Behind the Scenes of VYBES (Premium Drinks for Mind + Body Well-Being) : A Chat with Jonathan Eppers, CEO

You're in for a treat as we sit down with Jonathan Eppers, the CEO and founder of VYBES, a revolutionary wellness brand that's shaking up the industry with its innovative plant-based beverages.

Jonathan lets us in on his personal journey, where he transitioned from being deep in the tech space to spearheading VYBES during the early days of CBD - a journey fueled by his own struggle with anxiety. 

Our chat takes a deep dive into the murky waters of CBD regulations in the US. Eppers, a veteran in this field, sheds light on how VYBES ensures the safety and regulation of their products amidst the ever-evolving landscape of CBD laws.

Additionally, we get a glimpse into VYBES' exciting expansion plans, which include a "gentle energy" drink and a CBD powder product.

Lastly, we tap into Eppers' entrepreneurial spirit and what fuels his passion for creating and innovating. From painstaking research to facing the legal complexities head-on, his story is a testament to the grit and resilience needed to succeed in the entrepreneurial journey. Eppers offers invaluable advice for aspiring entrepreneurs and shares how staying focused and committed can lead to amazing places, like VYBES' recent feat of being stocked in Sprouts stores nationwide.

Tune in for this invigorating chat and walk away inspired and enlightened with a better understanding of the fascinating world of CBD.

Buy VYBES: https://idrinkvybes.com

Jonathan's Bio:

Jonathan Eppers is the CEO & Founder of VYBES, a functional wellness brand crafting beverages made with plant-based functionals that improve well-being, and more importantly, mental health. 

VYBES is a leading beverage brand pioneering a new category of functional beverages within grocery specifically addressing mental health needs, like anxiety & every day stress. VYBES is available in more than 4,000 retailers nationally across 32 states. Prior to VYBES,

Jonathan was the CEO & Founder of RadPad, an end-to-end rental marketplace that made finding a place, signing a lease and paying rent much easier, which was nearly sued out of business by their biggest competitor, Craigslist.

Jonathan left tech to try his hand at CPG after he began using CBD to manage his own anxiety, caused by the litigation. It has become his mission in life is to bring holistic forms of therapy using clinically proven plant-derivates to improve daily the health & wellness of people.

Transcript

Angela: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the 5D CFO podcast. My name is Angela Marie Christian and my mission is to help entrepreneurs and thought leaders rise to the 5D, where we can find wealth in all dimensions, in all areas of life. Enjoy. I'm so excited to introduce you to my guest today, jonathan Eppers. Jonathan is a CEO and founder of Vibes, a functional wellness brand crafting beverages made with plant-based functionals that improve well-being and, more importantly, mental health.

Angela: 0:34

I can speak from experience, being a long-time fan and user of Vibes. I was searching for a replacement to my nightly glass of wine, because I am an entrepreneur, I am a single mother, I am go-go-go from 5am onwards, and what I found was, yes, the wine was giving me relaxation, but it also decreased my patience, and I didn't like that. I really wanted to be present and calm with my children, and so, when I switched from having a nightly glass of wine to having Vibes, what I noticed was I still had that sense of calm and peace. My mood felt lifted, but I was able to be clear-headed and really present, and so I was a huge fan after the first drink. So Vibes is available in more than 4,000 retailers nationally across 32 states.

Angela: 1:27

Prior to Vibes, jonathan was a CEO and founder of Radpad, which was an end-to-end rental marketplace that made finding a place, signing a lease and paying rent much easier, which was nearly sued out of business by their biggest competitor, craigslist. Jonathan then left TAC to try his hand at consumer packaged goods after he began using CBD to manage his own anxiety which had been caused by the litigation, and it has become his mission in life to bring holistic forms of therapy using clinically proven plant derivatives to improve the daily health and wellness of people. So, without further ado, let's get into it. Hey, Jonathan, welcome to the show. I am so glad that we could make this happen.

Jonathan: 2:08

Me too. Thanks for having me on today.

Angela: 2:12

Yeah, I'm excited to dive into all things, Vibes, but first I would love to know a bit about your background and how you went from, where you were I think you used to be in TAC and then how you made that pivot. I'm always interested in how that kind of happens and what that looked like for you.

