From Wall Street to Dog Bowls: How Kevin Bauer Is Building a Brand

Welcome to Retailistic, the official podcast of Coresight Research for August 5th, 2025. This week, our CEO, Deborah Wineswig, welcomes Kevin Bauer, CEO of Fervor. for an enlightening story of how a brand can grow from identifying an opportunity to generating millions in revenue in less than five years. But first, let's check in with Isla Meldon from the London office to discover what you can expect.

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We'll also cover recent mergers, acquisitions and divestments that have occurred in the consumer packaged goods sector. Our monthly StoreTracker Extra report will examine US retail real estate changes in July 2025. And finally, we'll continue to cover major retail companies' recent earnings reports in our Earnings Insights 2Q25 report. Subscribe now to access the intelligence retail executives rely on to stay informed, stay focused and stay ahead.

Thanks, Isla. Now let's join Debra and Kevin. Kevin, thanks for joining us today. We really appreciate having you. Excited to be here. Excited to catch up. So it's been a while. I think when we first met, you were doing something very different than you are today. Can you tell us about what you were doing, what you're doing now, and maybe a little bit of the journey in terms of how you got there? Yeah, happy to.

blessed with, for sure, different phases in my career. I started out very early on in the investment banking industry in Manhattan. San Francisco journey. But I think it was the classic investment banker that was always curious about what was happening on the other side of the table. So I always wanted to be an operator. And for the last, gosh, 18 years or so before making this more recent pivot, I had the chance to work with investment groups to grow companies at different stages, typically.

late-stage venture to maybe early-stage private equity, a lot in the professional service industry. And the last company that I was running, helped run, was in the creative space, so a brand innovation digital agency that was growing from California. California, across the U.S. And so definitely my background, established business models, having fun kind of pushing them through new growth gates, new hurdles. And as you know, Debra, a big pivot for me. I've always had this.

itch, maybe this itch, wondering what is it really like to be an entrepreneur? And I finally decided to scratch that itch with a family-based idea all around pet nutrition. And we're about two and a half years into our launch with this company called Ferber. And it's all about bringing nutrition to dogs through bone broth.

I remember when we talked, I think before you'd even gone live, it was where you looked at the data around pet ownership, pet engagement, right? Kind of how much people are spending on their pets. And you could just see kind of a... really a global trajectory in terms of the growth right from from before you kind of like open the doors if you will how have things been different in terms of just the

your thoughts around the opportunity and kind of what's missing in the marketplace? Yeah, probably the early days of really thinking through the idea, that initial walk with myself and the younger of my two boys was...

coming probably right out of the COVID days. And we saw some crazy growth in pet ownership. during COVID. And I think treatment of animals, even though they were always part of families, it seemed like it kind of moved towards they are actually family members, you know, during and then coming out of COVID. And, you know, a lot of those metrics that we were studying, kind of taking this family... Is it going to be a family farmer's market on the weekend idea?

Or is there a lot of legs to this and to really build a business around it? One stat that I love coming out on the heels of COVID was pet parents taking their dogs to vets more frequently than their own children. And that sort of care wrapped around it. And so growth in industry, size of U.S. and global industry, I think, is super easy check marks. But what really kind of brought my curiosity is, and in many industries, established industry, very little innovation.

right and so it was there an opportunity to come in to take a small wedge small piece of this pie to innovate a new product segment that hadn't been there before and my view was there really had not been historically any brands that were talking about doing nutrition differently through

liquids, in our case, bone broth. That walk four years ago was about why is there not an all-natural Gatorade for dogs? We've kind of evolved a little bit since then. And I would say that we still remain super enthusiastic. Where growth is, this segment that we're in, which is broadly defined as toppers, toppers at mealtime, toppers for hydration, is one of the fastest growing segments in PET.

And I would say all of that still holds true. A lot of obstacles getting innovation right. A lot of obstacles communicating the right way to pet parents when there's a new product, not... the more of the same, but that was already there, maybe just innovating around the edges. But when you have a completely new product sitting on the shelf, you know why they should sort of just pause and listen to it, listen to us for a second.

