00;00;06;23 - 00;00;35;07
Speaker 1
Hi. Welcome to Dig in the podcast brought to you by Digg Insights. Every week we interview founders, marketers and researchers from innovative brands to learn how they're approaching their role and their category in a clever way. Hi. Welcome back to this week's episode of Dig In. I am joined today by Tyler Phillips, who is the founder of the Hummingbird, a new sort of snacking universe that he's created.

00;00;35;16 - 00;00;48;03
Speaker 1
Today we're going to talk about some really cool ways that he's positioning his snacks, brands, blending a lot of nostalgic marketing with a lot of sort of new tactics. Tyler, how are you doing?

00;00;48;27 - 00;01;11;08
Speaker 2
I'm doing well. Thank you for having me on the podcast. Hello, listeners. Welcome to the Hummiiverse, I guess. And well, we'll talk to you later on on what that even means. But it's my pleasure to be on here today and share the story and hopefully some helpful tips to maybe founders out there or just people in other businesses, even to life.

00;01;11;10 - 00;01;17;28
Speaker 2
Maybe, maybe a little bit of life. Tips for myself and Hank, the mighty mascot of the Hummiiverse or one of them.

00;01;19;19 - 00;01;37;20
Speaker 1
Love it. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. We've got to touch on all of the mascots if there's more than one. Yeah. To get to get the listeners kind of aware of who were chatting to today. Can you tell us a little bit about your background or how you ended up creating the hummingbirds?

00;01;38;14 - 00;02;03;12
Speaker 2
Yeah, so might sound like something that I came up with while I was like raving at a festival or camping or something like that, but it happened kind of naturally, just, I guess to go back a little bit for it before the Hummiiverse was created. I grew up in upstate New York and so was part of a large, kind of wild, very busy on the Go Family of five.

00;02;03;12 - 00;02;24;21
Speaker 2
And I'm the oldest. And then we also have a chain of hardware stores in the area actually shut up for hardware for anyone. Albany, stop into a new Alice. My store, my parents, John and Amy will greet you very much and can tell them that you heard on the Digg and podcast. But that might be a small niche here team for that.

00;02;24;21 - 00;02;47;05
Speaker 2
But yes, the family stores were really kind of like inspiration. Even I didn't, even though I may have not realized it at the time, just being a young age, at a young age, working in the store, being the oldest, I was always around conversations with my dad and his father, who passed it down to him. And it's been many generations since 1886.

00;02;47;05 - 00;03;08;06
Speaker 2
So I guess it's kind of in our blood is serving the community and building a small business to support that community. And so although hardware and snacks might not go hand-in-hand, I think that was one of those early seeds that was planted that kind of grew over time. And then I went to university at UMD, University of Maryland for finance and accounting.

00;03;08;29 - 00;03;33;17
Speaker 2
I was pretty good at math growing up, and so that's kind of where the universe seemed to be directing myself in. And maybe some younger people can relate to this. When you're younger, you don't really know that much about yourself or your interests. Some a lot of it is sometimes things that are projected on to you or people tell you, Oh, you're good at this, you should go do this, and and you start listening to them sometimes more than you're listening to yourself.

00;03;33;17 - 00;03;49;24
Speaker 2
So I think that's how I ended up in finance and accounting. And during those four years I learned a lot in the business school. I made a lot of great friends and networking and a lot of those friends to in the business school, maybe they had entrepreneurial families, but a lot of them went into the corporate world after.

00;03;50;20 - 00;04;17;03
Speaker 2
And so during my senior year, I kind of had a pivot, I guess, where I was talking with a friend. And this kind of weaves into some of the futuristic stuff we're doing in the company, because it was actually a friend that introduced me to cryptocurrency at the time. He had been like one of those entrepreneurs. I think like since the age of 14, he was buying and selling sneakers on eBay and then he always kind of scaled different businesses.

00;04;17;09 - 00;04;38;04
Speaker 2
He ended up having some like shoe machines and malls and stuff like that. And we were just talking and he's telling me about this new thing. Ethereum, that he was investing in. And so right before senior year, I started reading up more about it. I learned about the technology, so how it would disrupt a lot of things. I think I got a little bit too.

00;04;38;04 - 00;05;03;25
Speaker 2
I tend to be an early adopter and I think that the technology will arrive sooner than it actually does. So I had thought that my career in accounting was kind of in its last days that this blockchain technology would make everything transparent and traceable, and that could really transform like auditing and tracking transactions and a lot of thing that a lot of things accounts too.

00;05;03;25 - 00;05;24;25
Speaker 2
And so I think during that time I kind of was thinking, well, what else would I want to do? And I, I loved learning about this and I talked to that friend more and we had the idea to move to Puerto Rico, actually. And at the time, the business plan was to help small businesses adopt this new technology, cryptocurrency and blockchain and kind of consult with them on how it's the best fit to their business.

