The Month End Podcast

Episode 18: Steve Luttmann • Tortoise and Volt

February 01, 2022 Steve Luttmann Season 1 Episode 18
The Month End Podcast
Episode 18: Steve Luttmann • Tortoise and Volt
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

The Month End provides emerging inventory based brands real life knowledge in the accounting, finance, and operational world. Our guests are not only similar brand founders and owners, but key stakeholders and contributors to the industry. Each episode provides a glimpse into the vast experience and insight from its guest’s unique background in a casual, conversational tone.


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In episode eighteen, Accountfully's CEO and Partner, Brad Ebenhoeh sits down with Managing Director of Tortoise and Volt Marketing and Ventures,  Steve Luttman.  To say Luttmann is a success in the high end liquor space is a serious understatement.  He shares his experience bringing brands to market for big companies like Unilever and LVHM's Moët Hennessy, and dives into his passion for developing the boutique craft alcohol selections seen in Tortoise and Volt's portfolio.  Selections as eclectic as a Texas Hefeweizen Whiskey, a Midwest made American Vodka, and a  ready-to-drink Old Fashioned named after a Revolutionary War icon. For anyone interested in his proven process going from concept to branding, to successful launch, this is the episode for you. 


SHOW NOTES and VIDEO RECORDING:  http://www.accountfully.com/podcast​​

 

The Tortoise and Volt Website:  https://www.tortoise-and-volt.com/
American Liquor Company:  https://www.americanvodka.com/
Bahnbrëcker:  https://www.bahnbrecker.com/
Hercules Mulligan: https://www.herculesmulligancompany.com/
Leblon Cachaça:  https://www.leblon.com/


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Brad Ebenhoeh:

Welcome to The Month End Podcast, episode 18. With Steve Luttmann, how you doing today, Steve?

Steve Luttmann:

Doing good, Brad. How are you?

Brad Ebenhoeh:

Doing well. So, Steve and Accountfully has kind of a long standing relationship where we've supported some of your kind of overall brands that you're associated with. So at a high level, at this point I'm going to have you kind of detail out your background, but you're managing director of Tortoise & Volt Marketing & Ventures. And then through that entity, we've connected on several kind of brands, right drink brands, most recently Hercules Mulligan, an exclusive ready to drink old fashioned, which is great. Bahnbrcker, the world's first Hefeweizen whiskey in Texas. And then the last company we're working with at this point is American Liquor Co, the first and only four crop vodka. So exciting times, clearly you don't like to drink or deal with alcohol. So excited to chat on The Month End podcast. Thanks for Thanks for joining us, Steve.

Steve Luttmann:

Yeah, good to be here. Yeah. Thank you, Brad, for inviting me.

Brad Ebenhoeh:

For sure. So why don't we get started on your history? So clearly, you've been involved in the CPG brand space for a long time. Can you just tell us where you started from and kind of your your life cycle from corporate world to do your own thing to now Tortoise & Volt and kind of just walk us through all that?

Steve Luttmann:

Sure. Sure. I, you know, I grew up at Unilever in the food and beverage world. So I started in Europe as a trainee for Unilever in Austria, and I worked full time with them in the United States in New York and the region. I worked on the pasta sauce wars and Ben and Jerry's and Lipton Ice tea and, you know, I was there for 10 years, also took me to Brazil, where I was there for three years as a marketeer. And then I moved after 10 years at Unilever to Diageo Moet Hennessy LVMH used to have a joint venture for luxury spirit brands, and worked with them for a few years in marketing. And then I realized, you know, I created a few brands I was involved with creating a few brands with them. And I realized I could probably do this myself and was eager to kind of get out on my own, and created Leblon Cachaa from Brazil, built a craft distillery, with some partners down in the middle of nowhere in Brazil, and launched Leblon and 40 countries did that for 12 years. And that was acquired by Bacardi in 2017. And then since 2017, Tortoise & Volt, it's basically a way of me finding opportunities and creating new ventures. And the three brands that I'm working on now, Hercules Mulligan, Bahnbrcker, and American vodka are just all unique individual, you know, propositions and opportunities that are, you know, very, very attractive to me. And each one of them has their own challenges and unique sales propositions and, you know, I'd say they do have one thing in common is we're working with you on on all of them, which is fantastic, because it allows us to scale and it gives me one common process to work across all three, that we can learn from one more works better on the other and just have a common practice across all three brands.

