00:01
You're listening to The Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast. If it's radical, we cover it.

00:13
Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. I'm Ryan Alford, your host of your number one marketing and business show on Apple Podcast. We want to thank you for that. We're joined today. We say it's radical, we cover it. I don't know, this is about as rad as it comes, especially on the entertainment meets D to C e-commerce side. We're a star.

00:39
a Bravo TV show, Summer House, and the CEO of Loverboy. That sparkling hard tea you can't miss. Kyle Cook, what's up, brother? Good, good, thanks for having me. Hey, man. How we doing? Hey, just living the dream, brother. Living the dream at South Cackalacki. You got it. I know, you're in Manhattan, I understand. So, my old stomping grounds. Holding it down in NYC, baby. Is that always been home?

01:10
No, I, well, God, at this point, I guess technically I'm a New Yorker. I grew up in New Hampshire. I thought if you had a two-car garage, you must be super filthy rich. So very modest, middle income kind of upbringing. Been in New York since 2007. I moved down here to join a college buddy of mine to do a real estate startup. And aside from two years at business school, getting my MBA, I've been here since 2007.

01:39
There you go. You're definitely a New Yorker now. I think 16 years makes anybody whatever they are. This is when you get on the other side of life and business and everything else, you're transitioning from like startup to businesses and everything else. I know we'll get into that. But I mean, everybody's it's not even a guilty. I don't even feel guilty about it, but I think everybody's like pleasures reality TV, like especially like coming through our age, like

02:09
You know, it was so big coming up. You had all the MTV shows. You've had all these, the Kardashians, you've had everything else. Talk, walk us through, I think we should start there with just that journey because I'm sure people watching or listening, you know, know the name, know the face if they're into the show or anything like that. But I'd love to just understand that journey. Yeah, well, I think even just kind of talking about the guilty pleasure aspect of it, I think I would say pre-Kardashian era.

02:38
pre-influencer, creator era, it was looked at as like, why would you do this? You must have a joke of a career or no career at all if you're gonna put it all out there, and just do it for fame, right? And I think the Kardashians kind of changed everyone's attitude towards reality television. And I think it's just so mainstream now that it's no longer a guilty pleasure, it's a pleasure.

03:07
You know, people openly talk about it. You know, I have guys that wait in line at these meet and greets to say hello to me. And I don't think there'd be a guy in sight 10 years ago. No one would admit they're watching Bravo 10 years ago. So yeah, it's been a wild ride. And I mean, look, I originally looked at it from an opportunistic standpoint. I'm like, listen, this is a captive audience.

03:37
This is how you build a platform, how you build a name for yourself, how you launch a new age brand. And it just so happened that the concept was already a variation of what I was already doing. My friends here in New York, we all do different things professionally. We pool our money together. We rent a house in the Hamptons and we go out every single weekend, or at least some of the weekends of the summer. And you kinda pinball back and forth, back and forth. And that kinda summer.

04:08
house or share house lifestyle is something that a lot of people can probably relate to, particularly if you lived in New York. And it wasn't that novel of a concept to turn into a television show. But the Hamptons, aside from, well, speaking of the Kardashians, they did some shooting there, obviously real house size shot there, but there's never been a show that's truly based in the Hamptons that has stood the test of time. And I think that's...

04:35
That's kind of where we are today. We just filmed season eight. I think what energized the network about our show is it was about an existing group of friends. The real world Jersey Shore model where you put a bunch of strangers that are handpicked to be polar opposites and basically fight, like that model's been done. So how do you evolve it? And I think that's kind of what we do with Summerhouse. Yeah. It's a, how did it like?

05:04
How did it manifest? I think people always want to know, maybe I'm sure you've told the story before, but for our audience, how did it come about? So I was working on a nutrition startup. It was pre-launch. Spending every spare dollar I had to my name on either renting out the Hamptons or building my app. And a buddy of mine that I went to undergrad with

05:34
forwarded me this casting email and he's had a house in Montauk since the 80s. And I think his forwarded, his sister had forwarded it to him. And he was just like, dude, if anyone's gonna, you know, have a role in like ruining this town forever, it should be you. And I was like, what a compliment. Yeah, thanks buddy. I think, thanks. But you know, I was kind of at that point in my career where I'm like, all right, if I do launch this thing,

06:03
Acquiring customers, that's the number one challenge, the number one cost. I don't have a boss. I could use a free house. Like all these things kind of like spoke to me. And I'm like, hey, there's a very rare chance this will go anywhere. But I went out to the initial casting. It was a one-man band that hired a casting company and nothing became of it. Months go by, the audition tapes,

06:33
changed hands to some more seasoned producers. And they were like, listen, if we can tap guys like Kyle to go round up their friends and we latch on to an existing friend group, we could probably sell this to Bravo because there's something there. And that's when I kind of got more involved and more interested. I'm like, listen, if this is the real deal, there's actually a shot in hell that this actually makes it to television, it's worth me putting in the effort. So...

07:01
I kind of worked hand in hand with those producers essentially September through June. What year was that? This is 2015 into 2016. Because it took about nine months to kind of work out the kinks, get the right people in front of the camera, and then work with the network to figure out how the hell to shoot a show like this. Because bravo. I mean, yes, there's...

07:29
There's some surveillance camera footage in like shows like below deck, but nothing to this extent. I mean, every room is mic, it has a camera with infrared technology to Robo cam so you can get a lot better quality than the little GoPros they use in below deck. And yeah, you know, it was just next thing you know, end of June of 2016, I'm getting mic'd up and I'm like, my God, I cannot believe this is happening.

07:59
So, and that was season one and we shot in 2016 and it aired in Q1 of 2017. So one, for our listening business audience, like Kyle is a good businessman and recognized that gaining customers is difficult and you have to pay to get in front of, to get reach and frequency. A lot of audience seen a lot of times.

08:27
And so whether he was selling underwear or hard spike cider or fitness equipment, he knew that getting in front of that audience, he could talk about or build his personal brand up with which to then market any product. I'm putting words in your mouth, Kyle, but I'm reading them in the lines of how this works, right? Well, thinking of it this way, when I graduated business school was 2011. And one of the expressions that

08:58
professor said over and over again is cash is king. I think that's kind of changed to content is king. And I say that because you don't need cash to create content, but every company needs content to acquire customers. And so sure, my cheat code was a Bravo television show. But back in 2015, streamers, the Netflix, the Hulus, the Amazons of the world,

09:26
hardly existed. There was probably two or three shows on Amazon at that time. And so today, people have many more options at their fingertips. Right? I mean, you can launch a behind the scenes show and you launch your brand on YouTube. And again, content is king. And Gary Vee says it all the time. Every company needs to be a content company. And so that's the takeaway here is like, oh, you know, you could shrug this off as like, ah, this guy's got a TV show, unfair advantage.

09:55
et cetera, et cetera. I saw the opportunity and yeah, I put in the work, but you can do that on any platform, not cable, but maybe YouTube or TikTok, you name it. And that is exactly right, Kyle. That's why I respect the hell out of what you've done. And it goes back to, you went down, you started to go down this path. Like when reality TV started, the social media networks did not exist or did not exist in the form they are now. So you had to rely on TV.

