The Rapid Rise, High-Profile Fall, and Resilient Recovery of Juicero’s Doug Evans

Doug Evans: My ego took a hit because like all of a sudden I had never experienced macve behavior before. Like I'd been punched in the face. You know, I've had people say mean things, but I never experienced macve behavior. And that was shocking for me, but in a very meditative way, you know, I didn't take it personally.

You know, I realized that shit, like this happens to everybody and that by getting through this, I would be a better person, a better entrepreneur. And, you know, I have a unique education that I wanna put back to work. Welcome

Paul Shapiro: to the business for good podcast, to show where we spotlight companies, making money by making the world a better place.

I'm your host, Paul Shapiro. And if you share a passion for using commerce to solve many of the world's most pressing problems, then this is the show for you. Hello, friends and welcome [00:01:00] to the 81st business for good podcast episode. Before we get to this interview, which I promise is worth the wait. I wanna first thank Ken Swenson for his very kind review on apple podcast app.

Ken writes that this podcast quote has a special talent for supporting people's positive work, the show prioritizes impact over idealism. It's a good place to learn and get inspired. The very kind of you can thank you. And if you wanna get a shout out both to you and for your review on a future episode, please feel free right now to go leave your own review for the business for good podcast.

Now onto this episode, which is one that's very near and dear to my heart. Normally people, boy hearing stories about successful companies, but maybe we can learn just as much from those companies, which didn't succeed as those that did now, don't get me wrong. Doug evidence has had plenty of entrepreneurial success in his life, but the company he's most well known sadly did not end with his spectacular IPO or acquisition, but rather it ended with his very high profile companies demise.

After running his first startup for 10 years prior to successfully exiting [00:02:00] Doug founded and was the CEO of juice arrow, a company that sold high tech, juicers and subscriptions for vegetable packs to use in those juicers. This journey took Doug into the upper echelons of the Silicon valley world of venture capital, where he raised more than 120 million, which would be a fortune even today, but especially a decade ago, it was real money.

In this episode, Doug shares what his pitch included to have that kind of fundraising success, how and how he became a media darling with Oprah and others touting his products, glowing reviews in the New York times and more, but like IRAs Doug's success. Brought him a little too close to the sun and a series of withering news stories battered the company to the point where they'd gone from a media darling to a media punchline, the result, one of the most promising startups ceased to exist.

Doug opens up in our conversation about how he handled his rapid ascent into fame as a successful entrepreneur and how he handled his rapid descent. When the company endured bad coverage and eventual ruin, Doug also offers his thoughts on what he [00:03:00] wishes. He would've done differently as well as some unconventional thoughts, including why he thinks startups shouldn't issue, press releases about their fundraising success.

Hint, it just puts a target on your back. He. We also discussed Doug's life after juice air, including wonder valley hot Springs, look it up. It really looks gorgeous. I hope to go myself and his now evangelical crusade to get us all eating more sprouts. His new book appropriately called the sprout book.

Indeed did get me on the sprouts train and today because of Doug I'm growing my own sprouts and enjoying them daily in smoothies. So he's already got me converted. I also want to give a quick shout out to my friend at Simon hill, whose episode on his plant proof podcast, not too long ago with Doug inspired me to do this episode.

In some ways, this conversation is a story about how one man entered startup life rose to great prominence Gotti eviscerated in the press and endured a very public downfall and then got back up again and kept pushing his life's mission to improve public health forward. I admire Doug's resilience in the [00:04:00] face of such adversity and think that you will be inspired too.

You be the judge, Doug. Welcome to the business for good podcast.

Doug Evans: Fall. It is a pleasure to be here. I love speaking to conscious business people. So ,

Paul Shapiro: that's very nice of you. Well, I appreciate that, man. And I appreciated your book, the sprout book, which I will promote right here at the very beginning, because I recently read it.

I really enjoyed it and it persuaded me to actually modify my life. So I went online, got myself, some sprouting jars and for the last couple weeks, or maybe last month or so actually I have been sprouting and it has turned me not into a sprouts consumer, but also as sprouts evangelical. I'm now telling my wife and my colleagues about how easy and awesome it is and how it's basically like fresh vegetables that require essentially nothing.

It's just water. Like there's you don't have to put any soil or anything. Like, it's amazing actually to think about how easy they are to grow and how you have this like unlimited supply of fresh [00:05:00] vegetables right there for essentially free after your capital cost of getting the jars, which were like 20 bucks for me.

Are done. So I wanna say thank you for that. And I really appreciate that you wrote this

Doug Evans: cool book. Well, look, I wrote the book because when I began this sprouting journey and we can get into that, there were so many nuances and I felt lost. And so I bought all the existing books and I felt they were dated and incomplete.

So I wanted to write a book to be able to share the knowledge and the enthusiasm and the research that I gathered from being obsessed with sprouts out of necessity. You're doing it, which I love out of choice. Right? Cause you live in Sacramento, you have access to all sorts of produce and gardening and farming.

I live in the middle of nowhere, right? I'm an hour and a half from whole foods. [00:06:00] So for me being in the desert. I live near Joshua tree at wonder valley hot Springs. This is not only the Mojave desert. This is a food desert. And for me to eat right healthy, the way I want to eat fresh, right? Raw organic living foods.

My choice was to develop a complicated greenhouse infrastructure, urban farming for the desert or sprout. And I took six jars in one cubic foot. And within a month, most of my calories were coming from my little sprout garden and just blew my mind. That's really something.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. You know, I'll tell you. So my, my wife actually gardens about half of our backyard.

The other half is devoted for our dog Eddie, but about half of our backyard is in garden form. And I think like it's a lot of work, you know, I don't do any [00:07:00] of it. I watch her and it's just a lot of work, you know, she's got the soil, then she's bringing in like all of her, like soil amendments and things like this.

Like she she's in there and it it's money and it's work. And it seems to me it would be hard. She enjoys it. So it's like a hobby it's recreational. She really likes it. I think it's great, but it doesn't seem economical. Like the produce that we get out of it, which is phenomenal is not, is gotta be outweighed by the dollars.

And especially if you count her time as money and what she might be making per hour otherwise. So, uh, whereas, so sprouting, I mean, I, I spend, I would say literally less than 60 seconds a day on it. And again, it was like a $20 upfront capital cost and I get enormous amounts of fresh produce. It's amazing.

So we can talk more about that later in the episode. I know that you are, uh, sprouting evangelical. I saw on Instagram recently that you even count sprouts as a popcorn alternative to, you know, when you're watching a movie, which I don't know. I think you got a hard sell on that one, man, but I'll try it out.

I'll try it out sometime. But I do wanna talk about stress.

