How Kyle Lee Built Alaskan Salmon Company

How Kyle Lee Built Alaskan Salmon Company Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of Chew on This. Today we have a special episode powered by Mercury. And we have Kyle, who's the CEO and co-founder of Alaskan Salmon Company. It's a really interesting business and one that isn't unique to the ones that we've had on our company, which is typically, you know, health and wellness brand, beauty brands. This is something that's going to be a little bit out of the box. And I'm really excited about it because not only do you have Kyle, who's an incredible founder and a builder, but he's building something that's unique, that's going to be having stories that you haven't heard about and things that you probably don't know how to build. First of all, Kyle, thank you so much for taking the time out to come out all the way from Alaska. First of all, it was incredible for you to be able to be at least in a neighboring town to be able to come over to our studio because I know what we're going to do is remote. Thank you so much for taking the time out. For the few people who don't know you, few people who don't know your company, tell us a little about your background. Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah. Thanks a lot for having me. I've been a fan of the podcast though. I'm very fortunate and appreciate that for being here. My name is Kyle Lee. I'm the founder of Alaskan Salmon Company, born and raised in Alaska. And I've been commercial fishing for the past 10 years. Speaker 1: You know, you say commercial fishing. Tell us, what does that even really mean, right? Like, for those who don't do fishing or maybe have fished once with our dads, what is commercial fishing? Speaker 2: Yeah, so what differentiates commercial fishing versus recreational sports fishing is we're going out there with the intent of Catching a certain species to provide and sell to families across the country. Speaker 1: And that's salmon. Speaker 2: And commerce, yep. Got it. That's salmon. Speaker 1: And so you're in Alaska, you're doing commercial fishing, right, with the intent to sell salmon. When did this all come about? How did this even like, when were you like, I need to go get a commercial license and I need to go and get a DTC website up and I'm going to sell this, you know, cross country. Give us a little bit of that. Speaker 2: That is such a good question. And when we say it out loud like that, commercial fishing with the intent to sell, it sounds so formal, but that just wasn't the process when we started. You know, growing up, my parents had fast food restaurants. So, you know, I grew up rolling egg rolls, working with cash registers. So, my hands were like pretty soft. You know, never done any sort of physical labor, no blue collar job. So, you know, my best friend, his family, they were generational fishermen, commercial fishermen. So, I was like, that looks pretty badass. Loved to try it. And really, I went out and fished for two weeks during the summer and it was Blue skies, 70 degrees. I just loved it. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: You know, so like you guys get to do this for worth. As you know, you're out there fishing with your best friends. Like this is awesome. So when I first got into fishing, it was just out of pure joy for it. You're fishing in some of the most beautiful waters. Like the scenery is just insane. So yeah, that was the, that was the perception going into it. Little did I know, you know, as starting any business, there's just so much more. Speaker 1: Before we dive in, a quick word about today's sponsor, Mercury. If you run an e-commerce brand, you know how messy managing money can get. Accounts everywhere, surprise fees, pending invoices, inevitable delays. That's why we brought everything under one roof with Mercury. Now we've got our accounts, credit cards, capital, all in one platform built for how e-commerce actually works. And on top of that, we're earning 1.5% cash back on all of our credit card spend. We're also sending wires and ACHs with zero stress and zero fees. And we can track every transaction under one clean dashboard. The team at Mercury put together a special offer just for our listeners. So listen closely. When you deposit $5,000, Or spend $5,000 using your Mercury I.O. card. Within your first 90 days, you can get $250 back. Do both where you deposit $5,000 and spend $5,000 on your card. You'll actually get $500 back. Go to mercury.com slash Chew on This to get started today. Now, let's get back to the episode. So walk us through that now. So you fall in love with the idea of you can do something you love and it can also be a job. And, you know, you decide to obviously go the route of, all right, well, you know, you could have gone maybe wholesale, you could have gone maybe a different route that, you know, sometimes you see certain craftsmen in different industries like that, but you went the DTC route. Tell me a little bit about that. How has that been growing that and what are some of those challenges you kind of already poked out? Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good question. So we, it wasn't, DTC by choice originally. Okay. When we first found out that there's this opportunity, you know, I was going to, when I first started commercial fishing, I was doing my undergrad in Colorado. Got it. So, I saw the salmon at the grocery store marked as wild salmon. It looked so different from what I had in my freezer. I brought some for you today. We'll check it out. Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do that. Speaker 2: It just looked so different and I learned that the supply chain for seafood is very archaic. There's a lot of middlemen in this day and age. It doesn't have to be. We've got all these tools, direct communication directly to the customer. Our initial thesis was who's going to care the most about the highest quality salmon and who's going to be our earliest customer. So we started off with Japanese sushi chefs, Michelin restaurants, because those guys already know quality. So we don't need to convince them. We just need them to try it. We started off getting into a few of those restaurants and things were going well and then COVID happened. Got it. And so we saw that great initial traction. Speaker 1: That's interesting. Speaker 2: Yeah. And then everything just stopped. And so, okay, we know we have this good product. People are still going to eat seafood. How do we do that? Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: And then started Diving into the world of digital marketing, found out about Shopify, Klaviyo and all that. That was a very quick initial pivot. Speaker 1: Is that 2022? 2021. 2021. Okay, got it. So 2021 comes, you start to pivot into DTC, right? And how different is that world for you, right? You're kind of, you're doing, one, you're obviously out there literally creating and catching your product, right? Like, I don't think anyone who can Say that we relate to you can really relate to you, right? Like I go to a manufacturer and say I need X amount of collagen powder and they have it ready in four to six weeks, right? You're out there on a boat literally catching the product you're about to ship, but then you also need to worry about well, how do I get traffic? How do I get people interested, etc? So tell me about how that world started now in 2020. Yeah. Speaker 2: Also, like you're making making supplements sound easy. I'm sure like we both have different problems, you know, in rebuttal to that, you know, we're fortunate our products are already perfect. We don't have to manufacture or create any recipes. Fair, fair. Yeah, buying seafood online. And I think a lot of food is a new consumer behavior. And so when we first started in order to get traffic, we didn't have a budget. So I knew we weren't going to do any media spend. It was a pure SEO play. We didn't even have a shoppable website, just a landing page with my story, what I wanted to do, email capture, and then I would just write blogs. And then I started to take more SEO classes. I mean, some of those blogs I wrote in the first couple of months are still some of our best performing today. Wow. And then I think that just shows that, you know, the quality of information that you put out there, if it resonates with people. Speaker 1: Super important. Speaker 2: Yeah, super important. So, yeah, we started with purely SEO, but I will say we got very, very lucky because of one of those articles, a New York Times editor read it and I think we had some contradicting beliefs. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: So she sent me an email kind of like ripping me a new one about like, we were talking about our product and at the time we wanted to sell it for a hundred bucks a pound. And then she wrote like a scathing email to me, but I took it as an opportunity to educate her. Hey, there's hundreds of different salmon fisheries in Alaska. The one we're fishing out of is the best because X, Y, and Z. You know, a couple of weeks later, then she put us in print, which was like, you know, you can't. Speaker 1: That's incredible. Was that circa like 2021 or 2022? It was three months into the business. So then organic. Speaker 2: So yeah, that email capture we had generated like 4,000. People, which was crazy for us. Speaker 1: Wow. Speaker 2: You know, so yeah, we got very lucky. Speaker 1: I hope you sent her some salmon. Yeah. That's incredible. Okay. So, so again, you, I think so much of your story is like the untraditional roots of what you see in e-commerce and DTC, right? Like typically now a lot of people start their store and they're, they hop on Meta, right? And they craft up some ads and they start running traffic and, oh, it's too expensive. It's too expensive. You didn't have a choice. You, you had to figure out another way. Speaker 2: Yeah. Didn't have a choice. Content wasn't something