Mike Cesario, founder of Liquid Death and former creative director at VaynerMedia, explains how he built a punk-rock-branded canned water company by applying irreverent entertainment marketing to the healthiest product imaginable. The conversation covers how Liquid Death proved its concept on social before having product, the economics of the bottled water market, and Mike’s broader philosophy of finding stale categories ripe for a cool brand. Sam and Shaan riff on white-space opportunities and Mike’s insight that profitable side projects — like a $12,000 metal vinyl record — can double as brand-building.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host), Mike Cesario (founder, Liquid Death)
Introduction: Liquid Death and the State of the World [00:00:00]
Sam: What’s up, Sam, and we have a guest — Mike Cesario. Welcome, welcome to the podcast.
Mike: Thanks, guys.
Shaan: There’s a lot of crazy stuff going on right now. We’ll have this hour to be a little bit of an escape. We talked about everything going on last podcast. Let’s try to make this at least a 45-, 50-minute escape for people.
Sam: Yeah, exactly. It does kind of feel silly to be like, “Oh, here’s some business ideas,” when the whole world is — you know, whether it’s coronavirus or the different protests that are going on. But like you said, I think for me I’m glued to Twitter and the news and all this stuff all day, and then by 7, 8 p.m. I just need a break. I go walk my dog and go listen to some mindless stuff about sports or whatever else, just to calm my mind. So hopefully we can be that for some people — a bit of a diversion, a bit of an escape from the heaviness that’s going on.
Shaan: Mike, I’m glad you’re here. You have a product that we’ve talked about on the podcast before, which is Liquid Death. So if somebody doesn’t know what Liquid Death is, give the quick version — what is it — and then we’re going to talk about how you started it and then brainstorm some cool ideas around the space.
What Is Liquid Death? [00:01:30]
Mike: Sure. At the heart of what Liquid Death really is, we’re just completely trying to change the way healthy food and beverages are marketed. At the end of the day, most of the most hilarious, memorable ad campaigns that you ask most people about in the last 10 years — they’ll tell you Bud Light, Old Spice, Snickers, Doritos, Skittles — all junk food and alcohol. That’s the funniest, most memorable, youth-culture-owning stuff. Energy drinks like Red Bull too. It’s all junk food and alcohol that does all the escalated youth culture marketing, whereas healthy food is traditionally marketed to like mom — it’s quiet, it’s responsible, or it’s “look better,” you know, fitness models drinking bottles of water. They don’t use fun to market.
So we’re basically doing that with water. We want to take the healthiest thing you can drink that most people don’t drink enough of, and brand it and build a cool thing around it where you feel totally comfortable drinking a Liquid Death at a bar, at a house party, at a music festival, at work, in the gym. Just making it more fun to walk around and have.
Sam: And that made headlines when you raised all that money, because everyone was like, “This is such a silly idea and they raised all this money.” It seemed like an awesome company, totally worthy of going big. You ruffled some feathers, and I think that’s good.
Mike: Yeah. I always bring up the Reid Hoffman podcast — Masters of Scale. He always pushes this idea that truly innovative ideas are almost comical at first, because if something seems like it makes a lot of sense right now, it probably means there are four other companies that have been working on it for five years already. The things that are truly unique and innovative almost don’t make sense at first, or seem laughable.
And I think that’s kind of the case with Liquid Death. We’re really trying to disrupt a category in a way that’s not just disruption for the sake of disruption. In a category where almost all the products themselves are perceived as the same — most people assume water is water — it’s more of a brand play. We believe if we can make you laugh, we have a way better chance of getting your dollar sixty-nine than the faceless brand next to us who’s shouting electrolytes at you.
Sam: Let’s talk a little bit about the form factor. It’s a tall can, right? Are there other form factors?
Mike: It’s all cans. Which is cool — the branding is sort of like heavy metal or punk rock.
Shaan: How do you describe it?
Mike: Yeah, I think you’d say we’re alternative punk-metal-inspired design and vibe. The way I like to think about our brand is we’re a professional wrestler. It’s all theater and fun, and everyone’s in on it — like no one thinks the Undertaker is really an evil guy from the dead who likes metal. It’s a character, and it’s fun to buy into a character.
