[Intro music] Skipper Chong Warson: Hi, my name is Skipper Chong Warson and I'm a design director in San Francisco. Thanks for listening to How This Works. This is a show where I invite people on to talk about a topic that they know a lot about. Today, I have Kat Hantas and Nicole Emanuel with me. And we're going to talk about tequila -- making tequila, infusing tequila -- and running a business. Thanks for making the time and space to be here, Nicole and Kat. Nicole Emanuel: Thanks for having us. Kat Hantas: Great to be here, Skipper. Skipper: So Kat, Nicole, let's start with you. And let's start with pronouns specifically, my pronouns are he/him, how would you like to be referred? Nicole: I like to be referred to as she/her. Kat: And this is Kat and she/her as well. Skipper: Great. So who are you both? Can you tell us a few things about you? Kat: Yeah. So you know, what I think we'll do is why don't I always start if it's a question to both of us. I'm the older sister so I can jump in. And then, Nicole you can jump in -- Nicole: Deal. Kat: So I'm Kat and I am the older sister of the sister duo. And you know, we moved here from Greece as children. We are the children of immigrants. And I think that plays a big part in our story, for sure. And in the trajectory of our careers. You know, I went to UCLA, I was pre-med, I ended up ditching that and got into film and television and had a whole 15 year run in film and television. Skipper: Okay. Kat: And then I took some time off, I had two beautiful children that I adore, and then one day decided I needed to start a tequila company. Skipper: Okay. Kat: Which totally tracks, right? Like that whole path. Skipper: Absolutely does. Kat: Totally tracks. Skipper: There are no gaps to fill in on that. Kat: None. Skipper: Everyone's clear. Exactly. So we'll be diving in deeper into that. But Nicole, can you tell me a little bit about you? Nicole: Yes. Hi, I'm Nicole. I actually started a more traditional route than my beloved sister here. I started at Deloitte and Touche, also went to UCLA, you know, followed my sister's footsteps, actually, in every geography, or geographical location she moved to -- when she was in LA, I was in LA; when she moved to New York, I moved to New York; when she moved to San Francisco, I moved. So I guess I'm her little duckling as well. We're very close too. So did the UCLA thing, accounting finance background, did the Deloitte big firm then spent most of my career in tech and media. And I was the CFO of Refinery29, I was the CFO of Brit + Co. and I'm the CFO of AngelList. And during all of this, I got the luxury of seeing what works and what doesn't work in the startup ecosystem. And when my sister came with this idea, as she has come with many ideas, which I've all said, those are not interesting to me. But then, when she came with this fully organic idea, made sense for, her saw that it was happening to many of our girlfriends, as well as just, you know, no one's speaking to her in the tequila aisle, or for that matter in spirits in general, I thought this is a great idea. And I would love to come on board with you, sister. And so that was just shy of three years ago that we decided to do this. And two years ago that we have been in market. Skipper: Great. So just to wrap up our introductions, can you tell me one thing about the both of you that someone may not guess on the surface, something you feel comfortable sharing? Kat: Yeah, so I'll start -- I'll jump in. This is Kat. So Nicole was a double major in college at UCLA. And she graduated like magna cum laude or summa cum laude -- Nicole: Summa cum laude. Kat: All of that tracks. You can see it right on the surface. What you don't know about her, though, is that her second major was as a world arts and culture major, and she is an incredible dancer, and she was a Go-Go dancer, all through college, and she was the one who actually got me to all the clubs and bars. Skipper: Nice. I like this role reversal. I like it. So Nicole, do you have anything about Kat? Nicole: For having zero finance and business background, I mean, 0.1%. Her ability to be statistically right at about 98% is quite annoying, right? I do all the math. I do all the modeling. I figure it all out. She's like, it's probably going to be like 100 cases or something. I'm like, no it isn't. And then I spend two hours, triangulating attributes of certain accounts. There'll be like 99.3 cases. And she's like, so we said 100, right? And I'm like, Damn you! Skipper: That's a really good skill. Kat: I see things, Skipper. I'm an observer, I am absolutely an observer of life. I don't, I'm actually, I will admit, I am not an avid reader, I spend more of my time just sort of observing. I'm an auditory learner. So reading was always challenging for me. So I spent much more time looking outward into my environment. And so in that way, I could sort of see trends and you know, things that maybe it was able to connect dots in a very different way. Skipper: That's fair. Nicole: Oh, and one other thing to add to that was, I mean, people know this now about her, but we didn't know even starting this company together -- her palette is beyond point. I mean, if you even try to add an ounce of any kind of flavoring or any kind of anything in there, she can depict that in one second is quite impressive. Whereas me, you put a whole -- she's like, The Princess and the Pea with flavors and fragrance. And it's really amazing. Kat: Supertasters are interesting. And women tend to be -- I forget the exact number, I think it might be 35% more -- so supertasters are found in the female demographic than in the male. It's like we outpace by 35%. It was some number like that. So it was interesting. I did not know this about myself when I was making movies. Skipper: So I want to get into the subject at hand. I gave some of it away in our intro, but I would love to hear you all say it. What are the things that we're going to talk about today as it pertains to your business or in your lives? Kat: So we're here today to talk about how to build and create a tequila empire more specifically, an all-natural, real fruit-infused tequila empire. Skipper: Great. Talk to us about the name. So the name is 21 seeds. Kat: 21 seeds is actually two sisters and one girlfriend. So Nicole and I are obviously the two sisters. And then our third founder is Sarika. Also a Bay Area native, and she's the friend so it's two sisters, one girlfriend and then seeds, everything that goes into 21 seeds all-natural infused tequilas is all-natural, grows from a seed. Skipper: Okay. Kat: So that's how we came up with the name. Skipper: That makes sense. Kat: We very specifically didn't want to use a Spanish name. Like it's funny because people were like, why don't -- why didn't you just name it Casamigas. Like A-S. Skipper: A play on Casamigos, yeah. Kat: Exactly. Or, you know, if you look in the tequila aisle, it's like classic, casa, dos, you know, all of these names. And we were creating a product that was so different than traditional tequila. We're not from, you know, Nicole and I are from Greece. Sarika is of Indian descent but was born in the US. And we wanted there to be this distinction and to honor what tequila was. And we didn't want to, you know, take on a Spanish or Mexican name, when you know, we were creating a product that was a little bit different, it was a take on that. Skipper: Yeah. And that's great not to go down the path of appropriation. Kat: Yeah. Skipper: Yeah. Kat: Yeah. But we were very conscious of it. And we have an incredible distillery in Mexico that makes our tequila for us. And that's a very cool part of our story in that the distillery that we partnered with in Mexico is actually owned by a woman. And there are very few of them when we went down there in 2018 and started meeting with distilleries, I think there were three that were owned by women. It is a very, very male-dominated industry. And the really cool part of this