Patience is Part of the Journey with Mitch Jacobsen

Patience is Part of the Journey with Mitch Jacobsen

Kelly Kennedy: ​Hello. Welcome to episode 80 of the business development podcast. On today's expert guest interview, we have Mitch Jacobsen, CEO of Rvitta Energy Tea right in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Stick with us. You're not going to want to miss this one.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development advice. Tips and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business.

Brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast. And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode. 80 of the business development podcast. Honestly, I can't believe I'm saying 80 episodes at this point. We actually record guest episodes at this point a full month in advance.

We have a waiting list for guests, which is awesome and love, love, love our guests, appreciate them immensely. We could not do this show without the caliber of guests we've managed to get. And today is absolutely no exception. Today, we are graced with Mitch Jacobsen, a true game changer in the world of beverages.

Former engineer turned beverage entrepreneur, Mitch wears many hats at Rvitta Energy Tea. Receptionist, Janitor, and even occasionally CEO. His company, Rvitta, pronounced as re vita, don't worry, I had to figure that one out too, is short for revitalize and that's precisely what this natural energy drink does.

With its reach extending to over a thousand stores across Canada, it's redefining how we energize our lives. With a background in men's physique competition, Mitch harnessed his nutrition expertise to create an exceptional coffee alternative that not only boosts energy but also tantalizes the taste buds.

Mitch, alongside his dedicated team, Karly Jacobsen and Robert Wigg, embarked on a journey of experimentation, refining their NRGT formula over months of hard work and determination. Today, their product stands as a testament to the power of persistence and innovation. Welcome to the show, Mitch. It's an absolute pleasure to have you.

Mitch Jacobsen: Wow. Well, that was an incredible introduction. I tell you, Kelly, I'm going to hire you as a hype man here. So I really appreciate it. The honor is all mine.

Kelly Kennedy: So well deserved, so well deserved. It is truly impressive what you have managed to do in such a short period of time. What, what is it? Is it four years right now?

Mitch Jacobsen: Four years. Yeah. It doesn't feel impressive a lot of days, but I really do appreciate you saying that because it's been a grind.

Kelly Kennedy: Dude. Okay. First off. I've been, I've been seeing your product an incredibly long time at this point, at various shopping stores that we work at, gas stations, various places we go.

I had no idea it was Canadian, not only Canadian, in our backyard right here in Alberta.

Mitch Jacobsen: Right, right in Calgary here. Yeah, crazy, right? So we hear that feedback once in a while, which I always take as a compliment.

Kelly Kennedy: Dude, I, I love our Canadian founders, especially when they make groundbaking products, just like what you're doing.

You know you know, we're going to go back to the beginning. But when I was reading your founder story, I've spent so much time on the road. And, and I connected so much with the fact that you're like. You know, I was traveling from site to site, just slamming energy drinks to the point of sickness, which I can totally relate to headache, stomach aches, pain, like, and still barely staying awake on these long road trips.

Right. And I was just like, my gosh, I totally get it. But not only did he have those problems, he's like, I can do better. I can fix this. And so I was like, Oh, I love it. I absolutely love it.

Mitch Jacobsen: I must be out of my mind. I can certainly relate to that.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, yes, yes. Well, when you're in business development and you've been in it any length of time, you know, you're, you know, you're flying places, you're on the road, you're in meetings, and you're just trying to just keep going.

And so, I spent years and years of my life, I don't drink energy drinks anymore, not in the, not in the, not in the likes of Monster and Red Bull anyway. I've, I've finally just switched over to pounding coffee and I'm going to definitely try Rvitta going forward to see if that helps even more. But yeah, it's a struggle.

It really is. And you know, congrats to you for saying like, I can do better.

Mitch Jacobsen: Thank you. Yeah, I had that same problem, Kelly. I became an energy drink addict. Like I was, you know, two or three before lunchtime some days. Right. Totally. Not getting a lot of sleep and you're on the go all the time. You need something to keep you going.

Kelly Kennedy: And you touched on something really, really important. I think energy, energy drink addiction is a real thing. And I was definitely an addict.

Mitch Jacobsen: It's 100 percent me as well. The addiction is a real thing.

Kelly Kennedy: Mind you, we grew up in that energy drink time, right? Like, basically from being in high school to my early thirties, I basically had energy drinks almost every day.

Mitch Jacobsen: Right? Yeah, I think most, you know, young men, especially, and now young women do. It just becomes a part of your lifestyle. You start in university, studying for exams, and then it just carries through.

Kelly Kennedy: It really did. It really did. I I kind of forced myself to start drinking coffee to try to wean myself off of energy drinks.

I now, I can't get through my days without coffee. I love coffee, but... I, yeah, there was a time when that coffee was an energy drink and I'm sure every day that was not good for my health.

Mitch Jacobsen: Oh, totally. Yeah. I'm certainly looking at some of the long term side effects of some of those.

Kelly Kennedy: We're going to get into that because you have personal experience with a friend who had a severe incident.

You know, take us back to the beginning though. You know, who is Mitch Jacobsen? How did you, what's the story? Take us back.

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah. You betcha. So Mitch Jacobsen, I'm actually a petroleum engineer by trade, which is pretty crazy that I'm now in the energy tea business. If you had told me, you know, a decade ago that I'd be selling energy tea out of a flexible beverage pouch one day, I would have thought you were out of your mind.

Yeah. I grew up here in Calgary, Alberta. I'm very blessed that I come from an entrepreneurial household. My hero is my father. He started an engineering company in his early 40s. Wow. After recovering from a freak bout of lung cancer, actually. Oh my god. He was not a smoker, just had a freak bout. Beat it, but wasn't able to get health insurance.

Wanted to look after his family. So he quit his long time. Oil and gas career and started his engineering company following his dreams. So that always inspired me. So ever since I was a teenager, I, you know, wanted to do my own thing one day. And then in my early twenties, which this was really the light bulb moment for everything I'm doing today is I was out with my best friend at the time, and he was an energy drink addict, Kelly.

This guy was like crushing four or five a day. Oh, wow. Oh, the one evening. He's probably on his fifth of the day, sixth of the day, maybe, and I'm sitting down next to him, and I'll never forget. He goes completely pale white, like ghost white, clutches the left side of his chest, nearly passes out, and a brush from the hospital.

And I'm sitting in this little room, waiting for the doctor, and the doctor walks in, and he says, you're not gonna believe this, but your friend is 21 years old. We think he had a heart attack that was attributed to these energy drinks. Now, Happy ending of the story. My friends made a full recovery. He's okay now, but this was that moment.

Like what in the world is in these energy drinks? Cause I know lots of people crushing four or five cups of coffee a day and they're not heart attacks, right? Yeah. I was a 21 year old healthy fit kid having a heart event, you know. So fast forward, you know, a few years, I get out of university, I'm working in oil and gas, and my lifestyle was just where you described Kelly, right?

I'm on the go all the time, not getting a lot of sleep, but you need to be alert. You need to be awake. You know, you're in meetings, you're taking important calls of managing guys in the field. So I'm crushing these drinks. You know, sometimes it's two, three before lunchtime. And I started having adverse health effects.

I get heartburn for the first time in my life. I get those headaches that you were telling me about earlier. I'm not sleeping. And so I think back to my friend and I'm like, there has to be a solution to this problem. I look everywhere in the market for a healthy alternative, something that doesn't have the taurine, doesn't have the chemicals, doesn't have loads of sugar, all natural ingredients, couldn't find it everywhere.

I said, Hey, maybe this is a problem I can solve. Started screwing around in my kitchen, one thing led to another, and here we are today, yeah, distributed in a thousand stores across Canada, so there's kind of how it all came to be.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, and that's, that's, that's a crazy story. You know, take me back, like, you know, you, you were a petroleum engineer, like, obviously, we talked about this before the show.

Petroleum engineer to drink manufacturer is basically a complete 180. It's a 180. We talked about this too, because me and you were both in the oil and gas industry when you got into petroleum engineering. And 2015, especially in Alberta, Canada, was an incredibly hard time for oil and gas. There was a major oil downturn.

What was that like getting right into the oil industry and then suddenly just being, Oh.

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah, so I graduated in 2015. So how do you like that? It was the. I think the first graduating class where like less than half of people had jobs. It was one of the worst times ever to probably be entering the oil and gas industry.

No question. It was very fortunate that I, you know, I got on with the dream company that I wanted to work for at the time and absolutely loved my role in my career there. I was able to work on the sustainability side. So my job was, it was a unique new role in oil and gas where I was in response. I was responsible for finding ways to recycle more water for oil and gas companies, which at the time I wanted to be in drilling and completions because I thought that was cooler, but it's really neat.

That full circle, that sustainability background is helping me so much now. So it was almost like it was setting me up to do this. So spent, yeah, the better part of five years through that whole downturn, it was a very, very turbulent time in oil and gas, but fortunately I got on with an amazing company and got some great experience.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and in 2015 ESG was really in its infancy on the ground floor. Now it's critical. It doesn't matter where you go. What's your ESG plan? Because if you don't got one, you're probably not working.

Mitch Jacobsen: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it's kind of leading the way with, you know, some of the initiatives.

We built the first recycled water pond in Alberta that had ever existed. So I got to work on some, some really cool projects and a lot of that experience you wouldn't think would carry over to beverage. But. Managing people, dealing with high stress situations, some of the engineering background that I now use on our manufacturing line.

Some of that's actually crossed over a little bit. So actually, yeah, I'm still getting to use a little bit of engineering.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, it all comes together. I feel like without, without you having that background, there's probably about a 0 percent chance that Rvitta would exist. I'm sure it all goes together in some magical way.

There's no question in my mind. So take me back to, okay. You know, you know, you're, you're an engineer, you know, you're sitting around your kitchen table and you're thinking, I can make a better energy drink, but like, where do I start? What was that? Like, what was that? Like those, those first moments.

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah, that was really challenging.

Right. And I'm sure a lot of people can relate to this. You have a business idea. And you're sitting there and you're like, I think I could do this, but where the heck do I even get started? Right. And before that I had other really good ideas, you know, entrepreneurial ideas that I think could have been multi million dollar businesses, but I just never started.

Or never started or never took those first few steps because it was so overwhelming, right? Yeah. So this was the first idea where I really felt a strong calling towards and I had a bit of an epiphany. I was actually in the field pulled over on the side of the road after like a 12, 13 hour day looking down at this empty energy drink can and I just had this epiphany.

Right? I'm like, this is not the way that I thought my life was going to go. You know, I always wanted to start a business. I always wanted to do my own thing. And the longer I stay in a career working for someone else, the harder it's going to be, right? You're going to end up with more financial commitments and I'm going to have a family.

And there's always going to be an excuse, right? I'm always going to be waiting for that perfect time, but that perfect time is never going to come. So this was the first time where I'm like, okay, I'm just going to commit myself to this idea. And I said, I'm going to do one thing a day. That's going to lead me towards starting this actual beverage.

Cause I have no idea what I'm doing. Yeah. And day one, that one thing I did was Google. How do you start a beverage company? Everything that I've done today. Began with a Google search, like I had no background, no idea what I was doing. Googled. How do you start a beverage company? I ended up finding a book written by a guy about starting a beverage company.

Started reading that book. I'd read 10 pages a day. That'd be my one thing. And then I just started screwing around in my kitchen, mashing up caffeine pills and brewing tea and mixing stuff together. It all tasted terrible. But through that book, I had, I discovered that there's this profession. Had no idea it existed.

Called a food scientist. Food scientists help guys like me create a beverage that's actually commercially viable. So hired a food scientist, didn't have the money to pay them. Cause again, I was just a few years out of school, so I had a grace period on my student line of credit. So I maxed that out, paid the food scientist with that.

So it was my student line of credit to start the company and just, you know, over the course of, I thought it was going to take a few months and ended up taking two years going back and forth, back and forth, trying all sorts of different things with this food scientist. So yeah, long winded answer to your question, but.

I had no idea how to get started and literally started a Google search. How do I start a beverage company? And then just took it one small baby step at a time.

Kelly Kennedy: That is so, so amazing because Everybody would tell you don't do it. Everybody would tell you, who do you think you are to start a beverage company, Mr.

Petroleum Engineer? Like that's not your field at all. How did you do that?

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah. You know, I mean, I still deal with that today. Right. And even personally, I'm like, I'm an engineer. What the heck am I doing? Doing this? Like my whole family. Family line on the Jacobsen side has worked in oil and gas for like four generations.

We are not an energy tea company, but you know, by any stretch of the imagination, but that's the power of just putting in the work. You know, that's one thing. I'm very fortunate that my parents raised me. If you put in the work, right. Yeah, you can compete with the best if you work hard enough and so really carried that ideology over to this.

Right. You know, there's a lot of other beverage entrepreneurs that come from, you know, much more experienced families or much more experience in their background or they've worked in consumer goods. But if I just plain out work them, we'll be able to at the very least compete with, with some of those companies.

And I think, yeah, the work that you put in. It's amazing what can be accomplished if you just stick with it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. 100 percent persistence and determination counts a lot in entrepreneurship. I would say the more stubborn that you are, frankly, the more successful you are going to be. It truly is true.

And I hate to say that, but it does require a certain level of, I'm not going to lose. I have this like part of me. I hate losing, and I get that losing is a part of winning at a long level, and I learn from every single time I fail, but I hate losing, and my like drive because I hate losing has led me to success on so many different levels, and it truly just is.

I, I, I hate to, I hate to lose.

Mitch Jacobsen: Oh, that's a super powerful motivator. Absolutely. And I think if you were to ask the most successful entrepreneurs, they hate losing, right? They hate that feeling of failure. So it motivates them to just get out of bed the next day and keep at it. And that is one of the most important traits of traits of entrepreneurship, because you get metaphorically and sometimes literally punched in the face on almost a daily basis, and you need to learn to just.

Eat it and get up and keep working.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, man. We've had so many great mentors on this show at this point. We've had like Colin Christensen, Tash Jefferies, Dale Schaub people that have mentored thousands of different people over the time. And they're like, they're like, Hey, Kelly, it's okay to fail. Like you just got to fail quickly.

And I'm like, no, I don't want to fail at all. Yeah, it really is just that intrinsic. Okay. If I fail. I'm going to fail, but I'm going to do damn well everything I could have done to make sure that that wasn't going to happen first. And then I'll learn my lesson. How about that?

Mitch Jacobsen: Absolutely, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Okay.

So take me through, you know what I mean? I've seen pictures of you literally drinking juice out of glass bottles that you've clearly made. Yes. Experience is like, what was that like? Like you mentioned that it was like, in some cases it was brutal. What was the first moment where you're like, holy crap, I have something that's actually going to sell.

People are going to drink this.

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah. Well, I'll tell you the first holy crap moment and then I'll go to my first. So when I first started mixing things in my kitchen, I didn't even give that to anybody because it was that bad, but then I worked with this food scientist. So I maxed out my student line of credit, right?

