From Wall Street to Wellness: Andy LaPointe’s Journey with Traverse Bay Farms

Intro  

Welcome to another edition of inspired stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity, and explore current challenges they’re facing.

Anthony Codispoti (08:26.534)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codaspote, and today’s guest is Andy LaPointe, co -founder of Traverse Bay Farms, a health -focused company specializing in fruit -based products. This includes things like fruit concentrates, fruit capsules, fruit powders, dried fruits, and many, many other items.

They are based in Northern Michigan and have won 42 national food awards at the largest professional food shows in America. They have been featured in a number of magazine articles, online news stories, and included in two nationally published natural health books. Their products are distributed in 42 states and five countries. Andy has a diverse background as he has a great deal of experience in fintech, blockchain, and mutual funds.

He was formerly a series seven stockbroker and has a rare blend of sales and marketing, creating education systems, financial and analytical analysis, e -commerce and public speaking. He teaches courses, has written many books. He’s been interviewed extensively by some of America’s largest publications on subjects of crypto, small business startup, factoring, acquisitions and exit strategies. Now, before we get into all that good stuff,

Today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Adback Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our proprietary programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at adbackbenefitsagency .com.

Now back to our guest today, the co -founder of Traverse Bay Farms, Andy LaPoint. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Andy LaPointe (10:29.354)
Thanks, Anthony. I really appreciate you having me out. Looking forward to have a great podcast.

Anthony Codispoti (10:34.544)
All right, so Andy, tell us in your own words, what does Traverse Bay Farms do and how did you first get started with this?

Andy LaPointe (10:42.166)
Well, and that’s an interesting story. Traverse Bay Farms, we’re a health and wellness company that offers all natural products, which is with using as much locally grown ingredients as possible. And being based in Northern Michigan, we’re right on the 45th parallel north, Bel Air, Michigan. And the 45th parallel north is known as the Goldilocks scenario for growing fruits and vegetables. So basically what this means, it’s not too hot and it’s not too cold.

and some of the best fruits and vegetables on the planet are grown along the 45th parallel north, including Washington apples, grapes out of France that make great tasting champagne and wine, as well as Northern Michigan with our cherries, apples, and peaches.

Anthony Codispoti (11:28.146)
And so how did this all come about? How did you get, was Traverse Bay Farm something you started from scratch or was it something that you bought into? How did the idea for all this come along?

Andy LaPointe (11:39.446)
Actually, that’s a very interesting point and a very interesting question because as you mentioned in the I was a Series 7 stockbroker, registered investment advisor, and a mutual fund wholesaler for 15 years, traveling 150 nights per year. So I spent a lot of nights on the road. And the company that I was working for was actually headquartered in New York City. And I was in the World Trade Center about two weeks before 9 -11.

So I spent a lot of time in New York walking the Trade Center towers. during that fateful day, I was actually in Covington, Kentucky. And being in the financial services industry, it’s a very small industry. And I knew some folks that actually worked in the Trade Center. Fortunately, a lot of those individuals did make it out, all the individuals that I knew. But as I was driving home from Covington, Kentucky back to Bel Air, Michigan, which is about a six and a half, seven hour drive,

I came up with the idea of number one, Anthony, you could have been on those planes or in the towers or I could have been on those planes since I was traveling 150 nights per year, 75 ,000 airline miles. As I was driving back, I made the decision to completely alter my lifestyle where I didn’t have to be on the road anymore. And as I was driving back, I came up with the idea of launching Traverse Bay Farms.

which is the Gourmet Food Company. And we can talk a little bit more about that when I was younger working in the food industry and the family’s pizzeria business as well.

Anthony Codispoti (13:11.378)
OK, so the inspiration for this came out of the tragedy of 9 -11 and realizing maybe, hey, all this travel that I’ve been doing is, I don’t know, maybe I’m not enjoying it. Like, I want a different lifestyle. Was that part of what was going on here?

Andy LaPointe (13:28.81)
Absolutely. It’s one of those experiences in life when you get a whack on the side of the head and say, know what, it was a turning point for my life. And I think everyone goes through that at one time or another, where something tragic or traumatic happens in your life, just a simple experience. And for some folks, it could be driving a car and a deer run out in front of you, and you hit the brakes or sort of off into a ditch. Those traumatic experiences are life -altering. And for me, that was a very life -altering event.

taking a look at my lifestyle as I was driving back, driving through Ohio with Patterson Air Force Base, the planes taking off, hearing on the radio that there’s booms going on, no one kind of knew what was going on, but they were actually sonic booms as the planes were taking off. it was a very interesting experience coming back and all of that led to the decision of taking a step back, realizing what was most important for my life, my lifestyle.

as well as my family and how I can use the experience that I had in the corporate world and transition to become a lifestyle entrepreneur.

Anthony Codispoti (14:35.73)
Okay, so it does sound like we need to rewind back a little bit further to understand where the idea for this came from, because immediately prior to this, you were in a completely different world, right? You were going to the World Trade Center, you were in the financial space, a Series 7 stockbroker, but it sounds like earlier in your life, you had some experience in the food industry. Tell me about that.

Andy LaPointe (14:58.294)
Absolutely. Growing up from 14 to about 18 years old, I had four uncles that were in the pizza business. Actually, they were franchisees for one of the largest pizza chains in the US. As matter of fact, one of my uncles actually grew up with the owner of the pizza franchise. They were actually horse jockeys at the DRC, Detroit Racecourse, when they were 14 years old. When I was 14, I actually grew up in the pizzerias making pizzas.

working the commissary, working the dough. But most importantly, that was an influence on me in the food industry. And what that really taught me to do is to have dedication to work, number one. Number two, the love of food. And number three, the love of service. Because when you make a pizza, when you make a salad, it doesn’t matter what you make for a customer or your own family. It’s actually a love of service because you’re actually creating something.

that you want someone else to enjoy. So that kind of instilled onto me the love of food and the love of service. So that does date back to when I was 14 years old being in the food business. So that’s where my experience and the love of food and service really started. And that’s how this cultivated into the Traverse Bay Farms with our Grow My Food business.

Anthony Codispoti (16:17.5)
So tell me a little bit more about love of service. Was that something that was just kind of innate to you in your early work experiences? Or was that something that was passed down to you from a work mentor or family member?

Andy LaPointe (16:28.584)
Actually, and that’s That’s it was from my from my grandmother, Mamay. She was French Canadian. Actually, my great, great grandmother was a Ajeba Indian. And my great, great grandfather was a French fur trader. So they migrated from Canada down to northern Michigan over the generations. And Mamay, she spoke broken English, mostly French. I don’t speak French as much as I probably should. Bless them a la point.

