Meet the Willy Wonka of LinkedIn: Jake Karls

Transcription

Matt: Selling more bars than twice the population in Canada, using LinkedIn to get into big box retailers and building a $100 million brand, something less than 1% of companies can do. Jay Carls is the co-founder of Midday Squares. And in this episode, we dive into the highest highs and lowest lows he's ever faced as a result of entrepreneurship, how he used LinkedIn to grow his business, and what the word authentic really means to him. Let's get into it. Welcome to Connection Accepted. Today, we've got Jake Carls on, co-founder of Midday Squares. Jake, thanks so much for being here. Daniel: Yeah, it's a Sunday, and I'm fired up. I just got back from the gym. I re-signed up at a gym for, you know, I took six months off going to like an outside gym. Now I'm back to like going to an outside gym. I was working on my house every day, but now I'm back in that social environment, and I fucking love it. I don't know if swearing is a thing allowed on this, but I'm feeling amped, and then we've got our holiday party right after this. So I'm really jazzed to be with you guys, and I'm excited to talk LinkedIn storytelling, entrepreneurship, the whole nine yards. Matt: 100%. We're both so excited to have you on and amped to get into this conversation. Before we do get into the details, for the people who don't know who you are, first time meeting Jake, do you mind just giving a quick background on who you are, what you're working on, where you're from? Daniel: Yeah, so I'm from Montreal, Quebec in Canada. Daniel: It's freezing here, and I'm a co-founder and a rainmaker of a brand called Midday Squares. We're trying to build the next biggest afternoon snacking company in the better-for-you space, hopefully globally. Not just Canada and the United States, but all over the world. And I partnered with my sister and brother-in-law, who are unbelievable operators. I'm a horrible operator, a horrible CEO. I'm one who loves to make noise, tell stories, build brands. And the three of us started in a condo kitchen in 2018, and we were hand-making these functional chocolate bars, let's call it, or these afternoon snacks. And now we make from 50 bars a day to over 150,000 bars a day in Montreal in our own factory. We sell across 10,000 stores across North America, some of the greatest retailers. And we've sold close to 70 million of these squares. I think over 70 million at this point to date, which is technically almost double the population of where I'm from in Canada. I think we're like 40 million people, so we're close to double. But yeah, and my whole journey of life, just to give perspective, is I've always been a person that was... I struggled with organization. I struggled in the school system. I didn't do so well. I still graduated university and college, but I was always trying to be somebody else. I wasn't being myself. I wasn't leaning into my superpowers. I was trying to always fit in, in quotations. Matt: And I ended up becoming an entrepreneur because I got rejected from 36 different jobs after university. And I was like, what the hell am I doing? I just studied to be, you know, at the time an actuary and, you know, deep math and stats. And I hated it. And I respect everyone that does that, to be honest. They're brilliant people. But I realized that, like, I needed something to do. And entrepreneurship was the only thing that was available. I was like, I got to start a business. So I started my first business. I was 21. Outdoor fitness bootcamps did really well with it. And then I started to throw parties on college campuses for a second business. Went bust on that business real quick. Horrible CEO, horrible operator. And then my partners asked me to join this chocolate company. And they're like, we need you to blow it up. And my role was to be the cheerleader, to be the brand ambassador, to make as much noise as possible, as many relationships as possible. And I ended up calling it a rainmaker. And that's what I do every single day. I'm an energizer bunny. I'm fun. I'm loud. I'm wild. I make tons of mistakes, and I don't manage anybody. Daniel: So that's a little bit of the gist of context of who we are or who I am. That is absolutely incredible. And there is so many questions that I love to get into. I'm sure, you know, going from 2018, you guys were just baking these bars in, you know, your kitchen to now having sold 70 million of these. Matt: It's been a wild ride, right? So I kind of want to, like, start with the early days, actually, when you guys were just getting started out. You know, what was like the vision for Midday Squares and what were the early days like? Daniel: So we were in our condo kitchen, a little condo, and we were hand-making these bars. My brother and sister, my brother-in-law and sister were actually making this product or version of it for like two years because he was eating afternoon snacks that were like, I guess, more junky. And she made him a cleaner snack, which was the midday square, actually, just for fun. So they had this snack for a while and then they commercialized it in 2017 and 2018. And then they came to me and they're like, we need someone to make noise and blow it up because if it's a great product and no one knows about it, you're not going to sell anything. So someone needs to bring the noise and they will bring the operation. Matt: So when we joined forces, no one really knew who we were. We were literally three I say wacky people that had a delusional vision of building a huge CPG business when everyone would like when we tell them, maybe it's time to get a day job or the world doesn't need another chocolate bar. The world doesn't need another health bar. The world doesn't need another snack. Generally, there's, you know, there's brand new brands every year. There's limited space in grocery. So when we started, we just handmade these. bars every day from 5 a.m. till 5 p.m. Daniel: 50 bars was the maximum, that's all we were able to do. And from 5 p.m. till 10 p.m. we actually hand-delivered the products because we couldn't afford shipping. So anyone that would buy a product at Midday Square at the time, they were buying a sample. So a 25-cent sample just to get their credit card because that shows intention. And then we would actually hand-deliver, so we'd lose a ton of money on each product, to be honest with you. But as we were doing that, we were creating stories. So we were actually documenting everything on social media. And I mean, like, like good, bad, ugly, raw, unfiltered, non-surface level stuff, things you don't see businesses show, we showed the fights, the breakdowns, the milestones, the rejections, the failures, everything you don't ever see, we showed. And what happened was, people started to feel part of our journey. They started to feel like front row on this crazy series of building a business. And what it did was, it increased our organic viewage, and then that increased our attention that we were getting. And then that increased trial for the company. And as things started to scale, and we started to get more momentum, we actually started hiring a bunch of folks to come make these products in our condo. And we had like 10 people working in there, and it was crazy. It was like 5 a.m. till 12 a.m., and the building almost kicked us out because they said, you can't have a chocolate factory in a condo building, it's just not allowed. Daniel: So we ended up moving to a small kitchen. We hired a bunch of people. We were making bars on like a small assembly line of like mixers and like blenders and things like that. And we got it up to 3,000 bars a day, and we were continuing to tell the story and continuing to get little retailers taking a chance on us, little gyms, cafes. And the next thing you know, we had to make a huge decision, which was basically, do we continue to do this, which is not sustainable. We're losing so much money, so much capital, even though we're growing, or do we go to a co-manufacturer, which would then now take the manufacturing off of us, and we just focused on sales and marketing, which most food companies do? Or do we go build our own factory? And that was out of the question at the time because that was not something to, you know, it's very capital intensive. But we went to 26 co-mans, and they couldn't make the Midday Square the way we wanted it. Every time we'd go in there, it'd come out as something different. There'd be ingredient deck change. It wouldn't be the product that we loved and that we made it for. So my sister came back one day and said to my brother-in-law and I, we're going to build our own factory. And we looked at her as if she was out of her mind. Like, none of us were engineers. None of us had food manufacturing backgrounds. So she's like, I'll figure out how to make the machines, customize them, work with engineers to figure out how to do this process. Daniel: You guys find, at the time, she asked for $2 million to build this project. I was like, we were doing like under $700,000 of revenue, under $500,000 of revenue. So no one was going to give us that money. And my brother and I went out to go find capital. She went out to go figure out how to build these machines. And then we built the factory. It took, you know, close to two years. And in 2020, we had this first line running. And that was one of our greatest accomplishments is everyone told us it was impossible, but we managed to do it. We managed to find out the resources to get the expertise, and that produces now 150,000 bars a day. And as we were doing that, we created retail. We launched in the United States, Canada. And, you know, we did a D2C business. So it's been a hell of a ride, and I still think we're just at the beginning because the last seven years have been a lot of ops. Now the next hopefully 5, 10 years will be a lot of growth, innovation, sales infrastructure, and marketing infrastructure. Matt: Yeah, that's absolutely incredible. And, you know, for the audience, right, like Midday Squares are sold in a lot of major retailers. My local Whole Foods, you know, went down there this morning, grabbed a couple of Midday Squares myself. That's a very impressive feat for any CPG brand. Like, they want to be on the shelves of these top-tier retailers. Daniel: And, you know, a bit of an aside, but when I was working in management consulting, I worked on a number of CPG projects as well and saw just how much work it takes to get on the shelves of these top retailers. So super impressive that you guys went from essentially doing 3,000 bars a day with a bunch of different people in a house or in your condo to eventually building your own factory, essentially, which is like the hard way to go for most people. And then obviously now things have really taken off and you guys are focusing on just expanding further. What would you say was, you know, the biggest learning going from, you know, 3,000 bars a day to where you are now? Matt: I think two things. So first off, your business from zero to a million of revenue is very different than one to 10 million, and then 10 million to 30, 30 to 100. And I think that what people get mixed up is they think it's the same strategies or infrastructure that needs to be built, and it's actually very different. So a team could be different. Expertise can be different. And there's different games for each stage. So that number one, like, you got to think in terms of like, like I always say, like, you know, you got the ECHL in hockey, then you got the AHL, then you got the NHL. And you've got to be able to build those teams as you go and scale because it's really hard. Second is, there's no such, sorry, there's not... Matt: No, there is such thing as overnight success stories, but more or less, most, the majority is a 20-year overnight success story, not a two-year, not a three-year. That's just the anomalies that you see, but most businesses take an immense amount of time to build the infrastructure, to get the foundation built, then can you start to press gas and put petroleum on the fire so that you actually expand and blow up. It takes a long time. And if you're not patient and you're not willing to deal with an immense amount of pain, rejection, hardship, adversity for significant periods of time and pressure, and if you don't know how to get back up after each one and continue to give it your all and have fun and enjoy, learn the joy of that, you won't last. Daniel: And that was a learning for me. For me, it was just, like, I didn't realize how much pain and hardship would be on this journey. A lot of moments of just, like, very depressive states for me. I've never experienced these depressive states until this journey, to be honest with you. I've gone through the highest highs and the lowest lows. I had burnout, which was a significant, you know, experience in my life that I lost control of my life and I didn't know who I was at the time, and it was really scary. And I don't regret going through it. I actually learned so much about life during that journey. But, you know, I didn't know about this stuff. Daniel: I thought you just build a business, you know, you sell your products, it goes on the grocery store shelf, and then, you know, revenue comes in and maybe one day you sell or you acquire other businesses, and it's just like that. But not often do you see the pain behind the scenes of what it actually takes to, you know, build a $100 million business. I think that people throw that number out like it's nothing. There's like 0.8% of businesses, I think that's the number, that actually achieve that in the world. In the world, not in North America, in the world. So I think that, like, look, the thing is patience is critical, like we talked, like I said, patience and the ability to withstand immense amounts of pressure, and then the idea that every stage you need an infrastructure and a team that's kind of been there, done that, that's willing to work with you because you can't build this without the team. You know, my partners and I, you know, we used to do everything, literally every single role. Now we're becoming more and more irrelevant in the day-to-day of this company. It's like almost like, it's fascinating. It's running without us, which is crazy to think. And it's also a blessing, thank God. But again, those are the things. And I think everyone thinks it's just fun and games. You see the stuff on LinkedIn, you