10:23
is the distribution channels for the content. What's evolved now is you've got TV and in many ways, TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and Twitter are like stations in a way. Like they're other distribution platforms, right? So the last thing I'll just say on this topic of kind of content is king. I heard some crazy statistic that

10:51
something like nine out of 10 podcasts uploaded to Apple or Spotify or whatever, never see a second podcast. In other words, people put out a podcast and never follow it up. So whether you're trying to make a TV show or you're trying to get your TikTok or your YouTube or your whatever channel up and running, you have to put in the time, right? Like I put in a year's worth of work.

11:19
before we even shot a single frame of Summer House. If you think about going all the way back to the original casting. So everything takes work. And I think it's really easy to throw in the towel if you don't go viral, you know, your first or second stab at it. So that's the last thing I'll just say is persistence and drive and commitment is needed, you know, no matter what you're trying to do. 100% with that. I've told that story many times with our very own show here.

11:49
First 49 listens were all my mom. So and then now we get 1.5 million a month. So it's like, yeah, I mean, but it's been five years. So it takes time. It doesn't happen overnight. Before we get into some more of the business and how you've kind of parlayed the show, talk to us about the reality of like Summerhouse and now Winterhouse. Like, what's that like? Like.

12:17
Tell us, give us the real nitty gritty. Well, I think the reason why people are obsessed with it is because reality television is a heck of a lot more relatable than almost any other, you know, medium, whether it's a TV show that's scripted or a movie, or, you know, a game on, you know, professional athletes or a concert with a professional artist.

12:46
reality television, the beauty of it is like, we're all just normal people. Sure, we have our screws loose and some people are more dramatic than others, but I think the relatability factor is the secret sauce and from there it's, well, it's relatable because it's a little more organic and a little more authentic than watching something that's scripted. And I think that's...

13:15
At the core, like every brand wants to be authentic. Every brand wants to have, you know, organic look and feel and pull within custom, you know, within the consumer world. And I think that's what lends itself to being such a powerful platform. Now as for what it's like, I mean, look, I quickly forget that the cameras are running. You know, our show shoots 24 seven right through the weekend. You can't.

13:44
sit there and think about what you're gonna say. You can't premeditate anything. I mean, I'm sure some people do, but you gotta kind of live in the moment. It's one of the very rare occasions where none of us are on our phones, you're present and you're just kind of living in the moment and reacting, you know, and sure, there's a lot of alcohol involved in our show, which kind of proves my point. We are not.

14:14
thinking about what we're gonna say. That'd be literally impossible. But when you're filming it, it's fun. I mean, sure, you can have a bad day, but it's a fascinating process. Obviously we shoot exponentially more hours than makes the air. And so I love watching it in its final version because I'm seeing things I wasn't privy to, the way Bravo shoots, we do these interviews.

14:42
where you have an opportunity to kind of reflect and have a little more self-awareness than you would in the moment. I mean, there's all sorts of kind of little kind of hidden gems that make the way Bravo does it just so, so good for consumption. And yeah, I mean, it's really hard to describe until you see it and you're in it. But...

15:09
you know, the producers are there, they're not telling us what to do, they're not trying to tell us what to say, but they are moving things along because if you have a big night out, you have a big blowout fight with your friend, the next day, it's not necessarily human nature to just go right up to them and confront them and talk about it. The producers are there to like, hey guys, I know you'd love to just chill by the pool and nurse your hangover and avoid the elephant in the room, but that's not how you make a television show.

15:36
And that's that's kind of the key point of what I was going to say is like the you know people talk about like when you think about social media that like the cringe I don't like seeing myself on camera you know like I'm you know cringe where they like this is everything times a thousand and so did you I'm sure you just had to and everyone on it you have to just immediately get over that or is it still tough to watch? No I mean look don't get me wrong I mean my my tv

16:05
TV debut, I was wasted in a hot tub with Stassi from, from Vanderpump because our show kind of spun off, off of the Vanderpump franchise. Because we had like an organic connection with that cast. And so Stassi and her friends came to the Hamptons to visit. That's where we came in. And the next thing you know, you're watching Summer House. And my first, you know, couple minutes on television were really embarrassing because I was absolutely hammered.

16:35
They took their pretty little time to make their way to the beach. We were already hammered on Rose and by the time I got in that hot tub and trying to make a move, I was embarrassingly drunk. But you know, you, you kinda, I guess I got that out of the way right out of the gate. And, um, I don't have any issue watching things back. I mean, sometimes it's very cringe, particularly if it's not just me, maybe it's, you know, my relationship, but.

17:05
it's all part of kind of what we signed up for. And sure, some people are gonna handle it better than others. For me, I kind of wear it all on my sleeve. And I definitely try to be in touch with my feelings, my emotions, all that mushy shit. I think that's actually what makes casting guys challenging. A lot of guys are like Teflon. Yeah. And they're not in touch with

17:34
some of the more vulnerable things that make them a dynamic individual and dynamic enough to be casted. Yeah. Amen. The last thing I'll say is about that is like, how do you balance? Like, I just think about, and I know it's just like that short weekend, but to live, you know, work hard, play hard aspect. I mean, does the play hard getting...

18:03
get in the way of the work hard sometimes. Oh yeah. I mean, I, I joke, but it's like, it's like, yeah, you work hard, you play harder during the summer. Yeah. Um, I mean, look, it's been a grind. We, when we film, it's not just the, not just the weekends, right? Like Friday morning rolls around. You usually, you know, drive up to the studio, they go pro your car because it's a three hour commute and they want to capture some of that build up to the house. Yeah. And

18:33
And then from there, it's 24, 7 through Sunday. Then you had to drive back home, which is often three hours. And that's nine times out of 10 off camera, thank God. But I mean, gone is your free time. Gone is your time to decompress during the weekend or during your Sunday. And then to make it even more challenging, they want to capture some of our life during the week, working, going out to eat.

19:03
grabbing a coffee, catching up with a bud. So we have to make ourselves available. Usually it's Wednesday and Thursday, depending on what's going on. Yeah. And we often don't get that call time until like the day before or the day of sometimes. And so I have to tell my team, hey, you know, my schedule on Wednesdays and Thursdays has to be somewhat malleable because you never know when I'm gonna get called in to go film something for a couple hours.

19:31
And then once the season's all done with, we have these interviews every couple of weeks to help connect the dots. There's press commitments. And then when it airs, that also is a distraction. Yeah. So factor in Winterhouse, which is a condensed filming schedule, but it's a crazy, crazy two weeks. And then there's still obligations once you've wrapped.

20:00
And I got even in 2022, I shot a third show called, called the traders for peacock. So I, you know, I have very little bounce, but, you know, I've yet, yet to start a family. I'm trying to build up my nest egg. And, you know, no one wants to hear the pity story of like, Oh, Kyle's busy because he shot three TV shows and runs a company. It's like, this is what I signed up for. So

20:29
You know, no point in complaining. Yeah. Do you ever fall in love with the... You gotta love the process, you know, of it all. And it's like, I think you either love it or you hate it. And if you hate it, you probably don't last eight seasons like you have. I mean, that's all I can imagine, right? Yeah, I think, look, like one of your questions before we started rolling was just like, hey, is it the same cast? And the fact of the matter is...

