Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:07
For toilet paper companies.
Jake Karls: 15:08
Yeah, except for toilet paper companies and retreating. And what we did was we said, actually we are going to go on offense. We are going to try to grow during this time when everyone’s pulling back, we’re going to spend more. We’re going to hire more. We’re going to innovate.
We’re going to try to raise capital. And you know, I’ll never forget we would go to like, you know, in Montreal, we’d go to the hospitals and knock on the doors and ask if we could feed the staff, the administrators, the security, the nurses, the doctors. And the only reason why we asked them that is we wanted to keep our team employed so that they can continue to work in the manufacturing and not have to be laid off and all that stuff, right? So we ended up feeding a lot of the hospitals here. The staff, sorry, the staff of the hospitals.
And they ended up paying costs for our products, which was great. It was a win-win for everybody. Give, you know, great nourishing products to the people working their bums off right now to help everybody and then also help keep our teammates fully, you know, fully working. And that led to a great momentum shift. And we ended up again raising money.
We ended up launching a new flavor at that. During that time, we ended up hiring a bunch of folks, and we ended up growing the organization tremendously during that time. But again, that was a moment where we were faced with crisis and we didn’t sit back and stall or sulk. We decided to go on offense. And again, a lot of the time that we’ve seen success or learnings is when everyone goes one way, we always try to go the other way.
And not to be a contrarian, but we believe that typically where the herd goes is actually a more risky strategy, believe it or not. And we applied that value to a lot of things. And we’ve been wrong in many occasions, but we’ve been right more than we are wrong by applying those values.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 16:43
In, you know, that’s one chaos moment. I want to hear what sticks out to you. But another for me was a potential recall. Yeah, that was another chaos moment.
Jake Karls: 16:52
Yeah. We had you know, we had we had.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 16:54
I hear all these stories, Jake. I’m like, forget it. Like just. Yeah. Running a business is no joke here.
Jake Karls: 17:01
Well, I want to make it clear, like, you know, entrepreneurship. And I can only speak about this because I’ve been doing this, you know, I’ve, I’ve had three businesses, you know, one which I closed, one started with two, I, two I closed one was decent, a decent closure and then one was forced basically to force the closure. And then this one’s currently working that I’m on now. So it’s been almost 11 years, I’d say being an entrepreneur. And what I noticed the common trait is, is there’s a lot of pain.
There’s a tremendous amount of pain and loneliness and misunderstanding throughout the journey, which, you know, you got to be able to withstand immense amounts of pain and pressure if you want to win. And whatever winning is defined to. Everyone has different definitions of winning. But for me, you know, what I learned is if you could withstand pain and you could keep showing up every day. Excited for what you get to do, then you’re going to give yourself at least a chance at winning.
And that’s what we’re doing at Media Squares. As hard as it’s been with moments like a potential recall that didn’t go to a recall because we ended up proving ourselves innocent. And again, consumer safety is number-one priority, at least for us. And hopefully for other brands as well. But every moment also makes us stronger.
So every chaos we go through, every failure we go through, every learning, it’s always a learning, right? Every rejection, every moment that, you know, we lose an account, you know, we get rejected from an investor. They always lead to making us stronger. And again, the one who could withstand the most amount of pain, the longest usually wins. So yeah, entrepreneurship is a long game.
And yes, there’s beautiful moments, Jeremy. There’s huge moments of crazy, crazy milestones and excitement and it’s amazing. But there’s a lot of pain too. And people always ask you, well would you do you regret doing it? And it’s.
Absolutely not. I love it, I love the pain is something that you have to start to enjoy. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. But that’s something about entrepreneurship. And then when you brought up the recall.
Potential recall. Yeah, we were we had a situation where, you know, one of the organizations here. Basically, you know, tested our products and thought that there was a test they used. It showed that there could potentially be contamination, cross contamination of another allergen. And that was not declared on our package.