see the stuff on social media, and it's a lot of sunshine. It's a lot of moments of glory, of momentum. Matt: But a lot of people don't show the opposite side, which is majority of the time, which is the messy middle, the boring middle, or the hardship of the failures and the rejections. And I think that once you understand that whole concept, you can now appreciate the journey of entrepreneurship. Daniel: Jake, I think a lot of what you just described in building Midday Squares with a lot of the hardship and the unknowns, the high highs, the low lows, are a lot of the same things we experience on social media every day. There are, you know, one post will get a couple million views. The next one might get 10. And social media is this huge unknown, especially when you're starting out. There's not like a clear way to get a million followers, the same with building a factory. Matt: So I'm curious, when you take, when you start literally from zero with Midday Squares, how has your social media strategy changed as you've grown the company? It's changed drastically and it will continue to change and we're gonna continue to iterate and learn. And I think the beauty of this journey is the moment you stop learning and iterating is the moment you fail, in my opinion. And I'm not an expert, but the beauty of life is you should choose to wanna learn and iterate every day. And that's how you become a better human, a better leader, a better business. Daniel: But when we started Midday Squares, my pitch to my partners was, because I was in charge of the marketing, was, we need to tell a story that means something to people. We need to get people to care. We need to create an emotional connection because in CPG, there's, you know, 30,000 to 40,000 different products in a grocery store, let's call it typically. And if you want to stand out, you can't just have good placement or you can't just have the right price point or the right, you know, product market fit, let's call it. You need to get people to wanna look for you, to care, to know who you are and to feel part of what you're doing. So I pitched us, pitched this idea that we were gonna create a reality style, you know, entrepreneurship, reality show on entrepreneurship on social media, on Instagram stories at the time. It was only that. And we were gonna show behind the scenes of the good, the bad, and the ugly. So everything from the transparency was at the forefront. So we were gonna show moments, highlights, sizzle reels, and also the hardship and the pain and the ugly side that no one sees. So that way we show people and they get to know us. So when they went to a grocery store, they felt like they were buying from a friend. They felt like, oh, I love the Midday Squares crew. I know Jake, Nick, and Leslie. I know the whole team. They're epic, or I hate them and I don't want their product. But we evoked an emotion. And what we did was just very raw. Daniel: It was unedited or very limited editing. And we just started posting a ton of stuff. And what that did was it got us in this idea of thinking like a TV producer instead of thinking like a marketer where we're just... selling products. So that story brought people in, and it worked extremely well at the beginning when we were a very small organization, and we were the underdog. We were building. We were doing all the hand-making of the bars. Like, you really want to cheer on the underdog. It's baked into our DNA as humans in history of the underdog story. Whether it's sports, whether it's, you know, in history moments that you've seen the underdog win, David versus Goliath, like, it's just baked. So we used that. We built on that. And we started filming everything, posting, and it worked really well on Instagram. Then as we started to grow, we realized that we had more surface area. It wasn't just Montreal and Toronto we were in. It was now all across Canada and all across the United States, and people weren't coming in and seeing our beginning story of the underdog story. They were coming in as, oh, I just see this chocolate square. Who are they? What is this company? So the marketing had to shift to, you know, be more of bigger campaign or bigger ideas that were more general, but still emotional and still evoked an emotion that was based on great storytelling, number one, which is critical. Daniel: And number two was authenticity, because authenticity is not something you use as a marketing strategy. It's how you should show up in your business. It is how you make your consumers feel something deep and actually be part of what you're doing. So community is not a buzzword. It is actually something real if it's baked, if it's built on authenticity. And I think that that stayed constant throughout the process, but we're continuing to reiterate, reiterate, iterate and figure out what is the next strategy? What's the strategy now to, you know, the road to over $100 million or whatever the next phase is. And the problem with that is, again, marketing is changing forever, but storytelling doesn't change. Storytelling is how humans connect. So as long as you're telling stories consistently, you will be rewarded. And I think that now we're not just on Instagram stories, we're on TikTok, we're on LinkedIn, we're on, you know, meta. We're on, you know, email now. There's all these different platforms. And I think that the two things that we always say to ourselves, does it evoke an emotion? Yes or no. And if it doesn't, then it immediately doesn't get posted. And if it does evoke an emotion, do we even like the content? And if we like the content, then we post it. If we don't like it, then why the hell are we doing it? We're posting content for the sake of posting is the dumbest thing you can do in marketing because eventually it will catch up to you. Matt: So that's how we built the strategy. And we have videographers and editors, you know, and we were one of the early ones documenting the behind the scenes in 2018. But now a lot of brands are doing that and it's amazing, but we're now shifting what that actually looks like. It's not just about Jake Nick and Leslie now. It's what does the brand represent as a whole? It doesn't represent three people. It represents something deeper. And I think boldness and risk-taking and unapologeticness is what the feeling we want from people to experience from our brand. Daniel: I can even see that in the way that your website is with the all-bold fonts. And I can feel like I'm part of that thing bigger than myself because it feels like when I'm, you know, eating one or buying one, a midday square and seeing your content, you feel like you're part of something bigger than yourself. And I think that's one of the things that the greatest content creators do. And it's so hard to get right. So hard. And it's very impressive. Matt: Yeah, and I think that, look, we're in a phase right now where you're going to see in 2026, we're going through a rebrand, even the website's going through a whole change of everything. You're going to see it's all new messaging. It's new energy. It's a new feeling. Matt: And it's how do we tell our story now to, you know, two countries, some people that have never seen us, how do we make them