I was good at and I just knew it just takes a lot of money to hack money. You just have to have enough to test and have the process easy. What I know is true is salmon is something that a lot of people want and are curious about. You know, Google is the first place to capture those people who are already lower in the funnel. Speaker 1: And then talk to me about the growth in 2022 to 2023 and onwards. Did you guys start to shift towards more organic spending through Meta and some of the other platforms? Speaker 2: We actually didn't start spending on Meta until this year. Speaker 1: Really? Wow. So everything's been organic in Google? Speaker 2: Yeah, organic in Google because we had So the wild salmon season goes, it fluctuates every year depending on what the salmon are doing, but typically around mid-May through like August, September. Speaker 1: Got it. Speaker 2: You know, we were focused on a specific type. So we typically, we had like an eight week, we had a two month window. So we would go in and catch and buy as much salmon as we could. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: Um, and then yeah, through SEO and Google search and our email emails, um, I'm a marketing, we would, I mean, every year we'd sell out by October. Speaker 1: So does that, so then is there an element of that seasonality to your business of where even if you catch way more salmon, you can't sell it through like December, January? Speaker 2: It's a working capital issue. Got it. Yeah. So like I'm one of the many fishermen that fish for the company. Um, and so we pay all of our fishermen, you know, net zero. They deliver, we pay them right away. If they got bills, they got families to pay or families to feed. It becomes a working capital issue. Speaker 1: Very interesting. Speaker 2: So especially with DTC, we're a small company, right? And we still are, but we just, we would try to buy as much as we could, but you know, it just slowly. Speaker 1: Of course. No, no. And you have literally people, you know, it's a people business. Speaker 2: So to kind of help with that, we started doing pre-sales. Speaker 1: Smart. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: You start to also gauge your demand through that. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. It helps a lot on both fronts. Speaker 1: It's really interesting. Now, you know, one thing that I think is really interesting here is you're based in Alaska. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: It's kind of like the one territory where, you know, when everyone gives you shipping rates, they're like, oh, by the way, in Alaska, right, is this. And, you know, it's in some ways an afterthought. In some ways, it's in this corner that everyone knows on the map, but not many people know too much else out of there. How difficult and how many challenges do you face in just The logistical pieces, the fact that maybe even just like locality wise, you don't have too many people who speak the same, you know, language of DTC. Like, tell me a little bit about some of those elements. Speaker 2: It's funny you talk about, oh, we ship everywhere in the continental US, but not Alaska. And so the thing about us, we're the inverse. Everyone we want to sell to is outside of Alaska and shifty. So, I mean, our shipping rates when we started were eight bucks a pound. Speaker 1: Wow. Speaker 2: That's insane. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: So, you know, we would put a five pound box of fish, you know, 40 bucks. You know, five pounds of dry ice in the box. No, our shipping was like 80, 90 bucks per box. It's insane. Speaker 1: I didn't even know about the dry ice piece. Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, dry, dry ice. And like Kansas City is like 65 cents a pound. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: We pay 280 in Alaska. So there's like so many things that were, uh, it just, it wasn't, yeah, it wasn't ideal place for DTC because, and there also weren't many companies doing like all the other seafood companies are big wholesale. Right. So like the, the distribution lines just weren't established. Yep. Speaker 1: Wow. That's really, really interesting. You're obviously dealt with those challenges now and then you also need to make e-commerce work from a margin standpoint. So obviously you're forced to do the SEO piece. You're forced to go organic, which I think is almost a really cool part to how building businesses sometimes work out, which is you don't have the luxuries or choices that some other brands do. And then you also don't have the luxury of just popping up on TikTok shop and starting to push through sales there on your product. Tell me a little bit about, and I'm very curious on, were there additional growth strategies or did you ever tap into influencers? Did you ever tap into some other ways to get the word out there for your brand? Speaker 2: Yeah, we tried a couple different growth strategies, I