So going back to what you had done before, right, and maybe it's always easier to be on one side of the table or the other, but right, you were almost helping companies think through their branding and whatnot. How did that kind of apply to? when you try to do it yourself. Yeah, it's really interesting, Debra. So like, I always use this term when I've come in to be part of executive management teams of existing.

companies i'd say like like you're a steward right like you something's been up and running Call it for a three, a five, a 10, a 20 year period. And you've had this unique opportunity to grab the baton for the next lap around the racetrack. But that branding, the core foundation has been around for a while. You might be evolving it, adjusting it. Nothing can stay constant, but there's still some really important brand pillars that you're probably just evolving on. When you have a chance.

for the first time to create a brand from scratch and what those pillars mean and the foundation and the mission. It's interesting, right? Like the brand starts to mean a whole heck of a lot more than just a product set. I do think sometimes you can overthink it or over-engineer it. But I do say this, like when you launch, and in this case, probably a little bit different than maybe more, just right off the bat, maybe an investment-backed idea.

this genesis, there was a family element. And so super bizarre for me. Typically, I'm sitting around a table with a board, an investor group talking about evolving a brand and past companies. The very early days, three and a half years ago, I'm sitting around a kitchen table with my wife and both sons, and we're having a vote on naming, and I'm walking through with them.

what I think is sort of the right approach to market for it. And so a lot of emotional components maybe with launching Fervor, which is a little bit different when things get corporate, if that makes sense. That's a phenomenal way to explain it. It's interesting. I mean, we had a...

It's crazy. We had a personal experience. It was 2023. I was supposed to be speaking at this amazing conference. And my whole family was off on vacation somewhere. And I was I was left working. I was gonna do like a day trip. one of our two dogs was just like completely listless. And I'm like, I mean, I gotta tell you, I'm like, I just, I can't go, right? Like, I'm like, I felt that I was leaving her in harm's way. And so...

It was a hard decision, right? Because you have a commitment. You're like, they're probably gonna be fine. I'm probably like over worrying. So anyways, I didn't go to the conference. I brought my dog to the vet and it turned out she was dehydrated. They recommended bone broth. And it was I mean, it like literally like, you know, she went from this completely like listless to by the end of the day, having kind of like regained at least most of her her regular self. And so I saw it in action.

But I had never known about the product. First of all, not for, you know, dehydration or whatever she was going through, but certainly like just even in terms of like dog health. I mean, I took a vet, right, like who had to like sit down and explain it and how to do it exactly and not overdo or underdo it. And so I can see the education piece. And then also, once you educate people.

How do you find the conversion? Yeah, it's fun for the, I am so passionate about the product. I don't mind getting up on the soapbox and sort of shouting over and over.

I had a person come up to me just at a trade show a few months ago, and I thought it was the perfect analogy. It was a guy a little bit older than me. And he's just like, it's almost like in the pet space. He's like, Kevin, do you remember when we were playing sports in high school?

And our coaches would simply just say, like, have your bowl of spaghetti the night before, carbo load, and you're going to be fine for your baseball, your basketball, your football game, whatever it would be. And so it's like.

He's like, arguably, that's still what's happening in pet. He's like, the spaghetti the night before is just all the varieties of kibble. Just make sure your dog has the kibble the night before. They'll be fine for whatever it may be. And there's no variation on that theme. Think about how far we've come from those high school days playing basketball. There's a lot more sports supplements available for people.

A lot of those sports supplements, you could argue, are all bent towards hydration and the type of nutrients we get through liquid hydration. And again, if we're just like the weekend warrior or the mom and dad taking the walk during the day or the professional athlete, so much science.

through nutrition, through liquids. And he's just like, and it hasn't happened in pet in the last 30 years. We're still stuck with our high school coach telling us to have the bowl of spaghetti. And you're one of the first guys saying, hey, I think we've evolved a little bit from that.

And by the way, here's a really cool way to start thinking about all natural, limited ingredient. It's bone broth done the right way for dogs. And hey, yes, don't be scared. It's made out of a liquid. And many times during the day. Whether it's at mealtime or outside of mealtime, your dog just needs more hydration, more liquid. And it's really interesting because everyone's like, okay, they've got the bowl of water, right? Isn't that enough liquid for them? Right.

