Nuttin Ordinary is a 100% plant-based cheese manufacturer in New England. It uses a proprietary probiotic blend and production process to culture its cheese, achieving the taste and consistency its customers know and love. In today’s episode, Joshua Velasquez and Adam Hamilton have the opportunity to share their secret on navigating their business. They could network and find good advisors who joined their team, which helped guide them to the next level of growth. They also share what they found during COVID; consumers became really aware of what they were putting in their bodies. If you want to hear more about how Adam and Joshua scaled their business, tune in to this episode of TIG Talks now!

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Joshua Velasquez and Adam Hamilton On Navigating Through Their Plant Based Cheese Business, Nuttin Ordinary

Before I have Josh and Adam introduce themselves and talk about Nuttin Ordinary, I’m going to do two of my favorite things of light, which is to lay on you a little bit about our TIG Collective and our TIG Venture community. Let’s start with the TIG Collective. We have some challenges in this industry, one of which is the makeup of our boards looks a lot like me, middle-aged White dudes. That’s not the communities that we serve.

We serve as our brand. We serve broad, diverse communities. We need more women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ board members, not because we’re trying to tick some diversity metrics off of the to-do list, but because the brands that have diverse boards, diversity of lived experience, thought, and so forth are going to outperform those that don’t. It’s just good business.

We need to do a better job of building that next set of board members. At the same time, to be blunt to all of you reading, a lot of you entrepreneurs pick up advisors like vanity plates. You just want certain names, put them on the deck, and don’t do much to derive value. It’s important to learn how to extract value. Sometimes advisors have seasons, and the advisor you need when you’re a $1 million brand is different than the advisory you need when you’re $10 million or launching a real big D2C effort versus a retail effort or going through a fundraising round. The TIG Collective was built to help both sides of this challenge.

Brands come into the TIG Collective and sign an advisory agreement with the collective. Normal advisory agreements issue their advisory shares to the collective. On the other side, the collective sought out a diverse group of advisors with great wealth and a diverse set of experiences. They sign an advisory agreement with the collective and get issued shares in the aggregate upside of all the shares parked in the collective.

What we have is great advisors working with great entrepreneurs, both learning side by side, both supporting each other, and everybody benefiting from the success of the total. I’m very excited about it. If you’re either somebody who has been in this industry for a long time, interested in learning more about how to give back and potentially position yourself for a board, let us know. Reach out to me, Jenny, or Charity. If you’re a brand and want to be part of this community and collective, reach out to us as well.

The second thing I want to talk about quickly is our venture community. Fundraising is one of the biggest challenges that exist for any brand, especially early brands. It’s not getting any easier. The reality is that, for the most part, to get to the larger institutional venture funds, you are now having to get further. How do you get further without the capital that you need? Candidly, many of these venture funds are built to find the next grand slam. I think and believe in our thesis that great brands build good businesses, or good brands or businesses build great brands. Either way you want to flip it around, it’s an opportunity that needs to be invested in.

There is a path for a fund that’s built on singles and doubles, not grand slams, where LPs can make money, and good brands with good entrepreneurs have the opportunity to succeed and reach a point of optionality, that optionality being should they jump into the venture. Maybe it’s now their bankable. Maybe they have opportunities with private investors. The reality is we can build more brands that can get to EBITDA positivity and cashflow positivity by earmarking and putting the right money into work at the right time and structuring it in a way that is both beneficial to the founder and the LP. Our whole industry wins.

We can’t do it without you. If you’re a part of this industry and have been a beneficiary, you need to consider investing and being part of the TIG Venture community. It’s a rolling fund. You subscribe, and you can adjust your subscription on a quarterly basis. If you’re interested, reach out. If you’re interested in being the beneficiary of having some TIG dollars come in, please reach out, and we could talk to you more about the community. That’s it. I’m done with my commercials.

