Beverage innovators, here's what you need to know for 2025, courtesy John Herman of BERO, Alex Doman of Stiller's Sodas, and insights from 2,000 members of Highlight's product testing community.

In this edition of the Highlight Reel, we will cover:

• Growth opportunities in the non-alcoholic space
• The growing importance of functional drinks and ingredients
• How "better for you" trends will shape beverage innovation

Watch the episode on-demand, and don't miss the accompanying consumer research report, too!

Automated Webinar Transcript

 Pri Carr: Hello and welcome to the Highlight Reel an interview series with CPG leaders who are blazing innovation across the industry. I’m Pri Carr President and COO at Highlight. And today I'm joined by John and Alex, who are trailblazers in the industry. And are going to talk to us about the innovation. So John and Alex, can you introduce yourselves to us?

John Herman: So happy to be here. My name is John Herman. I'm the CEO and co-founder of the new to world nonalcoholic brand, BERO. I have a long history in better for you categories and brands, including, the likes of Nutrabolt and C4, where I was president for about eight years and then a number of years in other or, companies as well. But excited to be here.

Pri Carr: Excited to have you, Alex.

Alex Doman: Thank you for having me. I’m Alex Doman I'm very excited to be called a CPG trailblazer for the first time. I am the current co-founder and CEO of a business called Stiller's, which is yet to launch, which, I don't like to say it's in stealth mode because that's not our thing, but it's not launched yet, so it's difficult to describe it other than it's going to be a better for you soda. Launched with the celebrity Ben Stiller, which is very exciting. And I am in the process of dissolving AVEC drinks, which was my first, drinks business, which I co-founded with Dee Charlemagne, which was effectively like a modern American Fever-Tree. So less sugar, high quality ingredients and American style flavors.

Pri Carr: That's awesome. I'm really excited to see, Stiller’s soda when it comes out. It does seem a little stealth because I tried to Google it and I couldn’t find anything. So. But I'm excited to hear about it start with you, Alex. So you've been working in the nonalcoholic space with AVEC, as you mentioned. And coming up with Stiller’s soda. Tell me about some of the big trends that you're seeing in the space. How is the industry evolving both in nonalcoholic beverages and in the beverage industry in general?

Alex Doman: Sure. So my history in the space is I was a strategy consultant. This is now sort of years ago, and I was working with a ton of restaurants and CPG businesses about their proposition and saw some of this coming, mostly through a better for you lens. It was clear that the food system we had wasn't fit for purpose. And that included the amount of sugar in our diet and also the amount of alcohol that we were consuming. And for, for a very long time, I thought, you know, why is no one doing anything about this? And then I got kind of a bit fed up and decided I might go and do something about it. And at the time, this is now. So years ago, the UK and Europe was on a bit of an non-alc kick. And there were big brands being minted like Seedlip, who were an innovator. But it wasn't really, you know, this is when I launched AVEC So it was the non-alc scene was very nascent in the U.S.. I think Boisson, which is the big non-alc, retailer that's now no longer with us. Or, it had started in around the same time. So the UK, Europe and Australia had sort of started this sort of non-alc trend. I came to the US, it was quite nascent. But like a lot of things that happened in America, as soon as soon as we got on to over here. The creation and innovation and now dominance you would say of, of the non-alc set has been amazing. And to see it go from, you know, when I first started pitching AVEC people said people don't really care about sugar and people love to drink. This is right? And you know, we pitched that. you know we continued to pitch the business, of course, as we, you know, over the next couple of years. And people didn't answer that question. you know, answer that question in, as the non-alc trend has, you know, gone from strength to strength. So that's that's sort of like a big picture answer, right? Which is, slow to it. And now probably world leader in non-alc and here in the US.

Pri Carr: Do you see and and I’d love for you John, to weigh in as well. But do you see that trend continuing growing some of the data that we collected at Highlight? You see over 55% of people having tried nonalcoholic beverages in the last six months. And I can say from my experience, in my younger years, I don't think that was a thing, before. So how do you see that evolving?

John Herman: It's really coming down to just mainstream adoption. You know, there have been statistics that show non-alc is, you know, to % of the total category right now. And then there's forecasts that say, it’ll get to, I've even seen as high as and above percent of the total category. You know, a lot of the work and the trailblazing that had to be done when the questions were being asked of, why does this deserve to exist? That hard work has been done, and now you have consumers looking for it, albeit still a major opportunity for awareness to expand. Retailers thinking about it and bars reconsidering what should their menu look like to really service their guests at a higher level. In a post-Covid world where people are going out far less so, how do you how do you remain relevant to really the people that are visiting your establishments so that growth is going to be fueled not by, in my opinion, a sub ecosystem of non-alc, which is a niche culture or a complementary culture to the mainstream. It will just become part of mainstream because it's going to be an expectation of consumers that whether they are fully sober, taking a day off, taking a month off, or my mission in this whole thing with BERO is to come up with a better term than zebra striping. But mixing alcohol with nonalcoholic. I think there's just this mainstream adoption that is happening and will continue to happen.

Alex Doman: To add to that. One of the things that I was a big advocate, at AVEC was that each category is different. You know, they aren't all created equal. And now joining nonalcoholic beer, and other sort of nonalcoholic wines where there's a sort of one for one comparison. Right? You know, nonalcoholic wine, like, now, nonalcoholic beer is a very defined category with a market which, as you say, is going to continue to grow outside of those, you know, when you get into functional nonalcoholic beverages or in AVEC’s case, a sort of adult soft drink that you could mix with alcohol or mix with a non alcoholic spirit or have by itself a lot more blending is going on. Right? So when I started in the category, AVEC was considered very, explicitly, non-alc by retailers, most importantly. Right. And as the years have gone by, it's not become the amount of innovation that's going on. Whether it's people like hop water who really blend the lines. Right. Or functional beverages who are looking to, you know, like, like Recess or whomever. The difference between, like, being explicitly non-alc and having, you know, just this blend to, drinking nonalcoholic drinks, which aren't necessarily quote unquote, non-alc. Right? Right. And that, you know, extends to functional beverages and on, an adult soft drinks. And actually a lot of innovation is going on there.

Pri Carr: Right. And I think the data is pretty clear here. And, John, you have a lot of, industry experience in the health and wellness thing, but the better for you trend. So, we're doing it for our health, for our well-being. Overall, how do you see that trend influencing the beverage industry in general? And the adoption of it and it's top of mind for me right now with the surgeon general's warning on alcohol and cancer risk. But there's a lot of talk, in my friend group about what is actually better for you. Where how do we create a healthier, more balanced lifestyle? Overall. So how do you see a changing.

John Herman: Yeah. Taking a step back from nonalcoholic beverages like BERO or AVEC, all these, like, categories that are massive sodas, energy drinks, beer, wine. They're just being redefined for the next generation. So better for you. While it's, a good catch phrase and term, ultimately, it comes down to people are becoming more educated about what they're putting in their body, and they're discerning what they don't want to have. But ultimately, everybody still wants to indulge. But the legacy brands aren't checking the box for the next generation of consumers. So when Poppi and Ollipop started really building this probiotic prebiotic soda category, it wasn't about gut health. It was really about the evolution of soda. And you've seen that trend translate to Poppi taking a different stance on. I think it's the future of soda is here or whatever their term that I might be butchering. The same thing happened in my past with energy drinks, Red Bull and Monster and Rock star. They were untouchable. Until better flavors, zero sugar functional ingredients enter the category and now this idea of performance energy, which was all grounded in better for you, is a massive TAM. And that was driven by brands like C4 in my past or Celsius or many others. That same thing is happening here. So I think it's just a more educated consumer making better decisions about what they're putting in their body because they're worried about how they feel tomorrow and they're worried about how they feel years from now. And it’s just making the legacy brands have to either evolve or die.