distillery is that it's owned by a woman named Celia, she also is very much about trying to bring more women into the tequila industry. So the company is predominantly staffed by women, and she, to do that she has to adjust their hours so that the hours coincide with the hours that their children are in school, because they can't afford extra childcare outside the home. So they work while the kids are in school, and then they're able to pick up the kids after school. So it was a bit of luck that we stumbled upon her that we chose her distillery because of the quality of the tequila that she was making. And she's actually the most award-winning distillery in Mexico. But when we found out that it was, you know, when we went down there, we were hoping that she would, you know, partner with us, but we didn't know 100% we started to sort of convince her and obviously we were doing something very different. We weren't making traditional tequila. This is an all-natural real fruit-infused tequila. Nobody down in Mexico was infusing so it required infrastructure and things that we needed her to sort of execute on. And she absolutely came on this journey with us. And I think it's in no small part because it's women coming together. She saw a lot of herself in us as she was getting started in the industry. You know, she's been like a mentor and a godmother to us really, because she's given us advice, pointed out like, landmines in the ground that we should step over and, and things like this, like at every turn, she oversaw construction of the things we needed to put in place in order to be able to infuse at scale. So we benefited from a bit of luck. And I think that's the thing you'll find throughout our entire story. And I think with the success of any brand, certainly, when I was in the movie industry, luck played a big part in this. There's always a bit of luck. And then it's sort of what is your definition of luck, you know? Skipper: Sure. So I'd love to rewind it back a little bit. And we'll make sure to get into the notion of your distributor partners and the work happens at 21Seeds. But I'd love to hear about how did you get started, or how did you get interested in the notion of making an all-natural infused tequila? How did that start? Kat: Yeah, that's a good question Skipper, and I feel like I'm monopolizing the conversation. But that happens a lot in a Greek household, especially when you're the eldest. But really, truly, this was, this was my own personal experience. And I was a wine drinker, I very happily enjoyed white wine and rosé every night, a couple of glasses for many, many years. And then one day, I just started feeling crappy, not so hot. And I went to my doctor and ran some tests look at and those turned out fine. looked at what I was eating and drinking. And the minute I sort of said that I was finishing my night off with a glass, a couple of glasses of wine. He's like, that's the culprit. Skipper: Really. Kat: Like I want you -- that's right. And this is a doctor and I won't give you his name. It's always a second question. People ask me, What is your doctor's name? Skipper: I want that prescription. Kat: What is your doctor's name? But anyway, he recommended that I switch from fermented spirits. And I was like, okay, fermented spirits. I honestly didn't really know what that term specifically meant. I mean, I've heard of kombucha but I couldn't define fermented spirits. So anything like champagne wine, beer, saki so nothing fermented anymore, and I want you to switch over to a distilled spirit. And he recommended that I stick to a white distilled spirit, right, like not aged because when you age it, there are things called congeners that leach into the liquid, turn it brown, right, that goes from white to brown. They impart a lot of flavor, but they also impart some of the things that are trapped in the wood that are not so great for your head and can give you headaches. So if you're trying to drink cleaner, and better for you, like sort of, to the extent -- listen, I'm not out here saying alcohol is good for you, like everything in moderation. But if you're trying to drink cleaner -- Skipper: Yeah. Kat: Drink distilled, a white distilled spirit. And he recommended that I switched to Blanco tequila because it comes from an agave plant. So in terms of, you know, any gluten issues, remnant gluten, or any of that stuff, it's not in there. So agave is gluten-free. So I did that. I was sort of hoping that, you know, I went home, I was hoping he was wrong. He was not wrong. The minute I stopped drinking the wine within three days, I felt 100% better. And now I was sort of left with this blanca tequila. And it was, I was like, What am I going to do to this blanca to make it not remind me of college, right? Like, sure, not, you know, make it smell fresh and delicious, like, you know, as an easy to drink as a glass of wine. And I love to cook. And I just started infusing it, I threw a bunch of stuff into it and thought, let's just see what I can do to this, to just make it easier to drink and convenient. And I didn't want to have to make a cocktail every night. I just wanted to pour you know something in a wineglass and I started infusing it, completely changed the spirit in its entirety. And I drink it just like that in a wine glass, with a little club soda, slice of orange, and that became my new cocktail of the night. And that's how it finished my night. And -- Skipper: Okay. Kat: And I did that for years and years and years, eight years to be very specific, where I just was making infused tequila. If you were at my house, you'd have it. If I went over to someone's house, I'd bring it so that I also had something I could drink. And before you knew it, friends were asking for bottles. I was making bottles for friends. It was their birthday so someone asked me for a bottle of infused tequila. And you know, the kitchen was starting to look a little like a lab. And -- Nicole: And one side note, when you are infusing tequila, do not use a Brita which is what Kat used to use to infuse her tequila because it looks like water. And so when you go out for a run and you're really thirsty, you pour yourself a whole glass of what you think is water, but is actually cucumber jalapeño-infused, tequila straight. And you drink it because you're so goddamn thirsty thinking that you just came back from a run. And you think you're gonna die because you just basically took 18 shots of tequila after your run. Kat: PSA, do not infuse in a Brita for sure. Skipper: Home infusion tip number one. Kat: Not in a Brita. But you know, so over the course the years that friends were trying it, I also was noticing a trend going on right there was this sort of wellness movement moving into play in all categories, not just in, you know, certainly not just the spirits, but more. So like in beverages in general and food, like you were seeing this sort of wellness trend that was happening. And a lot of my girlfriends in particular, I noticed were moving away from champagne and white wine, in particular, white wine, rose, and champagne. And they were moving from those items right on over to blanca tequila. And they were again either asking me for bottles, or if we were out at a bar/restaurant, they would order a blanca tequila with a bunch of limes on the side and some club soda. And that's what they were making. And so I noticed that there was this whole trend of especially with women and guys, I knew who were like looking to drink away from beer, lower carb, less sugar. Moving over to tequila, again, for the wellness reasons really just to drink lighter and cleaner and like an easy spritz. And there was nothing in the tequila aisle for them. There was nothing for this consumer in the aisle when we thought about, you know, creating this as a business. Skipper: Okay. So Nicole, when Kat you know you all are sisters, you know, you describe going to the refrigerator and seeing the Brita, trying to grab