It seems like selling a product that is designed to make you feel good should be a cake walk. But as we all know, business is never easy, especially when you’re breaking into the supplement and nutritional bar space, which is overcrowded with industry giants such as Clif bars and KIND. So what’s an upstart company with a solid product and good intentions to do?
On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, we found out when we talked to Chris Bernard, the co-founder, CEO and Chief Mood Officer for Mindright, the good mood superfood. As it turns out, there are a few ways that a small new company can make a splash, especially in the digital space. Chris explains how organic reach outs and authentic connections formed through his partnership with Rob Dyrdek has helped Mindright create an influencer and ambassador community that wins against influencer fatigue. Plus Chris, he digs into why a content strategy that blends humor and education is what gets the attention of the digital audience. Enjoy this episode.
Main Takeaways:
- Be Serious… But Have A Laugh: Fun and funny content is a great way to build a relationship with consumers and to sell the lifestyle that you want your brand to be about. But you also have to balance real education and sales tactics into your content along with the comedic elements so that customers can get the full picture of what a brand is, why they should buy it, and to convince them to complete the purchase.
- Can I Get A Sample?: Free samples used to be a staple at grocery stores and markets everywhere, and those samples were a key way that new companies created buy-in with potential customers. Now that the industry has shifted away from that model, finding a new way to hyper-target customers with influencers, deals, and content is the best way to bring customers into the fold.
- Influencer Fatigue: Consumers are wise to the influencer strategy these days, and their fatigue is real when it comes to consuming influencer content. In order for brands to fight that fatigue and win engagement, building buzz around future products rather than current offerings is one of the best ways to do it.
For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
Key Quotes:
“When you’re looking for trends that are going to be shifting to food and beverage, you always start with supplements.”
“My partner who is a very big advocate of testing and research pushed to really go out and survey a group around 350 people. And while cognitive function was important to them, what indexed the highest was, ‘Do you have foods and ingredients that help me feel good? Happy, good mood. I want to be focused and feeling good.’ And this theme of feel good, just kept popping up and popping up and we took a step back and it was indexed so high. Like, ‘Why don’t we just lean into good mood?’”
“Every manufacturer has a food scientist, R&D, most of them do. Food scientists and R&D department. And most of the time, if they’re excited about your project, they will help your R&D…. You come in with a brief and your core tenants for, ‘These are the ingredients that I would like to use as superfoods. These are the outputs that we’d like to achieve, enhance mood, stress, energy. These are the functional ingredients we’re thinking about.’ And then you work with the ingredient suppliers to understand efficacy and transparency around their ingredients.”
“We tried to be everything but the kitchen sink. We wanted to be keto, we wanted to be paleo, we wanted to be zero sugar. We wanted to be everything. Vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free and have functional ingredients that support incredible, feel, good vibes and decrease your stress. And we were realistic that not all of that was going to work and our guiding light really became taste. If it doesn’t taste good, I don’t care if it has all those things, it’s just not going to work for us.”
“Especially through a global pandemic, people were at home and not having opportunities to sample in the markets or elsewhere. And for us, it’s just leaning into our influencers, our investment community and paid ads. [It’s about] finding unique ways to drive trials by pinpointing and targeting specific communities. It’d be really great to be everything to everyone, but if we could just focus on this core group that’s committed to their mindset — they’re coaches, they’re hustlers, they’re the boss, they’re the mom and they’re focused on what it takes for them to be successful every day, we call them the happy hustlers — that’s where we’re starting.”
“Having our influencers part of our ambassador program is a really important part around building the authenticity of their message.”
“Testing is worth spending money on. Just test landing pages, AB testing, digital testing, customer testing. It has opened my eyes to this completely different world. And it is a true science. And when you understand that word that works, that picture that works, that landing page that just converted, it’s a science. And then you can continue to really invest towards those things that are working because you know there’s turn on that.”
Bio:
Chris Bernard spent 5 years building a “better-for-you” fitness nutrition brand called Buff Bake with SKUs sold online and in 7,000+ retail doors. He has experience raising venture funding from top institutional and corporate venture funds, and demonstrates strong leadership, relationship, team building, and collaboration skills.
