YouSaid · the spoken record

Barry Turner

lines on the record: 111
first: 2025-02-24
most recent: 2025-02-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Think 100% to the work in the grind. I know a lot of people out there have gotten lucky. I don't use words like hope luck wish and try. I just don't like the word luck. I think it was always said luck wins you the lottery. I created my own lottery.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think about them ever. I do a board call every now and then, whatever, but I don't even comment on the call. I go on the screen. I'm just on mute and I'm listening. But yeah, then there's always two sides to every story. And I 100% agree with that.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you're being nice by saying sophisticated. They would never have had me stayed in that chair because they used a term one time. It always rubbed me the wrong way after they bought the company. They said, we need to professionalize the management in this company. And that means we weren't professional enough in their advice. Then you fast forward about four or five years later. They go, we got to go back to being an entrepreneurial brand. Well, that's what we were. That's what we always were was an entrepreneurial brand. And they never really embraced it because they had to come in, they had to show. Know what we're doing, and they just don't.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not at all. I have no problem saying that. We're not each other's cup of tea. And. It's just bad decision after bad decision, bad hire after bad higher. They hired this is no lie within six months of selling the company to them. We went from 17 employees to 59 employees. Business is in trouble. They only grow the business about six to eight percent a year if that they destroy profitability. I felt like I handed them a Ferrari and they turned it into a Ford Taurus.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, I still live by that. I miss my people more than anything. These are my team members. So, yeah, to this day, I wish I never would have sold my company.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so we sold 75% of the business. And it was just because how our business was structured, we were an S-corp. It had some value to them. And so Nick Gianuzzi, who I mentioned earlier, he represented us. He was our attorney. And he told us, point blank, he said, don't expect to get the second bite of the apple. You mean they were going to.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so they bought ended up buying 75% of the business. And at the time, now you understand, this is seven years ago. So if you're equating it to the value of today, so at the time, we were valued at $250 million.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Were a couple at the table and have made offers. And I'm just being honest with you, if I was going to sell it, I was going to sell it for to the highest bidders.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's only because people start, that's what people start coming for you. And you're fielding call after call after call. Not general mills, but general mills type companies will say. Big companies are coming for you. They're asking about you. They want to buy your company. And we had 28 interested parties right out of the gate. And then I'm like, shit, pardon my French, but we had just moved in this beautiful warehouse office. I was just starting to enjoy this. I didn't really want to sell. And then you're starting to feel like some big offers for your business.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so have that happened with a retailer. Now, social media is out there. And the first thing people do is they want to start pushing. You're just, oh, yeah, yeah. And, uh, I had to take that one on myself. I literally post, I was doing our own social media at the time. And I actually posted my own phone number and just said, anyone who gets, I said, I'll trust me. I said, I'm going to handle this. I'm going to, you know, I apologize to everyone or whatever. And it was real quick. We were able to isolate it real quick because it was one flavor and we knew that actual group that actually made it. So we were able to isolate and pull all that product. But anything to damage your reputation, it just makes you don't sleep at night.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One was an issue with one of our manufacturers. Got a call from one of our retailers in Florida said, hey, we're starting to see these little, we'll call them little bugs. And a cookie, no kidding, like a little, and they're called meal moths. So they get in flour, like flour has been sitting for a long time, whatever”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In and do this, I'll be 100% honest with you. I have never in my life worried about a competitor, a so called competitor. And that's not being cocky. It's just like if I'm worried about what someone else is doing, then I'm not worried about what I'm doing. So I didn't care what you were doing. I was building a brand. But I fought a bunch of other things along that journey that could have destroyed my business.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's the only way we knew how to knew how to do it. And I never believed in hiring when you didn't have to hire. I believe in paying your people more money that are there. And we had a great small little ragtag team. And from there, 27 million turned into 94 million in revenue the next year.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hot, yep. We just finished. I think it's 2014 at 11 million, and we're going to grow probably to 18 million or something the next year, whatever in 2015. But I got introduced to a gentleman named Nick Giazzi. And Nick is an incredible attorney. It represents pretty much every CPG brand that's been sold. He's always represented them. Nick pull me aside and just said, I love your brand. He goes, jokingly, he just said, stop finger around and start doubling your revenue. And you're going to get noticed. And I was like, okay, it inspired me to want to really turbocharge my sales. So we went from 11 to 27 million in one year by opening up accounts and actually managing, servicing the accounts we already had.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, exactly. But it's funny, guys, when we talk about sugar and carbs and all this nutritionist stuff. You and I are still in the minority of that. The rest of the country is still trying to make a better choice, but they're not going to make an extreme choice. So people still want to have their, you know, cake and eat it too. They'll sacrifice something in order to eat something that's just a little bit less bad that had some nutritional benefits to them.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's it. And a brownie is considered a decadent treat. It's not something you would eat every day. You'd eat a cookie every day.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Only, no, we're everywhere at that time. We're really starting to take off. 2014, we're about doing about 11 million in revenue.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we weren't shy about making a profit. What we liked about it is that we were, we never had to raise money. We never had investors, never had debt.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was it. That was everything. I want to create a better bad. I want people to make a better choice. And nobody's going to go from eating a little Debbie to eating some sort of protein bar. There has to be a stop in the middle.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Teachers People they could say for a buck 99, I get this giant cookie, it's very filling. I can grab my red bull and I'll grab a linearous”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, because of the packaging. Yeah, because of the packaging. And so I had to lightbulb moment again. It's like, I got to design a film for that cookie. And we did. Then I would say the rest is history, but the cookie just became an absolute monster. I wanted, like, again, I was creating, I wasn't creating a low sugar, low carb product. I was trading a freaking cookie.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it didn't have a great shelf life because it had a clear package. You can see the package and light oxygen can destroy it, but it had a couple weeks shelf life. And we remember a call we had with vitamin Shop. And vitamin Shop said, if you could get a shelf life on your cookie, we would take that also and I went. Okay.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, actually, yeah, the LA area, and then it just snowballed from there. GNC accepted it, Vitamin Shop accepted it. Then we said, okay, now we're on to something. And all the while, though, we had a little product. I don't want to jump ahead, but there was a little product. It was a cookie. It had a label on it, and it had a little, like a sheet in the back that you could print our nutritionals on. And we sold that locally to 7-Elevens and a lot of office buildings and stuff like that. This is a protein cookie.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of protein. Correct. It was basically a protein bar, but it tastes like a brownie in the shape of kind of a square, so it had to be different there too.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I felt like again, I was still catering to the masses and not the bodybuilder fitness people. I always said if I could be in two retailers at the time, it would be 7-Eleven and Walmart. That's the only group I wanted to sell to”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have a connection there? Well, we did. I didn't know who was working there. We just showed up at the office one day and see one of my former buyers. She walks in. She goes, I remember you. And I said, I remember you. And she said, what do you have? And I showed her. She goes, I love this. Let's put it in. That's it. That's it.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going to be a brownie. And so we find someone to manufacture the brownie. We design the film, everything. We ordered 72,000 brownies, 36,000 of two flavors, had those shipped to a warehouse that we rented. And we're sitting there with 72,000 brownies and said, now we have to go sell these.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And our original logo was mine and Benny's actual faces or hair that was original. It was like a real photo. But when I came back, the first thing I said I'm going to do is I'm going to create a caricature. It can't be a photo anymore. So we create a caricature of the logo.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Felt like I could launch the first direct consumer snack food company that was kind of a protein, fiber, all-natural. I thought that's what I was going to do. And so the first product I wanted to launch was a high-protein brownie because everyone was doing protein bars at the time and no one had done a brownie.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wasn't scared at all. I love going back into the unknown, but I was so confident that I could turn this into what I originally thought Lenny and Leary's could be, which was a brand. And a funny story, I walked into the office the first day. We had a small little office in Encino on a Ventura Boulevard. Jokingly to Don, I just said, okay, I said, sit down, shut up, and watch what I'm about to do. And we had a big laugh about that, right? But coming from my experience working in the software company and working with these guys who were very brilliant guys, by the way, in terms of marketing.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now I got to do what I wanted to do from the very beginning, which was build this. Money didn't excite me building my brand excited me. I wasn't scared at all. I got my baby back.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Still buying coffee bean and he had a little bit of other private label stuff. He was doing locally. And, um, Said, I'm about to shut this thing down. Would you ever consider coming back? So we did quick negotiations and I said, yeah, just throw caution to the wind here. I'm in.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was just kind of putting it out there in the universe. And that's when Don Krouch reached out to me and said, I need help. I'm about to shut this thing down.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, after a year of being there, they said we'd like to make you present of our company, let you run our company. And so I'm running the software company called Awareness Technologies. And we're selling computer monitoring software. Now, this is at the height of like the MBC show, Catch a Predator. So we're working with law enforcement agencies, schools, parents, et cetera, because the software captured everything, every keystroke, every email, every website visited. And we were doing great. I mean, this thing was catching fire. But I was looking at this. I'm just like, well, if I could do this with software. Imagine what I could do with if I had my company back. I could sell direct consumer snacks.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's an interesting story there. So one of my good friends, Michael Vinny, he was working with these guys in the software business and they wanted to meet me. I meet these guys and they've got this little software company they're doing and it's kind of computer monitoring software. So they asked me one day if I would like to join them. And I was like, well, in what capacity, what do I know about software, right? They said, we don't know. We said, we just think that you could maybe you'll run our company one day. And I was like, okay, so I hung out with these guys. I call it hanging out with them. They were paying me to hang out with them. And it's just, you know, I'm learning about the software business, but I'm also learning how to market online direct-to-consumer.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nobody knew the brand. No. Locally, you did. You would have, yeah, Magic Johnston was a big fan of our brand back in the day when he was still playing with Lakers and he would see our product, you know, and he'd always buy it at Gold's Gym. And somebody would say, hey, magic, that's Lenny and Larry's. He'd always stop and say, oh, man, I really love your product. So we had those types of things where we had people that knew us in LA, but nowhere else”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we made too much stuff to really focus on one that could be a winner. Now, we still had our brand, but like I said, it was the majority of our business was Coffee Bean.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Somebody asked me one time what did you think and a half years cost you? I said, it just cost me time because it came down to being very scattered. And not having what I call a hero product. We had all these products that we could make, but none of them were the one where you just went to. Yeah, this is our calling card. This is what we're going to be known for.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. Injured yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like something ended that you just didn't want it to end. I still had the passion for my brand, and it was like it was just kind of like giving it away and never watching it, never giving it a chance to grow up.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it's just a, again, regret that I should have just bought him out. And then Don and I were sent in the parking lot talking after we had done our deal. And Don said, you and I should have just partnered on this. I said, I 100% agree. And so Don and I remained friends as he owned the business. They actually paid me to really kind of manage the coffee bean account because they knew how valuable it was. And I had a great relationship with coffee bean.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, not bad. At least we create, we made money along the way. We created something that had value. And it was kind of cool that you could sell a business for almost a half a million dollars that you created from just an idea.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As a white label, yeah, yeah, they like the brand, but they really thought the white label business, they could turn it into something.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don Crouch and Jim Felder. They were two friends. Who were they? They were two friends. They were just two local guys lived in the valley.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, at that time, we weren't, it wasn't big enough to do East Coast, West Coast. So basically doing 99% of the work for half the money. Yeah. And it does take anyone long to figure that out. That's not a good model. So, you want to change? So, what do you do? You say either I buy you out or we sell the business. So we put the business up for sale.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which was Benny was delivering product to Coffee Bean. And I got a call that he got rushed to the hospital. He had a deviated septum, so he had a surgery done. And they had lancin artery, didn't know it at the time. So he bent over, was picking up something, and blood just starts gushing. So he gets rushed to hospital, almost dies. Wow. He realizes he wants to leave California and go back to Georgia and be around his family. So we tried to manage this. We'll call it as an east coast, west coast business, but 99% of our business was on the West Coast.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just the muffins. Yeah. And then we started developing more products, we came up with a brownie, high protein brownie at the time. We came up with a high-protein cookie. And we still know we're on to something. Then things change one afternoon.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Still working it behind the scenes. Don't get me wrong, we did not give up on it. Our day was spent like, we just kept opening up more and more accounts locally, started getting some independent 7-Elevens that could actually take product without the approval of the corporate office.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, this is their product. This was a chance to actually. We're actually making money now. And it got the point where we ended up, we were delivering pallets of product to their distribution center. So much the business was booming so much on the private label side, we had to go buy a big truck to deliver it seven days a week. We were dropping off product”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These aren't protein products for them. But then when we started showing them protein products like high protein cinnamon rolls, they were like, okay, this is interesting. So we started selling them some of our newest protein inventions”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What do you need? Because now we saw opportunity there. We're like, okay, if we get this private label business going, we can use that money and help to grow our brand. So they wanted some new cheesecakes. We started doing that for them. And then they asked us about if we could do things like bunt cakes. And the answer was always yes, we can do this. We can do this.”
2025-02-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lenny & Larry’s Protein Snacks: Barry Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT