Episode 12: Mid Day Squares
A Journey Through Therapy, Creativity, and Business Oddities
Episode 12: Show Notes
In this episode, we sit down with Lezlie and Jake Karls, the visionary minds behind Mid-Day Squares, to discuss their entrepreneurial journey and unconventional approach to entrepreneurship. Mid-Day Squares is a family-run business aiming to establish itself as a prominent player in the chocolate industry. Its focus is on producing chocolate products while also emphasizing an open, unfiltered approach to entrepreneurship and business growth. In our conversation, they share their journey and strategies of the founders of Mid-Day Squares, discussing the importance of authenticity, relationship-building, and the fusion of personal storytelling with business branding to create a loyal customer base. We unpack their unique perspectives on entrepreneurship, their unconventional approaches to business and life, and the impactful role of therapy in fostering robust business strategies and their personal growth. They share the reason for declining a significant acquisition offer and how this steered them toward self-reliance and industry expansion. Gain valuable insights into reframing societal stigmas, the quirks and routines that keep them motivated, the benefits of an open mind, and much more! Tune in and learn the secrets to entrepreneurial success with Lezlie and Jake Karls!
Key Points From This Episode:
• Introduction to our guests and a brief background about Mid-Day Squares.
• Fostering personal relationships as the foundation for business and networking.
• Learn about the evolution of the company and its unique team dynamics.
• Hear the motivation for their marketing and branding approach via social media.
• The value of storytelling and authenticity in content creation.
• Creating relatable content while balancing viral content with genuine stories.
• Understanding the difference between viral content and building a community.
• Learn why continuous and genuine content creation is so vital.
• Strategies to create strong, loyal fans who become brand ambassadors.
• Lezlie shares why they decided to turn down a big acquisition offer.
• Reframing situations and leveraging creativity as a strength to address problems.
• Unconventional habitats and routines that enhance their productivity.
• Discover the role of therapy in their partnership and personal growth.
• Eliminating social stigmas and final takeaways for listeners.
Quotes:
“I always hope we’ll make friends first then do business. The reason being is it really builds something warm before you have to do something transactional.” — @KarlsJake [0:04:12]
“I think what's really key is listening and seeing the feedback from your actual events.” — Lezlie Karls [0:16:08]
“I think the key is that we live through our content, and we enjoy it ourselves.” — @KarlsJake [0:18:56]
“Mid-Day Squares is more than just a functional chocolate bar. It's an experience. It's a feeling.” — Lezlie Karls [0:22:22]
“Every week [in therapy], we show up and have these really hard conversations and learn how to work with each other and learn how to have those hard conversations.” — Lezlie Karls [0:38:50]
“You can see something one way and be so bought into that one way, and it can completely change, and that's the beauty of being open-minded, and trying things that may not be in your comfort zone.” — @KarlsJake [0:42:09]
“This game of life is not about changing other people. The game of life is making you your best version, and you putting somebody down for not doing something is just bringing you down further.” — @KarlsJake [0:45:20]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
EPISODE 12 [TRANSCRIPT]
[0:00:02] JK: Yes, so after rejecting a potential offer from a large chocolate company, we then received two months later a cease and desist letter. So, with a threat to sue regarding the packaging color of our peanut butter, so I'm assuming you could see who it is that has a chocolate peanut butter, and what was unique about the situation was before that, everyone was totally Gucci with everything, and fine and dandy. Then, we were faced with this scenario, we had two weeks or three weeks to change the packaging or go to court, and court is very expensive to fight a legal battle even if you would have won.
[0:00:44] JU: You’re listening to Paint and Pipette. I’m your host, Jeremy Utley. I teach innovation and entrepreneurship at Stanford University. Thanks for joining me to explore the art and science of bringing new ideas to life. Let's dive in.
[0:01:05] JU: All right, we are live with Jake and Lezlie Karls of Mid-Day Squares. Great to see you guys this morning.
[0:01:12] LK: Great to see you too. Thanks so much for having us today. We're fired up about this.
[0:01:16] JU: I got to tell you guys, this is my package from this morning's Mid-Day Square. I do an early-day square, not just a Mid-Day Square. I'm a two-day square. Just for those who don't know the product. I could give my pitch. But I want you to give — what's your 30-second pitch on why the world needs another chocolate bar?
[0:01:34] JK: Wait, can we compare the pitches? Can we do like ours and then yours?
[0:01:38] JU: Yes, okay. Yes, you got it. Totally. We can have a live voting on LinkedIn as well. People can vote and say whose pitch is better.
[0:01:46] JK: Yes. Lez, you want to kick it? Thirty seconds.
[0:01:48] LK: Yes. Why does the world need another chocolate bar? Because Mid-Day Squares isn't just about giving you that decadent experience. We're really about giving that function to drive you to your next meal. We got protein, we've got fiber, we have the non-refined sugar. So, you get a bit of both worlds. You get the decadence of having chocolate, and really getting that sweet craving kind of fix. Then, you've got the function to it, right? So, it's like you're in between lunch and dinner, you need something that's going to actually fuel you, that's going to give you energy, and not make you crash. So, you grab a Mid-Day Square, and you could do it in the morning, you could do it at night, you could do whenever you need it. It was really designed for people on the go.
So, something that really, really adds value to your day and makes you feel good after you eat it. And Mid-Day Squares is not just a chocolate bar. It's also a feeling. It's a brand. It's an experience. A lot of people when they eat the chocolate bar, they feel good, and they feel good in many different ways. So yes, that's why you need a Mid-Day Square. There you have it.
[0:02:44] JK: I’ll do it in 10 seconds. I'll do it in 10 seconds. Mid-Day squares make your afternoon better. Here's why. It gives you chocolate indulgence with high protein and fiber that kills your hunger for up to three to four hours. That's it. That's all. That's why you need it.
[0:02:59] JU: Here's your customer pitch. Mid-Day Squares taste great without feeling bad. I don't feel guilty. But I feel like I should feel guilty. Or I feel guilty that I don't feel guilty. How's that?