would say. In year two, we started seeding to creators. I knew there was power in social media, but we hadn't done it ourselves. We haven't experienced it for ourselves. We've seen brands like Avi and other brands crush it and have these super fans, right, who are actually using your, customers are actually using the product and they're preaching it to their community. And so, yeah, we seeded a few, probably 50 creators, but The biggest value we got out of that was, you know, because we had no brand, no one really knew who we were. We had maybe a hundred followers. I created a video of just, because when people get this email and they get the product, they're going to look up who we are, right? They're going to check out our social. So I did a quick video, like, Hey, you know, my name's Kyle. I'm a commercial fisherman. Just give a quick, you know, 30 second video of who I am and what we want to do. Just like my original landing page, um, post it. And then that was our first. Going viral video. And so, yeah, it was great to connect with all the creators, but it also helps my kind of put us on. Hey, we can build our own social channels as well. Yeah. Speaker 1: And yeah, as my next piece was to touch on, you know, Being able to take content on your own and handling that piece, how much of a, um, how do you manage, you know, some of the dopamine that comes from it, right? Like, oh, we went viral or, oh, wow, we got a bunch of views. And then maybe your next video doesn't, but you still need to stay motivated to do it because it is a source of energy. Um, how do you manage your time with that? Speaker 2: You know, um, it is a lot of fun and cool to see when we get a lot of views, high views, high engagements, but right. And I'm yeah, it's great interacting with the community. Yeah, but I still I don't get really excited until we start seeing like metrics move on the actual website. Speaker 1: Makes sense. Speaker 2: But, you know, I know building the community is a long-term game, so it's fun interacting and seeing what works. Even though we've been posting for about two years now, we, you know, we maybe only post 10 to 20 videos a year. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: So still a lot of learning. But yeah, we got pretty neutral about it. Speaker 1: I mean, sometimes the quality over quantity piece makes a big difference, right? A few interesting questions I have is, you know, Have you ever been truly scared out there at any point where like, you know, give me a point where it's just like, holy shit, this is scary. Speaker 2: It's insane. You know, I was telling you, I had deckhanded for two weeks with my friend, and then the next year I bought my own boat, which was so dumb. I should not have done it. Everyone that I had talked to was like, hey, I really like fishing. I'm going to buy in. They're like, don't do it. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: You know, banks want to give me money. They're like, no, you don't have enough experience. Don't do it. But I just took out a ton of personal loans. I was like, I'm doing it anyway. Speaker 1: Wow. Speaker 2: But they were right because I didn't know what I was doing. I grew up in a restaurant. I've never, I'd never even changed oil in my car. I had no mechanical experience. Yeah. And it's so much different being, you know, let's say like an employee versus a CEO. So when I was a deckhand on the boat, I didn't have to worry about anything. Yeah. All I had to do was work hard. That's easy. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: So my first year it was, uh, It was a good wake-up call, but just like the most basic things, understanding weathers, but I would say one of the scariest things for me was I had taken on so much debt that I had to fish every day. Every time they opened the fishery, no matter how bad it was, I had to go out. And so there's, you know, it was like one of the worst storms of the year, but I'm in a boat, you know, they're built to float. I went out there, we're fishing, we're just getting crushed. And it was like, it was so bad. I was, I was laying on the deck, we're picking fish, I'm just throwing up and like, we're just getting rained on, the boat's just getting trashed. And then, you know, finally I get up and I look around and there's no one out in the ocean. And so I started calling all my buddies like, Oh, where are you guys? Like, Oh, we're back in port. We didn't go out. And then, you know, I told the girls, like, we're going to pack our shit. We're going to head back to town. But then at the time, the Coast Guard made an announcement over the radio that all these channels, there's these small channels where we drive back to enter safety, were closed. And what that means was because the water is more shallow, waves were just breaking. So if we would go through, if we were to try to go through, we would capsize and Coast Guard would not be able to come rescue us. Wow. So we just had to weather out the