December 1, 2023 • 27 mins
The Month End provides emerging inventory-based brands real life knowledge in the accounting, finance, and operational world. Our guests are not only similar brand founders and owners, but key stakeholders and contributors to the industry. Each episode provides a glimpse into the vast experience and insight from its guest’s unique backgrounds in a casual, conversational tone.
• • •
In episode thirty-six, Accountfully's CEO and Partner, Brad Ebenhoeh, talks with Tyler Watson of Dan O's Seasoning . As Senior VP, he leads the business development team. In the conversation, he shares a glimpse into the unconventional, yet wildly successful methods he employed to grow the seasoning company across distribution channels since its inception in 2017. For CPG businesses seeking some innovative and fresh ideas for growing their business, this is a must-watch.
For more small business and CPG- focused resources, visit Accountfully's resources page, where you will find helpful articles, guides, eBooks and more.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Brad Ebenhoeh (00:00):
Welcome to The Month End CPG community chat,
The Month End will provideemerging CPG brands real life
knowledge into the accounting,finance and operational worlds.
Our guests will be keystakeholders from those same
brands as well as other keycontributors in the industry.
Welcome to Episode 36 of TheMonth End podcast today we have
Tyler Watson from Dan O'sSeasoning. How're you doing
(00:22):
today? Tyler?
Tyler Watson (00:24):
I'm doing Dan-tastic. How about you Brad?
Brad Ebenhoeh (00:27):
Dan-tastic Love it. Love the start to this
conversation. I'm doing greatman. Tyler's the the SVP of
Sales that Dan O's and has beenthere since 2018. And I'm
looking forward to this chat onthe aspect from a sales side but
how it integrates on theoperations finance side of of a
CPG brand. So before we getstarted, why don't we start with
(00:50):
kind of your personalbackground, Tyler as well as
then was integrate it with whatDan O's does and what you do at
Dan O's. So just the floor isyours.
Tyler Watson (00:57):
Thanks man. Yeah, so I always like to kind of
start this introduction formyself because that's my
favorite topic is me. But not meand I eighth grade education. I
don't have a high schooldiploma, no college experience
whatsoever. I was basically bornon a retail sales floor love
people sold shoes. You know, itwas my kind of first go at
(01:20):
sales, couldn't make it as asandwich artist at Panera Bread.
So my wife, who then was myshift lead had no idea she was
going to become my wife. Shesaid, 'Listen, man, I said
working out you need to go applyfor the shoe store in the mall
over here'. And I'm like, 'okay,cool'. So anyway, learned shoe
sales. And it wasn't just yourbring a box out and set it in
(01:42):
front of the customer. It waslike, 'Hey, you're gonna sit and
fit this customer, you're goingto try to sell them, you know,
arch support, you're going totalk to them about their
ailments and all these things'.
So that's where I really learnedthat I love people. You know, as
a kid, I spent a lot of timegetting booted out of schools
and spent some time behind barsand things like that and learn
that I didn't want to be therefor long. And so I started to
understand that my diverse kindof exposure at a young age was
(02:06):
really applicable to being ableto learn all walks of life and
how I can, you know, converseand help those people through
product satisfaction. Love beingable to hand somebody a tangible
product and tell them about it,educate them about it, get them
excited about it, and then bringthem along on the on the
journey, right? Because that'swhat we do. We build brands. So
yeah, that's That's me in anutshell, retail dyed in the
(02:28):
wool sales guy has started withDan O's basically, Dan himself
was a bartender. And so myneighbor actually worked at the
bar with them. And this wasyears ago back in 2017. And my
neighbor's cooking with this,we're grilling out in the
neighborhood, and my neighborswhips out this baggie of
(02:49):
seasoning. And I'm like, 'Woah,wait a minute do that looks like
weed, dude. What you got to puton put on my chicken?! And I'm
like, and he's like, 'it's DanO's man', and like, 'I don't
know what Dan O's is'. And soanyway, I loved it. I enjoyed
it, tried to kids loved it, wifeloved it. And I'm like, where do
I find this stuff? And lo andbehold, he calls down that
night. And Dan's like, 'Hey, Iknow you've already eaten but
(03:11):
like, I'm cooking up some fishlike, like, bring Tyler over. If
he just wants the original.
Like, 'I want to tell them whyyou should try my spicy and I
want him to try spicy on thesalmon I'm cooking'. And I've
never met the dude before butwent over to his house and
quickly learned and when I talkabout Dan, the first thing I
talk about is his love language.
And that is cooking for people.
He's just so passionate about,you know, getting his flavor on
(03:34):
somebody's taste but and thenwatching their reaction. And so
that's kind of like the youknow, my introduction to Dan I
was was literally this dudecooking for me in his kitchen.
And, and I just I loved it somuch that I just wanted to be a
part of the brand and made thathappen just a few months later.
Brad Ebenhoeh (03:49):
Awesome. That's a great, great background and
everything here. Um, quickquestion, have you only been
like in sales from an employeerelationship? Have you had your
own business? Have you tried anyside hustles or anything like
that?
Tyler Watson (04:03):
Yeah, I sold some insurance. You know, that wasn't
for me. Great question. I'vedone franchise sales, so sold
and supported retail franchisestores for UPS. But ya know,
really never went into businessfor myself. I mean, other than,
you know, dabbling inpharmaceuticals at an early age.
(04:25):
I told you man, you're gonnahave to edit me.
Brad Ebenhoeh (04:29):
I can see why your sales guy and not just a
traditional accountant here. Ilove it. So anyways, this is
great. So when you went to DanO's and you started there were
you like, what was your role,then? And then how have you kind
of changed that, you know, fiveyears later in terms of almost
us heading into 2024 here? Yeah,
Unknown (04:48):
Yeah, it's funny, man.
I took a demotion. The last timeI came back to Dan O's is when I
first started with Dan back whenI was telling you, you know, he
was he was kind of a one manband. And so when he brought me
on, he brought me on asPresident of sales and business
development. So you introducedme as SVP, I have taken a
demotion since those days but,but totally fine. So yeah. So
when I came back to tantos, sothere was an interim right. So
(05:11):
like, I couldn't, it wasn'tsustainable when we were just
doing state fairs, flea markets,things like that. I had, I had
two kids at the time, a mortgageand it just that wasn't vibing.
So I took the job with UPS tokind of sustain for two and a
half, three years. And thendinos came back around to me and
said, man, we're, you know,we're really trying to build
this thing. We've got a newmarketing team here that's
helped an agency that washelping build something special,
(05:33):
and they were selling a lot onAmazon, Dan was, like, recently
taken off on Tik Tok and socialmedia and stuff. So I was like,
okay, cool. So I came back asregional vice president of
sales. So I had kind of themajority of the country, not the
East Coast, but the rest of it,and started to develop accounts
out from there, and then quicklyjust absorbed the other
salespersons job at the time,basically, and became the vice
(05:58):
president of sales withinprobably three to four months of
being back on Dan O's. Staff,and, and have been that pretty
much sense. And then recently,they're like, listen, we, you
know, we've kind of created moreof like a board, if you will,
internal board of folks who arereally, you know, high level
decision makers driving strategyfor the company. And then they
invited me into that and gave methe senior vice president role.