Jonathan: 2:31

Yeah, I really fell in the beverage and what we do today with Vibes, which I look at more as a mental health brand than a beverage, but I really fell into this on accident. My background has been technology based in living Los Angeles, started my career many years ago. Myspace is a product manager, sort of sitting between design and development and figuring out what hundreds of millions of people who use MySpace at the time would do when they came onto the website and just became hooked on creating things for people, things that help people connect. And I went from MySpace to e-carmony. So I was there for a couple of years as a product manager. Then I started my own company called Radpad.

Jonathan: 3:11

Radpad was a rental marketplace business that got pretty big. At the time. This was around 2012. And we were doing very well. The idea was like an Airbnb, so it was a marketplace, but for long term. Come on, you could find an apartment, you could apply, you could become a qualified renter by filling out a profile on Radpad and then you could sign a lease and pay a rent. But the cool thing was that you could actually, if you rented off Radpad, you would be able to move without paying a security deposit, and that was sort of like the magic thing that we were looking at, doing and working on. But we got sued by Craigslist and became one of the most challenging experiences of my life Literally almost lost Radpad and developed really bad anxiety and stress from that experience and luckily we were able to sell Radpad.

Jonathan: 4:11

But it was a very traumatic experience for me. It wasn't what I wanted to do. I was sort of forced into doing it and so when I came out of that experience in 2016, I was really struggling with my sleep. I was anxious all day and it was just hard for me to focus because when you're anxious, it's hard to really focus on anything.

Jonathan: 4:31

And a friend of mine suggested I try CBD oil because I was looking for natural ways to cope with this. I didn't think that CBD, which I'd never heard of, would work. I didn't know what it was, but I went down to a local natural food store here, asked for it. They gave me some and it changed my life.

Jonathan: 4:48

And I say it changed my life because when Radpad ended for me, I became very focused on my own mental health, something I had never thought about for much of my life because I hadn't had mental health issues. But this experience of my last startup really made me have to confront my mental health, and CBD was one part of helping me get through it. And I just believed back in 2017, I was taking this that a lot of other people would benefit from this, if only it was in a beverage and it was less intimidating than, say, like a capsule or a tincture, which is how most people were taking it back then, and so I launched VODGE about a year later, in 2018, and it just sort of took off, despite a lot of people telling me that I probably fail. And here we are, six years later.

Angela: 5:38

Wow, that's a story. Yeah, and I'm sorry that you had to go through that. It sounds very traumatic, but then it's like you found your purpose at the end of it, so that's amazing that you were able to get through that and then also help others get that same kind of relief.

Jonathan: 6:02

Well, you know that's. It's interesting because, like when I started this, I wasn't really sure how people would perceive CBD. Sorry, I knew. I knew that it was helping me for my mental health and I knew that if we could design the packaging in such a way that consumers would sort of see through what we were trying to do and understand it, and that would sort of get over the hurdle of what is CBD. Because when I started this years ago, most people didn't know what CBD was and so it was. How do you educate somebody who's in a grocery store, who has a second, to make a decision that you know you're selling a CBD drink and it's for their mental health? And that was hard and we tried to use the packaging design to communicate that and I think it's worked because that's people often know what our packaging and recognize it.

Angela: 6:52

Yeah, you know, that's what actually. I know we chatted a little bit about my experience with fives, but that's actually what caught my eye when I was in the grocery store, because there was a you know section of a few different kinds of CBD drinks and one. I liked the packaging, but it was not only that, but then also that it was in a glass bottle. I really liked that as well, versus the other ones that are in cans. That's what I gravitated toward was the packaging. And then, as I told you, it replaced my nightly glass of wine because I found that it gave me a sense of calm, but it didn't, you know, reduce my patience or, you know, increase anxiety, which, you know, alcohol can do. So, yeah, I think that was really smart, to focus on the packaging, for sure, and, oh sorry, go ahead.

Jonathan: 7:43

No, I was just gonna say yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate that we I wanted the packaging to reflect what CBD is, which is subtle, if you'll notice on our labels there's, there's, there's no low, there's no picture. The fruit there's no, there's nothing screaming at you to buy it. It's really just a colored piece of paper with black copy on it and it's designed to look slightly medicinal. It's designed to look minimal, free of noise and clutter and, and really you know, call, call to you if you're somebody who's like looking for more subtlety, if you feel like there's a lot of noise in your life. That's, I think, helped our packaging and our drinks stand out.

