young health focused beverage/snack brands get excited about lower barrier wins in the specialty channel (think GNC and Vitamin Shoppe).
Nothing inherently wrong with that.
for (most) brands, those channels are more billboard effect than true distribution.
Decent awareness and good for boosting door count but totally irrelevant sales data that would help unlock material retailers (the ones that count when you're trying to get acquired).
On top of that the distributor programs and the promotional spend needed to drive actual trial at these banners isn't worth it early on.
Get into your local regional grocery store.
Take that data story to the next biggest retailer and scale up from there.
150 local grocery stores is equivalent to a thousand doors in the specialty channel.
Add the specialty channel later.
two team styles crushing it right now:
1- young, no life, 12 hour days, VERY SMALL TEAM, in office, 6 days a week, hustle hustle hustle
2- remote, everyone is an expert, fully autonomous, results driven high performance culture, fully embracing ai
no middle ground.
no hybrid.
Healthcare in the information age is becoming more like cooking.
Cooking is a spectrum. Everyone should know the basics and be able to nourish yourself. If you want to nerd out on macros and technique, the recipes are there. If you don’t want to think about it, meal services will do it for you at a price. For a really nice meal, you go to a restaurant. And if you’ve got the means, you hire a private chef who cooks around your life.
Healthcare works the same way.
You should know your own body. Find the foods, workouts, and habits that work for you. Build your own n=1 cookbook of supplements, genetic testing, recipes that fit your life.
But you can also eat out. A doctor’s office has a bigger kitchen, more tools, more care modalities. Sometimes they have what you need, sometimes they don’t. Or if you have the means, you hire a private chef. A privare doc or health team that builds a plan around your life. Same kitchen as the restaurant, but they actually knows how you like your eggs and what micros/macros you need to hit.
Point is, just as there is no single “right” way to go about getting food into your body, there’s no single “right” way to go about taking care of your health. (That being said, please maintain at least a baseline understanding to be able to handle both yourself)
The beautiful thing is, it’s entirely up to you