Growth in Today’s Ever-Growing Market with Jonathan Gandolf, CEO and Co-Founder of The Juice

Brad Seaman: [00:00:00] Thanks for being on. I’m looking for I’m super looking forward to talking to you. I’m looking to hear in about. About the juice and heard about your background. Tell me how  did you get here.

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:00:08] Yeah, absolutely. So my career path a little bit wandering. I was very fortunate that I started my career at exact target here in Indianapolis email marketing platform.

When I started in this will come full circle at kind of the end of my wandering career path. But when I started. They were in hyper-growth hyperscale up mode. They were growing very quickly. They were out of office space in their Indianapolis offices. And. Very fortunately for me, I think they were out of office space except for very intentionally right outside of the CEO’s office, Scott Dorsey.

So they jammed, I think the new employees into that section. And I started my career about 20 feet from his office, which was probably very fortunate from a productivity stage or productivity perspective at that stage of my career, but just very informally got to know him. Standing at the printer, going to the kitchen, going to the restroom coming and going during the day, just like it kinda informally built this relationship that, that will come full circle near the end of this.

I

Brad Seaman: [00:01:09] like being in front of the class. Right. You’re just close to the you’re close to the teacher.

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:01:13] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I’ll never forget. There was a, you know, at that time, social media was just becoming a thing and I had a project that was, we were just researching some competitors. I’ll never forget. There was time.

He like had, you know, walked right behind me, kind of unknowingly. I had my headphones in and up on my screen and was like, Pinterest. Right. I’m like researching how like B2B brands are using Pinterest. I’m like, oh God, this guy probably thinks I’m slacking here. But so anyways, I, I went through a few.

Brad Seaman: [00:01:39] Have you ever asked him about this

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:01:41] it’s about, what’s one of those things, like as a young student your career you’re like sweating bullets. They can come back with a pink slip, but no, it was good. Got to know him, just great relationship built there, but it was, I went through a few roles that exact target ended up on the team.

That was how we used our own software. That became the team post acquisition. That was how we trained Salesforce to use our software. So I was actually really enjoying. That role. I was super happy. It wasn’t looking for anything. I had a side project that I swore was just that a passion project that became a full-time project.

So I was sharing an apartment with two friends of mine. We were. 24 25 year old males. So we obviously had a kegerator in the apartment. We had a, one of our roommates brothers was a bird at hopper house in Newport, Kentucky. He wanted to start a brewery, had no idea how to start a business. But the three of us, myself, I’d say marketing.

One of my roommates studied entrepreneurship. He was working at an exact target as well. The third roommate was a CPA at the time. We looked at ourselves and we said, Hey, Evan the brother we’ll we’ll write you a business plan thinking that was just that. And if you’ll trade us for a keg for the apartment, he said deal.

We wrote the business plan and got the kid. I thought that was that, oh, it would die on the vine. And he kind of looked at us like now, He said, well, it’s a very capital intensive business. You would need to raise money. He’s like, great. Do you know anybody with money? And we’re like, well, this was like post acquisition.

There were people in Indianapolis looking to reinvest into the community. And we said, what we’ll do is we will share this business plan with a few people in our network, not ask for money, but just ask for feedback on the business plan. So he and his brother did that and Nine times out of 10. I think the response was, this seems really legitimate.

There’s real opportunity here. Would you be interested in an investment? So then it started to get real. We ran a Kickstarter campaign to kind of test the idea and our goal was $30,000. In 30 days, we did that. And about 27 hours, we ended up raising $75,000. So yeah, I’ll stop there.

So how. Okay. So all right.

Super awesome. I got, so we don’t get too far because suddenly there’s going to be a while it’s going to be fun and a wild ride. So back to the fact exact target, are you there when you guys do the acquisition with? Yeah, so I was there through a acquisition, a part out Radian six. I go digital. And then obviously the Salesforce acquisition, the answer,

Brad Seaman: [00:04:11] Does it feel like

go, go, go, go days. Is it like, I mean, just every week, something new and

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:04:16] exciting is happening in that space. I knew it was unique at that stage of my career, but I look back at it now and I’m like, man went through three act, three acquisitions filed to go public. Didn’t go public, went public and then were acquired.

Five years. Like I knew it was unique, but not until this point, my career. And like, kind of with the perspective,

Brad Seaman: [00:04:36] sort of connect the dots and look back. Yeah. I mean, look, Salesforce is our exact targets. The best thing I think that happened in Indianapolis. I mean, I was here pre software culture, or pre software.

