Pints to Pets: Michael Oxton's Second Act

Michael Oxton: he basically walked quickly through the brewery with our head team and was just like, you guys are not running a world-class facility. you guys are jokers. And like, he sat us down and it was dad talking to the kids. the way you guys are running your QA, QC process is abominable. you are either trying to produce world-class beer every day or you're gonna go out of business.
Jerrid Grimm: Right.
Michael Oxton: figure this out and like redo everything or like get out. And like, he's like, it won't bite you today. Maybe you'll figure this out for a bit, but in a year or two years at some point, this is going to screw you. And that was when we were like, Holy shit. Like,
Jerrid Grimm: Right. Yeah. Michael, welcome to the show.
Michael Oxton: Thank you, pop to be here.
Jerrid Grimm: All right, so your first company, which we're gonna get into, is like right up my alley. I got into that's beer, right? So that's pretty that's a very stereotypical thing for like some guy to be like, yeah, I'm also into beer, right? but my wife says this, she's like, guys often have we just need like an overlap on something. They're like, you golf and I golf, great, we could be best friends, right? you like craft beer? Yeah, we're we're good. We just need one overlapping
Michael Oxton: Ha We're good to go, yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: The Venn diagram has to like barely overlap. And basically you can get along with anybody, I find. But I got into craft beer like I think it was 2008. I was living in Edmonton in Canada. And there was this one craft brewery called Alley Cat. No one was no one was into craft beer yet, I didn't think. So there was really like you were a Molson person. In Canada, you're either a Molson person or a Labat person. There was just
Michael Oxton: Okay.
Jerrid Grimm: It was like being Ford or Chevy. It was just you you only got to choose one of two teams. I don't know what it was like. I don't know if the US was the same where there was your like Bud Light or your something.
Michael Oxton: 2020. Yeah, it might be like Bud Miller cores. Like you gotta pick one of those three and like, you know, the Miller Highlife people are like their own little subset. Yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So how did you get into like give me the give me the background. It's it's called night shift, right? So how did it get started?
Michael Oxton: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, honestly, like same time period as you almost. like, I mean, I went to college at Bowdoin college up in Maine and Maine has an amazing craft beer scene, like has for decades. And so at Bowdoin, like we were surrounded by some of the best breweries, in new England. And so, I mean, that was like the beginning, right? It's just like, you got all this good beer around you. We're poor college students. like, you know, mostly we were drinking crappy stuff and then like every once in a while someone would foot the bill on an alagash white keg or a Geary's or Gritty's or whatever. And those were like for us the first sort of foray into like, damn beer could be really good, right? And like, I can get into this. And so we nerded out a little bit in college about that stuff. And that was just like part of the culture there. And then we moved down, a bunch of us moved down to Boston after graduating in 2007. And that's when You know, we'd like sort of kind of brought this like mindset of like, I drink good beer, you know, not crap. And it was like, well, can I make good beer too? Like there's this home brewing shop down the street from us in Somerville. And it was like a thing, right? I mean, you enter that kind of the same time where we were just like, craft beer is blowing up. There's new bottles like popping up on shelves almost every week. All my friends seemed to be talking about it. and I can make some of this stuff. Like, let's just dive in, right? And we all had like jobs, day jobs. And so like, you know, work during the day and then like drink beer, talk about beer, brew beer, whatever it is, beer at night. Like that was it.
Jerrid Grimm: You know, work with those. Yeah, that was the two sides of you you had two parts to your day, right? You had your work day, and then you had where you were like this micro, the smallest version of a micro brew. So are you I I did make beer one time. I did it when everyone else did it during COVID, you know, where everyone decided that was gonna be when they were gonna brew their own beer and make their own sourdough bread, right? it was way it took way longer. And I made an IPA, which I believe is like one of the fastest ones to make, the easiest ones to make sometimes at home. I made it
Michael Oxton: Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, it is.
Jerrid Grimm: And it took me forever. My kitchen was a disaster. Everything smelt like like sour oatmeal for like several days after. I'm siphoning stuff out of a tube. I have no idea what I'm doing, but our kitchen looks like a a chem lab. So is this what your guy do you are you doing it all at one I'm trying to picture this group of guys. Are you doing it all in one person's apartment or wh where are you doing this?
Michael Oxton: Yes. We all, we kind of all live in the same spot. So between like 2007 when we started home brewing and like when we transitioned from home brewing to like the business in 2012, we basically lived in two different places in Summerville down the street from each other. And I kind of more or less think of it as like, if you weren't living with us, you were often sleeping over in our place somewhere. So like this group of, it was all guys at the time, we're just like brewing beer. pretty regularly, right? And there was like a core three or four of us that were just like every week just getting equipment, doing new stuff, right? And then like people would kind of like come in and out, right? Like new roommates, people would leave, but whatever. There's this core group and we had the disaster kitchen. We had the living room with a bunch of buckets and all that. Like what's funny is like I've talked to so many people who have this same experience. They just didn't go on to like start a brewery, but like they did.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
Michael Oxton: the same path of like, yeah, I got into this at home brewed and like, so like there's a lot of people that like this story resonates and they're like, I thought about a brewery, but like that seems crazy. And it is.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. Yeah. It is like what at what point do you decide you're going from we're making this 'cause it's fun, it's a little hobby, you know, we have a few friends over, maybe we have a a tasting party from time to time, or did you right away think like this is going to be a business, we're really gonna focus on it, and it'll just take time to grow.
Michael Oxton: Yeah. think we dreamed of starting a brewery from day one because like, how can you not? Right? Like, I don't know. think unless you are, unless you are like wildly satisfied by your job in your early 20s and or very driven on a career path that you're like, you're absolute about, right? Like I am going to become like one of the best surgeons in the world kind of path and like, okay, like nothing's going to stop you. Go.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
Michael Oxton: Unless you're on a path kind of like that, I just think you can dream about other paths. At the time, our hobby was brewing, we were drinking beer, so that was just the dream path. As we got more more into it, the natural obsession did become really big, and this was independent of a business. I will say this, we were brewing an unreasonable amount of craft beer.
Jerrid Grimm: I guess we were all
Michael Oxton: We had our landlord coming by being like, I don't know if I want to continue leasing to you guys because this is a dangerous amount of liquid to have on the floor in this room. So it did become ridiculous. And we had spreadsheets and tasting charts and all this stuff. And there was a passion for what we were doing by this growing community of people that would come to our parties. And it was a two-story thing. And we had six people living in it.
Jerrid Grimm: Right.
