Founders:Allison Ellsworth, co-founder of Poppi soft on the cider vinegar soft drinks that had PepsiCo paying $1.95bn

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What started out as a kitchen experiment with a soda stream and apple cider vinegar turned into the number one best-selling soda on Amazon in the US and a $1.95 billion exit with PepsiCo. We are speaking to Alison Ellsworth, founder of Poppy. Welcome, Alison. Hey, thanks for having me. Alison, you grew up in Texas in the 80s. I've been watching Landman quite a lot. I believe your family was kind of in the oil and gas industry as well. Is it anything like that at all? Fun fact, I actually, before I started Poppy was a Landman or woman. Oh, for a second. So tell me about your parents. Your father was an entrepreneur, I believe. Did you learn what you know about money from him, predominantly? Oh, my dad was an entrepreneur, but money was not his strong suit. I would say he lost millions and he's made millions. But what I did learn from him was taking risk is necessary to be a successful entrepreneur and don't do it for the money, do it for the passion of it. And so I also was raised in a household where everything was yes and figured out. So, you know, for our Sunday best and I want to go play in the month, well, I'm probably going to get in trouble, but I had to figure that out for myself. So he's like, hey, go for it. Let's see the consequences. And I love that ability with an entrepreneurship of that, say yes and figure it out. What did your mother do? Tell me a little bit about her. Yeah, so my mom and dad, like most Americans in the 80s, they got divorced when I was in about second grade and we moved with my mom to Texas and she was just a single mother working really hard raising us. My dad then went on to do lots of companies didn't really reconnect with him back until I got to college. So really was raised by a single mother, which turns into what we call his latchkey kids. So you get out of school at three and from three to five or six, your mom's not there. So you're running a muck in the neighborhood, just old school, no phones, no internet and just being a kid. What about your sister? I believe she was also, you know, she got into business too. I think that it definitely runs and our blood. So my sister is also such a mentor to me and just such an incredible entrepreneur as well. And she's more on like the smart business side of things. You know, I think any entrepreneur needs someone to kind of keep us on the rails as I'm trying to drive us off. And you know, I started poppy with my husband and he's that for me as well. Tell me what you were like in school, Alison, did you have any favorite subjects? Were you happy to be in school? I know a lot of entrepreneurs actually didn't like school so much because they weren't happy with the authority of it all. Yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of someone telling me what to do, but I will say I was a pretty easygoing kid, although I was a solid C student. I had severe dyslexia back then. I don't think it was as commonly, I don't know, noticed. If you could say, and so for me, I was really struggled in school. I hated it. I was always daydreaming and trying to cut class and get out of there. I'm blessed to have danced from the age of three all the way to 20. And that's where I think a lot of my discipline came from and my creativity. So school, you know, not my favorite, but you know, necessary. And you went on to study dance, didn't you originally? I did and I was a dance major for about a year before I realized you don't need to degree in dance. And so if I took a year off, I moved to Spain and I learned what this big beautiful world was out there. And how much bigger it was outside of my bubble. And so when I came back, I was like, hey, what is the quickest way for me to graduate? They said, well, all your credits are PE. So let's go with sociology. I said, great. And I did every May semester. I did summer school. And I still graduated in four years, taking a year off because I was ready to go live in the big beautiful world. And is that when you went into the oil business? It is. You know, during my summers, you know, like I said, I was raised by a single mom. I always had a job. I mean, at 14, I was working the dance studio cleaning, you know, the toilets from the locker rooms to everything. So I've always had a job and had to kind of like, fin for myself. And my sister was an entrepreneur as well and working in oil. And I saw that you could make anywhere from $250 to $500 a day. And for a 23 year old, that is a lot of money. So I was like, okay, how do I get into this? I hit the road the day I graduated, moved to a teeny town in Utah, and just started working. And the beauty of it, you work these big jobs. You almost work seven days a week for six months. And then you take three months off and travel. It's kind of like a fun, ideal situation for a young kid. What did you learn from that experience? How do that shape what you're doing now? Have you learned things that you're taking into what you do today? I think a lot of it goes back to being fearless. So, you know, at 23 years old, I'm driving across the US by myself, staying in hotels, learning to be really street smart. On top of it, you're negotiating with city council members, the BLM, the federal government on oil rights and landowners. And you're learning these people have stories that you get to listen to and work with and really communicate with people is such a big key and success of like, how do you collaborate? How do you communicate? How do you work together? And I had to do it from a really young age. Well, not have anybody on these jobs with me. So I was running multi-million dollar projects as a young kid. And that's a lot of trust that they put into us. So I think I learned a lot of those fundamental skills of how to be really independent, self-starter, accountable and collaborative from my young age. I'm also going to assume that that's a predominantly male driven industry. And it's about 23 year old woman. That would be quite tough going into that. You know, it was an boiler alert, so is beverage. And so I've always been surrounded in this very male dominated industry, but it's never affected me. I never allowed myself to think lesser than smaller than or that I didn't belong to be there. I just didn't put myself in that headspace. Well, being very hyper aware of the situation and making sure once again