============================================================
TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
============================================================
[00:00] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_00: Hi everyone, I'm Phil Bliss, Founder and Host of Canada's podcast,
[00:10] SPEAKER_00: come to you from Toronto.
[00:11] SPEAKER_00: Today we're going to meet Alex Simonelli, who is the founder and CEO at Daydream Drinks.
[00:18] SPEAKER_00: Canada's first spotting water infused with hemp extracts and adaptor gems.
[00:26] SPEAKER_00: Alex, welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:28] SPEAKER_00: Great to see you.
[00:32] SPEAKER_00: First thing I mean, I've done a little bit of background.
[00:37] SPEAKER_00: Daydream Drinks, which is what you're founded and running,
[00:43] SPEAKER_00: tells a little bit more about it and why you started the venture.
[00:47] SPEAKER_03: Definitely, thanks Phil.
[00:49] SPEAKER_03: Daydream was started as a way to bring more calming moments to the world.
[00:55] SPEAKER_03: I saw the beverage market and I definitely saw an opportunity particularly in beverages where most of the older ones crowding the shelves are synthetic caffeine chemical or sugar filled beverages.
[01:06] SPEAKER_03: Personally, as someone who was drinking beverages almost every single day while working, I wanted something that was plant based that had no sugar.
[01:14] SPEAKER_03: I gravitated pretty quickly to Laquah on those kind of beverages, but there was no functional side to it.
[01:21] SPEAKER_03: Pretty much Daydream was built on the fundamental principle that in the future people will reach towards more plant based beverages, better for you alternatives than a caffeine or synthetic.
[01:32] SPEAKER_03: I'm sure there's still some people that swear by those or love them.
[01:35] SPEAKER_03: It's also a whole group of people that are more health-centric that we're speaking to as well.
[01:40] SPEAKER_00: But what made you move to the hemp products side of wellness?
[01:48] SPEAKER_00: As soon as you say hemp, everyone thinks cannabis and CBD.
[01:55] SPEAKER_00: I don't know what the difference is from.
[02:00] SPEAKER_03: The distinction between the two is hemp is below 0.3% CBD, so it's negligible.
[02:06] SPEAKER_03: We moved there because of the restrictions on building a CBD drink in Canada.
[02:11] SPEAKER_03: There was a lot of upfront cash burn.
[02:12] SPEAKER_03: I noticed quickly as a young entrepreneur about two years ago when I was starting that it wasn't really going to be...
[02:19] SPEAKER_03: I wasn't able to do the kind of marketing I wanted to do.
[02:22] SPEAKER_03: It wasn't really going to be able to be saling to launch something, even to test launch something and have an MVP just because of all the licenses needed.
[02:32] SPEAKER_03: I moved to hemp and I actually leaned more... heavy around the adaptogens, which are plant-based herbs that are anchored in the same kind of states that CBD is anchored in.
[02:43] SPEAKER_03: Productivity, relaxation, stress reduction, they provide those things.
[02:47] SPEAKER_03: There were no beverages with them.
[02:49] SPEAKER_03: I found them super interesting.
[02:51] SPEAKER_03: In the states, there's a whole category built out of it now.
[02:54] SPEAKER_03: In Canada, we can touch a little bit into this part of my process, but it was really about proving to the market that these should be part of the functional beverage market.
[03:05] SPEAKER_03: Canada is normally behind maybe a couple of years or so, maybe more arguably more.
[03:10] SPEAKER_03: I don't know when it comes to different products and trends.
[03:13] SPEAKER_03: That was the decision to go to hemp and then the customers and we started getting orders and the feedback came in and decided,
[03:19] SPEAKER_03: okay, that was a great pivot.
[03:20] SPEAKER_03: We're not going to touch CBD for now.
[03:23] SPEAKER_03: Maybe somewhere down the line, there's a daydream plus with some CBD in it.