Angela: 8:28

Mm, hmm, no, definitely. And for anyone that's listening who maybe isn't super familiar with CBD and I know you've already given some background on it but what would you say like would be? You know a few of the top benefits if someone's totally new to CBD.

Jonathan: 8:45

You know that's a good question. I get asked all the time about CBD and the answer is scientifically. We're still learning a lot about cannabinoids. Up until a couple years ago, it was illegal to study cannabinoids, including CBD, which is a stands for cannabidiol. But I can tell you it's derived from the hemp plant. It's non psychoactive, meaning it's not going to make you high. It's it's related to cannabis and THC. Thc is another cannabinoid but, as I mentioned, it's non psychoactive, so you won't get high.

Jonathan: 9:17

But what it what it does and what we know about it and we hear from from knowing the people who take CBD every year in the United States there's a couple things. The first thing that it helps you. It helps you reduce stress and anxiety in the body, helps calm you down. It's sort of a natural calming agent. And it works on your endocannabinoid system. Everybody has an endocannabinoid system in the body which is essentially a freeway of nerves that talk to one another, that connect your brain to your stomach and everything in between, and when you take CBD it attaches to receptors along your endocannabinoid system and it helps to sort of bring your body back into a balanced state.

Jonathan: 10:00

There's also some other pretty amazing benefits of CBD that we know about. It's a natural anti inflammatory and stress creates inflammation in the body, so helps reduce inflammation. Foods, alcohol all create inflammation in the body. So CBD is a natural anti inflammatory and there's also some some evidence that suggests that helps with pain. So if you've got, for example, an ache in your back or your shoulder, if you have headaches, it can help with that.

Jonathan: 10:30

What we don't know about CBD and what kind of gets into this area that there's a lot of debate over today, is how much CBD to somebody need in order to sort of get these benefits. And our drinks are formulated at 25 milligrams of CBD. There's also about 45 milligrams of magnesium in there, and magnesium works really well because it helps the body to more more readily digest and absorb the CBD to. You get more of those benefits of the of the actual ingredient, and it creates a calming sensation across the body. It's not going to make you tired per se, but if you're stressed for anxious, you've got a racing mind and can help kind of ease that a bit.

Angela: 11:09

Yeah, I love that you blend it with magnesium because I feel like we're all short on magnesium and it's such a great way to just calm at the end of the you know day or night. And just I could definitely when I drink one, if I have a headache, my headache goes away. That's just me personally. But yeah, I think it's fantastic. And I'm just curious was it difficult to break into the CBD space? Like how, if you didn't have that background, did you face a lot of hurdles? Or like how did you find the right people? I'm just curious like what that looked like.

Jonathan: 11:45

You know, when I got into this, no one was doing I mean one. Cbd is not like it is today, where most people have heard of it. A lot of people tried it. People have kind of a perception of about it. When I got into this, well, it's back in 2016, it was really when I got introduced to it, but really kind of went full head into it in 2017.

Jonathan: 12:03

And then I launched Vibes in 2018. So I spent about a year before I ever launched the brand really immersed in myself in this category, this ingredient, and really trying to learn as much as I could. And it started with my own self, my own body, you know. That was just working for me. How was I taking it? How much was I taking it? Talking to other people and seeing what their kind of reaction was had they heard about CBD and the? What I really found was I kind of stumbled onto something before it became, came kind of aware by the masses, and that made me a little nervous because I thought, well, how did I find this before everybody else, particularly when I'm a techie? You know I wasn't a health and wellness nut. I wasn't somebody who was going to natural foods store and buying up all these holistic types of supplements and medicines. So it was just interesting that I sort of stumbled on this and but it made me excited at the same time because I thought no one else is doing this yet and maybe I could be the first and maybe, you know, I could be successful with this. Maybe this could help a lot of people and my design background and my just sort of own experience with with CBD taking myself and having such a great results led me to say I'm going to do this. And so when I first started working on this, no one knew what this was. And I tell people about it and make what is CBD and I have to explain it to them and I realized that was going to be a big challenge initially.

