite memoryis around.
You know the people or theperson that they were with not
necessarily know the actual, theactual product.
Yeah, I can really if you couldshare a bottle of anyone, who
(42:19):
would it be and what would youdrink?
Speaker 2 (42:26):
It would be with my grandmother, but in her 30s, so
I think this was probably before.
So my grandmother's fromNicaragua, half of my family's
from Nicaragua, and I think thisis before she she crossed over
and came over to the States andI would have loved to.
Just my grandmother is just alittle spitfire and I feel like
(42:51):
the trouble that she probablygot into and all the stories
especially some of the storiesI've heard about her sisters and
what not have always beenentertaining and it would have
been cool to be there.
Being from Nicaragua.
Rum would be the drink that mygrandmother and I would probably
share and it more than likelywould be Florida decana, which
(43:11):
is the, the Nicaraguan rum thatthat comes from there.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
That's awesome.
I know that's cool.
I didn't know that about you,yeah most.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Most people don't, most people don't, and so that's
always a fun one to share andlike oh, your Nicaragua, like
well, half and half the car ago,and half German, if anyone's
really interested to know so.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
You have an interesting 23 and me.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Very much to you know .
It's funny.
You mentioned that I've beengetting yelled at by my
girlfriend because I have twoboxes of 23 and me sitting on
the dining table and they'vebeen there for like six months
because we just haven't done thelike.
Spit in the thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
It's like probably does it want to go after we get
off here.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
No, I want to be a mystery, brandon I want to be
the man of mystery.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Well, thank you so much for joining me today and
Before we hop off, can you leteverybody use listening know
where they?
Can, you know, get in contactwith you or find you all online?
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Yeah, 100%.
I mean, speak easy code calm isthe easiest way to find us.
We're throughout LinkedIn,instagram and whatnot.
The handles change.
I'm not sure which handles iswhich anymore, but also feel
free to email me directly ifanyone's got questions or wants
to chat.
Business Just Michael at speakeasy code calm.
Brandon, any spam I get I amgonna forward to you, buddy.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
I I've already put it out onto the I don't know the
clickbait websites.
You're gonna be like thousands.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Fair, fair, at least I'll feel important now, exactly
.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
We'll hear everybody listening.
Thanks, as always, forlistening.
This is Brandon Murrow, so youcan find us at drinkscom.
Don't email me, I won't giveyou my email.
I won't give you my email, butit's very easy to guess.
So you know, I guess I'mprobably gonna get some spam too
, but we will.
We will see you next time.
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