[03:28] SPEAKER_03: But no CBD has also allowed us to penetrate and sell the product in the grocery market across Canada instead of just the limited number of cannabis stores.
[03:40] SPEAKER_00: The key thing is, you went to business school, you did this, you did that, and kind of think,
[03:48] SPEAKER_00: why are you becoming entrepreneur?
[03:50] SPEAKER_00: Why not go off and get a good job and work for somebody and stuff like that instead of taking risk and working 24 hours a day and that kind of thing?
[04:02] SPEAKER_03: Well, I actually do so the first time I was in school, I general business, then I started going economics and different things.
[04:08] SPEAKER_03: I dropped out and this one, when I went back for entrepreneurship, there's a program where I was able to build this business and get marks for it.
[04:14] SPEAKER_03: That was the only way I was going back to school because I wasn't really interested in doing stuff if it wasn't my own thing.
[04:21] SPEAKER_03: But I guess it's just always been an itch for me that I've had.
[04:25] SPEAKER_03: I've kind of done more entrepreneurship, I think, is the word.
[04:29] SPEAKER_03: So in the past, I built a friends company up, they did multi-million in sales and sold it, and then I was left without a job.
[04:36] SPEAKER_03: So, I'm only 25 now, so I said, you know what, before too much time passes, I'm going to start something on my own that I'm really passionate about that.
[04:46] SPEAKER_03: I love building teams, I love connecting with people, again, especially when it's something I'm passionate for.
[04:53] SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, I mean, entrepreneurship has always just kind of been for me the obvious thing.
[04:59] SPEAKER_03: I mean, I know in the classes, they would give all these discliners, like 90% of entrepreneurs are going to fail.
[05:05] SPEAKER_03: The businesses aren't going to pass, like, you know, X amount of revenue or get to the point of a meaningful valuation.
[05:11] SPEAKER_03: And for some reason, that never really scared me. It just kind of seemed like a disclaimer on something that I just looked past.
[05:18] SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, it's just always been in my nature.
[05:23] SPEAKER_00: So, lots of people, you know, looking at this and listening, thinking about going off on their own into their own business.
[05:33] SPEAKER_00: You know, it all seems so easy, but, you know, how do you do that?
[05:40] SPEAKER_00: How do you finance it? How do you actually, what actions do you need to break out and get things rolling and build your own business?
[05:53] SPEAKER_00: I mean, from your perspective.
[05:55] SPEAKER_03: Sure. Yeah, it's from my perspective. It's not an extremely glamorous story.
[06:00] SPEAKER_03: So, you know, I sold my condo to finance to finance daydream. So, I'll move back in with my parents.
[06:06] SPEAKER_03: I don't complain about that. I'm lucky enough that I had that option to move back in, or as to those other people's situation.
[06:11] SPEAKER_03: So, it's a grueling road. I don't think that, you know, I think you need to have the mental fortitude for it.
[06:17] SPEAKER_03: And, by no means in the world launch ownership of my wildly successful bynet worth, but I'm glad to see daydream, you know, growing as a company now.
[06:26] SPEAKER_03: So, it's like those risks I took weren't in vain. And I think that's what any entrepreneur just wants to see is return on their initial investment with their time, money.
[06:36] SPEAKER_03: And, yeah, so I think it's about being being bold. You know, I've don't, you know, I mean, yes, you need to have sound boards.
[06:46] SPEAKER_03: It's important to have advisors important to test your assumptions before you spend a lot of money. That would be key.
[06:51] SPEAKER_03: You know, you don't want to go and blow your brains out per se.
[06:57] SPEAKER_00: You know, you saw you, you saw your condo that that's that I get that we get the money. I asked what I asked another couple.
[07:09] SPEAKER_00: About three episodes ago and they said you just ask for it. And I thought that was, that was pretty funny.
[07:16] SPEAKER_00: Funny statement.
[07:17] SPEAKER_03: But, again, we're asking here though, you get the money from an investor like what?
