Season 4 Episode 10: You Are Enough

Michael Maher: Welcome everybody to the longer game, the podcast where we talk all about retail and we've got a really expansive definition of retail. We talk about brick and mortar. We talk about e-commerce. We talk about directed consumer marketplaces, all those things.

we like to bring on a whole bunch of different people to talk about those things. And today on the show I with me Jordan Buckner. He's a CEO of food bevy. Welcome to the show, Jordan.

Tell us a little bit about you food bevy or just whatever's on your. Jordan Buckner: Michael, thanks so much for having me on. It's a beautiful day where I am, so I'm just in a great mood. Foodbevy is a media platform that helps support food and beverage brands, EBG brands grow from the early startup days to scaling their business.

And really around three core pillars. One is inspiring stories, the second being educational content and resources for them to utilize. Michael Maher: Love it. Jordan Buckner: And then the third is connecting with really great partners who can help build their businesses as well.

And so every week I'm putting out our newsletter articles, podcasts, webinars, all in service of helping founders navigate the journey of building a business in the space, which can be really fricking hard. And so that's where I spend most of my time. I got into is because I ran my own CPG brand, a line of energy bars for a number of years. and felt like I was building everything from scratch and reinventing the wheel when it's been done like thousands of times before me.

And so I want to provide resources so that founders can have the support they need as they are building their business. Michael Maher: going to ask you or have you bring up how you've done this before. And so you've got experience doing it, which probably makes it more personal, even more real. And that same thing goes for me.

My agency, Cartology, we help brands to grow on Amazon. I've done that for the past decade. But before that, for six years, I ran my own e-commerce business. There was a lot of figuring stuff out.

How do we do this? How do we do this? There was not as many guidelines as there. were now, especially from marketplaces, it very much felt like the Wild West.

List an item, hope it sells, maybe do a couple things, and make sure you're staying within Amazon's terms of service. So you having that experience, I'm sure, makes it even more meaningful when you're working with these brands. Jordan Buckner: I mean, when brands tell me about losing tens of thousands of dollars when working with the large food distributors, like I felt that pain. I've seen the checks come in with all these deductions when I was expecting a hundred thousand dollar payment and only getting paid $30,000.

Like that's a visceral feeling. And so it's like, I know where you're coming from when that happens. Michael Maher: Yeah. ⁓ man.

I think a lot of brands as they get started, a lot of, especially food and beverage brands, it starts from an idea of I want to create a product and there's often, or there can be a history tied to it. Like something happened to a parent of mine, ⁓ wanted to create better quality food because of that, ⁓ then I started this product. Or I went through my own health journey, because a lot of people aren't like, let's be honest, no one's creating the next Lay's right now. Right?

Like they're not just like, I want to potato chips, fried in seed oil. No one's going out and do that. So these brands that are emerging are coming out of personal stories, but it doesn't guarantee or a lot of these people just don't have business experience to go along with it. And you could even be experienced in business, but building a food and beverage brand is very, or just building a brand in general that's a product based company, it's different than building a consulting company.

It's different than building an accounting firm. It's different than building a lot of different things. And those kinds of deductions are things that you just might not expect. And so people think, I'm going to make money from this business.

And that's a possibility, but it only happens after you've gone through a lot of expenses and not being profitable and having to truly invest time and money in the business. Jordan Buckner: And here's the thing that I've through myself and see happening to others is that ⁓ actually very easy to start a food or beverage based business at the beginning, right? You have an idea for a product. There's lots of ⁓ out there.

You can start in in a shared kitchen space to start making a product, but there's a ginormous chasm. to building either a profitable or a self-sustaining brand, maybe through investment. And that's where a lot of companies get trapped because when we were selling our energy bars, our wholesale price to a retailer was a dollar. And so in order to bring in a million dollars for the business after our product costs and everything, we would have to sell two million bars because we had a 50 % margin.

And I was like, How do I sell like two million bars? How do I make two million bars to even get to that point where we can kind of have a business? And so this, scale that's required because product pricing is so low in this space and you're selling one to $5 items that you need a huge volume to actually make enough. Michael Maher: How often, I'm hearing you say that, how often are you, because like unit economics is a very real thing there can be surprise costs.

