Drink Innovation: How to Create a Winning Product with Billy Bosch Ep. 79

It's a constant, how can you innovate to stay ahead of everyone else and come up with the next great product. We always use this analogy and to do products of like, you're either pushing this product up the hill. With a lot of energy or you're chasing it downhill and just trying to orders full fast enough. And so for us, like we wanna be trying to fill orders fast enough and chasing the product downhill. And that's what we're always striving to create.

Welcome to FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS. How do people end up becoming an entrepreneur? How do they scale and grow their businesses? How do they plan for profit? Are they in it for life or are they building to exit these and a myriad of other topics will be discussed to pull back the veil on the wizardry of successful and FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS. My book RELENTLESS is now available, everywhere books can be bought online, including Amazon and BarnesAndNoble.com. Try your indie bookstore too and if they don't have it, they can order it. Just ask them the reviews are streaming in. And I'm so thankful for the positive feedback, as well as hearing from people that my memoir has impacted them positively. It is not enough to be resilient. You have to be RELENTLESS. You can go to TheRelentlessBook.com for more information. Thank you so much. Billy Bosch is the founder of iconic protein drinks and powder. He translates his vision for the perfect snack and meal solutions into reality. Leading his team in product testing and design. He oversees retail distribution. Currently over 8,000 locations, he's closed more than $10 million in capital to finance the business. We talk about how his past experiences informed his entrepreneurial endeavors. How moving across the country helped him to see opportunities and experiences differently and what he's focusing on to grow the brand.

I knew I had something about three years in because we had gotten through a test market and I was out pitching to larger retailers in different states, not my home state of Louisiana and people were highly receptive to it. I said, I think I have something here.

Highly receptive as in cool, good idea or highly receptive as we will order this from you?

Both.

Cool, yeah. So I talked to somebody that's sort of in your category, loosely, Kara Golden of Hint Water. She, I think is at a hundred million past that revenue now and really talked about how she figured out how to get her water going and the tastes. And I mean, so many things that you have to learn as an entrepreneur. I don't know. Did you have to learn chemistry? Did you have to learn bottling techniques? Like how the heck did you do all that?

Yeah, that honestly, great question. That was part of the learning curve was really just understanding co-packing side of it, that's means the manufacturing. So in my mind. Bad, which is good and bad. I look at a product and I say, "OK, how hard can it be to create this liquid? And put it in a bottle?" Seems pretty simple. In actuality, it's about $10,000,000 worth of equipment. The production run itself will cost two to $300,000 per flavor. So it's a sizable investment just to see if this thing's gonna work out.

Okay. That begs the question, who paid for this?

I'm rich as they said.

Okay. Everyone, if you're not watching the video, you should go to YouTube and watch the video because Billy's background is real and it's gorgeous in Miami.

It is.

Sorry to give your location, but-

No, it's fine. I love Miami. I moved here last summer and I'm enjoying the life here and the view. And in actuality, answer your question in all seriousness. I'm the opposite. Definitely at the time was opposite of rich. Definitely at the time was opposite of rich. I had very little money to start the business. I put about $30,000 into start quickly realized it wasn't gonna be enough. So I started the business in new Orleans and there was a nonprofit business incubator program called The Idea Village as well as the New Orleans BioInnovation Center. And the BioInnovation Center had a very low interest loan program. So I personally guarantee two $50,000 at 5%. Which we paid back within the first, I think three or four years of that loan. And then I did some pitch competitions as well, and I picked about 100k cash and pitch competition winnings, and really just try to do it scrappy in that fashion.

I bet you good on a pitch competition. Something tells me that you probably nail them.

The key to success of any pitch competition. Is having something delicious people can drink or eat because everyone's typically pitching some service or made up product. And when I can walk around or have someone help me out and like pour samples of our drink, we would just clean up, like everybody's pitching. And "Here's my great idea. And here's where we're gonna make a hundred million dollars." In actuality, people will get bored listening to these things. And we were the only ones with an actual product that sample out, most of these people are pitching apps and things of that nature.

When you pitch, how important do you think it is in addition to having a product that you can have someone experience right there? The relationship that the people might think or imagine they'll have with you, like, do you need to be a good person? Do you need to, because you know, I'm speaking about Shark Tank. People are choosing people to invest in on that show. A lot of course, because of market fit and they're seeing dollar signs, but really they have to be aligned with the person. How much of that have you experienced?

