Welcome Back. Here are the six quick questions. So question Number one is, what's your why? Why do you wake up every day and put your energy into pop and bottle? It's really two reasons, I mean there's more than two, but there's two that kind of really top the list. Um one is, you know, the north staff of this product and this brand is making a moment in your day a little bit better, a little bit healthier, a little bit more intentional, a little bit more mindful, a little bit more enjoyable and you know, I was kind of cleaning up the coffee routine, that was the, the reason we started this, and now the goal is really to kind of make it more accessible, so we don't want it just to be in available to the small cluster of people that can benefit from it. We really believe that access to better, healthier products should be wider and broader and so the why really is how do we get to scale to the point where we can put it in the hands, as many people that choose to choose to choose it.

That's kind of one big driver for what we want to grow the brand and and the second is for me, it's genuinely still so exciting to be building a brand that feels authentic to us. You know, it's something that we cooked up literally, you know, in our little kitchen, our little brainchild and it's evolved, it's grown, but it still has the essence of, you know, the friendship story that we started with the problem that we're trying to solve the community that we're trying to build the experience that we're trying to create in the world that didn't exist and just spreading that authentic story through our brand and having it, you know, hopefully impact other people in a positive way, in a small moment of joy, you know, we're not solving a huge problem that we're solving a small thing that you do every day that is really exciting to me and encouraging to me and something that kind of keeps me going on the gym. I love that Question. Number two is what's been your favorite marketing moment so far?

I think the most substantial for us was just the realization and I talked about this already, but it was a realization that we could have our product do the work for us and that our sales and marketing could kind of work hand in hand to grow the brand. And so that first half was launched, I talked about and seeing that, seeing that sales opportunity as a billboard, that was really kind of the piece that helped me understand how powerful that real estate was and is um and how focusing on the distribution was really like was really the monthly moment that we needed to kind of keep us going. It had an organic sell through once we got it on shelf because of the strength of the products of the brand and those were the marketing moments that really kind of decided to go deep in. So that one launch that was meaningful from a sales perspective, it was really meaningful from a marketing perspective. I love that question. Number three is what's your go to business resource that you can recommend, whether it's a book or a podcast or a newsletter that you subscribe to, You know, there's so much content that I love and I wish I had more time for for all of it.

But I really do like the one book I read recently that really resonated for me this atomic habits and you know, this concept that we really are our habits and the reason I really love it is because it's so every day, you know, it's when you think about goal setting and you think about milestones and and where you want to be, it's so zoomed out, it's almost unachievable. But when you think about your day, you control it, it's your time and it's just really a collection of habits, a collection of things you do just a collection of tasks, it's just process and what I loved about this, but it's really this idea that you are your habits, who do you want to manifest? Do you do you see yourself as a healthy person if you see yourself with a healthy person when you're making that next choice, what would a healthy person do choose that habit and suddenly after doing that habitually ritualistically for a few days in a row, you're doing the habits of a healthy person, suddenly you become a healthy person.

I think that's really powerful. I love flat berg, I love kind of thinking about it with our business in mind because it's described as habits in the book. But really, you know, the other lens of it is rituals, you know, we're in the business of rituals, the coffee ritual, tea ritual. And so that's just something cool about, you know, you are your rituals. So um for rituals, your manifest uh and how do you make your life a little bit more? How do you go where you want to go by changing the rituals in your life? This is a great segue into question # four, which is how do you win the day? And what are your rituals and habits that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated? This is I think this is like the, I just changed my life. This is kind of the most powerful way of putting the day is by saying no, and sometimes sometimes the measure of a successful day for me is how many things that I say no to today? The reason I say that is because our time is just the most valuable resource that we have and there are so many opportunities to say yes to so many things, You know, whether it's a retail opportunity, but maybe it doesn't make sense whether it's a meeting that you love to do, but it just isn't the right priority for that day.

Prioritization and what to say that yes to want to say no to, it's just so key to getting to where you want to go. And for me, it's really hard. I love to say yes to people. It's really hard to say no, and that's just a culture of training that I've had to build inside of me, and I'm still working on today. But yeah, I think a successful day for me is one where I've set some boundaries. I've made some decisions on prioritization and I've said no to a bunch of things that were hard to say no to God, I really resonate with that need to be better at boundaries. Question # five is what's been your worst money mistake in building the business, and how much did it cost you? Okay, We've had some real doozies, so feel free to share it. Yeah. Gosh, I probably so many things um we've definitely done things that just weren't the right time.

I think we invested in pr a stage here, but it might not be the most exciting, but we invested in pr expensive Pr at one point and stage, it just didn't make any sense for us in the business because we had no distribution. So um it was something that we actually should do and would have been fantastic to do, but when you're so tiny and national pr doesn't make sense because nobody in the other part of the country can can find your product and you don't sell online. Um It was just kind of wrong prioritization at the wrong time. And so while it was very worthwhile at the right time, it's just it was not worthwhile at the wrong time. So um yeah, that would be one example and I think that's such an important one, especially for pr because pr you can also get really caught up in the ego of wanting to see yourself. But then if it's not really driving meaningful results, it really can be a money waster and it can also just be a money waster. If you have, you know you hire the wrong people to help you with that piece as well. So you have great, great bit of learning there and question number six.

Last question, what is just a crazy story you can share from building your business that is good, bad or ugly. Let's see. Um there's nothing in some ugly moments. I have a really ugly one actually that I can share which I will never forget. Everyone survived. No one was, no one was hurt. Everyone survived. So we lived to tell the tale. Um This is probably in the first year or 18 months in our business, we had this beautiful branded, we met in the branded refrigerated vehicle, refrigerated van, they had parked a bottle on it, we see it drive on the highway. It was exciting and it was, it was a delivery van and truck product up and down California and I got a call early morning one day from our driver who when I asked because I thought it was april fools because I just couldn't believe what he was telling me. Um he gave me a call and he said hey I'm just I'm on the side of the highway, I just pulled up and the van is in flames.

Um And I thought he was joking until he sent me pictures to my phone of our proper bottle. We thought oh my God is this a metaphor for what's in half with our business, our beautiful black van with popping bottle branding up in flames, the logo up in flames, in flames. All the product inside it up in flames. Um It was dealt with everyone was safe but we drove out to kind of look at our vehicle that we poured money into that we got branded. Um it was just a very low moment. Um It was all our product for a week, a week of sales. It was this vehicle that we that we didn't have another one, this is our only one. Um and suddenly it was a huge setback in business. We didn't have any product, we've lost our vehicle, it was like so stabilizing at the time. Um It's just one of those moments where you're like well do we have a business tomorrow because we don't, we just lost a ton of stuff.

We had to go through an insurance claim. Um That was not easy. It was just it was just a crazy it was just a crazy time. Um But it was one of those moments when you realize that you have so much strength inside you you know and you you figure it out yes your phone problems and you figure out a rental um a late night production session calling our retailers to explain what happened, asking for some extra time to deliver. Um And we figure it out. But yeah it was it was one of the was ugly moment that is full on. Oh my God wow. Yeah that's a crazy one. That's a that's a crazy story. Oh my gosh josh thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story with pop and bottle and sharing all the learnings and the crazy stories. Gosh I'm like in awe of what you felt, thank you so much. Thank you. Hey it's dune here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the female startup club podcast.

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