Seth Waite - The #1 Most Important Question to Ask Consumers

welcome to shelf help today we're speaking with Seth Wade partner at Shaffer the buyer psychology firm that works with leading food and beverage brands around the industry before joining Schaefer Seth Think founded and or played key leadership roles at a series of leading ECOM and CPG focused tech and analytics firms went through a handful of acquisitions along the way a lot of great experience so really excited to get into it yeah Seth welcome on enemies first off just for the listeners that that aren't all that familiar with Schaefer love to just kind of get a quick lay of the land just in terms of kind of the the origin story and kind of the why behind the company and kind of the the model and kind of the course services you offer and then maybe if you just want to throw out a few examples of a few brands you guys work with today or ones you've worked with in the past that stand out and then we'll go from there no sounds great so thanks for having me first off yeah obviously the opportunity to talk shop and get into buyer psychology shaefer is a business that's about seven years old uh so not super old but in the world of entrepreneurship right there's always different stuff going on Sydney shaefer my business partner is the one that actually started the firm I was the first customer so she built a really great product really great great service I had a consumer brand and I needed help and was like hey I don't want to go build out a team and Sydney and I had worked together in the past and what she was offering was just super different than what else you know I saw out there so that's actually how I got connected into Schaefer was by being a customer for two years nice the end of that process my business was acquired and when the gold handcuffs and all the things kind of came off Sydney and I were like that was a lot of fun and the business grew ridiculously fast and we're like what if we we do that more often so Schaeffer really at the heart of it is focused on why do people make the purchases that they're making we always come back to like why why people buy that's the core question we're always driving and what happens often because we come from a marketing growth sales kind of background is there's a lot of data out there on like who customers are getting to demographic information about age and gender and income and all those kind of things and I think that's often the most like overused set of data it's interesting and it's really important at the very end of the process for targeting but it doesn't actually tell you much like you're not figuring out that because it's a millennial mom from a Chicago suburb that suddenly instantly she's gonna be interested in your product like if you took 100 millennial moms in Chicago suburbs they're gonna have wildly different interests and so part of that is well you gotta know the behavioral data behind what they do like how does that work there are also I think good analytics in that area like you got POS data and if you're on Shopify and do direct consumer right you got data there so you got this behavioral data and that gets you closer but the big challenge and where Shaffer comes in and solves it is you're still missing the y component which is motivations and values like what's the job you're really trying to solve and why do you care about this so that's the heart of Schaefer's like point of view that's what makes this different is when you can connect those three really interesting sources of data you get a complete picture and what you typically find out is that the reason why your funnel is performing like well okay maybe not at all is because you don't have the right people coming in the top and it's because your motivations are off you're not connecting your message to their motivations and that's creating problems so from a services standpoint that's research that's a big part of it is let's go get you that data let's make that like approachable and easy and thoughtful and let's layer that data on top of your who and your what data around behaviors and all of that turns into segmentation positioning strategy as well as messaging so often times it's like I have all the right parts I'm not sure what's the most important in the hierarchy like what do I lead with do I lead with vegan or does that play a role later in the communication so we do that strategic work and then we'll also go test it so because our background is heavy on the performance marketing side in addition to the strategy we'll come in and say look let's work with a creative partner yours or somebody and then let's take this new positioning new messaging hierarchy or new strategy really focused on your ideal and best customer segments let's go put it in the market and actually make sure that it's working so we'll then go put it on paid social paid search you know pick a channel and it has to be the right channel to fit with that ideal customer but we'll go test it so that at the end of this process we didn't just hand over like a really attractive strategy in a really nice deck but you're actually walking out going oh this is performing at a higher level than what I've got and what most people will find is that it's not just incrementally better it's massively better so like we just wrapped up a big project this last year over the holidays premium beef brand so we actually do a lot in the protein space and that includes like protein bars and then all the way through animal proteins as well and so we did this big project with them as we were going through the process they're like oh we know our customer like we've got it for some reason the ad channels just aren't working the way they should and or you know it's always a website issue or some kind of problem and what we found out is that they were focused on a fundamentally