Doug Evans: That was my best post. I'll. Just tell [00:08:00] you that was my best post 20,000 views over a thousand likes, hundreds of shares. Like people love that, you know, from an engagement perspective, um, they love it and it's true because to me. Like, that's what I eat.

Right. If I'm watching a movie on the laptop, sitting in bed, like, what am I going to eat? I don't wanna snack on something that has added salt, oil, or sugar that I can overeat. And I know like you cannot overeat sprouts. You just can't, the body will just stop you in your tracks. Say done, done no more.

Paul Shapiro: Let me just tell people who, who didn't see this post of yours.

So it's got Doug on the couch curling up to watch a movie. And instead of popcorny as a, a thing of sprouts that he's just picking out with his hands and eating. So we know that you're a true Weaver and it seems, it seems very evident, but psych that you are on this new journey with sprouts, but before we get to that, I wanna talk for a bit about [00:09:00] what you've done in the past, because you know, most people have, if they know your name at all, they think about Jero.

Um, they may not think though, or they may not know that you actually had. Another company that you started and successfully exited before Jera. So before we get to the Jera story and we wanna talk about that, of course. Tell us a little bit about the first company that you started with organic bill and why you started it.

What happened with it and what the exit was like for you?

Doug Evans: So I grew up eating cooked food, processed food, refined food, meat, dairy, animal products. Like that was my life until I was 33 years old. And then my entire family, except for my brother died of chronic illness. And then I shifted when I was 33 years old from eating that processed toxic diet to raw veganism.

And in New York city in 1999, there were no raw vegan restaurants. There were no resources. [00:10:00] So they say when the student is ready, the teacher will come in the middle of the night. I met my first vegan friend. And we started this business called organic avenue to basically provide the food items and lifestyle items that fit through our screen of quality and integrity.

And like, we didn't add sugar to anything that we made 50 items every day. And there was no added sugar. If we wanted something to be sweet, we would make like a homemade date paste.

Paul Shapiro: And so just to be clear, this was a store. It was not a

Doug Evans: CPG item, right. It started in our loft in Chinatown. And then we were having people like knocking on our door day and night and we AMA.

Probably $50,000 in inventory in the house. And then finally said, okay, well we better get a retail store. So in the armpit of New York city, [00:11:00] the lower east side, we got a small 450 square foot retail store put up our little shingle organic avenue and we start to sell cold pressed, organic juice, salads, entres desserts snacks, making it easy for people to conveniently share what we were experiencing, which was just, mindboggling the idea that you actually could not just live, but thrive on eating raw fruits and vegetables.

Paul Shapiro: And so how many years were you running organic avenue? Excuse me for calling it organic though. Earlier on. No, that's fine. How many years were you running organic avenue?

So

Doug Evans: it's really interesting in the beginning. I was an investor. I was a co-founder, but I was doing my other graphic design, computer graphics stuff, and I was funding it and helping and making [00:12:00] business decisions about leases and finances and the website.

And I did that for many years until our sales went from a thousand dollars a month to $10,000 a month to a hundred thousand dollars a month. And when we got to that a hundred thousand dollars a month threshold, I felt like, wow, this is a business. Like we have repeat customers, we have a, a mailing list.

We should open up more stores and step on the gas and like really make this thing, you know, a go. And then, so probably halfway in, I became full-time CEO and then. We ended up having 12 stores across New York city. And we went from a hundred thousand dollars a month to a million dollars a month in revenue and growing almost, I think it was 105% CAGR.

It was really a lot of growth [00:13:00] with a lot of moving pieces and some things that I look back today. And I think I must have been insane because we had a average shelf. Life of our products was three and a half days. Like it was ridiculous and we used no fillers. So everything was organic produce. And you couldn't buy organic produce for under a couple dollars a pound.

Now,

Paul Shapiro: did you have investors at this point, like, or, or were you, were you entirely running off of the profit that you were making on that million dollars a month? We

Doug Evans: were running off of my long term savings for a really long time. And then when I became CEO. That's when we raised some capital from friends, family, widows, and orphans, right.

And customers, some of the checks that came in were $5,000 checks, $10,000 checks. And we raised like a million bucks. And then the year that we exited, [00:14:00] we raised 6 million and then we sold controlling interest to the same investor.

Paul Shapiro: I see. And so you exited that year, which is how many years into the company

Doug Evans: now?

10 years of slogging. Well,

Paul Shapiro: you did pretty well, right? I mean, it was a, it was a pretty lucrative exit event for you. Was my

Doug Evans: understanding is correct. Absolutely. It was lucrative. It was good. All of our investors got a return on capital, you know, anywhere from two to five, six per two to five. Or six X.

Paul Shapiro: So yeah, I was gonna, I was gonna say probably not two to 5%, probably like two to 500%.

Yeah, that's great. That's awesome. Well, congratulations. I mean, most people, most startups let alone like actual brick and mortar stores obviously fail. And for you to create one that, uh, was doing so much in revenue and succeed with a successful exit, puts you in a very rarefied position among entrepreneurs, um, in any sector, let [00:15:00] alone the food sector.

So congratulations on that.

Doug Evans: Thank you. I mean, the lessons learned there were incredibly valuable and I take them with me. They didn't really apply when I started Juro because was literally like going from playing little league into being in the NBA.

Paul Shapiro: And was that your intent, like when you started, well, first of all, how long was it between when you exited organic avenue, did you found Juro about a month?

So, was that your intent? Were you thinking I'm gonna, were you thinking I'm gonna repeat my success with organic avenue or I'm going from lit week to big week?

Doug Evans: What happened was I knew a lot about juice, right? I had 16 different juicers. We were producing over a million juices a year at organic avenue.

And when I learned a lot about food safety and produce and supply chain. And so after we sold organic avenue, [00:16:00] I still loved juice. I just no longer had access to our own kitchen where I remember I would get up in the morning. And the first thing that I would do would be I'd go visit the kitchen and I would get this fresh juice coming right off the press.

And I was able to watch that process. And then I went online and I looked at all the juicers available and I went to Macy's and bed bath and beyond. And I bought several of them and I tested them and they were just like a shit show, like many pieces, hard to clean the end product. Wasn't very like silky and smooth the way I liked it.

Wasn't cold pressed. And then you had to buy, produce and wash produce and store the fresh produce. So running a little kind of juice bar in your house didn't make any sense. So what I [00:17:00] was inspired to do was saying, you know, I watched my friends who had espresso machines and ke with their K cups and they were drinking them two to four times a day.

Like they would just make these things. And most of them had juicers and they used those maybe twice a month. So the little red light went off in my head, light bulb went off and said, If I could design a juicer that was so easy to use, then people would use it twice a day. Like they just would, and I knew it wasn't about the juicer.