20:58
in no world would you be summering with the same people year over year over year. I mean, half my friends that I met in Montauk don't even live in New York anymore. Yeah. Some people are married, some people have kids, plans change. So the show has kind of evolved to take that into account. And look, some people are unbelievable individuals, but like maybe they just aren't cut out for TV. So we kind of, I think I chalked

21:28
my staying power up to just, hey, I'm not in the same place I was eight years ago. Thank God. And I'm evolving for better, for worse. And we're able to kind of capture some of that. And I'm hopefully slowly but surely giving hope for all of mankind that guys like me, that once upon a time were like scared of commitment and we'd use their job as a means of

21:57
justifying why they're not in a relationship. And guess what? There's hope. There is hope. I think it's a perfect transition to a lot of hope. A lot of hope in Loverboy. Yes. Everything's riding on Loverboy. I hope it's not a strategy, my friend. You got strategy. I know it. I see it. That's why you're on the show. Let's talk Loverboy. How did that come about? And how's it fucking doing so great?

22:26
Yeah, look, like I said, when the original casting opportunity came up, I was working on this nutrition app and I did a little research about Bravo. It's like the number one rated network among women on cable television. They're a little more affluent, educated than a lot of other audiences on television. And guess what? Who controls the disposable income of most households? Women. So.

22:53
All these things kind of check the box. And then when I looked at what I was focused on, which is nutrition, I was like, I bet you a large percentage of the audience that watches Bravo wants to look good and feel good. And nutrition is a huge part of that. And I looked at what people were spending on fitness and how much they were neglecting on the nutrition front. I was just like, I'm gonna do something about it. What I didn't understand or appreciate is that that would be nearly impossible to bring to life on camera.

23:23
I built a nutrition app where you connect with a coach. There is nothing about that that is TV worthy. In fact, when I would try to do something to showcase what I was working on, they'd be like, well, we need something visual. Can you do a workout and then talk about the nutrition app? So we would shoot that half the time, it didn't make the error and the times it did, people like after the fact thought I had a fitness app.

23:53
I'm like, no, after I'm in the kitchen, it's nutrition, it's nutrition. So all this while when there's confusion and disinterest and challenges in bringing this venture of mine to life, everybody was asking what we were drinking. What's the rose? What's this hard tea? What the heck is this hard seltzer? And it was like the opportunity was staring me in the face.

24:19
99% of alcohol products don't even have a nutrition fact panel or the ingredients listed. Here I am talking about the importance of nutrition and we're drinking products that once I did a little research, were absolutely horrible for you. I actually felt bad telling them the name of the hard tea that we were drinking on the show because it was just full of sugar. And like everyone's trying to cut out sugar Monday through Friday. Why would you just drink nothing but sugar during the weekends?

24:48
Like that tasty margarita that it's frozen coming out of the machine, full of sugar, go figure. So the opportunity was staring me in the face. There weren't that many hard seltzers out at the time, but I was just like, this is going to change how people think about drinking because there's a nutrition fact panel, you can see the ingredients, it's light, it's refreshing, it's an alternative to beer, it's an alternative to wine and spirits too. But all these hard seltzers kind of tasted the same.

25:17
And I looked at the fact that there was only one hard tea that had, you know, mass market penetration and distribution. And it was the same brand that hadn't changed in 20 years. And I realized there was this theme in alcohol. Alcohol is like 20 years behind the rest of food and beverage. And so I was like, why create another hard seltzer if I can create the first premium better for you hard tea?

25:48
And that was essentially the inception of Loverboy. It was, hey, online hard seltzers, we're gonna use better quality ingredients other than just natural flavors like a La Croix or a White Claw. We're gonna use better quality ingredients, but just because you're getting more flavor doesn't mean you're gonna get all the calories and carbs associated with some of the traditional hard teas, hard lemonades on the market. And we've kind of,

26:18
fill this little void and continue to kind of dominate it in between, you know, like a hard seltzer, which is, you know, kind of underwhelming, but better for you than the alternatives. And then this like full sugar, full flavor experience that two of those and you're, you know, you basically have consumed more, more sugar, you know, in that sitting than you're supposed to consume for the entire day. Yeah. So, Loverboy, we started with our sparkling

26:49
how much sugar is in an apparel spritz, like how much sugar is in espresso martini. We started building out these other product lines to fill other voids we saw in the marketplace. Brilliant. With the show, I mean, everybody wants to know what you're drinking. You know, like it was the perfect like influencer campaign within the TV show, right? Yeah. Everyone's like, how are you guys partying this much? And like waking up and

27:19
doing it all over again. I'm like, well, first things first, drink Loverboy because our Spartan Hard teas have zero sugar. And sugar plays such a big part in why you feel like absolute crap the next day. And you go into the, you know, your Monday work week feeling like all the gains you made from eating clean and working out were completely lost. And it's this vicious, repetitive cycle. And by cutting out sugar,

27:49
I mean, my God, it's like we eliminated those vicious hangovers. And I just got this question down in Dallas. I was at a pool party that I was hosting and people were asking me, like, how do you do it? And I'm like, I drink these, you know, I drink a Lover Bowl. Drinking your own product. What's the entrepreneurial journey been like? I know it hasn't been all roses. I mean, it's tough, right? You've had and made some really smart decisions, obviously switching to this product, having the TV show, having, you know, that.

28:18
built-in influencer base, so to speak. But like, I mean, look, I, I feel like I've been an entrepreneur ever since I was a kid. You know, once upon a time I sold cut go knives. I learned, you know, how to cold call, how to close someone on the spot. In college, I ran a contracting business where I had 50 people working for me, painting homes and.

28:47
and commercial buildings and just adding a level of professionalism in a service-based industry that lacked professionalism. I've worked in healthcare, I've worked in real estate, you know, you name it. I went to business school thinking like I'm going to emerge from there with my MBA to start some type of tech startup. And I did do just that, but I had multiple failures along the way, chasing trends instead of starting a trend. And, you know, I

29:17
all those learning lessons, all the failures, you know, make you a better entrepreneur. And I think that like the Mark Zuckerbergs and Elon Musk of the world really distort the reality of entrepreneurship. Like very rarely do you step up to the plate having never swung a baseball bat and hit a grand slam, you know, on national television. Right. Most of the time.

29:43
you know, the startup that you are known for, that business that you own and run, that your friends and family, you know, respect you for, that wasn't your first rodeo. And yeah, I mean, look, I'm 41. And, you know, it took me a long time to find success. You know, when I was, I think there was probably a 15-year gap between when I really tasted success running that

30:12
as a 20 year old netted 50 grand in six months after all my expenses were paid. And, you know, and fast forward to when Loverboy had its first profitable year. I mean, that was like a 15 year gap that I was just trying to find my way. How's distribution been like for Loverboy? Like what are your channels and, you know, where do you, where, where are you sold the most and, you know, what's it been like trying to grow that?