different customer than who was actually buying like currently buying and they were missing this monster market so we repositioned them based on those motivations found out that their demographic targeting was really off like all the things and there are smart sophisticated companies like it wasn't like these people are just like novices but in the process over six months they had a four times increase in sales across all their channels and then during the holidays they had an 8 x increase like it was just massive change because they were focused on the right people with the right message in the right channels wow so that's impressive that's what we do that's awesome that's a great overview I mean that LED into the first question I have to a certain extent you you kind of answered it a little bit throughout that but um maybe to kind of I guess double click on it a bit and all the experiences you've had and going through these projects with a lot of these brands anything that kind of jumps out in terms of the most common lie or maybe a few lies that brands tell themselves about why people buy their products yeah um and there's probably like I could write an entire book on just like yeah all of that I often will call it like they're they're building all these beliefs on like me search like I went out and determined by talking to you know my friends my mom whatever that this is true um or I had that one really good review a year ago and that's what I'm gonna base everything on so I think I think that ties to this concept that most brands and that's whether they're VC backs private equity yeah big food multi billion dollar enterprises like they believe they know their customer better than they do and so much of it is that they're used to having these like cute and friendly little personas around who their customer is and it fits nicely into a narrative that they like to tell themselves they like to tell investors and so they justify a whole bunch of decisions based on this idea of who they think the customer is and the moment you start pressing and like pushing it gets really squishy really fast and you realize that that level of understanding about the customer is very rarely much deeper than demographics and then the second they they get into demographics it's like now let's talk generational trends right like our customers all these things and I'm like okay but what does that actually what are you saying when you talk about the fact that your product is built for Gen Z because I know lots of people in the Gen Z generation and they're wildly different so that I think is like that is the core belief that limits growth across companies of all sizes whether you're emerging challenger brand midmarket or enterprise that makes a lot of sense yeah that makes total sense I've heard you say that in a podcast or your substack or somewhere that you found like research question a brand can ask is ask like what would you do instead I'm just kind of curious why why do you feel like this question works so well and kind of was it what does it uncover that other questions don't yeah so we do lots of interviews and a whole bunch of surveys more surveys you know than interviews but we're talking to people all the time and we're talking them often on behalf of other people right like it's not uncommon for me to have a blind taste test in an interview and I'm having this conversation and they're trying this thing and whether it's in a survey or an interview or a sensory test where we're trying to get taste and texture people are always performing so to that I just mean like we're always a little bit on stage and we want to give the answers often times that are true and close to what we think you want to hear or some people are the opposite which is like true and contrarian right like I'm not gonna give you the satisfaction of telling you what I think you want and so in the process of getting through this data motivational data especially where you're trying to like really understand why people are doing these things have to get layers into the conversation to start removing the performance like like to get them to start really talking where the answers aren't obvious yeah where it's like I'm you know I'm not leading you down a direction so the replacement question which is kind of what we just call it internally it really is that concept which is okay if this protein bar suddenly wasn't available online and in every store you went to it was gone what are you gonna what are you gonna do and often it's pretty open ended cause for some people they're like I'll just stop eating protein bars we've I've had people who will say I would make my own wow because and that's a beautiful that's my one of my favorite question or answers because in that scenario they're saying there's nothing on the market right that meets this need the worst thing you can hear is oh I'll just go get X right in the protein bar space one of the things we find all the time is that very few people are single brand protein bar suppliers so like in most cases people have two or three different brands in their pantry mm hmm got some stuff they like in the mornings or the evenings or on the go all of those kind of things so it's also not great if you hear cool I'll just start buying more of this like right there's no change there's no shift my behavior will stay largely the same and I'm gonna be one of those little like that's interesting move on that means you have a really poor position in the market and you're a commodity in the biggest sense so we're constantly looking and then what happens is you can start asking question after question after question and you start moving down in depth and pretty quickly you understand this is the values that influence my purchase in this area and this is what I'm motivated by as I'm making decisions and this is why