Time and Temperature: The Science of Zero Carb Pizza

**[00:00:00]** Hello everyone, my name is Armando Perez-Carreno and welcome to the Web Talk Show. Today with us is Omar Attia, founder and CEO of Zero Carb Life. How are you Omar? Doing well. How are you? I'm doing great. Thank you for asking. A bit of getting out of a cold. So, excuse my voice today. Everyone, Omar, can you tell us a little bit about Zero Carb Life and how you got here? Sure. Uh Zero Carb Life is a company where we're our mission is to transform health through food. We believe that food can once again be a source of medicine for us and a source of uh well-being and and improve our bodies. And that's what we're setting out to do. We believe the only way to really do that is to make healthy food and food that's good for you taste amazing and and not uh and tempt you in a positive way just like food that's not good for you. Uh so that's our our mission and how I got here is uh I graduated Purdue University chemical engineer a while back and worked for some of the biggest food companies in the world uh craft foods proctor and gamble kagra foods and learned a lot about both R&D uh product development and operations through those experiences and each time I would get promoted it would be a harder opportunity harder to go to entrepreneurial opportunity because it was making more money in corporate America harder to leave Uh and so it was kind of a hard decision back in 2014 to start my own business, consulting business at the time and start my entrepreneurial journey. And in 2020, there was uh 2019 2020 there was enough uh solid business pipeline for the consulting company to where I really wanted to start my journey in startups and and being focused on startups. And in 2020 all the consulting business shut down because of co and so was able to fully focus on the startup at the time zero carb life which was based on u me understanding some technology of someone who had brought this idea of that they had done at the kitchen top and then me **[00:02:00]** figuring out that were the things I had learned uh that we could innovate and invent ways at scale to make it for customers and continue to develop from there. So that's kind of how zero carb life started up. That's amazing. And for anyone who has not heard of zero carb life, when I heard the name, I thought, okay, zero carb, well, maybe it's like a drink or something. I don't know. And then I go and I see pizza. I would have never thought we would be discussing zero carb and pizza in the same sentence. So, h how did this come about? Yeah. And by the way, a lot of people, part of the wow factor that we that people have when they try our product is that when they hear zero carbon pizza, they're like, there's no way this tastes good. And so they're kind of blown away with the fact that it tastes just like a thin crust crispy pizza, even though the crust is fully protein. Uh, basically, we start with chicken uh chicken white chicken breast, you know, clean white chicken breast. And, uh, there's very simple ingredients in the crust. There's chicken breast, olive oil, salt, spices, and uh we put that together without binders, without additives. That's kind of our moat. Uh that's what we have patented. So we have one patent that's been issued, a few pending, and it's all around the fact that we have a very specific process of how we make that into a pizza crust that keeps its form, keeps its texture, is crispy to the bite. And uh you know, you can put your favorite pizza toppings on it. For the crust, we we do sell also frozen pizza that's that we make and then uh and then restaurants will buy the crust from us and make their own pizza on the crust. Uh so that those are kind of some of the channels of how we sell. We sell online, we sell to restaurants, and we sell to in retail. And then we have another product line which is the chips which we'll talk about in Yeah. Yeah. We'll get into those for sure. I'm just looking at the melted cheese and and I don't know if you're whoever's listening is not looking at this with me, but it's it looks so good. How can **[00:04:00]** chicken turn into this? It looks just like bread. I mean, it's it's all it's toasted on the side. Like you see it's just as if it was woodfired pizza, right? That just looks perfect. Is how does that happen? Like I don't you I know you can't tell me the secret recipe but like how does it work? Why why does it work? So we uh early on in my career we um I actually my first patent was with craft foods and people who are in food or chemical engineers or microbiologists know that the way you get food to be safe there's a couple ways. One is to use acid or preservative which is an additive to food. Another way is to use time and temperature. So for instance, uh when you say pasteurized milk, pasteurized milk is basically using heat for a certain amount of time and then it's considered what's called pasteurized. It's it's called pasteurized just because it was named after the pastor, which was the man who invented it. But basically that concept is what's applied in a lot of foods that you kill the microorganisms at a certain heat level for a certain amount of time. With um with the earlier patent I had gotten at Craft Foods, which by the way, Craft owns, I don't own. It was us uh accidentally discovering that mixing some of the milk fat ingredients actually for a longer time than we expected for a certain heat level allowed us to bring out some uh taste notes that would never show up in those ingredients without changing the nutritional value of those ingredients without changing the original you know ingredients themselves but but bringing out some different notes because of the heat which people who cook probably understand how that works but because you can caramelize onions for instance etc. But but in food processing that wasn't the norm. Using time and temperature is usually for killing organisms not for making it taste different or have different texture. So that same concept when I understood from the the friend of mine who had this kitchen top invention who he loved that he loved and he used to he believed the way to do it was sort of in a restaurant **[00:06:00]** not not seeing that it could be possible at scale because he wasn't a food engineer. I realized that I could apply sort of those earlier learnings and we could do this at scale and invent more products with the same