Ep.6 | The power of passionate customers | Sam Madani

Sam Madani, CEO of BOMANI, grew up in Orange County, inspired by his immigrant parents' resilience. After graduating from USC, he worked in finance in New York and later spotted an untapped market for a natural, low-carb alcoholic beverage. His journey with Bomani revealed a purpose: solving lifestyle dilemmas with passion, so BOMANI Cold Buzz, an alcohol-infused cold brew drink, was created. From kitchen experiments with friends to leveraging experiential marketing, Sam and his team navigate the challenges of group business ownership, fostering growth through understanding and empowering and growing their passionate customer base.

Sam Madani

BOMANI
Website
Instagram

Thanks for listening
Host: Jack Moran
Powered by: DreamSpear

Follow Shakin' Hands Podcast
Website
Instagram
YouTube

Dreamspear
Website
Instagram
Skool

SEE YOU NEXT WEEK!

Transcript

0:00

Hello everybody, and welcome to episode six of Shakin’ Hands. I'm your host, Jack Moran. You can find me on Instagram at Blue Collar Kid that is blue collar KEHD. We have a very special guest today, Sam Madani. He is the co-founder of Bomani, a canned espresso martini company. How are we doing today? Sound. Dude, I can't complain. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So I think we talked a little bit before about kind of what the theme of the show is. It's really to catalyze and inspire people to chase their dreams and go down their path, whether that's in business, but really mostly just getting out of the rat race and getting inspired to follow your passion. So usually, you know, kind of how we start out is by asking, like, what's your story? Like, how did you get into entrepreneurship? You know, what was the early stages like where you at now? You know, and don't shy away from details. Yeah, man, I think I owe a lot of the credit for my interest in entrepreneurship to my parents. Both my parents are immigrants. I'm a first generation born American. Both my parents actually fled Iran. They fled their homes as teenagers and came halfway across the world to create a better life. And I think that really weighs heavily on me in a really positive way to realize, like, what an amazing opportunity I started out with, even getting to be born here. What's funny is both my parents have started businesses, but both my parents are entrepreneurs. And yeah, and they're going from, you know, my mom putting herself through college, working in a gas station, you know, having before that spent a year in Turkey before she could make it into the U.S. because she was arrested multiple times as a teenager in Iran, like being told at 16, you're leaving in the middle of the night to go to a country you've ever been to, to then move to a country you never been to, and then from there becoming an entrepreneur, becoming really successful. Me seeing that growing up, I was like, okay, I genuinely believe everything is possible because I saw that everything was possible the long before I knew, like even what entrepreneurship was like, what the word meant. My parents would probably tell you that my first business was in seventh grade when I asked them to buy a ringtone. This is like mid 2000s like it was Lollipop by Lil Wayne. So I had great taste. but my yeah, my immigrant parents were like, wait, wait, sorry, you want $5? So that the phone that we bought you sounds different. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. So through a combination of Windows Media Player and iTunes and a bunch of YouTube videos that I watched, I would make my own ringtones and I would sell them at school, like on the bus back from school, and I made a couple hundred bucks when I was 12, I thought I was rich. And then in high school, like I started a tutoring business. I did all the AP math classes, SAT prep, Act prep, so I always really loved this stuff. I was really love the idea of like creating a product, creating something people really wanted. And then what I really got high off later was like, I love creating a brand that really evokes an emotion out of somebody. So in college, I studied finance, which I think is a good idea for anyone who likes entrepreneurship, just so you can have that financial literacy. It is the language of business at the end of the day. So being able to have that back pocket, I think is a really big advantage. First job out of college is in investment banking. And the summer before I moved to New York for that job, I met my to be co-founder Kai. I was immediately super impressed by Guy. Kai was he had played college basketball, he had started a basketball training business, and he got a 3.97 GPA at Berkeley. It's like, all right, this guy's a beast. We hit it off immediately, and we were always kind of throwing around ideas like, what are we going to do together? We then met our third to be co-founder, a meeting at a mutual friends party, and again realized, like he had such a complementary skill set where he had this, like really deep appreciation for food and beverage, which is funny because he was also working in finance. And then the idea for Bomani just came so organically, you know, it was like we were spending all this time thinking, what should we start? What should we build together? And then we're like, wait, the ideas are right in front of us. You know, we're coming home every Friday after work. We're making espresso, we're making drinks out of it. And by the way, when we had the idea this is pre Covid. So this is before the boom of the espresso martini. So I'm really really thankful for the timing that we hit the market because it was obviously Covid was insanely challenging. But the general markets decision that like hey Espresso Martini is here and it's amazing. Like that timing was perfect for us. So really, 2022 as Covid began to become a thing of the past, the timing really worked in our advantage. But the idea was organic. Like I mentioned, it was like us literally using our friends as guinea pigs in our kitchen during Pre-games being like, check out what we made this week. Try this version. Try it with this bean blend. Try with this base like. However, we would make the cocktails and eventually landing on a flavor that we're like look, our original flavor is going to be a skinny espresso martini. Just designed be that like perfect first drink. Like we've all been there, right? Like Friday after work, you're a little tired. You want to go out to perfect. First drink was really what we were after, and that was how we brought the product to market. That's how the idea we had the idea to bring the product to market. When we actually went to make the product, we realized why no one had made Bomani before us. Like, I would love to say that we were the first people to have this idea, but there's no way, right? You know what I mean? Like, how many people have tried this before? The challenges most espresso martini companies have to take Candace Perry's warranty. Companies have to take one of two shortcuts. They either pump up ABV to some crazy level 14, 12%, whatever it is that really impacts the flavor. Or they add like a citric acid, the sorbet. So they add something artificial, makes the product basically shelf stable. So through a process. But my point is saying that is, like everyone told us, it was impossible. The market told us it was impossible. All the experts we met with told us it was impossible. So it was just up to us to build the supply chain and sometimes not having the experience, not knowing it's supposed to be quote unquote impossible is a superpower, because then you can go out there and make it. You didn't know it was, but you don't have those limitations already in your hand. Exactly. And then that of being possible, obviously. So where we're at today, where Whole Foods were Ralphs were Bevmo were on Instacart on Gopuff were in a handful of premium bars. Now, like, we try to be really selective with our bar and restaurant presence. But yeah, I mean, that's kind of how we got started. Yeah. So was it like smooth going through the process or did you hit you know, it's obviously people don't realize like the hurdles that you go through in entrepreneurship. Yeah. It was a million times harder than we would have ever imagined. I mean, at every turn, like literally getting the product made was harder than we imagined. Getting into retail was as hard as it could be, let alone like a lot of the retailers we were getting into was during Covid when we couldn't even sample the product. One of our highest conversion marketing tools is just getting people to try it, because it tastes really good. We didn't have that during Covid, literally wearing masks and wearing gloves and like explaining Bomani to people at a at a grocery store. We looked insane, but every piece of it has been so challenging, and I think our team's ability to be resilient and work together and, like, have the support of one another has allowed us to navigate those waters. And so you said before, like you came from an investment banking background, how did that, you know, kind of impact your style, developing the business to that avenue, like changing the perspective and how you guys, you know, unfolded or developed the company? Yeah. No, it's a good question. I think investment banking is really good for a couple reasons. I mean, the most obvious one is the financial literacy. Like being able to whether you're raising capital or you're building your own budgets or you're negotiating with your manufacturers or you're trying to budget for what you can spend for ingredients, what you want to put it out on shelves, how you're offering margin to distributors and retailers. Like there's a lot of numbers of the language of business. And I think it is really important to have that wherewithal so that you're making an informed decision and not just hoping that it works out. And I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs hope that it works out. On top of that, I think obviously the work ethic that you're that is required of you in investment banking is very transferable that anything else you do, you know what I mean? Like, there is no substitute for hard work. And I think you have to learn that early if you're gonna get into banking. So like what? You know, how do you define success? Like, what are you chasing? Like when you look around and you say, this is what I see. Like, I don't know, I'm successful. Two words passionate customers. Everything we do orbits around creating passionate customers. And I use that word passionate customer, not just customers. Because what we've learned has been able to fundamentally increase demand. I'm not just talking about because a lot of companies will just grow by adding a thousand these stories. We don't do that. We add stories intentionally when we know we have the demand to perform well in those stores. Like it's very fundamentally looking to grow demand. Passionate customers are your best marketing tool by far. Like you're going to trust one of your friends, making your recommendation over a product, over any ad that you see. You know what I mean? Or if the ad is funny and memorable and you're going to watch that ad more likely if your friend sends it to you. So there's passionate customers are really what we're aiming for, and that is success does what that would look like in principle is having everyone who likes coffee, having everyone who's going out and already having some kind of caffeine, whether it's an energy drink plus vodka or an espresso martini at their local bar, like we always say, Bomani, is that perfect first drink, you know, not that. Pick me up. We always say Bomani turns your night on. So really seeing our passionate customers enjoy Bomani. Is that rich or that, like, perfect first drink? That's success to us. What are the like values that customers in your market are looking for? Yeah, so obviously our big differentiator versus all the other canned products is that it's caffeine. The other products that have caffeine in Beaumont is half a cup of coffee per per cans is half caf. The other products that have caffeine, typically their biggest challenge is taste. And it's really hard to get a Candace Presto martini to taste good. For all the reasons that I mentioned, people have to pop up baby and do all these crazy things that like, they're only doing those things because they don't know how to produce the product without without having to do those things that really impact flavor. So our flavor profile is really, really good. On top of that, our original flavor, like I said, is a skinny espresso martini. So we can actually offer that flavor with zero sugar, with zero carbs, no artificial sweeteners. It's only 110 calories per can like, and it's available to everyone. It's gluten free, it's dairy free, it's non-GMO, it's vegan, it's kosher. You know what I'm saying? Like, it really checks all those boxes for someone who wants to have a drink that tastes really good and frankly, a drink that they'll think themselves for the next morning. Yeah. And like, as a co-founder, you obviously like, you can't spread yourself too thin and you can't focus on every specific aspect of the business or you'll bog yourself down. How do you push growth within your company? Like what's your impact on the company? Dude, I think this is this is the hardest question to answer. Is an early stage entrepreneur like what I would have said two years ago is probably very different than what I would say today. What would you have said two years ago? I think two years ago I would have said like, no, you can do everything. You just have to do everything, you know what I mean? And I think I'm not the only person to say that. I'm being very transparent to say that I think I'm not the only person to say that most founders would be like, no, no, I can do everything. It's fine. I'll figure it out. But then you get to a point where you're like, they're literally are enough hours in the day, and at some point you're not the most informed person in certain parts of your business. So I think a really big step forward for us was us sitting down and saying, okay, between the three co-founders and our first employees, our VP, finance and operations, we said, we're going to a be obsessed about extreme ownership. And there's a really good book literally called Extreme Ownership where they talk about this principle of like everything extreme ownership means no excuses, no blurred gray areas. And that was a really big moment where we moved forward in our business. We said, okay, my co-founder Kai, he's going to lead all of the grocery and the liquor stores, all off premise sales. And when I say off premise, I mean anywhere you're buying alcohol that you can't consume, there. So if you buy like a Ralphs, for example, you can't consume it, you can't crack. That can open at Ralph. So you get in trouble. You have to take it home. It's off premise and he leads distribution. I mean, my my other co-founder is leading all the bar and restaurant hospitality side of the business, and Dustin is doing all the finance and the back end of the operations. So you have all these pieces and then I'm basically leading the marketing and the strategy. So having those business units run by each person requires a ton of trust. More trust than even know that you can give. Because even earlier stage when you give someone a responsibility, you say, hey, this is what you're leading a little piece of. You always like, oh, can I help with this little thing? With this little thing, it's like, no, you got it. Like, really hand the reins over support when you can support, but ultimately just support. You can't really grow the business until everyone has like full fledged ownership over what they're contributing to the overall business. So as far as like and I've had difficulty with this, removing myself from things that bogged down my time and are abuses of my time. Yeah. What how do you remove yourself from the processes that are bogging down? Yeah. So I think it's important to have like very clear communication, like how do we communicate those things. And I think having clear communication reduces a lot of the anxiety that you feel that's driving you to say, I need to be involved in everything. Like earlier on, I mean, we laugh about this now, but like early days, if we had a supply chain call, we would all be on the call. Even though one person was talking. We're like, do we really need to all be on this call? And now we laugh about that. Back then you're like, oh, what if they forget to ask this question? It's like they're not going to they're leading it. And guess what? If they do give them that feedback and let them make that mistake and then learn from that mistake the next time. So one really, I think clear way to do it is sort of communication. So we have a daily call every morning at 9 a.m. where we bring the most important topics to the team, and we have an open forum. I talk through them for like 30 minutes. That's a really good way to keep everyone up to date on things. We have a longer call on Monday where we start the meeting recapping the previous week's priorities, and it's a very black or white. Is it done? Is it not done? And if it's not, then you got to have a really good reason why, right? Because we were trusted to get that done and then finishing that meeting, setting the priorities for the following meeting. One thing we stole from Amazon is, Jeff, is this idea of coming to meetings prepared with prose. So people actually write thoughtful prose style preparation for that Monday morning meeting as well. And if we have longer strategy meetings, which we do once a month, people write really thorough, really long form prose that is as beneficial to the reader to save time as you're going into it, as it is to the person writing it. Because for the person writing it, you don't really know the extent to which you've thought through something until you've had to write it all the way out. To wrap that up is like basically to have really clear communication channels reduces the anxiety and allows you to take a step back and say, okay, I can really trust this person to run this side of the business. Yeah, it sounds like you guys have got a really good culture, and that's the hardest thing that I've found to develop is a good culture. And I'm not the best communicator. And it's it's difficult to communicate with your employees, especially when you have so much going on. So kudos to you for getting that done. No, I appreciate that. And I think it's like one of those things where we've made enough mistakes. Yeah, that we've been like, oh, we should actually really commit to this. And then you get in the habit of doing it. You're like, this is awesome. I feel so much better doing this. But it's one of those it's like working out as like the first like month you're in the gym, you just saw all the time. Your form is awkward and you're like, this is not very fun. But then after a while you get that habit built. Then you're like, wait, I feel amazing. I get to put my stress out during this like time of my day. You're healthier in the longer run. Like there's a lot of benefits to building those habits. Actually, the first book that we get everyone at Bomani is called The Power of Habit. Oh, okay. Great. Yeah, yeah, and it's I this is like a perfect segue. You say, you know, you've made a lot of mistakes. What's the biggest fuckup that you've made over the years that you're like, God, it's still the biggest fuckup we've made, I would say is not saying no enough. Yeah. Like I, I love I can definitely be a people pleaser. It's difficult, you know? Yeah. Being for everyone. Exactly. Being a people pleaser and just being like this level of like you're so in love with your product, you're like, of course everything is going to go amazingly well. Have they tried Bomani? And you're like, not only are they not tried Bomani, if this random retail chain and this random geography wants to carry your product, that's a huge compliment. But you should tell that person, hey, I want you to give that real estate to a product that's best suited right now for your demographic. We're going to be there in X timeline that stay in touch rather than say, yeah, yeah, you can go ahead and put it on your shelves. It's going to be amazing. Whatever those people haven't tried. Bomani their customers haven't even heard of Bomani. And if you don't have a cohesive marketing plan together to really make sure that you're drumming up that demand and creating those passionate customers in those stores, all you're doing is creating a lose lose for the person that's wants to buy your product. They're losing because they're not seeing the level of performance that we're seeing in the stores that we're actually focused on. We're losing because we're not doing our best to actually create those customers in that store and do right by those customers and the customers losing because they may never hear of Bomani. And we may not be wanting to focus on that geography of that retailer anytime soon, because we had a bad experience when we first got there. So if you can get yourself to say no to more things. So the yeses are super powerful, super focus yeses, then you're doing everybody a favor. But our biggest fuck up by a margin is just not saying no enough. That's a super strong point. Appreciate you. Yeah, yeah. You said before like you focus a lot on the strategy of the company. This is like an interesting question that we haven't asked before. But if you were to get $1 million of no strings attached capital right now, how would you deploy$1 million of no strings attached capital and deploy it? Experiential marketing. And when I say experiential, I mean like when people come to Bomani events in LA right now, like you should definitely come to our events. How long are you in town again? Till Monday. We don't that you left. I mean, we have one. We have two today. We have one tomorrow night. I'll tell you all about these events because I don't know when this is going to air, but, like. Yeah, the, the events are a really big way that we create those passionate custom. Let's get after it. Because. Yeah. Because if you come to a Bomani event, it's not just a fun party because there's a lot of fun parties. Bomani events are curated, like you have to apply to a list to be able to come to the event. We have about the Bomani click, who are like our biggest superfan, those who are coming at everything, we're making sure they get to cut the line of these events, making sure they get to feel really special because they're going out of their way to also make sure that they're evangelizing Beaumont and everyone around them. Experiential marketing means like, you know, we had a we worked with some of our friends to put together a concert in back, like maybe like 4 or 5 weeks ago where we had Zoo and Dombroski and disco Lions and Goodfellow and Wax motif and like this really awesome lineup of super talented deejays. But if you come to a party that's a Thursday night and we don't tell anyone about that, you know what I'm saying? We just say it's a Bomani party. So you come and you have this, like all and this amazing experience, you get to tell all your friends all weekend. I just went out with my friends on a Thursday night. You're not going to believe what Bomani pulled off. And there's zero expectation going into that. Exactly. It's like and we'll see it to some people like, and if you know, you know, type of thing and just genuinely make it like a really cool experience we're trying to create. Like if we're to personify the brand, it's you wish you took the invite. You know what I'm saying? It's not FOMO in like a douchey, exclusive way. It's creating FOMO because you should have been there because it was actually really cool that we'll do things like we'll release doves at events or like some events. If you order a mega martini, it's like a two foot tall cocktail. You get to hit a gong, you know what I mean? You play with the idea of, like, all lightning, no bottle. So, like, it comes with a side of thunder. So there's, like, really fun things you can do like that, that are really memorable. So it's like our events are experiences I think a really good way to say next time you see Bomani, when you were at Whole Foods, for example, you sit on shelves and you're like, oh, you know what? I actually know that brand. I went to their event when they had this awesome ice luge and it was, you know, was saying like this is like really great ideas. You got to take notes. Yeah. For real. It's like, just like making it a really fun, high energy brand that people want to be a part of. So with $1 million, no attached funding, we would put it in the experiential and experiential side. What's the biggest you've had from like doing experiential or experimental marketing? The biggest specifically for me, or just like a random success. Yeah, I think one really I guess one lesson we've learned recently especially is the power of simplicity cannot be overstated. Like simple things simplify, simplify. I'm big into that, you know, and just keep it stupid. Simple. Yeah, absolutely. So like one of the things that we saw is like, you see the four packs, a skinny espresso martini. So back in October we did a packaging refresh because again, like you can't have any ego as an entrepreneur. Our own fans were telling us we can't find the product on shelves. Our old packaging was like a sleek black package, which was pretty, and that's fine, but it wasn't eye catching. So I redid the packaging to put the disco ball on there, make it a lot more fun, make a lot more high energy, and we saw a very significant jump in sales, she said, okay, what other wiggle room is there because packaging was so high return? What can we learn? And one day, one of my co-founders was at a bar and heard one of the one of the patrons of the bar. She turned to her French. She said, oh yeah, you had Domani. It's a skinny espresso martini. I have no idea who this girl was, but she really inspired my co-founder. He came back to the group and was like, guys, I heard someone call Bomani a skinny espresso martini. So we started asking around, like, what do you guys think about, like, a skinny espresso martini? What does that what does that remind you of? And pretty quickly, people were like, yeah, that actually could work. Some people were like, yeah, I don't like the word skinny. And I don't know if people are gonna think about it on shelves. So I'm really, really proud of the way you handled this. We picked a select group with stores. We literally we didn't theoretically make this decision. We literally put both packages on shelves and we saw even some. Yeah, literally. And the skinny espresso martini outsold the cold brew coffee cocktail 4 to 1. And it was just a change in that. Just the wording. Well 4 to 1. And like that's a huge, huge difference. Huge. So it's like listen to your customers. You never know what they're going to say. And I wish we could go back in time and find this girl a waterfront and make sure that she is taking care of and gets free. Melanie, to the extent that any of our events, you guys are going to be taken care of, I have no