#42 - Courtney Boyd Myers @ AKUA

Episode Recap:

ReGen Brands Recap #42 - Spongebob's Favorite Regenerative Kelp Burger - (RECAP LINK)

Episode Transcript:

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated with AI and is not 100% accurate.

Kyle Krull - 00:00:15
Welcome to the ReGen Brands Podcast. This is a place for consumers, operators and investors to learn about the consumer brands, supporting regenerative agriculture and how they're changing the world. This is your host, Kyle, joined by my co-host ac who's going to take us into the episode.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:00:33
On this episode, we have Courtney Boyd Myers who is the founder and CEO of AKUA AKUA is supporting Regenerative Agriculture with their lineup of frozen plant-based meat alternatives like burgers, crab cakes and ground meat that are all made with regenerative farmed kelp. In this episode, we learn about how the brand pivoted from shelf stable kelp jerky into frozen household mainstays. Their exciting new partnership with Nickelodeon and spongebob Plus. Courtney shares her operating and fundraising journey as both a mother and female founder. Let's dive in. What's up everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the ReGen Brands Podcast. I am flying solo today but still very, very excited to have my friend Courtney from AKUA joining us. So welcome Courtney.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:01:22
Thank you. I was so happy to be here, Anthony.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:01:25
Yeah, we're, we're happy to have you. Um and Courtney for those. You know, this is our third kelp based brand podcast. We're very excited to, to officially I think, be over the hump and we are certainly a pro kelp podcast now, but tell everyone about AKUA and just what y'all sell and the lay of the land,

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:01:43
of course. Yeah. So AKUA is arguably the first company in the world that is making plant based foods from ocean farmed kelp. Um We, we became obsessed with kelp. It sounds like in the same way you're getting obsessed with kelp because it is delicious. It is nutritious and it is super sustainable. And so it ticks all the right boxes for me as an ocean lover and someone who likes to feed the people, they love healthy food.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:02:12
Yeah. And as someone who has some issues with, I think some of the current plant based offerings or alternatives that are being in the market, you know, Kelp is such a much better option I think than a lot of those things. And so we certainly want to spotlight that and help folks like you tell that story. Um give, give a feel for just kind of what y'all sell right now according to the products and where people might find the products today.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:02:37
Of course, so we're really excited because we just launched four new products into retail. So our little blue kelp burger box is now joined by two new flavors chili sesame and lemon and herb. And of course, our sponge Bob Kelp patties, which are mini burgers for kids of all ages um are just hitting retail stores shelves this month.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:03:00
Wow. Wow, that's huge. And we're definitely gonna dive a lot into all of that, especially the partnership with Nickelodeon and spongebob. I think that's an absolute game changer. So just excited to see that hit, hit the market and see how that that rolls for y'all. Um You know, Courtney, I know this, this mission and the brand is really deeply personal to you. So take us back in time. You know, how did this get started? Why did this get started? And how has this all kind of come to what it is today?

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:03:28
Yeah. So first of all, I grew up near the sea in Connecticut. I, I think like most women born in the 19 eighties fancied myself a little mermaid and was just obsessed with. It's true. Look, we all have, look at this stuff, isn't it be memorized? Um, and I, I loved eating seaweed. You know, I was always, is that kind of weird white girl in Asian grocery stores living in Brooklyn making my own seaweed salads and thought this is so strange that as like my non Asian American friends were not eating seaweed more because it's, it's so healthy for us. And it's just this massive food group that's eaten in, you know, a third of the world every day. And two is I, you know, started gravitating towards plant based eating in my early teens, I think like most teenage girls, I was becoming kind of obsessed with the healthy eating and, and staying fit. And I remember this really vivid Memorial Day when everyone was serving burgers and just being like physically nauseated and thinking to myself, I feel like I'm eating my own flesh. And from, from that moment on, I started eating, you know, 100% plant based and I would always make all 100% plant-based products. I think that for me, it was a really a, a health journey.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:04:34
Um, meanwhile, my father whom I, I love dearly background in the 19 eighties was like the head of marketing at Pepsi. And he was um a like complete, you know, western diet type of person. Um, he helped create the Burger King Kids Club. Um, and I, I watched him get, yeah, I watched him get two heart attacks, um, diabetes and, and two types of cancer, which are all very traditional Western diseases that are, are more or less I believe driven by diet and lifestyle. And so I became obsessed with helping him to eat healthier. And in that process was, was turning over the labels on everything in our fridge, throwing out everything with high fructose corn syrup and he just felt really tricked because he was like, wait a minute, I've been buying this, you know, salad dressing since like the 19 fifties.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:05:33
Like I know it didn't have high fructose corn syrup in it when I was a kid. Like why does it now? And so of course, always make food.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:05:54
Was he a willing participant or was he very resistant to this change? What was that journey like?

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:05:59
Oh, there were massive fights, you know, me throwing cases of Coca Cola into the trash can him getting them out? I mean, the the thing about food is it's so personal and it's so you have to be really kind of careful in how you approach things. The way I approached it was, was not the right way. I was just like this angry, you know, college kid coming home and, and throwing everything out of his fridge. But that journey sort of led me to also realize just like how much crap was on the shelves of grocery stores that people were really unknowingly buying for themselves and also buying for their kids. And so I went to Expo West when I was exploring, starting a food business. And I was watching all these better for you brands who essentially had just swapped out cane sugar for monk sugar. And we were like, we're better for you.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:06:33
And I was like, you're really not getting to like the root of the issues here, which is like how we grow our food is causing damage to the environment, which is then causing damage to our health. And so what