(06:20):
So I was very appreciative ofthat.
Brad Ebenhoeh (06:24):
That's awesome.
From an aspect of kind of whatyou've learned selling actual,
you know, consumer packagedgoods within this kind of food
and drink CPG space, what didn'tyou know, when you came in? And
now what do you know or thatthat then helps you sell the
product? Clearly, there's a lotof intangible sales things that
are just general acrosseverything but specific within
this industry. What have youlearned what has really helped
(06:45):
you guys Excel and had a ton ofgrowth the last couple of years?
,
Tyler Watson (06:49):
Yeah, I knew absolutely nothing coming into
this industry, man, like I said,as I was from a whole different
world of sales. And so when youcome into the grocery and you
sell into mass and the likes ofWalmart and Kroger, Albertsons,
Publix, all the all the awesomefolks, I've had the opportunity
to work with over the last twoand a half years building this
brand with with the company. Iask a lot of questions, man, I
(07:12):
mean, if I don't know what anabbreviation or acronym or
whatever it is, I'm not going tosit there and look it up on
Google, I'm just going to askthe person point blank, what's
that mean? Like, I don't know,we're all new, none of us are
from CPG. We're just, we'retrying to build this thing
together. And I think that'sreally led to the a lot of the
great relationship building I'vebeen able to have with our
buyers and key decision makersis like, they've helped me grow
(07:33):
into this role, you know, 100%,I didn't, I couldn't have done
it without our retail partnerskind of helping me along the way
and understanding some of thesethings. So yeah, I think buying
data has been really helpful. Soyou know, getting to know
Nielsen IQ. And those folksbuying spins data, getting to
know some of those folks workingwith their teams, has taught me
(07:55):
a lot about like retail metricsand key performance indicators
that, you know, are veryimportant to our business. So
yeah, I mean, I think it'sreally just been, you know,
learning trial by fire, andworking with our retail
partners, and just being verytransparent, just like what you
see with Dan and our brand andthe authenticity that lends to,
you know, his recipe content andthings like that on social
(08:17):
media, I try to really bringthat same element of
authenticity to the salesprocess and the selling process
with our buyers, and just letthem know that they're helping
us build this brand. They'reinnovating with us, and they're
not on the sidelines watching.
Brad Ebenhoeh (08:30):
So, you know, Rewinding back to buying data,
this is a great kind of jumpingoff point here. So a lot of data
exists out there. So like, whatwas kind of the exact data you
bought in relation to whatyou're looking at? And then what
are kind of the top two or threemetrics or KPIs that you kind of
focus on? Maybe at the storelevel? Or whatever it is?
Tyler Watson (08:50):
Yeah, yeah. So first, first set of data, you
know, we looked at by and wewere only in like 300 stores,
but I knew we were killing it.
In those stores. I just didn'tknow how much and how well we
were doing. And so I started, Istarted a conversation off with
a dear friend of mine, man, Idon't typically meet a stranger
but Chris Hamley, is his nameand he was a Nielsen, sales guy
for emerging brands with theirplatform called visor. And so we
(09:13):
bought visor, data. And what wasso compelling, you know, for me
as a salesperson to see is theyhave this this metric called
Brand ranking. And it's not asales ranking metric. It's more
of like a, it takes into accountlike your distribution metrics.
It takes into account velocity,you know, average selling price,
just all the cool metrics thatmake up a brand and their
(09:35):
success or not, and retail, thatbrand ranking takes into account
for. And so when we were when hewas demoing the product for us,
he's like, I've never actuallymet with a brand that was number
one on the brand ranking report.
And he's like, You guys are in300 stores and you guys are
number one on this. You're thefastest basically the fastest
growing brand in the category.
So I knew that we had a reallycompelling selling story to
(09:55):
tell. And so I was like, Dude,you gotta walk me through what
all these things was mean, Idon't know what velocity is, I
don't know what a totaldistribution point is. I don't I
don't know if this was two and ahalf years ago, we were in, you
know, we had some early adopterstores that brought our product
in, and we were very green. Soyeah, visor was was a huge help.
And now we, you know, spendquite a bit of money to, you
know, obtain that data from allaggregated data from all sorts
(10:18):
of sources and, and make senseof it.
Brad Ebenhoeh (10:23):
Very cool. Very cool. So what has been your
biggest kind of challenge orfrustration with kind of
distribution with working withretail aspect from your
position?
Tyler Watson (10:33):
I'd say? That's a it's a tough question. I mean, I
think, you know, sometimes weface certain partners have
supply chain constraints, and itcauses for our shelf price to be
a lot more than what we believeit should be. And it's no fault
of our own, right? Like if we ifif that retail partner doesn't
(10:54):
have distribution and a certainarea or region of the country,
then we have to go through athird party distributor in order
to get it to those shelves, andyou know, that person might have
a, you know, 28 to 35% markup,or whatever it is, and then the
retailer's got to make theirmarkup, and then all of a
sudden, our bottle that shouldbe, you know, seven, eight bucks
on shelf is 10 bucks, and that,you know, really does kill our
(11:14):
velocities. And so I thinkthat's a huge obstacle for us
that we're still, you know,actively trying to overcome and
figure out and other than that,I mean, I can't think of
anything offhand. I mean, thisis it's a it's a tough, scrappy
business to be in, but thatwould probably be my biggest tip
right now is just getting thatgetting our price, right. So how
do you–The spice is right? Theprice is not.
Brad Ebenhoeh (11:37):
When you go to sell the product, what do you
say, Hey, we're Dan-tastic,dominant and disruptive. Is that
right?
Tyler Watson (11:43):
Dan-tastic, Dan-o-mite; might be the best
Dan seasoning you've ever had.
Because it's Daaan good.
Brad Ebenhoeh (11:49):
Love it.
Tyler Watson (11:50):
So since we're talking about Dan-O-lytics.
Brad Ebenhoeh (11:53):
There we go. So since we're talking about the
D's (11:55):
deduction management, can I trace Yeah, management? Let's
get into that. How to? How doyou manage that? How does Dan
O's handle that and ensuringyou're kind of set up for
success, but also kind of reviewauditing, kind of ensuring
you're you know, what you'regetting charged and kickback is
what you guys have agreed upon?
Tyler Watson (12:12):
Ya man, that was new to us, right? I mean, that's
something you go into businesswith somebody, you're like, oh,
man, this is great. We just goton shelf, and then you get a
$90,000, invoice back, right?
And you're like, What the hell'sthis for? So ya know, we have a
rockstar financial team here.