feel something deep, still feel part of it and still keep our OG community amped up, excited, inspired, fired up. And it's a very hard question to answer, but what we're realizing is you've got to try a lot of things and then see what kind of works, but you need to have core values and first principle thinking on everything. And if you don't have those foundational core values or first principles, it's going to be very hard to see, to build an actual strategy over a long period of time. Daniel: At what point in this journey did you decide to experiment with LinkedIn? Because, I mean, I'm assuming that you just experimented with LinkedIn just like you're experimenting with your new branding now. Matt: So LinkedIn is a fascinating platform. And my personal journey with it was I always thought it was just corporate and it was job postings. And I was actually always scared to post anything, even when I started Midday Squares. Because even though I was comfortable on Instagram posting all kinds of crazy stuff, dancing with no shirt in the grocery stores, all this wild stuff. I was always afraid of LinkedIn of like exposing myself to the business world and being like, you know, made fun of or judged or like not good enough. Like, I guess imposter syndrome was something of that sense. But what ended up happening was one day I said, you know what, screw it. Daniel: I'm going to start posting on it because I feel like we need more talent. We need to get people. I need people to know who the brand is. And it seems like a platform that people use every day. At their offices, at their work, so they're kind of intentional on the platform. They're paying attention. They're not just doom scrolling, per se. And so I posted a quote, one of those like weird quotes of like a business leader. I thought it was safe, you know, you got to play it safe. And when I posted it, it got like 5 or 10 views or not like 15, 20 impressions. I can't remember what it was. And I was like, oh, shit, this platform's tough. And then I posted another quote and it didn't work. And then I posted like a job posting and it got a little bit more attention. Then I posted like a stat. Again, all these safe plays, these safe corporates content, right, pieces. And then one day I was like, screw it, I'm gonna post me dancing in a grocery store or something along those lines. It was some sort of dance video or something personal. And the views shot up. And I was like, whoa. And then in that moment, I realized that humanization and a little bit of personalization on this platform is so different than the typical content that's on it, that it actually has a chance of actually standing out, being a square in a big circle, like you're different, right? And I then realized, holy shit, I need to start posting this kind of content. Matt: That's my true life, my authenticity of who I am, my energy, my vibes, and not be scared. So I started telling myself a different story. I started saying, I'm just gonna have fun with this. I'm gonna actually make it fun. I'm gonna make a business, but it's gonna be fun. And next thing you know, the impressions went from 10,000 to 100,000, 200,000 sometimes proposed, sometimes 500,000. And next thing you know, it was driving millions of dollars of investment to our organization. It was driving retail partners to find us and want to work with us. So some of our biggest retailers that we worked with, it was finding new talent to want to be part of this journey. And then it was driving a ton of opportunities and also personal for me, like keynotes and, you know, podcasts and like media and journalism and all these things. And I realized, this is one of the most powerful platforms in my opinion, because people are intentional. And when you are intentional, you are focused and paying attention. And when someone is different in a crowd full of the sameness, you start to win when you post something a little bit unique, a little bit authentic to you. And that's what I started to realize. And the next thing you know, I started to use it weekly and our business started to get a lot of momentum, a lot of new customers simply to this platform, which I never in my million years would have thought LinkedIn would have been part of our strategy. So Jake, super impressive for the audience. Matt: Jake, I think today you've got 60,000 followers on LinkedIn, and I love what you said about being a little bit different to stand out, right? Because we all know LinkedIn is traditionally the most buttoned up platform. You know, everyone's on there kind of to look for a job usually. And it feels very corporate-y compared to TikTok or Instagram. But it sounds like you've really found a way to stand out and that's worked really well for you. I'm curious, what is your process when it comes to writing these posts? And I'm assuming you're writing most of these yourself, correct? So like, how do you go from idea to actually hitting post? Daniel: So like, I love that. And like, look, I still, I use other platforms too. So LinkedIn is just one of the platforms we use. And again, Midday Squares as a company, uses mostly Instagram, TikTok, but LinkedIn's becoming something that we're using, right? So it's like, it's actually becoming part of a conversation, which it never would have in the past, other than just hiring and stuff like that, right? So we're using it now as entertainment and education at the same time. Now, when I come up with my own personal posts, which I think, again, as a business, it's actually better to create personal posts. I think they do a lot better as an individual because humans connect better with humans rather than, you know, companies. And that's just my opinion. But what I do is I go over what happened last week in my life. Daniel: And, you know, I get to do, I get to do a lot of wild things. And I kind of go over what went on. What did I go through? What was a tough experience? What was a great experience? And I think about, okay, well, this is interesting to me. I actually find it interesting. So maybe someone else out there will find this interesting. Now, when I craft the story, I sit there in the morning from like 7 in the morning to 8 in the morning, and I just creatively write. And eventually I come to, you know, one of those things that happened the week before and I say, okay, how can I tell this now in a way that's not just personal and fun, but how do I tie it back to the business? How do I tie it back to some sort of, you know, relevance to corporate world, whether it's, you know, career, whether it's entrepreneurship, whether it's the unemployed, whatever it is. And I usually have a tie back. And what I've realized is once I get the writing down, I then find an image that can be relatable to that thing. So let's say it's talking about a retailer that opened up more space in the store for us and that this was a dream retailer. So I'll talk about my childhood of being, you know, walking through those aisles, so my personal experience, and dreaming about, you know, doing business with this retailer and then we finally got it and they gave us an end cap. And I'll show the end cap and I'll put a bold writing to, you know, show what this post is going to be about. Daniel: And what that does is it creates a visual, it creates a, their imagination goes not just from the writing, but they could see the visual. So I do that a lot, and it works. And sometimes I'll get, you know, low amount of views, and sometimes I'll get virality or mini virality. And for me, it's not so much amount of views. It's more about, does it engage and add value to someone else's life, and do I actually enjoy it? And if I'm doing that, I don't care about virality. I just care about the content going out. And basically, a lot of my buyers, a lot of the people in the investment world, are watching the content I'm telling. So I'm controlling the narrative about what we're building, not letting someone else imagine a different narrative or create a narrative that's not true. So, it helps you an ability to get that through to the corporate world, which is a critical world, especially if you're going to build a business or you're going to go look for a career. I think it's the most underrated platform right now for personal branding. And I think the most important thing is that you don't become cheesy, but you remain true to who you are. And don't just do things for the sake of doing it or posting because eventually that community will eventually get turned off and it will feel fake. And the moment you're fake or inauthentic is the moment that you lose in that space. Matt: So, if I stay true to who I am, and I have my trolls sometimes, and that's totally cool, but at the end of the day, I focus on who's Jake Karls, and what's his journey on this business world, and what can I share throughout that journey? And every week, I ask those same questions. What happened the week before? What would be interesting to share? We all have trolls. And I think it's just the fixed cost of posting on social media. I'm curious, Jake, as you're writing these posts and thinking about your day, like, are you jotting a bunch of ideas down in your notes app during the week and then writing them in a post editor and then scheduling them out for the week? Or what's your more technical process like for writing and editing and then posting? Daniel: So, because we started in 2018 and we were documenting everything, part of the marketing strategy at Midday Squares was filming everything, getting comfortable, taking content and B-roll, things that have happened. We have about six terabytes as a company of all the moments that happened throughout the last seven years. So, we actually have a ton of great B-roll that I could bring back to my posts. It's all on Google Drives and whatever, all this stuff. So I actually use a lot of that old content and I tell the story of something. So, for example, again, if something technical would be like, okay, well, you know, we're selling at Target and Target's been an amazing partner of ours. We started with two SKUs, two flavors. Daniel: Now we have six. And I'll show the beginning part of the old B-roll mixed with a picture or a different collage of what the new one looks like. And I'll go to the before after. Now, the creative process for me is not preparing weeks in advance. It's literally the morning of, I, I have those ideas in terms of moments that happened in the week before. So I, I just read them and then I come up with this something. I just start, I start typing and wherever it goes, I let it go. And then if it doesn't come off as interesting, I don't share that day. I don't care. But if it does, I then take the picture from the B-rolls and I create it. It all happens within that day. There's no prep other than the past experiences from the week before. That's it. And I think that that naturalness, that naturalness is what's actually allowing me to get some momentum on LinkedIn because it's just off the cuff. It's not so planned. It's not so structured. I make mistakes in my spelling. My sentence structure is a disaster. I've always struggled in school, in English class specifically, in you know, in essays and things like that. So I think that authenticity resonates with people. Some people gets them really angry, which is totally fine. But a lot of people resonate with that, that type of authenticity. Daniel: And again, I think that if you're going to post things, you should still have a theme of who you are and understand what your raison d'être is, your why, your purpose, your superpowers, and stay on tune with that. Don't veer too far off because you're gonna get lost. And I think a big thing with content creation and especially on LinkedIn, and I'm not an expert, but I believe that comparison can be the thief of joy. And I think I read that quote somewhere. Don't quote me that I said it. I found it somewhere. But what I mean by that is if you don't, if comparison's hurting you or making you feel down from whether it's another creator, another entrepreneur, another person in the career world, then don't look at other people. If you can get inspiration from them, then you will have your greatest way of creating content because you'll get ideas and you're not, you're not envious, you're more fired up and you'll feel a lot more energized. And I believe when you're creating content, you need to feel energy. You need to be excited. You need to be, you need to be fired up to get those juices flowing, to get the content flowing because people feel the energy that you're sharing. So, it's a mix of environment creating that energy for me. It's a mix of having the past experiences and it's a mix of having the B-roll and also just being me and being okay with not going viral, being okay with not an ROI on the content and just letting that build over time. Daniel: So, I think that that's kind of it. It's not a scientific approach. It's just, that's how I live my life. And that's how I share content on social. You know, Jake, what you described is a lot like a lot of our previous guests. And it just made me think of something I just heard from Stephen Bartlett, who is not on our That would be awesome, but he's now putting typos in emails and in his posts to make it sound more authentic. And I think that's really, I feel like the word of 2025. And what I'm also kind of curious to touch on with you is you briefly mentioned the ROI, the return on investment of a LinkedIn post. And most people that Matt and I talked to outside of the podcast think that you can't make money from posting on LinkedIn. And I think you're a prime example of this. Matt: So I'm curious to hear from you what tangible examples have happened to Midday Squares as a result of posting so much on LinkedIn, because you're literally getting more impressions than people like Mark Cuban, who have 6 million followers. You're absolutely crushing it on this platform. Daniel: Yeah, so again, going into it with not an ROI approach and just being as real as I can be, and again, authenticity not as a marketing word, but who you show up with online and who you show up in person should be the same. That's what authenticity actually is. Daniel: And for me, some of the return that Midday Squares has got, my company, has been able to get is investors that have written checks to the business in really hard times, and why that's a return is because they found us on that platform. They found us through content and they started to watch the story unfold and they start to build that indirect trust prior to even engaging with them on a serious conversation of due diligence or things like that. And what that's done is, it's raised us millions of dollars in venture simply because the story was being told, they were monitoring, watching, engaging, and then when we talked about depth, they already knew us really, really well, right? They already felt that trust and energy. Second of return is some of my retail partners that we work with today have found us via LinkedIn in terms of content, and that led to a meeting with some of these biggest retailers. And then obviously, you got to perform and do all that stuff, but it at least got us the foot in the door. And from an end consumer standpoint, I can't quantify this, but I get messages every day of someone with a picture at one of the stores that sell Midday Squares or at their home, eating the Midday Square saying, I just got it. I love it. Thank you for inspiring me on social, on LinkedIn. And that happens all the time. So what I would say is, it's not so much what a number is from it, it's more that it's just built the brand more and more. Daniel: And we're getting stronger and bigger every week. And I think that, you know, if you're going to create content, the moment you have an ROI on it, it starts to become transactional. It really does. It starts to become that you need to do XYZ because of that, not because you want to or not because it's purposeful or authentic, again, with this word. And I think that what I love about what I'm doing on social is that I don't care if it returns us money. I care that we're building a base or community that like us, what we're doing. And if they like me with my content, they're likely gonna give us a shot or try to help us. And I've seen many people that have watched our content, go to stores and fix our merchandise that's been out of whack in a store because they know I've talked about how hard our merchandising is in the fridge and how there's a lot of out of stocks. They will go and fix it on the ground in the city that they live in just because they are fired up and they're part of the content because they're part of the community, right? And I think that that is something that's also not quantifiable. That's just powerful. That's an army of people advocating, helping, growing, and supporting. And I just think that, look, anyone could do it. I'm not better or worse than anybody. I'm just sharing my story. Everyone has an ability to share their story. I used to think my story was boring. I told myself every day that I shouldn't share it. No one cares about my story. Matt: I'm an average person that might have high energy, but at the end of the day, it's boring. It's not fun. It's not entertaining. No one's gonna care. And that prevented me from posting, that prevented me from sharing or creating content. The moment I started to fight that story in my head is the moment I started to just let loose and stop caring what others might think of me, given that I'm a kind person, given that I'm living for me, and everything changed. Everything in my life changed. If you don't get attention today, it doesn't matter who you are, what you sell, what your product is. If no one knows who you are, you have very limited chances of winning. You still have a limited chance of winning if you do get attention, but it's a better chance, right? So you might as well tell your story. No one has your story but you because you live millions of experiences different than your sister, your brother, your friends, your acquaintances, your college roommate. Everyone's different. Now, if you don't share it, it's your loss. It's no one else's loss. Daniel: Man, just gonna react to that. You're absolutely spitting facts, Jake. I think, you know, even from Daniel and I's own content journey, for me personally, you know, on LinkedIn, I've been posting, you know, starting this year really actively, but on YouTube, I started posting about two and a half years ago at this point. Matt: And I do remember very clearly in the early days thinking that there was no reason why anyone would want to listen to what I had to say, right? There's probably hundreds of other people who could say the same thing that I was saying or maybe do it in a better way or are more credible to deliver that information, right? But over time and, you know, I only realized this through my own content journey is everyone's voice is uniquely different because even if you have the same experience as someone else, you lived it through your lens and you have your own unique reflections and takeaways from that experience that someone else might not have. So, there's, you know, I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here, but there is value in every person's perspective and coming to that realization was one of the biggest unlocks for me personally with my personal brand. And I can tell just talking to you for the last, you know, 30, 40 minutes that you've definitely internalized that. And yeah, like it's an incredible story and people are resonating with it and it it shows in the numbers. I think, and look, like I'm not an expert of anything. Like I'm just trying to have fun out there and share my journey as I'm doing it, the good and the bad. And if I could help one person out there, then I've done my mission. Like, you know, building a chocolate bar, building a snacking business is great. Don't get me wrong. It's what my, you know, income's coming from and stuff like that. Daniel: But that's not my mission. My mission is actually to show the world that if I could win in a very saturated, structured environment of CPG and build hopefully a, you know, we want to build very big, some of the largest companies. If we could do, we could pull it off by being unapologetically ourselves and sharing our story and leading with our path, then anyone can do it. Like, and that's, I know it sounds cheesy, but if I could inspire one person to just take that risk, be bold, lean into their story and share it, then I've done greater to the world in my opinion, because if we share our stories, like you said, Matt, it's our own perspective, even if it's the same experience, it's our own perspective of it and it's unique. And you know, in a world full of sameness, the only way to stand out is just to be you because you yourself, your DNA and your personality and your story is actually different. It's literally different. And especially with the world of AI, and I'm a fan of AI, by the way, big fan. It's helped our business a lot, you know, but there's one thing about it that I would say is with storytelling, with building a personal brand, yes, there's optimization tools and AI can help with a lot of that stuff. But one unfair advantage I think that's out there is the human connection is creating that. And that takes your personality. That takes your story. That takes care. Daniel: And if you lean into that right now, I think you're gonna have some success, especially on these platforms where a lot of people are utilizing AI. And I think that that's kind of something that, again, I'm passionate about. But