But Mamay, she actually taught us the love of family as well as the love of food. As a matter of fact, Mamay and my cousin, the one who was one of the franchisees for the pizzeria business, they actually shared a 10 acre plot. And we had apple trees, peach trees, grapes, a family community garden where we’d go over every Sunday, pick all of the stuff out of the garden.

all of the apples, all the cherries, and then we’d sit in Mamay’s porch and she would just talk about food. She would talk about different things, about pulling us together, and she always loved to cook. So I think that was ingrained into me for the love of service and all those warm memories of growing up, being in the kitchen with Mamay and helping her cook, but most importantly, enjoying those great recipes from my grandmother when we were younger.

Anthony Codispoti (17:51.026)
That’s a great story. As someone whose own grandmother had a big influence on him, just sort of warms my heart hearing you talk about yours. Okay, so love of service, love of food, cultivated at an early age, big life smack upside the head kind of moment coming, driving back on, you know, 9 -11 and realizing, hey, I want to do something different with my life. And so then connect the dots a little bit more for me. Like what were the first steps to actually get Traverse Bay Farms launched?

Andy LaPointe (18:20.982)
Yeah, the company started in 2001 and being in northern Michigan, we had access to a lot of the co -ops. We had access to a lot of the farmers where all of the produce was being grown and at our fingertips basically. So that allowed us in 2001 on September 12th, we actually started the concept started on September 11th and on September 12th, we actually started the business and launched it.

And then in 2009, I stepped away from the corporate world full -time to work on my business full -time. So it did take us eight years to transition. So from that eight years of 2001 to 2009, we transitioned our first product was a cherry juice concentrate, which was made with Michigan Montmorency cherries, helps with maintaining natural joint health and such. And then we moved on to different fruit -based products.

And what we wanted to do is not only use as much locally grown produce as possible in all of our fruits and all of our products, which included the fruits and vegetables because we knew the farmers and the growers, but more importantly, to help share the story of northern Michigan, of having some of the best produce, not only in the region, but also in the U .S. being right on the 45th parallel.

Anthony Codispoti (19:35.034)
And so your goal was to use as much locally grown fruit as possible. It was important to you, important to the identity of the brand known as Traverse Bay Farms. I’m going to assume that you were using probably contract manufacturers then to take the fruit and process it the way that you guys wanted it, you know, first into the juice product and then later into other things.

Andy LaPointe (19:56.818)
At first we did from that standpoint because as we were growing the business, wanted to, number one, have a proof of concept where we did have recipes and the recipes really date back to on my grandmother’s porch, know, cinnamon pickle baby beets, bread and butter pickles, that kind of dated back to those concepts and ideas of doing that. And a matter of fact, talking about recipes, I still remember when I was younger towards the…

the later years of my grandmother’s life, she would pull all of our aunts in, some of our uncles, and we’d sit on her porch. And each one of my aunts and some of my uncles had a three ring binder. And Mamay would share family recipes, all just verbally spoken and everyone would write it down. And then you’d photocopy them and give them to everyone else on the porch. So that’s where some of the recipes actually originated from. And I still have those fond memories of the closeness

that food brought our family together and sitting on that porch and most importantly is that open communication because when you really think about it, Anthony, food is the only product in the world that is actually invited into every single experience of us as individuals from funerals to births to weddings to graduations. That’s the only product that is invited into

all of those moments, important moments of life. So my dedication to service means when we approach a recipe from the very beginning, using proof of concept, and as we grew the company, all the magic happens in Bel Air now, but as we grew the company, what that meant to us and allowed us to do is really have that company culture of understanding for our mission and our employees that we are a very important part.

of our customers’ lives. We’re just not putting food in a jar. what I really like to stress with your listeners is no matter what you do for a career, everything you do in life touches a customer, touches somebody else. And approaching that as, you know, we are invited into important decision, retirement decisions, estate planning decisions, taking that love and expanding that into that relationship or that

Andy LaPointe (22:20.534)
that meeting with a client, that’s the difference between adding genuine value add or just being another individual helping them reach their goals. And that’s when you’re really deep down, able to reach down deep and really make that personal connection. And for us since 2001 and for me, even yes, it was with financial services, but with food, it has taken me to that next level because it’s every single event of a person’s life from, as I mentioned.

wedding, birth to death, graduations, and all the other important events of someone’s life.

Anthony Codispoti (22:54.138)
I really like all that Andy, because it’s not it’s it’s clear that there’s a passion for you that goes deeper than just, hey, I’ve got a great product to sell. And I think that’s, that’s a fine way to approach a business, right? I mean, you you want to develop a good product, you want to get out there, you want to sell it and market it and distribute it. But it’s clear to you, you know, listening to you that there’s a there’s a deeper purpose and a passion behind what you’re doing, which I have to assume shows up in not only, you know,

how your employees come to work and how they approach their own work. also, as customers interact with you and your staff, that’s something that has to rub off on them as well. So I would guess that you’ve probably got, at this point, 20 some years later, a pretty solid base of loyal customers who really respond to that type of messaging.

Andy LaPointe (23:44.506)
Absolutely. And most important is the when we reach out to our customers, it’s more as you mentioned, Anthony, it’s more than here’s a new product. We want you to buy it from us. It’s here’s a new product. Yes, it is. But this new product and for example, in today’s day and age, you have high inflation, high prices. Folks are on a limited budget just because we’re all of us are getting squeezed all over. So what we try to do with all of our products and then a new product because

Having a new product and asking someone to try something new, it’s a big risk on our part, but more importantly on the customers part because they’re taking something of value, which is their money. They’ve gone to work, spent an hour out of their time earning 50 or $100 or 20 bucks an hour, it doesn’t matter. They took an hour out of their time and we’re asking them to give part of that money or value of their life to us. So what we try to do in…

all of our new products is number one, offer the product, is outstanding, winner of 42 National Food Awards. So we have proven we can do that. But more importantly, we want to share with our customers how they can use that product with every meal of the day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks. So what that allows us to do is again, add that value, because when you have a quarter jar of cherry salsa, you don’t want to eat salsa and chips every night, although it’s good and it is a National Award winner.

Anthony Codispoti (24:47.236)
All right.

Andy LaPointe (25:09.342)
Shameless plug there, but more importantly, how do I enjoy that with breakfast? So we do include a free downloadable recipe cookbook that includes all of our products for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Cherry salsa on a breakfast burrito. You can do cherry salsa on a meatloaf. For example, meatloaf is traditionally a tomato based product. You have meat and tomatoes basically with cherry salsa. You can put a trench down the top of the meatloaf, pour some cherry salsa in there, which is that last quarter of the jar.

And as that meatloaf cooks, that cherry salsa is gonna kinda seep through the middle of that meatloaf. So you have kinda like a cherry meatloaf danish, which is excellent, but more, but most important, it shows the value add for our customers. Again, we’re not just not showing a, sharing a product. We wanna share an experience that our customers can enjoy with every meal of the day and every event of their lives as well.