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Transcript:
Stephanie:
Hey, everyone and welcome back to Up Next In Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, CEO at mission.org. Today on the show we have Chris Bernard, the co-founder and CEO and Chief Mood Officer at Mindright. Chris, welcome to the show.
Chris:
Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
Stephanie:
It’s good to have you. Would you rather have me call you Bernie? Which one do you want?
Chris:
My friends and my coworkers call me Bernie, but whatever you’re comfortable with.
Stephanie:
I’m your friend.
Chris:
Okay, call me Bernie.
Stephanie:
All right. I like it. So in the beginning, I like to always hear about your background, your journey and how you got to Mindright. So maybe if we could start there. What did you do before Mindright, we’d like to hear.
Chris:
What I did before Mindright was I was in action sports for a little over 15 years. I represented brands like Burton Snowboards in their sales and marketing channels as an independent contractor. I left that business in 2015 and I invested in a company called, Buff Bake which was protein snacks and protein cookies, nut butters and I came on board with them as part of that investment as the CEO and I helped them run that company for a few years until I was ready to try something new and had an idea and ended up launching this Mindright.
Stephanie:
So did you have the idea for Mindright right after Buff Bake or was there something in between there?
Chris:
It was something in between and it just evolved very quickly into what it is today.
Stephanie:
Okay. What was your original idea? And then what is it today?
Chris:
Vegan cookie dough.
Stephanie:
Well that sounds good. I dig that.
Chris:
It was okay. It wasn’t great and that’s why I kept it out of the vine and I think we’ll probably get into it. But one of the things that dismissed the idea was it really for me, I was looking for something condition specific. Functional foods are really driving the category right now and it’s all about condition specific. Foods that drive beauty from within, through collagen, immune support, sleep support.
Chris:
It’s really how we came to Mindright. We started to see this trend in supplements and when you’re looking for trends that are going to be shifting to food and beverage, you always start with supplements and you see this rise of adaptogens and nootropics and brain supplements and anti-aging and it’s just skyrocketing growth in supplements. It was this idea of how do we support our lifestyle through our mindset, our long hours, our drive, our energy levels through ingredients that support cognitive function. And that’s where we started was this idea of cognitive food support and I came to my partner with this idea, he absolutely loved it. At the time the working name was Feed Your Brain.
Stephanie:
Cool. I like that name.
Chris:
And it was just really focused on brain health.
Stephanie:
Do you have a background in this world? How would you even know? When I’m thinking about brain health, I’m like, “Feels like there’s so many things. I should be doing facial or I should be doing this. I should be doing so many things.” Did you have a background in this where you already knew this makes me feel good? Or did you have to learn all about it?
Chris:
No, I just knew I wasn’t feeling good. I always feel this brain fog and slow and besides this fact that you just hit 40, things start to slow down a little bit and you’re looking for ways to support your lifestyle and just keep your edge and just keep moving forward and you start researching and there’s a lot of great information around brain health, mental wellbeing, nutrition and other things that support those functions.
Stephanie:
Okay. And so what were some of the ingredients that you started finding that you’re like, “We need to have this in some kind of bar.”
Chris:
It was like lion’s mane, Gingko biloba, both of which didn’t make the cut at the end.
Stephanie:
Oh, how come?
Chris:
Well this is where I was going was, as we started with Brain Health, my partner who is a very big advocate of testing and research pushed to really go out and survey a group around 350 people. And while cognitive function was important to them, what indexed the highest was, “Do you have foods and ingredients that help me feel good? Happy, good mood. I want to be focused and feeling good.” And this theme of feel good, just kept popping up and popping up and we took a step back and it was indexed so high. Like, “Why don’t we just lean into good mood?” We’ve got a set of ingredients. We’ve got some data behind some of the ingredients we’re using to really support enhancing your mood, decreasing your stress and giving you energy. All the things you need to feel good. So we need to do it. And that’s how Good Mood Superfood was born.
Stephanie:
Cool. And did you always know that it would turn into a bar or did you have other thoughts early on?
Chris:
We had many thoughts and we still have many thoughts. This was our way of really standing up the brand, getting a feel for our branding, our message, bars is just the starting point. We have a really dynamic innovation pipeline of other snacks, drink blends, hydration drink. Things that will help support other areas of brain health.
Stephanie:
Very cool. So let’s talk a bit about your partner and how that working relationship is and how you even landed him as your partner.
