[00:00:10] Ray Latif: Hello friends, I'm Ray Latif, and you're listening to the number one podcast for the food and beverage industry, Taste Radio. This episode features an interview with Mark and Jon Sider, the co-founders of Greater Than, whose surprising and successful pivot came nearly a decade after its debut. Just a reminder to our listeners, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And of course, we would love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. Grind, persist, evolve, repeat. It was a routine born out of Mark and Jon Sider's tenacious belief that their sports drink brand, Greater Than, could offer consumers a healthier alternative to Gatorade, and that eventually, their hard work would pay off. Fourteen years after they started the company, the process is showing progress, albeit in a completely different way than the brothers imagined. Today, Greater Than is positioned as a natural electrolyte drink for nursing mothers. The pivot, cemented two years ago, was derived from organic demand and word of mouth among new moms who claim that the beverages kept them hydrated amid breastfeeding. It was an unexpected turn for the brand, but one that has given it new life and a massive boost in revenue. Greater Than has generated over $8 million in direct consumer sales in each of the past two years, a surge that has been recognized by Inc. Magazine, which included the company on its Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the U.S. In the following interview, I spoke with Mark and Jon about how timing and humility played into Greater Than's repositioning. how they effectively incorporated user-generated content into digital media initiatives, how innovation will play into the company's brick-and-mortar retail strategy, and about how their relationship and those with others have been impacted by the challenges of entrepreneurship. Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I am absolutely honored to be sitting down with Mark and Jon Sider, the co-founders of Greater Than. Gentlemen, how are you? Doing great, Ray. That's John. Great to be here at BevNET Live. And that's Mark. And we are at BevNET Live Winter 2022 in Santa Monica Watrous the Lowe's Santa Monica Beach Hotel. It's not your first time here.
[00:02:50] Jon Sider: Not our first time. It's a wonderful sort of You know, being back here, became here as very naive, persistent, and hustling street warriors, building a brand inch wide, mile deep, up and down the street, back before direct-to-consumer e-commerce and Amazon were even really options for a brand to look at.
[00:03:12] Ray Latif: Your first BevNET Live experience was 2009. Is that right, John?
[00:03:16] Greater Than: Yes. Our first BevNET Live experience was this show in 2009, which was, as John Craven said yesterday, the first BevNET Live in Santa Monica.
[00:03:26] Ray Latif: A lot's changed since then. I was thinking back, I was like, okay, I was with BevNET or I came to BevNET in 2011. So I missed the first couple editions of this show, but I do remember the brands that were sort of the quote unquote most innovative or hottest or newest or most exciting brands. And as you guys alluded to, they were all coconut water brands, Zico, Vita Coco&E. I mean, is that what gave you inspiration to start Greater Than, which originally was a coconut water based sports drink?
[00:03:56] Jon Sider: Certainly, seeing the coconut waters, I was introduced to them in yoga studios and the health electrolyte benefit of coconut water. And it was so obvious that brands like Gatorade or Powerade were not modern day hydration based on the health and wellness movement. And this coconut water ingredient, which was very compelling from a nutritional standpoint, but certainly had some taste challenges around it. And we thought with Greater Than, we could kind of bridge the natural benefits of coconut water and other ingredients with sort of that sporty swagger of like a Nike brand or an Under Armour, or in essence what Body Armour accomplished and did tremendously so well at. We were trying to maybe be that, but eventually found that the greatest athletes aren't necessarily athletes. The greatest athletes are moms who are creating a nurturing life and need amazing hydration to go along with that journey. And that recognition really sort of pivoted our brand. And that's what brought us back here many years later at BevNET to share that story with so many people who didn't know what happened to us because we were sort of these hustling, young, enthusiastic kids who really believed in the brand. And then we sort of exited and people didn't know and we were underground sort of working on it and we've come back here and the welcome has been great. Sharing our story has been great. I think a lot of people are excited about this pivot from being like a sports drink product to being healthy hydration for mom plus family.
