Marc Siden, CEO of Cloud Water Brands | Integrity, Entrepreneurship & CBD | SSP Interview

Welcome to the success story podcast, I'm your host, Scott Clary. On this podcast, I have candid interviews with execs, celebrities, politicians, and other notable figures, all who have achieved success through both wins and losses, to learn more about their life, their ideas, and their insights. I sit down with leaders and mentors and unpack their story to help pass those lessons onto others through both experiences and tactical strategy for business professionals, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between, with a further ado, another episode of the success story podcast. All right, thanks again for sitting down. I am with Mark Siden, CEO of Cloudwater Brands, so Mark has a really impressive resume, so he was the former co-founder and CEO of Onboard Informatics, a self-funded real estate tech company, that pioneered a dissemination of online real estate data to companies like Zillow, Truly a Chase Bank, globalbankerrealtor.com. He's been an advisor to companies such as Cloud, which sold for 275 million, NAB-wise, sold Airbnb, and Scout Ventures, early stage VC fund. He was a founding board member of Torche nonprofit organization that worked with underserved New York City high school students, giving them career and professional advice mentoring guidance, and also he is obviously a huge hockey fan, founding ice hockey coach in the Harlem A non-profit organization based in New York City, again, working with inner city kids promote education and work ethic through hockey, so just an all-around, really, really well-balanced, really well-balanced guy, serial entrepreneur, and now he's in CBD, so I'm really curious to know your story where you came from, how you got to peer, but thanks so much for joining me, Mark. I appreciate it. Yeah, and I appreciate that intro, I've been around a little bit, so the resume gets a little longer, but the balance is, as we talk about themes and life balance and what success really means that that's something that I've always strived to do. Thanks for having me, you know, on behalf of the whole team, I get to represent the team, but it's, you'll see, it's not about me, it's this amazing team I work with. So yeah, I mean, a lot of things, you know, day back to my roots in New York City, I'm born and bred, New York City kid, and had an interesting upbringing, my parents were opposite ends of the spectrum, my mother was this creative artsy type, my father, you know, a brilliant guy actually, scholarship to Columbia Law School, but at some point, he obviously had this bug in him, he said, screw this, I want to start my own business, and in a basement, very much like my onboard informatics, he started a business, and I watched him scratch and claw, and you know, work really hard, and you know, it's interesting as he passed away when I was young, and he didn't get to see through the success of his company, and after his death, the company actually went on to be successful, and you know, part of living in both my parents' honor was to kind of carry that, and it stayed with me, and I remember after college, I was working two jobs, and we don't come from many means at all, so he's always worked hard, I was working in a law firm, thought I wanted to be a lawyer, and also bartending at night, and one of the partners said to me, you know, this is not for you, you should go do something, you're too talented, you're too this, I didn't really realize that, but that really set me on a path to, you know, at a very young age, start my own businesses, and you know, a lot of people say I want to be an entrepreneur, I never said that, like I said, I never wanted to be in the CBD business, it was kind of like an organic process for me, right, and you know, the great thing about some of my successes is that my failures were the tuition to that, I've made immense amount of mistakes in my life, but it's great when you can kind of dust yourself off, and I've done plenty of that in my life, and that led me to starting an early stage VC company, and I started to make some investments in companies, and that was great, because I found out that I didn't want to be passive, there was one particular company, a data company that I made an investment in, and I was really intrigued with the model, and I remember going to the founder and saying, you know what, I'd rather join you and work with you, and he was like, great, and that kind of set me off on my experience, I was probably 22 or 23, 23, 24 at the time, and that company didn't make it, but I met a guy during the time, and we love the model, and we said, hey, let's do this on our own, so we went to another basement, just like my father in the East Village, and we self-funded, you know, this company called Onboard Informatics, and we were pioneers in an interesting industry, we were first-movers, and we were both broke, and failure wasn't an option, and we built that for 16 years, and we sold it, and you know, not retirement money, but it's, you know, you get a little badge for finishing, and you get a couple bucks in the bank, and it actually made me hungry or for more, and you know, all the while, I was also raised a certain way that, you know, the giving back, even if you don't have a lot, you give the most precious thing that we all have, whether it's me or Bill Gates or you is our time, and I started to learn how to invest a lot of time, and in things that really interesting, you know, interest in me, is the New York City kid, I grew up with a very diverse group of friends, so that's what New York City gives you part education, and it was important to me to work with in the inner cities, there's so much talent and passion, and you know, things that, you know, those of us who have a little bit more conformity in our life can give back, and so I'm very proud of, you know, those moments in my life, but, and that's helped me balance, so, you know, that kind of brings us to today, I can just pause for a minute, because that's a long trail back, but, you know, it's good, it's very good, and I like that, you know, when you first built out this company for 16 years, and then you sold it, that's an incredible success, and like you said, it's not going to stop you from working for the rest of your life, but it's still something very proud of, because there's not a lot of people that can commit 16 years of their life to their own thing, and say they come out successful, a lot of people don't even get that far, so that's very impressive, but it's nice that you took that, and for two things that I brought out of that, that I guess are really telling of a personality, a really strong personality, the one thing is, you still want it to do more, you still want it to