Pre-acquisition, there’s nothing here. There’s like exact target, which is in my opinion, kind of at the time. They were kind of in their own world. There’s not, Indianapolis is not excited. And that acquisition really changes the landscape. I mean, there’s a lot of really cool stuff going on in Indianapolis because of that.

So that’s super awesome. You’re a part you’re there, they’re making all these acquisitions they’re going public. You, you probably felt like the, the, the world.

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:05:17] Yeah, it was crazy. You know, I was just like, oh, this working stuff sure is crazy. Huh?

Brad Seaman: [00:05:24] What one? Your folks what’d you do? Like w what did your or your parents?

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:05:29] So my dad worked at Simon property group here in Indianapolis for 30 plus years. Like, you know, he was the guy who gets the job and just stays there forever. I mean, he loved it. My mom was a physical therapist. What tie you? My dad produced.

So like I had always thought I’d get out of Indy, but exact target kept me here. And then about the same time it’s super will happen. There was a lot of energy. Oh yeah.

Brad Seaman: [00:05:50] Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Okay, so you get, so, so those are those questions. So you get into the you get into the brewery business and you guys have read it.

You guys have taken your business plan around it. And you got, and it sounded like you were getting to the spot where you’re getting, you’re getting ready to get something exciting is going to happen. You get, yeah.

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:06:09] So we decided to start the brewery. One of the roommates goes full-time in October.

I left Salesforce in December, which every time I say it, I kinda have to a lot, I left Salesforce to go start a brewery that hadn’t opened yet. In January it was in Covington, Kentucky. So right across the river from Cincinnati, that’s where the brothers were originally from. We thought there was a huge opportunity in Northern Kentucky.

And so I was going down there Sunday, staying through Thursday or Friday, crashing on a couch, doing the true,

Brad Seaman: [00:06:39] not married, not married, no kids don’t have any kids not married.

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:06:43] I did my girlfriend had just moved from Chicago. I go to Indy and about six months later, I started traveling from India to Cincinnati.

But so we, we started the process in January. We, it was really ongoing, but January to March was pre-launch. We launched in March. In the four ish years that I was there kind of zero to 10 million in annual revenue six states or four states, 10 major markets grew the team to 40 ish pre COVID.

They obviously it didn’t have the part-time work during COVID they’ve they’ve brought that back on. They’ve done really well throughout COVID. But just really awesome opportunities called Braxton brewing company. And our whole hypothesis was. It felt like there was this rise in craft beer. There was this rise in technology, but not a lot of people had tied that together.

And so we felt like the Venn diagram between those two things was actually pretty large. So our mantra was being born in a garage, which we felt like was both meant like the blue collar hard work of enjoying, you know, cold beer after a hard day’s work, but also the, the Creative lubricant that is craft beer, right?

The, the innovation that is born in the garage, we really leaned into the entrepreneurship as well. We launched with a mobile app. We launched with free gigabit wifi in our taproom. We opened at 8:00 AM. Tuesday through Friday, had a coffee program, really treated it as coworking during the day, we had a company start and grow out of our tap room.

And so that was the community really adopted us with open arms. And that was a hell of a ride. Three and a half, four years.

Brad Seaman: [00:08:14] Cool. Now, do you guys sell that or do you, it just keeps

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:08:17] it’s no. So it’s still doing well. They’ve they’ve opened up a few other taprooms continue to expand distribution. It’s really a bummer.

I stay involved a little bit. But not at all in the day-to-day, but it’s really, yeah. They were set up for a really big 2020 actually had just invested in some really large sports sponsorships with like the Columbus blue jackets, the Pacers, Cincinnati reds and all of that, you know, kind of dissipated right in front of them.

So, but because of some of the success they had had, they were able to maintain throughout COVID. They actually turned it into an opportunity to acquire a few taprooms and, and continue to grow. It’s awesome to watch and cheer them on from the side.

Brad Seaman: [00:08:55] Awesome. So then you end up at where Springfield.

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:08:57] Yeah, exactly. So I’m in Cincinnati. At this point, my wife had moved down the girlfriend at the time moved down, we actually got married in Covington, loved Covington, loved Cincinnati. And we just kind of had started thinking about maybe what was next, but not entirely sure. I had a feeling eventually I’d want to, I didn’t want to make a career in the beer industry.

