YouSaid · the spoken record

Daina Trout

lines on the record: 97
first: 2020-09-28
most recent: 2020-09-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Are hard to explain, and there's more of that. But even in all those examples, you get a card dealt to you. It's not the whole deck. You get a card. You still have to do something with that card. You have to take it and run with it. And without that grit, that card's just a card and it flies away. So yeah, I would say it's 80% hard work, 80% pushing through and just like doing it when no one else would.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, it's definitely not zero luck. The initial number that came up was 20% luck. That's what I wanted to say. I would say it's 80% grit. There's definitely moments of blessings that ride along with Vanessa. Health aid would not be where it is without Vanessa. That is a blessing. You know, the phone call from the farmer's market, just when we need an investment, the guy that chose to buy a health aid and called us and said we wanted investment. I mean, those types of things are.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really still would have no choice. But to be honest, they helped us a lot in the beginning. They helped us build forecasts and get into the right distribution. And so honestly, I think we did exactly right. And I would say that to all those people if you have access to capital outside of private equity, great, go for it. But there's not only one way to do it.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So much of the choice you have is, yes, there's experience, but it's also, what's the context of the situation? I mean, we couldn't get a loan if we needed it. We were totally out of cash. It really felt like we had no choice. So I know if I was back in that position.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Justin Vanessa and I were like, oh, and I wrote back, I was like, we're still flying coach. You know, like this is, and still we are.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do one of the funniest emails we got was after we got that first money. I just got an email and it was like, you know, for your.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and this is the thing. I remember we talked to Andy Don of Bonobos about this because a lot of people assume you get all this investment and all of a sudden you're loaded. You're just swimming in cash, but it actually, the more outside investment you get, the less equity you have in the business and really Most entrepreneurs until or if they sell their shares in the business or equity, they're dependent on a salary that is determined by a board and that could be a perfectly fair salary, but it's not going to make you filthy rich.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was extremely proud and am extremely proud that we've been able to build something literally from nothing from that table to something that the biggest beverage company in the world would want to invest at this level. Like, yeah, I mean, it's awesome. But the keep going part didn't die down. Now, I will say over the journey, regardless of that investment, over the journey I've been able to pay myself more than $10 an hour like we did at the beginning and sort of I feel now I'm at a point where I feel fairly paid and that's allowed for me to at least Go on vacations. Because”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know what I'm saying, though? I mean, it's tough to come home. And then you have this other relationship to tend to. Which is a much more personal one. And it's just hard to transition, especially with children. There's no break. It's not like you can go to your yoga class and then come back and be like, okay, now her husband wife. So, you know, we just have had to work through that. And we have”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, doesn't think about that stuff. And so it calls for quite a bit of conflict between the two of us at work. And I actually invite that. I'm very comfortable with that level of conflict. In the end, we end up having a very solid dream. But you just don't really want to have sex with that person that night.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's really where the tension is, me and Justin. It's not, it doesn't really sit for me and Vanessa. I don't know exactly how to explain why. Part of it is that Vanessa and I are wired very similarly. So I think we just really operate from the same space. I think that's a part of it. I think another part of it is we don't live together. I think that separation time. And then also the other thing that makes it challenging for Justin I is we're very different Like he and I are in some ways opposite. You know, he's the operations guy. He's the one that, you know, wants to dot the I's, cross the T's, make sure everything is operationally sound and like structured and processed and system oriented, which obviously we need. But I am a very different type of force. I am the dreamer. I'm the one that,”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not living up to that. So, I mean, almost everything requires discomfort and push. And so in times of growth, like it's probably the hardest times.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then there's the capital piece. Like, we got that money. We thought that money was going to last us. I remember when we got the 2 million bucks, it was like, oh my gosh, we're good. Like, let's build this now, baby. And then it was like gone a year later. And it's not that we were reckless at all. It's just. The capital for growth is really intense and immense. And so we were already having discussions a year later of doing this again. And that's a lot of pressure and responsibility when I'm also the one that's still picking up the broom. I mean, so many pressures and responsibilities and growth. It's almost hard to pinpoint why you're building something. So proving it, proving that you can do it. I mean, so many times, I think the biggest fear was.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, more stores are willing to accept us, and we're very focused on growth, aligned with our investors at this time on just like, let's grow, let's grow this.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah. I mean, it was a huge, it was the next phase, right? So now we're like moving away from the majority of our business being from farmers' markets and home deliveries to, okay, now we're talking about huge orders.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but then the catch 22 is the distributor won't usually take you on unless you have some stores. They don't want to build you from scratch, so they want to know, oh, you've got Gelsons on board? Okay, we'll take you on”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And as you kind of did this, get this investment, you also landed a deal, a distribution deal, to get into Gelson's, which is a chain in LA, mainly around LA, and then also other places in the West Coast. And we have a sense of how important distribution is, right? Because you need to get in with a distributor, otherwise you yourself have to go door to door to door to door, and it's impossible, really, to scale your product. You need it everywhere and only a distributor can kind of help you do that, right?”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, so that was exactly what we did with the money. So we did two things with the money. We moved into the next brewery, which was really, really important because we were in way too small a space and couldn't keep up like we were maxed out. So we used half the capital probably to build out our next brewery, which we had already found the space and identified the equipment we needed. We just needed, you know, to write the checks. And then the other half to hire four or five key people. And I mean, that was like game-changing guy. Because like, yeah, it's game changing.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was like, could this be any more perfect? Like, where do we sign? And they were able to cut a deal pretty quickly within six weeks we had cash and they allowed us to include some friends and family as well. So we did like a series A slash friends and family round together. And that was in 2014 and that was our first investment.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Say he tried our kombucha and he thought it was the best he's ever had. And they really want to talk about an investment. Now, they had just gone through a very long diligence process with another kombucha company that was bigger than us at the time. And they didn't end up doing the deal for whatever reason. I'm not sure why, but they were convinced about the category. So it's like they entered our world already sold that they needed to get into a kombucha and fast.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were pretty scared we had enough to make that week of deliveries, but at that point we sat down and said, okay, who do we reach out to that has money and that does investments? And we were starting to gather those people. And we got a cold call from a guy by the name of JC. He was a manager at an investment company called First Beverage.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, 100%. And I remember the moment we were at the brewery and we had a $50,000 credit limit. And we just assumed that Amex would extend our credit because we were good about paying it in full every month. So we were like, oh, it's not going to be a problem. I mean, we've been great customers. Yeah, we got a flat no.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, we didn't get good loans from banks until like a couple years ago because our business was a bit like a rocket ship that, you know, it was growing like crazy, but we didn't have any sense of where our next dime was going to come from, except from selling the kombucha. But like we were going way faster than we could keep up with for sure. So I think from a conservative bank perspective, it just was not a safe move until recently.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No collateral, no, yeah, no assets as individuals, but also no profitability. It was just like a complete, you know. So you actually went this business?”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I always gave my middle finger at the Wells Fargo billboard on the 405 because it would be like helping small businesses grow. And I'm like, you didn't help us.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had some people that worked hourly for us in the brewery to help us, and then we also had some independent sales reps that got paid a commission. So let's say we had about 20 of those individuals that were working like some five, six hours a week. So not a lot. That was how we ran our sales. That was how we were able to grow in accounts. And then on the brewery side, we probably had two or three individuals.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We just wouldn't let it lose. We would show up and do samples. Justin Vanessa and I were doing samplings at least once a day. And then, you know, we did a good job of creating a bit of buzz around the product too. Yeah, and I think people liked that we were like a trio of entrepreneurs that were just getting started. And we had a really good kombucha. So hopefully people would tell their friends. I don't know. It just, it really did grow, but we pushed it very hard. We were always, always selling this thing. I was always demoing it felt like”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In LA. Yeah. It's like a proper grocery store, but they only have three of them at that time. Actually, at the time, they only had two. So it was still not a huge chain. Like we could make the deliveries.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As it was to make like a customer sale in a farmer's market, but it was worth the squeeze because usually the bigger the store, the more cases they would order at a time. But there was a period of time where Vanessa, Justin and I, we would each take a day to deliver during the week, a couple days a week. So we delivered every single day. And our days were full. And we would just drive around LA and drop off product to restaurants, cafes, small grocery stores.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, a six pack of kombucha is usually what we show up with, and we just say, you know, try it and sometimes we'd be able to put it right in the fridge right then and there. And we created a whole self-distribution model for a good two years. We ended up buying a van or leasing a van, a big white van. It wasn't refrigerated, but we put a bunch of coolers in there. But yeah, I mean, it wasn't as easy to make a wholesale sale.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know some, you know, we had a sales sheet that, like, I had, you know, used as inspiration for my sales pharmaceutical sales days. Sometimes you get somebody that was super stoked about it. One of the biggest early on challenges was refrigeration.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was not difficult. Yeah, we all were very grateful that the three of us landed with each other because I know a lot of people have founder issues. It's natural, right? You've got a thing of value. But for us, it just really hasn't ever been. The three of us were equally devoted. Dedicated, put the same amount of work into health aid. So we were, yeah, third, a third, a third, all the way and always have been.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And when it came time to having that difficult conversation, sometimes difficult, about how to divide up the business, was it difficult or not? Was it just like, yep, a third, a third, a third? How'd you figure that out?”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Individual jobs and responsibilities onto postcards. So we had like 100 postcards each with a job from making deliveries to brewing the kombucha to opening accounts. And we put those on a wall and we sat at the back and we just said, okay, go pick up the postcards, the three of us. Go pick up the postcards that you are most drawn to and you think you're the best at And naturally, Vanessa picked up the sales ones. I picked up the marketing and leading people ones. And then Justin picked up a lot of the operational manufacturing ones. So it sort of we very naturally fell into our roles of CEO for me, chief of sales for Vanessa and COO for Justin.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well... Yes and no. I mean, I was also the marketer. The beginning, it was like anybody who has arms and legs and has like we all shared the chores and the responsibilities. And brewing was the most physically difficult. I mean, it's a lot of lifting cases of liquid, moving cases around, filling bottles. So it was like no one person could do that all week. So we would switch. There was no clear kind of job responsibility yet. But once we quit our job, what we did is we put jobs.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“60 grand, so 30 grand each And that was just for a filling line that was like gone. It was literally the price of that. So we were, yeah, we were out of cash fast.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, we were so busy, guy. And we were the type of people that in the walk-in fridge at the bakery shop, when the light was out, we didn't like fix the light. We would just like work in the dark. So, yeah, no, I mean, we probably should have been thinking ahead because there's no question that as we got bigger, cash was coming back to us at a later time. And that was starting to really infringe upon our cash situation. But we weren't really thinking about that. So no, when we needed money The first time we really needed money, we needed money to buy our first filling line, which already we were past the cake bake shop stage. It was the next stage, but we asked both of our parents for that. Vanessa asked her dad and I asked my dad and they gave us money at like a, you know, I don't even think there was an interest rate. It was like, pay us back in a year.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where's your nutrition label? And like, where is your business location? And we're like, yeah, we can't be like Sierra Benicha Apartment A. Right. So we found a, it was called Cake Bake Shop in Manhattan Beach. And the owner's name was Laura. And she was closed on Sundays and Mondays. And in exchange for us opening on Sundays and Mondays and manning her shop, she let us use all the extra space she had for free.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But there was a point where our kombucha, you know, just could not fit anymore. And we needed some space. Plus, we started to sell in stores. Like stores would come to our markets and say, hey, can I sell this in my really awesome, you know, craft cocktail store or can I sell this in my like high-end market? And so we would deliver not just to individuals, but also to small wholesale accounts. And when we did that, that was when legally, you know, they would say things like, hey, where's your nutrition?”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kombucha factory Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were like definitely, I mean, neighbors who lived at Sierra Benita with us, thank you because we really, yeah, their lives were worse off because of us. Not only did it smell like kombucha all the time, but we had people coming in to help us make it. I mean, any friend that needed, you know, some cash.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because it wasn't at that time. I think Justin and I had scrounged together enough money to have a couple months of rent saved up. So at the end of the year, we found ourselves in this place of being like, it was like our dream, all three of us had the dream to give this thing a go. So we made a sort of pact at November, I want to say, was around Thanksgiving, where we said, okay, let's put in our notice end of the year. Boom, we're done. January 3rd, we come back. It's game time, baby. That was sort of the thought. And it really was as soon as we showed up. I call that one of the most important marky moments because it was when we came back that we could put our full mindshare to this business and growing it. And that's when we moved away from farmers markets.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've made the decision to quit my job and give Health Aid a full time go. He was sort of like, come on, you don't have to do that. I mean, listen, I'm supportive of health aid. It's going well. You should keep doing it. But like, don't quit your job. You should be making some money first.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it was so scary. It was so scary. I was so afraid to call my father and tell him, oh my goodness, I remember that. I was like shaking.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, when we had realized this was the business. Wow. Be honest, it was about the consumer to us, like, there was a response They like loved our kombucha. We were getting, they would say things like, I drove 100 miles to buy this kombucha. You know, it was like that. And we were like, okay, we have something here. It felt wrong to go back to hair loss after that. There was something here. It was alive and like growing.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And another thing we were doing at that time pretty quickly, customers who loved it would say, will you just bring this to my house? Like, I don't want to carry a case around the farmer's market. Will you just deliver, if I buy a whole case, will you deliver it to my house? And we're like, yeah. So then this whole other business started, which was us distributing cases to homes all throughout LA after the market. So like Saturdays and Sundays became extremely busy for us.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's kind of just LA. I mean, for sure, the ones that knew kombucha were probably more like the yoga customer, but I would say a lot of customers that came to us and bought really had never heard of kombucha before had heard something about probiotics. And we're just like, well, my doctor told me I should have probiotics. I'll give this a try. Let me buy one.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, at least half of our customers were repeat. And then the other half were new, which was so cool. We were really driving people to the category, people who were new to kombucha. And we would, first of all, you couldn't walk through the market and not taste our kombucha. We would make sure that everybody who walked by our booth got a sample. It was just.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so did Justin. Yeah, I mean, we didn't do the weekday markets at first. We did weekend markets, but then we did pick up a Thursday market, but we hired somebody to do that So he would do it for 100 bucks and a percentage of sales”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was hard, man. So, yes, in the week I was working and at night be just working so hard at making the kombucha, making more kombucha at the height of the summer, we were in seven markets and there were only three of us. You were in seven.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Were you making We were making it in the same jars as we make it today. Two and a half gallon cookie jars from Bedbath and Beyond. And that apartment just happened to have a huge closet with a bunch of shelves and we put in stainless steel shelves to add to that. You know, you could fit 10 jars per shelf. And we probably had a good 20 or 30 shelves. So we could make a lot of kombucha. And then we bought, I mean, I'm not sure if this is electrically safe, but we bought one of those space heaters. Just sort of put it in the closet so it warmed up the room to make the fermentation go a bit faster.”
2020-09-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Health-Ade Kombucha: Daina Trout · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT