Past guest and Marine Corps Veteran, Frank Manteau, joins the show again to discuss an update to his super popular product the "Crayons Ready To Eat".  These are the worlds firsts, colorable and edible crayons finally ending the heal risks of Marines eating real crayons!  Frank's business is unique and came with its own challenges, and still does but he has used his no quit attitude to constantly find solutions to bring his idea to life.  Frank shares his companies story and how he overcame these challenges and the mindset to put them into motion.

Battle Buddy Podcast Guest Links:

https://crayonsreadytoeat.com/

https://www.warriorrising.org/

https://fundthefirst.com/

Transcript from Episode 86 with Frank Manteau:

Keith McKeever 0:02

Welcome back to another episode of battle buddy podcast today we've got a repeat guest again, you're gonna want to tune in for this. Frank mentale from cranes already eat was on here almost two years ago. And I personally seen his journey from taking his idea of the joke about Marines and cranes ready to eat and taking the idea and some prototypes to fully launched. He's He's gotten into the hands of some amazing people and his business is just booming. So we wanted to bring a lot here and get a little update on what's going on and some of the journey, the bumps in the road that he had on that journey. So let's dive into it.

Keith McKeever 0:41

Welcome to the battle buddy podcast with Keith McKeever.

Keith McKeever 0:47

Welcome back to the show. Frank,

Frank Manteau 0:49

thank you for having me here. Appreciate it.

Keith McKeever 0:51

Yeah, you know what, there's nothing better than to have somebody come back on almost two years later, and share their successes. You know, we should we should celebrate everybody successes. And I've I've seen your journey from multiple different angles, you know, through the warrior Council, whatnot over the last couple of years, man, it, it's, it's always awesome seeing other vet, go out there and take an idea and run with it and turn it into something. So

Frank Manteau 1:17

Well, I'll tell you one thing, the success has not been easy. And it has come with many failures. And you know, anything in life, everybody's afraid to fail, don't be afraid to fail, you have to fail, in order to learn and grow and be successful, be willing to fail, fail in my book, no matter how many times you do it, it's always a first attempt in learning something. So look at it as first attempt in learning, you know, you didn't work out that way you learn another way, or you learn something else how to do another, you know, do it a different way. But fail and learn from it and pull yourself up and get there to the top and you know, push forward, improvise, adapt and overcome in every situation you can and push on and you will be able to make an app.

Keith McKeever 2:09

I couldn't agree more. I think that failing teaches you I would argue 10 times as much as succeeding does, yes, this is all the little lessons that you learned along that path. So you got to feel a little bit like that. Two steps forward, one step back is something like that, right yet. You gotta gotta learn a little bit along along the path. So before we dive into that, give us a little bit of recap of who you are, what you did, the Marine Corps, those kind of things for people who might not have listened to the first episode or, or don't know who you are.

Frank Manteau 2:39

So my name is Frank manto. I'm a seven and a half year, United States Marine Corps veteran in the infantry. I was in 95 202. While I was there, I did not only the infantry, I was so Coach recruits on the rifle with the rifle range, I started my career as security forces for a little bit. And that the opportunity to you know, do seven and a half years and and I'm getting my back messed up. So right around right after 911, I had to make a choice of staying in transferring out of the infantry, or getting out and taking care of my kids. But transferring out in the inventory wasn't an option, I wanted to go and spend time over there, I wanted to deploy but with the back injuries and everything else, it was best interest for the Marine Corps and myself. Go ahead and get out and jump into the civilian world. And for me, it wasn't easy. I I stepped away from the military community for many years, it ended up causing you know, a lot of trying to go through life without having you know, people next to you or people around you is not an easy task, especially going after getting out going and getting divorced, being a single dad, two kids, you know, young kids and everything else and trying to figure it out. And it wasn't until my kids were a little bit older that I started getting back into the military community and realized how much I missed. The camaraderie, the connections, the you know, everybody to be able to who's in front of you who's left or right, yeah, who can you surround yourself with, and really helped me understand that. You can't go through life alone. So you got to have people around you. And the more you get out there, the more you get with people, you start networking. Your network is your network, show me your, you know, your closest friends to share your future. They said it many times to different people. And it's true. I can say that for a fact that the moment I started getting surrounded by people, I was able to reevaluate my life situations and what I was doing and how things I was going about things and started making you know changes to better myself, not only personally but When I started the business endeavors to expand and grow those two levels that I never even thought of. And if you're not networking not working. So