And then when we did our testing and we made sure that we did the highest quality testing. So DNA testing, we went all the way to the bottom of the testing. And it was a very hard find test to find. We ended up proving that it was the test that was being used, actually couldn’t decipher between two proteins of a of certain nuts. So when you did the DNA test, it could actually show the actual difference in the nuts.
And we actually had zero of the product that they were talking about or, you know, so there was no cross contamination. And we ended up not. It’s not a win. It’s more just we ended up not doing a recall and it was a win for our consumers. It was a win for consumer safety.
It was a win for our team. Working so hard to come together in such a very, you know, emergency time. Because again, we would recall any product if we had any problems. Because again, consumer safety and quality is number one over anything else. So yeah that was a crazy moment.
And it ended up tightening our supply chain and tightening our team, our quality and safety teams anyway. So again every crazy moment usually leads to some sort of opportunity or some sort of learning.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:15
You know what’s interesting about that? It’s not like you were saying before, not everyone really runs their own manufacturing. So you, you, you know, if you someone wasn’t, they’d be like, oh, maybe there is something going on, but you were running the manufacture like, we have not, don’t have that at our facility at all. I found with your company you go against the grain, okay. You go against the grain.
One of those things is having your own manufacturing. That’s not normal. Talk about that decision.
Jake Karls: 20:45
Yeah. And again, you’re right with the consumer safety prior. Like what you’re talking about the recall I think it’s important to say yeah we had our manufacturing. So we were able to act really, really quickly in our control and activate, you know, operation Emergency, let’s call it. And that, that was really something I’m grateful for in terms of the team and having that ability to act within minutes, basically.
So having our own manufacturing was not originally a choice. It was actually out of necessity. When we were starting, I told you we were in the condo hand making these bars, and we would then hire people to come to the condo and help us make. And then we went to a little kitchen and had a room of tables and mixers, and we’d have like 26 people, you know, making these bars, getting into like two 3000 bars max per day. And then as we start to grow, we went to different co-manufacturers across North America and a bit in Europe.
And the idea was to go to these commands to help us scale this manufacturing process so they would deal with it as a third party, and we would focus on building Mid-Day Squares as brand innovation, sales, marketing, you name it, just growth specifically. And they would handle the operational aspect. But as we went to these co-manufacturers, every time we went there, the product would come out as a different product. It wouldn’t be the Mid-Day Squares that we loved, the Mid-Day Squares that we were making in our condo, and it wouldn’t even be close. By the way.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:02
Quality control was just not there.
Jake Karls: 22:04
It wasn’t there. So we had two options. They said, either you invest in helping us figure out how to make this at scale with machinery, which is a very big investment, or you change the product and you make it more like XYZ that they were coming up with, or you don’t work with us and you take a chance on building your manufacturing, and there’s a high risk on that. And as crazy as we are, we decided again, as you know, we want to stay true to the product that we had. We believed it was innovation.
And my sister ended up, you know, working with engineers across all over and built a manufacturing a line that can manufacture now. You know, like we said, 130,000 bars a day and hopefully more, you know, as we get, you know, better and better and more optimized more. But, you know, we built a fully automated plant or, you know, here in Montreal that now, you know, is basically one of the core cores of our business. And it’s been extremely painful. You know, it’s taken 90% of our resources.
So a lot of resources haven’t gone into sales growth in like innovation or, or marketing, simply because it has to go towards making sure the plant is operating, because without the product you have nothing. Right? So that’s been something that I’m excited for the day that we start to balance the expenditure. And it goes to not just ops, but it goes into growth, sales, marketing, innovation, which is very soon.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:28
Yeah I mean well, part of that I see, at least from my viewpoint, you know, better, but that’s caused you to find lots of channels that maybe you wouldn’t have explored if you had revenue, like you’re going on social, you’re, you know, just hustling out there everywhere on the internet to spread the word. So maybe that would have happened. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened. You know, I don’t know. Do you decide to raise money at that point?