Brad Ebenhoeh:

Yes, yes. And we definitely, definitely enjoy you as clients across those three entities. So can we go back? What was the the major in your background is marketing? Correct?

Steve Luttmann:

Yeah, yeah. I'm I'm a marketeer that dabbles in everything, you know.

Brad Ebenhoeh:

Gotcha. So from back in the day when in the corporate space, then moving on to your own brand. Leblon what was the biggest transition from the corporate world to small business entrepreneur doing yourself? Because I'm sure there was, yeah, 15 different "Oh, I have to do this, I have to do that." But what what, what was like the biggest shock factor or change? Or maybe it's a couple?

Steve Luttmann:

Fundraising. I mean, you know, you realize capital, you know, when you work in the corporate world, in the big entities--yes, you have to raise money internally. But when you're in the incubator space, when you're in the early stage of a brand, you know, you're living hand to mouth most of the time for the first year or two and you have to go raise the money or use your own and bootstrap everything. You don't have an R&D department, you know, the accounting department anything. You're doing everything--you're faxing, and you're selling, and you're raising. But raising money I think is the is really the the sea change and it makes you grow up real quick.

Brad Ebenhoeh:

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it does. So from your interesting, I mean, if I'm looking at 2005, you created this brand. It's now 2022, technology has completely changed. Right, but back in that space when you had to raise money in the in the 2005 to 2010 range, right? What was a couple of kind of pointers, I guess to to an entrepreneur to think about. But then also, now that you're on the other side of the table now possibly looking at brands and finding partners who are bootstrap, like, I guess, tell me kind of the different mindsets of them from where you were, and now where you're at and kind of benefits or positive recommendations or just kind of information that the emerging brand owners?

Steve Luttmann:

Yeah, you know, when you're starting out, you don't know what you don't know. And trying to fill that gap with people that know is really important. And getting that Rolodex and getting advisors, and getting people that can shortcut you in terms of getting knowledge and capability and information, it's really important. The thing that's really different today, is what I call the gig economy. Back then there wasn't as robust a gig economy. So, you know, you wouldn't even think of 1099-ing people, you know, it was it was not even, you know, it was weird, you know, can you work part time? Now, it's Plan A is is the gig economy, Plan B is full time. You don't have to, and you know, think about the talent you can get at all levels at the high level, you can get world class talent in the gig economy, that you wouldn't want to raise full time, you know, hire full time. So that's the biggest change of all.

Brad Ebenhoeh:

It's so true, the fractional world versus the other full time world, you know, 10-15 years ago.

Steve Luttmann:

Yeah. And the pandemic just accelerated. I mean, everyone, you know, I think we're moving in that direction. But the pandemic taught a lot of people that you can work from home, or you don't have to work in an office or you can be virtual, and I think it just accelerate the gig economy. You know, the 1099 thing?

Brad Ebenhoeh:

Definitely, we have we have a handful clients that are international, is there any weird like, you know, from you being in Brazil, in Brazil, with your brand? Like, is there like any different again, this could change? And today, but just is there anything different in terms of how like Brazil operated versus the US? Are there any nuances if there is brands out there that, you know, are international or some US or some, you know, international, some domestic?

Steve Luttmann:

Yeah, it's a different culture. I mean, it really is, it's a, it's a relationship culture, which is very endearing. It's fun. I mean, you get to, you get to really know the people, you work with people take the relationship there much more seriously. It is more inefficient in that regard. I mean, that there is that that factor? There is also you know, there's the the pail issue that you have to deal with, and certain certain circumstances, which, you know, you do have to do here, but it's all aboveboard there. There's, there's a lot that's below board the, you know, as a gringo you don't even know how to deal with it, you know, like, why would he asked me you don't even know, you know, and certainly the language you know, I mean, you know, you always assume everyone works in English, but they don't. I mean, in Brazil specifically you have to work in Portuguese.

Brad Ebenhoeh:

I think different culture, different lifestyle.

Steve Luttmann:

Totally. And there's always a weird thing, you know, like for example, on Leblon we age, our Cachaa in you know, XO cognac casks in France. And so you know, we brought in a 40 foot container of XO cognac casks from from Cognac, France, and it got to the port and what we didn't know is that you can import used manufacturing equipment into Brazil, it's illegal, it has to be you have to buy new, you know, they they do it for their economy. So, so literally, we had to we had to send them back. We did find a workaround, which is you know, we got them back and we sanded the outside of the barrel so they look new and send them back say oh, they're all new barrels so that we got them in but there's always a weird thing like that. Yeah.