[0:03:14] LK: I love it.
[0:03:15] JU: That's awesome. Well, I love your product. I love what you guys are building. Maybe give – Lezlie, I know the whole thing began with you in the kitchen, And I want to get there in a second. But first, I want to hear something, Jake, I saw you said in an interview, which I loved. You talked about the power of making friends first, before doing business. And I got to tell you, I have done podcasts now with hundreds of people. You're the first person I get on the phone with you to do kind of our pre-podcast conversation, and you're like, literally, you've never met me, you go, “Jer. Can I call you Jer?” I immediately said yes and I love you.
I have to say, I've experienced the make friends first kind of aspect of your vibe and your values. Tell folks more about what drives that? How does it manifest beyond just the, “Can I call you, Jer?”
[0:04:06] JK: Jer, well, I love you too. I hope you know that. I love your energy and I think it's genuine. So, that's why it's really powerful. But I always hope we’ll make friends first then do business. The reason being is it really builds something warm before you have to do something transactional and you don't even need to be transactional in the end. At the end of the day, if a relationship stays just as a friendship, you have won. Both of you have actually won.
I think, what’s wrong with society today is at networking events, at conferences, at different engagements, people are so focused on getting something or extracting value or something from somebody and it kind of derails them from being themselves a lot of the time. When you do that, you take away your superpower. Your superpower is you being you. When you're making friends, all you want to do is a friend likes you for who you are. They don't want to change you. And when my team tells me you know that they need a relationship at Target, my first goal is not to go build and sell into Target, it's to build a friendship with the buying team. If it works out great. If not, then it's still great.
Having that mentality allows for serendipity and natural flow to happen in the conversations. People don't think you're using them or wanting something from them. And that makes it better, and that's worked with investors, retailers, journalists, even, and new team members. So, go into your day or your opportunities with that mindset. I promise you, over time, you'll start to see a very big difference in the way that your relationships are built, and how long they last.
[0:05:34] JU: Just kind of building on that. Say you've got a new relationship where you mentioned before we hopped on live, you're going to see Sprouts, as an example, right? But imagine you're entering a room where the friendship hasn't been established yet. Can you walk folks through, how do you foreground friendship? What does it look like? How do you think about preparing for friendship? Because I think for a lot of us, we think about the pitch, we think about the deal, we think about the transaction, and the friendship can kind of be an afterthought. So, what do you do, I mean, other than being you, I think, I would say your superpower to use your word is probably to make friends, right? But walk us through, if you had to kind of unpack that superpower, how do you get ready? How do you get your mind right to make friends?
[0:06:13] JK: Well, yes, just to give the context. So, I'm heading to Sprouts tomorrow in Phoenix. I'm going for one day. I’m spending the day with the team. We're going to top golf. We're going to have some fun. And there's no ask. Our company, Mid-Day Squares has no ask if we’re going to hang out with them. It's, let's just have a good time. So, they've been in there. There's not even business talk. If it happens, great. If not, it doesn't make a difference. Right then and there, the fun is already there. Everyone's ready to have a good time. That's number one.
When you're going into a relationship that's not previously made, so whether that's through a digital reach out or through meeting people in physical, or in person. I think the key is literally just to go in with no intention. You literally are just curious. Act curious. Because I always tell people, why I don't have relationships with a lot of corporations or businesses is not because their products not great. A lot of the time, some of the products are great. It's because a lot of the time, they aren't authentic in the sense of how they're communicating.
What I've noticed through our brand, is why we're having a lot of success is obviously product market fit. But a secondary reason is because the three of us in our team is just being real. We show you good, ugly, bad, and that transparency creates a relatability and a trust factor. When you have that, that's what friends are made from, is trust, and relatability. Same thing goes for business and customer. It's the same type of relationship, obviously with a transaction that comes. But at the end of the day, if you focus on that, you're going to create a long-term fan. I always tell people, if a business is acting authentic, it's the same thing as a friend acting authentic. You don't want to be around them. You don't want to be associated them because it's cringe. It's weird. Going with the intention of just being yourself and nothing to come out of it.
[0:07:50] JU: So, Lezlie, I got to ask you. I know that it wasn't always this way. I would imagine. I’m reading about the origin story of Mid-Day Squares, there was a moment in time where you realize we need another superpower on the team. So, the way Jake just described the business, I think, is a really great accurate reflection of how things are today. How did you, Lezlie, come to the realization that something was missing?
[0:08:17] LK: I would say Nick and I have worked together before starting Mid-Day Squares. Nick invested in my original company, which was Hector, which is actually Mid-Day Squares. We took that company and then turned it into Mid-Day Squares. But that's where Nick and I originally knew we worked well together, is when we embarked on building a clothing company.
The one thing that both Nick and I didn't have early on, was the ability to put ourselves out there. Nick and I will lock ourselves in the condo and work tirelessly on something, and kind of disassociate ourselves from the world. That's great. But it doesn't allow you to get the brand out there in the way you need it. So, that's when we realized that in order to really complete this partnership, we needed somebody that was going to be able to push all of us to put ourselves out there and to create community and build a brand. Both Nick and I, didn’t per se, have experience with that.
So, when we thought about what we needed next, Jake popped into our head. He was already building another business. We pitched him on closing that business and coming to Mid-Day Squares to help us blow up the brand. Right off the bat, Jake wasn't interested to come to Mid-Day Squares. I mean, he didn't really care much about chocolate. He was like, again, the question that you started with when we started this live was, why does the world need another chocolate bar? Jake felt the same way. He's like, “Why does the world need this product?” So, after three months of convincing him to come, he finally decided to come in August and his one ask was, “If I'm going to join the team, we're going to take out our phones, and we're going to film everything. We're going to film making the product. We're going to film getting in the car and bringing it to the customers, the fans, and show the good, the bad, and the ugly.” And Nick and I weren't fully bought into this at the beginning, but I trusted him and said, “You know what, let's go with it.”