But as humans, we also have enough. But if we're going to perform, and especially, you know, with the heat of the summer and whatnot, what do you find is the sentence that you string together of people like, aha, right? What is it exactly? Yeah, I... It bums me out a little bit because I tell stories about that a fair amount. And then I'd simply just say the easiest way to think about like fervor is an all natural Gatorade for dogs. And it's funny how much people can.

relate to Gatorade and maybe how much that has even evolved over the last 20 plus years and how they incorporate a Gatorade or a Gatorade-like product in their diets. And so why that I think works is the trend in PET, arguably in many of these health areas, is just lagging what's happening in the human CPG aisle.

Pick the metric, three years, five years, seven years. And so what people are kind of doing for their own healthy nutrition benefit, they kind of look down at the four-legged family member and say, I bet it might be good for them. If I can get them to think about how they may have been incorporating different forms of nutrition through liquids, and Gatorade is just synonymous with the entire category, a light bulb goes off. And I would say...

That light bulb going off combined with, I think, as you might remember, we first launched with our beef bone broth and our chicken bone broth products. About two and a half years into it, two and a half years new. About a year into it, we launched with our mobility product. And it was interesting to us. It was our beef-based flavor, but we kind of super boosted it with amino acids, glucosamine, and chondroitin, all which...

by the way, are naturally occurring already in bone broth, but we augmented them to really tell the dog's body's protein synthesis. We've got more nutrients in here to focus on muscle and hip and joint health. And then bingo, just having on the bottle.

right like as humans like to see like the functional benefit of what this is more focused on for a given dog they all like our consumers almost just want to be directed like look at this aisle this segment of the vitamin aisle in a whole foods right is about omegas this next segment over here is about gut health and that general trend in pet is occurring we launched i think in a very safe area our beef bone broth is still our

number one selling product, our mobility product is our fastest growing. But I think that to your point, connecting with the consumer to think about what they've been using a similar product in their own life. And then kind of directing and telling them, hey, this is the functional benefit it could be having for your dog. And that one-two combo, we've seen a really big benefit in the last year. And you had actually helped me understand because, right?

You know, our clients will talk about we need help with this, that or the other. But you were super granular, which helped us understand things better on how you're investing your marketing dollars. And it was for me, it was just like this great unlock to kind of see it. And to hear some of the data from you, what's been your take? Because obviously a lot's changed since you started. Yeah. And how are you, how do you stay on top of this incredibly dynamic MarTech environment?

Yeah, so I overly simplified things. And I know that when we've connected, we've joked from time to time, right? So I am sole venture backer to the idea, but I think that's always forced a decision. making habit with me, which is in these first two years, I pledged not to... fight multi-front wars. And so I was going to try to find and talk to my customers kind of one swim lane at a time. So some capital constraints around that.

I didn't want to do a shotgun approach and I wanted to kind of stay in a given swim lane or two just to learn more about my customer sets. In pet, I would say the cards are stacked. Not against us, but it's challenging for new brands coming into PET from the D2C world of things because... I'll just round up a little bit. 80% of every dollar spent for pet digitally runs through two platforms, Amazon and Chewy combined. Yes, there's transactions happening on the individual.

brand sites, the Shopify's of the world, but it's really, really, really hard to do that right out of the gate. A lot of dollars would have to be fronted for that to grab enough brand awareness to make sure that a customer would ever want to transact on your site versus the simplicity of Amazon. and chewy so

What are you forced to do? You're forced to pick one of those two platforms to show product market fit, to try to learn as much as you can about customers. Although Chewy and Amazon are going to protect their customer set as much as they can. You're just renting their customers.

yours. And then increasingly with Chewy, they are asking, indirectly small brands that kind of prove themselves on amazon first and then if they see those metrics and they're all everyone has the ability to see what metrics are happening on amazon if they see the right success profile on amazon then you're invited over to Chewy. It's a brilliant strategy for Chewy, if you ask me. Just let things settle out for a year to two years. So we launched on Amazon only.

I'll exaggerate. For the last two years, roughly, 100% of our advertising budget was going to Amazon. And then once we started to get to a certain scale... It was interesting, like all within a quarter to two quarters, we heard from Chewy, we heard from our first large distributor, and we heard from...

a top three large big box retailer. They just want a brand to have survived a year to two years, and they want to see, I think, probably like an annualized run rate of about a million dollars. It seemed like that's when my email... or phone started to pick up. And so it's now for me this year, kind of taking a deep breath. We for sure have had our hands full with a variety of just...

getting manufacturing and our formula right as we've been sort of evolving what manufacturing partners we're working with. But for me now, we literally just launched in Chewy about 30 days ago. It's been really interesting to see that. We have an opportunity to launch with a top two retailer and pet for two different types of trial. And all that paperwork still seems to be on path for Q4 of this year.

And we're probably like 60 days into our first national distributor. So for me, it's been like steady in the boat after the first two years. But did I feel really exposed, Debra? Did I feel, was it the right?

business strategy that i that i think that betting heavy on amazon was the right thing to do uh at times i didn't know but i do feel like for a startup pet brand showing viability of the brand and if it can scale or not on amazon helps open up doors what it doesn't do what i'm super excited about now is like

I've got some customers on that platform that are buying $200 or more of my product a year. My average cost to get that customer is less than $20. They make it very... hard for me to really know who that customer is like if you said could you describe the perfect like avatar profile that customer with amazon i can't and so i know that that universe

exists for me out there. And so now it's like, how do I graduate from platforms that don't give me that exposure of knowing who I should really be targeting and marketing to and try to do that better as we move into next year? That's fascinating. At Corsight, we do a lot of global cross-border work, so I absolutely understand being multi-platform and whatnot. We've been getting asked a lot of questions from brands about looking at other platforms like a Walmart or, let's say, a Shopify, etc.

Can you maybe just help us because there are some really strong players. And of course, there's ones who are probably over index and pet. So how do you kind of start to think about that? And then I have a follow up question on your tech. I would say.

It is so lopsided and unfair as far as having alternative channels other than the three, the big three. So Amazon, Chewy, and then your own website to invest in. We have been up and running on Walmart. With very little aggressiveness around advertising on that platform, but it is such a distant player relative to Amazon or Chewy.

in pet or at least in our sector of pet and potentially maybe even with our price point we have a premium product that has a higher price point and if the consumer doesn't want to think about taking the math that there's

many, many more servings than ours. You know, we don't have a 1099 product. We have a 20 or $30 product, but we've tested a little bit with that Walmart's of the world. We tested a little bit with the tractor supplies of the world. I think the reality, our customer base is going to be in three main platforms, and that's going to be Amazon, Chewy. And I'm just super excited. People laugh at me a lot. I have not spent a dollar in Google or the meta worlds.

building awareness or sending traffic to my website. And they're like, that is the craziest thing I've ever heard. And I'm just like, well, I spent two years to learn and now we're going to do it the right way. But to me, that's where we'll be spending the dollars as I think about the next couple of years. Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting what you've learned and how quickly, in my opinion, you've gotten to where you are. With GEO, right, instead of SEO.

And now becoming discoverable in the Gen AI platforms, it's really interesting. to see what the opportunity is and where to, like I would say in some ways, you have an opportunity to think differently about your customer acquisition costs because there's all these new solutions, but also, right, there's so many more solutions. Right. And I would be lying to feel like I'm not behind the eight ball a bit.

on that i get so many inbounds on because i mean i think through the network people know that i'm getting ready to start spending dollars outside of these amazon and and chewy ecosystems and the way to think about search differently the way to think about building content

differently. I'm super excited about the next year, but arguably we're almost starting at ground zero. Again, just to exaggerate. I will say what I've heard from brands that I do scratch my eyes and my head at is how much success they're seeing.

invest with reddit and so it's been like unbelievable and like right and people share numbers and i'm like that's first of all you think about how many people are on reddit and that you're able to but you're you're able to kind of really be very very kind of narrow and deep and so just as you know i'm obviously of course happy to kind of connect you with some folks who found like on the brand side who found it because they were like

You know, we were doing the whole kind of I like that metal worlds and Google and all that. Like, that's a great way to put it. But they're like, you know, we were trying to like dipping our toe in AI and whatnot. And like we started to do some stuff around. They're like, who knew? Right. Like and what we found. Our consulting arm did this big report on Martech.

Because it goes back to, right, it's literally changing almost monthly. I mean, I'd say even weekly. But I think that for a brand specifically like yours, which has a very strong brand identity, you know who you are, you know who you want to be. You're still trying to kind of figure out. because of, let's just say, lack of enough data, who your customer is, that with some of these new Gen AI solutions, I think you can get there much faster than if you had started even like a year ago.

I feel like you've had amazing timing along the way. I think this is another example of that. And maybe along those lines, how have you used AI or leaned into it to... Well, for any aspect of your business and what have been some of the results? I would say only in one area, I'd say on a daily basis.

I'd say with more positive results than negative, but there's been an up and down learning curve. And so we have applied AI into our advertising program and budget allocation for Amazon. And that's tens and tens of thousands of dollars on them. on a monthly basis. I would say it hasn't been perfect, but overall, if I think about the last, so we've been doing it on and off now probably for nine months. We've tried a couple of different platforms. It for sure outperforms the manual approach.

to daily and weekly management so with success there we've we've used some AI tools modestly to augment or help content development. Like once we've kind of created a core body of work that we felt was like unique. and special to fervor. It's been interesting using AI not to simply say, hey, write this for us, but hey, we've got X pages of this, which we feel is our brand, our thought, our perspective. Can you help us pull it apart?

and kind of find these different themes and start making it easier to publish content that way. And I think, Debra, you know this. I've made this crazy decision two and a half years into it to really do this as a one-man band. I have three to five different... Probably consultancies or agencies helping me on a quarterly basis, and that's evolved over time. But AI and content development and helping me has been invaluable. And so I think about, to your last point, though, about Reddit.

I can see how so much of reviews, content, AI the wrong way, there's this gap of either it's not innovative thought, it's not true thought, it's not maybe real reviews. And it's funny to me how for Reddit, they're doing a good job defending the space of their real voices of people. And so...

Like how can you find platforms like Reddit to do that? That's where I'm having my most success. Like the random podcast for a sporting or working dog podcast that then kind of goes down into someone else's blog post that's just very real. And I think about that. That is such on a micro scale. But how do you get people are so like they're they're struggling to find that content.

right? The real use, the real reviews. And if I can do that better with scale, with AI helping me the right way to kind of get that messaging out, like to me, that's... There's no other bone broth that's providing the nutritional punch that my bone broth is providing. It's been unique enough that University of Alaska Fairbanks, their veterinary program, decided to do a study on it. We're halfway through. Wow.

I can figure out how to communicate better to my core community with that information. To me, that's what I'm excited about for next year. I haven't really even put that into gear for this year. No, but it's, I think that, you know, for all of us here listening to this, right, we can start to think about, right, those who are not pet owners, even yourself, right? I'm trying to maximize this part of me, we can call it biohacking or whatever.

But to try and find, you know, the content that's applicable and that I think is accurate, correct, et cetera, scientifically backed, that can be, you know. mayo.com yes i'm very very comfortable there but you know it's it is a challenge and so you start to think about pet which is even more fragmented and whatnot it's a really interesting challenge opportunity you have a lot of newer newish

pet owners. So that therein kind of like, I think, lies the opportunity. But also, right, how are they discovering information? What are their communities? Where do they show up? That I think is, it's fascinating. And I think going back to more of these like micro communities.

