 Hello and welcome to Startup of Storefront. This is the Launchpad series. Over the past year of doing this podcast, we've grown and so have our guests. We've always strived to cover every aspect of the entrepreneurial journey, from the ideation to the product launch and possibly even the exit. Most of our guests have been in the game for a while, but we know that those aren't the only stories worth telling. So we created this offshoot of the podcast to cover the companies that are just starting out. The flow of the conversation will sound familiar to those of you who are frequent listeners, but the topics will trend more towards pitching investors, crowdfunding, product manufacturing, basically anything that budding entrepreneurs are dealing with. So without further ado, I present to you Yasser and Chris from Lumen. Welcome to the Launchpad segment of the podcast. Everyone on today's show, we have Lumen and we have Yasser here. So Yasser and Chris co-founders of this company. Yasser, tell us a little bit about the company and who you are, what you do. Absolutely. So yeah, my name is Yasser. This is my co-founding partner, Chris. We've actually known each other since middle school and we, along with the third partner, started a company called Lumen. And so Lumen is cold pressed hemp juice. So we take the hemp plant and if you've heard of CBD out there, they take the hemp plant, they run it through like chemicals or solvents like ethanol or CO2 to extract CBD. What we do is totally different. So we take the hemp plant, we wash it, we grind it and we juice it just like you juice kale or spinach. So it's this green juice. It's healthy. We always like to say hemp just juice it. So it's got the chlorophyll, the vitamins and minerals. It's got naturally occurring CBD. We make wellness shots. So our wellness shots are sold online. So we sell them kind of all over the country. And then they're also sold in grocery stores. So we have a hemp seed oil variant of our shot that's actually sold in Whole Foods now. We recently launched in there. So that's kind of what we're about. We have a saying it's healthy people starts with healthy food, which starts with healthy soil. And so we kind of like to track the story back all the way to the soil. Chris can dive in more into like what we're passionate about when it comes to soil and biodiversity and ecology and systems. Before we do that, what made you guys want to start the company? What was like the problem you were trying to solve or what was the thing that said, you know, we should actually take this to the market? Yeah. So it all started with our third partner Jacob, who had the idea, well, first he had the idea to be a crazy ski bomb hippie that shredded huge mountains and bombed like 40 foot cliffs. So he was certified, I don't know if a lot of person was podcast certified bad. We put a nod of approval on the zoom call. So he would bomb off these cliffs, but over the years he banged up his body. And then in the off season, he would work on these farms and convert them to organic farms using permaculture principles, essentially making them good for the planet. Some of those farms were hemp and cannabis farms. So he started eating the leaves and he's like, wow, this is making my body feel better. And he's like, I feel like I'm going to get more out of this. I have to eat a lot of leaves. So he started juicing the leaves and the flowers of the hemp and his body felt amazing. His mind felt clear. And so he was like, aha. And he started looking into it and other people kind of were juicing hemp at home and cannabis at home and finding really good benefits from it. Anti-inflammation, de-stressing, better sleep, better digestion, all these reduced pain, all these amazing benefits. And so he looked for a way to commercialize it because most people can't juice it at home. They don't have access to hemp or cannabis in their gardens. And even if they do, it'll destroy your home juicer after just a couple of weeks of doing it. So he found us through our farming partner. Actually, we were all organizing this conference together. So we all met at this conference grounded in regenerative farming. He was like, Hey, I'm starting this company. Do you guys want to help? And so Yasya and I had just made the decision to ditch, not go back to medical school. We deferred our medical school acceptances to explore this concept of food as medicine. And at that point, we realized, look, this is it. Let's all join together. No one else is doing this. This is completely different than anything else out there. And this is totally aligned with our passion of healing the planet and healing people at the same time. Well, kudos to you guys for putting off school. That's amazing. And I hear the story a lot with people, entrepreneurs, either putting off medical school, business school, law school. And it's really, they find their deeper purpose, I think. And so that journey is really inspiring, I think, to a lot of people listening and kudos to you guys for actually being willing to take that step, despite, you know, what your parents might have told you, what society normally thinks is like, Hey, what are these guys doing? Right? They're going to, they're saying no to success, no to med school. Are they crazy? It's very competitive. So kudos to you guys. Give me a window into when you, when you launched. And so what, when, when did you guys either start, I know you guys didn't in the go-go campaign. So when did you guys launch that campaign and how much were you looking to raise when you did it? Yeah. So I believe it launched in November of 2018. And the whole