Makers & Founders Business Podcast

Okay, we are back for another podcast. It is the, Elevated podcast. Technically, I’m calling it Makers and Founders Podcast now because we’re going to keep changing this thing and that’s what we are. We’re makers and founders. It’s coming from a true brand professional. Yes. So I am less collegian. I am with my co-host Mark Gallo.

And today we have the pleasure of interviewing Nick Apostolopoulos. Yeah, I can spell it, dude. I can spell it. I’ve known the guy for 30 years. So, which is the crazy thing is actually almost 30 years I’ve known Nick. Well, it’s disgusting. I don’t like to talk about it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So when I was, what, 28 were, right around 28, we worked at a San Diego Web Design agency together called, Echo Link Interactive, which then turned into mass hysteria.

He was the, head of development. I was the head of creative. And we worked on a few projects together. We actually met in Madison Square Garden, which was a weird spot. Like he had been hired to do this, and I didn’t really know. And then I was creative directing a project for Intel showed up, and I was like, I don’t know, that was actually became his boss.

Right. And they they made me responsible for this. And it was total Peter Principle. I thought they were trying to fire me. I walked up to Nick and I’m like, I have no idea what I’m doing. Please just don’t make me look bad. And he’s like, who are you? So that’s how we met. We became really good friends ever since.

So I’m excited to, you know, sit and chat with you, obviously. So, couple of quick things. If you’re not an EO and you’re watching this for some reason. So we have what’s called forum. And in forum you have a bunch of, you know, up to ten people, let’s say, and, and everything is confidential within that capacity.

Mark is in next forum. So, you know, there’s things that Mark couldn’t say about Nick that only he could say. I know probably more than Mark, and I’m not in his forum, so I can say it, but I probably won’t. So. So, so, Nick, just real quick, I mean, I kind of said you’re our background in how we met, but just go back to what you used to do.

I mean, I know you wrote a book on, like, SQL or something crazy. I mean, going way back in the programing days and and then bring us up to speed. You know, I, I joke that my previous life was, was. Yeah, I was a software developer, software architect, had a company, worked worked with you at, on Madison Square Garden project and did much of it.

Yeah, yeah. For him. Yeah. Yeah. That’s true. Yeah. I’d love to bring that up. I really, I it is one of the pride and joys of my life. It’s like, it’s like but. And his pride and joy is he’s like three months younger than me, so I do I got what I was so I did that. Had a couple of software companies that did the development, like the stuff we did at the Echo Link and, you know, it was I enjoyed it and I’ve but, the market had gotten to the point where there wasn’t a lot of new stuff happening.

You know, the big.com bubble happened. We lost a bunch of money during that. I lost a company during that, kept going with consulting and, and, you know, doing various other things. But after the bubble crashed, the at least back then, the market got really not the market that, the industry got really fearful of doing new things.

So it just ended up being a lot of maintenance work and, and like, being in that world. By the way, you’re just another quick tip, you know, so a puzzle, a puzzle up was 13 letters. So his company name was a 13 when he when he spun off a 12 and he owns a 13 dot.com he still own now it’s still on it.

I mean, is that worth a zillion dollars case that’s worth like ten grand? That’s wow. I’ve got like the three letter domains were like, you know, I busy maybe I’ll anything. It’s not. Yeah, yeah, but it’s not that expensive anyway. But yeah I thought that was that was pretty cool. So, so I was kind of fast forwarding. I mean you were doing programing for years and years and years, and that’s how you were making, EO money.

Right? For sure. You know, you were doing a great job. You had a team under you, you learned all the lessons and owning an agency from the development side back then. The ones that I live to this day, every day and learn every day. And it was one fateful night, I believe I was with you in, at your place in Hillcrest where you were talking about vaca.

Can you can we get into how you got into this business? Sure. I mean, so for me, it was like you’d go down this path. Yeah. It’s a, it was kind of a silly story, because what happened was, is I just was tired of the software industry, and I was trying to figure out if there was some other thing I could do.

And then I had also. Well, you remember, I’d been a homebrewer forever doing homebrewing, make a beer. And many times throughout the years I tried to talk friends into starting, brewery with me. Breweries are a little bit more capital intensive than a distillery, so I could never talk anyone to do it because they were always like, oh, there’s already 40 breweries in San Diego.

Oh, there’s already 60 breweries. There’s already 80 breweries. And of course, now there’s like 140, although that’s number starting to cream backwards a little bit. Yeah. But somewhere along the way, you know, I drink less beer and more spirits, and I thought, I wonder what it would. I wonder if there’s anything such a thing as craft spirits.

I really didn’t even know. And I started researching it and found out. Oh, yeah, there is that world. It is possible it’s not as big as craft beer. And then, yeah, my stupid story about how I decided to start the company was I was at an event, I had friends in the industry, and I was at an event for a tequila brand.

They had bought out the bar and, this thing where they were trying to to promote their brand to the bartenders and stuff like that, the industry. And, so we all went to this event, drink free tequila, eight free food bar, hopped afterward in the back of but a friend’s apartment, and nobody could remember the name of the tequila.

And I thought, these guys just spent, you know, 50 grand, 80 grand on the party, and nobody remembers the name of the tequila. Somebody should do something simple, like 619 vodka. And everyone in the room was like, that’s a great idea. And I’m like, no, it’s a stupid drunk idea, but it’s somehow stuck. And I was like, I really want out of this software world, and I want to see if I can do this other thing.

And so that’s how it started. Yeah. And then for the first 4 or 5 years, it was still just a hobby. I was still doing my consulting gig. Yeah, I was trying to get the company off the ground. Well, yeah. I mean, one of the things I know about Nick, I mean, he is a risk taker. I mean, the true definition of an entrepreneur.

I mean, you know this too. Like, he’ll just go all in for these problems over. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he’s able to he’s able to stick with it like he’s, he’s he’s got resilience that no one else has. Because in the joke that you know, and ironically, Dominic, Carnevale will be coming in to do a podcast sometime soon and, you know, he had the he had the best joke ever when we were talking about, you know, your business.

He was like, you know, you know how you make $1 million in the vodka business? Start with 10 million, you know, and and so and so suck. Talk about living that right now. Right. So talk about some of those challenges. And I think, you know, like I remember in the beginning, I, you know, you kind of found a flow when you got into flavors, you know, and in the very beginning, you were just focused on creating a really great vodka, I believe.

Yeah. And, and by the way, was, correct me if I’m wrong, but, like, you know, you you basically were like, shit, there’s tons of companies making great vodka or and then they have so much distribution power, they can sell it for less. So I can’t get in Wells, I can’t, you know, so just talk about kind of what your thought was and how to grow the business.