Chris:
So I was introduced to Rob Dyrdek, legendary TV personality, former skateboard, a professional athlete. Rob has a show on MTV right now called Ridiculousness. I grew up watching his other shows, Rob & Big and Fantasy Factory, as many of us did.
Stephanie:
Rob & Big, that’s a good show.
Chris:
It was amazing. So then we just look forward to every week watching. He’s just such a character and dynamic human being. But what people don’t know is he runs a really diverse, exciting venture creation studio. He refers to himself and the people around him as do or diers, people that are interested in investing in themselves, growing businesses from the idea stage to the exit. And he’s invested in several brands, primarily at the startup stage. And when I came to him, I was in the transition period in my life. I didn’t know why I was meeting him.
Chris:
I was going to go in and just introduce myself. And I brought Buff Bake with me just in case he was interested in investing because always looking for investors and he made me tell him my life story from the day I was born until the day I ended up sitting in the chair in front of him.
Stephanie:
Wow. I should have done that.
Chris:
It’s not that interesting. But he really liked it. And I spent 55 of my 60 minutes talking about myself and then he’s like, “Okay. So what’s up with these cookies? What’s up with this Buff Bake? He’s like, “Okay. Those are really good. I like them but I really like you. If you have some ideas or you want to do something, come back and let’s talk about it.”
Chris:
I left and I got a call two weeks later from him, wanted me to come back again. Again, didn’t really know why I was going there. He wanted to pitch me on some ideas. And it just flew over my head. I went home, I called his COO and I was like, “What’s he looking for?” He wanted an idea from me. He wanted to work on something. So I had been in the background working on these cognitive ingredients, paired with superfoods and brought it back to him as a whole package. I came in with fully developed samples around bars and coffee creamers and bites to really articulate what this could look like. And he was so excited about the presentation. He just sealed the deal with me on the spot and we were off to the races.
Stephanie:
That’s amazing. What does the partnership look like with him? How’s he involved?
Chris:
He is very, very involved. He wants to be very involved in the creative process, but also through all the funding, the financial rounds, building the infrastructure of the company. He has built a really strong team around him. Managing the finance arm, managing the marketing project teams. So it’s an extension of my team. We are true co-founders, he’s very, very involved in the business and he and I are either working together on the daily basis or he and his team are fully integrated in.
Stephanie:
That’s really cool. And it seems like once you get access to him and then you had his network, it brings in other investors as well.
Chris:
Yeah. So that’s the next thing that happened. So we stand this thing up and we start to go out to bring in some strategic capital to help push things along. We started with some traditional resources and private equity and some strategics within the space. And then we started talking to his network a little bit and all of a sudden we saw how excited they were and one conversation led to the next, led to the next, the next thing you know it’s Marcus Lemonus from the profits. Jonas was extremely excited about the project. He now sits on the board with myself and Rob. Joe brought his brothers on as well. Jordan McGraw, Travis Barker, Ken Roxanne. It’s just this star-studded list of really great mindset celebrities and athletes. Very, very exciting.
Stephanie:
It seems like you have your own portfolio of influencers. You can get the word out there. While most people you’re trying to even think about, “How do I even tap into one of those?” You’ve got this whole little Rolodex just working for you.
Chris:
Right. So it’s exciting. I think that being able to have that leverage and that advantage really puts us in a unique position to tell the story.
Stephanie:
Awesome. So tell me a bit about, you said that you were getting samples when you were going to go and show him what you could do. What did that process look like? Because to me thinking about even making any kind of food and then getting the packaging and then getting ingredients that maybe some people aren’t the most comfortable with. If you hear some of the words you’d be like, “Well, what is that like? Is that even safe?” Tell me what that process looked like to even find someone who could make the bar that you wanted to taste good and have all that ready for the sample day.
Chris:
It’s funny. You start with the manufacturers. Every manufacturer has a food scientist, R&D, most of them do. Food scientists and R&D department. And most of the time, if they’re excited about your project, they will help your R&D. It comes with strings attached and not always do you end up owning your IP, which is important if you’re interested in exiting your company at some point, but you learn the process of what goes into R&D products.