Keith McKeever 5:11

definitely one good way to look at it, you know, and who doesn't like meeting more people in expanding connections, and learn more about people. So once you've been on this, this journey, the cranes already be out of scroll across the bottoms in the show notes for anybody listening or watching too. But gosh, we met over two years ago, in the winter Council, veteran veterans group on Facebook Mastermind Group bounce ideas off of people connect to people network, those kinds of things. And I've seen you take this idea of basically a prototype, when I had John last time this idea that I think at that point in time you were searching for a place to actually make the crabs ready. If I remember, right, you were you were looking at like, kitchens in soup kitchens, like On days off, or churches and stuff like that, and just trying to explore that and refine the recipe and everything. And gosh, you know, if people follow me, I did a live a couple of months ago, getting my kids unboxing ours, and they got to pick and they loved it. I'm glad I didn't have like a whole case of them, because they would just sleep for three days. They love their sweets, and they love the chocolate. But we've had quite the journey from there. So what what I wanted to ask was, what were some of those early, you know, kind of bumps in the road that you had after that? And how did you kind of get past some of that stuff?

Frank Manteau 6:44

Well, answer the second part first. improvise, adapt and overcome adversity. And perseverance is what got me through it. This five year journey has been hard, it hasn't been easy. It's been a lot of obstacles that have come in have come into the way of it. And one thing that the Marine Corps has taught me is, how are you going to get over that obstacle? How are you going to get around that obstacle? How are you going to go through that obstacle? And that's what you need to be able to do is whenever you have those obstacles, what are you going to do to be able to get get past that and then be able to overcome that obstacle. You know, when we first talked back, probably not in April, I had just converted the Grands ready to eat to an LLC, we decided to get out of the local cottage food realm and make it out of my kitchen to move it into a much broader large scale nationwide opportunity to meet FDA requirements. So we can ship our product across the across the country and everything. So at that time, we had just launched a crowdfunding, we went through fun, the first, we got connected with warrior rising in June of last year of 2021. And was able to not only secure a grant, but we were able to get connected with multiple people within you know, business and be able for me to take what I learned in the military, being in a five paragraph order a terrain, map, SWOT analysis, and all these things and everything else and what I learned in military, and how to implement that to be able to operate the business and build a business, you know, the business plan and everything to make it you know, get to that next level. And getting those connections really helped out and having fun the first knowing that unlike other traditional crowdfunding platforms, every 30 days, I was able to start requesting funds off of that. So I could put it into the business and which also helped me to the fire that those that donated, we made sure that we were they were going to get their product because now we were putting the money into getting the custom molds. Now we were putting the money into getting the packaging needed to meet the FDA requirements and get the downpayments on to the manufacturer that we found after being told no, or not even getting an answer from over 60 Some freaking chocolate manufacturers or confectionaries. And what's the pause right

Keith McKeever 9:26

here? That's 60 You didn't get an answer from how over 60 A lot of people would have stopped at five or probably less. Go back to that failure thing. I mean, that's that's pushing on. So anyway, I just wanted to point that out. That's That's incredible.