And this is pre 619 spirits in distillery. Right. For pre the bar. Pre the bar. Yeah. Pre the book because well that was the problem is I had no idea what I was doing right. Yeah. Okay I can go do this thing and it’ll be easy. And I’ll, I’ll create a local spirit and and every, every everybody will carry it because they’re already carrying all these local beers.

Yeah. And that turned out to be the dumbest thing I ever thought, right. So I went to hotels and whatnot, and I learned really quickly that that’s really stupid because the the local if you, you know, I joke with people, even to this day, if you walked into a bar anywhere in San Diego and they said, we have.

But like Miller, like if they didn’t list a local beer, you’d be like, what the fuck? Yeah. How do you guys not have local beers? And I thought that at some point that would catch on the spirits. And it may be kind of sort of, but not really. Yeah. And so what happens is, is in the spirits world, also, people are much more, settled on what they drink.

Beer drinkers go out looking for something new. Oh, look at Chocolate Porter. And they want to try it. Sure. In the spirits world, that doesn’t happen very much. And so I ran into this brick wall where these bartenders and bar manager for like, yeah, you know, if nobody’s coming in and asking for your product, we’re not going to spend time trying to educate them.

But they go, I want to Tito’s and Soda. We’re just going to promote Tito’s and soda. I’m not going to be like, oh, you should try this other thing. We’re under three deep in the weeds, right? Yeah. And so that was a hard lesson to learn. So we thought, okay, maybe we can pivot to retail. Well, that’s even harder unless you’re doing billboard ads and things like that.

Dude sitting on a shelf, nobody’s going to notice it. And part of the reason I started vodka in the first place is because I thought, okay, there’s nothing really, you know, we’re not a whiskey town or something like that, but I thought, vodka is very California. When you’re sitting by the pool, you’re drinking a vodka soda or something like that, and that’s where.

And I was honestly a friend of mine. We were kind of brainstorming and. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s generally not an old fashioned, you know? So, and we were brainstorming that. Okay, what can make us unique and differentiated? And it’s like, well, California refresh, we’re local. We could do flavors and real infusion flavors, right? So that’s why we chose it.

And that seemed to work pretty well, which was, you know, trying to do fresh, local ingredients, real, real ingredients. You know, our coffee vodka is real coffee. Rose petal has real rose petals, by the way. Rose petal. I mean, who the hell thinks of that, right? I mean, that’s a crazy. And it was it’s great. And and, in the female market particularly really like that.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. And so in fact, it was you know, it’s probably a little bit of a curse, but we purposely I purposely angled away from raspberry and other things like that that we could have done that would have been much more approachable because I was trying to figure out, find that point of being unique in the market.

Well, there’s I hold what, 20 I want to say 2012, 2015 period where vodkas were just really starting to play with the infusion. Yeah. You know, and I remember that with like Absolut. They were like they had every flavor. Yeah man. Yeah. And it was I mean it was all the rage for, for a minute. And it’s still kind of is I mean Sky has all the crazy flavors, but you know, the thing we were trying to do and I don’t know how successful we’ve been, is to try and say, hey, look, we’re not artificially flavored.

We’re not artificially colored. We’re using real or full creative. And this goes back to that $10 million comment mark. And if you think about it, because, you know, we’re all about the same age here and, and and when we were in the late 80s, early 90s, you would get an absolute and tonic or an absolute and soda. Right now you’re saying Tito’s and soda or Gray goose, right.

And so it’s a marketing game. It’s 100% a marketing game. And one of the challenges, you know, that I know Nick has had is, you know, like, so he has, first of all, and I’m not just saying this is vodkas are great. I mean, you name a flavor, they’re all great. There’s a but before the before this, before this, he has, so the he has a pickle vodka and a scorpion pepper vodka.

Okay, now, the scorpion Pepper vodka is, like, too hot for me. But if you, like, take a half ounce of that and, a half ounce of the pickle and a hat and that full ounce of the regular. That’s a bloody Mary that you cannot be. And so I’ve, you know, I’ve said, how do we how do oh, hell yeah, I’ve done the research.

How do we get a restaurant, you know, and this is your challenge to your point where they’re like, hey, we’re not going to educate people, but to put it on the menu, you know, in with the recipe, you know, get the scorpion Mary. Right. You know, and and get that, locally that it around. And I think the challenge becomes they don’t want to pay for it.

Right. It’s just the bottles are too expensive. And so what are the challenges you face of tracing the problem on the spot? Yeah, yeah I know, I wish I knew somebody. Yeah. So the pricing, is it a pricing issue or. Honestly it used to be a pricing issue. We haven’t raised our prices in a while and the market’s kind of caught up to us.

So pricing wise we’re still a lot more expensive than a well but we’re not more expensive than the other brands at the at our level. Yeah. Call brands. Yeah. And to to your point, I, I don’t know if you know this or not, but we are in the spot in La Hoya and one of the cool, the coolest things I ever saw is that so the spot in La Hoya uses that recipe basically, I think I don’t I think it’s half bloody.

I mean, half pickle, half pepper. Right. To make their Bloody Mary got it. And then on their menu. And I wish I could get this in every restaurant San Diego on their menu. They say this is our Bloody Mary. And if you really want you don’t want this. We can make it a Tito’s. And I’m like, oh shit, we’re above the fold on Tito’s, right?

That’s the one place we’ve had a success. But and we’ve slowly started knocking some other, things down. Like, are you getting relator’s art right or are they, are you getting reorders? In other words, you’re going through your flusher. They go through it. Yeah. Great cases I don’t. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But it’s, you know, it’s a case or two a month.

Well, yeah. It was. Yeah. Crazy. That’s what you need in every restaurant. Yeah, exactly. And that’s what we’re working on, you know. But but Covid really put a damper in that, right? Everybody shut down when our sales went through the floor. And, I spent all kinds of time trying to run a restaurant. And so, yeah, that’s that’s the challenge is trying to and that’s the you know, the thing is, it takes a lot of, a lot of cash to make that happen.

You need a you need a rep out there walking into every restaurant all the time. Hey, you guys ready to pick up that? That peck of pickled? Yeah. You guys ready to do this? Are you guys ready to do that? And we just don’t have that presence on the street, right? And that’s the other thing the brands the other big brands have, and they have pricing power, like you said, because they can go in and say, you know, the big guys are all portfolios of brands, right?

Yeah. They go and say, hey, if you break up, pick up this new goose flavor we have or this new kettle flavor we have, we’ll give you a discount on your on your, bullet. Right. Or whatever it is. Right. Yeah. You know, we know you’re using you know, you’re using this in the. Well, we’ll give you a discount on that if you bring in these other flavors.

Yeah. And I’ve seen a lot of those things come and go too. But they have the they have the muscle to do that. We just don’t. Yeah. You know, and we’ve talked to people about trying, you know, we talked to the shell about getting in there. But they want a pretty big spend, and the ROI just doesn’t seem to be worth it, you know?