Anthony Codispoti (25:48.028)
Ha

Anthony Codispoti (26:03.442)
So talk to me about how you got from 2001, 9 -11 2001 to here we are, 23 years later. What were sort of the big levers, the big moments in the growth trajectory of the business? I’m thinking particularly about sales and marketing. Were you guys focused a lot on e -comm early on? Was it a lot of like…

you know, big box distribution. What was kind of the strategy? What really helped you guys get where you are today?

Andy LaPointe (26:35.062)
The strategy 100 % was econ because coming into the gourmet food business or any food business, for example, and since we’re talking about the food business, it’s really hard to get shelf space. Even it being a specialty brand like we are the local grocery stores, they only have this much shelf space and they already have six or eight different products in there that are proven sellers. So our whole strategy was go direct to the customer, B2C.

And what that allowed us to do is number one, have an increased profit margin compared to having a distributor and wholesaler in place. Number two, it allowed us to tell our story directly to the consumer and build that loyal customer base. But most importantly, number three, it allowed us to take our brand and build it and shape it and mold it to how we wanted to do it rather than just having a product on the shelf. And Ecom was very new at that time.

And I mean, this was, you know, 19 2001. I mean, it was pretty new. You still I think you still had pets .com still. Yeah, exactly. No. Yeah. And actually, when I was when I was traveling, wholesaling the one way I leveraged my time when I got back to the hotel at night, I actually built I actually built my first website on GeoCities if anybody remembers that.

Anthony Codispoti (27:38.608)
You had to build your own shopping cart back then. There was no Shopify.

Anthony Codispoti (27:59.405)
yeah, I’m that old. Yeah, I remember.

Andy LaPointe (28:01.376)
There you go. Yeah. With the purple flashing signs that everyone thought was the best, best, best thing. Slice bread at the time. But that was the first site. It was GeoCities. So it was absolutely econ number one. But what really took off was research started to come out about the natural health benefits of Montmorency cherries, Michigan grown Montmorency cherries. And one of the websites, MSN .com did a story about the health benefits of

Montmorenci cherries and it just so happened we were referred to the journalist reporter I don’t know what term you’d use way back then who actually wrote that article and we were included in that MSN article as one of the sources for tart cherry and come to find out the journalist was referred to us by a friend of a friend or a customer or something but we were actually included in that and that really took us and we were we

That really helped us with sales, proof of concept, but more importantly, getting the product into the marketplace.

Anthony Codispoti (29:04.55)
Wow. You know, and it’s, it’s interesting. I wonder what your trajectory would have looked like without that article. Maybe still would have been very successful, but could have taken longer. But it’s interesting. I’ve been involved with businesses, my myself, where just, you know, one press mention can be enough to get you sort of on the way. And you know, that you can sort of ride the crest of that wave.

Andy LaPointe (29:29.143)
And fortunately that was really, that was very early in our growth. And what that basically allowed us to do is number one, of course with the growth, that allowed us to go to some local grocery stores and starting to put our product on the shelves in local grocery stores. But Anthony, that came with another challenge because if we’re making cherry salsa, for example,

there were six or eight other companies that are also making cherry salsa in northern Michigan. So for a gourmet food company, or excuse me, for a supermarket to take off a good selling cherry salsa product and put an unknown like ours, what we decided to do rather than beat our head against the wall is number one, create a raspberry salsa or a black bean salsa using raspberries or black beans. Michigan is one of the top growing black bean states in the nation. So.

rather than trying to bump another skew off, we went to the store managers and said, you know what? You already have a cherry salsa. How about a black bean salsa? You don’t have that. So that allowed them to expand their salsa selection to their customers. But that also allowed us to start getting our skews onto the shelf with our different product line. Because why butt heads against a leader in the marketplace when you can strategically come around, come alongside and

be on the same shelf space as them without trying to knock them off because the buyer is simply not going

Anthony Codispoti (30:56.208)
Yeah. So how does the sales percentage wise break down now? Ecom versus brick and mortar.

Andy LaPointe (31:02.294)
Actually, the brick and mortar right now we have wholesalers, which is direct to the stores. Then we have distributors, which is distributors sell to the stores. A lot of our business is direct to the consumer, number one, but we are distributed in 42 states. And that’s through the very strong relationships we do have with our distributors and wholesalers. And the benefit about having a business today, no matter what business you’re in, you have

the ability to offer your products online, course, distribution and wholesaling. For example, FAIRE, F -A -I -R -E dot com, is a online website that allows specialty food companies such as mine to list their products and stores across the nation can pick it up. So the leverage opportunity today is absolutely fantastic. But back to your original question, we do have a very strong online presence. Number one, a very strong distribution presence being in 42 states.

as well as five countries internationally. So from that standpoint, we’re probably a third, a third, a third. So what we never wanted to do is be relying upon one income source. We wanted to have multiple streams of income, having multiple relationships, because to be quite honest, in the summertime, a lot of folks are not shopping online. They’re out at the beach, they’re on their boat, they’re at the cabin. So the online sales historically go down. But the nice thing about that being in the stores,

They’re on the beach, at the cabin, they’re on the boat, they go to the local retail stores and they buy our products. So the online sales during the summer like this and the like that, and then the summer sales for our distribution are like that. So it offsets us. So we’re still meeting in that fulcrum sweet spot of the marketplace. That’s why we have multiple streams of.

Anthony Codispoti (32:49.554)
That’s great. Andy, talk to me about the importance to you of approaching work with purpose and avoiding sort of the busy work that can trap a lot of us.

Andy LaPointe (33:04.566)
And that’s a great question. know busy work is very easy to do, especially in today’s day and age. I mean, you have your mobile phone, you have your social media, your emails going off, you’re getting 20 spam calls an hour like we do all the time, and you’re trying to stay on track. And what I’d suggest is your listeners grab a pencil and a piece of paper or on your typewriter,

Write down two things. What is my long -term goals and what are my lifetime goals? Although they sound similar, they’re completely different. Long -term goals are, wanna buy a house in five years. I wanna be debt -free in two years. I want to pay off the kids’ college in six years or whatever it is. Those are long -term goals. And they do have deadlines. I wanna pay off the house in five years, be debt -free in five years, so on and so forth. But a lifetime goal.

Anthony Codispoti (33:42.801)
Yeah.