[00:05:33] Greater Than: We always cared a tremendous amount about Greater Than in the product, but we now found a customer who cares as much about it as we do. And we nurture that customer by very high touch customer service in many different ways. And we're building a mom unity community, but mom unity. And that also leads to some of these leading industry metrics that have propelled our growth in online sales that I was just referring to.
[00:06:04] Ray Latif: You guys have a great sense of who you are now, what the brand represents. And I think there might be some folks here at BevNET Live that are surprised when they see you, because every time they saw you at a trade show, you had been wearing the Greater Than t-shirts, the caps, you represented, as you mentioned Marks, that weekend warrior, that athlete, that someone who always really took health and exercise very seriously. And it definitely represented everything about your brand, clean living, a better for you sports drink, and pivoting that persona to one of we are focused on helping nurturing moms. You guys had to change yourselves. How difficult was that for you guys to go from these two brothers known for one thing to now being two entrepreneurs and brothers known for something, frankly, completely different.
[00:07:00] Greater Than: Mark, I'll start and then please complete when I'm finished. I think it's important to note that during this journey, well, my wife Courtney has been with us Greater Than and still my wife today. We have two children and I watched the process of her become a mom, breastfeed our children. I have a picture of an earlier iteration of Greater Than as we were going into the delivery. our triage at the hospital back in like 2015, with Greater Than at the time, it was along for the ride. It just wasn't clear to me or us at that time how our product could impact moms in that way. Mark also has a two and a half year old, a one year old, and his wife, Duna, has very much been a part of this buildup we've seen the past three years, considering the ages of those kids, of his kids. So there's this natural transition that was occurring in our lives while we also saw our customer base become mom. And part of this, at that same time, our third, at this point, founding team member, Brian, who's our CMO, was helping us with our digital media. And we began to see how our product was being used, not only in the feedback from the customers, but in the online ads we were running. And we just said, listen, this looks like an opportunity. We need to lean in. I don't think we had necessarily an alternative. And we felt like this was a great new lane to take, as Mark said.
[00:08:32] Jon Sider: And that's when we realized there's a difference between a dream and persistence and doing demos all the time, actually being a little more sophisticated about your business. And we did that sort of analysis. And as John mentioned, his wife, Courtney, was using Greater Than and then You know, my wife got pregnant and we had two children. She was nursing and we could see how significant hydration was to a mom and what mom's going through. So it wasn't hard for us to like jump on board to this new thing because it was going on in our house and we were you know, had evolved as people and the business case made sense and our customers needed the products. The Greater Than is the direct-to-consumer model became a viable option for brands and you could bypass Unifi and Kahi and bypass some of the distributors, and you can go direct to your customer and learn why they're using your product, why they like you, how much they're willing to spend over a period of time, and you can start developing a mathematical equation around your cost per acquisition, your lifetime value, your margin, and what this customer's worth to you, and how you then build a community around this customer and find more customers like that. And we were open-minded, and looking at the data, but we got really fortunate and received a great break that this nursing mom community basically chose Greater Than. There was nothing about the packaging, about the marketing, but they were using a lot of sports drinks and they saw our ingredient deck and our nutritional profile and started gravitating to it and then started sharing this message with us. And because of our lack of traction, we were willing to take this sort of leap of faith. I mean, it was August of 2019. Lack of traction with the sports drink positioning. With the sports drink positioning.
[00:10:21] Greater Than: We've successfully shedded sports drink. It's Greater Than, we're not in the sports drink orbit.
[00:10:26] Ray Latif: When did you actually just say, okay, we're not doing sports drinks anymore?
[00:10:31] Greater Than: It's been happening over the past three years. I think it's hard for me to date which year it's fun. It's either 2020 or 2021 where we actually removed it from our packaging. I'm not sure which run it was, but, um, that's not where we want to play. And it's Greater Than electrolyte rehydration. This will come into our retail strategy as we think through where we want to be in the store, how we want to be positioned.
[00:10:56] Ray Latif: You know, it's clear now that you're doing well and that the pivot makes a lot of sense. Over $8 million in annual revenue. Correct. Yeah. Two years in a row. Direct-to-consumer. This is all direct-to-consumer. So clearly the positioning and the business strategy makes sense now. But what gave you confidence? You were using sports drinks in your homes, your wives were, that is. You had some people, you know, come into your DMs on Instagram. How does that translate to, wow, this can be a big success. This can be a great pivot for us.
[00:11:27] Greater Than: I think we had to be in business for this to happen. I think if we were in a conference room, kind of like we are right now, and there was a whiteboard and we said, let's make a product that's specifically for moms who are nursing, it just wouldn't work. There's no authenticity in that. This has been a product that has been organically championed by mom and Perhaps we were enlightened with our own experience, with our wives, seeing it happen, and we're like, this is awesome. You can't have a more significant impact than helping a mother during this period in time when she's going through such a huge change in her life.
[00:12:12] Jon Sider: And then mom is a great customer. If you develop a relationship with mom and you can sell products to her and build a trust with her and she's the gateway to the household. There was just so many positives around everything happening here. It was so exciting. And we were packing boxes, which was exciting.
[00:12:30] Greater Than: listening to Taste Radio because we were doing work big, big smile on my face right now.
[00:12:34] Jon Sider: And this was, um, you know, sort of remind us the old days of building a display in a whole foods that you got in through a local forager, which we were very good at. And now we're shipping boxes ourselves and like, wow, we got customers. We got hundreds of orders today and we're engaging with these customers. We're getting repeat orders and this makes sense. And there's five million, you know, babies a year in the U.S. And this is like a legitimate market. And we could not be in the beverage aisle and maybe be in the baby aisle in the store and sort of like totally reinvent the game. So it was so exciting. The problem was we were low on cash and then COVID hit. Our inventory was very low. So it was like February of 2020. And we were doing more on pre-order than we'd ever done when we were fully in stock. And we weren't shipping for like 60 days. We were doing $60,000, $80,000 a month in pre-orders, which for us at the time was more than we were doing when we were fully in stock.
[00:13:29] Ray Latif: This is just organic, word-of-mouth marketing?
[00:13:32] Greater Than: Brian, who has played a significant role in our business and... What's his role? Brian's our CMO, Chief Marketing Officer. He's been working with us for four years, with us full-time for two. We've formed a great team around us, Brian being the first one. And together we've helped propel, drive the virality that we were experiencing through efficient digital marketing.
[00:13:58] Jon Sider: Yeah, we had the grassroots and we had a very effective ad campaign, very scrappy, nothing polished, user-generated ads repurposed. We had no design changes. We were not, we had no PR, we had no real celebrity moms. I mean, this was like a real movement from the middle of the country suburbs, not a coastal thing, not, you know, an Instagrammable thing. Just a raw sort of truth that mom needed hydration. And we got real, lucky to find this audience, and then honestly, lucky that this revenue-based financing was available. And I don't know how much this is talked about, but without companies like ClearCo, WayFlyer, Kickfurther, Shopify Capital, PayPal Working Capital, Stripe Capital, these were all people that loaned us money over two and a half million dollars in the past two years that allowed us to fuel this business because we weren't able to raise money. So without this non-dilutive unsecured form of capital tied to your Shopify revenue and your cost per acquisition on a customer that they're monitoring daily. We were able to take in this cash, which could pay for things ahead of time, and then they would just pull a percentage of our revenue. And as I said, we borrowed like $2.5 million, which really allowed the brand to go from $1.7 million in sales in 2020 to over 7 million in 21. And then we raised a seed round in December of 21, which was the first outside money to come into the company. And now we're at 8.3 million in 2022 and going out trying to raise this a series a with this traction that Greater Than is hydration and nutrition for the first thousand days of motherhood. And that's where the brand is playing today.