storm for two days. Speaker 1: Two days? Speaker 2: Yeah, it sucked. Speaker 1: You just stayed out there? Speaker 2: We had to. Speaker 1: Is it like a cover? So you have some covered area or? Speaker 2: Well, yeah, we would go inside the cabin, but so we're just like getting rocked. That's insane. It was really brutal. And so that's when I learned, you know, You gotta live to fish another day. Making money is important, but nothing is more important than life and health. Speaker 1: Wow, that gives you chills. That's crazy. I was just gonna ask you, what's the strangest thing that ever happened to you on water? That's definitely the scariest, but anything strange? Speaker 2: Strange? I can't. I'll have to think about it. We'll come back to it. Speaker 1: If you come back to it. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: If someone said they wanted to do what you're doing, what's the one truth you'd make sure that they understood first? Speaker 2: Your why. And do you truly have conviction to do it? No matter what venture, whether it's starting a business, commercial fishing, nothing's going to be easy. You know, so there's going to be tough times and You know, the ones that succeed are the ones who are kind of relentless and no matter how tough it is, they've got the discipline to make their way. Speaker 1: Great, great advice. Unknown Speaker: Let's be honest. No one starts an e-commerce brand because they love managing finances. But the further you scale, the more critical it becomes. At Obvi, we got tired of logging into five different tools just to see where our money was going. That's when we made the switch to Mercury. Now, everything's under one roof. Accounts, credit cards, capital, all in a single dashboard that's actually built for how e-commerce works. We're earning 1.5% cash back on every single dollar spent, sending wires without delays or sneaky fees, and getting funding with terms that actually make sense. And for our listeners, Mercury is putting together something special. Deposit or spend $5,000 in your first 90 days and you'll get $250. And if you do both, you'll get $500. Go to mercury.com slash chew on this to get started today. Speaker 1: Now, let's get back to the episode. the millions of distractions that other people may have, but at the same time, your resources can also be limited, right? And I think one of that comes down to, when you're starting a business, comes down to like, all right, well, what are the few things you fundamentally need, right? It's like, go create an LLC, right? You get your EIN. And the next step becomes, you gotta like, well, I gotta either put in money or I gotta collect money somewhere. And so you go need to open a bank account, right? What's the scene out in Alaska? Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen a bunch of, you know, legacy banks. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: It's the only option you have. Speaker 2: Yeah, only option. There's legacy banks and also there's a few like, you know, hyperlocal banks. We were banking with Wells Fargo for the first couple of years. That's also all I knew too. Being in a lawsuit, we're so shielded off from any sort of tech innovation or anything that's new or improved because we're five to seven years behind everyone else. And so it's not until we Not unless you listen to a podcast like this or you're attending events, you're going to figure those out. So yeah, that's all I knew. I honestly thought all banks were the same. So I was like, I've been banging with Wells Fargo my whole life, my personal stuff, so why not loop my business into that? Speaker 1: Makes sense. And then you made a switch to, I believe it's Mercury. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: How's that been? And what are some of those simplifications that came through it? Speaker 2: It's been incredible across many fronts. One is just so much easier to use and gather any sort of data or reporting. Some of these legacy banks, their websites are just insane to navigate. Just the interface is really nice, but there's other things that I really like where Now, through Mercury, we're able to, you know, we've got free wires in the US currency. Speaker 1: It's $25 every time. Speaker 2: I was going to say, yeah, Wells Fargo, they trick me $30 every time. And also, when we're paying our bills through ACH, it was 1%, you know, where now it's free. That all adds up. Speaker 1: It does. It really does. Speaker 2: And so, before, I was like, okay, I'm not paying 1% for this. So, I would have to go into the branch and pay. That's crazy. Speaker 1: That's insane. Yeah. And just a time thing, right? Yeah. You know, the other thing about, I think, Mercury and a lot of these tech enabled solutions, right? I think what they allow you to do is if that part feels easy, a lot of the other stuff feels even easier, right? It's like you don't want to have a challenging day in what you need to do to run your business. And