Brad Ebenhoeh:

Yeah, yeah. Dfferent nuances.

Steve Luttmann:

Tax regime, you know, all the taxes are, you know, it's different. Yeah. Not that it's more complex than here. It is complex there. But same, same thing you need some people that can help you that know what they're doing.

Brad Ebenhoeh:

Definitely, definitely moving on to Tortoise & Volt. So give us a little more background about like, you know, the firm and you know, the goal of what you are clearly we've identified some partnerships that we collaborate on or we work with you on but do you work with other brands, like you know, what is the the, the core service and what do you want to do with that with that company?

Steve Luttmann:

Yeah, so it's a marketing and ventures business. So, you know, it's consulting first and foremost consulting for other brands. They're, they're usually very quick in and out projects we do, you know, concepting, we do brand identity, and then we do business strategy. That's our core service. Obviously, our footprint is in CPG and beverages and bev alcohol certainly is a specialty. But I really do it to create opportunities, that is the on the venture again. So that's the focus. And, you know, I've been fortunate enough to have three really exciting projects come out of Tortoise & Volt, where, you know, I'm either the founder or the fractional CEO. And, you know, on Hercules Mulligan that started from reading a book in 2015, which, as you mentioned, I partnered with Flaviar on, you know, American Vodka, I had the good fortune of meeting some great guys, the founders and creating that brand in the Midwest. And then, you know, more recently, Bahnbrcker with some, you know, some really great entrepreneurs based down in Texas and a country music singer named Randy Rogers. So, you know, I couldn't be more fortunate in terms of the three ventures that I'm working on.

Brad Ebenhoeh:

Awesome. So then for those specific three ventures, how did those workout to where you actually, you know, became part of the core team and a founder and in launching the brands versus actually you know, more of your 1099 vendor relationships, your strategic relationships were with other brands where you're in and out, like, how did that come to fruition?

Steve Luttmann:

You know, it wasn't a straight line at all. It was just happenstance. Hercules Mulligan, you know, I literally developed that in 2015. And, and got it to a place where I was ready to launch it. But I had another project that I had to choose--I couldn't do both. So I had to find a partner with with Hercules Mulligan if I wanted to keep going. And I was just grabbing a breakfast or drink with you know, just ask his advice. I didn't know they were in the, in the space of building brands, because their marketplace and the club. And then next thing, you know, we're partners and, you know, they have amazing capabilities, a great community, and they have a great marketing department and sales department. So we launched it direct to consumer during the pandemic right before November 25, 2019. And proof of concept over two years and kudos to them. I mean, they did an amazing job. Now, we launched in New York, I hired the sales team and, you know, an ecosystem really bring that forward. So that one, I found that the brand and, you know, very fortunate to take direct consumer during the pandemic, because who would have thought, whereas American Vodka, you know, it was introduced to them through--I can't even remember how I met these guys--but they were looking for someone to lead the project. And initially, I said, you guys are crazy. It's a vodka. It's very hard to do a vodka, as we all know. I mean, it's very commoditized. But you know one I really liked the founders and the partners, you know, just said, I can learn a lot from these guys. And this project has a high level of difficulty. And I like the initial thought the design and started working with them and I think we cracked it with this four crop Vodka blend approach. I mean we call it the vodka whiskey lovers totally different approach to vodka where most Vodkas are in silos. And we found a way to you know, blend four different crops and create a different tasting vodka. And then on Bahnbrcker it really was through services. I was providing the services of naming and concepting and then brand identity and, and, you know, really hit it off with these guys. And these guys are really smart entrepreneurs, not from the industry, but you wouldn't know it. They're all working different aspects, different industries completely, but we hit it off and more importantly, it's in my wheelhouse, you know. I'm a concept brand guy. You know, it's a lifestyle brand. And this one's a destination brand. I mean, it sounds funny, but it's from New Braunfels, Texas. But it's very similar Leblon where it's the destination, you know, it's the place in the bottle and it's the spirit. You know, not in terms of the liquid but it's a you know, the spirit of the place. So we're all three brands are now in market. You know, we're focusing Bahnbrcker in Texas. American Vodka is in the Midwest and six states. And then, you know, Hercules Mulligan is national via direct to consumer through Flaviar, but now we're in New York City and killing it. I mean, the brand is, you know, I just pinched myself. I have significant imposter syndrome. And when people tell me they love the brand, I'm always and the product like really, are you sure. And that one, they just, they're just ecstatic about it. We got some magic in a bottle there. Yeah, I think all three are very cool brand concepts. So good work on all that stuff. So. So moving on from, you know, this marketing venture creating a product, now you have a product, now you have a brand or a concept, now we need to go to market and we need it, we're a small business, we need to, you know, raise money, we need to get inventory supply chain, so let's kind of walk through the the core kind of facet of, you know, kind of this podcast operations, you know, accounting is number one, but just focus on operations inventory, how do you source? How do you how you manage your inventory on these brands, you know, just kind of walk us through that process? Sure. So everyone's different, but typically I look for I look for partners, you know, on the production and, and the more capable, the better. And the more capable, the greater the commitment level. So, you know, on one of my projects, one of my production partners is a co-founder, you know, we became an equity owner skin in the game, and therefore, took on all the development and the working capital, which in this business is extreme. You know, the other the other two projects, you know, we just found some, some distilleries, local, that had the capability had the attitude, the mindset, and we work with them. Typically, we do all the purchasing of our ingredients, we own the formula, we do everything, so we're almost like renting their facility. It depends on their capabilities, and how deep they can and want to go. There's two challenges in that, in that world is one is the product development, you know, you gotta you got to get expertise to help you with that. And then, you know, the buying of the ingredients, and the packaging, and the cost is just enormous. You know, I mean, you know, how much you have--just your glass and your packaging, and your labeling and your cork and your shipper. And then that's not even getting to the liquid.