Michael Oxton: Everyone would invite everyone. So it would be like a hundred plus person tasting parties and we took them pretty seriously. However, like I think like the desire to start a business was as much driven by like we, we didn't want to work for people anymore. We wanted to start our own thing and it happened to collide with like, we're also excited about beer. And so it was just like, I want to go do something. I love beer. I'm going to combine these two things. Yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: Mm. Yeah. Yeah. And when does it go from I imagine initially it's an expense? You're using money from your day job to brew this beer and then have people over and it's a fun thing to do. At some point you have to make money from this. What when does that switch happen? And I imagine it's a relatively regulated industry, like any food product or beverage product, but then you add alcohol into it. When does it switch from a hobby and a fun thing to do into a real
Michael Oxton: Yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: business where you're going to be making money at it.
Michael Oxton: I mean, it definitely was just a expensive hobby for, know, 2007 to 2012. Just pure expense. I will say, like we lived in cheap Somerville housing at the time and didn't really spend a lot on anything. like, it was okay. You know, we managed. However, yeah, I mean, I think it was around like 2010, 2011, we started like writing the business plan and like thinking about
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
Michael Oxton: you know, what would be sort of like a professional upgrade and how would we sort of turn this into a business. Ultimately raised money through promissory notes with friends and family and raised like, it's like a hundred, was like 150K seed capital through friends and family through a promissory note. And so like that funding sort of got us to, you know, like a big,
Jerrid Grimm: Mm.
Michael Oxton: a brewing equipment that was like glorified home brewing, like could work on a quote unquote professional scale, some plastic fermenters and enough money to like build out like a small little space in an ever warehouse. I think what's interesting about like looking back on this is at the time, like we didn't know enough to not do it, right? Like we were, we were just ignorant enough of how hard it was going to be in all the legal hurdles and all of the
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
Michael Oxton: crap that was in front of us that we were just like, screw it, we're just gonna try and we'll fail or we won't, but we're gonna do it. And I do think there's something to be said for being a little ignorant, ignorance is blessed or whatever you wanna say. so many people that were already in the industry and we were talking to them and they were like, you're crazy, don't do it, you guys don't have the experience, I don't think you should get into this. If we had known all the stuff that they knew, we wouldn't have done it, but like. That was almost a hindrance knowing all of that. So it helped that we were stupid.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. Yeah, well you get told told, no, I remember when we started, I had a tech company and we went on this business. It wasn't a podcast, but it was like this radio show of some kind. And the guy was a really good tech investor and seen a lot of stuff. And he straight up said to us, he goes, This probably won't work out very well. And I remember thinking, I'm like, what the hell does he know? Right? And then every single problem, every problem he said came true immediately, right? Like
Michael Oxton: Hahaha. Yeah, yeah, that's what we thought. Same thing. Did it.
Jerrid Grimm: And yeah, it did they all came true, but you're just so stubborn or you're just so set on this idea. You push through a lot of those things. Like the problems do happen exactly the way that they say it is, and then you end up pushing through it. But you're right. If you look backwards, if you're like, okay, if someone pitched me the idea, hey, how would you like to spend 10 years grinding it out the whole time with like no clear path to it being successful? Maybe you go bankrupt several times during that. And then maybe there's like a
Michael Oxton: You just push through. Yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: 20% chance you're gonna exit even after all of that. No one takes that. No one takes that deal. No, no one does it.
Michael Oxton: Yeah, no one takes it. No, no, that's exactly it. So there it is.
Jerrid Grimm: So you start so you have this brute now it's becomes a thing, right? Like you're you're selling it. Are you selling it in liquor stores? Are you selling well, where do you sell this?
Michael Oxton: Yeah. The original plan was just all wholesale. Like we were just thinking, we'll just go around, you know, like we had some initial conversations with some local bars and some local liquor stores and they were just like, yeah, you know, craft beers hot, like give me what you got. You know, I mean, a few were like, fuck off. Like I don't want your, your swill, but like some were open. And so the original plan was like, okay, we'll take our Subaru. We'll drive around. We'll drop it off. We'll invoice people like.
Jerrid Grimm: Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Oxton: We didn't know what the hell we were doing. The whole idea of invoice, anyway. And we'll figure this out. And that's kind of what we did. And we had maybe like 20 accounts to start. And it was bars and liquor stores in Cambridge, Somerville, Boston. Yeah, so we like what we weren't banking on is people wanting to come to this like sketchy hard to find warehouse in Everett and just showing up looking for samples, looking to buy bottles from us direct, looking for brewery tours, which was like the weirdest thing in the world because it was just one big room and it was like not that interesting and people still wanted to like have us walk through it and like it was horrible. It smelled like
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
Michael Oxton: But like whatever, people want to be part of that. I think what I did in Bankomb was like how connected people want to be to the product, to the people making the product, how interesting that is that there's this brewery 15 minutes away that's kind of in a weird spot and I'm going to tell my friends about it and there's like a story that I want to be part of. And that was cool. We did not realize that would be so cool. So ultimately about half of our business for Like the first few years it stayed at like 50 to 40 % was D to C just out of our door and the margins were even higher there. So like what I will say is like the business plan we wrote disappeared after like three months and we were profitable in like three months because of the D to C business. And we just weren't banking on that at all. And that was like very nice.
Jerrid Grimm: Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I think this timing is really good too. I I'm curious how much of your success would you associate with how good of operators these twenty whatever you guys were mid twenties or something, versus hot market, lots of demand and interest, lots of sampling too. I like I think that's the hardest thing with craft beer as an operator, I've heard for the consumer, it's like insanely good. Like you can you could try a new beer every day that you wanted and there's always a new one. But I imagine as a as an operator, that's hard because people are they're not that loyal, right? is the is the market pulling you guys in or you haven't to really push this liquid into places and and getting it out there or or is there general like a lot of demand out there and and it it's you can't make it fast enough?
Michael Oxton: Yeah. Yeah, I I'm not, can't credit like operator brilliance at all. I think we were, we did not make some big, big mistakes, right? Like we didn't make big, big enough mistakes to, to, to blow us up. Like that was enough, right? Like we didn't make anything that was just fundamentally a horrible mistake that ruined the business. We prioritized customer service about everything, just just making sure anyone that wanted our beer got like the best experience possible. And we were at the intersection of a lot of good things happening and we were lucky. like, you know, I think we did some things like right enough, no things horribly wrong and also had like a very lucky entrance into the industry and like through sheer just like will, like made the most of that luck.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
Michael Oxton: Like we recognize we were in sort of like an opportunistic situation. It was just like, how do we not screw this up for as long as possible?
Jerrid Grimm: I don't think people realize how many mistakes you can make and still continue as long as the mistakes aren't these bet the farm type of mistakes, right? You can make a you can make a ton of little errors along the way and one account, you know, maybe you don't deliver on time, that account gets pissed off and they decide not to reorder, but you got 19 other accounts, so you can you hedge a little bit ab against it. Where's there ever like an inflection point? Because I think you've over the lifetime
Michael Oxton: Yeah. Yeah!
