Chris Hunter
Appearances
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
So I go to Chicago and I refuse to get a nine to five type gig. And that was fine in theory until there was one day where I could not pay rent. And my now wife cut me a check to cover rent. And I was like, man, I really got to do something now. You know, necessity or desperation, whatever you want to call it, will make you do some interesting things.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And so they just voluntarily reformulated and changed the products they were selling. For us, it was the only thing we were selling. And so our take was, hey, we will play by whatever rules you put out there, but you have to make them consistent and fair because if we voluntarily change, all that does is leave the the door open for the next person to come along and do it until they get big. Right.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
So in terms of communication, it really tested us. Look, my, my theory is like high highs and low lows will bond you, right? They're extreme and they're intense and, and it's easy to get along during those times, but it doesn't mean it's easy to communicate during those times. We were running at breakneck pace.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
We were trying to approach everything in an aligned fashion, but it didn't always happen. And so our communication was, could have been better while we got through it.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
Once the steel mills closed and the auto manufacturers started shuttering, the city just got decimated. So I remember growing up, my great-grandmother had these pictures of Youngstown as this hotspot, right? Downtown was thriving. People were all over. And I'm like, where is this place? Because I didn't know any of that.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
Yeah. So I started to look at what assets we had as a company, right? And it's very easy to understand that you have the brand with the revenue and the distribution. That's clearly an asset that most people look at and understand. We had another asset, which was we had roughly 325 distributors across the country and some in other countries that touched every retail location in their territory.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
So we had a distribution network. I'm not saying we owned it, but we had access, right? And so as I was thinking about, we had this big company, relatively big company and big brand or relatively big brand that was almost taken away from us at the whim of a change of government regulations. how do we diversify? So innovation and diversifying was really important.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And then the second is how do we use our assets? And so for me at that time, craft beer was the hottest thing in the world, right? Everyone was launching craft beers, but there were a lot of the same. There were unique stories. Oh, this one's from Chicago. This one's from San Diego, but the product itself was not really that different.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And so we were really lucky that we were introduced to one of our Uh, relationships to a guy named, um, Tim Kovac, who is this like kind of mad scientist brewer. And he had come up with this alcoholic root beer. It had no name. It had no real. And, and he was in the Chicagoland area. And when I tried this stuff, I, it was this, like the light bulb went off.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
It was this immediate realization of this is unique. It's in the craft beer space, which is popular. This is unique. No one else is doing this right now. And it's in our wheelhouse because what we really did with For Loco was around flavoring, right? And so for me, that was exciting. It was something new, as I mentioned earlier, like creating something new. And so this was really exciting.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
So there was also some internal turmoil developing, as I mentioned, about partnerships and lack of clarity of roles. And so I said, I'm going to dive into this. And I dove into that. And when we brought that thing to life, it was one of the most exciting things I had ever seen.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
We took it from non-existent to uniquely branded and to being the fastest growing craft beer in the country in a matter of 18 months. And then we ended up selling it to Pabst. The other thing that was exciting to me about that is, as I mentioned, I like to work on things I'm aligned with at whatever phase of life I'm in. I was 25 when we started 4Loco. Caffeine and alcohol didn't seem crazy.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
It was part of our weekends. At this point, I was early 30s and craft beer was much more my speed. So that was kind of an exciting evolution. And then again, realizing where I was in life and circumstances got me into a place where better for you and healthy products were really important to me.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
Yes. Yeah.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
So it's something I'm actually working through right now. Koya is a refrigerated plant-based protein drink. It's a ready-to-drink product. So buy it off the shelf, you open it, you can drink it right away. It's delicious. It's low sugar. It's all the things that you wouldn't expect when you hear plant-based protein drink, right? And the refrigerated space is very niche in a sense.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