It's money I don't even have paying this guy a monthly retainer. And we're going back and forth. I'm like telling them what ingredients I want to use. And I finally, I'll never forget. I get home one day from my office job, downtown Calgary, and there's a FedEx box on my front porch, and it's the first box of samples I get from my food scientists, right?

Like well over 10, 000 invested into this. I'm like, I'm not even going to try it. I'm going to invite all my friends and family over and we're going to do a blind taste test, right? Because someone told me you got to do like a blind taste test. That's how you make it professional. So I have everyone over everyone I care about.

Imagine this got the kitchen table lined up and I got those red party cups, right? And I got the labeled like a b c d e And I fill it with like red bull of vitamin water all these beverages, right? And everyone's got a piece of paper and they got a rank what they think's the best what one's the worst So i'm doing it and I collect all the papers at the end still haven't tried my drink, right?

Yeah, and i'm going down a love it would drink again b seems familiar Love this drink, get to sample D and it's like, tastes like battery acid. would never drink. This is this horse piss. Like just like horrible comments. I'm like, what? What is sample d? I wonder what that is. And I look at my sheet, I'm like, that's my drink!

My friends and family over. And I get. Tastes like battery acid, right? I think that's what my business partner. So that's where I started. Right. Well, it's like just talking about failure. You want to talk about an embarrassing failure. Here's this petroleum engineer. I got all my friends and family and I'd spent all this money on this crazy drink idea and it started to like, the taste just wasn't there.

Right. I didn't know what I was doing. We were using ingredients that just. Didn't jive with other ingredients, but didn't quit. Right. Was depressed for a couple of weeks, but kept back at it, you know, revised it. And then next blind taste test. Hey, we were second last one after that we were third last, you know, then we were like consistently second.

And then by the end of it, you know, a year and a half later, you know, to answer your question, we were winning the blind taste tests, you know, so that was that first moment, I think, where was like. You know, sample C or whatever it was at that point, this is the best one. We'll drink this every day. It tastes great.

Smooth, consistent. You know, that's when I was like, okay, I think we might actually have something.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And I will speak to it. Rvitta does taste amazing.

One of the things that I wanted to kind of ask is obviously, you know, you have, you have a nutrition background as well. When you were picking out the ingredients, was that the first thing where you're like, look, Rvitta has to taste great. Sure. But I know the ingredients that have to be in this to make it do what I hope it will do.

How do you make that part jive? Cause I imagine that was your challenge in the beginning was that you knew you wanted it to have a certain list of ingredients in order to get the effects without the bad side effects of anything. And then you're like, crap. Well, if I, if I put the ingredients in this way, They may not taste good as compared to energy drinks, and now no one will drink it, even if it does what I want it to do.

What was that process like in order to get it drinkable, but where it still had the ingredients that had the effects you wanted?

Mitch Jacobsen: That was the hard part, Kelly. And yeah, the reason why, you know, it didn't taste good in that first taste test was exactly what you said, right? I had these like vegan special ingredients, right.

And like, you know, using these things, yeah, it's Stevia in there and a bunch of things that just didn't jive with what we were doing. So even though it worked great, like if you drank a full one, you'd feel great. Yeah. It just didn't, the taste profile wasn't there. And if you're going to be successful in food and beverage, it doesn't matter how healthy your product is or how great it works, it's just a reality.

And so it was really the trial and error method. You know, we went back to the drawing board. I'm like, okay, you know, one of the first big adjustments I made is I thought I needed to have zero calories, right? Because I was, you know, at the time into like bodybuilding and that type of thing. And the craze was zero calories.

But when we did some market research, a lot of consumers don't necessarily associate zero calories with health, right? Because something like organic honey or a little bit of fruit juice can have a little bit of calories. Right? Yeah. Zero calories often means like sucralose at the, you know, Ace K artificial sweeteners.

And so even stevia, right, which is debatably, you know, good or bad for you, but a lot of people don't like stevia, even people that like natural products. So the first big change we made is we moved away from zero calories to 20 or 30 calories. Yeah. So then we could add a little bit of organic honey, right?

Then we can add a little bit of, you know, natural fruit juices. And once we started doing that, then the taste, you know, went from barely drinkable to this great tasting product, still with the right function. And then the next breakthrough we had is we stumbled across experimenting with caffeine from tea.

And what I noticed, Kelly, was when I drink energy drinks or, you know, even coffee, sometimes I get jittery, I get the sweats, I get those headaches you were talking about. When I drank tea, I just felt great for hours. I'm like, what's the difference with tea? Well, I look it up, tea naturally contains amino acids that can combine with that caffeine molecule and actually prolong its positive effects.

So you're not getting that crash and the jitters. And so it was those two kind of discoveries that led us to creating an energy tea. Yeah. Even though we didn't set out to create an energy tea, just to add health to your energy drink.

Kelly Kennedy: That was going to be my question. What did you start with before tea?

Was there something before tea?

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah, well, we start with just like we use natural caffeine. So the caffeine would typically come from tea. Like, you know, we used all sorts of natural, from guarana seed and other types of natural caffeine, and we just happened to land on tea because in those taste tests that we were doing in trials, we always felt better drinking the tea once.

So we didn't set out to create a tea company. It kind of happened by accident.

Kelly Kennedy: I love that. I love that. I love that. The journey, the path took you there. That was just the best option you wanted to make. That's awesome.

My gosh. Yeah. Like I can't imagine what those, okay. So, you know, okay. First off I want, we're talking to a worldwide audience. So I want, I want people to understand the level of risk that you took. When Mitch used his line of credit from his student loans in Canada, there is no running away from your student loan debt.

Okay. He committed, you know, whatever that dollar amount was, 10, 000 dollars that if he lost, he owes the government, whether he goes bankrupt or not, there was no escaping that student loan debt. That was one hell of a risk, dude.

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah, it was 10, 000 by the end of it. So I went all in pretty quick.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, that's that's, that was risk.

That was definitely going out on a limb.

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah, it sure was. Yeah. And that was tough, right? Because, you know, at the time, I just started, you know, when we got like a couple years into formulating this, I was starting to make decent money in oil and gas. Yeah. Things were looking pretty good for me. There was, you know, light of sight for me to be eventually promoted and the company I was working for.

So to. Throw that all away and pursue this crazy idea of tea and a pouch, right? Cause we had to custom design this packaging. Yeah. that and I did too, but I just, I felt a calling for this. I wanted to do my own thing and I really wanted to create something that helped people, you know, I think that's very fulfilling and at the end of the day, that's even more important to me than a secure career.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes and I feel like there is security in creating things that help people like there really is because people love to support things like that and founders like yourself who truly have their best interests at heart.

Mitch Jacobsen: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It's super powerful, right? You can create something that, you know, last generations, if you do it the right way.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. You know, like the way that I see it, if things like Pepsi and Coca Cola and all the pop companies can do it. And at this point, we know the health effects of them.

We know the long term it's not great for you. If those can sell like hot potatoes, why can't Rvitta?

Mitch Jacobsen: Exactly. Yeah. Why not? You know, if, if our intentions are in the right place and then we employ the right marketing strategy, there's no reason we can't be successful.

Kelly Kennedy: Totally. So I do want to take you into this lovely packaging.

I love it. I think it's awesome. I think I, it's, there's nothing like it. You walk by a store shelf with Rvitta on it and you got cans, cans, cans, boxes, and then this really cool pouchy container with Rvitta in it. And the cool thing about this pouch is it fits anywhere. It fits good on your desk. It fits good in your cup holder.

It literally, it's squishable. You can like wedge it into things. Like, how did you land on that?

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah, you know, great question. And for people, you know, just listening, they can't see it. You don't imagine a Capri Sun pouch. That's a little bit taller with like a regular drinking spout on it. That's kind of what our pouch looks like and how we got into it.

Was again, I, I set out to create an energy drink that was going to be in a can, right? If you looked at our first business plan, it was going to be in a can like all the other energy drinks. I had no intentions of doing this crazy pouch. But as I went along the journey, there was a couple things that came up.

You know, one, I had gotten introduced to a gentleman that sort of helped introduce Monster into the Canadian market, and I'm explaining my idea to him at this point. It's going to be in a can, right? And he looks at me and, and he's like, I'm going to be blunt with you. If you put this thing in a can, you have a 0 percent chance of being successful.

Right. You're going to, how are you going to compete with the big boys here? And I went home and of course I was a little bit upset by this news. Oh my goodness. You know, maybe this just isn't a viable business opportunity, but then it got me thinking, well, what if we don't use a can? What if we use something completely different?

So it's just so differentiated from that energy drink aisle. So that got me thinking then too, I had that. Sustainability environmental background from oil and gas. So I had a background and looking at data. And so I wanted to use what was the most, what's the most sustainable beverage packaging on the market. When I started researching this, what kept coming up is this flexible coach, right?

When you look at the overall carbon footprint, greenhouse gas emissions, water usage, you know, the, the, the flexible beverage pouch was top of the list. And something I never thought about is imagine cans aren't typically produced in Canada, US or overseas, an empty can takes up a ton of space, right? If you think about that on a boat or a train, that takes, there's a huge carbon footprint to transporting this empty can or empty glass bottle right in the transportation cycle, whereas the pouch, this can be shipped flat, right?

Like a piece of paper, it's very light, doesn't take up a lot of space. So it was a very environmentally friendly option. So the combination of. Choosing the most what we thought was the most environmentally friendly packaging, but also what a great marketing opportunity to have something that totally stands out.

That's totally different. That completely differentiates us. That's how we ended up landing on the pouch and we no one had done this before. So I took freezer paper and a curling iron. Welded it together in my kitchen, and that is how we designed this original pouch design.

Kelly Kennedy: It is brilliant. It is brilliant, Mitch.

Thank you. From a marketing standpoint, like, I kid you not, if I walk down an aisle, and I walk by Rvitta, It, it pops out, it's like in a world of cans, it's like, Oh, that is, that is in my face. It is brilliant. It's very, very, very well done.

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah. I mean, it comes with its, its challenges. The drawback is because it's so unique, very few, basically no manufacturers can work with these packagings with build their own manufacturing line.

You know, because we're effectively leading the way and we're the, you know, the 1st mover on this type of pouch design. We've had to custom design, filling equipment, custom design conveyors. So it's come with a lot of extra expense, a ton of headaches. But thank you to what you said there. It has certainly been a huge market asset, but we actually just got our patent approved for it too. So we own the patent law.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. Specific package design. Yeah. Well, there will be lots of people licensing it from you at some point. Mark my words.

All right. Well, okay. So you have created this tea. You've sent it out for samples. You finally have something that is drinkable and people like it. My gosh. Now what? What was the, what was it like to get that from I have something I can sell to a store shelf? Walk us through that.

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah, so this is late 2019 right now.

So we started in late 2017. It's been over two years and I get the formula down pat. I find. One small manufacturer that could do a small run, like 2000 pouches. We do the production run. I pay for it with my student line of credit, just like we talked about. And I get a pallet delivered to my front door.

So I think I told my boss I had a dentist appointment. So I had to take the day off or something. I'd take a day off of work, right. To go on this pallet. It's like middle of August, 30 degrees out and I'm hand bombing it into my living room. And. Yeah, I'll never forget, you know, standing there looking at my living room where my kitchen table used to be And I'm like, okay, now what?

And I didn't know, again, no background in sales, you know, no background really in marketing. So I took a case. I went to my local grocery store and walked in there, asked for the grocery manager, handed them a sample. And got our first grocery store, just like that, right? They're like, Hey, we'll bring you on consignment.

We'll give you a try. And just repeated that process over and over and over and got tons of doors slammed in my face, got tons of people telling me to leave. This was right before COVID too. So the timing was crazy, quit my job shortly after that and just went full steam ahead and pretty much took that approach, just cold approaching stores.

You know, did this called the Calgary Co-op head office one day and was like, Hey, I'm Mitch. I have this beverage company. Can you, can you direct me to somebody who deals with beverages? Somehow she gave me this person's number. They picked up the phone that day. I got a meeting. One thing led to the next.

So it was really just A lot of cold approaches and hard work and hustle.

Kelly Kennedy: I love this. I love this because on this show, we're consistently promoting active marketing. So active marketing is exactly what you did. You did the right thing, maybe completely unknowingly, but we live in a time where so many people focus on a passive approach, especially on a B2B and it just, it does not work well.

It does not work well. It works about 20%. And so like, we always advocate, you need to be spending, if you're doing B2B, you need to be spending 80 percent of your time knocking doors. Reaching out, getting meetings with people, pitching your product in person and really asking for that opportunity. And it's like you did it right from the start, just intuitively.

That's brilliant. I just didn't know what

Mitch Jacobsen: else to do. I think maybe ignorance is like, well, I have no idea what to guess I'll just walk into a store with my box.

Kelly Kennedy: And so what happened once COVID hit? Cause obviously that strategy became incredibly challenging the moment COVID hit. What, what did you switch to then?

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah. So January, 2020, I quit my job. So January 31st, 2020, that's my last day in oil and gas step into the world of entrepreneurship, you know, full time. And yeah, basically the first month, right. I get up my first big punch to the face. COVID shuts everything down, you know, This was kind of in the early days before, you know, you were forced to wear masks and social distancing and stuff, but the grocery manager still didn't really know what to do.

So I'd walk into stores, right, you know, late February, early March of 2020, and sometimes they'd be happy to see me. And sometimes they would tell me very aggressively to leave. You shouldn't be here. So we figured out pretty quickly, okay, the strategy that was working before, we're going to have to amend that.

Right. Yeah. So now, instead of talking to the grocery manager, we ship samples to the store. We would call on the stores. We would do all sorts of things, you know, to get the, instead of doing sampling and grocery stores, we started sending free product to doctors and nurses at hospitals. So you're supporting them, but you're also building awareness for the brand.

So it was a complete pivot in our strategy because you had a year point. A lot of that, you know, in person more in your face type of selling and marketing, we couldn't do it anymore because of, of the pandemic. So that was a huge pivot. And it was a blessing in some ways, cause it forced us to find some methods of marketing that was a little bit more scalable than just going door to

Kelly Kennedy: door.

I I agree. I agree completely because even our, even our marketing approach at Capital changed in that time and it's become much more effective, but it came completely out of necessity. There was no other choice but to find other, other avenues. So yeah, it hurt, but it was a learning experience and sounds like you learned the lesson.

Mitch Jacobsen: Learned a lot of lessons. Yeah, we found, you know, more efficient, efficient ways to do sampling, right? Like before we'd stand in a grocery store and people would come by and we'd sample them our product. Now we do like, we did a free nurse giveaway on Instagram one time where any, any nurse in the city, we would just drop a free box off and it was me driving around.

I would do like 40 deliveries, 50 deliveries a day, 12 hours a day in my truck, just driving to people's houses, dropping off boxes with a handwritten note. Yeah, but it was more effective, right? Because then they would share it with their unit and their friends. We get an Instagram share. And so we found all these other guerrilla marketing ways that weren't necessarily just, you know, going literally door to door, store to store.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, what was I, I imagine in that time you had a bit of a sales downturn cause it was, you were struggling obviously to keep the, keep the meetings flowing. You're sending out all these free products to people in hopes of something coming through. Was there ever a point for you where you're like, Oh shit, like I sure hope that, that we're making the right choice here.