Jerrid Grimm: of the company, like $200 million in sales, which is crazy, I imagine, if you like that's like insane. I was looking up how many companies ever exceed more than a million dollars in sales on an annual basis. And it's less than five percent of businesses in North America will ever exceed a million dollars. It's yeah, it's like two hundred million, I'm sure it's like I don't know what the percentage is. It's
Michael Oxton: Yeah, crazy. Is that right?
Jerrid Grimm: probably in the point one percent of companies will ever generate that much revenue. So was there an inflection point where you're like, holy shit, this is this is working.
Michael Oxton: This is a real business. I think there's a few different big moments. think the first, I'll do two, the first big moment was when we did realize we couldn't make enough to keep up with demand and it was late 2013 and we were basically like, we have outgrown our current facility. We are a real business now. We're gonna hit our million dollar revenue mark lifetime cumulatively.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
Michael Oxton: we realized like we need to sign a lease on a new warehouse, like start the build out of that and get a loan to fund it. And I'm like talking with mass development bankers about getting a loan and we're hiring people. And I'm suddenly like, this went from a little hobby with the three friends running this little outfit to like, I have staff, I'm worried about HR stuff, I'm worried about like loans and underwriters. And it just suddenly was like, shit, we're running a business.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
Michael Oxton: Like this is different. And then I would say the second big inflection moment was soon after that. We had moved to the new space. It was like a year and a half after. Moved to the new space, huge tap room. We had put like, you know, it about a million dollars into the whole build out, know, 2,500 square foot, big customer space, huge stainless steel brewery out back, like whole team of people running this brewery. there was like this period where we started getting, we were running like tests on the beer and some of it started coming back infected. And you know, like one batch of infected beer, like that sucks. That's like $30,000 you have to put down the drain. Like that's really unfortunate. Doesn't put you out of business, right? But it was like one and then another and then like a couple of days later another and like, was just like money was starting to tally up on.
Jerrid Grimm: Hmm.
Michael Oxton: both the cost and then also like revenue we were counting on that we didn't have from those tanks. And we had this guy, Will from Cambridge Brewing Company, who's sort of like very well respected in the industry and like knows his shit, comes by. We asked him like, what is happening? How do we, like, we don't know what we're doing all of a sudden. And we feel really out of our league and it feels like things are going off the rails really fast. And he basically audited, walked quickly through the brewery with our head team and was just like,
Jerrid Grimm: Well couldn't look at the other thing with it.
Michael Oxton: came back, did an audit and was like, you guys are not running a world-class facility. this is, you guys are jokers. And like, he sat us down and it was like, dad talking to the kids. he was like, this is a joke. Like, the way you guys are running your QA, QC process is abominable. And like, he's like, you are either trying to produce world-class beer every day or you're gonna go out of business. Like, you can't have one or the other.
Jerrid Grimm: Right. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Michael Oxton: you can't half ass your QA, QC lab process. just figure this out and like redo everything or like get out. And like, he's like, it won't bite you today. It might not bite. Maybe you'll figure this out for a bit, but like in a year or two years at some point, this is going to screw you. And that was when we were like, Holy shit. Like, okay, let's, sat down with our whole team. were like, from this day forward, it is world-class beer or bust. We threw away all of our old like,
Jerrid Grimm: Right. Yeah. Mm.
Michael Oxton: All of our old lab equipment, bought a ton of new stuff. was like dumped a bunch of beer. It sucked short term and then long term set us up for like the road we went on, which was just like nothing goes out the door that hasn't like passed all the lab specs and it's taken really seriously. And like we shifted our entire approach to like how we made liquid. Crazy.
Jerrid Grimm: Crazy. That's crazy. That 'cause you're probably running it the same way you were running it out of your kitchen almost. Like it's the same people. All of it's not like all of a sudden Yeah, it's not like it's not like your business gets popular and hand c has customers and all of a sudden you're a different person. Like you still have the same yeah, you're same same dude, right? Just happens to be like with a really popular thing and buying can buy more equipment than they could before. What was the what would you say was the peak
Michael Oxton: Correct. A grown up version of it. Yeah. You're not a different person. Yeah. Yes.
Jerrid Grimm: peak peak of the the entire business. Like when were you sitting there and going like it looking back
Michael Oxton: Yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: now, right? Like what was the the day or the week or the month where you're just like, this is the greatest.
Michael Oxton: I'll tell you. I'll tell you. It was when it's like very obvious or it's like stamped in my mind. It's when we the first night we opened up our Esplanade beer garden. So we ended up like we negotiated and secured like a somewhat long term lease on. big beer garden right on the Charles River in Boston, like right along the river, like the best possible place in the world for a beer garden. And this was like, I don't know, I think it was like 2018. we opened up this big beer garden. There's a line of people like all the way along the Esplanade. Like people start coming in and I just like, you know, one of our bartenders like poured some whirlpools for a bunch of us and we just like cheers along the Charles River.
Jerrid Grimm: We'll reply to that.
Michael Oxton: and like the sun setting, there's this giant crowd, we're in like the best possible place to have a beer garden. Everything was kind of just flowing and I was like, holy shit, like this is as much as you can ask for as a brewery, is like the best possible place to drink a beer. I'm drinking my beer with like really good people. have an amazing team around me and like customers that love this beer and this brand just flooding in like excited to just come hang out with us. Like that was just, I don't know, was like pinnacle like, all right, this is it, we're good.
Jerrid Grimm: I could Yeah. Yeah. That's the dream, right? Like you you kind of realize you realize the dream that could have been, and then you're actually sitting there. It's got a little bit of like a out of body experience, I imagine, where and it's still the same. Was it still were the three partners involved all the way through? Cool.
Michael Oxton: Yeah. all the way through. One of them stepped back a little bit near the end and he just got involved in some other stuff and there was no hard feelings or anything. So he did take a couple steps back from his day-to-day involvement. But literally, day one to the very end, the three of us stayed together. We all exited owning roughly 27 % to 28 % of the company. we had plenty of fights along the way, but nothing that like ripped the business apart. That was probably one of the luckier, like, I don't know how we did that, but it worked out well to have three founders that like all work together and like live together for a bit, not tear each other apart. Yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. Yeah. I I tell people when they're thinking of who they're going to go into business with, I tell them, I'm like, take it more seriously than you do with like a wife or husband, like a partner, because because there isn't a lot of outs in business that aren't very, very complicated. Especially, you know, you got three founders. Like what the company's not really worth anything, but it's worth something on paper and no one has money to buy each other out. Like I have friends that have gone through it.
