Dave “Kombucha” Lindenbaum Interview on his biggest breakthroughs in personal & business life. Dave is an awesome guest that shares his background in making a 7 figure online business and starting off in Kombucha. He’s also starting a hot sauce business. Great interviewee and you’ll want to listen in!
Vince: Welcome back breakthru entrepreneurs! My name is Vince and this is another one of our breakthru interview series that we did in Denver, Colorado. We go to talk to some amazing seven eight figure business owners, marketers, coaches, mentor, just people doing amazing thing in life and in business. I have Dave Kombucha Lindenbaum today aka Dave Lindenbaum, aka about five other nicknames. Why does he have so many nicknames because he’s a unique personality has a great perspective on life and business and he’s just a joy to listen to and he’s entertaining as heck as well. So if you haven’t heard or haven’t subscribed to our breakthru interview series. Subscribe below, turn on your notifications, like the video if it gave you some great insight, leave a comment below on what you liked about this video what you didn’t like, what you want us to ask next time. We ask roughly about three questions in the breakthru interview series. What was some of your biggest personal breakthroughs, what are some of your biggest business breakthroughs, how to align all of that for it as an entrepreneur or just in your life in general to live a life of passion and fulfillment as well. So subscribe below enjoy the video and please let us know what you think and we will see you on the other end. Listen to Dave Kombucha Lindenbaum right after this. Take care!
Dave Lindenbaum: My name’s Dave Lindenbaum. I have multiple nicknames, but we’ll say Golden Showers Lindenbaum. We’ll talk about that one in a second. Dave Kombucha Lindenbaum, Dave Multiple Pants Lindenbaum, Dave Joshua Lindenbaum. The golden showers, just to get that out of the way, I like to give as much value as I can to my fellow entrepreneurs, people I coach, students and really anybody. If I catch them on the street, I’ll talk to them. Yeah, that’s my name.
Dave Lindenbaum: Golden showers of value. Value showers, if you will. I also like to have fun and so that name is, I don’t like to take myself too seriously. That might be one of my little secrets to success, maybe. The Kombucha came from, originally one of my businesses. In fact, the first business I started was an online tea company, particularly for kombucha. For those that don’t know, kombucha’s a fermented funky probiotic-rich beverage.
Dave Lindenbaum: Like many entrepreneur stories, it came from a personal breakthrough. I had acid reflux for a very, very long time. A buddy of mine told me to try this drink. I drank it. I had the best bowel movement of my life and no acid reflux. The next day, I drank it again. Then after a week I got rid of all my acid reflux medicine but then, like the hero’s journey, the problem was buying these drinks were actually costing me more than my prescription drugs. As entrepreneurs, we always try to find better ways.
Dave Lindenbaum: We always talk about this way of serving, giving more value but I was trying to give more value, better value to myself, trying to serve myself. Figure out how I could solve my own problem. That came from figuring out how to make the stuff at home, which then said, “Well, if I’m helping myself, I wonder if I could help others and make it others?” Now, I picked the middle name Kombucha because I was trying to game the SEO in Facebook at the time, and then it just stuck.
Dave Lindenbaum: On the personal side, and it might not sound sexy but it’s treating your personal goals with as much respect as your business goals, let’s say. Whether you’re in a relationship, whether you want to change your sleep habits or fitness habits or anything like that. I saw the most success in my business when I was writing my goals down, tracking them, trying to find help and support, outsourcing.
Dave Lindenbaum: All these things we do in business, what if I could apply that to my personal goals? That was a big breakthrough. Really thinking in business terms, if that’s where you are thinking. Now from the opposite, if you’re being too business structured, maybe you need the opposite but that idea of things that you get breakthroughs in your business. See if those same things that led to that can give you breakthroughs in your personal.
Dave Lindenbaum: It’s really being willing to adapt and pivot and audible. I started … And evolve. All those words, gosh. I’m sure if you looked in the dictionary, they all mean different things. This idea of, your growth never stops. I’ll give you one example. Our first business Get Kombucha was on our own eCommerce store. Then Amazon came around and I combed into it. I was like, “Well, let me just try this out.”
Dave Lindenbaum: At the time, when we put up our product on Amazon, 90% of our revenue was on our income store. Shopify store or something like that at the time, and 10% was on Amazon. If you could see trends and it doesn’t … I reasoned with myself said, “Okay, listen. If I make the decision to put my product up on Amazon today, I’ll worry about optimizing, worry about all these other things another time but let me at least have it work for me.”
Dave Lindenbaum: This model works really well. I’m not a real estate guy. I don’t know too much about real estate, but this idea of real estate with passive income, like it’s working for you. Well, there’s tactical things you can do in your business today. Like setting up an autoresponder. Adding a product on a marketplace that people are already going to. That it might be running ads, retargeting ads. That the sooner you get that done, it doesn’t have to be perfect, but get it done today because then it’ll start working for you.
Dave Lindenbaum: While you’re improving it, you’re getting results. You might not be making money. Maybe those ads are losing, but you’re getting results then, to turn those ads off or something like that over time. Look for things that might not have a huge impact today, but will start paying you today the minute you implement it, there’s easy enough implement. That’s one idea I guess, of evolving or pivoting.
Dave Lindenbaum: Another idea of like in our products. Kombucha was our first company, but then we’re like, “Hey. People are writing to us that the reason why they love this product so much isn’t just because it makes kombucha but they enjoy just making stuff.” That idea, that experience. Kind of like the love hate I have with Ikea. You know what I mean? Schlepping this thing home and putting it together. You feel your shoulder’s about to fall off with this little Allen wrench, but you feel so much accomplishment that you put this together.
Dave Lindenbaum: I started looking at trends like Blue Apron and these make your own meal kits. I’m thinking of all this stuff like, “Well, what if we started doing more kits?” Not just for kombucha, but kits in general. Then I started searching, what are people really into? I saw that people are really obsessed with hot sauces. What if we made a hot sauce? Probably, actually, this is cool. This is like inside of how my brain works. Everything just becomes a little bit easier, at least to know that, or that that’s expected. Watching other people’s stories was a huge thing too.