Pri Carr: Alex, so as you're thinking about Stiller’s Soda, which angle are you thinking of? Leaning in, is this a nonalcoholic beverage or better for you beverage?

Alex Doman: This is to my previous point, right? Which is I strongly believe that if you take a step back and you and you put your self in the consumer shoes and not the retailer or the, beverage entrepreneur's shoes, people don't discern really between, you know, non-alc or better for you or whatever. They just go, I want to drink. And this is this point is made so clear to me because, you know, consumers really don't know the difference between a seltzer and a soda. And, or whenever someone I kind of pitched the idea, yesterday for Stiller’s and he went, oh, I love seltzer, I love Spindrift. And, you know, for us as people in the category, those a totally different categories that’s a near water drink. That's not even in our category. It's not even close. Right? But that's not the point to consumers. You know, don't distinguish.. And so you have to be thinking about the whole share of mouth, not just your category. And so for Stiller’s, we're, we're going to play into what, what John just talked about. Right. Which is, the legacy brands. Have got classic innovator's dilemma, which is to say they have they have, kind of backed into this false dichotomy of full sugar, you know, so in Coca-Cola's case, grams of sugar, which is, you know, depending on which country you're in, either more than your entire daily sugar intake or around about what you should have. in one can right. Or zero zero, but they get to it artificially. So whether it's Coke Zero or Diet Coke, you know, there's this whole thing last year about aspartame. You know, does it cause cancer? Yes or no. You don't really want to have that, you know, hanging over your product. And then Coke Zero is artificial. And so we're going to be doing something that's taking a leaf out of the Ollipop and Poppi playbook, which is all natural, low calorie, low sugar, but delicious soda.

Pri Carr: How do you, keep up with the innovation in this space as well? So there are other entrants, in this space. Or you think of Stiller's, AVEC if you think of, how do you distinguish yourself, from the competition in the field, not just the legacy players, but the other innovative disruptors that are in there. What makes you different?

John Herman: You know, I, I think, intuition can't be undervalued, like having a good gut and being able to look at a category and understand the consumer, but then approaching it with, you know, no ego to understand that you may not know everything. So you want to rely on research as well, but it's just fascinating if you think about, like the innovative retailers where you go out and you're I mean, we are consumers, so we're constantly learning about, you know, naturally what could be a great option for me. But being able to walk a shelf and say, okay, I understand the positioning here because you have a brand background potentially, but this is the audience not being spoken to. And, you know, really just you're going to be wrong. A lot. And that's where I think research comes in. But, just intuition and gut and being passionate about what you do like, it excites me to create brands and create products. And, you know, you don't have to bat a thousand. You know, you bat three hundred. You're in the Hall of Fame and Major League Baseball. I think it's probably the same in CPG. But like being able to read those occasions and, and also think about your own occasions. I think taking a step back to the non-alc metaphor, you discussion the really three things that play I think one, there's a reality that the only non-alc option for so long was club soda and lime and that's fine, but you get tired of just having club soda and lime. The second big piece is the culture of are you allowed to drink a nonalcoholic beverage in an alcohol setting? And the culture is evolving. It's not that judgment of like, sure, you'll so have it, but like, you're not going to get the peer pressure of, come on, grab a real drink, grab something else. Because they're becoming better options than just the club soda and a lime, and the third, they're still very much a ritual of drink. And it's just the evolution of what that looks like. We were doing a brand launch and kick off at Art Basel Miami, and probably the drink I saw the most. There was one of those functional sodas, and, like, the idea is I want to be out. I want to have a good time. I want to have something that tastes really good, but I don't want to miss out on the social interaction. But the confluence of those three things that like, even if you're not a brand innovator, I think a lot of people can probably identify with how do you drive the change there? And that's where the intuition, I think comes in.

Pri Carr: Alex, as you're thinking about Stiller’s soda coming in, to the market, how are you thinking about differentiating yourself from the other, sodas that might exist? Or even in, in a customer's mind who thinks seltzer is the same as soda because it's just another drink.