I want to introduce Josh and Adam from Nuttin Ordinary. I’ve known these guys now for a while. One of the cardinal rules we have in our community is no assholes. One of the other is this belief of karmic boomerangs that everybody here should be giving freely without expectation of reciprocity and let the universe worry about reciprocity. These two guys are the embodiment of both. They’re gracious, giving, kindhearted good people who are working hard and have built what is the best cheese.

The fact that it happens to be plant-based is a bonus. The fact that it happens to be a super clean ingredient, even more so, is truly the only cheese I eat as a whole food, plant-based vegan. I have absolute confidence that these guys are game-changers. They’re raising now on StartEngine, so I’m putting a plug-in for it as well. I’m going to turn it over to Josh and Adam to introduce themselves. I’m not going to pick which one goes first. I’m going to see how they’re going to duke it out together and see which of the two of them gets to start it off.

I have a longer introduction here. I’m Josh. I’m the Founder of Nuttin Ordinary. Adam is with me as well. He’s the Cofounder. Our story starts in the ’80s. How we got into this was I was raised vegan vegetarian. There were not a lot of dairy alternative options out there. I was also lactose intolerant. I was raised vegan vegetarian for health and wellness reasons. When Adam and I met, we were both on the same page when it came to finding quality premium dairy alternatives. We got to work. We built a test lab in my parents’ basement. That was in 2014. I reeled Adam in over from Rhode Island, but before I get too deep into that story, Adam, introduce yourself as well.

My name is Adam Hamilton. I’m the Cofounder of Nuttin Ordinary with Josh. We are also husbands, so you can imagine our work-life balance is nonexistent. To Josh’s point, Josh is focused on the creative side, the actual brainchild of creating our process and product. I’m focused on the sales and finance side.

I’m going to jump into a question quick to you, Josh. In the ’80s, with your parents, what made them encourage you and want you as a family to be eating a vegetarian or vegan diet? It’s still not common, but certainly then, it was even less so.

Part of it is they were Seventh-Day Adventists. The Seventh Day Adventists are known for eating a more vegan or vegetarian diet. The other part was my mom is from Puerto Rico and my dad is from Ecuador. They also missed having real, unprocessed food. It made sense to them. They were looking for healthier alternatives. My dad had high blood pressure. It wasn’t like we had to as kids. It was just what was served. When I got older and moved out, we had our options. We could do whatever we wanted. I always found myself going back to a vegan, vegetarian diet because that’s when I feel my best. It is a whole food. It was minimally processed. Back then, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Loma Linda Hotdogs. That was always a treat for us. It wasn’t always in the house. If we were going to have it, it would be a special day.

It’s interesting because the Seventh Day Adventist community in Loma Linda, California, which is the largest, is the only blue zone in the United States. At Loma Linda University, they’ve done a lot of work around this. I’ll give a shout-out to a couple called Dean and Ayesha Sherzai. They’re at Loma Linda. They’re neurologists studying the impacts of eating this way on brain health, cognitive health long-term, and dementia. It’s interesting work. You guys should all check that out. To go from, “There’s no good dairy, plant-based alternative cheese out there,” to building a test lab in your parents’ house, what made you take that jump? What was the background before? Why did you feel like you had to go out and solve the problem?

When Adam and I met in Rhode Island, we were talking about starting a plant-based restaurant that would be inclusive and bring everyone in. One of the items we were going to bring on was a fermented nut-based cheese that we had stumbled upon through our raw dieting days from 2009 to 2010. I took that. We said, “Let’s scrap the restaurant. The world needs something like this out there.” I needed it selfishly myself.

When you look at dairy alternatives and turn that label, it’s oil, thickeners, and gums and has no nutritional value. I was blown away that you can blend up cashews or a lot of the nuts out there, and it has a cheese-like taste and texture. The first one I made wasn’t my best work. Adam and I were both like, “There’s something here.” That’s when we talked to my parents and said, “We just need two years of your basement.” We built the test lab there, and I got to work. Once we had that sample that grabbed some of our coops locally, we knew that we were onto something, and we had to keep going.

What did your parents say when you said, “Mom and dad, do you mind if I build a test lab?”

In the beginning, they were a little nervous. First of all, they saw their basement as a dungeon. No one used it. It was a grimy basement. Adam and I went in there and gutted it out. We brought plumbing and electricity and made it into a lab. I had the FRP paneling and the epoxy flooring. Once we put that up, they got it. In the beginning, they didn’t quite see the vision. Part of it, as parents, they were a little afraid that we would be putting our own money into this, and what if nothing comes of it. From then on out, they’ve been cheering us on.

That’s remarkable. If one of our kids came back and said, “We want to build a test lab in the house,” I’ll be like, “Hell, you are. First of all, don’t come back.”

They did a lot. We have a private well out there. There was at one point towards the end where we were using so much water that we were drying their well out. They were kind enough to say they were going to take showers and wash clothes with their neighbors with who they were friends. They didn’t shower at their own house. They didn’t wash clothes at their own house, so we could continue to figure out this R&D process. That was the last two years at their house. They did that for two years.

That’s amazing. Adam, you said being married makes work-life balance a challenge. What have you guys learned about that? How do you compartmentalize? Do you?

It can be difficult. The good part is that we love what we’re doing every day. We have to go home and be like, “It’s 7:00. We have to stop talking about work and set up some boundaries.” One of the most valuable lessons we learned was to stay in our lanes. Josh is in charge of production. He’s in charge of the branding side. He asks my two cents. When I’m asked, I give it. I try not to give it too freely. It’s the same thing on the sales and finance side. We’ve picked our lanes and do our best to say on them. It’s never perfect, but it’s working. Having a cofounder allowed us to get a little bit further and quicker than when we talked to some other solo founders.

There’s no question about it. To have somebody to share the journey with is so healthy. I’ve been involved with lots of entrepreneurs that are couples, and it’s not always easy either because 1) You don’t know how to separate sometimes from it. 2) When either shit hits the fan at home or work, it’s hard to keep those two things distinct and separate.

We learned those early on. Honestly, I felt like COVID probably spread that one up. We learned to respect and stay in our lanes, not take it home. The biggest challenge is when we go out to hang out with friends, all we have to talk about is work.

It’s much like when a couple has a child. Your whole world revolves around that first child. You go out, and that’s all you can converse with. You’ve probably learned more about each other. The art form of living and working together has given you some incredible opportunities for reflection and self-awareness. It’s probably been pretty cool. Juliet works with me, not at the same level, but has been involved in the business. It’s an interesting journey. Shifting to the business side of it, you guys were up and going and hit the pandemic, which was a gut punch, and now out the other end. What are you excited about? What do you see in terms of opportunities and further enhancements for the brand? What’s keeping you guys up at night and stressing you out the most?

You’re right, Elliot. We had built an 8,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in 2019. I left my job in banking in July of 2019, all just in time for March 2020 to come roaring in. We took our five-year plan, crumpled it up, and threw it out the window. It was good to have two brains in the business to navigate those first couple of years of COVID. Some of the benefits we see from it are that we became lean in our manufacturing. We became super efficient. Most importantly, why we’re sitting here now is that we went out, networked, and found good advisors to join the team and helped guide us on that next level of growth. To your question about what we’re thinking about the future, we’re pumped.

One more thing to add is that with the market, we came into these clean and simple ingredients, fermented, plant-based cheese. We were pounding this drum. What we found during the course of COVID is that consumers became aware of what they were putting in their bodies. They were reading labels and checking ingredients even more so before the start of the pandemic for both health reasons and how they felt. They spent a lot of time at home cooking. How we positioned our brand is resonating even more on the back end of the pandemic than it did at the beginning.

That’s true. Both of your superpowers are knowing what you don’t know, asking, and getting yourself surrounded by people who can give you advice. At the same time, not just accept that advice as absolute. It is what it is. It’s advice. Some of which will be good advice, and some of which won’t be good advice and be applicable and being able to discern that. You’ve done a nice job of building that, and it will serve you well. Josh, anything to add on either side of that?

Adam did a great job covering all of that. I agree with all of that. One of the other things that we’re excited about is finally finding a community that believes in everything that we believe in and that our values align. That community is the TIG community. We got back from Expo East, and it’s so exciting when you come back and meet everyone that is able to leave their egos at the door. We’re all talking about all the different things we’re going through. We didn’t have that in the early days. It was just Adam and me. We were constantly searching. Even if we found a couple of people, they didn’t follow your policy of no assholes. We found a lot of assholes and kept saying, “This is not our tribe. Eventually, we’ll find it,” and we found that and were excited.

One thing I will say is that in this industry as a whole, there aren’t that many jerks. I learned the importance of community, not with intent, but by naturally occurring, and then recognized, “We’ve got to lean into this. This is where the real need is.” I was a part of a mastermind group. I remember we would meet twice a year in person. We were meeting in Toronto and were always prepped like, “Bring with you this question.” The question for that one is, what do you think your highest value activity or offering is?

I went in there and chest puffed out a little bit of swagger, saying, “It’s our empathy-based approach to strategy.” It sounded cool and was true. We’ve all been working together for a while, so we know each other. The entire mastermind group looked at me and said, “You’re so full of shit. It’s the power of the community you’re building.” That was an epiphany for me.

I came back from that and immediately reached out to the team and said, “We’re going all in on the community. We’re going to build the best vessel we can and try to facilitate it.” It’s because if I believe if we create a place that is safe, nurturing, supportive, and promotes access, education, and all of those things, we can make a difference in the outcome of these founders. It’s been cool to witness it. Our role is more just to be a conduit and then get out of the way.

I can piggyback on that. You hit the nail on the head. There’s an agency in the US called the Kauffman Foundation that studies entrepreneurs. They study their brains and their whole journey. One of the big things they found that resonated with us when we heard them speak one time is that entrepreneurs are so deep in what they’re doing. They don’t know who to trust. They don’t know where to look. They don’t know where to go. It’s almost like you’re running around like a rat in a maze. That’s something that we found now. We found the right voices we could trust, listen to, and have healthy discussions. It doesn’t mean we always are going to do that, but we trust that it’s coming from a place of goodness.

First of all, that means the world to hear, but it’s so true. It’s what we all need. I love it with the fact that I’ve been in this business forever. The way we have this community is I spend way more of my day still as a student than I do as a teacher. My role is less teacher and more like cross pollinator because we’re all learning from each other. It’s super beneficial. Let’s talk about the future of the business in terms of where you see growth opportunities and headwinds. Our broader community of our readers here, which are not only other entrepreneurs but retailers, investors, and so forth, it’s good for them to know what’s it like now in this environment to be trying to build a brand.

What’s next for us is we’ve already proven in the market in New England, a cheese lovers country. We’ve been able to build a pretty good business here. Why we’re excited is we’re winning with the folks that have that sophisticated palette that are reading labels and understanding what we’re doing. We’re ready to take that to the next level and start driving our growth nationally and being able to get into markets like Sprouts or Whole Foods, where those people are looking for those products.

One of the benefits that we have is that we truly are solving something. The folks picking up our products are those who are lactose intolerant or vegan for health and wellness or animal welfare. We’re solving something real for them, which is a clean, simple ingredient product that tastes good. We’ve taken the position that the consumer’s intelligent, that they know what they’re picking up, they’re checking those labels, and they’re trusting their taste buds. We’re winning with a small segment of those, and we can see that in our velocities and the stores we’re in, but we’re looking to reach more.

How do you reach more? We’ve had this conversation many times. I started off my introduction about you guys with the same statement because I believe it’s true. You make a superior and good-tasting cheese that happens to be a plant-based and clean ingredient. That’s not just because that’s the way I eat. You put this against other spreadable cheeses, put a blindfold on, and say, “What’s the best-tasting cheese?”

I would say you guys would win more times than not against even dairy-based cheese. You create this opportunity for those that are trying to either reduce the amount of dairy or are committed to trying to at least make some healthful choices for themselves, the planet, or all those things all the way up to the people who are complete vegans. You still have to do the education. You still have to drive the trial. You have to convince the retailer. How do you do that?

That’s probably something we’re going to figure out as we go. I don’t know if we can give you a concise answer, except the tests we’ve been doing have been working. We don’t want to give away too many secrets on this show. The influencer is an overused word, but the folks that carry credibility in certain communities where the customer that we’re targeting who they listen to. We’ve identified who those voices are in those customers’ lives. Now it’s about educating those folks and letting them educate the consumer.

The reality is if we can get the product to the mouth of the consumers, the product will do most of the work. It’s that eating experience. If you look at the labels and all of that, it’s there. Some of the things you guys are exploring, like having food service options and things like that, to move that trial around a bit is going to be very beneficial. Let’s talk about equity crowdfunding. Let’s talk about the Start Engine. What made you guys decide to go that route?

I’m a champion of it. It democratizes the process. It allows people who are sometimes kept out of being able to buy into the brands they truly love that are private placement brands because they’re not accredited investors to do it. It’s ultimately a way to test the salience of your marketing message and your ability to do that because you can see if you can convert people. Separating people from their cash is a great way to test the strength of your argument. What drove you to do it? What are you learning about the process thus far?

It goes back to values. Here’s the reality. We haven’t gotten to where we’ve gotten now alone. We’re not going to get to the next level alone. We have a favorite quote we love to put out there, “If you want to travel fast, travel alone. If you want to travel far, travel together.” We’re inviting people to invest in what we’re doing so that we can take this to the next level together. To your point, typically, the average American doesn’t get a chance and opportunity to invest in early-stage companies.

That’s changed with equity crowdfunding. That’s exciting for us. Here’s quick math. 1,000 people at $1,000 is $1 million. That reaches the max on the equity crowdfunding platform. As entrepreneurs, we certainly need some funding, but more important than the money, 1,000 ambassadors out there talking about our brand and products are both humbling and mind-boggling.

You create not only investors but evangelists. Those are force multipliers. That’s one of the things that I like about it. It’s different, even in the public markets. When you’re a shareholder in a public company, even if you’re a tiny shareholder, you tend to be a little bit prouder about your purchase and are willing to share it with other people. There’s that connection. That’s amplified significantly when it’s not something that’s widely available, and there are very few and little opportunities for others to jump in. It’s one thing to decide to do this. It’s another to build a campaign and encourage people to invest. How are you doing that?

We’re doing a lot of groundwork now. We rolled out this campaign not so long ago. We’ve raised $130,000. How we’re accomplishing that is word of mouth among our friends, family, and our community right here. We printed up these awesome postcards. We went out to Boston VegFest, which is a great consumer show. We were out there for two days. We sample the product, and then we hand them a card. That’s how we engage in conversations with potential investors. So far, everyone’s been receptive and excited. Some of them are blown away that they themselves are able to buy some shares in our company.

Are you happy with the early results thus far?

We are very happy with the early results.

We got a compliment from Start Engine. We had an update call with them. They got on the call and said, “What are you guys running for ads? You guys are doing well.” We broke it to them. We said, “We haven’t run any ads yet. This has been word of mouth. This is the stealth campaign.” Now we’re starting to spin up our social media and email list activities.

For those reading, we’re not that far. I got to give these guys props because they showed up at Expo East with QR codes on their shirts. “Click my shirt and invest.” They had all kinds of postcards to hand out and so forth. That’s what you have to do. I would imagine there’s a bit more fun in doing it this way. It’s not like you’re meeting with a bunch of gatekeepers and investors like, “My friends, don’t get mad at me.” I’m not saying that that’s the case. I’m just saying some of you are a little stubborn and have your own view on things. This democratizes it and allows you to go out and try to build momentum. Have you enjoyed raising money this way? You probably haven’t started reaching out to people to say, “I’m Josh. I’m Adam. How would you like to invest in us?” Are you doing that yet?