Chris:
And I came in, you come in with a brief and your core tenants for, “These are the ingredients that I would like to use as superfoods. These are the outputs that we’d like to achieve, enhance mood, stress, energy. These are the functional ingredients we’re thinking about.” And then you work with the ingredient suppliers to understand efficacy and transparency around their ingredients. And you let these guys do their job and you like what you like and you don’t when you don’t. And I think we did about 13 rounds of this bar until we landed in a place that we felt really good about.
Stephanie:
That wasn’t just you testing it or were there other people trying it?
Chris:
It was Rob and the entire team. His close team is a team of five.
Stephanie:
That is awesome. What kind of lessons did you learn when going through that process? Anything that you would maybe do different?
Chris:
Well, I’ll tell you one thing. We tried to be everything but the kitchen sink. We wanted to be keto, we wanted to be paleo, we wanted to be zero sugar. We wanted to be everything. Vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free and have functional ingredients that support incredible, feel, good vibes and decrease your stress. And we were realistic that not all of that was going to work and our guiding light really became taste. If it doesn’t taste good, I don’t care if it has all those things, it’s just not going to work for us. So we planted a flag and it was about taste. And we want this thing that tastes good. And if it has five or six or seven grams of sugar, we use a coconut Palm sugar, which we felt really good about. It was therapeutic. It was like, “Okay, great. We don’t have to use sugar, alcohol, or stevia or erythritol or anything. We’re going to use coconut Palm sugar. It’s a low-glycemic sugar. It tastes great. The bar still has 50% less sugar than an RXBAR or competitor. And we felt really great about that.
Stephanie:
That’s awesome. How do you view the landscape right now? Because I know when I go into certain grocery stores, I’m like, “Wow, there’s so many bars.” There’s the original type RXBARS but now it feels like there’s so many offshoots. Everyone’s trying to do lower sugar. Maybe not what you’re doing, but how do you make sure that you’re staying ahead of them and also differentiating yourself where people are like, “Oh, obviously we can see why they’re different than all these other bars.”
Chris:
I think again, it came down to taste, great amount of protein, our base values of, it is plant-based vegan, it is dairy free, it is protein packed and low sugar were really important to us. But I think we’ll continue to stand out with what our functional message around supporting mood through these super foods and ingredients. And we are just sticking with that.
Stephanie:
How do you get in front of new people though? I’m thinking about back in the day, samples where you’re like, “Oh, I would never have thought to buy that, but now I can see it’s healthy for me and good.” How do you approach that now trying to get in front of new people and have them try it for the first time?
Chris:
It’s difficult, especially through a global pandemic of people at home and not having opportunities sample in the markets or elsewhere. And for us, it’s just leaning into our influencers, our investment community, paid ads, really important. Finding unique ways to drive trial, pinpointing and targeting specific communities. It’d be really great to be everything to everyone but if we could just focus on this core group that’s committed to their mindset. They’re coaches, they’re hustlers, they’re the boss, they’re the mom and they’re focused on what it takes for them to be successful every day. We call them the happy hustlers. That’s where we’re starting. Our initial reaction was the right one. They’re really resonating with the product. They’re speaking about the product for us organically. And we’re just going to continue to focus on that community right now. And then it’ll just hopefully grow from there.
Stephanie:
It also seems like you have a really good idea around your social presence and how you want to present yourself. It’s like a fun whimsical looking, at least your Instagram feed and it’s not overly product driven, but it’s more selling the lifestyle behind it which I really liked.
Chris:
Exactly. That’s exactly right. And that’s what’s resonated the most is people are realizing that Mindright is a lifestyle. It’s not just about the products. We want to support you beyond that. And as you’ll see over the next couple months, we’re really going to lean into what it takes to have a better mood, to put the work into your mental wellbeing and really drive home this good mood movement. And being approachable and fun, makes it just easier to pay attention and watch and fun and funny is part of feeling good. And that’s the message that we want out there.
Stephanie:
It sounds like your content strategy you’re about to ramp up around those areas. How are you going to keep it balanced between educational, which I feel like a lot of people need education around the ingredients and why they’re added and how they need to be mixed together and then the other side around even outside of the product. Like you said, just good mood and how to feel happy and mindfulness and it’s like a whole different business over there. How are you thinking about balancing that and connecting with the right audience?
Chris:
It’s just that. It’s balancing, trying different things. It’s balancing being funny with incorporating lifestyle and people enjoying the product. You’re going to just start to see more direct response and testimonials. We are looking to partner with therapy based apps and other entities that help make mental health and wellness really accessible. We’re going to have our investment team and our influencers talking about the work that it takes to get Mindright. It’s not just, this bar is not going to solve your problems, it’s not. But if you focus on your nutrition and you incorporate things like the importance of sleep and getting exercise and some type of a meditation routine, all of these things combined bring you to that next place.
Stephanie:
Yep. Yeah. It’s not just try one thing and all of a sudden everything will be solved, like many things and there’s no magic potion.
Chris:
I think that that’s where other companies that are trying, mood or all of these other cognitive functional ingredients, they could fall short because they’re making it just about that. And I think that we’ll go along for the ride and we’ll be there to support our customers along the way.
Stephanie:
That’s great. So you just mentioned influencers. I’m going to go and I want to hear how you view working with influencers because we’ve had quite a few brands on the show and they talked about it. Some people, amazing experiences if you find the right person who is all in, it’s not just sharing a quick message of like, “Here’s my teeth whitener and it works great for me go buy it.” Versus maybe the ones that are really in they’re even part the product development. How do you view a good working relationship with influencers? And more than one, since you have many that you have to balance.
Chris:
I think for us, it’s about being authentic. If it’s not something you enjoy and you truly believe in it comes through. You see it and you feel it. And I think having our influencers part of our ambassador program, which we’re just at the early stages of building out, is a really important part around building the authenticity of their message. Our influencer program is very small right now, we’re still identifying how they’re speaking about the brand and what are the best ways to do that. But what we’ve gotten so far comes from a really organic place. We haven’t paid for any influencers yet. All organic because people are enjoying the product and sharing the message with their community.
Stephanie:
Are you sending them free samples or is it more your investors giving it to their friends who are other influencers probably. And then it’s organically happening through that way?
Chris:
A little bit of both. We identified people that live within our community that we would like to target and say, “Hey, we’d love your feedback. No expectations. You don’t need to post. We just ask you tell us how you enjoyed the product. How’d you feel? What do you think about the packaging?” And then it just happens organically.
Stephanie:
How do you view the longterm strategy around influencers? Because sometimes it feels like they’ll have this excitement and a big blip where their network sees it. And then there’s maybe diminishing returns and people are either hit over the head with it too much. Or like, “I bought it. It’s good.” Or the person’s not as excited anymore as they were maybe in month one. How do you keep them engaged or be like, “Okay. We’re kind of good for now.”
Chris:
We see that fatigue all the time. And I think for us, it’s the excitement around what’s coming. It’s creating community around the lifestyle and the future launch of our new products. The bar is here today. It might not be here in three years from now. It’s about continuing to evolve and supporting our needs today.
Stephanie:
Makes sense. So tell me a bit more about this ambassador program that you’re building.
Chris:
We’re at the early stages where we’re leaning into this mindset community from happy hustlers. We have three investors on the team that live and breathe in that space. And that’s Chris and Lori Harder, their lifestyle coaches and then Lewis Howes who also has a podcast, The School of Greatness. And just really leaning into what they do and how they do it and their communities coming to us and we’re setting them up and they’re incentivized by product. One of the angles that we’re working on right now is charity. When they post, we will support a soon to be identified a mental health charity with an investment.
Stephanie:
When they’re posting about the bar or the company, something like that, then it’s like, “Okay, that’s a point towards this charity or effect.”
Chris:
Exactly. Those are the early stages. We’re still in development. It’s still being worked out. We’re less than two months old in the market, so we’re close.
Stephanie:
Are there other ambassador programs that you look at where you’re maybe taking some key learnings from where you’re like, “I know this one works well and I want to implement some of those strategies into Mindright as well.”
Chris:
Yes. A lot of them are custom built though. There’s a lot of really great app solutions that work really well and incentivize through product or discount or payment. We want to try to be more organic. I’ve seen some great custom ones that are gamified, that built community around this excitement around this app itself and the message. So work in progress.
Stephanie:
That’d be cool to circle back and hear what you ended up building and how it’s working and the results. So tell me about your distribution strategy and where you’re thinking about selling. Are you on Amazon? Is it just your website and how do you think about where you actually want your bars to be sold right now?