I think alignment's a big part of it. In the early round, as long as the people you're bringing in that can help support the business financially have no right to actually be involved or take action in the business. I don't think there needs to be a ton of alignment. It helps to have people that are passionate. I would say the best investors I've had around the business are people that believed in me and my vision and said, "Hey, look, I don't know anything about this business. I don't think I can help you, but I love what you're doing. I'm really supporting you, go get after it." And those are the people that really empower you to get it done. And maybe there's a connection they can provide around the road. The people that are a real pain are the ones that are overconfident in what they're doing in the space, and constantly want updates on the business and wanna know what's going on. And you spend a lot of your time answering their questions and trying to explain your strategy and sell them on it versus going to execute.

Would you say yes or have you said yes to a Shark Tank appearance?

We looked at it previously. I would probably say yes. I think for the sharp take model, it's more helpful to kind of be earlier stage when there's less investment, because it seems as though these guys don't love the complicated cap structure, which is essentially like the ownership of your business. If you go in, you notice when you watch the, so rarely people go and say, "Yeah, I've got 47 investors and you could, you could be number 48."

Get in line.

Yeah, never does that happen? Yeah.

Oh, wow. Okay. So we're gonna just pull the veil back and go back a few years to you used to work in the event industry and at shell in sales before Iconic, how did those experiences shape you as a founder and entrepreneur? And did you learn? Did you have an edge because you had those experiences?

Definitely from starting another business. What I think a lot of businesses are similar in the fact of when you start this business in order to scale it, you have to have organization systems and processes and great people. And then the product or service honestly, can be very average. You wanna be ahead of the pack there and differentiate, but like you, and I know there's a really a ton of these companies that have average services or products and really Excel and make a ton of money and are great places to work because they have the best people and processes and all these things. So I learned a lot about how to set that up and the importance of having really strong team members and not just doing everything yourself with the, events business, which one about eight years, and then kind of led into me doing this. And then with shell, I learned quite a bit about consumer product market. And what you need to do to succeed in retail and how to survive in a competitive marketplace. So I would say like, that was really helpful. They have got a really robust recruiting process that I respect as well as great sales training. What I've learned in that sales training. Was definitely instrumental in me going selling a lot of these retailers.

I'm wondering then, let's say you started Iconic when you did, but you had, maybe you were working at a bank or you were doing something in those other places, maybe just a day job somewhere. Do you think Iconic would be where it is now. Had you not had those sales intensive experiences, starting your own business, creating your own systems and processes. Do you really think like it was the world paying you to learn how to be the entrepreneur you are at Iconic today?

Definitely, so, and that's really how I thought of it is that if you can go make money while you're learning how to be an entrepreneur, which the event business was a total side hustle. I was moonlighting doing that on weekends and at night. So a lot of people think, oh, I should just like be poor and go start this company. And I just gotta figure it out. Well, "Hey, hats off. If you can do that." But I think there's another way where you can make money. Sock away some savings and figure out how to start a business on your own over some financial support along the way while you're saving money.

Do you do experiential events, marketing events for Iconic? Do you use your events background to market your product?

Yeah, I'd love to do more events. We do, do some, of course, the pandemic put a slow down to that. So we're just starting to get those going again. And trade shows in particular are an area where you can use event experience to try and stand out and do things differently. And just building out what your run of show is. Who's doing what who's doing, what land and all these different things. There's just a ton of trade shows coming back. So that's a big piece of it. And then we do do some like events for CrossFit and other kind of health and wellness of things out there. I still have this vision of putting on like a large wellness festival. I don't know what it's gonna be called, but I think that, that there's a miss. There's not like the Coachella of wellness does not exist as far as I've seen.

You know what Billy, this reminds me. Wonderlust, Wonderlust Yoga in Hollywood.

I've been-

In Los Angeles. They actually put on wellness events, big retreats where red bull, all these big sponsors would come in. They stopped doing them pre pandemic. So there is like, there is some white space up there for you and looking back on what they did, what worked and what didn't might be a really quick way to start that up. So-

I like that.

That's Fascinating Entrepreneurs Podcast is we help each other out. I can look back and make those introductions to you. But gosh, they had huge budgets because they had great sponsors and that's really what it's about. But I think experiential marketing events for brands like yours could be like a major home run because you have people just like you're saying, you're giving them this product. You don't have to have a booth with Iconic. It could just be iconic everywhere. And also aligned with others. You and I are in the same class together. And the guy with the jump ropes, that's like a no brainer, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

So, anyway-

I love that idea. I just took a couple notes there. I think that you and I are aligned on these great companies and humans for a wellness, like something you can still have music and stuff, but like alcohol free. Yeah. Lots of like health forward wellness.