We’re doing that wherever we go. There are a couple of examples locally where we eat or work out at our local gym. We’re out there pitching to everyone. Honestly, it’s more personal. You get to talk to this person. It’s a little casual. It’s almost like when we’re out demoing the product itself. There’s a lot of passion involved in this. Everyone is excited to be a part of this. It’s a different feel from traditional pitching.

We can give some examples. Our local brewery has our cheese on the menu. The owners of that invested, and they were excited to invest. There’s a local sandwich shop that uses our product. It’s the same thing. They jumped right in. These were some of the first people. We met some people at Boston VegFest. We’ve been going to this show for several years. They’ve been following our evolution. The look on their face when they’re like, “I can buy shares in this company?” They’ve already probably spent $1,000 buying the product easily. Now they can have a piece of the pie. It’s been another humbling moment with these folks because they’re saying, “Thank you for the opportunity.” That’s pretty amazing.

That’s wonderful that you’re humbled by that. Another reason I like equity crowdfunding is that you can point to this as proof of product-market fit that is directly tied to monetization. You can walk into a retailer and say, “We’ve raised X amount from X number of individual investors because they believe in this brand. They want this brand. They want to see more of this brand. This is a brand that should be on your shelves.” There’s a real benefit there. Switching gears a bit, as you look down the road five years from now, where do you see the business? What are your hopes and aspirations for the reach that you have? What’s the product portfolio look like? Now you’ve got the cheese and ravioli. What’s next?

There are a lot of things that are next. We’re in the middle of some big changes at the company. At some point, we’ll be able to reveal our brand name. That is going to set the stage for where we can go with this company. We’re excited about that because it’s going to line up with the premium products we’re putting out. With that being said, we are rolling out some new flavors of ravioli in January 2023. We’re excited about that.

We rolled out two new flavors of cream cheese. They’ve been received well at Expo East and any consumer shows that we’ve been going to. We have other projects in the pipeline. I don’t want to sound too distracted here. We look at what we make. We make great premium plant-based cheese. We look at that as an ingredient. We’re always saying, “What else can we do with this?” whether that’s dressings down the road or in another frozen entree. Now, we’re focused on our cheese spreads and frozen ravioli.

There’s a lot of opportunity not only in product expansion and even across the category, but as we’ve talked about channel expansion, there’s so much need for there. I’m going to keep switching gears on you to keep you guys on your toes. If you could go back to when you were in your parent’s basement to the very early days of this and give either one of you advice to yourselves or the other, knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently? What would you want to tell yourself?

It’s to take a couple of days off. I was bad in the early days. I went 24/7. I was probably running on 2 or 3 hours of sleep every day because I would make the product, pack it, drive all around New England, deliver it in a Honda Accord, and then get back at it. We were never able to have downtime. Once we moved to the 8,000-square-foot facility is when I was like, “It is okay to step away from the business for a couple of days. Nothing’s going to burn down. We’re not going to lose consumers for a couple of days.” That’s one of the things that I go back and tell myself. Take a break for a second. I made more mistakes because I wasn’t taking breaks and rest, and because I was exhausted, I didn’t have the mental capacity to say, “Josh, step back. Ask for help and advice.” I kept plowing through.

How about you, Adam?

That was good, Josh. The one that I constantly think about is all the benefits that we’ve been gaining from being involved in a founder community. It happens to be yours. We’re on your show, but this is all real, and the advisors have come into our orbit. If we could go back in time, we would’ve figured out how to get experienced folks involved sooner than we thought we needed them.

It’s a conundrum because sometimes, when entrepreneurs bring people in too soon, they don’t yet know what they don’t know. There is some benefit of feeling around in the dark a bit first for a while because you get a sense of what you don’t know and where you could use the help, but at the same time, you wish you had the help 6 months, a year ago, 2 years ago, whatever. Josh, you mentioned taking some time away. What do you guys do for self-care? This is a hard thing to do. 1) It’s hard to be an entrepreneur. 2) It’s hard to be an entrepreneur together. 3) It’s hard to be an entrepreneur when you’re also a manufacturer. You’ve picked the trifecta.