Andy LaPointe (34:03.522)
is a goal that you must accomplish. And a lifetime goal is the overarching lifestyle or goal that you have for yourself and your family. And for example, my lifetime goal is a lifestyle. And my lifestyle is to be a lifestyle entrepreneur, which you create the lifestyle that you want for you and your family, no matter what that lifestyle is. And then

you create the income to support that lifestyle no matter what that lifestyle is. For me, it’s about lifestyle. So what that means is I need to be focused on number one, multiple streams of income to support that lifestyle and the freedom and flexibility because that’s a lifetime goal for me. Number two, need to, excuse me, I need to, sorry to keep saying I need to, but the point of matter is my focus is to focus on what allows me as a person to become

what I agreed to with God or the universe before I came to this realm. What was my mission before I came to this realm? And when you really think about that, take a step back and really think about what did I want to become before I came to this realm? And the best way to do that is to look back at the activities we did as kids. Because a lot of times when we were young, we were carefree, we were seven, eight, and 10, and 12 years old, we loved to draw.

We love to go fast on our motorbikes. We love to build forts. We love to whatever we wanted to do at that time. But when you really think about it, that’s your true passion. And over life, we get lost into trying to make it living. We go out and we get whatever job we can. I mean, again, for me, the love of service, which translated into food with my grandmother, Mamay, but number two,

I enjoyed numbers, I enjoyed finance. I really liked not so much counting pennies and stuff like that, but how to make those pennies grow. For me, I just like that. And with my lifestyle, I kind of weaved and stayed within that path, not to say like all of us, know, we make mistakes along the way and lose three or five years of our lives by doing busy work. But back to your original question.

Andy LaPointe (36:25.94)
What is your lifetime goals and what are your long term goals? Because the long term goals funnel up into your lifetime goals.

Anthony Codispoti (36:33.562)
So what advice would you give somebody who’s trying to figure out what that, you’re talking about going back to what was your purpose before you came here, thinking about what you enjoyed doing as a kid, and you’re like, I don’t know. I played football in the backyard, but that doesn’t really help me with a career path here. What sort of coaching could you give there?

Andy LaPointe (36:57.046)
The best thing to do is go into the silence. Where you go into the silence, you turn off the phone, you turn off all your social media communication, you turn everything off, and you sit still. And by doing that, that allows you to calm the mind, calm the body, and what is amazing about the silence is you don’t have to say anything about the silence. Let the silence come to you.

And what I mean by that, just let your mind wander. And doing this two and three and four days and five days, because it does take 21 days to create a new habit. Doing this consistently five and 10 minutes every single morning, that will allow you to see a consistency and a pattern of thoughts that are coming into your mind, motivation and encouragement that is coming to you from the silence, because it’s very easy to get caught up into the world.

So what I would suggest is sit down, take a step back, turn everything off, 10, 15 minutes, especially in the morning. Wake up in the morning, go into a quiet room, go into your office, turn everything off, and just sit and think. Secondly, have a pen and paper next to you or you don’t want to turn on your computer because of pen and paper. There’s research that suggests that the action of the hand as you’re writing actually connects the brain to the hand and the hand to the brain.

and it allows you to think deeper. It’s the motion of the hand of writing. So pencil and paper, take a step back into the silence for 21 days, five to 10 minutes a day, which isn’t that much, and take a step back and write down the thoughts that come to you. So number one, that’ll give you guidance. If you’re like, you know, I really don’t know what I’m interested in or what I should be doing, but more importantly, that allows you to take a step back and kind of hone in your interest. Number one,

your special talent and skills, number two. And Anthony, you mentioned when you were a kid, loving throwing a football outside, that really does have a small inclination or small direction because number one, that may mean you’re not meant to be sitting in an office. Number two, or a hybrid job. Or number three, as a coaching job. Or number four, that could be something where you like to work physically with your hands. So little activities like that,

Andy LaPointe (39:22.452)
take a step back and say, know what, I like this, I like throwing a football in the backyard, what does that really mean? As I mentioned, like working with my hands, potential coaching, not working in office, having a hybrid job. So what that does, that allows you to focus your activities in and most importantly, allows you to take a step back and say, you know what, what I’m doing now is exactly what I should be doing, what it’s meant to do, I never thought about that way or what I’m doing right now is maybe.

only 50, 60 % of what I should be doing. And that allows you to focus into your lifetime goals rather than your long -term goals.

Anthony Codispoti (39:55.612)
So we’ve been talking mostly about Traverse Bay Farms up to this point, but you’ve got a really interesting history before that and parallel to it. Are you still doing a lot of education and coaching and public speaking? Is that still part of your life?

Andy LaPointe (40:12.642)
Yes, it is. Yes, it is because the benefit about educating and coaching and speaking, if you do it with your children or if you do it to get paid or no matter how you do it, mean, Anthony, we’re coaching right now. What that allows you to do is express your expertise, number one, but more importantly, it allows you to give back to the world, to the greater universe. And by approaching it as I am coaching my children, I’m coaching my grandchildren, I am coaching

for big brothers and big sisters. I’m encouraging them. It allows you to give back to the world because what that always allows you to do is have a sense of give back, appreciation and gratitude rather than saying I’m only doing everything in this world for me, me, me, me, me, me. It’s more importantly, I will gives you the satisfaction of knowing that the universe is out there and everything you put out into the universe from encouraging and coaching.

It allows you to have appreciation and gratitude and more appreciation and gratitude that you have in your life. I believe it allows you to really calm your mind, calm your body, and most importantly, allow you to really focus in on what’s most important to you, your lifetime goals, and your lifetime goals allows you to give back to the universe. And giving back to the universe is your kids, somebody you don’t know, and we don’t know how we’re gonna affect other people. Someone could be listening to this podcast.

Anthony or any of your other podcasts, say, know what? That was an -had moment. That’s exactly what I needed in my life. And that’s by us coaching, by us giving back to the community, giving back to quote unquote the universe, because we don’t know how it’s going to affect us. And we’ve all heard stories and seen movies and such where someone’s been affected in such a positive life in a positive way. Somewhere down their life, it actually comes back to us in a very unknown or small way. We don’t know how it’s going come back to us.

It could be six degrees of separation or one degree of separation, but the approaching it as appreciation and gratitude and giving back. And again, that allows us to create calmness, not only for ourselves, but also achieve our lifetime goals.

Anthony Codispoti (42:22.706)
So talk to me a little bit more about some of your financial background. You’re a Series 7 stockbroker. You were going to New York City. You were traveling a lot, speaking a lot. Looking at your profile, I see a background in crypto and blockchain. And kind of helped me wrap my arms around that part of Andy LaPointe.

