Summary

In this episode of the Growth Mavericks podcast, Adam Callinan interviews Milan Martin, founder and CEO of Free Spirits, a company that offers non-alcoholic alternatives to traditional alcoholic beverages. Milan shares his journey of creating Free Spirits, the challenges of building a brand in a competitive market, and the importance of embracing discomfort in entrepreneurship. The conversation delves into the evolving landscape of alcohol consumption, the significance of e-commerce in business growth, and the strategies for customer acquisition and brand building. Milan emphasizes the need for sustainability in business practices and the positive shift in societal perceptions towards non-alcoholic options.‍

https://drinkfreespirits.com/
https://www.pentane.com/
https://www.growthmaverickspodcast.com/

Takeaways

• Free Spirits offers a non-alcoholic alternative to traditional drinks.
• The brand focuses on providing consumers with more options.
• Milan's journey involved learning from mistakes in balancing life and drinking.
• E-commerce was a crucial channel for launching Free Spirits during COVID.
• Building a brand requires navigating customer acquisition challenges.
• Fundraising can be a daunting task for entrepreneurs.
• Embracing discomfort is essential for personal and professional growth.
• Durability in business comes from sustainable practices and smart decision-making.
• The perception of non-alcoholic drinks is shifting positively in society.
• Free Spirits aims to redefine social drinking experiences.

