The Long Aisle with Lucas Ballasy: Inside the Minds of CPG Founders Playing the Long Game

Anna Zesbaugh is the founder and CEO of Corpse Reviver, a non-alcoholic, tea-based sparkling electrolyte drink with a can design that looks unlike anything else on the functional beverage shelf. Furloughed at 24, she built three businesses over the next six years before closing two of them to bet everything on Corpse Reviver, which is now in stores such as Walmart, Whole Foods, and Erewhon.In this conversation, we get into what it actually felt like to walk away from the first brand she ever built, visiting liquor stores to design her first can with her college neighbor, and why the team that got her to year three couldn't get her to year five.We also talk about why she shares the wins and the losses publicly, the line she draws between the people she calls and the people she pays, and the note she stuck on her bathroom mirror in 2020 that's still there.* Find Corpse Reviver: www.drinkcorpsereviver.comMore about Lucas: www.lucasballasy.com

George Milton co-founded Yellowbird Foods with his partner Erin Link, tilling up their Austin backyard for 150 habanero plants and building a national hot sauce brand on the belief that real food shouldn't need preservatives, sugar, and salt to taste good. He came to it from a music career, selling bottles out of a backpack at his own shows, and ran it self-funded for years before it became something that could pay him back.In this conversation, we get into the Substack post where he publicly announced he'd hired his own replacement as CEO, the slow realization years earlier that he'd one day make this shift, and what it feels like now to sit in the room while other people make the calls he used to make.We also talk about building a company alongside a life partner, why he used to personally call customers over a single damaged bottle, the resilience he pulls from endurance workouts, and the question he still can't fully answer about who you are when the thing you built no longer needs you.* Find Yellowbird: www.yellowbirdfoods.comMore about Lucas: www.lucasballasy.com

Gardar Stefansson, co-founder/CEO of GOOD GOOD, built a no-added-sugar jam brand out of Iceland, a country of 350,000 people, by betting that a sugar-free spread could actually taste like something worth eating. He started with a stevia sweetener company that didn't work, pivoted to jam, and has been scaling ever since.In this conversation, we get into how a follower bet with his marketing team turned into running two marathons in a strawberry jar suit within two weeks of each other, the overconfident retail expansion that taught him why getting into stores is the easy part, and what he's still sitting with at night even after a decade of building.We also talk about what it takes to run a company with co-founders on a different continent, why he thought it would get easier with scale and was completely wrong, and what building something meaningful actually looks like when you strip everything else away.+Find GOOD GOOD: www.goodgoodbrand.comMore about Lucas: www.lucasballasy.com

Michael Fisher, founder/CEO, built Rotten from his kitchen with zero food science background, a 90s gross-out aesthetic, and a belief that better-for-you candy shouldn't have to look the part.In this conversation, we get into what it felt like to receive a cease and desist from Ferrara, makers of Nerds, before a product even launched, how $200K worth of sticky, off-spec gummy worms became a TikTok campaign, and why Michael calls his executive coach "therapy, except you just talk about work."We also talk about the mental game of building, protecting your physical health when the business is consuming everything, and what it means to grow a brand in a way that lasts.Read takeaways from this episode here.+Find Rotten: www.eatrotten.comMore about Lucas: www.lucasballasy.com

Lucas announces the launch of The Long Aisle, while on a run, and what inspired the series.