Michael Oxton: That's true. So messy.
Jerrid Grimm: And it it gets messy. It gets messier than divorces get, right? So yeah, you you gotta find the right people to to get in it with because it's such a grind too. So tell me about the exit. I know that I know that you also had you built like distribution underneath the company, which is essentially like is that you're dropping off the like the beer's gotta get from the brewery, it's gotta get to the place where it's being sold and it needs a a way to get there. And you guys were doing those subrews.
Michael Oxton: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: At the beginning, it sounds like. just tell me quickly, like, why did you start a distribution? And then would you do that a again? Like own that infrastructure underneath.
Michael Oxton: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100 % would own it again. Started it accidentally, like not accidentally, as a matter of like circumstance, because when you start a craft brewery in Massachusetts, you almost always, almost every brewer in the state uses what's called a farmer brewer license, which has nothing to with farming, but like it happens to come with a self-distribution component. So you're allowed to basically own your own distribution if you want.
Jerrid Grimm: Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Michael Oxton: Um, and just drive your stuff around and drop it off and like manage it your own, however you want. Right. And like most breweries don't get that big. Like they just don't choose to scale. so they stay at like a, you know, mom and pop size and they just kind of like drive it around to their stores and drop it off. that's that. So that's kind of what we started doing. then like 2015, we were growing and like had just chosen to like try and scale fast and like.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
Michael Oxton: the demand was there and yet we sort of hit this cap on what Massachusetts allows is like what you can self-distribute under that farmer-brewer license, like the law. And so we were faced with this like weird choice of like, do we just stop growing and kind of cap ourselves and self-distribute some more or do we sign with a distributor that's out there? And there's not that many distributors in Massachusetts and the franchise laws for this kind of stuff are pretty tricky. Like it's like,
Jerrid Grimm: Mm.
Michael Oxton: If you sign with someone, it's basically like you're locked for life, no divorce without like some expensive legal battle. So we were like, I don't know. Like I don't really want to sign with any of these big guys yet. and we just, like we talked to a bunch of people who had done it and they were smaller and they were like, you lose so much control of your brand. Like if you're not their top priority, the distributor will just put you in the back and like forget about you. So we just heard a horror stories and we were like, well, I don't want to experience that. So. we ended up creating this entity, Night Shift Distributing, which bought beer from Night Shift Brewing, and we just started our own distributor, which like, I don't know, weren't, like, I don't think we thought it was like brilliant or creative, we just were like, this is just a great way to get around the law legally. And so we just did that, and we quickly like realized this is great, you know, it allows us to keep the margin, right, because we're selling it to ourselves, so that margin is kept, allows us to like,
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
Michael Oxton: That was key, but what was more key was like owning the relationships and like maintaining those sales relationships really well with all of our accounts because it's like my delivery guys going in and talking to their people, my sales guys going in and talking to their people. And it's just like, if they have problems, you hear it. Like you can solve things quickly. You get feedback that much more quickly. Like owning that channel was just so important. And you're just always your top priority. And then we ultimately were like,
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Oxton: we did the math and we're like, okay, well, if I'm go to a liquor store and drop off 10 cases of night shift beer, that's fine. But if I drop off 10 cases of night shift beer, but also five cases of wine and three cases of another beer and three cases of another brand's beer, that's even better. Like from a per gas basis, from a per delivery guy cost basis, it all just like mess out. The more you're putting out per stop, the better. So we started signing more brands and stuff and It was a juggling act to make sure that everyone felt prioritized. Suddenly we can't be the only most important brand in the truck. It's like everyone's important to some extent. But it worked out. We grew that for five years and then ultimately sold the distribution business. Sort of when it got to this point where we were like, wow, this is now delivering to like 2,000 stores. was a real, we had gotten so big and it was like, do we buy a box truck or a fermenter next month?
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
Michael Oxton: the brand just ended up becoming more important and the brewery more important than the distribution company. That's just what we wanted to run. And we, we also just, we saw sort of an opportunity to sell it at a pretty good multiple. And we were just like, let's take this. It'll help pay off a ton of the debt that we'd accumulated for the company. It'll put us in a great cash position as like a company itself to just sort of like deal with whatever comes our way. And, ultimately that was a good, that looked like a good choice.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. It's interesting because you do it you build this distribution company to solve your own problem, but it turns into like a fully fledged business, like delivery business. And it's not like you guys are sitting around the the apartment originally being like, you know what we wanna do? We wanna own trucks and have drivers and we just wanna move stuff around. Like,
Michael Oxton: Dude. That's so true.
Jerrid Grimm: yes, it's in beer, but you could have couches in there for like it's the same business, it's just a delivery business,
Michael Oxton: 100%.
Jerrid Grimm: right? So you get into now you have two entirely different businesses that just
Michael Oxton: entirely different.
Jerrid Grimm: Two well, so you're running two businesses essentially. So you sell the distribution business first. That helps kind of shore up the the brewing business, get it, you know, a bunch of cash in the bank. You can make some decisions there. And then what do you do with the brewing business? Like tell me about how that ends up, how you end up exiting that business.
Michael Oxton: Correct. Yeah, so then it was like, I'll focus on the brewing business. We were lucky that we were somewhat diversified and that we had these beer gardens that were operating. We had opened a restaurant and brew pub in Boston, sort of next to TD Garden. And that whole area of Boston was just like, all of a sudden blew up right when we entered, a little bit afterwards. like traffic there was really strong. So we had good numbers there. We had an Everett Taproom, which was like its own little D2C business. So we had these little D2C components, which were great from a profit perspective and also great from like a marketing and brand building perspective. And then out in the wholesale world and out in the markets, like we had been expanding. But what was interesting was like a couple of things right before we sold the distribution business, COVID happened, which like
Jerrid Grimm: That you can look like Rumble Facts and that doesn't
Michael Oxton: really thwarted our original plan was to like build a Philadelphia brewery, like this mega brewery in Philadelphia. Stopped that, stopped us from doing a $20 million build out in hindsight. Huge blessing. I don't think a lot of businesses can say COVID was a blessing, but for us it probably was. Cause it stopped something really expensive from happening. And then sort of in the years following the distribution sale. So that happened in 2021. You know, I mean, I think like,
Jerrid Grimm: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Michael Oxton: A few things, we quickly realized we cannot as profitably make beer in our own facility as we can in a larger facility, which Philly was going to solve, but didn't because we didn't do it. But then we found contract brewers that could make our beer much more cheaply than even we could make it ourselves in our own facility because our equipment and our whole facility was just weird. And so it was like... damn, like we can outsource a lot of our brewing to a contract manufacturer, keep the quality the same. And over time through like, had some, we had a propane or not a propane, a CO2 shortage and whatever. We ended up positioning ourselves to basically like move a lot of our production out of house. And so then suddenly like 10 % maybe of our brewing was in-house. We're kind of like this. hospitality brand sales company. Like we're not really a brewery anymore. And so at that point we were kind of like, well, what's the growth path from here and how do we like scale? And the industry was also starting to hit a lot of headwinds, like demographics of people who are drinking beer was starting to shift a little bit. And I think we kind of saw writing on the wall of like, well, maybe people are going to like slow down their drinking and like maybe like the craft beer boom is like has boom. And we started having conversations with a few different people about potential exits. And there was definitely an appetite for it at the time. so it was like, started as like a, let's just explore this became a, this feels like a real thing. And I think the three of us had spent whatever, 13, 14 years in the industry. I think we all felt kind of like, we've done all the things we really wanted to do. And if we have an exit now, we'll feel pretty good about it. as long as the terms aren't horrible. We feel like everyone's happy with the multiple and all that. We ultimately sold to the company, the Henler family company, which was also contract manufacturing almost all of our beer. They were well-incentivized to keep us in-house, because if we sold to someone else and all of that goes somewhere else from them,
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. Mm.
Michael Oxton: I think it was like 30 to 40%, maybe 50 % of their production was our beer.
Jerrid Grimm: Wow. I just wanna kinda pause on that because that's really interesting. So you've got the people that are brewing your beer, you're a very high-level customer of theirs. So you're like one of their top customers, if not their top customer. And so you're their top customer, and they could see the writing where their top customer, if you get bought by somebody else, of course they're gonna move, you're gonna that company's gonna take
Michael Oxton: Yeah. Top customer. Yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: wherever they want, right? Maybe they bring it in house or otherwise. So they're kind of looking at it like we could lose our top customer who makes up 40% of our revenue in like a snap, right? so yeah, they're totally incentivized to pick you guys up. What does a deal look like that where they're buying their customer in a way? Like what is that? You don't have to get into too many of like the financial details if you want, but I'm curious what that looks like from a because when we sold our company, we just
Michael Oxton: Totally. Yeah Yeah, yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: sold the entire company, sold all the shares in the company essentially. What does that look like in that exit?
Michael Oxton: I mean, it was technically a merger from a legal perspective. That was just interesting. We didn't know that would be the vehicle through which we'd do it. that was just interesting. So a few things. They're good people, and I think we're pretty good people. I don't know, when you deal with good people, just feel like, okay, generally better things happen than when you deal with bad people. It's such a simple thing to say, but it's true.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
Michael Oxton: We told them super early. We were like, we're looking at a potential sale. We're not talking to just you. And you need to know that upfront. they knew that was on the table. And I think everyone tried to be as open about it as possible the entire time through. What we did end up doing was we obviously talked around, but like,
Jerrid Grimm: Mm-hmm.
Michael Oxton: you know, they were well incentivized, but they also had their concerns or whatever. But we kind of got to a point where it was like, let's, let's agree on terms and then like start moving on due diligence and like make sure everyone's really good with sort of how this would look. Right. And we spent a long time doing it. We kept communications super open and everyone was like very transparent and like, I'll say like pretty chill and cool about the whole process. And so it wasn't short, like literally it took about a year to happen. And it was very stressful, I think, for everyone involved. But I will say, from an output perspective, everyone came out of it feeling pretty good about the deal. They retained 95 % of the staff. The people that they didn't keep were the guys running it, like us. And we didn't really want to continue to stay involved once we sold it. So we didn't want jobs. then our head brewer, he wanted to go do other stuff anyway. So like.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. Nice.
Michael Oxton: They didn't need a head brewer, that was fine. So like, they kept almost everyone and they were really good about it. We talked to all of our staff and like, I mean everyone, they own Jack's Abbey, the brand, which is pretty fam- or popular down here as well. And so like, everyone knew the Jack's Abbey brand and was very familiar with it. And so it just, it was like a pretty feel good transition. When you, when I think about other ways in which it could have gone down, I'm like, that was actually pretty good.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so what year was that? What year did you close that exit?
Michael Oxton: Well, we started in 2024, like early, and then think the ultimate, like the date of closing was like January 6th, 2025. Wait, hold on, that, yeah, that's
Jerrid Grimm: Okay. So yeah, just over a year ago. Night Shift, so I'm in the like I'm in Vancouver and Canada, but Pacific Northwest would be like the region, right? Big craft brewery area. But it's craft brewing can be quite regional, right? So I imagine well, I I've heard of Night Shift before and I don't even know if it was distributed in the area. I just think I knew about the brand because it it must have been exceptionally popular in like the
Michael Oxton: Yeah. Very much.
Jerrid Grimm: your region. Is that right? Like was it if you said it on the street to somebody like, Hey, yeah, I'm one of the owners of Night Shift, would people rate it be like, I know that brand right away? Like is that recognizable?
Michael Oxton: Yeah, yeah, it's funny because I still freak out. Like I'm always like, like, you know, yeah, I happen to own this brewery like back in the day, you know, a few years ago, night shift. I don't know if you've heard and they're like, yeah, of course I know. And I'm always like, really cool. you know, I, yeah, they're like, you kidding me? It's one of the most popular brands in the Northeast. And I'm like, wow, wow, wow, that's crazy. But yeah, I mean, it's a big like.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're like, How do you know about that? And they're Well it's in every electric store and of course I've heard of it. Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Oxton: I think there's like 50 plus people out there with like the logo, the owl logo of ours that I drew, like tattooed on their arm. Like we've got all these images, you know, it's like a really, it has like a cult following amongst like the real people that love it. And then it, it has become also much more sort of like widely popular amongst like the non craftbeard, snobby, whatever geeky crowd.
Jerrid Grimm: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Now that you don't own it and it essentially was like your it's your guys' baby. There's people with a tattooed on it. It's got that logo. Does it feel different not owning it? Like right now, you go into a liquor store, you see it on the shelf. Does it feel different than it did, you know, the day before you sold it?
Michael Oxton: that's a great question. Does it feel different? I have a funny answer. Yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: When you see the beer on a shelf right now, you walk into a liquor store this afternoon, you see it on the shelf, do you feel excited or do you feel sad when you see it? Okay, cool.