You know that your margin is 50%, but what if you don't package stuff right and you start getting chargebacks and now you're getting an additional five to 10 % that's taken off of that. That makes you have to sell even more bars. Now there's of course operationally things that you could tighten up, but how often when you're talking with the brands that you're working with, consulting them, giving advice, Jordan Buckner: Yes. Michael Maher: How do you ever say, like, look, I'm going to be really honest, like, this doesn't make a lot of sense.

Jordan Buckner: it's interesting. Yes. Yes, because here's the thing, as you mentioned, people are creating products that are very personal. They're not coming at this from like ⁓ industry knowledge business mindset where they're coming and looking at the financials and the business model.

They're coming at it with a place of heart, a place of passion. And so Michael Maher: Literally and figuratively. Yeah. Jordan Buckner: I have in my early days talking to brands just tell people like, this doesn't make sense.

And like, you need to completely change your business. And honestly, people don't like receiving that well, and they don't actually trust you because they feel like you're not investing in them. And so what I've learned just in terms of that approach and what's actually helpful is to walk through like, here's what the numbers are currently. And then this is what you need to do.

And so in my case, right, if we need to sell 2 million bars and every store is selling a service Michael Maher: Yeah. Jordan Buckner: certain number of bars, then we need to be in 3,000 stores, 5,000 stores. Is that possible? You work backwards and then adjust the, so I actually take like a, yeah, work backwards and then take a bottom-up approach as well to see like, what does that actually mean for your business?

How many products do you have to make? What investment amount do you need? And see if that fits into your lifestyle. Is this the type of business where you want to raise $5 million from investors slash can raise $5 million from investors?

Michael Maher: Mm-hmm. Okay, so work backwards into height, okay. Jordan Buckner: Or do you need to take a different approach to your business by maybe selling a slightly different product, have a slightly different pricing architecture that can sell well on Amazon or D2C first to build out that consumer demand before taking the journey to scaling and retail. Michael Maher: Yeah.

man, if you can get people to realize things on their own, there's so much, and you could be wrong about like, hey, I don't know that this makes a lot of sense. And there are many, there are several, I would say stories of like, everyone told me no, and then I built this thing into something amazing. But for every story that's like that, there's probably like 10 to 20 that are like, it just didn't work out, maybe it was the right situation, not enough passion behind it, hard, bad economic.

situations. there's a lot of reasons why something couldn't work out. But when you can get people to realize something on their own, it's a lot easier because then it feels more real. There's a great book I read called Gap Selling, and it talks about selling to the gap.

like, I have a pill. Like, hey, you have a really bad headache. I have a pill that's going to take care of that headache. How much does it work to you?

$10? $20? Sure. OK.

What if I told you it costs $0. $1,000. Are you willing to take that pill get rid of this headache? Probably not.

What if it turns out that you go to the doctor, you find out that you've got a really rare form of brain cancer, and got two months to live unless you take this pill? How much is this pill worth to you now? A million? Two million?

Are you willing to ⁓ go debt for this pill? the gap has to be big enough. But if you can help people to see that gap, maybe they decide Like, hey, I'm going to be honest with myself. I don't know that this is worth it to do.

When I was a young kid, I mean, maybe I'm still a young kid. I don't know. But when I was much younger, I was living at home with my parents. I was maybe five.

I said, I'm going to run away from home. And I had this imaginary family in my head. I don't know where I thought they were. And I never actually met them.

brought a suitcase, walked down the street. My parents were just like, yeah, go ahead. They let me go. Very shortly, I came back.

Well, I was hungry. I wanted dinner. Jordan Buckner: you Hehehehe Michael Maher: Like, don't have to, ⁓ can give people options is my point. Like, hey, you can do this or you can do these things.

And we do that with clients. Like, your options are, you know, reserve, inventory for Amazon ⁓ and the revenue you want or withhold it and send it to another channel. And maybe they don't sell it as quickly. And then we miss revenue opportunities and hear like, those are kind of your two options.

Which one are you feeling like going with? And allow people to make the decision. I feel like once people hear that and then they start to say it out loud, like, Wow, I need to sell two million bars just to make a profit. every retailer we've talked to has not let us in stores.

Like, wow, that's a really big gap. ⁓ that a gap that I want to close? Jordan Buckner: Exactly. And I think that's something that have to, as you mentioned, they have to discover that on their own and try it out, right?

And see what that is. I also remember I to study architecture. I thought I was going to become an architect, but that's also, I feel like ⁓ a of careers are hard, but that was one where a lot of people who are currently like in the profession will actually tell younger architects for better or worse, don't become an architect because the Michael Maher: Ooh. Interesting.

Jordan Buckner: amount of work does not match the pay for most people in the profession. And they say like, save yourself a lot of trouble. Like it's a lot of work for low pay. Like just don't get into it at all.

in some ways, right? They're like, why would you not want to build that next generation? But the other hand, they're kind of saying like, this is going to be really hard. Don't expect it to be easy.

⁓ if you, this is the type of heart that you choose knowingly, you have a chance of being successful. If you go into it thinking that it's gonna be easy, finding that it's hard every single day, you're going to struggle, feel upset about it, or too late when you have made a different decision. And so it's kind of similar with the CBG industry and lot of businesses, like go in knowing that it's hard so that when those problems happen, you're not surprised. Michael Maher: Mm.

Jordan Buckner: it really is just a way to say, okay, this is just another problem to overcome. ⁓ I think it makes for more resilient founders in some ways as well. Michael Maher: Man, were talking before we started recording about a book that I was reading called Living Fearless. guy named Jamie Buckner used to be the police force and then worked for the FBI and just great at solving cases.

⁓ his book is talking about living in your true God-given identity. Everyone has something. Regardless of what you believe, everyone has something very unique inside them that they were made and created to do. And he talks about going through the police academy and he had a, you know, like a think what he said is like commanding officer.

Yeah, yeah his CEO something like that and this guy was known as the troll like he just and he was terrible him every day He's like you should just quit right now at the very beginning you should quit and he kept you know I made it through to the very very end but the guy would like say he's like this guy was just he really was a troll but there were like these ⁓ of like pushing him and helping him to grow that he really like he appreciates now And he says, even he feels like we're similar to how God might push or grow us.

⁓ he ⁓ this guy. I don't think they're friends, but he's very thankful for him. And at the end of it, he was like, all right, well, you made it. And he's like, all right, well, what do I do now?

And he's like, you're on your own, man. ⁓ made it. You've got the whole police force behind you. ⁓ and prosper.

But he met those challenges every day of give up, give up, give up. But the guy was also a really great instructor. So he was able to work through that. And I think that gave him a lot of intestinal fortitude to be able to say, you know what, this is a hard situation.

And just because it's hard doesn't mean that I won't get through it. It's just hard. It's challenging. That's the reality of life.

Jordan Buckner: It is, and the last thing I'll say about that is that, I don't know who said this, it wasn't me originally, but everything that you do is gonna be hard, but you have agency to choose your heart. Working a corporate job is hard. Working, starting a business is hard. Working in finance is hard.

Working, doing, cutting down trees in the forest is hard, but you have agency to choose your heart and choose the thing that's going to align with you, and you can change it over time. Michael Maher: I love that. I interrupted you because I was so excited because the very first episode of season four was with a gentleman named Joe Rotundo who started Smear Case and the whole episode was titled Choose Your Heart. Jordan Buckner: Nope, so probably Joe who said that, and I saw that.

Michael Maher: He's not the first one to say it either. We can credit it to you if you want. I don't care. yeah, every single path going to be hard.

You're going to face some challenges. You could say ⁓ having money is hard. But having money is also hard because you likely have more bills. Maybe you lack purpose because you're so invested in the money instead of living ⁓ be You're living just for the sake of the money.

⁓ There's to be challenges no matter what road you take. So just pick the one. Jordan Buckner: Nah. Michael Maher: that you're most willing to deal with.

Jordan Buckner: I that. Michael Maher: Man, that's full circle and we're not even to the end of the season. When we talk about brands starting at a place of passion, I think these founders, start with maybe a why of why they're doing something. And then along the way, they probably lose some of that because of having to adjust to what are my unit economics?

What retailers are we going to get into? and probably find themselves conforming to these pathways. How often are you seeing people maybe veer from their why? And is that one of the things that you're helping them do is just kind of recenter on that why?

Jordan Buckner: All the time. And I experienced it personally. When I started my brand T Squares, was a line of energy bars. I was building it very much like with customers.

We're testing it out with people every day to try the product, to kind of build something that fit into their lives. But early on had an opportunity to pitch to investors and we secured our first kind of seat round of investors early on and raise a hundred thousand dollars off of $3,000 in revenue, right? And so like not life changing money, of course, but enough to like fund the business growth. And what I found is that speaking of that chasm of how many units you have to sell in the CPG industry, we may, it was easier for me to raise money from investors than to sell another thousand bars, know, a hundred thousand bars to, to customers.

And so, Michael Maher: Mmm. Jordan Buckner: the business quickly became focused on how can I satisfy our business metrics to meet what investors are looking for so that I can raise more money versus creating a really strong product that consumers were raving about. And here's the difference, right? Because order for me, like I can sell product, which we did to Whole Foods for having zero consumers who actually buying the product, right?

Like they will buy the product for me once. Michael Maher: Mmm. Jordan Buckner: at least, and we get that initial PO and they pay us without even them having to sell to a consumer. And I say that because then there became this focus on like new retail growth.

Like how can I pitch to new retailers so we can get money in top line, at least for those first orders. So then I can take that and tell it to the investor story. Investors saying like, look, here's all the retailers that we're launching into. We need more money.

Michael Maher: Mm. Jordan Buckner: So then we were able to raise another $250,000 off of at the time, like $100,000 in revenue. And we were then telling this story of like, hey, we started off at $3,000 and we raised 100,000. Now we grew our revenue to 100,000 and we need even more money.

But all along our repeat rate from our customers were not keeping up. People were still buying, but I realized this later, we did not, like our product did not have product market fit. meaning not enough demand to ⁓ the growth of ⁓ business. the example you ⁓ around the and the painkiller for that, we were not solving a big enough gap in our consumers' lives.

And so ⁓ after years of doing that, I realized the business was in a place that ⁓ I not feel aligned with because Michael Maher: Okay. Okay. Jordan Buckner: We were, I was constantly meeting with investors over consumers because one investor could write a check for another 200, $300,000 versus a consumer by, by a dollar to $50 worth of product. And so the incentives were misaligned and it actually got to a point where our bank account was draining.

We were running out of money. It was getting harder to raise money from investors. At the same time I was having this like, Michael Maher: Mm. Jordan Buckner: split between myself and my other co-founders found myself one day coming home.

and had a panic attack in my kitchen. And it was the first time that I ever had a panic attack my entire life. didn't know what was going on. Luckily my wife was there with me and kind of helped me through it.

But like I couldn't breathe. I was hyperventilating. My heart was racing. And I realized kind of at that moment where it went from a mental kind of fog and knowing that this wasn't right to like a physical emotional experience.

Michael Maher: ⁓ man. Jordan Buckner: it was at that point that I realized I needed to move on from the company. And it no longer serving me and I could no longer ⁓ serve the in its form. ⁓ And that a really powerful moment in my journey.

Michael Maher: man, what a real experience to go through. And like you said, that physical manifestation of the mental component, which, I mean, I think everyone's got a certain level of mental stress, but to have that come out physically, like, what a way to get your attention. I'm like, Jordan, you're going the wrong way. You're going the wrong way, stop.

Jordan Buckner: Yes. My body was physically stopping me. Michael Maher: What was your, just out of curiosity, what was your next step like after like, after you had this panic attack, you know, thank goodness your wife was there to, to, to comfort you and to, and to walk you through that. What was your, your, your next step after that?

Jordan Buckner: I was really confused, honestly. I did not know what to do. I kind of spent some time just reflecting. I did feel myself kind of disconnecting from the business and starting to plan how I could exit this, which is hard because I was the CEO.

I had three other co-founders, one of them who's working in the business full-time with me. We had four employees in the business and we had two investors, right? And I think on two levels, I felt beholden to these groups of people because I was responsible for this big part. And secondly, then I, my identity was the CEO of T-squares, right?

And like all my new like friends, my connections, my network, everyone that I saw was built around this identity of the CEO of T-squares. And I did not know who I would be without that. Right? Like I, Michael Maher: Man.