do something else, but the other thing is, even after a success like that, you mentioned it's not retirement money, but it still gives you the ability to, I guess, expand your scope and do other things, and not everyone, you know, I have a nice little list of these things that you've done over your career here that, you know, I reviewed and I was reading some other interviews and whatnot, and not everyone lists, regardless of whether or not they're doing them, or they're partaking in them, like the nonprofit work, the extracurricular work, the things that, from a business perspective, wouldn't traditionally be considered something you'd listen to on your resume, but I think that it's very important, and it's telling that these are right up there, like the Torche, and then like the nonprofit work in Harlem with the hockey, with, I guess, Harlem A, I'm not sure what, if that's the name of the league or whatnot, but just the, sorry? Ice hockey in Harlem, it was the name. Oh, it's actually called Ice hockey in Harlem, I was getting confused, I'm like, okay, so it's Ice hockey in Harlem, and then that's it, yeah, okay, gotcha, gotcha, that's Ice hockey in Harlem, so I guess it's the name of the organization, so the fact that you've listed those off as those are like points, and those are things that you, you know, you want to represent yourself with, I think that's very good, and I think that that's, I guess, you know, the key to happiness, key to success, you're still doing what you're doing, you're still building out a huge brand, you're, you're successfully building out a company, but you're also making sure that there's other things in your life, and I think that's something that, regardless of, you know, that's, that's a lesson like right off the bat, I want people to sort of focus on, because I think right now, I think right now people are very stressed about their careers and whatnot, and everyone's focused on work, work, work, work, work, and that's fine, because obviously you want to put food on the table, you want to keep, you know, a roof over your head, but there's other people that are even in worse situations, regardless of global pandemic issues, 24, 7, 365, so I think that that's something that we have to take into consideration when things get a little bit back to normal, and when we, you know, have the luxury, and we're not as stress as maybe some people are right now, to focus on people that, regardless of pandemic, don't have it easy, and that's, I don't, I want to go off on a, and take away from your story at all, I just thought it was a very nice him to elicit that out, and I'm, and that you do it, to be honest. I really appreciate that. Yeah, you know, a key, a key trait through all of that, has been adversity and managing through it, so when I was a young rebellious teenager, I created that all on my own, and then, you know, throughout my life, I've dealt with some pretty serious, you know, events as everybody has, I don't think my story is better than anybody else, but I think, you know, the key trait for entrepreneurs is, you know, how we embrace, you know, adversity, and what we do with it, you know, that nobody cares, statement is cliche, but nobody does care, and, you know, if you can't kind of embrace that, it's going to be really tough, through the tough times, because there's, there's no script in this type of life, and there certainly are no, you know, smooth sailing, that just isn't, and sure, entrepreneurs shaking their head right now, because that's what we signed up for. But I wasn't great to lose my father at 15, but, you know, instead of being a victim, I decided to live in his honor, and, you know, my mother, when she was dying, said, you know, when your most needy go give, and she helped me to actually give more when I was most needy, so I was very lucky not to have lost them, but to get those gifts, and they've really shaped who I am today, and, you know, my why is to live on my own terms. That is what I deem successful, so I can be with my, my wife of 16 years, who's still my best friend, my kids who I adore, I can play hockey, and I work eight days a week, and I find the time, and if you complain, then, then you're in the wrong business, right? We have crappy moments, but yeah, and that's really how you draw a box around, you know, creating something that you want. That's great. Now, after, and that's, that's very good. I don't want to, I don't want to take away from the importance of that, but I do want to understand more about what you're doing now, so what led you to work with after, I guess, well, after you sold, was it right away you decided to jump into something new, or was there different things that you've tried, different companies, different ideas that just didn't work out, or maybe they did. I don't know, so walk me through, from after you sold, sold, and after 16 years, to, I guess, cloud water. Was there some time in between that? No, and, you know, if I walked out of the attorney's office, you know, after the closing, and it was like, hey, you just won the Super Bowl where you're going. I mean, I would have said two things to you. I'm going to take a break, because I need it and deserve it, and I am not operating a company ever again. Those two things were exactly what I said that day, and like I said, you can't script life. I mean, you just, you know, you can try, and I was literally probably a couple of months into, you know, chilling out, and I get a knock on the door, and it's opportunity, and it's my good friend Barry Kalman, my co-founder, whoever grateful, or, and it actually started out like, hey, you know, I'm thinking of this business where you helped me, and I said sure, of course, I'll help you. And Barry told me about his excitement of, you know, being out west and discovering a trend that was, you know, coming along. I mean, CBD's been around for a long time, so it was weed. But now it's starting to come into, you know, food and beverage and consumption, and he tried a CBD water at a party, and he thought it tastes like crap. What I love about, you know, ideas is, you know, there are inventors who come up with holy crap that's genius, and then there are people, and I consider myself one of these, is take an idea and just make it exceptional, like, blow it out of the park, because just because it's taken doesn't mean it's being, you know, done in the right way, right? And so Barry, Barry sister runs a flavor lab in New Jersey, a very reputable one. She's a food scientist for years, and he kind of had this notion that we could take this and make it taste great. And, you know, Kudos to Barry, because that's exactly what he did. He brought back some CBD samples, and Ellie, his sister made some samples, and I remember Barry walking around with