I said I would make it myself because the flavor the attributes pick a thing they're so hard to find that this is what I'm looking for so that's a lot of depth and I don't have to spend an hour trying to coax it out of you it's almost instantaneous like cool let we just cut through all the other survey questions or all the other interview questions and got right to the point which is how much do you really value this what's the what is the the kingpin strategy it's a framework that that brand should kind of build their business around yeah most people show up I think whether you're again emerging or anywhere in the the process and you have this core belief that everybody's your customer like if you walk into this retailer you're my customer because somehow again like all Whole Food Whole Food customers are the same all Costco like you just you have this wild belief that you wouldn't believe in any other place like you wouldn't apply it anywhere else but the moment your brand or your product is somewhere you believe that nearly every person except for those trolls out there are gonna love your product and it's just not true yeah it's not for everyone and brands that are the most successful they learn at the quickest and and find like okay who is it for so the kingpin strategy I'm not a I'm not an amazing bowler like it's not like my jam where that's all I'm doing all the time but it is built on this idea of bowling kind of strategy and so when you're going for a strike in bowling you've got all the pins lined up the king pin is the very first pin and when you strike the kingpin with the ball with enough force in the right angle what it will do is it'll actually start knocking down all the other pins in succession if you hit the pins at almost any other angle if you're trying to go for too much or any of those kind of areas what ends up happening is you get something but you don't get it all yeah so if you're looking for that strike like you want to be a brand that feels inevitable like we're gonna be here 10 years from now I'm thirty we're gonna hit a billion dollars we're gonna do all those things then you have to get the strike you have to hit the kingpin and the way we think about it is the kingpin is your initial best customer so your best customer can come from a couple things one of it is like fit around behaviors and motivations and then the other part of that so like if I was building kind of the matrix you know four quads one is fit so I'm looking for how good of a fit it is the other is influence so the other kind of magic component here is is that there are people that are your best customer through motivations through behaviors and through targeting and then you're looking for the people on top of that who also influence their peers and their friends and their community and that's your kingpin like you go pursue those relationships and at first you might feel like I don't know if this scales as well as just throwing a bunch of dollars into Google's P Max ad campaign or you know hoping that Meta's AI will just like magically go grab people and somehow give me a low enough cost to do it and so what ends up happening is you go get these influencers they connect with the next line right and because you've done segmentation work ideally right you've come in and said who are my customers who's my very best and then who's my next and my next and my next you make the world feel very small and achievable so rather than I've got to figure out how to make my product mass market appeal instead it's like I've got to just nail this one group and then I know who my second and my third and my fourth and my fifth are and pretty soon you have a multi year strategy and your life gets really simple because marketing no longer feels frantic it no longer feels like I'm chasing every new retail door that I can find I've got to just be spending more and more money and I'm not exactly sure if it's working or not but it just gives you incredible focus yeah and that focus leads to success totally and it's so much easier to match here's who we say we are with here's what you need right and all of a sudden that customer brand connection is so much easier because you're not trying to say and and and with every single thing about you how does that relate to the marketing efficiency paradox which I'm sure you've seen you write about as well yeah I mean so we always go back to the fact that there is a really interesting relationship between efficiency and effectiveness when it comes to marketing like often times marketers are trying to do both and they can sometimes conflict and so what I mean by that is like efficiency is all about like we're talking ad spend or we're talking about you know promotions or pick a thing we're trying to optimize them like I always use that idea of like you know we're tweaking we're modifying it's like you know if we go old school right it's like it's the knob on the radio we're trying to get it just right and in the process of trying to get it just right we can really quickly lose the point and we can find ourselves optimizing on a smaller market than is real like cause you're like in an effort to get to the lowest possible cost per acquisition I'm now only focusing on the people that will buy it off of the one click or whatever that cost is and so you're actually often shrinking your market and not in the healthy way of aligning you know values and motivations but it's really just you're aligning some arbitrary goals that make your performance look better not the business's actual growth and so it's a really dangerous model that we see all the time and that's why we go back to this idea of like often times you're so focused on optimization that you miss the question on whether the right people are even in the funnel to begin with yeah that's that effectiveness versus efficiency component