Anthony Corsaro - 00:06:57
year was that, Courtney, what year

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:06:59
I went to my first Expo west in 2018, I want to say. And it had been about a year prior that I was introduced to regenerative ocean farming.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:07:10
Yeah, you were, you were early, you were early in that. So, tell us about that. Tell us, what was the, what was the, aha moment right there.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:07:18
Yeah. So, one of my best friends from middle school, actually, it was my brother's best friend. He, um, started Green Wave with Bren Smith. And so, yeah, so I had a real strong lead into that. And that's, I think one of those things you just can't duplicate. It's, it's the who, you know, in life. And I knew a farmer. And so he was like hearing me talk about wanting my career to orient more around climate change and food and wanting to go into this industry. I've been in tech and startups before and felt like I didn't want to tell my future granddaughter when she asked me, what were you doing while the world was burning? And I really feel like we're in this pivotal time in history where the choices we make, we can maybe turn things around. Um And we have to slow things down.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:07:59
So he said, well, I, I'm just like, you know, building this nonprofit, you know, it's quite small and new, but we're training fishermen in the New England area to grow kelp because it has all these environmental benefits of sucking CO2 out of the water. And nitrogen and replacing it with oxygen. And so I said, well, I, I love seaweed and I would love to come out and, and eat, eat your kelp. Let's, let's try it out. So, went out, sat on a boat with Bren Smith who's incredibly inspiring and he was telling me about just all the kelp he was gonna grow and I was like, I'm gonna help you get people to eat it.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:08:48
I love it. That's, well, it's a great, it's a great story because that's the whole impetus of the this podcast and the work that we're doing, which is to show that we need to create the market based solutions through brands and infrastructures and basically routes to market for the farmers or for the generally produced goods. And I'll throw a, I'll throw a link to Green Waves website in the, in the show notes. But they've been just a really a, a great example of a group that's come together and increased. I think the collective capacity of the entire return of ocean farming movement that they started really small as you kind of alluded to. But now they're, they're a real powerhouse. Um and they have all kinds of resources for farmers and brands and supply chain operators and all kinds of people in this movement. So I'm assuming you're, you're still working closely with that team or, you know, tapping their resources, right?

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:09:37
We are. Yeah, we donate 1% of our revenue every year to green wave. They're our 1% plane partner. Um And I think they've got such an interesting insight into what are sort of the biggest opportunities in the kelp industry for us all, which is like, how do you drive down the cost of kelp? So that more brands like AKUA start using kelp in their products because right now it's, it's expensive but like everything in sustainability, whether it's electric cars, you know, or or alternative milks, like things are more expensive than their predecessors. So we've been working with them on understanding the growth of the supply chain, the technology going in it in order to drive those costs down. Um And that, that's been a big part of our back and forth and also being able to tell the green wave story and the story of the farmers is important to our customers and then they're really helpful in terms of telling our impact story. So we measure impact in two ways. One is the CO2 that the kelp is removing from the ocean and two is the carbon avoidance. When you choose a kelp burger over a beef burger.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:10:41
Mm Interesting. OK. So you're, you're, you're in, you're with the fishermen, you're getting expired. You love to eat seaweed slash kelp. How do you go from that to I'm gonna create AC BG brand. And what's, you know, what's the first product? What was that transition like?

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:10:59
Yeah. Oh my God. If I knew then what I know. Now, um,

Anthony Corsaro - 00:11:04
I, I believe in the first conversation we had Courtney's direct quote was we kissed a lot of frogs to get here. So I think we're gonna talk about some of those frogs.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:11:12
So many frogs. In fact, my, my prince, Prince, my food scientist was the one repeatedly calling me just now. But I, yeah, so when, when we first started, we had these big, um, bricks of wet frozen kelp that I would have in my canvas tote bags. And I would be running around the like hot sweaty July summer in New York City dropping these samples off to New York shelves. And I was like, hey, I'm Courtney. I love kelp. And I would love to have you experiment with this in your restaurant. We're looking for a chef and a food scientist to work with on this business and most people probably check that kelp in their freezer and it's probably still sitting here today. Um But we did work with this one chef. His names Will Horowitz.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:11:49
He had a restaurant in New York City, um called Duck's Eatery. That was very neat, focused and I loved his um he did this salmon jerky that was really, really good and a mushroom jerky that were really good. And so I was like, well, could you make a kelp jerky? And I liked the idea of doing a drive shelf stable good business as my first toe to CPG because dealing with frozen logistics felt like a nightmare and it is a nightmare. But that's another. So we, we, yeah, we were doing these beautiful full pieces of kelp jerky that he was like hand rolling and toasted sesame seeds.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:12:33
And then we were bringing people off the street that we, you know, we meet and, you know, bribe them in with beer and bring our friends and we would basically get their feedback on the first iterations of Kelp Jerky. And that, that was our first product?

Anthony Corsaro - 00:12:55
Wow. Wow. And did that product ever make it to retail or what was the story around? Why that didn't end up being the product that I, that y'all, you know, y'all are not selling it now. So what was the, what was the downfall of Kelp Jerky?

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:13:08
Yeah. So we discoed our own product, which is one of my favorite CPG acronyms. And CPG is consumer package goods and disco. Well, it's just not an acronym but it shorten for discontinued. Um, but it sounds so fun. Discoed. Uh Anyway, we, in 2019, we brought the very first bag of Kelp Jerky to market and it was basically as a reward to our Kickstarter backers because we, we started on Kickstarter and um it, we put them in these little baggies that looked like you dime bags you'd buy drugs in and uh put stickers on them and the air from the bags like, you know, they weren't like, they were like porous, I guess. And so, like, everybody who backed our Kickstarter got these, like, super hard pieces of kelp jerky. It had basically, like, absorbed oxygen and it was just horrible and they didn't taste as good as, as what we had done on the kitchen bench top. And, and this is sort of like the theme of kelp jerky. Like every time we tried to scale up Kelp jerky, which was a dehydrated product, we really have issues where some kelp jerky pieces would come out like wet and some would come out over dried. And so it was really just like product consistency we were struggling with. Also the product was 70% kelp, which we've learned is too much kelp to give someone who's never had kelp before. And so some people really liked it and I have people really upset.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:14:20
We no longer make it. But for the most part, people were like that tastes like a wheat grass shot. And at the end of the day, if you need to make a successful food company, it just has to taste effing delicious. So we sold it in Air Juan and it did well in Air Juan and that was about it. Um And we sold it online and on Amazon and we made the tough decision uh in 2020 basically to stop producing it. Um It was hard to make and it was a hard sell on consumers if you're

Anthony Corsaro - 00:15:02
in the CPG business and you haven't discoed or discontinued at least one product. You're not in the CBG business. Um, and, you know, I just, I appreciate you sharing that with us because a lot of people that are just now starting brands or they want to better understand, understand the space, they use this show as a source of education. And so, you know, while Kelp Jerky might have not worked for you, we were all able to just learn from the things that you learned from that experience. And we unfortunately did not feel that pain, you know, for or fortunately, uh like you like you have. Um But in previous conversations, you know, you've talked about why you think more center of plate now is really more aligned with kind of the ethos that you think that the products and the sourcing are delivering talk about where you went after Kelp Jerky was, was, was dead, right? Where, where did you go from there? And how did you kind of land on the products that, that you all have now?