You know, we've got a retail opscoordinator on my team, who is
just awesome at kind of beingone of those people who spots
(12:33):
that from a mile away and sayssomething doesn't look right
here. Or, you know, what isthis? You know, what, what code
is this? What does that applyingto? You know, and oftentimes,
the first question is Tyler,what the hell did you do, you
know, during negotiations. But,but no, man, I think that's one
thing that it's, it's, we don'thave a fluid process for quite
as of yet. Because I think whatthe constraints are there is
(12:55):
that retail partners just haveso many different platforms to
log into, and try to managethat. And so, you know, we've
seen an evolution in thatparticular area of like aI
coming in, and, you know, chatbots, being able to bring in all
of those platforms, andintegrate all those platforms is
probably something you're waymore familiar with, than I am,
of being able to make sense ofthose things, track those
(13:17):
things. You know, audit, youknow, create audits, self audits
for you guys to do monthly andthings like that. So I don't get
too too far into the weeds. Ijust kind of, you know, if they
asked me a question, you know,our team finance team says, hey,
you know, what, what is thisabout this bill back or whatever
it is, you know, I can usuallykind of give a good idea of what
I know. But yeah, we wish I cantell you a little bit more about
(13:38):
that. That's probably about thegist of my expertise on that.
Brad Ebenhoeh (13:42):
Yeah, it's definitely a very kind of
nuanced situation specific kindof circumstance you have to deal
with in the in the CPG. Space.
But on the sales side, soclearly, from our conversation,
I'm assuming you could probablysell anything on the side of the
road, and you want to sell a lotof things, right? So how does
how do you handle the salesplanning? The sales? Hey, I want
(14:04):
to sell here and I want to go toinfinity. But how does that then
reconcile to two things? Let'sstart first on the inventory
side from your supply chain,your inventory, the purchasing
team that come in, or themanufacturing whatever your
processes, how do you guyshandle that process?
Tyler Watson (14:22):
Yeah, awesome. Um, so we brought on the demand
planner, because it all wasliving in my head before that on
what I had in the pipeline. And,you know, we brought in, you
know, I've got a businessdevelopment guy on my team who
brought HubSpot to the table whocould help kind of create a
pipeline there, right. And so wekind of created some processes
and, you know, and so forth.
But, yeah, I mean, inventorymanagement was huge for us,
(14:45):
because you know, when you startto ramp up for a 4,000, store
rollout, right, or 3,000, orwhatever it is, and you're
trying to start to take intoaccount not just the opening
order, but what are going to bethe anticipated velocities in
that channel, you know, why arewe you know, going to? Why are
we going after them, you know,what products are going to be in
there, you know, now that wedon't have just to SKUs anymore,
(15:07):
it's it's a lot to manage. And,you know, as a sales guy, it's
easy for me to say, Oh, I'm justsupposed to sell right, but then
you don't have if you don't havea team to be able to support
that, or an infrastructure to beable to support that. And more
importantly, if they don'tunderstand what's going on, if
they don't understand what youwere doing and what you were
selling. It's not going to work.
(15:28):
So yeah, I think it's it's as a,as a as a new emerging brand,
it's very new to us. That wholeprocess of organizing, and
making sense of an opening orderversus a replenishment order.
And so we've, we've been very intune with each other from
department to department to kindof bridge the gap on that
(15:49):
process so far. So I'm notsaying we perfected it by any
means. But we're not we're notout of stock anywhere, are on
time and full percentages aresolid, we report, you know, to
each other. I think one thingthat, you know, between our
sales and operations departmentwe've created is kind of these
KPIs that we live and die bythat sales actually reports to
operations and operationsreports back as though they're
our customer that we're theircustomer. And I think that
(16:11):
mindset has really created agood cohesion between the two
departments.
Brad Ebenhoeh (16:15):
Yeah, that definitely makes sense. You're
in the business together and theteam together. So ensuring that
there's some accountabilitybetween each other helps out and
then how do you handle reconcilethat to kind of the finance the
cash, the accounting team ofpaying for your, excuse me
paying for your inventory,supply chain and raw materials,
as well as then getting paidfrom your retailers? Like, what
what is your integration withthat look like?
Tyler Watson (16:36):
Yeah, same? It's a very similar process, man. I
mean, we got a pretty smallcrew. I mean, we're not. I mean,
I say that relevant to the sizeof business where we'll probably
in the year between 35 and 40million, we got about 30
employees, maybe a little bitmore than that. But our
accounting team is three guys,three cats, and then, you know,
sales is three or four people sotight, man, just we keep it
(16:58):
tight, keep it running lean.
Make sure we're talking to eachother all the time. But I think,
you know, we have, we try tomake sure their meetings in
place that, you know, we kind ofgo over high level, you know,
what, where's the business atwhere we ended last quarter? How
are we, you know, reconcilingthese things, but we got an ERP
system recently Brightpearl isis what we've been using. So
we're starting to try to bringin a lot of, you know,
(17:19):
integration and connectivitywith different things that we're
using different platforms we'reusing, and trying to bring it
all into that one kind ofumbrella system for everybody to
kind of, you know, live in andreport to.
Brad Ebenhoeh (17:32):
Yep. All of that makes sense in relation to kind
of the various sales channelsyou sell in and how do you two
things like understand thesuccess of the specific sales
channels, distribution, directconsumer, Amazon, whatever, as
well as how have you guysdecided which sales channels to
kind of go into and to spendyour kind of time and energy on?
Tyler Watson (17:56):
Yeah, I wish I had an awesome strategized answer
for you. I mean, truly, we'vegone after every single account,
we could so you know, hardware,I went after Lowe's hardware
became the number one sellingbrand in their stores, you know,
going into Bucees, you know, thetravel destination stop out of
you know, familiar with thosebeaver guy, but, you know, we
(18:18):
went into Bucees and becametheir number one selling brand,
and we're not even Texas bornbrand. And that's, that's a that
was a huge accomplishment forus. So, yeah, I mean, you know,
going after everything, and Ithink right now we're to a point
now to where we really do needand intend to spend a lot of
time on channel strategy anddifferentiation between the
channels, you know, club beingone that I feel like we, you
(18:40):
know, may not have approachedproperly to begin with, but, you
know, how do we go back to thedrawing board and kind of look
at the big, you know,competitors inside a club and
what we did with and what didn'twork, what did work, you know,
was the was the pack size,right? Was the price per ounce,
right? All those differentthings that, you know, an early,
you know, company probably kindof screws up and it's like, when
(19:02):
I talk to other brands who havebeen down this path before, it's
like, yeah, we did that too. Andit makes me feel a lot better
man. Because, you know, it's oneof those things you really are
hard on yourselves internallywhen things don't work out
exactly like you want them to.
But yeah, I mean, I think we'vewe've learned a lot from from
those exploratory kind of, youknow, first two years in
business in a, in retail. So,yeah, I think now what we're
(19:23):
looking at is what makes themost sense based off of the
consumer research that we have,what do we know about our
shopper? You know, now we cankind of get a little bit more
tactical on what type of flavorswe want to put into certain
channels. You know, are thereoffshoot product lines that we
want to toy around with? whatchannel is good for that? is
there you know, need fordifferentiation inside of a
(19:43):
channel to create lesscompetition and less price? You
know, competition within thatchannel. Those are the types of
questions we're really startingto ask ourselves now that we've
gotten a good foothold andretail.