It takes additional capabilities to have refrigeration from production all the way to the shelf. It's a very competitive and difficult category. And so we've heard from multiple people throughout the years, like, okay, you guys are a refrigerated beverage. That's where you need to stay.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And over the years, as we've talked to our consumers and listened to them and understood innovations that worked and didn't, we realized that what Koya really stands for is delicious plant protein or delicious protein in general. We are now launching Koya in different formats and channels. We have a shelf-stable Tetra Pak version that'll be available on Amazon. We're launching a kids line.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
We'll launch a powder. And so the advice that I'm happy we didn't follow in the long run was staying in our lane.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
Well, I try and I'm not always successful at this. I try to block my emails. And what I mean by blocking them is I try to dig in emails and run through them all and then try to go do something else. And I'm not always successful at it. But when I do that, I feel like I have the most satisfaction and productivity and the least anxiety.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
What can suck me in or anyone in is just sitting in front of your computer and hitting refresh on the email box. Like if I find myself doing that, I usually need to just pick up the phone and call that person rather than going back and forth. So that's one thing. I think one of the things I've learned over time is prioritization is really important.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And for me, this is the season of life that my family is absolutely the number one priority. I'm married. I have three kids, 11, nine and six. And when I sat back and thought about it, I realized that I will always be able to create brands. I will always be able to grow them. And while I'm not neglecting them. I also realized that my children will only be this age once.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
So when I have something that I can do for the long run and I have another thing that is only once, I'm going to make sure that I prioritize and focus on that only once thing. I love that too.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
So that's a great question that I think has multiple aspects to it. I think, first of all, the most important thing for me was learning and understanding who I am. And when we brought in this consultant back at Fusion Projects, he did these personality assessments and behavioral assessments. The one we did was called DISC. There's many of them.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And he came back to me at that point and he said, listen, if you have this perception of getting rich and retiring on a boat, Get rid of it right now because you will be drunk, you will be addicted, you will be divorced, and you will be miserable. That's just my personality, right?
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And so that was really impactful to me because it helped me realize where I grew up, success looked like, oh, you get to retire on a beach, drink a margarita, and you don't have any worries. That would actually be detrimental to me. And so success means that I can stay in the mix, work on things I want to work on, not need to work on anything, but enjoy what I'm doing every day, staying active.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
So I don't know that I had a big aspirational kind of career path, except for that. I was like, I want to be rich. And growing up in a lower middle class family, like you recognize the restraints that money can put on a family. And I was fortunate that I got into a couple classes that were, they called them advanced classes. They were really just opportunities to think outside the box.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And I think that not only will keep me healthy, it'll keep me alive. Yeah. And so you've come to really enjoy the game itself. Trust me, there are days that I'm like, oh man, I'm in too deep again. You know, it happens. You get blinders on running a business. You forget about everything else in the world. And sometimes that's necessary. But in the big picture, yes. What I enjoy now is growth.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And growth is not comfortable. You know, I went to Iceland and trained on breath work and cold water exposure. Those are all just, I've done marathons and IMAs. Those are all growth opportunities for me. I learn from my kids every day. That's growth. And I'm learning in business every day. And that's growth. And growth is really important and also keeps me motivated.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
I'll tell you when it's been at its best and when it's been at its worst. So my wife got really into Joe Dispenza meditations. And so we woke up every day at 6 a.m., we meditated for about a half hour, and then we got our day started. And we were done meditating and off with the day before the kids ever woke up. At night, we would take time after we put the kids to bed.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