It was about the produce and the supply chain and washing. And I just wanted to create that initially for myself and for my friends. So that an organic avenue was a local company who was in New York city. [00:18:00] And to scale it, you know, nationally, which would take, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars to be the Starbucks and have 20,000 stores.

So that didn't seem very practical. So that's where I thought like, okay, if we can. Take what we know about the supply chain. We know about food safety. We could create the packaging, we could buy the produce, we could triple wash it. We could dice it, slice it, chop it, shred it, put it into individual packs with the cheese cloth membrane to act as the strainer, and then create a low cost.

And I say low cost $700, which was the original price of Jero was one quarter of the cost of the nearest cold press that was available to the market. So to me, $700 was low cost and for what it [00:19:00] did, and then it would be really easy to scale this business. What I didn't know was how hard it was to do hardware, how hard it was to do sustainable packaging.

How hard it was to create a facility that had standards where, you know, urine food, the food business, we were swabbing a hundred times a week, making sure there was no E coli, listeria, salmonella, et cetera. In the plan, we were running 111,000 square foot lead gold certified processing facility. That was more than 50% refrigeration and freezing.

Hey

Paul Shapiro: Doug, sorry to interrupt you. But you know, I wanna just go back in the story a moment because you're, you're getting to this huge facility, lots of technology, but you had to raise the money to go there. So you had this idea, you wanted to create a really awesome juicer. That would be [00:20:00] the cheapest cold press juicer on the market at the time.

And you had enormous success pitching this to Google ventures, to climber Perkins. Like you went into the upper echelon of the Silicon valley venture capital world. And succeeded in, in raising more than a hundred million dollars. So what was the pitch that was so successful for you that led these Titans of the venture capital industry to think?

Yes. You know, this is the guy I wanna back.

Doug Evans: Hey, Paul, do you allow profanity on your show?

Paul Shapiro: well, you already said shit show so you can go ahead

Doug Evans: already. Okay. Uh, Paul, I am not here to fuck around. Okay. So I had this vision for Juicero. I built a prototype, which the prototype was rub Goldberg. It was welded in a Chinese kitchen supply place on the Bowery and canal in New York city, but it worked.

And then I took [00:21:00] the same produce and process that would go into how I made juice at organic avenue. Except the invention was taking the produce, putting it in the cheese cloth. And our patents were around the cheese cloth and the produce being inside an outer pack with a, a spout. So when you put this pack of produce in the machine, you could make the juice and remove it with no cleaning.

So it was a magical experience. So when I had that prototype that worked, it was blowing people's minds away, but it wasn't just the machine. It was what I was putting into the machine, which was those produce packs. And then I went to, and I never heard of what an industrial designer was. So you gotta understand my background.

I never went to college. I wrote graffiti as a teenager. I [00:22:00] joined the 82nd airborne when I was 17 years old. And then I just hustled. So there was a whole level of business and industries and specialties that I didn't know about, but I was showing this to people, smart people, and they were drinking the juice.

And, you know, I asked like, how do you get something designed? And someone said, oh, you know, there's a company called IDO and they do industrial design and product design and you should go talk to them. And then someone mentioned Eve Bahar and frog design. And so I started to research and then I found an industrial design firm and they made beautiful renderings of what the machine could look like.

So then I had looks like 3d renderings that looked real. And then I had a works like machine, and then I had produce and [00:23:00] recipes. For juice. So my pitch would involve bringing in this Rube Goldberg machine, bringing in beautiful 3d renderings, bringing a cooler with ice packs and these produce packs in prototype form, right.

Which could have been in the early stage, a zip block bag with cheese cloth inside with a bunch of produce that I shredded and diced and chopped with a food processor and putting inside. And I would show up wearing sandals, looking the way I look today, right. Just, you know, 10 years younger. And I would say, hold on to your seat.

right. And then I would bring the best juice that was available on the market. The press Juicery. [00:24:00] Blueprint, suya evolution, fresh. All of the top juices that were on the market that were being sold for five to $10 each. And then I would bring ju Sarah and I would press the button. You know, it would make loud noise, but investors can see past a prototype and then they would taste the juice and they would go, oh my God, this is incredible.

No additives, no preservatives, no pasteurization. Right? Every juice that's in a bottle is pasteurized either using heat or cold or pressure or chemicals to kill the microbiologic. Load right. And reduce it by 5 million to one. So that was the, the juice FDA, U S D a juice requirement, juice in a bottle or a jar, uh, needs to have a [00:25:00] 5 million to one reduction.

And for me, I tasted that juice and there was no way I wanted to drink it. The stuff that was in a bottle, it just was beyond what I wanted. I wanted fresh, like I wanted fresh. And so I said, I'm gonna make fresh. And you know, that was the story. So when people tasted it, they wanted be a part of it. So I would pass the hat around and, you know, my seed round was $4 million.

And then when I started to bring on the team, it became very clear and apparent to me that we needed to have very extensive. Resources to do the sustainable packaging, to do the food science, to do the software, to create the facility, cuz there was no facility that could do this. And it just, you know, [00:26:00] all of a sudden like the necessity of the manifestation of the business idea required resources beyond anything that my wildest dreams could handle, but I was up for the ride.

All

Paul Shapiro: right. You, you raised that 4 million seed round and I know you had this like hypersonic growth, you had Oprah touting the juice arrow. You were really flying high. So how did, did you have like a PR agency that was helping you sell this? Was it just so the product was so good, it sold itself. Like how did you go from this guy in sandals in Silicon valley, passing a hat around after showing him this loud machine to having Oprah using your product,

Doug Evans: you know, a lot of work.

And a lot of time to develop all of these various channels. So we had PR and PR is a double edged sword. Most PR money is wasted, right? You get people [00:27:00] that have had success. And what I realize now, similar to raising capital, it's like getting PR if you've got something great, you tell that story and you make the phone calls, you get the meetings, you have the persistence and resilience, and then people will write about it.

Like we were featured on the front page of the New York times business section. The problem with that, just FYI is that if someone doesn't resonate with what you're doing, your article could be front and center. And it could be great. It could be neutral or it could be snarky or it could be bad, right. It could be a hit job and you never know.

So I just did my thing. And Oprah, you always [00:28:00] hear about the Oprah effect, right. And what Oprah does for businesses, et cetera. She was like on my list, my manifestation, I didn't have like a vision board per se, but I knew that Oprah had her favorite things, which we were invited to be part of Oprah, had great reach.

So I looked at the six degrees of connection and said, how am I gonna get in front of Oprah? And I got in front of Oprah, blew her mind away. And we had 12 professional sports teams having Doce in the locker rooms. We were. Had this whole celebrity list. We were inside of whole foods in Southern California growing 20%, 30% month over month that the product worked and the people who used it loved it.