a glass of water, so you're here throughout this process, right? What -- and you described in your intro of how you all started as a company, this is an idea that your sister has had that light bulb went off for you as well -- and you thought, yeah, this is something that I think has traction. What was it that spoke to you about this beginning? Nicole: First, to Kat's point, we both saw the trend right? Because we were in the same social circles, all of our friends they all called it Kat's tequila. Hey, even like when Kat wasn't there, Hey, can you get your sister Kat's tequila? You know, it was it started being not a one-off, it started being almost like every party, if I didn't show up with Kat's tequila, I may be banned from the party's next invite. Right? And so it just it really started looking like a lab at our house, her infusing all these bottles of tequila. Because you know, so many people were asking for it. And we -- she has come up with many ideas. She's a very creative out-of-the-box thinker. Like, why doesn't this world exist? Let's do it. And I'm like, it's too hard. It makes no sense. There's not enough market share for it, you know? Or, you know, what's this? What's that? But actually, when she said, You know what, why aren't we doing this? Like, does it exist? The very first thing I thought actually in my mind was, can it exist? Hmm, tequila we all know has to be produced in Jalisco. It has to be produced a certain way. There's a certain governance around tequila for it to be even produced and called tequila. Right? So my first thought was, wow, this totally makes sense. But maybe you're just not allowed to do it, right. And so when we figured it out, you aren't allowed to do it. But it's quite hard because the infrastructure wasn't built in Mexico. We thought, you know what, we come from tech, we come from startup life, we come from the world of if you build it, they will come. And if you're smart about it, it could happen. So I thought it was an amazing idea once I realized that it can be done to just run with it because it checked off the boxes of we know there's a market there, we know it's a real story of my sister discovering that she can't drink wine and beer, which really sucked for her -- because seeing her not drink at all wasn't fun, either. So yeah. Kat: Oh, you know, I'll jump in there Skipper because, you know, aside from that, you know, Nicole had us run through some exercises, right? She'd been involved in many startups. So the first thing we did was take a walk in the tequila aisle. Skipper: Do some market research, yeah. Kat: That's right. Let's see what's there, right? So and what we found and again, this was in 2018. Nicole: -- 18. Kat: (In) 2018, the first thing we saw was, there were so many new tequilas on the market -- Skipper: Okay. Kat: Like all these new tequilas had come on the market, all of them were Blancos, Reposados, and Anejos. Skipper: Okay. Kat: And they were all being marketed like scotches and whiskies to men. Skipper: I see. Kat: Truly like even the way that they would talk about them, like sipping tequilas and the notes that they would describe are similar to the notes that you would hear being talked about when you talk about a bourbon or scotch or whiskey. Skipper: Okay. Kat: And so that was the first thing we saw, the next thing was sort of the sea of sameness, like all of the bottles to the earlier point about the name. Every single one of them was some version of a Mexican or Spanish name that was on the bottle. It was hard to decipher the one from the next. Finally, we tasted everything that was on the market that was flavored, you know, and I say, quote, unquote, flavored because -- Skipper: Yeah. Kat: You know, there's a loose term, it's like infused with flavor -- Skipper: Yeah. Kat: It's really just flavored. So but we tasted all of those products. And we found that there was just there was nothing in the aisle that was at the quality of what I was making in my kitchen. And also really nothing in the aisle speaking to her, that female consumer who was choosing tequila, actually, the demographic was choosing tequila, this millennial demo, one was choosing to three times over men, and no product in the aisle speaking to her, or this way of drinking tequila, which is sort of in the wine occasion to relax and unwind normally have a glass of wine or a beer, right? Skipper: Yeah. Kat: So we thought, Wow, there really is nothing like this here. And that's when we realized we were, you know, onto something. And we'd seen a white space. Skipper: I say, I think the due diligence you're describing that you all have done -- that's really important and significant and has helped you all to get to where you are. Especially because this started with a problem that you Kat had in not being able to drink fermented spirits and needing something more than just Blanco tequila, you have developed a persona -- that she that you just described. And even something like figuring out the jobs to be done for your product. Many businesses I find have no idea of who their customer is, or what their problem is, let alone the gap in the market, or how something like their product, like 21Seeds, is the bridge. But I don't want to lose sight of the distillery. That's something that I wanted to ask about. And I wanted to get into more detail. Can you all talk more about Celia and how the tequila is made? Kat: The first thing that when we had the moment in the aisle where we're like, Okay, there's a hole here. Now, how do you make tequila? Where do you start? Like, where does one start when they're going to make a tequila, and to Nicole's point, tequila -- there's a whole governance -- Skipper: Actually, what were you using when you were doing this out of your kitchen? Like, what were you -- Kat: I was just buying a Blanco. Yeah, like, I would -- Skipper: Just buying a Blanco and okay -- Kat: I was just buying a Blanco you know, a nice Blanco off the shelf and infusing it, using that. And when we decided to make this into a business, we realized, Okay, how does one make tequila and where's tequila made and it has a designation of origin, just like champagne and cognac. So, to Nicole's point, it all comes from a region in Mexico called Jalisco and in fact, our distillery is in the town of Tequila. And there is an actual town of Tequila in that region. There are many distilleries outside of the town of Tequila. But ours happens to be in the town of Tequila, which is a very charming, amazing town, then if you ever have the chance go down there it is, first of all, okay, then nicest people like, everyone that works at our distillery, they are so proud of their work, they want to get it right, like there is such a work ethic. Honestly, we were in awe. I mean, truly, I don't know that this product could have been made in the US to be honest with you. Because, you know, there was a lot of trial and error and stumbling through stuff when you're trying to do something new. So -- Skipper: Okay. Kat: They were there with us and their neighbors were there. I mean, it was, it was an incredible, incredible experience. Nicole: Yeah, the community is -- to Kat's point -- the community, even if they couldn't figure something out, like how they all come together to problem-solve, it's quite impressive. Skipper: Okay. Kat: Absolutely. So we make everything down at our distillery. One thing that is really cool about our Blanco base that we use is that she does an extra step to ensure that it's really smooth in that she does a thing called chill filtration, which normally you see in scotches and whiskies but not so much into kilos because it makes it more expensive, but what it does is you drop the temperature down to 30ºF and at that temperature any they're called aldehydes. So any sort of headache causers and there's a whole category, you know, when you're distilling, you want the heart -- that's the good stuff -- and you don't want the head and the tail. And