yeah you have to find a way to do both but if I could only choose one it would be effectiveness right are we growing with real customers who are repeat business and they're coming back and are we getting trial like that's the other component here is often efficiency reduces trial because it's tightening up metrics and instead you're missing the opportunity for building a brand and creating discovery and first time experiences which they cost more than a repeat purchase and then retargeting right so your mix can get off and pretty quickly you're gonna find yourself in a situation where your numbers look better than they've ever looked in your marketing performance but your revenue and your growth numbers aren't improving hmm interesting you kind of framework to work around is is uh this thing called the I people buy pyramid that create the complete pyramid yeah so when I talk about motivation and values that feels really fluffy often like what does that actually mean like how does it show up so what we did is created a framework and a structure that allows us to talk about it analyze it and communicate and share so if you're familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs um you know it's pretty like core philosophy around how do we make decisions subconsciously and consciously and at the very bottom of that like pyramid or triangle that Maslow has is this foundational principle of like we build on safety and physiology and these really basic functional needs like am I safe am I gonna live right like we elevate and move up layer by layer and decision by decision based on achieving these kind of core components until eventually you get to and this is where Maslow's model has a some variation as like until eventually you get to this like self actualization space and and there's a variety of opinions and thoughts around how that works so while we didn't just come in and say hey we took that and put some new names on it what we did is say okay what are the truths there and how do we think about that from a motivational standpoint because purchasing considerations and decision making aren't that dissimilar psychologically from decision making and considerations we make in a lot of areas so the very bottom of our why people buy pyramid is basic functional needs and in like food and beverage it's taste it's texture it's like freshness availability it's satiation like do I actually feel full right like cotton candy really struggles there it's not one of those things you walk out and you're like man I I am satisfied not the most the most empty calories you could probably find totally I mean it's just it's air basically um doesn't mean it's not good but um you know maybe there's a protein cotton candy out there or something I don't know but that's where we start and we go look as a brand you don't have to satisfy everything cotton candy's a killer product at a lot of situations but it doesn't do everything on that basic list but it does some of them and the key is you're trying to do the right ones and this is where business strategy and buyer psychology come together because what you're really trying to do is say here's who we are these are our strengths and our weaknesses as a brand as a products skew pick a thing like this is this is where we are today and this is probably where we're going to be in the future now how do we use those advantages as much as possible in connection with how people make their choices so you got these basic needs and then what happens immediately after that is you you come up to the emotional value standpoint which is like how do I make choices based on how I feel about it so nostalgia really great one and a lot of brands are pushing on that like how do we take millennials back to the 90s how do we you know how do we go backwards and there's so much data around how nostalgia works one of the things that I found really interesting as we do this work is that when nostalgia is connected with a place rather than just kind of a like a memory or like an object the impact of nostalgia emotionally on buying decisions goes through the roof it's huge yeah so that's why it's like you know the stained glass windows at a Pizza Hut like it takes you back to this like Pizza Hut buffet from my childhood and all the you know after the baseball game like it connects all these feelings it's the Oreo at the kitchen table with a little cup of milk and you're twisting and licking and dipping right it's connecting the dots to products but it's it's connecting this place this moment in time for you so nostalgia is powerful but there are lots of other ones like reward so that's incredibly powerful for lots of brands especially if you move into that like premium or other space but there are a lot of nutrition and better for you brands that are pushing on reward as a core emotion totally so they're coming in and saying this is a guilt free treat like you can have this and not feel like this is a reward without feeling bad about it and so you've got other things too like design aesthetic so this is where challenger brands do really well they show up and they've got beautiful packaging and Holy Cow does that make a difference so they put time and energy into this and this aesthetic draws this person in and helps them go I I just feel emotionally connected so fishwife if you're familiar with that brand they have a beautiful aesthetic it's different it's illustrated it's bright pinks and purples it's feminine in a world can fish in a world that is usually very masculine so it's a lot of like navy blues and it's you know logos and pictures of like captains and anchors and it's masculine they came in and said let's tell a different story let's tell a story about what happens once the fish arrives on shore and the fishwife behind it so they're connecting these emotional dots and they're doing it