idea. She was, but that was one of those days where you're like, listen to your customers, test it. You never know what else can you do that for one, no change in cost, that you're going to quadruple the size of your business. Yeah, and I agree. Like I always talk about it's it's interesting that you emphasize the simplicity. I always talk about like when I'm running ads or like campaigns. The more words that you add, every single word is a filter. So yeah, you can have the top of that funnel being super broad. You can filter them out later. But like what you don't want to do is filter out someone that might be a potential customer. People are busy, man. Like you like as it being your own brand. You're so obsessive that I was so in love with it. You think everyone knows everything about Bomani, but like, really realistically, most people are on their phones, they're looking at their grocery list. They're just trying to buy booze before they leave the store. And there's going to be an impulse purchase. You have a couple seconds to impress them. So that's kind of why I think the simplicity matters so much. And you said before, like, you wish you could go back in time and meet meet the girl again. If there's one thing, if you could go back in time, what is one thing that Sam now would tell Sam, like starting out young? It's a good question. I would say start paying more attention to returns, like, I mean, there's a million lessons. I'd say the first lesson, which we already talked about, would be like, genuinely divvy things up and give people leadership roles. But after that, I would say, like, really understand what's returning versus what's anecdotally returning. Yeah. And those are really big differences. You spend all this money in a marketing campaign. Everyone's like, oh yeah, there were so many posts about it. Were those posts translating to dollars, right? I mean, we've had some viral videos that have generated pennies compared to us. Do changing our merchandizing on shelves marginally, you know what I mean? Yeah. So it's like, really understand what your customers are responding to, not just what people are anecdotally saying. Do they like, what do you think are the biggest things that have impact on revenue? I think I mean, product quality really has to be there. Yeah. Especially today. There are so many products on shelves and customers will forget 99% of them. You have to have a product people really, really like ritual, our product. One of the reasons, honestly, to be real with you, one of the reasons we survived through Covid and all that craziness, and then the market meltdown of the last couple of years, is that people come back when they buy Bomani because they have it as the first drink before they go out. So like, if I'm going to have a tequila and I or Sam having a beer night, first of all, how many beer brands do I get to pick from? Like, I can't even count, you know what I mean? So if you were to start a beer brand, it's really competitive to try to say, use our brand for us. We're not doing that. We're just saying whatever beer brand you choose that night. How do Bomani first? Hello, Bomani is a pick me up when you're ready to turn your night on. You know, like, that's kind of when we where we see is like, okay, the ritual, the product quality. And then I think obviously huge impact is it availability. So you have to be available that at your demand level, you don't want your availability to exceed your demand. You don't want to be in a 1000 stores if you only have a hundred customers, but also if you only have 1000 customers, you have a hundred stores, you're missing out on that. So you have to really grow those two things hand-in-hand to to create sustainable, recurring, real revenue. It's super clear that you have like a super firm grasp on your company and like kind of the intangibles that go into make an exercise for. So it's like really interesting to see try to wrap it up here. But we always like to us ends with a fun question. You mentioned before, like stealing a page out of Jeff Bezos book. If you could meet one person or have an hour with one person and could talk and ask him any question and why it's so basic to say Steve Jobs is so basic, the real answer probably is Steve Jobs. But, to make it someone else who I'm actually very fascinated by is Cyrus the Great, like the Agent King Cyrus. He was really the first one to come up with the idea of human rights. He was the first leader in history to when he took land, he wouldn't dominate people and make them convert religion and make them where? What the ruling party was wearing. All the previous empires said that he was the first one to have the idea of like, look, when we take over this land, you guys can wear what you want. You guys can believe what you believe. You can even keep your own language. What we're going to do is we're going to create a society where your taxes will benefit everything that we build, create infrastructure, create innovation. Like a lot of those lessons, it was like, that's so standard today. And like obviously the mantra of the US and a lot of the Western countries. But that idea then was so beyond out of the box. I just wonder what he would think about today's world, but what other ideas does he have? Another one of those like crazy ideas. And then you know what I mean and why Steve Jobs Steve Jobs because he was the master of simplicity, and I think so many of his innovations were