that's why they people always warn don't drink moonshine because if the distiller doesn't know what they're doing, then you could go blind and you really can go blind because you don't want any of the head and the tail to end up in what you're drinking because that is the stuff that makes you go blind. Skipper: Okay. Kat: But so at this temperature, these aldehydes that may be slipped into the heart become solids, and then those get filtered out. So when we went looking for a Blanco to infuse with -- our infusion processes, quite light touch. I think what we found with most of the flavored spirits that we tasted on the market, regardless if it was in tequila, vodka, whiskey, or rum, it didn't matter. They all tended to be very sweet and sort of very sugary have this sort of weird aftertaste like they're sucking on a nickel and kind of smell like Jolly Ranchers. Skipper: Not a great taste. Kat: Not exactly what I was going for, and I was not a fan of flavored spirits myself prior to you know, it's a very different process when you're infusing and versus just flavored spirit. Okay, so it's quite light touch when you taste 21Seeds, I don't know if you've had the pleasure yet. But when you taste it, first of all, the first thing that you're you're taken aback by is just the aroma of it, it smells fresh, like the things you know, we're infusing it with, there's Valencia orange, you pop that cork off, you get this bouquet of gorgeous oranges, and, you know, the cucumber jalapeño, and then, grapefruit hibiscus, you get that nice smell, it smells fresh. And then when you taste it, it's subtle. It's not an overpowering taste, because it's quite light touch so that we wanted to make sure if we couldn't replicate what we were doing in my kitchen, I didn't want to do it to be honest with you, because I didn't want to bring a product. Nicole: She's a little bit of Steve Jobs like that. She's like, Nope, nope, it's not perfect. Nope. And I would tell her, We can't create your kitchen. You got to get over it. And she was like, Nope, we're -- I'm not getting over it. Either it tastes like this or we're not doing it. So -- Skipper: And especially at scale, right? Like it's not -- Nicole: Exactly. Skipper: To get the quality that you're getting out of your kitchen. And that took you a number of years to get those processes, iterate upon it -- Kat: That's right. Because -- Skipper: So to make it at scale in a whole different geography... Kat: Exactly. And Skipper to your point, this is such a good point, I iterated for eight years, I was tweaking and you know, and so I knew the flavor that I wanted it to the finished result, I knew what the gold standard was. And so that's what we had to hit. And I will tell you the biggest compliment ever was we made the OList last year, last summer. We made it on your website. Yeah. We were told because we were not in the room -- we were not in the room where it happens. But we were told, we were told that when Oprah tasted the cucumber jalapeño, you know, she is a huge tequila fan that everybody knows -- yeah, she drinks, you go to her house. She talks about it. When she went on that tour, she talks about how everyone comes to her house does a shot of tequila and she's big tequila fan. And she also infuses her own tequila. She loves to infuse tequila. And so when she tasted our cucumber jalapeño in a spicy margarita, our recipe which is on our website, 21seeds.com, you can find it there. Skipper: Yeah. Kat: The exact recipe when she tasted that she could not believe that we hadn't just infused the tequila. Like that week. Skipper: Like fresh. Kat: She thought it was totally fresh. She thought it was a fresh batch of, you know, like infused in a kitchen tequila. Skipper: Okay. Kat: And that was a huge, huge moment for me personally. Because if she goes through all that trouble of infusing herself, she's got a palate for it, you know, and that's developed. And it was a big, big, exciting moment when I heard that. Yeah, it was super cool. Nicole: And that's why you need your third partner to be a Stanford engineer. Skipper: Okay. Nicole: Which Sarika is. Skipper: Yeah, that's great. Kat: And then we were able to do it, we found Celia, who was a great partner, and she again saw herself in us when she was getting started in the tequila industry, and really supported us 100% and, and helped us bring this product to market. And then it was kind of a wild adventure from there. Like I don't think we anticipated what was going to happen. Skipper: Hmm. Okay, so we've talked about the beginnings. We've talked a little bit about the distillery in the town of Tequila. So bring us up to speed like how do things work in the business, right. You mentioned before we started recording that there were some barriers that you discovered in the industry, so maybe that's something we could start with. Kat: Yeah. Nicole, you want to take that one sister? Or do you want me to jump in? Nicole: Sure. Well, you said you wanted to start first but that's fine. So I'll start because it's like, it's like Frogger trying to get in here. But -- Kat: I feel like I'm dominating this conversation. Nicole: Because of what Kat said about moonshine, right, back in the day, when people would actually make things in their bathtub and put the head and tail in the heart, it started becoming very scary for people to just drink any kind of bootleg alcohol. And so this an actual constitutional law, in the Constitution. So the 18th amendment -- Kat: No, the 20th. Nicole: -- prohibited people -- Kat: the 20th. Nicole: Nope, the 18th -- Kat: The 20th and then 21st. Sorry, 21st amendment, or -- Nicole: You're still not right Kat: Was it the 21st amendment and them 21C -- Nicole: 21st overturned it. And then 18th amendment -- Kat: Nicole's gonna Google it, because I'm pretty sure it's the 21st, the 21st amendment put us into prohibition and the 21st, the 21C -- Nicole: Okay. So the 18th amendment, like I was saying, so you stop talking. She's not allowed. Sisters, sisters. (Laughs) So the 18th amendment basically prohibited people from drinking because people were dying and getting sick, right. And then that wasn't helpful. It actually did the opposite. People were bootlegging more and buying more illegal booze and that sort of thing. And so the 21st amendment actually 21stC, as in carrot, right, overturn prohibition, but created this rule called the tied-house rule, which says, okay, you can distribute alcohol, but it has to be in three tiers, you have to have the person making it be in the first tier, the person distributing it being in the second tier, and the person selling it is in the third tier. And you can't play across tiers, right? So the person making it shouldn't be selling it unless you have a beautiful place and Napa, in which case, we'll let you go because you're wine and nobody's gonna fight over how wines produced, right? So in spirits, there's this three-tiered system. And we didn't know that. So we thought, we have this product, and we're going to go straight to BevMo. And we're gonna sell this product and get it on the shelf. Skipper: Sure. Nicole: Right? And they're like, Who's your distributor? And we're like, Say, what again? What's that? And they're like, Who's your, you know, whatever. And so we had to set all that up, right? We had to realize that we could not be direct to consumer, which you can if you're a certain percentage of alcohol or less, or if you're wine. Skipper: Okay. Nicole: But as a spirit, especially 35% spirit like we are, you can't sell directly. So what we did is we got a distributor, and we started selling, and we specifically started selling in our own backyard in California, because California is the biggest market for tequila consumption by a lot, right -- 86% of all tequila consumed in the United States. Kat: Isn't that a crazy number? Skipper: That's crazy. Kat: It's very much a U.S. -- Nicole: Of that percentage, yep, of that percentage, over 21.5% is consumed just in California. So you can imagine if you can't even win in your backyard -- so for us, if we couldn't win in our backyard, we thought we couldn't win. So let's try it in California. Now, I'll let you jump in, Kat. Kat: Yeah, so that is true. So you know, the tequila industry, just all spirits are governed by this three-tier system. And within that system, there's a way that you come to market traditionally, right, there's, the path of distribution, right. And I think the important piece to remember here is sent to something you said Skipper when we started this conversation was because oftentimes, people start a company and yet they don't necessarily know who their consumer is, we 100% knew who our consumer was, you know -- we like to say, for her, by her, and the men who support her, that's who we're going after, and because of that, everything we did, everything we thought about was really around trying to solve her pain points in all aspects. And also about how do we reach her -- that's how we came at it from, you know, tech, Nicole squarely in tech, but you know, I'm up here in the Bay Area and surrounded by tech, it's not about making that consumer have to come find you on your website, right. It's how we go where she is and let her know about this product. And so that was how we approached distribution -- in terms of how we thought about it. And when we got to the industry, that is a very male-dominated industry, but also set in its ways because it is protected by this structure. You don't have to, you know, you don't have to alter the distribution, but it is what it is, right? Skipper: Right, right. Kat: They're very much set in their ways in terms of how you bring traditional spirits to market. Well, that's the first place to start is you think traditionally, spirits are for men. Skipper: Yeah. Kat: They're not really marketed to women, you know, traditionally, in the spirits industry, they think about the female consumer, they sort of think about a diet drink or a wine or something that's lighter or sweeter. Skipper: A skinny drink more recently. Kat: Exactly, exactly. So traditionally, spirits have not been marketed to women. So they haven't spent an awful lot of time thinking about how women discover brands. So when we came to the industry, there's two parts of that distribution. And the first part is discovering the brand -- where do you go to discover the brand and make people aware of the spirit. And traditionally, that happens in the on-premise, which is the bars and the restaurants. And then the volume of sales come in the off-premise, which is the places you can buy it, right? The liquor stores, the BevMo's, the Targets, depending on what state you're in, so the retailers, right? So when we looked at that model, we thought to ourselves, Huh? Well, our consumer we're going for is we're going after her, and she doesn't discover brands in a bar/restaurant, right? Like she -- and this is in 2018 so in 2018, how are women discovering brands, they're discovering brands in two ways, really. One is in this outer premise, I like to call it so there's the on-premise, the off-premise, and what I like to talk about as the outer premise, which is this digital landscape, right? Whether it's online media, which is Nicole's background, Refinery29, POPSUGAR, Well+Good, PureWow, Bustle, like places you go to read about products, to read about cocktail recipes, to read about places to eat, drink, what to wear, skin products, all of that has been done in this digital landscape, right? So you're either learning about brands there or through friend recommendations, right? So whether that's Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, that's where women go to discover brands. So we thought, That's where we're gonna go, we're gonna go there to tell her about 21Seeds, and then she'll know, that's the awareness piece, she will go over to the off-premise retailer and buy it. And that was the plan that we came to market with and it worked, because -- and they all kind of thought we were nuts -- that's not how it's typically done, you know, this is the distribution, like -- Nicole: You can't start in chain, you can't start in such a big -- if you don't, if you don't move, you'll get pulled, that's not the way to do it, you have to spend all your money on the on-premise, you have to do all this stuff. And the more they told us we had to do something, the more we wanted to do it the way we wanted to do it. Kat: We also -- we didn't need to go into a focus group or a lab or, you know, we could just we are her. We know where we go to discover brands. And it's not happening, you know, in a bar or restaurant for us. And so that was a big part of it. And again, this is where luck comes into play a little bit because we launched this brand in the spring of 2019, we came to market. And we came with that game plan in place. And we could never have predicted that by the end of that year and the beginning of 2020, we were going to land in the middle of a pandemic, that forced everyone including this traditional industry to move online, they had to do it out of necessity. And so here we were, from the get-go communicating with our customer, online, and really driving awareness online, and now everyone else was scrambling to get there. And so we got a little lucky in that regard because we were already there when everyone else was you know, sort of like, Oh, no, what do we do now? We got to figure out another way to communicate with this consumer because you can't taste them, you can't try the product in other places -- in the on-premise... Skipper: That's right. And no one being able to go out to bars. And I think you point something out Nicole around how the model that has been the path by which other spirits have come to market, that also feels like a broken model to me generally. Because you know, you look down the aisle and quite honestly, you don't see a lot of variation. There are rip-offs of something else or, but there doesn't seem to be -- to use a tech buzzword, but I think it's appropriate here but you don't see much innovation, you don't see much that's different. I think you all have a right to say, Yeah. Okay, so if this isn't the path that we go, then we're gonna blaze our own path. Kat: That's absolutely right. Nicole: That's right. And what was scary about that is we decided to go to one of the biggest retailers in California as our first customer. So we're like, if we're gonna go for it, we're gonna go for it. Because if they say no to us, and they can't see the vision then they're just going to be the echo chamber of everybody else who will say the same thing. Right? So we're just going to try and make sure that we can get there. So here we are, we don't have our product finished. Skipper: Yeah. Nicole: We have what it tastes like. And we have what a sample bottle's gonna eventually look like our labels not even made, right? It's kind of like a homeschool project, right? We're taping things together, a prototype. And we walk into BevMo, which has 146 liquor stores in California. Skipper: Okay. Nicole: And we say, Hey, we're three girls, we think this is the way women want to drink. And by the way, this is basically the Kettle One Botanicals in the tequila aisle, right? And try it and see what you think. And they're like, We love it. Now listen, you guys are small, new, it's unlikely that you're going to get all three of your infusions on our shelf. But we might try one or two, and we might try it on a sample set of our stores. And we're like, Fine, right? It'll get us started. So we're like, Great. So we're like, Okay. And off we go to Mexico to do our first run. Skipper: Okay. Nicole: And we're doing our first run. Skipper: So give me a time. When you went to BevMo in the spring of 2019, before or after? Kat: Well, we met -- Nicole: It was March of 2018. Skipper: Okay, March of 2018. Okay. Nicole: Okay. And we go, sorry, it was February of 2019. Kat: That's right. Nicole: It was February of 2019. We go to Jalisco. We go to our distillery. And it's our first day there, right. And we have not fully scaled out the infusion process, we have done it now on a smaller scale to prototype it to give to BevMo, right, of what they tasted. So we don't know if it will fully work at this point yet. And we order you know, a small run -- 400 cases. Skipper: Okay. Nicole: Run. And we get the purchase order. Skipper: Are there 12 bottles in each case? Nicole: Six, six bottles in each case for us. Skipper: Yeah. Okay. Nicole: And so we get there -- the first day, right? We're all excited that we're going to make this product that we know is going to be amazing. And we get BevMo's P.O. and here we are, we're expecting maybe 40 stores, one or two SKUs, and we're going to be excited about that, right? Because it's a big first order. Skipper: Yeah. Nicole: We open it up. And it's all 146 stores, all three SKUs, right. And now we don't have any more cases. Kat: They bought the whole first run. Nicole: So we literally huddled -- me, Sarika, and Kat -- and jumped up and down like a cheerleader job for about two minutes until the onset of fear just came over us. And then we realized we've got to make this happen. And that was our first order. And since we have done exactly what Kat has said, we have gone where she is. And that was really an important account for us because it gave us distribution all over California. And since then we've gone to you know, Whole Foods, Walmart, Total Wine, and Target and all of these other places where she shops, but it was so important for us for them to believe that this product would work so that others would believe it, but also that we could produce it in time that it could get on the shelf, which is pretty great. Skipper: So what's something about the work that you do in making the 21Seeds product? What are some assumptions that people have about the work that you do? Kat: That's a good question. Nicole: You know, people think there's a lot of glory in any kind of business, right? Ooh, you're a cool tequila founder. That's so much fun. And there's a lot we actually have cool consumers, right, our consumer because it's a three-tiered system is we have to make our distributors believe in our product because they're the ones that are selling our product. We have to make the retailer believe that our product is sellable. And then we also have to communicate to our ultimate consumer who's buying it, right? So spirits seem like this cool fun -- which it is, by the way, I'm not by any means. When they say, what do you do for a living, and I say I own a tequila company, let me just tell you, it's much cooler than saying, I'm a finance person. Let me tell you there's no callback, it's crickets on the other side of that one. But it is really complicated to be in spirits and a lot of people. And that's why you see thousands of new spirits hitting the market every year, is they think it's a lot easier than it is because, Hey, I'm going to make something cool. I'm going to put it in the marketplace. And they don't realize how complicated this industry actually is. Kat: Yeah, I think that's a really good point, the fact that we actually have three consumers, we have three customers really, truly the end, they all behave very differently, you know, and they're quite different, right, our first immediate customer is our distributor, and that is predominantly male, right? So couldn't be more opposite than the messaging that we're putting out to our consumer, our ultimate consumer, which is our girl out there, right? Like, that couldn't be more different, and then the intermediary. And if you've ever played a game of telephone, you can see where that message along the way can completely get turned upside down. So -- Skipper: Yeah. Kat: You know, it's an awful lot of babysitting in a way, like making sure that everything is getting done all along that chain of distribution from the point that it leaves the distillery to the point that it ends up on her bar card at home in a beautiful cocktail. Nicole: And we're very lucky because our distributor partner is such a partner to us. So we've gone through the cycle of different distributors, and different everything, you know, all the different learnings that you have as a growing company. And it's so key to have a distributor partner, your first customer, to really believe in what you're doing, because they're the ones that are actually going to the retailer and telling your story, right? Not you. Skipper: So an enlisted, not even just a cooperative business partner, but someone who's a partner with you, in selling this together, right? They have a stake as a distributor. But really, it's about the collaborative and cooperative effort that it takes to get this ultimately in the hands of a consumer. Kat: That's right. Nicole: That's right, because like we said, it's a three-tiered system. So if you don't have a distributor that doesn't believe in you, then you're dead in the water, right? Because you can't sell directly to the retailer, right? So that's it, game over. So it's really important to have someone that's, that's passionate, just as much as you are about what you're trying to accomplish, and believes in that mission statement. Because of the fact that we can't go directly to the retailer, Kat: Back to that game of telephone. If that message is getting, you know, messed up along the way, then it's no good. No bueño. Skipper: So we're coming to the end of our scheduled time. But I want to make sure that if there's something that we should talk about, that we haven't talked about yet, I want to leave some time and space for that free for you both. Kat: You know, I'd love to touch on the other piece of this, which is industries not losing, never losing touch with, you know what the customer wants, what the customer actually wants. And I think that's when big companies that rest on their laurels, especially protected by a certain distribution model. That's really pretty impenetrable in many regards. Sometimes they stop listening to the customer. And I think that's really important because, again, I think it's played a big part in why we have succeeded as quickly as we have succeeded. I think that we came in -- so if that's unless there's something Nicole you want to talk about, like there's was there something you want to touch on because I really want to talk about, like how cocktails are being made -- Nicole: I was just going to talk about another piece that was just like the mental mind frame of a founder and how to do that piece. But you go first, Kat. Kat: So one of the things that I noticed again, like going back to what we talked about Skipper, I'm constantly observing, I'm an observer, right? I love to pay attention to what in many ways because I used to work in the film industry. And at one point, I worked in a management company, I find comedians are the same way -- they don't talk as much, they're always in their head like kind of observing things and then that ends up in some skit down the road. But anyway, one of the things that I noticed about the spirits industry as a whole as a consumer, right was I noticed that you know, the palette had shifted in this is like now in the bars and the restaurants right like the palette had shifted. Everywhere else, you know, this wellness trend was going on. And things have gotten less sweet, you know, less caloric, no sacrifice on taste but there was this emergence of like Spindrift and Lacroix, and Fevertree, and you know, all of these things that were lighter. And you know, you saw it in iced teas and waters and in all aspects. And yet, I wasn't seeing that same shift happening in bars and restaurants with the culture they were making, they were still very heavy and caloric. And even before we went into COVID, right, there were articles starting to be written about how this younger millennial doesn't drink as much like they aren't drinking as