plan around it was obviously we had a little bit of savings. We've landed maybe a tiny amount of investment and we didn't have enough money to like do a full blown launch and start selling into like grocery stores or selling into retail or online. And so what we ended up doing was we took the little bit of money we had and we were like, okay, well, if we can do an Indiegogo campaign and gather pre-sales, we can get enough pre-sales to have a large enough order where it made sense, right? You can buy a bulk, we can't buy one bottle at a time, but if you buy a thousand bottles at a time, it's cheaper and then it kind of works from a, from an economics perspective. And so that was the plan. It was like, okay, well, we got one shot. Let's take it, you know? So we had this, you know, money set aside for Indiegogo, we had a little bit of money set aside for some Facebook marketing. And that was the plan. It's like, cool, let's launch the Indiegogo, let's do some Facebook marketing, we'll drive traffic, we'll get some sales. And the goal was kind of like 15, 30,000 mark. If we can cross that, that puts us in a good position to kind of launch us. So we reached out to Facebook, they're like, look, we can, you know, we'll let you guys market. It's just a juice, it's a food, you're not extracting, you're not making the chemicals or anything. Right. Because Facebook usually doesn't allow you to, to market CBD products. Yeah, yeah, you cannot promote. I will get to it. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I just want to make sure people know. Yeah. Yeah, they don't. And so what ended up happening was they were like, ah, like, this is the green light thing. So we were like, all right, cool. So we'll set this money aside here. And, you know, we fly up to the, the farm and, you know, with whatever little resources we had, we shot some videos and we made it work. And at the time we're supposed to do full sized juices. We ended up doing shots. It all worked out. So campaigns get to go. We hit launch. We tried to run our first ad on Facebook and they said, no, like it just got caught by some filter. And we tried to do the appeal. The appeal was like six weeks. And so we were in this position, we're like, what do we do now? So we just put whatever we had and made product. We filled coolers. And this was up in Oakland San Francisco area. And we would pull coolers around and we would go store to store, you know, it's like I was saying earlier, yoga studios, CrossFit gyms, coffee shops, we'd set up a little table. We'd put our, you know, little display out and we would ask the community, you know, we'd go to the, the CrossFit class and be like, Hey, look, we'd love to come in. We'd love to participate in your class. We'd love to learn more about what you're about. And then we'd love the opportunity to tell you what we're doing. And we ended up doing about $32,000 in pre-sales and just about six weeks, just kind of like up and down the block, just, you know, knocking door to door. And that was, you know, the proof of concept. It's like, look, people want it and it works. And from there, we launched in November, we closed the campaign, I believe in December, we shipped product in January, and then we hit grocery stores retail here in LA at the end of February. So once retail said like, Hey, look, we love you guys. We like what you guys are doing. It's unique. It's different. We'll pick you guys up. We packed up our stuff and moved to LA and we're like, cool, this is it. Like let's just keep on trucking. But you guys ended up raising $200,000, right? Uh, no, on Indiegogo is 32,000. Okay, got it. 32,000 in about six weeks. And you would say, and just for people listening, just so it's clear, you would say a lot of that getting those investors was big on just putting the product in the cooler and going out into the market because digital marketing said no, right? It was like, that was the only choice. Yeah. And I'd also like to clarify that Indiegogo has two different styles. I'm not sure how it is now, if it's changed at all, but you can raise investment or you can do pre-sales. And so we chose, instead of the sell a piece of the company, we chose to sell a product. And so people were buying Lumen wellness shots. So they were like, okay, I'll spend, you know, 50 to $100 and I'll buy a 12 pack of your shots. And so that's how we ended up because it gave us the scale, right? It gave us enough scale for it to like work and we can make a little bit of money and it would kind of get us to the next stage. So we chose to take the route of to sell the product instead of sell the company. Why the move to LA? It's a big market for wellness products. It's also a big, essentially like the capital of content creation in the United States. And also happens to be the capital of wellness trends. And so we're like, cool, let's go here because as a small team, we wanted to leverage our time most effectively. And so we just went to where other people can find us, as opposed to us having to seek other people out all the time. And it worked out really well. I mean, it's also more affordable than the Bay Area. I mean, that's yeah, that was probably in the back of our minds as well. But it just made made sense. You know, the Whole Foods, so pack region is the largest Whole Foods region in the country. There's 10 different independent retailer chains down here for natural and organic grocery. It's more than anywhere else in the country. So it just makes sense from a launch. But it's also home to the largest shot companies in the world. Three, three or four of the largest shot companies in the world are also based out of Southern California. So it's also the most competitive. So it's kind of, I mean, we're pretty competitive guys. So it was like, if we can win in this market, if we can prove it out, then the rest of the country is kind of just let's adapt, let's modify, but we know we can do it. That makes a lot of sense. So you guys raised this money, you moved to LA, and what's the next step? You're hitting the pavement trying to get in the whole, it sounds like Whole Foods worked out, Irwan, other grocery stores. You went right to retail, or were you trying to grow the online business? A mix of both, what was that next step? So for us, it was like, we had those sales, but when those were kind of pre-sales, so now you're starting at zero. And so any sale is growth, right? So it was like, okay, well, we need some sales, and we got into Irwan, we got into Lazy Acres, another retailer. And we thought, we used to think that 90% of the battle was to just get into the retailer. And what we quickly realized was 90% of the battle is to get off the shelf. 10% of the battle is to get into the retailer, right? And so now our products are on shelf, and we're all excited, but then nobody knows who you are. Nobody knows what you do. Nobody knows what hemp juice is. People know what CBD is, but hemp juice is just what's hemp juice. And so then it's, again, the grind of, you go into the retailer, you set up a table, and you just talk to people all day. And we used to have internal competitions of how many units could we sell in the store, just because we're competitive, but you just talk to human beings. It's person-to-person connection, one by one. It's like, hey, how are you doing? Would you like to try a shot? This is what I'm about. This is why I left medical school. This is my journey. This is my product. And this is why it's good for you. And you just, it's the grind. And so I think every single day for months, from February till about when COVID hit and they stopped letting us do it, we were just in stores, and you just educate consumer at a time, and you slowly gain that traction one at a time. And they talk to someone. They talk to someone. So that was kind of the early days. It was just, you just grind it. And it's an enjoying journey. You learn to love it. You learn to love the feedback. You learn, our shots when we first started did not taste good. It was our perspective of what we thought a good shot would be. But you go out there and you start talking to people and they tell you what you need to know about your product. They're like, ah, this one's too green. This one's too bright. This one's way too much ginger. And so you start to learn that it's this process of how do I evolve and interact and how do I grow in the market? I have this perception of what I think my company should be, but the consumer has a very different perception. So how do I meet them where they're at? So you learn to love this discovery journey. And that's kind of what the early stages like. It was like, let's really find our stride and find where do we meet consumers and where do we take that new concept and really grow it? It's such a good pro tip. I mean, I tell founders that all the time. It's like the three founders or four founders or the two of you can be in a room thinking you know what the world wants. And as soon as you develop the product, which could, for some people, they want it to be perfect in their view. And then they go out to the market and it's like, yeah, no, we don't like it. And it's like, oh, and they realize they've spent all this time solving for their own selfishness, which makes sense because you're like, look, I'm a consumer too, but it's always the bad move. It'll always save you tremendous amount of time if you just go out and say, hey guys, do you like this packaging? Do you like this label? Do you like this color? No, great. And that feedback loop is super important. Where are you guys today in terms of sales, in terms of revenue? And then we'll jump into COVID and what you've learned there. Absolutely. Yeah, so it's been a fun journey. We kind of started really young and COVID was, put us in a little bit of a vulnerable state, but we learned and grew out of it. So pre-COVID, we'd been growing month over month. We got the business to just over 15,000 a month. And we had a couple different channels of sales. So we were in kind of like high-end gyms. We were in juice shops. We were in our grocery business. And then we had our online business. So it's kind of like three components. And for us early on, it was good to build a resilient business that had multiple sides to it. And so as a very young company, seeing our online business grow, seeing our retail business grow and our kind of independent and high-end gym business with like the mom and pops grow was a lot of fun. When COVID hit, what ended up happening was our online stabilized and grew a little bit. In terms of our retail business, that took off. So like our grocery stores, people were buying wellness shops that crazy. But then our mom and pops, our gyms, all of those obviously shut down. So for us, it was a fortunate scenario to be in where we had enough in different parts of the market that as we lost our mom and pops and lost our gyms, our retail kind of covered for it. And so then it became a question of, we had to learn to adapt as a startup because you only have so many funds. You only have some, you have to watch your operating expenses. And so we looked internally and we were like, okay, how do we make it through this time? Because the retail business sure, it's spiked, but it's not gonna last