That was our time to catch up on the day and talk. Those are two really important things. That's when it looks at its best. Of course, you add in eating healthy and exercise and all that stuff, I think, which is kind of table stakes. At its worst, which I go through at times and now is one of them, I'm waking up just before the kids. I'm getting five minutes in with my wife.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
I'm down at a coffee to get myself going and kind of frantic all day. It's never perfect for me. But the beauty, I guess, is I can realize when it's not perfect and adjust rather than just think that's how it is forever.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
Those would probably be the same answers. And I think they are be willing to take risks and just take the first step. I will caveat that by saying the biggest mistakes I've made in my career have all been when I thought it was going to be easy, when I didn't put in the work and I wasn't going to be committed for the long haul. So I think there's real value in really digging into
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
what you're about to do or what you're considering doing, what you think it's going to take. Do you want to do it? Asking yourself all those questions up front, but don't get paralyzed by analysis. Take the first step because you know whatever plan you put together or whatever path you think you're going to take, it's absolutely going to be wrong on day one.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
So just jump in, just start, be open to making mistakes, be open to learning and course correcting, right? Because progress is the key. There is no perfection. A hundred percent.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
Yeah. A reframe of that for me is that it's only really a failure if you don't learn from it. And so we choose to look at life as life is happening for us, not to us. And so when you look at things through that lens, what could be perceived as a failure or a setback can also be perceived as the best redirect you could ever have. And that one that you may not have
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
I got to do an internship when I was in like fifth grade, like all these unique things. And I feel like it opened my eyes to like what I want to do isn't here or at least isn't present in my life. I don't know what it is. It's going to be something different. That coupled with the fact that I always had this entrepreneurial spirit is kind of like I could figure this out.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
chosen or purposely self-imposed, but it was imposed for a reason. And so if you look for that reason and you go with the idea that life is happening for me, you can start to find the silver linings and the beauty in it.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And I had collected a lot of contacts and business cards. One of them was a guy that was involved in a startup vodka company. And long story short, I bugged him. literally email and call every day until he gave me a job. And that's what got me into beverages.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
I'll find unique ways to make money that excite me. Helped me into what I ended up doing. I could not have mapped out my career path, though. What was the first business venture for you? Yeah, I mean, you can go way, way back and say the first business venture was, you know, being a first grader coloring pictures out of a coloring book and selling them door to door. I did that, right?
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
But really more, and there's many of those examples along the way, but maybe more officially was in college, there were three businesses that I started. One was never really structured as a business, but it was actually the largest and it was called Fusion Projects, which ended up being my business. the parent company of Four Loko. And it was a promotions business.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
So I would do nightlife promotions, mainly in Columbus, but in other cities across the country. It paid really well. It was a heck of a job for a college student, bringing people together, especially out at a bar or a nightclub. And I met a lot of people. The other business I started, which was actually with one of my Fusion Projects partners was called Wild Havens.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And the idea was that we were going to give people access to unique and exclusive events in different cities or locations around the world. And we put a little effort into that probably lasted about a year and then we shut that down. And then the third was a magazine. We started in Columbus with some different partners. It was centered around four main aspects of the city. It was entertainment.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
It was personality. I forget the other two, but you get the idea. It was a free publication. That's really where I started learning a little more about business. And then I moved to Chicago and was just trying to figure out how to pay my bills and ultimately took a job and then started Fusion Projects. What did you learn in the events business about what you liked and didn't like?