Brad Ebenhoeh (19:56):
Oh, that makes sense. And the kind of the last
question before we get to ourown final questions on the
podcast like, what are some bestpractices are really good kind
of ways that that Dano and youand the sales and I'm sure the
marketing folks have created abrand awareness. What are some
kind of cool tools or things youguys have done? And you know,
the last kind of, you know,maybe 2023. To, to do that.
Tyler Watson (20:20):
Yeah, I think probably one of my favorite
things we've done, you know, asof late is, we created this
campaign together on our socialmedia called hashtag #inthewild.
So we were looking at a page, wehave this group on Facebook,
it's called Dan O's fan O's.
And, and we built this page, itwas, I think we had 200 members
when I joined back in 2018,maybe less than that, actually.
(20:40):
And now we've got over 200, andalmost 240,000 members right
now. And so it's grownexponentially. And, you know, we
look at that channel, and I waslooking at the channel, and I'm
like, noticing that a lot ofpeople get really excited about
finding our product in a retailstore near them. And I'm like,
What can we do with that,because we've always been really
worried about kind of poking thealgorithm on our social channels
(21:01):
and feeling too salesy, youknow, in our content. And so I
started thinking, like, wherecould that type of content live?
And so we kind of put our headstogether, and realized quickly
that we weren't utilizingstories. And so at the top of,
you know, Facebook, InstagramStories, it's just a snapshot in
time, 24 hours, and it goesaway. I'm like, man, what if we
(21:23):
started putting that customersengagement that picture them
finding and at retail, holdingup a bottle in front of the
store, with the logo in thebackground, that sort of thing?
What if we put that on storiesand got people excited about
sharing that, and then sharingit to our facebook page, or
Instagram, who's, you know, wegot millions of followers. So
it's like, exciting, if you seesome huge brand, you know, on
social post your content. And sowe started this in the wild
(21:47):
campaign, and it was gaining,you know, 10, 20, 30,000
impressions a day, you know,just doing that alone and
showing customers in the wildfinding our product. And so we
were, you know, looking at, youknow, basically a couple million
impressions more every singlemonth. And those impressions
were important, because theywere showing retail
availability, right? Like, wehad never really figured out a
good campaign to do that withoutcoming across, like we were
(22:08):
trying to sell where our recipevideos or where we kind of
started and have a good footholdon social media. So this was a
great way for us to kind of dipour toe in the water on that,
and utilize a particular tool onsocial media that we've not used
before, which was and not thatwe didn't use the stories, it
was just that we didn't have areal strategy to using the
stories. And now I feel like wecan do that with with this in
(22:32):
the wild campaign. And it can bekind of an evergreen campaign
that runs forever, and peoplecan continue sharing their
excitement about finding dinosin the wild.
Brad Ebenhoeh (22:41):
Yeah, I love, love stories like that. I just
love kind of learning like thatas a kind of a fellow, you know,
entrepreneur, myself and abusinessman and just kind of
always kind of conscious andaware of marketing, brand,
strategy, awareness, all thattype of stuff, especially in
terms of how social media andsociety kind of keeps changing
(23:01):
and how they absorb content.
Right. So it's alwaysinteresting to see where that
exists. So as we're wrappingthis up, it's been an awesome
conversation. You know, for allthe CPG kind of founders out
there, we always end with twoquestions. And then the first
one, I want to kind of say, whatdoes one do? From your
perspective?
Tyler Watson (23:19):
Yeah, so I had to really mull this over, you know,
you and I talked about thisbefore. And I was like, and by
the way, I feel like I hadn'tgotten to know you, we got to do
a second episode, at some pointin time, I got to interview you,
because you seem like an awesomeguy, man. But yeah, so do form a
brand strategy. And, you know,really to ensure that your
(23:40):
messaging is clear, it'srelevant. You know, I believe
that recently, we did a lot moreconsumer, dove into a lot more
consumer research and it led usto find that a very different
consumer was shopping andengaging with our brand on E
comm than the one buying atretail. And you would think
that, you know, the Ecomcustomer was actually younger,
but it was the opposite. It wasthe the customer that was buying
(24:01):
on E commerce was actuallyolder, and the customer buying
and store was was younger. Sothat was a really interesting,
you know, kind of factoid tolearn about that. And then, you
know, pivoting the marketingplan to accommodate that where
the bulk of your business iswhen your strategy was so you
know, tailored to that EComcustomer, you know that that's
just not an easy task. So yeah,brand strategy man, form one
(24:23):
note, you know, even though weknew kind of we had a gut
feeling of who we were and whoour customer was, you know,
getting that data to support agut based decision really
helped, you know, craft ourstrategy.
Brad Ebenhoeh (24:37):
Awesome. And then what is one Don't
Tyler Watson (24:41):
you I mean, this is this is a, you know, for me
as a sales guy, this was toughbecause like all sales guys just
kind of want to let theircustomer dictate things but
like, I feel like because oursuccess is due to our
disruption. Like you saidearlier, we dominate and disrupt
is kind of like our mantra hereas a leadership team. And so you
know, we've I've had partnerfeedback come back, like we had
(25:02):
a massive, massive customer thatI was in buying talks with. This
was about a year ago. And theysaid, Listen, you know, we want
to bring in your brand lookslike it looks, you know, it's a
great product branding isawesome, but like, we got to
take that little guy off thefront of your bottle, right like
little Danny you got to see himright there little little
redneck dude walking, walkingaway. Not a redneck at all. But
(25:23):
that's what that was theperception, right? It was a, you
know, Pacific Northwest, youknow, kind of consumer shop or
whatever. They're like, I justdon't know that that's going to
resonate with them. And I'mlike, Well, that's the case. And
I don't think we should dobusiness together. Because
that's just not that's not whatwe're going to do to accommodate
this account. We'll just buildelsewhere and you know, you'll
be left behind but yeah, I mean,you know, the knee jerk reaction
(25:46):
are for a sales guys to go backto the team and say, Listen, we,
you know, I've got this hugeopportunity, we should we should
change everything about whatwe're doing. Because this
opportunity is massive. It's thebiggest one we've ever had. But
you know, I took that time toreally kind of look inside and
say, you know, if this customerdoesn't like us for who we are,
then we shouldn't be doingbusiness with them.
Brad Ebenhoeh (26:03):
I couldn't agree more. You can't say yes. And
vendor need out of everybody.
It's just It doesn't work thatway in business, so Well, all
right. This was an awesome chat.
It was great to get to know you,Tyler. And you're so you're
good. Dude. I'm looking forwardto your interview with me here
at some point in the future. Allright, well, this is episode 36
(26:23):
of The Month End podcast beforewe go, where can people find Dan
O's? And what should they buy?
Tyler Watson (26:28):
Everywhere you if you haven't tried Dan O's
because you don't know till youDan-O; you gotta go find that
original green cap. You can findit at all your Walmart stores,
Kroger, Albertsons, Sam's clubsgot the OG and the 20 ounce
bottles so I mean just lookaround and if you want to just
try Dan O's and you don't wantto go in big with a big bottle,
you can go to your local DollarGeneral Store and get $1 pouch
(26:50):
of dollar of Dan O's originalseasoning to try us out and then
you can go to the Walmart whenyou get hooked. Awesome.