forever. And it's eventually gonna start to slow down. They're not gonna let as many people in. So we had to start again, finding a way to meet consumers where they're at. And we just looked at the market. We'd always been talking to the Whole Foods people and we knew that that was something that we were really excited about. And so we just reached back out and we just knocked on the door again and we're like, look, the timing is right. People want wellness shops. Look at what's happening with retail. We see what's happening with Amazon. So it's a really good way for us to leverage Whole Foods and Amazon. And so our business dipped a little bit, as COVID really started to hit, but then Whole Foods came online for us. They're like, look, we like you guys, we like what you guys are doing, let's do it. And so that really put us back on a growth trajectory. So we're back with that kind of like above 10K and we're growing month over month. So next month it's really, really good for us. So that's kind of where we're at as a business. We are vulnerable because we were so young, but I think we were fortunate in the fact that we had developed a little bit of kind of, we grabbed a little bit of each, timed a little bit of each style of market. So as COVID hit, we were able to kind of work our way and kind of keep going. Yeah, that makes sense. It's interesting, I think there's two groups. There's like two camps of people right now in terms of like COVID and how they've been affected. There's one camp that, it made their business actually simple, right? It made it for sure stressful, but it literally showed them, hey, this is the only thing working. Like the grocery store is the only thing that you have available to you. And so it just simplifies the business in one way. The hard part of that is it's a different beast, right? It's a completely different beast. I mean, you're dealing with the demands of retailers, contracts aren't that friendly sometimes. And so it can get a little bit tricky, but that's great. It sounds like you guys found your groove and now you're on your way. On what you said, Diego, right there, it makes it simple, but there's also challenges associated with it. Over half of our sales would come from us just sampling out to people as well. And so like that's been completely removed even from the retailer space. So it's kind of like this hurry up and wait game where we're waiting to have that opportunity again because then you capture so many more consumers. So like the growth we're seeing now still is kind of even stunted in retailers, but retailers are finding a way to start reintroducing that back into different businesses and we're excited to do that because this is definitely the most challenging time for many different companies out there. And as a wellness company, you'd think it would be one of the easiest, but I remember what you said, it's definitely made it super clear on what is working and even what SKUs are working and what SKUs aren't and what taste profiles are working. I mean, we're in the process right now even really hyper-focusing our product offerings and it's been a blessing in disguise. One of the things that we had at Coya on the podcast and I just did Runyon and I come down Runyon and there's a Coya truck and they're giving out free Coya to everybody and they can do that. If you pull up to the fence, but don't go in, you don't need a permit. And so I was like, if I'm a wellness company, this is a no-brainer. Go to every hiking trail and just start being like, here you go, here you go, here you go. So it's such a good idea. Give us a sense of your cost. So how much is it cost to make each little, each shot and then what are you guys selling it for just so people know? We sell each shot for $3.99, process between a dollar and $1.50 to make it. So most of that margin ends up going to the distributor and then the retailer. Yeah, it really ends and then online where you'd think you'd make most of your margin back as a business. A lot of that ends up going to shipping as a fresh product because our product is refrigerated. So our margins, we have a clear path to improve them. We used to be $4.99 before that, where you're $5.99 a shot. So as we've improved our costs, we've lowered our costs to the consumer. And that's something we believe strongly and is accessibility to the product, improving people's health. Because again, from a food as medicine perspective, it should be democratized as much as possible. That's really hard to do. We have a lot of wellness companies on, there's so much of it where you're educating a market. Right? And so because you're educating a market, you're inherently, you have to price high in order to sustain. Curious, why wouldn't you, have you seen like the lower price be successful in terms of sales? Yeah, okay. I mean, you make up for the margin and the volume and the velocities of sales. So we make a lower margin, but we sell more. And so on that note that you end up reaching more people and educating more people, but there is that sweet spot. I mean, we definitely aren't going to play the race to the bottom. Some of the, there's one juice company owned by Coca-Cola that's like a $2.99 shot and where we have no intentions to go down and try to be that bottom price point. Yeah, I'm sure yours is healthier anyway. There's no sugar or something, right? The sugar always, these companies with the sugar all the time. It's like, that's for sure. We talk about it works better and it tastes better. We coined this term that kind of just an insider term, functional density. People talk about like nutritional density, nutrient