with a beautiful aesthetic that's disruptive on the shelf and everywhere else and then they also attach this other really interesting emotional component which is appeal so the question of how do I look when I buy this product and how do I look when I have it in my cart and one of the things that they've done which is I think crazy awesome is that they figured out how to to help women in particular go how do I look when I have a tin fish can in my clutch or purse and so you're like I got a Louis Vuitton handbag and in it I've got a little can of tin fish and it says something about me and it connects me to these emotional components and then from emotion you have like personal growth or personal goals this is where you see a lot of functional brands they're really trying to hang their hat they're coming in and saying like this is gonna help you lose weight it's tied to GOP ones or whatever this is tied to mental health yeah and mood and you kind of go through all those things and you're saying okay now that I've got this baseline emotional connection and it satisfies this basic need at the bottom what's it gonna help me do because you don't usually answer that without those other things first and you know emotion is so strong because we eat a lot of junk like we eat stuff we all know we shouldn't but it's the emotional connection right it's the fact that when you go to the movies you always get a Coke or pick a thing right like and so that personal growth really is layered in on top it is powerful fishwife solves this by saying fish is an incredible protein it's super lean like let's check all those boxes and then the very top I have that this kind of pyramid is ultimately like beyond self now that I'm personally like seeing all this fulfillment emotionally and through like personal goals that I have let's also connect it to do I feel part of a culture a community some key moment a charity doing good fish wife has a campaign that is called Hot Girls Eat 10 fish and it crushes like it just crushes because it pulls the thread on all of these things yeah the emotion the appeal the design aesthetic and I feel be part of a culture and a community they sell merch I mean they sell a ton of merch women are wearing like I eat tin fish or I eat sardines or all this kind of stuff they basically created a brand new category of customers who didn't buy canned fish before yeah and who are willing to spend more money on it than anyone else in the market cause it's an entry point they're like oh this is what it cost to buy tin fish and I'm willing to make this because I got the connection with the brand like they're crushing it from top yeah pretty much double the price of like other tin fish yeah yeah and so they come in and they can do that because it's so much more than 10 fish and their product is good but I don't know if it's twice as good at the basic functional level right like I don't know if it's twice as tasty and twice as you know good texture and all the things yeah they're winning by layering and stacking all of these different psychological triggers yeah totally old buffets it was that long ago that they used kale as a decoration on their buffets and now it's something that people eat which I thought was really funny kale has had a complete like rebrand right like you look at how some of these core products work uh pistachios a killer rebrand like they're kind of in everything right now Dubai chocolate huge they're all over the place and 30 40 years ago they were something you only bought at gas stations or at ethnic markets right and that's because they were all like stained red yep they stained your fingers and your hands and that was to cover up all the imperfections like nobody really touched them they were a super niche product and through the process of reinventing and connecting the emotion and the functions and all these other psychological and motivational components now they're the rage and there's a totally there's a massive market for it yeah and in a 25 year period everything is shifted for pistachios totally yeah that's a that's a great example too in the fairly intimate book ramping your brand by James Richardson seems like pretty much everyone in CPG has read it at this point you kind of harp on it at the beginning a little bit but he you know he kind of talks about how premium pricing premium positioning really comes from one just really crystal clear promise and not I think he calls it featureitis how is this kind of similar and or different to I think you kind of call it you're like you don't make shoppers do the work framework yeah yeah I mean we we get this and there's a balance on the don't make shoppers do the work so I will say is like the IKEA effect is a real thing like there's a time and a place for having customers do some work but it should be the right work and it should be tied to their motivations so in the world of making brownies or a cake what they wanna do is feel like they were part of the process that they made something right like they contributed in a meaningful way and they can proudly show this cake to someone else and go I made this not I bought these and I took the label off the you know the case and I changed the plate that I've got it on and now I can present it you know so there's there's a pride component that's directly tied to some of that the difference though is often times we make them do work in all the wrong places hmm so in an effort to streamline our business we add work to the customer in an effort to you know check an emotional box that we have on how the package should look we ask them to do all this work right like we're constantly asking them to figure out who we are asking them to figure out why we matter to them we're asking them to figure out like how we meet their needs and it's like well yeah it's on the back of the package or it's you