It was, at the beginning was really rough. Speaking to the camera was really uncomfortable for Nick and I. It took us hours to make a video. Jake and I had a lot of hard conversations at the condo, me feeling at the time insecure to be on camera, and Jake pushing me through those insecurities and saying, “People love you for who you are, and just go with it.”
[0:10:43] JU: Okay. Hang on. Okay, there's so much here and I just want to break it down. Why on earth did you go with this crazy idea? Jake said, “Hey, we got to pull out our cameras and record everything.” Why did you not just stop and say, “Sorry, buddy. That's not what we had in mind.”
[0:10:59] LK: Well, you know what, we saw Jake do it. We saw him build community at his previous company that he was at, and he couldn't get a product to sell. He wasn't strong at the operational component of the business, but he was extremely strong at getting people to want to rally behind his business, whether it was wearing his products, working for him for free, or showing up to events. They just wanted to be part of whatever he was doing. So, we trusted his vision. He presented us that this was going to work through a presentation, and we can get into it a little later. We bought into it and we went with it and it did work.
So, when we started seeing it translate early on, you start feeling better about putting yourself out there and showing the process. So, that's how the tripod came together. It is crazy. We're not partners, because we're family members. We're partners because we each bring very different things to the table, and what Jake wasn't good at in his previous company, was what Nick and I were good at. When we came together as a tripod, that was how we really created magic, because we brought very different skill sets to the table.
[0:12:11] JU: Where did it come from? Where'd the idea come from? Let's all whip out our phones. Because when you described Mid-Day Squares to me – by the way, before I ever tasted the product, before I ever knew anything other than you wanted to call me, Jer. You said something like Elon Musk meets the Kardashian. Where did that idea come from? What I really want to know is what was the beginning of it? How did it become fully realized in your mind even before you shared it with Lezlie and Nick?
[0:12:37] JK: Well, so I always knew that storytelling using social media was becoming popular because people were on their phones. So, previous to doing Mid-Day Squares, I had a fitness business and a clothing business. They both won – the fitness business worked. I just didn't have passion for it anymore. But I used Snapchat to grow it, literally, just show people having fun and being myself. Same thing happened with the other business, but it didn't work out operationally. So, when Mid-Day Squares came to convince Leslie and Nick, they were very data-driven people, I had to go and look in the entertainment world and find the TV ratings for Keeping Up with the Kardashians and Shark Tank.
The reason why I looked at those two shows is because they were very popular. If ratings were on fire, they were living on fire. And I looked deeper into why. What people loved about the Kardashians is the story was very dramatic, wild, crazy, and it was family. Right? So, there was these core values in there, and there was this idea of boldness and craziness that people really were attracted to. Obviously, there's the posh life as well.
The second thing with Shark Tank was people love the idea of entrepreneurship. They were starting to become celebritized. Shark Tank was the original to showing the basic surface-level story of what and who the business actually is. Not just what the product is. But who is this individual? What do they kind of stand for? And how are they raising their money or not raising their money?
So, I said to my partners, what if we just took those two shows, made a baby with them, but authentically to us. Meaning we're a family business. We're crazy. We have a ton of drama between us. You're married. They're married. I’m brother-in-law behavior. That's a lot of drama right there.
[0:14:06] JU: Which you love, right?
[0:14:10] JK: Then, I said, what if we took the Shark Tank but we actually just removed the curtain and we actually showed a glass door of what was going on behind the scenes. So, not the trade secrets of our product. But we're talking like therapy sessions, milestones. What does it feel like to open up your first retailer? What's the emotional factor? What does it feel like to meet your first customer? What does it feel like to almost be on a divorce that with Lezlie and Nick, because their pressure was so high? What does that look like?
Then, I looked at Elon Musk and at the time, his social media following was growing so much. What I said about that was, he just doesn't care and he's unapologetically himself. So, people either love or hate him, but the 50% that loves him are diehard fans and will do anything. I said, the three of us are weird as characters that are whack jobs, completely different views on life, somebody's going to like one of us. So, if we just put it out there and be ourselves, somebody's going to veer towards us. If they're veering towards one of us, they're likely going to be a fan of the business. And that created a reality show on entrepreneurship. We didn’t have the money to take cameras out. So, we used our iPhones.
[0:15:11] JU: Okay. So, I got to ask this, because this is a little bit of a hobby horse of mine. But I often say big data is well and good. But little data trumps big data. What I mean by that is, what I've observed entrepreneurs that I've gotten to teach and mentor and study over the last 10-plus years, is they're actually really good at creating data. Big data is all about existing datasets and mining it for insights using AI, ML, blah, blah, blah, right? That's all well, and good.
Little data is about scrappy experimentation. I mean, I haven't fed you guys this. So, I don't know if you're going to say, “Oh, we didn't have any little data.” But Lezlie, you said something about when we started to see that it was working. And I guess for me, that just kind of gave me this little tendril of, did you guys have any little data that you were looking at? And if so, because you mentioned Jake, the big data, Elon Musk's following, and the Kardashians’ ratings, but what was the data that you all were looking at to know whether it was working for you?
[0:16:08] LK: I think what's really key is listening and seeing the feedback from your actual events, right? When initially, the business started, and we launched on our website, we launched a sample program where we were losing money on this program, but we essentially had a 50-cent bar that you could buy, just to taste the product. When we launched, again, we were filming this whole thing, telling the story, we didn't have a huge following. It was our community, people around us kind of brought them all together on the Mid-Day Squares page, and people started ordering this sample, for 50 cents. And we would film our experience of making the product for them taking a picture, writing them a note, and then getting the car and actually showing up at their door.
The response to that was crazy. People were reposting that experience. They were reposting their Polaroid picture that they received from us. They wanted to take a picture with us, then repost that, and it created virality. We're like, “Okay, that's the first data point. We're making people feel something, and they want to share their experience with their community.” Boom, that's huge, right? That's the best marketing that you can have is when the customer does it naturally on their own authentically. So, that was the first data point.