Jonathan: 13:33

Getting this out there into the market is that people don't know what it is. They don't know what, why they should take this or what it's going to do for them. And there was a lot of perception around cannabis and you know what I drink, this and what make me high. And one of the ways when I first launched vibes and I tried to overcome that was by being very deliberate about where we sold vibes and and where you as a consumer founded. For example, we did not sell this, our drinks, and we still don't and dispensaries or anywhere that's cannabis sort of related, and we did that because we didn't want to confuse consumers that it's cannabis. Instead, we went sort of the polar opposite.

Jonathan: 14:10

We really focus on grocery accounts. We really feel, in particular, in natural space. I really focus on, like coffee shops where people go in and get caffeine. That sort of makes them feel anxious and maybe they drink vibes later to help kind of mediate that that anxiousness. So we were very I was very deliberate about where I put vibes so that when somebody saw it they would say I found this at, for example, a gym and it's a health and gyms are healthy and they sell healthy drinks, so this must be good for me. And once they tried it they'd be like, wow, this is really good. And that was sort of help overcome some of the educational pieces that you know were difficult to do because I'm not standing there next to the drink while people are looking at it. So it was really focused on where you discovered this and that really helped me sort of educate, to educate people on what this is and that is actually good for them.

Angela: 15:07

Right, you know, and, as you were saying, that it's so true because I remember when CBD first kind of came out, I was a little nervous to try it and I've had bad experiences with marijuana in the past where it actually created anxiety. So I was like, is this going to make me anxious? And I was just I was really nervous to try it and I did a lot of research before I would even, you know, take a pill that had it in it. So that's really smart that you thought about that so strategically and placed it in places where you know health is the focus. So, yeah, it's really smart.

Jonathan: 15:42

Thank you.

Jonathan: 15:43

I mean hindsight it looks smart, but when I was doing it it was like I don't know if this is going to work. But I did know that I believed in it. I knew that it was helping for me and I really believe that the packaging again going back to sort of the packaging that if people found it in these places that it would resonate with them and that packaging sort of renaissance would convince them to buy it and try it. And then once they tried it, we heard, or I heard from a lot of the store owners that people were coming back and buying it because they loved it so much. And that's when I knew that maybe I have something here, maybe there's something that's actually special about this drink.

Angela: 16:22

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, and I remember it now. Of course it says mind and body function on the glass, so that's what caught my eye. I was like, oh, what's that, you know? And then I picked it up and looked at the back and, yeah, great packaging, for sure. And so did you face any like? Was it hard legally? I don't know what the legal legalities are around CBD, but was it hard to like get all of that in place, like the legal aspect of it?

Jonathan: 16:54

Also, you know it's really interesting. You're asking a really good question and giving me a little bit of whiplash from your dive in, because it has been a very challenging category from a regulatory standpoint. What made CBD legal in America is a 2018 farm bill. So Congress passed the farm bill, which Removed hemp and hemp as a schedule one drug. So when that happened, you know, essentially anything that's derived from hemp, with the exception of cannabis, thc, and hemp does have traces of THC in it is legal and so. But when it comes to food and beverages, that falls under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration, our FDA and so, and yet the FDA and the and Congress or sort of that, conflict. Right now and it's after six years, seven years we're still sort of in the state where, nationally, like, as you put CBD into foods and beverages, the FDA has basically said that this isn't permissible, but states like California and New York, texas, florida, indiana, tennessee there's almost 30 states that have said wait a minute. Congress legalized CBD, the FDA hasn't done anything about it, and and millions of consumers are taking CBD supplements, drinks and there's no regulation on here, and so when I got into this category, none of this was going on. It was kind of the Wild West and. But in the past six years, as I mentioned, a number of states almost 30 of them have passed CBD laws that have legalized CBD and their states California being the largest market in the country and as part of the legalization effort, have put in regulations. So so brands like vibes or anyone selling a CBD product to a consumer has to comply with these regulations, which includes lab testing. So our drinks are tested, not just for potency and purity to make sure that if it says 25 milligrams on a label, that's what you're actually getting but also we have to test for things like heavy metals and solvents, pesticides, things that would be bad for your body and harmful, to make sure that when you're you're drinking these, you know You're drinking something that's actually good for you. And so we work with a third-party lab who we send our drinks to. They test it, and if you, if you, if you scan the back of the bottle, there's a QR code, it'll take you to the labs page and you can you can look at you can actually look at the labs for every flavor we have, and that's something that we have to do ongoing.