this little green bag everywhere here, trying my drink, trying my drink. Barry was challenged in terms of putting this into a plan and making it real, but he knew what, you know, he knew the vision. And so one thing led to another, I introduced Barry to a bunch of people that I thought can help him, and they invited me to what would be the third meeting at Barry's apartment, and this was a marketing guy. This was a guy who's been in cannabis and a food and beverage consultant. They all were unanimous. He's like, they were like, this could be something really special. And I tell the story all the time now, but I kind of looked over my one sentence I could chime in all night is, Barry, just make sure you find a really good CEO, because you're not an operator, and that's going to make or break your business. And all of a sudden these heads turned to me, and I wasn't a conscious man, because I would have said, I'll do it. And they all looked at me and said, why not you? And I said, me, I don't know anything about beverage. You know, I'm a data guy. And you know, the three guys left and Barry quantitatively, he's like, you're my guy. I want you to be, you know, my co-founder. I want you to build a company. And, you know, and the rest is history, right? And I, you know, I talk about, you know, I'd rather be lucky than good. I didn't think this up. I didn't run over to Barry's and say, oh my god, we have to do this. In fact, I pushed him back and said, wait a second before I get myself into something. Let me do a little due diligence and so forth. But, you know, I was able to meet a sister and a bunch of other people who are now on my team. And I was very quickly able to insulate myself from my total ignorance, my blindness to what I was getting myself into. But going back to managing your own business, adversity, things like that, those are, those are agnostic when it comes to, you know, building a business. So I was able to bring something to the table, like, you know, not much, but enough that, you know, if you get this off the ground and here we are today. So no plan, no great idea on my part. And as I talk about my team, it's really my team that really makes this a very special business. But as I said, I'm humbled and grateful that I was offered the opportunity. And it's in my blood. I couldn't say no. It was inconvenient to my chill out. I didn't want to do it. But, you know what, I'm more excited today than I've been in my life. I love what I do every day. I get up with, you know, excitement every single day. And it's not easy, you know, especially now. Well, no, it's it's not easy. And it's not first, there's so many, not easy in there. It's not easy to start a company. It's not easy to build a company in an emerging market. It's not easy to successfully continuously build and keep a company, obviously growing and profitable when there's a worldwide pandemic. Like, there's a whole bunch of things that are weighing against you. And also it's not, it's not your background. It's not, it's not what you, what you knew, like you mentioned, you were a data guy. So, I guess my question would be when you start something like this, what, what do you do? What's the playbook for someone to be so, so simple? What's the playbook for someone to be successful? Because is it, you said, diversity, tenacity, but there must be something, there must be some sort of process that you've understood or followed that you consciously or perhaps subconsciously allowed you to be successful in the first company. And then that's sort of carried over to second company, cloud water. I'm wondering if you are aware of what that is when you first go into something as an operator, as a CEO into a brand that you don't know, what would be the first things that you, you start to understand, take on and to try and build out in that first take to market. That, that's a great, great question. And I, if it's okay, I want to spend a minute or two on this from a couple of different angles. So, you know, the first I love giving analogies, and I grew up a hockey guy, I still try to play now. And, you know, my younger years I had my share of fights, and I did very well. And people would ask the same question, the answer was simple. I was terrified. I was scared to get my butt kicked, right? And it motivated me to, you know, do that much more. I was scared to get hit. I was, you know, it's, that's the truth. And in my last business, I was broke. My parents are gone. Nobody cares. If I fail, I fail. And that drove myself and my business partner, John Bednars, every single day. And we, we were self-funded. So failure wasn't an option. And I can sit here and say, I'm brilliant and my pedigree is this and no offense to that. There are so many brilliant people out there that I admire. But, you know, underneath all of that, there has to be a driving force that drives you every single day. It has to be an eight. I can't teach somebody to, you know, have that spark fire or what have you. Brilliant people can give you ideas, people can write exceptional financial statements, gant charts, and all these things that look good on paper. But underneath, if, if you're not driving yourself by something, right? And I didn't really care what it was. It happened to be fear. And I'm not a very egotistical person, but I'm a very prideful person. And every single day at night, after the day is over, I think about our exit. I think about the winning, winning the game. And again, not so much from competition, because that's what I want to do. And that's what I want to do for my investors and my team. And if I stop thinking about that every day, I think the company will fail. So there's a driving force, a fire, a north star that has to be involuntary. I'm getting back to earth and practical. How do you, you know, so what do you overlay on that is, you know, in some of this is cliche, but I'm just going to say it. And in this particular case, like I was, I was, I was challenged, right? I didn't have the beverage experience. I didn't, you know, I knew about CBD, but no expertise. And so it forced me because, you know, there was so much pressure on me, not to fail. And to make this work is to surround myself with the most amazing people. And people that knew their, in their lanes, like Ellie for the flavors are co-packer. They'll side beverage. David Linker and his family, who are also investors in the business. I had lunch with Carol Dollar, who was the former COO of vitamin water. And Carol looked at me and said, I love this. I love the vision. I want in. I couldn't believe that. I mean, again, very lucky. I didn't go to lunch to pitch Carol Dollar to be my COO. She is now our COO. And the list goes on and on. So when I sit at a table now, I have a group of people that all have equity