Alex Doman: I'm trying to think of how much I should give away, but, you know. I think there's always, you know, I find innovators in this space fall into one of two camps. Do you listen to the data and take a data driven approach, or do you take an intuition level approach? And I think that, both can work. I think that they don't, you know, the, the truth is, is that I think the best people know that you have to do both, you know, you should be making decisions made on taste and intuition. With all the, the data that you can get right. Because data is never perfect. You know, we, we do this we do all these surveys to like, Highlight do. And you're only getting a snapshot of information and you don't want to just, like, take it for what it is. You know, you kind of need to, interpret it amongst all the other data with all the other data points and kind of get a North Star for your business. Now, with Stiller’s in particular, because that was the question is, how are we thinking about differentiating ourselves? Is we personally think that the mainstream drinker has been left behind by a lot of the innovation. A lot of the innovation has been because it's really quite early. I mean, that it's difficult to describe how fast real habits are changing in the US specifically. I mean, they're changing globally, but from a from a non-alc perspective, it is frightening how fast the changes in terms of habits, I mean the non-alc shelf didn't exist in most retailers two and a half years ago. Seriously. And it's now in every major grocery store. And when we went on the store with AVEC drinks, it was amazing to see that the we were competing with very established brands on the shelf straight off the bat. Such was the demand, right? So the that's to say things are changing really quickly. It's difficult to make decisions. But we at Stiller’s think that a lot of the innovations happen for the coasts and that's necessary like necessarily so Right. Because these people are the people who are often changing the habits the fastest. And we think that is, a chance for a bit of this is a geeky term, but second mover advantage, in going, hey, this is a mass change is happening where, all these changes and habits are being thrown up in the air. How are they falling? Where do we, you know, a bit of reading of the tea leaves. Where do we think they're going to fall? And, I'm picking a new proposition that we think is more, applicable to a larger audience.

Pri Carr: Yeah. I work at Highlight, so I clearly believe in the power of data. But I do think that, the combination of intuition and data to guide where to direct that intuition, because you may, it may pull you in multiple directions, at one time, which has been my experience in work, that there are two paths that sound pretty good. For us to go after can be really, really powerful. Thinking back a little further behind in your careers, for our listeners who are thinking of launching their own products or renovating their products that are out in the market, any lessons to share, about what you wish you'd done differently in past, past, beverage launches, things that you might want to change around. And, Alex, I'll start with you, because you’re dissolving a business. Lots of learnings.

Alex Doman: I wrote myself a list of, why I shouldn't set up another beverage brand as I was dissolving, AVEC and it basically comes down to, you know, one key point with four sub bullets, which is don't start a beverage brand if you don't have unfair advantages. Out the get go. If you do so, you can still win, but it's going to take you a long time. Yeah. So if you want to, if you want to have one of these, exits that everyone hopes for, you have to start with one of four advantages, right? I call it my loading the bases theory so I can feel like I can relate to Americans a bit better. And it's, you know, unfair advantages in access to customers distribution. Lower cost and, access to capital. And if you, you know, if you look at the story of beverage, Most of the big success stories have had at least two of those four things out. The guy out the get go, you know, and that was a big learning for me with AVEC, because we kind of did everything that you were supposed to do, right? We turned up for our seed round with all of the like, best in class KPIs that we were told that we would need. And then, you know, we I mean, there was sort of a great liquidity crisis going on in early stage consumer, but, at the time but, That was a big learning, right? Which is don't go out. We’re using baseball analogies this is so fun. Go don't go out swinging. Load the bases. Yeah.

John Herman: Maybe I think for me, I'm naturally I think I'm pretty optimistic in, in life. But optimism can be a really dangerous thing when you're starting a business because you'll be blinded because of course your baby is the prettiest baby and, you know, everything's perfect. And I think having too much optimism probably prevents you from seeing what's around the corner and seeing where you're failing. And that could be failing in positioning capabilities. Allocation of funds. But like trying to tone down optimism, I think is a big learning for me. And then secondarily, I think focus is a very important word. I think focus is something I absolutely struggle with. You know, you go into planning seasons and you think, here are the three things we need to get done. And quickly the three become six. And you realize that you've lost focus. Or even when you think you have focus, it's easy to take on more than you can really be successful with. So I am, I'm a recovering, probably overly less focused person. But, you know, I think my team keeps me in check, and I can't, agree enough that that, like, the check boxes of product market fit, operational capabilities and actually funding to do so those three things like you can't you can't really be successful if you don't check two of the three of those boxes. Really strong foundation science.

Pri Carr: That's been my experience running businesses is I've actually run maybe the same business started and shut it down multiple times in my career. And sometimes the timing just wasn't right. And it was these fundamentals of like, is the market willing to put money behind something at this point, even though the foundation is right? And then sometimes it was just execution. And so it sounded like a great idea that we should go pursue it. Didn't turn out to be the best idea at that time.

John Herman: And, and what are you wired to do? I think, you know, BERO, we're creating a premium nonalcoholic beer brand. We're not doing the hard work that some other brands did for the past eight years, creating the category, convincing people it mattered, getting the contracts, brewing capabilities up and running. We're coming into a very hot category, and we're saying, hey, we don't want to make nonalcoholic beer. We want to make a great beer that happens to be nonalcoholic. It's a completely different skill set. So also know what you're signing up for, because building a category from nothing is a lot harder than building something that is starting to get momentum.

Pri Carr: Yeah. I’m gonna piggyback on that point. One of our research findings on why people are choosing nonalcoholic beverages is, the primary reason people choose that is actually for the taste. They want something not just that's better for you, but something that's delightful, on taste. So how do you actually taste? Seems like something that's so intuition driven, so personal. But how do you think about? We're actually going to nail that? That spot was like, create a great tasting beverage.

John Herman: So when we were starting BERO, it was, you know, Tom Holland is my partner and co-founder. He has an amazing and authentic story about his sobriety and why he was looking for the brand. I had operational background and capability. I like beer, he likes beer. We didn't know the first thing of making beer. So the first hire we had was a tremendous brewmaster. 40 years experience, worked for Sam Adams start up his own brewery. So the first was we added the talent to really make sure that we could overdeliver on the expectation, because again, it wasn't, oh, that's a good non-alc beer. Like, I want to be able to do a Pepsi challenge one day and have BERO up against, you know, your mainstream beers and have people say like, oh, that's the best tasting beer there is. So it was making sure we have the talent and the expertise on the team. This is something that I have been I mean, I was a strategy consultant in my previous life and did a lot of this, so, you know, this sort of, surveying work and brought that into my, my current, my current world and the word taste. And we've started adding refreshing as well, because it comes up a lot in soda is such an interesting one to me. And my worry about it is, you know, because that's basically, one of our key insights is really the thing that people care about most is taste. Let's make the tastiest product we can. And so that's how we're measuring everything, right? Which is, you know, do we in a taste test, blind taste test with XYZ, competitor who wins, you know, and we're not going to launch until we think we have the winning product. Right. Which is a really good, metric to have and really focuses the business, which is fantastic.

Alex Doman: My, you know, because a lot of our conversations have been the value of data and all this. I think one of the interesting things is, do people mean that like, what do they mean when they say taste is the most important thing? Or is that a, is like a truism, you know? And so that's something I wrestle with a lot is, is when you ask about something, what you're tasting, what's your the most important thing, you know, to taste like. Okay. That's interesting. Is it. You know, and if you look at lots of products on the market who are hugely successful and I think would fail the taste test badly or name any names, but it isn't necessarily always the best tasting product. So I think it's an it's an interesting.

