June 22, 2026 – Super Lux Travel Club Adam von Gootkin and Pet Focused Dating Terry James

Intro 1 0:04
Broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning School for Startups Radio, where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk, or passion. Jim Beach.

Jim Beach 0:26
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another exciting school for startups radio. This is one of our best shows in a long time. I must admit, two amazing stories. One of my friends coming back for the sixth or seventh time, I think we talked about it, who I have known for 1012 years, because of the show, Adam Van Guten is with us first. His companies are just amazing. He has a new experiential company where they’re going to hang out at the Pope’s summer villa. You’ve got to hear this. And then Terry Jones is with us. He is a Seattle entrepreneur who has built a pet empire with food, a on like an app for discovering other pet owners, and all sorts of great stuff, and it is so impressive. He’s raised a bunch of money to get that off the ground, and so it’s another just fantastic guest. Two great, great, great stories, and I appreciate you being with us. We’re going to get started in just about 30 seconds. Thanks so much for being with us. Oh, and my book won finalist in the National Indy Awards thing, so I’m excited about that. Finalist top three. We are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us today. Very excited to welcome my first guest to the show. His name is Adam Van Guten. He has been on the show seven times, believe it or not, first time back in 2015 and we’re so excited to have him back, that might be our most frequent guest ever, but he hasn’t been on the show in four years, so we’re excited to get an exciting update. Adam started off, his family started off moon shining, and back to that, running speakeasies and things like that. His family got busted in the 1890s or 1880s or something, for some sort of booze-related thing. Anyway, in his early 20s, he restarted Onyx Spirits Core Company, which was a huge success, and that has grown into something even way cooler than that. Adam has a deal with the people that own the High Clare Castle in just outside of London, you may know that as the TV show Downton Abbey was filmed there. The family who lives there has an incredible history. They were also the family that paid for the King Tut expedition about 100 years ago, and used to display a lot of the King Tut stuff there at the house. Anyway, on the premises there, they grow a very special something. What is it,

Adam von Gootkin 3:11
Adam? Oh, they’ve got a whole bunch of botanicals that we use for our award-winning gin. In fact, when I first arrived there, and I saw the gardens, it’s 5000 acres, the estate at High Claire? I was so inspired, because all the ingredients we need for an amazing gin are just growing right out of the ground.

Jim Beach 3:27
Created High Clare Castle Spirits, which has become one of the best-selling gins in the world, and one of the highest award-receiving liquor products out there. It’s just won every award. It’s been incredibly successful, and since that Adam has started expanding into other things, which we will talk about experiences and organizations that are there for, you know, to help you do cool things that you couldn’t do otherwise. Adam, welcome back. Great to talk to you,

Adam von Gootkin 3:54
Jim. It’s so good to be back with you after these years. I always enjoy coming on. Thanks for having me. You’ve

Jim Beach 3:57
always had fun. What was the story about your great great great great granddaddy getting busted.

Adam von Gootkin 4:02
Well, so we had, so there was a few busts, actually, back in the 1860s My, my ancestors had a distillery here in New England, and they figured out a way to smuggle whiskey over the Canadian border, and they were to avoid paying, you know, the taxes, the excise, the alcohol taxes, and so the US government kind of decided that we should no longer own a distillery, and they took that away, and they ended up creating laws that make it a lot more difficult to do that, so they lost the distillery, but then when Prohibition came, my grandfather and great-grandfather on the Connecticut River owned a hotel and converted the restaurant in the basement over to an illegal speakeasy. This is like, you know, obviously 80 years later, or whatever. And ran that through Prohibition. They owned a couple steamship paddle boats, so they would smuggle in the liquor from from Manhattan every day on the steamships, kind of hidden amongst the other dry. Goods, and, and they ran that during Prohibition, so that was kind of an inspiration for me. Once upon a time,

Jim Beach 5:05
go ahead, tell us your early story with Onyx, and how that grew into High Claire.

Adam von Gootkin 5:10
Well, you know, I left college after, like, one semester, it just wasn’t for me.

Jim Beach 5:14
You were kicked out,

Adam von Gootkin 5:16
okay? That’s, that’s a more accurate way to put it. I was trying to class up the joint, but yeah, I was, I was, I was, I was received a letter that kindly asked me to leave, which Dean to

Jim Beach 5:30
my classroom and asked me out of the classroom and kicked me out of the middle of class.

Adam von Gootkin 5:35
Oh my god, are you kidding me? How horrified. At least mine was a letter that I got to hide from my family for a few weeks. Yes,

Jim Beach 5:44
that was my wife I got kicked out of school that day.

Adam von Gootkin 5:48
Oh my god, that’s horrifying in front of everybody else on top of it. My god,

Jim Beach 5:53
yes, you got kicked out.

Adam von Gootkin 5:56
Yes, I came, I came home, and I was kind of contemplating what to do. I, I had nearly joined the military, and then, you know, I just felt very entrepreneurial. I was, I was just absorbing, you know, hundreds of business books and biographies from all the great business leaders and things. I just felt that entrepreneurship called me, and I had to, like, if I was going to make this thing work in life, I was going to have to kind of trudge my own path, most entrepreneurs, I think, feel that way, and kind of have to figure it out for yourself from scratch, really. I didn’t have a whole lot of financial support behind me, or anything like that. So I decided to get into the liquor business. I found a passion for distilling liquor. I feel like there’s a real magic and an alchemy in it that comes, and it’s a very ancient thing. I was able to train with a bunch of distillers, and decided to build with my longtime business partner, Pete, the first distillery in Connecticut to be built in many, many decades. And so we learned the business, really, you know, we had, we had the corn fields, we had the spring water, we worked on the recipe, we made a million tweaks, and we launched the first, really the first legal moonshine in the United States, and the first distillery in Connecticut in a long time, and and then subsequently went on to make Connecticut’s very first whiskey using corn and grain from here in Connecticut as well. So it was a very craft, small brand we were very proud of, and I kind of learned the ropes of distribution and marketing and and production and all that kind of stuff from from a very pretty young age I was in my mid 20s at the time, I think. All

Jim Beach 7:26
right. And then, hi Claire.