in the business, all organically love the brand. And they're telling me what I need to know, not what I want to hear. And that is where brands fail, you know, just because you raise some money and you can afford a really great agency or this person, make sure that those stars are aligned very early on, right? And so I was very lucky to get that team together. And, you know, everybody talks about execution. Well, of course, you have to execute. But the planning is really where execution, you know, is meaningful or not. And, you know, we've been very, very thoughtful about what we're doing, what we're building, how it looks, how it tastes. There's brands out there that I admire. They're way ahead of us. But what I think we have that some other brands don't have is a very, very solid foundation to make it through this time and then build on that because of the thoughtfulness and the planning that we did. And part of planning is knowing that you're going to get 10 curveballs. You can't look, go back to a book and say, wait, what did we say we're going to do here? Throw it out because if you're not nimble and thoughtful, you're going to get your ass kicked out there. And again, that's where I come from. I don't want to get my ass kicked. So there's a few different components they all need to come together. And the last thing I just want to say if that's okay, there's a very, very big difference between being an idea entrepreneur and being a CEO. And I was not a CEO at my last company. That was my title. But you don't get to be a CEO until you have really been through adversity, managed people, lost people, made mistakes, cringing at night, like how did I say that or how did I do that and really understand what it's like to lead. And leading is not with a microphone and shouting and whatever. Leading is by example and putting yourself in a room where everybody's smarter than you that you're learning from. And when they look at you and say, what do you think your ability to make decisions at key moments? I didn't learn that until just a few years ago as long as I've been in business. And I think we all need to be conscious of that if you want to be successful and be a real CEO. That's those are very, very good lessons for entrepreneurs. I love, I love you. There's a lot to pull out there. I love the one that you mentioned about surrounding yourself with people with that North Star metric. I think that's incredibly important. And I think that's something that a lot of CEOs need to listen to and CEO all the way through to successful just to starting out. Because if you have that goal and grow and say goal alignment, that's where I think the company can flourish and that's running a successful startup is not easy. And I think that to overcome all those ridiculous odds that are positioned against startups, it's a group of incredibly smart people with a little bit of luck all with that North Star alignment, that goal alignment that will eventually allow them to be successful. And I think that that's what that seems to be one of the many things that you've done very well. So I think that's great that you've pinned that. And what I like to, as you speak through these things, you also mentioned the few things, but it also really helps me understand why the second brand is successful. It also helps me understand why cloud water is successful. Because when you speak through your process and what you've come to realize, and you know, the role of the CEO and how the CEO is really just the, I'm also a hockey guy, but to draw a football analogy, the quarterback of the team, I think that that's when you can understand how you can tap into the right people that are smarter than you, that I'm more skilled than you, and sort of just amass that and then drive the company forward. And I think that's what you're doing successfully now. Now my question stems from, I guess, CBD in general, the market for CBD or the industry. Let me know if this is accurate or not. So before Coronavirus COVID-19, obviously, there was a huge surge in the popularity of CBD products. It seemed to be almost a little bit of a novelty. I thought I noticed some cooling off of the industry pre COVID-19 CBD. Is first question, is that correct? Was there a little bit of hype around the industry? And second of all, what will differentiate certain brands and bring them through so that they're not just hype, their household name products that I can go sell to my mom, grandmother, whatever. I guess that's my question, if that makes sense. Yeah, and it's a very insightful way to look at it. So you know, anything that the new shiny toy, especially in this world, you know, we look at our markets how they swing up and down and reactionary, we're very reactionary, we're very polarized in myopic at times. And CBD received a huge amount of PR. First for its hey, look at the shiny new toy and then because of all the FDA and regulatory, you know, controversy and so forth. And you know, those spiked if that was a hard, you know, a chart, those things were really spiked high. And then yes, you're right, they started to kind of level off, which by the way is fine because those of us in the industry kind of want to level predictable framework in which to build our business. None of us have that. Any of my competitors know, there's no, there's no, there's no framework or sandbox to work in right now. And what we found during COVID was that and I, you know, read a lot of social, I look at not the posts from companies, I look at the comments. It's, you know, if you want real live data, people say, what are you reading these days? I'm reading what people are saying, business leaders and people out there because that's where you get the real news. And, you know, people are saying, I don't want to drink every day or I, you know, they're being honest. I can't be trapped with either my family or my kid. I can't take this and you have no choice. So one of their antidotes and CBD has moved to the forefront as one of those, you know, components where people are, you know, either mixing it with alcohol or not. But one pattern that I saw is that they're turning to CBD to help ease their anxiety, their stress and their fear. And not through the news, but through kind of the underchannels, which are more meaningful to me and the industry, it has gained huge popularity. And what we want is for it to organically come into mainstream because people understand it. They take the right dosage and most importantly, find it efficacious and impactful because we can't make claims. We don't have enough money to, you know, put billboards up in pounder chest. So that undercurrent is actually incredible for this industry and not that anybody didn't predict long, you know, longer tail. This will be huge. But