Mitch Jacobsen: Oh, tons of times. Yeah. I mean, we still to this day have that conversation, you know, all the time we were in a little bit more of a fortunate position then because we were working out of my house, you know, so our overhead was effectively nothing. We're paying ourselves. So we were pretty small and nimble.

We didn't have a lease to pay for our employees yet. So, you know, we could Afford to give away a thousand dollars a month worth of a free product with the hopes that. . We'd get some orders from it, but all the time we're looking at ourselves and we're like, too generous. Are we getting too many samples away?

Is this worth it? Yeah. Those are conversations we still have. I think to this day.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is one of those things where. You have to balance it. You have to balance it. And while you have a product and people have to try it to buy it, it really ends up being that it's like, but you need to make sure that the right people are trying it and they're getting it out to the market.

Mitch Jacobsen: Absolutely. That's a lesson too, right? Is, you know, nowadays we have to be very selective with the events that we send product to, right? Yeah. You know, making sure it's a demographic that we think is going to be more suited to our product instead of a, you know, a demographic that maybe just wants free stuff and they're never going to buy this again.

Right. You have to be very selective, especially when you're doing sampling demos.

Kelly Kennedy: And I think you were, you know what I mean? I think that your product from my, from my unknown standpoint, just the knowing of what it is and what it does, I think it fits really well into the executive lives that we are speaking to right now.

I think it truly is a drink that is good for people that are in a high performance role that need that little extra oomph, but without that big crash that comes with it.

Mitch Jacobsen: Exactly. That's what we designed the product for too. Right. And also branding that a professional would feel comfortable bringing to the office.

Right. We used to run experiments when I worked in oil and gas. If I brought a Monster can into a meeting, great brand, learn a lot from them, but I would get teased relentlessly. I remember my boss came into my office after a meeting one time. He's like, Mitch. Are you okay? Like, I'm asking you because I'm worried about you.

Like, why are you drinking these things? Yeah. And that was a, another light bulb moment for me is not only is the product unhealthy, but it's also the brand doesn't resonate with someone like myself, right? Yeah. Whereas, yeah, you're never going to bring this into a meeting and your boss is going to ask you if you're okay after, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, it has a completely different brand perception around it, which was well done and well engineered. So congratulations, because it really does come down to not only the choice of container that you chose, but also your logo. The look of your blending of the colors on the on the, on the pouch itself, it's well done.

And it really, it looks premium. You bring it in. It's like when people come in with their smart water or whatever else, it looks like a premium brand.

Mitch Jacobsen: Thank you. Well, that means a lot. We've, we've put a lot of time and effort, made a lot of mistakes. Certainly our first 10, 000 pouches we ordered. I'll never forget this.

I was doing one of those cold approaches. I think it was January, 2020. And I walk into a Give him a sample. He tastes it. He likes it. And then he looks at the back and he starts giggling. He's like, Oh, is this an inside joke you have on the package? I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. He's like, well, on the back of the package, it's a health Canada thing.

We have to put not for persons sensitive to caffeine. Yeah. We had felt sensitive S E N S T I T in the middle of sensitive on 10, 000 pouches and the barcode didn't work. So we made a lot of mistakes. So you say that is a very high compliment.

Kelly Kennedy: That happens every day. Every day somewhere there's a typo and hopefully we live in a forgiving world where it's like, ha ha, that sucks.

Hopefully they fix it next time.

Mitch Jacobsen: Hopefully, we looked at that, you know, a thousand times and somehow we missed it.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh boy, I can't tell you how many times I've had to go back and correct capital capital advertising material for the same reason. So don't feel bad. It's hard, man. Proofreading things, because if you read something like three, four times, You like automatically start to miss the typo.

So it really helps to like have multiple people read it.

Mitch Jacobsen: You gotta have multiple people. I feel your pain.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, we still make mistakes to this day. Hopefully we fix them faster than than we make them. So, okay, so bring me, bring me into that Health Canada process. You know, what was that like?

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah, that was really challenging to Kelly.

So when we, you know, first put our business plan together, I expected us to be launched, you know, naively in like four or five months, right. It ended up taking well over two years. And a big part of that two years was we had to get this approval from health Canada. They've since changed the rules a little bit, but I had to submit the application.

So again, I don't have a background in this, so I completely self educated myself just through Google. Cold calls and whatnot submitted this, and it took almost 18 months for them to review it and get back to which, from a consumer standpoint in Canada is great. Right. You can be assured that pretty much any product you buy a grocery store has been through rigorous review by Health Canada.

Yeah. But from an entrepreneurial perspective, that's 18 months. That's a long time. Right. That's a long time. Whereas in the U S or other countries, I could have been to market in, you know, four or five months. So that was a very tedious, challenging process that I'm proud that we made it through, but it was a big hold up.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah and obviously you were probably thinking at that time, like I'm in Canada. This is where I want to sell my product. Was there ever maybe a discussion where you were like, Hey, maybe that makes sense to launch in the U S first. Was that ever like on the table?

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah, we had, you know, thought about it, but you know, I'm a little bit nationalistic.

I'm proud of being Canadian and I want to sell it here too, right? It but that was a very frustrating thing. And if I could ever have a, you know, sit down with health Canada, I think there should be, you know, cause I've, I've watched while we were waiting for our approval, us companies or other companies with big legal teams get approved before us, right.

Or push it through because they have more resources and I think I think our government and Health Canada should prioritize, you know, small Canadian businesses and help them push these approvals through. Yeah, I need entrepreneurs to be creating jobs here. Right. It makes sense.

Kelly Kennedy: Agreed. Agreed. I remember we went through the patent office or the trademark office, sorry, the trademark office here in Canada.

And I trademarked, I trademarked some stuff for capital right off the beginning, like literally like not like two months into our launch, I'd already had trademarks out. I did it myself, learned the process. Same as you. And just two years later, two years came back and I was like, are you kidding? Like.

It was, it was nothing special, but yeah, the amount of time that it takes. And I'm not just like ragging on Canada. I'm sure that there are like other places this is a challenge, but it definitely feels like a few more resources should be focused or there should be a premium payment option where it's like, okay, look, we need this rush.

And I get that not everyone needs it rush, but can we not just like pay double and get it done in two months, as opposed to two years?

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah, I think our trademark took almost three years. Whereas our U. S. one was like six months. That's so, yeah, there's definitely some challenges. I'm just here locally getting those approvals.

Kelly Kennedy: No, I, I totally agree. And I've been through it and I'm sure we're not, we're talking to a lot of business owners who have been through it and they're like, ah, I know what they're talking about.

Mitch Jacobsen: Their shaking their head for sharing that because yeah, they're nodding their head.

Kelly Kennedy: So take me, okay, take me, you've been, you've been marketing to individual stores.

At some point you're like, wait a sec, we need to market nationally. We need to hit up, we need to get this into all of their stores, not just, not just save on foods down the road or safe way down the road. Bring me to your first moment where you got that national meeting and what was that like?

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah, great question.

So in the beginning, again, being naive, I thought I had to go store to store. Well, we figured out, you know, a few months in there's these entities called distributors where, you know, you ship them how it's a product, and then they ship cases to a whole bunch of stores. And our first big break was we got a meeting with Sobey's and a gentleman.