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
Look, I loved working with people, right? I loved interacting with people. I'm a social guy by nature. I felt like it was really eye-opening the impact of relationships, right? How much they matter and how many doors they can open. One of the things I didn't like was for the future, you know, I was obviously young and single at that time, but that's a very grueling career path, nights and weekends.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And And so I wasn't sure that that was the right path for me. At the time, I probably wouldn't have said that, but looking back, that was a good pivot. This is the best thing ever. It was amazing. Yeah. So I go to Chicago and I refuse to get a nine to five type gig. I ignorantly felt like my experience was more than that, right? I wasn't going to take some entry level corporate job.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And that was fine in theory until a couple of months in, I had credit card debt racked up and And it's like, I got to figure out a way to pay bills. And you know what really tipped the scale was there was one day where I could not pay rent. And my now wife, girlfriend at the time, cut me a check to cover rent. And I was like, man, I really got to do something now. Wow.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
I had met these guys who were doing this hail damage gig, basically like storm chasing. They'd go to neighborhoods that were impacted and they would facilitate it. the roof repairs, they're all making a ton of money. It's like, I'm going to take this job. And you didn't need any qualifications. The funny thing, the ironic thing of that is I'm afraid of heights. So I'm climbing on roofs.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
But necessity or desperation, whatever you want to call it, will make you do some interesting things. And that was one of them. And I never lost a contest. I never lost a contract because I needed the money. But I didn't want to do that for long. From my promotions career, I had collected a lot of contacts and business cards. One of them was a guy that was involved in a startup vodka company.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And long story short, I bugged him, literally email and call every day until he gave me a job. And that's what got me into beverages. Wow. So you have this kind of persistence. Yeah. To give you how aggressive or desperate, interchange whatever word you want, I was at that time. There was this other startup vodka company that was very popular in Chicago. It was called FN Vodka.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
They ended up becoming a pretty big brand. And I liked that brand and I wanted to work for them. And I did the same thing with them. So much so that I said, if I don't hear back from you, I will assume an interview on Tuesday at 10 o'clock And I showed up at their, I never heard back from them. And I showed up at their office and no one was there. I left my resume on the desk and walked out.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
But like, that's how aggressive I was because I got to eat, man.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
No. So I started selling vodka for this company and they put me in quite possibly the most difficult situation that you can have, which is on premise, which is bars and nightclubs and restaurants in Chicago. And the reason it's the most difficult situation is because every brand is spending their money there. They have big budgets, right? Yeah.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And so I was going to these places with no budgets and no experience, just asking them to believe my story or to believe in me and put the product in their stores. I did that for a couple months. Then he started expanding my responsibilities. So I managed off-premise, which is stores, grocery stores, liquor stores, whatever it may be.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
in in illinois and then they expanded me to five states at that point i realized that i understood at least enough the the distribution game you know in alcohol it's a three-tier system so you have the supplier which is the creator of the product you have the distributor which takes the product to the bars of the store and then you have this the retail location and so i understood that i met enough people and um i was selling a lot of the vodka uh that was being mixed in with red bull
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
I was 25. I was out also drinking a lot of vodka mixed in Red Bull. And so I said, you know, maybe we should try to do this as a combination ready to drink product. And so I called my old college buddy. He's the guy that I had tried to start Wild Havens with. And I said, hey, I'm thinking of starting this thing. And he's like, yeah, I'm in. He was part time in it.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
A couple months in, we realized neither of us really wanted to do the financial modeling and decks. And I had a buddy who worked for ABN Amro. I called him and I said, hey, what do you think? Yeah, I'm in. And that's how we got started. Wow. Yeah. Our investors were friends and family.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
Where I started, being that I'm from Youngstown, blue collar, lower middle class, there was no money from friends and family for me. Fortunately, my partners both went to their families and they put in small amounts of money in retrospect for the size of the company became, but that was our investment. We didn't have the experience or the connections to really go raise traditional funding.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And so we bootstrapped it. And that Looking back, luckily we did because I think that had we had more money in the early days, we would have just spent more money on all the wrong things.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
Well, everyone had told me at the beginning, like, make sure you understand the exit. How do you guys separate in the future? And being naive, 25 year olds, I think we just blew past that. Hey, we're friends. Who cares? It'll all work out. And quite frankly, like I assumed I was kind of the connection point. Right. I brought the two guys together.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
