 Other than candy, what's your go-to guilty pleasure? I'm a sweet tooth, that's why I started this company. It could be ice cream, cookies, cake. If it's sweet, like, no self-control. Mesa Chahada, founder and CEO of Behave. Are you ready to answer some questions? Yeah, let's do it. The words candy and kids are often synonymous, but your target audience is clearly adults. Why? We wanna speak to that millennial consumers probably starting to have kids or gonna have kids soon, and what we have found is that when we build a fan in that millennial customer, they're giving it to their kids, and kids are also loving the product, but we wanted to speak to that person who's ultimately making the purchase in the aisle. I feel like I know who you're speaking to. Can you, in detail, to Vance, the little things, tell me who you think you're trying to hit? So we sort of have this consumer that we call, I think we called her Brianna, and she sort of epitomizes who we think the customer is, right, she goes to boutique fitness classes, she cares about her health, but also is not necessarily like a super dieter or a super fitness-obsessed person. And so, yeah, we kind of built this personality around who we thought the target customer was, and it's definitely a fun exercise to kind of go through pre-launch. Behave with the line crossed out is very Vegas, and could be really fun and naughty. Have you ever thought about doing any campaigns in that direction? Our brand voice is very irreverent, right? Like, we curse in our brand copy. We really try to bring that irreverence. A lot of the idea behind our brand is, yes, we're better for you, and we have that sort of better nutritional aspect, but we're not about dieting, we're not about diet culture. We're actually more about, like, living your best life and having fun and being able to just enjoy candy and kind of say, eff it, I'm gonna eat the whole bag. So, yeah, we definitely kind of have that, like, irreverent tone that we try to bring out in all of our marketing. What did you do versus what did your branding agency do? I had a chaotic universe of a brand in my brain and Gander, the branding agency we worked with, sucked it out of me and put it on paper and created an actual kind of living, breathing brand out of it. How long did that process take? Six months, probably, start to finish. What brands were on your mood board? You know, speaking to that, like, irreverence that we're really going for, brands like Starface, some really cool, kind of, Gen Z forward brands, some brands that our branding agency had done, like Magic Spoon and Mina T and a few others, Lizzo, like, you know, maybe not a brand, but I guess a brand in her own way. What other names were you considering? Actually, Behave came up in a conversation with a girlfriend really, really early on and it just kind of stuck and we never changed, so. Are you ever concerned that the name is a pinch too smart? It's a conversation that we had, especially with our branding agency, but I think ultimately we, with the cross through on the word mark, we were able to really get the point across, which is we are actually kind of anti-behave, we're anti-telling you what to do, we're pro just doing whatever you want to do. What's the difference between you and Smart Suites? We are really focusing on kind of innovation within the category, introducing premium, never before seen flavors into the candy space. So we're really, really focused on the taste and the product and kind of bringing innovation into the category through product versus kind of maybe recreating some of the classics. And now we are at our flow code flow card. So this season, Flow Code is a sponsor with the brand. They have a revolutionary new QR technology that is incredibly mobile friendly, where as we're talking, there's gonna be your flow code specific to behave up on screen. People will pull their phones up and scan as we're talking right now and it will take you to a custom Flow Code flow page. What would you love your Flow Code flow page to include? Yeah, let's take people to our homepage just cause I think our site is really the best place to really understand the whole brand. We can include a discount on there. So when you click the link, it'll just be auto applied and our TikTok, we're all about TikTok right now. Other than candy, what's your go-to guilty pleasure? I'm a sweet tooth, that's why I started this company. It could be ice cream, cookies, cake, if it's sweet, no self-control. I hear you're a pretty good DJ. What skills did you learn as a DJ that have carried over to your role as founder? I didn't know anything about DJing. A friend asked me to DJ a party and I was like, sure, I'll do it and I showed up and I did not know how to use any of the equipment and it was fake it till you make it, which I think is very similar to starting a company where you kind of need to just raise your hand and say, I'm gonna figure out how to do this and then just hope that that snowball starts rolling and that you can just keep kind of faking it till you make it, until you kind of get to where you're going. How'd you come up with the idea? Working at Daily Harvest actually, which is in the health food space, I was starting to wanna eat cleaner and eat healthier and candy was the thing I just couldn't give up and I was like, is there something healthier in candy? There wasn't and I was like, why not? There's something healthier in every other category and that was what kind of got the wheels turning on the idea. What's the next milestone you're working towards? You can find us anywhere, I would say, that's, you know, we wanna build to that as quickly as possible. So far in your company's history, what's been the best day and what's been the worst? Best day, maybe launch day, just cause there's so much build up towards that and then we launched and we had such an incredible response. Worst day, which is, it's funny cause some people might see it as a positive but it really was, tough was selling out. What's the key to your business? The team, definitely and myself not included but the incredible people that are building the brand alongside me. What's the biggest lesson you've learned so far? You need to ask for help, you need to know where you need support, you need to know when your plate is too full and you know, you're maxing out or burning out and being able to bring in the right people and the right talent to help move to the next stage of the business. How has your origins from Tunisia had any impact on this business? You know, I would say it just gives me probably a different perspective. I grew up spending a lot of time there in the summers and I can't necessarily pinpoint it but just maybe having gone through different things and had different experiences that hopefully I'm bringing out through the brand and through the energy that we're kind of trying to put on the shelf. Work from home or office? Both, flexible. What's your kryptonite? Gotta say candy. Who's on your Mount Rushmore? Lizzo, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, AOC and Pearl and Emily and Elizabeth on my team. When will you know you've made it? Never, hopefully. Are your parents proud? Yeah, I think our parents are proud. What do you worry about? I'm trying to manifest that I don't worry about much, that I just kind of let things ride off and I think when you're starting a business you have to shift into that mindset otherwise you will never get one minute of sleep. Who do you aspire to be? Myself, my most authentic self. How do you make sure your brand resonates and doesn't just check boxes? By having real humans behind the brand. We don't have agencies or algorithms or AI writing or creating social media content. It is real humans, it's me, it's Pearl on the team. Emily, it's our voice and who we are as people that is hopefully coming through when we interact with our community and when we put things out as a brand. Besides sales, what metrics do you look at to determine the health of your brand? More qualitative metrics, like just we go through every single customer service inquiry, how people are interacting with us, how people are feeling about the brand and the product, conversion on the site, how people are interacting with the site, revenue, customer acquisition, things like that and then retail take up as well. Who do you want to steal market share from? I don't think of any categories especially in food and beverage as a finite pie. I think that especially in these better for you categories we're growing the pie, right? I think that there's so many people who have left candy that us and Smart Suites and other better for you candy brands are bringing back into the mix. So that's what I'm really excited about. I don't think it's a zero sum game. Mesa Chahada, founder and CEO of Behave. Thank you so much for coming on and answering some questions. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm Ian Wishingrad and I'll see you next time on I'm With the Brand.