Pri Carr: Yeah. I mean it's it's fascinating there. I mean we're Highlight, we do research and a lot on the sensory, side. And there are ways to ask questions that are more nuanced, that are less likely to lead to truism. But it's interesting. It's almost always a combination of factors. So people will say, taste is great. I will say from my personal experience, if I'm spending calories on something, I want it to be worth those calories. And, I'm a wine drinker. And when I moderate my wine consumption, it is for, for a and wine for me is a lot about the social experience, the taste experience, the stories behind, all of those. But it's all of those things that come together. So it's really hard to study on a single dimension. But, it's why at Highlight, we believe, it’s like you need to keep innovating, renovating what you've built, and keep extracting insight from who your target customer is on how they're evolving in their journey and it's especially hard and more needing of data, when the customer preferences are also evolving as rapidly as they are in this category.

Alex Doman: And I'll say that the interesting thing about the taste metric is that, to an extent, we view it as the, sort of, as an objective thing. But the truth is, is that, you know, the same wine, you could put the same wine in an expensive looking bottle next to, you know, the same wine and people would say that the one that would look more expensive tasted better. Yeah. So it's, you know, taste is actually not just, funnily enough, isn't just about the objective taste on your it's a component. Right? It's like it's very rarely just about an objective. Right. Right. But that's an interesting thing for an innovator. Right. It's like okay. Well so that isn't an objective metric. How do we define taste. It's you know we found this a lot with AVEC is how your can looks feels, contributes massively to taste. You know that's difficult to innovate for.

Pri Carr: Yeah. It's been one of our actually our top things to study is packaging. And the package experience a blinded experience versus a package experience of what does that lead to? In the sensory experience of, something. And it's fascinating to see that it is.

John Herman: I think the easiest way to describe it is it's all a multi-sensory experience that gives you taste and feeling and affinity, and liking, of a product. So that's super fun. I mentioned intuition, we did a ton of research on BERO, whether it be a myriad of packaging opportunities, naming, and then of course, we I think we had people taste test our beer compared to other leading within the space. And there are a few that did really well. There was one, this one actually, our hazy IPA, we're watching on video. And you know, the early rounds we were getting ripped apart and, you know, that hurt me, now mind you. Again. My my brewmaster, who's amazing, he's watching it. And like, you know, he took that as an opportunity to rethink and do better. And we tweaked it to something better. But like, I think it goes back to if you think you have the individual components when they put together, they tell your brand story, great. But then when you kind of break them apart to can they stand on their own? It's not an exact science, but we, we definitely learned a lot during this taste test about the opportunity. Yeah. We found it critical to get the authentic information right, like in contact, in context that you are making those decisions.

Pri Carr: All right, so, let's talk a little bit about the better for you category and how that's evolving. So the better for you term, at least in my life, has meant many, many different things. There's a new fad that comes out of what it means for something to be better for you. So as you think about it, what does better for you mean for BERO? What does it mean for Stiller’s soda? And how do you think that that definition is going to evolve over time?

John Herman: So for me, better for you can be you mentioned the word fad or trend. And hopefully and you don't know. And so, you know, you're hitching your wagon to...do you hitch your horse or do you hitch a wagon. Okay. Well, hitching the wagon to the trend horse and not the fad horse, you like it better for you trends like keto. A few years ago, I'm not sure. Like people are still doing keto diets, but it's not the rage that it once was. So, you know, to identify the trends that connect to it. To me, it goes down to like, just what is the addressable market that you're getting into? My hope is that we're not creating a brand that's niche and small. We're able to create something with scale that can really make an impact to a lot of people's lives. And I think that comes across in how we're seeing retailers really react to the brand and react to the positioning. And I'm by no means disillusioned to think it's because I'm in the room talking to them like Tom and his story and like his involvement with the brand. It comes through so well. And what that's really resulted in is some amazing strategic partnerships. So, you know, the moment we presented this brand to Sprouts, they wanted to be the first retailer carrier and they rushed to make it happen. Then we were having conversations with Target, which has been absolutely a dream come true with end caps across stores and all of the support and integration from top to bottom, that's resulted in us being the number one NA beer brand and the number nine beer brand holistically in their set. In the first two weeks of being out there, to working with a retailer like Amazon who literally realized they weren't in the NA space, and had to rewrite regulatory code to allow us to ship and have age gating and make work on their platform. Those proof points with these like giant, influential retailers. It really told me that there was this trend where better for you meets a really meaningful category that is alcohol or beer, and retailers are seeing that they need to get behind it because that's the evolution. So it's been a real I think it's been a pleasure to see that confirmation that, again, it's not just me falling in love with what we're building. It's like other people can see the potential there too. And yeah, I think it gives me a lot of hope that, like, this instance a better for you can be a trend and something that will continue to build