much. And I think the reaction of the industry was to create booze that didn't have booze in it anymore, like non-alcoholic booze. And my thing was, I was there sort of listening to what the consumer was saying, and I was hearing an awful lot -- can you make that less sweet? I cannot tell you how many times I would be, you know, going to order a drink. And I would hear the person next to me say, Oh, can you put that on the side? Or can you make that last sweet? Can you take the sugar out of it? And so I was thinking, why are they not taking that feedback? Skipper: Yeah. Kat: And I think that was a big piece of it for me because I thought, we bring this product to market, then, you know, in the bars and restaurants this'll allow them to very easily make a 21Seeds and soda, right? It's just infused tequila club soda. It's basically, you know, what they're drinking in record numbers in the off-premise, right? The only category outpacing tequila is the ready to drink (RTD) category, which is that spiked seltzer category. And what is that? Skipper: I see. Kat: It's the 100 calorie flavored seltzer, right? With a little bit of alcohol in it, right? They want they were drinking that in record numbers. And yet, they weren't ordering as many cocktails in a bar. So my mind would go not to necessarily take the booze out of the alcohol as the first step, why don't we just make those drinks lighter? Skipper: Right? Kat: And then let's do that experiment first, and see if that doesn't move the needle. And then we can move to non-alcohol, you know, as a category. Skipper: Sure. Kat: So I that was something that, you know, as the other piece of this, you know, and especially now, as the on-premise is coming back, and we're moving back into that space, that's something that I'm really excited. I love to do science experiments, I loved science, I studied science, even though I didn't end up using my major in real life. But I'm excited to see that experiment now take place in the on-premise. And really, the focus of 21Seeds in bars and restaurants is really to make it that simple. And see if that doesn't bring those drinkers back into those bars and restaurants, as opposed to having them just buy these ready to drink at home. And I think we're gonna see that it might. And again, that just goes back to observing and figuring out where are the pockets of opportunity. And I think that's a big space for us now that we're in the off-premise. And we're reaching our female consumer where she shops. Skipper: Yeah. Kat: I now want to address the on-premise, and really give the customers what they want, which is a lighter spritz, basically. Skipper: Yeah. And to your point, I think there's really a distinction between an infused product, and especially an infused product like your all's, and a flavored product, right. Along the way, we've tasted something that has been a flavored something or other. And quite honestly, and maybe this is just my own bias, my own palette shining through. But I think for the most part, they taste disgusting. Like I would rather have -- Kat: So do we. Nicole: We do too. That's why it kills us when people say flavored because we're not flavored, we're infused. We have a very interesting, difficult process to do that. So don't put us in that category. Skipper: So Nicole, is there something that you want to cover that we haven't sort of gotten into yet in our conversation? Nicole: Yeah, I just wanted to take a moment to say that trying to be a founder, right, it's not for the faintest of hearts, you have to -- this isn't like a little side hustle that you hope kind of will happen one day or whatever you might start off of it as a side hustle. But in the sense that you know, you're asking you to raise capital, your people are trusting you, you are in and out, day by day building something that you feel very passionate about in an industry that has less than 10% females in it, right. And so you are already trying to convince them of why you think this product is important for consumer that has essentially been ignored, for the most part, and ironically, they don't say you know if there are two guys on a bottle or whatever, being super masculine, and they say, they don't say to anyone, Hey, why are you showing this product to such a, like the consumer is a guy, right? When we have like more fun and light label, they say, why is it so feminine, right? It's like that double standard is quite interesting. But what I would say is one, as founders, what I found was really empowering and impactful is female founders actually stick together, even if they're in your industry or outside of your industry, there has been so much support with each female founder that I have been really impressed with everyone coming together either from a mentorship perspective, a helpful perspective, with no skin in the game, right? They're just trying to be helpful, which I thought was really amazing. And then, and a lot of men have been very helpful and supportive of our growth, we actually call our husbands the interns of 21Seeds, because they've all been forced to help us in their own right. So I would just say that if you really are passionate, and you believe in something that you should definitely go for it. If you think you can give 100% and as female founders in a place where it's a small percentage, you got to be able to fight the fight, you've got to be strong enough to fight the fight, because it's not going to just be handed to you. Skipper: Yeah. So we're coming to the end of our time together. And I want to finish up with a few of the closing questions that I asked of all the guests. So Nicole and Kat, what's one of the most important lessons that you've learned so far in your life and or in your work, and they can reflect back to 21Seeds or they can be for other things? Kat: It's important to get help at the right time. Always. I know that in 21Seeds, there was a moment where it went from being a project to being a company, it went from, you know, Nicole, Sarika, and I not being able to keep up with the volume of tasks at hand every day. And you realize, like, you can't do it all anymore by yourself, and you have to hire, and you kind of have to let go and trust that someone may not do it as well as you would 100%. But they'll do it 80%. And that's got to be enough. And that moment was a lesson that I had to learn. And my husband gave me a great analogy for it that helped me learn it. Which was -- Skipper: What was the analogy? Kat: Well, it was really, it worked. It really worked for me because we have two kids. And he said, Look, we brought these two kids into the world that we have, certainly, and now they're 10 and 13. We have not made them the human beings that they are -- like ourselves. Yes, we brought them into the world ourselves. But then at that point, we had grandparents and aunts and uncles, and cousins and friends and teachers and so many people that came into their lives and influenced them and sculpted them and really helped them become who they are. And so think of it like that. You didn't want to hand that baby off to someone, but you did. And guess what? Look, it all worked out. So just think of it like that. And I was like, Oh, yeah, that's that was a great analogy for me. Skipper: Yeah, a trust exercise. Nicole, what about you? Nicole: What I believe throughout the whole life cycle of my career is you can either be the person that pulls the ladder out from someone or puts the ladder up to help someone grow, right? Skipper: That's great. Nicole: You can either build it or you can bury it, right? And I've always been a builder -- with people and with companies. That's why I've always been obsessed with startups. And I don't believe in -- if I when you don't, and none of us do it on our team. That's not -- we have a no asshole policy. We don't want to act like one. And we don't want to hire any of them. And so I think it's really important that the people that we've brought