30:41
Sure. Well, I think a lot of people understand that, you know, alcohol is tricky. Obviously there's a lot of regulation and red tape. And some people have heard about the three tier system. Some haven't, but essentially by law, I'm required to sell to a wholesaler who then sells to a retailer. I can't go to retailers direct. So that's the three tiers supplier, wholesaler and retailer. And if you don't have wholesalers on board,

31:11
because they're your actual consumer, then you're never going to get into retail and retail will never sell to the consumer. And as a result, that's actually part of the reason why alcohol is so far behind. This three tier system creates a disconnect between the suppliers and the consumer. And so you're putting products out there that are archaic and dated, but your wholesalers don't know any better because they're not selling to the consumer directly either.

31:41
And, you know, when you think about the Bravo consumer, it's not the consumer that's going into convenience or liquor as much so as going into grocery. So our strategy, you know, was to go to where our fan base is and build that early adopter strategy and parlay that into almost reverse engineering the typical cycle. Normally you're going to your wholesaler.

32:10
begging and pleading, and then going to the retailer. We almost did it the exact opposite. We had consumers asking for it, then the consumers were asking their retailers for it, the retailers were asking the wholesalers for it. So you create pull instead of pushing shit out to your wholesaler. And that, again, that's all driven by content, right? Yes, it's driven by my TV show, but anybody, I mean, Jake Paul's doing it.

32:39
with prime. Logan Paul's doing it with his YouTube channel and his Instagram, right? So there's a thousand ways to do it now. Yeah. What's, as you look back, you know, you mean, you're what, six, five years into Loverboy 2018. So like, what do you look, you look back, I know you don't live in reverse, but like what's been like the biggest learning lesson.

33:01
I mean, like any industry that you're technically an outsider, you know, entering in, you know, you don't know what you don't know. So you have to be like a sponge, you know, but there's definitely times where, you know, we were way too hung up on this decision or we took way too much time to expand or we took certain things, you know, from a supply chain perspective for granted. And so look, we've, we've had strategists try to.

33:31
invest, we've got strategic try to buy us. We have had every venture capitalist in consumer packaged goods inbound and try to invest. And there are certain things that perhaps we were a little naive or cocky or what have you. Anytime any brand has been around for a good couple of years in the consumer realm,

34:00
there's always a chance you kind of lose your edge, but we are just laser focused on understanding our consumer, continue to set trends instead of follow trends. And yeah, just every day is a learning lesson. What is the master plan with Loverboy? I mean, if you can share, what does that look like, that roadmap? Yeah, I mean, look, I think...

34:30
I think I am very much in the mindset that I'd love Loverboy to be a household name that lives well beyond the Bravo universe. And I think we're already kind of approaching that. People are drinking it and have no idea who I am. They have no idea what Summerhouse is. And I think that's the goal, right? To build a brand bigger than me, bigger than the show.

34:58
We are still in single digit weighted distribution. And what that means is, you know, obviously some retailers like the Walmarts of the world sell a heck of a lot more volume than a mom and pop. And so weighted distribution takes into account the chains. We're still single digit distribution. And the biggest challenge we've had in the last 18 months is our wholesalers aren't taking enough product in to fill the shelves and prevent out of stocks.

35:24
So until we can solve the out of stocks, until we can get our weighted distribution up into double digit, ideally like 25%, we just have so much left on the table, so much opportunity. And so we're laser focused on execution and building a brand that can stand the test of time. And would we take a call from a strategic now that we'd-

35:54
wouldn't want to have two, three years ago because we were so nascent, absolutely. But I'm not looking for distractions. Like I said, if I'm in execution mode, these need to be due diligence pretty quick. Yeah. I mean, is that a, is it just meeting the right people? Like, is it just getting in front of more people? Like with that three tier system, like what's the magic trigger that's just like the windfall?

36:24
Well, you have to demonstrate.

36:28
consumer awareness, consumer poll, whether you have a big marketing budget or some content strategy. And then, I mean, look, you need a product that offers points of differentiation. There's been dozens upon dozens of attempts to take on the number one hard tee.

36:48
But all of those products were me too, lookalike products that didn't really offer any differentiation. They were similar brands, similar branding, going after the similar consumer with a similar sugar-fueled product. So you kind of have to have points of differentiation. And look, I'll be honest, like it is way harder to launch.

37:16
you know, a product that plays in what we're calling this fourth category, whether it's better for you or beyond beer or ready to drink, you have to have like a lot of stars aligning today versus even just two years ago and certainly pre pandemic. Yeah. The I always like to say it's don't be better, be different. Yeah. It's like that's the key.

37:45
Yeah. And don't spend your time stressing out about the competition. Cause if you're different, then it doesn't matter. Yeah. Well, if you're better, you're competing. If you're different, you're dominating. Right? Exactly. Yeah. I love it. It's like, it's like, imagine trying to take on Nike. Our shoes are better. Our clothing is drier and fits better. See what I did there? Yeah.

38:14
You know, good luck. Good luck. Good frickin luck. Exactly. You could have a way better product, but you don't have the Nike Swoosh. Yeah, exactly. Just do it. The Where's the show going? Where's this all headed, man? Outside, I love her blood. I'm just talking about where's Kyle Cook headed? Where's Summer House, Winter House? You know, what's the future hold?

38:42
Yeah, look, I think I hope the show continues to follow me, Amanda, our friends, our company as it evolves. And like I said, I hope it continues to evolve. I think that's what makes the television show great. You know, will I age out of the Summerhouse concept as it is? I suspect I'm going to start a family at some point, and I also don't plan to raise that family in New York City. But

39:11
I think I got a few years left from that perspective. Winterhouse is a completely different beast. It's so much fun. It's two weeks of the year. And yeah, it's a wild ride. But yeah, I mean, there's a side of me that wants to think about the next chapter and continue to put content and content creation at the center.

39:40
and think about what haven't we done. Guess what? We haven't had the time or the team or the bandwidth to do YouTube or start shooting some behind the scenes. So that's the kind of stuff that I'm focused on. Yeah. I love it, man. Well, maybe we'll get the invite up to one of these summer houses or something. Hey, we're known for our, oops, sorry. Just draw my cat. We're known for our theme parties.

40:10
You know, I think, I don't think there's another show that has put theme parties on the map quite like summer house. And, um, it's, it's a lot of fun. And if you ever find yourself in the Hamptons, you hit me up. Yeah, I will. Hey guys, uh, we're, we're gonna keep up with you, Kyle. Let's give everybody all the, uh, the websites, the social handles. Yeah. So lover boys, obviously my, my bread and butter, uh, it's my baby. So that's a drink lover boy.com and

40:38
same handle across the Instagram, Twitter, et cetera. I think we actually have the lover boy handle on TikTok, but we're not too active there because there's some challenges pushing a brand, an alcohol brand on TikTok. And then you can find me, just search, Kyle Cook on Instagram, Twitter. Technically it's the letters I, M, and then my name, Kyle Cook. But yeah.