I have another one for you. You probably know about it, but day breaker, it would be an incredible partner. Yes. Not only standalone, but to bring into your wellness experiences. So Billy, you probably know this. Some of the people that listen to the podcast may not. My core business is Events and Entertainment Production, and we are doing experiential marketing events for Google and Salesforce and LinkedIn, Apple, Facebook. All of these brands are throwing a lot of money into their integrated marketing campaigns, heavy on the experience side. Have you ever thought that you should write a book that you should write the story of your life to help other people learn from your experience? Please go to MemoirSherpa.com and learn how I can help you write, figure out your publishing path and market your story, your memoir, to a best seller status. Okay, so we're gonna move on to this. You recently, and we just talked about this move to Miami. You also have a place in Austin. Do you think that those moves for you have really helped shift your mindset and given you fresh perspectives on your business?

Yes, a hundred percent. I think the way I describe moving to new cities that are just their stock value has just one crazy high through the pandemic is it's like, if you go start at a high school and you're a student and everybody's already been there for like four years and you gotta go try to make friends, that's what it was like moving from Louisiana to LA. Awesome place, lots going on. Still love going there, but like it takes time. Cause everybody's got their groups and there's a lot of people in and outta the city. But for the most part, everybody was there. When I started spending time in Austin and Miami, there's so many new people that moved there from San Francisco, New York, LA, all these other cities that it's like, you started high school and it's a brand new high school. And no one knows anyone. All of my friends that I'm making very few are from either of these cities. Everybody wants to be friends cause no one has friends there. They all just wanna like have a sense of community and a lot of the people that moved they're dreamers, they're thinkers, they're builders, they're creatives. They want freedom of artistic expression and business expression. So these cities have really just like. Exponentially grown with this level of talent. So it really does spawn creativity, just being in the community and being here and seeing what's happening.

Can you give an example of something that you encountered in Austin or Miami that was maybe an "aha" moment or a place where you pivoted because of the mind frame and mindset you found yourself in that was a new.

I mean, there's two answers to that, that come to top of mind here. One is that in Austin, it's so geared towards like Paleo and Keto and whole forward thinking kinda edge some of those have been around for a while. But some people think these are fads. I think they're long term trends. And based on the people that are are in Austin. It's really convinced me to like double down on products or in this vein of Keto and Paleo, because I think both of those trends are here to stay for quite some time. And they even have like a Paleo and a Keto conference there in town. And then when you look at Miami, one of the guys I met here had a company called Boxy Charm, which is like subscription makeup boxes. And I met him just from being in town. He's a great guy, has been really generous with introductions. Just kind of a great guy to bounce ideas off of and he basically started this makeup subscription company with the help of a massive army of influencers and affiliates. And so I've really decided to double down on that side of marketing awareness and really kind of build more of that out. Whereas we were split between to initiatives before, and it's hard when you have a product that's in stores and online. The stores want you to run their marketing programs. You've gotta do stuff online. So your small business budget gets split in all these different directions.

That's great. He encouraged you by what he's doing to use the influencers and you also have a subscription model, right? For Iconic.

We do. Yeah.

Did that come after meeting this person or before?

It came before, but we really started to put more energy around it. After I spoke to him and kinda looked at the growth they had seen. And really once you have that recurring revenue, that's the real valuable piece of a product company. Even a company is how can you build out more of that recurring revenue? That's reliable.

So much easier than getting new clients.

Totally, totally right.

So what is your number one challenge as of today, this moment in iconic that you're facing and trying to solve for.

There's two things, one, it's always just awareness, how to drive more awareness. This is one of the first times we've been within. Probably 10 minutes of every major household in America in terms of being in stores. So it's not like an access accessibility, a thing with Iconic. That's the challenge, it's more of making sure people know why this is something that's, it's imperative to have in their life. And I'm a firm believer that it's not that they need our product necessarily. I would love for them to have Iconic, but our product is a protein drink with no sugar and protein and fiber speed up your metabolism. And most people aren't eating healthy food or they don't have readily accessible that healthy food will say. Right. And so if you can just have one thing in your day that adds some protein without any sugar and a super clean, you're gonna increase your metabolism. Even if you're sitting on the couch all day, like you will lose five to 10 pounds a year and your body's gonna be in a state. Or maintain whatever healthy weight you're at. So I'm a big believer in people just having more protein and fiber in their diet. And then the other piece of it is innovation. It's a constant, how can you innovate to stay ahead of everyone else and come up with the next great product. We always use this analogy and do product of like, you're either pushing this product up the hill. With a lot of energy or you're chasing it downhill and just trying to orders fast enough and so for us, like we wanna be trying to fill orders fast enough and chasing the product downhill. And that's what we're always striving to create.

So not to add something to your marketing plan, but when you were saying awareness, I'm wondering if you had considered buying remnant billboard ads. In major cities and what that means for anyone listening that doesn't know what that means is that there are big companies that do media buys and they buy billboards all over the country in the major, secondary and tertiary markets that they want. But there's a lot of Ad Space that is goes blank and they don't want that. Right. So those blank spots, if they're not bought yet are referred to in the industry as remnant ads and I've had huge billboards. I had a huge billboard on the way onto the Bay Bridge for over a year for $1,000. Come on. I'm not kidding you. When was that? This was maybe 10 years ago. So the remnant ad pricing and such might be different, but the reason why it's so incredible is that you take that ad space and you get it until someone buys it.

Wow.

Right? Yeah. So that's one thing, another thing that comes to mind, and this is so different. I mean, I have recorded maybe 70 of these podcasts and I've never done this before. So I think you might be turning over a new leaf for me but we know each other fairly well. And you know that I care about you and your brand. There's someone else that I interviewed that I think might be a good market fit for you to do something with, and he's refers to himself as Keto Savage and he has this Keto Brick Product.

Okay.

And the dude is like, cut. In fact, he told me something that just made me wanna take a nap and maybe cry. Yeah. I haven't a carb in seven years.

Come on..

I was like, "Oh my God!"

That's impossible. Come on.

I mean, I don't know. I think he, anyway, you saw.

At some point he had a carb, so.

If you see a picture of him, you'll understand, he's all oiled up and posed anyway, really, really interesting dial introduced you to that person. Okay, where are we now? Okay. What is your, well, I hate to say this. What is your exit plan? Did you have one when you started, do you have one now? And I'm thinking of Jessica Fiacovich right now?

Yes. Yes, Jessica and I, and to your interview with her. And initially when I started the company, I wasn't sure what I would do. I read about companies that had big exits. I read about companies that just grew and became family businesses that were profitable. And I would say the best piece of advice I got along the way was from a guy that was chief strategist at Coca-Cola and he flew down to meet. He had left the company and retired and he flew down to meet with me in New Orleans. We were just getting going and I'm thinking, "This is incredible. Coke's gonna buy our company and we just started." And he says, And he says, "I came down here for one reason." I said, "Okay, I'm listening. I'm listening." Tell me the money. Felt like Jerry Maguire. And he says, "My 25 year old daughter drinks your product every day. And she won't touch Cola product." And I said, wow. And he said, "You got something. And if I can give you one piece of advice, it's to grow this. Like, you're gonna give it to your grandkids one day and means grow it like a healthy business and know that strategic eyes are upon you and people are watching what you're doing." So that was, that helped me create more informed decisions on how to grow the business and the challenge with beverages. It's just a very cash intensive space. And the minimums for runs are very high. So I knew it would have to raise money and if you raise money, people wanna return. So it's either pay them back or sell the company one. And at this point, we've raised quite a bit of money. At least for me, it's quite a bit of money onto the tens of millions of dollars. At least for me, it's quite a bit of money onto the tens of millions of dollars. But in the meantime, it's just grow.

Gotcha, okay. One last thing I see you on social media. Giving tips and tricks about the business world and such. Are you becoming an influencer Billy

Natasha, I like to think I've always been. No, I'm kidding. No, I'm actually pretty introverted as it relates to social media and some of our mutual friends have really pushed me to get out. Cause they're like, look, it's selfish not to share what you know. And I get bombarded with questions from introductions and people mean, "Hey, talk to my friend, that's starting a business." And I'm like, "Dude, I'm just answering the same questions over and over again."

Yeah.

So why don't I just start putting stuff out there? And now I've gotten a little bit more out of..

You send people links now.

Yeah. I'm just like, "Go look at my Instagram. I'm posting stuff there." And it's kinda fun to just put stuff out there. And I like to do it in one take. I'm not one of these super polished guys. It's like scripting and rehearsing and all that. I'll jot a couple things down and just send it. And I enjoy that and I really enjoy putting value out there. So who knows how many people end up consuming it or finding value in it. But I just like to share the knowledge.

For more information, go to the show notes, your listening to this podcast. Wanna know more about me go to my website, OfficialNatashaMiller.com. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you loved the show. If you did, please subscribe also, if you haven't done so yet, please leave a review where you're listening to this podcast. Now I'm Natasha Miller and you've been listening to FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS.