YouSaid · the spoken record

Josh Hochschuler

lines on the record: 111
first: 2025-06-30
most recent: 2025-06-30
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

“I don't attribute to Luck. I do think I've been blessed, very, very blessed. And I think it's a team effort. But I feel extremely fortunate to God for the blessings in my life. And there's been this common thing that people like to call it an overnight success. But I say, yeah, it was a 15-year overnight success because it wasn't just from one day to the next, like you said, there was a tremendous amount of hard work. It was a roller coaster ride and it was scary. And I think that's how a lot of these entrepreneurial businesses go. It's just so different from being an employee that you expect to get a check every two weeks when you go home and you worry about could there be a fire or is there I don't can't get robbed. There's just a different set of concerns that you have when you own. And starting a business is hard and it takes”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, it was, well, Eddie Phillips was Jewish, so he understood a lot of what was important to me. Steven has enjoyed the kind of learning about this and being involved and speaking to me about it, et cetera. And funny enough during Passover, there's certain rules you're not allowed to own certain things. One of them being food that you're not allowed to eat during that period. So I would have to sell him the business and he would have to give me $20 and have a handshake. And the rabbis would have to see that this was happening with the handshake through a picture. And so after a number of years, he said to me, is this real or you just want $20 for me every year? What's going on? What's going on? So we've had fun with it. We've had fun with it.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's hard for me now to imagine any other way. Completely look forward to it, kind of resets everything perspective and on life and etc. So yeah, now, I mean, once you get past the initial fear and it can have real trust and faith, then you move on and you learn to love it and live it and enjoy it. So it plays a huge role for us and for our children and for the way that we raise our family.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was terrified. I remember leaving that Friday and thinking to myself, you know, what happens? How is this going to work? Like what happens if there's, God forbid, a fire? Or it's an important day of the week, Saturdays. It took a very long time to get over this I'm not going to work for that day. I'm done working. I will have faith in God that the business will be okay for 25 hours. And it really helped our home life tremendously because As my wife used to joke, she's like, Thank God for Shabbos, I wouldn't get to see you otherwise. So she knows she has me that time frame together with the kids with uninterrupted, completely focused on our faith and our family.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So there's nothing more important to me than family, and I am incredibly involved in my children's lives together with my wife. But it definitely was a workaholic for a long time. And it was about February of 2006 when my wife and I decided that we would start keeping Shabbos, which is...”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. I stayed on for three years as a consultant with a number of handful, maybe a week or two a year. I would be involved with them. And they were great. They were a very, very stand-up, impressive organization and company. So I'm very happy about that. It made me very proud that the person who took over what was like my baby was a company that makes me proud.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Big time incentives, so we were incredibly motivated to work very, very hard and make sure that they were left with a beautiful business. And so by the end of 16, we had hit 245 million in sales, and it was extremely profitable. They got what they paid for.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, and part of the negotiation. So Steve had been through the whole Belvedere experience, and they wanted him to live in Paris, and then they were counting his days of vacation. And so he didn't want to feel like he was going back inside some sort of cage. So the negotiation involved a lot of freedom on our part. However, they knew that we were incredibly motivated to see this through.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Something like, God, I don't know, $250 per ounce that they were drinking. Anyways, so they're passing it around, like everyone smell it. Don't drink it, just smell it because it's too expensive. You can't drink it. So then they down it. And next thing you know, everyone's laughing and they bought everyone around of this scotch, which I was never able to afford before that. I'd never tasted it. So I said, you know, that was such a fun night. I would like to go buy a bottle of that and hold it for special occasions. And so that's what I did. I bought a bottle of that. That was how I celebrated. And whenever I open it, whether that be a birthday or a big milestone in someone's life, we always write down on the bottle why I'm having a sip of it to celebrate the date and the event.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Buy yourself something. And I said, I don't know. What am I going to buy? And she goes, Just figure it out. You got it. I insist you buy something. So that last night when we sold the business to Unilever, we had gone out, the investment bankers were ordering McCallan 25.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, kind of like a nice place for the family to get away on the weekends here or there, play sports, fish, that sort of thing. So I guess that would be a material difference. My wife said to me, go buy something. You just did this, go buy something.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, it wasn't just me alone, but yes, it was a lot of back and forth. We kept thinking, oh, this time we'll get there, this time we'll get there. And we were too far apart. So it took almost a year and a half, I think, before we were able to finally say, okay, we're ready to do this.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, I had a nice salary. I was able to go out for dinner. But in any case, and my father said, look, I don't care what you're worth. It doesn't matter to me if you have money. He says, I just think that to be able to sleep well at night, it's nice to have a nest egg that you can depend on. And I'm just proud of you because you're a good person. And that meant the world to me and that helped me get over that.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I was having children. Do I want this to continue and then expand it into different novelties or what have you, other products and bringing my sons in and make this kind of my life's journey? Or do I want to be more of that serial entrepreneur? That was a lot of the thinking. My father had a lot of influence on me. He thought it was a good idea to take some chips off the table. Yeah. Although the company was very profitable, but we just kept pouring it all back right back into the business to.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I think you start thinking to yourself, is this a business I want to run for a very long time and bring my children into it and make it a family?”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that started this at least a year, I think it was a year and a half back and forth with those guys. We just didn't feel like we were ready to sell yet.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and it's hard to come out and be behind the original authentic one. So, no, we weren't. But then Unilever actually came to us. They came to us in 13. They said, this is the call you've been waiting for. And said, we want to buy your business. And we're like, well, it's not for sale. We're not selling.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we hadn't approached anyone. The business at that time was owned by three people. It was me, Stephen, and Eddie's son had taken, had inherited his shares.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I came to the conclusion that there was a concept where there are certain people that like to do business on their own, and I don't like that. I like having a partner.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think for a while it was Steve was CEO, and I was president, basically running it together. Eventually, as we hired more C-suite on, I took on the title of founder. But until the very, very, very end, it was Steve and I running that business.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we took that success and went around to all different chains. Kroger's the biggest. And we started gaining distribution just across the country and a lot of sales people were buying it.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think it did. I mean, our sales were great. We came out of the gates just blazing and it just kept going up and up and up.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It played over and over until that buyer called us and said, You weren't kidding about your spend. I can't get to work in the morning without hearing your ad on the radio.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I still have them. I'm going to send them to you. But they're really funny. The ads themselves talked about that there was a clear jar on the aisle. So it talked about the pack and it talked about the brand.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He says $500,000. So we ended up getting the business after that meeting, and Steve calls me and he says good news, bad news. Good news is I got us in. And I'm like, oh, amazing, amazing. He goes, bad news is we've got to come up with $500,000 to pay for radio. I just guaranteed them”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I'm like, oh my God, go to the airport, go to the airport. So he just gets in his car still driving the airport. At the time, you could not go into publics without wearing a suit and tie. So I call his wife and we're saying, grab a suit, grab a tie, stick it into an envelope and a FedEx, go to a FedEx location. And within a short period of time, I will have an address for you. So we find some little motel hotel inside of the road, have her overnight at first thing delivery by 7 a.m. He gets cashes the flight, gets there, puts on his suit, makes it to the meeting, tells the guys, you've got to give us a chance. You have to let us in. We are going to make you look good. We're going to sell well. And it will be good for your career. So he says, well, how are you going to do that? And he says, well, you know, I have done this before, but we're going to do it. And he goes, no, I want to know how. And so Steve just goes, radio. And he goes, really, radio. He goes, yeah, radio. He says, well, how much are you going to spend on the radio?”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Especially, you know, they get the snowbirds, they get a lot of people in the winter when we don't have much going on elsewhere. So that's a huge plus. They have a ton of locations. They own Florida. So you had the ability to do tremendous business with them. And we wanted to be able to show a win at a big chain. What ended up happening was we went and pitched to them. We got a phone call from the broker and he said, I got bad news. Unfortunately, they decided not to go with you. This was in the very beginning of 09. And we said, no, no, no, no, no, no. Cannot be, cannot be. So Steve said, call the buyer and tell him, I just want 30 minutes with the guy. Any 30 minutes he wants, I just want to talk to him face to face. Get me a meeting. So he calls us back and he says, you got your meeting. That's the good news. The bad news is it's tomorrow morning, like 8.30 in the morning. And we're sitting in Dallas, Texas. It's 5 something in the afternoon.