understanding. And so that's kind of how we came about to to launching zero carb life is applying the same concept. And so it's using time and temperature. And so I can talk about it because it's in the patent, you know, so people it can't be necessarily copied exactly the same. Uh we do have some trade secrets around how we make the chips. So that I won't wouldn't be able to say, but it's the same concept. It's time and temperature instead of additives to keep the form, get the texture, get the mouth feel. It's very intricate because if you go higher in thickness, it loses that texture. If you go lower in thickness, it starts to break. So, it's a lot of re research and development went into it, but that's what gives us the mo. That makes perfect sense. Actually, I I like to grill a lot. Okay. And I went in a rabbit hole once because I was trying to figure out how to make the perfect steak, right? and and I just do it by uh you know intuition and you're doing things and then but then I got into learning about specific temperatures and how the water can only boil at a certain temperature on top of it and then the what is it the malarity effect or something like that it will only happen at certain temperature so you can't do it so hot because it doesn't really make a difference and so I started learning about a bunch of stuff like that and how you would get different completely different flavors and textures in the meat based on whether you gave it a lot of heat before and then less heat or gradual or at the end or whatever you do and it's the same piece of meat, right? And so the three factors, yeah, when it comes to steak for instance, it's the thickness of the steak. So that'll that'll obviously have a factor and the only reason the the thickness has an effect is because of the heat uh transfer across the steak, right? And so **[00:08:00]** the duration, the temperature, how steady the temperature is or temperature changes, and of course the duration of of each of those temperature stages, that will all affect the steak you cook. So and and then you can add water to the top of the steak. In some cases, you can use just the water that's in it because every every obviously u animalbased food has water in it. So all of that you can play with and get the perfect steak at some point. And it also depends on what you call the perfect steak, right? So, some people want to have that meaty taste in it. Some people want to have much more of the flavor that it's been flavored with. So, it's all uh it's all an art with science as the base. Yes. With with science. Yeah. And I remember I interviewed someone many many years ago that has a gelato place uh in Portoas near near Cancun. and he was explaining the whole pasteurization process and and how he make everything he did was natural with with whole milk and actual fruit and everything. He showed me the whole process. It was very interesting and it was very interesting to see from an outside point of view like things that you don't really think about. They make sense after you hear but like you to make ice cream you need to heat it up, right? So it's like there's there's this process that like like you said it's time and temperature which I I'm impressed h how you were able to get from from the concept to actually make something based on chicken, right? Which I mean, I love chicken also, but man, it's just the pictures. I don't know very good photographers, but it looks amazing. Yeah, we we uh we definitely work to make sure it looks like how it looks when it's cooked. But yeah, I mean, the concept of our pizza is the highest protein pizza on the market. our, you know, our our chips are the highest protein per 100 calories on the market, including all protein chips. And it's all because we are able to maintain the ingredients to have the most, you know, chicken and other proteins in the chips as the most of the ingredients without having all the additives. Because when **[00:10:00]** you have in order normally in order to bind protein, it's very difficult to bind it unless you add either something that basically tapioca or egg or something else. And even egg doesn't really bind that well, especially if you want it crispy. So, so normally most other companies, they'll do something that adds cal adds calories and carbs and sod sodium and a bunch of other things that in the end are not great for your body um at higher amounts especially. And so if you want to consume a lot of protein through those products, then you end up consuming a lot of sodium, a lot of you know carbs that are simple carbs. For us, we we call we call our company zero carb life. We don't necessarily say everybody should consume zero carbs. We believe you should consume a low like the best diet is a low complex carb high protein diet. That's what's best for for everybody especially if you want to maintain proper macros and and uh and have strong body and healthy body. Uh you do want some some carbs especially in the form of vegetables and and fruit and uh and you know some other uh whole grains. So that's that's kind of what we recommend. So we take that away so that you have all the opportunity to consume those carbs. So that pizza and chips are a lot less carbs that you're consuming. This is great. I expect because of how chicken is probably harder or more expensive to get than just flour. Yes. That the the whole supply chain part is interesting and the manufacturing part as well. Can you talk a little bit about how you got to be able to do this at scale? Yeah, so initially honestly it was just finding the right the right partners. Uh but we've been blessed because of the growth we had that over the last couple years we actually you know I I myself invested to expand that contractor and we became partners and then we actually were able to make an acquisition of the facility which allowed us to have total control of costs and and of supply uh **[00:12:00]** which has been great for our business and so that's why this year as we're scaling you know we've grown rapidly over the last quarter we're now in Target stores and actually I just got a call today that the Target order the third target order is a little higher than even we expected which is great news but the point is that um you know with all that growth now that if we hadn't had the supply chain transition to where we have more control it could have been very difficult because we have to