Jonathan: 19:30

So the lab testing was a big piece of the regulations the proper labeling, so consumers knew that there's actually CBD in here. You have to actually put that on the label, which sounds obvious but, believe it or not, not everyone was doing that. So labeling was another requirement. And then manufacturing it's got to be manufactured in a place that's that's got good manufacturing practices, which is requirement by the food and drug administration. So you know, as a consumer, that when you buy something on the market it's being made in a food, food, safe and regulated facility. It's not being made in someone's home kitchen. It's not being made, you know, in some third-party kitchen. It's being made in a place that is Supposed to be in compliance with all the food laws. So those regulations have been put in place in a number of states. That's helped open up the category and it's why grocery stores like sprouts, for example, are now selling CBD drinks like vibes.

Angela: 20:26

Wow. So when you entered the market, there wasn't any of that regulation none of it.

Jonathan: 20:33

None of it existed, and it was very difficult because we would. You know, when I started this I was pretty naive, to be honest with you, um, and sometimes that becomes a blessing because it allows you to see things that other people May see and it may keep them away. But I didn't see some of these sort of challenges because I was naive and but getting into the category and being the first really to do this, I was sort of at the forefront of or not I, but by sort of the forefront of this kind of movement. And so you know, when I started this I thought I'd just be a, you know, kind of a mental health beverage brand.

Jonathan: 21:10

But now I've been very involved in helping pass regulations, where I'm part of a trade group called US hip roundtable that advocates on behalf of the hemp industry. You know we're having conversations with Congress, with the FDA, with states. We're trying to work with states to put in regulations so that states that don't have them Put them in and the products in the state then are safer. So those are things I never thought I'd be doing and I was sort of thrust into that place. I had to do it because no one else was really doing it at the time and In order to protect the category and make it better and more mature and professional, we you know someone had someone had to step up and fortunately there's there's now a lot of us in this cat, in this category, that are part of helping shape the future of the category.

Angela: 21:55

Wow, that's pretty amazing. But that's great. You get to be a part of it.

Jonathan: 22:01

It is, you know it's. My favorite expression is if you don't have a CD at the table, you're on the menu, and you don't want to be on the menu.

Angela: 22:08

No, I like that. And so I noticed that you have, like I've been drinking the glass bottle vibe strings for a while now, but then I noticed that you also have a gentle energy drink, which I haven't tried yet, and and then the CBD powder. So can you tell us a little bit about these and like when someone might use the powder, or you know how the gentle energy actually feels? If someone is worried about you know, will it make them jittery? If you could just talk more about those two products as well.

Jonathan: 22:45

Yeah, so, as you mentioned, we have free products here, our CBD line, which is in like 14 ounce glass bottles. Those are what I started with. It's what's really made vibes what we are today. A couple years ago we launched our CBD powder online. It's sold in a glass canister and eight ounce glass canister is about 2000 servings in there. It's a.

Jonathan: 23:05

It's a tasteless, dissolvable powder that's very fast acting because of how it's made. So you can put that into water, you put in a coffee, you can put it into any sort of beverage, hot or cold beverage. I've even heard of people baking with it, which is interesting, but it's really designed for liquid formats and the idea is, if you're somebody who likes CBD, wants the benefits of CBD, but maybe you want to put it in a tea, you can do that because it is tasteless. It does dissolve on contact with with a liquid. You dissolve it in and you don't even see it, but you know you it's in there because you put it in there and it's dose at 25 milligrams of scoop and, as I was kind of saying a little bit ago, you know, one of the things we're all trying to figure out is what is the proper dosage for somebody. So our powder allows somebody who, for example, let's say, you have neck pain or back pain or you're really anxious and 25 milligrams just isn't enough for you, you can dose it higher because you can add now two scoops, now you have 15 milligrams of CBD. So it gives people an ability to sort of almost dose themselves based on what works for their own body. And if you don't want to drink, you know for vibes to get that dose, you can use our CBD powder as a way to get there.