Brad Ebenhoeh (26:57):
Awesome, Well thanks for your time, Tyler.
Really appreciate it andcongrats on everything so far.
Tyler Watson (27:02):
Fantastic to be with you today, Brad
Welcome to The Month End CPG community chat,
The Month End will provideemerging CPG brands real life
knowledge into the accounting,finance and operational worlds.
Our guests will be keystakeholders from those same
brands as well as other keycontributors in the industry.
Welcome to Episode 36 of TheMonth End podcast today we have
Tyler Watson from Dan O'sSeasoning. How're you doing
(00:22):
today? Tyler?
Tyler Watson (00:24):
I'm doing Dan-tastic. How about you Brad?
Brad Ebenhoeh (00:27):
Dan-tastic Love it. Love the start to this
conversation. I'm doing greatman. Tyler's the the SVP of
Sales that Dan O's and has beenthere since 2018. And I'm
looking forward to this chat onthe aspect from a sales side but
how it integrates on theoperations finance side of of a
CPG brand. So before we getstarted, why don't we start with
(00:50):
kind of your personalbackground, Tyler as well as
then was integrate it with whatDan O's does and what you do at
Dan O's. So just the floor isyours.
Tyler Watson (00:57):
Thanks man. Yeah, so I always like to kind of
start this introduction formyself because that's my
favorite topic is me. But not meand I eighth grade education. I
don't have a high schooldiploma, no college experience
whatsoever. I was basically bornon a retail sales floor love
people sold shoes. You know, itwas my kind of first go at
(01:20):
sales, couldn't make it as asandwich artist at Panera Bread.
So my wife, who then was myshift lead had no idea she was
going to become my wife. Shesaid, 'Listen, man, I said
working out you need to go applyfor the shoe store in the mall
over here'. And I'm like, 'okay,cool'. So anyway, learned shoe
sales. And it wasn't just yourbring a box out and set it in
(01:42):
front of the customer. It waslike, 'Hey, you're gonna sit and
fit this customer, you're goingto try to sell them, you know,
arch support, you're going totalk to them about their
ailments and all these things'.
So that's where I really learnedthat I love people. You know, as
a kid, I spent a lot of timegetting booted out of schools
and spent some time behind barsand things like that and learn
that I didn't want to be therefor long. And so I started to
understand that my diverse kindof exposure at a young age was
(02:06):
really applicable to being ableto learn all walks of life and
how I can, you know, converseand help those people through
product satisfaction. Love beingable to hand somebody a tangible
product and tell them about it,educate them about it, get them
excited about it, and then bringthem along on the on the
journey, right? Because that'swhat we do. We build brands. So
yeah, that's That's me in anutshell, retail dyed in the
(02:28):
wool sales guy has started withDan O's basically, Dan himself
was a bartender. And so myneighbor actually worked at the
bar with them. And this wasyears ago back in 2017. And my
neighbor's cooking with this,we're grilling out in the
neighborhood, and my neighborswhips out this baggie of
(02:49):
seasoning. And I'm like, 'Woah,wait a minute do that looks like
weed, dude. What you got to puton put on my chicken?! And I'm
like, and he's like, 'it's DanO's man', and like, 'I don't
know what Dan O's is'. And soanyway, I loved it. I enjoyed
it, tried to kids loved it, wifeloved it. And I'm like, where do
I find this stuff? And lo andbehold, he calls down that
night. And Dan's like, 'Hey, Iknow you've already eaten but
(03:11):
like, I'm cooking up some fishlike, like, bring Tyler over. If
he just wants the original.
Like, 'I want to tell them whyyou should try my spicy and I
want him to try spicy on thesalmon I'm cooking'. And I've
never met the dude before butwent over to his house and
quickly learned and when I talkabout Dan, the first thing I
talk about is his love language.
And that is cooking for people.
He's just so passionate about,you know, getting his flavor on
(03:34):
somebody's taste but and thenwatching their reaction. And so
that's kind of like the youknow, my introduction to Dan I
was was literally this dudecooking for me in his kitchen.
And, and I just I loved it somuch that I just wanted to be a
part of the brand and made thathappen just a few months later.
Brad Ebenhoeh (03:49):
Awesome. That's a great, great background and
everything here. Um, quickquestion, have you only been
like in sales from an employeerelationship? Have you had your
own business? Have you tried anyside hustles or anything like
that?
Tyler Watson (04:03):
Yeah, I sold some insurance. You know, that wasn't
for me. Great question. I'vedone franchise sales, so sold
and supported retail franchisestores for UPS. But ya know,
really never went into businessfor myself. I mean, other than,
you know, dabbling inpharmaceuticals at an early age.
(04:25):
I told you man, you're gonnahave to edit me.
Brad Ebenhoeh (04:29):
I can see why your sales guy and not just a
traditional accountant here. Ilove it. So anyways, this is
great. So when you went to DanO's and you started there were
you like, what was your role,then? And then how have you kind
of changed that, you know, fiveyears later in terms of almost
us heading into 2024 here? Yeah,
Unknown (04:48):
Yeah, it's funny, man.
I took a demotion. The last timeI came back to Dan O's is when I
first started with Dan back whenI was telling you, you know, he
was he was kind of a one manband. And so when he brought me
on, he brought me on asPresident of sales and business
development. So you introducedme as SVP, I have taken a
demotion since those days but,but totally fine. So yeah. So
when I came back to tantos, sothere was an interim right. So
(05:11):
like, I couldn't, it wasn'tsustainable when we were just
doing state fairs, flea markets,things like that. I had, I had
two kids at the time, a mortgageand it just that wasn't vibing.
So I took the job with UPS tokind of sustain for two and a
half, three years. And thendinos came back around to me and
said, man, we're, you know,we're really trying to build
this thing. We've got a newmarketing team here that's
helped an agency that washelping build something special,
(05:33):
and they were selling a lot onAmazon, Dan was, like, recently
taken off on Tik Tok and socialmedia and stuff. So I was like,
okay, cool. So I came back asregional vice president of
sales. So I had kind of themajority of the country, not the
East Coast, but the rest of it,and started to develop accounts
out from there, and then quicklyjust absorbed the other
salespersons job at the time,basically, and became the vice
(05:58):
president of sales withinprobably three to four months of
being back on Dan O's. Staff,and, and have been that pretty
much sense. And then recently,they're like, listen, we, you
know, we've kind of created moreof like a board, if you will,
internal board of folks who arereally, you know, high level
decision makers driving strategyfor the company. And then they
invited me into that and gave methe senior vice president role.
(06:20):
So I was very appreciative ofthat.
Brad Ebenhoeh (06:24):
That's awesome.