I assumed I would always kind of be in the majority with one of them, and it wasn't really a big deal. And so we just set up LegalZoom documents that were very basic, and it was kind of like majority rules. And in retrospect, I learned that we should have spent more time thinking that through. We were not thinking big picture long term. Things change, people change, lives change.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
I mean, mine sure did, right? I was 25 at that time. In my 30s, I got married. I have three kids now. Life was very different. And that ended up coming back to bite me. So it was kind of like, let's just divide and conquer, right? Let's not, I have a different mentality than you instead of aligning or whatever.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
Hashing through that, you do what you want in your world and I'll do what I want in my world. And we brought in the business coach when the company got bigger and he identified that that was a significant threat to the business quickly. He said, you guys have a three-headed monster with no real hierarchy. And if you can't figure this out, you're going to sink the business.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And it was too big for us to sink at that time.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
Yeah, it's all challenging, like you said, but it's just in different ways. And I think for me, that early stage of 1 million to 10 million is challenging, but it's a lot of fun because you're celebrating a lot of wins often, right? And you're trying new things and you're able to be scrappy and atypical in your approach and things like that. But it's difficult, right? Because it really matters.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
I mean, we were... uh at fusion we were almost out of business for the first two years consistently right month over month there were times where we didn't take salaries and so those are different challenges than when we went into hyper growth when we grew from eight to a hundred and 150 plus in two years like those are different challenges those challenges are like how do you keep your
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
materials coming in? How do you keep inventory? How do you scale fast enough to support this kind of growth? And then Acquia, I would say it's been a little bit different as we went through that phase of going from 10 to 50 plus. You're really putting in
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
more infrastructure and more systems and to be quite honest that's not what i love to do and so it was really important for me to have a team that did love to do that and uh i still get it's funny i still get frustrated with some of the systems that are in place i'm like who cares just you know whatever and they're like no this is the process can you please follow it so they have to hold me accountable do you feel like your gift is like you're the the resident rainmaker like bringing in connections and relationships
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
Good to meet you. Good to meet you as well.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
Yeah, I think every founder and CEO are going to have a different skill set. And that's something I didn't realize as a kid, I thought like the the role of founder or CEO was very well defined. It's not right. And and so understanding where I add the most value has been really important to me.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And it's definitely that it's I am a salesperson, I enjoy marketing and finding unique ways to build awareness. And then I enjoy working on strategic partnerships and high level relationships. And so Where that comes into play and is the most effective for the company, the example would be Koya with Starbucks. I knew that Koya was a fit for Starbucks.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
I knew it's somewhere that we wanted that product to be distributed since day one. Eight years ago, I started working on how do we get into Starbucks? And we had plenty of starts and stops along the way. I never gave that up to one of our sales team. I said, this is my account that I'm going to figure out.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
And it was definitely not a linear path, but I was able to strike a strategic partnership with Starbucks. And Koya is now distributed in Starbucks nationwide. Those are the kind of things that one, excite me. And two, I feel like I can do and maybe you can't hire others to do on the team. I love that.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
Look, there are in sales, there are hunters and there are gatherers, the way we think about it, right? And the hunter, not only my last name, but I am a hunter, right? I like enjoy going and creating the new relationships and striking the new deals. And that's a lot of fun for a lot of people. There are other people who are gatherers and they enjoy that.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
Yeah, good suspicion that I didn't originally grow up in Miami. I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio. Historically, if you look back generations of my family, it's probably that there were a lot of Italian and Irish immigrants that were working in the steel mills. Youngstown was once a booming metropolis at a time, top 10 city.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
optimizing those relationships and building on them. And there's a lot of things that a lot of us can do, but it doesn't mean we should do, right? And so I can do that, but it's not the highest and best use of my time or skills.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
Yeah, it's a complex question and situation that was very intense, as you can imagine. But trying to summarize it up in a nutshell, it was really important for us to get aligned on how we were going to address these situations. They were very serious, right? To the point where we were being sued by the FDA, the TB, which governs alcohol. 18 attorney generals.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
There were frivolous lawsuits, class action lawsuits coming out of the woodwork. There was a point where I was told by our legal representation, don't answer the door because you may get served papers or arrested, right? It was that intense. And so- For us looking back at it, or at least for me looking back at it, I was baffled because we played by the rules. Our beverage was approved by the TTB.