00;05;24;25 - 00;05;46;25
Speaker 2
And so this was kind of it started in 2017 and then we graduated in 2018. So by the time we graduated, that kind of been one of those bubbles in the cryptocurrency market that it popped. And we found ourselves in Puerto Rico like a beautiful, wonderful island. But now we weren't sure what to do. So I started working with some startups.

00;05;46;25 - 00;06;09;09
Speaker 2
They're not in food yet, but still throughout childhood until then had always loved food. And then as I got older, got more into nutrition and and really focusing on what was being put into my body. But work with startups and things like renewable energy there through a free accelerator program, consulting with another kind of serial entrepreneur from the Bay Area that had moved there.

00;06;09;09 - 00;06;31;20
Speaker 2
He was only like 19 years old, one of those college dropouts, and he had many businesses that kind of consulted with him on and helped with, like business partnerships, customer insight to kind of work on our MVP product investor meetings and just love the relationship building side of things and the collaborative ness. I think of the startup world.

00;06;31;20 - 00;06;56;08
Speaker 2
And then in January 2020, I promise this is kind of the end of this origin story, I guess for now. But January of 2020 is kind of one hand. Comey maybe would have been born. It's our universe, I guess he's our mighty chickpea mascot. And really the first mascot in the universe. And it all originated around. I was coming back from a hot run outside.

00;06;56;18 - 00;07;16;11
Speaker 2
I started like loving endurance training, actually, even right down coming off of like 90 minutes on the bike. And it just gets me in kind of this creative flow and it's where you can kind of sort through all those problems that sometimes if you're focusing too much on them, they're tough to solve. But when you have that space, sometimes the solutions just pop into your head.

00;07;16;11 - 00;07;38;24
Speaker 2
And so it was on this run. I came back and I was creating like ice cream for the first time in a while, but I was on like more of a plant based diet and I had cut out added sugars and I didn't want to compromise that there was nothing available like that in Puerto Rico. So I looked up this recipe and it was really kind of wacky, was like, you take a dessert hummus and you can add milk to it.

00;07;38;24 - 00;07;59;10
Speaker 2
And in this case, I added a plant based milk and a little bit of plant based protein. And then I mixed it up and stuck it in the freezer. And it was honey was what we called it. It was like this vegan protein ice cream. And from there there was a lot of pivots. And then obviously one of the big things maybe we can talk about leaders like adapting to different things.

00;07;59;17 - 00;08;19;09
Speaker 2
COVID happened only a few months later, right after that friend who I had moved with and then a few of our mentors, they were actually going to invest in the company. So it was like four of us. And then I found myself in March back home in Albany, helping out with the the Phillips hardware chain of hardware stores, upstate New York.

00;08;19;23 - 00;08;38;23
Speaker 2
It was an essential business. So scans very busy and we're trying again to support the community. But I was still making this product by night and ended up getting into an accelerator program called Union Kitchen and they kind of brought the business to life. And in the first real sense of like, what do we do to get on store shelves?

00;08;38;23 - 00;09;04;14
Speaker 2
And we launched a popsicle, went from ice cream, identified more of a gap in the market with the popsicles with honey. I think the one connection is always trying to find that blue ocean opportunity, that white space, instead of going and competing in a saturated market, just being bootstrapped and not having a huge budget to really compete against the big guns, it's like, okay, they're doing this well, how can we be different and still say we need them?

00;09;04;14 - 00;09;31;25
Speaker 2
Maybe they're too big to focus on right now. And so that was a learning lesson. And then since then kind of learned to get out of the frozen category. And we've been transitioning since last year into shelf stable snacks, first with the mini muffin Kickstarter campaign. And that has had its own challenges partially due to the Russia Ukraine situation and the labor shortage market here.

00;09;31;25 - 00;09;55;01
Speaker 2
So that's been delayed a lot. Sourcing ingredients has been kind of tricky. And then that's what opened the door to introduce points into the world, which is our only product right now for sale. And it's and actually as of this week, ten retail markets in Los Angeles. And then we're going to open up e-commerce this fall as the temperatures cool down a bit.

00;09;55;01 - 00;10;02;00
Speaker 2
And we don't have to worry about melted chocolate as we shift it. So that's the long story, I guess.

00;10;03;04 - 00;10;29;08
Speaker 1
But that's so interesting. No, I really I think a lot of people, you know, maybe further on in the lifetime of the business, get like so tired of telling the story of how everything came together. So it's nice to talk to someone who's happy to tell the story. I think a lot of the time when I'm interviewing people, they're like, Oh my gosh, another person has asked me to tell the story of the business.