And the question is, is okay, well, would being in the shell and people seeing them pour the bottle, would that be a good good. Would that be worth it. Right. Is that oh hey, the shells boring. 619I gotta go find this in the store. That is the challenge of. It’s a tough one. It is. Because I know that actually Blowfish tequila is the shells.

Yeah. And that’s what. That’s why I brought it up. Because I know the guys who got it in there. Yeah. He said, and I know what they paid and I know. And so we were. And they don’t have a tequila sponsor. I mean, I’m sorry, a vodka sponsor. And so he talked to them about being the vodka for the, the, the irony is they won’t talk about they won’t touch the flavors because they just want to do it faster, I’m sure a quarter what I mean.

And so then the question is, yeah, would it be worth it? Would they move enough cases and would it be enough for people to see the vodka being poured to start going, oh shit, the shelf was 6 or 9. What’s that? Or or if you have heard of it here, I gotta go get that. Well, let’s talk about the math on that real quick.

So, so what, would you have to pay to be the selected vodka? And then how do they pay you back based on sales? Yeah. So? So I mean, the deal that got bandied around to us was 15 k to be in for a year. Okay. That’s a marine’s reasonable. It seems reasonable. The question is, would we make that back in sales?

Right, right. And so if the answer’s no, then it’s like, okay, well, that’s 50 K marketing spend, right? Or two I care ten K whatever the over is on. Sure. Because certainly our, you know, even if we get a 15 K buy, that’s not our profit margin. So, so at some point we have to look at it as a marketing spend.

And that’s the question right. Yeah. Yeah. We I mean is it worth it to move 15 K for the product because we probably would because they’re number one seller obviously. Yeah. And Blowfish did the math and thought it was worth it. And so, you know, we’d be featured not only there at every event there, but also at the, at the symphony because it’s the same concession.

The suppliers sell that much, but again, so it’s a that’s the question is, is it worth it? And, you know, if we had the if we had the money, we would probably do it. But right now it’s just, you know, it doesn’t make sense, doesn’t make. Well but again, like, can you see like so Blowfish I know is I think on the low end what, 30 or 40 bucks.

And then the high end 100, I know that I’ve probably I’ve done the narrows there, but but how I know your bottles a little less right. You know, and I, you know, I generally know your profit margin, but why can’t you make it seems to me with all the events they have, all the people there, all the, the liquor sales, they would be able to tell you pretty much data wise, we could figure out what they sell.

Yeah. They haven’t given us that information, but we would know. Yeah. Well, so then why don’t you know, like a like is it legit? You exit. It’s one of those things we’re still trying to. Yeah. Come on. And I don’t know yet. Yeah. You know, the biggest issue for us right now, as you know, is it’s just it’s just even if they came tomorrow and said, okay, here’s the contract sign, blah, blah, blah, it’s cash flow.

We’re working on that, on the new space we’re going to get. Yeah, he’s coming in. I just don’t have well yeah. Hopefully. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well we’re going to get into. Yes. Yeah. So that’s the problem. So so to answer your question. Yeah. All things being equal, that would be a no brainer deal. Right. If we didn’t make the money back, it would be worth it to say, oh, we’re in the show and people are seeing it.

And like, you know, like, did you know Blowfish was there just from seeing it? No, no, actually, I, I know the owner, or, you know, so so that was one of those things I just found out. Yeah, yeah. So let’s, let’s get into, you know, Mark had to bring it up, so. Well, first of all, how how long, how long have you had?

Well, let’s before we go there, Mark and Nick, how long have you had the restaurant? Let’s. And, if you haven’t been to listen, I’m solicit. You’re not allowed to do this. No, I’m saying go to this goddamn restaurant and I’ll. I’ll tell you why. The food is unbelievable. Like, really good. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nick’s back there cooking.

You know, he’s making the English muffins while everything else has gone. Yeah. No, but it’s really, really good food and really good cocktails. And, frankly, a good atmosphere, too. I mean, I know the problem is, is so open, like, when it’s crappy weather, you’re screwed, like, today, you’re not going to be a good day, but, it’s a it’s a great it’s a good atmosphere, games, all this kind of stuff to hang out.

You’ve had it to talk about the evolution of that. And, and then before we get to the new space tour, how many years the maker of spirits face. Yeah. And some mistakes that were maybe made there. All of them, opening up a restaurant and it’s only 45. Well, I mean, I could go back to and and I’ll take you back, like, you found that space, and I was remember thinking to myself, I’m sure we talked about it, but like you’ve heard from chefs and all these, you know, don’t get a space that doesn’t have a kitchen because it’s costs that you have to spend that could have been pre-built somewhere else.

And someone that you did not do that you got an empty shell and you built a full custom space and frankly, a lot by yourself and Jason, a great guy, really built your steel and your bar and all that. And so just. I’m sorry. Go ahead. No, I mean, so, you know, like I said, it was a it was I was learning really hard way that it was a struggle to just be a brand.

Right. And, and, and only be selling to bars and restaurants and not have any kind of location. And, so prior to 2017, in California, distilleries weren’t allowed to do what we’re doing. You could you could have brewpubs and wineries, but distilleries weren’t allowed to be open to the public at all. 2017 that changed. They passed, they stayed, they added a craft distiller license.

And then you could be open to the public and you could have a restaurant bar do all that. And so running into all these brick walls. And then I happened to find that location. I thought, I have friends who owned bars, and bars are busy. How hard can it be to run a bar? Right. And that’s a not that I didn’t know.

Restaurants are hard. Yeah, but I thought, okay, we have the space. The space is inexpensive. We can build it out even. And you know. But again, that was my naivete, right? I thought we could build the space out for 50 K. Yeah, well, I don’t know where I got that number. But it is a signal and 250, right?

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. No tables, but, you know, and it’s not the first time. Might not even taste. Got me in trouble. But, you know, I was like, okay, we’ll figure out how to do this. And then the the city had never permitted one of these before. And so we signed the lease in 2016. We didn’t open it till 2018, which cost me an absolute fortune because we were paying rent the whole time.

We could do the buildout. Not unlike what we’re running into again right now. And so anyway, so we went through that process. I, we signed the lease, we opened the we finally opened the restaurant in July of 2018. So it’s been what’s that going to be eight years now. Nine years. I can’t do that. Yeah. This July.

And so, yeah, that’s how we got there. And then you know, I thought, this is, this is the way I think, which again, gets me in trouble. I thought, okay, what I really am trying to do is build this vodka brand, and if I can just, oh, get the bar and restaurant to break even. Then I have a marketing tool because people are going to be coming in and seeing the vodka and buying it and trying it, and I have a free place from which to run the distillery from which to run the other business.