Chapters

00:00Introduction and Background

01:55The Rise of Free Spirits and Its Mission

03:34Personal Journey and Insights on Alcohol Consumption

07:17Business Development and E-commerce Strategy

11:48Brand Building and Customer Acquisition

15:41The Importance of Direct-to-Consumer Strategies

17:44Navigating Early Business Challenges

19:32Sustainable Growth vs. Blitzscaling

21:03Turning Negatives into Positives

24:45Building Mental Durability

28:53Creating a Durable Business Model

31:36The Future of Non-Alcoholic Spirits

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Adam Callinan (00:58)Today we are talking with Milan Martin. He is the founder and CEO of a company called the Free Spirits Company. You can find him at drinkfreespirits.com. It is a alcohol substitute that largely mimics alcohol and the experience of being able to be social and public with friends without having the downside effects of alcohol, both short-term and long-term. You will see through this conversation that Milan has a really deep.expertise in branding and brand building. He does some absolutely fascinating and hilarious things with taking, you know, negative social media comments and turning them into these epic marketing opportunities and fully appreciates that you can't make everybody happy all the time, which is really, really important. We also get into as expected things around the importance of getting comfortable, being uncomfortable and durability and building.businesses that are built to last. So really enjoyed this conversation with Milan and I hope you do too.Adam Callinan (01:52)Milan, thanks for coming. I appreciate your time. in the world that is rapidly advancing towards anti-alcohol or moving away from alcohol. Explain what Free Spirits does and how you got.Milan Martin (02:04)youYeah, you know, I think free spirits is part of a much bigger movement towards an expectation of optionality, right? Consumers in general, if you think about, you know, your options of ordering at Starbucks, I mean, there's literally infinite, you know, different options for how your coffee can be made. And that's just a, you know, a small example of what consumers expect these days. And so, you know, I spent 20 some odd years in the advertisingbusiness. A part of that was in the alcohol world and the playbook was convincing people that in order to relax, decompress, celebrate, mourn, etc. alcohol was a part of the equation.At the end of the day, think what people have started to wake up to, and I think what Free Spirits is here to further convince people of is, actually, that's not the case. That, you know, this ceremonial thing, you know, Adam, of you and I having a cocktail together is really wonderful. With or without alcohol. And, you know, I think the common knowledge, the...The industry, of course, wanted us to believe that alcohol was the star player of that equation, historically. Whereas the reality is, I think, that you and I sharing a really great cocktail together that is made of ingredients that come from all over the world and is crafted with care and is big, bold flavors. And that as a...as a piece of you and I sitting in a great cocktail bar, having big energetic conversation or meaningful conversation or whatever, I think ultimately is just being redefined. And Free Spirits is ultimately here to say, hey, man, do more of that and do more of the things you love without what has historically come with pretty significant downside.You know, I think that, in my experience, having a handful of cocktails with friends is such a wonderful thing, but too often turns into something really bad, you know, too often, right? Whether that just be as, you know, as mundane as a hangover or as, you know, awful as, you know, alcohol becoming the third leading cause of premature death globally.you know, too much of alcohol is not a good thing as we all know. So anyway, think free spirits ultimately is here just to say, do more of what you love. Now you can kind of do it in a way that doesn't have harmful ill effects on your health and your relationships, generally on your life.Adam Callinan (04:39)what was the genesis? Did you have like a life event? Obviously we don't need to get too personal if you don't want to. Or was there, did you just see an opportunity and decide to go down that rabbit hole? How did you come up with the idea for the product?Milan Martin (04:50)Yeah,wasn't necessarily an aha moment. It was a culmination of what I would just describe as mistakes in pursuit of the right balance in my life. And personally and professionally over the course of 20 some odd years of drinking, there was just so many times where I was, to put it politely, over-served.Adam Callinan (05:17)Okay.Milan Martin (05:18)And I think the aha moment, if there was one, was just the idea of never once was I sitting there thinking to myself in the process of getting over served. Never once was I sitting there thinking, you know what I need? I need more alcohol. Right? It's just more that phenomenon ofAdam Callinan (05:31)Yeah.Milan Martin (05:36)Your glass is empty. I'm like, Adam, it's my round. You want another cocktail? And you're like, yeah, of course I want another cocktail. Right? It's like the alternative historically was not drinking anything at all or leaving or maybe drinking a cranberry juice or something like that. And that's all just boring. Like there's something exciting about a fresh cocktail.Right? Like, kind of bourbon is in it? did you get, you know, that particular margarita, the Cadillac Margaret? Ooh, that sounds good. It's in a beautiful glass and it's made all for you. Right? It makes you feel special. And I think that, you know, certainly there are people in the world that have, you know, a chemical dependency on alcohol and that's really not what we're about.the majority of people who get themselves into trouble with it is, you know, what I found was it's, it's that it's the notion of too much of a good thing. You're like, I've had two or three cocktails. Well, so one more, one more. And because you don't want the goodness to end. So, you know, the, there was never like, man, that was that one time where I went on a bender and I really had to, you know, turn things around. It was just more of a series ofyou know, and maybe I'm a slow learner because after it took me 20 years to kind of go, it's not the alcohol I've been after, you know, chasing the dragon. It's really the experience. And what if that experience, you know, didn't necessarily have to have alcohol as the as the main ingredient?Adam Callinan (07:03)Yeah, that it makes a lot of sense and certainly resonates with me. My wife and I have over the last COVID was bad for alcohol, pretty much for everybody. And over the last bit of have certainly scaled it all back. We do like a good glass of wine, but scaled that back a lot. Yeah. Well, and pretty much too much of anything is bad. I mean, frankly, like too much water is bad. So you, I think if you can live outside of the extremes whereMilan Martin (07:13)Yeah.Yep. Yeah, less is more. You're trading up and drinking better, you know, versus drinking more.ThankAdam Callinan (07:32)generally in a safer place. how did you, when you started the company, how did you start selling? Did you, primarily e-comm or did you try wholesale distribution or how'd you get moving?Milan Martin (07:33)Yeah, fair enough.Yeah, the brand, the business is a COVID baby, right? So when we launched, it was in 2020. And just because of the nature of the world at the time, Econ was exactly where we started, because that was really the only channel. There wasn't really any on-premise bars and restaurants.you know, and off premise, you know, liquor stores and grocery stores and all of that. It was just a longer gestation period in terms of finding distributors and all that. So we really cut our teeth and learned the business, the manufacturing, the supply chain, the product development.you know, the, marketing of it, the audience, all of that, you know, in a very sharp way through e-commerce, which, you know, isn't wildly uncommon these days. There's a lot of brands that start that way. It's, know, it's an easier price of entry, I guess. yeah. Yeah, exactly. Totally. Yeah. And you, you learn the basics of your business. You make a bunch of mistakes.Adam Callinan (08:27)youThat's exactly how we started at Bottlekeeper. We were Econ for the first four years exclusively. Same thing.Mm-hmm.Milan Martin (08:45)And we made a bunch of mistakes. And it was really difficult. But I think you're making mistakes at a level where the mistakes are just easier to fix versus kind of sitting there going, my god, we've got pallets across the country sitting onAdam Callinan (08:55)Yeah.Milan Martin (09:02)distributors and retail shelves and all of that kind of stuff, you know, and so I think for us that was the right way in. You know, I often describe the business as a series of kind of baby steps. Because a lot of times you get the question of like, you know, when did you take the leap, you know, and decide to kind of like leave a corporate job andAdam Callinan (09:18)Yeah.Milan Martin (09:21)And at least, you know, for me and for the business, it was actually just a series of small steps where I almost kind of punked myself into it, where you kind of go, all right, well, let's put the idea on a piece of paper and then let's get, you know, the name and let's kind of, you know, I'm not committed to it yet, but then let's kind of push forward into what a product looked like, what would the brand look like and.It's all of a sudden like you're just kind of walking into the ocean, baby step by baby step. And all of a sudden, you look back to shore and you're like, whoa, we're pretty far out there. I didn't realize we were this far out. And so I think your question about the Ecom thing, that was kind of one of those baby steps. And then all of a sudden, you get a couple of distributors and some big national retailers. And all of a sudden, man, then you're in it.Adam Callinan (09:56)Yeah.Milan Martin (10:11)And that's obviously not the end of it, that's the beginning of it. I think that a lot of people are afraid to start a business because they think it's jumping off a cliff. And I kind of see it a little differently. I see it as a bunch of steps that are exciting and interesting and progressing the idea. And then...Adam Callinan (10:15)Yeah.Yeah.Milan Martin (10:37)then before you know it, if you just kind of persistently keep at it. One day it's like having kids. It's like you don't really notice your kids getting older and then somebody who doesn't see them for a year goes, my gosh, they're huge.Adam Callinan (10:44)Yeah.Yeah. It's really, reallyimportant. And I, I get and hear the same thing where you, you know, you, you talk to a friend or a friend of the family or a friend of a friend or whatever it is that's thinking about doing a thing and they have to like think they have to quit their job and go raise a bunch of money and do, you know, go play that the game that's certainly people go and play, but there's so much risk. There's so much risk. And if you can go and just test it.and take time to test it and not go raise money and stay as lean as humanly possible for as long as you possibly can and give yourself and the business the chance to start to move, really interesting things can happen. And again, we have a lot of parallels. That's exactly what we did at Bottlekeeper. It was like a goofy side project and then suddenly it wasn't a goofy side project anymore, but that was a year, you know, that was a year in. Yeah, it takes time. So now,Milan Martin (11:27)Thanks,IYeah, 100%. that's great.Adam Callinan (11:41)So you're now in retail, you have retail distribution. You're obviously still selling online. You're selling on like Shopify, Amazon, standard channels.Milan Martin (11:48)Yeah, allthe usual suspects online, know, about 40, 45 % of our business is still direct to consumer. We kind of see it as a discovery vehicle. You know, unlike the spirits world or the alcohol world where you can't necessarily sell online, we can.Adam Callinan (12:06)Yeah.Milan Martin (12:06)And so we use that as a strategic advantage to market the brand and get people to buy a bottle or buy a four pack of cocktails, try it. And even margins are good at a product level, but shipping glass across the country and all of that makes that side of the business. You don't want to have too much of your business in e-commerce in this world. And so we start to kind of, as we've gone fromno retail doors to thousands. It's now easier when somebody discovers it online for them to now go to Total Wine or Safeway or Hy-Vee or Binny's or Bevmo or any of those places and make it more of a part of their shopping routine.Adam Callinan (12:48)So you're looking at the e-commerce experience and the paid media that goes in to support the e-commerce experience as the effectively fuel for the broader business. So looking at that sort of customer acquisition, which is impossible to track in a B2B retail setting, frankly, it's almost impossible to track in a DTC setting at this point too, holistically. And I think that's a really smart way to do it. That's kind of where we ended up as well.Milan Martin (13:07)Yeah, Yeah, exactly.Yeah, it's funny. I don't know if you experienced the same thing or not, but I think early days, you know, we kind of thought kind of, you know, monatically about like, that's our, that's our customer acquisition spend. And, you know, like a lot of small businesses, you know, that's where you're spending your money.I'm a guy who has spent 25 years in the brand building business and the advertising business. And so I often think, well, gosh, like we're really not spending upper funnel. We're not doing the kind of the big things that are just kind of those more brand impressions. Or even if I just wanted to say those things that are driving, you know, that.preference when somebody gets to shelf and sees six or seven brands, how do they make the decision to buy your brand? But what we found is just because you're allocating dollars in customer acquisition marketing that has a direct call to action to click here and to go buy, there's a of people that aren't clicking there and that aren't buying. But if you're doing your ads right, that is a brand ad.you know, and I think a lot of people have said things like, wow, I see your, I see your advertising everywhere. I see your brand everywhere. We know that brand. And you kind of go, really? Cool. Like didn't, you know, I didn't realize, you know, so it opens your mind to realize like, you know, a brand impression is a brand impression. Obviously, you know, we, have our metrics on the backend of customer acquisition, you know, cost of acquisition and, you know, return on ad spend and all those things.But at the end of the day, those kinds of initiatives have a broader appeal. And as we kind of get more front foot and grow as a brand, yeah, we'll be doing more upper funnel stuff. But because the name of the game in CPG, as it sounds like you well know, is somebody gets to shelf and they go.Adam Callinan (14:50)Yeah.Milan Martin (15:01)or, you know, or Smirnoff or, you know, Stoli or what? Like what makes that person make that decision and feel good about, that's my brand.Adam Callinan (15:08)Mm-hmm.Yeah, and that we never had to compete the way that you're competing because we sort of invented the cat or category. So that that's a whole nother level of of, you know, vying for shelf space and competing against, you know, and in the world of non alcoholic, are you do see yourself competing with the alcoholic? Are you competing with other non alcoholics or both?Milan Martin (15:23)Exactly.Well, mean, in your case, sounded like, you know, yeah, maybe you weren't competing with other brands, but you were competing with apathy or, you know, lack of understanding of the category. That's hard to, right?Adam Callinan (15:41)100%, which is why wespent heavily in our direct to consumer business, because it drove the whole company. And we saw, you know, there were times where we just turned it off because I wanted to see what baseline was and you see everything fall because that's the customer discovery channel. They see the ad on Facebook and then they walk into ACE Hardware and see it on the shelf. That's how they know what that is. Otherwise to us, it just looked like a water bottle.Milan Martin (15:45)Right.I often like what you just described as early days and for us too. You're pushing a car up a hill and if you take your hands off that car, man, it's going to roll right back over you versus, you know, as the business matures, maybe the level flattens out a little bit and you've got some momentum. Youtake your hands off the wheel or off the car for a little bit as you're pushing and the car might keep going.But early days, like, yeah, you're like, let's turn off the ads for a couple of days. You're like, jeez, we'll put them back on. Yeah, totally, totally. Now, that's exactly right.Adam Callinan (16:26)Yeah.Yeah. Momentum matters a lot. Yeah.So what are you in, you know, within free spirits, what are the things that you, you know, sort of struggle with don't like? mean, are you, you, are you having problems with it? it our customer acquisition models changing so dramatically is AI coming in and doing funny things with, you know, add budgets and spends.is I don't know if you've raised money, but like fundraising is generally a thing people don't like doing. I never liked doing it. I haven't really done it. So yeah, what are the parts that you see there?Milan Martin (17:44)Yeah, it's a, it's funny, man. When I started the business, I think I was kind of wide eyed and you know, innocent to the realities of the day to day. And I'm like, you know, coming from the ad world, I'm like, you know, I'm to start my own brand so I can just do great, you know, creative and build a brand people love. And you know, we, we, we do some of that, not as, not as much as I want to because exactly as you've described tokeep a business like this growing and evolving is really hard. It's very capital intensive. And we've decided to do this in a way that is capital efficient. So, you know, it is expensive to do what we're doing, but we've, we've also done it in a way where we've raised, you know, a 10th of what a couple of our competitors have raised and we're doing a lot more revenue than them.Adam Callinan (18:30)Hmm.Milan Martin (18:33)and what has come with that is just the gut wrenching day in day out of managing a growing business, you know, without sitting on a lot of cash, you know, and I've just never been a big fan of those.you know, startups, whether they be tech startups or, uh, or CPG startups where it's like, yeah, we've raised a huge seed round or a huge a round and we're just going to blitz scale and burn through that and acquire customers at any cost with no efficiency. Um, I know that's a thing. It's a model. I'm not necessarily judging it. I just don't particularly think that is a model that feels right. Um, it doesn't feel sustainable to me.Adam Callinan (19:10)Yeah.Milan Martin (19:16)you know, yeah, at some point we will partner and, and exit to, you know, a large, strategically aligned, you know, spirits company, beverage company, whatever. But in the meantime, we're trying to build this thing in a sustainable way. you know, and finding that balance between.Adam Callinan (19:26)Hmm.Milan Martin (19:32)aggressive growth, but not burning large piles of cash. you know, to your question, the, you know, the, the capital raise thing was not, not something I was really familiar with. wasn't a muscle memory when I came into this thing. mean, you know, I did a lot of business development and a lot of pitched a lot in the ad world. So it's, there's a lot of similarities there. Um, so I think I had an advantage, but man, it is, uh,the whether it's with fundraising or pitching distributors or pitching retailers, the amount of no's you get. And it sounds cliche, but it is gut wrenching. I mean, you spend.Adam Callinan (20:12)Mm-hmm.Milan Martin (20:14)most of your days getting no's and you go to bed at night thinking like, gosh man, I've made no progress today. I've gotten no's by really smart people. Do these people know something? I don't. And I think for me, the hardest part, and