Andrew Suzuka's guest appearances

Andrew Suzuka

Stairway to CEO

The Journey

The Reducetarian Podcast

15 Minutes of Genius

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Have you ever been sitting around a campfire with friends, or riffing with your partner about some great business idea you had when you were walking the dog, or driving to the grocery store? We all get ideas that pop into our head when we see a need, have an unfilled want, or notice the way something we’re interested in could be done better. Sometimes it’s easy to spit-ball with a close friend about big, potentially life-changing ideas like, “Hey, we should start a band!’ But we all know the unspoken truth when we say those things out loud — we’re probably never going to start that band and someday end up on a stadium tour. It’s those ideas that we really believe in, the ones that could actually be something real, that, ironically, we hold a little closer to our chest. They are harder to talk about. Andrew Suzuka, the founder and creator of Otamot Foods, was no stranger to having good ideas and turning them into entrepreneurial successes. In fact, when the idea for Otamot Foods first popped into his head, Andrew was already running his own company. But success in one area didn’t make Andrew any more willing to share the new ideas he had brewing. ”You have to have a lot of self-confidence, but you also have to have enough self-awareness to know that you don't know everything and you have to pull in people and you have to share your ideas with people,” Suzuka said. “And it's probably, I would say the number one challenge of being an entrepreneur is sharing your idea before it becomes something. And if you can get over that, you're on your way.”Andrew had to walk a long path to get over that fear. Today, he knows collaboration is the only way forward, but what did it take to get to that realization? Who did he finally lean on, and how did all of this ultimately lead to Otamot landing on the shelves of Whole Foods? Let’s jump into this week’s episode of The Journey. Main Takeaways:Sharing is Caring: No matter how great of an idea you have for a business, nothing significant will come from it without extreme dedication and investment of time, money and energy. You don’t need to worry about someone “stealing” your idea; the chances that they’ll take it to the finish line are almost nil. The power of sharing a good idea is getting early feedback on what could make it better and what could make it really work well. Be Nimble: Everyone talks about pivoting, but especially in the Consumer Packaged Goods space, being nimble and being able to negotiate with all of the different parties involved in getting your product to market is a useful skill. Your Support Network Should be Multi-Tiered: It’s important too have all sorts of people in your network, including outside mentors, industry advisors, and company board members, all of whom can help you make important decisions about your business. Make sure that you’re still tapping into your original support network as your business scales. Your close friends and family can offer support and perspectives that really help and uplift you.---This season of the Journey is produced by Mission.org and brought to you by UPS. To learn how UPS can help your small business, go to UPS.com/pivot.

Have you ever been sitting around a campfire with friends, or riffing with your partner about some great business idea you had when you were walking the dog, or driving to the grocery store? We all get ideas that pop into our head when we see a need, have an unfilled want, or notice the way something we’re interested in could be done better. Sometimes it’s easy to spit-ball with a close friend about big, potentially life-changing ideas like, “Hey, we should start a band!’ But we all know the unspoken truth when we say those things out loud — we’re probably never going to start that band and someday end up on a stadium tour. It’s those ideas that we really believe in, the ones that could actually be something real, that, ironically, we hold a little closer to our chest. They are harder to talk about. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewsuzuka/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Andrew Suzuka</a>, the founder and creator of <a href="https://www.otamotfoods.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Otamot Foods</a>, was no stranger to having good ideas and turning them into entrepreneurial successes. In fact, when the idea for Otamot Foods first popped into his head, Andrew was already running his own company. But success in one area didn’t make Andrew any more willing to share the new ideas he had brewing. ”You have to have a lot of self-confidence, but you also have to have enough self-awareness to know that you don't know everything and you have to pull in people and you have to share your ideas with people,” Suzuka said. “And it's probably, I would say the number one challenge of being an entrepreneur is sharing your idea before it becomes something. And if you can get over that, you're on your way.”Andrew had to walk a long path to get over that fear. Today, he knows collaboration is the only way forward, but what did it take to get to that realization? Who did he finally lean on, and how did all of this ultimately lead to Otamot landing on the shelves of Whole Foods? Let’s jump into this week’s episode of The Journey. Main Takeaways:<ul><li>Sharing is Caring: No matter how great of an idea you have for a business, nothing significant will come from it without extreme dedication and investment of time, money and energy. You don’t need to worry about someone “stealing” your idea; the chances that they’ll take it to the finish line are almost nil. The power of sharing a good idea is getting early feedback on what could make it better and what could make it really work well. </li><li>Be Nimble: Everyone talks about pivoting, but especially in the Consumer Packaged Goods space, being nimble and being able to negotiate with all of the different parties involved in getting your product to market is a useful skill. </li><li>Your Support Network Should be Multi-Tiered: It’s important too have all sorts of people in your network, including outside mentors, industry advisors, and company board members, all of whom can help you make important decisions about your business. Make sure that you’re still tapping into your original support network as your business scales. Your close friends and family can offer support and perspectives that really help and uplift you.</li></ul>---This season of the Journey is produced by <a href="http://Mission.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mission.org</a> and brought to you by UPS. To learn how UPS can help your small business, go to <a href="https://solutions.ups.com/tools-to-adapt-ussp-page.html?campaign_id=REC_PVAN2020&amp;WT.mc_id=VAN701864" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">UPS.com/pivot</a>.