those street smarts were coming into play. So when did you meet your husband, Steven, who essentially became a very important part of Poppy, isn't he? Yes, absolutely. So when I was working one of those jobs in Utah, I went to the mall and I ran into him at the mall, which is like so fun. If you think about no bar, no dating app, and he asked if I wanted to get ice cream. And it just we immediately fell in love, got engaged and married very quickly. But through that process, I was like, hey, I'm traveling. You want to come make good money with me. And so he came to work with me and he taught himself how to do it. Be a GIS mapper, which we were doing a seismic activity exploration at the time. And so it was fun to kind of work together from our early age. And so when we went in to start mother, then Poppy, we knew what we were getting into when it came to working together. You were struggling a lot with your health, wasn't it? When you were on the road. And that was kind of one of the initial ideas of where you wanted to make a beverage, isn't that right? When you're living on the road, you don't have a lot of access to wellness. When it comes to food and workout areas, there's just like a lot of elements in your sleeping in different places. And I felt that for about seven years. And my body just was not happy. So my stomach always hurt. I had really bad acne. I was always tired. I couldn't lose weight. I couldn't like figure out what was going on. Instead of, you know, going to a ton of doctors that just kept telling me I had girl problems, I decided to Google my symptoms. And I learned about nutrition and what you put into your body can really affect the way you feel. And so I started on a journey of understanding the ingredients and wellness. And I discovered the ingredient apple cider vinegar. And I started drinking it every single day. And I hated the taste, but I loved the way it made me feel. So I had this idea of, wait, why don't I make this taste good while keeping it better for you? Not high in sugar, clean ingredients. And so the idea was really spun out of a personal problem of mine. You're listening to Fanders from the BBC World Service, Omniana Byrne. And today, I'm speaking to Allison Alzworth, the co-founder of the soda brand Poppy. Lean on frozen pizzas, pastas, and seafood. Everyone loves. They're build your own family meals feeds for for just $35. Stock up at Whole Foods Market. If you are currently overpaying on software to run your business, remember this number. 10,000. That's the number of new businesses that join Odu per month. Join Odu today at Odu.com. That's O-D-W. Now tell me about the first time you actually brewed this drink. Was the first variation nice or did it take a little few goes to actually get the right quantities for it to actually taste good? I was awful at the beginning, I remember, you know, I was like so excited about it trying to get my dad and my husband and everyone to try it and they were like you were crazy, I'm not drinking vinegar. And so our first version is what we call like our hooch or rocket fuel and it was just really strong and so what I learned is like all in moderation. Like you don't need three tablespoons of apple cider vinegar. Let's go down to one or two teaspoons and like like make this more enjoyable. So the process was always tinkering and making the product better over time when we first launched we didn't have really any sugar in it but we found we added five grams of sugar really balanced that flavor and really made it more mass and made it more like soda. So it was a really fun process where I made the first nine flavors in my kitchen by myself and a lot of those are what people enjoy today. A lot of families have home remedies don't they? I mean my grand has so many for every type of ailment but what led you to actually bringing it to a farmer's market and deciding to sell it? We wanted to start a family and it just wasn't one of those things where you're like okay well we can have kids will traveling across the US and doing all these things and it we could have but it would have been harder. So we decided to buy a little house in Dallas Texas because of some Texas and I was like oh let's go home and once we kind of got back there I got pregnant right away which was the plan and I realized real quickly I really don't want to go back and do this on the road thing and so I was like hey I'm going to take my stuff to the local farmers market just for fun Stephen ended up getting a job for oil and gas company in Dallas and helping me on like the nights and weekends with it and it just started blowing up after three weeks of selling at the farmers market week over week we kept selling out. On week three one of the Whole Foods foragers came by our booth and she's like hey I'm here with my mom I usually don't do this but your booth is popping offices and saying you need to be in Whole Foods and that was the first moment we realized oh wow we have a business here. Wow so what were the next steps then presumably Whole Foods wanted you guys to scale it so they could actually stock it on their shelves? I'm so glad I didn't know a lot back then because one thing with beverage it's intensely capital intensive you need to like put a lot of marketing dollars into it and so for us we're like oh we're going to get into Whole Foods let's open our manufacturing facility let's figure out this branding and how we get UPCs and nutritionals and get it ready for grocery and such it's about 10 months and we got into some local Whole Foods in Dallas about 14 of them and we were selling we did about 500,000 in revenue which is amazing but we weren't profitable we were just investing it back in still working the farmers market pay our mortgage it was a quite a crazy time until one day was sitting at home and I saw on Mark Cuban's Instagram that Shark Tank was coming into town and so for me like well next step in the American dream is yeah go on Shark Tank. So what was the Shark Tank experience like and I think it's important to point out you were pregnant at the time weren't you? Yes when I started the company I was pregnant so we had our first born through all that and then when it was time to go on the show I got I was pregnant with my second and so when we originally went to the open casting call and tried out us three months pregnant and then what people don't realize it takes a really long time to get on the show they do background checks to they do diligence into