Brad Ebenhoeh:

Yeah, understanding your costs, understanding your fully loaded costs, you know, you need to know that before you get out of it. So how do you manage, not manage, but work with different people on these ventures, you know, like different founders, different teams. Like over here at Accountfully, I have my team, but I have clients at the same time, like, you're basically running four businesses here with your marketing venture, and, you know, the three businesses that are together, their inventory base, these brands were talking about. Finding partners that you can work with, but at the same time, this founder here may have a different mindset than this founder over here. So like, how do you challenge or how did those challenges work together? You know, and this is normal for a small business with various partners anyways, but how do you work through those aspects?

Steve Luttmann:

Yeah, I mean, the good news is, is the, the challenge is the same. And you can use what you're using in one business for the other business. And, you know, there is best practice, and there's tools. And there's also talent. So I mean, not only do I work with you guys across all three businesses, but I work with others across all three businesses, where and when it's, it's relevant, or modeling to me is a really important skill set in innovation--financial modeling, supply chain modeling, modeling your sales versus actuals. I mean, all those tools are really important. And, you know, there's an art and a science to them. And the better they are, the better you are. I've gotten better and better at modeling. And I, you know, and then I use them across all three. Every single business is going to have a different situation in their model. So you may learn something in one business, you say, "Oh, I'm going to use that on these." And that's how you get better.

Brad Ebenhoeh:

Yeah, gotcha. Yeah. 100% makes sense. From a modeling perspective, what is your workflow for modeling, like, every month, every quarter? Do you update it? Or do you review it? Give me best practices of just, you know, the model that you process that you use.

Steve Luttmann:

Yeah, so it's an animal. I start out, you know, pretty bare. Get a lot of tabs. I walked through the P&L, every line item is a tab, or they can end up becoming their own model like working capital supply chain. I do monthly, five year monthly, and then it breaks down to an annual but I, I just do, I have to. And then, you know, I walk through the P&L, and then I continue on to working capital. And then what's the the capital requirement? All the way to outcome analysis? You know, what's the return on investment? What's the Series A, Series B, Series C? And I build that, and I'm always, always using it, you know. And will you use that for the operating plan for the year. You know, give it to you guys so we can compare actual to plan. But I tend to update it quarterly in some regard for the operating plan, and annually for sure.