[07:25] SPEAKER_00: You know, you obviously did that. You saw the condo because you used your own stake to get it rolled.
[07:34] SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, precisely.
[07:35] SPEAKER_00: But to keep growing, you know, sometimes that isn't enough. Many, many, many times it isn't, isn't enough.
[07:44] SPEAKER_00: How do you, how do you kind of work through that?
[07:47] SPEAKER_03: So, it's a mixture of two things. So, firstly, I was lucky enough to have a mentor in the CPG, which they had a food product space.
[07:54] SPEAKER_03: I'm called flourish pancake. So, his name is Andrew made a, he's a founder. We've been friends since we were kids.
[07:59] SPEAKER_03: I saw him in an attorney. I'd hang out around his office.
[08:02] SPEAKER_03: You know, you'd be like, don't you have anywhere to go? I'm like, no, I actually don't.
[08:07] SPEAKER_03: He's like, okay, then you're going to go wrap these palace for me in the warehouse.
[08:10] SPEAKER_03: So, I put in some sweat equity to get a coat, get some coaching with my, my, my friend.
[08:15] SPEAKER_03: And I learned really quickly that cash flow was the most important thing to be managing.
[08:20] SPEAKER_03: And I went really quickly, the kind of margins and the kind of way you have to build a business again to CPG.
[08:25] SPEAKER_03: So, the dollars I invested from selling my condo went a little bit further because I backed them with some education.
[08:31] SPEAKER_03: Meaning we were actually profitable our first year while growing.
[08:35] SPEAKER_03: So, I didn't lose money starting the business the first time. I lost the initial investment, but the business itself was profitable.
[08:41] SPEAKER_03: It could have easily been not if I wanted to just can grow it really quickly.
[08:45] SPEAKER_03: But I wanted to show profitability for investors. And then the second stage to that was raising money from investors as kind of that jet fuel to start moving, you know, the machine a little bit more.
[08:56] SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, you have some more money. And again, it's the discussion maybe internally between you and investors if you want to show, continue showing that profit if you can.
[09:04] SPEAKER_03: But a lot of companies are venture backed and they burn a lot of money and they constantly need money on their, on a run way, they call it.
[09:12] SPEAKER_03: And so, I think it's refreshing for some investors to be like, oh, you started this with your own money and it's, you can keep growing it profitably.
[09:17] SPEAKER_03: Well, but you could grow it quicker if you, if we raise more than fun, we get that.
[09:22] SPEAKER_03: But if you didn't have us, you could still grow it profitably. So that was kind of my approach. And I only knew how to structure the business, you know, with the protect my margins have enough for margins for attractive business in the grocery space with these wholesalers and traditional grocers.
[09:39] SPEAKER_03: You know, have enough for my op X and my cost of goods and the profit.
[09:43] SPEAKER_03: So I only knew that because I, because I had a mentor or someone I can hang around and learn from. So, yeah, that's so it was a mix of raising money and the structure.
[09:55] SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you don't. So because it's not a cannabis product, you know, you sell across Canada. Are you looking further afield?
[10:06] SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is sort of the big world. You're, you know, on the horizon, too.
[10:16] SPEAKER_03: That's a great question. Yeah, I think that once we've saturated and grown and really, you know, have our foothold in across Canada, because born and raised, I really want this product to be a Canadian product more than anything.
[10:31] SPEAKER_03: And we're on our way there now we're launching across all the, all the loblas and stuff. And I think this is, you know, this we had the story that we started with the first two years.
[10:41] SPEAKER_03: Had the unique brand unique ingredients to that story and now we're going to be building the data.
[10:45] SPEAKER_03: I think those two things together are going to enable us to look geographically for expansion, whether that's to the south of the US or elsewhere Europe Asia.
[10:54] SPEAKER_03: I think that, you know, where the team is super excited. We've talked about this kind of stuff, the investors have mentioned advisors have mentioned it.