Andy LaPointe (42:44.502)
That’s a that’s a really good question because most important Everyone has opportunities in their lives to to look at and focus on but as long as they dovetail together That’s where you’re able to take the experiences from one part of your life and use it in a different part of your lives for example with crypto I actually learned about crypto way way way blockchain way back when and 2013 I was actually

Sitting with a friend of mine who was a sushi chef at one of the local sushi bars and he was taking a break We’re having to take a break. He’s like he’s like, hey, did you ever hear about something called? blockchain I mean, no, never heard anything about blockchain. He was ever here Bitcoin. I’m like, no, I never heard about bitcoin. So basically my introduction to bitcoin was over a California roll and some sake at a sushi bar back in 2013 so

The way that dovetailed in, that was from my experience as a financial advisor from 15 years in the corporate world. like, you know what? What is blockchain? What is crypto? Because with crypto, that’s basically digital money. And in my mind, that equated to financial advice, financial advising, corporate consulting, mutual fund wholesaling. And then from a blockchain standpoint, that was authenticity, transparency, as well as integrity of…

transactions, you didn’t have a third party affecting transactions or any fraudulent attempt because the blockchain and coming from being trained in the financial services, everything was about compliance. In my mind, everything is about compliance today where you do have certain guide rails. You have to stay in those guide rails. And when you do stay in those guide rails, you can actually move faster forward than you could if you try to go outside, you know, the norms of society or anything like that. So the blockchain, that really caught my interest from

from that standpoint.

Anthony Codispoti (44:40.9)
And so talk to me about the kinds of people that you’re generally speaking to, whether it’s in smaller group or one -on -one coaching, or it’s the courses that you’re putting out there or the public speaking that you’re doing. Who’s the audience that’s generally receiving this? they just kind of your average Joe or they small business owners, large business owners? Kind of paint a picture for me.

Andy LaPointe (45:06.902)
One of my first courses on Udemy, for example, was an introduction to cryptocurrency and blockchain. And I created that back in about 2015. And to answer your secondary question, most of it is one -on -one when I do individual consulting is one -on -one. Number two, course consulting where they purchase my courses on Udemy or on Amazon, for example.

my daughter and I wrote a series of Bitcoin books. The first one is Bitcoin Smart Kids. And it’s simply a 15, 18 page book teaching the very basics of Bitcoin to children. And it doesn’t matter when I say children, it doesn’t matter what age you are, because I think we’re all children to a certain degree. what that, because if you can teach a very complex subject simply, that means you truly understand it. So my daughter and I, when she was 16, 15,

We wrote blockchain smart kids talks about blockchain or Bitcoin. What is it? Then we did metaverse smart kids talks about the metaverse because she was interested in the metaverse. Then we did blockchain smart kids. It talked about the blockchain, the hash rate, explaining it at a elementary level. So anyone could pick it up. I had financial advisors that actually bought all courses, all three of those, all four of my books. And they actually called me up and say, Andy, this is, you know, so and so just wanted to let you know, I read your books.

before I do a presentation to my clients about Bitcoin, because I really don’t know what they are, because they’re so simple. So it allows them to explain it to their clients on a very elementary basis. So number two, is the books that we write. Number three, as I mentioned, one -on -one for small business owners. And then because the way I approach everything is whenever we create a course or a guide to teach somebody else,

And whenever we learn a new subject, no matter what it is, it’s always good to approach it as being a teacher. So for example, when I first started learning about Bitcoin, I had no clue what it was. Because like I said, was in California, had some sake and that was a great, great dinner. But when I went back, I okay, how do I explain it to other people? And one of the best ways to create a course, and if I could pass along your listeners, is to when you create a course or a book,

Andy LaPointe (47:33.492)
write it as, of course, as if you were being a teacher, number one, because you have to know your course material better than your students. So whenever you approach something new, you want to learn all the material as you were a teacher. Then you basically funnel that back and make that into the final course that you have. But whenever you learn a new topic, what you want to do is approach it as being a teacher. So you learn the best of it. So when you have a consulting session with a client, you are able to answer those questions at

they may not know what they need to ask in your answer those questions before they ask them.

Anthony Codispoti (48:07.536)
And so the folks that you’re coaching or the folks that, you know, are taking your coaching and then passing it along to their clients, what’s the context of it? Are they trying to teach them how to invest in crypto? Are they trying to give them advice on maybe other real world applications of blockchain? What does all that look like?

Andy LaPointe (48:29.59)
Well, from the crypto standpoint, the crypto are mostly courses in books. And for example, I’m a equity investor in a crypto education startup company based out of Vancouver. So we’re about three years old now. We’re going through the steps of bringing those courses to public. So I’m also an investor in a crypto startup education company too, from that standpoint. And then from my experience of creating the courses as well as

bringing that and doing presentations to clients, that’s where the company that comes into it. So from that standpoint, we’re teaching investment advisors specifically how to present crypto blockchain to the clients so the clients can make intelligent investment decisions into Ethereum, into Bitcoin, as well as what is blockchain as the underlying backbone for cryptocurrencies.

So from that standpoint, that is an educational standpoint that is for institutional clients.

Anthony Codispoti (49:34.492)
So aside from sort of the speculative element that goes along with crypto, what do you think are some of the near term applications for crypto and blockchain in general?

Andy LaPointe (49:50.24)
Well, blockchain in general, of course, is the underlying authority of cryptocurrencies. And for example,

I have a company called Ag Tracer and it’s a blockchain based company. And what Ag Tracer basically does is we are building this out and it allows farmers and growers to record onto the blockchain when their crops were harvested, how their crops were grown, if they’re using pesticides, if they’re organic, number one, and then number two, they can place that information onto the blockchain. So that allows a

consumer the trust of knowing how the produce is grown, how the product is grown, when it was harvested, as well as each distribution point along the way. And the proof of concept, for example, is Traverse Bay Farms. So what we’re doing is we’re going through the proof of concept now where we basically say, okay, we’re taking these ingredients in, we’re putting it onto the blockchain. These are the ingredients. This is the manufacturer date. This is the storage date. Then it went to this.

wholesale company, this distributing company, and then the store puts it on their shelf. So it basically has a traceability factor from batch all the way to product. But more importantly, as you grow to farmers markets too, Ag Tracer will allow farmers to do the exact same thing. They have a produce that was just harvested last weekend. You have a farmers market on Friday. They’ll have that blockchain application where someone can take their smartphone.

hit the QR code and it’ll show exact traceability from harvest all the way to sitting in front of the farm stand at the local farmers market. So there’s a lot of flexibility, but anything that has to do with blockchain with the traceability and the trust factor, that’s most important. And crypto is a secondary component because blockchain is the underlying focus. Cryptocurrency is from an investment standpoint, it’s a risky investment. Number one, diversification is portment number two.

Andy LaPointe (51:53.014)
but also you do have to do your research when you do start selecting the different cryptocurrencies out there because back in 2013 there were Bitcoin, Ethereum wasn’t even there, you had Litecoin, you had maybe two or three dozen cryptocurrencies out there. I think now you have 10 ,000 plus cryptocurrencies out there. So research is most importantly from that standpoint, but it all goes back to the underlying blockchain of those cryptocurrencies.

Anthony Codispoti (52:19.174)
So you’re in the proof of concept stage for AgTracer that you just described now. When will a customer be able to see that QR code on a label and see it for the first time, that chain of custody?