[00:15:46] Ray Latif: There are so many different ways to start a beverage company. There are so many different routes to market. But if I'm thinking about Greater Than and where you guys are right now, it's the narrow focus that has really given you a platform to build this brand. It's really knowing who your customer is. really knowing the best way to market to that consumer and really understanding how best to deliver product to that consumer. That kind of focus is what I see in brands that are the most successful brands, the ones that don't get distracted. That being said, you do have opportunity to go a lot further. And this is the retail, this is the brick and mortar component of Greater Than. You had been chasing brick and mortar forever. Can we get into this real estate retailer? Can we get this distributor, et cetera? And now it's like, okay, we have a great foundation. We know we can do well on direct to consumer, indirect to consumer. But I would think this, and I mentioned this before we got on the mics, it feels like the bigger prize the biggest prize is with brick and mortar retail. So how do you do that and do it intelligently in a really thoughtful way that makes sense for the brand?
[00:17:05] Greater Than: You know, we're certainly trying to figure that out. And we're certainly as we talk to folks in the industry and at large, we want their feedback to develop that strategy as we enter retail, because we wanted to do it right the first time and execute properly. But Mark, go ahead. I know you had some initial thoughts.
[00:17:24] Jon Sider: It's tough. I mean, retail is a, you know, we have some history of selling into some good retailers and working it. I think our laser focus gives us a huge leg up. You know, there's 15 million moms in the U.S. with kids under, you know, toddlers and under, and we're just solely focused on that. And if you do think of great brands, even outside this industry, Nike was a running shoe company and they were to extend into a lot. Under Armour was a performance polyester shirt that, you know, obviously became a huge sports apparel company, beverage brands that had specific, you know, Zico and yoga, Greater Than with nursing moms. You got to start somewhere. And the retail advantage we now have is knowing who our customer is and where they're shopping in the store. And we feel being able to be in the aisle that mom is shopping in for her baby's needs there's only one beverage in that aisle, and it happens to be the most expensive beverage in the store that's a non-alcoholic, and that's Pedialyte. And there's nothing sitting there. And Greater Than now has this reputation of helping mothers stay hydrated and nourish her milk supply. That's marketing gold. How does Greater Than help you stay hydrated? If it's helping nursing moms, how can it help you? And Pedialyte started as a drink for sick kids recommended by doctors. And obviously it's a lot more than that now, but that's a DNA that they still have, you know, functionality and credibility. And we think that the Greater Than DNA of being this support hydration drink for people with dehydration issues, such as nursing moms, that can extend out to other people, baby boomers who aren't getting enough electrolytes, but we're out of the sports game and into the functionality electrolyte game. And we think that Pedialyte has a lot of ingredients that you really wouldn't want to be drinking. There's room to disrupt. And that's where we're playing. And that's the retail strategy, where moms go. Initially, when we were a natural brand, it's Whole Foods, it's Erewhon, it's UNFI, it's Kahee. Now we're thinking, wow, Target, Walmart, like Baby Isle, that's where mom's shopping. you know, millions of digital impressions. We have hundreds of thousands of moms in our email database. We have this mominators program. We can drive traffic to a retailer. And we have this whole strategy around this sort of retail opportunity and the community we're creating to drive sales there. And we're excited about embarking on that in 2023 and finally being back in stores. As we're out there talking for a series A, we've learned. that investors are extremely complimentary of our persistence and our pivot and creativity. And the $8 million in sales number is a huge accomplishment. I think only 1% of beverage brands get to $10 million. I think that was a stat I'd heard. There's a proof of concept at $10 million. It's not too far from that, yeah. The goalposts are always moving.
