 Who's career do you model your own after? Oof, I really, I don't model. I'm kind of making it up as I go. I don't model my career after anyone. I'm just trying to figure out the best possible moves for me and the business. Danny Beckerman, founder of Jars by Danny. Yes, hello. You ready to answer some questions? I am. Great. Could you have made it without Instagram? No, I don't think so. I did not have the dollars. I mean, I had zero initial investment. It was just me. I was making them out of my apartment. I was, you know, my first, like, business lesson that I taught myself was that I had to sell them for more than I was buying the ingredients for. So I was making profit right away. And I had $0 to spend on marketing, on advertisements, on anything. This was such an unbelievable way to get your name out there and your product out there and free. Now it's not as free. PR or influencers? Combo of both. I've never hired a PR agency. I always do my own PR. And now also influencer marketing is getting a little oversaturated. People are a little sick of seeing advertisements. If you had $1 in marketing to spend, where would you spend it? I do think so. I think so, maybe, yeah. The paid ads on Instagram, they do work on Facebook and Instagram. They work for me 100%. If I put one out, I see sales right away. How important is community? Community is very important. Those loyal followers, loyal jar eaters, people that are so excited when they see your next steps and everything and how the business is growing. It's very important. It's important for me because it makes me feel good and it encourages me to keep going. And it's nice that I know that these people have my back. All my business is word of mouth social media marketing. So I need to have my community that kind of has my back that tells people about it, that posts it on Instagram, that shares it, that tells other people to buy it, tells people how good it is. Do you ever pay influencers? No, never have. When I first started and as time went on, I gained a community and a kind of most of a friend group of food bloggers and other influencers in the food space. And they're part of my community. They're part of the community of people that want to see me succeed and grow. I can't think of someone that would charge me that would be unbelievable for my brands and make a difference and be worth it. What brands do you look up to? The first one that came to my mind was Drybar. I know her and she's amazing. And I think her brand is so amazing, just like from the second you walk into a Drybar, every little note, every little napkin, everything is branded. The color scheme, the way that people talk to you, everything, it's on brands. And now I notice those things and I really appreciate them when I see them. How'd you decide on your brand aesthetic? When I was making these desserts and jars, I had been doing a ton of experimenting with brownies and mousses and whipped creams and cakes and everything. So when I was layering them in the jars, I was kind of playing around with the recipes so that they would sit perfectly on top of one another. I'm a perfectionist and that's what I liked. I liked it to look like that. And then it kind of built from there, just the whole layered aesthetic. So everything, a lot of my things are layered, my website's all colorful stripes. The lids on my jars are all colorful stripes so they all kind of matches. How much inspiration do you pull from Big Buy Melissa? Ooh, honestly, none. I mean, I totally respect her. She's built an unbelievable business. We have a very different business model and a very different product. But I love her, I love her brand, I love her color, I love everything and I really respect her. I just see it, I saw it as when you see demographically the dessert product. I figured it was like, okay, this is, if I were to describe you, it's like, oh, it's like her version of a Big Buy Melissa. I didn't know if she was one of the people that you were like, if I do this right, that's how I want to play this. No, I mean, again, I love her, but she's more, I mean, she's a ton of brick and mortar. I'm more direct to consumer and I do a ton of corporate catering and our products are so different. But I always really just wanted to do direct to consumer. I thought that was the best way for me to control the quality of my product. Just like from beginning to end, I wanted customers to have the best possible experience. This is an expensive product and I want to make sure that they're getting the best. Are you concerned that your brand awareness is low and then someone else could come knock you off and they'll take all the credit? I get that question all the time. I do not think so. So something that I did on purpose when I started the company was I wanted to brand myself along with the jars. So I was thinking about names, you know, just jars or some other fluffy names. But then I got a really good piece of advice from someone that said, put your name in it, keep your name in it. And if you kind of look through all of my marketing and my social media, you'll see that I tell the story of like a really fun dessert company and it's definitely delicious photos of food, but I'm also telling the story of a young female entrepreneur started in New York City and building her business for the last six years. And you can really see that very clearly over my Instagram. So I always wanted people to, you know, love the jars and I also wanted them to not just want anyone's desserts, not just want anyone's desserts and jars but to want jars by Danny specifically. Do you ever want to be mass, mass, mass? If that's the right way for the business, if I, you know, team up with a partner that has those channels and they're like, let's do it X, Y, Z, this way you fully take over all marketing and brand and social and the things that you're 100% best at and we're gonna work on operations and production then yeah. What's the end game? The end game is, I honestly, I would love to sell to a larger company that would be able to scale in a way I cannot and build the brands in a way I cannot. So that is, that's definitely a goal of mine. But I would love to stay on as well in this larger company and further develop brands and products. And how far are you away from that, from doing that? You will see, hopefully, hopefully not so far. I think you know something. Yeah, maybe I do. Your favorite three Instagram accounts that are not people? It's funny to say this because I've got my whole business on Instagram, I don't scroll that much. I really don't, I actually, I really try and minimize it, which is again really funny because I really do attribute the success to jars, a ton to Instagram, but I also think that it's kind of unhealthy and I really try and stay off it as much as possible. You're fashionable, your jars are fashionable. Thanks. How much does the product really matter? A ton, the product matters a ton. I mean people, you know, people are excited to see it. They love the photos on Instagram and then something that everyone always says to me, which I love to hear is that they taste even better than they look. So I think the photos of them, the brand itself, like all the beautiful things you see on Instagram, that gets my customers to purchase and then the taste and the high quality of the product keep them coming back. Repeat customers or everything. What was the hardest thing you had to learn on a job? Oh, so many hard things. They can't trust everyone. That not everyone might have your best interest at heart even if it seems that they do. People always can be thinking about themselves first, not everyone, but in business all the time that's the case. To read contracts more thoroughly before I sign things, really form a team of advisors that you can ask these questions to and run decisions by and make sure that you're just not jumping into things that you shouldn't be jumping into. Danny Beckerman, founder of Jars by Danny. Thanks so much for coming on and sitting with me. Thank you. I'm Ian Wishengrad and we'll see you next time on I'm With The Brand.