[00:00:10] Ray Latif: Hello, friends. I'm Ray Latif, and you're listening to the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food and beverage, Taste Radio. This episode features an interview with Kevin Lee, the co-founder of Imi, the high-profile, fast-growing brand of better-for-you ramen. An innovative brand of high-protein, low-carb, and vegan ramen, Imi defines disruption. Known for its neon yellow branding and off-the-wall social marketing, Imi launched in 2021 and has developed a loyal community of consumers who view it as a healthier option than traditional ramen. Available in six varieties, IMI is currently sold in over 2,000 retail locations nationally, including Whole Foods, Sprouts, H-E-B, The Fresh Market and Wegmans. IMI has pulled in nearly $14 million in outside capital, including funding from R&B icon Usher and professional tennis star Naomi Osaka. It might be easy to view IMI's rapid start and assume that its founders have done most things right. But like many upstart brands, a lot of things went wrong before Immy eventually found its footing. Patience, the founder's overarching vision to, quote, create a nourished and happier world, and consistently reminding themselves that challenges may lay ahead, have been key to the company's trajectory. In this interview, co-founder Kevin Lee spoke about how Immy's emphasis on community building has paid off, how the brand recovered when its first batch of products were poorly received, why the company doesn't stress about a financial return on its investment in social media, and why monthly strategy calls end with urgency about the unknown. Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I'm honored to be sitting down with Kevin Lee, who's a co-founder of EMI. Kevin, great to see you.
[00:02:10] Kevin Lee: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:02:11] Ray Latif: And thanks so much for sending samples to the office. I have about five bags here on the table and they all are making my mouth water right now. You know, it's, it's so funny when I think about EMI and just the excitement around the brand that just the enthusiasm that people have for EMI. What do you think generates that?
[00:02:29] Kevin Lee: Well, that is very kind of you. I'm so happy to see those packets on the desk as well. You know, we've been hit with wave after wave of better for you products and a lot of them are great. They taste great, but there's nothing quite as satisfying as a hot steaming bowl of ramen. It hits a very different. I think like umami taste receptor that it's very hard to get tired of eating instant ramen. Whereas, you know, on my fifth protein bar of the week, I'm just like, I do not want to eat a protein bar for like The Fresh of my life. And there's something about that where it's like, when you when you combine that deliciousness and that, like, I'm not getting tired of this bowl feeling with the, oh, by the way, like, oh, it's low carb, high protein, plant based high fiber doesn't raise my blood sugar, like, Great. I don't even want to think about that. I just know that I trust Amy. Amy's good for me. That's all that matters. And that's what I think has really resonated with customers more than anything.
[00:03:27] Ray Latif: Well, what really interested me most when I first saw EMI, and I guess this is just, you know, something that happens to a lot of folks in the food and beverage industry, is that you really get attracted to great branding and great package design. And, you know, EMI has some of the best package design out there. It's bright, it's bold, it's beautiful. It has the ramen, a picture of the ramen right on the front of the pack. You know, you can clearly tell the name of the brand. You can see the product attributes pretty clearly as well. But I want to go to a quote from an interview I did with one of your angel investors, that's Kat Cole. Kat Cole is the president and COO of Athletic Greens and a longtime food and beverage executive. And as part of our conversation, she said, there is no free lunch. You can build a beautiful brand and market your way to early customers. But if you believe your own hype and you don't actually get to the truth of, do they find enough value to reorder on their own and tell their friends, eventually you'll be found out. And I think this goes to the topic of community. And I've talked to a few entrepreneurs about the importance of building a community, especially early on, to be those ambassadors and those evangelizers of your brand. When you were starting out, how much did you think about creating that community and creating a group of people that could speak on behalf of EMI in a way that you couldn't because you just didn't have the reach or resources?