this, to me, sets the right amount of energy behind what this component is and how great it is and how impactful it is on people out there. And one of the reasons that excited me to be involved because I got a certification in CBD and I was overwhelmed with all the medicinal qualities and opportunities that it has to play in society. And so this is very exciting, actually. I don't want people to suffer, but, you know, I love my cocktails, but certainly not, you know, five, six days a week, I need to be lucid. I drink, you know, I drink cloud and I also take some tinctures at times. CBD is a part of my daily life and it helps me a lot. And I can't make a claim, but according to a lot of people out there, it's very similar reaction. I think it's great for us. And how do you think that you and maybe this isn't part of your strategy to bring it to market is the is the epitome of successfully bringing a CBD product to market being able to curb an older generation's opinion of what CBD is. Is that part of the strategy? If so, how do you do it? Or perhaps that's not even part of the strategy. We're just marketing to people that are, I guess, you know, your younger generation that have already sort of climatized to it. Great question again. You ask really good questions by the way. So, you know, I just ask questions that I want to know the answer to because I want to figure out like how do I get, you know, my grandmother to understand how she can benefit from CBD. I don't know how to do that. So, you're a company that sells it. I'm assuming that would be something that hopefully or maybe you thought through to some extent. That's why I ask these. So, yeah. Well, you know, it's not a, if we hold out the top five strategic, you know, kind of well, it's of what we're looking to do. It's indirectly part of, you know, educating everybody. You know, vitamin water where Carol came from and said, who was your consumer? She was like everybody. And, you know, you don't go to a marketing meeting saying, we're marketing to everybody. Like, how do you message that? But when you're educating and the entire population from my kids to your grandmother is, wait, is that weed? And what's the difference between hemp and this? And cannabis is cannabis. And so, we want to educate everybody because, you know, we don't, we don't sell it to kids. But when parents ask me, you know, is it safe? And I say, well, I give it to my kids and they're like, how do you do that? Well, because I did a lot of research. And I know that the FDA approved EpidialX and it's given in mega doses to pediatric seizure patients with, you know, great impact and that my in-laws, we started ordering cloud, you know, called us and said, holy crap, I've been taking this, this, and this. And your father's arthritis is like 20, 30, 40 percent better. And so, it's really just continuing to educate without making the claim. So, people understand that it's age agnostic. You know, you have a natural CBD receptor mechanism in your body to metabolize CBD and it works within naturally within your central nervous system. So, it's not like a foreign component or this, you know, fat or what have you actually, you know, has an impact on you scientifically. And then listen, you know, maybe I'm part of the older generation now or not, the older we get in generation, the more set in the ways they are and bringing them new things even like technology, it'd be very difficult to, you know, to throw off on that. But back to your question to stay within the frame. We want to educate everybody. Our data tells us where our sweet spots are and that's millennials through Gen X. And but we've gotten lately, we've gotten bleeds of data in younger generations, Gen Z, and even the older generations in the baby boomers. So, there is a vast market for this. And I think you educate in a general way. I don't think you educate a millennial differently than you do, you know, your grandmother because it's science and they should understand the science. And that's the best way to do it. Like, grandma, this is going to do wonders or whatever. Well, here's an article on, you know, people your age and what they say about it and let them peer, you know, see from their peers, you know, what's going on and so forth. And, you know, perhaps they'll catch on to the science. I love that and I love the focus on education. And this is a little bit outside the scope of what you're doing in particular, but I would love to pick your brand on this as well. How do you think would be best that we encourage people to adopt more self education as opposed to just taking everything that is taught over? So, how do we encourage people to go check out different resources, perhaps as part of a marketing strategy for a company that is in an emerging market? You know, we're speaking about CBD, but I think technology is just as relevant. So, how do we get people to go outside the scope of what they know as a marketer, as a firm and get them to self-educate, to do their own due diligence, to understand the gamut of things out there that can impact their life so that it's not just mainstream media that tells it over to them. Well, my first, my first reaction was stay away from mainstream media, like, then to you, you know, you read, you'll get a lens, right? And there's, you know, different motivations there. You know, everything is accessible right now through technology. And whether it's the WHO or the Harvard, you know, business medical journal or universities that are creating studies, they should have a lot of dots and little letters and not be easy to read, but in there are scientific results, good, bad or ugly, right? And do not, you know, read marketing claims, hours or anybody else's. The only thing that you would want to read from, you know, to answer that question, I don't want to knock what we're doing, but we put our lab results on our website and it shows the purity of the CBD and the lack of heavy metals or pesticides. And so make sure you're getting a pure form of that ingestible number one. And then, you know, read the studies, read the medical studies and the science. And overwhelmingly, they are positive. And everything can have a side effect. You can't make one thing for the whole population, but there have been no deaths. There have been no overdoses. It's not toxic. There's not, you can't get addicted to it. And the WHO in articles publishes this. And what forces myself and our competitors when we educate is this is what we have to point to. We can't say, drink cloud water, it's going to, you know, take your stress away. That's a claim. We can't make that. While I think we should be able to at some point because the science is there, we have to say studies show by the Harvard Medical Journal show that this is done this or this came out or this article. And it kind of forces people into those articles too. If they really want to say, well, I don't believe this guy. Let me go make sure, you know, this is right. And, you know, we founded this company on the premise. And our why is we want to help be part of the process to empower people to take health and wellness into their own hands. And being part of that process is not just saying, hey, drink cloud water, it's great. It's 25 milligrams of CBD is to understand what they're putting in their body and why and make conscious decisions. There's no more empowering feeling to say, I did research and I've been through the medical system with some illnesses and I did just show up at the doctor and say, all right, fix me. I was effing and powered and knew everything they were doing. And that helped me through the process, right? This is no difference here. Understand what you're taking and don't believe all the marketing hype because that's all it is. Very good. And that's a really, really good answer. And I think that just like the to empower yourself for new products and for existing, you know, I think that whenever there's something that's impacting our body, it's very important to do your own research to an extent, but the feeling of researching, reviewing all of these medical journals and whatnot peer-reviewed journals. And then you can optimize your life, you can optimize the way you feel, you can reduce your stress, reduce your anxiety, increase your performance depending on, you know, what you're trying to accomplish. There's a lot of ways that it's a cheesy term, but you know, you biohack your existence so you can be a better and feel better just in everything you do. And I think that that's something that a lot of people, unfortunately, just default to traditional medicine and nothing wrong with that by any means, you know, you want to trust the people that have the PhD in their name, but I think there's a lot of ways that you can improve your life that probably don't require, you know, you go into the doctor just because you broke a bone or you got a you got a sickness or whatnot. There's a lot of other ways you can improve your energy and whatnot. And these are so like, this is like a whole other topic, like, you know, like stress, anxiety, energy management for performance. Like these are all things that, you know, we can talk about all day and there's there, there's, we can go on tanges about different ways to make your life better, but just the fact that you can do that and you can understand that process and you know the sources to go to, that's that's very important. So thank you for appreciate you bringing that up. That was a very, I didn't mean to go there, but that was really good. Hey, well, we're gonna go where we go, right? This is yeah, exactly, exactly. Conversation. I mean, I could talk to the cloud water all day long, but I think, I think the universe we live in is just as important, you know, and why we're here, why we exist, why anybody should give a crap to listen to this or look at our product. So, you know, that's that's more important to me to be honest. Well, I wanted to, yeah, so the products, the products great and, you know, like you're the CEO of the company, you obviously are extremely passionate and love the product. And I, my respect, I completely, what I wanted to pull out was why, why cloud water is even a thing? Why CBD is even a thing? Why any of these companies even care and why you should care as somebody listening, somebody trying to improve their life, some aspect of their life, whatever it may be. And this is, you know, this is obviously one of thousands of products that are CBD focused. And I really want, you know, you mentioned before, it'll be, it'll be good for CBD, it'll be good for cannabis when the market levels out. And when there's less interest, because then that's when you can run a reliable, sustainable, and repeatable, and then eventually scalable business. It's hard to, and it's also less stressful for the consumer when there's less hype and more tangible, you know, meet on the bone, so to speak. And I think that will be comforting for people that want to try something. For example, grandmother, who's never been in it when the hype is gone. And then it's just like the products that are true and have, you know, been around for not not many CBD products have been around for 10 years, right? So when you start getting into those products that have been around for some time, now that'll make everyone a little bit more comfortable, I think, if they already aren't. Yeah. Yeah, I feel for the consumer, just because there's been this incredible mad rush, you know, to slap CBD on a label and call yourself a CBD company. And, you know, I love competition, but you're exactly right. You know, with hype comes a rush, a lot of confusion. And then on a backdrop of people still trying to get comfortable with the, you know, different differentiators between hemp and cannabis, which is exactly the same plant, by the way, same everything. The the concentration of THC is the only difference. And hemp is much lower, and then we can derive the cannabinoid CBD and others from that. And and then in our case, we we take out all the THC. So we're a completely THC frame, meaning 0.0. The legal limit is 0.3%. So there's no get high. And that's why CBD really took off. You know, cannabis has had a stigma and then went kind of commercial. And here we are in this legalization process. But I would say I don't I know I'm not an expert on the ratio. So I'm just going to this is a non scientific. I think for every person that gets high, there's at least 10 that don't want to get high. And, you know, but cannabis, if you filter out the get high stuff, there's amazing properties in CBD. And and that's really why it took off because like wait, have the properties of this stuff and not get high. And it can help me do this. I mean, why shouldn't it be popular, right? And that's certainly, you know, you know, why we exist. And I think in a more predictable market with better education, people can make choices. And invariably in these type of dynamics, you'll get that mad rush and there will be a fizzling out. You know, there will be a clean out of companies that, you know, we're just more excited to get into the space and really didn't think about, you know, the longer term or how they can differentiate. You go down the aisle and there's so many packages that look the same now. And it's like, well, why do I pick this one over this one? And so, you know, I don't want to give my competitors a leg up. But if you're not differentiating from day one, you're just part of the pack and good luck, right? Because your price, that's not a war you want to fight. If you don't have quality, you know, integrity and your ingredients and a reason why somebody should pick up your, you know, your vessel, your package and take your drink. So we've taken a different approach in, as I said, in terms of how we're going to market and how we're approaching the market. And it's painful. I'm not going to lie. We're slow, we're steady and it's painful. But I want my investors and people to know that it's part of our, it's part of our, this has been pre-thought out. And when we hit the gas pedal, which we're about to do, we're going to go. And so we've kind of held back the horse, right? So that as we see, you know, that opening, we're going to go for it. And we know that our packaging is right or ingredients are right. We got the flavor profiles, right? We got our price points, right? The supply chain is ready for scale. All things, it'll kill a brand in one day, by the way, you know, if you don't get those right. So hopefully, I'm answering your question. Maybe you are. No, there's no, there's no right or wrong answers to these questions. You're, you're great to interview and you're bringing in a lot of really great points and things that I don't even touch on, things that can kill a company before they start, all these, all these data points and these things that have been thought through, I think are just, you know, it's great to listen to this because it just shows like, I speak to a variety of, I speak to a variety of people, but a lot of them are business focused, some within organizations, some outside of organizations. And I just like, when you tap into somebody that clearly has an entrepreneurial buzz, they know how to build a business, they tackle some of these problems. And you hear similar things from people that have been very successful and that, you know, I hope that when people listen to this, there's, there are like key takeaways. You may not be in CBD, of course, but there's so many key takeaways that you can take from this. And if you want to start something, if you, even if you're, even if you could be an employee in an early stage, as long as you have some influence on where the company is going to some extent, or, you know, you could even try and incorporate some strategies for tenacity, overcoming the university and building out process and scalability within own department. If you're working within an organization, you just, it's just about framing it and understanding how the lessons sort of apply to your own personal situation and your own personal context in life. And that's really what I hope that some people are able to do. And that's really the goal of this podcast. But yeah, so I guess to, whenever I sort of, that was incredible, a lot of really good lessons, when I close these down, what I like to do is first, I just want to give you the floor to mention anything about I'm going to give you a floor for, like, just two seconds, and then I'm going to just ask some, like, life insight questions or life lessons you've learned. But for, for Mark, like, what, you know, what are you doing? What's your, what's your North Star metric? Where do you want to take cloud water? Is cloud water the last venture? You said you, you know, the last venture was the last venture. But, you know, where do you want to go in the future? Where do you want to take cloud water? And where do you want to end up eventually? Yeah, I'm not going to say great question anymore because it doesn't sound like I'm just kissing your butt. But that's all good. I appreciate the positive feedback. That's no worries, don't worry. I reserve the right to change my answer because I told you what I said coming out of the last sale, but yeah, you know, as I said, I think about our exit every day. And meaning, that means that we have to get the company to, there's a lot of things that have to go into that. We have to get it to mainstream, which are on our way. People need to continue to love our, you know, this product. We'll have other products where cloud water brands were not going to be limited to adjust this. We have some really great stuff we're working on now. And, you know, I do see, I do see this business scaling a little bit slower than some other businesses, but more meaningfully over time, there's some risk in there because you need money along the way. But, you know, we set up the books and records from day one to be clean. We set up our strategy to be, you know, pretty focused, but nimble. And, you know, we're not, we're not going to stray from our Y. And we think our Y is great. You know, why we exist, why we're different, and how we do it. Very thought out. And so far, the feedback has not only proved our concept. It's given us more energy and confidence to keep going. And I, to me, whether we're doing a dollar a day or a million a day, those things, again, or what excite me at night to say, this is starting to come together. So I don't have a time frame. I'm not rushing. But I do believe that this company will be very successful. I think we've done too many great things. And I say that humbly, you know, for this not to work. And I do foresee us being picked up by, you know, the multitude of acquires that you do it. But I never build a business to sell it. It is the biggest mistake you can make. It's like dressing up for whatever you build fundamentals, you build value, you build long term, you become a lot more sellable than to say, I'm just here to sell the company. So I want to be very clear. It's not what motivates me. But I think about the exit. It's like championship. You got to get to the playoffs first, right? Game by game. Yeah. So that's how where I see us, you know, over the next two to five years, I don't know. I'd be lying. I have no idea. We're just going to keep grinding because we love what we do. That's very good. Very good. And that's a very noble motive. And it's very important that you said that because a lot of companies I find, especially in emerging markets, do build the sell. So it's nice that you differentiate it. And I feel the passion. And I think that the passion stems from somebody who just likes building really, really great businesses. You were there for 16 years originally. So at on board. So that's not building too for a quick exit by any means. So that's obviously the way you operate. So just the people who work with you are very fortunate that they have a leader like that. Very good. Rachel, for that statement, I appreciate that very much. Yeah. No, you see all kinds. And I've worked in a variety of companies over my career. I've worked with kind of different types of entrepreneurs and all different types of personalities. And yeah, the worst kind of entrepreneur is the one who knows how to be successful, the one who has the capital, the one who can sell to the