An LTL Showed up to their SF Residence! Nikki Elliot and Michelle Razavi cofounders of Evali

My Biggest Lessons with Chris Meade

Michelle and Nikki started Elavi to fulfil their own need for Functional, shelf-stable snacks designed to go with you anywhere and help with cognitive focus, balanced mood, athletic recovery, and overall vitality in a delicious, convenient way.

4:00 Starting by bootstrapping, which is amazingly hard to

5:20 Balancing full time focus form one co-founder without both having to deplete their safety nets and the importance of having a co-founder. Making contribution of both sweat equity and capital equity and managing the dynamics.

9:30 Starting their retail strategy local to keep acquisition costs down, and find out what their sales and follow up strategy looks like.

12:00 What types of sales collateral do you need? What unexpected customers did you get.

15:00 Working with distributors to work into big box retail

18:00 Hard lessons learned including shipping LTL truck loads to residential SF addresses, and working with retailers.

20:00 Discussing DTC or retail sales strategy and creative marketing strategies to connect with customers.

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Chris Meade is the co-founder & CMO of CROSSNET, the world’s first four-way volleyball game. Chris was honored with Forbes 30U30 for the 2021 Sports category. CROSSNET combines elements of the childhood game four square and volleyball in a competitive game to 11, win by 2. CROSSNET is now available at 3000+ retail stores such as Walmart, Target, DICKS, Academy Sports, Sam’s Club and 20+ other retailers.