Pri Carr: a real persistent one.

Alex Doman: For me, I think we're coming to this, point where we might be achieving that awful word balance. It's sort of something that I think we've been teetering on the edge of, for a long time. We have all these diets come out and there's this and there's that. And I think this is I'm an optimist, which you have to be kind of an entrepreneur. And I think, we, you know, transparency of information, you know, is improving asymmetries of information. You know, in decline. And I think that whether it's, you know, how people are drinking or, what people are, you know, whether it's non-alc, alc. And you said zebra striping, but, you know, I think people are really folding in non alcoholic options into their every day. And people will get to choose, both when they're at home and out. And I think the same is true in food and, sort of the soda world, which is I think people are going to start to look away from full sugar, gram of sugar options and zero zero and question like, how do I how do we get there, you know, and go for something which is tastes great, is all natural, is naturally low in sugar and calorie. Right. That's where I think we're headed.

Pri Carr: I think the key word on balance is a really powerful one. And our data also showed that it's actually you won't find a bunch of people who are on extreme ends on the data if, like, I'm a never drinker, I will never, ever touch alcohol to I'm a binge drinker or I drink every, every single night. But you see a lot in the middle of people trying to figure out what is that moderate and balance. What is that balance that is healthy for me. And that's also more sustainable. So it becomes less of a fad and more of a trend.

John Herman: Absolutely.

Pri Carr: All right. We're out of time. So I'm going to ask the last question. Both of you have in common that you work with a pretty famous co-founder, in developing your product. What's that like? Do you want to take this first?

Alex Doman: As I said, we haven't launched our product yet, so we're really in the beginning stages. But honestly, it's been a delight so far. I mean, creating a brand with someone who spends their life creating things is a joy. You know, and I'm not, crazy enough to think that, like any business, we will go through ups and downs and things will change. But so far, so good.

Pri Carr: Awesome.

John Herman: When I left Nutrabolt, it's kind of a it's a privilege thing to say, but I'll say it. I had two goals. It was work with great people and have fun doing what I was doing. And, you know, from the moment that I met Tom, it's been, you know, honestly, the way, like, good human being with an unbelievable perspective of the opportunity and who his own personal brand is and that passion to build something with, without ego. You know, we rely on each other so much that we've built trust. And ultimately, I think the first meeting I had, I told him, I'm like, you know, every new brand shows a chart up and to the right and look how smart we are and how good we are. But when you zoom in, it's a really jagged line. And I go, we have to really kind of batten down and realize, like, there's going to be downturns as much as upturns. And, you know, we have to pull each other through it. And it's been great. Honestly. And I think trying to the learning for me is trying to understand when people see the opportunity with the brand as an opportunity that they believe in with the brand? Or is it that they just want their share of the celebrity's time and balancing the two to make sure that we're maximizing the potential for both, you know, our long term growth, but then also, you know, our consumers. Right. But he's been an amazing partner.

Pri Carr: That's awesome. I love to hear from both of you on the authenticity of both of your brands and what you're building, that they're honest stories that yes, the celebrity lends, the brand as well, but it's an, holistic, authentic story. That was really fun. Thank you for joining us, John and Alex. This was a really fun session. We'll share more about how to stay connected with Highlight and our speakers in a post-event email. Stick around for live Q&A and thank you for joining us today.