41:08
I try to be active, but I could be a lot more active, put it that way. Kyle, really appreciate you coming to the show. You shared a lot of insights, especially on the business side that probably people didn't understand or know that relate to reality TV and everything else. I really appreciate the transparency and authenticity.

41:28
You got it, Ryan. Thanks for giving me a platform to share it. And thanks so much for listening along. Hey, guys, you were to find us the radcast.com search for Kyle Cook. That's Cook with an E. You'll find all of the highlight clips and everything today. And look, I want you to go into your grocery store and I want you to say, I want lover boy. Ha ha ha. Start. Helps. It does. Let's get the push going with the pull.

41:53
You know where to find me. You know where I'm at, at Ryan Alford on all the platforms with that blue checkmark before you could buy it. We'll see you next time on Radcast.

42:25
You're listening to the Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast. If it's radical, we cover it.

42:36
Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. I'm Ryan Alford, your host of your number one marketing and business show on Apple podcast. We want to thank you for that. We're joined today. We say it's radical. We cover it. This is about as rad as it comes, especially on the entertainment meets D2C e-commerce side. We're a star.

43:02
of Bravo TV show, Summer House and the CEO of Loverboy. That sparkling hard tea you can't miss. Kyle Cook, what's up, brother? Good, good, thanks for having me. Hey, man. How we doing? Hey, just living the dream, brother. Living the dream in South Cackalacki. You got it. I know, you're in Manhattan, I understand. So, my old stomping grounds. Holding it down in NYC, baby. Yeah, has that always been home?

43:32
No, I got at this point, I guess technically I'm a New Yorker. I grew up in New Hampshire. I thought if he had a two car garage, you must be super filthy rich. So very modest, middle income bringing been in New York since 2007. I moved down here to join a college buddy of mine to do a real estate startup. And aside from two years at business school, get my MBA. I've been here. Yeah. Since 2007. Hey, there you go. You're definitely a New Yorker now.

44:00
I think 16 years makes anybody just whatever they are. This is when you get on the other side of life and business and everything else. You're transitioning from startup to businesses and everything else. I know we'll get into that, but everybody's, it's not even a guilty, I don't even feel guilty about it, but I think everybody's pleasures, reality TV. So I said coming through our age, it was so big coming up. You had all the MTV shows, you've had all these, the Kardashians, you've had everything else.

44:29
Walk us through, I think we should start there with just that journey because I'm sure people watching or listening know the name, know the face, if they're into the show or anything like that. But I'd love to just understand that journey. Yeah, I think even just talking about the guilty pleasure aspect of it, I think I would say pre-Kardashian era, pre-influencer, creator era, it was looked at as like, why would you do this? You must have...

44:56
a joke of a career or no career at all, if you're going to put it all out there and just do it for fame. And I think the Kardashians kind of changed everyone's attitude towards reality television. And I think it's just so mainstream now that it's no longer a guilty pleasure. It's a pleasure. People openly talk about it. I have guys that wait in line at these meet and greets to say hello to me. And I don't think there'd be a guy in sight 10 years ago. No one would admit.

45:24
They're watching Bravo 10 years ago. So yeah, it's been a wild ride. And look, I originally looked at it from an opportunistic standpoint. I'm like, listen, this is a captive audience. This is how you build a platform, how you build a name for yourself, how you launch a new age brand. And it just so happened that the concept was already a variation of what I was already doing. My friends here in New York, we all do different things professionally. We pool our money together.

45:53
We rent a house in the Hamptons and we go out every single weekend, or at least some of the weekends of the summer, and you pinball back and forth. And that kind of summer house or share house lifestyle is something that a lot of people can probably relate to, particularly if you lived in New York. And it wasn't that novel of a concept to turn into a television show. But the Hamptons, aside from, well, speaking of the Kardashians, they did some shooting there, obviously real house-sized shot there. But there's never been a show.

46:23
It's truly based in the Hamptons that has stood the test of time. And I think that's where we are today. We are, we just filmed season eight. I think what energized the network about our show is it was about an existing group of friends, the real world Jersey shore model, where you put a bunch of strangers that are handpicked to be polar opposites and basically fight. Like that model has been done. How do you evolve it?

46:52
And I think that's what we do with Summerhouse. Yeah. How did it manifest? I think people always want to know. Maybe I'm sure you've told the story before, but for our audience. So I was working on a nutrition startup. It was pre-launch. Spending every spare dollar I had to my name on either renting out the Hamptons or building my app. And a buddy of mine that I went to undergrad with.

47:19
forwarded me this casting email and he's had a house in Montauk since the 80s. And I think his sister had forwarded it to him. And he was just like, dude, if anyone's going to have a role in ruining this town forever, it should be. I was like, what a compliment. Yeah, thanks buddy. Thanks. But I was at that point in my career where I'm like, all right, if I do launch this thing, acquiring customers, the

47:47
That's the number one challenge. It's the number one cost. I don't have a boss. I could use a free house. Like all these things spoke to me. And I'm like, hey, there's a very rare chance this will go anywhere. But I went out to the initial casting. It was a one-man band that hired a casting company and nothing became of it. Months go by, the audition tapes changed hands to some more seasoned producers. And they were like, listen,

48:16
If we can tap guys like Kyle to go round up their friends and we latch on to an existing friend group, we could probably sell this to Bravo because there's something there. And that's when I got more involved and more interested. I'm like, listen, if this is the real deal, if there's actually a shot in hell that this actually makes it to television, it's worth me putting in the effort. I worked hand in hand with those producers essentially September through June. What year was that?

48:46
This is 2015 into 2016. Yeah. Because it took about nine months to work out the kinks, get the right people in front of the camera, and then work with the network to figure out how the hell to shoot a show like this. Because bravo, yes, there's some surveillance camera footage in shows like Below Deck, but nothing to this extent. Every room is mic'd, it has a camera with infrared technology, it's a Robocam,

49:16
get a lot better quality than the little GoPros they use in the below deck. And, and yeah, it was just next thing, end of June of 2016, I'm getting mic'd up and I'm like, my God, I cannot believe this is happening. And that was season one and we shot in 2016 and it aired in Q1 of 2017. So one, if for a listening business audience, like Kyle is a good businessman and recognized that.

49:46
Gaining customers is difficult and you have to pay to get in front of, to get reach and frequency. A lot of the audience seen a lot of times. And so whether he was selling underwear or hard spike cider or fitness equipment, he knew that getting in front of that audience, he could talk about or build his personal brand up with which to then market any product.

50:13
I'm putting words in your mouth, Kyle, but I'm reading them in the lines of how this works. Thinking of it this way, when I graduated business school was 2011. And one of the expressions that a professor said over and over again is cash is king. I think that's changed to content is king. And I say that because you don't need cash to create content, but every company needs content to acquire customers.

50:42
And so sure, My Cheat Code was a Bravo television show. But back in 2015, streamers, the Netflix, the Hulus, the Amazons of the world, hardly existed. There was probably two or three shows on Amazon at that time. And so today people have many more options at their fingertips, right? You can launch a behind the scenes show on you launching your brand on YouTube. And again, content is king. And Gary Vee says it.