frankly at this point, the most rewarding part is having kind of managed through the mental game ofEvery no making you actually feel like you're closer to your yes. And early days every no was just like an indictment of you. It was like you. It was a bad idea. My line is a bad execution. My line. It's a whatever. And actually it took me a little while but now you kind of get to a place where every no is. Is validation.Adam Callinan (20:42)Mm-hmm.Milan Martin (21:03)because what we're doing is a little weird, know, to what you did. We've kind of created an industry and it takes time. Not everybody completely understands the point of non-alcoholic tequila, for example.Adam Callinan (21:18)Yeah.Milan Martin (21:19)In fact, you know, we get a lot of, you know, less these days, but early days, we used to get a lot of online hate from people. What's the point of non-alcoholic tequila? In fact, one of the most persistent comments was, you know, free spirits, non-alcoholic, anything that's like hiring a hooker for a hug. And it wasn't until we kind of like, you know, embraced a little jujitsu on that where we kind of go, actually.Adam Callinan (21:37)Ha!amazing.Yeah.Milan Martin (21:45)let's use that to our advantage. And we went out and we hired a professional sex worker to go around the city giving people hugs and handing out cocktails. We filmed it as an activation, right? So how do you start to turn those things into something positive? But early days you hear those comments, you're like, man, they're right, maybe this is dumb, you know?Adam Callinan (21:52)Ha ha ha.That's amazing. Yeah. That's epic. man.that we used to get because our product was like a beer bottle product that you put a beer bottle inside and it kept a cold and the early stuff. And again, I was doing all of it because we had no employees for the first three years of the business and that was done intentionally. It was all ecom. We were bootstrapped. We didn't raise money or anything. Then it grew. mean, in our first year, we did like our first real year, we did like 150,000. Our second year, we did about a million and a half in our third year. We did eight million and that was all. This was like the glory days of Facebook though.Milan Martin (22:13)rightYeah.Adam Callinan (22:33)Like we could not spend the money fast enough and it was returning like 15, 20 X ROAS. But I was managing all the comments and so I had to like deal with those. And because our brand was like a snarky fun brand, would, it was so fun laying into those people and like the fun brandy producty sort of way. Like, you know, like were you flexing when you typed that? And then other people would dig into it and it became this like epic, really fun dialogue that wasMilan Martin (22:33)Yeah, yeah.Yeah.totally.Yeah.Adam Callinan (22:58)perfect for the brand in it. And of course then it takes those things that they're posting about, have all this commentary and Facebook likes that. So they wanna show it to more people. But that's really cool that you guys turn that around. I love that. That's awesome.Milan Martin (23:09)Well, it's yeah, mean exactlyyou have to it sounds like our brands are kind of spiritually aligned we you know John who runs? Digital and e-commerce was telling me yesterday. He's like, yeah Yeah, got a comment the other day of like, you know This must be like drinking cat piss and I replied, you know what you drink cat piss And so yeah, there's you know, I think that there's an authentic authenticity to that and think that's that's an important thing. I always say you knowAdam Callinan (23:25)Did you do that often?Milan Martin (23:36)We're too poor as a brand to be boring. We just can't afford to be boring. And so if what we do pisses off some people and some people are offended that we hired a sex worker and they start accusing us of promoting sex, you're like, okay, I'll take it, yeah.Adam Callinan (23:56)Yeah, who cares?That's awesome. Yeah, very, very aligned. So you you talk about building durability in the business, which we are very much on the same page for there. And I can't imagine being in a company where you're just, your success is completely dependent on your capacity to raise the next round. Just seems like a very challenging way to live. How do you create that durability?personally because like you know, you mentioned that you mentally got around turning those nose into positive things, but I imagine that was a progression. Are there things that you had to implement in your life to sort of create that durability? Did you get, you know, into doing hard things or meditation or yoga or like what have you done to help deal with those ups and downs?Milan Martin (24:45)I think all of the above.There's probably nothing wildly unique about me as a founder. I think that there is the philosophical piece of it for me. The best advice I ever got in the early days was to get comfortable being uncomfortable. And it's a mindset shift that the only good things come from discomfort. Nothing good, nothing gets created from a place of comfort.Adam Callinan (25:15)toilet.Milan Martin (25:16)And so, you know, if you embrace that, you know, it's just a mindset shift when you're like, this is really hard and this is really uncomfortable and this feels existential. And you've been through it enough times where every time you're like, this might be the end. And when it's not the end and you come out better for it, you know, when that happens enough times, you have the wisdom as a human being to kind of go,Okay, got it, right? You know, it's, you know, when you're in your 20s and 30s and a girl breaks up with you or whatever, you're just like, oh, it's the end of the world. And, you know, it happens a few more times. You're just like, all right, it's just like it, leads you to something else. And I think, you know, I've definitely embraced, you know, the, the stoics of, you know, uh, you know, in the Ryan holidays of the world, where it's like, you know, the obstacle is the way it's like anything that stands in your way.Adam Callinan (25:45)Mm-hmm.Milan Martin (26:04)is the way and is going to propel you to what you want. Not because the Stoics say it or because you read a book, but because you've experienced it enough times to know it's true. You know, so I think, you know, that that's definitely been a part of it. And there's, man, there has been a couple of times, you know, this every day is hard. But as I look back, there's been three or four things that have happened, you know, that have been.Adam Callinan (26:12)Yeah.Milan Martin (26:28)ridiculously and horrifyingly hard, know, and lawyers and, you know, threats and awful, awful, awful stuff that you never would have had the ability to prepare for. You know, there was a period of time whereAdam Callinan (26:34)That stuff is the worst.Milan Martin (26:42)Dude, I had a couple of week period of time where I literally was medicated. I had to take like a, you know, a pill to calm down. You're like, I can't stop my heart from racing. But again, it's just one of those things. You come out the other side smarter, you know, and more suited to do the thing. And, you know, we're in the process of raising our series A right now. And we tried to do it a year and a half ago, two years ago.I never would have known it then, but you know, we would have been much, we would have been much less efficient in spending that money a year and a half ago than we are now. We've, made the mistakes. we are smarter. And so all that to say, I think, you know, as much asfailing to raise the Series A a year and a half ago, frankly when the markets were at a terrible spot from a capital perspective, just felt existential.Adam Callinan (27:32)Mm-hmm.Milan Martin (27:38)the business just got so much smarter and so much tighter, you know, you'll appreciate this having lived in California. It's like, well, they say, you know, the California produces great wine, you know, a lot of times because there's not a lot of rain in the growing season and the grapes just have to get really efficient and get sweeter and, you know, absorb every bit of nutrient and, you know, and water that they can when there's not a lot of it. And it results in the kind of, you know, product thatAdam Callinan (27:57)Yep.Milan Martin (28:06)that they get and I think we're similar where it's not.We have not come from a capital rich environment. We've not come from an easy environment. We haven't had a big strategic. One of our competitors, God bless him, founded the business and aligned immediately with a big global strategic. And they grew faster and they've exited already. I think their exit was modest because it was modest downside as well.Adam Callinan (28:34)Yeah.Milan Martin (28:35)And we've taken a different path. So all that to say, think the discomfort that comes from the day to day, ultimately, you kind of realize that when you're feeling that discomfort, you can kind of step out of it for a second and go, all right, good. Something good is happening here.Adam Callinan (28:54)Yeah. Yeah, there's a, there's a, could spend the next hour talking about those things because I had a lot of them. I'm still having them. of course. Yeah. Everything is uncomfortable. It's supposed to be uncomfortable. Being comfortable in discomfort is, sort of my, mantra a little bit. So we, yeah, we, we see very much eye on that, but the reality though is that you're building and what you're building and how you're building it is creating something that is dramatically more durable so that ifMilan Martin (29:01)Are you?Yeah.Adam Callinan (29:21)You know, to your point, like raising money three years ago, two years ago, it was hard for everybody. And CPG got hammered after, you know, in the, that sort of post Ecom high COVID world. That was great for us at bottle keeper. And we got really lucky that we exited in 21, sort of in the, the mid of that really lucky, like we didn't do that on purpose. It was just in hindsight, you get to look back and say, that was lucky. but I, yeah, the, durability, the anti-fragility that you create out of necessity is, I mean, that's what it's all about.Milan Martin (29:39)Yeah.Well, and I think that's a really good point. And I'm