The Action Catalyst
Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership)
Tue, 25 Jun 2024
We’re going loko! Chris Hunter, founder of several successful beverage brands, including the iconic Four Loko as well as the health-focused Koia, and the unique Not Your Father's Root Beer, shares insights from his memoir, “Blackout Punch: an Entrepreneur’s Journey from Chaos to Clarity”, including the gap in the market that he identified that led to the creation of Four Loko, what they SHOULD have done at the very beginning to avoid disaster later, how the role of Founder/CEO is ill-defined (and why that's a good thing), hunters vs. gatherers in sales, fighting the government to keep Four Loko legal, creating Not Your Father’s Root Beer, what success means as a younger man versus now, and the value of knowing you’re going to be wrong but taking the first step anyways.Mentioned in this episode:Learn more at SouthwesternConsulting.com/Coaching/StudentsSouthwestern Student Coaching
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.
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.
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Today's guest is Chris Hunter, the founder of several successful beverage brands, including 4Loco and Not Your Father's Root Beer. His new memoir, Blackout Punch, An Entrepreneur's Journey from Chaos to Clarity, tells the story. How are you?
Good to meet you. Good to meet you as well.
Yeah, so you're hailing from Miami right now, but where did you grow up?
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.
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.
I can't imagine. We're going to talk about your whole successful commercial enterprises. But I'm always kind of curious. Usually... You know, high school or even a young recent graduate isn't necessarily thinking like, man, I'm going to start all these amazing beverage companies. I got to know what were you on the track to do or what were you thinking you were going to do?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But like, that's how aggressive I was because I got to eat, man.
I got to pay the bills. That's amazing. And so was that then the person that you ended up with in terms of working on this, on For Loco or-
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
What are some of the walls and challenges that you didn't expect in growing this thing?
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.
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.
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.
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.
And it was too big for us to sink at that time.
We're talking you're growing to $10 million, $50 million, $100 million in revenue. Different challenges at different points, right? Can you give a few examples of what was challenging about getting to $10 million versus what it was like going to $100 million?
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Selling is just an external thing, right? Finding partnerships and selling and bringing in business is super important, but sales is a skill in general about communication. And you end up in leadership, finding yourself selling the vision to your people or selling lots of things internally to get it done.
And I'm kind of curious, I mean, one thing that popped out to me was the government regulations and a little battle that you had to kind of jump back into what you faced when you were faced with some of the government agencies trying to keep Four Local legal, right? How did your communication skills, how was that relevant in that issue?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Literally some life-changing moments during that time for you, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I guess one of the more recent ventures was not your father's root beer.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That's so interesting. It's like your beverages reflect your state in life. Like you see high energy, like go get it in the beginning. And then it's more like this calm, healthy.
Yes. Yeah.
I love that you found and gravitated towards things that reflected that for you, right? That you pursued products that you were passionate about. First, just a quick lightning round. Sure. One thing that I always wanted to know from guests is what's one piece of advice you're really glad you didn't listen to?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah.
Love that. One of the things that I think is a lot of our listeners wonder is when you're dealing with a large organization, a large team, and you're responsible for leading it, time is one of the most scarce resources that you have. Yeah. What's one habit or practice that you feel saves you the most time each day?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah. At the very beginning of this podcast, you said, as a young man, success meant to you making as much money as possible. That's a paradox phrase, but you said money was number one. Define what success means to you now and how you know when you've achieved it.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Two last quick questions. One, morning routine. What does it look like in the morning if you have your ideal routine?
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.
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.
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.
I'm going to rephrase this question I typically ask for you. Typically, I might ask you, what advice would you give a 21-year-old version of yourself? But I'm going to change it and say, what's the piece of advice or the value you really hope to instill in your kids?
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
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.
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.
Yeah. It's so interesting that so many people misidentify failure and mistakes, right? Like they think failure is this horrible thing that they should avoid at all costs. And from experience interviewing all of these brilliant people like yourself, you've built multiple successful enterprises. Failure is something to almost, you have to embrace failure.
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
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.
Life is happening for you. I really like that one. I'm going to take that with me. Chris, this has been a fantastic interview. I know you just mentioned and published this book, Blackout Punch, an entrepreneur's journey from chaos to clarity, which I think will be great for so many of our listeners because that's the journey many of them are on.
So thanks for giving us some of your wisdom here today and some anecdotes for our folks to take home with them. Yeah, it was fun. Thanks for having me on.
I appreciate it. If you enjoy this podcast, please make sure to subscribe. And to stay updated on everything that the Action Catalyst is up to, make sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Action Catalyst Podcast and on Twitter at Catalyst underscore Action. And thanks for listening.
This is your host, Adam Outland. And outside of this podcast, I'm also the leader for a division of our company, Southwestern Consulting, and our division is the Southwestern Student Coaching Program. And that division, we started back in 2020 because the desire we had was to take all these skills that we've equipped executives with for
Over a decade, I've coached executives and managers and sales professionals on the skills, the habits, the motivation, and the systems to be successful in their job and in life.
And what we realized from working with 30, 40, 50 year olds was if we could have gotten to them when they were in ninth grade, in middle school, in high school, and equipped them with the same things we're teaching them now, the ripple effects would be huge. And so back in 2020, we decided to formulate a coaching program for youth
equipping youth with the same types of skill development that we typically work on with adults. We just apply it to their world. And what that looks like is teaching them the study skills, the communication skills that they can use every day in the classroom and outside the classroom, coaching them on the mindset and the motivation of someone who's a top performer And what does that mean?
It means helping a young teenager create and craft a vision for themselves. Because without a vision, we perish. But with a vision, we can be equipped with the motivation to dig into our study habits. We can see the connection between our future and the excellence that we have to form our habits now to be successful in the long run. And we also work on the emotional intelligence.
It's how we balance our emotions and manage those emotions when they come up in a way that allows us to communicate effectively with others and to communicate with ourselves. It's about equipping young people with self-talk. That means equipping them with the language that they can use to better direct their thoughts and their mind to accomplish their goals and their aims.
And lastly, we equip them with the systems. That means for us, the tools, the time management, and the organization strategies are to not just work hard in life, but to work smart. And when we combine all these different areas that we work with our teens on, what we find is that they form the habits early in life that allows them to achieve their goals later in life and even right now.
And so our passion is to equip as many young people across this world as we can. And we're doing pretty good so far. We've got teens in seven different countries who have been through our coaching program to date. We've worked with over 400 teens, and we would love to be able to serve you as well. Here's how it works. If you want to investigate coaching, we start with a parent consultation.
That's a free call to discuss your students' particular needs and our program details. We work with Olympic athletes all the way down to teens that are just struggling to motivate themselves to do the daily work necessary in their class. So wherever your teen is, we'll meet them where they are and get them to the next level. And that starts with a parent consultation with you.
A student planning session, that's the next step. If we agree that the value that coaching can bring matches your team, then we will move to a student planning session. It's basically a free one-on-one coaching session with your team. And that is designed to support them, but it's also designed to ask a lot of questions to help explore whether or not they want to be coached.
Because at the end of the day, they ultimately have to be the one that pulls the trigger. And then after your student planning session, we get them paired with the right coach for them. We have an amazing staff of coaches from ex-Division I athletes, people who've come from the Ivy League system.
We have coaches who have come from entrepreneurial backgrounds and acting backgrounds, so we can pair them with the right fit for them. And then once they partner with their coach, they'll benefit from two coaching sessions a month to really zone in on their personal growth and their skill development.
So if you're ready to give your student the tools they need to be successful, click the link in the show notes for more information and to make sure you can schedule your free parent consultation today.