make it a very special facility so normally in the US uh FDA and a lot of a lot of people in the US don't know this but the FDA governs any food product that is under 2% made from animal uh you know made from meats uh other and seafood. So if it's, you know, pork, chicken, beef, duck, whatever. If it's over 2%, it's governed by the USDA. If it's under 2%, it's governed by the FDA. Well, USDA facilities normally don't make pizza and chips. So, you can't just go, you can't go and get quotes from seven plants that are making pizza and chips and happen to be USDA certified because you don't find those. We're one of the most unique products because we make something that's usually from under 2% meat with over 2% meat. So we're governed by USDA. So we really had to find a very innovative contractor initially and then we us taking control makes gives us a lot more flexibility because we have eight to nine product forms in our next patents in addition to pizza and chips. You know we have taco shells, breadcrumbs, pasta, uh empanadas. So we have a bunch of other products that we can easily commercialize. We're not planning to because we're still saturating the market with pizza and chips and we're growing. But those are all possibilities for us or whoever you know exits us. Uh and so we want to make sure that the pipeline and commercialization is all very easily uh done and we've been blessed that from a supply standpoint other than the chicken like you mentioned which I'll get to a second but from a process standpoint because of the innovation that we've done with how we develop those processes they're not extremely complicated. you know, there's there's equipment that we of course **[00:14:00]** there's some modifications to equipment that we we've had to make, but it hasn't been extremely capital intensive like sometimes it has to be for other products. Uh so that's been good for us. And then from a chicken standpoint, it is insane because chicken prices change quarterly or even monthly. And then with what's going on right now, especially with gas prices where they are, you know, when you have a raw supply, which you require, you can't just buy a ton and and keep it stored forever. because number one it's capital investment but number two quality can can be you know a problem. So you have to be with the market at some level and that causes us to have to figure out how to hedge because you can't just keep changing prices on the consumer you know every two weeks even though the price of your raw is changing quite a bit every two every week or every sometimes every 3 days. So it is a challenge and we're we have creative ways that we're trying to address it but it's a constant challenge. Wow. Did your taking control of the facility or or this provider make sense early on? Was it something that you immediately saw as a potential but then just waited until you were ready or was it something that became apparent? And I'm asking from the point of view of someone that might be in a similar position where where where it might be convenient for them to do something that maybe they haven't explored it. Right. I I would say it's not at all the right thing to do when you're very early on. You need to make sure you have product market. You need to make sure that you are going to scale because if you if you take on such a liability too early even if it's a different entity which is the way we did it like it's a different entity with a cost plus relationship. It's very uh uh you know uh above board visibility to both organizations. It just has common partners. But even if you do it that way, it's it could be very very early to invest if you just started up your food **[00:16:00]** food manufacturing, excuse me, your branded food company because it's much better to do contract manufacturers supplying you. Even though you pay a lot more, it's still better to do it that way because you're you're not taking on more risk than you have to. And it's because so many innovative food products and food companies don't make it. And the reason they don't make it isn't necessarily because they have a bad product. It's because the business is very, very tough business. If you're going to retail, there's a lot of promotional spend. There's a lot of getting on shelf costs. If you're going e-commerce, it's not easy to get word out there and to get trial. There's cost to that. And so, you need to I mean, the the game is a very tough game to play in. and you need to know that you're at least winning at some level before you invest in having your own supply chain control. Um, for us it started being apparent obviously early on for the reason I explained that you know we're making very unique thing and you need such a USDA facility that does this type of product. It was kind of clear that hey, if we had this ourselves, it would be great. But that's not a good reason to go and invest money in it because now you're putting yourself in a bigger hole. Once once we had the volume and we have the track, we had the traction and we had the product market fit that we've seen. That's when it made sense because we could we could foresee back in 23 early, you know, excuse me, back in uh 24 and early 25, we could see that this is going to grow rapidly once we go into retail because we're going to have success in retail and then it'll just start blowing up in other retailers. And you don't want to be in a position where you say, "Well, I can't really fulfill that order because, you know, this contract manufacturer has this on schedule 6 weeks from now instead of next week." You need to be able to fulfill orders as soon as they come and at the same time not overspend and have a ton of inventory. So the only way to do that is to have control of the supply chain. Let's talk about retail a little bit. When people create a food product a lot of times it's a concept. Oh, where am I going to sell **[00:18:00]** it? B to C sounds hard. I should just sell it as stores. That's where I see products, right? So, but it's not as easy as it might seem if you're just starting out, right? So, how what can you say about the process of getting to retail if one is creating a new product? What things should one consider? Uh what caveats are there? What are the some of the the main learnings that you got out of starting to be at retail people you know being in retail? Um well first of all I would uh I would suggest to anyone starting