00;10;29;08 - 00;10;52;02
Speaker 1
So that's it's really interesting. Thank you. So you've been through lots of iterations in terms of the products that you kind of brought to market or you thought about bringing to market. You got the points product on the market. Now, I think one thing that would be really interesting to dove into is the way that you market Hummii or the products themselves.

00;10;52;13 - 00;11;11;06
Speaker 1
We talked a little bit about this when I had a chance to chat to you earlier this week. But you were saying, you know, it's a mash up of kind of new and nostalgic themes or reference points. Talk to me about how you kind of developed the visual brand for your for your business.

00;11;12;07 - 00;11;33;26
Speaker 2
So I guess to start off, like I don't come from a background in marketing or design, I like to do and drew cartoons a lot when I was little and maybe some of that was like suppressed while I was in college and now it's just all built up and came out with making these storylines and these characters. But some of that mash up might be unintentional.

00;11;33;26 - 00;12;03;29
Speaker 2
But then as I make it, people like, Oh, that looks cool. Like, I'm like, okay, why? I didn't mean for it to look like it's like a collage of different things that just me not knowing, like games that well and how to set things up. But it's cool because it kind of resonates with the do it yourself. I think nature of like just small businesses and and especially this brand to how it like our story I think can live through the characters and the characters are kind of these underdogs in their own universe.

00;12;03;29 - 00;12;27;22
Speaker 2
And so the storytelling in that way, I think stemmed from like just growing up with that large family of again, like five kids. We were always like stuck in front of the TV. Sometimes if the parents were dealing with someone else and we bonded over like TV's going to the movies a lot. And so all that storytelling. And then my dad is just like a natural storyteller.

00;12;28;28 - 00;13;02;08
Speaker 2
I listened to so many. I was very quiet as a kid and I was into so many conversations that he had telling these fun stories that, like you learn a lot from but also engages you like he's asking questions throughout. And so I think we want to do something similar with the honey bears where as we evolve, it becomes something that the community can get, I guess, invested in and and I can evolve to it so that we're not just the ones marketing to the community, but it's really a back and forth kind of dialog and conversation.

00;13;02;08 - 00;13;24;28
Speaker 2
And the way that lives with the snacks is like it's also very easy to show what a flavor is at a quick glance or like what the product might be if we have like an anamorphic cartoon that shows it right on the package because grocery stores are very busy. I mean, that's one thing I've learned and we can even probably improve on some of our packaging designers.

00;13;25;12 - 00;13;48;01
Speaker 2
It's got a lot going on and a lot of colors, which maybe works well in the digital sense in the world when people have more time to like zoom in and see it. But on grocery store shelves, depending on the setting, all that noise, instead of drawing attention, it can almost be overwhelming to certain people. Tends to be, though younger people are drawn to that and that's kind of one of our core communities.

00;13;48;18 - 00;13;50;12
Speaker 2
So I hope that answer the question a little bit.

00;13;51;09 - 00;14;23;02
Speaker 1
Yeah, definitely. And I feel like as we're talking about the brand and the company that you've built, it's all kind of bringing up things, I guess, from the past about why you would have wanted to create a business around food or just like a business in general. When we think about the mascots or like the cartoons that you're using on your packaging and on your marketing, does that kind of come from that as well?

00;14;23;03 - 00;14;34;24
Speaker 1
Like this? I don't know. Like little kids sitting in front of the Saturday cartoons in the morning, is that kind of like that nostalgic, warm and fuzzy feeling that you wanted to convey?

00;14;35;05 - 00;14;57;21
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think actually it does. And I think there was a lot of nostalgic emotion going around, like when the pandemic hit, and that was really when this company kind of like started, really. I mean, it was just a little fun idea, like was making samples, had a little bit of a logo and I think just incoming like a first cartoon version of them before, but everything else came afterwards.

00;14;57;21 - 00;15;22;07
Speaker 2
And when people were stressed and felt like there's a lot of uncertainty in the world, we tend to go towards things we understand and things that make us comfortable. And so, yeah, like you're saying, a lot of this probably stemmed from that and I think a lot of the characters there different personalities. It just comes from relationships in my own life or other people who join the team sometimes is like an early in show task.

00;15;22;07 - 00;15;47;22
Speaker 2
I'll be like, Well, we're working on this new character, but we don't have a nailed down yet doing a kind of as your first homework assignment for, say, like, go help create this character and it helps bring in different perspectives and voices. So that's that's the idea with the characters, too, is like not only do they look different because they're different ingredients with the points each color of the as this this is like an M&M alternative that's naturally colored.

00;15;47;22 - 00;16;06;08
Speaker 2
So they have like a little bit less pride or tones, which again kind of plays into that nostalgia because when you picture like all time things in the forties, I don't know why in our heads everything just seems a little bit like sepia toned. And so yeah, they all have their own personalities.