look, I learn every day from somebody. Whether it's content, whether it's this, whether it's that, I get inspired. And I think that if you're gonna go out there on LinkedIn, just start sharing. Build the muscle like you would build a bicep. Every week, lift the five pounds like a bicep. And then next week, lift six pounds, and the week after lift seven pounds. And just get a little bit better every day. And if you do that, you're gonna create this muscle that will let you share your story, that you'll give yourself permission, which you shouldn't even need, by the way, to share your story. And next thing you know, your LinkedIn or your social platforms will slowly start to build a base, whether it's even if it's a hundred followers, who cares? It's a hundred people. Go to back to a college classroom. There's maybe 50 people. That seems like a lot. Imagine 50 people listening to you every day. That's crazy, right? So just build slowly. And when I started LinkedIn, I was a couple hundred followers. Now I have 60,000. Hopefully, I'll have a hundred thousand soon. I don't know. But what I can tell you is my consistency will hopefully allow me to get there. And it's not so much the numbers that you should think about. Daniel: It's more how do you make people feel? I absolutely love that. I think what I'm also hearing, Jake, is like really focusing less on the outcomes and more so on the inputs that you're putting in, right? The consistency showing up authentically on a daily basis, not thinking so much about, oh, is this getting a hundred thousand impressions or not, uh, is key. And, you know, you talked a little bit, I think maybe the word you used was the boring middle, the, the period where- Matt: Yes, exactly. Where you're kind of, you've been posting for a while and maybe you're not seeing a ton of growth yet. And a lot of people probably drop off and quit in this stage because they're too focused on the outcomes, which they have limited control over. But if you focus on those inputs and just showing up every day, staying true to the mission, posting if you're feeling- Like it's gonna help at least one person out there, then 100%, like, things will take off. You might get 100 views, guys, on your post, and that might be 70 people that say, wow, I wanna actually, I wanna buy his or her product, or I wanna see what their service is all about. 70 people, that's a lot. That's a shit ton, right? So I think we forget, I think numbers create this like, this craziness in our brains, and we get obsessed with outcomes and virality, and I've been there. I've been there many years, and I sometimes get caught in that a lot, and I'm like, what is going on? And I just get back on track after. Daniel: But the moment you do it because you're having fun for it, and you're actually like doing it because you want to do it, and not because you're told to do it or you think you have to, is when you start to win and people feel it. People start to see that subconsciously or consciously. So I would say like, just start, and I know it sounds cheesy, just start, and just stay tuned. Like, the messy middle is actually where all of the action and all the fun actually happens over time. When you think about it, the messy middle is that thing that's like called trust the process type of thing, where I think athletes talk about. I never understood that. I always said, well, when's XYZ gonna unlock, or when's this gonna happen? And the moment you do that, you start to drain energy because it's not about the outcome. It sounds cheesy, but it's actually about, it's a privilege to be on the journey that you're on. We're alive, guys. It's one short life we live, whether we like it or not. It's true, it's real. We could, as I say with respect, we could die any day. We could die any moment, right? So it's a privilege to be on earth, and everyone's life's different, but if you get to share your story, that's an opportunity. That's something that, that's exciting. And if you get 10 views, so what? Like, you might have helped one person. You might have helped no one, but at least you built the muscle to share your story. Matt: So you're getting better yourself, at least, right? So that's kind of like my advice is have fun with it. And again, I'm not an expert, so it's not really advice, but have fun with it, and just be you as you're on this journey of sharing content. Daniel: That's incredible. Jake, I wanna pivot a little bit more to sort of LinkedIn, the platform specifically. You've been posting a lot. Curious from your perspective as someone who creates on the platform, is there anything that, if you could go talk to LinkedIn's CEO right now, you would ask them to add or remove? Anything you'd wanna change about the platform? Matt: Yeah, so I don't know anyone at LinkedIn. I wish I did, to be honest with you. I post a lot on their platform, and I also, you know, talk about them a lot of my speeches, you know, that I give in keynotes, and it's just only great things. But I think they need to do a better job at videos. At one point they were really promoting video content in a form that was like, not the doom scroll, but like that same format of just like watching and engaging. I'd love to see that come back. I think they did like two years ago. I'm not entirely sure. There was a moment where it was just, it was going viral nonstop and people were seeing it and they were experimenting. I would love to see video get bigger. And I'd also love to, yeah, I think that's the big thing I'd love to see as a creator there is to see that content go further and push that again. Daniel: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Matt: We've heard across the board that people haven't really been seeing a substantial increase in reach when they post a video versus just like a text and a good image. So, you know, it feels like LinkedIn management has been pushing this narrative of, oh, video is the next big thing, but not really seeing it in the numbers yet. Either am I. I did see it a while back. It was crazy. It was one of the craziest things. And like, it was getting us a lot of action and a lot of opportunity and then it just, it phased off. And I'd love to see that come back, especially for the creators that are, you know, on the platform consistently creating content. And I think, like, look, they like timeless content, like timeless, what I've noticed. And that's great. But like, we also need to reward momentary, moment stuff that's actually moment, you know, in the moment relevant. And I think that that's something I'd love to see too, not just the timeless stuff going viral all the time, but, you know, moments because that could help somebody in the corporate world. That could help someone in their career, whether it's an entrepreneur, like that really helps, right, at the time. So, look, I have everything else that I have to say is great about it. I think it's an incredible platform and I'd love to meet more people at LinkedIn if I can, or anyone at LinkedIn. I don't know anyone. If anyone from LinkedIn is watching this right now, reach out. Just reach out. I have great ideas. Daniel: Like, I actually wanna create stuff. Like, I think there'll be some really cool stuff. I even