know buried in our origin story somewhere on our website and it's like they're not doing that work so instead what happens is in the 14 seconds when they're in the aisle and they're turning and looking at their options if it's not obvious they're gonna grab the thing next to it and they're not gonna turn back unless they have a bad experience so we just keep adding all these layers we're always adding barriers to our own success by by not understanding what they care about customers and making those things hard for them yeah and and again hard doesn't always mean like oh geez we're you know they've got to like put a password in to get access to our stuff but it can just be that our information isn't obvious that our brand looks beautiful but isn't very functional like I see that happened a lot early in the process mm hmm is there's a lot of copycatting I wanna look like pick a brand yeah and in the process it's like yeah but this doesn't fit and now your best customers don't think that your product is for them and they've got to do all the work to go figure it out and you're just praying that they try it once yep and fall in love with it yeah yeah that's really interesting maybe it's on a podcast or something that you talked about French's the yellow mustard brand everyone knows and yeah the reason that they were able to sell to Mccormick Mccormick I think they've been through a few acquisitions but I think the one you call out was they sold to Mccormick for 4000000000+ you know fairly simple brand simple product and I think you kind of were talking about how they're able to achieve that level of enterprise value because they they own the moment is what you said can you kind of expand on this and kind of touch on how brands can kind of build their business and positioning to achieve a a bit of a similar goal yeah so I think Frances goes back to like they own the moment from the very first day that they came out into the market so this wasn't like some brands you fall into it like over time you have this epiphany moment you're like this is what we should be doing they got it from the start which I think is fascinating now I'll say mustard isn't for everybody really but if it's you know but if it's something you love like they own it and and the reason why is when they came out they showed up at the World Fair like back in the day the World Fair was right it was like south by southwest it was the biggest event out there and it brought all these people who were more into discovering and trying and having experiences and so all these people hundreds of thousands of people would descend on the city and they'd have all these opportunities so when French is introduced itself it wasn't demoing with a little bit of mustard in a small cup and saying why don't you try this and you can try it on anything you want it's really good with let me give you a big old list of things and they weren't they weren't leaving it up to you this goes back to the like don't make them do the work they weren't leaving it up to the customer to figure out where French's mustard fit instead what they did is they sold hot dogs with mustard on it that was their moment they're like when you think of hot dogs you're gonna think of French's and they still own that moment today which is like it's for a lot now this is where again this is where opinions get real sketch based on where you live in the country you know like for some people it's like ketchup never belongs on a hot dog or you know pick all the things but the reality is for most Americans you think about ketchup and mustard as core condiments that are part of your hot dog experience and whether you like it or not that's where your brain goes and so French's just owns that opportunity can you put mustard on other things sure do people I'm sure they do but when you think about French's you think about hot dogs and so it's fascinating how successful they've been by getting you to think about another product they don't sell the hot dogs right like there's not here's French French's hot dogs and hot dog buns and this whole line of things they're just saying every time you think about this staple yeah we're there yeah yeah that's really powerful super powerful and so it's kind of this tag along component of we're always part of it and I think especially in the sauces and the condiments and things things like that sometimes you have the challenge too of like you gotta be make sure that it's something that happens all the time so there are some brands out there where I'm like you can absolutely do that as Frenchies but people might only do this once or twice a year totally that's a problem for you yeah if you're trying to be the last yeah totally that makes a lot of sense brands that initially focus on on DTC is kind of their beachhead launch strategy which I think is certainly common these days it seems like definitely not every time but it seems like it's not I guess all that uncommon for those brands to struggle to to a certain extent or go through some growing pains I guess in terms of translating that same success they've had in the DDC channel into retail uh assuming that resonates with you I'm kind of curious from your take like why do you think this is and how does it maybe relate to just kind of misunderstanding about retail psychology I I I think right now I think it's really hard to go from d to C to retail but I also don't think that it's much easier going reverse because they're yeah so different and retail when you go from direct to consumer you have so much control and I think the very best DTC brands they're showing up and saying we know our customer we have tons of analytics we can ask questions in real time we've got an email list like we have the ability to connect with and keep connecting with our customers they're not at arm's length like they're right there I can