From an aspect of kind of whatyou've learned selling actual,
you know, consumer packagedgoods within this kind of food
and drink CPG space, what didn'tyou know, when you came in? And
now what do you know or thatthat then helps you sell the
product? Clearly, there's a lotof intangible sales things that
are just general acrosseverything but specific within
this industry. What have youlearned what has really helped
(06:45):
you guys Excel and had a ton ofgrowth the last couple of years?
,
Tyler Watson (06:49):
Yeah, I knew absolutely nothing coming into
this industry, man, like I said,as I was from a whole different
world of sales. And so when youcome into the grocery and you
sell into mass and the likes ofWalmart and Kroger, Albertsons,
Publix, all the all the awesomefolks, I've had the opportunity
to work with over the last twoand a half years building this
brand with with the company. Iask a lot of questions, man, I
(07:12):
mean, if I don't know what anabbreviation or acronym or
whatever it is, I'm not going tosit there and look it up on
Google, I'm just going to askthe person point blank, what's
that mean? Like, I don't know,we're all new, none of us are
from CPG. We're just, we'retrying to build this thing
together. And I think that'sreally led to the a lot of the
great relationship building I'vebeen able to have with our
buyers and key decision makersis like, they've helped me grow
(07:33):
into this role, you know, 100%,I didn't, I couldn't have done
it without our retail partnerskind of helping me along the way
and understanding some of thesethings. So yeah, I think buying
data has been really helpful. Soyou know, getting to know
Nielsen IQ. And those folksbuying spins data, getting to
know some of those folks workingwith their teams, has taught me
(07:55):
a lot about like retail metricsand key performance indicators
that, you know, are veryimportant to our business. So
yeah, I mean, I think it'sreally just been, you know,
learning trial by fire, andworking with our retail
partners, and just being verytransparent, just like what you
see with Dan and our brand andthe authenticity that lends to,
you know, his recipe content andthings like that on social
(08:17):
media, I try to really bringthat same element of
authenticity to the salesprocess and the selling process
with our buyers, and just letthem know that they're helping
us build this brand. They'reinnovating with us, and they're
not on the sidelines watching.
Brad Ebenhoeh (08:30):
So, you know, Rewinding back to buying data,
this is a great kind of jumpingoff point here. So a lot of data
exists out there. So like, whatwas kind of the exact data you
bought in relation to whatyou're looking at? And then what
are kind of the top two or threemetrics or KPIs that you kind of
focus on? Maybe at the storelevel? Or whatever it is?
Tyler Watson (08:50):
Yeah, yeah. So first, first set of data, you
know, we looked at by and wewere only in like 300 stores,
but I knew we were killing it.
In those stores. I just didn'tknow how much and how well we
were doing. And so I started, Istarted a conversation off with
a dear friend of mine, man, Idon't typically meet a stranger
but Chris Hamley, is his nameand he was a Nielsen, sales guy
for emerging brands with theirplatform called visor. And so we
(09:13):
bought visor, data. And what wasso compelling, you know, for me
as a salesperson to see is theyhave this this metric called
Brand ranking. And it's not asales ranking metric. It's more
of like a, it takes into accountlike your distribution metrics.
It takes into account velocity,you know, average selling price,
just all the cool metrics thatmake up a brand and their
(09:35):
success or not, and retail, thatbrand ranking takes into account
for. And so when we were when hewas demoing the product for us,
he's like, I've never actuallymet with a brand that was number
one on the brand ranking report.
And he's like, You guys are in300 stores and you guys are
number one on this. You're thefastest basically the fastest
growing brand in the category.
So I knew that we had a reallycompelling selling story to
(09:55):
tell. And so I was like, Dude,you gotta walk me through what
all these things was mean, Idon't know what velocity is, I
don't know what a totaldistribution point is. I don't I
don't know if this was two and ahalf years ago, we were in, you
know, we had some early adopterstores that brought our product
in, and we were very green. Soyeah, visor was was a huge help.
And now we, you know, spendquite a bit of money to, you
know, obtain that data from allaggregated data from all sorts
(10:18):
of sources and, and make senseof it.
Brad Ebenhoeh (10:23):
Very cool. Very cool. So what has been your
biggest kind of challenge orfrustration with kind of
distribution with working withretail aspect from your
position?
Tyler Watson (10:33):
I'd say? That's a it's a tough question. I mean, I
think, you know, sometimes weface certain partners have
supply chain constraints, and itcauses for our shelf price to be
a lot more than what we believeit should be. And it's no fault
of our own, right? Like if we ifif that retail partner doesn't
(10:54):
have distribution and a certainarea or region of the country,
then we have to go through athird party distributor in order
to get it to those shelves, andyou know, that person might have
a, you know, 28 to 35% markup,or whatever it is, and then the
retailer's got to make theirmarkup, and then all of a
sudden, our bottle that shouldbe, you know, seven, eight bucks
on shelf is 10 bucks, and that,you know, really does kill our
(11:14):
velocities. And so I thinkthat's a huge obstacle for us
that we're still, you know,actively trying to overcome and
figure out and other than that,I mean, I can't think of
anything offhand. I mean, thisis it's a it's a tough, scrappy
business to be in, but thatwould probably be my biggest tip
right now is just getting thatgetting our price, right. So how
do you–The spice is right? Theprice is not.
Brad Ebenhoeh (11:37):
When you go to sell the product, what do you
say, Hey, we're Dan-tastic,dominant and disruptive. Is that
right?
Tyler Watson (11:43):
Dan-tastic, Dan-o-mite; might be the best
Dan seasoning you've ever had.
Because it's Daaan good.
Brad Ebenhoeh (11:49):
Love it.
Tyler Watson (11:50):
So since we're talking about Dan-O-lytics.
Brad Ebenhoeh (11:53):
There we go. So since we're talking about the
D's (11:55):
deduction management, can I trace Yeah, management? Let's
get into that. How to? How doyou manage that? How does Dan
O's handle that and ensuringyou're kind of set up for
success, but also kind of reviewauditing, kind of ensuring
you're you know, what you'regetting charged and kickback is
what you guys have agreed upon?
Tyler Watson (12:12):
Ya man, that was new to us, right? I mean, that's
something you go into businesswith somebody, you're like, oh,
man, this is great. We just goton shelf, and then you get a
$90,000, invoice back, right?
And you're like, What the hell'sthis for? So ya know, we have a
rockstar financial team here.
You know, we've got a retail opscoordinator on my team, who is
just awesome at kind of beingone of those people who spots
(12:33):
that from a mile away and sayssomething doesn't look right
here. Or, you know, what isthis? You know, what, what code
is this? What does that applyingto? You know, and oftentimes,
the first question is Tyler,what the hell did you do, you
know, during negotiations. But,but no, man, I think that's one
thing that it's, it's, we don'thave a fluid process for quite
as of yet. Because I think whatthe constraints are there is
(12:55):
that retail partners just haveso many different platforms to
log into, and try to managethat. And so, you know, we've
seen an evolution in thatparticular area of like aI
coming in, and, you know, chatbots, being able to bring in all
of those platforms, andintegrate all those platforms is
probably something you're waymore familiar with, than I am,
of being able to make sense ofthose things, track those
(13:17):
things. You know, audit, youknow, create audits, self audits
for you guys to do monthly andthings like that. So I don't get
too too far into the weeds. Ijust kind of, you know, if they
asked me a question, you know,our team finance team says, hey,
you know, what, what is thisabout this bill back or whatever
it is, you know, I can usuallykind of give a good idea of what
I know. But yeah, we wish I cantell you a little bit more about
(13:38):
that. That's probably about thegist of my expertise on that.
Brad Ebenhoeh (13:42):
Yeah, it's definitely a very kind of
nuanced situation specific kindof circumstance you have to deal
with in the in the CPG. Space.
But on the sales side, soclearly, from our conversation,
I'm assuming you could probablysell anything on the side of the
road, and you want to sell a lotof things, right? So how does
how do you handle the salesplanning? The sales? Hey, I want
(14:04):
to sell here and I want to go toinfinity. But how does that then
reconcile to two things? Let'sstart first on the inventory
side from your supply chain,your inventory, the purchasing
team that come in, or themanufacturing whatever your
processes, how do you guyshandle that process?
Tyler Watson (14:22):
Yeah, awesome. Um, so we brought on the demand
planner, because it all wasliving in my head before that on
what I had in the pipeline. And,you know, we brought in, you
know, I've got a businessdevelopment guy on my team who
brought HubSpot to the table whocould help kind of create a
pipeline there, right. And so wekind of created some processes
and, you know, and so forth.
But, yeah, I mean, inventorymanagement was huge for us,
(14:45):
because you know, when you startto ramp up for a 4,000, store
rollout, right, or 3,000, orwhatever it is, and you're
trying to start to take intoaccount not just the opening
order, but what are going to bethe anticipated velocities in
that channel, you know, why arewe you know, going to? Why are
we going after them, you know,what products are going to be in
there, you know, now that wedon't have just to SKUs anymore,
(15:07):
it's it's a lot to manage. And,you know, as a sales guy, it's
easy for me to say, Oh, I'm justsupposed to sell right, but then
you don't have if you don't havea team to be able to support
that, or an infrastructure to beable to support that. And more
importantly, if they don'tunderstand what's going on, if
they don't understand what youwere doing and what you were
selling. It's not going to work.
(15:28):
So yeah, I think it's it's as a,as a as a new emerging brand,
it's very new to us. That wholeprocess of organizing, and
making sense of an opening orderversus a replenishment order.
And so we've, we've been very intune with each other from
department to department to kindof bridge the gap on that
(15:49):
process so far. So I'm notsaying we perfected it by any
means. But we're not we're notout of stock anywhere, are on
time and full percentages aresolid, we report, you know, to
each other. I think one thingthat, you know, between our
sales and operations departmentwe've created is kind of these
KPIs that we live and die bythat sales actually reports to
operations and operationsreports back as though they're
our customer that we're theircustomer. And I think that
(16:11):
mindset has really created agood cohesion between the two
departments.
Brad Ebenhoeh (16:15):
Yeah, that definitely makes sense. You're
in the business together and theteam together. So ensuring that
there's some accountabilitybetween each other helps out and
then how do you handle reconcilethat to kind of the finance the
cash, the accounting team ofpaying for your, excuse me
paying for your inventory,supply chain and raw materials,
as well as then getting paidfrom your retailers? Like, what
what is your integration withthat look like?
Tyler Watson (16:36):
Yeah, same? It's a very similar process, man. I
mean, we got a pretty smallcrew. I mean, we're not. I mean,
I say that relevant to the sizeof business where we'll probably
in the year between 35 and 40million, we got about 30
employees, maybe a little bitmore than that. But our
accounting team is three guys,three cats, and then, you know,
sales is three or four people sotight, man, just we keep it
(16:58):
tight, keep it running lean.
Make sure we're talking to eachother all the time. But I think,
you know, we have, we try tomake sure their meetings in
place that, you know, we kind ofgo over high level, you know,
what, where's the business atwhere we ended last quarter? How
are we, you know, reconcilingthese things, but we got an ERP
system recently Brightpearl isis what we've been using. So
we're starting to try to bringin a lot of, you know,
(17:19):
integration and connectivitywith different things that we're
using different platforms we'reusing, and trying to bring it
all into that one kind ofumbrella system for everybody to
kind of, you know, live in andreport to.
Brad Ebenhoeh (17:32):
Yep. All of that makes sense in relation to kind
of the various sales channelsyou sell in and how do you two
things like understand thesuccess of the specific sales
channels, distribution, directconsumer, Amazon, whatever, as
well as how have you guysdecided which sales channels to
kind of go into and to spendyour kind of time and energy on?
Tyler Watson (17:56):
Yeah, I wish I had an awesome strategized answer
for you. I mean, truly, we'vegone after every single account,
we could so you know, hardware,I went after Lowe's hardware
became the number one sellingbrand in their stores, you know,
going into Bucees, you know, thetravel destination stop out of
you know, familiar with thosebeaver guy, but, you know, we
(18:18):
went into Bucees and becametheir number one selling brand,
and we're not even Texas bornbrand. And that's, that's a that
was a huge accomplishment forus. So, yeah, I mean, you know,
going after everything, and Ithink right now we're to a point
now to where we really do needand intend to spend a lot of
time on channel strategy anddifferentiation between the
channels, you know, club beingone that I feel like we, you
(18:40):
know, may not have approachedproperly to begin with, but, you
know, how do we go back to thedrawing board and kind of look
at the big, you know,competitors inside a club and
what we did with and what didn'twork, what did work, you know,
was the was the pack size,right? Was the price per ounce,
right? All those differentthings that, you know, an early,
you know, company probably kindof screws up and it's like, when
(19:02):
I talk to other brands who havebeen down this path before, it's
like, yeah, we did that too. Andit makes me feel a lot better
man. Because, you know, it's oneof those things you really are
hard on yourselves internallywhen things don't work out
exactly like you want them to.
But yeah, I mean, I think we'vewe've learned a lot from from
those exploratory kind of, youknow, first two years in
business in a, in retail. So,yeah, I think now what we're
(19:23):
looking at is what makes themost sense based off of the
consumer research that we have,what do we know about our
shopper? You know, now we cankind of get a little bit more
tactical on what type of flavorswe want to put into certain
channels. You know, are thereoffshoot product lines that we
want to toy around with? whatchannel is good for that? is
there you know, need fordifferentiation inside of a
(19:43):
channel to create lesscompetition and less price? You
know, competition within thatchannel. Those are the types of
questions we're really startingto ask ourselves now that we've
gotten a good foothold andretail.
Brad Ebenhoeh (19:56):
Oh, that makes sense. And the kind of the last
question before we get to ourown final questions on the
podcast like, what are some bestpractices are really good kind
of ways that that Dano and youand the sales and I'm sure the
marketing folks have created abrand awareness. What are some
kind of cool tools or things youguys have done? And you know,
the last kind of, you know,maybe 2023. To, to do that.