What do you do individually or as a couple to make sure that you are nourishing yourself and practicing some self-care? Before I turn it over to you, just to make the point to jump on a soapbox to all those reading, we make a mistake. Trust me. I’ve been guilty of it many times in my career too. We tell ourselves, “I can worry about working out. I can worry about meditating or what later. I got to get this done,” yet the most important asset in our businesses is ourselves. We are.

If we can’t show up manifesting the best version of ourselves, or as close to the best version of ourselves, we’re not only doing ourselves a disservice, but we’re going to have deleterious effects on the business. It’s an important business component to make sure that you’re taking the time and doing the things that you need to do to practice self-care. With that pressure on you both, how do you do that now? How do you make sure that you are? Is that something that is a work in progress, which it is for me?

Early on, I did not do a great job taking care of myself. I used to love going to the gym or hiking a lot. Like I said earlier, I was focused 100% on the company, and I started neglecting my own health. Halfway through, I started laughing to myself and being like, “Look at me. Here I am making this amazing, healthy product for everyone while I’m slowly killing myself because I’m not taking the time to take care of myself.”

In 2021, I decided to start going back to the gym. I focused more on meditation and going back out and hiking. One of the benefits we have of starting a company in New Hampshire is our backyard is the woods. Everywhere you go, there’s the woods and mountains. It’s a great way to de-stress, recharge, and refocus again. What I’ve been doing is going to the gym. I’m always a grumpy person when I miss a day. Right, Adam?

I can attest to that. The other thing that we’ve done is that we sneak in moments as a couple. I’ll give you an example. We had to drive five and a half hours to Upstate New York to visit Arabella Bakker. On the way, we had some friends out at the Finger Lakes vacationing. They had four young boys. It’s a very rambunctious household. Josh and I called them and said, “We’re coming through. Can we stop for a night?” For that night, we stopped there. We made dinner, and we all went swimming. We caught up. We had that moment of friend time. I dare say family time and then some couple times, and the next morning, we’re waking up and finishing our journey.

First of all, the Finger Lakes is a beautiful area. That’s so important to allow yourself those little luxuries. It’s easy to feel guilty about it or like, “I could use this time to do something.” It’s so critical to slow down and do it. I work hard at it because I carry the guilt sometimes around with me, but I know logically that in order to do what I do and serve the way I try to serve, the first person I have to serve is me. I make the time. As the business grows and as you start contemplating the culture, what you want to do, and how you want to build the company, have you had much discussion about that? What do you want the business and the culture to be of the business?

We’ve been doing a lot of thinking on this. Company culture has been thrown around a lot over the years. The more we think about it, the more we think that it’s us bringing our values as founders into the workplace, and that’s creating the culture. We have values of inclusivity, integrity, and respect. That’s how we’ve been running the business. The result of that is that we’ve been attracting folks that share those values, from mentors to our production team to our sales force. By sticking to our values, those pieces are falling into place.

That’s beautifully said. It’s so true. I also would encourage you to make sure you vocalize it and have intentionality around it. What I’ve seen and witnessed is a lot of times, entrepreneurs will start, and their companies are still small. Maybe for a long time, it’s primarily the two of you, some fractionals, and a few part-time people. As the company grows, you start saying, “Now we should pay attention to culture,” but that horse is already out of the barn because the culture started itself.

You’re right. The best way to the culture is to live it and be the embodiment of the culture you want to be. That’s the most effective. You also want to start vocalizing and articulating it, making sure that it shows up in the workplace, even if the workplace at that moment is the two of you on that day. It’s a good practice and discipline to build.