Then, you just saw the engagement, right? I mean, when you talk about social media, and that's what we were using, those are the platforms we were using at the time, it was strictly Instagram. I mean, the analytics were there. The engagement was very high. We were able to see that. But the beginning, we focus less on the analytics, and we focus more on what are we hearing? What are we seeing? What was the inbound of the experience from the customer? What were they saying? What were the comments they were writing? How are they sharing their experience? And those data points kept driving us to, okay, people want to see this type of content. Let's keep putting more of it out there.
I mean, today, four and a half years later, we're heavily driven through the analytics. We definitely now look more than ever, especially on TikTok, it's an incredible platform, and using their analytics when people are dropping off. How many people are watching until the end? What's the views? What's the likes? What's the formula and the patterns that we see, based on those analytics of different videos and how they perform? But when we first started, those weren't our data points that we were looking at.
[0:18:27] JU: Yes. I can't help but wonder, when Lezlie's talking about the analytics of say, TikTok, and drop-off rates, and stuff like that, I don't think they're at odds. But to me, there's a question about authenticity. There's a question about friendship. There's a question about how do you make sure? Because it can be easy to kind of over-rotate towards some things that may be not as authentic. How do you make sure that even in the midst of all this robust data from social media, you stay true to those authenticity values that are right in the foreground of your mind?
[0:18:56] JK: I think the key is that we live through our content, and we enjoy it ourselves. That's number one. Even the media team, when they watch content, they're not putting something out, because it looks like a trend, or it looks like the data is showing that. They'll actually go through what's actually going on and how do we tell that story. If it means something to them deeply, they're going to share it and it might not go viral. It might not get the million views that they're looking to hit up there at KPI at the end of the month. But the content was added value and so powerful, that it was worth it for the 3,000 people that watched it in the end. We put two videos up recently on, I think, it was TikTok.
The videos were, one, about my personal injury that I'm going through and how it’s affecting my entrepreneurship journey and mentally, and it's really good quality content in terms of you know what other people might be going through. We could help a lot of people that are going through something similar. We only got like 4,000 views or 5,000 views. So, it didn't go viral. But the power of it was powerful. If you look at the comments, the meaningfulness of the engagement of people, is so authentic, that it's heart-to-heart. And then there was another one with depression. My brother-in-law being, he's depressed and he keeps taking a certain pill and he talks about it and how it’s helped and be more productive, and that went viral. But again, it was a heart-to-heart conversation, right?
I think we've noticed the more authentic we are, Jer, the better we are, the better our content is, and the more we build our community and fuel that community with more authenticity, the more they're going to come back and stay with us for long term.
[0:20:21] LK: I'll add to that. It's just, I think your content needs to represent you. I think people do choose virality, and I think that's not forever, right? That's not how you build something that can last forever. You might hit virality in the moment, but how do you retain that customer, that fan? How do you build the community? To build a community is very, very hard. You could go viral and be hot for a minute and then fall off because nobody really cares about what you're doing.
So, I think, to Jake's point, when we look at the media, and we look at our goals for the year, we're going to make certain videos that obviously we've identified a formula that works that can reach those million views, and we will probably launch one of those videos every month because at the same time, we're still building a brand and we need to sell product. So, brand awareness.
Now, that being said, those videos are still authentic. They're just a type of storytelling that really resonates and rouse people up. And there's that type story. To Jake's point, how do we continue to build community? Sometimes that doesn't get a million views, because it's not dramatic, and it's not some big problem that happened in your company. But it's more an intimate moment that still makes people feel something. And I think, I was listening to the MasterClass that Kris Jenner was leading on how to build your personal brand. She said something really important, which is, “To understand if people like your content, to understand if your content is making people feel something are resonating, read their comments.”
To Jake's point, we posted this video on Jake's recovery on his back and the mental strength that it's taking for him to get through this. And if you go on Instagram, there are 60 comments or 65 comments. They're paragraphs of people, in this day and age, when we are flooded with content, and our capacity to watch things is so short, our attention –
[0:22:07] JU: Let alone, comment, right? Let alone comment deeply.
[0:22:12] LK: Exactly. Write a paragraph is powerful. It means people stopped, watched it, cared, and wanted to share their experiences. The video made them feel something deeply. That is what I mean when I go back to Mid-Day Squares is more than just a functional chocolate bar. It's an experience. It's a feeling. Yes. I think there's a fine balance between your data and your intuition.
[0:22:36] JK: That's the art of winning. That's the art of building fandom in real life.
[BREAK]
[0:22:41] JU: How much time and effort does it take to test an idea? When I ask individuals and organizations this question, they typically overestimate both the time, effort, and expense required. Tests need to be quick, fast, and cheap. You need lots of tests. So, when I work with organizations, I help them take ideas out of the waiting for testing pile, and move them into the tested pile. That's where lessons are learned and impact is created. Do you want to make impact for your organization's good ideas? Let's talk. Check out jeremyutley.design, or write me at jutley@jeremyutley.design. Let's test some ideas together.
[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[0:23:26] JU: Well, you know what it makes me think of y'all, and maybe it would be worthwhile to look into. But Derek Thompson wrote a book called Hit Makers. I think it's Hit Makers. If it's not, I'll send you the link and I can post on LinkedIn if it's wrong. But there's a great part of the book where he talks about, he contrast, like you remember the double rainbow video? And it like went viral. It's like 40 million views or some crazy number of views. And it's basically a guy going, “Oh”, he's like on some kind of a trip saying, “There's a rainbow and it's like beautiful.” He starts crying. Then, there was another video, there was like a makeup video that went viral. They both had the same number of views. But they had radically different impacts on the brand, and on the trajectory of the creator.
And what he unpacks was, the double rainbow guy was basically, it was a fluke, it was a one-hit wonder. He had no other content for people to dive into. So, the viral thing was like a jumping-off point. But people jumped in, they did a belly flop into the pool. There's nothing else, right? The makeup artist, I’m making these words up. But the makeup artist, she actually had this incredible discipline of posting a video every week, and one of them after a long time totally took off. But then all the people who saw that realize there's this trove, this library of material to dive into, and it had this compounding effect.
So, to me, I think about that with you guys, you've got the kind of the broad appeal of the million-view video, but then every time you get like those million views, which is 996,000 more than the 4,000 –be careful doing math on real-time live. But it's 990,000 more videos than the 4,000 one. But when one of those 990,000 people discovers you for the first time, then they're able to dive into deeper content.
[0:25:11] LK: They go down the rabbit hole, and they expand.
[0:25:14] JU: Exactly
[0:25:14] JK: Yes. Jer, and Lez, we literally spoke about this. We're an investor, a new investor call this morning with a potential future investor. We brought up this idea of going on tour. This was a topic that we were discussing to structure how we would go on tour. What the tour means is, is simply showing up physically to give a performance or entertainment or added value to a group of people. It's a very similar strategy to how politics works, and how politicians typically go to fire up their bases, and they get their voters excited. No matter what they say, it doesn't make a difference. They built the fan, so the fan will support them.
I always say, if there's 100 people in these tours, that we got 100 people are listening to our conference, and you give the performance of your lifetime, and you get 25 to turn into super fans, those diehard fans can turn into hundreds of thousands of dollars over time, because they're out there selling your product. They're out there going and telling people, shouting about your brand, without even you knowing. They're going to the grocery store and fixing your product as a merchandising tool, and that is the power of fandom. That is the power of making people feel something deeply, being yourself, and doing it where you stay consistent, and it will reward you over time. It will have a massive reward. But it's not about virality. It's not about getting 100,000 people in a stadium. What's wrong with that 100, and you're hitting 25 out of 100 in terms of super fandom.
[0:26:35] JU: Right. I want to shift gears and talk about something. There's kind of two big topics on my mind that I really hope we cover in the next 20 minutes or so. We can see we get both of them. I'll just kind of preview since that you guys know where we're headed. One is the topic of therapy and the stigmas and all that stuff, I'd love to hear. Jake, you posted recently about kind of reframing therapy. So, I won't give anything else away there. But then the other one, and Lezlie, maybe I'll start with you. I want to go to March 2021. Because March 2021, as I understand it, you've got an acquisition offer, basically from a major chocolate brand. Can you talk for a minute about why you said no. Because for a lot of people out there they go, “Wow, an exit opportunity. I've only been doing this, what?” You had been doing for two or three years at that point, right? Wow, an exit opportunity, what gave you the conviction to turn down the acquisition at that point in your journey. And then we'll fast forward, of course, to June 2021 after that.
[0:27:31] LK: I think for us, I mean, we started this journey, not knowing per se, where we wanted to go with it. But early days, Jake, Nick, and I, thought a lot about building this thing and then selling it. That was our initial thoughts when we launched Mid-Day Squares. Let's build it, let's sell it, and then let's continue building, or doing whatever would be next for us. Then, as we started the journey, and became industrial builders, I mean, we manufacture, we build a plant, learning a lot about equipment and automation, even when COVID hit, that was really interesting for us to see that we now know how to manufacture and we are a serious added value to society, right?
We can start up lines, and we can get products going, and we could support the infrastructure, which was pretty cool. So, we realized that we love this, and we see ourselves building this over the next 25, 30 years into something massive and becoming the acquirer. I mean, for us, we don't see why we can't be a version of Mondelez, right? Build a great foundational business, understand how to operate manufacturing plants, understand how to build a good gross margin, and create a world-class organization. Then, from there, purchase and build and help build other companies. So, that's something that we are super passionate about and see ourselves doing. We have a really clear path to 230 million or 250 million in revenue. Then from there, what's the next stage to go from the 250 to half a billion, and then a billion, and then 10 billion, right?
[0:29:17] JU: World domination.
[0:29:18] LK: For us, it's not out of reach. We do believe over time, we're going to get there. We're opportunistic people, so we're never going to say no to hearing out an opportunity and we welcome opportunities. We also have shareholders to listen to opportunities that come our way. But for us, like I said, we can see this through. We believe we could see it through. We believe we can grow the company to where it needs to go. It's just not in the books for us to want to sell the business, especially at this time. I think strong opinions are loosely held. We can't foresee you know the future. We may, at one point, decide this is not for us anymore. That is a possibility. But where we're at right now with the vision that we do have, we do want to take this thing all the way through, what's west of Westeros for us, and see it through. That's where we're at right now and we're excited about it. I mean, we love building. That really is what drives us every day.
[0:30:17] JU: Okay. That's more thoughtful than I could even – I won't even [inaudible 0:30:23] perfect, Lez. Fast forward now, Jake, to June 2021. You, out of the extinct of conviction that Lezlie just described, you said, “No way are we selling. We're in this for the world domination program, WDP.” What happened in June of 2021? Where did that come from? And what fueled your response?
[0:30:44] JK: Yes. So, after rejecting potential offer from a large chocolate company, we then received two months later a cease and desist letter, so with a threat to sue regarding the packaging color of our peanut butter. I'm assuming you can see who it is that has a chocolate peanut butter, and what was unique about the situation was before that everyone was totally Gucci with everything, and fine and dandy. And then we were faced with the scenario, we had two weeks or three weeks to change the packaging or go to court. And court is very expensive to fight a legal battle. Even if we would have won, it would have been hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars spent in energy on a case that can drain the whole company.
In that moment, we as a company, play to win, and we also play to our strengths. Our strength was we share our authentic story, and what actually happens if we're going to change our package, we're going to tell you why. We're going to show you the irony of the conversations and show you the good, the bad, the ugly. When we shared that, our fan base got excited, fired up, and energized by the boldness of kind of exposing an irony or this scenario, whereas David versus Goliath, big chocolate versus small chocolate. And Lezlie wanted to go one step further, and she decided that you wanted to create a music video, diss track, to show that we do not want to be any other company. We are our own identity. We did this diss track. It had gone seven months of planning, recording, and executing. It was this parody to the song My Name Is by Eminem, and it just showed the company that we are bold. We are ourselves and we don't care.