Tyler Watson (20:20):
Yeah, I think probably one of my favorite
things we've done, you know, asof late is, we created this
campaign together on our socialmedia called hashtag #inthewild.
So we were looking at a page, wehave this group on Facebook,
it's called Dan O's fan O's.
And, and we built this page, itwas, I think we had 200 members
when I joined back in 2018,maybe less than that, actually.
(20:40):
And now we've got over 200, andalmost 240,000 members right
now. And so it's grownexponentially. And, you know, we
look at that channel, and I waslooking at the channel, and I'm
like, noticing that a lot ofpeople get really excited about
finding our product in a retailstore near them. And I'm like,
What can we do with that,because we've always been really
worried about kind of poking thealgorithm on our social channels
(21:01):
and feeling too salesy, youknow, in our content. And so I
started thinking, like, wherecould that type of content live?
And so we kind of put our headstogether, and realized quickly
that we weren't utilizingstories. And so at the top of,
you know, Facebook, InstagramStories, it's just a snapshot in
time, 24 hours, and it goesaway. I'm like, man, what if we
(21:23):
started putting that customersengagement that picture them
finding and at retail, holdingup a bottle in front of the
store, with the logo in thebackground, that sort of thing?
What if we put that on storiesand got people excited about
sharing that, and then sharingit to our facebook page, or
Instagram, who's, you know, wegot millions of followers. So
it's like, exciting, if you seesome huge brand, you know, on
social post your content. And sowe started this in the wild
(21:47):
campaign, and it was gaining,you know, 10, 20, 30,000
impressions a day, you know,just doing that alone and
showing customers in the wildfinding our product. And so we
were, you know, looking at, youknow, basically a couple million
impressions more every singlemonth. And those impressions
were important, because theywere showing retail
availability, right? Like, wehad never really figured out a
good campaign to do that withoutcoming across, like we were
(22:08):
trying to sell where our recipevideos or where we kind of
started and have a good footholdon social media. So this was a
great way for us to kind of dipour toe in the water on that,
and utilize a particular tool onsocial media that we've not used
before, which was and not thatwe didn't use the stories, it
was just that we didn't have areal strategy to using the
stories. And now I feel like wecan do that with with this in
(22:32):
the wild campaign. And it can bekind of an evergreen campaign
that runs forever, and peoplecan continue sharing their
excitement about finding dinosin the wild.
Brad Ebenhoeh (22:41):
Yeah, I love, love stories like that. I just
love kind of learning like thatas a kind of a fellow, you know,
entrepreneur, myself and abusinessman and just kind of
always kind of conscious andaware of marketing, brand,
strategy, awareness, all thattype of stuff, especially in
terms of how social media andsociety kind of keeps changing
(23:01):
and how they absorb content.
Right. So it's alwaysinteresting to see where that
exists. So as we're wrappingthis up, it's been an awesome
conversation. You know, for allthe CPG kind of founders out
there, we always end with twoquestions. And then the first
one, I want to kind of say, whatdoes one do? From your
perspective?
Tyler Watson (23:19):
Yeah, so I had to really mull this over, you know,
you and I talked about thisbefore. And I was like, and by
the way, I feel like I hadn'tgotten to know you, we got to do
a second episode, at some pointin time, I got to interview you,
because you seem like an awesomeguy, man. But yeah, so do form a
brand strategy. And, you know,really to ensure that your
(23:40):
messaging is clear, it'srelevant. You know, I believe
that recently, we did a lot moreconsumer, dove into a lot more
consumer research and it led usto find that a very different
consumer was shopping andengaging with our brand on E
comm than the one buying atretail. And you would think
that, you know, the Ecomcustomer was actually younger,
but it was the opposite. It wasthe the customer that was buying
(24:01):
on E commerce was actuallyolder, and the customer buying
and store was was younger. Sothat was a really interesting,
you know, kind of factoid tolearn about that. And then, you
know, pivoting the marketingplan to accommodate that where
the bulk of your business iswhen your strategy was so you
know, tailored to that EComcustomer, you know that that's
just not an easy task. So yeah,brand strategy man, form one
(24:23):
note, you know, even though weknew kind of we had a gut
feeling of who we were and whoour customer was, you know,
getting that data to support agut based decision really
helped, you know, craft ourstrategy.
Brad Ebenhoeh (24:37):
Awesome. And then what is one Don't
Tyler Watson (24:41):
you I mean, this is this is a, you know, for me
as a sales guy, this was toughbecause like all sales guys just
kind of want to let theircustomer dictate things but
like, I feel like because oursuccess is due to our
disruption. Like you saidearlier, we dominate and disrupt
is kind of like our mantra hereas a leadership team. And so you
know, we've I've had partnerfeedback come back, like we had
(25:02):
a massive, massive customer thatI was in buying talks with. This
was about a year ago. And theysaid, Listen, you know, we want
to bring in your brand lookslike it looks, you know, it's a
great product branding isawesome, but like, we got to
take that little guy off thefront of your bottle, right like
little Danny you got to see himright there little little
redneck dude walking, walkingaway. Not a redneck at all. But
(25:23):
that's what that was theperception, right? It was a, you
know, Pacific Northwest, youknow, kind of consumer shop or
whatever. They're like, I justdon't know that that's going to
resonate with them. And I'mlike, Well, that's the case. And
I don't think we should dobusiness together. Because
that's just not that's not whatwe're going to do to accommodate
this account. We'll just buildelsewhere and you know, you'll
be left behind but yeah, I mean,you know, the knee jerk reaction
(25:46):
are for a sales guys to go backto the team and say, Listen, we,
you know, I've got this hugeopportunity, we should we should
change everything about whatwe're doing. Because this
opportunity is massive. It's thebiggest one we've ever had. But
you know, I took that time toreally kind of look inside and
say, you know, if this customerdoesn't like us for who we are,
then we shouldn't be doingbusiness with them.
Brad Ebenhoeh (26:03):
I couldn't agree more. You can't say yes. And
vendor need out of everybody.
It's just It doesn't work thatway in business, so Well, all
right. This was an awesome chat.
It was great to get to know you,Tyler. And you're so you're
good. Dude. I'm looking forwardto your interview with me here
at some point in the future. Allright, well, this is episode 36
(26:23):
of The Month End podcast beforewe go, where can people find Dan
O's? And what should they buy?
Tyler Watson (26:28):
Everywhere you if you haven't tried Dan O's
because you don't know till youDan-O; you gotta go find that
original green cap. You can findit at all your Walmart stores,
Kroger, Albertsons, Sam's clubsgot the OG and the 20 ounce
bottles so I mean just lookaround and if you want to just
try Dan O's and you don't wantto go in big with a big bottle,
you can go to your local DollarGeneral Store and get $1 pouch
(26:50):
of dollar of Dan O's originalseasoning to try us out and then
you can go to the Walmart whenyou get hooked. Awesome.
Brad Ebenhoeh (26:57):
Awesome, Well thanks for your time, Tyler.
Really appreciate it andcongrats on everything so far.
Tyler Watson (27:02):
Fantastic to be with you today, Brad
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