The problem was realistically that the rest of the world [00:29:00] call it the other 96% of the people who had money who had influence, who had media couldn't get it. They're like, huh? Why would anyone spend $10 on a juice? Huh? If someone couldn't get that a cold pressed organic juice was worth $10, cuz there was no fresh.

Then the Jua at $7 made no sense the machine at $700 or $400 made no sense. So the rest of the world is eating cooked, food, processed food, refined food, meat, dairy, animal products, smoking cigarettes, like two out of three Americans are overweight in obese. So you get this world that like I'm preaching, not to the choir.

So Oprah loved it because she knew about [00:30:00] health and she cared about health and Wynne. PTRO loved it. She put it on the front of goop and called it the best product of 2016. And it was only January, like in the first month she called the year. And so the challenge is the rest of the world and the rest of the country didn't get it.

And some people took grave offense at our success. And they wanted take us

Paul Shapiro: down. There's no doubt. Uh, you know, look, there's a, a saying that the spouting whale was the one who gets harpooned or the tallest tree is the one that gets cut down. Right? So you hadn't had this rapid ascent. You wouldn't have people who were saying, Hey, let's try to, as you said, bring this guy down.

But before we get to that, I do wanna ask you Doug. So, you know, you went from leading a life of, you know, you had had financial success, but you weren't exactly a household named by any means to now being on, uh, you know, the New York times business front cover to Gweneth Paltro and Oprah. Like, how did this, if it did change you and how did you handle [00:31:00] this sudden shove into the national spotlight with what you were doing?

Doug Evans: I could tell you one thing, it didn't change my wardrobe. it didn't change what I ate. It didn't change my car. Right. I still have the 2007 Prius that I bought when I was running organic avenue to go to the various stores. So one thing for me is that the money didn't change my life right? During ju I still lived in a, like relatively low cost apartment in San Francisco.

And what makes me happy is being in flow and doing things that are contributing to making the world a better place. And that's so trite to say, but whater was about, for me was us dietary guideline recommend seven to 13 servings of fruits and vegetables. Every day, [00:32:00] the average American was consuming less than one.

And I had great success in my own health and in my friends and family, by adding fresh organic vegetables and cold press juice to their diet. So I was. Just obsessed with making this product. Cuz if you think about the options that people have for beverages, soda, processed, juice, beer, wine, milk, energy drinks.

Now non-dairy which I love for other people, but like the non-dairy drinks, the Olie and the koalas, but most of the drinks that people are buying the soda and the beer, the wine, they're all like acid forming toxic products, right? Added sugars poisons. So for me, the idea that we could create something convenient for someone that had [00:33:00] natural energy, boosting characteristics, immune boosting properties, micronutrients, pH nutrients.

That's what drove me. You know, what would happen is, you know, my lead investor from Kliner Perkins. You know, would tell me what I needed to do. Right. And the board would tell me what I needed to do. And I was like, okay. And they're like, Doug, you got your seed round. You're gonna need to raise like 10 or 20 million series a.

And I was like, okay. So how do I do that? And they go, well, there's different investors. You're probably not gonna get your angel investor who wrote you a $25,000 check to participate, you know, funds have these different stages. And I became a student of Silicon valley venture. And then I don't know how other people pitch, cuz I didn't sit in on their pitches, [00:34:00] but I probably was a little different than the, you know, the 20 year old coming out of Y Combinator.

And I was probably different than, you know, the NBA coming out of warden or Harvard or Northwestern or Stanford. But I just did my thing. And I think that the authenticity of the vision of the mission of myself and the product is what raised the money. I was merely the conduit.

Paul Shapiro: Well, you were quite a conduit and it was, uh, obviously quite an idea that had a lot of people, very excited.

And so you are, are raising all this money. You've had success. You're the one who conceived of it. You're the one who founded it. You're the one who ran it. But a time came when you were no longer the CEO and, and you told Simon hill and your, in your interview with him on his great plant proof podcast, which I really highly recommend folks listening to, if you haven't already heard that episode with Doug, that they brought in an [00:35:00] outsider to become the CEO.

So what happened there and what were the circumstances that led to the evolution of this company from a founder led company, to having somebody coming in from a large beverage company to become the CEO? I

Doug Evans: know. Is a consequence of personal imbalance. I was working too hard, too many days. I wasn't meditating enough.

And there was a weak point when the company had a hundred million dollars in the bank and the board with the greatest intention said, Hey, we think we can get the former COO of Koch to leave his present position. As president of [00:36:00] Campbell soup, running their Bolthouse carrot division and come and be your partner.

And you can design the trains you can handle. The PR in the marketing and he'll run it like a business to scale it. Like he's running a billion dollar business today and it's really hard. And I looked at it and I had no conflict with my board pretty much ever. And I hate to think of myself as gullible, but in hindsight I should have said, oh, that's great.

You know, nice guy, like, let him be an advisor, let him be a board member or something. If you think we need more help scaling, you know, let's bring in a COO or various parts. And I just took the bait and I don't have any regrets because my life is incredible now, but that was not the right move [00:37:00] for me or for the company.

But I did it. And. You know, once you make a decision like that, there is no turning back. And if there's any founders who listening to this podcast, when a founder gives up control to a CEO, the world changes for them. Sometimes better, sometimes worse for me, it didn't work out. And this

Paul Shapiro: all predated the Bloomberg assault on the company.

Is that right?

Doug Evans: Yeah, that was probably six months before it.

Paul Shapiro: So this event happened. So let me, we don't need to relive this, but essentially a Bloomberg journalist went on a crusade against the company, trying to suggest that it was like smoke and mirrors as opposed to a product that people really loved.

And I'm wondering what you think would've happened. Had you still been in the CEO spot? Cause it, the, tell me if the mythology is wrong, but the mythology is that the Bloomberg article. Led to the decline in the fall of Jero. [00:38:00] So tell me, do you think that's right and if it is right, would it have been different if you were still the CEO?

Doug Evans: Well, I do think so. I think what I would've done with Bloomberg, which I did with, you know, pretty much any press is I would take them under the Kimona and I would share everything that I was doing and that the company was doing. So to me, I did a lot of one on one skeptic to believer, right in the process.

That's where the money came from, taking people who had money and skepticism around investing and exposing them to my vision, my energy, our product, and the market, and tell them the whole story. And I was extremely successful in doing that. And here you get [00:39:00] someone who had a different view of the world.

Didn't live the lifestyle, couldn't articulate the vision well, and didn't want to take them under the Comona. So as opposed to having, like, I look at the New York times article and I say it was snarky, but it wasn't bad. And we showed everyone everything. And I took what could have been bad and made it neutral.