out that if they can start out first getting uh traction in e-commerce if their product so our product was a big challenge in e-commerce because it's frozen but it did well enough because of COVID that we kind of were able to sustain those hits. Uh, and the reason there's hits, to be very candid, is when you're shipping frozen, there's a ton more cost than if you're shipping an ambient product. You have to put dry ice. You have to have a cooler. Uh, you can only put so much in the cooler because if you go oversized, then you now you're paying at a significant exorbitant cost structure. So, it's very costly to ship frozen. If someone is is is selling a new product that isn't frozen, I definitely recommend starting e-commerce because you get immediate feedback from customers. you get you you can get to product market fit much more easily by iterating product and getting feedback and iterating product and you're also getting revenue pretty quick, right? You're not waiting 90 days to get paid. Like with Target, the minimum we're waiting is 30 days to get paid on product that we've already funded and paid for and manufactured 45 days prior or 60 days prior. So the cycle with e-commerce is better, especially for an early on company that doesn't have that runway. And so I recommend e-commerce first. Then when is the right time to go to retail? Once you confirm that you have product market fit at some scale, then you go to retail. But you have to have **[00:20:00]** the capital infrastructure, the money behind spending for promotion because once you put the product on the shelf, it doesn't just sell itself. You have to have demos in store, especially if it's a new product, especially if it's a new category. Like protein pizza is not really a known, it's not a category, right? Pizza is a category. So you have to get trial because people hear protein pizza, they think it's not going to taste good. So they have to taste it. So you get demos, you get u you have to pay on for advertising, you have to pay to give discounts. All those things are very capital intensive. So I would say if you're going to go to retail, even if it's even if you're going to independent retailers because there's not, you know, obviously going to the big store like Target, Walmart, uh you know, Sprouts, etc., it's a lot of spend, but you're also getting a lot more volume. If you're going to smaller stores, that could be good way to test, but you know, it's a lot it's a lot slower because it's smaller volume and you still have a long payment cycle. All the I know there's a ton I'm saying right now, but it's because retail is a retail is a challenge. Be ready, but if you are ready, go to retail because it is definitely where you can win, right? So, you're not just you're very few brands can win on just e-commerce because you need to sell a lot to to get to an exit level of revenue. Some do, but that's not really where you win with foods. You have to go to retail eventually because a lot of people, that's where they shop, even when they shop online, they go to their app to get stuff from Kroger or from, you know, Target or from Walmart. So, really, that's where you want to be. Uh, but don't go to it too early because I've seen too many, you know, I'm in network with a lot of CPG founders and CEOs and I can't tell you how many have gone out of business because they went to Walmart too early or went to Costco too early and it was just, you know, it caused them too much. they couldn't do anything else because that's all they could focus on and then as soon as it didn't win and they were basically out of business. They had overextended themselves. So you have to be very disciplined and you have to apply that thing where you know Steve Jobs once said that the you know getting to greatness isn't about saying yes to a few right things. It's about saying no **[00:22:00]** to almost everything. U I don't know how he said it but and so you kind of have to say no to retail even when it presents itself if you know it's not the right time for you. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because you touched on two items that I think are very valuable. One is of course be ready, but the other is the marketing part. The demos demos are huge. The supermarket has so many items all flashing colors and different things and then with market trends they change more modern or whatever everyone's changing and so you go and it's a cacophony of options. It's very hard to choose something just by looking at that and the way people shop typically they have a list in their hand. So we have to think of that shopper and they're going through and they're like oh okay I found this. Okay. And then so maybe they'll see your product if it's next to something else. They're not just like browsing aisles to see what they find, right? And so it has to pop out. Yes. So there's a lot of packaging and all that involved. So marketing in terms of packaging, which maybe we can discuss a little bit later, but also if you don't do demos, you're going to lose out on a bunch of feedback, real-time feedback from from customers and and a lot of potential new customers. We had a guest on the show recently that that's what they do. This company that gets professionals to do demos, right? So, so we actually had two types of guests. We had one guest that that does that. They did demos like at trade shows, things like that, and had people like experiencing products. And then we had another guest that was all about like instore tastings, right, for wine, for beer, for for other types of food products. And it's it's completely accurate, I think, what what they had said. When you go into the store, if you see someone showing a product, especially if it's a **[00:24:00]** product that's like like in your case, not a category that exists. Mhm. But it looks tasty and they're offering it to you, you're like, "Yeah, why not?" You try it and it's the percentage of likelihood that you're going to get it just goes through the roof, right? If it if it was tasty or to to your liking. But I' I've bought things where I taste it. I'm like, "Yeah, this is good." And I had no intention of buying anything like that, but it was good. And uh you have some sort of a rapport there with the person giving you some free food and and you get it. And so yeah, I think I think that's but to your point, you have to consider all this spending, which especially at