51:11
all the time. Every company needs to be a content company. And so that's the takeaway here is you can shrug this off as how this guy's got a TV show, unfair advantage, et cetera, et cetera. I saw the opportunity and yeah, I put in the work, but you can do that on any platform, not cable, but maybe YouTube or TikTok, you name it. And that is exactly right, Kyle. That's why I respect the hell out of what you've done. And it goes back to you went down, you started to go down this path. Like when reality TV started.

51:41
social media networks did not exist or did not exist in the form they are now. So you had to rely on TV as the distribution channels for the content. What's evolved now is you've got TV and in many ways, TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and Twitter are like stations in a way. Like there are other distribution platforms, right?

52:09
on this topic of kind of content is king. I heard some crazy statistic that something like nine out of 10 podcasts uploaded to Apple or Spotify or whatever, never see a second podcast. In other words, people put out a podcast and never follow it up. So whether you're trying to make a TV show or you're trying to get your TikTok or your YouTube or your whatever channel up and running, you have to put in the time.

52:39
Like I put in a year's worth of work before we even shot a single frame of Summer House. If you think about going all the way back to the original casting. So everything takes work. And I think it's really easy to throw in the towel if you don't go viral your first or second stab at it. So that's the last thing I'll just say is persistence and drive and commitment is needed no matter what you're trying to do.

53:09
I've told that story many times with our very own show here. First 49 listens were all my mom. And then now we get a one point five million a month. Yeah. But it's been five years. It takes time. It doesn't happen overnight. Before we get into some more of the business and how you've parlayed the show, talk to us about the reality of like summer house and now winter house. Like this. What's that? Tell us, give us the real nitty gritty. I think the reason why people are obsessed with it.

53:39
is because reality television is a heck of a lot more relatable than almost any other medium whether it's a tv show that's scripted or a movie or a game on with professional athletes or a concert with a professional artist reality television the beauty of it is we're all just normal people sure we have our screws loose and some people are more dramatic than others but

54:08
I think the relatability factor is the secret sauce. And from there, it's relatable because it's a little more organic and a little more authentic than watching something that's scripted. And I think that's at the core. Every brand wants to be authentic. Every brand wants to have organic look and feel and pull within the customer world.

54:36
And I think that's what lends itself to being such a powerful platform. Now, as for what it's like, look, I quickly forget that the cameras are running. Our show shoots 24 seven right through the weekend. You can't sit there and think about what you're going to say. You can't premeditate anything. I'm sure some people do, but you got to live in the moment. It's one of the very rare occasions where.

55:05
None of us are on our phones. You're present and you're just living in the moment and reacting and sure, there's a lot of alcohol involved in our show, which kind of proves my point. We are not thinking about what we're gonna say. That'd be literally impossible. But when you're filming it, it's fun. Sure, you can have a bad day, but it's a fascinating process. Obviously we shoot exponentially more hours than makes the air.

55:35
And so I love watching it in its final version because I'm seeing things I wasn't privy to the way Bravo shoots. We do these interviews where you have an opportunity to reflect and have a little more self-awareness than you would in the moment. There's all sorts of little kind of hidden gems that make the way Bravo does it. Just so good for consumption. Yeah. And yeah.

56:02
It's really hard to describe until you see it and you're in it. But the producers, they're not telling us what to do. They're not trying to tell us what to say, but they are moving things along. Because if you have a big night out, you have a big blowout fight with your friend the next day, it's not necessarily human nature to just go right up to them and confront them and talk about it. The producers are there to like, Hey guys, I know you'd love to just chill by the pool and nurse your hangover and avoid the elephant in the room, but that's not how you make a television show.

56:32
And that's the key point of what I was going to say is like the people talk about, like when you think about social media, like the cringe, I don't like seeing myself on camera. Like I'm cringe worthy. This is everything times a thousand. And so did you, I'm sure you just had to, and everyone on it, you have to just immediately get over that or is it still tough to watch? No, don't get me wrong. My TV debut, I was wasted in a hot tub.

57:02
with Stassi from Vanderpump, because our show spun off of the Vanderpump franchise, because we had an organic connection with that cast. And so Stassi and her friends came to the Hamptons to visit. That's where we came in. And the next thing you know, you're watching Summer House. And my first couple of minutes on television were really embarrassing, because I was absolutely hammered. They took their pretty little time to make their way to the beach. We were already hammered on Rosé. And by the time I got in that hot tub,

57:32
and try to make a move. I was embarrassingly drunk, but I guess I got that out of the way right out of the gate. And I don't have any issue watching things back. Sometimes it's very cringe, particularly if it's not just me, maybe it's my relationship, but it's all part of what we signed up for. And sure, some people are going to handle it better than others. For me, I wear it all on my sleeve. And I definitely try to be in touch with.

58:02
my feelings, my emotions, all that mushy shit. I think that's actually what makes casting guys challenging. A lot of guys are like Teflon. Yeah. And they're not in touch with some of the more vulnerable things that make them a dynamic individual and dynamic enough to be casted. Yeah. Amen. The last thing I'll say is about that is like,

58:29
How do you balance? I just think about, and I know it's just like that short weekend, but the live work hard, play hard aspect, does the play hard get in the way of the work hard sometimes? Oh yeah, I joke, but yeah, you work hard, you play harder during the summer. Look, it's been a grind. When we film, it's not just the weekends, right? Like Friday morning rolls around, you usually...

58:56
drive up to the studio, they go pro your car because it's a three hour commute. And they want to capture some of that build up to the house. And then from there, it's 24, 24, seven through Sunday. Then you had to drive back home, which is often three hours. And that's nine times out of 10 off camera. Thank God. But gone is your free time. Gone is your time to decompress during the weekend or during your Sunday.

59:25
And then to make it even more challenging, they want to capture some of our life during the week, working, going out to eat, grabbing a coffee, catching up with a bud. So we have to make ourselves available. Usually it's Wednesday and Thursday, depending on what's going on. Yeah. And we often don't get that call time until the day before or the day of sometimes. And so I have to tell my team, Hey, my schedule on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

59:55
has to be somewhat malleable because you never know when I'm gonna get called in to go film something for a couple hours. And then once the season's all done with, we have these interviews every couple of weeks to help connect the dots. There's press commitments. And then when it airs, that also is a distraction. So factor in Winterhouse, which is a condensed filming schedule, but it's a crazy two weeks.

01:00:24
And then there's still obligations once you've wrapped. And I got even in, in 2022, I shot a third show called the traitors for peacocks. So I, I have very little balance. I get to start a family. I'm trying to build up my nest egg and no one wants to hear the pity story of, Oh, Kyle's busy because he's shot three TV shows and runs a company. It's this is what I signed up for. No point in complaining. Yeah.

01:00:51
Do you ever fall in love with the... You gotta love the process of it all. And I think you either love it or you hate it. And if you hate it, you probably don't last eight seasons like you have. That's all I can imagine. Yeah, I think, look, like one of your questions before we started rolling was just like, hey, is it the same cast? And the fact of the matter is, in no world would you be summering with the same people year over year over year. Half my friends that I met in Montauk don't even live in New York anymore.