a result of him being able to filter out the things he didn't care about. So, like, there's that famous story of when he came back to Apple in 1997, after he was kicked out, he came back and he said, what are the issues of our company? And he got this huge list of issues. It's like, okay, you guys have until the end of the week to give me the top ten. And they were fighting and they said, can I do a top 20 or top 50? Said, no, no, you're going to top ten. Then at that meeting, after all of this negotiation, they finally weaved it to a top ten. He went to that meeting and crossed seven of them out. And he said, you guys get three. And they fought him on everything. But they're like, you guys get three. He cut down their product line to four products laptops and PCs for and then laptop for, consumer versus laptop for, commercial PC for consumer, PC for commercial. So like he really, really simplified things. Another example was when he was when they were asking one of the people on the android side why the and none of the Android phones work as well as the iPhone. The head engineer said, well, it's so easy for them. They only have one phone. So I think it's so amazing that, like, you know, Steve Jobs had very little technical experience. Yeah, he was an amazing marketer. He's a Rain Man. Yeah. He was just a guy who was like, focus on this thing and do this like fucking phenomenally well. And that's what gets me really excited too. I really like when people talk about Steve Jobs, like Reality Distortion Field. Yeah, like he basically lived outside of reality. But yeah, that imagination is what manifested these products into reality. And it's like a true testament that if you put your mind to it, where there's a will, there's a 100%. I know, I mean, like, there's a really good book. I mean, obviously is, biography by Walter Isaacson is amazing. But what I actually really liked that I read talking about no simplicity is just called insanely simple. Simple. I see it's another really good book about to check out. yeah. Highly recommend. It's an easy read. Are there any, like, last comments that you can make to an entrepreneur that might be watching this are someone who's looking to make the leap onto entrepreneurship and then give you a chance to, talk about, you know, where can somebody. Yeah, I mean, the number one piece of advice by a huge margin is do with the right people. There, there's and I want to kind of leave it at that do with writing. How do you figure people. It's so tough. Yeah, that's the million dollar question. And if you're not sure they're good people don't go into business with them. Yeah it is. You discover so much about people when you work with them, when you trust your livelihood to them. Like it is a really huge decision. It's the biggest decision of your life is probably the person you marry and the person you do business with. Like and in fact, in the U.S., divorces are way easier than separating equity from an operating agreement. Like just to call me like like that's like an interview. Really? Yeah. Yeah, that's insane about that off line. Yeah. No, I mean, like, that's that's really like like, the truth is it's all about the people that you do. And it's super difficult to gauge people. Like reading people is such a skill in itself. But like, you can have all the financial models down, but if you don't have the interpersonal skills, like the ability to filter people, like you're getting yourself into a into a store. Yeah. where can people, you know, buy Bomani? Where can they find you if they want to ask you any questions for sure. So, Bomani, the best way to stay in touch is Instagram is just drink Bomani. That's Bomani I and then as far as stories go, in Southern California we have a store locator on our website. So just drink bomani.com/get Bomani. But it's also very easy to find if you go on the website. As far as the retail chains go, we're in Whole Foods, we're in Ralphs, we're in Bevmo. We're available for delivery on Instacart and on Gopuff. And then as far as bars and restaurants go, we're in a handful of premium bars in LA, mostly in like the we go to Santa Monica area, but there's a lot of spots in that list is, growing every month. So by the time this area is going to be more of them, just check out the website, you'll see it. And then if you're in Southern California, definitely pull up to Bomani event like you said, you're going to pull this weekend at some of and have a really good time. But that's why I say in touch with me, LinkedIn or Instagram? Both is just Sam Madani my last name is Madani and I, but yeah, the Bomani Instagrams the best ways to stay up to date. Well, I appreciate you taking the time out of your day. I know we, when we came in, you're, like, taking calls and whatnot, so I know you're super busy, guys, so really appreciate you all. Yeah. Thanks. You're out of time to, share with, like, people that, you know, may want to get into entrepreneurship and are looking for that inspiration. So thanks again. Appreciate you, man. Thanks for having me. Well, that concludes episode six of Shaking Hands. I'm your host, Jack Moran. You can find me on Instagram at Blue Collar Kid. That is blue collar KEHD. If you like what you see, please subscribe. And if you have any questions or feedback, you can reach out to me on Instagram. and other than that, tune in next time. We're going to have a lot more interesting guests and conversations. Thanks, guys.