think like LinkedIn podcasting could be really cool about like certain things. Like, I don't know, I think they could do it. There's a lot of fun stuff that we could do. Matt: Jake, I think this is a great time to transition into good idea, bad idea, where I have a lot of fun ideas prepared for you, and you're gonna tell me what you think of them, okay? The first one is in some of these... Are a little crazier than others. It's a midday brick, which is a midday square, but with double the calories of your current square. Daniel: Bad idea. Why? Because the size we made it was intentional for the, it's a 2 p.m.er. You get through your afternoon, it's 2 p.m., it's the perfect amount. You feel fired up, energized, amped. And, you know, too much chocolate is not always great. Matt: Okay. What about a midday gains, double the protein? Daniel: Love that. Love that idea. Matt: What about a shelf-stable square? Daniel: Not yet, but a great idea for the future once we have enough coverage and brand awareness. But we love fresh snacking, refrigerated snacking. I believe it's the future of where snacks are moving towards, especially in the consumer's education and stuff like that. But over time, I'm not opposed to what you just said. Selling it a cava or another fast casual restaurant. Matt: And the reason I asked for this is because I do a lot of Uber Eats in the work and I can't get midday squares on Uber Eats, not at a grocery store, and you can't always Uber from a grocery store. Great idea. I think there's huge potential in that world. They all have coolers, refrigerated coolers, a lot of them. And there's nothing better than, again, your lunch and your 2 p.m. snack, right? And if anyone's listening from that, reach out. We could distribute it to you guys. It's not a problem, and I'd love to work with. Love that. Daniel: Um, good night squares. Night chocolate with melatonin. I think once we become bigger, it's a great idea. I think Midnight squares would be really cool. Another one is, uh, We got a lot of people saying that they like that they want them at midnight for like when they're, when they're high. People send us messages all the time. Well, there's also the good morning square, which has caffeine in it. There are a lot of different verticals you can go. Matt: I'm a huge fan of owning the afternoon. We want to be the known snack for the afternoon because people snack a lot at that time or they need something like to get them right after lunch. They just need that pick me up, that feel good. We want to be the dominant in that, like literally owning. That's why in our name, it says midday specifically. So these next two are some marketing ideas for you. The first one is a giant five pound midday square, like the largest midday square. I love it. I love it. Daniel: For our community, for our community. You do it as like a giveaway to, to our community that supports us. Yeah. And then like you chop it up or, or, you know, And another one could be the largest edible QR code as a midday square. It'd be a niche. I don't know if that's a world record that can be broken. I didn't look it up, but I thought it might be a cool idea. Not sure what would happen, but, uh, yeah, I guess QR codes are popular. Like, you know, I guess people like it and we are a square format. Matt: The last one is my dad used to work at a hotel company and they'd always put chocolate on the hotel the night before. And I think that could be a great avenue for you all. I think check your fridge. You got a midday pump, a midday, uh, uh, surprise for you. And I think that in the fridge and it's just beautifully presented there, you know, we do sell to some, some, uh, hotels that put them in the fridges, uh, as like a snack to grab. I think it's I think it's perfect and it's great for the brand. I think it's something that's classy. It's cool. And you know, we're really all sort of on the go snack for people when they're traveling. So it's also good, especially when hotels, people are usually traveling or, or for work or for, for leisure, but still it's, it's on the go and it creates that that, that reminder, right? Daniel: Which is super cool. I totally agree. I mean, I'm traveling a decent amount for work now. Daniel: And I, I, I, I know I was emailing you a lot about this, but like when I was in Dublin or in Georgia, you're, it's an away game really when it comes to snacking and eating and the snacks at these hotels and even in airports are not as good as you would think. We need to make, we need to get them even better, you know? And I think that that's something that I think the consumer wants. I think that the consumer, not just you, but all the travelers. I travel every week. Like I, I want an elevated, you know, option or just more options because some are great and they're already and some brands are awesome. But I think that we just need an elevated experience because when you're traveling, you want to feel good. You don't want to feel nauseous or gaseous. I always say this like our like stomach pains. Like you don't want to feel any of that stuff. So, you know, I think that the cleaner stuff is the cleaner ingredient stuff would be good. How hard is it to get in an airport? Very hard. It's distribution. It's agreements. It's, you know, there's a lot, but that's. Obviously, we won't. I think you will see midday squares, maybe not this year, maybe next year, in airports, which we're going to work on because travel is a huge opportunity for us that on the go snacking is great because our products are actually on the go for five days out of the fridge. It's no problem. And then the rest in the fridge. Daniel: But to be honest with you guys, like midday squares has barely scratched the surface. Yes, we've done a lot and we've gone a lot done. We've got some amazing moments and great partners, but we still have a whole journey ahead of us because there is so much opportunity, but you've got to be able to focus in entrepreneurship. And if you can't focus your business, no matter how good the product is or service, it will fail. So focus is critical. And we're slowly getting better at opening up and being able to focus on another vehicle or another platform, but focus, focus, focus is critical. And this has been an awesome conversation. Jake, is there anything else that we haven't talked about yet that you want to share with the audience? Matt: I love dancing. And it's some of the most fun thing in the world. I think everyone should dance in the morning or dance before a big meeting. It literally releases momentum in your system. You start to feel amped. You feel the child inside of you come out, which is the best because you were adventurous as a kid, curious, excited. So just go out and dance. Let loose, put music in your AirPods or whatever you have there and just lose it. Just lose control. It's the most fun. We'll have to share that one with Eric Wei. He was a previous guest on how to do some fun, you know, yelling and breathing exercises before he recorded that episode. Let's go, baby. Woo! Thanks for coming on the show, Jake. Appreciate y'all a lot. Matt: Go create great content because that's what that's the world we live in. Hell yeah. Daniel: All right, that's a wrap.