Adam von Gootkin 7:29
And then I decided that, you know, we had grown as big as we could with that brand, and that brand wasn’t really scalable on a national or global level, it just kind of wasn’t designed for that. So I started looking for a brand that we could launch that had more global legs to it, and had, but interestingly, my kind of thing was it still had to be deeply authentic, and it had to resonate, and it had to be unique and stand out. And I learned about High Clare Castle through watching Downton Abbey, which my wife was a big fan of, and she kind of had been asking me to watch it for a while, and I kept saying no, and then I finally watched it, and I loved it, and I learned it was a real place. It’s a great show, and really, in the movies, have been really, really fantastic

Jim Beach 8:09
too.

Adam von Gootkin 8:10
Yeah, they’ve been great, and so I basically cold called the castle, and you know, the day after that, the phone rang, and it was the Earl of Carnarvon, God’s son to Herlate Majesty Queen Elizabeth, and we had the most fantastic phone call, and a few weeks later I was on a plane to go stay at High Claire for the weekend with my wife, landing there. I had no idea what I was really doing. I was like, what have I gotten myself into? And, and it began the most, the most amazing, you know, partnership.

Jim Beach 8:38
Amazing. I can’t believe that they just called you back the next day. That’s well, I can write a very.. you must have left a damn good message.

Adam von Gootkin 8:47
I can write a very compelling email.

Jim Beach 8:50
And what has that experience been like with him? Obviously, it’s gone pretty well.

Adam von Gootkin 8:58
It really has. I mean, we’ve been. we’ve been successful. We’ve grown the brand as a company’s got a $60 million valuation to it. We are now the 11th most sold premium gin in the United States, and our plans are to be within the top five in the next four years. And we are the single most awarded gin in the world now. So there’s a lot of people that are committed to vodka and other other drinks that are finding the magic of gin to our brand, and I think people are realizing there’s a lot of sophistication and joy in the cocktails that gin brings to life. So, I’ve enjoyed, you know, growing the business all over the world, and the US is our biggest market, of course, it’s the biggest market for liquor in the world, and just a few months back I’ve stepped aside as CEO to the role of chairman and founder, and I brought on the most amazing guy named Laurent Shun. He’s he’s the former CEO of Angostura Bitters, and before that he was a CEO with Pernod Ricard, the second largest liquor company in the world, and he’s now spearheading our growth. In a much even bigger global way,

Jim Beach 10:02
does Lord Carnarvon have a really big forehead?

Adam von Gootkin 10:06
I mean, I think it’s fairly average. Why do you ask?

Jim Beach 10:11
I think we talked about this last time. I am 99% sure that they talked about him in The Crown, that TV series, which was another great series, and talked about his father’s high forehead, and how there was an entire generation of English nobility that all have a high forehead, because he was so promiscuous and had so many mistresses, that there’s a whole generation of high foreheaded people now in England.

Adam von Gootkin 10:37
Well, so okay, so first of all, so Lord Cadaravin, my business partner, is the eighth Earl of Carnarvon. I talked about number

Jim Beach 10:48
seven, I think, or not even number six, I think it was actually number six.

Adam von Gootkin 10:52
Yeah, so his grandfather, who was known affectionately as Porchy, was really good friends with the Queen, exactly, and

Jim Beach 11:01
actually, probably,

Adam von Gootkin 11:03
well, there, there are there are rumors that that was a discussion, you know, some of those weddings, the marriages back then were kind of arranged, right, and so I think I do think that that Lord C’s grandfather might have been on the short list of wooers, but I can neither confirm nor deny

Jim Beach 11:20
was the only person that had a private line to the Queen, and that was the Queen’s Portugues, the Queen’s horse manager, stable man. You’re,

Adam von Gootkin 11:29
you’re really good, you’ve done your research. Yeah, so Lord Genarvin’s father and grandfather were both racing managers for the Queen, and Lord Carnarvon today still, he’s still, you know, breeding thoroughbreds and racing them. In fact, we, as Heichler Castle Gin, are sponsoring Goodwood and the Newberry Race Track this year, along with some US side polo matches and things like that. So, horse racing is still intrinsically a part of High Claire and the culture and Lord Carvin’s business, and even High Clair Gins business.

Jim Beach 11:58
All right, let’s move on to our congratulations on retiring. That is pretty cool. I have

Adam von Gootkin 12:04
not retired. I am not, not even anywhere near retired. I’m in my office now. I’m constantly

Jim Beach 12:10
going. And your new CEO sounds like you got an amazing guy to replace you, but now you are moving on to sort of some new things, experiences. Oh, first, before we go to experiences, every stat I see says that liquor consumption is going down in the United States. It is, it is, it’s going down globally, right? Why is that, and how do you respond to that?