on and the people we choose to work with and their advisors, they're all builders, right? They're all in the benefit of making something bigger and better and helpful. Versus let's take this thing down because that would give us an advantage. We don't work that way. Skipper: Those are both great lessons. What are two things that you both are excited about right now. And by that, I mean something either that you're reading that you can't put down or maybe it's something you're watching or listening to? Kat: Nicole, do you want to start? Nicole: Outside of Bridgerton, which hottest thing I've ever seen. Talk about -- thank you, Netflix. Yeah, but outside of that, and this is gonna sound so silly -- the thing and I don't mean to bring it back to 21Seeds, but I think the coolest thing is seeing people for the first time try 21Seeds -- that is my most favorite little sidekick thing, I don't know what you would call it. Nicole: You get a lot of joy off of it. Yeah. Nicole: I get a lot of joy off of watching someone try 21Seeds for the first time because I don't want them to try it to impress me, I want to have them try it. Because I want them to believe in what I say. And that's what's super exciting for me. Skipper: I think that should be a hashtag. That should be a hashtag that when people try for the first time, like do a little video, whether it's on TikTok, Instagram or something, that would be my first time. Nicole: We do have one called a #noshotface, actually, which is kind of funny, because every time someone would take a shot, you embrace yourself of how -- Skipper: You steal yourself because it's going to be terrible. Nicole: Like, I'm gonna handle this, I'm gonna do it. And then everyone's like, Oh, they don't make the face. And so we're like, Yeah, it's the no shot face shot. So... Kat: I think for me that one thing I'm super excited about actually, is for the on-premise to open up again, you know, which is the bars and the restaurants because we had this hypothesis, right about how the off-premise would behave, and how we could reach our female consumer, you know, in this outer premise, and we succeeded in doing that, right? And we've proven that out, I love to prove things to have a hypothesis and like, prove it one way or the other. And so right now, I'm so excited to see if this theory that I have -- which is that you know, which is based in everything that I'm reading and seen before COVID, about like that this consumer would actually drink more if we just made drinks for them that they actually really wanted, which were lighter, and just more like a spritz if that would really work. Skipper: Yeah. Kat: So I'm dying to have that happen. And you know, Hope everyone gets their vaccine. So we can be out there and out in the world again, and bars can open up at 100% and restaurants as well. And then other than that, I just, I just love right now, I'm a new entrepreneur in this regard -- I've been the CEO of a company, I've always independently produced or I worked at, you know, companies in entertainment in my prior life. I love being a student of information and a new space and an industry and I love learning about how to make tequila. And I loved learning about, you know, how you sell tequila and really getting to know the industry before we figured out how we could disrupt the industry, you know, so I'm constantly listening to podcasts. And I actually, I love podcasts. I listen to them all the time. And I'll deep dive into, you know, if I hear something that's interesting, I'll go see what that person has written and dive into that. And I love going down the rabbit hole of information in that way. So that's where I'm at right now. Skipper: Do you have a favorite podcast that you're deep diving on? Kat: Of course, I love Second Life and I love How I Built This, I love hearing the stories of companies right now. I love hearing about mistakes the founders made and how I can learn from them. I'm such a student of all that I'm a student of being an entrepreneur right now for sure. Skipper: Okay. Nicole: I get full on anxiety watching Shark Tank because of the deal -- Skipper: Right. Nicole: The deal structure that they do. I literally go, Don't do that! That's a terrible evaluation. I can't watch anymore. My husband's like, Unless you have a cocktail and a pool, I'm not watching Shark Tank with you. You'll start like -- Skipper: That's funny. So where can people find out more about 21Seeds and then you all -- we've mentioned the website and we'll link that in the show notes -- but where else can they find out more about you? Kat: Definitely a great place to start is the website because we have cocktail recipes there. I do all of our cocktail recipes, I like to keep everything as light as possible. We also have just all of our press there so you can get it all in one place. If you want to do a deep dive into 21Seeds, you can do it right there on the website. But then you know you can also find us, you can also buy 21Seeds and taste it at many retail locations now across the whole country so and if for some reason -- Nicole: You just have to put in your zip code and it will take you to that your closest location Skipper: And that's on the 21Seeds website, there's a locator for where you can find 21Seeds near you. Kat: Like here in the Bay Area in California, Safeway is a great partner of ours and we're at Total Wine and -- Nicole: Molly Stone's. Kat: Whole Foods, Target -- Nicole: Target. Kat: That's right. But the website is the best place to start. And then of course we're always updating stuff on Instagram, Facebook and we're putting recipes up on Pinterest as well. So those are all places you can look for us. Skipper: Okay. Nicole: And we love hearing from our consumers if they want to email us at hello@21seeds.com. We love hearing from them. We love hearing their stories. We love, a lot of people send us DMs -- Kat: Cocktails -- Nicole: Cocktails. And they show us how they don't have a shot face, you know, because they took a shot and they were fine. And our hashtag is #girlscalltheshots. So a lot of times girls are taking a shot showing us that they are in fact calling the shots. So cool. Skipper: Nice. That's great. Well, thank you, Kat and Nicole, I really appreciate you both making time and space. I know we run a little bit over, but I appreciate you making time and space for our conversation today. Kat: Thanks, Skipper. It was a pleasure to be with you. Nicole: Thanks, Skipper. Skipper: Thanks, Skipper. And thank you for listening to How This Works. This episode was edited and mastered by Troy Lococo. Please follow or subscribe and leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. This is the first season of our show. And it would mean so much if you could tell one other person about the show and why they should listen to it. You can find How This Works online at howthisworks.show -- that's three words, no dashes. Again, that's howthisworks.show. We're also active in the places where social media happens. I hope that you learned something from my conversation with Kat and Nicole. For sure I did. We'll talk again soon. [Outro music] Skipper: Today, I have Kat Hantus and Nicole: with me. By the way, is that the right way to pronounce your last names? Kat: Yeah, Kat -- Nicole: It is. Kat: Yeah, you can say Kat Hantas, like Pocahontas. Skipper: Okay, Kat Hantas. Okay, cool. That's a good pneumonic. Alright, let me try it. Let me try that line one more time. Okay. Today I have Kat Hantis with me. Alright, today I have Kat Hantes and Nicole Emanuel with me. Today I have Kat Hantis and Nicole Emanuel with me. It's funny, I'm not landing that emphasis. Kat: Ah ha ha ha. Nicole: Like I'm haunting you. Nicole: Skipper, we're haunting you. Kat: It's better than Pocahontas. Skipper: Got it. Today I have Kat Hantis -- Haunt-us. Kat Haunt-as with me. Kat: There you go. Skipper: And by the way, I think this is important. This is important to get people's names right.