then you go and log into your portal to figure out the money and payment and you're like, Shit, I don't want to deal with this right now. Speaker 2: That's exactly what happened. So when we first started, The season we're always so busy, busy just catching fish, selling fish. I didn't really have time for ops or finances. All I really cared about was like really high level. Okay, this is our cost. This is what we're selling for. I'd kind of ballpark the variable cost in between. And then it wasn't until three months later at the end of the season, I'd reconcile and track everything just because it was too It was just too clustered. I couldn't really have any visibility into it. But through Mercury, we have so many separate accounts. Just by logging in, just a quick view. Our restaurant business is this. Our DTC business is this. So it has been really nice. Speaker 1: I think even for us, when we made the move, I think we were at legacy as well. And I think for us, the biggest piece was the savings of the transaction stuff was helpful. But I think being able to actually have an app that just logs in and tells you exactly what you want to see and know, and you don't have to toggle and press a bunch of buttons. It doesn't sound like it's a lot of work, but it's just one less thing to worry about. It's one less thing to click around and figure out where you need to go or figure out what you need to do. I think that's one piece that really helps. I'm curious, what are some other tech enablements or things that you implemented in your business that have been very helpful, if you had to call out anything else? Speaker 2: There's a lot to uncover there, but just like the full stack, even if we start on the e-commerce side, Shopify is like the first layer. When you first start and you get Shopify and then you start to dig a little bit deeper, you add these channels such as like Klaviyo or Tentive to build. And then once you kind of learn that, there's additional add-ons that make that even more efficient. And especially now in the day of You know, AI and testing, we implement a lot of those things to, you know, constantly test and see what works and what doesn't work. Speaker 1: That's awesome. I'm curious, you know, when you look at something like salmon, right, and people buying it in potentially bulk or people buying it, you know, to obviously keep in their home and utilize as they need, when it comes to something that I feel like isn't a retention rate that is often talked about, right, like, you know, People typically know retention rates for beauty, health, wellness, apparel, some of the categories we all talk about, but the category of, let's say, seafood, right? The retention rate maybe isn't something that is publicly talked about or there isn't too many benchmarks, etc. How do you work on determining if your business is proving to be something that has good product, good loyalty, getting feedback from your customers? Tell me a little bit about how you understand your business deeper because you don't have as many open benchmarks. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been a tough one for us and that's something we're still solving and learning because we were selling out every year. Every season it was a new set. It was, we would lose essentially all the data from like, we'd have some customers come back, but you know, it's really hard to reacquire six months later. So this is our first 12 months of revenue. And really we'll gather our data of how we're performing and then look at a holistic payback. Okay. This is, this is what we've been doing for retention. Do we think we're doing the best that we can? Right. Or it's like, okay, we know there's a lot of cracks in our, in our email flows or our subscriptions aren't optimized, our landing pages aren't optimized. So then we say, okay, you know, this is where we're at when we're operating at 65%. If we invest, we can We'll make a guess, okay, it should be here. But it is hard when there isn't a benchmark. How was that? Did you guys deal with that early on? Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, for us, the tricky part was we knew for supplements there was benchmarks, but when we were coming out of the gate in 2018, we had launched Flavored Collagen was our whole thing, right? We started with Flavored Collagen and we were probably only the second company to offer it. Right, and so when you have something that is new or a little bit unique, you have a tough time understanding how to compare it because I can't go and take my retention rate against vital proteins that serves unflavored collagen and built their whole business on unflavored collagen, right? And so knowing that they have a 37.2% retention rate didn't really help me because it's like, oh well, mine's flavored. People won't take it as often because it's And today we're going to talk about something that you'll take when you want something flavored, right? It's similar to like drinking seltzer water versus maybe plain water. Like you'll have flavored seltzer water once in a while, but you'll have water every day, right? So being able to almost craft something that feels like, hey, this is what's working for my business. And that's enough for now was a good starting point for us. Speaker 2: Did you know that going into it or is that something you discovered? Speaker 1: You had to discover that, right? Because it's like, initially you're trying to chase after these crazy goals that people talk about. Crazy numbers people say and then you're like, that's not gonna work for my business. You know, like it just doesn't. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing. There's so like there's so much like great advice out there, but you as operators, you have to do it for yourself and figure out what works for you. Speaker 1: That's right. Speaker 2: You have two seafood companies and you could do the same thing and one's gonna crush it and one's not. Speaker 1: That's so true. Speaker 2: You just have to do it yourself. Speaker 1: Yeah, you nailed it. I think out of all of this, the one thing that comes out is if you're building a business with good product, at the end of the day, the only thing that's going to come between you is working capital or some sort of pandemic type of thing. That's the only real, if you really think about it, it's like I have a good product. The only reason I can't get it into more hands is because I either don't have the money to spend on marketing or I don't have enough money to make more of it, right? Because if people are enjoying it and buying it and you have good reviews and you're getting good retention rate and whatnot, the only reason you can't grow is because of money. And then the other side of it is if you get forced into a business model because of whatever's going on in the world, right, to where you can't distribute more. So I think that's the part that's like you then just go and become Excessively obsessed with building great products, right? I think it's super powerful. Everything you've shared so far has been incredible. It's really, really cool to see your journey. I wanna get into some really cool rapid fire questions. And again, feel free to answer this with as much detail or as little, but it's a little bit of a fun way to understand a little bit more about you and your business. But number one was, what was going through your mind That day you decided to toss the academic track and just do and go the open water route. Speaker 2: I knew I was smart enough to get a job if I failed, but I was only young enough and strong enough to do commercial fishing once. Speaker 1: Wow. Great answer. What was the moment you realized there has to be a better way to get wild fish to people's tables? Speaker 2: When I was doing my undergrad in Colorado, I played soccer for the university and I mentioned earlier that I saw the salmon at the grocery store, but then also I would cook We do spaghetti nights before our games and so a lot of great feedback from the guys. Speaker 1: How did that unexpected digital connection change the way you run the business? When you started the DTC piece, did it have to change a lot of what you were doing in your processes? Speaker 2: Not so much, not on the operations, but on the selling side, the consumer side. Yeah, it completely changed because before wholesale, we were just dialing the phone. I'd speak to the chef directly. Digital marketing is a whole new beast. Similar to when I got into commercial fishing, I was like, oh, fishing's easy. I was like, oh, I'm just going to build a website. This is going to be cake. You look up the metrics like, oh, people get like a 3% conversion rate. No problem. All this traffic's going to start coming in, but that's just not the case. Speaker 1: No, it's so true. What's the craziest review you've gotten on your product? Speaker 2: The craziest review I've gotten is that our salmon was dyed. Because like, because the color of our fish is very red, it's very vibrant. And so we had, we got our, it was like one of our first one-star review of like, you know, some lady had ordered and called us out for lying, saying that we claim to be wild when it's very clear the salmon has died. The product was that good, huh? Yeah, it was a good, it was a good... Speaker 1: That's incredible. Speaker 2: There's the wrong one, yeah. Speaker 1: That's incredible. Wow. And on that note, when it comes to educating people about the product being literally so fresh, so different from maybe what they're used to seeing and eating, have you had to pivot into putting disclaimers or educating people in a different way? Or are you still generally hoping that people understand that this is literally coming from Alaska? Speaker 2: Yeah. My goal and objective with all of our content across short form videos or SEO articles is just pure education. Obviously, we sell our products, we sell salmon, but We're a small company and