Don't Be Afraid of Feedback with Andrew Suzuka, Founder of Otamot Foods

Genius Juice CEO &amp; Founder, Alex Bayer interviews Andrew Suzuka of Otamot Foods. Andrew is the Founder of Otamot Foods. In just a few short years, he has secured national launches in Whole Foods, Sprouts, and many more to come. Hear his story about why their tomato sauce is setting the bar much higher than existing brands and how they plan to continue scaling. His idea to have a better tomato sauce stemmed from giving his daughter better food with authentic and real ingredients. This is inspiring for any CPG entrepreneur to see how Andrew was able to accelerate his business so quickly in a seemingly crowded category.--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/genius-juice/support

Genius Juice CEO &amp; Founder, Alex Bayer interviews Andrew Suzuka of Otamot Foods. Andrew is the Founder of Otamot Foods. In just a few short years, he has secured national launches in Whole Foods, Sprouts, and many more to come. Hear his story about why their tomato sauce is setting the bar much higher than existing brands and how they plan to continue scaling. His idea to have a better tomato sauce stemmed from giving his daughter better food with authentic and real ingredients. This is inspiring for any CPG entrepreneur to see how Andrew was able to accelerate his business so quickly in a seemingly crowded category.--- Support this podcast: <a href="https://anchor.fm/genius-juice/support" rel="payment nofollow" target="_blank">https://anchor.fm/genius-juice/support</a>

Episode 44 | Andrew Suzuka | Otamot Foods

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How his childhood was full of the love of food and exposure to business and learning how to make money, even from an early ageWhat hard lessons he learned from mistakes in business while in college and how what he calls his first real business really grew and provided a lot of opportunity with nationwide clientsWhat it was like to have a successful experience in an acqui-hire with NOISE that was an amazing partnership for Andrew and what he did next with recruiting solutionsWhat led him into financial management and consulting, to part time CFO roles, and lead to a full time CFO positionHow the idea for Otamot came to him, what he did differently with this idea compared to other ideas he had over the years, and why he chose the name OtamotWhy they were able to hit the ground running after launching Otamot, how he got in front of more buyers, and his advice on marketing and pricing strategyHow he balances his full time, 9-5 job, with his 5-9 job growing Otamot and what advice he has for others who have a great idea and want to take it somewhere  To Find Out More:otamotfoods.comQuotes:“To grow your business and really grow your experience, you're going to have to work with more and more people.”“If you want people to be the extension of you, then you've got to give it all for them every single day.”“I call it being comfortable being uncomfortable. Because if you're going to be squeamish and if you can't kind of thrive off of being in these different and challenging situations and really get excited about, hey, how do I jump over this thing? Then being an entrepreneur or doing something that hasn't been done before is not for you. And that's OK.”“A little light bulb went off and I said, I love making food, I am a parent that just wishes I didn't have to spend three hours to make this, but I feel really good about her eating it. But is there a life hack here?”“If we're going to flip the label around, what if we just flip the name around too? And it really plays well into it and really explains the origin of the sauce, which is we really want to turn things around.”“We prepped enough that well before launch I hired a PR company. Well before launch we did our branding and sell sheets, so we were able to hit the ground running and look like a million bucks before we made any money, before we had one sale.”“When you're building a business, you also want to look at what will your COGS be later on based on certain velocity assumptions. And you should be pricing yourself based on those future velocity assumptions, in my opinion.”“If you want to go national, you have to be ready for it. And that just doesn't mean, hey, have a few bucks in the bank. That means be ready from a production standpoint, be ready to service them, be ready to understand how freights work, how UniFi works…”“If I didn't have great teams on both sides of the table, I could not do this.”“You just have to be someone that's been used to juggling life and you have to enjoy being that clown.”