That’s how we think about it. We’re just playing this fun character. It’s fun to choose to believe in it and not take it too seriously. And you’re right — if you’re at a bar or a music festival and you choose water, you feel like you’re opting out of the fun. They’ll sort of make you feel that way. You’ll get the small plastic cup with a baby straw, right?
Sam: That’s actually a good point. I don’t drink, and I still go to bars. I used to order sprites with lime because I was like — it looks like a gin and tonic. Part of it is people feel uncomfortable. So even though I don’t like drinking soda, I’ll drink it anyway just so it doesn’t come up. So Liquid Death is a great alternative to that.
Where the Idea Came From [00:05:30]
Shaan: Mike, where does this idea come from?
Mike: I think it was a culmination of all my passions and experience converging into one. I grew up in high school playing in punk rock and metal bands, skateboarding. I would do all the show flyers and album art for our bands, which got the entrepreneurial side going — we were booking shows, selling merch, pressing records, all that kind of stuff.
Then I got into a career in graphic design, which led into advertising. I was an advertising creative director for a long time. I worked on big brands like Nestlé, Toyota, Volkswagen, Naked Juice. So I got a good sense of where big companies screw up, where they’re short-sighted. I can’t tell you how many boardrooms I’ve been in where I’m trying to convince people that social media isn’t some niche little add-on to your business — it is the internet. When you say “I’m going on the internet,” nine times out of ten you’re going on social media.
A lot of brands are just way behind the ball on what it really takes to be successful socially. Your little social posts aren’t just competing against other beverages — you’re competing against influencers who are uncensored and can do crazy stuff, you’re competing against everything awesome on the internet when someone’s scrolling through their feed. That’s what your marketing is competing against. So when you really think about it that way, do you really think your typical beverage ad is going to stand out in someone’s quick scrolling feed? Probably not.
I built Liquid Death around the idea that we think about marketing like entertainment. I never want to put something in your feed that feels like marketing. I want it to feel like actual entertainment — the funniest thing you saw that morning, something you want to share with your friends.
Shaan: I’ve got a question — I’m looking at their Facebook ads right now, and what you’re saying is true. Here are two ads I see. I wish I could show this through a podcast, so I’ll describe it: there’s a giant can of Liquid Death in front of a mountain and it says, “This is dumb. Don’t buy this.” There’s another one — it’s like the Mountain from Game of Thrones, but instead of his head there’s a can of Liquid Death erupting from his muscular body. He’s standing in a grocery store aisle holding an axe and it just says something like “Now available nationwide in Whole Foods.”
I want to ask about that, but first — is there anything you can give listeners to show how big this business is?
Mike: I can’t get into specific sales numbers, but since we launched nationally in Whole Foods — we went in March 15th, basically the day the pandemic started — even with 80% decreased store traffic and everything else going on, we’ve had insane growth in Whole Foods. We’re now the fastest growing water brand in Whole Foods.
Sam: And you’ve raised how much total?
Mike: Grand total since the very beginning — I think around $12 million.
The Origin Story: Warped Tour to Liquid Death [00:09:00]
Sam: When you look at this business and what you set out to start — was your perspective basically: what is something that’s good for you but has terrible marketing, and how can I build a business around that?
Mike: Yeah, I think it really came from growing up playing in punk and metal bands. A lot of my friends in that world were very much into health — I was a vegetarian at 16, a lot of my friends were even vegan, a lot of them didn’t drink alcohol.
One thing that we’ve been mislabeled as is “Liquid Death is water for the straightedge crowd.” That’s not what we’re trying to do. Yes, it’s been adopted by them because it’s more fun to walk around a bar without drinking if you have this, but the health food industry does one thing we don’t want to do — we don’t want to be preachy. We don’t want to say you should be doing this and you shouldn’t be doing that. We’re like, “Hey, you want to go rip some shots at a bar? Fine. Maybe take a break and have a water for an hour.” Or, “Hey, you want to smoke weed? Great. Maybe hydrate while you’re doing it.” Or, “You want to pound a Monster energy drink? Great. Maybe buy a water to have after.”
Anybody who does any lifestyle also drinks water. Compared to any other brand, you want it sounds like you guys are trying to do that.