[11:02] SPEAKER_03: So it's, I think we have an iconic brand, the Asian super iconic, the design is very, the visual identity.
[11:09] SPEAKER_03: It can cut through any language barriers. It's a cool brand unique and radiant set. Like I said, so I don't want to bring it across the globe.
[11:17] SPEAKER_03: Now this is obviously really far away. So yeah, it does fire me up to talk about that, you know, the future possibilities of that.
[11:26] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, we would you said you had you had a mentor, which is, it is very interesting.
[11:32] SPEAKER_00: How important is that to, you know, to someone building their business? I mean, not.
[11:40] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think that's an awesome question. So in, I'll put it this way, never really loses. It's important. So whether, you know, I had that first mentor who was my friend earlier on that, you know, that placeholder evolves over time.
[11:53] SPEAKER_03: Now I have, you know, advisors have come on as as investors.
[11:58] SPEAKER_03: We have, we just got an investor investment from e beyond and they brought on a great advisor for us, Alan Lindon, Linda who has 25 years in Unify.
[12:08] SPEAKER_03: We have a, a, a, a, a, 14 year executive from AP and Bev Tony Cohen, early investor and tequila, trombone, flow water and these manager in the hospitality business.
[12:20] SPEAKER_03: So I've been constantly building from, from my friend Andrew and who's still technically, I talked him every week.
[12:27] SPEAKER_03: You know, so you didn't go anywhere, but that need, you can't ever satiate that need because you need to have advisors and sound boards.
[12:34] SPEAKER_03: Ideally, the way we've structured it is our investors are also advisors. Then they have that interest as well.
[12:41] SPEAKER_00: Thinking about the advisor, thinking about certain a couple of advisory boards as well.
[12:45] SPEAKER_00: What's the best piece of advice you've been given that you keep on using?
[12:53] SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's tough because so much of the advice they give me is very specific to today's issue or whatever.
[12:59] SPEAKER_03: We're dealing with.
[13:01] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it isn't something about somethings, you know, we carry something around with us and say, oh, I better do it this way.
[13:10] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, I think that some of the things that earlier on were ingrained into me is just to really, you know, stand up for the ideals that you have.
[13:21] SPEAKER_03: If we're business, I think people want to be agreeable as often, but if you don't ask, you'll never know kind of thing.
[13:29] SPEAKER_03: So it wouldn't to not be agreeable all the time with your own ideals.
[13:33] SPEAKER_03: And I saw entrepreneurs doing that and I realized early on in reading some books as well that agreeableness is so unegrableness is actually one of the top five characteristics of most entrepreneurs successful entrepreneurs.
[13:45] SPEAKER_03: So I saw early on even with Andrew that I was mentioning, you know, the need to ask questions to push back on things to really struck.
[13:53] SPEAKER_03: So I have the good fight for your ideals.
[13:57] SPEAKER_03: I don't think any investor looks at that has look at the sky is being hassled and look at it like look how he's fighting for his business and I was going to fight to defend whatever, you know, the business evaluation, whatever happens to be when I invest as well.
[14:10] SPEAKER_03: So it's an attractive characteristic to have to a certain extent.
[14:14] SPEAKER_03: But yeah, I think that's one of the major things I learned.
[14:16] SPEAKER_00: You think you think like entrepreneurs are a bit weird.
[14:21] SPEAKER_00: You think they think we're wired differently.
[14:24] SPEAKER_03: Probably if friends are entrepreneurs and think of yourself, I mean, is this something just so a partner of mine in the business, since like earlier in the early in the business things Chris, you know, very strategic numbers oriented, you know, quantitative, where's I'm more qualitative.
[14:43] SPEAKER_03: We make a great team and he actually said, hang around with you.
[14:46] SPEAKER_03: I got more risk adverse like, you know, I noticed myself like thinking of things a little bit differently.
[14:51] SPEAKER_03: So I think I'm just maybe on to our hardwired to take a bit more risk.