Michael Oxton: Excited, no, I feel excited. Every time I feel excited, they're gonna, if they listen to this, like the new owners, the only thing that'll drive me nuts is sometimes I'm like, I wouldn't have chosen that font. Or something like really label geeky, because I'm like the label geek guy. That's the only, like I'll pick up a can and be like, I don't know about that font. But other than that, no, I have like pure fondness for the brand. And I think that is an interesting answer because I,
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Michael Oxton: Here's what I'll say my My path since exit has been like a very sort of like topsy-turvy one and I think my emotions like really went like the full gamut and I now look at the the beer and like to see the brand out there and I have like a true fondness for it and a little bit of nostalgia But it's almost more similar to how I felt like during and before the sale But I will say like in the moments after we sold, had like a, it, thank God I'm done, I'm so done with this. Like it was such an arduous process, like a year long, whatever you wanna call that, like exit. I was so done, I was like, thank God it's behind me, I never wanna think about it again, like I'm out. know, like don't even wanna look at the cans again. I was just so good with it. And then I think like three to four months later, I was like, So I missed it and I missed my role and I missed the company and I felt like really like sad about it. And I would see cans and be like, my God, like I missed this so much. wish I was working on that because like I had just been working on it a few months ago and you suddenly lose that like piece of your life that has been like defined you for so long. so
Jerrid Grimm: Mm-hmm.
Michael Oxton: It was a weird emotional journey that I did not expect to have happen. And I'm finally sort of like now, like again, like, feel good about it. And it wasn't simple. Yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah, you're on the other side of it. Yeah. And then you go instead of going into another what an obvious thing and what most people do is they do this same they so they exit it and they're like, I learned I learnt a bunch of lessons. And they start what would be the most obvious thing would be you start another brewery and you make none of the mistakes you made before and it starts at the point that you left night shift at. you've decided to go totally different direction. so you're
Michael Oxton: Right. Yeah, yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: Co-founder in a company called Everfur. Give us an idea with it. It has nothing to do with brewing. It couldn't be further. It's like my next company. I know my next company. I've been in digital advertising, my thing, whole like career. I know I'm gonna be doing like flour milling. Like it's gonna be the polar opposite of everything that I know. And I feel like you're doing a similar thing where you're moving into this like tech pet.
Michael Oxton: Nothing to show. Yeah, right?
Jerrid Grimm: Kinda like nothing to do with broom. So tell me about Everfur and how you got into this.
Michael Oxton: Nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I will say, let's see a few things. I mean, there was a period of time after I exited where I was like, maybe I will stay in like beverage, but not alcohol or maybe not beer and just sort of take my learnings and apply those somewhere within like the beverage or even CPG industry. And I spent like a really long time reaching out to founders and reaching out to just like, people running beverage but also beverage beyond, Runamuck maple syrup is like a cool company out of Vermont. I chatted with him and I was like, you're doing something so cool. I didn't know what to do because he had already founded the company, didn't need my help. But I was just trying to like, what is out there and where does it feel like I can be useful or spark something. And I stayed in touch with Rob, my other like, the other co-founder that I probably worked the most with. And we talked about like trying to start something together and like, there was all sorts of like paths started and stopped, right? I think ultimately where I landed was I, did not want to join a company and work for someone. Like I just, I could not wrap my head around and do that and feel good about it. just like, it's like,
Jerrid Grimm: What Yeah.
Michael Oxton: not in my DNA anymore, or I wrote it out. So that was interesting. And I just learned that through conversations and experience. And then the other thing was I wanted a small team. I kept coming back to I just want to start something small. But maybe the third thing was I don't know what I want to do. I didn't have a great idea. And so, all right, you combine those things, and suddenly I got this introduction to this guy, Faison.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Oxton: who's running this company, it's called EverFir. He's a PhD in computational biology. He's 29. He's got this really cool process where he takes fur and he runs it through a mass spectrometer, which I had never heard of really before. And he gets like disease signal from the biomarkers in it. And he had just finished like a pilot study that came back with some really interesting signal, but like there weren't really any sales. wasn't.
Jerrid Grimm: but
Michael Oxton: It was like an ambiguous sort of path for what the company was gonna do. And he was in the middle of a raise and we just started talking and I was like, all right, small little team, ambiguous or yeah, like somewhat ambiguous path. And he needed a co-founder who had business experience, who was like, could sort of compliment sales, marketing, business, B2B, whatever, like. And then just wear a bunch of other hats because there's like two people, three people. had a cool ops guy, Raf, on the team as well. So I was like, I don't know anything about pets or this space or anything you're doing because I am not like, not a science guy, but we bonded over like interest in like what's happening with AI and how to leverage that. And, you know, I mean, I'm not like a
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
Michael Oxton: science guy, but like we spent enough time with like biology and like the, like the chemistry and biological side of like beer that I felt like I could, like there's an interest there and there's like a little bit of a synergy I can carry forward here. Um, and then I just, I was like, we worked together really well and like, I just kind of did some like, whatever you want to call it, like free consulting for a couple of months. then bam, he was like, let's do this. Like you join, we're going to like figure out a path and like, We've been at, like, this is late last year and we've just been going forward ever since. And it's, you know, it's a tiny little team. We're only five people now. But like, we've been doing some really interesting stuff and it feels very much like the infancy of something special. And so like, I get like a little bit of that like spidey sense of like, this feels like the night shift early days. And so that's very satisfying.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. That's interesting. Do you have a pet? Okay.
Michael Oxton: I have two dogs, so I mean, I will say, I've loved dogs my entire life. My favorite animal growing up was a wolf, to the point where I wore wolf sweatshirts to school way beyond when it was cool, like maybe third and fourth grade. I am a dog and wolf guy. So there is that. It's in my heart, I love pets. And I'll say this too, I think this is maybe an interesting, maybe interesting point. We were lucky.
Jerrid Grimm: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Oxton: that we started the craft beer company when craft beer was rising. But like we also weren't stupid, right? Like we entered an industry that we knew was booming. And like there's a great argument to be made that like, if you're going to start something new, like be in a space that is growing and has huge opportunity. And like, it's very clear that like the pet industry is in like a pretty good place right now. And it's hard not to ignore that like that's probably a great place to like put some effort and energy and like see what comes of it. So like directionally, you can at least feel like you're moving into something strong. I would not start a craft brewery today and try and like fight the headwinds that those craft breweries are facing. I don't know how, like there's plenty of craft breweries out there that are crushing it. So I don't think it's like a bad industry to be in. I just think it's, you know, you got to look at the writing on the wall and like if you're going to start something, probably move in like a positive outcome direction that feels obvious from the start.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah, there's what's that saying that you can be a good operator in a great market and succeed, but you can't be a great operator in a bad market and succeed. Right. And you would probably be you'd probably be a great operator in a new brewery. Like because I mean, you're in the you're in the point one percent of people that understand that business, but the market itself is has changed a lot, right? And you could be a
Michael Oxton: That sums up what I said, better. Yeah. Yeah. I'd hope so. Yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: Maybe you're not you have a co-founder though who is the science of this as well. Would you consider yourself like a go to market guy? Is that where you're that that's my background. So I was in a tech company, but I can't code. I mean, I can code with I can like do a terrible job with AI now of coding, and say that I can do it. Like I I do some vibe coding on the side. and I was always the go-to-market person. I knew the business.