We don't need to fight illegally. We don't need to fight anything legally. We can win by being us. It blew up. It went viral. Our fans got excited. It was the David versus Goliath story. It helped us win in the United States a lot of new customers and new fans. In the end, we have no beef with that company, by the way. And I always say this is, we are fans of the what they've built over legacy in terms of what the company has built in the products. They've done our childhood products, basically.
But I can tell you that in those moments of large uncertainty and hardships, you have two options. Do you go where the herd goes and follow the herd and do what everyone else does? Or do you look the other way and try something new? That's what we live by at Mid-Day Squares, is a core value of ours. So, when we're facing these moments, we go the opposite way. We want an outlier output. We don't want an average output. And it's either going to be good or bad, but it won't be in the middle. It won't be neutral. I think that's what's allowing us to continue to expand and continue to, again, go back to our thesis of building fans rather than customers and yes, a diss track to answer to a legal battle.
[0:33:32] JU: Okay. Let's talk outliers for a minute because I wouldn't even go there. But Jake, you just set me up too perfectly. Lezlie, talk to us about how does the idea to do a diss track if that's the good idea or the bad idea. Walk us backward through the kind of the family tree. What led you to the breakthrough, we should launch a diss track in response to this cease and desist letter. How did you get there? Because that's a radical idea. How did you preserve the ability to continue thinking radically, et cetera, et cetera?
[0:34:05] LK: I think you got to have fun in life. I think that's the first thing and getting to be creative. I love being creative and I think Mid-Day Squares has done nothing yet. We have done nothing. We have zero budgets for marketing and being creative, like really don't have a lot of budget to get creative. So, I think we got to just figure out how to think outside of the box and have fun with it when we thought we got the cease and desist, I mean, we were first pretty rattled. We're human. We were pretty affected by it. There's so much going on in Mid-Day Squares. There's so much intensity all the time and everything. You're at the bottom of the layer cake, so you just feel like you're in quicksand and everything's going wrong at all times.
I think, when that happened, a lot felt like when you're having explosive growth, the business is walking you a lot of the times. You're not walking the business. So, to throw that on top of everything else that was going on, it was discouraging, and it was hard to experience it. Then, we took a minute to digest everything and to not be emotional about the whole thing, and then turn it and say, “Okay. Well, how do we turn this into a story?” Let's take this and let's turn it into a story. That's what we do at Mid-Day Squares, we tell stories, like Jake said. Then, that's where it got the creative juices flowing on how we should tell it.
To Jake's point, we use our superpower, which is creativity, and our platform to come up with this idea on saying, “Well, no, we're Mid-Day Squares.” So, with just a creative brainstorm, a couple of sessions, and then we just started planning it. And it took time because we're running a business. So, from nine to five –
[0:35:40] JU: – make a random distract in the middle of the workday?
[0:35:44] LK: We have to do it after work. We would work all day, and then – that’s the thing, people watch our social media and they're like, “Oh, they just film all day. Mid-Day Squares is full of fun and games.” No, no, no, no. Don't get that twisted. We work really fucking hard, and then we do all this other creative stuff after hours, or in between every meeting, or whatever it is because that’s what you have to do.
[0:36:08] JU: It's a priority.
[0:36:09] LK: Yes. It is.
[0:36:11] JU: Okay, so there's so many directions, we could take this, but like, Jake, she comes with a diss track. Is it instant yes? Is it, hang on, we should talk to our lawyers? How do you go from this is a crazy idea, to this is a doable, crazy idea?
[0:36:23] JK: Think about this. That was three and a half years into the business. We were doing crazy shit every single month, more or less. I'm not saying crazy like that, but just always outlier inputs to receive outlier outputs. When she told us this idea, it was a bit confusing. So, I was scared from the legal standpoint that this could take us actually over the edge and close the whole business if this goes south. Then, it was like, you go back to what is our core value? What is the core value? And if this is part of the core value, then why aren't we doing it?
Then, when we agreed to doing it, and we did do a legal, obviously, spoke to our legal team about it. They weren't thrilled. But what I could tell you is, I'll never forget the one thing that angered me the most about the whole process was having to go to studio to practice how to sing. That was the most – I'm being coached on how to actually sing like Eminem or try because that guy is so talented. It's almost impossible, but I would have to go through hours –
[0:37:15] JU: That was so good.
[0:37:19] JK: – like 40 minutes from our house, and we'd go there at like, 6pm and stay there till 11pm. It was brutal after a full day of work, and she would be like, “You have to learn this. You have to do it if you want this or we're not doing it.” And just going through that training process was like kind of going through school where you don't like a subject, and you have to study for it. That was the thing –
[0:37:38] LK: I do want to say one thing on that, Jake, is that's where the therapy piece comes in. Because I lead media, and Jake and Nick, are also my partners, right? It becomes really complicated when we're trying to record a music video, and they've had a really hard day. Like I said, there's so many ups and downs as you're building this company. And then we got to show up at 6pm to record a rap song.
[0:38:06] JU: Right. Totally superfluous, unnecessary distraction, potentially business destroying, extracurricular.
[0:38:13] LK: Exactly. I have to wear my two hats. So, I have to wear running the division, and then also being partners with them and being like, “Guys, like, I don't need the attitude or the negativity.” And that's where we'll go and have a really hard conversation in therapy, where we'll talk through that. If we're doing a music video, and we agreed I'll show up. When we're there, even if you're tired, or whatever it is, I don't want to feel it.
[0:38:37] JU: Commit to the bit.
[0:38:41] LK: Let's show up and don't make me have to motivate you in that moment. So, that's where we, kind of like leading into the therapy piece, where every week, we show up and have these really hard conversations and learn how to work with each other and learn how to have those hard conversations.
[0:38:59] JU: When did you all discover the need for or the value of therapy? When did you infuse it into your kind of regular rhythm of operations.
[0:39:10] JK: Lez, you want to take this? Because this was long before I was part of the journey.