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Publics, it's looked at as a leader in the industry. People focus on what they're doing, their trendsetters. It also is in Florida. And Florida helps offset the seasonality of the business.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say it was either the end of 2009 or 2010 when it was feeling really good. The big turning point of 09. Was that we really wanted to get into publics, which is a chain in Florida.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You had to hold the cup underneath the spigot. It was like in the kitchen faucet and fill and then put the lid on and then keep doing that one by one by one by one. Yes. And we had multiple of these machines. So we were not doing one at a time. But each machine would do one at a time. We didn't really automate to fillers until pretty much 2012.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was an evolution of the packing. You know, we went from packing with a spatula to where we were moved to what's called a continuous freezer and it would actually flow out as if it were coming out of a hose, which made it easier. To pack, but still was not automated. We did not automating”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, forever. So it was exciting to come and disrupt and then start taking away enough market share to just completely become a nuisance to them until they have to buy us. And so they had been through it. They had been wildly successful. And they thought that they would be able to, together with me, repeat that series of events.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Again, you would have to ask them. But my best understanding from just having spoken to them about it is they liked the size of the category a lot. It had been boring for so long. Nothing had happened in that category forever.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. So the end of 2008 till through 09, let's call it. And that was the period of needing to live to see another day. And those two gentlemen for the most part funding that.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, it was horrible for us. A few things had happened. There was a large sale that was made to a distributor. The understanding was that would then go to these different customers. What wasn't realized was that had it not been sold to those customers, we get it all back. So we got that sent back to us and you can't then resell it. So that was trash. So that was a hard one. Steve really took over most, I would go with him, but he was heading up VP of sales, managing sales. I really dedicated most of my time to product and manufacturing and more of the trade. And so we lost money. We lost considerable money that year, a lot of bad debt. And there was no more money out there. By the end of 2008, There was nothing left.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think it became clear pretty quickly that it would be much better if Steve got involved in the operations. It didn't take long to figure that out, mainly because I think he's an incredible operator. He really knows how to build and run businesses. He became like a business mentor for me. And he was just a natural at leading and a lot of marketing and sales as well as finance. He's very, very strong in those areas.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there was like we needed to sign some, get some bank loans or line of credit or things like that. So their balance sheets helped with getting approvals on those things. But yeah, they put in money and they bought out all of my original storefront investors.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I went there and I sat down in their offices, and I was very intimidated at the time. I'm sitting there. There's a massive office and they come walking in this huge boardroom table and sat down and they're like, all right, you got a few minutes. Tell us what you're thinking. And for some reason, they thought it was a retail concept and they were not interested in retail. But then I explained to them, no, this is wholesale. This is wholesale and this is what we're doing. And they're like, oh, we like it. Then I had brought product with me and I had them taste it and they loved it. They thought it was amazing. They loved the pack. And they said, make us a proposal.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I saw a lot of similarities. I saw their brand, they came out, they were much more expensive than the competition. We were more expensive in the competition, not to that extent, but we were more expensive. They invented the bottle that you could look through the window and see the image on the back. So they had this innovative packaging. I just was like, these guys know a lot about branding and they've had tremendous success. They've been down that road as entrepreneurs. So I called and said, you know, I really want to come meet with you guys. I had just had my first child. And they go, come, come. We'll give you a few minutes. And in their minds, it was they were just doing this PR guy a favor. There was no real thought of that anything would come from this.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, and Chopin Vodka. That point, they no longer owned them, they had sold them, they sold them to Louis Vuitton A Hennessy, but they were kind of now wanting to do something again. But I didn't know that. But this friend of mine from college had come to Dallas and we were together and I said, he said, what are you going to do? How are you going to finance this thing? Things are going well as far as the top line, but it is unsustainable what's happening here. And I said, I'm so anxious so much need to meet someone. You know who would be perfect is these guys that you just did this PR for? And he said, well, hold on. I'm friendly with them and picked up his phone and called them and said, hey, Steve, you should meet this guy, Josh. He has a business that he'd love to tell you about it.