[00:20:29] Ray Latif: This whole process feels like a roller coaster. I imagine that there have been some times when you were really focused on the sports drink brand where you felt like, wow, we got this great win, we're doing well, we can build off this. And then I'm sure there've been some really low points. I hear this from entrepreneurs all the time. It is highs and lows and managing those highs and lows is kind of difficult sometimes. navigating or managing the emotional strain of starting and running a business is something that I don't understand. I'm not an entrepreneur, but you guys are, and it feels like you've gone through all the emotions. How is that something that you've dealt with? How do you deal with the craziness, especially given that you've been doing it for so long?
[00:21:13] Greater Than: I mean, the collateral damage that comes with building Greater Than, and I'm sure for many people out there is huge. It's a huge toll. I've flown out at the drop of a hat. Mark's been in California for a number of years. There's different things that have happened. I just booked a flight and came out. I think we're, you know, Mark and Jon, we're brothers. This is very much a family business. Our whole team is a part of that, including Brian and three others, Alyssa, Eduardo, Heather. We have some other people who have been working with us for a very long time. But for Mark and Jon, and for our family, it's just, As difficult as it has been, we just have a solid family foundation of trust and belief in one another. And fortunately, it's won the day.
[00:22:03] Jon Sider: You know, every entrepreneur starts with a dream and those lights and, you know, receiving respect from the community, being on stage and accepting an award for your brand. I mean, I think that's why all entrepreneurs get into this. Plus in this industry, there is a large financial reward, usually, not usually, but you know, in the cases that you do and you get out there and chase that. And, you know, you read the press and you hear the stories and most of the stories are the success stories. You don't read about the losers. Well, the brands that don't succeed. The brands that don't succeed. Right. Yeah. The stats of beverage launches, how many get, like I said, to 10 million, it's like 1% or 15 million. It's a low number. But entrepreneurs always know the odds are stacked against them and you just push forward. It's hard, there's a lot of damage. It's hard with your personal relationships with your wife, with your partner, your brother, your business partner, whoever that might be, your potential investors. When you're not winning, people are having tough conversations. You question your self-worth, you question a lot of things. You just have to push through. And as John said, if you have a really good team and there's not really a distrust with integrity, there is a brotherhood around the mission. I've heard stories of people coming back from the war and like the second, not the second thing at home, but like they actually miss being at war because there was such a purpose and they miss like that camaraderie. For us, like part of the struggle may be like, not that we want to struggle, but like there is that sense of purpose. And we're not doing the same thing over and over again and continuing to fail. We are, you know, improving and making progress. And you just take, you know, whenever you're trying to build something, you have to celebrate the small wins to some level, not by spending money and throwing parties, but by internally recognizing that you accomplished something that was very difficult. And we're going to have to play that back for Mark. And, you know, that gives you the momentum to like keep pushing forward. And if you do that, you know, 1% better every day at the end of the year, you know, you hopefully make a lot of progress and that's where Greater Than is today, but it's really hard. I respect all the entrepreneurs in this business successful or not successful. In fact, I think a lot of the unsuccessful entrepreneurs are the smartest guys in the room because they dealt with so much. They don't get to go up on stage, unfortunately, because their brands, you know, maybe aren't household names, but the journey of those entrepreneurs troubleshooting through manufacturing, retailers, ingredients, supply chains, financing, legal, I mean, this is a real jack of all trades founding type of industry. And, you know, anyone who enters it, Even if you're extremely, you know, even if you're a Mike Rapoli type or a Lance Collins type, and these are the all stars of the industry, you know, Lance has been very vulnerable on a BevNET live. I remember him giving a pitch saying how hard it was and how his personal relationships were tough. It's tough. That's the matter of a fact. You got to accept it, embrace it and deal with it.
[00:25:04] Greater Than: And I would, as something that's just been true for me, you got to find a third party to get some of these emotions out. That's probably not your brother and probably not your wife. So you got to find a person that you could speak to and just get those emotions out the door, process them. because the stress level is so high. And when you have a family, you have your kids to worry about, you got other things you can't just pile on. You got to find someone who's outside of your orbit that can be a sounding board and listen and help you refocus. And then for me, even the past six months, which have been a challenge for a variety of reasons. And with us all now remote Zooms, like I get outside, I go for walks. And then I talked to Mark, I talked to others on walks, and that's been a great way for me to refresh.