Frank Manteau 9:44

Yeah. And it's it's not taking no for an answer. It's finding out well, what was it that that conversation entailed that had them say no? Well, some of it was we weren't doing that. We didn't have the we didn't want to put the volume or put had the money to build to do what they were asking us to do they want us to do 20,000 units can do 20,000 units, we need something smaller just to get us off the ground and get us going. Or they come back with. We don't you know, that's not their realm. They don't deal with that. That's not their actual excuse, okay, fine. Then we find somebody who is, well, your engineer chocolate, we don't know what you did. We don't want to tap into it. We don't want to, you know, attempt this and go through any of this. It's like, we found two places that said, yes, they will sign our NDA and they will talk to us. One, just, you know, the communication wasn't there. And then we found our manufacturer out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. And they were ecstatic to work with us. They understood that, you know, we had, they love the story behind it. They very they support the military, they support the military community. And to know that what we were doing was not only bringing a job to reality, but we were making a product that was so versatile, that it can interact with kids, parents be able to have enjoyment with their their kids, people in that love chocolate artist, daycares. And eventually, you know, hopefully here within, you know, this time of the year that we will be getting only not only in a retail locations, the fact that also getting us into restaurants to where we can have those traits in restaurants was like those visions and those ideas, gave them the opportunity to sit there and say yes, we will try to do what we can to make it happen. So we landed that. And between the crowdfunding between the water rising between the support of the community and with no marketing, no paid advertising, no anything. And me getting out there and going to different events and getting involved with different entities to be able to see the community share our odd idea and our product with their followers and nerve people to not only get us a broad stroke of hearing United States, but they talked about us on a podcast and Frick in the UK. And you know, all these other different places and it's like, I'm just the freakin guy from the backwoods of Ohio. That was an infantry grunt in the United States Marine Corps that you know, does woodworking work blue collar jobs, all his life and everything else to have this product being talked about in multiple places and multiple industries was a game changer to know that we had something good and going through you know, making it happen and then we started getting A's and it's like you said, anybody would have stopped at five and we had the problem of our packaging. We were supposed to launch the goal was May 1 of 2022. We were going to have product launched Well, we had an issue with our packaging. They came back with the wrong color on the stripe of the packaging. How do you go back and redo that? That set us back? All right July Here we go. We're gonna launch in July of 2020. To manufacture it gets the packaging somebody on the packaging line that made the final decision on the order read the paperwork instead of calling emailing saying anything they saw see our E and thought maybe it was a typo and it's supposed to be CRP packaging, which means child resistant packaging. So not only do you have one zip lock access, you have two zip lock accesses. That is meant for like CBD or you know product that's not supposed to be accessible by kids everything else you got take this line here and I get a video from the manufacturer is like is this the packaging you wanted and they were showing me and I'm like what? And it shrunk the packaging. So now our crowns would not fit in the packaging. They got 10,000 packages of wrong size had to go back to the packaging manufacturer made you know fix their mistake and they didn't charge us they went back and had it redone and we restarted the whole process over again to finally in August I think it was August they got the packaging right. Got it the manufacturer and then he started getting this stuff then to allow us to finally get product in September and If I intention was not to be able to ship the product, our manufacturer was going to do the distribution for us. Well, with the economy opening up, and the business is trying to find people to work, a lot of industries over there, and Oklahoma decided to say, hey, we'll give you $18 an hour to work at, you know, target or come to McDonald's for 15. And with the sign on bonus, and a lot of these brand new college kids or, you know, people that are, you know, interns and stuff, went and worked elsewhere to get a higher pay and lose their passion of what they went to school for. So now we had to, how are we going to ship this, who's going to be able to do this tribution send it out here to me, send it to me, I will figure it out. I didn't have a location didn't have anything for it. Got it shipped out here. And it, trying to figure out how to do this. I don't know anything about shipping, packing labels, how to, you know, figure out the package, the product and everything else. And it was a massive learning curve. And at that time, my chief strategic officer Flossie Hall, she has a great understanding of business, she has a good network within her consulting company. And she was able to get us male spouses to come on and help us with our marketing, you know, do our did graphics design, do our social media handle that for us, it was able to get somebody that was knowledgeable in sales, and customer relations of buying, you know, products for different locations and everything. And that was able to help us Okay, now we have somebody understands that what kind of package do we need to get to ship the product out? So we shifted from doing the priority mailers, which would only fit so many in a box where you fit not, you know, so many and then he had to put stuff in extra packaging to keep it from rattling around breaking and everything else.