01:01:20
Some people are married, some people have kids, plans change. So the show has evolved to take that into account. And look, some people are unbelievable individuals, but like, maybe they just aren't cut out for TV. So we, I think I chalk my staying power up to just, Hey, I'm, I'm not in the same place I was eight years ago. Thank God. And I'm evolving for better, for worse.

01:01:49
And we're able to capture some of that. And I'm hopefully slowly but surely giving hope for all of mankind that guys like me that once upon a time were like scared of commitment and we'd use their job as a means of justifying why they're not in a relationship. Hey, guess what? There's hope. There is hope. I think it's a perfect transition to a lot of hope. Lot of hope in lover boy.

01:02:16
Yes. Everything's riding on Loverboy. I hope it's not a strategy, my friend. You got strategy. I know it. I see it. That's why you're on the show. Let's talk Loverboy. How did that come about? And how's it fucking doing so great? Yeah, look, like I said, when I when the original casting opportunity came up, I was working on this nutrition app and I did a little research about Bravo. It's like the number one rated network among women on cable television.

01:02:45
They're a little more affluent, educated than a lot of other audiences on television. And guess what? Who controls the disposable income of most households? Women. So all these things check the box. And then when I looked at what I was focused on, which is nutrition, I was like, I bet you a large percentage of the audience that watches Bravo wants to look good and feel good. And nutrition is a huge part of that. And I looked at what people were spending on fitness.

01:03:14
and how much they were neglecting on the nutrition front. I was just like, I'm gonna do something about it. What I didn't understand or appreciate is that would be nearly impossible to bring the life on camera. I built a nutrition app where you connect with a coach. There is nothing about that is TV worthy. In fact, when I would try to do something to showcase what I was working on, they'd be like, we need something visual. Can you do a workout and then talk about the nutrition app?

01:03:44
So we would shoot that half the time it didn't make the air. And the times it did, people like after the fact thought I had a fitness app. They're like, no, after I made it in the kitchen, it's nutrition, it's nutrition. So all this while when there's confusion and disinterest and challenges in bringing this venture of mine to life, everybody was asking what we were drinking. What's the rose? What's this hard tea? What the heck is this hard seltzer?

01:04:14
And it was like the opportunity was staring me in the face. 99% of alcohol products don't even have a nutrition fact panel or the ingredients listed. Here I am talking about the importance of nutrition and we're drinking products that once I did a little research, we're absolutely horrible for you. I actually felt bad telling them the name of the hard tea that we were drinking on the show because it was just full of sugar. And like everyone's trying to cut out sugar.

01:04:43
Monday through Friday, why would you just drink nothing but sugar during the weekends? Like that tasty margarita that it's frozen coming out of the machine, full of sugar, go figure. So the opportunity to stare me in the face, there weren't that many hard seltzers at the time, but I was just like, this is gonna change how people think about drinking because there's a nutrition fact panel, you can see the ingredients, it's light, it's refreshing, it's an alternative to beer, it's an alternative to wine and spirits too.

01:05:13
But all these hard seltzers tasted the same. And I looked at the fact that there was only one hard tea that had mass market penetration and distribution. And it was the same brand that hadn't changed in 20 years. And I realized there was this theme in alcohol. Alcohol's 20 years behind the rest of food and beverage. And so I was like, why create another hard seltzer if I can create the first premium

01:05:43
better for you hard tea. And that was essentially the inception of Loverboy. It was, hey, online hard seltzers, we're gonna use better quality ingredients other than just natural flavors like a La Croix or a White Claw. We're gonna use better quality ingredients. But that just because you're getting more flavor doesn't mean you're gonna get all the calories and carbs associated with some of the traditional hard teas, hard lemonades on the market.

01:06:13
And we've filled this little void and continue to dominate it in between like a hard seltzer, which is underwhelming, but better for you than the alternatives. And then this like full sugar, full flavor experience that two of those and you're, you basically have consumed more sugar in that sitting than you're supposed to consume for the entire day. Yeah. So, Loverboy, we started with our sparkling hard teas and then we realized, my God, look at...

01:06:41
how much sugar is in an Aperol Spritz, like how much sugar is in an espresso martini. We started building out these other product lines to fill other voids we saw in the marketplace. Brilliant with the show. Everybody wants to know what you're drinking. Like it was the perfect like influencer campaign within the TV show, right? Yeah. Everyone's like, how are you guys partying this much and waking up and doing it all over

01:07:11
drink Loverboy because our Spartany Hard teas have zero sugar. And sugar plays such a big part in why you feel like absolute crap the next day. And you go into your Monday work week feeling like all the gains you made from eating clean and working out were completely lost. And it's this vicious, repetitive cycle. And by cutting out sugar, my God, it's like we eliminated those vicious hangovers. And I just got this question.

01:07:40
down in Dallas. I was at a pool party that I was hosting and people were asking me, like, how do you do it? And I'm like, I drink these. Drinking your own product. How's it, what's the entrepreneurial journey been like? I know it hasn't been all roses. It's tough, right? I mean, you've had and made some really smart decisions, obviously switching to this product, having the TV show, having that built in influencer base, so to speak. But Sure. Look, I, I feel like I've been an entrepreneur ever since I was a kid.

01:08:10
Once upon a time I sold Cutco knives. I learned how to cold call, how to close someone on the spot. In college, I ran a contracting business where I had 50 people working for me, painting homes and, and commercial buildings and just adding a level of professionalism in a service-based industry that lacked professionalism. I've worked in healthcare. I've worked in real estate, you name it. I went to business school thinking like,

01:08:39
I'm going to emerge from there with my MBA to start some type of tech startup. And I did do just that, but I had multiple failures along the way, chasing trends instead of starting a trend. And I think all those learning lessons, all the failures make you a better entrepreneur. And I think that like the Mark Zuckerbergs and Elon Musk of the world really distort the reality of entrepreneurship.

01:09:05
Like very rarely do you step up to the plate, having never swung a baseball bat and hit a grand slam on national television. Right? Most of the time, the startup that you are known for, that business that you own and run that your friends and family respect you for, that wasn't your first rodeo. And yeah, look, I'm 41. And you know, it took me a long time to find success. When I was...

01:09:35
I think there was probably a 15 year gap between when I really tasted success running that contracting business where I, as a 20 year old, netted 50 grand in six months after all my expenses were paid. And fast forward to when Loverboy had its first profitable year. That was like a 15 year gap that I was just trying to find my way. House distribution midlife for Loverboy. What are your channels?

01:10:03
Where do you, where are you sold the most and what's it been like trying to grow that? Sure. I think a lot of people understand that alcohol is tricky. Obviously there's a lot of regulation and red tape. And some people have heard about the three tier system. Some haven't, but essentially by law, I'm required to sell to a wholesaler who then sells to a retailer. I can't go to retailers direct. So that's the three tiers, supplier, wholesaler, and retailer.

