I'm in the locker room drinking a bottle, and I said, hold on, can we take lemon water and make it taste good?

Can we give it flavor?

We've got over 300 investors, and I have an incredible obligation to return on capital for all of them that have invested in this, invested in me, invested in lemon.

Perfect.

You know, candidly, just in last year, maybe not so much our investors, because I think they know me well enough to know that we're going to fight to the death, but certainly the external world and in food and beverage, they were certainly putting our coffin in the ground.

Now the problem is that they forgot to put the nails in it.

Well, Yanni, a lot of people don't realize how much capital is needed when starting a CPG brand.

How did you grow $100 million company with two ingredients, lemon and water?

Well, listen, if I knew how capital intensive it would be, I'm not sure if we would have taken the first step on this journey, Justin.

But, you know, once you, once you raise $1 of capital, then you're, you're pot committed, you're all in.

And, and look, I mean, the short story is I coached college basketball for 10 years.

My last year coaching, I was at the University of Nevada in Reno.

A friend of mine wrote a book on the ketogenic diet.

In the back of Matt's book were all these sample meal plans every day started by drinking organic lemon water, lemon juice and water.

And I hated it.

Buy organic lemons, cut the lemons, squeeze the lemon juice all over.

Bland taste.

I mean, so many mornings I just threw my hands up in the air.

I said, there has to be a better way.

And, you know, let's fast forward and we can get into the founding story with a little bit more depth as the podcast moves on.

But two ingredients ended up becoming six ingredients.

Right?

We added a sweetener system.

We added natural flavors, vitamin C, so that we could tell 100% vitamin C story.

And you know, and the rest is history, if you will.

But the idea was let's take two ingredients, lemons and water, and let's make them taste good.

So you're, you're at Nevada.

I know a little bit of your history.

We, we have some mutual, mutual friends, which is how we ultimately went full circle here.

But so you're at Nevada, your, your friend, you read up on the, this keto diet.

You hate the, the bitterness of lemon and water, and then the what, the wheels start turning.

What.

Tell me more there.

What, how do you just start experimenting?

I need details here.

Not yeah, not exactly.

So, so you know I've got this, this part of my routine now, right.

I told my friend Matt I'm in A through Z diet plan training program.

I was working really hard.

I needed some structure in my, my routine.

You know, Eric Musselman, the head coach at Nevada at the time, we really got after it.

Our day started early, they ended late and, and you know, this is the path of, of destiny, if you will.

Coach Musselman's wife Danielle, her sister was on the field marketing team at Buy.

Little did I know, 2017 this was at the height of their growth story, right.

And so we knew the brand.

We were drinking a lot of it around the, the offices in the locker room and fast forward end of the season, I'm in the locker room drinking a by and I said hold on, can we take lemon water and make it taste good?

Can we give it flavor?

At the time by was very innovative.

One gram of sugar, great flavor.

A single ingredient hero the coffee fruit.

And that was the seed of the journey.

Now I didn't run out of the locker room that day and start a beverage brand.

We lost Iowa State a few weeks later in the first round of the NCAA tournament in Milwaukee.

And a few few weeks later I was in Santa Monica, California having lunch with a friend of mine, John, who who invests in early stage food and beverage businesses and small checks.

And I said John, what do you think of this idea?

And he said I love it.

Anything that you can do that can capture a piece of someone's daily routine, what they do in the morning when they first get up, what they do at night when they go to sleep, or any point in between is worth going for.

You can build a business around daily consumption, especially consumer brand obviously.

And I jumped up because all I knew was lemon water in the morning, right, Justin, I said I've got it.

We're going to go build the morning drink.

And, and that night John and I, we went to the Whole Foods in Venice and we got a bunch of, you know, organic lemons and sweeteners and I don't know what the hell.

And we played around a little bit with it and it tasted a little bit better than what I was doing before.

It was far from, I mean certainly a work in progress.