Brad Ebenhoeh:

Love it. Yeah, it's interesting, the models, you can have templates. But the next thing, you know, there's 65, more tabs on Excel sheet or five, you know, and it's a tab for this. So it's always--they're very individualized. And that's kind of, the clients that have a model, I'm like, you know, don't just pay somebody to have a model. And then just to raise money and don't use it, you need to understand the inner workings of it. You need to update it consistently, whether it's monthly or quarterly need to assess against it. And you can literally use it as a tool to forecast scenarios, to your point, like, when will I run out of money? You know, when do I need money, and what is the amount of money I can get, and then that saves the day in terms of just being proactive of like, maybe I can get a cash flow loan for 100-150k to bridge these two months versus other scenarios that you have to give equity on. So it's all about that whole scenario planning and analysis. Initially, when you talked about, you know, raising money is the hardest thing as a brand owner. You know, with these brands that you're having here that you're supporting, you know, Hercules Mulligan went through the crowdfunding equity route, or is currently going through that so how was that decision made? How has that process been? Just kind of give us a little more like thought, you know, or walkthrough of that?

Steve Luttmann:

Sure. Yeah, that so that was an interesting one. So it's definitely related to the brand and our situation. I don't recommend to go into crowdfunding, unless you really think it through and understand it, and also to get some expertise. And I, you know, we're fortunate one of one of the people in our team really, is very capable in that area. So, I mean, first off, you know, we launched direct to consumer, within the Flaviar community. And, you know, the brand did great. I mean, it was a hit, you know, quickly sold 2,000 cases. And the next thing, you know, we're at 15,000, I'm sorry, 2,000, bottles, next thing you know we're at 15,000 bottles, 12,000 consumers, and then, you know, we're getting to fundraising, and we're raising money from angels. And we said, why don't we go back to these consumers and ask them if they're interested. And we did, we didn't ask them for money, we just asked them if they're interested. And the reaction was very positive. So we decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign, you know, did a lot of analysis of who we should use--we use Start Engine. And then we spent four months trying to figure out how to do a campaign. And that's where, you know, our team did an amazing job. I mean, I can't even take much credit for it. Because the Flaviar team, it's just such an amazing job here. And, you know, I think we put it probably, you know, best in class campaign together. And, you know, our raise was 750 grand, which we thought was going to take three to six months, at least, that's what Start Engine told us. And, you know, we're oversubscribed, after three weeks, in fact, right now, we have a waiting list. We would have kept going, but we just don't need the money. You know, because we also at the same time got angel investors within the rest. So it was an amazing experience. The key to it, I will tell you, Brad, is we had 12,000 emails, that could go out and that people consumed our brand, and we're, we're already beloved. And if we didn't have that, we would have to go find that--we'd have to do paid media or something. We have to get a list.

Brad Ebenhoeh:

Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's leveraging your network, your connections, your brand loyalty, you know, numbers, etc is really key if you're gonna go. It's, again, it's just crazy the the different routes you can go to these days with getting money, whether it's debt, loans, short term loans, whether it's company equity, whether it's national angel investing, friends and family, you know, and then you get to the end of--SBA loans. It spans the entire spectrum now, and it's never been easier to get money. But you got to be careful in terms of where your money is, what the terms are, what you're giving away and all that stuff, which is key for founders.

Steve Luttmann:

What's exciting about this is now we have 800 with--I know you have Marc Levit on your channel, and Mark calls them investomers, your crowdfunding people are investomers. Obviously they're consumers, they're investors, but they're now brand advocates and ambassadors. And you know, what more could you ask for?

Brad Ebenhoeh:

Yeah, I know a lot of people in the world don't, you know, want to be an entrepreneur or be a investor, they see all these cool things like, oh, yeah, you got in at Amazon or things early? Well, now these people are actually they're, "hey, I have a friend or this is my company, I'm an owner of this company." And it's just, it's interesting, the mindset of just normal people out there. And then when they do that, then also they buy it, or they buy it through their friends for holidays, or birthdays, and it's just this kind of this very cool kind of brand, investomer brand, loyalty person that's just there to support you. So it's super cool in terms of that type of relationship. So I'm glad that gone well. So outside of that, as we kind of are nearing towards the end of this, from a sales marketing perspective, that's your brand, like, how do you assess? What are your some of your key metrics related to sales in terms of top line profitability of sales, etc?

Steve Luttmann: Well, the first thing is on the actual operational front, we look at:

What's our account sold? How many accounts are we in? What's the repeat order in those accounts really important? What's the quality of that repeat order? What's the conditions in that account? Certainly, pricing is important, how much discounting do we have to do if any? And if we are just doing discounting, hopefully, it's based on volume bytes of bracket price discount, not just, you know, a pay to play. And then, what's the quality in terms of on premise and off premise, relative to our business, and we always say, in the on premise, you build the brand and the off premise, you build the business. And that's where you really can scale is in the off prem--it's very expensive in the on premise to do business. So we do look at splitting out our sales that way. And right now we're a small brand, we're not meaningful to a distributor. So we have to put our own sales team, our reps on the street, which isa big cost for us. So the measuring of the deal flow in the sales pipeline for each other sales rep is a is a complicated area. Right now, we actually do it via Google Sheets, we're going to move to an online CRM tool--we're going to use one called Lily Pad. But in the beverage alcohol industry, where you have a three tier system and a distributor, it's a little more complicated than when you're when you're direct to consumer and with Amazon, and can see everything.