00;16;06;08 - 00;16;28;24
Speaker 1
So interesting. Thank you, Tyler, for kind of explaining that. And thank you for letting me, I guess, ask you questions about your family life. It's just really interesting to hear where all of these ideas come from. I kind of I wanted to ask a little bit about your actual products because I know you said you had the muffin and then there was the popsicle and then you were toying with ice cream for a little while.

00;16;29;16 - 00;16;58;11
Speaker 1
Do you have any specific sort of rules or anything that makes, I guess, your product? Is there a threshold that needs to hit or rules that it needs to hit to be like honey compliant? I feel like that sounds like a really intense word, but essentially I just want I want to understand how, you know, that something is up to standard or that, you know, works for for you and your customers.

00;16;58;24 - 00;17;21;20
Speaker 2
Yeah, I like that. They come in compliance and comics compliance rule book or something. Yeah. Yeah. Really guardrails and I guess like anything we always hear like in life, like once you have rules, that doesn't mean you can't break them, but at least it helps you focus a little bit. And then you can take it on a case by case situation of like, okay, is there a reason to break this and should we?

00;17;21;29 - 00;17;47;19
Speaker 2
And so the rules are that the products are plant based. That's both for my personal health, I guess like source where I've just personally I know everybody's body is different too, but I felt much better on a plant based diet. And I think our products too. I want to help promote that. And it also comes from a place of sustainability.

00;17;47;19 - 00;18;18;10
Speaker 2
And now we're reaching like even in that short time of like two years since the company has launched, there's interesting things developing. Like you can have a product now that's not plant based, but it's more sustainable because they're doing things like lab grown meat. You can get away without like getting it from the cow per se. So like I guess that would be where the conversation about breaking the rule would come or like to amend the rule, the Hermes compliance rulebook.

00;18;20;05 - 00;18;43;09
Speaker 2
But, and then the other ones I would say is low sugar. Again, like I just saw a big benefit in my own energy, which is ironic because people think like sugar will give you energy, and yet does. But it's usually short lived and it leads to a crash. And like some of our products like these points, they are keto friendly.

00;18;44;04 - 00;19;13;04
Speaker 2
I wouldn't say I'm on the keto diet, but I may be in ketosis sometimes. But the main difference there is like we're not a brand, whereas keto brands tend to be very high fat because that's what your body is using as a fuel source. And we more I think it might be more of use to people in like the prediabetic and diabetic communities, which is like a large portion of our population right now.

00;19;13;04 - 00;19;34;05
Speaker 2
I think like a third of adults, 18 year old, are either pre-diabetic or diabetic and those numbers looking like they may increase. So like we just want our snacks to be something that people can enjoy and again, that nostalgic. So it's like maybe something they missed from their childhood and now they can enjoy. No, it's not going to spike their glucose levels, give them a horrible crash later.

00;19;35;24 - 00;20;02;05
Speaker 2
And then with the plant based and sustainability aspects like it's helping the planet too, which I think that that'll make you feel good. And then as you eat it, know your body will feel that. So hopefully it's like instead of like the M&M alternative, I'm stealing this from a a friend I met this weekend at a sampling of that and said I could use it but is like mighty and mindful is kind of our version with the points.

00;20;02;05 - 00;20;42;29
Speaker 2
And I think that's how we look to grow in the future. And the one person I didn't talk about in this scenario who might get angry if I didn't mention of his hand coming and I the power of the check to and so I chickpeas where that's a I guess an example like with points looked at amending that rule of like we didn't use chickpeas in this product right now but what we're working on is getting to a point of scale where we can start doing neat things with the formula and we could introduce a version of it that has a little more protein in it, and that would be in the form of chickpea

00;20;42;29 - 00;21;07;25
Speaker 2
protein that we're sourcing in partnership with this company that's based in Virginia, new nutrition. And they make this product called our teas. And it's like you can't taste like those off notes that sometimes you get with pea protein. So I'm a big proponent. It's like a little club. Any time I meet, like other chickpea brands, we just end up nerding out and sharing our love of the chickpea and oh, cool.

00;21;08;05 - 00;21;33;15
Speaker 1
I mean, as I hear you talk about, you know, the chick, the mighty turkey and all these different terms, like it just seems like, you know, and of course, you know so much about about plant based food and how to feel your body in the right way. What would you say to someone who maybe comes from a finance background like you, you know, loves food and wants to get into this space?

00;21;33;15 - 00;21;40;25
Speaker 1
Like what would your advice be to someone like that? Because you've had to kind of upskill that part of you, I'm sure, really quickly.