And that night I, I, I googled how to start a beverage company and that was, that was coming up on eight years ago now, can you believe it?

And yeah, and we have sold almost 120 million bottles Justin, in the, well in the six years since it Took us a couple of years to get the first bottle sold, but.

But yes, since that moment, we have built one hell of a brand.

I.

I would say so.

And I'll say a lot of other people would agree as well.

You.

So, you know, you guys, you're hitting these milestones after the season ends with Nevada was this is 2018, 2017, 2017, you start googling how to, like most people do.

I imagine I did the same.

How to start a company, beverage company.

Were you already thinking, I'm interested in doing something else, or at what point did you push all your chips in and say, I'm pursuing this?

Well, I tried to.

Tried.

I was in the mix for an assistant coaching job at Oklahoma State as these conversations with John were brewing.

And I think.

I think if I.

I think if I got the job at Oklahoma State, I would have probably taken it and there would be no Lemon Perfect.

Mike went a different direction for the spot that he was considering me for.

So I think at that point is when I went all in with this thing.

So I moved back with my mom and dad in New York City, and obviously, that's a humbling moment.

I was 33 at the time and, you know, thought I had something that.

That, you know, could.

Could be interesting.

Came up with a name for Lemon Perfect.

That was June 13, 2017.

So I didn't invest any dollars on this thing until I had what I thought was a really compelling trademark that can scale, and that explained what the product is right in.

In.

In a.

In a.

In a great way.

And so.

So once, once we had that, and I.

I registered the domain name on a street corner in Paris.

Believe it or not, my dad's from France, and I hadn't had a chance coaching basketball to get out there with any kind of frequency.

And so we went and.

And, yeah, I was with my mom and dad and.

And we.

We.

We were just walking down the street.

I was searching, searching, searching, trying to think, and it just.

It came into my head.

And then, you know, got back home and got to work on figuring out who could help me formulate this.

This idea that was the next step.

And, you know, found a formulator in Louisville, Kentucky.

And, you know, I was so sure, Justin, I was so sure that we had the next big thing that, that, you know, that I didn't tell them what the idea was.

I gave them some high level.

But then in the room when I got there, I told them what this was, and they said, we're so sorry.

We don't do anything with with, with real juice.

Right.

Obviously my, the product was based on organic, fresh squeezed organic lemon juice.

Right.

That was a moment where as I was driving back to the Cincinnati airport.

So, you know, I mean, you're not that far, right?

It's about what, about two hour drive or so.

And I remember calling my mom, telling her that I need to get back and figure out where I can go in basketball.

At this point, it was still early enough.

I said, I can go get a job somewhere.

You know, I started to talk with Joe Pasternak, who had just gotten a job at University of California, Santa Barbara.

And I was about to throw in the towel and I just made a few more calls because I felt like, my God, what am I doing here?

I just spent 10 years working on my craft and I was a, you know, I'm a hell of a college basketball coach.

I, I recruited at a high level.

I felt like I could, you know, and, and, and, and I wasn't going to let one year, one hard year at Nevada, you know, dislocate all that.

And, and, but I made one more phone call to a company called Ocean Blue Innovation in Southern California, and they were the winner.

They, they ended up helping me build Lemon Perfect 1.0.

We're now on Lemon Perfect 4.0.

But the initial concept that they helped me build is the bedrock of what we have today.

Well, I remember seeing the rebrand, you know, launch on online and LinkedIn, you know, follow you on LinkedIn as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You go through a lot of these challenges and you got to make changes a lot of times, you know, sooner than later, as opposed to just dragging your feet and, you know, clamping it off.

But what point should you work with the, you know, producer in California?

You start ramping up.

Is this, is this starting to get wheels here?

Is it starting to move?

What point did it really start gaining traction where you're like, okay, this, this, this is something special, I would say.

Almost from the start.

So, you know, the idea was, let's be a mile deep and an inch wide on day one.

Right.

And so once we had the product and we had raised our seed round, I moved to Southern California because I had met a beverage incubator, sales and supply chain, beverage incubator, critical Mass Group.

Dan Moran on the sales side, Robert Al Shuler on the supply chain side.

Robert was in Orange County, Dan was up in the South Bay in Los Angeles County.

And, and I just said, I'm going to be around them because I think that they can Help me figure this thing out or I chart my path.

And so I moved to Southern California in part also because I had a relationship with the management team at Bristol Farms through one of my college friends whose dad was on the management team at Bristol Farms.

And so I said, well, I think we've got a chance to get into Bristol Farms.

So you know, 12 stores to me, I sat there and I said whatever we need to do, like that would be the greatest thing in the world if we could sell this thing in 12 stores.

And so I did.

I moved to California March 6, 2018 with two boxes and a dream.

I didn't bring much with me at all.

I said this is a time Justin, to start fresh.

And you know, and, and settled in and spent three years there and, and you know, once we, once we, so we were hyper focused on winning in really in 22 stores.

Bristol Farms erawan Lazy Acres and we were just relentless.

We demoed in those stores almost every day.

We spent all of our time, all of our resources talking to consumers, building great relationships with those retail stores, store managers.

You know, we started as a keep refrigerated item so we had to be kept cold and in the produce.

So there was only so much that we could do.

But we started to take more cooler space.

More cooler space.

We demoed hard.

Our price point was very approachable in a sea of $4 and $5 and $6 and $7.

We were sitting there at 249 and that gave us, you know, a great trial in that set.

And, and then we, we took that data and we built a hell of a story from there, I would say.

So you face, you face a lot of adversity, Yanni, to say the least.

You get over that initial hurdle which is just getting on the shelf, I think, you know, creating a solid product.

And I don't know, like I, I.

Drink this nearly every day, but I don't know if you have a bunch of angels working for you and you just bottle up the coldest clouds in the atmosphere.

But it's like no matter what, how long this sits out, if you, if it's a hot day, it just stays perfectly chilled.

So you, you have an awesome product, you get it on some shelves.

Consumers start buying when you start building out a teeth.

We hired our first full time employee about 18 months after we, we raised our first dollar of capital and that would have been about nine months after we sold our first bottle.

I, at the beginning, you know, I tried to maximize our resources so I hired all fractional all fractional resources, fractional sales team that also had a merchandising team in Southern California.

Check that box.

Fractional demo team.

Check that box.

Fractional supply chain team, fractional finance team, working with some marketing agencies.

And I kind of just directed the traffic on all of it.

And it was a really good way to start because it was efficient, allowed us to test and learn.

And then our first hire was a.

Was a sales leader, and we built out our team from there.

And, you know, I've built the business to.

To.

To 50 people.

But, yeah, for the first while we were only in Southern California, I really focused on just fractional resources.

And it was.

It was.

I think it was appropriate while we were figuring out if we had product market fit.

So build out the team, you move away from the fraction.

I imagine you start bringing some.

Some resources in house.

When and where do you start working with, you know, people like Beyonce, people like Blake Griffin to raise more capital and.

And scale this.

This company that has.

That's, you know, really taking off.

Just not.

Never sold lemon.

Perfect.

Never.

I've presented our vision and told a good story and let the chips fall where they fall, where they fall, you know, And I'm also very fortunate that through my.

My web of basketball, that.

And.

And.

And even my college network and my high school network, through those networks, you treat people really well for 35 years, and then you go and do something like this that people can hold in their hands, that they can feel in their heart, that they can taste with their mouths, right?

And there's an excitement for that and the idea of building something that could really scale.

So.

So, you know, like Blake and Taylor, they invested in our very first seed round, and.

And.

And they have been by my side ever since.

You know, Beyonce, she came to us through one of our.

One of our investors who's become one of my absolute dearest friends.

And so it's been a lot of inbound traffic, almost all Justin.

Like, I.

I don't know if I've actually solicited anything, like, even.

Yeah, I can't remember if I've sent a cold email.