Right, right. Obviously, again, stupid and naive because I still need to make money and I didn’t calculate that into the into the mix. Right. But I was still working consulting and so I didn’t need it. Yeah. But quickly after opening the restaurant, I realized, okay, this isn’t going to work. I got to go in full steam and dive in with both feet.

And yeah, the hijinx ensued from there. Well, and then 19 months after opening Covid, right, we’re just getting our legs under us, and I go for kicks. I’ll tell you, the Knicks did find one of the biggest loopholes in bar ownership history. So, yeah, I mean, and, if you could explain that. Relevant to the distillery.

Yeah. So that the nice little loophole of this craft distillers license is that if you have a craft distillery and you have a kitchen, which, again, we knew we needed anyway. Yeah, but had to build from scratch, which was again, dumbest thing. That if you have those two things, you can operate as though you have a regular full liquor license without buying a full liquor license, which right now they’re probably about 100 and 5060.

Right. So we did get a avoid that expense, right? Yeah. And so we operate as though we have a full liquor license because we’re a distillery, in fact. Side note, and that may be where we pivot too soon. Yeah. Is, you know, I’ve thought that I’ve, I’ve thought for years now that the good side hustle might be trying to find places that can’t afford a liquor license.

It’s not if I can help them become a distillery so they take advantage of this loophole. I mean, it saves a lot of money, right? Like you’re you’re immediately. It’s like a turnkey operation at that point. You’re going to I mean, this the cost associated with starting a business at any level, any time you can look for efficiencies and well, or even if you find a place that’s currently doing beer and wine and lost a liquor license, they don’t have 150 grand.

Right? But and it’s not as easy as it sounds, there’s federal licensing involved in stuff which they don’t normally have to deal with. So there is a component to it. But as a consulting thing, it’d be easy to go in and say, hey, I’ve already run this up. I know how to get the federal license, I know how to do this.

I know how to do that. Well, for 30-40 K, we can set you up as a distillery, and then not only can you operate as a full bar restaurant, you can make your own spirits. You can have your own branded, you know, whatever lessons, you know. Vodka, right. Whiskey that. Well, one of the things, you know, like because he was so.

And listen, this could be my naivete too, because we talked about this and we, we, you know, said, look, let’s be the local bar, meaning all the spirits are local, all the beers are local, and, and and because of 619. Right. It’s San Diego based. And so you want to talk about like, you know, sticking to the, religiously knit cats.

Right. Everything in the bar, whether it’s a bourbon, a gin, tequila, it’s all local stuff. Now, the question I have for you was that a mistake? And do you think sales could have increased if you abandon that? Did we did we make a mistake? And did I make it a single? Yeah, that’s a good idea, right?

No, that’s a great question. I mean, like, if you could do a rum and club after party and coke, we could do a Jameson, and we can’t do Macallan right? Yeah, we don’t get that. So. Okay. The answer to your question is, is it’s not a mistake. Well, it is a mistake in the location we’re at. That’s the answer.

Your question in the new location. I don’t think it’ll be a mistake at all. And why? Because our current location, as much as I. As much as this pains me to say, we’ve been trying to make it an elevated craft cocktail distillery for eight years. And it’s a dive bar. Yeah. And so people walk in now? No, no, that’s, people walk in once a year.

Somebody will walk in and say, can I get a Jagermeister? Can I get something? We don’t have 90% of the time if they come in is, oh, can I get a Jack and Coke? We go, hey, we don’t have that. We have local things. We will. Oh that’s great. So we don’t lose customers because of it. Oh, I don’t know if we gain customers because of it, to be honest with you.

Yeah. But the it doesn’t it doesn’t work well in our current location, and only because that strategy prohibits us from being able to do Dollar Bud Lights during the game because we don’t have Bud Light. Right? Yeah. So that’s where it gets in the way is we can’t we we we compete well on price with the neighborhood, but we can’t do the hey, you know, during this event, can we get a bucket of beers or get this or get or do we do a Boilermaker.

Yeah, yeah. If you’re and we look like a dive bar. And so, you know, we if we, if we could do like a, you know, an $8 boilermaker, that’d be great. But we can’t afford that because the beer cost too much on the spirits cost too much. So in our current space, it doesn’t work very well. Right. It hasn’t been a it hasn’t been a horrible thing.

We’ve been doing fine. But, you know, I think I think one of the biggest mistakes we’ve made is not that space per se, but it’s that we spent so long trying to turn that space into something it’s not. Which is why I spent the last two years trying to find a new space. Right? Right. Because as much as I love that space, and as much as people love it, it’s just it.

It just doesn’t scream high end spot, right? We tried to do caviar tastings in there and stuff, and the event went well, but if I told you that and then you walked in and look, the place would be like, you did what? You’re. Yeah. So it doesn’t really fit, right? Right. Be at the tables as it is.

And it was, it was, it was, it was the opportunity in front of us at the time. But yeah, I think I think all told, that strategy probably wasn’t the best for that spot. Got it. Well, and then moving into the to the news so I know, how much more years lease you have on that too.

Okay. And so, that’s a 2000ft² Sparc. Yeah. Like 2300. Okay. So then you spot eight. Correct. So that’s a monster, right? I know you, Nick, and I know that your thought is if I the money will come right? And that the spot I’ve got to pay will come. And you kind of thought that with this previous space, I know that your thought on the new space is to make it elevated.

Right? Right. So that you can follow that dream and then hopefully stick with the current space and do a dive bar. But let’s just talk about what do you think the real math is on this and how will it pan out and will it happen? And what mistakes have you made there? I could just, you know, keep going stuff out.

Yeah. And I mean yeah, yeah. Let them problem solve through it if you for. Yeah yeah yeah. But but that said you know me well right. And and and I, you know full disclosure I talked to les last week and I literally said to him, I sent him a text and I’m like, I think I might be done pulling rabbits out of my hat.

I’m. I’m running out of I’m running out of that problem solving runway. Right? Yeah. And, you know, when we opened at the first spot again, I totally underestimated how much would cost. I didn’t have the money. I signed the lease before I knew how I was going to do anything with it. Then we fought the city forever and paid a bunch of rent.

And so, you know, I had to figure out how to how to build that space out. And we, we did a, we did a crowdfunding thing. And luckily we raised about 190 grand through crowdfunding at the time, which was crazy because we were zero revenue. Our balance sheet literally had zero on it when we posted it on the side.

But we got like 400 or 200 and some people to, to invest, you know, between 100 and $5000 or whatever. And we raised 190 grand. And so I, you know, I’m working with somebody now who’s trying to help us raise financing for the new space. And, and every time I talk to him, he just laughs and he goes, you do everything backward.