The hardest part is managing that culture. Every day you hire someone new. They’ll sell you a bill of goods, and you realize that 2 or 3 weeks later, it’s like, “This is not a perfect fit.” Early on, we would wait for them. We thought they’d catch up or needed a little guidance on what we’re creating here. We then realized that they were cancer in our culture, and we’d have to cut that out immediately. That was 8 to 10 months down the road, when it was a little too late, and they started poisoning the well. Now, we’re working towards being better at that.

My philosophy has always been I hire for culture first, fit second, and for the job third. I’ve brought people in, not just with TIG, but in larger companies. At one point, I had a team, both direct and indirect, of 680-plus people. You hire for culture first, fit second, and job third because if you got the right culture, inevitably, you can find the right piece to plug that person in.

If you have the wrong culture, it doesn’t matter how good they are as a functionary. If they don’t fit, it doesn’t work. For the last couple of questions, I’ll give one of these to each of you, and I’ll let Adam go first. I’ll take you guys off the hook. If the community of readers here can help you in any way, and if you can help them in any way, if you want them to know anything specifically about what you’re doing, I’ll lead it off by saying invest in their Start Engine campaign. What else, Adam?

What we’ve been striving to do is to be the entrepreneurs and founders to others that we didn’t have when we were first coming up. I’ll give you an example. At Boston VegFest, we had two founders come up to us and start picking our brains. We sat there and chatted with them for ten minutes and said, “Here are our cards. Follow us up. Ask us questions anytime.” We want to make sure that we’re that resource to others. If there are entrepreneurs out there reading, don’t be afraid to go on LinkedIn and add us. Don’t just add us out of the blue and leave it there, but send a note saying, “I heard you on TikTok. I’d love to pick your brain on something.” We will make the time to do that.

That’s great. You guys do that. It’s a weird thing, isn’t it? I remember when it first started happening to me, I was like, “Do you realize that I don’t have anything figured out myself?” There is that recognition when you’re starting to get that tipping point like you’ve been around long enough, so you must know what you’re doing or at least know what not to do. How about you, Josh?

There’s great joy in connecting people and seeing everyone else be successful around you. To play off what Adam said, we end up learning just from talking to people that are asking us questions. We learn a lot from that. It might be a question that they’re asking us, and we’re like, “We don’t know that question, but let’s find out together.” We’re walking away with something. Part of why we went to New Hampshire, started this company, and why I dragged Adam out of Rhode Island in the middle of nowhere in New Hampshire is I wanted to change the dynamic that everyone always complains about, “There’s nothing great happening in New Hampshire.”

I said, “Let’s do two of the hardest things in New Hampshire. Let’s pioneer a plant-based cheese in the middle of dairy country, New England. Let’s get into frozen and chill,” which is also another category. We wanted to encourage people in New Hampshire to say like, “There’s something here. We can do this together as a team. You don’t have to be making what we’re making. It doesn’t have to be a food company. It could be a tech company. It could be anything you want, like opening up a restaurant. Let’s all work together to make this successful for everyone.”

I get that. I live in an area in California where we’re 70 miles away from Silicon Valley. On the other side of the mountain is a whole different world where people have an inferiority complex because we’re 70 miles away from the mecca of entrepreneurship, yet here in this area where 83% of the world’s almonds are grown, where a lot of the wine that people drink has grown, there are a lot of inherent entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship opportunities. It’s the same thing. You need to be able to point to people who have done it to begin to create that belief.

You’re right. You’re taking on a challenge, but as you prove this and people see and witness that you have proved it, it will instill belief in others, which is super cool. That’s a great way to end. You guys are awesome. I mean this sincerely. You are the embodiment of the entrepreneurs that make this industry great. You’re doing everything for the right reasons and showing up in the right way. It’s a pleasure to bear witness and be along with you both for the journey. Thanks for spending the time doing this with us too.

Thank you for having us.

It’s our pleasure. Thank you, Elliot.

We love being a part of this community.

Thank you. Invest in Start Engine. We’ll plug each other. Guys, take care.

Important Links

• Nuttin Ordinary

• StartEngine

• Kauffman Foundation

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