I didn’t think, but an opportunity found me with Springbok here in Indianapolis. Phil Daniels, who was one of my mentors reached out. And it was too good. Say no to just, I figured even if I waited several years to get back into technology, it was the exact type of technology. I’d be looking for.

And so made the very smooth transition from craft beer to healthcare analytics leading product marketing, and then eventually grew into a role where I was leading the entire marketing team and the business development team at Springbok for about two years. It was really fun, kind of the same.

Process where in beer, we felt like there was this missed opportunity. As spring Springbok, we really went down this category creation, creating this health intelligence category that we felt was tangibly different than what was in the market. And that was kind of my project over my time there.

Brad Seaman: [00:10:07] Awesome. So where do you count? So, so I think we, we so you’ve got a new, you’ve got a relatively new thing.

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:10:14] Yep. So, all right. I know you know, what’s your background, 20 minutes later, we’ll get to the punchline here.

Brad Seaman: [00:10:20] Well, I’ll tell you what summit, some of the, so there’s a lot of people that are good at burying the lead and keeping you on your seat and you’ve done a good job.

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:10:29] So yeah, I was happy at Springbrook. Yeah. Loved our team. And then in March I got a call from Scott Dorsey. So here’s where we come full circle. Right. I had just gotten to know Scott very informally. We had stayed in touch. He was actually one of the people that invested just a small amount of the brewery.

But we’d stayed in touch and he reached out in March asking me if I’d be interested in high alpha opportunities. This was like the same week that COVID kind of turned the world remote. And I told him you know, I’m really happy where I’m at, but I’m always going to take your call. Right. And I remember he ended that call saying, you know, that’s really good because we like to hire happy people.

I thought, oh no hook line. And see, I walked right into that trap. So, oh, that’s about a month later to another high alpha partner who, that leads me to this idea. They had ran through a sprint week that I had actually participated in a survey for. I don’t know how many people had to say no to them first, but they eventually got to me on the list and said, Hey, we’re looking for a marketer lead this marketing business.

And so, you know, we did a lot of exploration. I think of each other, them of me and me, of them. And then we decided in July to take on this content marketing platform idea. July, still really tough time to start a business. So we really spent the first four or five months listening to as many people as possible as many marketers as possible.

And then we truly started building the business in January, hiring a team, building product, going in and getting some customers and some users. And it’s been a wild ride since then.

Brad Seaman: [00:11:58] Gotcha. So tell me about, so, so I read so tell me about the business. What’s what’s what problem are you guys trying to solve and what are you.

What are you selling? Like

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:12:07] what’s the, yeah, absolutely. So everything, you know, our, our thesis is that everything that we do is consumers of content, right? Whether it’s music, TV, movies, it’s all curated for us as B to C consumers. But then in the B2B space, when we expect somebody to go find content for B2B purposes, whether they’re making a purchasing decision, just trying to advance their career, learn research, we kind of just drop them into Google.

Right. And say like and you’re not exactly getting results, curated for you. You’re getting the people with the deepest ad budgets or the most sophisticated like SEO marketer. It’s our ideas. Like let’s bring that very familiar consumer experience to the B2B content space. So, you know, I feel like it’s so classic tech to say you’re like something for something else.

The example we always like to draw on is being like Spotify for B2B content. So based on what you were going to say, no, no, no, no. I could have gone to Netflix. That’s the other one.

Brad Seaman: [00:13:04] I feel like, you know, and I sort of describe what we do is Uber for everyone.

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:13:10] Yeah. So the whole idea is like, based off your role what you’ve engaged with previously, what people like you are engaging with your company size, your industry.

We can curate the right content for you. And over time as that audience grows, it’s only going to get smarter and smarter. And there’s a lot of cool things we can do with that. Once we have the content and the users on our platform. So that’s, that’s what we’ve just started. We’re in an early access or a beta period right now.

And we’re actually going to launch more formally in August with all of high office.

Brad Seaman: [00:13:38] So is that, what’s the so what’s the monetization strategy, is it, Hey, you’re going to vendors and saying, Hey, look, we’ve got an, we can now see sort of what content somebody that’s

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:13:48] important to them. Yeah, exactly. So it’s free for the content consumer.

We’d like to keep it that way into the future. That’s just kind of the ethos of what we want to do. We monetize through the brands, what they get, if they monetize is promoted content across the platform they’re selling. Spaces reserved for that promoted content. They get access to a robust, like a premium analytics package.