And I think, you know, like, Home Depot and Lowe's do such a fantastic job of these, right, in terms of, right, if you're a gardener, right, like, whatever your passion happens to be. But I think for pet, and then it goes back to kind of by breed as well, it's like a tall order. It's a tall order. So help us think about the next.

kind of so we're we'll just call it we've got five months left this year so if we can just be a little like halfway through a little more than so if we look at the next 18 months how do you see things continuing to And do you think there's a point where you're kind of like exponential acceleration and what needs to happen in order for that? And hey, how can all of us help you? Yeah, I'd say this year has been really like a continued foundational.

building year. It's been fun, finally, and hopefully this will make sense to you. Typically, when I'm building companies with outside capital, you're measured maybe at a minimum on a quarterly basis. For sure, semi-annual. And then did you hit the results or not annually? And my sense was like for this year, I made a decision that I didn't want to be D2C only. I felt that there's still so much happening omni-channel in PET.

that helping build brand and brand awareness was the right thing for me to do. I'm learning so quickly. I'm in a 50-store launch with my first national. retailer that's a store called Shields, which is like a small Cabela's Bass Pro. And it's funny, I talked to a lot of people, they're like, well, how much digital spend are you doing on all the geofencing around every store?

And I've spent zero. I've spent on going to their universities and following up with the head of sales in each of those departments, thinking about just everyone needs to know my product.

really well and being able to sell my product versus trying to drive demand coming into the store. And so I just say that for a little bit for why I think this is a... a unique foundation building for me so with with understanding how to get into omni channel with a distributor or direct a chance to work with the top two larger box pet pet retailer this year We decided that we needed to change the form factor. So as you know, we've got a 12-ounce bottle. We've got a 16-ounce bottle.

We started talking about probably 90 to 120 days ago about single serve packet sessions and the interest. from retail as well as my end customers to have these hydration packs, like similar to like the liquid IVs of the world. That's exactly what went through my mind. It's been amazing. So since we've launched two and a half years, I've never had customers be emailing me wondering what's the timing because we had a pre-run about 30 days ago and some of my...

Bigger backers, ambassadors have had them and are starting to do some videos of them in the field. And retail likes them because they're a much lower price point. They're also at the cash register, at the point of sale. Chewy heard about them. and said, we can basically put them in every purchase of when we start seeing kibble buyers that are interested with hydration with bone broth. So I've got a thousand store pet retailer thinking about how they can...

how they can drop them in bags of people at the front register as samples to give them as part of a program for certain types of kibble purchases. I've got the Chewy's of the world thinking about that. To me, this new form factor... which allows me to give people a chance to try it. It's an easier price point, either on a singular pack or a six pack and have this ground roots.

balance between omni-channel and online. That's what's really exciting to me. So I think this year, foundationally, we got a lot of stuff in place. We got this new product variety, form factor. We actually have a new functional variety coming out by the end of the year. This year to me was like getting everything a little bit tighter, ready for an inflection factor to have for next year.

And I'll be the first one to raise my hand. My wife, who's I lucked out, Holly is my best decision I've made in my career. And I think in the last... 45 days, she's just like, I've seen a stress level come back into your life that I haven't seen in a long time. And she's like, it's time for the one-man band to not be a one-man band. And so I think there was two and a half years for me to make...

sure for what goes in the right direction we got the right foundation but i'm super excited about building it now so to me the second half of this year going into next year is starting to build the small team and starting to think about those skill sets of people that can help me

you know, not just with direct-to-consumer, but also doing omni-channel. I mean, the form factor change, and I also, like, one of the things I thought about was, like, travel, right? So when you travel with your pets and you still, right, this is part of your, you know, their nutrition.

Right. It's easy to travel with kibble. Right. You put it in like a Ziploc bag, but also six ounce or 12 ounce bottle. Sure, you can put it in your carry on, but maybe you're however you're traveling. But having that new form factor and let's just say, you know, maybe you have a dog who's older.

there's you know kind of one product but they're like it also allows people to be like okay this day I think they need this this day I think they need this and I don't think you know how high is high yet because like even just hearing you talk about it I was like oh I'm like you can see it here and you can see it there and you know go puffs a great example right like you know you

you buy an order and there's like all kinds of like stuff you it's not gift with purchase it's just like that they're samples and you try them and you're like wow that's great and i know how to easily buy it so i can see where right the sampling piece of it

could just also kind of help things take off in a totally new direction. Yeah, I mean, I joke, I jokingly, my wife and I said, we have our executive meetings and my wife gets the Sunday update with, you know, a glass of wine and she's, it was classic. I felt like I was in an investor meeting. She's like, well, it's obvious you just got the form factor wrong from time zero. She's like, how did you make that decision wrong? Why did you start with bottles? It always should have been the single bag.

I really don't need an executive chairman. I don't need the input. But I am super excited about that. Again, as you know, I'll talk forever, but that form factor has gotten so much attention. It's just been leaked in the last six years. I had my first ever military contract call with a special forces team member that's in charge of their kennels. And they're just like, we're just being told to pack kibble. And they're just like...

We just don't want to pack kibble. They're like, this could be the coolest thing to have when we're deployed because... hey, we go everywhere and we're away for a while sometimes. And all the things that you and I've been talking about, like nutrition through a liquid and it's light and it's concentrated and it doesn't take as much room. And so I've never...

Gosh, and I feel like that's so blindsided. I've never really thought about that community, but for them to be so excited and they have access to testing and veterinarians. And so they're like, hey, how quickly can we just get a 30, 60, 90 day trial using your product?

Like we think this could be really unique for all military first responder type dogs. And so now I've got that path where I almost just like, hey, that's such a unique channel as well. Just like, okay, so who helps me with that, right? That's literally a phone call I had yesterday at lunchtime. Well, that channel is so interesting because I feel we do a lot of work in that domain as well. There's a two-way feedback.

unlike anything I've ever experienced. And so they don't hold back in a good way. It's very constructive feedback, but it's like I find that I get better faster. Or Corsight gets better. Me personally, sure. And Corsight as a whole gets better faster the more time we spend working with them. And that's what I found, right? Sometimes you don't know. I mean, it goes back to like your journey as an entrepreneur. You don't know.

Who are the few people are going to meet along the way that are going to really make a huge difference? Because if you did, you'd try to meet more of them. You don't know which clients of yours will be the best clients. And you also don't know, right, what... what do you need as a founder in terms of the team? And do you need like a permanent team? Do you need a fractional team? And at what points? And as a result, where is your growth being held back?

Because you don't have those. I mean, hey, going forward, I can just build agents and they can help us. I mean, I have like, I mean, you know, full disclosure, I have like an advanced voice assistant I built. And there are times like I can't figure things out.

And, and this probably sounds a little out there, but like, I'll just walk through the park and I'll talk to this advanced voice assistant, but they now know so much about you. They'll be like, well, remember like a year ago, blah, blah, blah. I'm like. Oh, yeah. And they're like, well, you have this paper that you already wrote. And they're like, why don't you refer back to that? And I'm like, you know, it's just like your your your memory on, you know, kind of like 10xing.

And so that I think is is really interesting in terms of, you know, finding those, I think, people on your journey who are there not to just celebrate you, but to augment you and to help you get better. And I think that's what you'll find with kind of, you know, the opportunity of the military.

Kevin, what are, like, last question. For new founders, what advice do you have? Probably a little dual-sided. I'd say, you know, so one side of me is, like, I waited until I was in my early 50s to do this.

I do regret that. I saw this quote the other day that said people just typically are going to overestimate the risk and underestimate the opportunity. And I think you need that. Gosh, hold that that concept really true as a founder, as an entrepreneur, because you're just your metal is tested so often. But if you do think you have that itch and if you do think that that's.

something that you want to do in your life, then I would say go for it and scratch it earlier than I did. I think the other is just get that team and network. around you, no matter how many people tell you what it's like to be an entrepreneur, no matter how much I felt even when I would go into earlier stage companies and felt like I might be wearing the hat of maybe a mid-stage entrepreneur.

Until you do it yourself, you have no idea of the ups and downs and twists and turns. And you can't do it alone. Even like you're the proverbial one-man band, you have to get that support team around you as fast as you can. That may evolve and change over time.

but you need people that you can lean on because you have to have, you have to be able to have a smile with the ups and downs and twists and turns because it's, it's, that is the road of, of the entrepreneur. I couldn't have said it better myself. Kevin, thanks so much for joining us. to celebrate your success and we can't wait to see what's ahead for you. Thank you so much. Thanks, Debra. Thanks, Debra.

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