the business and understanding you know is this product gonna work on the show and so by the time they were like okay you're going on the show it ended up being nine months pregnant and having like 12 days later that's how much an entrepreneur like believes in what they're doing I was like I know they have doctors here in Dallas I will be fine I am going on Shark Tank. What did you learn from that and ultimately you did get investment. We did get a deal on Shark Tank and it's funny because even though we got a deal afterwards we like went and like laid down and like almost want to take a nap because it's so emotional right like everything is on the line there we did go on the show to get a deal not to just get the publicity of it which I know some people do the producers were incredible the show was incredible they really want people to be matched up with sharks that want to give them an actual deal and so we were matched up with Rohanoza who is a beverage guy and he absolutely was the best shark for us and after we got the deal we decided to do a rebrand so we pulled out a market which was mother beverage before it was named after the mother of vinegar and we rebranded and we wanted to look at who our consumer was and why are we doing what we're doing and we realized we were revolutionizing soda for the next generation and so how do we bring that to life? You got a $400,000 investment from Rohanoza so what exactly did you use that for and I believe you also went through a major rebrand after he spoke to you about the name. Yeah he basically was like hey you got a great story great liquid but the branding sucks. $400,000 is just not that much money so we immediately had to start raising more money just to invest into the brand and manufacturing and team you know we took nine months off we did the full rebrand we said hey for soda we got to be in a 12 ounce can if you're soda you have to scream taste till let's go color so we did a lot of that work so then when we launched Poppy March 3rd 2020 the first week at COVID it was an interesting time. Yeah and actually shark tank aired in April of that year I know you said you didn't go on the show for the publicity but did the help. Oh absolutely I mean think about a national commercial second month of COVID lockdown where everyone's at home watching TV and it absolutely blew us up we were like doing $2,500 a day on Amazon you know doing pretty good but then after it aired we started scaling to 250,000 a month and it was also for the first time everybody think about their health and wellness and also TikTok is extremely important for you guys too isn't it. We launched during COVID it was everyone is desperate for community and really going to the platform to connect and I remember I think I was one of the first founder led companies to get on and really just be myself my kids are running around wild in the background you know makeup soft teams on talking about scale and like letting people in on the the process and it really connected and grew our community and so it just really helped us connect on such a human level a lot of entrepreneurs they look at their businesses like their children was it hard to exit and let it go on by far one of the hardest things to do because for 10 years you're working towards something you handed over it is an emotional like identity crisis right poppy is thriving right now the team is killing it I am obsessed with everything they're doing but it's just harder right you have to like almost redefine what your purpose in life is and so for the first six months post-ex that you have all this wealth which we're so blessed to have generational wealth for my family but it's hard right and so yes I get at first world problems but it didn't take away from the emotions now I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life yeah it's interesting you were kind of like processing that for the six months did you ever think oh I'd like to immediately start another business or what was your thinking at the time you know as an entrepreneur when you're working as hard as we were I mean I hadn't gone to the doctor to get checkups and go to the dentist and just take care of yourself and work out I mean like I don't have time to work out I wasn't sleeping I was working late hours had kids so I was like okay I'm gonna focus on me and like finding myself again and then my husband told me about an idea and I was like it's incredible he created something for me let's do it and so we actually are launching a new company and I'm so excited to bring it to life well tell me a little bit about that or if you can't you know I can't tell you what it is but I can say it's once again spawned out of like a personal problem where I think passion is so much of a better driver but what's funny this time we started with an org chart because I think entrepreneurs don't realize your team does everything for you and young entrepreneurs think that the goal to success is like do everything yourself no don't let your ego get in the way of growth bring in incredible people to surround you and so for us with starting the new company it's funny you share with the org chart like who do we want to surround ourselves with how do we want to scale this and what culture do we want to build which is so important well Allison we're all extremely excited to see what your guys' next business is going to be but we always finish with just a last question if you could go back Allison to the very beginning the very start of the journey is there anything that you would tell yourself know that confidence comes over time and it's learned by being awkward and looking small and feeling small and then you learn that confidence over time and that you'll be just fine wonderful that's Allison Ellsworth the co-founder of the soda brand poppy she was speaking to me Leana Burns for this edition of Business Daily the program was produced by Neve McDermott and Victoria Holland to get in touch with the team do send us an email the address is business daily at bbc.co.uk self-directed investing trading full service wealth management automated investing financial planning thematic investing retirement planning few and to think that's just a small taste of what Schwab offers because Schwab knows that when it comes to your finances choice matters no matter your goals investing style life-stage or experience Schwab has everything you need all in one place so you can invest your way visit Schwab.com to learn more