That’ll actually show them if your buyer’s a director of marketing, we can show you exactly what content format directors of marketing are engaging with. Exactly what search terms they’re searching for. And then in the future, we’ll actually be able to predict how that content will perform.

Brad Seaman: [00:14:23] Okay, cool. Yeah.

That’s, that’s awesome. I think that’s it. You know, look, I know one of the challenges. That I think researchers have, or people that are interested in sales and marketing products is it’s, you know, it is fragmented and then you download it down. I don’t know who invented this, but you download a piece of content and then you get a phone call, right.

So I’m, I’m in the phone call business. So we’re not, we’re not against it, but it is, it can’t be alone. If it can

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:14:48] be, I think we’re both smirking right now a little bit you know, I, that is the, the, the B2B experience, right? You fill out a form for a piece of content and likely if the team is doing what they’re supposed to be doing well, likely before you’re even done reading that content, you’re going to get a phone call and, or any.

I’ve managed teams that have done that in the past. So, so I hesitate to bash it too much, but it’s what if we just gave the consumers? I mean, there are times a consumer welcomes that call, right. But a

Brad Seaman: [00:15:17] hundred percent look, I’ve got three things right now. I mean, look, I’m in the business. I believe in phone prospecting.

I think the bigger challenge is how people do it more, you know, there should be just, there just needs to be more question asking and less telling people what to do. You know, like if you’re getting on the phone and seeking to understand. You know, versus trying to I think I heard somebody say what’d they call it pitch pitch, slap pitch

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:15:40] slash ,

Brad Seaman: [00:15:43] but less pitch slapping.

But yeah, no, I’m total obviously pro phone call, but I think it’s that it becomes, it comes down to the, the relevance. And I think the challenge with the research is the assumption. So I think it’s offensive, it’s offensive. And I think the smart Smartwater across our phases at the same time. Is because it’s just presumptuous to assume that downloading a piece of content means that you’re interested in the company.

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:16:08] Okay. So that’s actually like at the core of what we want to do and what we believe in is we want to put the control of that engagement back in the hands of the content consumer. Right? So on each individual piece of content, they have the ability to either say they’re just browsing, which passes.

Company name, company, or company name, job function, and job role. But no. No contact information to the brand. So still directionally some good information for the brand or the content consumer can raise their hand and say, I’m open to outreach. I’m ready to hear from this brand for the brand, that should be a really high quality engagement.

Somebody that’s probably read your content at least once. They’re they’re going to convert at a pretty high clip, and we’re just putting the control in the consumer’s hands on that interact.

Brad Seaman: [00:17:00] Yeah, no, I, I love it. I, you know, look, I think that the challenge with the w I think there’s two challenges.

One, I think the, the S the biggest challenge, I think with the SDRs calling is a lot of times they’re just not trained, right? So it’s like, we take the non trained STR and somebody downloads a piece of content and they call, and they don’t research, and they don’t actually know what your company does. And they definitely don’t know what my company does.

And and now they’re trying to get me in a meeting cause I download it. And they don’t listen. So you’re like, Hey, look, I download the white paper, you know, I’m a competitor. And they’re like, yeah, yeah, well, you should buy our stuff. And you’re like, you know, did you not hear me? I said, all my competitor, she’s trying to check her stuff out.

So yeah, a lot of I’m sure there’s lots of funny stuff, stories we could tell, but I think the challenge is, Hey, typically the inside sales team gets to cut their teeth. Do reps cut their teeth on content callbacks. And then the other thing is the pers pursuing, or assuming that download it downloading a white paper is interest.

And I think that’s probably the bigger reason why people sort of shrug on the white paper download phone call is because it’s just presumptuous. It’s just like, you know, it’d be the equivalent to taking somebody out to dinner and then them assuming you were going to get married, like that’s just way, way, like we just did dinner.

I mean, that’s like.

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:18:23] So my CTO, our CTO, and co-founder, he always compares the interaction to going shopping for shoes. He’s like, if you’re shopping for shoes, you’re standing looking at the wall, you know, somebody comes up to you and says like, Hey, can I help you? And you’re like, no. And that’s like in the, a, B to C world, if you say, no, they like go away.

Right. But like in the B2B world, you’d be looking at that wall and they’d be like, Hey, can we help you? And you’re like, no. And they’re like, okay, what about. What about now? What about those shoes? Those shoes. What’s your phone number? What’s your email? What about now? Are you interested now? Like and so, yeah, it’s I, I was actually, you know, while we’re trading VR horror stories, I was at a company previously.