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:15:58
Yes. So in 2020 we were driving out to Anaheim to do Expo West even though everybody else was turning around. And I think God it was canceled because we were about to basically blow blow our budget on sampling Kelp Jerky. And then when it was canceled, um my co-founder at the time and I went back to a Mexican restaurant and we were just like, oh my God, like the world is falling apart. Like our business isn't working like this is so horrible. And we were like drinking our margaritas and I was like, you know, we should really consider doing some R and D on the kelp burger because our manufacturer at the time was making salmon burgers all day long. And so they said to us look like your jerky is a pain in the butt to make. But we could make burgers for you really easily. Like, why don't you consider that? And so my co-founder who really like, just liked culinary but didn't have a background in it.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:16:42
And he was a spreadsheet guy so he could like track recipe development pretty easily. He was like, look, I, I, I'll make like the first version and we'll like, get people together in New York City once we get home. So we got back to New York City, March 9th. We host our first kelp burger tasting party with like five or six iterations. And like half of our guests didn't show up because they were like, getting panicked about COVID. And then, yeah.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:17:08
And then we, you know, we have some beer and the burgers were great and we were really excited. And then I remember driving home that night and Trump announced the borders were closing and my husband was in France at the time and we weren't really married and I was like, he's French and I was like, you need to get on the last flight or like, I don't know when I will see you again. Like, the borders are closing.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:17:44
Wow. Yeah, you had a lot, you had a lot going on personally and professionally at this time.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:17:49
And so, you know, we drove up to this little cabin that my parents had on a Lake George was just super cold and my co-founder and I basically started sending each other. He would send me samples of the kel burgers. He was making, we would try them, we'd send him feedback back and vice and back and forth like that for the first month. And then we said, look like we need like more tasters for this, but we can't host parties, which is how we did R and D on Kelp Jerky. And so instead we put together this beautiful type form where we are creating like all these data sets. And we were, then we, we had a big online following from like our Kickstarter and Kelp Jerky. And so we had about a 20,000 person mailing list at the time. And we basically launched the Kelp Beta Burger Club and we said, we're all sitting in your home like just pay for shipping and we'll send you samples of our new product for your, you know, your, your feedback.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:18:30
And

Anthony Corsaro - 00:18:43
did this, did this come with an NFT or anything or just or just

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:18:48
like that would have been maybe not so amazing, but maybe. Um and so we, we, we sent out these kelp burgers and, you know, we should have been selling masks probably, but we sent out the kelp burgers and we had over 1000 people over that first six months of the pandemic, try our product and give us feedback and they would try it repeatedly and they would, you know, they'd get samples every two weeks. And so instead of throwing parties where we were like scribbling notes on yellow lined paper and getting drunk, we had these like beautiful data sets of like, what did you think of that iteration? Was it too much for me? Where do you shop? What's the, what's the price point you would pay for this? Like how many do you want in a packaging?

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:19:26
So it was like, wow, we, we just got so much valuable information that also we could then take that to investors and say, look like nine out of 10 people have said 1000 people have said this is the best vegan burger they've ever had. Like, let's do this. Um So that was why we discard the kelp jerky all of a sudden we had this like much more interesting and impactful product to focus on versus the kelp jerky where we were doing data collection on that was sort of never clocking north of like a 6.5 or seven on the taste scale. Um So yeah, we, we, we had to go with the product that with, with very little money in the bank at the time we had to focus.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:20:11
Mhm Yeah. And there's a lot of themes like to pull out from there, right? Like taste is, is king slash queen. Always, right? So like it's a table setter if you don't have the taste, right? Like there's no conversation and then two is, I think in the regen space, there's a lot of ingredients, crops outputs, whatever you wanna call them, that we can make really cool artisan products which are great and like, I salute all the artisan butchers and, and bakeries and chefs and people that are doing stuff like that in their local communities. And that's amazing. But there has to be some sort of economies of scale to produce a CPG product that also commercializes those ingredients in a way that can be on, you know, 50,000 store shelves, right? And so I think that's a perfect illustration of kind of that journey for y'all. Um ok, so you have a good product and then you got to get it into retail, right? So like how has that journey been?

Anthony Corsaro - 00:20:55
And then would love to kind of dovetail into the new partnership and the new skews and kind of the rocket ship that you're fueling up there.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:21:13
Yeah, I'll answer the retail and, and fun question. But first I think it's, it's an interesting note for, you know, upcoming fruit founders to think about like how much innovation is too much innovation in CPG. Um We were trying to do so many new things at once when we started and I joked to some of my friends who are in food, who came from tech because a lot of us came from tech. We saw what was happening in M and A and we were like, oh my God, like food startups are the new tech startups. And um yeah, so we're here now. One of the things that we've we've noticed is if you see a trend in tech, you're already too late. If you see a trend in food, sit back 10 years and then get started working on it because it takes so long to not only create new products at the manufacturing level. So like the whole manufacturing industry is set up not to innovate, it just wants to do what it's good at, which is make, you know, thousands of bags of, of this type of chip or thousands of burgers at once.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:22:03
And so with kelp jerky, it was this whole new form factor and to like create a new manufacturing and process around that is extremely capital intensive and you're not going to want to make those capital risks with a new business. And then two is like, you know, we're already using a new ingredient, like let's stick to, you know, very proven form factors where you can introduce something new through a traditional form factor like a burger. So yeah, key, key, key learnings for us. I think if I was going to do it all over again, like I would have done something even simpler, like just sprinkled kelp on a potato chip and called it a day um which probably would have crashed, but we are here now. So back to your retail story. Uh The retail

Anthony Corsaro - 00:23:00
before, yeah, before you made that segue Courtney, I think it's super good points that you just made and, and one thing that I think caused part of that was like the success of Impossible and beyond. And it, it just was an outlier, right? Like we've seen the reset now with those companies, but the public market success and the fundraising success and how innovative those were, I think sent kind of a false market signal to the rest of the industry that we were that, that the food industry was ready for the level of innovation and, and it's really not just like you, you said, right? Um And there's a level of comfort ability as just like with your dad, there's a deep comfort and psychological piece of a lot of food and beverage choices in America. And so you have to like there has to be a gateway or you have to like sneak it in at the start, right? With, with an ingredient like kelp, like how do we sneak it into things that people are already super com comfortable with whether that's formulation or format or, or whatever that may be. So spot on there, I just wanted to add