Jordan Buckner: Yes, I still had my family and friends, but I felt like I lose a big part of my life. It also happened just before, it was the beginning of 2020, right before COVID. And then COVID happened, our business kind of shut down. At that point, was starting to it was a little confusing, it was starting to get better, because we started to get some more product market fit selling to corporate offices right before then with our energy bars.

Michael Maher: Mm. Okay. Jordan Buckner: Um, but I was like, okay, maybe I can kind of figure out a path through this COVID hit offices shut down or customer base was gone overnight. And I realized at that point that I have to exit the business, did it a little slowly in terms, like we shut down our production.

stopped investing money. Um, had to have those difficult conversations with our investors essentially and saying that like, Hey, we need to shut down, which is tough because they're like, we believe in you, we wanna support you, like don't shut that business down, just like hold out, like we'll just kind of pause things and then in the year if you wanna pick this up then we can do so, we'll support you, which I really appreciate that they did that and they had that faith at the same time as like ⁓ so at the.

Michael Maher: That doesn't sound like a typical investor, by the way. Jordan Buckner: It's not, and I'm really grateful for the people that I was able to bring on as investors. But at the same time, I have to tell them like, I need to move on because of just where I am in life and kind of what I need and the business isn't aligned with that. And they were disappointed, right?

I think like there's the personal level of like, we want to support you and that like I believed in you. And then there's also like they have their own like the financial. component of like, yes, it's a risk, but they also lost the money that they put in, right? We were only able to return some of the money back to them.

But I can tell you, it was a journey. It kind of felt like what I imagined. Some people, you know, in a light way, going through a separation from a partner, right? We had to get paperwork drawn up by our attorneys of like how we're displaying the business, their conversation on who would get what.

⁓ Michael Maher: Man. Jordan Buckner: looking at all the investor documents of like how much each person would get and what assets. And so we had to split the assets. I'm very thankful that it was fairly easy to do that process.

But I can tell you that final day I got all the signatures back on the paperwork. I felt a relief and like had a big weight lifted off of me of closing that chapter of my life and getting closure. Michael Maher: Man. So interesting that you talk about your identity as the CEO of T-squares.

That's how people know me. And when my first iteration of my business, running an e-commerce business before I started this agency, I had a very similar experience. It was like, all right, we're out of money. We didn't have investors.

We weren't getting the sales we needed. And I was losing to competitors. And over the course of six months, it just you know, very quickly went away and I had to go to my wife and say, Hey, by the way, I can't pay myself anymore, which was not a fun conversation to have. And I waited too long.

I thought I have to figure this out on my own. really I should have, you month in like, Hey, things are kind of changing. I don't really know what's going on. And so we've got a much ⁓ relationship with me being an entrepreneur and talking about that now much more open.

But I, you know, I waited till the last minute. Couldn't pay myself. Felt like a huge failure because my identity was in the success or failure of this business. And when I reflected back, my wife Kristen told me, even when things were going well, it seemed like it wasn't enough.

Things weren't good, whatever. So I think it's important to know, one, you've got this great thing with food, baby. That's not your identity, but it's something amazing that you do. There's always more things that you can iterate on.

I think if you can realize that you show up to the table to the boardroom or to the computer, wherever you're going, you show up as enough. Do you have things that you need to work on, grow? Yes, absolutely. Do you have hard work ahead of you?

For sure. But you already are enough. And whether this thing succeeds or fails, that doesn't change. Your identity is already being enough.

Jordan Buckner: Yes. Exactly. I totally agree. Yes.

Michael Maher: Some of us have to learn that the hard way though. You and me both, we both learned the hard way with what was a business failure, but it really is only a failure if we allow that to be the end. Jordan Buckner: Exactly. And there's always more.

There's always so much more you can be. Yeah. Michael Maher: Until death. Until death.

Death is the final, death is the failure, I guess, of your heart giving out. But like, yeah, there's always more challenges, always more things that you can do. And I believe if you're really walking in, you know, the identity that you've been given, whatever is, if it's, you know, I'm a creative builder ⁓ or a warrior, don't know, whatever your identity is, Go and live in that thing. There's always gonna be more things for you to do, always.

Jordan Buckner: Michael, I'm curious because I know your thought for us from these ideas. Have you ever thought about a personal mission statement? Michael Maher: I have a, yes, I have, I have a family mission statement we wrote it out on a, on a, ⁓ a flip chart and we had a family meeting, you know, whatever. I've got a business mission statement.