He’s like, you should have gone out, gotten the funding for us for for together and then gone and found a space. Hey, that’s something we accept. That’s not how I work. Right. Unfortunately. And so I spent two years looking for a space, figuring, okay, I can find something, and then I’ll figure out what it’s going to take to make that space.

And so the answer to your question is, I don’t know what this new space is going to work because I think the projections are fair. They’re probably aggressive. But the space, using pictures of it, it’s it’s it’s night and day from the current space. Right. It’ll be an amazing space. If we could pull it off.

It would be incredible if you can pull it off. But you’re in the same boat, Nick. You still have to create a kitchen. You have to do all that. Sure. Yeah, I have to do all that. I again, that that and that. And the mistake we made was signing up before we got into it. And we’re a year in now.

And you know, we I thought, okay, I’ve been through this before. We are we need to build as a kitchen and blah blah blah blah. How much can that possibly cost? Right. And I wasn’t an idiot this time. I went out and talked to some people and you’re like, oh, you’re probably looking at this much per square foot, blah, blah, blah.

So we thought the build out budget would come in around 1.2 million. I have about 800 coming from the landlord in tie. So I thought, okay, I’m gonna need 2 or 4 grand to finish this build out. Yeah. Which again, I thought, okay, I raised 200 last time, but nothing I could go. I can go crowdfund that.

Yeah, you have that. You have a proof of concept. Yeah. And then and, and what happened was that budget came in at originally the first time, 1.8. It’s been whittled down some now because there was porcelain countertops and crazy stuff specked into it that we don’t need. But yeah, I’m running into this problem where now we’re at that point where we even we’re ironically, the city’s all on board this time, but we just we’re just trying to lock up the financing for, and we’re struggling to do that.

And we launched a new crowdfunding, which I thought, okay, we’ve been open eight years. We have is we really have a history. We have tons of gas, we have lots of loyal customers. We have we’re known in the space the Serial Business Journal article, you know, stuff like that. Right. We’re getting exposure. I thought, okay, we can we can easily get.

304 hundred and 800 people to even if they only throw in 100 bucks, it’s a hundred bucks. And yeah, that’s only 80 grand. But if I can get five, six, 800 people to throw in a hundred bucks, then we can go. Hey, guys. Look, we’re doing this. You know, some of those people will throw in 500. A thousand, isn’t that.

I thought we could raise half a million in that thing. No problem. And right now, we’re stuck at about 140, I think, you know, the crazy part is, is in the last, we stopped promoting it altogether, not just because we’ve there’s been no movement at the new space. And in the last three weeks we’ve done like six investments.

I’m like, oh, shit. Okay. People kind of it died off last year. And it looks like now the New year, people are like, oh, okay. Yeah. You know, so, so and a couple of those were $10,000. So it’s like, oh okay, there’s some movement now. So maybe we really start need to start pushing that again. But it’s a struggle because I feel like it’s a chicken and egg.

00:30:04:07 – 00:30:26:14
Unknown
The space has been sitting empty for a year. If I could walk in and start showing like, hey, look, we did this. We’re building the floors. Look, they’re framing this. And I know I think we could drive that, that more, but it’s a matter of trying to find the funding to get it going. Right. And and, you know, in the meantime, we’ve just been borrowing against the, the existing business and my house and whatever to try and keep paying the rent and all the other stuff on the new space.

And this is the story of a business owner at the end in a shirt, you know, when you start talking about the journey of a business owner, the things that a business owner goes through, it’s cause you put yourself out there, put yourself at risk, put your family at risk, right, you know, and then still try to sleep at night, right?

You know. Yeah. And that’s and yes, I mean this story I’m sure resonates with. Yeah. Everybody. Well and on top of it and this is goes back to your backwards thing. Right. Whereas your, your occupying a space you’re not using and paying rent on that space which becomes essentially debt service to your profit. Yeah, right. It’s totally.

Yeah. Right. And well, again, all we’re doing right now is accumulating debt. Right? And since you’re not like a Chili’s or whatever, you know, like you don’t have a well, they’re probably out of business now or I don’t even know. Maybe you are like, you know, so you know, you since you’re not since you don’t have that much revenue to support that, it becomes a much bigger challenge to run your own business.

Yeah. Is was would you say that’s the biggest challenge you’re facing right now? Like what’s happening. Yeah. That’s the bigger that’s actually the biggest challenge are facing right now. We can’t service the debt we’ve been taking on. You know, we have some potential outside investors. But you know, the good in the bad is that in the, in the without going into a long story during this process, it’s it’s turned out that both properties, our current one and our new one are are available to buy.

They’re not listed on the market. But both land both owners have in the last six weeks said, hey, if you want to make us an offer we’re interested in and entertaining it, which they weren’t before, right? So that’s good because now I can say, oh, okay, if I can find investors, I can say, look, you can help me build this space out and own part of the building, right?

Yeah. Well, that’s a it’s a way to be able to cover their leverage. Exactly. Yeah. So but again, I naively thought, oh, this will make everything way easier. And it’s not because we still have to we still have to buy the properties as owner occupied. Right. The good news is the good news is I control, for lack of a better term, both properties because I have leases on.

So I’m the only one currently that could get an SBA 5 or 4. Nobody else can or not. Somebody else can buy the property, but they’d have to buy it at a regular commercial out. Right. So I have some leverage there. But at the same time, thanks to the way, the way I’ve gone about this completely backward is it’s going to be really, really hard to get SBA 5 or 4 loan right now.

Our books will look ridiculous because all they’ve been doing is borrowing money to, you know, so now I have to tell the story where, hey, look, yeah, this thing is upside down, but it’s because I’ve been borrowing money to put into this other space. So this is what we’re trying to do. And again, full disclosure, we had, we we found we thought we found a bank, that would that would because that’s the other thing is there’s no to try and do a 500 for in the new place.

It’s not built out yet. It’s not open. It has no cash flow to to base it on. We did find the lender. We did find a lender who said, that’s okay, we’ll do it based on projections. Yeah. And they denied us yesterday. So they they went through and they said yeah send us this and the stats. And that’s the other thing.

And, and then we got a note back saying, no, we’re not going to we’re going to pass right now. It doesn’t fit our credit box, whatever that means. And they said, they said based on historical cash flows, we think your projections for the new space are a little aggressive. And I’m like, yeah, again, I can explain this story.

Yeah, yeah. The cash flow here is horrible because we’ve been trying to fund it. This new location. Yeah. And yeah, maybe the projections are aggressive, but I don’t think so. I mean, for the projections for an 8000 square foot space, that’s an event space and this and that and the other. Yeah. They’re not that aggressive that you also have to deal with.

Are you doing a million to where we’re at. And that and and so I mean I know the math isn’t a straight line. Sure. But you go to three and a half four times the space. I, I, we should be able to go from 1.2 million to 2.4 million. Yeah, maybe not 3 or 4 million, but we should be able to double our revenue in the space of 3 to 3 times the size.

Well, especially with the event. That’s right. And because that’s the biggest problem with the space we have right now. But always there’s nobody nobody wants to hear that story, which is that we turned down 30 and 40 person events all the time, because that is a buyout in our current location. And the new location, we could do a 30 person event, still be open for dinner service, still be doing a cocktail class in the distillery.

Yeah, you could do all three of those things at the same time. Yeah. We can’t do we can only do one thing at a time where we’re at and that really messes with our ability to to leverage the brand and to do the things we want to do. And so, you know, even when we do a cocktail class, it, it takes up half the bar.

So, yeah, you know. Yeah. And so but, but you know, trying to tell that story to a bank is really tough. Yeah. They need to like come in and see it. And so I mean we have some investors who get the story right. But even then they’re still, you know, wanting to hedge their bets. And and you know, one of the options we’re looking at right now or we’ve been looking at is trying to get a hard money loan to buy the space, get it open, season it for 3 to 6 months so we can go back to the SBA or whatever lender and cash flow.

Right. But but that requires putting 2,030% down to the hard money lender upfront. Right. There’s the loan. So it’s it’s all a mess. Is that loan you’re talking about that you just like to, to buy the building or just to operate. So that has to buy the building to complete the building. So attraction loan and open. Why?

I’m just curious and I don’t know, I mean, what about the asset itself as, as leverage? I mean, great for that. Think like beyond the projections, like, you know, the, so so I’m not a banker. Yeah. That’s down then. Yeah. Yeah. But, I that it I think the answer to that question is, is that. Yeah.

The asset it’s not like when we build the asset out, it’s going to be worth 5 or 6 million bucks or. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the answer to that question is the bank still doesn’t want to own it. Right. Or like, yeah, it’s something other. Yeah. It’s like okay, great. It might we might not lose money.

But then we all know we have to try. And so we don’t want to deal with this real story like this. Like what. How house item. Yeah. But still the bank’s going to say, well, we still want 20% down and we want this and we want that because they don’t want they don’t actually want the asset. That’s a there isn’t just a backstop.

Right. Because that’s where I thought too. I’m like, oh, now that this thing’s here, it was my investors. Hey, if everything goes, goes, goes totally sideways and my projections are a total mess, which I don’t think they are. Then you own the building. Yeah. And the maybe the bank world, but investors probably won’t. You know, I’m hoping their appetite is a little more like, okay, if we own if we do end up owning the building, we’ll just find another operator.

Right. The bank’s not going to do that. The banks gonna want to get off their balance sheet. The others, other owners might be like, okay, well, Nick can’t run it. We’ll just go find an operator who can run this thing, right? Yeah. So, you know, and that’s the problem is trying to prove that that I, we are good operators is really difficult because I leveraged myself so hard in the last 12 months trying to do this that are, you know, 20, 24 books look great or 2025 books look horrible.

Yeah. You know, we’ve done. Yeah. Just I mean, I, you know, we’ve we just they just look for. Yeah. Yeah. And so it’s really hard to get that, which I was maybe in a space like next month, we thought we are, we thought we’d be, we thought I thought, well, but again the problem is the two fold is I thought like an idiot that I would only need a couple hundred grand to do it.

So when we got the numbers, they were just way too high. Yes. My agreement with the landlord, which I, you know, I agreed to. So it’s it’s there. But, they said, hey, look, we have, you know, I have they have 800 grand in tis committed, but they’re like, we’re not going to spend any money into this until whenever, whenever the bid comes out, you need to have the, the the room balance out upfront.

And so, you know again that goes against Nick. I’m going. No, no, no. If you guys start spending your 800 grand right now, I’ll, I can don’t get it because I can I can create excitement and energy and you know, I can go get this crowdfunding thing up if I start showing things like, hey guys, it’s not too late to be involved.

Right. But they’re going, yeah, that’s not how we work. And so again, as, as Mike likes to say, I’m doing everything backward. And yeah, so I literally was talking to him yesterday and I’m like, I might have learned this lesson now. I might have learned, like, don’t do this backward. Although I don’t know if that’s true because, you know, we we we founded this space and I guess I could have said, hey, I’ve got this space, here’s the potential lease, and tried to go find some investors for it.

But at the time, it just seemed like an opportunity we couldn’t pass up. It was a great thing. You didn’t want to lose out on this, but I didn’t want to lose out on the space. Yeah. Tons of parking. Yeah, it’s hard to bear. Yeah. Just want to lose out on the space and. And also, like, an idiot, I sort of thought, you know, and this should have been a telling clue, right?

I thought, wow, based on our books, this landlord’s being like, I’m surprised they’re they’re offering us a lease, because, again, even the landlord was taking a leap on. Hey, you’re only doing 1,000,002 over here. Yeah, we see your space, but you’ve never operated eight grand before. You know, 8000ft. But the landlord was willing to take a leap on us because they liked our concept.

They saw that they saw everything. And so I thought, okay, well, if they’re willing to take a leap, let’s go. And I remember telling people at the time, I’ve said this a dozen times, and because people are like, oh, it’s going to be great, I’m like, no, it’s either going to be spectacular or it’s going to be a spectacular failure.

It’s going to be one of the two, because and right now we’re leaning towards the failure side because I don’t I’m running out of rabbits. I don’t know what’s going on. The decline yesterday was not was not good because I, because I had some investors really excited about that possibility. I have a postmortem with them later today to see where they’re at.

We’re talking about, you know, they were they were the last couple of weeks, they’ve been talking about a 250 K bridge loan to help us get there. Yeah. I don’t know if that where that is right now. I’ll find out this afternoon. Yeah. You know, and hopefully that’s still possible because again, at the end of the day and this is, this is just my naivete, or maybe it’s my eternal optimism.

I’m like, look, there’s real estate involved in this deal. Now, at worst case, you end up owning a building. And yeah, the bank doesn’t want to. But hopefully the investors investors are like, okay, well yeah, worst case we want to build it. You know, I and and not only that, but this is one this is a bank that said we won’t do it.

Our projections. Fine. I was surprised they said they would do that in the first place. Right. This was amazing. Yeah. Oh, so I got my house. So I was amazed. I said like the first place. So my thing is, hey, look. Okay. Yeah, that was kind of a long shot. And the long shot didn’t pan out. But you know, let’s build this space out.

And then once we get open again, even if you take my projections, I cut them in half. There’s plenty of cash flow to service the to service the loan. And then at that point, it should be a no brainer to go get an SBA loan right on this thing. Once it’s cash flowing and we can show, hey, yeah, that’s not that’s this place was doing that.