And in the case of Bloomberg, it went from neutral to terrible. And so I think my gravitas, my knowledge, my passion, my intention, like the, what Bloomberg got wrong was that we were a company that wanted to make it easier for people to live healthy lifestyles. And in the beginning, it's expensive to live a healthy lifestyle.

Organic [00:40:00] produce costs more than, you know, conventional produce and all produce costs more than process subsidized, you know, animal products and breads and corn products. And so we just wanted to do that. And there was a reason, like every decision that we made about the cost of the machine, like when they would say the machine costs $700, now it costs 400.

That's a lot of money. Well, we were not making any money on the machine. We were selling the machines at cost, but that's what it costs to make that level of precise engineering. You know, there are some people out there that would, you know, mock oh, wifi connected juicer. Well, now everything is connected in 2013.

When I made that decision almost 10 years ago, the reason I did that. Was for food safety and food quality. Because if someone were to [00:41:00] take a normal product that says used by date January one, and they were to drink, you know, eat it or drink it on January 15th or January 30th, that doesn't matter may not taste as good.

We were dealing with fresh, raw produce. And in 1997, AALA had raw juice and people drank that raw juice that had E coli, oh 1 57 H seven. And they died. So for me, if there was anything that would've killed ju arrow, it wasn't gonna be some snarky journalist at Bloomberg. It would've been a food safety crisis of someone getting sick or, or killed.

Like, that's what I thought. So, let me ask you

Paul Shapiro: then why was the article effective in, in creating the downfall of this company that had been flying so [00:42:00] high? So, you know, that same journalist at the time who no longer works for Bloomberg, but at the time she was also running these very negative articles against other companies, including what was then called Hampton Creek and is, is now called eat just, but you know, her, her basic argument against you, Sarah was, yeah.

You know, you say, it's this great feat of electrical engineering and so on, but you know, you can squeeze as much with your bare hands. And so when you then went out and talked, this article came out, you told your customers, Hey, if you know, if you wanna return it, you can. And apparently O only 3% of your customers actually decided to return it.

Most of them did like the convenience of having this tire service, where they had this fresh juice available to them and the packs coming to them. And they liked the aspect about getting text messages, letting them know when their vegetables were close to expirations so they can make sure to utilize them.

Like there were a lot of benefits associated with this thing. So if only 3% of the customers returned their juice, arrows, what was it then that made this article? So potent that led to the downfall? Like why was it [00:43:00] that the company ceased to exist? If it wasn't, you know, this article,

Doug Evans: what happened? I think that for one Bloomberg really had no reason to be writing about Juer we're not a public company.

We weren't a public company. We weren't on their, their normal tracking. The only reason why they wrote the article on Hampton Creek and Duer is to get clicks and to get fame and the angles. So the reason why the Bloomberg article was effective was because Giro was a target because of our success. And then it all depends.

Like how far is someone willing to stretch the truth? So the Bloomberg. And had a very clear bias and intention of moving the market, getting a [00:44:00] CEO fired, getting a stock to go up. It was very like insidious what they were doing and what they were trying to do. And so they were very misleading in what they were saying, their reporting.

And then because of all of the characters right in it, the Google ventures, the Campbell soup me, you know, it's juice, it got some attention. And then the fact that they squeezed the pack, they created a video where, you know, basically squeezing a pack by hand, there would be a problem if you couldn't squeeze the pack by hand, because the produce that was in, it was already shredded.

Scientifically documented. There was no more than 20% of free liquid AKA juice in the pack. That was the [00:45:00] byproduct of the cutting and shredding. And 80% was just chunks of, of produce. You know, imagine Paul, if you were to take bubble wrap, you know, that comes with little electronics, you could pop each one, pop, pop, pop like a kid.

But if you were to take a sheet of bubble wrap and fold it into six inch squares and put it between the palms of your hands and you tried to press it, you wouldn't be able to pop even one bubble. If you were to take the same six inch squares and you were to ring them like a towel, it would be going pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

The mechanics of squeezing and ringing a pack by hand versus using two plates in a mechanical process where you're just exerting force. The human hand is like evolved over billions of years and has incredible, [00:46:00] you know, flexibility. You couldn't build a hand squeezing manual part to make a press for anything near $700.

Like you'd have to have a robotic arm, you know, to do something like that. So the whole notion was just ridiculous, but the video was so well done to make it look like you could do it by hand. And they only showed in the two minute video, 20 seconds of squeezing it by hand and the rest, you know, just smoke and mirrors.

I

Paul Shapiro: don't wanna squeeze anything for 90 seconds, which is how long I think they did it in that video. Seems like a, a pain to me to have to squeeze for that long. And I guess the point that I would make is one that I've heard you make elsewhere, which is that there are some people who want to fly Southwest economy from New York to LA there's, other people who wanna fly first class, and there's other people who wanna fly private and all of those [00:47:00] things get you from New York to LA.

It's just, you know, the more you pay, the more convenience and luxury you have. And that was essentially what the first iterations of juice arrow were. You know, you're gonna pay for the convenience of having this machine cold, press the vegetables for you. And you're gonna get the other associate benefits that we already talked about.

So I guess this just leads me back to my question. Like what happened, did, did Bloomberg article dry up new customers for the company? Like what actually was the mechanism by which this led to the downfall of the company and because if it didn't cause your. Existing customers, you know, to have a mutiny against you.

Was it new customers that you lost? Like what actually happened that led to the decision to shut this thing down?

Doug Evans: I was no longer on the board or working for the company when the decision was made to pull the plug. So I'm only speculating. Had you sold shares at that point? At that point, I was all in and wanting, you know, this thing to [00:48:00] grow.

What happened is I was speaking out privately about how we were handling this. No one liked that you seem like a disgruntled founder at that point. At some point, when I felt that I could no longer be effective and my time wasn't being valued, I fully left, you know, the company.

Paul Shapiro: You left your, your governance role in the company and you weren't any longer receiving like a salary and you believed in the company.

I mean, you say you didn't sell any shares. It's not like you tried to sell secondary shares. Like you went down with the ship

Doug Evans: essentially. Right? I think what, you know, if I'm speculating, what happened, you know, from being, you know, bird's eye view, the Bloomberg article became a meme and then the company became a meme of Silicon valley excess.

And it became an easy target because [00:49:00] no one was defending it. Right. No one was defending it. It was just like a punching bag where people were dumping on it. Where for me, I would say I would've accused Bloomberg of libel. And the, the Bloomberg article said to Sarah feeling the squeeze investors unhappy, and they're like smoking gun comment.

Came from an anonymous investor, right? And since, when do investors hide behind the cloak of anonymity and what Bloomberg did was they went to the investor and they went to many of investors. If not all of our investors that would speak to them and said, Hey, you know, what do Sarah's a fraud? Does a Charlton.

Did you know, you could squeeze the pack by hand, we're writing this expose, et cetera. And they got one dumb, naive, inexperienced person to speak to them. And the quote that they got was [00:50:00] if I knew that Doug was Hawking bags of juice, we never would've met with him. And then Bloomberg writes the headline to see our feelings, squeeze investors happy.

Such garbage.

Paul Shapiro: I will say Doug, I reread the article recently while, uh, preparing for this. And there was a follow up though, where the investor additionally said, I think the company is gonna do well and I'm backing them. Like, so it wasn't even all negative. Like the, there was a negative comment in there, but the, it wasn't from an investor who was trying to jump

Doug Evans: ship.

I mean, the, the whole point is they conned and misled an investor and they don't need, they don't need like this isn't a trial. There's no judge and jury, this is bullshit media,

Paul Shapiro: right? In this case, the journalist is the judge and the jury. Well, the journalist and whoever their editor is, or all the judge and the jury here and the prosecutor and the prosecutor, right.

Doug Evans: They get to do it all with no transparency in context, outta context, et cetera. So what happened is then [00:51:00] there were articles, you know, in hundreds of other publications and no one had the truth. Like no one had the truth. I wanted to have. A attorney, contact Bloomberg and put a inquiry to hold all of the, the data that was used for the testing, the interviews, the part to see how far they stretch the truth in order to create their narrative, et cetera.

Because I think like, I don't think it was honest, but what happened is once that article came out and then there were hundreds of other articles, we went from being the darling to like a joke. It was just a joke. And then no one wants to fund a joke.

Paul Shapiro: It was mainly the impact on the [00:52:00] investment community then that you think the article was, or that it, that it created that cascade effect hundred percent.

So how did you handle that, Doug? Like on a personal level, you went from being a media darling to, in your words, being a joke. You know, you've commented elsewhere. You felt like you were getting eviscerated in the media. You went from being in the limelight to now being, you know, essentially turned into like a pariah in the investment community.

So on a personal level, like, what was this like for you and how did you handle that type of stress?

Doug Evans: Well, I used the time of not working at Juro to get back in balance. So I started to work out again. I started to meditate again. I started to travel. I spent time with friends and, you know, there was a, a definitive stage of grieving and there was also the need to like inquire and do a post mortem to see what did I do, right.

What did I do [00:53:00] wrong? You know, what were my identified mistakes? And from an investment perspective, do Sarah was a disaster, right? People put money in. And they got back, you know, a fraction of it when they decided to shut down the company and return capital to investors, right. And sell the assets from almost all other metrics.

Jera was a great success from an entrepreneurial journey. For me, it was a great success. I went from running a juice bar to running a high tech Silicon valley, precision agriculture company. We shipped over a million packs of the Juro product, thousands of machines, B2B, B2C. We were growing 20% month over month that people had the product were using it 9.2 times a week.

So we had very low churn. Like all of our metrics were successful. [00:54:00] Like if no one knew how much money we raised. Right. And we were just this company. We would've launched our version two product. We would've gained more customers and the company would still be there. I still think the company, you know, has great legs.

You know, if the people bought it, you know, decide to relaunch it, taking into consideration, you know, some of the lessons learned.

Paul Shapiro: And so the version two product that you're referring to, would've been a lower cost, $200 version. So in the same 200, 200. So you went from 700 to 400, and then you're saying you would've gone to 200.

So it's kind of like the Tesla strategy of creating like the Roadster and then all these different models that forget progressively.

Doug Evans: Oh, God forbid, wait, wait, Paul do not do any comparison because when I said we were like following the Tesla strategy, The headline was, you know, Doug compares himself to Elon Musk.

Paul Shapiro: wow. Okay. I will not compare you to Elon Musk. Uh, but you know, you, you were, uh, engaged in a [00:55:00] strategy where you were creating a high end product going to a low end.

Doug Evans: So, well, Paul, when, when I worked for best buy right along the way, and I was doing some consulting work for best buy, you know, back in the early two thousands on the marketing side, a 40 inch flat screen plasma TV was $35,000.

Today you could buy a 40 inch flat screen, L E D L C D TV today in target for $149.

Paul Shapiro: I was actually looking at, um, something that Tim urban tweeted recently, where he showed a 1991 radio shack ad. There were 15 different pieces of equipment, like a calculator and a tape recorder and a computer and all these things.

There was 15 different things that they were advertising in this 1991 radio shack ad. And, you know, all of them were, you know, somewhere between 50 to several [00:56:00] hundred dollars. And now every single thing, all 15 of the items in that ad from 1991 are in your pocket, all of them. And it, you know, it's incredible to see just the, the pace of progress that technological advancements have brought to bringing down the cost of, of these various technologies.

But I wanna ask you, you know, you mentioned a moment ago, you know, if the people who own it, you know, they want to resurrect it and try and, and learn from some of the mistakes. What are the mistakes that you think, like if you had to go back and do the ju arrow experience over, what are those lessons learned that you're referring to that you think would be beneficial to those who are trying to replicate

Doug Evans: the company again?

I think for one, avoid the media, right. Just avoid the media cuz it, it didn't really help. It hurt more than it helped, I think. Right. So you think like

Paul Shapiro: Oprah Gwyneth Poro, they hurt more than helped.

Doug Evans: I think that there was enough word of mouth and enough community of people who were buying it, that the company could have been [00:57:00] successful in grassroots.

Like we started in San Francisco and LA and then we added 13 other states and then we were moving to go national on the product and, you know, people, the net promoter score. And I don't remember exactly what it is, was really high. Like people who had it loved it and shared it. And today I've got a much bigger following at Doug Evans on Instagram than I did when I was running to Sarah.

So I had no connection with our customers. There we weren't using social. We were kind of following this strategy and protocol of Silicon valley, big tech. And the reality was we had no business in that category. Like we should have been promoting and using the information along consumer [00:58:00] products that could scale.

Paul Shapiro: So one of your lessons learned then you would say, you know, embrace more social media, direct contact with potential customers, rather than going through the more mainstream media. I presume another one of your lessons is that you would not have relinquished the CEO spot. Are there other lessons that you think would be valuable for people who may be starting their own companies in this space, or even if any of the people who are involved with juice, arrow, are they are listening and thinking that they might want to resurrect this thing?

Like, are there any other things that you would offer given your

Doug Evans: hindsight? I think that. Starting with the manufacturing plant. We had a pilot plant that was 10,000 square feet. And we jumped from 10,000 square feet to 111,000 square feet. And the main reason we did that was it's really hard to move a plant and move [00:59:00] equipment in downtime, et cetera.

And that was way too big of a jump. So we moved out of the 10,000 square foot plant before we needed to. And we moved into a plant that was way too big. And even though we were producing like 50,000 packs a month, you know, which the plant was capable of producing a million packs a month. So I think if we would've grown a little bit slower, we could have handled things.

A lot better and, you know, you get a big plant and then all of a sudden you increase the burn. And that was not like at organic avenue, we literally blew the walls off of our first plant, right. By, you know, running three and a half shifts per day to maximize the square footage and the usage. And so I think that if we were running it [01:00:00] more towards a regular company and, and like, you didn't have the capital, you wouldn't have built a big plant.

So that was, I wouldn't have done that. I definitely would not do that. Now.

Paul Shapiro: Would you have raised as much money as you did them

Doug Evans: had the company had a little bit more capital? The fact that there was bad press would have had still the company still would've had a substantial run rate. And could have gotten through it.

So I probably, I look at that and saying the capital, wasn't the problem. I wasn't personally concerned with dilution or my part. I just wanted to make sure that the company could hire the talent that we needed and have the resources to execute. So I still would've raised that amount of capital. And, you know, if not more because you needed, you know, when you're doing, [01:01:00] had we ordered like first batch, instead of being in the single digits, if we would've ordered 20,000, 30,000 units price, would've been dropped precipitously, right.

Just by doing that. But then we would've had all this inventory tied up and you know, you don't know. So these decisions, you know, were, are tricky, but the capital, you know, would've given you the runway and to hire the talent. And so I don't have a problem with the capital. I have a problem with, you know, some of what we did with the capital.

Well,

Paul Shapiro: let's fast forward a bit. Doug Soro goes by the wayside, something that you had built, you talked a little bit about the resilience that you had to have in order to withstand that type of an onslaught in the press, but fast forward to today, because you now are the former CEO of Juro, but there is life after that downfall.

So you had a very successful, you had a very [01:02:00] successful exit with organic avenue. You had an unsuccessful ending to Juro, but that's not the final chapter for you. So what have you been doing since then? What are you doing

Doug Evans: now? So after Jusa, I decided to take some time and move to the desert. And in the course of the desert being here, I love hot Springs.

I love raw food. I love sprouts. And so I start to sprout. I realized that sprouts could feed the world that every problem, you know, that was exposed with Juicero actually is eliminated or alleviated with sprouts. So just think about this sprouts. If you were to go buy sprouts in your local health food store, it's $5 of serving.

If you grow them on your own, it's 50 cents. Jero didn't have economic advantage. Like the cost of a sero juice at $7 was the same price of [01:03:00] going to the, the juice bar juice and fresh produce has like a weak shelf life seeds that you use for sprouting have theoretically an indefinite shelf life. Not only that, but Doug,

Paul Shapiro: I, I gotta just challenge you.

I haven't done the economics, but I doubt that I'm paying 50 cents of serving. I can't imagine it. Cause I bought this pack of seeds. For very little money and it's producing a huge amount like per serving. It's gotta be less than 50 cents. I think

Doug Evans: it depends on the varietal, like certain seeds or more money, broccoli seeds, or more money than, Hm.

Bean seeds or lenal seeds or Corzo seeds. So there's a nuance, but the insight that I had where originally I was growing alfalfa and Hm. Being, and now I grow alfalfa, Zuki, arugula, radish, Clover, broccoli, chia, flax, all sorts of lentils, all sorts of peas, hemp, like [01:04:00] it's extraordinary. The variety and the insight that I had was every benefit of the whole food plant-based diet can be achieved by eating sprouts, that sprouts on a macro level.

Aren't this garnish aren't these seeds, but sprouts are in fact vegetables. And every single sprout contains every single amino acid for protein. They contain them in various levels and they contain antioxidants, prebiotics, probiotics. Bioflavonoids like sprouts are incredible from a nutrition perspective.

And that, I don't know if you agree with this, but I really feel strongly that you're better off getting your nutrition from whole food plants than from vitamins and supplements. So that the idea that if you need more [01:05:00] folate or more protein or more vitamin B six, or you can actually get those from eating sprouts, very powerful.

And then the third part, which is the most mindboggling part sprouts are medicine. They are absolute medicine and there's more than 2,500 peer reviewed, published papers on broccoli, sprouts, alone and sulfur. And the impact that SLF Farhan can have on killing cancer cells on creating heat, shock protein, to reduce the symptoms of autism, how they open up the NRF to pathways for strengthening the immune system and the ability to block viruses that spouts.

I don't know if you know my friends, Robbie, and Cyrus from mastering diabetes, but they have articulated very clearly that sprouts are the number one food for someone with type one type 1.5 type two diabetes, because [01:06:00] they are low sugar. So juice was high sugar sprouts or low sugar, high fiber, high protein.

So sprouts are like the perfect food and they can be grown. Without soil without sunshine, without fertilizer, without pesticides, that you could just take water, a jar, some seeds and grow them. So my whole life right now is about sharing the message of sprout. So I wrote the sprout book. The sprout book is now in its eighth printing.

And I launched during COVID, which was a double edged sword. One. I couldn't do one book signing. So everything on my tour got canceled, but sprouts really resonated with people who are staying at home, who need to eat, who wanna be healthy. So, you know, the whole industry, since my book came [01:07:00] out and the communication, you know, has just grown exponentially.

So what I'm working on is just everything to make it easier for people to grow sprouts. I'm working. UC Santa Cruz on safety and science and biology and fungal, you know, working with Dr. Jed. FAHE from Johns Hopkins university who wrote the original pioneering broccoli, sprout sulfa papers. I've got a fire in my belly, and if anyone wants to come under the Kimon, I'm happy to share a little bit more privately.

But right now, like the journey of being knocked off of the pedestal is to me, like I wasn't on a pedestal. Like my life really didn't change the difference of what I was doing at organic avenue versus Jero. I, I was working, I was working every day and my ego took a hit because [01:08:00] like all of a sudden I had never experienced macve behavior before.

Like I'd been punched in the face. You know, I've had people say mean things, but I never experienced macve behavior. And that was shocking for me, but in a very meditative way, you know, I didn't take it personally. You know, I realized that shit, like this happens to everybody and that by getting through this, I would be a better person, a better entrepreneur.

And, you know, I have a unique education that I wanna put back to work. That's really great. I,

Paul Shapiro: I admire your tenacity and your resilience in the face of so much adversity. So let me ask you, you're talking about being a better entrepreneur. So you, uh, hinted that maybe if somebody wants to learn more, you can come under the kimono and see, but so is there a third act in Doug Evans, entrepreneurial

Doug Evans: journey?

Paul, there was already a third act and turns out [01:09:00] my discovery of wonder valley hot Springs turned into. An incredible success already. So in the four years since I moved here, you know, we have hundreds of acres with hot Springs. We have 12 houses and it's unbelievable. And the business is pretty much running itself.