Jonathan: 24:24

A lot of people are using it for specifically for help with caffeine and sort of the jittery. You kind of mentioned the jittery effects that caffeine gives people and what we found is that CBD paired with caffeine works very, very well and helping to give you energy, but without sort of the jittery, sort of buzz that you can get from too much caffeine. So that's our CBD powder product. We only sell it online, so it's not sold in stores. Only our beverages are sold in stores. And then you brought up also our gentle energy drinks and this is a very new product for us. I'm very excited about it. I spent the last almost year working on it. We just launched them in California. That's right now. It's only available in LA and San Francisco, but it will be expanding to other markets, other cities later this month.

Jonathan: 25:19

But the idea is that if you look at what's on the market today in the energy category and energy category is pretty exciting because it's one of the biggest categories in beverage so only category bigger is water. But if you think about yourself, if you think about your friends, if you think about society, so much, so many of us are drinking caffeine throughout the day to be able to kind of keep up and the. But the problem is that most caffeinated drinks, energy drinks on the market today Celsius C4, ghost energy, red Bull, prime Energy they all have two to 300 milligrams of caffeine. But I'm calling extreme caffeine and there's a reason why. When you drink those you get a racing mind. There's a reason why you can sometimes get chest pain. There's a reason why you're not sleeping well night is because you're you're taking too much caffeine.

Jonathan: 26:11

And I think there's a movement that's. I'm seeing it. I've been seeing it for the past year, year and a half by younger consumers who are trying to cut back on caffeine because they know it's not good for their mental health. They don't like how it makes them feel, but they still want energy. And so what is there on the market today? There's not a lot, and that was where the idea of our gentle energy years came from. Is could we make an energy drink for people who don't drink energy drinks because they don't want that much caffeine? And so we launched a gentle energy drink.

Jonathan: 26:45

In a can, we sell them for 3.99. There's two flavors strawberry rosé and passion fruit hibiscus. It's literally just water juice, tea and magnesium althoronate, and it's the Guayusa tea that we use. That really is the magic energy source of this drink. It's from the Amazon. I don't know why people aren't as familiar with Guayusa, for, like CBD, when I started, people aren't familiar with it. But I really believe in Guayusa for a few reasons. One, it gives you a natural energy boost without making you feel over energized. It also doesn't spike your blood sugar, and so, because it doesn't spike your blood, you're not going to get the crashing effects that you do with other types of caffeine based drinks. And we add magnesium althoronate to it. There's multiple forms of magnesium, but magnesium althoronate is a really amazing magnesium. It's patented because it's ability to cross the blood brain barrier so quickly, but it really helps with focus, concentration and mood.

Jonathan: 27:49

So you know, what do most people drink energy drinks for? Typically, it's for mental stamina. It's for, you know, I need to be creative and I need that energy to be creative. I need to sit down and focus on something and energy to get through it. And that's really what this drink is designed for is for somebody who wants energy but wants to be able to focus and not have that head buzz and ultimately then when they go to bed at night, you know we get to sleep. So I saw an opening in the market and so far, the drinks have only been on the shelves in LA in terms of just go for about a month. They're doing very well. I'm excited about the potential to bring this to more people.

Angela: 28:32

Yeah, no, I'm definitely going to have to try it now Because, yeah, like you're saying, this morning I had one cup of coffee and I really wanted another, but I knew it would make me jittery, but I wanted to focus, so it'd be so nice to have what you said. You know which? I hadn't heard of, that tea either. So I know that a lot of entrepreneurs are just really wanting to have that focus without the jitters. So that's amazing. I can't wait to try it.

Jonathan: 28:57

Yeah, well, we'll have to send you some. So after we get off this, we'll get you some.

Angela: 29:02

Oh, thank you. Yeah, I love that, and I'm just wondering if you have like a few words of advice for any entrepreneurs who you know, like you, might have found an answer to their struggles but then don't know where to start or like might feel like their determination go down. Do you just have any? What motivated you to just keep going?