[00:05:00] Kevin Lee: I love first off, I think that you call that out because my co-founder and I have always taken this community building approach to EMI since even when EMI was just an idea, just to give you some context, even on our backgrounds. So prior to EMI, I had worked as like a product manager in a different industry and I built the world's largest, it was actually the first and largest community of product managers in the world at one point. And my co-founder, he was actually back when it was still called Facebook, he was building tools to help creators manage their communities. So we both had this lens and this mindset coming in that, hey, to build a brand, you need to have the power of a community behind you to build an enduring and sustainable brand. And what that actually looked like tangibly was Even in the R&D phase, which took us close to two years, we weren't just building in a silo in our kitchens. We had built a community at the time of a couple, I think at the time it was around 4,500, effectively, ME evangelists who had watched all of the behind the scenes of our progress in this private Facebook community we built. Separately, we had another wait list of around 30,000 people. And so it was a combination of both of these groups that really propelled us when we initially launched. And these were people who, you know, even when we launched in like Whole Foods and we were just doing a trial in five regions, they would show us pictures where they would go into the aisles and buy out the entire aisle, including the retail boxes that the packets were in. They were literally asking the store clerks, like, Hey, can we, can we take home these boxes as like, you know, little trophies, basically like souvenirs that we can keep at home. And we were so fascinated to see that, you know, our community members go above and beyond all the time. They fight for us in the comments without us asking. They give us effectively like proofs of demand. So when we approach retailers, will sometimes hint to our community like, hey, we're thinking of launching in this retailer. Just curious, do any of you shop at this retailer? And we'll get hundreds of comments and we're able to then take screenshots of that post and send it to the buyer and effectively tell the buyer, look, there is inherent demand of people who live around your store regions who are excited. They already know our brand. They are literally clamoring in the comments to go and buy our product off your shelves. we've been forever grateful because I think this, without this community, we wouldn't have gotten to where we are today. And there's also, you know, as much as I sing the praises of all the, you know, maybe the way our brand has grown, there were also really terrible moments where in the first year, our product was not great. We hit a lot of roadblocks in manufacturing. We shipped a product that we were not a hundred percent proud of, but our community, because we were so transparent with them during the whole R and D phase. And we told them what was coming. They were patient and they were willing to go and support us anyways, give us feedback. And they were right there when we launched that new version of EMI and they were right there to help support us. So I think that people have always followed EMI because of this like founder story behind the brand where We kind of brought in saying like we came in saying, look, we are just two normal guys. We were friends. We were roommates. Both of our grandparents like come from the food industry. And actually why we started this brand was because of a lot of these health problems we saw in our families. So my grandmother's pre-diabetic. Both my parents take medication for high blood pressure. There's obesity in both of our families. there was like a very personal reason why we wanted to build this brand. And I think people can see that authenticity, like right from the get go, because you cannot fake authenticity through, you know, whatever the four years we have run this brand, you have to show in day in day out. And I think that our community members, when they saw that they latched on. And I remember even when we launched in our community, a lot of people were like, I feel like I'm a mother to the Kevins. I feel like both of you are like my children and I want to do everything to see you both succeed. And that is the kind of loyalty that we are so grateful for. But I think it's really hard to fake that or to think of it from a lens of like, oh, we want to do this community because we wanted to drive first time trial and repeat purchase. People always ask us like how much Did you plan out this community? Did you have a content calendar for like the types of posts you guys made? And we were like, we did none of that. Like I would never do that. We just posted and we responded to every single comment. If you scroll back in time, you go back to like, the first two to three years of that community, you will see there is not a single comment that has been unresponded to. And it was just me and my co-founder in there day in, day out, answering every single person's comments, answering their private Facebook messages, linking people to each other. And it's just how you should do any kind of community building, in my opinion.
[00:09:47] Ray Latif: Does the community you're talking about include investors? I think that, you know, when it comes to your audience, when it comes to consumers, there's a way of speaking to them that does generate real belief that this is authentic, that there's an authentic story behind this brand. But for investors, I feel like the financial story, you know, the operation story, you know, the velocity, the gross margin story is so much more important. But, you know, did they really, were they impressed as much as your consumers with, you know, your backgrounds and the sort of why as to, you know, EMI's creation?