⁓ got ⁓ somewhere, I don't think I have a, like a very specific personal mission statement, but like, I would love that because then it becomes very clear. What am I showing up and doing? today. Is it running this business?

Yeah, that's a part of it, but what am I actually doing? And then that becomes the real focus. Jordan Buckner: Yeah, it was actually a conversation I had with my wife who asked me because she worked on having a personal mission statement. And I was like, you know, I don't.

And I think that led to me feeling like whatever I was doing at the time, no matter what it is, like was the thing I needed to be doing with my identity, by actually ⁓ and writing a personal mission statement outside of that, that could be all encompassing and could change over time. ⁓ really helped to keep me. grounded and have something to fall back on so that I knew everything else within there I could do and kind of fit within. so my personal mission statement is around, like I love building things that make the world a better place and provide value to the world and also helping others do the same.

Because I... Michael Maher: Hmm. Helping other builders become builders, too. Jordan Buckner: Yes, I love helping other builders become builders.

Right now that's showing up through bevy and my work. Right. And like, get to work with thousands of other founders and helping them bring their own version of change to, the world. And I don't even need like, was talking to someone else about this, like the change that you bring does not need to be at ⁓ world level.

It can start that yourself. How can you become a better individual? How can you become like your family better? your neighborhood, your community, your city, a group of people ⁓ a certain area.

Maybe it's a dietary need, right? Like what change can you bring at these different levels? And love being able to do that myself and then helping others do the same. Michael Maher: I love that.

mean, your impact is something that can help build legacy. legacy doesn't mean, you know, I've sold 10 million albums. It could mean, hey, I inspired 10 people to go and write amazing songs. And now gone out and influenced the world.

And whether your name is on it or not, you still know that you had that impact. I think thinking about legacy is something I've thought more about over the past couple years. What is the legacy that I'm leaving? I'm at halftime in my life.

I turned 40 this year. It was not like a crazy mind blowing experience. Like, oh my gosh, I'm 40. It was great.

My wife did amazing things for my birthday. So I'm very thankful for her. God has blessed me significantly. And it allowed me a little time.

Jordan Buckner: Hmm. Michael Maher: allowed me an opportunity to reflect on like, all right, what have I done up to this point? What has not served me well? What do I need to, you know, leave behind and what am I going to focus on in the next half?

And it was posed to me every couple of months. I go and meet with the spiritual director, just someone who's very wise, knowledgeable, uh, you know, and the ways of the Lord to help push me in the right direction. And that's what she said is like, you're at halftime. It's time to reflect.

Let go of what didn't serve you well. Focus on the things that you can do. that are ahead push forward. So building a legacy might just mean, hey, am I investing the time I need to in my daughter so that she can go and be a great student, volleyball player, wife someday, mom, whatever career she picks?

⁓ I enabling her to do those things? Because if I'm not, that's really my first line. Yes, my business, but ⁓ family should be number one, second to God only. I doing a good job there?

Am I doing a great job, since good is the enemy of great? That's an impact that you have. Having an impact on calling a friend, like, hey, man, I was thinking about you. Everything going OK with you?

I ⁓ to check in with you. That can be an opportunity to just help change someone's day slightly. And you turn ship as you're moving. It's very, very slow.

But you start to go off in different directions from where you were. Like, that gap. starts to grow from where you were going to where you are now. And I think it's worth reflecting on to think about, am I going in the right direction?

Or what is the legacy that I'm going to leave? And am I making small incremental changes to make a bigger impact? Jordan Buckner: You're right. Yeah, I totally agree.

And I'm just a couple of years behind you. So those conversations are definitely up and you know, I'm also curious. I've been thinking a lot about like, what does of serve me? How do I want to show up in that next phase of ⁓ my life?

actually one thing I'm curious about, especially around business is how ⁓ long want do the things that you want to do and how that shows up. And I think about this because Michael Maher: Mm-hmm. Jordan Buckner: With T-squares, our goal from the beginning was to like try to build a business and sell it within five years, right? We heard all stories on like how I built this and like that was my goal.