call them interview them survey them all the things and I can test in real time like it's a speed component for them now I think most direct to consumer brands that struggle in DDC's a huge part of it is just tied to how do I how do I get profitable with direct to consumer and so much of that is what is your product like is it frozen is it refrigerated is it heavy is it huge all that stuff so what happens then is you've got this thing figured out you're doing a ton of direct to consumer you know volume where you're growing there and you feel so intimately connected with your customer and then you transition to retail where you don't have any control components at all like you're fighting just to get on the shelf you're you're often not in the place in the store that actually would be the best for you so it's like my customer is thinking that I should be here in the store and the only place I could convince them to put me was over there right they want me in refrigerated and I'm stuck down you know in the dry pasta aisle or pick a thing and so that's a problem because now you have a disconnect between customer motivations and shopping experience yeah and then even just the the communication like how do I reinforce those relationships retail is rental that's how I always think about it like retail is real estate at the end of the day you're negotiating with a brand to own a very small amount of square footage and you're renting it and it can be changed at any time and with it comes all these restrictions and so your only other option then is like well I could do some shopper marketing and some like retail media but that is not where you build your brand right that's where when you have a brand and people are coming into the store that's that final moment of like hey just don't forget to put that in your cart it's a terrible medium for discovering a new brand and creating that connection so yeah I think that's a big part of the problem is like social plays such a big role often in direct to consumer and and that's where you're building brand and you're creating trial and opportunities you have promotional opportunities you have so much control and then you go to retail and you're like holy cow like I I'm just hoping that this thing works and I can and and and then the investments also become much bigger in totally new channels like demoing I wasn't doing any of that before and all of a sudden you're like I've got to be doing this in every store in all these locations to build the reputation in the brand when I outsource it it often doesn't work very well but when I do it myself I have to be in Texas and Chicago and Boston and all these places and that doesn't scale either so it's a hard it's a hard and brutal transition yeah and it's something you totally can figure out but you have to go back to OK within the lens of the data and the resources that I have how do I create the right customer connection based on motivations in a retail space compared to to DTC and I also would just say lots of people struggle with the fact that they believe they have to be not just selling to everyone but they have to be in every store right there are some brands like retailers that are just not the right place for your brand yeah totally and some of that is they don't have the right customers but the other part is sometimes they just aren't going to help you be successful yeah and it could be the wrong category manager or buyer at that time and everything else could be right but getting put in the wrong place or not having the right partnership there it'll kill you yeah totally yeah that's a really that's a yeah a really good uh I don't know what's worse to say to put it I I opening reality check for what retail really means functional is uh definitely all the rage right now just based on what I've read about some other kind of takes you have would it be accurate or fair to to say or or guess that you think kind of the importance of functional benefits may be a bit overrated and if I got that right why why am I right yeah there's a place for it but I always go back to hierarchy like if I took the 10 things that made your brand great it's not should functional be on the list it's just where I think I think you run the risk of you always have the trade off of immediate growth and long term brand building and with that always comes do I have the money to survive long term like can I just get to two years from now and so there's always immediate pressure like I gotta go find revenue now I gotta sell my product I gotta do this stuff but in the process it becomes very short sighted so that if you're not careful you're just a protein version of pick a thing and when that no longer is special and hey guess what protein is no longer special like when that's the case are you just now chasing the next function in the net like it's now protein and fiber right it's now protein fiber and pick the thing after that so it becomes this issue where you lose all differentiation it's super valuable for it a really small period of time if you're an early adopter not usually that helpful like there's a lot of brands that cared about protein that went out of business because it just wasn't the right time no the the market didn't care about protein at the time and so and then the issue is if you're outside of that perfect little window which exists usually for a very brief moment by the time you can get your packaging and your production all your other stuff you might have already missed it and the issue is it's a me too scenario and you no longer have differentiation yeah so my take is that functional benefits should and can be a significant part of your your product they might be number two or three or four on your hierarchy but you should build your business around more than the function your number one should always be something other than