Michael Oxton: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: I knew everything except the code, but I had a co founder that knew the code and was an expert in that. So we were like yin and yang for that. where do you think you add the most value to a company like Everfer?
Michael Oxton: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think there's a couple of things. I think go to market is true, but like I've had to first understand what the market is. So like, I don't feel comfortable saying like I'm a go to market guy in the pet space until I feel like I know this pet space well and like can come at it with a pretty sound idea of like what would work and what won't. So like, I think I understand consumers really well and like pick up on signal really well from like what I hear and see.
Jerrid Grimm: Mm-hmm.
Michael Oxton: And I think I have like a reasonable approach to like business strategy. And again, like I think it's like, I know how to not screw up a bunch of stuff. Like more than anything, I have failed a bunch of things in small enough ways in my past that didn't put me out of business in the brewery industry that I can like apply a lot of that to like us now where I'm just like, let's not do X, Y, and Z. Let's not work with, you know, we're not gonna go hire like, we're not gonna go pay.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Oxton: tons and tons of money on every influencer out there and trying, like, I know there's a bunch of paths out there that will not work for us and like, I kind of have an idea of where I think we should try and move the business, but like, I think I'm also, I think I'm a good founder because I don't have a giant ego and like, I'm very much open to like, not knowing stuff and hearing what Faison wants to do and hearing what like, our other guys in our team want to do and like, ingesting all of that and being like, okay, based on that feedback, like how do we iterate our plan? Because we haven't, like we've figured out a lot of our strategies, but like we're still, we're still figuring out stuff every day. And there's a whole AI component that we're building now that's like literally changes because the technology changes every day. Like, you know, but it's exciting. It's just, you know, we're, figuring that out. So I'm not sure I even answered your question that well, but I think I'm like,
Jerrid Grimm: Right. No that's
Michael Oxton: consumer landscape, go to market, and then like B2B partnerships, think I'm like figuring that out really quickly as well. And I think, I don't know, I can like talk to people okay.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah, I f well I find that founders of businesses are generalists in a lot of ways because they had to do everything. Like you know a little bit about HR, you know a little bit about like the software you're gonna have to use, you know a little bit about marketing, a little bit about sales, like you know a little bit about everything. And even you might not have like this bio like chem background, but you're right, you you worked in an industry and had a brewery that is like highly based on like the way that
Michael Oxton: Yeah. Yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: different things interact. Like it is a chemical process that's happening, right? And a biological process. So you so it's not that far. So what things would you say you have now from like your first act, from Night Shift, that you didn't have before you started Night Shift that you will right away, like what are the lessons that you're gonna help apply right away? And I don't know if you've sat back and kind of thought about that, but what will you apply to Everfer immediately that you learned?
Michael Oxton: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. all right. There's, there's, I'll say like two jump out to start and I'll say these two. one is I think I started night shift with a, I can and will figure this out mindset, but not necessarily with the experience or confidence to back that up. And I think now it's like, can confidently feel and say like, we'll figure this out. And just like, I come at that with like so much so much confidence. I'm just like, we will figure it out and I know that and I've seen it happen so many times where like, I don't know, over the last few months we've had stuff happen even within Everfer where it's like, shit, this feels like really bad or this feels like a big challenge and I'm just like, this will pass within six hours. We will feel differently about it by tomorrow and we will have a plan and I'm not gonna sweat this. And so I think that level of like...
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
Michael Oxton: let's stay the chorus, let's not be thrown by small things. like, even if big things come our way, we'll probably figure it out. like, my like soundness of mind around that, I think is like very, very strong where it would more easily sway or be, I'd be more easily stressed by stuff during the night shift days. So there's one. And then I think the other, which is probably like a little bit related, is just like pure amounts of focus and like the desire. to drown out noise. I think the ability to drown out noise is something I hope to have in 20 more years. But the desire to just filter through crap, I think is really strong. And I think when you're starting a business, and through a lot of my days at Night Shift, you can so easily just, shiny object, shiny object, and you don't really know what to follow. And I think eventually what I've learned to some extent is like,
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
Michael Oxton: You just gotta pick something and follow it. And obviously be open to shifting when you need to evolve yourself, your business, your path, your strategy, whatever. But to some extent, what is it? There's a quote, it's like, a blind fool is more successful, no, focused fool is more successful than an unfocused genius or something. It's like, I believe that. I really think just pure focus is.
Jerrid Grimm: Mm.
Michael Oxton: a wildly successful path. And I don't know if I could have said that 10 years ago with the same level of like confidence and assertion.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. And you know that you said that kind of the peak moment of Night Shift was you're out of that beer garden in the perfect spot. You have your own beer. There's like people enjoying it. What do you think that moment will be forever for? Like look into the future. What is that what is that beer garden moment you think where you're like, we did it?
Michael Oxton: man, that's such a good question! I mean, think, like, so, I think it's, it's something like... You know, we have tens or hundreds of thousands of people who have, you know, used our, use the ever for app technology, whatever you want to call it and, or health test. and I, for some reason I go to like, we're surrounded by dogs, right? Like it's gotta be at like an event where there's just dogs everywhere. And, it's some sort of event where.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
Michael Oxton: I don't know, it has to be an in-person event. I don't know why, but I just feel like that's appropriate. we're surrounded again by just like pet owners who have animals that have been helped by our technology, right? Like, cause that's the ultimate goal. Where beer, the ultimate goal is like joy, right? And like togetherness, I think like for us, the ultimate goal is like dogs living healthier, happier, longer lives and pet owners benefiting from that. And so.
Jerrid Grimm: Uh-huh.
Michael Oxton: Some sort of experience that has that happening in mass to me is the big goal. that probably is another, never lose sight of your customers is maybe a lesson I'm carrying forward as well. It's just like they are the signal, the purest signal of everything.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. You know what? I talk to a lot of people that have businesses and if you if you kinda ask that question, I almost have never heard someone give a financial answer where they're like, we will hit twenty million dollars in revenue, which is really surprising because it's a business, right? Like it's it's supposed to have this financial outcome for shareholders. Like it's a spreadsheet. At the end of the day, that's what people look at it, you know, if they're in finance. but it's more like
Michael Oxton: my god. Yeah, yeah. truth.
Jerrid Grimm: You wanna make a little dent in the universe almost, right? Like you just wanna see that something you put all these hours into, all this stress, that like a bunch of people were like, Hey, that's cool, right? That's kind of all we want. We just like, we're just kids that are like, we just want someone to be like, that's kind of cool. That worked out.
Michael Oxton: Yes! That, yeah. Yeah, you change the world a little bit in like a positive way for some people. I know, maybe if you ask a CFO they'll give you that, know, and I wouldn't blame them, but...
Jerrid Grimm: Just a touch. Yeah. For sure. They'll be I would like Ibadah margins to increase to twelve percent. For sure. Well, I love it. I'm I'm super excited for Ever for I do have a a dog as well and I know like we have a doodle. We have a Aussie Doodle. I think they only don't they only make poodles now? Like some variation of poodle. I think that's the only dogs that are out there. I grew up on a a farm though, and so dogs to me are like they're an animal that eats food and then runs around and stuff.
Michael Oxton: Yeah. Yeah. Do you? What kind of dog? Nice. Yeah. That's funny. Yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: This dog in our family is closer to like a sibling of the family, except for me. Like it sleeps downstairs. There but if I go away for work, that dog is like in everybody's bed, sleeping there, right? Like it's it's a part of the family. And then I come home, it's almost like you see everyone just go like you especially see the dog just be like, back to being a dog. But I I but I do see how important like the health of a dog is.
Michael Oxton: Yeah, yeah. I know my place.
Jerrid Grimm: Because when it is treated like a family member and not the same as, you know, a sheep right on a farm, right? Where it's just one of the other an animal that you love very much, but an animal and and death is a part of, you know, living on a farm. I didn't know life expectancy of a dog. I just knew it was until a coyote got it. Right? Like I was that was it. That was how you understood It's really sad in like retrospect. I don't think we had dogs that made it to twelve to fifteen years old. just because it's just the natural kingdom doesn't really
Michael Oxton: Yeah. Yeah. Wow, that's so funny! my god.
Jerrid Grimm: have that happen that often. but like vet appointments, yeah, but I I do see like my mind has shifted on that quite a bit now. And now I see why, you know, like the dog, you can see it has like feelings of what's going on, right? And it has like its stomach hurts and it what it it's concerned and like everyone's concerned. So anything that makes it easier to like diagnose and treat a dog, I think is especially like preventative
Michael Oxton: What an interesting perspective you have, Sure.
Jerrid Grimm: Because then you don't run into that question where the surgery that it's gonna require is six thousand dollars and you have to decide whether you're going to spend the six thousand dollars or not. Like you've too much control over it. Me I have this debate not debate. I had to raise the question where I'm like, What is the limit that we're willing? And my wife and my kids will both say unlimited. I'm like, Well, unlimited, it can't be unlimited, right?
Michael Oxton: Yeah. Yeah. There's no limit.
Jerrid Grimm: And then so I jokingly said replacement value one time. That didn't go over great. For sure not. For sure not. But I love I love the idea of preventative care in general, right? So if we're doing it for people, why not do it for that? So it's really cool. I really I'm excited for you in this kind of like new direction that you're going. and it's a hell of a second act.
Michael Oxton: God, I'm sure. What a mistake. Yeah! It's so new. Yeah, it's so different. I think part of it is I came out of Night Shift thirsty for something different and it's so different and so new. And it has nothing to do with the fact that I didn't like beer. I don't drink that much beer anymore, but that wasn't it. I think part of it was just an excitement and a thirst for something new and different. This is obviously completely new and different.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
Michael Oxton: And also like a personal attachment to like the idea of, helping dogs, helping animals. And like, I will say there's like this moment, I didn't touch on this in our discussion around the exit, but I will say there was this moment where like myself and Rob kind of had this like, we're not really like our core consumer anymore. You know, we used to be like, I knew my consumer cause I wasn't and then suddenly I wasn't. I, I, was kind of a freaky moment where I was like,
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
Michael Oxton: I don't know what's driving them the same way I used to. that's like, whoa, like how do I run a business successfully if I don't know our core consumer? And like, there's ways to figure that out, right? But I do think like that was an interesting insight that like, I don't know, it did impact how we thought about the exit and the timing of it. Yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. Yeah, I I can see that. It's it's much easier to like solve problems for yourself than it is to solve problems for others. And I I found that same thing. I've been in advertising most of my career and we would I always wanted clients that sold products to me because I found it really hard to get in the mindset of a customer that wasn't me, that was like, you know, a sixty five I'm like twenty two. I'm like, we should just have beer clients, right? We should just be doing like concerts and
Michael Oxton: Good! Yeah! Yeah!
Jerrid Grimm: work with bands and we have like a you know something for car insurance for like senior citizens right and i'm like i don't i don't know what they're into so yeah it is it is easier it is yeah it's easier to be in it so well this is cool it's it's been so good talking to you i'm i'm really pumped that you've got like this second chapter that you can do i i look at these things as chapters and if you keep if you keep doing the same thing it's like you know it's a little bit ripping
Michael Oxton: Yeah, they're not gonna like my jokes. Yeah. Yeah. They are.
Jerrid Grimm: competitive, you can get, you know, better at it in Honest Skill. And there's something to be said for mastery. but I think it's cool that you're going in this other direction and we're excited to see where it goes. What would you say to listeners, what's a good way for them to interact with Everfer? Is the app out is that the thing to do? Download the app. Yeah.
Michael Oxton: Yeah, that's probably the easiest. I mean, you can go to like everfur.com and like bump around, but like on the app store or Google play, just type in everfur, it's spelled E-V-E-R-F-U-R. And you can just download the app and mess around. I mean, if you're a pet owner, it's great. You can upload your pet's profile and it's got all sorts of insights. I'll say this, this is what's cool about it. The more you give it, the smarter it gets about knowing your pet. and it'll just like become context aware and it'll pull vet records and it'll start answering questions for you. So it's cool from that perspective. It's a tool that like, I was always like, this would be cool to have as a pet owner and suddenly I have it for myself and my dogs. And so I'm just like, I think people will like this. We got like 3000 people already using it. So like enough people like it where I can recommend it confidently. And yeah, I mean, you know, we're gonna evolve it and change it. And like the whole point of a second act is to like,
Jerrid Grimm: Like that. Nice.
Michael Oxton: apply learnings and figure out new stuff and that's kind of like the path we're on now.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah, great. Well if you're if you're in the like northeast, go get a a night shift brewing product, download the app and you're just you're just living in Michael's entire legacy in that moment, right? So it's been great having you on the show.
Michael Oxton: Please do. Yeah. my god, that's overwhelming. Well, thank you so much for having me. This was a really fun conversation, awesome questions, and just like really, really good discussion. I like truly had a blast. This is really fun.