Shaan: Let me get you to rewind and make it real. Take us back to the moment you have the idea. Where are you, what’s going on, who are you talking to, and how did it turn into something?
Mike: Sure. In the world of rock and roll, punk, metal — the only brands that have invested in owning that culture are energy drinks, primarily Monster. Monster was sponsoring the Vans Warped Tour, sponsoring all these different metal bands. You didn’t see that with many other brands.
I graduated high school in 2000, and around 2007 I was in Denver working for an agency. I went and hung out at the Warped Tour with my friends — they took me backstage, we were hanging out with the bands on their tour buses. I saw that they had huge stacks of Monster that these guys were all drinking. I was like, “How are you pounding energy drinks right now? It’s 98 degrees.” And they were like, “No dude, it’s water.” Monster gives all the bands what looks like Monster cans at the bottom, but it says “Tour Water” — because they know none of these bands are going to drink energy drinks in the sun. Bands on stage are pounding what looked like energy drinks to all these kids, but it’s really just water.
That’s when I remember thinking, “That’s so messed up. Why isn’t water marketed in a cool way like this?” And when you actually had a freezing cold can of water, it’s just more refreshing psychologically. There’s actually a Popular Science study — they showed that temperature was the number one quencher of thirst neurologically, which is why if you’re really thirsty and you suck on an ice cube, it actually quenches your thirst a little even though no water is absorbing into your body.
So that was sort of the aha moment — why aren’t healthier things marketed this way? None of my friends actually wanted to drink energy drinks. We just wanted to drink water or beer. Of course the bands had to take the checks from these companies, but that’s where the idea really started.
Other Verticals Mike Explored [00:14:00]
Sam: What other verticals did you explore? Are there other products you think would also work for this approach?
Mike: So that Warped Tour moment happened around 2007-2008. Then maybe two years later, I was living in San Francisco and I actually developed a spirits brand on my own called Western Grace — basically a brandy. The idea was: how do you make brandy cool? Every brandy bottle in the liquor store had dust on it. It was what your grandfather drank, or some replica of French luxury with cursive golden text. But brandy’s taste profile is similar to whiskey, which was the biggest, fastest-growing spirit.
So I had this idea to create a brandy that felt more like a whiskey and felt cool. I found a brandy distillery in Northern California who said, “Oh my god, we’ve been waiting for someone to try to make brandy mass and cool for 20 years.” I found some spirit industry folks who had helped create Hendrick’s Gin and Sailor Jerry rum, and they thought it was interesting. All of a sudden I had a brandy company.
I moved back to Philadelphia where my partners were. Only a couple years out of ad school, no entrepreneurial experience, no liquor industry experience — and we started building it. It’s still around today. They’re in probably 80 bars in LA, all over Austin, Nashville, Florida. But I left the brand a little early because me and our spirits folks just didn’t see eye to eye on a couple of marketing things. So I said, “You guys keep growing it, I’ll keep my little chunk of vested equity, best of luck.” No hard feelings.
Then I went to work for an agency in Tennessee called Human Eye, where I started doing a bunch of funny work for the organic world. We did this campaign called “Save the Bros” for the first organic protein shake — this funny viral video that went bananas. It was the first time humor had really been done in the world of organic. That was like the Warped Tour reinforcement — right, why aren’t more health brands playing with the kind of humor and irreverent internet stuff that these unhealthy brands are doing?
That’s really where I started building the nuts and bolts of Liquid Death, figuring out the production, coming up with the branding. Then I think maybe two years after that was when we officially launched.
Sam: Do you think there’s still opportunity in other spaces like that?
Shaan: I think it’d be more like taking cottage cheese and making cottage cheese fun — rather than protein shakes, which are already kind of trying to mass market and get into different lifestyles. The product categories that are only playing it safe, with non-internet-based marketing — those are the ones with the larger delta between what’s out there and what could be out there, right, Mike?
Mike: Yeah. It’s tricky. Protein shakes — the protein shake consumer is probably predominantly male, bulking up. And that’s why Organic Valley, when they came to the agency, they knew that all their commercials were picturesque sunsets over family farms, “our family farmers just care more” — and that works for the mom who shops Whole Foods for their other products. But they knew that when they launched an organic protein shake, it’s a very different customer.
We did this video called “Save the Bros” — like, if bros keep drinking all the chemical crazy stuff in protein shakes they might not last much longer and go extinct. Who’s gonna bring the beer pong table when they’re gone? This whole funny idea of “save a bro, get him on an organic protein shake.” It worked really well.
The key is: the product wants to be drunk by a consumer who identifies with the marketing. If you try to make an oat milk brand that feels badass and rock-and-roll, the oat milk customer probably isn’t guys who ride Harley Davidsons. They’re not drinking oat milk. You’ve got way more marketing education to do to convert new customers into something they’ve never had before.
Water is different for us because everybody drinks water. We don’t have to explain how to drink water. Everybody drinks water — from Harley dudes to metal dudes to yoga moms to everybody. It’s just about: from a psychographic standpoint, who thinks this is a cool thing that could be part of their day?
How Liquid Death Proved the Concept on Social First [00:20:00]
Sam: How did Science get involved? Because when I first heard about this it was like, “Oh, this is coming out of Science labs.” For people who don’t know — Science is this weird quasi-venture capital firm, also like an incubator. They launched Dollar Shave Club and a variety of things. A weird combo of company builder and investor based out of LA.
Mike: We launched Liquid Death in a backwards way compared to most beverage brands. We launched a year before we met Science.
We launched Liquid Death on social media before we ever had product, because we knew that with such a crazy idea, nobody was writing us a check just for the idea of Liquid Death. They’d be like, “This is stupid, you’re crazy, who would buy this, it’s a negative name, retailers will never carry it.” So I knew we had to prove it out as a concept on social first, before we could de-risk it enough to actually raise.
We designed the can to look like a 3D realistic can, shot a $1,500 video, and just put it on Facebook. Not Twitter, not Instagram — just Facebook. Put maybe $3,000 in paid media behind the video. Three months later we had more Facebook followers than Aquafina, the video had three million views, and we had a range of DMs from: “Hi, I’m a 7-Eleven franchisee in the Midwest, how do I get this in my stores?” and “Hi, I’m the biggest non-alcoholic beverage distributor in New York City — Big Geyser — how do we talk to a sales rep about distributing this?”
And we didn’t even have product yet. No idea how we were even going to make it.
So I used all of that social traction, distributor interest, and retailer interest to start raising a small friends-and-family round so we could actually produce physical product. The minimums are really high — a quarter million cans is the lowest you can produce with a can manufacturer. So it’s a little capital intensive just to start playing the game.
Sam: What does a quarter million cans cost?
Mike: You’re talking $150,000 to $250,000 just to kind of get started with cans, probably.
Once we raised a little bit and started producing, we source and bottle our water in Austria, in the Alps. Once I finally had a physical can of Liquid Death for the first time — probably around October 2018 — a guy we knew had a connection at Science. He said, “You guys should really talk to Science, they’d probably be all over this.” We went and met them with a physical can, and once someone could actually hold it — it wasn’t just digital images from social — it made it completely different. They understood the magic of it. That’s when we decided to do a deal with Science, and over the next two months they helped us gear up our DTC launch in January of the following year.
Retail vs. DTC, and the Size of the Bottled Water Market [00:25:30]
Shaan: Do you think this will be mostly DTC or mostly retail? Where do you think the bulk of the business comes from?
Mike: We’ve always known it was going to be retail from the beginning — we just didn’t know how soon to push into it. Water is something you don’t want to just order on the internet. You want to buy water when you’re thirsty, somewhere. It’s just naturally a retail play, versus something like Soylent, a meal replacement you could order to your door.
Shaan: What’s your pitch on how big this gets? I like the bottoms-up analysis — rather than saying “vitamin water sold for X so maybe we can get there,” something like: there are this many grocery stores, this much velocity, so I think this can be this big.
Mike: The bottled water market in the US alone in 2019 was $20 billion. Still water was a little under $15 billion of that, sparkling about $3.5 billion. Massive market.
The biggest retail channel in terms of doors is convenience stores — over 150,000 of them. Then maybe 30,000 grocery stores. And then on-premise like restaurants and bars — about a million locations in the US.