we're also not for everybody. Waste is subjective and every family has their own nutritional needs. Some places, they might, that's groceries like farm salmon might be the only thing they have. There's a place on the market for all seafood, but I just want to make sure people have the tools they need to make that decision for themselves. Very cool. Speaker 1: I love that. What's one place you would move to if it wasn't Alaska? Speaker 2: One place I would move to? That's a great question. You know, I haven't thought too much. Speaker 1: Love Alaska too much. Speaker 2: I was like, there's so much for me to do in Alaska. Speaker 1: That's awesome. What'd you think of the David Protein Cod? Speaker 2: That was, I mean, they're the geniuses behind that. Like they did such a good job and it's so much fun to be able to You know, support them. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: On that campaign. They crushed it. Speaker 1: No, that was, um, what was your take on it? I mean, it was, it's, it's, it was, it's been an honor working with them on the digital side, just as an advisor, but being able to see like this shift, especially while they're waiting for the bars come out and, and being able to even move this up and, and, and, and, you know, seeing your involvement, I think it's probably one of the most powerful campaigns we've seen in a long time. Not just from the fact that these have a lot of media around it. But being able to harness the messaging the way you guys did of, you know, the double entendre, I'm like, hey, compare this to our protein bar, but also it's a product on its own, right? And it had this double mix message and it got the perfect amount of like crazy responses, hate responses, love responses, and then like marketing genius responses. And I just never have seen a blended build-out like that ever before. So I would love for you to share your story there. Speaker 2: Yeah, they created a lot of good conversations around it. Like you said, there's the full spectrum of people for and against it. So it was really cool to see. And yeah, Zach and Peter are awesome for doing that. The team crushed it. But Zach didn't tell me how my He never told me how much effort they were putting into this campaign. I knew their thesis because on their website, even before this, they already had the cod. So they're like, oh yeah, we're going to do this campaign about it. I thought it could have been a PR box for creators. And it's crazy because it almost didn't happen. I'm not even kidding. When I got off the boat from salmon, we were going out fishing for the cod for our business and also for theirs, and we broke down. We made a couple sets and we broke down, so we weren't even near how much product we needed, let alone how much they needed. It was a tough call to make, but we were heading back to port and I was like, I got to call Zach. I called him and was like, hey man, this is what's going on. We're not going to be able to, we didn't catch as much as we had hoped. Zach and I, we've been working on this for so long and I didn't want to let him down. So I was like, okay, we caught this much, we'll split it, you know, we'll take away from what we need and we'll give half to you guys. And I'm glad you said it. Speaker 1: No, it's incredible. And again, it's power to you because I think one of the most incredible parts of your story is like at the ethos of who you are and what you've been building is you truly care about creating something that's built around your ecosystem and bringing it to people's tables, right? And whether it's through a collaboration and as great as a marketing campaign and a product campaign I've seen with David or through what you're building with Alaskan Salmon Company. I think it's incredible to be able to see that you can pivot to still make the ethos of your mission come true. So kudos on building that. Kyle, I've had an incredible time talking to you. I wish we could go on for much longer. The one thing we like to do at each episode at the end, and I find it to be very powerful, is we like to give one thing that you would want the listeners and the viewers to walk away with, one thing for them to chew on, one takeaway that can get instilled in their business. Speaker 2: One takeaway about their business? Speaker 1: One takeaway for them to to work on on their business or one thing to to even as a as an entrepreneur? Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah, one thing. One thing I'd like to say a lot of people. You guys know what you need to do for your business because no one knows your operation and your processes better than you do. So I would say have conviction in what you're feeling and really dive into it. Focus on the channels that you know you're succeeding at and just dive deeper and really trust yourself. Speaker 1: Chew on that. If you want more from us, follow us on Twitter, follow us on Instagram, follow us on TikTok, and check out the website ChewOnThis.io.