This place is actually generating this revenue. Right. So, but again, that’s a story I have to tell the investors and hope they bite. And so we’ll see what’s our what’s our. Okay. So I think I know our best case scenario here. You know building gets bought. Money comes in, you get to build to the build out and you you suffer through till that gets opened and we grow that that that’s the best.

What’s our worst case scenario? Right. Today? Worst case scenario is everything goes away because I’ve leveraged everything to the hilt. Right. So, you know, a business owner story. Yeah, yeah. Worst case, everything goes away, you know? Well, even the current location, or only because it’s saddled with the debt of the new location. Right? So it’s currently servicing the debt of the of, you know, we’ve paid in a year.

We paid and you know, we’re into the new space. How did you oh 25 oh, wow. Roughly. Right. Okay. And very soon it’ll be 250. And so and that’s just going to keep growing. Right. And so to, to to make that happen, we’ve taken lots of short term debt, which was really expensive. And so we’ve the current business is saddled with a lot of debt.

Right. And it can service a lot of it, but not all of it. So, you know, to be as judicious about this as possible, we could try and restructure a lot of that debt and just say, hey, this is where we’re at work with us. That’s the option I’m working on now. But again, even even even looking at that, when I was talking to the investors yesterday, they’re excited because not excited, but they’re like, well, the, you know, the the curd building, I mean, is up for sale too, right?

So we could buy that. Again, I mean, that’s more debt. But if they if they’re willing to come in and help us buy that building, and, and give us some cash to make that keep going, then we could probably keep that. But I mean that do the absolute worst case is everything goes away 3036 going back to that, I it’s it’s, you know, it’s it’s full disclosure I’ve talked to you and I yeah.

And you know, it’s it’s I’ve been we’ve been on the precipice of that for, for for for. Yeah for a couple of years. Well what’s with the current building though. There’s another building attached that already has a lease so as well. Right. So I should speak better at the current property rights, the current property, three buildings we occupy, two crazy I guess one.

Right. And so that would be purchasing the whole property. Right. Hitting the leasehold there and then the leasehold there. That helps to guarantee some of that revenue. It seems like a smart purchase, but as where I’m going right as because we’re not the we’re not the only tenant in the building. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It’s so, so it it’s a little easier for them to swallow because.

Yeah. Crazy Burger has all these crazy burgers already paying part of the rent. They would be paying part of the mortgage. Yeah. Yes. So easier to swallow. Again the difficulty is going to be is going to be finding a lender to even loan on that building with the current state of our financials because, well, and explaining to them all.

But yeah. But even honestly our sales are up this year over last year already January was up like 10% over last year. Oh it’s great. It’s things have things. Things, you know, it’s it’s probably that little had been that too little too late thing. Things are shifting around like I’ve been. I was really surprised by sales this year and January sales.

And I’ve talked to some other people and, and it seems to be rebounding. Right. That’s why I think people are finally putting a little money into the, into the refund or etc.. But yeah, too little too late, right? I mean, that’s not enough to cover everything. And so, you know, and again, trying to explain to a lender this business looks like crap because we’ve been trying to do this other thing.

Right. Yeah. It’s just really hard to do I think I mean, I and I’d be interested to know too, just of the direct correlation to the business in January because we had an incredibly warm January. And, you know, his face is so killer from an outdoor, you know, it’s like it’s like if you’re in California and you want a drink, this is the place to go because you’re outdoors and you’re indoors, you know, and that’s it’s kind of that, that whole thing.

So I wonder what that’s like some other people. And it’s funny because, you know, my, my, I say my investors, there’s a guy he’s retired. He he’s done this for years and he’s, he’s working for free right now. He’s doing it. He jokes that sometimes he’s doing I. How are you doing? He’s like a lot of work for free.

But, but, you know, he likes the idea, is interested in the thing. And so he’s the one trying to talk to various people and trying to help raise this money. And he’s constantly ask me, how are sales? How are sales? Because he he is very, he’s very sour on. He thinks there’s everything’s going to kind of fall apart in the next year or two.

And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, I, I don’t again, I’m overly optimistic. I think, I think hospitality is going to rebound to this year because last year couldn’t be any worse in the last two years. And regardless how you feel about the administration etc., etc., things, you know, gas prices are coming down, things are, you know, things are starting to settle.

Yeah. And and so I think people are being more optimistic. And so January kind of proved that. And then even Mike even called me, you know, at the end of the month and said, how are you doing? How’s sales? I’m like this. And he goes, yeah. He goes, you know, I because I don’t understand it. I talked to a couple people.

I talked to a beer operator I know, and his sales are up 30% over last year. Yeah. And I’m like, yeah, I think it is going to turn around right now. This week’s going to this week going to suck. It’s raining. I think February will probably prove to be better than last February. So as your business cycle right is the cycle is usually around 18 to 24 months.

And if you look at the stance that our cool, you know, the hospitality industry took a little bit of a head last year for, you know, definitely, you know, some 2044 year. It’s it’s funny because I guess, you know, everyone can look at it from their own perspective. But a lot, you know, at the end of the the last six months of last year, it was, oh, this place closed.

Oh that place closure. Oh that place closed or that place closed. There was a lot of those. But then if you look at all the places that are opening in the next 3 or 4 months, it’s crazy. And I mean, not small properties. I lost to North Park, which is like a $5 million bill down Bakari, which took over the old, urban solace.

I mean, there’s just there’s just if you go to San Diego Magazine, they got 26 or 28 of the new openings coming, and they’re all huge projects. So these guys are all betting like, hey, this, this is coming back around, right? And our new project fits in that world, right? It fits in this way because I think, honestly and this is I don’t you know, I’m not an expert, but I feel like what’s happening is, is people are don’t have the money they used to have.

But I feel like because of that the market’s bifurcating. I feel like people are either going for, for, you know, hey, I just want to go get a burrito and a beer and the cheapest thing I can find, or they’re looking for an experience. They’re looking to spend money at a at a, at a, at a French restaurant, have a thing or come to a distillery and have a, have a cocktail class and appearing in a thing or a tasting dinner.

And that’s what we can’t do at our current space that we want to do with the new space. And so, you know, I could be completely wrong, but that’s what I keep trying to pitch is like, look, this the reason we’re trying to do this is because I think we can offer this as experience caviar pairings and, and have, have, distillers come in and do a, do a whiskey class and meet the actual distiller from whichever distillery in Southern California, things like that.

I think people will pay up for. I think they’ll pay 150 bucks to come in and have that. Well, let me compliment you for one second, because a lot of times, you see, you can be wrong. And I feel like, you know, your optimism, optimism has manifested continually staying alive for a long freaking time. Right. And you you turn, you turn, you turn Ron into right somehow.