01:10:34
And if you don't have wholesalers on board, because they're your actual consumer, then you're never going to get into retail and retail will never sell to consumer. And as a result, that's actually part of the reason why alcohol so far behind this three tier system creates a disconnect between the suppliers and the consumer. And so you're putting products out there that are archaic and dated. But.

01:11:01
Your wholesalers don't know any better because they're not selling to the consumer directly either. And when you think about the Bravo consumer, it's not the consumer that's going into convenience or liquor as much so as going into grocery. Our strategy was to go to where our fan base is and build that early adopter strategy and parlay that into almost reverse engineering the typical cycle.

01:11:29
Normally you're going to your wholesaler begging and pleading, and then, then going to the retailer. We almost did it the exact opposite. We had consumers asking for it. Then the consumers were asking their retailers for it. The retailers were asking the wholesaler for it. So you create pull instead of pushing shit out to your, your wholesaler. And that again, that's all driven by content, right? Yes. It's driven by my TV show, but anybody Jake Paul's doing it.

01:11:58
with prime Logan Paul's doing it with his YouTube channel and his Instagram. Right. So there's a thousand ways to do it now. Yeah. What's as you look back, you mean you're what's six, five years into lover boy 2018, so what did you look back? I know you don't live in reverse, but what's been like the biggest learning lesson.

01:12:17
Like any industry that you're technically an outsider entering in, you don't know what you don't know. So you have to be like a sponge. But there's definitely times where we were way too hung up on this decision or we took way too much time to expand or we took certain things from a supply chain perspective for granted. And look, we've had strategists try to invest. We've had strategists try to buy us. We...

01:12:46
have had every venture capitalist in consumer packaged goods inbound and try to invest in. There are certain things that perhaps we were a little naive or cocky or what have you. Anytime any brand has been around for a good couple of years in the consumer realm, there's always a chance you kind of lose your edge. But we are just laser focused on understanding our consumer, continue to set trends instead of follow trends.

01:13:16
And, and yeah, just every day is a learning lesson. What is the master plan with Loverboy? If you can share like, what does that look like that roadmap? Yeah, look, I think, I think I am, I'm very much in the mindset that I'd love Loverboy to be a household name that lives well beyond the Bravo universe. And I think we're already approaching that. People are drinking it and have no idea who I am. They have no idea what summer is, summer house is.

01:13:46
And I think that's the goal, right? To build a brand bigger than me, bigger than the show. We are still in single digit weighted distribution. And what that means is obviously some retailers like the Walmarts of the world sell a heck of a lot more volume than a mom and pop. And so weighted distribution takes into account the chains. We're still single digit distribution. And the biggest challenge we've had in the last 18 months is our wholesalers aren't taking enough product in.

01:14:15
to fill the shelves and prevent out of stocks. So until we can solve the out of stocks, until we can get our weighted distribution up into double digit, ideally like 25%, we just have so much left on the table, so much opportunity. We're laser focused on execution and building a brand that can stand the test of time. And would we take a call from a strategic now that we wouldn't wanna, wouldn't.

01:14:44
want to have two, three years ago, because we were so nascent. Absolutely. But I'm not looking for distractions. Like I said, if I'm in execution mode, these need to be due diligence pretty quick. Yeah. Is that a, is it just meeting the right people? Is it just getting in front of more people? Like with that three tier system, what's the magic trigger that's just like the windfall? You have to demonstrate

01:15:14
consumer awareness, consumer poll, whether you have a big marketing budget or some content strategy. And then look, you need a product that offers points of differentiation. There's been dozens upon dozens of attempts to take on the number one hard tee.

01:15:33
But all of those products were me too, lookalike products that didn't really offer any differentiation. They were similar brands, similar branding, going after the similar consumer with a similar sugar fueled product. So you have to have points of differentiation. And look, I'll be honest, like it is way harder to launch.

01:16:00
a product that plays in what we're calling this fourth category, whether it's better for you or beyond beer or ready to drink, you have to have a lot of stars aligning today versus even just two years ago and certainly pre-pandemic. Yeah. I always say it's, don't be better, be different. That's the key. Yeah. And don't spend your time stressing out about the competition because if

01:16:31
then it doesn't matter. Yeah. If you're better, you're competing. If you're different, you're dominating. Exactly. Yeah, I love it. Imagine trying to take on Nike. Our shoes are better. Our clothing is drier and fits better. See what I did there? Yeah. Good luck. Good fricking luck. Exactly, exactly. You could have a way better product, but you don't have the Nike Swoosh. Yeah.

01:17:00
Exactly. Just do it. The where's the show going? Where's this all headed, man? Outside of Loverboy, I just talk about where's Cal Cook headed? Where's Summerhouse, Winterhouse? What's the future hold? Yeah, look, I think I hope the show continues to follow me, Amanda, our friends, our company as it evolves. And like I said, I hope it continues to evolve. I think that's what makes the television show great. Will I age out of the summerhouse concept as it is?

01:17:30
I suspect I'm going to start a family at some point. I also don't plan to raise that family in New York City. I think I got a few years left from that perspective. Winterhouse is a completely different beast. It's so much fun. It's two weeks of the year. Yeah, it's a wild ride. But yeah, there's a side of me that wants to think about the next chapter and continue to put content.

01:17:59
and content creation at the center and think about what haven't we done? Guess what? We haven't had the time or the team or the bandwidth to do YouTube or start shooting some behind the scenes. So that's the kind of stuff that I'm focused on. Yeah. I love it, man. Maybe we'll get the invite up to one of these summer houses or something. We're known for our, oops, sorry, just dropped my cap. We're known for our theme parties.

01:18:29
I think, I don't think there's another show that has put theme parties on the map quite like summer house. It's a lot of fun. And if you ever find yourself in the Hansons, you hit me up. Yeah, I will. Hey guys, we're going to work here. Everybody keep up with you. Kyle, let's give everybody all the, the websites, the social handles. Yeah. So lover boys, obviously my bread and butter, that's my baby. So that's a drink lover boy.com and.

01:18:55
same handle across the Instagram, Twitter, et cetera. I think we actually have the lover boy handle on TikTok, but we're not too active there because there's some challenges pushing a brand, an alcohol brand on TikTok. And then you can find me, just search Kyle Cook on Instagram, Twitter. Technically it's the letters I, M, and then my name, Kyle Cook. But yeah, I try to be active, but I could be a lot more active, put it that way.

01:19:22
Kyle, really appreciate you coming to the show. You shared a lot of insights, especially on the business side that probably people didn't understand or know that relate to reality TV and everything else. So I really appreciate the transparency and authenticity.

01:19:37
You got it, Ryan. Thanks for giving me a platform to share it. And thanks so much for listening along. Hey guys, you were to find us the radcast.com search for Kyle Cook. That's Cook with an E. You'll find all of the highlight clips and everything today. And look, I want you to go into your grocery store and I want you to say, I want Loverboy. That helps. It does. Let's get the push going with the pull.

01:20:01
You know where to find me. You know where I'm at, Ryan Alford, on all the platforms with that blue check mark before you could buy it. We'll see you next time on Radcast.