[00:10:24] Kevin Lee: Very much so. We have been very intentional with every investor we have brought on into this company for all of our rounds of financing. Part of that is because, you know, we knew we had a specific mission setting out with EMI that we wanted to build a company that was kind of at that intersection of for profit and for good. And it was very important for us because I've seen plenty of companies who kind of go down this dark path, a slippery slope, where they start bringing on investors who aren't necessarily like mission driven in the same way. how that can lead to different decision making and decisions that you ultimately aren't proud of when you look at yourself in the mirror at the end of the journey. And I think for me and Kei-Chan, my co-founder, we wanted to say that, hey, we were proud of every single decision. And not to mention everyone who we brought on alongside this journey, like we felt just as good about them as well. And so we vet every single person carefully. And even for example, when people ask us about like our investors, We have very specific reasons why all of our celebrity investors were brought on. And just to give you a small example, you called out Usher earlier. Like, yes, Usher is a global superstar. Yes, we did. You know, obviously, we listened to him, you know, all the time growing up. He performs at the Halftime Show recently. But below all of that, Usher is like probably one of the kindest people you will ever meet. He is extremely, extremely kind and thoughtful. He cares very deeply about the world beyond himself. He also himself like has a family with like a diabetic son and it's a very personal reason for him why he wanted to be involved with EMI and we can point to that to you know reasons behind again every single person we brought along and I think if it wasn't for our story they actually wouldn't have bought into our vision because it was very difficult to get this business off the ground it's It's very difficult to find manufacturing for instant ramen. It wasn't even necessarily a space I think most people understood because they kind of just think of instant ramen as that cheap cup noodle that you have. And I think a lot of people wouldn't understand why, you know, it's, it's now a more premium option that's healthier and better for you. So I do think the investors really bought into our story and are, and we're part of that community alongside our customers.
[00:12:35] Ray Latif: When Amy came out, I think people weren't surprised to hear that you had attracted financing, that you had attracted interest among the funding community. I think the thing that I was a little surprised by was the taste. And I'm going to reveal something, Kevin. I'm, I apologize for this, but when I first tried Imi, it wasn't for me. I'll just say that. And you had mentioned earlier that you went through some production issues and that you fixed the flavor, you fixed the texture, whatever it was that you fixed, you fixed it. But that's hard, right? I mean, they say you don't get a second chance to make a great first impression, right? Right. How did you manage, again, that process with your community and how do you manage that process with your investors such that they believe that you could do better? They stuck with you.
[00:13:25] Kevin Lee: I think the sentiment you echo here is one that me and my co-founder and many of the thousands of people who are by our side have echoed similarly. And it was an extremely rough first year for us because we knew deep down, I mean, we're both Asian-Americans who grew up eating pretty much every single instant ramen under the sun. And we knew what the golden standard of good instant ramen should taste like. And so to have to launch a product that was subpar It was, again, it was one of the worst, I think, especially for me on my mental health, manning the CX, talking to people and knowing the reactions. That was a horrible, horrible year. And I think what I tell people is in food and beverage, you are taught that you have this first impression. And, you know, once you lose a customer off taste, you never have a chance to win them back. I just don't think that's true, necessarily. And I think that the way you do have to mitigate that is, again, through the transparency you give around the brand. It is through the community that you build where you tell them stories day in and day out around what you are doing to pick yourself up and to fix whatever issues, you know, everyone is already calling out. You know, for us, we've