Maybe you’re wrong, but you’ll still make that happen. And, absolutely. And so. Well, I mean, this could be like a Howard Stern 3 or 4 hour interview. We’ve got to wind down. I need to ask you this. You’ve kind of said it. I think in many different ways. But, you know, where where do you what is some of the biggest regret you have over like that you’ve done maybe, maybe this past year over the course that you’ve learned like, hey man, don’t do that.

Maybe it’s going backward, I don’t know. And then where do you think you want to where do you think you’re going to be in three years? Should this work out or not work out? Like what’s going to happen? And I know these are tough questions. And Mark, feel free to interrupt. And I feel like my biggest I’m doing all right.

I mean well it just because I’m in the middle of right now my biggest regret is signing this lease without knowing how I was going to do it. Right. Yeah. And just figuring, thinking I could make it happen. I don’t know if I had much of another choice. Because where we were at wasn’t sustainable for the long term either, right?

It just wasn’t going to I mean, the revenue that we could make it, but it doesn’t make to make the revenue to support me or support whatever it it was, you know, and we’ve been trying to grow the, the sales to bars and restaurants since Covid and that’s picking up. But it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s 42 grand, five grand, ten grand, not even ten grand a month, right?

Yeah. So I would say my biggest regret is signing that lease, but I also feel like I didn’t have a choice. And, because while we did have proof of concept and we did kind of show that this could work, and I showed that a bar could work, you know, you know, Steve told me, dude, you’re you’re never going to nobody’s going to go there if you don’t have it.

Jack Daniels right. Well, I proved that’s wrong. We packed for New Year’s Eve, and everyone’s drinking local spirits, and we’re not drinking anything natural. Right. But, while there was a proof of concept, I still.

I don’t think I had, and maybe I was wrong. The bona fides to go out and say to go, to go do it the right way to go to go to a group of investors and say, this is what I’ve got, this is what I’m doing. Because the financials at the current place aren’t amazing. They’re okay, but they’re not amazing.

Or they were. So I don’t think I could have convinced anyone, even two years ago that, hey, you should help me find an 8000 square foot space. So for the record, we weren’t looking for that big of a space, right? We were looking at 4 or 5, 4 or 5. We found a bunch. They fell through. And then this space, you know, I, I don’t mean to belabor it.

Even my contractors, like the other spaces you looked at, I was trying to convince you not to do them. This space is amazing, right? It’s great. Bones, it’s 2015. It’s an amazing space. And so, I, I biggest regrets doing it backward, but I don’t think I had another choice. My choice was to go. This isn’t working.

And and and give it up or try and try and go big or go home. Right. So, Yeah, I don’t know, ask me in a week because it might be totally different, but because I, you know, this is I mean, I, you know, I literally message you. I’m like, are we still doing a podcast this week? Because this might not be a good time because I don’t I’m a I might be coming and go, I so I had this business.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it’s, we can always say. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So. Yeah. Anyway, that’s probably the biggest regret. And then, I don’t know, going forward three years. I mean, if this works out, I think, I hoped if this works out, that I will have established that I know what the fuck I’m doing and that I can pull these things off.

So hopefully next time I don’t have to do it backwards, right? Yeah. I mean, even with Mike. So who? Because Mike I met through 117, which is the other story I’m a part of, and he’s like 75. He’s retired. He golfs every day. He was there. He worked for Wells Fargo, he blah, blah, blah. And but he, you know, he calls them like he sees them.

And everyone’s always like, hey, I’m sorry. I’m like, no, Mike, I don’t I don’t want you to tell me, sugarcoat shit. I need to know if we’re, you know, and and so, he’s he’s he said to me multiple times, he goes, you know, if you pull this off, he goes, it’ll be he you won’t have to worry about writing your next check, right?

You’re right. You’ll be able to go, hey, look, we did this 8000ft². Some 3 million a year. Yeah. Let’s move this along. Right. So that’s where I think it will be in three years if we can pull it out. Awesome. I worry about your cortisol levels. Let’s do. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I just. Yeah. The last. Yeah.

Just. Yeah. All right. Three years ago, I had. Yeah, yeah. It’s the only thing I wish the only thing I, I don’t know how as why as I feel like a stressed out as I been, I should have lost a bunch of weight. And I’m simply like, the upside, the upside still kind of there. You’re reaching. You’re not this good food.

It I just so that’s it. That’s all. You’re like, oh man, that was maybe if I was maybe like a diet bar, then I think it’d be fine. Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s so funny. Normally when we do these, we kind of have some questions that we go through. And I think he just said them all without us asking the questions.

Right. Like the lessons learned, you know. Exactly. Yeah. Right. Yes. Nick, dude, like, you know, I love you. I wish nothing but the best for you. I don’t want to see this go out of business, frankly, because, I want to get good. I like that chicken sandwich you have. So, you know, I really I really hope this works out.

And I don’t know if you think about it. I mean, podcasts like this are truly the basis of the way your runs. Yeah. You know, it’s this isn’t Instagram where it’s all, you know, unicorns and rainbows and things of that nature. This is truly getting into the founders vision and shit that happen. But you know, the one thing I would also say, and Nick, I’ll say this to you, I’ll say this to me because, you know, I started a business, the CBD.

I should have asked, you know, we were all optimistic and stuff, and it’s and it takes longer to work out and is to lean on. Oh, you know, you’ve got guys in here that are killer commercial. These guys killer have a killer tool. Are finance guys, killer attorneys and like, maybe to. And this is just a lesson, not just for you.

It’s for all of us to, you know, like, if I have a question, just ask. And that’s the one thing I love about this community, is, is, you know, is, is that information that you get out of that? So but dude, man, let’s make this work. And, you know, however I can out your lips, dude.

Yeah. Let me if I just pull up 8 million bucks out of my ass, I’ll get that over to you. And we’ll we’ll make this happen. But now, thank you for coming in today. And you. Oh, and one more thing you should know is Nick also was a sponsor of EO, and so all the vodka you were drinking was Nick.

So thank you for that. So, all right, thanks a lot. And have a good one. We’ll see you next time. Thanks. All right. One down to a new, I don’t know that we’re down this way. It’s, every day, everything’s a fucking disaster. This. I don’t know how you that you know. Well, this. Yeah. This, I had to cure a three day or quit today, which I don’t know how I’m gonna do a who, what the, the the.

We haven’t paid rent that current space, so they gave us a three day notice. I don’t I don’t pay today. They start. They

start evicting tomorrow. I mean, I’ll figure it out. We’ll help you move your stuff up. We’ll just double check it. But. Yeah, I mean, the one question, though, and I could use those chairs in the corner, you know, it was.

Hey. Oh, yeah. What a building. So I bro. Yeah. It’s got it. Yeah. I always laugh it. Yeah. So a trip. I mean, it’s, we is no rigid. Yeah. Yeah, that was mostly. I was going to need it if you for toast. They picked the. You got pre-approved for a loan.