Keith McKeever 17:09

If it's confusing to go to the post office and try to figure out what package you need. Exactly right. Everybody has that problem, they go to the post office, I need to ship this, like, what's the easiest, most cost effective way of doing this, you know, it's

Frank Manteau 17:24

exactly. And you know, getting all that figured out. And then, in the beginning of September, at the same time to practice, the product is getting shipped here, I had the opportunity to connect with another go to award rising business shower, as to follow up with them that, you know, hey, we appreciate your support, you know, you're continuing to help us out and wanted to show them what had what we had done. And go down there and take the product and show them and give them a thanks and appreciation for their what their funding had done and their mentorship and everything. And it led me the opportunity to connect with Tim Jensen and grunt style which he within a five minute conversation offered us an opportunity to do 10,000 unit loi with Ron style that all of our that they will have our product and all their retail locations. And we didn't even we haven't even launched the product to be able to sell openly, yet at this point. So it's like now I'm learning a whole new ballgame. I gotta figure out wholesale pricing, I gotta figure out, you know, what's the manufacturing so now we're stood we're trying to get it to where we can get all these pre orders and his crowd fundings, you know, shipped out. Now we're trying to figure out now we're getting into the wholesale realm. It's like, alright,

Keith McKeever 18:49

we have different packages and different shipping skills to learn.

Frank Manteau 18:54

Yeah, exactly. You know, what, how are we going to make this happen? And then it was we're going to get in this situation, it was like, I knew that once we were able to get I had it in my mind. And I don't I told my team I said, once we get this product can handle once we get this, it's going to I have a feeling that it's going to be you know, something that's going to blow up and I don't know how long it's gonna last. But initially, it's going to end up you know, just being a whole game changer. And I never never realized going from just getting the product finalized to get into 10,000 unit li order from cron style, to launching open sales on October 3 of 2022. Trying to get all these pre orders situated and have a day job, working the day job, getting up in the morning handling emails after work, going home printing packing slips, printing out the shipping labels, going back to work the next day after work going back Putting the putting the orders together, stuffing them in, put them in boxes going into the day job on my lines taken to the post office. We were averaging 1014 to 21 days to process orders because that's how much they were coming in. To the end of November, we had to seek out distribution facility to not only because we want to make sure we're customer focused, we want to make sure we're giving, taking care of the customers, they're taking care of us and get them the product in an effective manner. How do we do that? What we were doing was working. But it wasn't efficient enough and wasn't given that turnaround time. Knowing that we're in the holiday seasons, how can we better you know, make this happen? We found a distribution facility, three and a half hours north of me. Thank goodness in my day job, I was able to take a day off, drive everything up there, drop it off, and handle it to them. And December, we ended up being able to make sure that three days left within three days, the orders were processed, shipped out going to the customers

Keith McKeever 21:19

was awesome. Because, you know, we've gotten to a point as a society where people want that, like, instant gratification, they buy something. No, I don't want to shop at Amazon. But Amazon still want to blame for right, you know, you didn't two days, you know. So that instant gratification. So I think some people are willing to understand that like, Okay, if it takes four or five days to get here six days, seven days, whatever, you know, smaller business, you know, that not everybody has the Amazon distribution network, right. But yeah, there is all that that pressure of, you know, you got to get it out as quickly as possible. People want what they what they ordered, and then you have the complication of Christmas. Right. And, you know, we just recently too, so lots of leftover come there.

Frank Manteau 22:04

Exactly, you know, and knowing that, you know, it was that time of the year, and we couldn't have secured the distribution facility at the right time. You know, not only were we down to our last 1200 units, mind you, we started out with 5000 units, okay? Between crowdfunding pre sales, and our first two months, we went from that 5000 units down to 1200 units. So you can imagine how we know that the keep up and to go through and do this for two months with a day job trying to make this habit.