That's a really good thing. So that was a little bit of, uh, you know, the, the next act. But with sprouts, I see enormous potential to make it easier for people. And I'm a product guy in my core, I'm a product guy. So I like to build products and I'm in it. Right. I wrote the book to publish my research and now I love tinkering.

I've got a lab, you know, I've got great people around and you know, we're looking, how do you make it easier? How do you make it better and get into the nuance like today when I say [01:10:00] alfalfa seeds or Hm. Beans. Right. People think of a single sprout there's hundreds of varieties of every type of vegetable, just like, you know, I grew up on, uh, red, delicious apples, and I go into whole foods today and I see 20 different types of apples.

So the idea of kind of going deeper into the most nutritious food on the planet and making it mainstream and look the, the communication level going on the role podcast and the Simon hill podcast, the Joe Desant podcast, like I went on Marion Williamson's podcast. And most of your readers, you know, listeners may not know Marion Williamson, but she ran for president against Trump and a spiritual leader.

And her first podcast, after she withdrew from the election was with me to talk about food. Equality and food justice, because she sees [01:11:00] sprouts as a means of helping to nourish people in challenged, lower income food deserts, where now they, they could grow. I, did you see that John Lewis movie they're trying to kill us?

I did so sprout to the remedy for that. Like I wanna go hang out in Ferguson with John Lewis and, you know, get that community sprouting that's on my agenda.

Paul Shapiro: All right. Very cool. So, Doug, let me ask you, you've had quite a wild ride of highs and lows that few people ever experience those highs or those lows.

I think that, that you have experienced. So it's been quite a wild ride, but let me ask you, are there any resources for entrepreneurs or want to be entrepreneurs out there that you would recommend that you think were useful for you in your own journey here?

Doug Evans: I would say the most valuable resource that an entrepreneur can do.

At any stage in their business, take 10 days and go do a [01:12:00] Vipasana meditation. It's non, you know, religious sec non-denominational and it's 10 days, no reading, writing, speaking, eye contact or technology. So you check your phone in at the door. And for 10 days you meditate and you learn the basic thing is to observe your cravings, to observe what you're clinging to and to observe what you have aversions to.

And you find that in your body. And I've done that twice. And the goal isn't to get into this state of bliss or Nirvana, but it's to be able to be in a state of equanimity so that you can. Respond to various situations in a thoughtful, practical, pragmatic way, not react impulsively. And that really, really like had I not done that [01:13:00] meditation, I could have blew a gasket in these board meetings, you know, and instead I was just able to observe thoughtfully and maintain my composure.

Also feel good about being able to see that every lesson, every mistake was actually a success. If in fact it could be turned into an identified mistake. Like you can make mistakes all day long. If you can identify the mistake and then learn from it, then that mistake was a good thing for you. That was an asset.

So that was very effective. So I loved my Vasa meditations. I think that. Nature is good. Like getting into nature is good. I won't talk about psychedelics on this podcast, but I think that, you know, a lot of positive work being [01:14:00] done in the psychedelic world, not recreationally, but from a level of, you know, one on one counselor and treatment and controlled settings can be really, really helpful, you know, for people, you know, there's the books that you know, you and I have read the think and grow riches and the greatest salesman in the world and the four agreements.

But I think that being in silence and being with friends are really good. And you know, that's why I reached out to you, Paul, because you are like, you are someone. That I want to have in my life. Like, I wanna spend time with people like you with people like Simon hill, with people like rich role and the people that are doing good things that are working, that are creative, that are entrepreneurial.

That's great. There's a, a podcast that I went [01:15:00] on called over the wall by a very, very successful. You should get him on your podcast. Actually, his name is Rob LA Caio and Rob and I go back well over 20 years, he had the last IPO before the market collapsed in like 2000 and he created internet web chat.

And when I met Rob before the IPO, he was just, you know, slugging away. Then the stock was like at $6 a share, and then it went as low as 7 cents a share. Today. I don't know what it is today. It's probably 50, $60, $4 billion market cap. And Rob is like the second tenured second longest running CEO of a founder, CEO of a publicly traded company in America.

You know, Rob knows my tenacity and that's what we spoke about. But cuz that's a reflection of who [01:16:00] he is like to go from 7 cents a share, you know, where you could buy the company for $2 million market cap and say has a $4 billion market cap. So things like that. But I think that, you know, your podcast, like every episode is just incredible.

Like Paul, you are the resource that I would recommend to not just to your listeners cuz that's preaching to the choir, but to other people like I'm excited to share more about what you are doing cuz you're grounded and your head is screwed on. Correct. Well,

Paul Shapiro: I really appreciate that Doug. And more importantly, I appreciate everything that you've done.

As I mentioned. Few people have the highs that you've had. And few people have the lows that you've had. And again, I admire the resilience and the tenacity that you have shown through both of those. And I think it's a good lesson that anybody can learn, whether you wanna start your own company or whether just in life in general.

So I really appreciate that. And I, for 1:00 AM somebody who is very much looking [01:17:00] forward to seeing what you do next, I know you've become quite an evangelical sprouts. You've, uh, converted me. That's for sure. I did sprout about maybe 15, 20 years ago or so, but I don't remember why I stopped, but I am back into it now.

Uh, you've persuaded me that sprouts are very healthy, but most importantly for me is they are so time non consuming and they take up so little space and so few inputs to make these fresh vegetables in your kitchen that I'm in on your sprouts journey here with you two man. And I appreciate all that.

You've done all that you're doing, and I look forward to continuing the conversation and, uh, maybe we'll be chatting again about a potential future business. Relating to round. So we'll see.

Doug Evans: Terrific. And Paul, I will say the last thought that comes to mind is that a coach is a really good thing. A board or a forum is a really good thing.

I just had a friend go through Sivan B, um, her mastermind, just like 10, 12 people get [01:18:00] together. And her Instagram, this full disclosure, I'm married to her, but her Instagram is just S I V a N B. And her work is getting people to shift from scarcity to abundance, and like, imagine being able to make decisions from an abundance consciousness as opposed to a scarcity consciousness.

And so that's the consciousness that I'm in right now and being abundant and doing my thing.

Paul Shapiro: Well, I appreciate that. And, uh, one more thing that you and I have in common is we're both married to people who are an inspiration to us. So I appreciate that very much, Doug. And thanks again, and I will be rooting for your continued success and whether it's the fourth or the fifth act or whatever it's gonna

Doug Evans: be.

Thank you so much, Paul you're you're an incredible human being and I'm, I'm grateful to have you in my life.

Paul Shapiro: Thanks for listening. We hope you found use in this episode. If so, don't keep it to yourself. Please leave us a [01:19:00] five star rating on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. And as always, we hope you will be in the business of doing good.