His name is Gary Hughes. We have so much admiration and respect for this amazing man, any local. You know, product in Alberta, you know, knows him. He has just done a phenomenal job. We got a meeting with him. He gave us a shot. In Sobey's stores in Alberta and that was, you know, our, I'd say our first big other than Calgary Co-op that really helped us expand because once we had Sobey's, then we were able to get a distributor up until that point distributors are hesitant to look at you.

If you don't have any distribution or you don't have your account. They could sell into, so then we got our first distributor. We started selling into the Sobeys Safeway stores, and that's really how we've built our business is just starting in those local Calgary co ops and then the Safeway Sobeys here in Calgary, here in Alberta, and then eventually translated into national listings where we've been in and out of Walmart and Superstore or in Whole Foods in the West and East.

So, you know, but it really all started with just. Looking after our local Safeway and Sobey's stores here in Alberta. Everything kind of came from that.

Kelly Kennedy: Dude, congratulations. Thank you. You truly are a Canadian success story, bar none. There is no question in my mind. And keep in mind, you've done all this, really, from a point where you had a product to today, has only really been a few years. It hasn't been four, it's been really like two or three to get it to where you're at today.

Yeah. Which is unbelievable. Unbelievable.

Mitch Jacobsen: Thank you. Yeah. It doesn't feel like that sometimes. You know, I'm, I've like many entrepreneurs, I always feel like I should be way further ahead.

Yeah. We've we've, we've, we've made some, some great inroads and I'm really proud of our team. Yeah. We've you know, we're off to a great start.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, absolutely. So, okay, so bring us into that. When you, when you had Sobeys and you landed them and they're like, yes, we're going to carry these. Did they recommend a distributor for you to reach out to, or did you have to find one?

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah, sort of. It was a little bit of both. They had recommended, you know, again, like Gary, man, I don't know where we would be if we didn't have him. I just have... The utmost respect and appreciation for him, but he had sort of recommended some distributors that he liked working with. Yeah, we reached out to them.

The 1st, 1 that we worked with didn't end up working out. So then we moved to another 1, which was a tremendous partner. They did an amazing job for us, really helped us expand in the West. And then we took that same strategy of, you know, going store to store, focusing on 1 store at a time. We just replicated that with the distributor.

So it's pretty uncommon. For a brand to actually still go into the stores. Once you have a distributor, typically a brand will give the product to the distributor, the distributor then goes to the stores where we said, we're going to help you. So I drove everywhere. I went to as far Northern Alberta as you can go all the way to the tip of the Island, Campbell river in BC, went store to store writing orders for our distributor, Karly and Rob, my business partners did the same thing.

And it was just that same drill of marketing, especially when some of the COVID. Restrictions started to ease up a bit where we could wear a mask, but still go into stores, do things like that. You know, that's how we really built that business was just that gorilla marketing, you know, shaking hands, creating relationships with these store managers and doing whatever we could to get our product in front of consumers.

Kelly Kennedy: With this show, when I started it Mitch, my goal has always been to help people do business development better, right? The reality is there's a ton of ways to waste your advertising dollars. There's thousands of them. Take your pick, just hit the internet. Yes. But the reality is this guerrilla level active marketing strategy where you are reaching out, you're making real connections, you're meeting these people, you're introducing yourself as a human saying, I have this amazing product and I'm Mitch.

You're like, you're going to, you're going to work with me. Having that personal connection. That is what sells. That is what sells. That's where you need to be spending your advertising dollars. Yeah. You still need like in Mitch's case, he's got. You know, now he's got a widely recognized product. He needs to get individual consumers on board his passive marketing strategy.

Now I bet you, he's gone through the roof, but in the beginning, what he needed was stores on his side and he did it through active marketing. And I'm so proud of you for doing that. You hit it. You're perfect. You're like the perfect person for this show.

Mitch Jacobsen: Well, thank you, Kelly. I appreciate that. You know, again, like.

I didn't necessarily do it intentionally. I just didn't know what else to do. So the other thing is it's hard, right? I'm an introvert, I'm an engineer. I'm not naturally great with people. I really have to work at it. And I looked at my competitors. I'm a competitive guy, just like you, Kelly. I hate to lose.

What is the one thing they're probably not doing? And I'm like, I bet you they're not driving to 12 hours to Campbell river and going into the thrifty food store there and meeting with the manager. I bet they're not doing that. So I'm going to do it. Right. So a lot of it came from that. Just you know, drive to want to do the hard things.

Cause I know in my previous athletic life, that's what. Winch championships, right. It's doing that work that no one else wants to do. That, you know, interface marketing is, is the hard work.

Kelly Kennedy: That's right. There's no replacement for hard work. There is no, there's no easy way to the finish line. And if someone's telling you there is, they're lying.

Mitch Jacobsen: Or their trying to sell you a course or something.

Kelly Kennedy: That's right. You know, I mean, even even in everything that we teach, I recognize there's effort involved. I'm not asking. I'm not giving you a easy strategy. I'm telling you that. I have a strategy for you. If you follow it, you're going to win, but yeah, it's going to take some work.

There's no, there's no quick way to the finish line.

Mitch Jacobsen: There's really not. Yeah. That's one of the number one lessons I've learned in this too, right. Is I think entrepreneurship, especially nowadays is very glamorized, right? Yeah. You go on YouTube and you see these 17 year old kids with their rented Lamborghini trying to sell you something saying you can be a millionaire in two months and it, you know, you and I know it doesn't work like that, Kelly.

You have to put in the work. And time and patience is a part of it.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. You know, I wanted to talk to something that you spoke about, and you talked about being an introvert. I am also an introvert, who had to learn to get extroverted tendencies because I ended up in a position where suddenly it was like, Hey, Kelly, we need you to do this.

You tend to be really good at it, even though what they didn't know is I didn't want to do any of that because I was an introvert and I much preferred doing my day, my easy tasks or whatever. So I had to work on myself. To get to a point where I could be a more extroverted person. But the reality is at heart, I'm very much an introvert.

And I've talked to plenty of CEOs at this point who say the same thing. They're like, yeah, we were very introverted people, but we had to learn to be extroverted. Tell me about what that was like in the beginning for you.

Mitch Jacobsen: Oh, man. Well, I wouldn't have guessed you're an introvert, Kelly. You have exceptional people skills.

So, yeah, I get it. Yeah, it's been really tough. It's still tough to this day. And I think. You know, the big difference that I understand between introverts and extroverts is extroverts feel energized by personal interaction. Whereas an introvert, it's like pulling your battery on your phone down, right?

Every. Interaction with someone. It takes energy, right? It takes a lot of focus. And so I've really, like, if I have a big event or something, like, I have to mentally prepare myself, you know, days in advance. Just got back from the Canadian Health Food Association show in Toronto. And I spent like. You know, a couple of weeks before like preparing myself mentally to be turned on so that I can be there and in the moment and present in every social interaction.

And that was something I really struggled with in the beginning, right? Because I had to learn, I learned by doing and I learned by failing, right? The first time I went into a grocery store and I didn't pick up that the manager didn't want to be talking right now because he's busy and he's distracted and I'm trying to give him my pitch and then he gets angry, you know, I go back and I'm like, okay, What could I have done better there?

Well, you know, next time I go in a grocery store, I'm going to say, Hey, is this a good time? And if his body language is a little bit off, I'm gonna be like, I can tell you're really busy right now. I'm going to leave this box of samples with you. My card's in there. I'll come back another time. Right? Like it's, it's a lot of it was, I learned just through making mistakes and then being really conscious of energy management too, right?

If I got a big social event coming up, I got to make sure that I prepare myself a couple of days in advance so that I have the energy so that I can be there focused and present.