Keith McKeever 22:47

I mean, it's no joke, you really weren't sleeping or sleeping all that well. So like how did you there's two things I want to unpack with what you just said, first one, I want to focus on you. How did you try to find some sort of balance and get some sort of sleep and take care of yourself and your knees to keep yourself going a

Frank Manteau 23:10

couple years ago, I come to the realization that I was like everybody else in society that you have to have a work life balance. And a couple years ago, I had the opportunity to shift that mindset for me, and I should have realized this a long time ago. But everywhere I went with my kids or out to an event and whatever else I couldn't talk about what I do, whether it was the day job, whether it was the woodworking whether it was you know the any endeavor that I was involved in the audit trail. And then the crayons, I always talked about it. And then a couple years ago, it hit me. I love what I do. I enjoy what I do. It's an extension of me. I don't need a work life balance. So if I go to a concert, I go out somewhere with dinner with my kids or I go out to an event with you know, accompany party or whatever else. Or I go to a networking event, they're going to know that this is my day job. This is what I do for my business. It's an extension of me and I'm going to talk about everything that I do because I enjoy it. And my opinion for everybody else is if you think you need a work life balance, you're in the wrong business, you're in the wrong job. Find something that you enjoy and make it an extension of you. And then everything you do will not be needing to, you know, have that balance of Well, I gotta decompress. I gotta leave that here. This is going to be here. You And then this is going to be here. No, it should all be part of you one entity. And the moment I realized that it became more, more, as well as a passion as well as to be able to make sure that it was just everything I did an involved regarding the sleep wise, the Marine Corps taught me mission accomplishment, you do what you got to do, you do make it happen. There were many nights that I would get the bed at one, two o'clock in the morning, I'd be up at five, six o'clock in the morning, you know, pushing on making it happen. Five years, five years of that. And to surround myself with a team, I now have a chief strategic officer that handles a lot of the aspect of the marketing team, the customer service aspect, the finding out funding, finding different sources of grants, to get us applied for and to be able to help organize the meetings and things of that nature. And to have my initial co founder Cassandra, handling the customer service, and coming up and then creating new and exciting ideas and products. As we shifted from crowns ready to eat, and to a no treats, which is a C Corp now. And we're going to move treats a little bit, you know, later on, that's a lot, you know. Sure, bye. Bye. Every time anybody sees this, you know, some people have an understanding what no treats is happening. And to have a person that understands sales, and have somebody handling the social media, and being able to have everything outsourced, distribution is outsourced to our distribution facility, manufacturer handles the manufacturing, all of our other products are outsourced or stickers, or decals. Everything is made by active duty are made by veterans and male spouses. That they make the product, it goes straight to the distribution facility to allow me finally after five years of time of sacrifice, and, you know, losing that sleep and putting the hard work into it, that it is true. And there's other people like I want it overnight, I need that overnight. If you want it overnight, you've got the wrong mindset. It takes time, it takes hard work, it takes sacrifice, and it is a lonely road. To be able to get to the point now that I can be the CEO, I can be the one that is going to handle oversee the operations of the company, work with the sales team, because I am the face of the company to be able to be out here at these events, going to do these things and manage my team and be able to have that reward of we finally made something with the work of a team. And I didn't have to do it alone.

Keith McKeever 28:23

Yeah, like, where you went with kind of that balance because I've said that many times. Like there's no true balance, right? You can't like you can't balance out all the work 50% of the time and you know, do whatever. But there's a lot of truth to it. If you love what you do, and it becomes who you are kind of deep in your soul. You're kind of always on and you're always kind of energized by it. But sometimes you do need to flip the switch off for a couple of hours and relax, do a hobby recharge a little bit is there you know, I know you love woodworking and haven't had much time in the last last five years to do that. Is there anything outside of that, you know that you've been able to do to kind of those little little periods of like alright, Frank needs a timeout for for half a day.