Adam von Gootkin 12:33
Great question. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think that there’s always trends in every industry, right, especially in consumer good stuff, where there’s health-conscious consumers, people are definitely consuming less alcohol, but they are consumers consuming more higher quality, so it’s kind of like less, it’s kind of like less but better is really the theme that’s happening in the liquor business. People are, I think, younger people are experimenting also with legalized cannabis and even mushrooms and that kind of thing, so you’ve got that kind of angle, but I think generally people are, you know, just looking, they’re being a little bit more health conscious as a trend, which I think is a good thing. The only category of liquor in the United States that’s growing right now is premium gin, because again people are not drinking the average or middle of the road things, when they do have a cocktail, they want the best, and so those, those sales are kind of, are still growing, thankfully. So we’re very, we’re very, you know, cognizant of what are happening, you know, what’s happening with trends with the consumers, and you know, from from my perspective, I think, you know, prioritizing health is a great thing, and I don’t think it’s an either or conversation. I think if people want to, you know, reserve their cocktails for the weekend and drink responsibly and have a focus on their health, but drink better, I’m all for it. And I think our brand is a flawless fit for that.

Jim Beach 13:54
Yeah, you are perfectly positioned. All right, experiences,

Adam von Gootkin 13:58
yes, this has been a great one,

Jim Beach 14:02
because the young people, especially, they are huge into experiences. I saw that 70% of the people who went to Coachella had to buy now pay later, which is really scary, that they would still do that. Yeah, but it speaks to what is important to this generation. They don’t seem to want to buy as much stuff, they want to do cool things,

Adam von Gootkin 14:27
you know. I think, I think when we talk about experience, I think the world is shifting under our feet so fast right now. And from an entrepreneurial mindset perspective, we have to be thinking about a very different tomorrow. AI is flipping the world upside down, and I feel like also, so much of what we consume, people are getting wise to the fact that a lot of our foods are fake and over-processed, a lot of our clothes, micro plastics in the water, things that fall apart but cost a lot, like we. Becoming very homogenized, and, and when you, when you add in private equity and venture capital, that’s, that’s kind of prioritizing and creating businesses to that are kind of losing craftsmanship, losing a bit of the romance of business, and just getting so chess game with the computer kind of mode that it’s losing beauty in the world, and so from a high care castle gin perspective, I feel like we’re the first spirit that’s really rooted in a sense of place with a sense of people that has kind of a really authentic lifestyle around the liquid itself and the brand, and one of the situations I found myself in over the last few years is I’ve got so many opportunities to do really crazy, wonderful things around the world, and because I got three small kids and I’m running high, Claire, I can’t possibly say yes to these invitations, so I’ve decided to open a private club for people who are looking for kind of unviable magical experiences in all sorts of corners of the world with accesses to that you would not be able to get through a booking agent, a travel agent, or or really buy, and that’s called House Van Gutken, and I launched it in January,

Jim Beach 16:19
and where is that going to, it’s not a physical club, it’s a membership club, right?

Adam von Gootkin 16:26
Yes, it’s an invitation-only private club that goes around to castles, palaces, islands, very unique places around the world. For example, in October, we’re going to two of our members are accountant accountants from Italy, who have given us their palace and castle and Reggio Emilia for the weekend, and we’re planning a whole bunch of really amazing activities in a kind of a royal ball in the back gardens behind it. Back in January, we had a dinner at St. Patrick’s Cathedral underneath the altar in a secret room where we raised money for the cathedral, and we had dinner prepared for us by the chef to the pope by candlelight. Well, while the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra played for us, it was a really spiritual, but beautiful and grand kind of evening. So we’re, we’re doing these experiences all around the world for people who are that enjoy the club, the idea of club exclusivity, but the membership is really oriented towards people that prioritize authenticity. We have everything from entrepreneurs and CEOs to architects and artists and princes and princesses, and it’s a very unique, eclectic group of people.

Jim Beach 17:40
I have two responses. First, Adam, I’m 99.9% sure that I recommended and said that suggested this business to you in 21 in the interview the 2021 because I have been – I’ve told you this 1000 times – that the next time I go to London, I expect to spend the night at High Claire Castle, and you’re yes,

Adam von Gootkin 18:05
indeed, I will arrange a visit for you. You

Jim Beach 18:09
should do that, for you should have, like, a club, because point number two, when I was a kid, there was an organization here in Atlanta called the Skylarks, and every week they took a trip somewhere in the United States or the world. They usually left Thursday morning and came home Sunday night, so you’d only miss two days of work, and it would be snowmobiling in Montana, or skiing. Or I went there to see the King Tut exhibit in New Orleans. We went for a long weekend in New Orleans, and they had special tickets to the King Tut. We went to Mexico with them, I went to Bermuda with them, we went all over the world, and it was so cool, because it was membership only, and every month you got a, like, a flyer or little booklet that came with all of the upcoming trips, and they even had a trip that was mysterious, you didn’t know where you were going until you actually landed, which I thought was a really cool experience, but it was so it was just a totally different way to travel. You would show up at one of the cargo terminals at the airport, they would take your car and your luggage, and then you would walk into the terminal and the plane would be indoors and open, so you could go put your stuff on the plane, and then all around the plane, at the bottom they had catering for breakfast, and that kind of stuff, and you wandered around to talk to people, and you know, we went on a lot of trips, so we knew a lot of people there, and it was just like a big party, and then you all got on the plane, and then they would fly you to your place, and then they take care of the luggage, it shows up at your room, they have all of the busses available, and then if there’s a big event, you know, it’s Saturday at 10, you know, and then you had some organized stuff and some free time and stuff, and it was a huge success until they flew the airplane into a mountain and killed everybody, the story, but that’s actually what happened, they had everything, it was an. Amazing model, you should, I mean, it sounds exactly like what you’re doing now.

Adam von Gootkin 20:04
I think I think you know what we’re doing is similar, you know. I feel that people are looking for something more in their travel experiences, and in our case, because I’m so fortunate to have built a wonderful network around the world of really interesting people, you know, we’re able to focus on heritage, we’re able to focus on cuisine, and I’m, you know, I’m just absolutely romanticized by stunning architecture and art, and so when we integrate all those things together, the result is this kind of traveling club concept, and that just brings people to these adventures that you could never imagine or dream up, and memories for a lifetime throughout the year. We’re doing these, and interesting enough, it’s also a really perfect segue for Hiker Castle Gin, because we’re activating the brand around the world in unique ways too. So, it’s a great way to bring the brand to new markets and expose people to it in a way that would have been much more expensive for us to do, if we, if we didn’t do it this way, so it’s a good synergy business that, uh, that allows a lot of our friends, my friends, and investors, and people I know in my network professionally to come aboard, join the club, and really just have experiences that are actually unbelievable.

Jim Beach 21:17
I was speaking with Renee Lemo, pronounced her last name, Lemur. Yes, my chief of staff. If she said that I was going to be vice president of that company, is that true?

Adam von Gootkin 21:28
We can make anything happen for the right price point.

Jim Beach 21:33
Vice President, I would expect a salary.

Adam von Gootkin 21:35
Okay, understood.

Jim Beach 21:39
Let me tell you, one of the experiences that I arranged, I was able to get my entire MBA class to spend the day, or as long as we wanted, at the Secret Coca-Cola Room underneath Space Mountain at Disney. Wow, and wow, you walk, you go in there, you have all the Coke products, there’s a Coke dispensary, and all that stuff, and then you open one door and you are at the front of the line of Space Mountain, and we rode 40 times that day. Space Mountain, my entire class got to go, and I was the hero.

Adam von Gootkin 22:11
Wow, that’s amazing. That’s

Jim Beach 22:13
applying for the job. See what I can arrange, Adam. You didn’t even know there was a Coca Cola room underneath Space Mountain.

Adam von Gootkin 22:18
I did not know that. Absolutely, that’s right up our alley, to be honest. Well done, your class will love you forever.

Jim Beach 22:27
Yes, and I still have the record for the largest group to ever show up at Disneyland as one group. We had 26 bus loads of kids one day. That’s

Adam von Gootkin 22:37
insane. Wow,

Jim Beach 22:39
imagine 26 bus loads of kids that you’re responsible for.

Adam von Gootkin 22:43
I would rather not.

Jim Beach 22:44
Yeah, the trick was we played zone. I had one counselor like every 100 feet, you know. Oh

Adam von Gootkin 22:50
my god,

Jim Beach 22:51
covered the entire park that way.

Adam von Gootkin 22:53
Well, it sounds epic.

Jim Beach 22:55
It was a good time, you know. The kids had time. I wasn’t able to get them into the secret Coca Cola, that was a different Disney park, but so I love this, I love this idea. And how do you get invited to be in the club?

Adam von Gootkin 23:13
Well, it’s all invite only. I mean, you know, we’re really looking for people that, that are really well, we’ve got some princes. I mean, it’s really not about that only. It’s really about people that prioritize authenticity and want that sense of adventure, love to travel, love good food, love the arts, and love, love magic, and a little bit of a sense of kind of awe and mystery. And so, I mean, you know, our website is private, you do need a pin code to get in, but there is a button on our website where people can join the wait list, and we could kind of, we can, you know, somebody, my staff can reach out and just talk about whether or not it’s a, it’s a, it’s a mutual fit, you know, we’re, we’re not growing too fast, we’re keeping the membership, you know, expansion quite slow, actually, we’re being, we’re being very thoughtful around that, because we want to make sure everybody gets the maximum out of it, and, and next year is proving to be even more intense with the events that we’ve got planned around the world, so yeah.

Jim Beach 24:11
Well, I cannot wait to receive my letter of hire.

Adam von Gootkin 24:17
Absolutely,

Jim Beach 24:21
these are going to be all over the world, or just Europe-based,

Adam von Gootkin 24:26
no, all over the world. Yeah, we’ve got, well, you know, next year is going to be all Europe and US, because it’s only our second year, and but we’ve got opportunity. Actually, that’s not quite true, because we are going to Latin America, we’re doing Nicaragua in January, which is also where my cigar business is based, Hector Castle Cigar, so we do a very unique cigar and Nicaragua experience, and a lot of things not to do with cigars as well, but it’s a very

Jim Beach 24:54
there too. One of my best, as a matter of fact, the my roommate from graduate school, the same group that got. Into the Disney room, my best friend and roommate, been friends for 35 years now, lives in Nicaragua, and is probably the number one businessman American in the country. Come on, get out with the president and stuff like that. I’m sure he can. He got me into the Volcano Park, which is completely off limits. No one’s allowed there. And we went for a hike and a picnic on the volcano. Yeah, exactly. Seriously, I’ll introduce you to his name is Mark, and I can introduce you to him. He is a powerhouse in Nicaragua.

Adam von Gootkin 25:38
Yeah, it would be great to know him. I, you know, I’ve been very fortunate over the last few years to get to know a lot of the prominent families of Nicaragua. You know, it’s a very old school place in that kind of way, and I’ve always loved it since the first time I went to get our cigar business going. It’s a very kind of Jurassic landscape. It’s the people are so kind and beautiful, the food is incredible, you know. Everybody, everybody tends to kind of focus on Costa Rica, because, of course, it’s had a history and a reputation of being more stable than Nicaragua. Nicaragua certainly has had its, its share of challenges,

Jim Beach 26:13
problems.

Adam von Gootkin 26:15
Yeah, it’s definitely had those challenges, but it’s, but it’s such a beautiful country, and such a beautiful place, and I, I felt that it would be a place that I know most of our club members have not been, and we have a lot of great ins. I love to meet your friend Mark as well, and it’s going to be magical. Yeah,

Jim Beach 26:30
how are you so good at networking? How do you end up meeting princes?

Adam von Gootkin 26:35
Well, I think it’s probably because I prioritize authenticity, and I’ve got, I’ve got no shame, and so I don’t get very wowed by anybody, especially if they’re they’re kind and they seem interesting, and they’re, and they’re unique, and you know, I’m fortunate to be all over the world growing our businesses, and have done since I was in my, my 20s, so you meet people and you attend things and stuff, and and over the years I’ve just built a wonderful, wonderful network of people, and, and now I thought it would be a wonderful, you know, opportunity. I’m 43 you know, our businesses are growing and maturing. I just thought it would be a good time to kind of open up the portal of that of that world to a lot of the people that I know and or don’t know that that that seek out the same kind of meaningful friendships and and those adventures, you know,

Jim Beach 27:24
I love it. I love it. I always wanted to recreate the Skylarks, you know, with the same game and everything. I know no one’s gonna sue me for, you know, trademark in French because they’re all dead. Oh

Adam von Gootkin 27:36
God,

Jim Beach 27:38
oh, that’s so sad.

Adam von Gootkin 27:41
Yeah, that’s intense. It

Jim Beach 27:42
is. It was unbelievable when it happened, because I knew, probably, you know, I knew all of the pilots, all of the founder was on the plane when it happened.

Adam von Gootkin 27:49
Oh my god, what a nightmare!

Jim Beach 27:51
Yeah, yeah, we used to go every February, my father and I did a father-son snowmobile trip to West Yellowstone with them every year, and you know, if you’ve never been snowmobiling, that is an amazing experience. There’s nothing more fun than that, racing down a runway at 80 miles an hour, knowing that it’s, oh yeah, safe.

Adam von Gootkin 28:15
Yeah, I love it too. I love it too, yeah. For sure.

Jim Beach 28:19
Well, Adam, it’s an amazing story, and you’re doing so impressive with all of the success and all of the cool stories. How do we find out more, get in touch with you, and buy some gin? And yeah, well, the site for the club,

Adam von Gootkin 28:35
yes, the gin is Highclere gin.com H I C H C L e r e, and people can get cocktail recipes on there. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and stuff, and certainly they could order a bottle and have it delivered home. We just launched our new peach rose version, which is a rose gold bottle that just came out a few weeks ago, and I made that recipe using rose from the Lady Cadarvan rose grown at the castle, and also peaches grown to the castle, and a little bit of honey kept by the beekeepers, so people can get a bottle of that if they want to try it. It’s super delicious, and Forbes just named us the best tasting flavored gin in the world, which is pretty cool. And and then, if anyone’s interested in learning more about the club, it’s House Van Gutken House VG calm.

Jim Beach 29:21
Yes. fantastic. Adam, congratulations. And I can’t wait to have you back next time. And I will maybe even apply for the club. Does the club have, like, a membership fee, or is it only fees for the trips?

Adam von Gootkin 29:35
It’s annual dues. Yeah, there are annual dues, because we go very big and very over the top, so the dues cover that, and they have to get yourself there, but we have a whole lot of travel concierge options, and all sorts of VIP, from very simple to very extravagant, so yeah, it’s all taken care of.

Jim Beach 29:53
All right, perhaps the most important question I can ask, are you Team Harry or Team William?

Adam von Gootkin 30:01
Oh, wow. So, well, you know, I’m certainly an Anglophile, and I believe in tradition and the history of what the crown represents, and I fully support the future king and his wife, and all the beautiful work that they are doing, both in the UK and around the world.

Jim Beach 30:19
Team William.

Adam von Gootkin 30:21
Yes,

Jim Beach 30:22
yeah, me too. I can’t stand Harry and that wife of his, but anyway,

Adam von Gootkin 30:27
you know, they’ve had a tough go of it, and I’m not going to pretend I know everything. You know, there’s three sides to every story, and one of them is the truth. And I think they’ve had their own weird challenges, and I don’t follow gossip really either. All I can say is honestly to keep it positive, like I just think that what Will and Kate are doing is so fantastic for the younger generation of the UK, the Commonwealth, and the world. There’s like a billion people on planet Earth that live within the British Commonwealth, and I think they set a really good example for leadership today. So, I just, I think they’re doing a good job. The other stuff that’s happening, I don’t know, man. I don’t know. I try not to read the articles, because it just, you know, who knows what’s real, you know?

Jim Beach 31:09
I know she is probably the most beautiful woman in the world right now. I can’t..

Adam von Gootkin 31:13
I know

Jim Beach 31:14
anyone who does it better than her.

Adam von Gootkin 31:16
I know my wife would agree.

Jim Beach 31:17
Thank you so much for being with us. Amazing job, and we can’t wait to come back. Thanks a lot, Adam

Adam von Gootkin 31:23
Jim. It’s always so good to be with you. Thanks for having me back, and I’ll see you soon, I hope.

Jim Beach 31:26
And we will be right back, you. To well, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a wonderful question. Actually,

Intro 2 31:46
oh my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jim. Wow, that’s, that’s all, that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question, and, and I don’t have a great answer.That’s a great question. Oh, that is such a loaded question, and that’s actually a really good question. School for Startups Radio.

Jim Beach 32:05
We are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to welcome to the show Terry James. He’s had a very successful career, and then became an entrepreneur. He worked with some of the biggest and most prestigious companies in the world, and did really well there. At Morgan Stanley, he was the national sales director and won the award for being the best. He had a 25 year career in wealth management, sales leadership, and real estate development. He has helped develop $500 million in real estate transactions. After that, he moved to UBS, where he was a wealth manager there. After that, he decided to go out on his own and become an entrepreneur, and he’s already had success there. He’s been named one of the top innovators, and I’m sorry, one of the top 100 innovators by Entrepreneur magazine for two amazing companies that he has developed. First, he has Nibble and Wag, which is a pet food company, and we will find out all about that, and an app called Off Leash, which is a community for pet owners to help them find dog parks and talk to each other and find breeders and all that kind of stuff. I would assume. Terry James, welcome to the show. How you doing today?

Terry James 33:19
I’m doing great, thank you for having me on.

Jim Beach 33:20
Well, it is our pleasure. I do want to acknowledge that Terry was supposed to be on the show about a month ago, and I blew him off rudely, and so he was very gracious to not hate me and to come back at another time. So, thank you, Terry, for your graciousness.

Terry James 33:34
Absolutely. Why’d

Jim Beach 33:36
you leave the financial markets? I mean, you were making hundreds of $1,000 a year in positions like that. Why would you leave?

Terry James 33:46
You know, it’s interesting. I think at my core, I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur. My father was an entrepreneur, so kind of following those same kind of footsteps of wanting to be on my own. You know, I left and started a mortgage company. As I got into real estate, was able to sell that company, and then ultimately get into the traditional transactional real estate world. Built a company there, and then eventually started a construction and development company to buy, build, and develop properties around the Seattle, Washington area.

Jim Beach 34:19
Excellent. How is Seattle doing right now? We don’t hear good things in the rest of the country,

Terry James 34:25
you know. Seattle’s an interesting market, just because, you know, it’s got its own unique challenges facing it right now. You know, we are big time international port city, right, lots of trade that’s been impacted by tariffs and some of those kind of things. We also have a large international tech population that’s been impacted as well, but you know, listen, the core of our business is still built upon its vibrancy, its diversity, its tech focus. You know, Starbucks and Costco, and those kind of things are still there, even though I split time between. Between the kind of Los Angeles area and Seattle, they are Seattle’s home for my wife and kids and everything for a long time, but I split time between there, but we still develop in the Seattle area. The

Jim Beach 35:10
mayor there seems, so we don’t want to talk politics, that this is my last question. The mayor there seems unique,

Terry James 35:18
I think. Seattle brings that uniqueness out, you know, every time you know Seattle and Portland have, you know, different but similar dynamics, so you know, I think you need someone that can understand the culture of Seattle, right, because you’ve got the vibrancy between the tech world, traditional business, real estate, and it’s got its own challenges, but you know,

Jim Beach 35:43
business, in your opinion,

Terry James 35:45
I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I mean, I, you know,

Jim Beach 35:49
bucks to leave,

Terry James 35:50
yeah, you know, but if you look at it, I think every, every community has its own challenges that they’re trying to solve, and I think the, you know, every political person is trying to do their best to try to put the interests and needs of the people first, and Seattle, you got to have your own understanding of kind of the unique dynamics of that city, right, to really understand it, you know, you know, Starbucks is a core competency, just like Costco, just like Nordstrom, right, they’re probably, probably part of that core community. I was, you know, pretty honored to sit on the corporate leadership council for Seattle Children’s Hospital for a long time. You know, those are the fixtures of, of that, of the Emerald City, along with the University of Washington, those kind of things. But Microsoft is, is, you know, a standard bearer, you know, Amazon, Google, you’ve got, you know, both sides of the water, you’ve got, you know, two different, almost two different communities and two different cultures, one on the east side was more business focused, and then you know Seattle with its own kind of unique ways in which of viewing the world, so

Jim Beach 37:00
I heard just yesterday you mentioned Portland, that the Portland Ritz-Carlton condo building has halved their prices 600 down to 300 million, down to a half million. They’re expected to lose $75 million on the building because they can’t sell it. Are you having that kind of problem in Seattle too? How are commercial and sales doing?

Terry James 37:23
Yeah, I think I think you know we’re at a 2520 25 year high in terms of interest rates, but prices have an affordability crisis that’s going on that’s unique, that’s it’s not unique to Seattle, but Seattle has its own unique flavor, right? When you think about California, when you think about Seattle, Seattle is one of the most expensive places to live in the country. It’s got certain dynamics that are very positive, right? Education, it’s, you know, quality of life has always been rated really high, you know. Good schools, where you know, both on the East side, where you know public school rankings are pretty strong, but you know, prices are high, and you’ve got interest rates that are in the high 6% range. People are going to have their challenges and being able to afford that, particularly when you have major companies that are making cuts, you know, some are technology related, you know, with the advancements of AI and those kind of things, where you know larger employers that are in Seattle are cutting parts of their work staff, so you’re going to have some of those unique challenges that present itself. You know, a seven $800,000 home now is super expensive, where in a sub three 4% environment that wasn’t the case.

Jim Beach 38:41
So, are you a dog, a pet person?

Terry James 38:44
I am. Yeah, we’ve got two dogs, Solo and Bean. Solo is our is our kind of older boy, he’s a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, and our younger one is a Shih Tzu Poodle, his name’s Bean, and we also have a cat who’s been with us about 17 years, his name is Simba. They have this unique, special thing that they can do, right, where you know you take them to a dog park, you have the ability to connect with people maybe you would never normally have a conversation with, you know, they’re the perfect icebreaker, and they just show this ability for unconditional love, right? That’s that’s the beauty and uniqueness about, about dogs in particular, which is, you know, really the core basis of off-leash, and really why we created our food.

Jim Beach 39:34
Wasn’t there an Eddie Murphy skit with him going around with the leash, meeting women that way?

Terry James 39:39
I think I can remember that. Yeah, he was like, you know,

Jim Beach 39:43
Puffy’s gone. Where’s Puffy? All the girls would come and all up look for Puffy, who may or may not exist. We don’t know. All that we know is they had a leash. I think, well,

Terry James 39:53
to be honest, most people that do have a dog in their a. You know, social profile does increase their opportunities or odds of finding that you know special someone. I will say that

Jim Beach 40:08
I agree. Yes. All right. What gave you the inspiration and the idea for let’s start with off leashed? Where did that idea come from?

Terry James 40:17
You know, I think we all saw during the pandemic, everyone being shut in, and you know, really disconnected from each other, and we saw this kind of rise in social loneliness, but we found that pets were this unique way of bringing people together, so we said, you know, could we could we help people find each other, find friends, find connection, find community through their pets. So, in 2022 we launched our social app in Seattle, was our core and our first real kind of initial entree into the market. It was, as a, you know, as a matchmaking app for people to help people find love. We felt the world needed more of that.

Jim Beach 41:04
Let me interrupt. Terry, is this a for a dog to meet a dog or for a man to meet a woman? Is it a date for humans?

Terry James 41:13
That’s how it started. That was our initial tip of the spear, right? As an

Jim Beach 41:16
idea, like a Jewish people J date or something like,

Terry James 41:20
yeah, something similar, but where pets kind of drove how people connected, so we got our global patent on our matchmaking process, because no one had before done helping people not only have human traits of how they connected, but also overlaying animal traits to make sure you had compatible animals and those kind of things to do so, right? And so that’s how we started in 2022 Puget Sound Business Journal rated us as one of the top five startups there in Seattle, and our vision and the vision for the brand was much larger than that. Right, we felt that we had the opportunity to really be that central hub for all pet lovers, for all things pet, right, that social connection and community was at the core of it, and so we set out to build this platform and this social community that was really solving for people’s biggest problem, which was, you know, this isolation and, and this lack of connection, right? And so that’s what we focus on building, and so we sanded down to LA and 2024 raised some additional money for the brand, as we started, you know, we started as a bootstrapped, I put in about a quarter million of my own money, because we believed in the concept of what we were building, and we thought that this needed to be exist in the world, and and and then my business partner, our CEO, Jeff Brown, he brought in another 100,000 for us to get our brand started and off the ground, and we believed in it, and so we had to have proof of concept first, and so what we did then is went out and got other people who love pets as much as we do, who love people as much as we do, to help us continue to expand our vision

Jim Beach 43:01
from the market. After that,

Terry James 43:03
we did, we did. So, we’ve raised about a million total, and we’re about to go out to the market to raise another 5 million, so that we can continue to have boots on the ground in locations across the country. It is, we’re in about, we’re in about 42 states right now, in about 66 cities, where we have members who are part of our social community, and we’re continuing to look to expand every day.

Jim Beach 43:24
And is it still basically focused on dating for humans?

Terry James 43:28
No. So, what we’ve built now is really this fully integrated pet ecosystem, right? So, you can come for there’s some people are on our social platform just for the matchmaking portion, and that’s great, we have that, but you know you’re a pet owner, you know that there are multitude of needs that you have, some just need advice, right? They need to get information about how do they be a better pet parent. So we created our Eve AI to do just that. It’s kind of like Chat GPT, but for pet people. It was only trained, we got invited into the Google Cloud for Startup program early, so we were able to build our own LLM, and what that is, is basically we created a humanized version of a companion to help give you advice to be a better pet parent. It also helps you, you know, answer some questions if you’re trying to do some matchmaking as well, so there’s a positive component in that, but that’s what we created. Now we’ve created, we have, you know, if we go onto the app, you can join various different communities, you can come to live events that we host, you know, mostly on the West Coast, right now, until we expand across the country, and you really can find your people hyper local and those kind of things, and then listening to our community is where we came up with the idea of building our own pet food.

Jim Beach 44:47
Okay, go ahead and tell me about the.. let me double check the name Nibble and Wag. What’s special about that?

Terry James 44:56
So it really spawned from listening for. I think the most important part that we’ve learned about this is that the needs of pet parents are very different, but you know, the three biggest concerns that we would say most pet parents have, right, it’s financial insecurity, right, I got to be able to afford it, food insecurity, I want, I got to give them, you know, the kind of food that you want, and then housing insecurity, right, we’re making sure I can, I can get my dog, and so a lot of things are changing in pet parents, right? They’re becoming younger, more diverse than ever, and the way in which they take care of their pets is very different. We saw that trend happening. So now 74% of pet parents come from millennials, Gen Z, and Gen X, right. And so how they, how they operate, how they do things, is very different, but their biggest concern is buying good food for their pets, and so there’s this stratification, if you will, between like the kibble that we see most people being able to afford and the fresh food that most people would like to afford, but maybe out of reach, especially for younger people. So we said there had to be a happy medium, you know. My, I grew up, and my first dog, his name was Jumbo. I don’t mean to digress, but my first dog was Jumbo. I was the last key kid growing up in Las Vegas, Nevada. What that means is that I would get off the bus as a young kid and get myself into my house myself until my parents came home. Both parents worked, so you know, back when I grew up, that’s what she did, and, but, but my point of safety for me was my dog Jumbo, and every time I walked in, not the best neighborhood, but when I opened that door, my little dog was there to give me that safety and that comfort until my parents got home, and we, you know, couldn’t afford much, but we gave the dog with the best we could, we gave him some alpo, and, and when my economic circumstances changed, I got older, and we had pets, you know, we went to the opposite, it was like, oh, we got to buy the most expensive food for my pet, and the reality that wasn’t the relationship either, but most people don’t have the ability to choose to give their dog good food, so I said, could we? This happened over tacos and margaritas. We were having some drinks. I was speaking at a conference, and one of the other founders that we started this brand with, we had this conversation. Is that, look, can we make something that was super healthy and super affordable, right, for people, and so that’s what we set out to do with Nipple and Wag, and took us about a year, little year, year and a quarter to do. I’d never built a pet food before, so this is a brand new thing for me. Jeff and I were crisscrossing the country, going to every conference we could, trying to find as much as we could, and then we figured out the formula that we could do it, and the biggest challenge is getting people to understand that just because the price is lower doesn’t mean the quality is ever any less. So we created this premium dehydrated dog food that’s under $2 a meal, that you know, for a family of two, you can feed two pets for like 110 bucks a month, which is, you know, you know, anywhere between three to five times less other premium foods, but get the same nutrient quality, the same, you know, health benefits that you get, we use upcycled ingredients, all real natural food, locally sourced, and with an environmentally friendly focus to it, so we wanted to say, listen, we need to bring healthy food to everyone. Everyone, regardless of your ability to pay, should be able to be able to afford good food for their pets. Their family member, you wouldn’t sacrifice for your kid, you shouldn’t have to sacrifice for your pet. So that’s what we tried to do.

Jim Beach 48:36
Farm to pet bowl. Yes, I love it. How much is a big bag of kibble from Costco? You know that 50 pound bag I buy every month. How much does that cost? Do you have any idea?

Terry James 48:50
You know that’s going to be somewhere between, let’s say 60 to $70 right? For like a lot

Jim Beach 48:56
of trips or something. Yeah, for like a large bag. Never think about it. I just buy the bag, you know. My wife tells, well, you know, bag, you know. So then the kibble

Terry James 49:08
we’re not right, you know. When you think about it, you, you look at where, so it’s a one pound bag. So, as a non-off leash member, it’s 16 bucks, right? 1699 but it’s a dehydrated food, so you have to rehydrate it, so it equates about three to four times that number, right? So, when you think about that, equates about almost roughly about four pounds of food, so depending on your size of your dog, you know, you’re it’s at least two meals a day, so with four bags of food, you can easily feed a pet for a month, but here’s the most important part that I think there’s a big study that just recently was released that looked at what they, you know, what they do with kibble, and most people, you know, listen, we’re all trying to do our best to give our dogs the best, but we don’t spend the time looking. At the ingredients that really go into the foods, right. So, when you think about it from that perspective, and the study came out and looked at all the carcinogens and arsenic, and all this kind of bad stuff that they put in, a mystery meat, all this bad stuff that they put into most kibble, and you know, dogs get the same ailments as humans, they get diabetes, they get heart disease, they get, you know, they have obesity issues, they get cancer, they get all these things, they get the same thing that humans do, and a lot of it, it’s what, what they put into their body, and dogs can’t control what they do, only we can, so when you look at this big study, and then you look at all the bad stuff that I’m not saying every company is doing intentionally, but why I’m saying that’s that’s the outcome, and if you could give your dog an alternative of something healthy and affordable, why wouldn’t you? You would do that for your child, and for most people, they look at their pet as a part of their, their family, right? So we should be trying to do the very best for our pets as we are trying to do for our own family members, right? And that means we got to give them better food, but I understand that that’s for most people, especially in this economy, that is as a, as a challenge, right? Because you have to decide between, okay, I want to give my, I want to, I’d love to get my dog this fresh stuff I see on on TV, and look, farmers dogs, amazing food. It’s great, fresh, just food for dogs, great, amazing food. But it’s out of reach for most families financially, and so what you’re left with is what what you can get off the shelf, just kibble, you know, whatever fits in the budget. And there’s some great food from that perspective. I’m not, I’m not arguing that, but what I am arguing is that there’s a better option, and there’s a better choice for your family, and we tried to go out and create that right with the help of Beth’s, and making sure we stayed with inside of all the goals and standards, and looked at what they were providing, and said we could do something better, and then could we make it so every family could afford it, and that’s what we did very

Jim Beach 52:05
quickly. How did you find a factory production?

Terry James 52:09
So our partner in this is a company called Dog and Whistle, based out of Nevada. It’s one of our co-founders. He owns about 25% of the company, but he’s our chief culinary officer, so he is making the food out of our location out of Nevada, so when he does all the dehydration, so it’s real ingredients, dehydrates him in his kitchen, and then we bag it, and then sell it, so we just launched about a little less than 30 days ago with this food brand, and it’s direct to consumer right now. We hope to get it into some other local stores and then continue to build this brand across the country.

Jim Beach 52:54
Wow, Terry, it’s an amazing idea. I love both ideas. I’m sorry, but we are out of time. Boy, we blew through the 25 minutes fast, there. How do we find out more about you? Get some great nibble and sign up for the app.

Terry James 53:06
Yes, yes. So we are available on the App Store, either Google or the Apple Apple Store. Our website is www.offleashed.com that’s O F F L E A S H d.com and then our food brand is www dot nibble and wag.com We’d love to see you in our community, build your pets a profile for them, for you and your family, and start connecting with people in your community, and also help us with this mission of bringing affordable food to everybody across the country.

Jim Beach 53:43
I love it, Terry. Thank you so much for being with us. Congratulations on a great job. And we’d love to have you back. Thanks a lot.

Terry James 53:48
Thank you.

Jim Beach 53:49
You hear the music, so you know what that means. We’re out of time. Be safe. Take care, and go make a million dollars,