Kelly Kennedy: What does that preparation look like for you?

Mitch Jacobsen: Good question. Yeah. You know, a lot of it for me is actually visualizing like social interactions, which might sound a little bit weird, but I, well, if I have to give a presentation or something, I'll visualize myself giving the presentation and the people smiling and laughing at my jokes.

I, you know, I visualize myself at the trade show, like shaking someone's hand and like giving that perfect presentation. Fully focused on them so that I'm going in there prepared. Right. I kind of know what I'm going to say. Truthfully, I've read a, you know, I've read a lot of books on how to be like to make small talk, how to be, you know, come across as, you know, more likable.

Right. Because a lot of those skills don't come natural to me. So I've had to work at it just like any other skill, just like working in the gym. I'll read a book, I'll practice it, you know, in my personal life. And then I, you know. One of the things that has really helped me is I try to practice it in my everyday life.

So if I go to the grocery store and I'm standing there, you know, checking out my groceries, instead of not saying anything to the grocery clerk, I'll be like, Hey, How was your day today? You know, I like your shirt. We're, you know, give them a compliment or something. And when you start to practice those little interactions, you get better at it.

You get better at reading people's body language. You get better reading people's energy. So just like everything else that I'm not good at. I've really tried to improve my skills by Actually, like consciously practicing social interactions.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. And you hit it on the head. It is a learnable skill. So if you're struggling right now, you're an introvert and you're like, crap, like I have to do business development or I've come up with a product.

I'm trying to market it. And this, this happens with a lot of business owners. Because just like you, they're analytical, they, they thought about it, they invented this great, this great product. They're probably engineers, right? They invented a great processor, product, or whatever, a robot, widget. But marketing it is, might as well be a whole nother language, right?

But understand, it is a learnable skill. And by the way, you are incredibly likable. So you have definitely... If that wasn't you before, you have definitely 180

The

Mitch Jacobsen: book paid off, I guess so. I appreciate it, man. Thank you. What kind of, what, what have you done to work on that skillset set?

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, goodness, dude. Threw myself into a fire and did it thousands and thousands of times.

Yes. You know, I mean, I still, to this day, I still hate cold calls. I, I'm not, I'm gonna be the first to say it. I have a business based on cold calls. I still hate cold calls. Yes. But if you make enough of them. You get better and better at better at fighting yourself because it's you. You have to fight.

It's not the, it's not the guy on the other end of the line. It's you internally. And if you can get into that, okay, I'm just going to sit down. I'm going to make four or five calls. By the time you make the fifth call, you're in a cold call cadence. The sixth through 20th is nothing. It's cake. But making, picking up the phone and making that first call, probably the first four or five times.

Is the hardest part in any day for almost anybody in my position.

Mitch Jacobsen: Yes, I completely agree. Right. But it just gets easier the more you do it, you know? And yeah, the more times I got rejected in stores too, the better I got at it because I've just gotten used to taking those blows.

Kelly Kennedy: And your pitch for the product started off, you know, unrefined, this glob of words.

And after you've said it, you know, 1500 times. You know, I mean, your pitch for your product is probably so good at this point that, you know, they probably buy 1500 cases from you right off the, right off the spot, but it didn't start there.

Mitch Jacobsen: You know, something that really helped me too, is I reframed.

Instead of trying to pitch yourself, somebody, yeah, I reframed it as how am I going to help this person? Right. And sometimes even when I'm at a trade show, I won't even talk about my product. I'll just ask them how they're doing. How's your day here? Have a sample, give this a try. And just that positive interaction might be the way.

So I think, yeah, you're reframing selling as helping has been another paradigm shift. I guess you could say that's really helped me in my business.

Kelly Kennedy: I always laugh when I when I finally got good at business development and like, I'm almost a little bit embarrassed to say it, it probably took me between three and five years to actually get good at business development.

But the learning point for me where I learned and got really great at it was when I learned to shut my mouth.

It's so funny because, you know, I think about the beginning and, you know, I mean, I go into a meeting, I'd be like, we have this great product and service, and I know you need it. And here's why you need it. They'd be like, Kelly, we know we need it. Like, shut up. Let's just talk for a little bit. Let's just learn a little bit about each other first.

And it's like, my gosh, if I would have learned that from the beginning, I would have been so much more effective, but you have to fail that way to learn. But, what I always say now is that the business always comes, you don't have to start there. Heck, it could be the last five minutes of the conversation.

But in my experience, if it is the last five minutes of that conversation, it's always like, yeah, this looks amazing. We'll send you an RFQ or we'll send you an order for this. Like appreciate the chat. It was great meeting you. Like the business always comes. Don't force it.

Mitch Jacobsen: Oh, I completely, completely agree.

Yeah. And I think you hit the nail on the head there. The more you listen, I think the better you're going to be at marketing and sales because You know, you can learn something from everybody too. That's right. Yeah. Everyone from the guy, you know, the homeless guy, I've had conversations with people that are homeless and learned things, right.

If you just ask them, everyone's an expert at something. Yeah. And so I think if you can get that out of them, You know, and create and genuinely care about that person care about how they're doing the sale will just start to come naturally.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, it really does. It really does. And I think that's a lesson hard learned.

And every everybody that has to market. It's something you'll learn on your own. It'll come one day, you'll be like, Oh, Okay. That's the thing I've been missing for the last five years.

Mitch Jacobsen: Exactly. Yeah. You'll learn it the hard way at some point. So I certainly have.

Kelly Kennedy: You learn eventually. Yeah. Yeah. But it's like, you know, you put yourself out there, you learned a new skill.

You, you learned how to start conversations, how to be more extroverted and you've, you've had amazing success at it. And so. You know, I mean, you truly are an inspiration. You're an inspiration to entrepreneurs.

Mitch Jacobsen: Well, thanks, Kelly. I feel the same way about you. So I really appreciate you saying that.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, thank you very much.

Take us to Superstore. Congratulations. You just won Superstore. Thank you. Now this has been, this is huge. If you're Canadian, this is our biggest grocery store. This is a big flippin deal. Yeah. But that was no easy process for you.

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah, it was no easy process. I think we got turned down. I've lost count probably at least a half a dozen times, you know.

Like you just said, it's, it's, it's the biggest grocery store chain in Canada. They're the biggest grocery in Canada. If you're in Western Canada, especially, that's like the main place to get your groceries, right? So every food or beverage entrepreneur dreams of having a product in there at some point. So when we first started, of course, right.

I'm like trying to get ahold of the superstore buyer. We present the first time. Don't even, I don't even know if we heard back or didn't work out right. Present the second time. Didn't get the listing the third time didn't get the listing fourth and fifth time. I think didn't get the listing right or tried Didn't even get a presentation.

What have you and and truthfully we weren't ready back then so I think in a lot of ways it was a great blessing that we were young and naive and I don't think we could have even filled the purchase orders at the time and then Eventually, it was actually earlier this year, we finally got the listing.

We're celebrating, you know, our sales broker that helps us sends us the email. We're all high fiving and clapping and smiling. Well, a few days later, unbeknownst to me, there had been a paperwork mistake that I could have fixed. I could have caught it. I take full responsibility for it. It screwed up the listing and we've lost it.

So we finally get it. We're supposed to be on shelves and made. I tell all my investors, I like make the announcement, we're all pumped about it. Get a call from my broker and they're like, Hey, there's this paperwork issue. You know, we could have, I could have caught it, you know, months ago. And I didn't. And that was devastating.

Truthfully, one of, probably one of our darkest days this year for sure. But we just kept at it. Was able to present again. And just this last month we've landed on shelves and it's certainly been a surreal moment.