Jonathan: 29:27

Well, the truth is, being an entrepreneur is a very hard, lonely journey and I don't mean to sound so pessimistic about it. This is not my first company, it's my third, and every company I've always started. I started because of a problem that I was experiencing that I was trying to solve for myself, and I just believe that if I was able to find a solution for myself and it worked so well that other people would benefit from that and certainly there's ways that you can quantify that. You can say, as an entrepreneur, when you're thinking about starting a business, you can ask yourself, well, how many people could actually benefit from whatever I'm trying to do? And if it's a large group, then maybe it could be a big business. And if it's going to be a big business, maybe it's worth the time and effort and stress to start it.

Jonathan: 30:16

I think a lot of entrepreneurs get, or a lot of people think of entrepreneurs as kind of a sexy, exciting people look up to entrepreneurs, so they want to be an entrepreneur. But the truth is, if you're going to spend your time doing something, you better be very passionate about it, you better be committed to it Because, like any relationship, a business is a relationship. They take a lot of work. They can be very rewarding, but they can also be very tough, and so you've got to be able to stick through the bad times. But if you think you can do that, if you really strongly believe in an idea and you think you know how to get it going, then I encourage you to try.

Jonathan: 31:08

People always ask me well, when did you know that you want to start Vibes? And the truth is, I knew that I wanted to do this when I couldn't stop thinking about it all day, every day for months, and I started doing things like researching it. I went out to Colorado to meet hemp growers. I started talking to friends. I was meeting with people in the beverage industry asking how to start a beverage company, and so once I realized that it was encompassing my whole life, that's when I said to myself you know, I need to do this, because if I don't, I'll regret it, and I'd rather try and fail than not try and regret it. And so you know, it's one of those things where, if you have an idea, you're thinking about it nonstop. You know if you can take the leap. I highly encourage you to do it.

Angela: 31:59

Yeah, people need to hear that to stay motivated, because it's so easy, especially when you know they have other people in their ears, maybe family members or partners, you know, telling them to get real or stop dreaming. When it's like, like you said, you can't stop thinking about it, then I feel like it's almost like your purpose, you know, or one of your purposes. So, thank you.

Jonathan: 32:20

Everybody in life needs a purpose and I think that's what people are struggling with today and you know whether it's their day job or you know why are they here. You know, on planet Earth, like, what is our purpose? And you know, I think we all go through those times in life where we feel lost, we don't know which way to go, and then something in our life kind of happens. But I think you know, in order to get to an opportunity where something in your life happens like, you have to be willing to just keep going through it.

Jonathan: 32:49

Life is not always rosy, it's not always perfect, it's often, you know, very complex and sort of in a state of gray and with shades of color. But I think that's what makes life so rewarding, so exciting. And for me, any business I've ever started has always been something where I just I knew I had to do it, it was like my purpose. So, hopefully, whether it's, you know, beverages, a rental business, or you know mowing lawns for a living you know which I did for a while you know, if you enjoy something like, you should spend your time doing that.

Angela: 33:27

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Is there anything else like that you'd like to share about vibes or the future of vibes, or also where people can find you? I'm sure there's. I think there's a store locator on the website and I'll link all of that as well.

Jonathan: 33:45

Yeah Well, first of all, just thanks again for having me on today Like this was a lot of fun. You can find our website online at iDrinkVibes and spelled with a Y, b, y-b-e-s, so iDrinkVibescom. We're sold in about 30 states, primarily in smaller natural food stores, cafes, coffee shops, juice bars, but we did just get into Sprouts. I'm very excited about that. It's going to be our biggest retailer to date and we'll be hitting their shelves in December. So if you're near a Sprouts location, you can pop in there in December and pick up a vibes. And then, as you mentioned, our website does have a store locator. It's not fully up to date, but it does have stores that carry vibes across the country and you can see if there's one near you.

Angela: 34:31

Great yeah and congratulations on Sprouts. That is huge.

Jonathan: 34:34

Thank you.

Angela: 34:35

Yeah Well, thank you so much for coming on and I'm excited to share this with all my listeners. I bet they're going to start buying out that gentle energy drink.

Jonathan: 34:47

Well, hey, thanks again for having me on, Angela. I look forward to keeping in touch.

Angela: 34:54

Yes, thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the 5D CFO podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it and tag me on social media. You can find me at Angela Marie Christian on Instagram, facebook and TikTok. If you haven't purchased my best selling book, manifestation Mastery, yet, it's priced at $0.99 on Amazon for the Kendall version.