Brad Ebenhoeh:

So true, so true. My background, originally in small business was, when I was working at a big accounting firm, I went to become kind of a first accountant controller, for family wine businesses, they were set up in that manner to one's the wholesaler, one's the supplier, one's the broker ones and I'm like, "What is going on here?" Like the old the three tier system and the different requirements of each shade? It's a completely different animal. But yeah, people and partners that you can partner with to help to compliance needs and all that. So. So anyways, kind of wrap it up here. You know, the final kind of two questions we have for you, Steve, and then we'll chat more about your brands afterwards. Tell us one CPG industry do?

Steve Luttmann: You know, I think the most important thing is you got to get your concept, right. In VC speak, you always talk about risk. And there's three types of risk:

concept risk, you got execution risk, and you got financing risk. And I always believe the concept risk is the critical one. The more you can go to town and get your concept, right--your packaging, your product, everything that relative to your proposition--execution, it will take care of itself. You'll attract the talent, and you'll attract the money, and you'll figure it out. But I call Tortoise & Volt, Tortoise & Volt because I think you've got to think slow and act fast. And the part you got to think slow on is on that concept. You got to really know--the brand name is critical. What is your differentiating? What's your point of difference? Is your product good? It's got to be amazing to succeed. So that's the do. I mean, that to me is huge. Yeah, I can definitely tell where you come from, the sales and marketing and brand development world. Yeah. All right. What is one CPG industry don't? Don't get over your skis. Don't don't fall in love with your product. Make sure you are, certainly you can be passionate and you can internalize it, but you've got to separate yourself your product and as a founder, you can't get too attached to it. You have to look at it objectively. That's why it's important to have people like yourself telling you another point of view, and just don't get over your skis. Go listen to your consumer. And keep in mind, people are going to tell you what you want to hear. So try and find out what you don't want to hear. And just don't get over your skis too far, especially when it comes to expansion. Start small, prove concept, and then expand. Don't try and rule the world. We're not on Shark Tank. It's not as sexy and as fun as you think it is, especially when you fail. So just be an adult about it and don't get over your skis. Really just try and go through it sequentially. If you do, that's how the big successes work. I mean, I always look at Tito's, and it's a 30 year overnight success. Yeah, but what a success.

Brad Ebenhoeh:

Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that information. Good stuff. All right, Steve. I really enjoyed the chat. So where can people always find these products?

Steve Luttmann: Yeah, so Hercules Mulligan, you can buy us online. All three products you can buy online:

HerculesMulligancompany.com, AmericanVodka.com, and Bahnbrecker.com. B-A-H-N-B-R-E-C-K-E-R. So go online, and you can get delivery rate to wherever you live.

Brad Ebenhoeh:

Love it. AmericanVodka.com was available, huh?

Steve Luttmann:

Yeah, yeah, we got it. We had to pay for the URL. Yes. But I'll tell you. It's worth it.

Brad Ebenhoeh:

Yeah, no, I think simple brands like that speak to a big chunk of society these days, which is awesome. It's like, the brand name that's I think what it comes down to when you're saying killing the brand or getting that brand concept right. It's like, making it not too complicated, but simplistic, but very sophisticated. I'm saying you're like, wow, that's cool. So awesome. All right. Steve Luttmann, Episode 18 Montoth End Podcast. Steve, thanks so much for your time again. He's the director of Tortoise & Volt Marketing Ventures, and you can find him anywhere with these three brands. Steve, thanks again and really enjoyed the chat.

Steve Luttmann:

Likewise, take care.

Steve's Background
Different fundraising methods from 2005ish to now
Dong business in Brazil vs. USA
How Steve manages the business side of the brands
How Steve manages the various partnerships
Steve's workflow for modeling across all businesses
Steve's advice on crowdfunding
Key Metrics Steve looks for
CPG Do
CPG Don't
Where to find all of Steve's brands