been transparent since that first year. We talk about how rough that first version of the product is. Even if you look at our public facing Facebook ads in any founder story ad, we literally showcase, you know, in that story, we talk about how we launch our product and everyone hated it. We use that term. We said we launched our product in January of 2021 and everyone hated it. And we almost ran out of money actually, because we were six figures into debt of like producing these POs. We couldn't sell to the product, but behind the scenes, we were already going back out to fix the product, working with a different manufacturer. And there's numerous reasons why that whole debacle even happened. But again, I think it's like, if you are transparent with your audience, with your community, and you tell them, look, I know what's wrong. I'm fessing up to it. I've heard all of your feedback and I'm integrating this feedback. And oh, by the way, like here is the timeline. We promise we will execute against this timeline and we will get you something that is much better, better than, you know, what you deserve. Frankly, I think people will buy into that. They will give you a second chance. Second chances are hard to come by, especially in today's society with cancel culture and everything, but I think it's so important. And, you know, our investors, I just think you remember. We had two investors, Matt Higgins, who is the founder of RSE Ventures. He was also a guest Shark Tank. One of his closest friends, Jesse Daris, who's the founder of Daris PR, they typically invest together. And I remember Matt Higgins tried our first version and he hated it. He absolutely hated it. And I remember he told us, he was like, look, I almost did not invest with Jesse. But Jesse told me, he said, hey, Matt. You have to bet on the jockey, not the like, you have to believe the person and you have to believe that they are going to fix the product. But if you wait to invest by the time the product is like perfect, like it's going to be too late. And they took that gamble, then lo and behold, like. We lived up to those expectations, thank God. We executed, but we fixed that product. Now Matt loves it. His entire family eats it. He texts me all the time saying, here's a picture of my wife eating this. They just invited us back to go speak at HBS about this journey where we went from this really bad product all the way to now being featured in Food Network and Food & Wine as Editor's Choice instant ramen alongside these traditional instant ramen brands that have no health benefits. I think that's just like a wonderful, we call it, it's almost like a hero's journey. We're not calling ourselves heroes by any regard. It's just like people want a seat. They can't expect perfection. And I think as long as you are transparent about that, I think you will always be able to win those customers back.
[00:17:16] Ray Latif: I didn't come back to me for some time. That's my second point of honesty here in this conversation. Well, I love the honesty. We got to match it one for one here. Well, you know what got me back on the train, on the Emmy train, was social media. And I started to see posts about Emmy on Instagram. And I was like, wow, this looks really good. Maybe we should give it a second chance. And I did. And I was like, okay, great. I'm glad I did. And your social media strategy has been I would say very successful. You have about 150,000 followers on Instagram. Your TikTok audience is outstanding, or your TikTok content strategy is outstanding. Your audience is growing for sure. But let's talk about Instagram first. It's just this interesting mix of traditional images and videos that you think you would see on Instagram. And then stuff that just is like, whoa, where'd that come from? And the where'd that come from concept that I'm talking about is a post that I saw from a couple of months ago that said, what Asian grandparents do at grocery stores? And it's a multi-slide post. And the first one, it says tap watermelons to see if they're ripe. Walk around the store with their hands behind their back. I'm sorry, but it's just like, it's really, really funny content that seemingly has nothing to do with the brand. You know, when you are curating your content strategy specifically for Instagram, let's start there. How do you think about that? How do you think that that process works between humor and, you know, product recipes and, you know, showing the package and showing the images and content about the founders? How does that all work?
[00:18:51] Kevin Lee: Yeah. You know, a long time ago when my co-founder and I first started Emmy, We kept trying to form fit our social media content to what we thought our target customer would want to see. And it wasn't until like eight months in, we looked at, you know, our social media and we said, both of us were just like, my God, we hate all of this. Like, this is not who we are as people. And we had to completely flip that script. And we started realizing people are coming to ME. And this should have been obvious in hindsight, like the community came to find us because they loved our story. They wanted to learn more about what we were building. And if you go to our Facebook community, you see all of like the behind the scenes and why people were so engaged, they wanted to follow our journey. So if that was the case, then it should have been obvious then that we should put out content that is interesting to what me and K-Chan and our team, frankly, like, you know, that we love, that we want to put out into the world. And I think stuff like the, you know, what our Asian grandparents would do in a grocery store is Like it's quite literally what our grandparents do in a grocery store. Like it's not hard for us to make that content because that is literally what we grew up seeing in our everyday lives. Like to this day, I still tap on the watermelons myself because that's what I learned from my grandmother and my parents. And, you know, my dad, when he walks around the grocery store, I actually just posted a photo because they came, my parents came to visit me here in LA and I took them to Erewhon and they walked around Erewhon with their hands behind their, like their hands behind their back, just laughing at every single price in the store. Because, you know, the first thing they do is they go to the avocados just to gauge how expensive the store is. And they were like $6 an avocado. And they just started laughing. Like they were bursting out laughing. And I remember I like, I tweeted about this and went viral instantly. And I was like, my God, this should have been a social post, but. We just realized, look, we're living our lives as two Asian-Americans who grew up with Asian heritage, but with American values because our parents immigrated here to give us a chance at a better life. And as a result, we have this really unique perspective in between both of these worlds. And there's no playbook for this. It's not like there were a lot of brands who came before us who lived this unique life because we are first generation immigrants. That is literally the definition of first generation immigrant. We're trying to pave the way for future. you know, in-betweens who are just like us who came to this, you know, their parents may have came to this country. And so that is the content we're trying to put out in the world where it is this blend where you'll see this Asian heritage, the elements of our culture that we want to introduce to Americans. But then you also see these crazy recipes that combine ramen with like traditionally American recipes. And you might be like, well, what the heck? That's not like uniquely Asian or uniquely American, but you know what? That's our experience. And that's what we want to show with the world, because that's what attracted people to us in the first place. And I think you'll see that theme resonant through all of our social content, whether it's IG or TikTok or emails, the campaigns that are coming up this year that we haven't announced yet. But that's kind of the underlying thesis behind everything.
[00:21:52] Ray Latif: You know, Instagram is again, this, this great mix or your Instagram page has this great mix of food recipes, sort of humorous content. Whereas on TikTok, I feel like what you're doing is creating a whole nother community almost. You know, you have a lot of posts and a lot of video that focus on this sort of ramen on the street. It's like a person on the street interviewing people about things that have nothing to do with Emmy.
[00:22:17] Kevin Lee: You know, we've always told our team, our mission is to make nourishment delicious and fun, but our vision is to create a nourished and happier world. And that sounds very woo-woo because most vision statements, most mission statements are, but if you've ever spent time with me or my co-founder, I think you'll realize very quickly, like the type of people we are and the type of energy we want to spread into the world. And it's why I mentioned like, it wasn't enough for us to just build like a, know, a delicious instant ramen and call it a day. Like we had to build something we felt was at that intersection of also doing good for the world. And it's not like, again, it's not something you can fake. Like you can go on my LinkedIn and you can see exactly that I have been living this my entire life. So as my co-founder, we've both been very passionate about like building a happier and more nourished world. And that overarching theme is actually what you are mentioning. Like if you go to our TikTok ramen on the street, Yes, we have a person in an Emmy costume, but she's interviewing people. She's asking these really deep, thoughtful questions that honestly inspire people. They spark a lot of creativity, a lot of joy. They make people happy. You read through all of the comments. People are like, you made my day. You have like put me on a different path. You changed the whole trajectory of my mood. And that is the kind of energy we want to put out in the world. And yes, I think that they're like, it's awesome that it overlaps a little bit with the idea of instant ramen, because If you think about instant ramen, like it was always there for you. It has been that buddy by your side who has always comforted you in any time of need. You can kind of create that emotional resonance, I think with instant ramen. And to us, that's just, that's a positive thing, right? If you're already thinking these like positive, happy thoughts, as you think about Emmy to us, that's already a win in our book, but. Again, it's just a brand extension of who we are as founders. And it took us a long time to realize that, hey, as long as we're putting out something in the world that we feel like good about, that resonates with us as founders, I think that's a good thing for the brand. And it's just an extension of who we are as people. It doesn't necessarily have to make perfect sense. As you called out, that whole TikTok may look like something separate. It's actually not to us. It's actually, for me and Caitlyn, I think it's one of our most proud moments in the Emmy journey. Like we've had many proud moments, seeing people happy when they eat our product, but seeing literally like 10 to 15 million people a month be impacted by our videos in some positive way, I can't think of a better thing to do with our time or with like the privilege we have as a company to afford to be able to do that. That's a great thing. I think Tom Bilyeu, the founder of Quest said this, where He's like, if you finish your journey and you look at the mirror and you look at the person looking back and you're proud of that person, you have done a good job. I think that's what we've always aspired to do. And so if I look back and the only good thing that came out of this was that ramen on the street, tick tock, I will feel very, very happy. That's something every founder listening to this should aspire to.