[0:39:13] LK: Yes. So, Nick, and I have been seeing our business therapist, coach, Dr. James Gavin. I've been seeing him now for 12 years, Nick a little longer. Nick introduced him to me and Nick was introduced to him through another entrepreneur. And basically, I've always been a really big fan of therapy and working through whatever it is you need to work through. When we started Mid-Day Squares, Nick actually said, “The only way I'll really go forward with this partnership is if the three of us commit to business therapy as a tripod”, and especially you're dealing with very fragile relationships. So, brother, sister, brother-in-law, and husband and wife. So, there's a lot of complex relationships and you know what, Mid-Day Squares becomes a very successful company at the end of it all, and the three of us don't have our relationships, and what did we really win, we won nothing, right?
That was the commitment early on. Jake was never into therapy. He didn't really believe in it. He felt there was a negative connotation to it and he didn't believe in therapy early on, but he did trust us. So, he agreed to join the sessions. It's been the best thing that we've done as a partnership. We've been committed to it together for the last four and a half years. We show up religiously. I do twice a week. So, every Tuesday, it's either, it's on rotation to the tripod, or Nick and I. And then every Friday, it's my own personal session and we're super committed to it. And it has changed our partnership, it has changed us as humans, it's allowed us to learn how to have the hardest conversations with ourselves, with our teammates, with each other. And it's helped us to be more empathetic, it's helped us to learn how humans work, and it's challenged us in so many ways.
So, it's a line on our P&L. It's a very expensive line, but it's the best investment we can make to have a successful partnership. So, we really believe in it. I'll throw it to Jake.
[0:41:15] JK: I didn't believe it in the sense because I thought I was a frat boy. I was in competitive hockey. I was like, I thought I was the coolest kid on the block and I was so naive before doing it. I thought therapy meant you're broken and you're a failure. I say this now, and I say it, it's crazy that I even thought that then, that five years ago, that was a thing.
Today, I just had a therapy session this morning, an hour and a half and it was phenomenal. I wouldn't have lasted through this journey. I wouldn’t have lasted both personally and business-wise, because I need therapy to function. What I mean by that is to function optimally. I don't mean like breathing and living. I mean, being a great leader, a great entrepreneur, a great person, the world, and therapy is probably the best tool. I know, it's very expensive. And I know not everybody can afford it, and we as a society got to get better at that, on figuring out how we do that. But my perspective completely changed.
And the lesson that I'm trying to show you right now is you can see something one way and be so bought into that one way, and it can completely change, and that's the beauty of being open-minded, and trying things that may not be in your comfort zone.
[0:42:24] JU: Speaking of your P&L, I mean, I think it's an interesting point that you raised. How do you advocate for the value to – you've got VCs on your cap table. You've got investors. You mentioned fiduciary, responsibility earlier, right? How do you justify that use of resources? Has there been a battle there? I mean, Jake, you mentioned the battle that you had with your own identity. Has it been a battle to demonstrate the kind of demonstrable return? Or are the investors now, on the other end of the spectrum, telling all their other portfolio companies? You guys got to see this performance coach as well? How does that go?
[0:42:59] LK: Yes. I mean, they understand the importance of the relationship, and they understand the importance of us, needing what we need, and how that, if we are in the right mind, if we are working through our hardships that the company is going to excel. They fully understand and buy into it. I do believe they are pitching it to their other founders. I think, at the end of the day, the founders need to be in the right headspace, and that's how the company is going to propel itself forward. So, they've only seen success, and seeing the strength that it's created in this partnership.
One day, Mid-Day Squares hopes to be able to offer it to its team, like to the entire team of Mid-Day Squares so we can have it on site, a coach, a business coach, a therapist available on site. That would be the dream for us, because we believe everybody needs it.
[0:43:52] JU: Now, Jake, you want to talk for a second about the reframe. You mentioned this, I don't know if it was Twitter link. I follow you all in all of your different platforms. I don't know where it was. Maybe it's cross-platform. I thought it was a powerful reframe when you talked about there's a stigma associated it when I talked about this way. But then when I start talking this other way, it unleashed something for people. You want to share that?
[0:44:11] JK: Yes. So, I basically talked about alcohol consumption. Basically, over the last like three months, I haven't really drank alcohol. It's not that I've given up alcohol, by the way. If it's an occasion, I feel like I'll do it. I'll drink. It’s just that I don't like the feeling that I feel after and how it makes my stomach feel and the pains, anyways.
But long story short, I was on antibiotics starting January. I had a tooth removed and I needed to get antibiotics for it. And my friends are always, “Come out. Come out.” And I’d be like, “Oh, no, I'm I can't drink. I'm on antibiotics.” And no one would say anything. They go, “Yes, that's great.” When I wouldn't say it like that. They would say like, “Oh, just have one drink. It's all good. Don't be a baby.” I realized the mind perceives those things as different. If somebody doesn't want to do something in that space, they're considered weaker or less of. But if they're on some sort of medication, it justifies, “Oh, no, it's all good. Don't worry about it.”
So, I wanted to reframe that if somebody doesn't want to do something, it doesn't make them lesser or anything. Have respect for them and don't pressure them. I think that a lot of people go through this. I know my partner, Nick, does too, because he doesn't drink alcohol really anymore as well. People just need to take it easy and do them, instead of worrying about everyone else. This game of life is not about changing other people. The game of life is making you your best version, and you putting somebody down for not doing something is just bringing you down further. That was the big reframe I wanted to do, and it resonated so well. I think we got like 180,000 views on LinkedIn, and 494 comments, individual comments, people talking about this exact experience that they have. I was like, “Oh, my god, this is a problem. This is a real problem that people are going through and we just need to change it.”
[0:45:51] JU: If it's weakness, it's one thing. If it's performance, it's another thing, right? And making it about performance, not about weakness, but about strength, about enhancing strength. It's a radical reframe.
