Nuts.com: Jeff Braverman. From Corner Store to Snacktime Powerhouse

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to how I built this early and add free right now join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts When I told my dad and my uncle actually met them back in Edison, New Jersey where they were still living I went with them for a walk I remember exactly where I was because I said I want to join the family business and they said verbatim, "You're nuts" Like, you can't make this song Yeah, I mean, it's classic for my family of course, but I was making more money than they were When I made a clear look, I need the keys to the store and I'm going to deliver and my uncle kissed me And he was like, "I love you and let's, you know, I don't understand what I feel blessed and let's let's do this" Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists and the stories behind the movements they built I'm Guy Ross, and on the show today, how Jeff Braverman transformed his family business from a humble storefront in Newark, New Jersey into a huge online snack imporium, nuts.com Normally, we just interview founders on this show, but today we're making somewhat of an exception because technically, my guest Jeff Braverman didn't found the company that he eventually transformed. It was a small family business that sold nuts in Newark, New Jersey and it was started by Jeff's grandfather in 1929 Back then, it was called the Newark Nut Company and, as I say, it was a small local business But around 2003, Jeff decided to leave his job and finance to see if he could turn that nut store into a national brand Now, at the time, Newark Nut Company was doing about a million dollars a year in sales, so yeah, very small But Jeff saw a huge opportunity in turning the family business into an e-commerce business, and eventually he rebranded it as nuts.com Today, that same company does over a hundred million dollars in sales a year, it's still family-owned with thousands of products, nuts, chocolate, gummy candy, pretzels, crackers, you name it The story of how Jeff reinvented a nearly 100-year-old company is full of surprises, a random comment from Rachel Ray that changed everything, a hilariously bad jingle that turned into marketing gold Even a peanut protest against CBS Studios, and we'll get all of that But first, Jeff grew up in the 1980s and 90s in Edison, New Jersey, not far from his grandfather store in Newark, and some of his earliest memories are of helping out at the shop He loved it when we came to the store, we would sit down and do stuff, you know, help them cut open bags, believe it or not, M&Ms We would open up bags of M&Ms and dump them into these buckets, he would get up with us when the peanut roaster, when the peanuts would come out of the roaster till almost the day he died, he would get up and help us bag the peanuts You know, for me it was special because I would spend most of my time, I would spend with him, would be at the store So to us grandkids, he was this still stoic kind of quiet guy, wouldn't say a lot, but very loving and a very proud grandfather But with the previous generation, it was tougher, it was tougher, how so? Kind of his way or the highway, you know, you do what you're told, you know, my dad, you know, he tried, my dad would try to do some forms of innovation or make some changes in the business And my grandfather would often say no, at one point, I remember my dad told me this story where he wanted to put display cases I mean, this is like crazy talk, but like you couldn't see the product in the old store And my dad said, well let's make display cases, how much more could you imagine how much more we could sell if the customers could see the product? So you would go prior to that, you'd walk into the store and you wouldn't see any displays of nuts, what would you see? Think about like a, I don't know, like a old country western store, what you would see on TV, there were just barrels of the product And they would be more in the back and so on and they would plus customers would have to know what they wanted And then you would go and put it in a bag for the scoop it for them Correct Got it By the time you were born 1980, Newark, which is where this, you know, the storefront was and where the operations were, was already in serious decline Right? Economic decline Do you remember, what do you remember about going to Newark to the store when you were little? Did it feel safe? Like, what do you remember about that? Again, the old store, because I was only four or five, I don't remember that much about that, but when we moved, yeah, like we had code words, if someone was going to rob us Because you didn't move that far, you were still in Newark Just two blocks away, but then the customers were scared to come But like, so like I remember when the alarm would go off as a kid, sometimes I would just go in with my dad and uncle, they would have to go in and check And I would be in the car, you know, I think, I don't know when first you had car phones came out, so maybe I don't think I was six years old, maybe I was 12 or 13 I don't remember, but I remember having 911 pressed ready to hit it as they went into the store to check what caused the alarm to go off Meantime, were you always working there like during high school? Like was this your weekend job and after school work? Yeah, so I would go a lot, certainly when I was little and one nice thing that my dad did for me was just, I was empowered, maybe we had no choice, but at seven years old I loved doing the cash register, which was pretty cool for a seven year old to do But yeah, so like, you know, summers I would work in the store, you know, as I got older, then I would go in on Saturdays for sure Because my grandfather passed when I was about 15, and I was 95, he died Correct, so I would spend lots of Saturdays Once your grandfather died, I'm assuming your uncle and your dad continued to run the business, it was still generating enough revenue to support their family Yeah, it wasn't great though, and they obviously had to work super hard I mean this is, you know, most of the time they're just scooping quarter pound of cash used and doing work like that But they did have to evolve and go more into wholesale just because the retail kept on declining So who were they selling to? So for wholesale, it would be, you know, a specialty supermarket The one thing that I learned from my grandfather and my uncle is, hey, you know, give the customer what you want to eat You know, kind of like the golden rule, you know, treat others as you want to be treated So we actually had great quality stuff So there was like this specialty supermarket in more Southern Jersey that just appreciated it But we would just sell them, most customers, we would just sell them, which to me wasn't that interesting, but we would sell them bulk cases They would get 25 pound cases of whether it was going to be mental dates or freshly roasted peanuts and so on It was not pre, it wasn't packaged at all And then those customers repackaged them and then sell them themselves Exactly So at that time, like let's say the late 90s, right? As you're getting ready for college, can you estimate how big was a business? Was it doing 5 million a year, 10 million a year? No, about a million dollars So it was a, yeah, it was a small business They probably ran things pretty tight to keep costs down Very tight So they were, I mean, your dad and your uncle were literally doing like labor Like they were doing, they were moving sacks of nuts and things to keep costs down Yeah, 100% I mean, back then when we would get, so we, in our claim to fame, were these freshly roasted peanuts in the shell So we would get a truck load in, maybe then it was every two months or so And the truck comes in with 100 pound burlap sacks, they're floor loaded These are raw peanuts These are raw peanuts in the shell Coming from Georgia, these become from North Carolina, come from Georgia And then you roast them on site Correct, but we would have to get them Floor loaded, you have to get them inside Yeah We actually had a second level because we built this building How much, every two months, how much, how many pounds of peanuts? Well, a truck load is about 40,000 pounds Wow, that's a lot of peanuts Alright, meantime, you're getting ready to go to college and start your life And you go to the University of Pennsylvania And from what I've read, you were a little bit of like a stock market savant in high school Yeah, yeah And I know those kinds of kids It's always that weird kid who's like really good at stockpicking, you know, and they do pretty well And sometimes they don't, but