[14:55] SPEAKER_03: We also need people like him to tether us down sometimes because there are times when he tells me something I said, you know what, I'm going to go based off this over our can strive.
[15:05] SPEAKER_03: I do have now and I'm not going to, you know, so I've also, I sort of changed right because being huge to risk risky.
[15:14] SPEAKER_03: You know, to be damaging as well for the business, but I think entrepreneurs inherently have that mentality of well, they must right obviously of gambling because they're.
[15:23] SPEAKER_03: There's so much of that gamble going on in the early days.
[15:27] SPEAKER_00: And was that in mind, you know, you know, what job wouldn't you like to do?
[15:34] SPEAKER_03: What job would job?
[15:37] SPEAKER_03: Well, I do a lot of everything in the business. I really enjoy the sales, the leadership aspect.
[15:44] SPEAKER_03: I do a lot of the numbers stuff, but I don't think I would want to do something where I'm trapped too much looking at numbers all the time.
[15:51] SPEAKER_03: I like to make things happen in the real world and then review those how they're have those actions, quantify through a numbers and better understand the impacts of what I'm doing, but I like to go right back out there.
[16:04] SPEAKER_03: So I'm very active.
[16:05] SPEAKER_03: COVID has obviously made that the last years all virtual for me, whereas I love to drive around travel, take meetings, go meet people, but go to stores, do demos.
[16:14] SPEAKER_03: So what I wouldn't want to be trapped behind too many numbers all the time without the real life aspect of it.
[16:27] SPEAKER_00: What's your favorite word, you know, or phrase or whatever that you like to use, you know, and what word do you hate?
[16:39] SPEAKER_03: Favorite phrase I would like to use.
[16:42] SPEAKER_00: The phrase, the like to use that's kind of, this is right.
[16:49] SPEAKER_03: I would say that strict strict with the vision flexible with the details. That's something that we say a lot.
[17:00] SPEAKER_03: Our ethos is also brand over everything in the company. We have a couple of other things. We kind of like our values that we write down.
[17:11] SPEAKER_03: I think that having integrity is extremely important, but that's not per se a sentence or something that I like.
[17:17] SPEAKER_03: I think the word, integrity is extremely important.
[17:23] SPEAKER_03: I think that the main thing that the word I would stay away, I guess you said, what is the word you hate hearing?
[17:31] SPEAKER_03: Was the second part of the question?
[17:34] SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's not so much a word. It's definitely, it's definitely excuses. I hate hearing the word no, but we all get faced with that.
[17:43] SPEAKER_03: He transformed that into not now, but later.
[17:50] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I would say that's.
[17:54] SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you're running very hard. How do you manage to find a balance?
[18:01] SPEAKER_00: Work load and relaxation? How do you manage to do that?
[18:08] SPEAKER_00: These are good processes that you need to follow to do that.
[18:14] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm a little bit everywhere. I tried to set these better schedules for myself. It's like, yes, at this time, I'm going to put everything away and then it never happens.
[18:26] SPEAKER_03: So I'm pretty much tethered to my phone, like always doing work.
[18:30] SPEAKER_03: The weekends, I take maybe Sunday off sometimes, most of the time I'm still working.
[18:34] SPEAKER_03: I am a really big believer in that whole, if you work X amount more than your competition or getting what they're getting done in 12 months and four.
[18:47] SPEAKER_03: I am a big believer in that. In the earlier days now, I could take a little bit of time to cool off.
[18:54] SPEAKER_03: I don't burn out and I get to leverage that with the help of my team. That's great.
[19:00] SPEAKER_03: Still a very small team, still not where we want to be yet in the landscape of things.
[19:06] SPEAKER_03: A lot of work to do, scaling up these stores, we're going to be in about a thousand stores.
[19:13] SPEAKER_03: There's just a ton of stuff to do, especially now with the Loblaws launch.
[19:17] SPEAKER_03: I was mentioning to you off recording. That is pretty much, I can elude myself and say, yeah, you deserve time off.
[19:27] SPEAKER_03: But the reality is there's too much to do. So it's just an illusion. I would be lying to myself to take time off.
[19:33] SPEAKER_03: I really just take some time when I feel like I'm burning out and I switch gears.
[19:37] SPEAKER_03: But I have a very active mind. So I end up just filling that time with other stuff, like working out or reading.
[19:44] SPEAKER_03: So I don't really just kind of shut off. That to me isn't really relaxing.
[19:49] SPEAKER_03: Feels kind of like wrong to totally shut along.
[19:52] SPEAKER_00: Even morning or a night person. I'm a night person.
[19:58] SPEAKER_00: So you get most of your, most of your good ideas after 7 o'clock in the evening.
[20:04] SPEAKER_03: Yes. I write like a mad man at night. I get all my emails. I schedule send them.
[20:10] SPEAKER_03: If you get an email from me at eight o'clock on the nose, it's just the auto schedule send time that Google gave me.
[20:16] SPEAKER_03: My team is like, dude, my team is like, dude, I'm getting emails from you at like 12 one in the morning.
[20:21] SPEAKER_03: And my team schedules, like they love and Chris, who I mentioned earlier, my partner, he wakes up, you know, business partner wakes up at six, gets my emails from one of the morning.
[20:31] SPEAKER_03: And answers all of them all. I'm still sleeping. So it's like, but and then you know, like during the afternoons and stuff, I'm still working too.
[20:38] SPEAKER_03: So that's normally when I schedule my in person video, not in person video meetings, right now.
[20:46] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, what inspires you? What are the top three things that you know, that inspire you?
[20:58] SPEAKER_00: I mean, there may not be three, maybe one, maybe do whatever, just throwing the number out.
[21:04] SPEAKER_03: It does, yeah.
[21:07] SPEAKER_03: When I see somebody going after their ideal situation in life, their ideal, you know, like I was reading recently, I'm still reading a book from and and Rand called the fountainhead.
[21:20] SPEAKER_03: And he talks about the, you know, I'm man striving for his, you know, or ideals in life.
[21:30] SPEAKER_03: That would have been that we are kind of the masters of our own fate. And although sometimes circumstances for people's lives are completely different than other people's, you know, there's a certain innate drive that all of us have.
[21:45] SPEAKER_03: At some point for something we want to see and do in our life, not for everyone, it's not entrepreneurship.
[21:50] SPEAKER_03: It's not starting. This is looks crazy to some people, like you said, or just not attractive. They just want X or Y. And I would say awesome.
[21:58] SPEAKER_03: So if you know what that thing is, it go after and that really that inspires me to, you know, want to go after that ideal situation for my own life, for my business.
[22:10] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[22:12] SPEAKER_00: So you mentioned a book, or your book, whatever, you know, at least from my perspective, from many of the people that are talking to their books are important.
[22:23] SPEAKER_00: They're where they get, you know, some, some of their deeper, deeper ideas from what would you recommend to somebody out there that sort of maybe had, you know, again, you carry carrying that stuff around in your head.
[22:41] SPEAKER_03: Yeah. Yeah. When I finished recently that an advisor and investor of mine gave me and I'm really grateful for that is the big finish.
[22:50] SPEAKER_03: You know, that book, I think for someone who's in the stage, maybe not right in the startup stage, right.
[22:56] SPEAKER_03: Or actually in the stage of the business, it's really great talks about kind of the peril slash, you know, modes of thinking that you should be in when looking to scale up your business, what's important and eventually the sell, you know, how the sale of your business affects yourself mentally.
[23:15] SPEAKER_03: Some people are, are left still feeling, along you for something because so much of their, of their personality was grown through developing this business or the connections they made or this, their soul still in it.
[23:29] SPEAKER_03: But, and also talks about things to look out for when building your business and sell and selling the business.
[23:36] SPEAKER_03: And it's just all around great, great read talks. It gives a lot of real life examples, which is nice. So you get all these different perspectives, real businesses that you may have actually even heard of like talk about Ben and Jerry's own point like Stony Creek yogurt that's selling to the known.
[23:49] SPEAKER_03: So it's like real products that you may know.
[23:53] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's a really great book and I, as I mentioned, I'm reading that Anne Ren book. I have not even got a dent in it, the things of hologram, like, you know, it's, it's awesome.
[24:06] SPEAKER_03: And I have heard a lot about her philosophy for for me.
[24:09] SPEAKER_03: This is my first time really getting into her philosophy. So I don't really want to, I probably not all if I talk too much about it, but I am a really big philosophy reader as well. So not just, you know, fiction. I'm a big nonfiction philosophy reader.
[24:27] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's right.
[24:29] SPEAKER_03: Insight and I kind of feels like when I read something that feels like, okay, that really that resonates me because I'm going through that I don't feel so alone anymore. I feel like now even stronger purpose because there's somebody writing about this, you know, unique situation that I'm, or emotion that I'm feeling or this drive that I'm feeling.
[24:46] SPEAKER_03: So I definitely like to read more philosophy that's around striving for things versus versus just general.
[24:58] SPEAKER_00: Okay.
[24:58] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what are the top two or three things on what I would say your inspired lifeless. Those things that you know, that you really cherish kind of thing.
[25:12] SPEAKER_03: Travel for me would be a big one. I love to travel. I'm also a huge believer that for me personally, once I do a lot of traveling, I usually am excited to go home. So I did this.
[25:23] SPEAKER_03: I just didn't have traveling two years ago in between when I wasn't working on anything. So this was right before daydream. I lived in in Europe, visited Italy, Sardinia and lived in Berlin for about three months in Germany. And I by the end of it, I wanted to go home so bad.
[25:41] SPEAKER_03: I really felt like I need to start something like I had all these things pent up. I was like, this is great. The vagabond lifestyle, but it's also there's so I get so much fulfillment from building something building, you know, the business.
[25:56] SPEAKER_03: So I think the other thing would be just, you know, I think everyone's striving for a level of financial independence to be in a place where you can just do the things that you want to do in the business, not necessarily.
[26:10] SPEAKER_03: You've done well in business and life. And so you can pursue ideas or I would love to help help entrepreneurs when I'm older. Right. And being a place like the people who helped me.
[26:21] SPEAKER_03: That would be awesome. Right. Like so these are things that keep me going in the background. Right. Yeah.
[26:29] SPEAKER_00: You know, that's really been an interesting session. You know, I really enjoy Alex. How can people get a hold of you if they've got some questions.
[26:40] SPEAKER_00: Just just which is which is the best way for them to connect basically.
[26:46] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, you can reach out to us on Instagram. So daydream is at daydream. You can shoot me an email.
[26:55] SPEAKER_03: You can check the general lines. It's high at drink daydream.com.
[27:02] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's those would be the best ways you can check us out online as well.
[27:05] SPEAKER_03: We have a lot of WWW.drinkdaydream.com. That's you know, we do free shipping across all of Canada. So people want to give the the waters a sip and a sample.
[27:17] SPEAKER_03: They can do that for we have a pretty sweet discount going on pretty much most of the time and plus the free shipping set the best way to get a sample packs probably through the website.
[27:29] SPEAKER_03: And there's also a store locator on there. So people can see if it's around them in stores and stuff in case it's like right beside them and they don't want to wait for shipping.
[27:39] SPEAKER_03: But yeah, that would be the best way if you want to directly get a hold of me, you know, just just shoot me to that address and I usually check all them.
[27:47] SPEAKER_00: Okay. Well, thanks.
[27:54] SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
[27:54] SPEAKER_03: Appreciate it. Great questions and really really had a great time talking with you.
