- Today we have a special interview,
it's actually three parts,
it's with two of my childhood friends
and we're at a company called Drip Club.
Andrew, how's it going?
- Good man, thanks for having me.
- What is Drip Club exactly, what do you guys do?
- We evolved over time, but today we do product development.
So we develop and distribute our own brands,
so e-liquids, in the United States and all over the world.
- If I'm a vape shop, or something like that,
I'd probably go to you guys for different flavors,
is that how it works?
- In the beginning we used to sell
a lot directly to vape shops, but now
we're kinda changing our model a bit
where we're focusing more on the product
branding side and we're working with distribution partners
to get the product out to the shops.
- We all have our own entrepreneurial journey,
you have yours, Jonathan which will be on in a little bit,
we all have our different ones,
but how did you get to where you are now?
You had a company before this.
- The very first company that I started was called
Stoom Room, was a online rental service for costumes.
College students, they do a lot of theme parties,
we want to create a service where
they didn't have to buy the costumes.
That was the first business I started,
I started out with my girlfriend at the time.
- What you look like you learned from that?
- I think you should think very carefully
about going to business with your significant other
because I think there's a lot of challenges and stress
and anxiety and that can put a lot of strain
on a relationship.
Now, a lot of people do it and they
make it work, but I think it's challenging.
- It's very small percentage that can make it work.
- Yeah, it's very small. - 'Cause I think you're
working all day, you're thinking about work
but then when you go home you're thinking about it again.
- Exactly, and when that happens,
you're seeing them ever day, that's tough.
When you have disagreements in the business
it's really tough to separate that from your personal life,
especially if you guys are boyfriend girlfriend,
husband and wife.
- I think it was Bill Campbell,
the guy that mentored Steve Jobs and these other people
in Silicon Valley,
said, "Don't ever work with your friends."
Talk about this business now.
- Ah man, that's tough, I feel like--
- You're working with one of your best friends
- Yeah, I'm working with one of my best friends.
No matter when you're looking for a business partner,
the process is the same, whether their a friend or not
and I think it's identifying the values,
work ethic is important, you want
somebody that is in the trenches with you
who's willing to roll up their sleeves.
I think looking back, one thing that we probably should
have done too, and I think is
really useful, is taking a personality test.
There's different services that can do it
and their free, you can go online.
It's interesting too 'cause we took that personality test
and all three of our personalities,
completely complementary. - Complement each other.
- We're all different, in different ways.
I think communication's really important.
- So what I'm hearing is A, setup boundaries initially.
- [Andrew] Definitely.
- And then you also have to have criteria.
Then the third thing is taking like a Myers-Briggs,
or even like a Tony Robbins DISC assessment.
- Yeah, personality test, to see where.