I don't think I ever have.

I mean, even yesterday, we're raising around right now, and I'm on the phone with my good friend Joe Pasternak, who's still the head coach at University of California, Santa Barbara.

And he.

He loves lemon.

Perfect.

And while we were on the phone yelling and screaming about recruiting stories and all that, and, you know, Joe's wired like I am.

He said, you gotta meet you gotta meet, you know, my dear friend and our biggest booster.

And, and we spoke last night over zoom and like it was one of those magical zooms.

And I was like, my God, I'd love to have this guy join our story.

And so it's just, you know, it has been bridges that have been built through my basketball journey.

And you know, I joke around often, Justin, that when people ask me, well, you know, I want to go start something, right, I want to go start this or start that in this world of food and beverage.

I sometimes joke around and I tell them, go coach college basketball for 10 years and then come back to me and we can, we can have a conversation at that point.

I'm glad you brought that up.

I love that story.

I think that's something that's often overlooked and definitely forgotten in the world of business is, is how important those relationships are, regardless of when they are built.

They're, they're crucial to growth, you know, personally, and that's business.

The coaching piece, how is.

You have a team of 50, you mentioned how is coaching Division 1 basketball the highest level?

How has that translated into managing a team, building your culture and, and you know, your energy is contagious.

I'm sure that translates.

But how has that translated into, into running a limit purpose?

Well, look, there's a scoreboard in both businesses, right?

So you have to be hyper competitive in college basketball.

It's a, it's to make miss game.

There's a scoreboard.

Win, lose, right?

There's only one team standing at the end of each night and certainly at the end of the season, you know, one champion in beverage or any, you know, any entrepreneurial endeavor.

There's a scoreboard, right?

It's, it's, it's gross revenue, it's, it's, you know, profit, it's gross margin.

I mean, there's just a lot, right?

And so everything that we do is, is just, we're just very competitive.

We talk about winning the street fight every day right in the trenches.

So there's nothing more important for Lemon perfect than winning in the trade underneath the roof of the retailer.

And our team gets after it.

And so, you know, we, we talk about the competition.

We don't run from it, we get after it.

And you know, our goal is to ultimately be number one in the enhanced water category, flavor enhanced water category by dollar share.

And we've got work to do.

You know, we got four brands to go chase down and we're going to get there.

You have it, you have those other brands on the scoreboard as well as a company.

You know, we talk about it every month, we look at it, you know, we have all the bottles lined up and, and yeah, I mean we won't stop until we cross the finish line.

We think we've got the product, we think we've got such a differentiated product.

We went on flavor, we went on nutritional deck, we went on brand and packaging.

We're competitive on price in the category.

And so, you know, we do, we think we've got a proposition that, that stands above the rest.

I would agree with that.

And I imagine you still face some adversity as you guys continue to grow, right?

Different, different challenges in the early stages.

I know you mentioned thinking you're going to get back into coaching, overcome that, that challenge.

What are, what are some of the bigger challenges you see now at this stage in your business?

Well, look, last year was a, was a hard year for us.

I mean 2024, you know, the business did still almost $100 million in retail sales in the face though of incredible headwinds from product quality challenges.

So we, you know, to keep it brief, we had some oxidation issues in our, in our product.

We went from a 12 ounce vessel to a 15.2 ounce vessel.

A margin expansion, winning, convenience, retail were really the two drivers of that change, of that change for me, I don't know if you recall, but a couple years ago now, over two years ago now, there was a, a very damaging article that came out on erythritol and elevated levels of erythritol in the blood having association with elevated risk for cardiac events, stroke, heart attack.

And there was no way that I was going to continue on this journey with that gorilla in the ring.

And so we take erythritol out, we start running the 15.2 ounce bottles we ran at the beginning, our 15.2 ounce bottles on an interim line before the line that was being built for us was ready.

And the combination of not having the erythritol to mask some of that oxidation.