Well-performing water brands just in 7-Eleven can be doing $50 million in scan sales just in that one chain. The top water brands by scale are Aquafina and Dasani — both over a billion dollars. Aquafina’s Pepsi, Dasani’s Coke. Nestlé’s the other big one — they have brands like Nestlé Pure Life, also over a billion.
Sam: Who owns Fiji, and how much do you think Fiji and Evian do?
Mike: Fiji’s owned by Wonderful Brands. I assume Fiji and Evian are probably somewhere around $500 million a year, but I can’t say for sure.
Sam: What would the margin on that be?
Mike: It’s not as big as you think. Retailers want the most margin on bottled water — they mark it up higher than almost any other beverage in the store. Then you’ve got distributors needing their margin. So you really get down to it — bottled water isn’t some insane margin business for suppliers. Energy drinks probably get more margin than water. I would guess sub-30%, not above. In most beverages, a really solid margin would be like 40%, 50% is killing it — 30% is probably on the low end.
Sam: When I used to own a hot dog stand in Nashville — it was called Southern Sam’s — the hot dogs made a little money, but bottled water was where the real money was. I was buying it from Restaurant Depot for like 14 cents a bottle and selling it for two or three dollars. I could make a thousand dollars a day off bottled water. That was the play.
Mike: Ha — that’s a sales guy. Yeah, man.
Shaan: We had this question on the podcast once — if you had to make a thousand dollars tomorrow but I stripped you of all your current income streams, how would you do it in a week? And Sam’s was: I go to a hot place, buy water for 14 cents, go sell them in front of a stadium at the stoplight. People don’t care about the water, they care about the convenience. I totally overthought it — I was like, “Well I’d create an online store,” and Sam was like, “Nah. Too slow, too complicated. I’d be a vendor at a summer concert series. I swear to God I’d make a thousand dollars a day in bottled water sales.”
Sam: You just know that’s where you crush it.
White Space: What Other Categories Could Work? [00:31:00]
Sam: What other opportunities have you seen — things that if you weren’t starting this business you’d be very interested in? Our listeners are entrepreneurial types who love to hear different perspectives. You’re seeing things most of us don’t even think about on a daily basis. You came up with this idea to begin with. Do you have anything that completes that sentence — “I’ve always thought you could do this” or “I’ve noticed these things really crush it or are backwards”?
Mike: That’s a tough one. Where I was really most inspired in terms of my point of view on business and branding is from brands like Virgin. Early in my advertising career in San Francisco, the main account I worked on was Virgin America. So I got super deep into Virgin and Richard Branson. Their model was: find a stale category, make the one really cool, fun brand within it, and almost change the category so the rest of it has to start adapting.
Airlines — nobody was excited to get on an airplane before. They were the first ones to make planes look like neon blue lighting and put TVs in every seat, which now is common on every airline. That really inspired my way of looking at things: what is something that like cottage cheese — what is a category where you can’t think of one cool brand? Obviously it has to still have appeal, it’s just a victim of poor brands not innovating. You see an opportunity — this could be a thing people would really love if someone just did it right.
At the end of the day, with packaged goods especially, branding is so much more important than most companies think. Most companies are started by business people — someone with an MBA, someone who understands the nuts and bolts. It’s rare that businesses are started by creative people, by artists, by graphic designers. What usually happens is the business folks think really rationally: “My product contains this, so the name of the product should be about that and I should list all the rational reasons someone should buy it.” That gets them part of the way, but then they end up hiring a creative agency to build a story around this boring thing to make people care about it.
What I think is interesting is having creative people at the very beginning of the process — just considering what the company should be, what the name should be, what the product should even look like, whether anyone will actually care. Creative people have a good sense of what’s culturally going on, what’s cool, what people care about. Business people, not so much. They’re more in the nuts and bolts of numbers. Which is hugely important — that’s why there are so many brands that never get the creative side but still get acquired. But imagine if they had great creative too. You might be a two-billion-dollar brand.
Shaan: Speaking of water — I’m good friends with Scott Harrison from charity: water. Have you ever met Scott?
Mike: I’ve heard of the brand.
Shaan: They’ve done a phenomenal job with the brand. Scott was a party promoter in New York for ten years — convincing dudes to buy three-thousand-dollar bottles of Grey Goose when they could go across the street for fifty dollars. Then he has a come-to-Jesus moment, goes to act, says I’m giving back — but all he knows is how to promote parties. All he knows is cool. So he reinvented charity as a cool brand.
He has this quote he uses when he tells his story — it’s from someone talking about philanthropy: “Imagine if we could sell charity with one tenth of the finesse that brands sell toothpaste. Imagine how much good we could do in the world.” And that’s basically what he did. He built a brand that stands for three things, has awesome design — because every charity website looks like they hired their eighth-grade cousin to build it — and he worked with influencers, did print campaigns. He’s now raised over $150 million for the cause, one of the fastest-growing charities out there. Because he applied cool to a category that was totally uncool before.
Mike: Totally. And I think “cool” is a weird word. It’s less about cool and more about — how do you make it interesting? How do you make it desirable, like “I have to have this”?
Sam: That’s what I want to know. I want to go back to that first question — what else is in that category? What have you explored, or what would be interesting for someone to come in and change?
Mike: I think Liquid Death is so much bigger than just a water company. At the end of the day, I think about us as a pop culture factory. We just released a Liquid Death vinyl record — in less than two weeks we sold 700 vinyl records, which is more than most metal bands actually sell when they release a record on a major metal label. It was this genius idea where we took social media hate comments and made them the lyrics to a metal album. A water company just became a record label for a minute.
I think about all these other places where there could be innovation tied to our general mission of health. Like — what if Liquid Death creates a chain of heavy metal yoga studios? People who want to do yoga but don’t want to listen to Yanni while they’re doing it. Or tough-guy multivitamins. Rainbows and Care Bears on the bottle — maybe we just make the form factor and brand a little different to speak to a different audience.
Profitable Marketing: The Vinyl Record Model [00:40:00]
Sam: You guys have raised $10 or $12 million — you’re definitely still getting going. At my company we have a brand people know, and if we make stuff people will buy it, but in my head I’m always like: don’t make other stuff, just focus on what we’re doing and kick ass at that, and then maybe eventually expand. You’ve done these little experiments like the vinyl record. In my head I’m like, no, no — focus. How do you decide where to throw money?
Mike: All these other products that we potentially make — if they succeed, they double as marketing for the water.
Sam: It’s marketing that’s profitable.
Mike: Exactly. We made a vinyl record — I can’t tell you how many eyeballs that got on Liquid Death from people reposting the album, sharing the album, talking about it. And that album, to execute — including printing the vinyl — cost us $12,000. We hired a guy who was a friend of a friend, an incredible metal musician named Gus Rios. He wrote and recorded the whole album. His buddy mixed it — and his buddy has mixed stuff for Justin Bieber and a bunch of other major artists. We made a commercial for maybe $2,000 on stock footage, and my wife edited the video. That’s all we launched with — a little launch video made with stock footage and we pressed records and sold them in our merch store.
So it’s like — what would it cost to start a chain of five small heavy metal yoga studios in LA? Small little studios, some instructors. Maybe you could build that out for, call it $500,000. What does $500,000 buy you if you try to run one TV spot during the Oscars? Maybe a 30-second spot. Which is going to see more lift and more brand evangelism — one $500,000 commercial during the Oscars, or a chain of five heavy metal yoga studios in LA that gets talked about by every publication, that people actually go to, that everyone who goes posts and talks about?
That’s a way smarter way to spend your money, and you might actually make some of it back if it’s a good enough business model.
Shaan: This is like Elon selling flamethrowers, right? He’s Iron Man — rockets, underground drilling, electric sports cars. Then he comes out with a flamethrower for $700, sells tens of millions of dollars of them. It’s basically just feeding the evangelism of the cult of Elon — life should be a little more badass, a little more fire, a little more speed.
Mike: Right. And when you create your own experiences for the brand, you control what goes on there. Yoga studios — there are going to be coolers of Liquid Death as the water served, obviously. It all connects.