[00:25:54] Ray Latif: this is the honest and candid conversation that doesn't often happen, whether it's, you know, Taste Radio or otherwise. And I thank you for sharing your story with us and with our audience, because they're going to benefit from it. They're going to love it just as much as I've loved the time that we've been speaking.
[00:26:12] Jon Sider: Thanks. I mean, we're, you know, 8 million is a lot of sales, but I still don't feel much different than the starry-eyed entrepreneurs who are about to embark on their first production run, you know, next quarter, who are sitting here today. And I hope they can take something from this. And yeah, thanks, Ray. They will. And it's exciting to feel that way, isn't it? I think we will be very successful. And I hope that our story, you know, we'd love to share it in a very true way where other entrepreneurs can really understand what you're signing up for and how long, I know I'm mentioning a lot of brands, but, and even people we've learned so much from, you know, these conferences at BevNET, you know, Celsius was, was a garbage brand like 10 years ago. And here they are today, you know, the brand of the year. And that gives us confidence because that was a 15-year journey with all sorts of crazy twists and turns and Russell Simmons and other sort of characters who are no longer involved with that brand. And, you know, Greater Than is a similar story. And I guess that's one for the persistence, because if you stick with it, maybe you can be Celsius, but maybe not. Maybe you'll be a smaller brand that caters to a specific group of people and you can have a successful company that doesn't need to be distributed by Pepsi. That isn't necessarily the end goal either.
[00:27:34] Greater Than: everything Greater Than has done has been UGC, you know, typically beverage beverage brands have been lifestyle driven, very polished. We went the complete other direction. We just screenshot testimonials, the pictures we receive, we put them online and we just try to be as real and as raw, not only in this conversation, but in our day-to-day work and how we've marketed the brand that has helped grow it. Yeah.
[00:28:00] Jon Sider: You know, Ray, we were talking about luck earlier in this podcast. I'll tell you one lucky thing is Amazon. We can go on Amazon and see what customers buy with Greater Than, and we see that they're buying hydration powders. And then we can send out a questionnaire. Hey, are you guys interested in hydration powders from us? And the answers are overwhelmingly yes. What properties? are you interested in having for that, you know, hydration powder? And they tell us, and then we can, we just launched our hydration powder. So we're plugging a new product here, but we're constantly able to see on Amazon what mom's buying Greater Than with it could be a lactation cookie. And then we're like, Oh, interesting. Maybe we can sell, you know, a snack product that aids in this. And, and, and there's no one really, the industry leader on that category. And then we think, oh, we can be in the baby aisle and not just have our drinks. We can be a platform brand of multiple items, supporting nutrition for mom in those first thousand days. And like I said, Amazon is a new animal and they're giving you data where you can see what people are buying your products with, which helped your innovations teams come out with new and good products. that your customers want. So we're very excited about where this brand can go, both from the RTD side and, you know, the powder side and other possibilities, you know, health and wellness for motherhood is where Greater Than is focused.
[00:29:20] Ray Latif: Outstanding stuff, guys. Thank you so much again for taking the time to sit down with me. I have this sneaky suspicion that we'll see you guys back here next year, probably on the main stage of event life.
[00:29:31] Jon Sider: We'll tell it how it is. So we look forward to that day.
[00:29:34] Ray Latif: And that's a great reason to have you on the stage. Thanks so much again, Mark, John. It's been a pleasure. You got it, Ray. That brings us to the end of this episode of Taste Radio. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks to our guests, Mark and Jon Sider. Our audio engineer for Taste Radio is Joe Cracci. Our technical director is Joshua Pratt. And our video editor is Ryan Glenn. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to ask at Taste Radio. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