Frank Manteau 29:12

Thing is is I between the next hit the woodwork and it's therapy. It is that therapy. You know, it gives me and a lot of other people it could be you know, painting it could be you know other things but for me Woodworking is that therapy to help me calm and unwind the mind and things of that nature. On top of the woodworking I had got into you know, got a diode laser engraver. So just to be able to do different things in the image and let that thing go and increase in different things. I started dabbling into 3d printing got a 3d printer to let you know figure out those things and my mind is a creative mind. So I've always got to be somehow what am I creating? How am I creating it. And knowing that within the crowds ready to read in the military, it's that we're creating things, to put a smile on people's faces and educate them with things of the military and things of that nature. That, you know, we're doing this and I have a team that's able to help me create those things. So it's, it's about a creative aspect. And everything that I do. I do love Halloween. I have run, been involved in the haunted trails and haunted houses and stuff for many years, and I had opportunity in my local town to, you know, start a haunted trail. But it's always constantly on the go, you know, so it's not really decompressing. It's doing things that I enjoy to do. And when you enjoy it, you don't need to decompress.

Keith McKeever 30:51

Oh, yeah, sometimes do things like, like, a volunteer thing, like, you know, one of my things that I've been doing for years is the Honor Flight network. Yeah, it's work. You know, if I volunteer for something, I might be somewhere for two hours or eight hours doing work. And it can be exhausting, just like any other job. But the fact that it's, it's something different, the different goal, there's a passion behind it, you know, that in and of itself is kind of recharging. So, yeah. Everybody has something in everybody. If they don't, they need to do some soul searching and find that thing that works for them. But exactly, before we get into the military style, want to go back to another question, because I know you've got Cassandra, I can't remember what you said the other philosophy, right. Is that your your basic team, I know you've got some of the people that are helpful with some things. So

Frank Manteau 31:46

that is our core, you know, that that's our that's our, you know, basically are the owners of the company. Me because Andrew blog, so how have you,

Keith McKeever 31:55

through this bumpy road, are two steps forward one step back kind of thing with the packaging, and all those ups? How have the three of you been able to keep each other focused on the right path encouraged and positive throughout the whole process? Because, like you said earlier, like 60 Plus failures just on on the manufacturer, not only will some people quit, some people associated with a company might say, Hey, I'm gonna go find another venture. So have you guys been able to navigate that?

Frank Manteau 32:30

rink, or like I said earlier, mission accomplishment? How you, okay, we have the mission, we have the goal of getting the product created to be able to ship manufacturing nationwide. How are we going to do that? There's no Plan B, there's no plan C, there's no plan D, it's, this is the mission, this is the option. Now, what tactics in what you know, scenarios are we going to be able to run through to be able to make that happen. You know, so it's a matter of keeping that open line of communication. It's getting everybody to understand that what the mission is and what you are trying to accomplish, and have the trust in your team, that you have the right people on your team that are willing to have that same vision and that same mindset. And knowing that, when it happens, what we are achieving, and what we are bringing out to the you know, out to the world. But a line of communication, can consistent meetings, consistent openness of okay, here's this my idea may not be the right idea. But it's an idea. made a decision. Take it to them get their feedback, let's all come up with what option in what way can we be able to make it work, you may have an idea of breaking what you're going to be able to do of trying to sell a house. You know, earlier we talked about, you know, you came up you learned about this, you know, AI program, you know what I mean? So, you learned about that. And you found that it had an opportunity to give you a better listing to list up the houses, how many other people in your industry are doing that? You don't know. You may be probably very few. But finding those options, listening to other people and actually implementing and trying to listen, open for suggestion. And even if you don't agree with it, find a reason come to that common understanding. Okay. All right. I may be wrong. You may be right. But let's give it a try. And let's see what happens. And give it a try. That fails. Guess what? You learn something? If it was if your success is succeeded you What is the right decision?

Keith McKeever 35:03

Forget almost makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up that is like the most military. I love it from a leadership perspective of like, mission. First, here's the mission clear by in clear communication, everybody focused on that very clear. Because there's a lot of companies out there that are not very clear on their mission. And that's definitely a testament to not only the mission, but your leadership, as well as their leadership, you know, forever. Everybody has aspect there to say, we're in this together, we're pushing forward, we just can't figure it out. Exactly. So man, I love it, that you know, what could just take that excerpt right there. And that could just be condensed to college business leadership course. That's how you create company culture people.

Frank Manteau 35:48

Exactly. You know, it's the first communicate, yeah, and you gotta have fun, you've got to be able to have fun, you know, you got to enjoy, you got to be able to know that, no matter where you go, and your team comes with you. And you can enjoy their company, you know, you can, you know, just interact with them. And because you have to realize is that whenever you get into a business like this, the person that starts it, the person that created it, has the most passion for it. But when you get the like minded people involved, and you get people doing the things that they enjoy to do, you spend a lot of time with them, just like in your day job. If you have a day job, you spend a lot of time you spend 810 hours with them. And if you don't build a relationship that cohere, you know, coincides outside of that work, you know, to where you can interact, and you can have fun, and you can enjoy each other's company, go to lunch as a team every once in a while, you know, what I mean? Connect with people, and get to know who they are as a person. What do they enjoy? What do they what do they like to do? What is their hobbies? You know, so you can build those things. And go to build a friendship. It's another family treated as such

Keith McKeever 37:19

that whether or not another just just another face another name another number in your company? Yeah. Yeah, I love that. You mentioned fun. I know, You've had a lot of fun at some of these events. Of course, because we've known each other for a couple of years. So you've followed all your social medias. It's gotta be incredibly rewarding and fun to, you know, look into the eyes of little children, when they're confused about Wait, these are crayons that I can eat, and I can color with them, you know, or, you know, grown veterans, you know, in their 30s 40s 50s that, see it and they're like, oh my god, I can't believe you actually took this joke, and made this something, you know. And of course, they're gonna look on their face, you know, when they crack it open and take their first bite, it's gotta be incredibly rewarding and fun to go to events to see that over and over again.

Frank Manteau 38:09

Big time. It is it's, it's unbelievable. Just, you know, a crayon is one thing, but sitting there and you tell them that it's truly a colorable chocolate crayon. And then they're like, Nah, and some people don't bite into it first and ever. Like, oh my god is taste good color with it. Holy crap, but actually colors, you know, and you'll see through our social media and you know, different videos of people trying it and you know, everything else and it's just like, when we did our Christmas time. We had one our she's actually the lady that handles our graphics design and everything else. And she did an amazing video for the holidays for Christmas with her daughter. And then just and that was in the funny thing was it was an authentic look on her face. It wasn't you know, she basically you know, told her daughters like hey, color with these, you know, and they had these wooden ornaments they had made by an I think was a better known company. Colored on the ornament and enjoyed it. Get a chance to go back to our crowns ready crowns ready to eat on our Instagram. And you know, I think it's open on our tick tock as well. But just to see that Christmas video is just it warms the heart

Keith McKeever 39:31

it's definitely mind boggling that they did they actually work and they actually color now I wouldn't recommend that you use the whole pack to color a whole whole coloring book because then you're just wasting good chocolate to find that balance right

Frank Manteau 39:45

that's why we made it triangle shaped and appointed each end so you color at one end and you're biting on the other end. Oh, okay.

Keith McKeever 39:51

Yeah, see, I goofed that up I when I did my live unboxing of that and so I'll have to do some more. My kids my kids were begging me for We got it in the mail, and I had it on my desk just because the kids, yeah, anything could happen if I would have left it upstairs within reach, they would have found a way to open it needed. He kept coming down here literally every day and tapped me on the shoulder and saying, Dad, when can we eat those crafts, I really, really want to eat those crafts. And I'm like, okay, alright, guys, just just hold on a sec, I'm working on an idea, we're going to do a live or we're just going to do it. And to me, it was really important. I was like, I gotta have my kids in there. Let's enjoy. Let's go live and see it and see look on their faces. They were so excited for it. So

Frank Manteau 40:35

it was it was I appreciate it. That was That was awesome. Yeah.

Keith McKeever 40:43

So your militaries? What? What kind of things do you have gold miners explain what put you out on the horizon a little bit more.

Frank Manteau 40:50

So military, it's krans ready to eat is going to be underneath of that. So what we're doing with no treats, is we are bringing items, jokes, ideas, and things specifically tied to the military. That we can create into a treat, whether it be a chocolate item, like a ganache bar, or a truffle, or different things, that we can create a taking physical items of the military, putting them into a tree, and connecting and educating people about military, through, you know, the items we make as a delicious treat. So within those those treats that we're going to have, people are going to have the opportunity to go on our website and get a little bitty, you know, excerpt whenever they receive the items of the history of those items. So it gives them an explanation, it gives them a connection of, you know, an understanding military because there is a there is a gap of the way that I've noticed that some of the civilian side doesn't really understand what the military does and what the things we have. Because sometimes when they say military grade, does it mean it's the greatest thing in the world? You don't? I mean, we

Keith McKeever 42:14

all know that for sure, exactly. But a lot of people I mean, they may have one person in their family has served in the Corps, or the Air Force, whatever. But their whole perspective of the military may be based on that one particular brush. I got it all the time as Air Force like, oh, well, fine. Did you fly? I still laugh on you guys. I didn't fly planes, my boss said in a pickup truck behind it, make sure nobody touched it.

Frank Manteau 42:34

Yeah, exactly. It's knowing those things and to be able to bridge that gap of given that educational background to it. As well as hopefully here in the next few months, we can get a program in place. Because a lot of us in the military that had been deployed and been overseas and everything else, one of the hardest things to get when you're on a deployment is a treat, you know, a good quality treat, because when they ship it, it gets sent over it goes sits in a Conex box, it sits there for a couple of weeks, you may not get mail for two, three weeks, you know, that was wrote two or three weeks ago, you know what I mean? So what we're gonna we're going to be working on is we're going to figure out between shipping distribution, packaging containers, to be able to hopefully, and this is a this is a goal of ours is to give people an opportunity to build a treat box, I care package that will be able to be sustainable to send over two units that are deployed.

Keith McKeever 43:50

Well, it's awesome, because nothing you can do about the time. But anything to help with that freshness. There's nothing like half melted Girl Scout cookies or chocolate chip cookies that were like two weeks old that probably shouldn't eat. You know what I mean? You know, so yeah, that'd be awesome. I remember. I mean, I remember getting care packages with both times I was in Iraq. And it's kind of funny, once somebody gets a care package. It's like, people could smell it a mile away, you know, and Head Start pop around the corner, which gutted it. Exactly, nothing quite like it. So

Frank Manteau 44:24

yeah. So it's we're looking at as a goal to be able to bridge that gap. And continue to give back to the organizations that, you know, we, you know, on our websites, we round up right now to a couple organizations and to help out, you know, them demonstrate as well as just it's not only about you know, us and what we thought of it's about how can we help those that you know, are helping the community and helping the troops.

Keith McKeever 44:55

Awesome. Mass. That's awesome. Those are some great goals. Also, I can't wait to see, you know what, what the next few months or years and achieving those goals look like. So I appreciate you coming on Frank and kind of sharing and giving some some good advice for people on how to run their business and kind of how to navigate some of those hurdles, because I don't care what business you're in, you are going to have hurdles. You're going to have problems, you got to find a way, you know, you mentioned wall earlier, like you got to go over it and go under it, go around it or you can go through it. But the last thing you should do is let it stop you.

Frank Manteau 45:29

Exactly.

Keith McKeever 45:30

So don't let that wall just be unless it's a great wall China, you know. Yeah. I want to take you a little longer but anyway, yeah. All jokes aside. So I appreciate you coming on share with us.

Frank Manteau 45:44

Definitely. Thank you for having me back on and you know, just I was I can say is keep up what you're doing. You know, you're doing a lot of great things with you know, with this podcast and getting a lot of people connected and getting information out there. And you know, the names fitting like I said before you know, who you got with you and who you got around you. Make sure you stay connected. And you don't have to go it alone.

Keith McKeever 46:12

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. So that that's that's a big one. So there we go. Like Frank said, Don't go it alone. If you're struggling make sure you call 988 Press one, you could text 838255 for the suicide hotlines. And as I always say, if there's resources not on the website that you think should be, please reach out let me know what you think should be on there.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai