Tag: employees

Meet our Chief Science Officer and Certified Food Scientist, Scott Riefler, who applied his food and beverage knowledge and experience to create SōRSE, our water-soluble emulsion technology for infusing beverages, food items, topicals and nutraceuticals. Before entering the food and beverage world, Scott worked as an advanced materials scientist in the aerospace industry. By nature, Scott is a teacher; he is a wealth of knowledge on a variety of subjects and is a mentor to many of SōRSE’s employees. When Scott is not at work, you can find him spending time with his wife and daughter, practicing yoga, and making a mean loaf of sourdough bread, which is also a science!

After working in the aerospace industry and at TIC Gums, how did you end up at SōRSE?

Serendipitously. I was at a concert with a friend who had brought a friend, and in chatting, I asked him what he was up to. He said he had left Microsoft and had entered the cannabis space, which I thought sounded pretty interesting. As we continued talking, I let him know that I had recently retired, and I mentioned something about the edibles platform. He then rattled off a whole bunch of reasons why it couldn’t be done. It gets me pretty excited when somebody tells me you can’t do something, so I responded by saying that I had some ideas that might work. That led to lab work, ultimately delivering his version of the impossible. It was revolutionary to the people who were working at the startup, which led to an invitation to join the team.

In your time with the company, what are you most proud of?

I am proud of watching a cohesive team form and exploit the value or the potential value this technology brings. I am proud that we have adopted a food business mentality with everything that goes with it in terms of food safety. I am most proud of the progress the team and my colleagues make.

What do you love about your work, and what do you find challenging?

I love that it’s applied technology into new frontiers. It’s new — we are pressing into the not-yet-possible with incredible speed. At times, I do struggle with setting high expectations and then delivering, so what is most challenging for me is outwardly projecting a realistic level of expectations while keeping my internal, unbridled enthusiasm a bit hidden. I often feel I wish I could be a stronger contributor. I do my best to practice that serenity poem.

At SōRSE and outside of SōRSE, you are a teacher – you mentor scientists, and you give presentations to people inside and outside of the cannabis industry. Why is sharing your knowledge with others important to you?

There are several levels to this. I follow the teachings and philosophies of a few people. In the world of systems, I am a W. Edward Deming disciple. I believe very strongly in his principles. In selling cycles, I believe in spin selling completely — so there are several facets to this answer.

First of all, everybody sells and everybody should be selling 100% of the time. One of the cornerstones for successful selling is first building trust. If you don’t first build trust, it is going to be very hard to get someone to give you their money. Sharing knowledge and educating is fundamental to building trust. For example, if I go to buy a car, and I find out early in the game that I know more about the car than the salesperson does, that person is never going to sell me a car. If the sales manager doesn’t listen to my request to talk to someone more knowledgeable than me, then they have lost my trust. We absolutely need to listen to the customer and hear what they are saying.

I also believe that I practice the idea of leaving it better than I found it. Something that we all inherently have is knowledge we share, particularly knowledge on topics other people may not have. If you can figure that part out, then leaving it better than you found it is become easy…paying it forward, if you will.

Back to selling — we are attempting to build a brand; we are attempting to get our phone to ring. One of the ways to build that brand and earn trust is to have our brand recognized as an authority in our space. Being invited to speak at industry symposiums, trade shows, attendance at our webinars, or even conversations with major customers is an indication that the marketplace sees us and our brand as an authority figure in our space. This is critical, it’s bedrock, it’s the foundation for us to be able to sell our product. Thus, it is incumbent for every one of us to be a teacher.

Then of course there is the burning platform theory — as a company, we need to continually grow and educate our employees, and acknowledge how important it is that employees are always training and learning. You can’t learn through osmosis.  Personally, I am constantly reading and attending seminars; I make a personal effort to constantly upgrade my training and then pass that knowledge on to others. I want to help people become “dangerous” and turn them into dangerous players in their space, and for me, that is almost always about knowledge and experience.

If you were to give a piece of advice to someone entering this industry, what would it be?

The first thing I would say is that nothing is special about this industry. Anyone who says that it is, is wrong; they are likely smoking the product.  Work hard, never substitute knowledge for familiarity, make sure it is your passion, and have fun.

To end, this is one of my favorite quotes: “If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” Albert Einstein

Meet our Director of Product Development, Michelle Sundquist, who brings over 20 years of product development experience in the food and beverage industry to our team. If you have ever wondered who was behind Starbucks cold brew coffee product launch, that was Michelle. Her dedication to creating quality products is evident in the work she does with our customers; she listens carefully to their ideas and helps them clarify and actualize their product vision. Outside of SōRSE, she is an active outdoors-person who loves skiing and scuba-diving and a dedicated Packers fan.

What have been some of the significant moments in your time working at SōRSE?

For the Mad Tasty project, we were able to put together a number of beverages quickly. I think having Ryan Tedder be able to choose something, go into production and move to market so fast is impressive. What I enjoy the most is building the infrastructure for R & D — how projects come in and get approved, and how we approach timelines. As long as you are confident and good at what you do, it’s pretty easy to turn something around quickly and efficiently. I like creating the processes for getting projects done.

In the very beginning when we were creating the emulsion, we had a good product — people liked it, but they didn’t know why they liked it. Once you try it, you become a strong believer in how controllable the experience is. Because we understand the science of the emulsion and have gathered documentation on it, our customers feel confident in our products. It makes me really proud that as a food ingredient company, we have gotten to that place quickly. Having all of the different departments represented that you would typically see in a bigger company also makes me proud — it shows that we are thinking about the big picture.

What is it like working with customers who are trying to figure out how to create and then launch a product? How do you coach them through the process?

It’s really exciting working with customers. When they talk about their products, there is so much passion. There is a big difference between hearing someone talk about something they are excited about and reading about it somewhere. In person, you get pulled into the passion.

When I start talking to someone about a new development project, I like to have them tell me what they want to do in their own words. My goal is to get to know them and their personality through talking to them. From there, I look at the words they are using to describe their product, and think about if those are words they would use in their life in general. After that, you can get a better idea of who the customer is. At the same time, you have to know what the current trends are and what the competition is doing.

Once you get a sense of how the person communicates their ideas and an understanding of the product they are looking to launch, then you can get into the specifics, coaching them through the nitty-gritty, like calorie count, organic, low sugar…. People are very focused on calorie count, but the more calories you allow, the more ingredients you can use. You need to really explore the customer’s reasoning for the decisions they are making for their beverage.

At Starbucks, we were constantly training, particularly in problem-solving, dialing in on the development process and delivering what the customer wants and needs. A lot of this comes down to conversation and communication. We need to think about how we can make the customers’ ideas work while constantly remembering what their goal is. It’s important to explore the “why” — because there could be multiple ways to get to a solution that may work a little better.

When you think about someone who has been a mentor to you or influenced your career positively, who is that person and how did they help you along the way?

There are a number of people who have influenced my career and who I look up to. There are two people in particular I turn to for advice, and each has a unique skillset I gravitate towards.

One is Lani, a Global VP for Beverage at Starbucks. She has the ability to stay incredibly Zen through any situation, which I think is really impressive. A lot of the classes she had us take were around mindfulness, self awareness and understanding how others may work differently, which was something I really appreciated. Mindfulness helps you get in the moment, step back, stay in the moment and reset. The class made me realize that everyone gets stressed and that we have to own it.

Jill is the other mentor I rely on; she is very creative and a very strong food scientist. In my creativity, I am methodical — whereas her creativity comes from all directions, which makes it messy and chaotic. I love to learn from her because it challenges me to think about things in a different way. I’m constantly curious as to which way is a faster or more successful process.

What advice would you give to someone entering this industry?

I would remind them to focus on all of the attributes that make people who work at start-ups valuable to other companies. If you join a company because you enjoy the culture, you have to know that culture can change quickly with the turnover of a few people. If you join a company because of the product they sell, the industry is so new that the products they sell can also change.

I think it is better to not have expectations. What you can expect is to work hard and know that you won’t get a lot of direction, but you’ll have your name on the plane when you get done building it. You also need to have a lot of self-confidence in the work you are doing and be able to figure out if you are being successful or not — you have to be able to assess and evaluate yourself.

You also have to know that there can be chaos anywhere, in any business. At the end of the day, businesses are made up of people, and people can be messes — you have emotions, frustration, newness to the business, and disagreement. Because of that, every business has their struggles.

If you could, what product would you create for consumer use?

If I had the know-how, I would come up with more reusable, compostable packaging. If there is a compostable solution to packaging, companies should be forced to use it.

Can you share a fun fact that not a lot of people know about you?

I met Kurt Cobain once at the Health Department in highschool where I used to volunteer as a Peer Educator. He came by with his daughter Frances and signed a bunch of swag — so I won a pair of hot pink, glow in the dark boxer shorts that he signed.

My husband and I also got married at the top of Whistler and skied down in our outfits together — peak to creek!

Meet our Chief Revenue Officer, John Kueber, who brings over twenty years of experience as a business executive building companies and developing brands to the team. John loves the challenge of building out new processes, educating new customers, and finding people to manage new projects. When he is not at work, you can find John spending time with his wife and twin daughters who love sports as much as he does or putting miles in on his bike. An accomplished athlete, John has completed an Ironman, summited Mount Rainier two times as well as ten other Cascade peaks, and has ridden over the major cycling passes for the Tour De France and Giro D’Italia.   

What have been some significant moments or some highlights in your year at SōRSE?   

I’m most proud of what I accomplished in Canada; I was able to find about half a dozen marquee accounts for SōRSE and Valens, and I felt this validated that we can take what we have to another country. It also validated Valens’ initial investment in licensing the technology, and I’d like to think it played a big part in them increasing their investment on the second license. They saw it was working in Canada and hopefully that was a factor in them seeing the opportunity for the other countries where they have licenses. I’m really proud of jumping in feet first, going out and finding those accounts without a ton of direction and helping get that business set up, from messaging to pricing to process, to helping the Valens team build their sales team. It’s all been super rewarding and fun. People were genuinely excited about SōRSE in Canada, and it’s cool when you have a product that people are interested in. Currently I am happy with the changes and the progress that we’re making in the sales team. I feel like we’ve gone from having limited structure to a more solid structure, and we are forming a team with powerful personalities to build up our business.     

What do you enjoy about your role and what do you find particularly challenging about it?   

In comparison to last year when I was managing my accounts and answering to one person, my new role as CRO has shifted me towards management. The fun thing right now is that we are an early stage company with a startup atmosphere that is trying to reach a national and global market. There is no end of productive work to be done, whether it’s bringing on new customers, building out new processes, or finding people to manage new projects – and all of that is fun. The downside is that every day you’re questioning your priorities and you’re questioning if you’re moving fast enough, using the right amount of capital to go fast… what do you with complete regard to speed, and what do you do a little more slowly and carefully and make sure it’s done right? Every day I’m defining priorities, which is true for most leaders in businesses, but it’s a little more true for this business. I think the cool thing is, unlike a lot of startups, our strong capital base allows us to execute in the right way.     

What is your philosophy on sales, and what qualities makes a salesperson successful?   

Salespeople have to have their own internal engine. It’s an overused cliché, but they absolutely have to have grit — the ability to stay persistent and tough even when a deal is taking a long time or a period of some lost deals.  The most important qualities for me, and two of the hardest ones to hire for, are the ability to be both empathetic and the ability to create a narrative.   

To be empathetic, you need to be able to listen to your customer, and be able to repeat back (in different words!) what you hear them saying, and understand what they are going through. That is a skill you have to develop, and a lot of people don’t ever develop it.   

Combined with that, you’ve got to be able to create a narrative for the customer: “Here is what you are going through, here is what SōRSE does, and here the way those two things can be woven together.” You have to build a story on how our product can provide a solution for the customer. Humans tend to think in terms of stories, they think in terms of what works well for others; what we are working on is taking data and figuring out how it fits in to the narrative.   
 

Good salespeople also understand when a project is not a good fit. They value the customer’s time, and if a project is not worth doing, they’re not afraid to say so and move on, because they know that if they work hard, they will find better opportunities.    

Can you describe your first sales job, and how you learned how to build relationships with customers?   

 My first sales job was selling programs for the University of Washington crew team. As a freshman you had to sell 100 programs on Saturdays before you could move on with your day. Many of my teammates dreaded this, but one friend and I had a ton of fun with it and would sell 500 programs each, really just by going the extra mile to have fun with the Husky fans walking into the game. If you love your product and love connecting with people, I found you could have a great career with sales.  After college, I sold internet advertising for the New York Yankees. That was a lot of fun because it was very early days of the internet, so I was learning a lot about technology while also getting to sell.    

Having said that, I did decide early on that while I love to sell, I didn’t want to purely be a professional salesperson. Back in the 90s, if you were 25, a lot of people weren’t comfortable handing you $500,000 to start a company. Once I left my ad sales job, I raised $200,000 from friends and family, and started my first company which I sold for just under $5,000,000 after two years. That was a confidence builder and an experience that made me realize that I had some good entrepreneurial qualities.   

More importantly, I also learned an important lesson about conviction from that experience; that first business I built was an early internet commerce store, and I probably had 200 people tell me it was a dumb idea and that it wouldn’t work, and they were proven wrong. Most people really have no clue what’s going to work and what isn’t. If you think your idea is going to work, if you have conviction and passion for your idea, don’t let the haters keep you down.    

That experience parlayed into a voice technology business which merged with one of Howard’s companies; then it happened with a media business that was bought by a larger media company. In situations like these, you have to do the selling, you have to do the work, but you also have to have conviction, believe that you’re smart, that you’re doing the right things, and building the right business.   

Bringing this back to SōRSE, early when I heard about this opportunity from Howard, I started looking at the CBD and cannabis market – and the conventional, common wisdom out there is that cannabis is weird business for a variety of reasons. Yet once I dug in and looked closely at the marketplace, particularly around CBD, I saw that is was a compelling, good-for-society business. I’m passionate about it, I have convictions around it, I knew I could sell it, and there is room for growth, so it sounded like the right opportunity.    

If you were to give a piece of advice just entering the cannabis business as well as someone who has just started at SōRSE, what would it be?   

That one is easy: Find a specific problem to solve or a specific solution to create and work hard to meet it. Don’t jump into the cannabis business just for the sake of it. Right now, don’t JUST launch a CBD sparkling drink; it’s been done. Launch a CBD drink that is targeted towards a specific market or provides a certain function. Fill a specific need.  

At SōRSE, I think it’s important that we stay lean and stay hungry. We need to work each month with the same hunger that we did in the beginning. Let’s keep up the intensity and enjoy it.    

We are at the beginning of a new decade. What was your life like in 2010? What were you doing for fun?   

Ten years ago, we were living in Seattle, and my twin daughters were three years old. My wife and I were knee-deep in parenting them. I was COO of a media company, raising my twin girls, and not having much time for anything else. I wouldn’t trade having kids for anything, but it was definitely all encompassing for a few years!  Having two little girls waking up at all hours for a few years definitely took it out of me and my wife, Katarina.