The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
It was approved by every state that it went into. That included the formulas, the cans. Everything that we were being criticized for was legally approved. And so they had, they, Broad Sensitives, had applied pressure to other brewers that were doing similar things and they were much larger than us. And so for them, it was like, this isn't worth, you know, the juice isn't worth the squeeze.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Four Loko Vs. The Government
So I started selling vodka for this company and they put me in quite possibly the most difficult situation that you can have, which is on premise, which is bars and nightclubs and restaurants in Chicago. And the reason it's the most difficult situation is because every brand is spending their money there. They have big budgets, right?
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Four Loko Vs. The Government
Where I started, being that I'm from Youngstown, blue collar, lower middle class, there was no money from friends and family for me. Fortunately, my partners both went to their families and they put in small amounts of money in retrospect for the size the company became, but that was our investment. We didn't have the experience or the connections to really go raise traditional funding.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Four Loko Vs. The Government
And so we bootstrapped it. And looking back, luckily we did because I think that had we had more money in the early days, we would have just spent more money on all the wrong things.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Four Loko Vs. The Government
Yeah, it's a complex question and situation that was very intense, as you can imagine. But trying to summarize it up in a nutshell, it was really important for us to get aligned on how we were going to address these situations. They were very serious, right? To the point where we were being sued by the FDA, the TB, which governs alcohol. 18 attorney generals.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Four Loko Vs. The Government
There were frivolous lawsuits, class action lawsuits coming out of the woodwork. There was a point where I was told by our legal representation, don't answer the door because you may get served papers or arrested, right? It was that intense. And so- For us looking back at it, or at least for me looking back at it, I was baffled because we played by the rules. Our beverage was approved by the TTB.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Four Loko Vs. The Government
And so I was going to these places with no budgets and no experience, just asking them to believe my story or to believe in me and put the product in their stores. I did that for a couple months. Then he started expanding my responsibilities. So I managed off-premise, which is stores, grocery stores, liquor stores, whatever it may be, in Illinois. And then they expanded me to five states.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Four Loko Vs. The Government
It was approved by every state that it went into. That included the formulas, the cans. Everything that we were being criticized for was legally approved. And so they had, they, broad sensitives, had applied pressure to other brewers that were doing similar things and they were much larger than us. And so for them, it was like, this isn't worth, you know, the juice isn't worth the squeeze.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Four Loko Vs. The Government
And so they just voluntarily reformulated and changed the products they were selling. For us, it was the only thing we were selling. And so our take was, hey, we will play by whatever rules you put out there, but you have to make them consistent and fair because if we voluntarily change, all that does is leave the the door open for the next person to come along and do it until they get big. Right.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Four Loko Vs. The Government
So in terms of communication, it really tested us. Look, my theory is like high highs and low lows will bond you, right? They're extreme and they're intense and, and it's easy to get along during those times, but it doesn't mean it's easy to communicate during those times. We were running at breakneck pace. We were trying to approach everything in an aligned fashion, but it didn't always happen.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Four Loko Vs. The Government
And so our communication was, could have been better, but we got through it. Literally some life-changing moments during that time for you, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Four Loko Vs. The Government
At that point, I realized that I understood, at least enough, the distribution game. In alcohol, it's a three-tier system. So you have the supplier, which is the creator of the product. You have the distributor, which takes the product to the bars or the store. And then you have the retail location.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Four Loko Vs. The Government
And so I understood that I met enough people and I was selling a lot of the vodka that was being mixed in with Red Bull. I was 25. I was out also drinking a lot of vodka mixed in Red Bull. And so I said, you know, maybe we should try to do this as a combination ready to drink product. And so I called my old college buddy. He's the guy that I had tried to start Wild Havens with.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Four Loko Vs. The Government
And I said, hey, I'm thinking of starting this thing. And he's like, yeah, I'm in. He was part-time in it. A couple months in, we realized neither of us really wanted to do the financial modeling and decks. And I had a buddy who worked for ABN Amro. I called him and I said, hey, what do you think? Yeah, I'm in. And that's how we got started. Wow. Yeah. Our investors were friends and family.