Andy LaPointe (52:23.924)
Exactly.

Andy LaPointe (52:34.038)
we’re looking at probably second quarter of 2025.

Anthony Codispoti (52:37.586)
Okay, all right, so we’re getting closer. Here we are, we’re recording this in Q3 of 2024, so not too far off. What are some of the bridges that still need to happen for you to get there? What are some of the challenges that you’re working through?

Andy LaPointe (52:52.35)
A lot of it is number one, anytime you make a company, of course, you have to add the value add for the client. You have to the value add for the consumer. Number two is how does a company make a profit? That’s the point that we’re working at. And there’s a couple of different business models that I prefer not to go into on this podcast that we’re looking at. But there are some different business models that we are looking at from a revenue generation.

source and you know subscription base of course number one print on demand number two there are some there’s two or three different models we’re looking at so that’s the that that’s the different branches that we’re looking at now so proof of concept is probably about 70 to 80 done so to make sure that we’re going back we’re in the alpha stage right now of course then you have the beta stage and then from what we’re doing now it’s more importantly how we’re have income

created so we can maintain the viability of the company and most importantly, build the company into the future. And we’re traveling.

Anthony Codispoti (53:53.946)
What is the, what’s the underlying tech?

Andy LaPointe (53:58.762)
Well, we have the blockchain as the underlying tech from that standpoint. If I can just go into that right now, if you don’t mind. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (54:04.611)
Absolutely. Yeah. Well, we’ll have you back on to talk about it when the time is right. All right. OK. What? Yeah, very exciting. What what other fun things are you involved with in the sort of blockchain crypto? It doesn’t even have to be sort of this new tech like because I know you’ve got a long standing background and mutual funds and wholesaling and you had your series seven and.

Andy LaPointe (54:09.174)
Yeah, we’re looking at second quarter of 2025, so about six months. So it’s pretty exciting times.

Anthony Codispoti (54:32.267)
What other kind fun things are you involved with in sort of the whole financial realm?

Andy LaPointe (54:37.238)
Well, that’s from the financial realm.

When I was traveling 150 nights per year, 75 ,000 airline miles, if I can back up just a little bit and what else am I doing, one of the catalysts for a book that I wrote called Up North Dream, The Guide to Moving to Northern Michigan was I was sitting on a plane, usually on Thursday night or Friday night flying back from wherever in one of the seven states that I covered. And the people next to me, know, where do you live? You know, the standard sitting.

seatmate conversation. And a lot of the people said, hey, you live in Northern Michigan. How can you live in Northern Michigan and still have an income with what you want to do? How do you make a living in Northern Michigan? And this was before COVID. This is before work from home became popular. This was before everyone moved to their second home, sold their primary homes. So one thing that I focused on and one thing that I still focus on is how to design that lifestyle. An up North dream.

the guy that moved to Northern Michigan was actually a catalyst of those seat conversations. And you mentioned, how does it all tie into my financial services background? The financial services background allowed me to really get into the personal and intimate moments of a lot of people’s lives, just like food does. Because when you think about it, when you’re sitting across the table from a client, and I’ve heard things that they even share with their spouses. I heard thing that, know, someone’s…

someone has a million dollars to invest, come to find out that their spouse is cheating on them, their kids are on drugs, they’re doing this, they’re doing that, and they’ve never told anyone else this. But having that confidence of sitting across the table from someone, they’re more than likely they’re disclosing that. Just like when you go to your doctor, you’re disclosing information. So my UpNord Dreambook, that lifestyle book, allowed me to use that financial services background to write a step -by -step guide how to move to northern Michigan.

Andy LaPointe (56:38.87)
and I actually taught classes in the Detroit area because most of the people moved to Northern Michigan at that time lived in the Detroit area. And I taught evening classes, people would pay $150 an hour. It’d be an hour course, 150 bucks, I’d sell out using the adult community education courses where they’d go through the adult community education courses, they’d take my course for 150 bucks and there’d be 30 people in the class and I’d get half of that. And I did that for about four or five years.

using the extra time and leveraging my time. that’s how everything kind of dovetails in together of taking a step back using my financial services background and writing that step -by -step guide, which was a catalyst of sitting next to folks on the plane. How do you make a living in Northern Michigan?

Anthony Codispoti (57:23.849)
Interesting and really focusing on that purposeful, meaningful work and stepping away from the busy work and what’s the biggest actions I can do. It’s like, wow, I can sell out this course, you know, 30 people, 150 bucks an hour. get to keep half of that and I get to educate people on a topic that was, you know, communicated to me that a lot of people had questions about.

Andy LaPointe (57:46.89)
And it all goes back to that service when we were originally at the beginning of our podcast, Anthony. It’s that dedication to service. It’s that long -term, not the long -term goals. Of course, you I wanted to write a book that was a long -term goal, but the lifestyle goal was that income and giving back to the universe. So UpNord Dream allowed me to do that because what that did is that of course that created an income to support my financial goals. But more importantly, the lifetime goals was

living a lifestyle that I wanted for me and my family, creating an income that I needed to support that lifestyle no matter what that lifestyle was. So that’s how everything kind of dovetailed together. And no matter what your experience is in your life, again, if you take a step back and say, you know, I coached football, but now I’m doing this in the corporate world. But if you take a step back and really think through your experiences, in all honesty, they dovetailed together. Even…

more than a lot of folks may give credit to if you take a step back and say, how can I use this experience to help me reach my lifetime goals? And just take that step back, go into the silence and work through that step by step.

Anthony Codispoti (58:56.838)
What are some of the fun growth goals that you have for Traverse Bay Farms? Any good projects other than what we’ve already heard about with the blockchain that you’re going to be integrating there?

Andy LaPointe (59:08.288)
Well, that was a really, that’s a fun goal. That’s moving forward number one, because that takes advantage of the technology in the marketplace and the demand in the marketplace. But also it allows more trust for my company in the marketplace, because we’re giving that forward. One of the other fun things that we’re looking at is actually pulling back some of the products that we’re offering. Not that they don’t sell, but by pulling back on some of the products that we’re offering.

It may not seem like fun, but it really is. Then we can focus on, because right now we have about 40 different SKUs. We want to pull that back to about 30. So about maybe a 20, 25 % pullback of our less selling products, number one. But more importantly, that’s going to allow us to focus on the products that have more flexibility in the marketplace and more ability for us to really add value to our clients.

by taking a step back and creating more recipes, breakfast, lunch, and dinner recipes, snack recipes for you know, for these remaining 30 some odd products. But more importantly, the other fun thing we’re really gonna focus on doing is going back out to Hollywood and meeting some of our celebrity clients.

Anthony Codispoti (01:00:28.176)
So two things I heard there, gonna work on reducing the skew count. Let’s focus on the ones, yeah, I the ones that you’re gonna remove, they’re not selling, but you wanna focus on the core hero products that are really moving quickly. That’s gonna allow you to simplify inventory management. It’s gonna help with cashflow. It’s gonna help you sort of refocus your efforts on the ones that are your best sellers.

And then heading out to Hollywood to meet some of your celebrity customers. How is it that you know that some of these folks are customers? Are they already posting about you online? What’s going on there?

Andy LaPointe (01:01:08.95)
Actually, it’s a really cool story about part about 12 13 years ago. We get a call from just a customer and She gives a call and says hey, know what? I’ve been a customer of yours for a while. I’ve been buying for me I’m like, yeah, and she was you know, I’ve been buying from you. like, yeah We know who you know, we know your name and stuff like that. She you know what? I I work in Hollywood and I have a lot of Celebrity that are clients like really and she goes well, you know what if you would like

I’ve shared your products with other folks in Hollywood and they like it. If you’d like, why don’t you, this is 12, 10, 12, 15 years ago. She goes, if you like, why don’t you come out to Hollywood? I will introduce, I will set you up at some of my events, give you a chance to meet some of the celebrities that I hang with. So we’ve been out to Hollywood every three to five years at Oscar and Emmy award parties as well. And on our website, we have currently probably about 30 or 40 photos of celebrities.

with our products, have celebrity testimonials on our website that we’ve just met from customers of ours and say, you know, we like your product, we want to introduce you to other people that we’ve been with. So it’s really cool. And with COVID, we were going to go out there 20 of COVID because COVID happened in end of 19, we were going to go out there in February COVID, but that’s when that started really locking everything down and no one knew what was going on. So probably 2025 we’ll go out to another Oscar and Emmy party.

So we’ve been out there a couple of times, so it’s been really cool.

Anthony Codispoti (01:02:38.374)
Where can I see these pictures on your site?

Andy LaPointe (01:02:40.532)
Yep, if you go to Traverse Bay Farms and then About Us, actually if you go to Traverse Bay Farms, the Tart Cherry Capsule page, you’ll see a video testimonial of Kevin Cerbeau, a great individual. He was 1980s Hercules series. He has some new series out now as well as the What If movie, which is a phenomenal movie from several years ago. He’s given us testimonials for our Tart Cherry Capsules. He’s given us testimonials for our Cherry Prime.

And what’s really cool about that, Anthony, it has given us an opportunity to meet some of the greatest people out there from that standpoint. And that’s what makes it fun.

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:20.348)
that’s, that is a lot of fun. Yeah. Any other celebrities that you, that you can mention?

Andy LaPointe (01:03:23.434)
Yeah.

Andy LaPointe (01:03:29.814)
Yeah, we have a lot of celebrities, for example, Ernie Hudson from the Ghostbusters. I mean, I have two retail stores. He’s on our wall with our products. have Sasha Cohen, Olympic medalist from a couple of years ago. She has our Tart Cherry, Miss America, Miss Michigan, as well as a lot of other people. Joey from the Sopranos. He’s on our wall. So there’s a lot of folks that…

that we’ve met over the years and they’re some of the best folks you’ll ever meet, which is fun and it’s cool. You wouldn’t expect to see that, but that’s really has was formed by just going out, doing the hard work, blocking and tackling, but most importantly, giving back and having folks really, really reach out because they know intuitively that you’re doing a good job as a company and as individuals. And plus it’s fun.

Anthony Codispoti (01:04:25.978)
Aside from the fun component, are you able to measure an ROI or is that a little bit kind of fuzzy hard to do?

Andy LaPointe (01:04:32.904)
It’s kind of fuzzy hard to do because there’s no, you know, this is a infomercial, this is a hard dollar outlay to do this from that standpoint. But as I mentioned, we do have folks that give us a call and say, hey, I saw this on your website. That’s my favorite actor or actress. If they’re using it, I know I want to buy it. So again, that’s really fun. And that allows the fun factor because a couple of years ago, excuse me,

Anthony Codispoti (01:04:54.844)
Yeah.

Andy LaPointe (01:05:03.156)
Several years ago, we took our employees out there with us too. So not only do we get the experience as company owners, we always have our employees experience as much as they can as well.

Anthony Codispoti (01:05:14.842)
Andy, people listening to this are like, wow, this Andy LaPointe guy, he’s really smart, very successful. He’s, you know, migrated from, you know, one industry to a completely different one. And he’s found success in it. And he continues to have his hands in both of those things. And this guy’s just Superman. What they don’t realize is that, you know, everybody has struggles, right? Everybody’s gone through hard times. Everybody’s had, you know, challenges they’ve had to overcome. What, what’s something either on a

personal or professional side of things that big challenge you had to overcome and some of the lessons that you learned coming through the other side.

Andy LaPointe (01:05:55.486)
I think the biggest challenge to overcome, of course, is emotionally and figuring out your lack of self -confidence to a certain degree and your lack of confidence of going into a new industry that you’ve never been into. mean, everyone has those, but I think the down, the biggest overcome is to, no matter what,

what you face in life or in your business, as Napoleon Hill said, every adversity has a seed and an equivalent or greater benefit. And everyone’s had adversities and being in business, losing money is the biggest adversity ever. And if I could, if you don’t mind, when we were first starting out, when we were really getting into from B to C, we’re going to

B2B for distributors. We had a distributor that we started to distribute through. It was a local distributor just a couple hours south of us. And you know, the first order was maybe $2 ,500, half a pallet. Then our second order, another month later, was $5 ,000. And then two months later, it was $10 ,000. Then four months later, their third or fourth or fifth order, whatever it was, was close to $30 ,000. And they’re paying us, which is fine. They’re paying us and we’re…

Yes, we’re finally successful. We have a distributor. They’re paying us. They’re paying us. And so that was going up the mountain. But what happened and what typically happens as a trend in the food distribution industry, and this is just a little bit of an insight, if you ever have a customer that has been with you for 20 years or two months, they start buying regularly every 15 days and they pay you every 30 days or whatever terms are. But if you have a customer that’s buying from you regularly,

Then on day 25, five days before the next payment is due, they place another order. So then you’re two orders into them before that first payment is due. And then they do it for another month. Of course you’re sending it to them because they’re a good customer. But long and short of it, one of the greatest adversities we had is out of customers that did exactly that. For about six or eight months, they were a good customer, then they started ordering more before the third -day terms were up.

Andy LaPointe (01:08:22.646)
So they were into us to about $30 ,000. I get a call that says, Andy, this is so -and -so. I’m very sorry we’re going bankrupt. So we’re out 30 grand, 30 of hard money, our money that we sent, we trusted, and we’ve always had good relationships with our distributors. always call them, excuse me, I make it a point to call them personally every month and a half to two months how our sales are going, what do need to do just to keep that open communication.

We lost $30 ,000. Some people, that’s not a lot of money. Other people, that’s a lot of money. For us, it was a lot of money and the surprise of doing that. So the adversity was there’s two things I can do. Number one.

Andy LaPointe (01:09:07.798)
lose my mind, because we just lost $30 ,000. Number two, let it affect how I am going to move forward in the business. Or number three, take the hit, get the most you can out of it, get some sort of return and move on. No matter how hard it is. Ultimately what happened was he declared bankruptcy. I said, I’m not gonna take this hit. I’m gonna do everything that I can within my power to get my, you know, to get.

get the money back. So what I did is I drove an hour and a half south to the bankruptcy court, sat in front of the judge, excuse me, the client was my ex -customer was sitting in front of the judge and the judge says, okay, you’re bankrupt and you know, did the gavel and everything. And my customer turned around and looked at me and I said, what about my $30 ,000? He goes, I’m bankrupt, too bad for you. Literally to my face in the courtroom as the judge is sitting up there as he’s walking out.

Anthony Codispoti (01:10:01.554)
Wow.

Andy LaPointe (01:10:07.712)
So that was a huge adversity. And again, there’s a couple ways you could take that. Number one, is it gonna take my business down? No. Number two, because I’m not gonna let it, number two, financially that was a huge hit. So we did have to retrench. We did have to take some hits like any company would, any newer company. But number three, the seed of that.

adversity that greater benefit the equivalent of greater benefit What i’m doing today is again not allowing my customers to take that Secondary order before the payment terms are due number one number two Limit my credit to my customers. We’re back then I was like yeah, you need 100 000 I’ll give it to you You need 50 000 worth of inventory and i’m just throwing these numbers out, but you get the idea I’ll give it to you because I was desperate for the business. But what that allowed me to do is tighten up my mindset

tighten up my business model, but most importantly, tighten up my emotions to say no to certain types of business or say no to certain patterns and say, you know what, it’s not worth it. I’ve been through it, it’s not worth it. So the greatest achievement or the greatest benefit out of any adversity is to take a step back. I wrote down the Benjamin Franklin close. Way back in the day, my sales manager said, you know what, Andy?

Whenever you want to make a decision, you can use the Benjamin Franklin clothes. I’m like, what’s the Benjamin Franklin clothes? He goes, you take a piece of paper, write a line down the middle. The pros are making the decision. What’s the worst that can happen? If the pros have more bullet points than the worst that can happen, you make the decision yes. If the pros have less and the nos have more, you don’t make the decision. So I did the Ben Franklin clothes on myself and you do the same thing with clients, Mr. and Mrs. Client.

You know, why, you I know you’re interested in buying this car, but why, you know, what are your objections? Write the yeses, write the nos, if the nos outweigh the yeses, don’t buy it. If the yeses outweigh the nos, then you buy it. But, so I did the Ben Franklin close on myself, but most importantly, that allowed me to tighten up my mental attitude, and that’s how I overcame it. Just to say no to certain types of business and certain patterns.

Anthony Codispoti (01:12:26.706)
Yeah, thanks for sharing that. That is a painful lesson to learn. Anybody who’s been in business has experienced something along those lines. And in the early trajectory of your company, $30 ,000 was a lot of money. But, you know, as you’re looking back now and you’re in a steadier, more successful place, probably grateful that you were able to learn that lesson at $30 ,000 as opposed to

$300 ,000 later down the road. And it encouraged you, it forced you to make changes in how you approach things on the business side of things to prevent those bigger losses from potentially happening down the road.

Andy LaPointe (01:13:11.062)
Yeah, absolutely. And one other point, I could throw it out, Anthony, one of the things that I also learned from that experience is maintain your vendors and have a strong relationship with all your vendors. We do not jump from vendor to vendor to supplier to supplier, excuse me, from supplier to supplier just to save 30 cents on a pound of sugar or 30 cents on a pound of cherries. We don’t do that because if we have long -term relationships with our suppliers,

our suppliers will go to bat for us and with us when we need them. And although we were early in the company, we did have good relationships with our suppliers. And that’s one of the reasons we were able to overcome it is I kind of said, hey, this is what happens to my suppliers. They said, you know what? We like working with you. You’ve always paid your bills. We’re willing to give you 45 day terms or 60 day terms on some of our suppliers worked with us very, very well. So I’d like to toss out

Anthony Codispoti (01:14:04.198)
That’s huge.

Andy LaPointe (01:14:07.21)
Yes, you can always get something cheaper from somebody else, but that long -term relationship is vital in life. It’s vital to have long -term relationships no matter what aspect of life you’re in. So another way to overcome that and another way to benefit from that that we did is keep your suppliers, keep your relationships as long, excuse me, as strong as possible and as long as possible. We rarely change suppliers. We rarely change suppliers for that reason. And that came out of that lesson.

Well, part of it came out of that lesson of not changing suppliers.

Anthony Codispoti (01:14:40.592)
Andy, just have one more question for you before I do it, I wanted to do two things. If you’re listening today and you like today’s content, please hit the subscribe, like, or share button on your favorite podcast app. Andy, also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you. What’s that?

Andy LaPointe (01:14:56.31)
best way to get in touch with me would be two ways the website TraversBayFarms .com or 231 -533 -8788

Anthony Codispoti (01:15:09.34)
There you go. Last question for you. What do you see are the big changes coming in? Let’s focus on Traverse Bay Farms that that business, but maybe pick one big change that you see coming in the next five years that’s likely to affect you guys.

Andy LaPointe (01:15:25.236)
biggest change is going to be more individuals, more people, more companies are going to be purchasing food online. the purchasing food online, because not only the convenience number one, the the accessibility number two, but most importantly, in my opinion, is by purchasing more and more food online, because we’re specifically talking about Travis Bay Farms, you have to have that trust factor. And by having that trust factor, you have to be

everywhere at once. You have to be omnipresent with all of the social media channels, with all of your online marketing, not so much offline marketing because if it’s an online business channel, it’s more of online marketing. So the biggest thing that we’re looking at over the next five years is to take advantage of more food being purchased online from convenience, but more importantly is folks, when they do purchase food, it’s something we consume into our bodies. It’s something that we eat.

which is very, very personal to each and every one of us. So what we’re doing is we’re not only maintaining, but also increasing that trust factor when they purchase our brand, know it’s nationally award -winning, quality ingredients, but more importantly, that we stand behind all of our products and we deliver it to our customers. So the biggest trends that we’re seeing is more Grommet food purchases online through convenience, and number two, from a price standpoint, that’s very, very important.

and then building that trust factor of next three to five years.

Anthony Codispoti (01:16:55.282)
Terrific. Andy, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Andy LaPointe (01:17:02.72)
Thank you, Anthony. I certainly appreciate you having me on.

Anthony Codispoti (01:17:05.734)
Well, folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.