density. If you look at the ingredients in our shots, it's, it's an elite, they're all an elite of their own. What's next for you guys? Are you guys in the process of maybe raising more money or what is, what is the thing that's going to take you to that next step? Besides the obvious, right? Besides growing your presence, education, branding, what are you guys really leaning into right now? Maybe it's PR, maybe it's raising capital. Just give me a window into that. Yeah, that's a great question. So right now we've gotten to the stage where there's no real more R&D. We've gotten hyper focused. We understand our business and it's more of like, let's grow it. So it's the grind between zero and a million. So we've got some, we're raising some funds now. We're actually, we've closed most of the funds that we need and we've got some commitments. So that's been exciting and those funds are really gonna drive our growth. So it's, we've got this Whole Foods SoCal opportunity. You've got a Whole Foods opportunity in Northern California that's knocking at the door as well. So that's exciting for us and it's just growing what we know works now. So for a long time it was figure out the product or the skew or the price point or the flavor profile or the function. And that took a lot of time but fortunate for us we were able to develop a lot of that pre-COVID. So now it's just to grow the business. We know the levers to pull on. We know how to place the product, how to price the product. So a lot of those funds that we're raising today are how do we drive growth with the system that we have in place? So it's how do we drive growth at Whole Foods because we're already seeing really good traction early at the door. So it's like, okay, let's put fuel on that fire and keep pushing that boat. We've got really good sales up and down the block with some amazing independent retailers that are thriving outside of everything going on during COVID. So it's like, how do we fuel their growth because they're already doing really, really well. And we've got new opportunities that are coming to us where we're looking to partner with some pretty cool exciting gym locations that are doing some outdoor stuff. And so it's like, okay, there's opportunities to grow and thrive there. So for us, that's what the funds are for. We've gotten the business to a stage where we're very comfortable with it. We're enjoying it, we're really happy. So now it's just how do we take this system that we know works and get it to, you know, a million is where we look at internally. Yeah, it's like, okay, you know, let's get it's the grind to a million and then from there and beyond it just becomes mechanics, right? Of like race, capital funds. And I want to give everyone a sense of like the science. And so give us a window into how it makes you feel, why it works and just the science of what's behind this. So if anyone goes and buys it, they can at least, you know, it's not like, hey, we just like these guys, but it's like, hey, we like these guys and there's something, there's some tangible benefits here. Yeah, a big part of it for us is that scientific background. So aside from the medical school being a nice feather in our camp, my backgrounds in biology, Yasser is a cognitive neuroscientist and we worked with a team of nutritionists, dieticians, medical doctors, Eastern medicine practitioners, the whole gamut when coming up with these formulations. And so it's not just us trying to figure out what the heck is going on. We're pulling on all these different strings of experts to put something together that bridges that gap between Western medicine and Eastern philosophy. So we've got two different kind of like categories of products because we're a hemp company as a foundation. And so the stuff that goes into Whole Foods has something called hemp seed oil in the product. And all of our hemp comes from farms that use regenerative farming. So already because the soil is healthier, the food that comes out of it is more nutritional. It has higher different active compounds, whether that's the vitamins and minerals, the chlorophyll, the omegas in it. So the hemp seed oil that we sell on Whole Foods, we put the minimum daily amount of omega-3s. If you compare it to other hemp shots that use hemp seed oil, which there's one or two, the closest one to us has 55 times less hemp seed oil than what we have. And the way we formulated ours is that it has a minimum daily amount. So that tells you how efficacious the other shots are. I mean, for us, there's only so much you could put in there to make it taste good and work well. And so that was our threshold for that. So omega-3s also help some of the other compounds in there absorb better. For instance, fat and curcumin, the active compound and turmeric, when those two are combined with each other, they absorb better. Another fact too, for instance, all the immune shots out there in the world, turmeric juice actually doesn't contain that much of the active compound curcumin. Most like it's lost in the juicing process in the pulp. It's not water soluble. It's fat soluble. So we're the only shot in the market that actually adds curcumin back into it as well. So little tidbits there from the hemp juice side, which is kind of what we started on. The fun part about that is that it's full of this compound called raw CBD or CBD A. And so everyone's familiar with CBD. Don't need to beat that dead horse. But CBD A is something brand new for a lot of people. The same researcher in Israel that discovered CBD back in the 80s, Raphael McAllum, he also discovered the medicinal compounds in CBD A, but it was only recently in labs that they were able to stabilize it in like a pharmaceutical format, not like a juice format, because no doctor is going to be prescribing juice to a patient as much as we wish. When they isolated that compound, they found that it works a thousand times stronger for anti-nausea, anti-inflammation than we got. That's a huge order of magnitude. I mean, it's night today. It still works through things like stress and pain and inflammation. The gut health aspect is in a league of its own. So that's the cool part about the hemp juice. And so then you have to figure out like how do I standardize it and stabilize it? And that's what took us about a year and a half before we even launched the product in terms of figuring it out. So there's a lot of science that goes behind it and we can dive in, we can talk on hours and hours for it. Yeah, I think that's one of the important things is that I think the consumer thinks like science has done, right? We have this natural tendency like, oh, we learned science. It was in, we took a class and now we know science. But there's actually like to your point, you mentioned the 80s discovery. There's even more discoveries around cannabinoids in the 90s. And so we're talking about like very recent history where one, it's being discovered and then it takes time to get to the masses and like how do we use this and how does the body ingest it and what is actually going on? And I think it's important for people listening to realize science is being created right now, right? And a lot of these products were sort of in like the new frontier, I would say of wellness and it's just beginning. And you know, I think the way I play this out and probably you guys think about it the same way is right now, people generally speaking, if they don't feel well, they get medicine. That medicine has a series of symptoms and those symptoms get covered by other medicines. And then it just becomes this like really, it's not great. And the human body actually doesn't like it, right? It's like not good for the body. And these natural, these cannabinoids, these things that are existing in the marketplace are kind of like taken over. But you have a lot of resistance because obviously there's industries built upon the old science. And so there's, I think that's the hard part, right? The hard part is one science sounds, it sounds up here. It sounds intellectual. It sounds, you know, whatever like contrived or whatever. And I just think, and I always think about this. How do we market science? So it sounds sexy. So it's not like not, you know, CBDA, but it sounds like, you know, it just sounds sexy. It's like we need Perez Hilton or Perez Hilton to commit it and add like normal stuff, normal words that everyone will understand. And they'll be like, oh, I get it. And I don't know how we do that, but I, you know, it's, I appreciate you sharing that because I've realized and talking to enough wellness companies recently that science is literally being made. And there's so much education that I think forces companies like you guys to be a business, but also almost a media company in some way, where you have to do these podcasts. You have to in your brand and create education. How much time do you think about that? Like the, just the peer education, whether it's via Instagram or how do you even think about educating the consumer? It's my whole day today. Actually, it really just depends on how much sales demand is pulling us into retailers. I'm outside of that pretty much goes into marketing. So because we're a young company, and it's kind of like this fine balance of a small team, like how much do you spend where sales is always going to pull us the strongest. And of course manufacturing right after that, if you don't have product, you can't sell it. And then any free time after that is purely spent on how do we talk about the product? How do we better educate? And while you're on the field, you're constantly learning to, you're constantly hearing things from the reps or the store personnel that are on the floor. You're hearing from customers, you're getting emails from customers, you're getting all this interaction. And so for instance, part of our product development that we do is we have a small group of people that we trust that we give samples out to and we get feedback immediately. So, and then the things that we hear, the FAQs, for instance, the things we hear come up over and over and over again, it's like, cool, let's just address that on the label. We think of things as like primary, secondary, and tertiary placement or importance. So primary importance is what goes on the front of the label. And then we have these little boxes, these caddies that sit on the shelf and it's what goes on the front of that. Secondary goes on the side of the bottle and then in the back of the caddy. Tertiary is what's on social media, what goes on our website. Email would go into secondary as well. So it's like, what's the order of importance of things? And education is a big part. I mean, we have conversations on different themes. For instance, this week, we were really focusing heavily on how do we make him choose sexy? So how do we communicate how simple it is, but then how effective it is at the same time? Right. How do we avoid saying words like cannabinoleic acid? You know, it's like no one will ever know what that word is ever. So raw CBD, the word raw is a lot sexier than cannabinoleic acid. You know, it's, it's, there's different ways that we're figuring it out. And part of it too is just putting it out there. A lot of the marketing struggle is just, if you know it on the inside, but you're not putting it out there, then it doesn't matter how much, you know, people are never going to know it. And so a lot of it just comes down to as a young company for education is making the collateral itself, spending the time to design it in clear, succinct ways and then just making sure it's out there in front of consumers. Yeah. But yesterday I was on the podcast with a CPG expert and she had spent a lot of her time with big companies, massive companies and now is running a small, kind of like a startup, you know, and she was telling me that it's really interesting because when you're a big company, you have to protect, you have to protect your revenue source. And so although they know sugar is bad or whatever they're adding into their, into their whatever they're creating isn't great for you, they have to protect it. And, and what she learned was actually from her process as she shifted, right, to this like super healthy company, what she learned was lean, she actually leans into what they're afraid of. So what the big company's afraid of letting out, that becomes the differentiator. And so then it, for her, it was like really straightforward in terms of what we need to do is just create video or quick clips that is like, this goes in my body, this is this product, this goes in my body, this is this product. And like, my body's happy on this side and not so happy on this side. And it's like really simple stuff, but you know, she was saying that the big industry is actually aware and they're quite nervous about, about the education of the consumer because it's happening and it's happening. I think, I think COVID has accelerated this too, which is certainly a good thing. Yeah. And I think the access to information, right? If you look at how much information have people have today because of these things, right? Like you can, you can look anything up. And, you know, I come from a very conservative Middle Eastern culture where, you know, the way our parents and our grandparents grew up is if your parents, you know, the older was wiser. And so if your parent was like, Hey, jump, you said how high? Or if they say, Hey, go left, you were like, cool, I'm going left. Whereas now, you know, I was talking to my dad the other day, he's like, all these new generations and he's definitely evolved a lot in his thinking, especially since we've come to the States, it's obviously since I've become an entrepreneur. But he says, you know, this new generation, you say, Hey, jump. And they say why. And for a while, he was trying to understand why are you saying why? But what I was explaining to him was is because they can, it's trust, but verify. Like they're trusting that you're saying jump, but now they have access to information that they can go verify. So what we used to know as correct, now they can go check and be like, no, no, no, actually it's this way. Or oh, yeah, you're right. And it's this new culture that even though these big companies might be trying to protect, I think at the end of the day, people have access to so much information that they can go seek what they believe in. And sometimes it's bad because it can be a self fulfilling prophecy. You can look in places, they tell you what you want to hear. But I think if you, if you train yourself to be open to listening to all the perspectives, I think it'll make you a better person for it. And I think at the end of the day, it'll give you the tools that you need to find the answers that you need to make you a better person. Whether it's health or religious or spiritual or emotional, whatever you're looking for. So I think that's the key thing is that we live in a world now where there's so much access to information that if you can find the way to look for the information that you know is unbiased or find the different angles, then that's just the world we live in. And so I think as a society, we can continue to get better because that information is out there for us to benefit from. I totally agree. Well, look, I want to thank you guys for coming on the podcast. This is our first segment of the launch pad. Tell everyone a little bit about where they can find you, how they can support. So everyone, drinklumen.com. That's another place where you can order online. Whole Foods, any of the Whole Foods here in Southern California as you go. So that's super exciting for us to be amazing for you guys to go in and support those teams. You know, the whole body teams that every single Whole Foods have been absolutely crushing it. They've been working their hearts off. So it'd be great for you guys to go in there and support them. There's a chain called New Seasons up in the Pacific Northwest. So if you're anywhere in the Oregon area, you can go to New Seasons and check us out there. I don't want to be missing. There's a place called Urban Radish in downtown Santa Monica and Culver City. There's another great spot called Jackson Market. If anyone's looking for a hidden gem as a place to hang out, they've got a great outdoor patio, especially with COVID. They've got like a huge pizza oven thing. So a really fun place to be and look it up. It's called Jackson Market. And what's your Instagram? Tell them your Instagram. Atmeatlumen. Atmeatlumen. Well, look, I appreciate it, you guys. Best, I'm going to go to Whole Foods literally today. I'm going to buy some product. I live super close to the Whole Foods by the Grove. And so I'm going to go and support. And thank you guys for coming on the podcast. I appreciate it. Please, the absolute world. Thank you so much for having us.