00;21;42;20 - 00;22;01;27
Speaker 2
And it depends on what level you're at in the finance world. Some people have a lot of success if they come from like an investment banking background where they've done it for five years, they've saved up some money and they have like some great connections that can even be like some of their first investors and then think you're setting yourself up for a good foundation.

00;22;01;27 - 00;22;31;29
Speaker 2
The one thing that like sometimes those people like and something that I need to like tap into and kind of at it coming out of college, maybe all the running in the time in Puerto Rico, like all that fresh air and kind of shock to like being in somewhere different is getting that creativity out and not being beholden to numbers, which is not a great like little car with an awesome founder, Jimmy Schmidt, who started Schmidt's naturals, the Joe Dent Company.

00;22;32;20 - 00;22;53;24
Speaker 2
And she now does investment in other companies. But she said you have to be a certain level of like naive ness. Like if you're spending all your time in the data and the research and looking at what other brands are doing, you're not going to do you're not going to build something unique. And you might be there's always like things with data, like what is the data?

00;22;53;24 - 00;23;27;28
Speaker 2
Not saying sometimes is more important and you might only discover that by just really getting your voice out. And then your communities voice out and building around, around that. But yeah, I wanted to say don't go into food at the beginning, but that would have been kind of harsh. It was tough working up the numbers and yeah, I didn't know that before getting into this as it gets really, really difficult to get a profitable business off like right off the bat.

00;23;27;28 - 00;24;01;17
Speaker 2
But maybe that's where if you come from the finance world, you have some connections to money and investment and really smart people to make sure you're driving down your costs and pricing it in an okay way. And it's like sometimes this would be like I keep on going on different tangents, but the last thing is like we're seeing interesting things, the like tax structure right now, we're like, you might do like a price decrease, but then also you're decreasing the pack size a little bit, which at first, like it might rub people the wrong way.

00;24;01;17 - 00;24;26;27
Speaker 2
Like, well, now I'm getting less food, but then like kind of going back to the thing of like a third of the population is pre-diabetic or diabetic. Like some of our pack sizes might be too large to begin with. And you go and travel to these other countries and their meals and their portion control is much smaller. So maybe indirectly this is like starting a trend where smaller packs for a smaller price will be a thing.

00;24;27;01 - 00;24;51;18
Speaker 1
I mean, in terms of how you learned so much about the the sort of plant based world and how you learn so much about where you source chickpea protein. And like, was that just like a what's the phrase I'm looking for? Did you just have to kind of jump in with two, two feet and figure it out in the in the moment?

00;24;51;25 - 00;24;56;19
Speaker 1
Like, how did where did you look to for help on on the actual industry itself?

00;24;57;03 - 00;25;20;26
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think of I've talked about this in another podcast, so I don't want to repeat exactly what I said, but it's like I, there's some elements of like gamification and like entrepreneurship and like I played some video games growing up and it's like, okay, you're put into this big new world and you jump into the missions right away or to like you get a scope of like environment.

00;25;20;26 - 00;25;50;12
Speaker 2
You make a few friends that maybe can help you if it's like a multiplayer game or something like that. Or even I also played team sports. So looking at that and like in the CPG space, I think especially like everyone is really kind and they offer your help on that. First, being someone coming out of college and growing up in New York and like in that business school sense, you're kind of caught off guard by that because like you're trained, or at least I was to be like not trusting of people who offer their help, like, what do they want in return?

00;25;50;12 - 00;26;15;28
Speaker 2
But over time, you can sense when it's genuine and then it's nice. Like the more connections you make indirectly, you'll be able to kind of help other people because you're just have your ear, your ground, ear to the ground and you'll hear of other things that people need. And then someone else mentions like, Hey, I'm looking for this, and you're like, Oh, well, that person just posted something about they're looking for more clients and they offer this.

00;26;15;28 - 00;26;35;13
Speaker 2
And I had a conversation with them that works very well. So that's kind of where getting help comes from. And then knowing who your specialists are, I think to reach out to never shy away from like a cold LinkedIn outreach, sometimes it's just a numbers game or even just catching a person on the right day or the right time.

00;26;35;13 - 00;27;00;16
Speaker 2
And then some of the knowledge that I've had or like Drawn to learn is like just from like people who are taking look at the business of the product and they ask something that no one else has asked. And then I market down. I'm like, Well, that's a great question. I wish I had an answer for it. And then I have to go and do some research so that I do realize it.

00;27;01;23 - 00;27;02;05
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00;27;03;02 - 00;27;37;18
Speaker 1
It's really good to hear. I mean, even even though it's such a saturated space that like, everyone is so kind, I've heard that before, but everyone's like so, so open to helping other people and making sure that they can connect people to other people who can help them. So that's really good to hear. I'm totally switch gears right now in a conversation we talked about Nfts and we kind of kept on getting, you were saying you got really excited about new technology.