Sam: My takeaway from this whole podcast is I’m going to do a handful of — I’m not going to launch a yoga studio — but a $12,000 vinyl release or something at that scale is super interesting. I need to do more of that. Do you have one person on your team who does these odd things, or is it a project you lead and coordinate?
Mike: We work with creative agencies — mostly run by my friends from the industry, small startups. What’s nice about Liquid Death is because we want to do such cool, different things, people are willing to work at a nice rate because they want that piece for their reel. We’re not asking them to make some typical thing. They’re like, “Hey look at this amazing thing we did with Liquid Death.” They want the case study, not just the Nestlé check.
Shaan: They’re doing the same thing you’re doing with the vinyl — maybe it pays for itself, but it’s also marketing for them.
Mike: Exactly. So yeah, we get a lot of smart creative people throwing ideas into the mix. At the end of the day, I’m a very creative-focused CEO. We built a nice team around us that’s really smart with operations and supply chain, which is not so much my strong suit, so I can focus more on the brand and creative side. And Liquid Death really is a brand play. Building all these fun things we’re talking about — how do you build a brand with such an evangelist audience that continues to grow — that’s really the focus.
Working for Gary Vaynerchuk [00:50:00]
Shaan: We’re coming up on the hour. Sam, did you have anything else?
Sam: I’m taking notes. I’m writing to my team — because I’m also creative but I’m definitely fiscally conservative. I’m like, “No, no, focus on the cash cow.” But you’re right — this stuff that seems dumb but is awesome, you can do it for way cheaper than you think.
Mike: Yeah, I guess it’s just — one of my old bosses used to say this. I worked as the creative director at VaynerMedia, so Gary Vaynerchuk was essentially my boss. I learned a lot from him in terms of marketing really just being about day-trading attention. Marketing is all about attention and what you pay for it. The price for a billboard — you’re paying so much per eyeball that sees it. It can be effective, but you’re overpaying for it versus: create a yoga studio in LA, you might generate even more eyeballs and attention at a way, way lower spend. It’s always about how do I get attention for my brand, what are all the different possible ways to get attention, and what are the most cost-efficient ways to get it.
Sam: I have to ask — was it awesome or not awesome working for him? Is the guy the real deal?
Mike: I love Gary. I think he’s an incredible human being. I’ve worked for a lot of corporate folks, and there are a lot of egos, a lot of people who don’t care. Gary truly cares. Even if you’re going to tell him you’re quitting, he’s going to be like, “Oh, awesome! Do you need any help finding your next thing?” He just cares. And I think that’s what he’s built his whole company on — you can build a massive company with a compassionate point of view on your people, without being some tyrant.
Shaan: Is there anything people don’t really know about him, or a misconception you’ve seen?
Mike: I would say talking with him one-on-one, the volume isn’t as loud as it is when he’s on camera. He’s an entertainer to a degree — he’s an educational business entertainer. But he’s entertaining to watch: the way he talks, his passion, how smart he is. There are plenty of business people who say smart things, but there aren’t as many who are like — in a way he’s playing a bit of a character. Off camera he’s way more mellow than most people think.
Shaan: I was on his podcast once, and he wasn’t on right away. He had to get amped up a little.
Mike: Yeah, he turns it up slowly.
Wrap-Up [00:54:00]
Shaan: Awesome. All right, Mike — we’ll wrap it up. Where should people follow you and find you? Where can they get more of what they got today?
Mike: Most everything with Liquid Death happens on Instagram, so follow us — it’s @LiquidDeath on Instagram, @LiquidDeath on Twitter, and LiquidDeath.com.
Sam: Awesome. This is awesome. And sorry if you heard my typing during the podcast — while he was talking I was writing things down. I had three ideas while you were talking about exactly what you said. You inspired something. I was like, “I have to write this down.” We’re going to do this, and if I don’t do this I’m going to regret it.
Mike: I do the same thing. I’m looking up everything you’re saying.
Shaan: That’s a sign of a good podcast.
Mike: It’s all about speed. One thing I always push — the idea shelf life these days is very short. If you have a cool idea right now and you don’t act on it tomorrow, someone else is probably making it. The things that are truly unique — right on.
Sam: Guys, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on.
Mike: Thanks, guys. Take care. Thank you.