 Then that's kind of when I realized okay this is like a legitimate business you know that there's like something here and that's when I've had to ramp up and learn about what garnering investment really meant and looked like. Okay so you had revenue and you were like okay it's time to scale this. Yeah I mean lots in between you know like you're dying doing everything you're just like trying to figure everything out go to trade shows talk to people learn about the food industry we then move from my apartment kitchen into a commercial kitchen and like start scaling the recipe and then after that you have to figure out oh okay we've kind of maxed our capacity here move it to a co-manufacturer and then figure out fulfillment and everything else so while doing that I'm also realizing this is very expensive to start this type of business and I have to figure out what raising capital looks like and how that works. So how'd you go about it? So I heard about this book called Venture Deals by Brad Feld. Yeah Brad Feld had a company that was very similar to Groupon but basically when the Groupon it was like Feld's deals it was something as obvious as that. Oh yeah. Because we met Brad at Bowtide Company and we launched on his company site which was like a Groupon competitor at the time. Really? And yeah it was all because of that book. Wait did the book come first? A book came first. Okay. Yeah. But then he would spend time on the East Coast giving like certain seminars and stuff and talks around some of like the Boston school systems. Even today he's very vocal about like investment what it takes to start up a business. So you read his book? So I read the book so that I understood what all these terms were. In the meantime we were invited to join this kind of food incubator accelerator called Excel Foods at the time based in New York and they wanted to like invest but I didn't want to take a full investment so I gave them an exchange of equity for this participation in this accelerator so I could learn all these things. Was it like 7%? No much less like I think 2 to 3. And then so I did that went through that whole program and then they ended up doing a bigger investment in us down the line. In the meantime I'm reading this whole Brad Feld thing trying to get like understand the difference between a convertible note and equity raise and angel investment etc. But then you know you kind of have to like know who to go to to raise money. So even though Excel Foods had invested I was trying to figure out like where do you where do you find these people. And that piece was really hard so I almost like walked into some very predatory deals but then I realized okay I don't really have a real index of people I just like I just don't who make these types of investments. So I started entering pitch competitions for startups and I chose them because I always I saw that on the on the the judges on most of these were VCs or or angel investors themselves and so I figured you know if I can get their attention then at least I'll know about my company even if I don't make like the top whatever. So I started entering one's base in LA and I ended up getting into this one called Woman Founders Network. They had a pitch competition. We made the top ten and the top ten were given a pitch coach and I was given this like amazing pitch coach who then helped me prepare on like a lot of subsequent pitches national television you know appearances etc. But she was like savage when it came to like my deck and everything she would just basically what means to shape. How was that for you? Did it was it hard at first to take that kind of feedback? Yes and no some things because like a founder is very attached like oh everyone needs to know this this like part of like this information that we're in these stores and that you know this is how we think about distribution and she's like no one cares and you have like five minutes to convey all this information. You have to practice like every word matters like every word every space in between each word. Your timing has to be you know on point like and we can't waste time. So she would literally record me video record me and then we would review any nervous ticks I had any filler words like and then I would have to repeat that over and over again but her techniques were so great you know I ended up winning first place in that so that was like not only today at $20,000 but one of the judges was Jesse Draper of Halogen Ventures. It's a fun base here in LA and so she ended up investing and then I was like okay that's like works so then I entered there's a Tory Burch Foundation pitch for $100,000 we ended up taking home the 100k for that one and then on that panel was Tony from Q-Ball which is a fund out of Boston he ended up investing that's how I got my first set of investors and then they introduced me to more people but for someone who didn't have doesn't have a role at X who doesn't know where like investors live or sit. This was a great way for anyone to just get in front of the right people. And the incubator didn't help you out with any of that? They didn't help you out with structure? They did some. Okay. But also you have to realize like they're also VC and they were just starting so we were both learning and they introduced me to some people but some panned out some didn't so I just like I also knew like I had to learn this too on my own and not also also just rely on my investment fund to do that. We went to Y Combinator and it was similar there was a guy named Jeff and he's probably the most like charismatic person to give a speech ever and he's the guy everyone goes to when they're doing their deck and not so not all the founders as an example are like from America and so if there's one that has an accent he'll say your options are your teammates doing the pitch or you're going to a speech coach and it was like like imagine hearing that about your baby and then you as the founder if you had the accent would be like I'm gonna do it I'm gonna do it and he'd be like okay here's the data on the word of the money flows if you have an accent here you go and you would see literally the fact that like if they couldn't really understand you I mean you were talking about 10% versus like 90% I mean it was staggering and so he's like this is up to you this is your company but if you want to fail then I would continue to do what you're doing and like yeah go ahead try to learn try to figure this out in the next three weeks because then not only are you trying to figure that out but you're also spending all that time with a speech coach when you should be spending it on your company arguably right because it's like it could be a three million dollar decision that's the reality like any seed stage at that at that point two to four millions what they're getting and so wild like that and then of course you're getting recorded she was her name's Lisa Elliott shout out I mean she has her own media coaching company but I think it's true and I don't think that's really shared with founders a lot you know everyone wants to take a very supportive approach to your picture your content in your deck and you just need someone to be ruthless like sometimes yeah especially when you're starting out you don't need yes men yeah honest feedback because the public is is not going to yeah be as kind yeah I mean she'd be kind about it but she's like you know in her own way she'd be like no one cares right it's not helping you to be kind at that stage yeah yeah and you have to like be in a place to receive that right not take it personally yeah but that was good training to not take the pitching part personally yeah so like after you get you know it's it's not like oh you just meet investors and it's all good it's like I did pitch maybe 70 or 80 times before I raised the serious seed because it was just so much of it is like you're learning how to pitch so a lot of them are wasted meetings but also you are figuring it out like what is the narrative what is the story but then there's also a segment of people who just don't really understand what you're doing you know they think it's just great a novelty you're like a gag gift or like they don't really get it