00;27;37;18 - 00;27;53;19
Speaker 1
You tend to be an early adopter. And when I was checking out your site, when we were chatting, you mentioned you were considering the potential of kind of investing in NFTs for Hummiiverse. Talk to me about the rationale for doing something like that.

00;27;54;23 - 00;28;18;00
Speaker 2
Yeah. So originally I think when the business stemmed, I probably wrote like an early business plan with that friend who had moved to Puerto Rico, which he actually was the one who helped came up with the name homie. So that friend who taught me a little bit or just told me, Hey, I'm investing in this thing. Etherium And then I went and learned about it and told him more about what he was actually buying.

00;28;18;14 - 00;28;36;07
Speaker 2
And then I, him and I would have conversations because then he started getting interested in learning about it. So I think in the early days we wrote up like a business plan about like, okay, every other e-commerce site. How can we again like gamify it, make it a fun experience and use like tokens or cryptocurrency that people are owning.

00;28;36;08 - 00;29;01;21
Speaker 2
And the cool thing with this is like there's a limited supply or we can set a limited supply. So it really is like it's like we can just print more money in a sense. Like we would eventually run out and then the people have the, the Hank's or if that's what the tokens are called or whatever they might be, they can trade them among themselves or you need to circulate it back out.

00;29;01;21 - 00;29;30;21
Speaker 2
So that was like the first idea, but that never came to light. And then with NetEase, those really started rising in popularity. I think in like 2019 I bought my first thing like a virtual piece of land in 2018. I still have it. I don't quite know what to do with it because I'm not technical, but maybe it would become like a cool metaverse shopping market experience where like other brands could hop in or something like that.

00;29;31;02 - 00;30;04;29
Speaker 2
I've talked about that a few times, but as an NFT has grown, I think like we saw, like the proliferation of like cartoons again being used and then it's like, well wait, we already kind of have cartoons that we're creating. Like that would kind of be a natural progression there. It wouldn't feel like we're forcing anything. And then a cool company came out that's called Novel NFT, and I had found out about them because we were in similar like small group of 250 people I was with some of the founders is this group called Club?

00;30;05;05 - 00;30;31;14
Speaker 2
It is. It's called Club CPG and it's this community actually connecting back to Jamie Schmidt. And I mentioned earlier her and her husband Chris Cansino started this group that's like at the intersection of Web3 and CPG or that's how it started. And now it's kind of included people in gaming, people in other industries, but it kind of started with that core goal.

00;30;31;14 - 00;31;00;28
Speaker 2
And so I joined it early on because I didn't know of other people at the time that were in this CPG space that were also thinking about Web three. And I was kind of intimidated or afraid, I think, to like vocalize that this is something that we want to do. And then jumping into this group and like talking with other people about it and sharing ideas and again learning about novel which getting back to it, it can connect into your Shopify website and it can do things called like token gating.

00;31;00;28 - 00;31;42;07
Speaker 2
So like if you have an NFT, you can unlock specific discounts, new sections of the website in almost access, like a pass to a different shopping experience for each person depending on what they had. And that can be with a NFT. Is that us as a company release? And we grant them access to different things. But since it's all public and all the contracts are out there for you to find it, and then you can copy them into this novel platform, you can grant other community's perks on your own website, which I thought was really innovative and cool and something we would want to test out when we start our e-commerce channel.

00;31;43;16 - 00;32;25;29
Speaker 2
And then the last I mean, there's so many things with NFT is like it's really a tool and sometimes it just gets clumped together as this one thing, but it can be a source of like crowdfunding. So as we're going like this summer into a bear market a little bit and it's a tough time for some founders to fundraise, it's a good time to build a community and a business and as you build that community, maybe it's through the sale of Nfts that can help bring a product to life, kind of connecting back to Kickstarters and like again we that's how we got funding to start formulating the mini muffins was through their but I

00;32;25;29 - 00;32;49;14
Speaker 2
guess I want to maybe we're going to ask like more questions about this but can talk about to like the philosophy of switch from like instead of offering hey nft is I think our first foray into really doing it right because we we've had an NFT in the past with this company called real shovels was not successful, but I learned a lot from it.

00;32;50;25 - 00;33;08;22
Speaker 2
But I think the solution for us at least maybe to offer them for free to our friends who purchased the products and then we just give them all the perks and they have to use that gift to get the perks, because that's just how the technology works. Otherwise, like with discount codes, you can always share it to other people.

00;33;08;22 - 00;33;19;06
Speaker 2
And how do you know that the person that you intended to get that perk is the one getting it right? So the freeway is how we plan to roll it out as far.