I’ll keep them on named where we actually had to like untrain or BDRs because some of them had been trained to like, you should get off the phone as fast as possible. They didn’t know the product or they didn’t know, you know, in like, it was almost like the company was afraid of letting them spend too much time with a prospect because they weren’t properly.

It was really interesting. And I have a lot of passion, a lot of energy around BDR SDR. And it’s not something I realized I had until I really got to know it a lot better, but yeah, I

Brad Seaman: [00:19:36] think it’s a powerful, yeah. Well, look, it’s a powerful tool for getting people on the phone. Just whether you’re doing this or you’re getting somebody on the phone.

I think it’s a super powerful mechanism. It’s just like anything else, if you don’t do it right. You’re not going to get the results. So you know, and I think the biggest challenge, I think the biggest challenge with SDRs is just like, you can’t be a good SDR if you’re not interested. If you’re not, if you’re not a good listener and you don’t care, like I, you just can’t.

I got up and I had this conversation with somebody a couple of weeks ago on the podcast. You know, can you be a good salesperson? Am I asking you, I’m actually going to ask you the question. I, they, they asked me, do you think you can be a good salesperson and not be inquisitive or not be generally curious?

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:20:22] So I think you can probably brute strength your way to some, some success, but you’re not going to do it near as efficiently or near as effectively or at near as high a quality. Yeah. Somebody who is inquisitive, because I think we’ve all seen the, like the lone Wolf sales rep who just goes out and does whatever the heck they want.

And they can get some deals across the finish line. But then the CSM is struggling to make all that come true or to match that like, but I think the, the inquisitive I’ve always really admired the people who can sit and listen to a conversation, speak very softly, but carry a lot of authority. That’s, that’s what I strive for.

And I’ve got a lot of work to do.

Brad Seaman: [00:21:03] Where you could talk. I mean, you can talk a lot and still be a good listener. You just have to be know. I think it’s just like, it just, what are you like, what are you picking? You know, what are you picking up on? You know, and maybe it’s, I mean, maybe it’s like maybe a better state of you can talk a lot and still have good, be perceptive.

You can still perceive what somebody needs perspective, but, but in general, I think it’s good. Yeah. You use your ears? For sure. Yeah, well, super interesting. So I love what you guys are doing. That’s cool. I like the idea of being able to browse, being able to raise your hand, or you guys are just focused on sales now, sales

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:21:40] and marketing.

So it was in marketing right now. Eventually we want to be all B2B content. You know, we had to like thin that universe down a little bit to start with and sales and marketing is still a pretty big universe. So there’s some debate over how small that slice is. Yeah, so we’re starting sales and marketing, and then we’ll start to expand from there, like already kind of on our radar is customer success.

I think some people would even say that it is sales and marketing and that’s some of what we’re learning. So we’ll, we’ll start to as kind of demand drives it. We’ll start to expand that outside of sales marketing, but we still have a lot of work to do even just within

Brad Seaman: [00:22:15] sales and marketing. Just in terms of the, how many guys do you have on

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:22:18] your team?

We’re at eight people we’re hiring. Three others right now, I’m actually about to be have four others posted and then you know, transparently, we’re going to go out and do some fundraising here in the not too distant future and then continue to grow the team from there. But we’ve got just an awesome team.

It’s been a, it’s been a case study in hiring smart people and getting out of the way for me personally.

Brad Seaman: [00:22:40] Awesome. Are you, do you find yourself like one to. So

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:22:44] I was worried. That would be the case. I’ve always, I don’t know, like unfortunately, or fortunately, like one of my mantras, like I grew up with like being in my head for my parents was like they might outsmart you, but don’t let them out work you.

And that’s always, I’ve kind of always like prided myself on my work ethic, but that’s gotten me in trouble as I’ve gotten, gotten into people management, you know, jumping too often, too far into the weeds. Not being good at delegating, so I’ve gotten better at that. And now the team that we have just makes it so easy to do that.

It’s I really have to, I need to stay focused on kind of the vision the customers some sales motions, and then ultimately fundraising. But we’ve just got an awesome team that makes it really easy to delegate to right now.

Brad Seaman: [00:23:30] Well, Jonathan, I really appreciate you being on this was great. Like I said, look forward to following what you guys are doing and I wish you the best of luck and hope we stay in touch.

Jonathan Gandolf: [00:23:39] Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for the opportunity. You

Brad Seaman: [00:23:41] bet.