You’re like, okay, we need to build this manufacturing. We need money. What point do you decide? Okay, we need more resources.
Jake Karls: 23:57
Well, yeah. You know, we each put a decent amount of money in to get the business going. So that’s like to get the initial start. But then when we wanted to build a facility it was quite expensive. And we ended up raising over $4 million from our local government here and our federal government on debt.
So it was debt to build infrastructure. And it was a great program. By the way, there’s a group called Investissement Québec. And, you know, their goal was to create jobs and create, you know, you know, some momentum and innovation in, you know, in the city or the province. You know, I guess, you know, you guys call it a state.
So yeah, you know, we got that debt which was really beneficial. And again, it was from the local government mostly, which is something unique because it’s like your state government, you know, lending a company money, not the federal necessarily. So it was our state government, our provincial government that lent us that capital to go build this facility out. And it was, you know, it was fascinating. We ended up doing it over like a two-year span.
And we got it running. And the moment we actually got the first bars running through, it was just a monumental moment showing that anything’s possible. You know, everyone told us it was impossible. Everyone said that it’s going to be too hard to do. It’s too risky, too expensive.
And we ended up we had a thesis, we had a vision, we executed, and it actually got done. And it was, you know, even, you know, behind me, like where I am now, like multiple rooms behind me. We have our manufacturing plant and sometimes I’ll just go there to feel the energy. It’s so cool to see a product go from, you know, ingredients to a finished product leaving the building. Right.
And there’s so much that goes into it that people don’t see. And we don’t show a lot of that on social media, because obviously there’s trade secrets and know-hows that we don’t want to share that we’ve worked really hard on. But, you know, when people come see it in person, they’re like, this is so cool. And I think it’s one of our prouder moments in our business.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:49
I think, you know, Jake, in the Against the Grain, it sticks out manufacturing. The second thing against the grain that sticks out to me is raising money. How you raised money. And one of them involves a boom box. Okay.
Do you want to talk about that for a second?
Jake Karls: 26:07
Yeah. You know, I’m a huge believer in being yourself unapologetically in both the corporate world and the personal world. And why I say that is because you are your best version when you are you. And that’s been a huge, you know, mission of mine is to inspire the world to lean more into themselves, to be unapologetic. And that’s really how you win the game of life.
Whatever. Again, you that you deem as winning. But one day we were raising money, and this is money that was not going into the manufacturing, was going into growth of the business. And it was from venture capital. And we went to go meet one of our investor groups.
And because I love dancing, I love music. That is who I am. I take my shirt off in grocery stores, I dance, I have fun, I don’t care, that’s who I am. I like to spread that energy. I decided before going into one of our first venture capital meetings with a group, you know, called Boulder Food Group, who’s an unbelievable group.
And I went before going there. I brought a boombox and I told my partners, just follow along as we go into this boardroom. We’re just going to dance. And this was the first like, formal meeting. We’re going to dance, have fun, let loose, go crazy, and we’re just going to it’s going to be really awkward, but it’s going to bring the energy out.
It’s going to show our authenticity. My partners felt really uncomfortable, but they followed along because they, you know, again, we trust each other.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:21
I mean, what does your sister say that like “Jake don’t do it” or what was her reaction to it?
Jake Karls: 27:26
They were just uncomfortable. They’re like, are you sure? But they’re like, they’re like, they’re like, well, we’ll go along with it. Or like something like that because we love you or like we trust you. Anyways, they did and I’m grateful.
But I went in first by myself. I think the first thing was me by myself. And then I just started losing it. Dancing, blasting music and everyone started dancing, having fun, laughing, good vibes. And it took the meeting from formal to informal really quickly and just made them feel who we are and the energy and the boldness, and we ended up partnering with them on our first financing.
They were our first investors and I’ll never forget that moment again. You know, what’s most important about life is how you make people feel. No one can copy how you make people feel, so you might as well try to lean into that. And dancing and boomboxes and having fun is part of my, you know, my why my superpower. So yeah, that was a critical moment.
And I’ll never forget.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:18
I picture like in a movie. Right. It either goes really bad or really good at this point. You know, for you, luckily it went really, really well. Another against the grain that sticks out about your product is refrigerated, right?
That’s tough logistically. Talk about that decision to okay. This is going to be a refrigerated product right. Because most on the market are not.
Jake Karls: 28:44
Yeah that’s that I like that you bring that up. So for us we chose to be refrigerated. And the reason being is number one we’re very bullish on fresh snacking. So the idea of you know snacks that are going to be in refrigerators I think that’s where the modern-day snacking is moving because of the psychology of the consumer. Right.
So they want to eat more products that in my opinion, that are cleaner or sorry or have a, you know, a more natural feel to it. That being said, the supply chain is extremely difficult on when you do refrigeration. There’s limited space in the fridge and sometimes you get put in a dairy section, sometimes you get put in the grab and go, sometimes you get put in the produce. So there’s a lack of consistency put you. Yeah, there’s a lack of consistency, which causes a lot harder time for the consumer to find your product.
So at the end of the day, for us, we chose that. And, you know, we were inspired by a company called Perfect Perfect Snacks who’ve been doing it for like 20 plus years. Who did a phenomenal job in building this refrigerated category. And now it’s becoming more and more and more popular where you have more brands entering, you have more space being built, there’s more consistency happening. And we’re seeing consumers choose fresh snacking, you know, very rapidly.
And yeah, that was a bold decision. And it’s also like, you know, where all the bars are in the store. There’s like almost like a decision fatigue. If you go there, there’s so many bars. So being somebody else is more outlier, less competition.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:09
Totally.
Jake Karls: 30:10
Yes. But now there’s more competition coming in. And it’s exciting because the more competition that comes in, the more the market grows. The more the consumers, more the more consumers come to the set and it becomes a destination.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:21
I mean, I view it also as a little bit of a moat because I mean, there’s, you know, Mid-Day Squares and there’s not like a sea of bars near it, or at least from my vantage point, you know.
Jake Karls: 30:34
Yeah. And like, look, it’s also our bars don’t have preservatives or additives. So the preservative or additive is the refrigerator.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:42
Yep. Okay. Let’s talk about some glory for a second. I’ve bombarded you with people hearing about the challenge stories. We’re already getting stressed out about it.
But glory. One of them is launching in Target. Talk about. Talk about that.
Jake Karls: 30:58
Yeah. So, you know, Target’s been a great partner of ours. We’ve been hustling, and we worked hard on that account for a very long time. And again, it was very depth into relationship building, focusing on how can we, you know, work with them and understand. And they were actually one of our first nationwide retailers across the United States.
And they took a chance on us, but not just a chance. They actually went full throttle and gave us, you know, you know, the opportunity to go into 1,700 stores off the bat, which is huge, which is basically across all states. And that was a huge moment for us. And I’ll never forget, we were in local retail retailers across the nation prior to that. And then suddenly we just got across the whole nation really quickly and we had to support it.
So it was kind of one of those moments where you either meet up to it or you don’t. And our team, you know, felt the momentum. They worked extremely hard. And we started to just we said yes and we went full throttle. And it was a crazy experience.
And today, you know, we sell many, many bars with them. We have many SKUs with them. We’ve grown the account. You know, just last week I think we had over 50,000 bars sold, you know, across Target last week, which was super cool. And I think that what’s unique about our partnership is, you know, it’s been a two way road, meaning the communication has been two ways.
And I’m grateful for that because when you have a two way communication, you can work out problems, you can work out opportunities, you can work out how to win more. And that’s what we’ve done. So shout out to the Target team. Shout out to our brokers Moscow, who we’ve worked with, you know with Target. And I hope we continue to build that partnership.