the retail level with the big players is going to be hard because where are you going to put your money? it's going to dilute how which stores, which states, which right? So, what you mentioned about maybe some of the local stores, it's also very interesting if there's smaller shops, smaller uh supermarkets, things like that near your area and you can talk with the owners and maybe have some presence there and you can go and like I think that way you can have that feedback cycle without directly jumping to the to the big players, right? Is that is that accurate at all or is accurate? Just as a a founder or another CEO, if I'm giving you advice, just be aware that that's not the play for revenue growth. That's a play for test market. And and that's still extremely valuable. Like I think you hit the nail on the head that you don't have to be in the game of going to retail and the big spend to get retail level feedback and test that, you know, test how how are people picking you up on the shelf. So, it's very good to do exactly what you said that if you can have a controlled if you can have a a test in some markets where you actually can have either your team or someone that you contract for, you know, a reasonable cost to go and check out how are people picking it up off the shelf, how's velocity because that's one of the things that you can get from the big stores is, you know, velocity. We get **[00:26:00]** velocity reports per week. Velocity is how fast people are getting it off the shelf. So Target will give us our veloc velocity report every single week because everything is digitized. You know, everything's automated for them. When people check out the data, all uploads, we get it weekly. We know exactly how much is on average has been sold per per store. You can't really get that easily from independence. You can at some because of now more, you know, better software systems and and POS systems, uh, point of sales systems, but it's not like the big guys, uh, where it all uploads and is analyzed and you're kind of know where you're at. So, but it is really good to test. You definitely want to get feedback in addition to e-commerce. It would be it's great to get feedback from independent retailers, etc. Um, just be ready to support that as well. Like you can't, you know, a one or two man company. You can put it in two stores, three stores, four stores in your area, a lot time in your schedule to be checking on those, but you know, you can't go you can't go to 40 stores unless you have, you know, four or more people that can go check on it or you're contracting someone. So everything has a cost. You know that that's the interesting thing that once you're in this business and especially you know me I've been now CEO of it for 5 years and was with Craft and Proctor GM didn't have to worry about all the things I worry about CEO but I've seen a lot of what goes on operations R&D so I have all that experience. There's a lot of nuance that is never realized by someone who's like hey I have a great idea I want to start a company to sell this product. then they when they're in the middle of it, they're like, I did not know this is all the things I'd have to have to deal with. Um, so, you know, we've been blessed to have success and to be able to navigate these things. Um, but people have to be ready and I'm not deter I'm not deterring anyone. No, for sure. For sure. But it's a good advice and and it brings me to my next question which is do you think that it makes sense for someone who has the entrepreneurial bug and they weren't in that space before regardless of your space just any space. **[00:28:00]** Sure. And they're planning to go into a space because they have an idea right so they might have not might not have had the experience of working in a corporate environment in that particular industry. And from what I'm hearing, yeah, it's a good idea to get some experience beforehand, right? Because you get to know the players, you see how the game works, etc. Let's say someone's just didn't have that experience, but now has the idea in a set of place when they want to go and be an entrepreneur. What how can they get access to that? Is there like would you suggest maybe trying to network with people in the industry and try to get feedback from people who who've done it before? What what what would you suggest in that sense? Yeah, without a doubt. If someone, and I'll just reframe your question to make sure I'm answering the right one. What you're saying is if someone has a great idea for something because they're a customer and they realize that, hey, I could I can do this better and they've never really done work in that industry, is that a good idea for them to sort of make that that leap to a different industry than what they've been used to and and and start something up? I would say it's not a bad idea. It's something that can be done. I would say don't think that you could just go into it and succeed because you have a great idea. Ideas are not the issue when it comes to business succeeding. I mean, I could point to three to four products that are selling like uh hot cakes on in the food industry that are not even ideas. You know, for for instance, Liquid Death is an amazingly popular product and it's literally water. And now, you know, now they're doing flavored drinks, but it's water, right? And it's all about the marketing, the positioning, how it got into the market, the channels. I guess what I'm saying is yes, a person can make that leap, but if you're going to do it, you better have, like you said, a network around you. Ideally, you have someone that gets added to your team. Ideally, you don't have to pay for their time. They they believe in the idea enough to say, and they're a good way to that's a good way to validate, by the way, cuz people don't realize this, but when you're a founder, everybody that becomes part of the equation is someone **[00:30:00]** you're pitching to, someone you're selling to. So when I'm when I'm hiring an employee, if I want top talent, I'm selling to them the vision of where we're headed and why they should be part of it. Even if they're going to get paid to paycheck, they still need to believe that we're, you know, this company isn't going to go out out of business in two years, their paycheck will will grow or they'll have bonuses that are higher than anywhere else they can go in two to three years because we're