Kelly Kennedy: It's it's amazing. It's amazing. This, this guy's the limit at this point for you.

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah, we, we got a lot, a lot of work to do and there's so much growth

Kelly Kennedy: potential.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, talk to me about that moment for you. I know, I know I'm hitting on a pain point for you.

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah. Getting the superstore moment?

Kelly Kennedy: When, when you realized, Oh crap, we just lost it. We just lost it. How, how were you able to, how were you able to recover from that? Cause I am, I know as a president myself, That when you lose a major deal like that, it hurts and it hurts personally.

Mitch Jacobsen: It hurts personally, you know, and unfortunately that was one of about a half a dozen blows that we had just that quarter, you know, this truthfully 2023 , you know, from the outside looking in, it looks like we're doing really well, but internally we have had so many battles this year. We have a filling machine.

That's just been a causing us so many issues, so many manufacturing challenges, losing that listing. We lost another, you know, major listing at the. You know, there was some really dark days, right? Where I'm waking up and I'm like, holding on. I don't think I can get out of bed today, you know, went through some mental health challenges.

But what I keep coming back to is everyone I've met that's been successful in entrepreneurship. Has incredible persistence, incredible tenacity, right? It's like the first Rocky movie. They're able to just take blow after blow after blow, get knocked down over and over again and keep getting up. And that spirit of entrepreneurship is what I really work towards.

When I'm in those dark moments, okay, we're taking your setback, but let's get outta bed tomorrow. Let's keep executing. Eventually this is gonna get better.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. I, I totally agree with you. Like it really is one of those things where the best thing to do in that moment is just to go make another phone call or go take, do something to progress.

Do something to move business forward because if you sit and dwell on that pain, you're going to live there for a while and you're not going to get anywhere. The way out is just to say, that sucked. Where can I learn my lesson here? And let's do something more. Let's book another meeting. Let's get in front of somebody and let's do this again.

And yeah, I haven't found an easy way for that either. I feel like that, that for me is the same thing. I just, I look, I look to the next thing and I try my best not to dwell on, on the loss.

Mitch Jacobsen: Yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, learning to regulate your emotions is something every entrepreneur needs to learn, right?

Is celebrate the wins, but don't get too excited. And same thing with the lows, right? When you take a big blow, don't let it get you too depressed. Yeah, this is a setback. You've had lots of them. Just keep working. Right. And instead of doing the whole rollercoaster ride of just up and down and these crazy swings, you know, I'm really trying to oscillate kind of in the middle now where.

I'm not getting too excited, but I'm also not getting too down. And I think that's a skill set that you just learn over time to take things in stride and just keep executing.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I, and I truly believe that if, as long as you keep executing, the positives are going to outweigh the negatives, right?

You just have to keep going. And there's no way in this entrepreneurial journey that you're going to get away with it unscathed. There's no way. Nobody does. Nobody

does. You're going to going to have learned a ton of lessons along the way. And as long as you stick with it and you push and you learn your lesson at each one and you implement those learning strategies. You are gonna come out the other end with a product that's absolutely amazing, but it's going to take some beatings until you get there.

Mitch Jacobsen: Yes. Yeah. And I think that's the common misconception nowadays. It was for me. Right. Nobody told me when I started that I was gonna go . No one tells any of us darn near every, every day, right? Most days I go home looking like Rocky yo Adrian beatin to a pulp. That's how I feel on the inside anyways. That's most days right? If I have a day where nothing goes wrong, it's like a solar eclipse.

Kelly Kennedy: I know, I know. While you're sitting there scratching your head thinking, I know I missed something today.

Oh boy. Yeah, it's been, it's been a hell of a ride for you. You're absolutely killing it. You know, if you had one piece of advice for yourself in the beginning, if you could go back to the very beginning and give yourself just that one piece, what would it be?

Mitch Jacobsen: Man, that's a really good question, Kelly.

You know, if I could sit down with myself four years ago, I would say, you know, look, man, patience is a part of this journey, right? I was that young, dumb, naive kid that thought I was going to have a Lamborghini two years into my business. Right. And when things got hard and, you know, still haven't been able to pay myself, that's just, that's a part of the journey.

That's a part of developing something great. And try and enjoy it. The process, right? Try and show up every day with a smile on your face, because this is your dream, right? This is what you've always wanted to do. You just got to pay your dues, you know That's what I would really tell myself because there's been a lot of times where I've really got deep in the hurt locker Right like long stretches of depression because things just weren't going as quickly as I wanted them to even though from the outside Looking in people are telling me Mitch you're killing it and on the inside.

I'm like Holy man, I don't know how I'm going to get out of that. So I would tell myself to, you know, expect to get... Take some blows, take them in stride and understand this is gonna take time and just keep at it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah. You know, I, I relate to you immensely. I I totally get that feeling where it's like, everyone's like, man, look at what you're doing.

But it's a completely, and I know it might sound like it might sound horrible or like we're, yeah, like we don't appreciate everything. But like inside, as a founder, when you're doing something big, I think it's really hard to connect with the scope. Of what you're doing. I know for me with the podcast with capital, that's definitely a thing is that I always feel like I should be doing more, there's no question.

I feel like I should be doing better. I should be doing more. There should be more than I'm doing here. Why can't I just do more? And everyone's like, dude, like look around, you're doing a ton. And. I think as a founder, and I don't know, man, like if you ever figure it out, if you ever find the secret to that, let me know.

Cause I want to be the first to be like, Oh, okay. That's what I need to be doing. Cause I think as founders, as business owners, we always feel like we should be doing more and become a bit of a never ending cycle.

Mitch Jacobsen: For sure. I think it's tough to balance, but you know, I also truly believe that, you know, that's the mentality that it takes to create something great.

You know, I read a piece I don't know if you're familiar with. Tim Grover. He was Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant's trainer. And I'll never forget this. I read his book and he said, you know, you ask someone that's not an entrepreneur, not a high achiever, how would you describe winning in one word? And most people would say great, you know, fun, exciting.

And then he went and asked Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, a lot of these like high level top entrepreneurs. And he said, the words he got was relentless, ruthless, brutal, like you know, a blood bath, like those are the words he was getting. And then Kobe said everything that was his, his word. And I think about that a lot.

Right. I was like, you got to find that balance between being relentlessly focused on achieving more, but also stopping sometimes to smell the roses and be like, okay, I'm going to enjoy this moment.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. I know I struggle with that. That was the first good minute. I really struggle with that moment. Like I. You know, I, I'm looking forward to that moment when I can just kind of hit a spot where I'm like, okay, like This is amazing. I'm also not confident that I'm ever going to find it, which is also terrifying.

Mitch Jacobsen: I hear you. Well, if you figure it out, Kelly, you let me know.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, me too. Me too. Mitch, this has been absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for joining us today and telling your story.

Mitch Jacobsen: This has truly been an honor, Kelly. I really, really appreciate you reaching, reaching out and having me just the way that you are with people on this podcast.

I think speaks to your character and I just can't thank you enough for the opportunity.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, dude. Pleasure's mine. And I, you know, when I, I can't, you know what I mean? I would say I wish you the greatest of success, you, Carly and Rob, but you guys don't need that. You don't need any extra help. You're doing amazing.

You don't need any wishes.

Mitch Jacobsen: Well, I'm not going to give you any wishes either then Kelly.

Kelly Kennedy: You don't need any luck. It's all on your side at this point. You got it. This has been episode 80 of the business development podcast. We have been graced with Mitch Jacobsen of Rvitta Energy Tea. Founder, inspirer did absolutely amazing until next time we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization. Is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development podcast.