And then on this interim line we didn't have nitrogen dosing and the ability to put oxygen scavengers and UV blockers in the residential anyway, it became a very hospitable environment for just a product that fell off a cliff, to be honest.

And we had to fight back through that, Justin.

So ultimately for us we ended up, I was in a really dark place last summer.

We end up, you know, reformulating the product because I didn't, we didn't exactly know what was happening.

So we changed out the stevia sorts.

We.

We switched out the.

Some of the lemon extracts that we were using, played around with the ratio of flavors that we were using, added more lemon juice, right.

And came up with what this is lemon perfect 4.0 magical, magical liquid.

And then in all of that, we said, well, we have to also reintroduce ourselves to potentially consumers that have lapsed that tried the product.

And to give you some context, it almost tasted like you were drinking burnt stevia.

Like it was.

It was gnarly, especially in the summer and the fall after the bottles were subject to heat and light exposure through the summer.

And so we.

We.

We started the packaging exploration in October.

And, you know, the result of it is far more transformational than.

Than I think any of us thought it could be going into the work.

You know, plus 20 points on purchase intent, plus 25 points on refreshment perception.

Right.

And, you know, these bottles have been on the shelf now for almost a couple of months.

In April, if you take out club, was the best month in company history.

And it was.

It's happening fast.

Wow.

It's like, yeah, this is.

We've never been more excited about Lemon Perfect than we are here in this moment right now.

Well, I mean, it's.

It's very clear.

And I've heard you talk.

You know, we haven't had this type of interaction, but, you know, you are so maniacally passionate about your brand, your product, what you're putting on shelves, that there's no wonder why you didn't have to sell anything.

You know, people naturally want to gravitate towards you and believe in your product because of that type of passion.

I did want to jump back real quick to something you said.

You mentioned being in a dark place last summer, and that's easily understood with the amount of challenges that you're facing.

And I think it's a lot of what entrepreneurs go through, and it's.

It's tough to understand unless you're in those shoes.

What actions or like, what thought processes did you have to overcome?

You know, that.

That dark stage that you went through.

You know, Justin, I guess some mornings and not all, I found the strength to get out of bed and try to figure it out.

You know, got in the flavor lab, you know, fortunate that the team at Ocean Blue Innovation was very comforting during this time of great stress and depression.

You know, look, I've never lost everywhere that I've been.

You know, at Oklahoma, you know, we went to the NCAA tournament twice.

You know, when I was At Harvard, we went to the NCAA tournament twice, first time in school history since 1946.

We went in 2012 and 2013.

We beat New Mexico in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

14 seed over at 33 in Salt Lake City.

Tommy Amaker has been at Harvard now for, for 18 years.

When I was at Vanderbilt, we recruited the top 25 class.

Coach Stallings went and got a job at Pittsburgh, you know, that paid him almost $20 million.

You know, I go to Cal, you know, we, we have great success.

Coach Martin goes to Missouri from there and a deal that paid him over $20 million.

And then, you know, go to Nevada and, and recruit great players and have great success there.

And Coach Musselman goes to Arkansas and gets a deal worth, a five year deal worth almost $15 million.

So, so, you know, everywhere I was, I, I am proud of the fact that I helped improve, you know, the, certainly the financial lives of, of the people that I was working for and that that's your job as an assistant is to elevate the head coach to win and elevate the head coach.

But you know, for me here, you know, now I'm in that first chair and we have investors and it's life or death in a lot of ways.

When you invest your whole life into something as I have here, we have to find a way to the winner's circle.

You know, We've got over 300 investors and I have an incredible obligation to return on capital for all of them that have invested in this, invested in me, invested in Lemon.

Perfect.

And candidly, Justin, last year I think there were many, maybe not so much our investors, because I think they know me well enough to know that we're going to fight to the death.

But certainly the external world in food and beverage probably thought that they were, were certainly putting our coffin in the ground.

Now the, the problem is, is that they forgot to put the nails in it, Justin.

And now this thing is set up, this thing is really set up to be a billion dollar B business and, and maybe a whole lot more.

I'm here for the ride.

I, I love to hear that, you know, says a lot about you, your team.

And I have all the confidence in the world that, I mean, I'll be supporting from my end.

I'll do my part, but I have all the confidence in the world that.

You all get there.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I appreciate you sharing that.

Yanni, one final question.

How many times is Blake Griffin dunked on you in practice?

Huh?

You know, God, I'M smarter than that.

I didn't get in his way.

I don't.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, I don't know if he's ever dunked on me, but I've, I've, I've spent a lot of time with him, I've rebounded a lot, a lot of balls for him and, and had great joy in doing so.

And to see him, you know, doing so well in his, his, you know, post basketball life, you know, more so just the family that he's building, all of his off the court endeavors.

And you know, Taylor, his brother is one of my, my best friends and super, super involved with Lemon Perfect.

So, yeah, it's been fun.

It.

I'll tell you, when you have a product, when you have a product that people love, that people want to share, it gives you such incredible richness.

You know, this life's journey is, is so much more compelling because of Lemon Perfect, to be honest.

Like, and there just aren't that many businesses where you have a product that you can share.

There are a lot of great businesses out there, but they're not that shareable.

Right.

This is something that's shareable that allows me to, to have some fun and, and, you know, and, and, and meet some just wildly interesting people.

Amazing.

I hear that.

This is my serious last question.

I promise I'll let you.

Good.

Let you go one or two sentences.

Use 10 if you want.

But you know, 50 to 100 years from now, when people talk about you and your legacy, what do you want them to say?

Man, you know, you'd love to start with, you know, he's just a, what a super nice guy he is.

Right?

You'd love to start there.

You know, I have a, I have a friend and an investor that has really been the fuel of Lemon Perfect almost from the start.

Mike Levine Vino, he's the co.

Head of sports at CAA Creative Artists.

And there's no one in my network that more people know than him.

And when you talk about him 100 out of 100 times, people say he's the best.

I love him.

I don't know how he does it.

He's the nicest guy.

He's a killer.

He's a friend.

I mean, it's like, you know, and I'm sitting there saying, my God, I, I'd love to have just 10% of the way that people talk about this guy, you know, and on top of that, it would be, it would be really special if Lemon Perfect has.

Look, in 50 years, I will always be the founder.

I will not be the owner of this business.

Can we create a brand and a product that has an, that can endure, you know, over years and years, that, that would be incredible, right.

If we could deliver something at that point to the world that, you know, helps people find joy, you know, like a feeling of, of joy in every sip.

And certainly, you know, we think that if we get there, when we get there, we'll have made such a profound impact on the health and wellness of people everywhere.

Right.

I mean, so much of the dislocation of health is because of what people drink and not as much as because of what people eat.

You know, drinking your calories is really bad.

Right.

And, and so can we deliver a product to the world that elevates joy, but at the same time makes people healthier?

Like, how incredible would that be?

And so, you know, Justin, when you start a business like this, your legacy is based a lot on the product itself, right?

And I've got other ideas.

And so we'll see where those products ultimately land.

I love building beverages.

I love creating products that taste great and that are better for you, that people can hold in their hand.

So, you know, I guess I'd love to think that people would consider me if we, if we fast forward here.

A genius beverage entrepreneur, right.

And one of the best to ever do it.

If that happens, I'll have had a chance to give back in a lot of ways and, and hopefully live, you know, the next 42 years of my life, the second half of my life, if you will, having forged great relationships through the, the, the, the lens of the products that I create.

Yeah, that's incredible.

I appreciate you significantly you sharing your story with us.

I love it.

I've been following you for a while and you know, I have met several people that know you and you have a lot more than 10% of the compliments you're shooting.

You're shooting for 100% for people I've met.

I really appreciate that, Justin, and congratulations on everything that you've built.

Awesome, Yanni.

Well, I appreciate you drink.