00;33;20;08 - 00;33;45;00
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's just I haven't actually ever I speak to a lot of people in the CPG world or city world and I've never talked to them what NFT is. I think it's so cool and use I love the way that you kind of laid out the benefits from a business standpoint of why you would want to invest in NFT is it's all around or the tech not invest in the technology itself.

00;33;45;11 - 00;34;24;18
Speaker 1
It's all around kind of building community, creating a really cool experience for your customers. But I think one of the things you're also alluding to is the fact that there are some pitfalls when it comes to leveraging nfts or leveraging the technology, I mean, especially when you're trying to launch products or a range of products. So when you mentioned the NFT, the previous paid NFT didn't didn't quite land, are you kind of holding off for the moment on launching the free NFT so that you can get your product lines off the ground or what's the plan there?

00;34;25;15 - 00;34;45;16
Speaker 2
Yeah, and with the paid, one of the lessons learned was that originally we were supposed to have like an integration where you could buy it with a credit card and it would have made it very simple for people. And then when we got to launch, I noticed that didn't have that option anymore. And it turns out they removed that feature.

00;34;45;16 - 00;35;14;13
Speaker 2
So that may have been one of the things that would have changed the outcome from that. But again, I still think I learned a lot from it and maybe this free way is better. And yes, with it, you don't need to set up a wallet right away or anything. And that's one of the areas of friction we're going to be having this NFT free for you to claim whether you claim it or not, it'll be there like in your name through novel.

00;35;15;08 - 00;35;36;21
Speaker 2
Like when you buy the product and you have your email, you'll have an email saying that this NFT is ready for you to claim. And then one of the reasons waiting for launch. So we have the art set up. I'm sure the hope is to at least launch different collections over time that can offer unique things and give a glimpse.

00;35;36;21 - 00;36;09;00
Speaker 2
You mentioned something that I didn't talk about as much earlier, but is the community building in the storytelling aspects like we're working on? Glass, there's things called PSP projects which are like the ones where you see like 10,000 unique different characters. That's something that we would launch with first using the freeway. But over time, with the storytelling, we're working on developing back stories to these points characters and creating little animated like looping videos.

00;36;10;05 - 00;36;33;01
Speaker 2
That would be like your first foray into the actual like animated story of these. And then stemming after buying that, you would kind of be introduced into this storytelling space of more of their backstory. And maybe that character's working on this new products, and now you get access to that new product early that they're developing because you bought that NFT.

00;36;34;10 - 00;36;59;06
Speaker 2
That's not answering your question directly really. But and one of the big things that floating off is, I would say like the budget right now, we are trying to get the website set up, but some of that requires selling more points here in Los Angeles during the summertime, which is okay, because we have time before we would really be able to ship nationwide in an economical way like this fall.

00;36;59;22 - 00;37;33;03
Speaker 2
So I have a few months to do that. And then with novel right now it costs there is a cost associated with using their platform and some of that is okay for other people because they're not doing it a free way. They can make up that cost by having people pay for fees. But since we're using their tool in kind of a unique way so far from their other customers of granting to them for free, it's not like we'll get paid back directly on that monthly investment.

00;37;33;03 - 00;37;44;04
Speaker 2
So it's like we're launching some things first on the website and we may have to retroactively get those people. The NFT is and then later introduce it.

00;37;46;03 - 00;38;14;24
Speaker 1
Makes sense and it's probably probably a smart decision, although clearly I'm very excited about I'm going to have to go get myself the first NFT whenever it launches. We are almost out time Tyler. So I am going to we always do a Rapidfire question segment at the end just to get some sort of rapid feedback from you. Our first question is about budget, which we kind of just touched on.

00;38;14;24 - 00;38;24;18
Speaker 1
But if you got double your budget tomorrow from what you're working with right now, what would you spend it on? Would it be the NFT launch? Would it be something different?

00;38;25;11 - 00;38;47;14
Speaker 2
Yeah. So as I mentioned, the budget also isn't that substantial right now, so I have to be crafty with it. But yeah, the website getting it just ready and not adding that perfectionism like put us at a fault. Like it's okay to launch. Okay. And I think that's the cool thing with NFT is is the community understands that they're part of this building process.

00;38;47;14 - 00;39;12;07
Speaker 2
So that can be part of it. The other part is, I think doing unique things just like gifting bags to more people. Like even later today I'm driving up to Pasadena to visit a few stores, but there's a customer that reached out to us and Instagram and just dropping off some freebies to her to hand out to her friends, try give feedback, things like that, and just knowing that that will have like a reverberating effect.

00;39;12;07 - 00;39;35;15
Speaker 2
And worst case scenario, it develops just a connection with someone where we can just chat. She ends up being a she's a dietitian actually, too. So that's someone that's like people in your network. If there's questions about nutritional aspects, she seems very happy to share what she knows. See, I think those would be the two areas.

00;39;35;15 - 00;39;46;10
Speaker 1
Awesome. And what is the coolest CPG brand packaging product innovation that you've seen in the last 12 months? And it can't be it can't be helped.

00;39;46;22 - 00;40;20;14
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think that I hope I would honestly say that there's other cooler core innovations in a different way to although I sound probably passionate on this really cool one. So like one is just a fancy food show, one that really stuck out and it's two I believe the sister in laws or there's I believe they're that or they're sisters they're connected in some way and they launch this brand hypnotic and it's this really innovative whipped cream.

00;40;21;16 - 00;40;52;03
Speaker 2
And so they have this unique patent on the nozzle where it infuses, like, kind of like jelly or like like a flavoring into the whipped cream as it's as it's like pour down through the nozzle, and then they want to do cool things, like possibly putting something on the bottom, like a dispense thing, like for toppings. But I thought that was really their branding is very cool and their backgrounds too.

00;40;52;03 - 00;41;06;22
Speaker 2
Like one comes from the entertainment world and worked at CAA and the other one comes from a world where you would it wouldn't be as much of a surprise to go into that. So it's crossing that parallel and how it might help them in the future.

00;41;08;00 - 00;41;20;19
Speaker 1
Oh, that's really cool. I've got to check these guys out. We do a a newsletter Spotlight on some of the coolest innovations going on in different sectors, and I feel like we should feature that one. Yeah, I'm.

00;41;21;07 - 00;41;24;22
Speaker 2
Popping. I like these mushroom chips.

00;41;26;05 - 00;41;27;26
Speaker 1
I'm sorry. What did you call them?

00;41;28;17 - 00;41;30;08
Speaker 2
Pop italics. They have these.

00;41;30;11 - 00;41;30;26
Speaker 1
Hyperbolic.

00;41;31;18 - 00;41;54;13
Speaker 2
Chips, but like, they're branding to like the. Oh, I guess okay with right now because mushrooms has this connotation around it. Yes. We're kind of leaning into that instead of like trying to go away from it. So they have like this hippie kind of seventies like branding and stuff. And actually one of the founders is not both of them came from the finance world.

00;41;55;15 - 00;42;00;26
Speaker 2
That's cool. So it's a it's a cool kind of connecting back to what we were talking about earlier.

00;42;00;26 - 00;42;16;04
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's so interesting. Final question. I feel like we've covered some of this, but if you could only choose one sort of skill that you think as a founder you really need to have in your toolkit, what would it be?

00;42;16;04 - 00;42;41;04
Speaker 2
Curiosity like every just be curious to learn. And I try to remind myself sometimes like it doesn't always need to be to learn to serve the business or serve a purpose straight away. Sometimes it's just good to learn things and then later on it can just be in your repertoire and help you, whether it's help you directly or just be something cool that you share in a conversation.

00;42;42;15 - 00;42;44;21
Speaker 2
Just stay curious.

00;42;45;00 - 00;42;50;25
Speaker 1
Awesome. Thank you so much, Tyler. Where can people find you or find your brand?

00;42;51;28 - 00;43;30;18
Speaker 2
Yes, you can find me on LinkedIn if you type in Tyler Phillips to IPH. I like IPS but then recommend adding honey. So you and I just because there's probably lots of Tyler Phillips's. You can also reach me by email at Tyler at Omnicom, and then you can find more about Honey. We're on Instagram at Honey H you and I underscore yummy why you and why and then on our website WW W dot honeycomb and the final place.

00;43;30;18 - 00;44;10;06
Speaker 2
I guess if you're an ally you'll be able to find us in some stores here. We're in like Rainbow Acres Co-op, both hive locations, which are juice bars, some kiddos shops that are more on the outskirts, outskirts, nutrients like food organic and a few other stores. If you're not sure where we are, just feel free to reach out the contact info that I shared earlier and I'm always interested to hear where you like our community or interesting community members may shop and how we can get in those stores like that's the connection with the trip today is with that woman that I'm sharing samples with.

00;44;10;14 - 00;44;25;09
Speaker 2
She recommended checking out this store, so then developed a little route to check out other stores in that area. I just want to say to thank you so much for having me on and everything you do with a dig in and the stories and information that you guys share to.

00;44;26;08 - 00;44;38;11
Speaker 1
Oh, thank you for joining. This has been really nice and honestly, I've learned a lot, so I can't wait to see where you guys take the brands and hopefully we'll get a chance to chat to you again.

00;44;38;11 - 00;44;44;14
Speaker 2
Thanks, Stephan.

00;44;44;14 - 00;44;51;11
Speaker 1
Thanks for tuning in this week. Find us on LinkedIn at Digg Insights. And don't forget to hit subscribe for a weekly dose of fresh content.