Archives for November 2018

November
23, 2018

4 min read

Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you’ll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners.

With Thanksgiving almost in the books, how about geting a head start on Black Friday deals? Take advantage of deals ranging from a sleek carry-on luggage piece to highly reviewed noise-cancelling headphones. Also, don’t forget to check out with the promo code to lock in the displayed sale prices. 

12.  Fantom 10 Quick Access Slim Wallet – $39.20 with promo code “BFSAVE20” 

This minimal card holder sets to revolutionize the traditional leather bifold wallet. With a razor thin and lightweight carbon fiber design, the Fantom wallet utilizes a lever to fan out cards–making it easy to access cards with one hand. 

11.  BentoStack – $34.36 with promo code “BFSAVE20” 

Stop trying to look for cables and chargers in your bag. The BentoStack neatly stores all your charging and smartphone accesories in a protected multi-level storage unit. 

10. Extreme Boost 20,000mAh Back-Up Battery – $25.59 with promo code “BFSAVE20” 

We all know that feeling of hitting 5 percent battery life and no charger in sight. The Extreme Boost Battery allows your to charge up to four devices at once. And the 20,000mAh capacity will allow you to charge your iPhone X over seven times. 

9. Genius Pack G4 Carry-On Spinner Case – $159.20 with promo code “BFSAVE20” 

This sleek all-in-one travel system makes it easier to pack for business trips and weekend vacations. Equipped with four 360-degree wheels, expandable compartments, a waterproof coated fabric, removeable laundry bag, and more…what more could you ask for? 

8. EVO Flow System™ Planner – $31.99 with promo code “BFSAVE20” 

This isn’t any ordinary planner, the EVO Flow System Planner is tailored how your mind naturally process information. After planning and taking notes, simply scan and save your data on the app to map out any trends.

7. Chargerito: The World’s Smallest iPhone Charger – $23.99 with promo code “BFSAVE20” 

Touted as the “world’s smallest charger,” the Chargerito can attach to your keys so you always have access to a smartphone charger. The Chargerito is an all-in-one solution with a wall plug and power adapter tip.

6. MOZA Mini-MI Wireless Charging Smartphone Gimbal – $75.99 with promo code “BFSAVE20” 

Whether you are trying to film a company promotional video or wanting to capture memories on vacation, the MOZA Gimbal allows users to take steady smartphone videos. Even with eight built-in settings, the gimbal is intuitive and easy to use.  

5. Ockel Sirius B Windows 10 32GB Pocket PC – $199.20 with promo code “BFSAVE20” 

Literally have the power of a desktop PC running Windows 10 in your pocket with the Ockel Sirius B. With 2GB RAM and 32GB Flash Storage, this is perfect computer for any small-business owner, traveler, or student.

4. Oco Motion HD Pan/Tilt Wireless Security Camera – $103.20 with promo code “BFSAVE20” 

Keep tabs on your home and office when you are away with the Oco Motion HD. The security camera is built with a self-learning detection that will alert you via smartphone of any motion or sound.

3. KeySmart Pro with Tile Smart Location – $31.99 with promo code “BFSAVE20” 

Never lose your keys again with the help of this key organizer with a Tile locator built in. Use your Android or iPhone to either locate your keys on a map or to send an audible alert from the KeySmart. 

2. iPM 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Station – $34.99 with promo code “BFSAVE20” 

There aren’t that many wireless charging stations that are able to charge your Apple iPhone, Watch, and AirPods at once. Charge all three Apple devices fast thanks to the Qualcomm 3.0 Quick Charging Technology. 

1. Cowin E7 Active Noise-Cancelling Bluetooth Headphones – $51.19 with promo code “BFSAVE20” 

These active noise-cancelling headphones are perfect for those traveling this holiday season, trying to get some work done, or just binging on Netflix. With 30 hours of playtime, you don’t have to worry about running out of juice all the time.

November
20, 2018

4 min read

Spending time at a hotel during the off season doesn’t need to be like a scene out of The Shining. In fact, if you can home in on the right destination, off-season travel can be some of the most fun, rewarding and — yes — cost-effective vacationing you can do. Plan your trip right, and you’ll be able to gain access to hotels, restaurants and events that are too crowded (or expensive) during the tourist-swarmed high season.

Related: 21 Ways to Get Inspired (Infographic)

Over the winter, Long Island’s East Hampton — home to celebrities like Steven Spielberg, Jerry Seinfeld and Martha Stewart — is chock full of activities for budget-minded travelers looking to unwind. Besides possessing some of the most gorgeous beaches on the east coast, the swanky town is packed with all the arts, shopping, eating and drinking the savvy vacationer could want.

Here are five reasons an off-season trip to the Hamptons is the perfect way to recharge.

1. Killer accommodations

A quick scan of booking.com or Airbnb will demonstrate the obvious: It’s way cheaper to find a place to stay in East Hampton over the winter. We suggest checking out Journey East Hampton, which maintains the hip and sophisticated spirit of the Hamptons without the stratospheric cost.

Image credit: Journey East Hampton

All the rooms feature a cozy lounge area, ultra-modern bathrooms and an insanely comfortable bed courtesy of Serta Simmons’ Tomorrow Sleep mattress. Guests can enjoy craft cocktails in the lobby bar or step outside by the bonfire and warm up with s’mores. You can’t do that over the summer. (Well, you can — but people might look at you funny.)

2. Easy travel

Unless you’ve been stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for hours on end on 27 East, it’s almost impossible to comprehend the agony of driving out east during the summer months. But get this: Not only is the one-shot route to the Hamptons mostly clear in the off-season; but once you arrive, the town’s country roads — usually backed up with beach-goers — are incredibly fun to wind through. If you’re the type who finds spirited driving a Zen-like activity, East Hampton’s windy roads can be your nirvana. In fact, in her book, Drivetime, Professor Lynne Pearce, of Lancaster University notes that driving can “positively direct and structure thought.”

Related: 3 Important Changes That Can Save Yourself From Burnout

3. Unique activities

As one of the hottest travel destinations on the East Coast, East Hampton in the high season can be a touristy mess. While certain activities are off limits over the winter (now is not the time to take those surfing lessons), there’s still lots to do on the chilliest of days.

Ice skating at Buckskill Winter Club, cider tastings at Wolffer Estates and special screenings of live theater from the Metropolitan Opera at GuildHall are all totally worthy daytime options from December through February.

4. Trendy restaurants

Try to make a reservation at locals-only Italian favorite Nick & Toni’s during the summer, and you’ll be lucky if you can sit after 4 or before 11. During the off-season, however, you can rub elbows with some of the town’s biggest names. (Alec Baldwin is a regular.) Typical waits at Bostwick’s Chowder House, a casual, locals-approved seafood spot, can be well over an hour from May through August. We much prefer walking right in and scoring one of their legendary lobster rolls immediately, thank you very much.

Related: 11 Habits of Truly Happy People

5. Natural beauty

Fighting for towel space on one of the Hamptons’ iconic beaches is hardly a calming experience. But a brisk, centering, off-season morning stroll on Indian Wells Beach or Atlantic Avenue — both open during the winter and blissfully uncrowded — is just the opposite, and sure to recharge your creative spirit. Science backs this up as well; in his research on the psychological and cognitive effects of the outdoors, neuroscientist David Strayer has found that time in nature enhances higher-order thinking, restores attention and boosts creativity. For even more inspiration, visit the 16-acre garden at LongHouse Reserve with sculptures by acclaimed architect Buckminster Fuller. It’s the ideal place for smartphone-addicted cubicle dwellers to unplug, unwind and invigorate.

November
19, 2018

7 min read

In this ongoing column, The Digest, Entrepreneur.com News Director Stephen J. Bronner speaks with food entrepreneurs and executives to see what it took to get their products into the mouths of customers.

Chris Hunter is one of the guys responsible for Four Loko, the formerly caffeinated alcoholic drink that was blamed for causing a few deaths, and which the government then cracked down hard on.

Four Loko is still on the market today — and apparently selling well — but Hunter, who was 25 when the brand was created, has since moved on to other businesses. His current pursuit is leading Koia, a plant-based protein beverage company. Quite the career pivot, right?

The beverage brand launched nationally in Whole Foods in 2016 and has since expanded to the shelves of more than 4,000 U.S. stores. It expects to have $10 million in sales for this year. Koia’s products include five flavors of its original protein beverage, as well as three fruit infusion flavors. The company plans to introduce a keto line in January.

Related: How This Alcohol Industry Newcomer Created a Japanese Whiskey Brand for the U.S.

Entrepreneur asked Hunter about his career shift, what interested him about Koia and his advice for launching a product.

Chris Hunter

Image credit: Courtesy of Koia

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you go from Four Loko to Koia?

My life had evolved. I was in my early 30s and my first son was born. Life was just different than it was back then. I was looking for something I was a little more aligned with. Craft beer was really popular at the time, and it still is, so I found a small craft brewery outside of Chicago that was creating an alcoholic root beer. I formed a relationship with the creator and founder — essentially we brought in this company and brand under a subsidiary of [Four Loko parent company] Phusion Projects — and we created the brand Not Your Father’s Root Beer. We ended up selling that brand to Pabst shortly after.

At that point life was changing again, and my second son was born. He was born dairy intolerant, so we became a dairy-free household. My wife was studying to be a nutritionist. We were starting to eat a lot differently. My workouts were changing from when I was younger, from typical gym days to now doing yoga and triathlons. I was much more aware of health and wellness in general.

I started investing in some small, better-for-you companies and products, from meal delivery kits services to a product called Raw Nature 5, which was the original form of Koia. It just so happened that the product was in my gym, and I had been drinking it.

Why was an attractive product to you?

As I started to do my due diligence, Raw Nature 5 was a really bad name, and it had this really bad bottle and label. But it was selling really well. It was only in 30 stores in Chicago. I started to dig into it a little bit more. One store told us it was their best-selling product, and it was selling for six bucks a bottle. I stopped into a Whole Foods and noticed there was a good amount of shelf space dedicated to this product. As I was standing there, I watched a consumer basically pitch the product to another consumer.

A bunch of industry veterans, including Mark Rampolla who created Zico, invested in the product, so I invested alongside them. I was the local guy who had some entrepreneurial experience, so I formed a good relationship with Raw Nature 5’s co-founders. As they started moving along, the company got into a difficult situation — it was running out of money.

Image credit: Courtesy of Koia

We collectively decided to pull Raw Nature 5 off the shelves, because it wasn’t a scalable product at that point. There wasn’t a process in place to sell it nationwide. But I believed in the product so much, so me and other investors decided to invest what was a significant amount for us. I talked about wanting to bet on myself and take the reins. So I came in to help pivot the company and co-found the new company and new product, which we collectively rebranded as Koia.

Related: 5 Ways Switching to Plant-Based Diet Boosts Your Productivity

What can other entrepreneurs learn from your experience of launching into Whole Foods?

There’s multiple ways to go to market. I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong. A lot of companies will saturate one particular market like New York or L.A. or wherever and prove out their story and then launch nationally. We were fortunate that we had an opportunity to launch nationally with Whole Foods. You can’t really turn that down, but it’s an expensive way to go. We had to take on investment and grow the company quickly.

My advice would just be to think through what you want the final outcome of your company and product to be and what route to market best fits that, whether it’s a regional build or national rollout.

What has been the company’s greatest challenge, and how were you able to overcome it?

The natural food beverage industry has a ton of new products launching, so it’s a crowded space and there’s a lot of noise around it. It’s a difficult route to market. How we overcame it is we added an extraordinary amount of support to any retailer that we’ve launched at. When we had the opportunity to launch with Whole Foods, we didn’t have the mentality of, “Oh great, we’re done, now let’s sit back and watch what happens.” We hired merchandisers. We did a lot of in-store demos. We did price reductions. We did everything in our power to make sure that consumers were exposed to the brand.

We made sure that the labeling really spoke to our selling points that there’s 18 grams of protein and only 4 grams of sugar in the entire bottle. That draws people in right away. They’re intrigued. We were confident that once people tried our product, they would like it and become repeat purchasers. That’s an expensive thing to do, but I believe that’s the right way to go to market.

Where does the name Koia come from?

As we came up with the name Koia, we used a branding agency, and looked into our belief as a company and what we wanted to stand for. We honed in on blue zones — places in the world that people live longer than others. What we started to look at is there’s these five common trends with people that live in blue zones. One of them is they eat a primarily plant-based diet, which clearly fit with Koia. It fits with our mentality as a company. The name Koia is derived from one of those blue zones, the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica.

Related: This Beverage Entrepreneur Got His Start by Simply Asking a Big Company to Let Him Sell Their Products

What is the most unusual thing about working in this particular niche?

What’s interesting to me that it’s such a small industry. It seems like everybody knows each other, but it’s also such a friendly industry. I’m just shocked at how many other companies and brands we collaborate with are open to doing that. Other companies we talk to share their stories of successes and failures, and we try to figure things out together.

How do people react to your past with Four Loko?

People want to understand how I went from that to this, because it’s pretty opposite ends of the spectrum. To me there’s no right or wrong. I’m not ingrained in one way of eating or drinking versus another. It’s about options. What it ultimately boils down to that I like to work on things I’m aligned with, and Koia is aligned with my life and my lifestyle right now.