And that didn't realize that didn't serve me. And so now in the work that I'm doing with Food Bevy, I've ⁓ designed the business where I own all of it. I'll never take on investors of any kind. And I don't even really want to sell the business ever.

I've designed in a way where I can do this for the rest of my life continue to find purpose around it until I want to change at some point in the future if I want to, but ⁓ don't want any outside forces to affect how long I can continue doing this ⁓ that's what I want to do. Michael Maher: That's exactly how I felt. I honestly, it's like, I love what I do. I've had offers to sell my agency.

I've talked with people, but I'm just like, what would I do if I were to sell my agency? Probably go back and do something in the Amazon realm and consult or something. it's like, so sure, maybe that's something that God has for me in the future. I would be totally OK with that.

So I'm open to those things. But I'm like, man, I just want to have a really Jordan Buckner: Yeah, just do it again in a different way. Michael Maher: People ask me like, what is your vision? I'm like, vision is I want to do such a great job for the brands that we work with that people are lining up to work with us.

Now we can't work with every single brand. can't, don't, to provide a really high level of service, we're not going to be able to take on every brand. We want to be able to give them a lot of resources and under promise and over delivered. And honestly, the first six months of any relationship with a brand is often very challenging.

Why? Because we are totally pivoting that ship. Most brands on Amazon, one of the biggest problems is you're spending on branded and discovery terms that do not drive market share or organic visibility. turning that ship and you're not seeing a big change.

Like I can kind of see the same horizon. What's going on here? Like we're not seeing sales grow like we need to. And I'm like, look, we're charting a course here.

Here's where we're at. We're seeing the growth that we need to in some of the leading indicators. Lagging indicator of revenue is going to show up later. So we have to continue to build that path and whatever we can do to help them to see that the better.

And then once they get to that place of like page one visibility, then they're all in because they see the results. But it's very challenging in that time period. And I feel very equipped to help people in that time period and to be challenging in a way that's also supportive. So like, Hey, here's what we signed up to do.

We got to keep doing this thing or else we're never going to see the results. But also saying like, understand that it's challenging. You want to be profitable. You want to get to this place.

Absolutely. As a business owner myself, I get that. And here's how we get to those places. Instead of just saying, sure, we'll make this adjustment or we're just going to change this because you wanted to see, we're going to change this or saying, you're wrong, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

We know what we're doing. You just need to listen to us. Like we're not order takers, but we're not dictators. We're helping.

We're navigators. We're helping you guide to get to where you need to go. It's just challenging in the beginning. what would I do if I were not to do that?

Probably more of the same. So it never made sense. Yeah, right, exactly. And there's so many more relationships, I'm sure, that you have from going through T-squares and now where you are with food bevy that you've been able to leverage.

And it just becomes a part of your story. Jordan Buckner: Yeah, I just do something else but starting over from zero. I did, and I think that was actually one conscious decision as well of like, do I completely change industries? Do I kind of go into the tech industry and do something else?

One thing my dad taught me though, he's like, you want to make sure that your experiences are layering on top of each other. Even if they skew a little bit, you want to make sure they're layering so you're constantly building instead of constantly starting over from zero. And so I thought, you know, I have relationships, I understand, have... Michael Maher: Mm.

Yeah. Jordan Buckner: some expertise in the food industry. So what can I do within this industry, but in a new way? And that's where we're food bevy manifested from.

Michael Maher: I mean, that's great. Layer your experiences. What a good food and beverage quote, too. Layer your experiences.

you've been a pleasure to talk with, man. ⁓ people want to find out more about what you're doing, where should they look? Will you be on a drafting table drawing up plans for a building? ⁓ maybe they have somewhere else that they could ⁓ Jordan Buckner: Yeah, exactly.

I kept a drafting table for long after like years after in my house, but finally got rid of it. The best places that foodbevy.com. You can see all of our information there.

Everything I provide out is free for ⁓ So take a look. There's lots of resources and then find me on LinkedIn to search Jordan Buckner. And then I'm constantly posting on their new wins resources, anything that can help. ⁓ then if you have any questions, let me know happy to, to help you on your journey.

Michael Maher: ⁓ man. Okay. Awesome. Thanks for being here, man.

All right, people. That's it. We don't got anything else. You don't got to go home, but you got to get out of here.

Until next time.