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:24:00
that. Yeah. And, and even before that, I mean, when like Crave Jerky sold, I mean, that was like a big deal, you know, and I, and I think Crave jerky was such an interesting story because it helped women enter the jerky space because it was the first jerky that was soft. And that was like a big inspiration for us on making soft jerky. That could attract female buyers who, you know, typically are vegetarian consumer base for a uh female. So today, you know, we, we have this frozen food business, which was not my goal in entering CPG. I was like, I wanna just build an online business. I never want to work with K here or Un fi I wanna just like it on Amazon and build ad to C brand, which you know it to say that in 2019 was pretty early.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:24:33
Like we had all of our shop I flows and everything set up before the pandemic hit. And that was really helpful. And now you're seeing, you know, uh again, a shift in consumer habits, people returning the the grocery store is, is as important as it was ever Instacart, you know, things like go Puff and Foxtrot. And so we are really just turning the ship from being this online platform where we could do really lightweight R and D to being a, you know, retail focused company where I have to be, you know, studying freight analysis on every shipment and understanding, you know, our contribution margin after every single person in this entire chain takes their cut, which is so crazy and very different than drug to consumer. And we are, you know, right now in probably almost a 1000 grocery stores and, you know, growing fast, um, we wait a very long time to hear things like from our brokers about reset periods and then even when we get a yes, sometimes it can take months to get on shelf. And so the, the speed of growing the business is very different and it, you know, it's capital intensive.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:25:51
But I also think that like, one of the things I've learned is like, is just to like, like it's ok to grow slowly, like, just do like, like keep all your dollars because things just take a very long time. Even if you got a yes from a retailer, it might take three months before that revenue hits your books or if not more. Um, and then we're in about 40 restaurants which actually do move faster. You know, a chef is gonna say once you're on the menu, you're on the menu and it's like very hard to get discoed and chefs are like these consistent, you know, sort of purchases and, and, and I, I love food service. I I much prefer sitting with a chef and talking to him about Kel and AKUA versus talking to a grocery store buyer who's, you know, at the end of the day just trying to clock out at five and go home. Mhm.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:26:46
Yeah. The, the incentives and I think that's, that's something we've talked about a little bit. Right on the grocery side is at the VP and the C suite level of a lot of the retailers, they've made sustainability commitments or return of commitments, but they're not getting action at the category management or the buyer level because those people are overstressed, overworked, they're still buying based on spreadsheets or on kind of misaligned incentives to those, to those sustainability goals. I think that's a huge issue and I also think people that aren't in food don't understand the margin compression of the retail model, right? Like all the the capital constraints that you just mentioned and the cash intensity that you just mentioned a lot of the times it doesn't exist at food service, right? And you know, I tell people a lot coming from our business and legacy produce distribution is like we buy celery, we pay the vendor for the salary and then like we own the salary and have to sell it for a margin and like that's on us and like we all like find a way to make good money whereas you sell to Unify or, and then there's like 17 billion this fee that slotting fee charge backs and then you go to Whole Foods and then it still has to sell at Whole Foods to the front and register. And it's, it's a lot. Right. And that's the reason why I think we're seeing margin impression in some of the inefficiencies that we see. But food service has the opportunity to be a channel that's a little kinder to the business and to the entrepreneur from that perspective.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:27:53
And you know, it doves to it dovetails into the innovation conversation around your, your most forward thinking consumers are are gonna patronize those, those restaurants and those food service operators. And you have a better chance of educating that captive audience like at the dinner table than you do of like catching the busy mom at 7 p.m. running through the frozen aisle at Whole Foods, right? So yeah, I think, I think there's a lot to unpack there for sure.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:28:37
Yeah, food service is, is wonderful and it was, you know, before I, I built a, I helped build a community called Summit and we always used to say that the dinner table is the most important piece of connective technology that's ever been invented. And, and so one of the things I was really happy about moving from jerky to kel burgers was because our brand is so much more, at least to me than just AC PG business. It's, it's a movement to know that, you know, your your mind shift, start in the mouth, you know, ability to be a better human citizen starts with what you put in your body and where it came from. And we can have those conversations over kelp burgers or kelp bolognaise at a dinner table much more easily than we could just swapping kelp jerky, you know, on the go. Um So I'm, I am happy to be in center of plate now for, for many reasons, even if the frozen logistics are, are a nightmare. Um But it's yeah, I think like there's something really nourishing too about a burger versus like a snack company.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:29:48
Mhm For sure. Um Let's talk Sponge Bob. I'm really excited to talk about spongebob. I think that's a, it's a game changer I think is the word I've already used once. Yeah, I love it if you're, if you're listening, Courtney is showing us the packaging um which spongebob is, is front and center and rightfully. So um so I I think, I think there's a really cool, you know, market awareness and consumer pull through element here, but like there's actually some real merit around why Nickelodeon wanted to partner with you all and the ocean conservation work and everything. So we love to talk about both that commercial side and that impact kind of sustainability side as well. Yeah,

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:30:24
of course. So when we started Facebook ads around the kelp burger because we were selling it online only at first. Um we were getting all of these comments from people saying like, oh my God, it's a crabby patty. Like, oh, it's like Patrick and Sponge Bob on your team. And I was, like, really freaked out when I got an email one day from Nickelodeon. I was like, oh my God, they're going to sue us. Like this is like, you know, we've like, infringed on something and they were like, hey, we love what you're doing and we want to talk to you about like licensed products with Sponge Bob. And I was like, and I had never thought about doing licensed products because to get that

Anthony Corsaro - 00:31:01
inbound too and to not have y'all reach out. That's, that's awesome

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:31:05
because I hadn't even thought about it. I, when I think about licensed products, I think about Sugary yogurt with, you know, some Disney cartoon on it selling, you know, sugar to kids. And so it wasn't even on my radar. Um Sponge Bob, of course, I know who he is. I'm 38 years old. So I like, yeah, but like, I, I kind of like for me it was like a stoner show. Like I was like, ok, my brother is like sitting in the basement smoking weed watching spongebob like, you know, which I love. So obviously we're big fans of weed culture to. So um so anyway, I um they emailed me and I was like, ok, and I, I kind of put it on the back burner because again, I was like, focus like this is, this is like a new product distraction.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:31:41
And then, um and then I got pregnant and I was like, oh my gosh, I love the idea of taking our burgers, making mini burgers and doing healthy foods for kids now that like, I'm kind of entering that like mom zone. And so, you know, we, we started working on, on the licensing deal together and what it would look like and learning more about it. And the Nickelodeon team was just amazing to work with. Um We, you know, I think the, the idea was to do two flavors. Um But maybe one of them would be like, uh we were thinking like nuggets in like spongebob form, but that ended up being really complicated. So we just did like the mini