[00:25:09] Ray Latif: All right, I'm gonna put my cynical investor hat on. The cynical investor is gonna say, okay, well, that's all well and good that you guys are happy that you're putting love and happiness out in there in the world, but where's the return on investment for social media, for your social media strategy? And that's a pretty harsh thing to say, but I know people would say something like that or ask that question. How do you talk about that? I mean, how do you know and do you really care if TikTok and Instagram are influential and impactful on driving awareness and trial, more importantly, and velocity for me?
[00:25:44] Kevin Lee: Well, I think the thing I like to point to is like, why are we doing this interview? It's because you saw the social, you saw the TikTok, and you were interested. And I think that's something that I've tried very, very hard not to quantify. It's the exact same reason that when we built that community in the early days, we did not quantify that Facebook community. Everyone was trying to point it to some dollar figure. They said like, oh, you know, the time you spend in that community, what has it led to in dollar sales? We never did any of that. That was never the point, but it still led to good things. And I think with this TikTok, we know it's going to lead to some positive benefit. I mean, yes, I can put on my investor and founder hat. I can give you all the, you know, I can be like, oh yes, it'll drive this many impressions. And that would cost us this much in CPMs and we spent it on pay channels. But again, it's like, if people are already talking about it, which it seems like it is, it's creating waves in the industry. I think that can only mean a great thing. We have buyers who have definitely already seen it. Whenever we go to trade shows, people come up to us, our booth, and they say, Hey, I saw you guys on Tik TOK. And it's not just, I saw you on TikTok. It's, I like saw your content. I didn't even realize it was from you guys. I just like really enjoyed it. And I follow, I was like, wow, okay. It's a media property that you're just following your free time. And then, oh, by the way, you discover that Emmy's behind it. I don't think that's ever a bad brand association. So again, I think sometimes these things are like magic. It's like, you don't necessarily want to quantify the magic because that's when the magic stops. And I know that sounds like a very woo-woo statement, but— No, I love that.
[00:27:15] Ray Latif: You don't necessarily want to quantify the magic. I love that. So do you think about a balance or a sort of a cadence in what you put out there and when?
[00:27:27] Kevin Lee: Within EMI, we do think about Like I think, yes, our content strategy for IG, for example, it generally does fit under certain themes, right? So the theme might be like Asian food and culture. It might be specific to like our ramen, which is the recipes. It might be like humorous memes related to ramen in some way. And traditional content marketing would call those content pillars. So we have a sense based on our brand, what our content pillars are. And those content pillars, again, are based off of us as individuals, because for me and K-Chan, it's, we're spreading, again, it's like, it's the culture we grew up with, which is unique to us. It's also the product itself, which has both like Taste Radio health, you know, certain value props. And then it's also again, like this idea of like, are we creating a nourished and happier world and like what fits under that theme. You know, I'm sure our social person would say, yes, there's more of like a strategy around, hey, this week, we need to have two of these three of these. But overall, I think as long as they're fitting under those like idea of those content pillars, that generally is building the right resonance with the customer. Someone who is interested in like Asian American food, health and nutrition, learning more about like Asian culture, wants to like a laugh out of their day or feel good moment. I think TikTok calls it hope core is the hashtag, which I think is pretty awesome. So I would say we definitely have a hope core vibe. If you haven't, you know, distilled that already from this interview, but that's generally how we approach it.
[00:28:57] Ray Latif: I'm glad you brought up your social media person or team. I spoke with the founders of Bloom Nutrition a few months back, and they were very upfront about the fact that they hire young people and people who are very in touch with modern culture and pop culture to be their social media gurus, essentially. Is that a similar approach or do you take a similar approach at EMI and, you know, look for folks who are intimate users and have, I guess, a deep understanding of how these platforms work?
[00:29:34] Kevin Lee: So for IG, our team member who runs that small, I wouldn't call him a Gen Z by any, I think he's actually a millennial. So probably not, yes, I guess relatively younger. And then for TikTok, she's definitely Gen Z. But again, that was not intentional. It's funny because our TikTok person, Emily, she was actually my wife's best friend, worked at BuzzFeed, and Emily was like an intern for her. And I remember when I interviewed Emily, I was looking for a specific type of energy. It was like, you know, is she someone who is going to be like very bubbly, very creative, you know, doesn't have to follow pop culture by any means. But like, also, is she a good person? Because my firm belief has always been that companies are just leverage vehicles for founders to deliver their values upon the world. And that sounds like a mouthful, but really it's like if you have certain values, those are for sure going to be exemplified in the types of employees that you hire. And then those employees are then going to push those into the work they put out into the world, which is going to attract a certain type of customer. So for us, it's always been about the. And it's more about we have a very, we actually do have a very diligent hiring process for every team member, certain cultural values we are looking for. And I think because she embodied those cultural values, I was not so much concerned as to whether she was pop culture focused or Gen Z. It was just, I know that whatever you experiment doing, you're probably going to figure out in a way that we're going to be very happy represents us. And I think the not so like well-told story is that this TikTok that you see ramen on the street was not like an overnight success. This was actually like a nine month journey where Emily literally quite literally like failed for eight months straight, like experimenting day in, day out. She was feeling pressure. We were trying to give her a safe space saying, Hey, do not stress at all about numbers or whatever. Just experiment. Like we trust you because that's why we hired you. And on the ninth month, it all hit. And literally within a three month period from that ninth month, we grew to 100,000 followers and we grew to 10 to 15 million views per month. Because I think even in the comments and like you can see in the comments, people are like, I love this person. They don't even know her name, probably, but they're like, I love this person. She asked such thoughtful questions. And that's because we interviewed for that quality. And I knew she was that type of person. So it was almost like trust the process. And I say that to her all the time. I say, trust the process. You are going to figure it out. I have full confidence in you. That's why we hired you for the type of person you are. And I know that the TikTok or whatever spinoffs of media properties you create are going to be great. And yeah, that's how we think about it.
[00:32:08] Ray Latif: I am so glad, Kevin, that you share that with us because it is a process. It's probably easy to look at success on social media and say, oh, they just nailed it. They know what they're doing and they're just really good at it. But no, I think it takes trial and error. It takes time and it takes some luck and luck in achieving virality. And you got to keep going. Thank you so much again for sharing that with us. Of course. Last thing, Kevin, you know, as a founder who's been doing this for a few years now, I think about, you know, all the things that you've done right and all the things that have gone your way. But when, you know, you think about the next few years or even just, you know, this year, 2024, how much does I guess the impending crisis way into your mind. And I bring that up because there's always an issue that comes up in entrepreneurship. There's always an issue that comes up when building a food or beverage brand. And as much as you want to think about the successes that you want to achieve and the things that you want to do with ME, I would think that you also want to be very, very cautious about what could come, what could happen, some of the risks that are associated with your business plan and growth plan. Do you think about that stuff as much as I might think you do?
[00:33:36] Kevin Lee: We think about it all the time. Every month we do a monthly strategy call with the entire team. And we use that session to talk through our most recent investor update, which we send monthly, but we always end. Like we, we also talk about the positives and all the things we're excited about, but the last thing we end on is what keeps us up at night. And me and K-Chan each spend like a solid 15 to 20 minutes talking about literally what is going to keep us up. Like, what is the pitfall we see in this business right now that we are definitely scared of. And we do this consistently to remind the team that yes, things might be going well. Now there might be some great momentum, but. we've been founders long enough to know that it's not always going to be rosy and beautiful. And like, we've been through shit before, especially in that first, you know, year where it was just like horrible. It was like gut-wrenching horrible, like literally to the point where I was like sitting in the bathroom with the lights off, sitting in the tub alone, you know, head in my hands, like worried about whether we're going to survive. And I try to remind the team, like, look, it's, you have to be prepared for that. This wartime mode, we call it. And so there's a number of those things I could list out for you, but I guess, yeah, to answer your question, I think about that all the time. And I don't even know if it's a healthy thing, to be honest, because I've actually been trying to like retrain myself where, you know, I don't want to always like every time something good happens in my life, I just start thinking about like, what the negative will be like, I think a lot of people do this. It's actually like, there's a book called The Big Leap, which is just about this, where everyone grows up. within this like comfortable range of like room temperature. And the moment we like exceed that room temperature, we try to like tell ourself a negative story to bring ourselves down because we think, oh, we're not, we don't deserve to be at this next phase of our life. And you'll see, you see this in a lot of things. Like if you haven't been dating for a long time and you find someone amazing, you'll suddenly like with, you know, within a few months of that relationship, you'll be like, Ooh, something must be wrong with this person or something's going to be wrong with me. And then you like, you kind of like sabotage yourself and it happens all the time. Like. I remember I was getting married and I went on a honeymoon and things were amazing. But during that mini moon, I was on the beach and I was just like, I can't be happy right now. Something has to be going wrong. And that's a dangerous feeling, I think, for a lot of founders out there because we go through so many ups and downs on a constant daily basis that we can't allow ourselves to be happy. We can't allow ourselves to take the big leap to that next phase of growth. I guess like I kind of went on a rant here, but this is like something I've been thinking a lot about lately and whether it's actually been holding me back as a founder from the next phase of growth. I think it's like important to be self-aware, but I also want to feel that gratitude and let myself be in the moment of like, Hey, maybe there is momentum and it's okay. And it's a great thing. I don't need to, you know, stress about the next pitfall that's coming. So that's my end rant of the day.
[00:36:27] Ray Latif: I thank you so, so much for being so honest and candid, Kevin. I think your, I wouldn't call it a rant, but you know, what you just talked about is something that I think a lot of founders feel. And I think a lot of people are just looking for balance. You know, you want the highs. You also want to be aware of the risks, but you also want to feel good about everything that you're doing. And it's very difficult, but if you can find some semblance of balance, I think that's a good thing. It helps if you have a fantastic brand and something that you can build upon and a great team and a great community and people who just generally love what you're doing. And I think that's, you know, in me in a nutshell. And it's, you know, again, one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you today. And I really, really appreciate you spending the time with me and sharing your story with our audience.
[00:37:15] Kevin Lee: Thank you so much for having me. And I appreciate the candor from your end too.
[00:37:19] Ray Latif: Thanks so much again, Kevin. That brings us to the end of this episode of Taste Radio. Thank you so much for listening. Taste Radio is a production of BevNET.com Incorporated. Our audio engineer for Taste Radio is Joe Cracci. Our technical director is Joshua Pratt, and our video editor is Ryan Galang. Our social marketing manager is Amanda Smerlinski, and our designer is Amanda Huang. Just a reminder, 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. Check us out on Instagram. Our handle is bevnettasteradio. 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.
[00:38:13] Kevin Lee: you