not a huge fan of the venture capital model. At some point, maybe we partner with the right venture capital firm or fund. But I think what I've found is that the venture model creates a lack of durability and creates a lot of fragility.because ultimately the model there is growth at all costs. And too often that puts founders in a place of, forget the middle of the business. I'm just, you know, I need to grow the top line. And...You know, get a lot of early, know, especially when we, when we founded it, I don't know if you did as well, but we got a lot of advice of like, Hey, forget everything else. It's just, you know, don't invest in supply chain. Don't invest in that middle bit of the business. Um, forget margins and profitability and all that. Just, it's gotta be, you know, 150 % growth every year. Top line.And A, we didn't really have the luxury of that. But I'm also glad we didn't go down that road, because we've built a supply chain that is really, really tight. And now that we're competing with big global players, we have to be able to compete at a price level and a marketing level. And the investment that we've put into our supply chain, for example, that's got our margins in really good place and our cogs waydown allows us to compete. And so if we were just kind one of those brands that was a house of cards that really did nothing other than invest in Facebook ads, right, we'd be in trouble now. But we've built a really strong foundation of the business.Adam Callinan (31:25)Yeah.epic. How do you want people to find you find free spirits? Where can they find you?Milan Martin (31:36)Yeah, you can learn a lot about the brand at drinkfreespirits.com. On Instagram, it's at drinkfreespirits. And I think there's a lot of content there that just kind of says, here's how free spirits can fit into your life. If at the end of the day, we're not an anti-alcohol brand at all. We're a brand that says, you know.drink all the cocktails that you want without the downsides. 95 % of our customers still drink alcohol. And I think what you'll discover when you kind of look at the brand is like, no, this is a brand that just thinks life is too great for hangovers or the ills of alcohol. And it's also too great to just be boring.It's also too great to just go, I guess I'm going to drink water. Yeah, exactly. That's right. Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. So yeah, think we're kind of in a place where we're jumping that chasm from the early adopters to that kind of early majority. And it's nice to have a category behind us where there's a nice tailwind.Adam Callinan (32:21)Yeah, you can't supplement that with nothing. That's the hard part. It's always been a complete dichotomy of one or the other.Milan Martin (32:46)think people from all walks of life are kind of waking up to, you know, what used to be, well, I'm not sober, so I'm not going to really look at a company like Free Spirits to realizing, oh, well, I'm not sober, and therefore a company like Free Spirits can actually help me do what I love to do on a cocktail on a Thursday afternoon or, you know, a couple on a Thursday night.Adam Callinan (33:08)Yeah.Milan Martin (33:11)and I get to go to the gym in the morning or hey I've had two or three cocktails on a Friday night but I'm not ready to go home maybe I'll have you know a free spirits cocktail and you know won't experience the downside of having you know too much too much more alcoholAdam Callinan (33:28)That's great. mean, I really love what you're doing and how you're positioning that I think makes an incredible amount of sense. And it's clearly where the market is going as a whole. see, know, valuations of companies out like athletic and what they have done is crazy. And certainly, I mean, I live in Montana where it's a lot of outdoorsy stuff and people as a whole are very much moving away from alcohol into these really good NA products that just didn't exist before. So it's awesome.Milan Martin (33:32)Thanks, man.Yeah.Yeah, yeah, the optionalityof it is it didn't exist before and therefore people, you know, would either just go, I guess I'm drinking, you know, or, you know, we've all been there where, you know, somebody's like, hey, Adam, coming out tonight. And you're like, I don't really want to drink. So no, I'm not coming out tonight. Which, you know, is silly. Of course go out. But, you know, now that there's options and also the perception.Adam Callinan (34:02)Yeah.Milan Martin (34:22)of like, know, when I was in my 20s living in New York, if you decided like, you know, like I gotta take a week off.seltzer water or cranberry juice or something. And the bro culture would kind of get you of like, come on, dude, why aren't you drinking? Come on, These days, that's much less. And there's just much more acceptance. And the perception of drinking a non-alcoholic beverage being a weakness has shifted more a perception of positivity of like, well, Adam's having a non-alcoholic margarita. Good for him, man.making good choices, you know, for him and his life.Adam Callinan (34:52)Great, deeply appreciate your time, Milan.