Okay, the last thing I want to do, I always love to know in the last couple minutes, I love to know about weird stuff. Weird stuff, meaning what is stuff that you do, tactics you employ, that you feel like nobody ever taught me this. And if somebody like watched me or saw that I do this, they think I was weird. I've had executives tell me they go into the stairwell and sing to themselves. I've had like a world-famous New York Times bestselling author telling me that she does her best work when she's laying down in bed working, right? She doesn't like to be at a desk.
There's stuff, I find, that's really useful to know. It could be like therapy, for example, where normalizing through storytelling helps people embrace their own weirdness, I think. So, I want to ask both of you, what's your weird thing you do, that you feel like you kind of need to justify or explain, but that you actually feel is a source of strength and superpower in your own pursuit of creative mastery?
[0:47:02] LK: I'm married to Nick and we sleep in separate rooms. We each individually have our own bedroom. I think many people look at that, or there's been a lot of judgments around how's the strength of your marriage? And odd that you guys don't sleep in the same room. But sleep is something very important, and good sleep is the key to being able to be really strong at work. We want to have ultimate focus and energy. So, for me, I need to sleep in my own bed, because that's how I'm going to have the best sleep. It's not about my relationship being healthy or not. It's really about making sure that I get in my proper sleep that I can tackle the day. And then I would say, I have my best, most creative thoughts while I'm getting a massage. So, I work while I get a massage. I have the same therapist –
[0:47:56] JU: Tell me the details of this, because I need to get on the massage train. How do you work while you have a massage? Please elaborate.
[0:48:02] LK: So, I mostly just do face down, so that way I don't have to turn around. Mostly I'm able to have my head through the face hole and work on my phone. I'm constantly just getting emails through, having creative thoughts, thinking through story ideas. Sometimes I'm on the phone. But two weeks ago, I tried to sneak in my laptop and she actually shut it down, just like, “Lezlie —” She's like, “I got to put a pause to this. You're not bringing your laptop in.”
[0:48:33] JU: Unreal. It's weird when the oils drip onto your keyboard. It's just weird, right? Okay, Jake, what about you? What's the weird thing that you do?
[0:48:41] LK: I love smelling my fiancé’s armpits when she has a slight amount of body odor, and the reason being is it gives me like a caffeine boost. I can't explain it. It's like, it's natural energy where I feel like I could literally get a performance after. I could go on a whole stage and light it up. It's kind of like a drug I do every day when she gets home from work, and she's very clean. By the way. Don't get me wrong.
[0:49:06] JU: Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Your secret is safe with me.
[0:49:09] JK: That's definitely something that I think is weird that people really judge, but gives me life. So, it's like, I always say, “Do you babe. Whatever you need.” What's yours?
[0:49:18] JU: I’m going to reciprocate? And I'm going to let you put yourself out there not joining you.
So, I've become totally obsessed with this idea of what Andrew Huberman calls NSDR, which is non-sleep deep rest, which is not unlike massage actually. But basically, it's just, you lay totally still for 20 minutes. You don't move a muscle. You don't necessarily sleep but you just enter this like amazing space. Last week, I kid you not, I was in Georgia doing a keynote for a nonprofit foundation for like 600 people. My keynote is right after lunch, and I've got a soundcheck at 12.45pm. I’m going on stage 1.30pm. I'm not dressed in my suit or anything. I'm like in my scrubs. There's morning sessions. I was listening to kind of get a vibe of the room. Then there's a lunch at like 12pm, I think it was 12.15pm. I ran to lunch. I hit the lunch buffet. I ate lunch. I finished my lunch by 12pm, I think it was 19 or 20, and then the sound guys were like, “Hey, we're early. You want to go do soundcheck?” I go, “No, I'm going to go take a nap. I'll be down in a minute.” They go, “Wait, what?” I said, “Yes, I'll be right back.”
I ran to the elevator, hit the sixth floor went up, laid straight up, straight down, set my clock for 21 minutes, went into like total dream state, timer went off. I put on my suit and I run downstairs. They're like, “There's no way you took a nap.” I go. “I did. I promise you.” They're like, “That's amazing.”
[0:50:39] LK: Andrew Huberman a machine. I love his stuff, too. It's so powerful.
[0:50:43] JU: It's good. Try it. Try it, NSDR. I mean, the key, I found, Lez, is you can't be like – for me, the magic really happens when I no longer know where my hands are. You know what I mean? All of a sudden, it's like, “Wait, are my fists closed?” I don't even know like that's where all of a sudden, I'm in this sweet spot.
So, Lezlie and Jake Karls, thank you for joining today. Mid-Day Squares. We love what you're doing, huge fans. We want to promote and support you in any way we can. Folks, go check out the product. They’re at Whole Foods, Sprout, and Target. All sorts of outlets. Yes. You got it there. The aforementioned offending color. Very nice. And any closing remarks that you want to give? Lez, Jake, anything you want to say? Last words?
[0:51:29] JK: Thanks for having us, Jer. This is a good time and love the conversation flow. I think these are the kinds of conversations that stimulate Lezlie and I, and give us more energy so we appreciate you.
[0:51:41] LK: Yes. Appreciate it. The conversation was great and just giving us a platform to share our story on is awesome. Agree with Jake, love the conversation, and really fired up to be here.
[0:51:50] JU: Thanks, y'all. Have a good one.
[0:51:51] JK: Thanks, Jeremy. You too.
[OUTRO]
[0:51:54] JU: By day, I'm a professor, but I absolutely love moonlighting as a front-row student next to you during these interviews. One of my favorite things is taking the gems from these episodes and turning them into practical tips and lessons for you and your team. If you want to share the lessons you picked up from this episode with your organization, feel free to reach out. I'd be thrilled to do a keynote on the secrets that I've gleaned from Creative Masters or put together a hands-on workshop to supercharge your next offsite adventure. Hit me up at jutley@jeremyutley.design for more information
[END]
The first question an innovator must answer is not “can I make it?” but rather, “should I?” This has become something of a mantra among CEOs I work with, as a needful protection against the gravitational pull of the organizational bureaucracy.