And another really interesting partnership that I’d like to mention. That was a huge milestone for us that we worked extremely hard on for such a long period of time, similar to the amount of time we worked on Target was Costco Canada. Costco Canada is, you know, we worked, you know, two and a half, three years on that account. And we were rejected. And then we had to we did a road show to prove ourselves.
And we ended up, you know, blowing up the road show using social.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:59
When you say road show, basically you’re standing in like your staff are in Costco handing out things.
Jake Karls: 33:06
Or we went to almost every day. Yeah. So we had we would hand, you know, do the hand to hand, you know, meet the Costco members, understand what their feedback was, what they liked, what was the right price point. And we would sell a one store at a time for like 12 days or 13 days. I can’t remember the exact amount.
And, you know, it’s basically a test, right? Do the customers like it or not? And we blew it out of the water. And Costco took note. And eventually, you know, that kind of led us to have some a little bit of leverage in conversation after being rejected in the past.
To get in. And it kind of showed that their members actually do want it. And I would say that was one of the craziest moments, because it taught us that you’re not going to get everything the way you want at first, and you have to work really, really hard and get creative and de-risk it as much as possible for your partner. And that’s what we did in Costco. Canada has become a phenomenal partner.
And that’s not to say that we don’t have all of our partners have been phenomenal, to be honest with you, from the mom and pop shops all the way to the large, large grocery stores. Everyone’s been great.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:05
You know, I remember I had the one of the people of. Yes, two on the podcast. Yes. Two products. And they said the same like when they were trying to get into Walgreens, they got a test and they just blasted social media and just got as many people into that store as possible, like just to drive that demand.
And they’d hustle to get that first one and then obviously leverage for the other one. So I love that story. The other a glory is celebrities. Okay. At least I see it.
Celebrities are talking you know, talk about you talk about some of the people that just talk about Mid-Day Squares.
Jake Karls: 34:50
Yeah. You know, I think I think instead of talking about celebrities like, you know, luckily we have some amazing folks in that world that have eaten Mid-Day Squares and have talked about it. I think where I like to talk about more is actually not them. They’ve been great, but more on our community has been some of the biggest catalysts for our business. Meaning like, you know, our community, the everyday people that eat our products at their offices, take it to work, they eat it on the go when they’re traveling.
They advocate for us at a level that it’s unheard of and they have gotten us, you know, millions on millions of views organically. They have convinced not just individuals to buy our products, but to have investors invest in our company, to have media cover our business, to have retailers partner with us because they’ve gone to do the work, because they feel part of what we’re doing. And I think that’s the power of community is when you get people to believe in what you’re doing, not just buy your products, but to believe in it, they will do a lot more than just purchase or transaction. They will go out there and advocate. They will go out there and build for you.
And that’s something that I think Mid-Day Squares has put a lot of time into, is trying to communicate human to human with our community as much as we can and taking the time and actually caring. And when we do that, we actually see that the consumer feels like they’re buying from a friend, or they’re buying from a family member, or they’re buying from a neighbor. And that allows us to grow so much more and create such an awareness that is, that is not replicable unless you are real and authentic and human and building something meaningful.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:26
You know, we are talking about this journey. And when you say pain, what immediately goes to my mind is therapy, right? And therapy has been a big part of the journey personally and as a company. I know that just a family business is tough. What are the you know, you were I don’t know if you still do this, but you and your co-founders, you know, sister and brother-in-law go went together just to make sure everything was solid.
What were some of the things that you would go over like? What was the format of those sessions with the three of you?
Jake Karls: 37:00
Yeah, therapy’s been some of the best investment we’ve made in our company to date other than, you know, innovation, manufacturing and storytelling, which are all I guess most of those are equal. But I think investment in therapy has allowed us to survive and thrive as leaders and as humans. And, you know, for us, we’ve been going to therapy together since day one. My partners and I since the beginning and once every ten days or so, 7 to 10 days. For communication alignment, working through hard conversations, making sure we stay aligned and that we believe in each other and that we’re honest and we’re communicating because there’s nothing worse than a partnership that, you know, fails because of a lack of communication or tension build up.
We want it to prevent that at all costs. Because we are family, we love each other, we’re best friends, but also to protect the partnership and actually build as leaders, as executives in a company and become better communicators. And that’s what we’ve done. And we still do it today together, the three of us. We also do it individually and sometimes do it with our partners in life.
But therapy has been one of those greatest, the greatest investments in terms of return on investment of life. And I’m a huge advocate for therapy. I wasn’t prior to this, and I think without that, we wouldn’t be here today.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 38:13
So how did you come to that decision to just start at day one?
Jake Karls: 38:16
My partner’s my partner, Nick. My brother-in-law suggested it because he, you know, he’s had prior businesses and communication is usually the prerequisite for success. You know strong communication is key for success. And a way to protect communication is to work through it in a guided, professional way in a safe zone and come up with the tools. And he started to learn that prior to Mid-Day Squares.
So he wanted to apply it to this. And my the deal was that if I go to therapy with them, you know, my partners, you know, once every 7 to 10 days in good or bad times that they would commit to my strategy, which was basically my proposal was we’re going to document and share everything on social media, you know, you know, sharing a little bit of a private life or personal life. And originally they weren’t comfortable with that, but they committed to that. And I committed to therapy. And that worked out to be two great investments we’ve made and we continue to do to date.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 39:09
Yeah, no, thanks for sharing that. What surprised you or what surprised your audience of some of the things that you’ve shared in the company, shared on a private level?
Jake Karls: 39:20
I think, you know, sharing, you know, burnouts and things that we’ve gone through that can make us in quotations look weaker, which is incorrect. Sharing those journeys have been, you know, scary, vulnerable. But the support and the relatability and trust that it builds with our community, whether that be investors, whether that be retail partners, whether that be, you know, customers. It’s fascinating. That’s been the biggest surprise is the amount of support and the amount of humanizing business, how powerful that can be in scaling an organization.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 39:57
One of the parts I like about your story is. Leaning into your strengths and you coming to terms with there’s things you’re good at and there’s things you’re not good at. And I remember I was listening to a video, you said I was not a good manager. I think that’s what you said. Anyways, talk about that realization.
And then we’ll talk about kind of how you decide to play to your strengths and really focus on that.
Jake Karls: 40:29
Yeah. So for me, I stepped down. I started as a CMO because I co-founded the business with my partners, my sister and brother-in-law, and they are co-CEOs. And I decided to be a CMO because I wanted a title, a big title, to be honest. My ego was driving that and I was doing a little bit of marketing, but I ended up being a horrible manager and I ended up stepping down from that.
After, I don’t know, eight or so months and tons of therapy of realizing that I’m actually playing to my weaknesses, not my strengths. And my strengths were something about, you know, building community, building the network of the brand, being out there, being loud and being a manager and running the, you know, playbook on that side was actually not good for me. And people were, you know, not happy with that. And I was doing a horrible job. And I ended up stepping down and kind of wanted to be managed.
And even though I owned a big part of the business at the time, you know? You know, when we started it, I was okay with it because when you lean into your strengths, that’s when you become your best, when you’re playing to your weakness and trying to fit that in and forcing it, that’s when things collapse. And yeah, so I stepped down and I became a rainmaker. That’s my job today is I am one of the rainmaker. I am a rainmaker.
I make friends for Mid-Day Squares. I bring in, you know, network. I bring in the relationships, I make as much noise as possible. And it’s paid off in in 20 folds in the 100 folds. And I feel free.
I feel free to be me and free to do what I do best. And I think everyone in the world should take a close look at what they’re doing, whether they’re at a company, whether they’re, you know, unemployed, whether they’re building a business, you know, starting a podcast. And if you don’t love what you do and you’re not playing your strengths and it’s time to move on, if you are playing to your strengths, just keep building and keep investing in that because that’s the highest reward you’re ever going to get.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 42:11
Yeah. No I love that. And I think about that a lot because I think sometimes I try to improve. Maybe I just need to just not do it and let someone else do it the way I want to know your favorite products, right? One I want to know your favorite flavor of Mid-Day Squares because I was saying mine is cookie dough.
And then I want to talk about just in general, what are some of your favorite healthy products on the market that you like?
Jake Karls: 42:40
Yeah. So I’m actually allergic to my own product. I’m allergic to peanuts and nuts. So I’ve actually not had a chance to eat Mid-Day Squares, which is crazy. I started a company.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 42:47
That is crazy.
Jake Karls: 42:48
Yeah, but I believe in my consumers and I believe in R&D team so much. That and I believe in you when you tell me you like the cookie dough.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 42:55
So there’s not going to be like a non-nut one at some point.
Jake Karls: 42:59
Maybe one day. That could be, it’d be a dream of mine. But it’s just we need another facility, another line. Like there’s a whole, there’s a it might just take time.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 43:06
Very logistically complicated. Yeah.
Jake Karls: 43:09
Yeah. So other products I like I’m, I’m a huge fan of like good old things like Perrier. I’m also a good a huge fan of candy, believe it or not, like Sour Patch Kids. And I find those delicious and I just can’t help myself. Good or bad.
And I’d say other things is chomps is one of my favorite products on the market right now, which is a meat snack. I never ate meat snacks before, and having that is just it’s been phenomenal throughout my life and I love it. I just love the product, I love the brand, I love the people behind it. And yeah, so I’d say that.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 43:46
That’s one of my favorites too. Love it. One last question, Jake. First of all, thanks for sharing your journey. And if anyone could check out Mid-Day Squares, go to Middaysquares.com.
Go to your local store. It’s probably in there. I’m sure it is. And just check out their social channels because they document and share pretty much everything I would say. And you know, last question is mentors for you Jake, in your life and business, who’s been mentors for you, and maybe a great piece of advice or lesson that you learned from them.
Jake Karls: 44:23
Yeah, 100%. So mentorship to me is both physical and on digital. So I have hundreds of mentors that I work with that I don’t work with, that I just take in knowledge from on social media. So anyone from like, I love.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:35
You.
Jake Karls: 44:35
France. Yeah, yeah. Richard Branson, I don’t know anyone. I have all these people that I follow, like, you know, Tiger Woods. I’m a huge fan of, you know, and these are mentors of mine because sometimes they share their journey.
They share their state of mind. They have books, they have these things. So they are mentors because they’re passing information on to me. And, you know, I don’t take all of it. I take the good stuff that I appreciate from it.
And then physically, I have, you know, some my board member, you know, you know, David Cinnamon is a beautiful character, a beautiful guy. He just he allows me to think bigger. And then I have just a ton of friends and colleagues that just inspire me on a daily. So I think mentorship is not so much just having people physically, but you can have it through books, through the internet, through social media, and you just got to choose what you’re looking for.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 45:21
Totally agree. Are there anyone I know you’re very active on LinkedIn. Is there anyone?
Jake Karls: 45:26
Mike Fadda. Mike Fadda is a good friend of mine and a mentor. He’s built an amazing business called Manitoba Harvest. And he continues to live a, you know, a very, you know, wellness style lifestyle that I love. And he just has a work ethic that is fascinating and execution level. That’s fascinating.
And I meet with him a lot. We’re really close friends, so he’s been a great mentor throughout this process as well.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 45:46
Love it. Jake, I want to be the first one to thank you, everyone. Check out Mid-Day Squares and we’ll see everyone next time. Thanks so much.
Jake Karls: 45:54
You’re a rock star.