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So in 2007, a friend from college was in town. He had done public relations for Stephen Eddie at Belvedere Vodka when they still owned it”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really wanted smart money. I was trying to find someone who I thought could bring a lot of value. I started to feel like I really don't know what I'm doing. And I need someone who has more experience in this who can show me the way. I think I have a great product and I've got all the energy in the world to go and make it happen, but I don't know exactly how that works and I need help with the expertise.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, finances were very, very tight. And then the salesperson that we had knew of a friend in Minneapolis, and he helped us get a couple of chains in Minneapolis. And I knew that I couldn't just keep going into further debt. And I had started to go out and try to find a more sophisticated investor, a bigger investor to come in and put in some real money to give relief to these investors that I've been carrying since the days of the store.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I wasn't discouraged. I said, no, no, no, it's going to be great. You'll see. Watch, watch, watch. So I came up with the pack that was pretty early on. That was still in 04. The concept of not being in cardboard when there was a sea of cardboard and coming out with something completely different that would hopefully generate trial started pretty early on. It started in 04.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So way back in 2004, when I started at that first specialty store, in the very, very, very beginning, I was doing it in those little tiny styrofoam. Containers that they use in other countries often. Shortly thereafter, I had gone to a trade show. It was actually in Italy. They had a new display case that rather than having metal pans, it was made out of transparent plastic. That pan allowed for you to see the ribboning, all the different swirls, the bits and pieces, the inclusions. And so I was like, wow, I should try to do something like that on the shelf in a supermarket. So I came back and I found a jar and I showed it to my wife. And I said, what if I were to package it in this? And she said, that's a terrible idea. That looks like a urine sample jar. No one's going to ever buy anything from that.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, Whole Foods was way different back then Each store had a lot of autonomy, and they were able to take us on. So that would be one example. But there was some other specialty stores that were just getting started. Maybe you've heard of sprouts. Of course. Time sprouts had very, very few locations. They were out of Arizona, but they had come to Texas and they had opened, I think it was two locations in all of Texas. And so that would be another example. So we were able to get into these kind of specialty markets that had the autonomy to be able to make these decisions and put us on shelf.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so that is true. That's helpful. But it's also if you can have good numbers and show what you're able to do and tell the story. It's incredibly helpful in sales meetings. And so that's the point when we started going around and meeting literally in the stores with the Frozen Isle manager, who could be a teenager, and saying to them, look, we're selling here, we're selling there. Let us go on yourself, try us out. That was starting to go into 2007. And that's kind of how we started getting more and more stores in 2007 was meeting with the frozen aisle manager.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it was more than that. I think it was like 70 or $80,000, but it was way more than they probably should have given me, but they did. Back then, it was like, why do you only want $70? Take 80. It worked out for me. It saved the business.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, personal loan. I remember because I'd been waiting to get the news, waiting to get the news, waiting to get the news. And it was amazing news. And then, of course, we stayed in business. But it was a moment. The entire time, every time I would call my father and say to him, you know, this is happening and this is hard and I'm worried about this. And he'd say, you keep going. It will work out. You keep going. It's going to be fine. And this time I called him and he said, you know, maybe you're going to have to close the doors. And that was just heartbreaking. But we didn't. We made it through. It was a real crisis moment.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Roughly. And so I remember I called a meeting and I said, everyone, let's huddle up and talk. And I said, I'm going to go to the bank and I'm going to try to sign and get more money from the bank to pay you what I owe you. Because I don't have it right now because of what just happened with this big customer. But it's going to take a week or two weeks, you know, 10 days to get this done. If you leave in the meantime, I can't even service the customers I have and I'll lose them as well. So, I really need you guys, please, to give me some time, and I will pay you what I owe you. And I know the timing is horrible. So they spoke amongst themselves and then came back and said, we trust you. We're going to stay. Go find the money. And I said, you got it.”
2025-06-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Talenti: Josh Hochschuler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT