386 From Corporate to Caffeinated Chocolate: The Awake Story with Adam D'Eramo
How to Know If You Have a Business Opportunity (Not Just an Idea)
Episode 386: Rain or Shine Podcast
Guest: Adam D'Eramo, Co-founder of Awake Caffeinated Chocolate
From Corporate to Caffeinated Chocolate: The Awake Story with Adam D'Eramo
Episode 386: Rain or Shine Podcast
Guest: Adam D’Eramo, Founder of Awake Caffeinated Chocolate
Quick Summary
Adam D'Eramo, co-founder of Awake Caffeinated Chocolate, shares the journey of leaving PepsiCo with two friends to build a functional food brand from scratch.
From a spontaneous lunch conversation to surviving COVID's devastating impact and landing a Costco deal, Adam reveals the mindset shifts, market testing strategies, and resilience required to build a successful consumer brand.
In This Episode
The pivotal advice that changed her perspective: "The job you want might not exist yet"
How she landed a contract with Canada Games (after thinking she'd "never get it")
The difference between knowing your values and actually connecting with them
Practical strategies for working through tough business days
How to discern between fatigue and fear when motivation is low
Building community in a new city as an adult entrepreneur
Why curiosity and joy are essential tools for getting unstuck
Key Takeaways
Start before you're ready: If you're waiting for the perfect moment to leave corporate, allocate time on the side to test your idea. The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.
Ideas vs. opportunities: An idea becomes a business opportunity when people will pay for it AND you can turn a profit. Market test early and often.
Use digital research tools: Concept testing through apps costs just a few hundred dollars and provides feedback in under 24 hours. Awake uses this multiple times per year.
Break big problems into small ones: During COVID, Adam and his team focused on solving the problem right in front of them—this week, this month, this quarter—rather than being overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenge.
Listen to your team: The marketing manager who persistently advocated for Amazon and e-commerce ultimately helped save the business during the pandemic when all physical locations closed.
Memorable Quotes
"I think the hardest regret for me to carry for the rest of my life would be if I didn't try this. A regret of inaction."
"There's no substitute for executing an actual market test. When we found out we were selling 20 bars in a week, it was euphoric."
"Are you a quitter? Quitters are losers. If no, then it doesn't look good today, but you've gotta find a way to solve this problem."
"I haven't heard a single story that was all sunshine and rainbows. Everybody's had adversity. Resilience isn't just a nice attribute for an entrepreneur, it's a prerequisite."
"The biggest strength of our partnership is that we know what we don't know. It's liberating to go find people who have that knowledge and capability."
About the Guest
Adam D'Eramo is the co-founder of Awake Caffeinated Chocolate, a functional snack brand that launched in 2012. After leaving PepsiCo with his co-founders Matt and Dan, Adam has spent over 12 years building Awake from a campus-exclusive product to a nationally distributed brand available in major retailers across Canada including Costco, Shoppers Drug Mart, Loblaws, and more.
Adam is passionate about entrepreneurship, continuous improvement, and building teams with an entrepreneurial mindset.
Connect
Awake Chocolate Website: AwakeChocolate.ca
Online: Amazon.ca
Instagram: @AwakeChocolate
LinkedIn: Adam D'Eramo
Retail: Shoppers Drug Mart, Bulk Barn, Loblaws, Sobeys, Costco (rotational)
Resources Mentioned
Awake Caffeinated Chocolate
El Sombrero (Mexican restaurant in Mississauga)
Wilfrid Laurier University
PepsiCo
Compass, Sodexo, Aramark (food service companies)
Digital research apps for concept testing
Shopify (e-commerce platform)
Amazon.ca
Costco
About the Host
Kelsey Reidl is a marketing strategist, business consultant, and host of the newly renamed Rain or Shine podcast (formerly Visionary Life). With over 350 episodes and seven years of podcasting, she helps entrepreneurs build sustainable marketing strategies while navigating the ups and downs of business ownership. She's also a speaker on topics like ranking on ChatGPT, a course creator, and a mother balancing it all with her signature "rain or shine" philosophy.
Connect
Instagram: @kelseyreidl
Website: kelseyreidl.com
Subscribe to the weekly newsletter: kelseyreidl.com/newsletter
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Host: Adam, welcome to the Rain or Shine podcast. We absolutely love spotlighting seasoned entrepreneurs like yourself. You have such a cool story of bringing Awake caffeinated chocolate to life with two of your friends. So I cannot wait to dig into the story, all of your success habits, some major milestone moments. So first off, thank you so much for being here today.
Adam: Well, thank you for having me on. Appreciate the invitation.
Host: Awesome. Yeah, it's gonna be a fun conversation, and chocolate is my favorite food. So that might have been part of the appeal of sitting down to chat with you because I am a super fan of the product. So that was a really fun pitch to receive in my inbox. Let's kick start with the first question today. Can you take us back to the moment when you and your co-founders decided to start this business venture of Awake caffeinated chocolate? Do you remember what was that conversation or the moment when you guys actually said, "Yeah, let's do this," not just, "Hey, let's dream and jam and brainstorm"?
Adam: Yeah, no, I remember it distinctly. Like many good things in life, it happened over a meal. So the three of us were working together for PepsiCo at the time. And there is an awesome Mexican restaurant in Mississauga called El Sombrero. They make the best burritos. We were there for lunch one day, and it was a point in my career where I really was just starting to feel like if I was ever gonna take a shot at building a business of my own, I needed to act and act soon.
So I just said to Matt and Dan, "You know, I'm really considering leaving corporate and starting my own thing." And within 10 seconds, they both said the same thing. "I feel the exact same way." And so we said, "Well, why don't we do it together? Three minds are better than one." And we made that agreement in a few seconds and never looked back, which is kind of amazing for such a big life decision. But I think it was possible because we were all very passionate about the idea of building something from scratch, and we identified a pretty compelling opportunity where we had lots of expertise. You know, we all have fairly high risk tolerance. So when you're passionate about something and you feel like you know what you're doing, I think it's actually easy to stay the course.
Host: There's so much that I wanna dig into there. It's so interesting that you say it started how a lot of great things start, which is over a meal. That has definitely been a through line over the 300 or so episodes that I've recorded. Every now and again, I can distinctly remember the founder of Velofix, which is a successful Canadian franchise, that all started over garage beers and snacks. The founder of the media company The Gist, which is a female-focused sports outlet that's gone on to be incredibly successful, same thing. It started over a girls' night with food and wine.
So it's just so interesting because I think so often we think that we'll come up with our best ideas while we're just sitting in our basement scrolling Instagram. Sometimes I'm just not convinced that's the case. I really do believe just getting out there and expressing your ideas. Like, "Hey, I feel like I have this vision to start a company. Does anyone else have this vision? Do you wanna chat about it?" Because if we just keep everything inside, we don't always get that sounding board that's needed in order to actually take that next step. Did you ever have any fear that you would put the idea out there and it wouldn't work? Or were you just unapologetic about, "This is what I want," and talking to people about it and not keeping the idea inside?
Adam: Good question. I don't think I had any fear about it. It was a conversation, just interaction with friends. And to me, there was no risk in saying what I was thinking. It had been on my mind a lot. I had reached a point in my career where I had started to get into executive level roles, my compensation package was changing, and I felt like, "If I don't do this now, I'll never do it." And so the idea of not talking about it with friends seems crazier than the idea of talking about it with them.
And I love conversation with people. People-to-people interaction is so much richer and so much more beneficial to me than say scrolling Instagram, as you mentioned, or being online. You know, email seems like a ubiquitous way of people communicating these days. And it's just less satisfying than actually talking to people. I get a lot of energy from my co-founders. So for me to have that conversation with them was totally normal, and then I actually wasn't surprised when they had the exact same reaction. And when you dig deep into that, there are certain personality characteristics that we have in common. They both grew up in homes with entrepreneurs, so that had been modeled for them all of their lives. In some fashion, we were probably all hardwired to do this together.
Host: Yeah. So before I round out on this topic, so what you were basically saying was you had a very steady, stable job. Things were probably comfortable. You could have stayed on the corporate ladder. We have so many listeners, and even just people I talk with in my personal life, who describe themselves as having the golden handcuffs. It feels virtually impossible to leave at a certain point. And one thing that you said is that you have a high risk tolerance. But for somebody listening who is climbing the corporate ladder, has safety and comfort, but has this yearning to start their own thing, test out entrepreneurship, or just break away, but they're scared, do you have any advice? What would you tell that person?
Adam: Yeah. That is a really great question. I mean, in my case, for sure, the golden handcuffs thing was a real consideration. And I just thought, "If I don't leave now, it's only gonna get more difficult to do it." At the same time, there was no version of my own career story that I ever imagined that didn't involve building something from scratch. And so I guess I looked at it and said, "I think the hardest regret for me to carry for the rest of my life would be if I didn't try this." A regret of inaction. You know, if I try it and it doesn't work, I'll figure it out, right? And sure, maybe there will be a financial setback, but at least I won't be walking around for another 20 years in corporate life going, "Man, what if?"
So in some ways, it's a bit freeing to take that risk. But I get it. It's a practical problem for people who have an appealing career path and a safe income. To those people, I would say, "Look, if you're not ready to take the plunge on a full-time basis, at least start allocating some of your time on the side." There's a Chinese proverb that the journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. And I'm a big believer in momentum. Once you start doing something, you'll see pieces fall into place, and that'll let you know whether you're gonna be able to keep going or not. But if you don't at least take some steps outside of your nine-to-five or whatever it is to start pursuing an idea, you'll never know if it could happen or not. And I just think it would be a tragedy to go through the rest of your career wondering, "What if?"
Host: So true. Yeah. I mean, when we start to fast-forward, it's like dying with an unlived dream is a really heavy burden to carry. So yeah. It's like, write out, "What is my plan B if this doesn't work out?" Map out the risks. But yeah, I mean, if you have that burning fire, it's what are those first few steps you can take? So I think that's great advice. Well, let's talk about, you said the journey of 1,000 miles starts with taking a few steps. So obviously, you and your co-founders, you started to bring this idea to life. Could you walk us through one of the first, "Holy shit, this might actually work," moments? Whether it was small or big or just some piece of validation you guys got that you're like, "Yes! We're on the right path."
Adam: Yeah. Well, I mean, we took steps along the way to de-risk this proposition. So I said we have high risk tolerance. That's true. But we took some steps to figure out whether we had an idea or a business opportunity, 'cause there's a difference between those two things. And one of the things we did is we figured out the formulation and production and a whole bunch of brand design aspects for Awake on our spare time, right? There was a year and a half, two-year period where we were working nights and weekends on Awake. And we got the brand to a point where we could execute a market trial.
So my partner Matt and I, we both went to Wilfrid Laurier University. Shout out WLU, great place. The convenience store manager there was kind enough to let us test market the product. And for context, in a store like that, if a chocolate bar is selling three to five units a week, that's pretty good. So we gave them a couple of boxes, came back the next week, and they had sold them all. So that was a moment of validation, right? That was like, "Wow, okay. This isn't an idea. It's probably a business opportunity. We're onto something here." And it was super encouraging. And it really gave us some data points to talk to some investors about helping to raise some money. And it just confirmed what we had thought. We thought this was a good idea. We'd even done some online research to validate that it was. But there's no substitute for executing an actual market test.
And when we had found out that we were selling, I forget exactly what it was, it was more like 20 bars in a week, it was very exciting. Euphoric almost, right? You spend all this time, effort, and energy building this product that you want to launch into the marketplace. And then when you see other people resonate with it and spend their money on it, it's just the best feeling.
Host: Yeah. You said euphoric, and that's such a good word for it. You're just almost beside yourself that, "Wow, we might be onto something here." Well, first of all, I must say, I don't agree with your "Go Laurier" 'cause I'm a Western grad and my husband is a Laurier grad, so that rubs me the wrong way. No, I'm just kidding. Love Wilfrid Laurier because that's where my other half comes from. But you mentioned that there's a difference between an idea and a business opportunity. And I feel like I see this and have conversations around this with people all the time that they don't understand the difference. Can you just break down what you mean by there's a difference between those two things?
Adam: Yeah. Well, I mean, first is, do other people think the idea is good, right? So you have to socialize the idea. If it doesn't make sense to others, it's definitely not a business opportunity.
Host: Are you saying opinions or objective feedback?
Adam: Probably both. So use Awake as an example. We knew from conversation with other people when we explained the idea of a functional chocolate, a snack that gives you energy, 99% of the time people said, "That's a really good idea. I would buy that." And then we progressed to objectively measuring that with some research. But I think that the key difference between an idea and a business opportunity is are people willing to spend money on it, right? Because ultimately the function of a business is to generate sales and at some point profit. And if people aren't willing to spend money on it, it's not a business idea. And then the last step, in my opinion, is can you turn a profit? People might be willing to spend money on it, but if it's less than the value of the item you're trying to sell, also not a business opportunity.
Host: Okay, I love that. Thank you for that distinction because I think it's important 'cause some people, they run blindly with these ideas, but they don't get the right data or validation and then ultimately it proves that there's no demand or there's no product market fit. So I think that's really important. You also mentioned that market testing is important. So in your case, you actually put the product into a store, got the weekly POS data. Is that what you mean by make sure you do some market testing? Actually put your product or service out into the wild, see how it performs without going all in and distributing to a thousand stores right off the bat?
Adam: Yeah. And I would say there's even a preliminary step that companies should use wherever they can, which is to just do digital research. Everyone's walking around with a phone in their pocket these days and there are apps and other companies that can send surveys out to a well-defined sample population and ask them questions. It's never been easier to do a concept test on a new product. And these things are inexpensive and they're really quick. We do it multiple times a year. It never costs us more than a few hundred dollars, and we have feedback in less than 24 hours.
You know, as an example, we are at the tail end of a brand refresh. We've totally overhauled the design system for our packaging based on some insights that we got. But we used concept testing and package testing along the way, using these app-driven research services, to make decisions. You know, if ever we were uncertain about what we wanted the final design to look like, we would just A/B test something, or you can do A/B/C tests. It's never been easier to get feedback from people.
Host: So true. So true. A great reminder for us. So as you know, the name of this podcast is Rain or Shine. We know that not every day is sunny and rainbows in business. In fact, there are a lot of days where you just feel smacked down, hit in the face, what the heck is going on. I'm curious, has there ever been a challenging season or a failure or a big mistake that's happened? How did you recover and what did it feel like to be in that moment?
Adam: Yeah. The most obvious example of that in our business, it was COVID. So we launched the brand originally as a campus exclusive. We were only on college and university campuses, first in Canada, then in the United States. And that went really well for us. It created a situation where we were able to build relationships with the biggest food service companies in the world, Compass, Sodexo, Aramark. And because our campus business was going really well, they gave us opportunities in other channels that they serve, like healthcare. We have a great healthcare business now, offices, manufacturing. If people are away from home and there's a packaged food offering, we're generally there.
So we really focused on building that channel for the first six and a half years of our company's life. And it actually worked really, really well. We grew every year 30 to 50%. We were profitable. No need for outside capital. And what we didn't realize is we were sequentially putting most of our eggs in the same basket, and then COVID happened. And in a little over a week, 75% of our ship-to's were forced to close, and most of them remained closed for over a year. And so that was a real existential risk for us, right? Almost nobody can lose 75% of their customers in a week and make it through. And it was a really difficult season for us.
You know, it felt arbitrary and unjust. We had customers who wanted to stay open and wanted to keep buying from us, they weren't allowed to. And one of the consequences of all of that was that we had to let a bunch of people go, good people who did good work and were invested in the success of our brand. We had nothing for them to do, so unfortunately, we had to lay them off. Everyone who remained, which was about half the team, had to take a pay cut that lasted for over a year. We didn't pay bonuses for two years. I mean, it was a really difficult situation.
And I think part of the arbitrary nature of what happened inspired some defiance that helped. That was motivation for sure. It was like, "You know what? Screw you. You're gonna close all of my customers? That's unfair. I'm gonna find a way to keep going." And the other thing that helped in that season was just asking myself the question sometimes, "Are you a quitter?" Quitters are losers, I think. And is that how you feel about yourself? If no, then okay. It doesn't look good today, but you've gotta find a way to solve this problem.
And the other thing that Matt and Dan and I did during the whole COVID situation was we got really good at just solving the problem that was right in front of us. The enormity of the challenge that we had was sometimes it felt overwhelming, but then you just break the big problem down into smaller problems and go, "Okay, what is it gonna take for us to get through this week, and then this month, and then this year? And eventually, how do we get the business back to normal? And what did we learn from this whole experience that makes the business better?" Because to have gone through all of that and not at least had a stronger business on the other side of it would have been a real tragedy.
Host: Yeah, I think what you're saying is so important, that it's keeping your identity really solidified. Like you asking yourself, "Am I a quitter?" It's like, "No, I'm an entrepreneur, and I solve problems for a living." So yes, the magnitude of the problem of COVID was massive, but what it sounds like you did was almost break these longer term time frames into, "We just gotta get through today. And what's the problem at hand today? And what can we do with the resources we have today?" Because that's all we ever have, right? And the nature of running a business is that it's not always predictable, or it's not always steady, easygoing, coasting. If you want that, you go work for somebody else and they can deal with all the shit. But when you take this journey, you're kind of accepting that it is a bit of a roller coaster ride and the goal is to not quit until you know it's the right decision to quit.
Adam: I actually think that's an overlooked and unglamorized secret of success. One of the nice things about being an entrepreneur and in this line of work is I've had the chance now over the last 12 years to meet lots of other founders. Some of them have built enormous businesses and they're tremendously wealthy, some of them are just getting started, lots of them are in between. I haven't heard a single story that was all sunshine and rainbows. Everybody's had adversity. I joke, if you haven't lied awake in bed at night wondering how you're gonna meet payroll next week, you haven't really had the entrepreneur's experience.
So in my opinion, resilience isn't just a nice attribute for an entrepreneur, it's a prerequisite. You're gonna face adversity. And one of the keys to success is just finding a way to stay alive. Keep going. I'm a big believer in the power of momentum. When you break through obstacles, it builds momentum in your favor. And I don't know, the market seems to love a winner, so stay around long enough to become a winner and then things start to happen for you.
Host: I love that. I once heard a quote that basically said when we complain, you're saying to the universe that I don't understand how the world works. Of course there are good and bad days, or say you're complaining when it's a rainy day. It's like, "I don't want this rain," but that means your model of what the world actually is is inaccurate because there are going to be rainy days. We actually need them to balance out the sunny days and for all the plants and nature. And so to complain about it is just saying, "I didn't expect this." But if you can just reframe that, saying, "Of course there's gonna be rainy days and of course there's gonna be sunny days," so when I'm hit with the rainy day, it's all good because I expected it. My model of how the world works is accurate.
And I always think about that for business because it's like, of course there's gonna be shitty days. That's not when we give up and say goodbye and say, "What the heck? This sucks. Let's complain all day." And it's like, "Okay. This is what I signed up for and I'm gonna keep going because I know it gets really good on the other side of solving this challenge."
Adam: Yeah. I totally agree. In some strange way, adversity is like exercise but for your mind, right? When these problems happen, if you can get through them, on some level, it makes you stronger. Now, if your business experience is nothing but adversity, it probably means you have some managerial discipline issues or you're in the wrong line of work. But I think everybody should expect some adversity along the way. And when you get through it, man, it's an accomplishment that you need to feel good about because it's a reminder when you inevitably face adversity in the future, "I can do this."
Host: Absolutely. So obviously, on the other side of adversity, there's a lot of incredible moments, celebrations, times when you're just elated to be an entrepreneur. I'm curious, with you and your co-founders, do you guys take the time to celebrate and to reflect on your progress? You've taken this company so far. You guys have done so much that is truly incredible. How do you guys stop and not always chase the next goal, but really anchor in, "Let's celebrate how far we've come and congratulate ourselves because nobody else is really doing it for you"?