having, you know, great results. So everyone you're selling to a network potential equity partner a strategic advisor all these people if they believe in in your idea that's validation for it early on and you need those support that support system in order to if you're certainly any founder needs that support system but if you're going to leap to a different industry that you don't have experience in you better buckle up and you better get a lot of people with you on that on that rough ride of uh that rough plane ride so that they can help you smooth it out. Yeah, that's a very good point. There's a lot of fun and adventure in entrepreneurship, but it is a wild ride. And especially in certain industries, there's going to be so many surprises that it will just hit you in the face if you're not ready. Yeah. And some and look, some industries are easier than others. You know, if you have an idea for a software as a service and it's in a different industry, but you've done software as service in something else, that's that's potentially doable. But to go into foods when all you know is like car insurance, that's that, you know, I would I would not do that alone. It's almost like skydiving, right? I don't know if you've been skydiving. I went skydiving once and it looks amazing. It's an amazing experience. Everybody knows how to just fall. So, it seems like you could just do that, right? And then you just pull on two strings. But if you do that without someone who's experienced, you're going to just die. So, you know, you don't want to skydive without, you know, an instructor behind you the first few times. And no one does that. That's the same thing with going into a startup believing you can make it big and not having someone that's pulling the parachute and knows when to pull it. **[00:32:00]** Yeah. So, that's a great analogy. I was talking many years ago with the founder of of a very large consumer package goods company and he had started out with frozen like you were saying long time ago but then he quickly realized the costs involved and pivoted to dry goods and just blew up. Right? And when he told me that this was many years ago, I was like, "Wow, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. You there's why go unless like in your case it has to be this because that's that's the product and that's where you're heading, right? But if you have the option and the alternative like you have two things that you might follow, but one of them you can definitely scale. You can do both. You like both. One you can definitely scale. The other one's gonna have a ton of complications like frozen foods. Like which one do you follow?" Well, try try to pick the the path of least resistance if they're both good. Yeah, maybe. Exactly. And that's when that's when you have that opportunity to talk to people in the industry. Like if someone came to me and talked to me about a new frozen food, I would say, "Okay, tell me what's unique about it or it's a value proposition you're offering that no one else is. Tell me how you're going to make it work when if it's e-commerce, this is what you can expect, you know, in terms of cost structure. So, don't do it unless you'll be able to overcome it." And for us, we had incredible u you know, we weren't pricing too highly, but we still had incredible um uh product margins which allowed us to be able to do frozen. I don't think that's as you know, as easy for others. Like if you're in a somewhat of a commoditized thing like ice cream, you might have an incredible ice cream, but if it's not if it's not very very different, you're not going to be able to charge three times what people are going buying ice cream for, for example, unless it has a very very unique value proposition. So now, how are you going to justify all that cost? And by the way, the cost isn't just in e-commerce. Uh distributors of frozen **[00:34:00]** and retail charge a lot more markup than than distributors of ambient because they have a ton more cost for the energy, there's fewer of them. And because there's fewer of them, even if their cost structure is not that much more, they have to charge they charge more because there's fewer of them. So you just have to be ready for all of that. And and that's just an example, frozen versus not frozen in every industry. what is the unique challenge of what I'm thinking to do and how can I get knowledge of it. Yeah, you can use AI to find out a lot of stuff but there's nuance that person people have who have been through it will be able to point out to you that you wouldn't be able to get necessarily from AI at least not yet. Yeah. No. Yeah. I it's great that we use AI a lot in in our business and and help clients within all that but it's not an end all beall thing right. So, it can help you navigate heavy research. It can help you find things. It can have help you find people, uh, calculate things. It's it's it's really an amazing tool, but at the end of the day, it doesn't have all the experience that a person has, right? So, it knows things that were public, yes, and it can ab make abstractions and and predictions, and it's very good at that sort of thing. But you can never compare it to someone in your game, for example, that has, I don't know, maybe 70 years old and has done it for 40 of those years or 50 of those years, right? And knows all the ins and outs in a millisecond can tell you what to do in certain situations. AI is not there. It's it's far from it, right? It's amazing. But that experience, personal life experience with things and and things that have happened and situations and weird edge cases, that's that's where where humans really shine. And we were talking about this the other day. It's I think there's going to be some sort of comeback of of the older generation that's sort of sometimes left **[00:36:00]** aside. It's like, no, no, we really need you guys because there's there's a lot of knowledge there that can really help you. And to that point, what would you think? Because sometimes we're we we might be afraid, right? So maybe I I want to talk with someone that I know is very good in the industry, but but they're experienced and they're they're successful and I I might not have the guts to go and talk to them, right? So what would happen if someone comes up to you and and just asks you questions and genuinely is interested in knowing about your journey and how they can like you as a founder or people you know as founders and successful founders. Is it good for people to ask for advice and and try to to talk and or or do you think they'll be cast aside? No, I I think mo almost every successful founder I've met, if they are a successful founder, they actually um they cherish when people ask them for advice. It's almost like something that is gets built in within us because we constantly say, I wish someone would have told me X, I wish someone would have told me why. Though we cherish that someone is coming and doing that early on in their journey. And we also believe at least most founders I've met as well as I believe that when you when you are genuinely connecting with people to just help without necessarily expecting anything back you'll get a ton back in in a lot of other ways. Uh not necessarily you don't have to wait on it from that person but what you give is you will get more than what you give if you're giving sincerely for the sake of the goodness of giving. And it's the same thing in terms of advice. It's the same ter thing in terms of guidance and normally um it helps you crystallize further like as I'm having this conversation with you I'm crystallizing further some things I would like my team to understand at a at a you know at an an ex executable level things that are in my head anyway. So when you're giving **[00:38:00]** that advice it helps you crystallize thoughts that you can then share with your team and make everyone better. That's an excellent point. So the first thing is yeah, go and ask, right? It's uh they'll likely give you very good advice. The second thing I I heard this from Tony Robbins the other day as well. He was he was telling it was Alex Herosce I think they were chatting and he said about giving giving without expecting right and how it sort of comes back in a way like you can see it however you want it but it it happens right so you give you get back and and then the third thing it is very true when you you teach someone or you guide someone in something it's not wasting your time it it just I've seen it. Someone comes along and we're we're explaining how this works, that works. It suddenly starts sparking things in your mind. You're like, "Yeah, that's right. I I forgot we we we we knew about this but haven't implemented yet." Or like this is another way to think about the same thing. And even if you're the expert, just by talking with someone else and explaining it in simpler terms, it brings back a lot of what you may have been thinking about the past few days and you sort of have it in your subconscious and it just comes forward to be used. Yep. Yep. And especially if they ask you questions. Sometimes people who are new to the field or new to the concepts you're explaining ask a question that you haven't asked yourself or your team being in the trenches hasn't asked. And that actually then points out maybe a in the armor of what you're doing or it points out something to where it actually opens up a new door of ideation or a new door of a challenge that you may not have perceived that is is coming soon. So it actually helps in that way as well. Yeah, that's a great point. I did I understand properly that you're in the middle of a Rex CF race? Um, we are. Yes, absolutely. How does how does that work? We we uh we **[00:40:00]** talked Jason Fishman and I were were talking about that on a on an episode and I had no idea but I I just learned about it and then I I started hearing about it more. So how does that work? Sure. So you're talking about Rex CF in general like how how that So Rex CF was a regulation that was uh I believe it was 2019 or 2018. It was recent. It's it's in the last less less than 10 years ago that the US government securities and exchange commission allowed that private companies can do a public raise as long as they meet certain stipulations and and so then you can so then as a on the heels of that a few businesses were launched like weunder where you are able to share with this public everything about your company and not you know as long as they confirm that they're an accredited investor which is the requirement by the SEC they can buy shares in your company. And so, uh, and so that allows that a company like us, which isn't necessarily IPOing anytime soon because it's doesn't make financial sense for us to do so, uh, can actually sell some of our shares to the public. Most most sort of optics that people have about why people go to the public is they think they can't raise on the private market. But we actually have raised have been successful in every raise we've done. We've overh over overs subscribed every round we've had until now. and we have great network to continue to raise from. However, we believe at this moment in our journey, it's great to get much more public support and ownership in the company and so we're doing it much more for the traction and the awareness raising along with selling our product to to sell our company and to have much more people invested in our company. So we believe it'll give us that effect and at the same time you know we can still go to the private market if they if they're interested and a couple have been and and have you know uh funded checks or have committed to it but we are allowing opportunity for people in the public to also you know to also invest no matter how small their investment is so they feel like they can still be part of this success **[00:42:00]** and and and we just believe in that in general like look we're having this success let's let's allow people that don't normally get to see these things and invest in them. It's a great opportunity. So, uh, so Rex CF has opened that door for the general public, which wasn't open before. I I think it's great, especially with products like these, like some some people become real fans of of foods, beverages, of of different things and and they love it and share it with everyone. And so, it's great that people who love a brand can say, "Well, I want to invest in this brand early on or later." and and I don't know it it gives them a feeling of belonging in a way and then also depending on how much they like maybe they they start just instead of just sharing it for the sake of it it's like they they they feel like yeah yeah of course you have to have this cuz it's like it's good for you and like it's a I don't know it it it it helps in many ways and like you said it it will also give traction because it's are sharing about it and they're and and things like that. So yeah, a lot a lot of the loyal customers are going to promote are promoting our product anyway. Yes. So why not reward them for being loyal customers and for promoting our product by saying, "Hey, and when you promote our product, you're also going to, you know, you're going to make a little a little bit of uh value back when when we have, you know, when we have our exit event just like any other owner. So, I think it's only fair, especially those loyal fans, that they get a piece of the action, if you will, you know, as they're as they're helping grow our our our company. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's so many affiliates, right? Like so many companies have affiliates and and so many join and they actually do well with with affiliate marketing, but but that's just that and it's if they exit or whatever, they're that's it. It's gone, right? But but this way they're they're still a part of it. It's very interesting. What would you **[00:44:00]** give as a piece of advice for someone who is thinking they're in the corporate world, they they they might have worked for for some of the big players in a specific industry like you did, have experience, have seen some potential opportunities for betterment of something and and they're thinking they they maybe they they could go out and and do something. What's the path that you think would be not necessarily a safe bet because entrepreneurship is a safe bet, but uh what would you recommend they start with? Yeah. Yeah. Like less less less risky, but I would say number one, don't go don't leave your job until the ma the side hustle can clearly point to being a main hustle. So, I'm a high I'm a I'm a big advocate of doing things as a side hustle until you validate. Now, there's obviously things to be said about speed to market, and if you have something that needs speed to market to succeed, the side hustle game, it will obviously make it slower. But, uh, it's a tough decision, especially if you're leading a family or your income is supporting more than you, uh, to go ahead and make that leap without validation. You should have validation before you make such a leap. At the same time, if you can take the risk and if you pretty sure you can hop right back into the workforce or hop right back into some other way to make income, it's best if speed to market is a big deal on what you're working on to just make that leap. But don't do it until you have validation is the way I would normally like in the normal situation. Don't make the leap until you have validation. And validation can be, you know, you do this, you do it as a side hustle, maybe yourself or with a couple other people doing it as a side hustle. And once you have sort of what's indication that there's product market fit, uh you you know you you plan to then commit to it and take a bigger risk. At the same time, I want to **[00:46:00]** caution that a lot of people have great ideas or what they believe is a great idea or what they believe is a great solution to a problem. So, first of all, nothing is a great idea unless it solves a problem that people actually have that they want to solve. So, if you think people have a problem and they don't realize it's a problem, great. That happens sometimes. But you need to go to those same people and validate, hey, if I could solve this problem for you, how much would you pay for it? And don't go on their word. Create a proof of concept and then see how many people will actually pay for it. That's how you validate. Once you have proof concept validation, think is there a way that I can go a little bit bigger without taking more risk and prove it at a bigger scale. And it's those it's a little bit between proof of concept and product market fit. If you can still do that without taking more risk, that's what you should do. If you can't and you have to take more risk to do it, then take the additional risk, but only as much risk as you have to in order to validate more. So the ideal is that you continue to take more risk as you get more validation until it becomes really clear. Look, this needs us to dedicate ourselves to it and go all in and then you do it and you don't look back. Don't hesitate. However, the norm is measure your risk, take proper risk, validate, and grow. That's great advice. Risk is good, but don't gamble, right? Yeah. I mean, you have to gamble a little, but don't don't throw all your chips in the pot because you have the best hand. Yeah. And because you don't know what the other hands look like and you don't really understand, sometimes you don't even understand the hands. You think it's a great hand, but it turns out there's a nuance that makes it not a great hand. Amazing. Thank you so much, Omar. This has been an excellent conversation. I learned a lot today about food and also manufacturing and other things along the way. So, really thank you for coming on the show. Appreciate it. If people want to know a little bit more about zero carb life, **[00:48:00]** and your different products, where should they go? Should they go to a website? Should they look on the stores or what? Yeah. So, if they live near a Target, especially, so we're in 556 Target, so they can go to Target, but yeah, definitely go to zerocarblife.com and life is spelled lyfe uh because it stands for love your food every day, love your family every day, love your, you know, fitness every day. So, it's it's a play on that as well. And so, zerocarblife.com. And then also of course if they want to get a piece of the action they can go to our refunderer page uh which they'll find you know the link to it on there as well and it's uh I'm sure you can share the link to to it for them. But uh yeah but that's you know that's where you can get some of that action as well if you if you like what you see on our website. Amazing. I'll put those in the show notes and again for everyone who's listening at least the pictures look amazing. Next time we go to Target I'm going to I'm going to grab one and see uh what what this is like. So, if you have not liked or subscribed to the show, please do so. That way you can learn whenever we have a new episode with amazing people like Omar here. Thanks again everyone and thanks Omar for coming on the show. Thank you Armando. It was a pleasure. Precious mine. See you in the next one. Cheers.