Chris:
It’s everything digitally native. So we are alive on our website getmindright.com. We’re on Amazon. We’re looking at a various array of subscription box companies. But the really big one right now is all of the delivery convenience guys. So this new evolution of convenience, prime is not good enough. It can’t be there the next day. It needs to be there in 20 minutes. So we’re looking at partnerships with goPuff, FastAF, Dot. We’re in the process of vetting those guys out right now and seeing which one makes the most sense. And I think that can meet format. It’s just growing and exploding right now. Through COVID people were forced to adapt to Amazon and delivery service and it’s here to stay. It’s here to stay. Those conveniences will never change.
Stephanie:
Are you worried about maybe your brand and the story not being told correctly when you’re starting to have many outlets for your products going out and you can’t fully control the messaging or?
Chris:
Yeah. I think that’s why picking the right partner for these delivery services is key because we want to make sure that we have the ability to tell a story, whether it’s this big or in a banner. It’s really partnering with the right team to help make that happen. And then we have a lot of work to do on our end. And I think that our community will help push people to these services. Amazon, getmindright, goPuff, that’s where we go and they’ll really rely on on that. It’s challenging.
Stephanie:
Yeah, no. Especially when you have so many different people you’re vetting right now and thinking about all of the control that you could be losing but also all the access that you’re going to be gaining. It’s tricky. Because this is a commerce show, I want to hear about your ecommerce strategy around what’s working. What do you think that you’re doing on your website that maybe is unique and others haven’t tried out yet or that you’re like, “This is a good tip that more people need to know about.”
Chris:
I think it being less templated and more just an experience where it just feels fun. It makes you dive a little bit deeper to find out what’s going on. What works for some people doesn’t always work for others and I think this format is working well for us right now.
Stephanie:
Do you find yourself being able to look back at maybe your experiences at Burton and other places and pulling some lessons from there? Or is it such a different market that you’re like, “That probably wouldn’t work for this product.”
Chris:
I think it’s very similar. I think at the end of the day, you’re selling an item that you’re passionate and excited about and what is the best way to share that with your friends or your customers? It’s very similar in that sense.
Stephanie:
Yeah. That’s cool. So where do you guys want to be in one to three years? What are you hoping to achieve?
Chris:
We’re looking to achieve this just amazing platform of good mood foods that span across really great retailers, Whole Foods, all the natural channels. It would be really great to see it everywhere obviously, but this really accessible approach to foods that help support your mood.
Stephanie:
Have you started talking to Whole Foods and other retailers like that?
Chris:
We’ve had some early conversations, but we really want to stay firm on this digitally native approach. I think that one thing that I’ll add is testing is worth spending money on. Just test landing pages, AB testing, digital testing, customer testing. It has opened my eyes to this completely different world. And it is a true science. And when you understand that word that works, that picture that works, that landing page that just converted, it’s a science. And then you can continue to really invest towards those things that are working because you know there’s turn on that.
Stephanie:
Yeah. I agree. What is a finding that maybe came out of some of those tests where you were like, “We would have never changed this, changed the product, change the website, but now that so many people are saying this, we’re definitely moving forward with that.
Chris:
I would go back to the beginning where Rob and I, Mindright. There was two different names before Mindright. And now I look back, I’m like, “Neither of those would have worked. Mindright should have always been number one.” We tested Mindright. Mindright worked really well but We wanted to brand the ingredients themselves. And we were like the unstoppable blend. We’re unstoppable. This mentality of you cannot be stopped, masculine. And we were so sure of it and it failed miserably.
Stephanie:
They were like, “I don’t like that.”
Chris:
No, no. So now at the happy brain blend.
Stephanie:
That makes me feel happy. That’s more on brand.
Chris:
Yeah. And then from that moment on we’re like, “That’s our guiding light.” It makes me feel happy. Does it? Yes Or no. Okay. It’s in.
Stephanie:
And how are you doing these tests? How are you going about trying to get this feedback? Are they surveys or what are you all doing behind the scenes?
Chris:
Yeah. Surveys. Right now, we’ve moved to more surveys. We’re surveying around our current database of growing email subscriptions and then we’re going to start doing some stuff through Instagram, social media. But the original testing went through a market research firm.
Stephanie:
All right. Well, let’s shift over to the lightning round. The lightning round is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I ask a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready?
Chris:
No.
Stephanie:
Nope. Be right back. Need to go get some more tea. Get In the right mood here. All right. Well, we will move on anyways. If you had a podcast, what would it be about and who would your first guest be?
Chris:
Oh my gosh. My podcast would be about thinking big. My whole life I never thought big. I thought pretty small and I put roadblocks up in front of myself and I think that now as I sit on a board with Rob Dyrdek and Joe Jonas, literally anything is possible and it would be about stories and ways to help open up your mind to anything is really possible. And I think as cheesy as that sounds, it really is. And I feel like here in my home with my kids and now that we’re talking about getting Mindright and this positive growth mindset and to hear them talking about it, it’s a real thing. I don’t have a title yet. I’ll let you name the podcast.
Stephanie:
There you go. I’ll help you name it. Who would you bring on for your first guest?
Chris:
I bring in Rob. He is an amazing person to talk to about all of this stuff. His mindset is just next level with what he does to keep his energy and his success where it is. It’s remarkable.
Stephanie:
Awesome. What does your mindfulness practice look like?
Chris:
I’m sorry.
Stephanie:
What does your mindfulness practice look like? How do you stay centered and balanced and not getting pulled everywhere when doing a startup?
Chris:
I think for me, I committed to getting up early every morning. I have to be up by 5:00,5:15 or else I can’t do the things that I want to do for myself, which is exercise or just have a moment of meditation. Whether it’s a minute or five minutes or 20 minutes. I try to do that every morning. I have four kids so life is really hard sometimes. Here they are.
Stephanie:
I feel that.
Chris:
So it’s get up early, it’s a few minutes of meditating and just understanding where I’m at and being really grateful for that. Exercise, 30 minutes. That is my non-negotiable. I have to get 30 minutes in, if I don’t my day is just off and once in a blue moon we have a sauna that was gifted to us by-
Stephanie:
Wow.
Chris:
It was miracle. That’s another podcast.
Stephanie:
Yeah. Okay. I want that friend. Gift me a sauna.
Chris:
It was some local guy just giving it away. He was moving.
Stephanie:
What area of California do you live in because I don’t know about many local areas being like, “Here’s a sauna. Do you want ice staff as well?”
Chris:
I’m on the hunt for one of those. So, if you know one. I started fasting, so I intermittent fast. I don’t eat my first meal until 12:00 or 1:00. And I found it’s really helped with inflammation and energy and I feel great. I also stop thinking through COVID I just-
Stephanie:
So impressive.
Chris:
30 days and then you felt great and 60 days, I’m like, “Wow, I feel awesome.” And it just stuck.
Stephanie:
All right. Last question. Two more questions. What’s one thing that you don’t understand today that you wish you did?
Chris:
What don’t I understand. I don’t understand a lot of things let’s be honest.
Stephanie:
Good answer. Just everything. Lots of things.
Chris:
No. I think for me, part of the reason why we’re starting digitally native is almost a personal challenge to myself. I know retail really well, I know relationships, building brands, building distribution, working with brokers. I don’t understand digital that well. And it can be frustrating at times because the learning curve is pretty steep and it’s always changing every day because you’re learning something new and I think digital marketing I don’t know very well.
Stephanie:
Well, you’ll be learning it with this company. So that’s great.
Chris:
It’d be great to hire the right people to help you.
Stephanie:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. 1,000% to that one. All right. And then the last one, what one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year?
Chris:
I think it’s these convenience delivery guys. I think they’re going to change the game for a lot of people. FastAF is a really good example of what’s happening with commerce outside of food and beverage, because they’re delivering unique gifts. You need a gift and you’re going to a party in an hour, they’ll be there in 20 minutes with this beautiful candle or gift item which is just changing the way that we do everything.
Stephanie:
Yeah. Oh, I completely agree. All right. Well, this has been such a blast. I feel like my mind is really in the right place now after this interview. Where can people find out more about you and Mindright?
Chris:
Check us out at getmindright.com or on Amazon.
Stephanie:
All right. Cool. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Chris: I really appreciate it. Thanks so much.