Anthony Corsaro - 00:32:38
burgers. I still love that

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:32:41
though. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, once we get big enough, we can do more fun things like this. But yeah, they're just Patrick.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:32:47
Patrick might be an easier shape to make a nugget out of than Sponge Mob unless you're just gonna go straight up square with no

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:32:52
appendages. Yeah, that's, that's a great idea. So, so yeah, we, we just literally are launching the product this month. It's, it's hitting uh grocery store shelves in like, I think this week.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:33:05
That's really cool. That's really cool. Well, we're excited to dive in on the next one around how all that's flowing at retail and, and kind of the awesome results of that. But, you know, I think one thing we've talked about is we have to, we have to do more media work in the space in an individual way with the brands, but also in a coalesce way to educate them on things. And to me that has to be sometimes counterintuitive. And so what I mean by that in the kelp burger capacity is it's really, really hard on a small package in frozen to put something front of pack about saving the ocean or supporting fishermen or whatever, like the awesome outcome of return of kelp is, but spongebob could be the Trojan Horse for then educating about all of that or whether it's about the new of the product, whether it's about the the fisherman livelihoods, whether it's about the carbon sequestration and the the reducing the acidification or like whatever it is, right? Like we have to find, I think catchy um sticky ways to get the consumer into that story because I don't know how catchy or sticky like sustainability as the lead thing really is. II I don't think it very is at all for the vast majority of people.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:34:20
Yeah, I I do agree with you. And you know, I think one of the big reasons Nickelodeon was looking for brands in the Ocean Health Space. They've launched a really awesome platform called Operation Sea Change, which is using the brand to raise awareness around ocean health, limiting ocean plastics. And another reason is the founder of spongebob Squarepants, Stephen Hillenburg, who's passed away was a lifelong vegan and ocean conservationist. So it, it fit really well in sort of honoring his legacy as well. And we have done a lot of consumer testing on how to sell to people. And we led really hard at first with our nutritional, you know, aim, we read, led really hard with our climate change messaging. And I think all that really matters is the deliciousness factor two is the health factor, what's in it for me?

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:35:04
And three is the climate change piece. Um Now, of course, that's not every consumer, but that's the mass America consumer and that's what you have to hit in order to go big. You know, we have worked with um some big corporate partners before who, you know, wanted us to sort of tone down our climate change messaging. And I at first was sort of heartbroken by it. But then at second thought, I was like, you know, if I want to grow this into $100 million business and make Tenex returns for our investors, I need to have the cattle ranching pro fracking guy in Texas eating my kelp burger and I don't need to be layering in polarizing messaging about climate change every single day. Like of course it's there and it's what gets me out of bed in the morning.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:36:07
But we with consumers lead with uh the deliciousness and the health and nutrition piece and we're, we're trying to do that more and more so we can reach a wider audience because very sadly, climate change is a polarizing topic in the United States.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:36:28
What are the health and wellness? Yeah. What are the health and wellness or nutrition pieces? Y'all lead with? Obviously, the label is much cleaner than a lot of plant based alternatives. But what are the other things that are kind of front and center that y'all tout in marketing?

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:36:42
Yeah, I mean, just on the label piece, you know, we are going after wiping beyond an impossible off of every menu that we can. I mean, we are very loud about that. We, it, it, it does not necessarily,

Anthony Corsaro - 00:36:55
I would, that would be lovely. I would love to see that. So we fully support

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:36:59
that. I as a, you know, vegetarian, I'm like a vegetarian, but like as a vegetarian, I do not want beyond to be my only vegetarian option on a menu. Like it's just gross for me. It doesn't make me feel good. Um I, you know, I do like their sausages but again, it doesn't make me feel good. Um Yeah, kudos to what they've done, it is incredible to make something bleed from plants and I, we only stand on the Giants of shoulder or the shoulders of giants who've come before us. And I think that if they hadn't done that we maybe wouldn't have gone, gone in the other direction and gone back towards like the clean, you know, plant forward approach to plant based foods. And so our ingredient list is very clean kelp, extra virgin olive oil, you know, mushrooms, pea protein, black beans, quinoa, um coconut uh blossom, which is like instead of soy, basically potato, starch, nutritional yeast, tomato powder, chickpea, flour, peas, starch, spices, conj agar. That's the entire list. And we're actually working to simplify that. Like we don't need the con and the aar like we thought we did, which is a binder. Um And then from uh you know what's in it for me.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:38:03
So there's obviously we've got a really decent amount of protein, 12 g of protein per burger from the pea protein. Um You know what shines about kelp are not necessarily the macro nutrients like it's got, you know, some fiber, it doesn't have any calories pretty much. It is a zero sugar, like zero fat, um minimal on the protein that comes from P for us. Um But what's amazing about health is the micronutrients. So you're looking at the vitamins and minerals. Um I'm just gonna read the box here just so it's easier on my brain. But you know, you're looking at like 20% of your daily value for vitamin A. You've got a whole host of all your vitamin BS B one B, six B, probably 100 and seven.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:38:41
I don't even know. So they're all like, nice and, and on this. Um And anyway, and then you've got like your fates, your magnesium, your zinc, your omega threes. I mean, people eat fish oil to get omega threes. That's crazy. Fish are getting their omega three s from algae. So it's better to always go lower down the food chain when you can and all of this, which is to say that like we're looking at mass agriculture on land right now where we're growing vegetables in like depleted soil.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:39:07
We're not getting the same vitamin and minerals out of our food that we once were so like getting that from the oceans where basically it's coming down from the mountains through the rivers is, is really important. And um yeah, I think that,

Anthony Corsaro - 00:39:37
yeah, it's a, it's a zero input regenerative, grown whole food. That's real, that's natural versus us. Planting GMO corn and soybean in the Midwest where most of that land's natural prairie and should be perennial grasses grazed by ruminants anyway. Like it just, it doesn't make sense like ingredient versus ingredients.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:39:55
Yeah. And then I think like, you know, I can talk about excellent source of this and that all day. But like when you eat a kelp burger, you feel fantastic, like you feel so good. And that is something that I've sort of struggled to like, figure out how to put on the front of our box. But it's like you get energy from it versus like a normal burger where you're like, oh my God. Like, I'm so heavy. Like, I can have a beer sweet. Yeah. Like, I can have a beer, sweet potato fries and a kelp burger and feel amazing. Um, so I, I'm a, I'm a big fan of, of that test. Just like, how do you feel after eating something?

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:40:15
And that's how you should make your food choices.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:40:33
Have, have you all played around with demos or? I mean, it's, it's probably tough in store when it's a frozen product, then you gotta heat it up, you gotta cook it. It's gotta be like the right temperature when like people be like, what, what has been working from a trial perspective or what have you tried that?

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:40:48
Yeah. So on the sampling side, we have done a lot of sampling at air one to get started and they like, didn't give us a plug to like, plug into anything. So we would like get a hot pot with like a, like some thick battery powered thing under it and like precook the kel burgers and like break them up. I mean, it's really hard to sample frozen products as you, as you said, you know, you need an outlet basically. And then we can do it on a flat top grill. We've done a lot of events. Um Our head of marketing served like, I don't know, like 2000 people at Coachella kel burgers, like we love opportunities like that. Yeah, it was awesome. Um We, you know, I think food service like going to try one burger in a restaurant.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:41:15
Then you feel confident buying two kel burgers on shelf. Um And then we've been using tools like aisle where there's like you go to a page on our, our website and you can get like a coupon, like a $2 off coupon to go to like any store near you. And so kind of using couponing a bit more to drive trial, like it's only a $7 box, like there's two burgers in it. We're not asking you to like commit a lot. And then, yeah, we're really like now that we have all these skews with Sponge Bob, we're really hoping that like the packaging itself, like that sort of billboard effect of our, our brand will help sell it as well off shelf and it is working so

Anthony Corsaro - 00:42:09
good. That's what it's all about. That's all that matters. Um Courtney, I wanna give you the opportunity. I, I think it's always really important, especially with female founders and we got female founder. We have, you know, someone who became a mom during their founder journey, we have a pandemic founder, we have a regenerative food founder, which all I think bring their own unique uh challenges and opportunities. But how has that journey been from a fundraising perspective? And like, how has that all worked, you know, today with the brand.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:42:40
Yeah. Who, um, don't know how much to hear here. Um, I, I will say that I, I like to take the mindset that being a woman has helped me more in life than hurt me. I think there's been countless dinner parties where someone needs to check a box and have a woman or two and I get invited to something that maybe if I was a man, I wouldn't have. Um, I think that we've raised at least in our very first fundraising round, we had more women on the cap table than men. So I think like, as more funding goes towards, you know, like women led funds that's gonna help women led entrepreneurs. I mean, there's some crazy stats about like who does the grocery shopping in everyone's household. It's the woman mostly. And so like that purchasing power and like targeting that woman at the shelf is, is like really core to our marketing.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:43:20
And so I think female investors really understand that more. Um We do of course, have plenty of male investors. I think that they're a little more um woke than your traditional male investors out there. Like we've got, we've got some great people on our team really, really lucky. Um But yeah, I mean, I've definitely had my fair share of like just idiot comments from guys. I've like fired like one guy. Um I laid him off because he wasn't delivering.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:43:50
He was asking for 15 K a month and couldn't even get us into UN F I and he was this big shot in sales and when I laid him off, he said, you know, you're, you're going to be replaced next year as CEO because it's really hard to be both a CEO and a mom. Um, and like, I've had comments from another guy that's been let go, like when I was like, pissed off because he wasn't delivering, he was like, stop acting like a frustrated pregnant woman and I was just like things you shouldn't say to people. Um Yeah, there's like a few things like that that I, I just, I almost in the moment I freeze because I'm just so shocked because I, I do tend to just surround myself with like people like you or just like incredible vibe awesome people. And so when these comments come out, it's only like after I hang up the phone or I'm like, oh, I had a good singer for that back, but I did, I didn't deploy it. Um And then I think that over time, you know, one or two of those types of hires I tended to sort of go towards more women on our team. And so our team is like, predominantly women right now.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:44:52
We, our food scientist is, is a guy um who's amazing. But yeah, I think, I don't know, I think there's something very feminine about the oceans and saving the planet and food and so it attracts a lot of women to that mission. And so, you know, now we've got a lot of moms on the team too and everyone's work from home and it's flexible and like, if a kid pops into a zoom, it doesn't matter. Like, and I think that's the environment that I want for myself. So I've, I've created it for the team too.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:45:35
Yeah, there's a huge, we, we could spend hours on a deep philosophical conversation. I think around, I think a lot of the work that regenerative brands are trying to do is is more ingrained with feminine energy, right? There, there's a deeper mission beyond just we're trying to build a business to get to a certain exit number and get to a certain multiple for investors. Obviously, lots of people are also trying to do that. And I think that's great because the capital like has to work and like we live in a capitalistic society and like we have to live in the world that is created around us. Um But I do think sometimes there can be tension or competition between like those energies and those ideals. And part of my theory of change is like we have to better resource those people and better resource the community together to find uh new strategies, new theories, new things to trial because I, I don't know if we can really get all the way to those goals. Like with just the things that have kind of served us to this point because clearly they've created where we're at now and that's not where we want to stay or, or wanna go.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:46:31
And so, you know, I just have a great deal of empathy and respect for people like you that are, it's like putting your ass out there like in the seat and like doing the work because it's the only way we're probably gonna find those answers, right? We're not gonna like, think our way to them. It's gonna be a lot of work and a lot of conversations like this and a lot of just vulnerability and, and trial and error.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:47:00
There was this fantastic post. Um I read yesterday that what I pulled up and it was so Paul Hawkin project Drawdown founder, he said, if you empower and educate women, statistically, this is the number one effective way to fight climate change. And I, and I love that. And so I, I wanted to leave you with that because it was someone's someone's post about the Barbie movie. It's like, um but anyway, Barbie aside, II, I think that we've got a lot of systemic um changes to make. We need like Corporates at every level of the food chain understanding like the movement that we need to go into. And I'm not saying like only sell plant based grocery stores like that's not the answer, but we need to sort of be giving the brands who are putting themselves out there in vulnerable positions when you are using new supply chains and you're trying to do new things that are attacking climate change. Like, how about not charging them slotting fees? How about like minimizing their charge backs?

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:48:02
Like where is the sort of like carbon credit system for like the, the, the food system, you know, in terms of like brands emerging and II I think, yeah, I'm, I'm working on that with some, some key players but it's, it's gonna take time and a lot of soldiers

Anthony Corsaro - 00:48:23
and I, I think the amount of positive, uh conversation and high fives and back slaps is like awesome and to be celebrated, but we've reached a critical point where it has to turn into, I think real operational or financial support for a lot of these enterprises or it just isn't like it, it, we can't materialize it. And I think uh a reverse argument back is like, well, that's philanthropy or that's subsidy and it's like, dude, we've subsidized the shit out of where we're at today. And so if you're, if you're gonna sit here and talk about the billions of dollars a year and the trillions of dollars cumulatively that have like come in to make the system what it is today, like, we have to have something that's at least opposite of that, probably equal and opposite, but at least something that is opposite of that. So I think that's kind of a, an easy argument to dismiss as just not accurate.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:49:14
Yeah, I, I mean, it, it's infuriating to get the question from like lesser educated investors arguably who are like, ok, but like when are you hitting price parity with like a beef burger? And I'm like, do you mean a subsidized factory farm beef burger? Because never, and, or do you mean like a grass fed bison burger? Because we're already cheaper than them? Like when did oat milk investors like ask them, when are you gonna hit parity with dairy milk? Like it's everyone is paying $6 for, for oat milk. It's a huge success. It doesn't matter. It's not the same price as cow milk. And so yeah, I mean, I think there's like, Tesla's like, what if like Elon couldn't get any backers because they were like, when are you gonna hit price parody with like the Honda Accord?

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:49:46
You know, it's just like, that's not the way to think about this. Like we have to be more expensive when we do new things like you, you that price somehow it has to get passed on to the consumer, it has to get absorbed by the brand and it, you need all the middle men in, in between to, to give those things a break as well. And, and the electric car industry is such a perfect example of that. You know, everyone in Norway has a Tesla because to buy it is completely tax deductible. So what if like to buy a burger was tax deductible?

Anthony Corsaro - 00:50:34
There's, that'd be great. Yeah, there's such a massive amount of internalized costs for Regen brands that other, that other players in the food system get to externalize. And so like, that's one piece of my work is really centered around what are the financial mechanisms that can remove that burden, right? And not make it fall all on the brand and the consumer and the producer slash farmer because right now it really does and it's really not fair. And I think we're getting some wins without even innovating that. But that like would be the catalytic unlock uh to I think even bigger and, and much more success.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:51:08
Yeah. Yeah. And so I, I should shout out that if anyone's feeling inspired by our mission and if this wonderful podcast comes out before our campaign is over, we are um we're crowdfunding on Republic right now. So we've raised about 100 and $30,000 from like 200 something investors. Um And our, our like whole mission is like, put your money where your mouth is. And so if like, you care about climate change and care about everything you've been speaking about on the podcast, like definitely check it out.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:51:36
Yeah. Love it. And we will, we will, we will uh link it in the show notes and it's a good segue, Coney into what's next for a right. We got, we got the Sponge Bob deal rolling. I'm sure you can be very focused on getting that into retailers and supporting velocities and whatnot there. But you know, what's coming down the line, product innovation wise or just big goal wise? Like, what are the next 35, 10 years look like?

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:51:59
Yeah, I mean, for us, like, we've got our ground meat into food service, which is doing really, really well, we want to grow that business. Like I just, you know, I, I sit at night and sometimes think what if this business doesn't survive? And like the number one thing that keeps me going is like, I need to keep eating my product. Like, I don't want to live in a world where the ground meat doesn't exist. I mean, I, and, and like, it's, yeah, so I, I think that for us like food service is, is a, a big focus and then of course, in retail, you know, I, we've got great velocities right now. Thank God, both in natural and conventional. Like, I'm almost surprised how well we're doing in Albertson's and Vas and pavilions because that was a bit of a test for us in socal. And I think when we get the spongebob patties out there and we have like multiple skews on shelf, it's kind of really pop.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:52:41
Like our packaging is dope. I think one thing we do really well versus like Legacy Seaweed brands is by like really making this fun and accessible and, and like reaching the consumer where they are. Um And then I think when it comes to like Sponge Bob too, like we have an opportunity opportunity to bring that product into food service. Like imagine, you know, reimagining kids menus across the US. You have a, a spongebob patty, like your kids gonna choose it and your parents gonna look at the ingredients and be like, oh my God, definitely order it. Um So yeah, I think we're, we're, we're really focused on the the retail food service balance and how to kind of do them both with, with limited team.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:53:34
Yeah, love it, love it. Um ok, I'm gonna take us home with our final question that we ask everybody. This is the big macro question. Um How do we get Regen brands that 50% market share by 2050

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:53:48
2050? Oh my God, great. I'm so glad you didn't say 2030. Um Well, I, you know, I think really back to unfortunately so much, the only thing that creates, there's, there's three elements that create change in, in any society and it's government and it's, it's companies, you know, commerce and it's, it's consumers and so, you know, consumers can only be taken so far but price matters. Um you know, because people are trying to feed their families on a budget. And so in order to get price parity, we need government support, we need subsidies going into regenerative food crops. That is just the fact that it, I don't think it's in the big bill and whatever it was called that didn't make any sense. Like Biden pass. No, not the farm bill. The one that was like the other one.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:54:46
Yeah. Yeah, there's been actually some really big wins recently in the inflation reduction and with the climate Smart Commodities grant, I think the, this or the, the, the complaint there that I think is a, a really valid complaint, especially with the climate smart commodities, was it it, it sent a lot of money to the already big to try and make them better when I think some of the trail blazers that are better but not big should have been rewarded and, and we should have been focused a little bit more on making the better bigger. Um But yeah, it's, it, it's still so small compared to what we need but continue,

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:55:19
right? So something like there, there could be, I don't know how it be funded but like a regenerative lobby group to go against. What is a really scary part of the American food system, which is like the dairy and the meat industry lobbyists. Um I think that's gonna be super key and then, you know, back to what we're talking about with Corporates, like, you know, we've seen thank God over the past 10 years, like more Corporates develop like AD N I strategy and a sustainability strategy and you we need people to help those Corporates actually implement that in action. Like, what does that look like? Um And so, and those two are so intertwined, of course, but with sustainability, it's like, I, you know, I tell investors this and they're like, well, what do you think your revenue multiple and your valuation in like a billion years is gonna be? And I was like, well, II, I swear to God, I think that Corporates are gonna have a mandate at some point to add, you know, more climate friendly companies and who is going to tick a box for, for these folks like over another place, food company? Um And so that's part of it and then going back to like, you know, kind of corporate spending together and, and in the same way that we've done with de and I is like giving sustainability companies a bit of a leg up as well.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:56:33
Mhm Yeah. And I think the real challenge there that we haven't figured out and it's because it's, it's really hard is you mentioned DE I, right? Like how do we have AD E I strategy? That's not just we have those people in leadership roles, but like our products aren't harming populations of those people, right? And I won't name company names, but they might have that representation at the executive level. But their product portfolio is still inherently very harmful and extractive to those populations of people in this country. And So, like I said, that's a really tough problem to. So, but like, it's the deeper question and the challenge that we have to fix to really solve the root cause and not just treat the symptoms.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:57:12
Yeah. I mean, it reminds me from Bloomberg banned, like, extra large sodas. Like I, I wouldn't, like, I'd love to see, like, I don't know, but then it's like you're infringing on people's personal freedom and like, I don't know where I stand on that because like, I don't know, you don't want to be told you can't eat a chicken nugget. But um yeah, I think that it, it, you know, thank you Michelle Obama. It all comes down to like food education at those younger levels. And one thing that really gives me hope is I talk to a lot of investors who are like, I don't really get it, but my kid's vegan, let me call them in. And then this like 22 year old, like young guy comes like dancing through the doorway and he's like, dad, like, I love this, I've heard of a, you know, and I'm like, thank you. Um and, and, and that, that, that gives me hope obviously that's like, you know, an investor's kid that's probably, you know, growing up in Marin. And so it's like, not everyone, but how do you? Yeah.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:57:58
So I, I hope that the younger generations with the purchasing power by 2050 when you and I are going to be like, we live in 26. Yeah, we will be. It's not that far away. Um, yeah, I think, I think that, yeah, we're going to see hopefully a lot of change when, when that crowd comes up. I think it's something like the largest group of vegetarians and vegans, like, in any generation is, is like the, the kids in college right now.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:58:35
Yeah. There was a, there was an interesting thing that I did a blog recently with some Nielsen IQ data and it showed like the younger demographic cares more about the environment. It's like, duh, it also showed like their spending power is just so significantly less than millennial, millennials, boomers, et cetera, like the older demographic. And that really if people can position to capture that market share, like once those people have more share of wallet and dollar to spend, like that's the opportunity because right now they're at the vanguard and they're supporting, but, you know, they're still in school or they're on an entry level salary or whatever, you know, fill in the blank. Um But yeah, as, as big as these challenges are, I'm, I'm equally as hopeful, which is, which is empowering and inspiring.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:59:19
Yeah. So I think I answered your question in like a million different ways and it probably wasn't as podcast and concise as you need it, but it's a great, it's a great question.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:59:28
No, I think you the, you know, to wrap it is the way you started it, right. Which I think every single person's answer comes back to these three things which was like government Corporates and consumers and like those, those are the three levers that we have in the society that we live in with the way that the government and the economy are set up. And if we don't change those three things, it, it won't happen like that. It has to be what we change.

Courtney Boyd Myers - 00:59:51
Yeah, I mean, personally, I feel like some days I need to just like get off Instagram because I'm in a bubble of people following people like you and I'm like less worried about. I'm like, oh everybody cares about the climate and it's like, how do we connect with that pro fracking cattle rancher in Texas? Like how like, you know, we are so divided right now as, as a, as a nation and you know, I'm in Europe right now where things are just not like that. Like there's of course polarized, you know, like politics, politics, but like with, with the States, it's like we've, we've got to find threads to come together, we've got to have those, those giant dinner table conversations. Um because we're, we're not gonna get anywhere. Just me and you talking about regenerative brands on a podcast, like I'm sold your soul, like hopefully all the listeners are saying too.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:00:42
Yeah, you, I mean, you're spot on and like, that's one piece that I love about Regen ag and regenerative agriculture is, it should be very common sense better for all bipartisan. Like, let's, let's fucking do this, you know, like, it should be very simple. Um And I, I think, I think we're right on a, like a huge tipping point of that being the case and, you know, like kiss the ground in their work they're doing with the farm bill and many others. And now we have like $1 trillion worth of companies with some sort of region, a commitment. We can talk about whether that's green washing or whatever validity it has. But there's this huge ground swell that I think is becoming a mixture of both grassroots and corporate and policy that, you know, the the stakes are too high for us to not figure it out in the next decade. And I think we will,

Courtney Boyd Myers - 01:01:30
I feel it too. I feel it too. I just hope that Trump doesn't, doesn't come back. I just picture this like mcdonald's layout in the White House and it's just everything that's wrong with the world. Um But yeah, iii I remain positive as well as long as, as long as we don't have a Trump 2024 issue.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:01:54
Well, all we can do is wait and see to see what happens with that. Well, this has been, this has been super fun and informative coordinate. Thank you so much for joining us and um the URL for Aa's main site. Is it just WW dot AKUA dot com. So people can

Courtney Boyd Myers - 01:02:10
find and there's a really lovely guy who owns AKUA dot com who won't sell it to me. But he's really

Anthony Corsaro - 01:02:17
nice for, for those just listening. A is a ku a very

Courtney Boyd Myers - 01:02:22
easy. Thanks, Anthony. It was awesome to be on your podcast.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:02:28
Appreciate it for show notes, episode transcripts and more information on our guests and what we discuss on the show. Check out our website Regen dash brands dot com that is Regen dash brands dot com. You can also find our Regen recaps on the website. Regen recaps, take less than five minutes to read and cover all the key points of the full hour long conversations. You can check out our youtube channel Regen Brands podcast for all of our episodes with both video and audio. The best way to support our work is to give us a five star rating on your favorite podcast platform. Subscribe to future episodes and share the show with your friends. Thanks for tuning in to the ReGen Brands Podcast brought to you by the Regen Coalition and Outlaw Ventures. We hope you learn something new in this episode and it empowers you to use your voice, your time and your dollars to help us build a better and more regenerative food system. Love you guys.