the function last question for you Seth any brands in particular or just kind of trends categories something along those lines in the CPG world that you've kind of particularly been tracking more closely these days or things you have your eyes on at all yeah um two things one I try tons of products so I always joke with people my love language is food that is kind of my model again I work out a lot to to manage that process but I literally have a budget that I have every month and it is just for trying food and beverages so I get all the boxes my family sometimes is like oh jeez like where are we gonna put this in the pantry or the fridge and I'm like we're gonna try it and and we do a lot of at home taste and texture testing and things like that so I'm always trying it there are so many good brands out there I think that's one of the things we live in this like golden age of food CPG because whatever you want it exists and there's somebody out there doing a really good job and they're typically pretty thoughtful about the ingredients and how it's made and all of those kind of components so on one hand I just call out like it's a really wonderful time to be a consumer agree of CPG and and yeah and if and if someone listening has a product that they're like I would like to hear his opinion I typically will not only try the product but I will shoot you my initial thoughts as part of it but in addition to that I think the other component is just there are some big things shifting that have been in the works for a long time so like a lot of people are talking about the USDA's updated you know pyramid and like like uh FDA and all these kind of things right like like food pyramid shifts people are talking about what's happening better for you they're talking about protein they're talking about fiber fiber is like the next protein that a lot of people are saying there's people out there talking about magnesium and like you go down the list and everybody's got their thing what I will just call out is that most trends even the ones that feel like they just appeared overnight have been happening for decades yeah so I was talking to JW Wiseman he's the founder and CEO of Curious Elixirs mm hmm and Curious Elixirs are the fastest growing private beverage company in the US wow so they're doing great now it's like you know the fastest story that's ever happened right ink 5,000 is interesting cause when it measures that it only measures the last three years so he's had an incredible three year run on a 10 year business and what he's talked about is a truth I think happens across the board which is his product is why do I if if I don't want alcohol in a beverage why do I have to trade down to a soda or a water or something boring he's like alcoholic drinks there's so much like flavor and mix and interest and not just like I don't want just a mocktail I want a drink designed to really create a great experience and to help me feel a part of the social community that exists and he's been talking about this for more than 10 years now non alcoholic right now is now like hitting trend and being popular and everyone talking about Gen Z and how they don't drink anymore and all the things but his whole perspective is it's gonna take me 30 to 40 years for this to truly be made mainstream as part of the process and I think better for you is the same it's a 30 to 4 year 40 year journey to go from yeah cringe to this is what Big Food is doing or big beverage yeah and and so I think you have to have a general connection of either we're gonna be a brand that's lightning in a bottle we're gonna come in at the right moment and capture as much revenue and customer connection as possible and then get out and some people time that perfectly yeah that's incredibly rare though yeah hard to do I think I think most successful brands are saying they have to say I'm committed to the next decade and we're gonna educate and we're gonna connect and build community and we're gonna change culture we're gonna be part of this shift and what I care about there isn't a risk that it's gonna be unfashionable in three years so that's a huge part of how I think about like that CPG component is you gotta pick one or the other the middle is really dangerous yeah yeah the messy middle in a lot of things is the dangerous the most dangerous place to be I feel like always always you gotta make a hard decision and say no to everything else yeah totally yeah Seth this has been awesome so many great insights here I think um yeah people are gonna love this what um what's the best place to to follow along with you I know you think you have a substack and people think what's the best place to follow along with you and all your kind of insights and then best place to follow along with everything that's going on that shaver as well yeah so we got a substack it's called it's literally why people buy dot com alright super easy go there sign up it's totally free we got a podcast and and share insights and perspectives and then in addition to that LinkedIn is where I I'm talking about this kind of stuff every single day and so if you'll just find me there on LinkedIn connects happy to talk in direct messages and just chat through concepts and ideas and things that you disagree with that I talked about today as well love talking shop as part of the process and always available on LinkedIn and then if you want to learn more about Schaefer it's just Schaefer dot Co so s c h a E f E r dot co perfect yeah we'll link to that one we'll definitely link to the uh the Substack website as well awesome awesome 7 this is great appreciate the time that kind of you kind of one of or maybe not the single highest leverage if our product disappeared tomorrow at the end of the day is this working four key levels that are involved totally off topic but you mentioned Pizza Hut and those old