Adam: That's a good question. I would say we do. We celebrate the wins probably not as much as we should because probably another feature of being a good entrepreneur is you're inherently dissatisfied. You know, when something good happens, you're always, "All right. Great. Now, on to the next thing." But we have a little bit of company process built in that helps. For one, we do a business review with the whole team every month. It's one hour. We'll walk through what were the results. We encourage everyone to share the highlights from the piece of the business that they own. And we really try and go out of our way to celebrate what went well. We'll also acknowledge and confront what didn't go well, but we really try to celebrate what went well.
If we have a record quarter, we generally measure our performance milestones quarterly. If we have a record quarter, 100% we'll celebrate that. Maybe we'll do a team lunch. And then major milestones, along the way we've had a couple of them and we've done ad hoc celebrations. One big part of our growth story has been getting into Costco. And we launched with Costco about a year and a half ago. When we got the confirmation from the buyer that she was bringing our product in to Eastern Canada, we just sort of stopped what we were doing and took the whole team out for dinner. And it was a great night. It was a great memory for everyone and we just enjoyed ourselves for a couple of hours and then it was like, "All right. Now, we gotta go back to the office tomorrow and make it all happen." But I do agree. There's a power in celebrating the wins along the way, and you need to. It's like charging a battery, so to speak.
Host: Is there one dreamer on your team? Who's the one that's always, "Oh, what if we got into Costco?" Or, "Imagine if Awake was the go-to chocolate brand in all of the world?" Or is that best done as a team? How are you constantly pushing the boundaries on what your vision is and where you're going and what goals you guys have?
Adam: That's a good question. I'd say it's a bit collaborative. You know, ironically, maybe I might be the biggest dreamer. I'm really energized by opportunity and chasing pathways for growth. Whenever I hear when someone on the team suggests a new idea, I get super excited about it. You know, when we talk about new product development, I get super excited about it. And it seems in the space of a couple of seconds, I can go from hearing about an idea or thinking of an idea to imagining it being a nine-figure revenue stream and everyone in the world eating it.
So it's, but those moments happen, I'd say, across the team. And I'm glad of that because one of the things we've learned to do over time is hire for culture. We hire for attitude. And specifically, we're looking for people with an entrepreneurial mindset, problem solvers in real time who are passionate about growing, who just want to grow. And over time, we've become pretty good at identifying those people. And one of the nice outcomes of that is we got a lot of people on the team who have big ambition and share it in compelling ways.
Host: And obviously, you've created that culture where it's welcomed, because I know that in some workplaces, people contribute ideas, but then they get shot down, and then they feel like, "Oh, well, it's not my place to share an idea." So have you done anything to specifically foster a culture of ideation and share things with us? Or is that just in the hiring process and making sure people have that entrepreneurial mindset?
Adam: Well, part of it is in the hiring process. And by the way, we weren't always good at that. We've made our fair share of bad hires along the way. It's like so many things in business, hiring has been a learned skill for us. So part of it's in the hiring process. Part of it's overt. You know, on the wall in our office, we have this thing, the Awake Belief System. And it's just ten points, and it's really around trying to build a culture of continuous improvement. We can always be better. That's rule number one. And I just think if you openly adopt a mindset of continuous learning and continuous improvement, it creates an environment where people feel comfortable sharing ideas.
And a lot of good things that have happened in our business have been as a result of the team suggesting ideas. One example, to our detriment, my co-founders and I, we ignored e-commerce or D2C as a business channel for the first six years of our company's existence. Mostly because it's not what we knew. We came from Pepsi, and what that company is amazing at is selling food in convenience stores and grocery stores. So we just assumed that's how you build every food brand. And we weren't aware that the world was changing in a really important way.
But so we had someone on the team, a marketing manager, and he was just relentless. He was always telling me, "No, no, we have to work on Amazon. We have to try stuff on Amazon." And I sort of dismissed it for a while, but then he just wouldn't let go. So I said, "Okay, let's do something. You tell me what the plan should look like, and as long as it's not insane, we'll do it." And it started to bear fruit immediately. And because of that, in 2019, we started to lean into D2C. We got a Shopify store up and running, and we started to learn the skills you need to be successful online. Well, that stream of revenue actually was probably the main thing that helped us get through COVID.
Because at the same time that everything else was closing, that was taking off. And if it hadn't been for that, we might not be around today. So that was a really great object lesson and good reminder for me and for Matt and Dan that the people on our team have good ideas. We need to listen to them. If you're gonna let somebody work for a company that you've poured your heart and soul into, you should at least trust them enough to listen to them when they suggest ideas. Doesn't mean they're all good, right? We've had people share plenty of bad ones. You just say, "Here are the problems with that idea. If you can find a way to make it better, let me know." Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Host: Yeah, it's funny, eh? As entrepreneurs and as founders, we can have our blinders on so much that we're missing these obvious opportunities, which is why I think it's such a vital reminder that you shared to lean on your team, ask them their feedback. If you're a solopreneur, hire a consultant or a coach, or have a business bestie that you bounce ideas off of and say, "Am I missing something here?" Because we can get so just head down, we think we know everything that's going on. And yeah, I think the truth is that we all have blinders on in some way, and it's really important to not just have your head down and assume you know it all at any point in this journey.
Adam: No, yeah, nobody can do it all. And it's interesting because a lot of times in media, visionary founders are sort of glamorized. And when you dig beneath the surface, you almost always discover that they had an operational partner or a financial partner. I'm not aware of many, if any, great companies that were built by a single person. And we've said since day one, maybe the biggest strength of our partnership, Matt and Dan and I, is that we know what we don't know. And it's liberating to go out and find people who know those things and can bring that knowledge and capability to your team.
The idea that anyone can do everything is ludicrous when you actually step back and look at the number of things you need to know and the number of decisions that need to be made. It's just unrealistic for one person to do it all. And then when you bring in the experts to fill the gaps, you realize, wow, they're so much better at this than I ever could have been, even if you devoted your entire work week to learning the new skills. So yeah, everybody's got their strengths, and it's so lovely to be able to include other people in the vision as you grow a team.
Host: Amen, yeah. Couldn't agree more. Adam, this has been so awesome. I am so grateful to you for coming on the Rain or Shine podcast, sharing a little bit of the backstory, how you guys get through those hard moments and through the good days too. So where can people find Awake Chocolate, both in retail stores and if they wanna purchase online? And how can we connect with you personally?
Adam: Yeah. So if you wanna find Awake in store, we have lots of retail distribution across Canada. Shoppers Drug Mart, Bulk Barn, Coast to Coast, we're in all stores. Loblaws, different divisions of Sobeys, Costco, we're in on a rotational basis. AwakeChocolate.ca and Amazon.ca are great places to find Awake. And then in terms of connecting, either with the brand, @AwakeChocolate on social, or for me, I'm on LinkedIn. It's Adam D'Eramo. That's probably the best way to get in touch with me.
Host: Awesome. Yeah, we'll link all of that in the show notes and encourage people to go pick up some Awake Chocolate next time they're out and about shopping. So we wish you all the best and thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Adam: Thanks for having me.
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If you're a solopreneur, author, or thought leader wondering why your marketing isn't translating to consistent revenue, the problem usually isn't what you think.
After 8+ years of working with ambitious entrepreneurs, I've discovered something crucial: most marketing challenges aren't about needing more tactics—they're about solving the wrong problem.
Here's What We'll Uncover Together:
✓ The Real Constraint blocking your growth (it's rarely what you think)
✓ Your SEO Opportunity to rank on Google for what matters
✓ Your AI Visibility Gap and how to show up when prospects ask ChatGPT
✓ Your Lead Generation Blind Spots and where you're losing potential clients
✓ Your Custom Funnel Analysis showing exactly where the leaks are
Book now!
The Potential Return: A clear path to $10K-$50K+ in new revenue
I work with business owners who are done guessing and ready for a marketing strategy built on what actually works—not marketing myths.