investors. And the one who sells the story to the employees sells the vision, but just has the plans to exit. And doesn't, isn't transparent with that. With the less the worst kind of entrepreneur ever. So yeah, no, I appreciate that immensely. And you know, you've proven it out with on-board informatics and what you've done in the past. So awesome. Good job. Not to tell you that it's things you don't already know, but that's very noble. What was I going to say? One question I like to ask is just, you know, you've had a great career one lesson that you would tell your younger self that would help you today. You know, I used to say, you know, if I can revisit some of my mistakes, but as I get older, you know, certainly never want to hurt people or whatever you make mistakes. But I'll take every single one of them again, right? I mean, to sit here and hear you say that and you think, I know it, maybe I do, but it's always great to hear. I'm so mired and working so hard. It's really nice to sit back and hear something that I really appreciate that. You know, somebody actually pulled me aside and well, I think always invest in yourself and always believe in yourself. I've had a lot of trouble listening to my gut over time and that's kind of how I raise some adversity and if I could go back and tell my younger self is it's right there. That answer is right there. And I'm going to talk about a mathematical one or, you know, figuring out your gross margin. I'm talking about people, your instinct, you know, directionality. It's right there. You don't need anything else. And that cost me a lot in life and led to some mistakes, which I, you know, I embrace. But if I could do anything over again, there's things I could have avoided by just listening to myself. And so, I mean, that's what sticks out on the cuff to your question. And I think about that a lot. And I think I've improved that in terms of listening to my instinct and not being afraid to make a mistake, right? And not being afraid to fail even though I don't want to is you're going to make mistakes. So, but listen to yourself because you forgive yourself pretty quickly when you do that. Good advice. Very good advice. Is there any book, resource, person, podcast, audible that you would recommend to people that are listening that you're tapped into now or something you've read in the past that was a really good read? Yeah, I haven't, I haven't read a book lately. I bought a bunch. I haven't had time. I think the best resources I've been able to get right now is really just going on and just reading some business leaders what they're doing now. Imagine that, yeah. It's like managing through adversity 2020. That book isn't written yet. It's going on right now, right? And there's, you know, you can read a book that was published last year. It may be dated already. No, you know, there's great elements in books on execution and planning and team and inspirational people. Geez, like Simon Sinek is wow. But there's no book. You turn the page now. There's no, there's no written element about what's happening tomorrow. And so I keep up really on people I admire, people I've worked with in the past, people who tend to whatever they touch turns to gold. You know, what are they doing? How can I find inspiration? Not afraid to emulate a great idea. It doesn't have to be my idea. And so I'm, you know, reading what people out there are saying. What are the real feelings? Not through the media, you know, through COVID through their fears through this is how you reach a community and talk to them with with a genuine, you know, not sight of quote from a book. And again, no offense. They just want to hear realness. They want the real thing today. And that's what's inspired me. And Russ Johns is great. Adam Posner, you know, this podcast is amazing. Listen to what people are doing. And I don't listen. I have one little angle here. There's amazing people out there that could give you perspective. And I'm glad to be a part of this. But also I'm a fan and a listener and, you know, a student because, you know, you got to learn every single day. And right now there's a ton of information to teach you, you know, this new world. And also you have all the smartest people that are also trying to actively learn themselves because no one's ever had to deal with things like this before. So this is not like you mentioned, the book may be outdated. This is why you want to tap into those people, how they're figuring out and solving for their problems. Yep. Where do people find more about about yourself, about Mark LinkedIn, about cloud water, where do they go? What are the places to go? And look, just so everybody knows, cloud water, and this is fine, right? You know, it's okay. But it is a premium sparkling hemp infused rank with 25 milligrams of hemp extract, which is CBD. Comes in four flavors, grapefruit mint and basil, blood orange coconut, blackberry lemon and rosemary. And then we took a really hard turn to the right and made an Aztec chocolate and strawberry in a black bottle that has spice and sweet. And again, we dare to be different and took, you know, and took a risk. You can find us a hat cloud water CBD on social, our website's cloudwaterbrands.com. We have sampler packs that where you can just pry the beverage or if you like to get, there's, you know, cases, lots of specials going on. I'm on LinkedIn under Mark Siden. And yeah, I'm not going to give my cell phone out today, but you don't have to do that. It's not a requirement to be on this show. You can definitely find me one of those ways. And we'd love more people in our community. I, you know, I'm crazy. If somebody writes a bad review, I write to them and I want to talk to them. I want to understand I'm up late at night DMing with people. I want to connect to the community. And, you know, so if anybody has questions or I can help out, I'm usually the person behind those, you know, you know, it's, that's a committed CEO at the very committed CEO. So what I do, it's not a job to me. I love this. It's not a job. That's all for today. Thanks again for joining me on another episode of the success story podcast. You can download or stream this podcast wherever podcasts are available, including iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, iHeartRadio and many others. You can also watch this podcast on YouTube. If you haven't already, please subscribe and share this podcast with your friends, family, co-workers, and peers. Please leave us a rating on iTunes. It takes about 30 seconds as it allows other people to find our podcast and let's our amazing guests reach even more people with their message. And remember, any rating is fine as long as it contains five stars. I'm Scott Clary from the success story podcast signing off.