you were one of those kids Yeah Alright, so getting back to your life story, you go to Penn and you get a degree in finance and management And did you think or assume like I'm going to wind up running my dad and granddad's business Like I'll be a third generation owner of the net store, like were you thinking that in college? Not at all, you know, I was always going to help in whatever capacity I could But my dad hated it It was terrible Alright, he worked really hard, didn't make a lot of money And it was super stressful Right, we almost lost the house over this thing So like, there were no expectations placed on me and I didn't place any expectations on myself I didn't think I was going to go into the business But you did something in college, it was interesting to me, I mean this is the late 90s When it just started to become easier to register domain names This is why I owned GuyRaz.com because it was around then that I registered That although I don't think there was a big clamoring for that at the time You registered nuts online.com Tell me about that, why did you do that? I was because of just my stock investing in high school I was just very attuned to what was going on in that world Most people knew about the inner thing But like, I'm the kid who Based on Peter Lynch's philosophy, I bought ALL stock Right, maybe in 1995 before everyone thought I was going to go bankrupt when I was like no way So I was like more, I was closer to this than most, seeing what was happening And to be clear then, anyone could make money picking stocks when that go-go era of the internet So, you know, I just looked at our little store And I see this new thing called the internet taking off I was like well, maybe the whole country could be our, you know, we could sell to the whole country We had my dad on my uncle because of his was struggling so much They did try, you know, when I was in high school to do some type of catalog But it didn't bring that much in So like I was already thinking of, I already had some exposure just the seed of other channels and ways to go to market But for me, I was like well, the internet's taking off Let's try it. Let's go sell nuts online So you registered nutsonline.com, probably cost you $10 or whatever, right? A little $69 or so, a little more, but yes And all right, so you have this, and what was the plan was to convince your dad and uncle to start to have a website and start taking orders online? Yeah, so I put together a little business plan I met them at the local diner in Edison, New Jersey And this could have been their first, one of a few business meetings they've ever really had And, you know, they were excited by the idea, and I said, okay, well, I need a budget You know, look, I think they had confidence in me And I also had a unique relationship with my dad where even in high school I started managing his money So a unique set of circumstances You managed your dad's money Wow Well, I wasn't like he had that much, but you had big stocks for you and stuff Correct, I took it, I started calling it stockbrokers and why you recommended these, whatever, I got into it But then I put together a plan for my dad, like how he could retire and what he needs to do So he trusted you, probably, he was like. Yes, yes, yes, not 100% that comes a couple years into the business But yes, so they gave me a budget of like, just made up thing like $700 Those days, it was really hard to build a website for $700 It was really expensive I ended up spending closer to $3,000 Because I had a higher company and so on and so on And you had that money from what, your stocks or your. No, they still had some, it wasn't like the business was destitute It wasn't a super profitable business, but like when they did the catalog test, I'm sure it cost more than that Sure But what you were saying then, hey guys, we can sell stuff while we're asleep While you're asleep, you can sell nuts through the website, through the internet And did either your dad or your uncle say, "The internet, who's gonna buy stuff through the internet?" "Isn't that where you go and watch?" Not even that time, you're even watching cat videos At that time, it was like, you know, I don't know, I don't know what you were doing in that time Let's put this way, nutsonline.com was my seventh choice for a domain name at the time Got it, okay, I couldn't get the other six Because they were probably a little racy, right? 100% So, yeah, how do they react when you said that? I don't think they knew, I didn't have any huge promises at that point in time They also recognize that like we have to figure something out, the business keeps on declining I think it was this more they had just confidence in me and let's give this kid a shot Yeah Why were you, I mean, what motivated you to do this? Because this is like great, this is a great something to do or a grand something to do Like hey, I want to, was it, you want to help the business grow and thrive or was it just like scratching an itch? Because it was seemed fun, like, because you were not going to do this full time Yeah, it's a, it's a great question I don't know if it was, hey, going to do something big, but certainly it was just this familial pull I thought that goes back generations that just, just going to do whatever it takes to help So I think it was just that pull just just wanting to help not much more than that And how, when were you going to do this, were you planning on doing this like because you registered the domain at 99 You got to build a website at that time again very hard to do there's no square space There's no Shopify like you need somebody who knows how to do this And it's going to cost them on and then you need there's no logistics There's no, there's a third party logistics operators in the same way There's no drop shipping like none of that infrastructure that's so easy now So how are you going to do this? One of my friends, he was a year older, I happen to have had a roommate who was building websites So it's one of these as simple as that, if not for that, I have no idea Because it was harder and it would have been a lot more money So that's also why I built it for like $3,000 or so But we would get a few orders trickling here or there Could it be one a day, one every two days, but for my dad and I was the most exciting thing in the world My dad would scream out, we had this little office above the store and he would scream out, "We got an order!" He would be so excited and that we had this little thing I made as a boy with like a closed pin type thing And he would lower the string down out of the office window, he would still use that to drop the order down So but then they would, we had a credit card machine Nothing was automated then so you have to type in the credit card number So we get the number, nothing's encrypted, right? You see the number, the fastest across You type it into the credit card machine, where I remember as we got going a few years later like I could do that really fast So I would do that for holiday, I would type my fingers really fast The order would come and you manually see the number and type it into the credit card machine Correct, and then the amount And then you would do, we didn't even have product labels at that point in time This is really a rudimentary We would type in the UPS or FedEx shipping label ourselves We would then have to type the tracking number back into, back to the customer But the order would come out, they would go take bags at the time, they weren't great Because there wasn't much outsell there, but clear sell-o bags They would fill them, scoop right from the counter, have a foot pedal to seal them And you put them in a box and then UPS comes later on and picks it up Alright, it means that you graduate from Penn and you go work for Blackstone And when you went to start working at Blackstone Again, were you thinking this is just temporary? I actually am really excited about this nuts business And the potential for the internet here or was there no way you were going to do that? No, no way I was going to do that You were not going to do that, you were going to go into finance? So I was going to go into finance, you know, I've read the books back then, I read a book called "Monkey Business" Or else like, ah, investment banking stinks, but I still kind of went into it It's just hard to go against the herd So I just went along with everyone else But no expectations of going to the family business To me, I always had this entrepreneurial bug So what was I going to do, maybe through the role of finance, I would buy a business or do something like that I don't think it was going to be in strictly finance And I think there were a couple of kind of random kind of piffness moments for me One is I had to like, I think they said I couldn't take off for Thanksgiving And then I just did anyway, my sister was in Spain And you know, I visited her And she wasn't really making any money, but her life was beautiful And I was like, hmm, okay, and then I went to a Blackstone sponsored event They were very involved, the chair was involved in the council of foreign relations And so I went to an event and I happened to have met one of my colleagues, uncles, who was an entrepreneur So not finance, but an engineer, he was at GE working for the man, working a hundred hour weeks And you know, I said, hey, I'm better than this, and he left and went on to entrepreneurial pursuits So, you know, and I mentioned that point about working for the man I did have an entrepreneur manager professor who said the greatest risk in life is working for the man So I have these seeds in my head It's a great, that's a great quote And for me, like seeing, I was sad, I'm a pretty empathetic person And let's say, you know, I'm in the office early on a Saturday morning, and I see the partner there Making millions and millions, I don't know if it's tens of millions, but millions and millions of dollars And it was really sad to see this grown man, who's not spending time with his kids Not with his wife, and it was just like sad, and for me, you know, I just wanted better I felt like, look, I felt there was something, I want to say this with humility, but I felt there was something special About me that I can do good things in life So it was just like these components of things, and when I met with that uncle, that colleague's uncle I was like, well, should I just wait after the one year? Because I'm sure you get this question from people all the time, like when is the right time? Yeah And he's like, what, you get a stub bonus in December? He's like, because he was like, now, he's like, well, I get a stub bonus in five weeks He said, just leave as soon as you can All right, so you decide you're going to quit Blackstone and go join the family business And at this point, it's still called the Newark Nut Company, right? Correct It's not called Nuts Online, it's called the Newark Nut Company Nuts Online was just a website Correct I mean, you know, Blackstone in 2003 or 2002, you were easily making, I don't know, 70, 80 grand a year, maybe more Even more, yeah, it was making about 105,000 or exactly 105,000 Yeah, I like cash Yeah When I told my dad and my uncle, I actually met them back in Edison, New Jersey, where they were still living I went with them for a walk I remember exactly where I was because I said I wanted to join the family business This is before quitting And they said, verbatim, you're nuts You can't make this soft Classic for my family, of course, because they're a cast of characters But I was making more money than they were I was really highly rated, you know, I was well educated in doing phenomenal And they hated my dad more so than my uncle, but they hated what they did, you know And, you know, what my dad those said to me at that point was it wasn't necessarily a card blanche But I made it clear, look, I need the keys to the store And I'm going to deliver And my uncle kissed me And he was like, I love you and let's, you know, I don't understand But I feel blessed And let's do this And you joined to basically to take over or to Ron, I guess the internet side of this thing But what was your deal? I mean, how would you get paid? Yeah, and it wasn't with the internet, I didn't know the internet was going to be the big thing So what I did was I said, okay I understood the symbolic value of equity, this business was worth nothing I said, hey, I want 10% of the business I want 50% of the upside of profit There wasn't much profit And I need a draw Because I need some money to, I was still living him and had in So I took a $28,000 draw against my profit share Okay, so it makes sense. Alright, so you're now working full time at the family business, the Newark.com And what were you making suggestions on how to change the business? Like, what were you doing? Yeah, so I just rolled up my sleeves and dug in and just looked at, like, let's just study this business Try to see where the opportunities are So some would be simple as, hey, we sell raw cashews in the store and roasted cashews I know what we pay for raw cashews We're buying from our friend the roasted cashews because he was a roaster That spread is pretty big Well, why don't we just send him the raw cashews? Pay him just to toll it, just to roast it And that's suddenly saved us $10,000 That's like, mona from heaven Right? So, hey, I start winning proof points with my dynamical because that's like, you know, real money for a business that's not making any money And then the other thing I did was, well, there's a couple of things One thing I did was I visited our wholesale customers and just said, what more can we do for you? Mind you, I'm a shy kid, I don't like selling at all And I didn't love that we were selling sometimes commodities in a 25-pound box Right? It wasn't a point of differentiation there So, we had, for example, the specialty supermarket said, I really want you to package the product for us My dad and uncle said, no, too much labor, I showed them the math and then I became the labor Right, but this is still, this is not, this is still Newark Nut Company It's still, you know, your grandpa's company And this really is the beginning of why we're doing this story And I want to explain this quirk of this story to our listeners Because you are not the founder of Newark Nut Company, you join the family business But, and this is the big difference here, you essentially founded a new company And this was not what you were thought you were doing when you joined, right? You didn't think that it was going to be a completely different company, which we're going to get to You thought you were going to help grow this business, is that fair to say? 100% It was going to be Newark Nut Company, and maybe it would be 5, 10, 20% bigger, and it would be a nice lifestyle Yeah, you would have to get a little bit bigger than that to be a nice lifestyle Maybe 4 or 5x that, but yes Right, but again, early days, this is pre-stripe, pre-internet security People are still wary about, I mean, there were, I remember like, you get on the today's show You watch the today's show or the nightly news that Tom Broke on, it's like, you know, people are using their credit cards on the internet And getting, you know, many people are elected to do that In 2003, people were elected to do that So, how did you start to use the internet or see the internet as a bigger opportunity? What kinds of things were you doing, just to even create awareness around what you were offering? Yeah, I saw the potential with Google, certainly in 2003, once I joined the business, I started seeing it A book came out, I don't remember exactly when it was one of the first books about how to use Google AdWords And at some point, I just hired the guy The guy who wrote the book to you members name? Yeah, Andrew Goodman The guy named Andrew Goodman wrote a book, it was like a paperback about how to use Google Oh, I'm embarrassed to say, I didn't even, and I'm friends with them still, but we don't, you know, we don't work together anymore But a friend of mine sent me the PDF, I didn't even pay for it So, we were one of the first, not the first nut guy online, there was a couple other people But we're in that freshman class, right? Of people online, you know, so there was some distinct first mover kind of competitive advantage And kind of, I looked at it similar earlier on, it's like, well, if we can sell one order to a one customer in every state a day, that's 50 orders a day And when I had an average price of what, 20, 25 bucks in order, I had maybe a little more than that And we started to charge shipping then, I don't remember what it was back then, but it could be a little bit more I don't remember to be honest back then, so, you know, bottom line, as I said, hey, I don't like this wholesale bulk stuff, this concession supply stuff I don't like selling, I like building and engineering and being behind the scenes Let's go all in, let's take advantage of this early mover advantage and just run faster than. This is stodgy industry, let's move faster than anyone else in our space, you know, we probably had, you know, let's say, call 150 or so products, I started adding some more products at the time, but nothing aggressive And let's really utilize the power of Google AdWords So what did that mean? I mean, this is 2003, you're revamping the website And again, 2003 websites, these are different worlds, because before, and we're going to get to the day when you launch it, because we need December 4, 2003 Correct, is that right? Yes, yes Before that date, you were getting what, between 1 and 5 orders a day, on average? Yes, it could be a few orders a day type of a thing So what, before December 4, because we're going to get to that What did you do? What did you put in place that was going to change the equation that day? So we were spending very small amounts of money advertising And the shift was just still not to spend out much more, but it was going from $3 a day to $100 a day Got it You were going from spending $1,000 a year to $36,000 a year Correct Which was a big deal Through Google AdWords Correct Okay, so December 4, 2003 is the day you relaunched this new revamp site, nuts online We launched the ad campaigns immediately on, and it's like the floodgates completely open It goes up 10x, immediately But if we were doing three orders a day, suddenly it's 30 Wow But the reason why you saw this shift was because of the way you used Google AdWords Yes, I mean, that was the, yes, we launched a much, the site was better, don't get me wrong Yeah And faster and friendlier and easier to use and so on But then it also then, at that point, I was able to unlock, you know, unleash, begin to unleash Google When all of a sudden these, this flood of orders comes in, it's still a small team of people Like you guys are literally packing these orders How did your dad and uncle respond, were they like, oh my god, this is amazing So my dad, I mentioned earlier, but my dad's a creature of habit And look in this store, when we would be busy for Christmas, just in the store, he'd be so nervous I loved it, he'd just be so nervous, it was busy But most days it would be dead, like we'd be sitting there on Saturdays in the summer And it's like, I did the math, I finally said we're shutting down on Saturdays We were making $2 a person an hour It was just like, there was nothing, there were no guys nuts in the summer unless you're the baseball game I guess But like, the retail business was dying anyway, there was nothing, nothing doing So he would be so nervous when it was dead too So here, right, it just like, it's just like, boom, boom Like, because suddenly you're talking about it could be a few an hour, right? And he said, shut it off He said, shut it off He said, shut it off because he was so nervous because again, it was just us We have to do the work similarly Get a full load of work Yes, like, we're the laborers And you know, there might have been some expletive said, but it's like, if you can't take the heat, get out the kitchen I told them, go home We got this, go home When we come back in just a moment, the online business gets a huge and crazy boost When some TV fans launch a protest against CBS by sending them pounds of peanuts Stay with us, I'm Guy Ross and you're listening to How I Built This Hey, welcome back to How I Built This, I'm Guy Ross So it's early 2005 and the revamped website for nutsonline.com is getting some serious traction So serious that Jeff has to convince his nervous dad not to shut it down Meanwhile, most business is still coming from wholesale in the brick and mortar store in Newark But that store, it's about to get raised to the ground So the city can build a hockey arena There went the retail store So we had no choice but to find somewhere, some location somewhere else You did find a location, a facility where you were going to do your roasting and your packing But no retail store, right? Correct Essentially, in 2005 was the end of a storefront of Newark nuts And it was still called Newark nut company at that point Correct It's obviously sad from the family heritage standpoint My uncle was probably more sad than my dad, but my dad hated this store It's no customers and it was hard and people tried to rob you So like not a great thing I think the biggest emotion was fear Because the store still brought in revenue Even though it wasn't a fun place to work, it still brought in cash And margin, much better margin than wholesale When you're talking retail margins, you're buying truckload of peanuts and you roast it Okay, granted you're selling a pound bag for $1.59 or whatever $1.79 It's not a lot of gross profit dollars, but there's margin on it You can't make tons of money, but you can make money So great, even though the numbers are small, the margins are high So there was fear, but do you remember specifically saying or having a conversation That went something like this We're not going to have a brick and mortar store anymore We're not going to have customers coming in The internet seems to be working, the wholesale business seems to be working We're not going to stand there and sell to retail customers anymore We just had no choice This is a store that was already there for generations But you could have opened up a new. You could have gone to the suburbs and opened a New York nut company I'm just saying it wasn't out of. But we just didn't know how to do that Would the customers come? Will they come from scratch? We were already losing more and more customers It was just something that wasn't in the family vocabulary And it would be super risky But when we moved out, I was terrified We were now going to have like much more of a real warehouse So about a 15,000 square foot building And I was nervous We had offices in the front, I was about to subtly sit But then something told me not to And you know, thank God we didn't Yeah, because you were thinking this is too big for us So all right, so you guys are now no longer. You know, brick and mortar no longer face customer facing Now it's all online and all a wholesale business When did you start to see the online business just really become the main business? Do you remember when you start to sort of see that happen? Yeah, if not 2004 by 2005 You know, we started adding a lot of products Besides roasted peanuts and cashews Like we started with this base of, you know, 150 products Across nuts and tried fruit and seeds and candies and chocolates and so on And then some of it was, I would just say to my dad and uncle We're selling salted sunflower seeds in the shell Other products we sell unsalted, why aren't we selling unsalted sunflower seeds in the shell? That's funny because they would say no one wants them Nobody wants unsalted, they would say no one wants unsalted sunflower seeds in the shell Correct, but it turns out diabetics do and that's what they want to chew on at a baseball game And that became like at the time like our top, if not our top. Wow It could have been our top 10, certainly was our top 10 seller So found gaps in the assortment You know, we would. There was a serendipitous moment where my friend wasn't well And I donated blood for him on the upper east side in Manhattan And instead of, you know, drinking the orange juicer apple juice I went to Dylan's candy bar on the corner Yep And I had some of the most amazing chocolates And so I called, I had to write a letter, I thought this supplier was huge I had to write them a letter convincing them to sell to me as a distributor I knew the Google game, so like these guys invented dark chocolate espresso beans So I knew I had a rank number one Or dark chocolate espresso beans So that one product allowed us to be a distributor for these guys This was called Coopermans, right? Copper, copper, copper, copper, copper And, right, I just called, I said, hey, give me your top 40 products And we're gonna sell 'em all And that was the beauty Wow And it was easy then when we had one distribution center And just kept on, you know, going after it We're like, I had a friend who had celiac disease and couldn't get gluten-free snacks I was like, great, and in 30 days we certified 700 products, bam, organic We just kept on expanding, we would take catalogs from our suppliers And you dump them into a keyword tool So you didn't need to do any research It just told you what people were searching for, the US is a huge place Lots and lots of people So we just went after it super aggressively and suddenly had thousands of products over the next, you know, X number of years And was your wholesale business still significant? The traditional legacy wholesale business Yeah It just kind of stayed the same, right, because I did put effort into it And then it was, like, less effort into it And then it would just be a slow decline But the bulk of your business was basically individuals going to nutsonline.com and ordering product That was like more than 60, 70% of your business? By, you know, by 2010, right? It's the vast majority Right? I know the revenue we did when we switched to nuts.com And at that point the wholesale business is like, you know, 2% or something, 3%. So when, I mean, this, the company is still called Newark Nut Company, right? Correct Just out of curiosity, when did you finally just change the name to what it is now? Once we rebranded in 2012 to nuts.com is going to change the name Okay, so it's still the Newark Nut Company, but it's nutsonline that's really what you're known as But still, you know, it's, and I think I've read that by 2006, you're doing about $5 million in revenue Okay, so you know better than I do, but yeah, something like that Sounds about right to you So that's pretty great. I mean, you joined in 2003 officially, formally Yeah, yeah, so sorry And you hit your 5x now for 1/2x since, you know, in terms of revenue doing pretty well And it's all coming from the internet There was a stunt that you pulled The year after that, and I want to, I want to ask you about this because it was, there was a show on TV called Jericho about this town in Kansas And it was post-apocalyptic and how they survived this nuclear attack on the United States And it was canceled, CBS threatened to cancel it because they didn't get enough viewers. I was looking at it The numbers by today's standards are insane. They got like 9 million viewers But in 2007, that was a disaster. And you sort of got involved in the protest about cancelling the show And tell me, tell me this story because this is a crazy story And it actually got you tons of press, but what, what was the story? Yeah, so this post-apocalyptic drama, like you said, got canceled on CBS And fans decided to protest because in the last episode there was this historical illusion And it talked about the details not alas, but a general says the US general says to the Germans nuts Like we're not going to surrender nuts So fans decided to send nuts in protest to CBS In the show, a character said nuts in response to something like. Yeah, it's a true story I forgot it was a battle of the bold battle of us, not over-member But the general says nuts, so fans decide that's their rally and cry Nuts And they're going to send nuts to CBS To protest CBS, it's a decision to cancel the show Correct So we see these strange orders coming in and my cousin says, "Hey, what the heck's going on here? I'm scared" Where people placing orders for one pound bags of different types of nuts, often cheap nuts Like mix nuts and shell or peanuts Shipping to CBS In New York Yeah, they're New York office So my cousin was like, "Hey, we can't ship this stuff, we have to cancel it" And I said, "Hold on, let me just do some research here and I find out what's going on, the show's canceled" And I had never seen the show And by the way, were they sending it to a specific person at CBS or just a pound of nuts to CBS? I'll get her name wrong with something like Nina Tassler or something like that And I just looked her up, Nina Tassler, she was at CBS There's a lot of energy here And I said, "Let's go" "Let's do something here where you have like all these people it's super inefficient And it's expensive to ship a one pound, the shipping is freaking $8 or something like that" "Let's harness this energy" You know, when you're a fundraising drive, they have the thermometer type of a thing I said, "Let's go, let's get up with thermometer" And this is where, I've always heard this expression, you know, man plans and God laughs And then, probably for the next three weeks, I didn't sleep Wait, so sorry, on the website, I'll have me understand this You had a banner or something that said, "Hey, if you don't want CBS to cancel Jericho, click here" Save Jericho, right? Save Jericho, send peanuts and we're going to make it super easy Give $10, give $20, give $50, whatever this is, because we had to give you a bunch of nuts We'll send nuts in bulk in 25 pond cases, freshly roasted peanuts, because that was our stick Still is our stick and everyone came to us We start collecting so much money, I think very quickly it goes to $40,000 How many pounds did you end up of peanuts, did you end up sending the CBS? So the number I remember was we shipped 40,000 pounds of peanuts For these? That was that full truckload of peanuts What did they do with all those peanuts? I don't know, I think I don't remember such a long time ago I think they ended up donating them, we gave them addresses of where to send them, where people could use them I mean, just the publicity that you got out of that, you were in the New Yorker and the New York Times and CNN National Inquirer more than once, which was quite embarrassing By the way, this was, they decided not to cancel it, they decided to renew it for another few, well, it was only seven more episodes But they did disagree And I guess they actually appreciated the stunt, they invited you to meet the cast Yeah, they flew me out, I was the celebrity at the Fall, CBS Fall lineup party Why do I slap that my friend's dorm or whatever the hell I stayed? You know, I walked there, you know, people come and live in scenes This cast were kissing me And these were like famous people But yeah, they, and then when Nina Tassler brought it back and it she says "Just please stop sending the nuts" But for us, I mean, our website crashed at one point in time We were on like K-rock and all these places where like the traffic was unbelievable Interestingly, from a business standpoint, we then did some analysis on hate Did these people become customers and come back, not really But what I realized was we're getting links, as you can imagine, mattered a lot then New York Times, that's a lot of authority, it's lending Ultimately, when you'll get a kick out of this, when the campaign was done I then redirected that page to our nuts page, our ratings would go off That's everyone was done with this thing Well, meantime, the nuts business is just growing on it I mean, obviously you're doing advertising, but it just continues to grow year after year I mean, the online business Correct And you were, by this point, CEO of the company Yeah, we didn't have quite titles, but you would say by 2000 And certainly once we bulldozed and moved in, I was already calling 90% of the shots Now this is just a very different business Was your dad and uncle, were they still involved by 2007-08? Oh yeah I mean, creatures of habit, they're helping us laborers This is like you get into Christmas season, you don't hire more people necessarily You bring in friends and family, and it was different with food safety Now you can't do any of this stuff, but we would just, you feed them I'd let them eat the stuff Alright, so let's go to 2012, because this is a pivotal, another pivotal moment I mean, at this point, you are nutsonline.com And that year you would change the URL And I guess the story I've read starts with Rachel Ray, which I want to ask you about But I guess the story goes back even years before that So, you're nuts online, but you realize that actually you'd be better off if you were nuts That would be a better URL for you to have Tell me about, why did you register that back in 1999? Was it not available? Yeah, it wasn't available, and I didn't even think like hindsight's 2020 It was because I didn't come from, like we didn't have tons of money I didn't even think about buying a domain from someone, it didn't even cross my mind It was like, oh, these six are taken, let me move on to the next one Yeah, like I remember in 2005, I saved to my files, the name of the person who owned it Of the person who owned it, yes, they had owned a bunch of things And I DMed him, which I'd never done, and he wrote back And I feel like I gave him an offer that I thought was quite generous I think I offered him something like $200,000 then Yep And he just said, no, thank you So you forgot about it, okay, that was in 2008, let's fast forward to 2012 Rachel Ray, she's gone for 2011 She's got her show on TV, and what you guys provided snacks for her show? Yeah, it was a wedding episode, and we had a nice wedding candy business online What's wedding candies? I think of Jordan Omens in this organic bag Oh, Jordan Omens and Stels, they're pastel colored, okay Who likes Jordan Omens, by the way, they're not good Ours are like super fine, so it's less sugar, but I don't like Jordan Omens It's gross, it's just coated I think one of my kids does, but I think they're gross Put chocolate on them Don't put more sugar, candy sugar on them Yes, look, we'll sell a better quality than most And we did ship them to Rachel Ray, and at the very end, she says in the credit, she says, oh, I really want to think nuts.com, and we were nuts online.com, so I was like, oh, man Oh, wait, sorry, go slow down, she says nuts.com Not nuts online.com, correct I was like, oh When we come back in just a moment, how nuts online finally gets a name change And turns into an earworm in the most annoying, rap jingle ever written Stay with us, I'm Guy Ross, and you're listening to How I Built This Hey, welcome back to How I Built This, I'm Guy Ross So it's 2012, and Rachel Ray has made a slip of the tongue on our TV show referring to nuts online.com as nuts.com Which actually is the name the Jeff had always wanted I thought it was better And like over the years, people would often say, what is it nuts.com? They wouldn't catch the nuts online I think, you know, I'll say we, but more me Just the foresight that like this Amazon centric world is going to do a great job at intermediating your relationship with the brand Think about when you go on Amazon, you buy a light that breaks the next day, but like it's vendor QBZ, AY, you know, whatever from China So I think I had appreciation for where that was going, where how brand, even though we had a brand how we could lean in more Right, certainly like, hey, if someone sees our ads and it's nuts.com, that's like, whoa, these guys have much more credibility when that stuff mattered more From a retention standpoint, you know, I did back of the envelope math, if you get a 1% improvement in retention, whatever, it's long term the stuff can pay off From a recruiting standpoint, from employees, everything, it's just cooler And then I just asked a friend, I asked some friends what they thought And they were supportive, so I reengaged with this guy And in the end, what did you agree to? What was the price? It sold to me with $700,000, $700,000, and which he never countered, I had to make eight moves in a row He would just say no, no, no, no, no, he wouldn't even counter, you would offer this, no, this, no, no, so you were negotiating against yourself Correct, and at the end, I just, I was getting fed up, honestly, and I've principles and I was like, you know, not that this was like a playbook or anything I was like, hey, this is exploding, 48 hours on walking, and he then accepted it So 700 grand, for a business doing 30 million a year, seems very reasonable, were you really nervous about spending that much money? No, it was reasonable, we were very profitable at the time, and I just believed in it, and again, my BS, back to the envelope math, felt like, hey, a slight in change, and one of these things, you know, we'll get a, okay, maybe it's not a two-year payback, but maybe it's a ten-year payback Okay, so you have the domain, I want to go back to the margins thing for a second, because earlier you had mentioned that the retail store did really well from a margin standpoint, even if the overall revenue wasn't so high, that, you know, 50%, you know, you're selling direct to the customer Well, you've got an online direct to consumer business, so I'm assuming the margins are, and you've got to ship it, you know, but, and package it up, but still, and the margins are probably great They were great, because also, there was different times, where, right, Amazon didn't create the table stakes of what they are, right, we used to have shipping actually was a profit center Oh, because you could charge for shipping, but that included your costs And also, look, I wanted to build the business, you know, the way I wanted to, so I don't want a condition customer to expect discounts I actually wanted shipping, because I wanted the hurdle, because I wanted to get the good customers, I wanted, I wanted to adversely select away the bad customers You know, and the complaints we got back then, let's say for free shipping, when you would actually look at the customers complaining, this was then, it was a person buying a bag of sunflower seeds for $2.99 Right, you can't ever make money doing that So, all right, just to be clear, this is Amazon change the game when they made shipping free, because then everybody expected all shipping, which today, everybody expects shipping to be free Correct, and obviously you paid for prime, but people, obviously, forget that You did not, you were charging for shipping, up until Amazon just kind of changed that, because, because you could, because people assumed you're going to pay for shipping But you could charge a premium for it, because, you know, you had to cover your cost, the person in the warehouse, and so, even though the shipping cost might be $3.99, you could charge $4.99 for shipping Correct, the economics were great, advertising, what people called, you know, CAC, and so on these back then was very different, so your advertising as a percentage of revenue was way lower Labor was way lower than what it is now, so yeah, pretty good economics back then All right, I want to just digress for a moment and ask about sourcing, because you're selling, you were selling at this point 150, 200 plus different, excuse for items Right, from Jordan almonds to candy to, you know, chocolate covered espresso beans, but were not still the primary driver, was that still, what most people ordered, like cashews, peanuts, walnuts, pecans, nuts About in 2012, what time frame, yeah, about then, yeah, I would say by then it's getting closer to a 50/50 Okay, and where, I mean, I know that you're, you know, you're buying espresso beans from a Cooper, sorry, I keep forgetting the numbers Copper, copper, copper, copper, so where were you sourcing, almonds come from California, right, peanuts, peanuts are also in the US, but where are you getting your stuff from? Yeah, so a lot of stuff has grown domestically, and look, this is one thing that's unique, even though I came into a small business, but because also we had a little bigger aperture than just a retail store, because we had this little wholesale business, you know, we had direct relationships with farmers and growers, and it's like a nice thing, for example, where we buy walnuts in California Last time I actually visited the farm, the owner of that company, he's a farmer and processor, so like he processes for other people too, he's like Jeff, you're our longest standing customer, like his father did business with my grandfather So if it's still domestic, we're going to go as direct as we can, when it comes to stuff overseas, it depends, like, you know, today when I think about tariffs and exposure, I would say direct and indirect exposure to tariffs is like 50% of our products Because a lot of your stuff, right, I'm like cashews, do come from, I think Brazil, right? So direct, right now, yeah, Brazil or Vietnam, look, my favorite product of ours is an organic dried mango, it comes from Mexico, right? It's not, you know, a lot of this stuff, look, we have a lot of chocolate in our business, ain't grown, not grown, not grown here And what we'll use is more expensive, as is coffee Oh, well that's a whole 'nother stuff Yeah, a lot of stress over the last couple of years, yeah, these are the old time, 50-year highs And well let's just talk about this for a minute, I mean climate change, and I don't want to get into this too much It is effective, it's got to affect some of these things, right? Like coffee prices are going up, chocolate prices are going up I'm sure that changing weather patterns are affecting certain crops, nuts, for example, right? Correct, and look, we've seen stuff, obviously we've been in business for a while We saw stuff where almond pricing went up two to three X, our cost, years ago, because there was concerns about, there was a bad crop, but they're concerned about drought But the California, I just drove up the five in Calamans, all almond farms, and you're like, there's no water here, this is crazy, this is not being diverted And some of they figured out better yields and whatnot, so then almond pricing has moved a bit, but it's come down from those levels But yeah, one of the few things I lose sleep about these days is cocoa pricing I look at the futures daily, because we have a chocolate business, and we buy lots of cocoa both here and in Europe And it's down now, you know, when I look at let's say the futures in March, it may be down 20-something percent from its peak That's three X, where it was two years ago, because it's very hard to grow this stuff, whereas the climate shifts There's some insect stuff, but a lot of it's just drought All right, I want to go back to your kind of fan marketing side, because you bought ad space on Series XM In 2015, and you, and this is so weird, you wrote, I guess you wrote age song, a jingle I helped write rap, yeah You helped write a rap, it's a rap about nuts, and it just played on Series XM, and I've heard it, and anybody listening to this, you should go just search for the nuts.com jingle Because it is, it is so annoying, it is a mere worm But really, you know, tell me the story first about this jingle that you wrote Super polarizing, people who love to hear hate it, people have remixed it, like not our versions, people have listened to it 100,000 times Yeah, look, I was just dabbling, I call it 2015 era, it was like, hey, what other channels, so we dabbled a little bit, and this was a very useful playbook for when COVID hit We did try TV, we tried some radio, we tried a bit of different things So, look, we're trying to be creative, and I don't think it was originally my idea And then I was supposed to do it, but I'm not really musically inclined, and I was sick, so my brother-in-law did the rap And then we put it on, we put it on the air, it was, again, polarizing Yo microphone check, one, two, and three, it's nut.com delivery When I need a yummy snack, that's good for me, there's a sight I hit when I'm hungry From a cash is doing, I'm a dry piece, you're a pump, nut.com won't be outdone Apparently, you start to get letters in from people saying, stop, it's driving me nuts Yeah, it was like 50/50, 50% of people loved it, 50% of people hated it and couldn't get out of their heads Like, so it was a party thinking, this is great, it's annoying, people are talking about this, or were you like, ooh, it's annoying I think some of the talking and stuff came about actually later too though, where we were ready to kill For me, I was just like looking for a certain return, I think the rap was just okay, in terms of it wasn't super performant So just the aperture wasn't wide enough for the returns kind of that we were after So, all right, but all of these different attempts and ways of advertising like on serious XM I mean, they continue, your business continues just a year after year was growing So, I would think that really a business like yours in order to survive and scale You've got to basically be in every office, in America, or many offices And that, because you just get repeat, I mean, when you're selling to corporate offices, it's just automatically someone's hitting the, you know, reorder button And just relying on individual sales, which might be one-off sales, or maybe somebody might over three, four times a year It's not enough Yeah, correct And in this day and age, it's super hard, the DDC space is super hard But what we find with our, call it on the website, but our B2B business, believe it or not, even though the margins, the gross margins are lower than net margins are higher When you factor in everything, just as much sticker customer and just handling those orders And what we found was, looks, a lot of this stuff was just accidental and then you just learn from it and lean in And there's along the way we found stuff where like, I don't know, but we have significant market share of micro breweries That's the US, who would have known? I didn't know Who just buy and bulk? Because they're going to buy, they're not, they're, they're hops or they're primary ingredient But hey, they want to have some toasted coconuts Right, P-can flavored brew, IPA or something Correct And so we found that with offices, where the offices may not even be buying the 25 pound cases, they actually put out, they have one and five pound bags, for example, or single-serve stuff And they'll put it out, so it's kind of like, and at that point then let's focus on that and add more and, and, and, and, and serve their needs better Never, never necessarily part of the grand plan, but that's, that's, that's a really healthy part of our business It was probably 15% of our revenue or so, maybe, maybe actually at that point probably more, maybe 20, 25% All right, so you have, I mean, you're, you're growing your corporate B2B stuff and, and, and then COVID hits, right? I mean, everything closes, offices shut down, and, and the B2B business must have totally disappeared, but on the flip side, people were suddenly, people were suddenly stuck at home, right? So imagine your direct consumer sales must have exploded Yes, and then you fast forward, maybe a week or two, and then schools are closed, and, and now it became, we have infinite demands, how the heck do you ship this stuff? Yeah, because we're in central New Jersey, which is page close to ground zero for COVID early on in the pandemic Did you have employees who were scared to come to work and scared B2B? Oh, yeah, it was, it was, it was terrible. We did like, we went to warm back, keeping people safe, like tearing down walls of a cafeteria to expand it, putting out bathrooms outside in the traditional trailers to put in UV light. I was like, safety Zara as I'm working the plant, like yelling, you have to yell, to keep people apart. Some people certainly got sick, but like, my worst, one of the worst days of my life, because this was like, I was having nervous breakdowns every day, was after Easter, the day after Easter, people would reflect. And April, so this is 2020, yeah, correct. The employees were to reflect a lot on the weekends, and then more would be scared to come in, and that Monday, we had 70% worker call out. Wow 70% of your employees said they can't come in. Correct. These are the, these are the, because we're making stuff. We're roasting chocolate coating, packaging, shipping, and I'm just working. I'm literally working, you know, probably like 10, 12 hour days in the plant, then going home, trying to save the business at night. And the employees demanded to speak with me, and it's one of those surreal kind of out of body experiences were in 30 minutes in Spanish, I couldn't find my plant manager, was a native speaker, I speak well enough, but in 30 minutes had to give the speech of all speeches of why we're here, and why we need to stay here, and how I wish we could close the factory and go home, but we can't, and everyone's counting on us. And yeah, but it was exciting too, scary and terrifying, and also exciting, just for your experiences, just put your head down, and you go. You know, one of the things I'm curious about is you mentioned earlier on about watching your dad just work six day weeks, and maybe have half a day off on Saturday, and just the grind that he, and that when you went to Blackstone, you saw for a version of that there, and that you didn't want that. And I wonder whether, when you started in 2003, at Newark Nut Company, now it is nuts.com by this point, you know, talking about 2020, you're grinding, you're working, like your dad was working, I mean, of course the returns, whatever. But how did you feel about that, because you wanted to, from what I gather, you wanted to avoid that, you wanted to be able to spend time with your kids and your family and all these things. Yeah, I mean, look, you didn't have so much time to think, you told me specifically in the COVID period. Yeah, I didn't even before that. It sounds like you were actually probably working hard, but you're not 60 hour weeks. Yeah, yeah, easily that, but when you love it, it's like, I'm sure you ask this, or people ask you this, and so on, it's about work, life, balance. A lot of theory right now is there's no such thing for me. There was no such thing. I love this. I work all the time, and I'm with my family all the time. I try to be present, like, okay, if I'm working on the next business idea on a Saturday night on my kids asking me to play, okay, I'm trying to be better about that. But one thing I did was, especially when I got married and had the kids, hey, like, I am going to leave work, right, I had to commute and so on, but I would leave work, you know, five-ish, get home, see the kids, eat with them, and then do work when they're sleeping and so on. And I wake up really early, so I work early in the morning. So, look, for me, it's like, I rise to the occasion. This past peak, 2024, we sold more gifts than we expected. I was supposed to come in for two Saturday corporate volunteer events for morale, because like the workers are working so hard on the plan. I had to stay neat at me for seven straight days. These are gift boxes, like, tens of custom gift trays. We're not like, we're seasonal, so our business does, you know, December could be doubled July, but it's not. It's like the Harry and David sales got these things, right? Correct, correct. We do similar stuff. Are they competitors? I mean, everyone's a competitor at this point. Yeah. But, no, just in my DNA, like, nothing's beneath me. You know, like, you'll see my dad come in, you know, look, COVID, we sent my dad and my uncle home, right, we said this isn't safe for you like this. Sure, yeah. My dad's diabetes and so on and they're old, they were, you know, ready in their 70s. But look, my dad will help, he'll help move when we're in the picking area, he'll drag these totes around. And my uncle, he's meticulous about the quality, so we'll bang out tens of thousands of custom trays, which is a unique thing we launched, believe it or not, in 1999. My uncle will be at the end of the line and he'll approve them. And one day they really needed him because we were super busy, he worked the whole time, like 12 hours. You know, he's got to sit on a stool a little bit, he's older, but then the team gives him, you know, a standing ovation. F coming out of COVID, I think our sandally, because it was a crazy time. In October of 2023, you guys, for the first time you picked, you decide to step down to CEO, you found a CEO from outside the company, asked for the family. And you became the chairman of Nuts.com was this, I imagine you were just exhausted, you didn't want to, what you didn't want to be doing operations every day and just. Yeah, at this point, it was, it was about two years before I said, I hired a president. What, I started, we were picking up our head, let's build out a team, COVID gave us the luxury of then let's go after this and really build out a team and not be, not be so lean. And at that point, finally, I had a friend and I finally brought him as an advisor, so I wouldn't be just alone in this journey because it gets really lonely. And even if you're super successful outwardly internally, there's this imposter syndrome and do I know what I'm doing. And he helped me see a path where Jeff, hey, in three years, you could focus on M&A culture and strategy, for example. And I actually heard it on one of your podcasts, it's like, why, why build on your weaknesses? Yeah, I don't have to. I could have retired 15 years ago, why not lean into my strengths and do what I love doing and I'm good at. Get exactly what I like and it could be better for the business too. Yeah, by the way, I think that was syrup likely from who founded Spanx who said that, lean on your strengths and, you know, and don't worry about your weaknesses. And versions of that have been said by others, but it's, it's true, right? And so, and so today you are, tell me about how, I mean, how you're involved in the business, I mean, do you go in every day to the office? You're still in this, you know, still in New Jersey. And I mean, what, what's your kind of day to day look like? I don't go in that much. I want to leave, give the people space. So, you know, maybe I go in a couple times a month, we have a corporate office separate from our, our manufacturing plant. I would say I'm still more in the weeds than I'm supposed to be. Look, I love being in the weeds. Don't get me wrong. I, so we'll see, it's still this evolution. And I know, I know what I'm good at. I know where I interfere too much. I know things get dangerous and so on. And I'm relatively self-aware. Of course, I have ego. Everyone has ego. But like, I'm okay not being the person, right? I don't need to give the speeches to the employees. I don't need to go to the conferences. That's fine, right? Like, I want to work on fun stuff if I can. Still family-owned, the business. Correct. And your dad and your uncle are still both alive? Yes, they're both alive. And what, and they're not, of course, I'm assuming they're uninvolved day-to-day, are these, what are they, are these still owners? So, I bought my dad out a long time ago. I probably bought my dad out 17 years ago. My uncle's still, still an owner. He's still a shareholder. He maybe comes in once every couple of weeks. He helps the team on buying. He's got these long standing relationships. And he still has. Yes, can he chisel someone five cents here and there? It's kind of an old-school mentality. Yes. But like, the people love talking him. He goes on vacation with some of our suppliers. You know, it's a nice thing. Or if I'm, I don't want to step on toes, I'll go to him and I'll say, go check the quality of these organic raisins. Because I ordered someone. I was like, they could be better. What is, what are they make of this? I mean, just the transition or the transformation of the business from what it was to what it is now? Yeah, I mean, for them, I mean, they're just amazed. They wish Poppy Sol were still alive. He wouldn't understand because he would say, where's the cash? You know, he doesn't see the register and so on. But for them, look, this worked. And it worked really early on. We never took on investors. We grew. We figured out the model. We grew very quickly and profitably. And look, even before the true financial success, they got a second lease on life. I told the story earlier about Saturdays where we were making $2 a day. I did the math. I said, guys, this is not about me shying from work. This is a waste of time. No one's coming to the retail store. So this is like, I don't know if it's 2003, that the latest 2004, I said, we're closing on Saturdays. My dad looks like, oh, Poppy Sol would never allow this. Right. You just work, you know, and my uncle says, well, kind of we just try it out and let's just do a half a day. I said, no, this is a joke. Right. Doesn't make any sense for us. We closed and like, I made the decision on a Monday and we closed on that Saturday and my uncle on that Monday says, oh my god, that's the best decision of our life. And they got a second lease on their life where they could be evolving the community and go to temple and just do stuff that most other people get to do. I bet. I mean, you know, this question was coming, but when you think about, right, this whole journey and what happened. And I mean, you hope to have five exit and you, I mean, I think it's estimated you guys are doing, you know, close to $100 million a year and sales much bigger than a million dollar business when you joined. How much of where you are now do you tribute to the work you put in the grind and how much do you think had to do with just the luck and timing of of the era that you happen to live in? I was born into a family that had a nut business that was terrible. My friend's father, when I was my childhood friend, his father was a dentist and he would make fun of me that my dad sells nuts. No one expected me to go into this business. I mentioned earlier something about man plans and God laughs, you know, stuff comes your way. Yeah, and it's what you choose to do with it. Are you open to it? And are you going to freak and work fast and hard and smart as it comes your way? Okay, great. I chose to join my little family, nothing, nut business. And it was amazing. My dad gave me the keys. Yeah. And you know, my dad will get teary eyed because he, you know, what he'll say to the new employees for onboarding will do like a onboarding lunch. And he says, you know, I hated this business. I never really wanted to go into this business. And I didn't really get listened to and the thing, you know, that this is speaking for my dad, he says the thing I said is if I have, if I have children one day, I'm never going to make them want to come, if I'm never going to make them come into the business. But if they want to come into the business, I'm going to let them come into the business. And I'm going to let them do their do what they want. So this is like a visceral right, right? I carry a thing for my dad and it's special. That's Jeff Braverman, the chairman of nuts.com. By the way, that annoying rap shingle that we played earlier, Jeff says it's still out there and it's still a thing. Oh, I mean, people would, people would jam me with this. You know, they would, I'll be talking to me on the phone. They would start playing it. The only thing I do of what I, because I still, I still have it is when I go to speak at like schools and stuff, whether it's executive MBA class or just like boys and girls club, I play the rap at the end and everyone likes it. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And if you're interested in insights, ideas and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, please sign up for my newsletter at GuyRaz.com or on Substack. This episode was produced by Sam Paulson with music composed by Rumtina Robloey. He was edited by Niva Grant with research help from Olivia Rockman. Our engineers are Patrick Murray and Jimmy Keely. Our production staff also includes Andrea Bruce, Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, Casey Herman, Norgill, Chris Messini, Carrie Thompson and Ramelle Wood. I'm GuyRaz and you've been listening to how I built this. 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