<h3>In This Episode You’ll Hear About:</h3><ul><li>How his childhood was full of the love of food and exposure to business and learning how to make money, even from an early age</li><li>What hard lessons he learned from mistakes in business while in college and how what he calls his first real business really grew and provided a lot of opportunity with nationwide clients</li><li>What it was like to have a successful experience in an acqui-hire with NOISE that was an amazing partnership for Andrew and what he did next with recruiting solutions</li><li>What led him into financial management and consulting, to part time CFO roles, and lead to a full time CFO position</li><li>How the idea for Otamot came to him, what he did differently with this idea compared to other ideas he had over the years, and why he chose the name Otamot</li><li>Why they were able to hit the ground running after launching Otamot, how he got in front of more buyers, and his advice on marketing and pricing strategy</li><li>How he balances his full time, 9-5 job, with his 5-9 job growing Otamot and what advice he has for others who have a great idea and want to take it somewhere  </li></ul><h3>To Find Out More:</h3><a href="https://www.otamotfoods.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">otamotfoods.com</a><h3>Quotes:</h3>“To grow your business and really grow your experience, you're going to have to work with more and more people.”“If you want people to be the extension of you, then you've got to give it all for them every single day.”“I call it being comfortable being uncomfortable. Because if you're going to be squeamish and if you can't kind of thrive off of being in these different and challenging situations and really get excited about, hey, how do I jump over this thing? Then being an entrepreneur or doing something that hasn't been done before is not for you. And that's OK.”“A little light bulb went off and I said, I love making food, I am a parent that just wishes I didn't have to spend three hours to make this, but I feel really good about her eating it. But is there a life hack here?”“If we're going to flip the label around, what if we just flip the name around too? And it really plays well into it and really explains the origin of the sauce, which is we really want to turn things around.”“We prepped enough that well before launch I hired a PR company. Well before launch we did our branding and sell sheets, so we were able to hit the ground running and look like a million bucks before we made any money, before we had one sale.”“When you're building a business, you also want to look at what will your COGS be later on based on certain velocity assumptions. And you should be pricing yourself based on those future velocity assumptions, in my opinion.”“If you want to go national, you have to be ready for it. And that just doesn't mean, hey, have a few bucks in the bank. That means be ready from a production standpoint, be ready to service them, be ready to understand how freights work, how UniFi works…”“If I didn't have great teams on both sides of the table, I could not do this.”“You just have to be someone that's been used to juggling life and you have to enjoy being that clown.”

Secret Sauce with Andrew Suzuka, Founder and CEO of Otamot.

In this episode, Brian talks to Andrew about building a brand and getting your product into retailers. Andrew touches on the inspiration behind his company, Otamot, and goes in-depth with how you can create a successful business of your own, from developing a brand identity to working with manufactures, co-packers, and distributors.For show notes and past guests, please visit www.reducetarian.org/podcast.  Follow Reducetarian: Twitter: twitter.com/reducetarian Instagram: instagram.com/reducetarian Facebook: facebook.com/reducetarian LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/reducetarian-foundation

In this episode, Brian talks to Andrew about building a brand and getting your product into retailers. Andrew touches on the inspiration behind his company, Otamot, and goes in-depth with how you can create a successful business of your own, from developing a brand identity to working with manufactures, co-packers, and distributors. For show notes and past guests, please visit <a href="http://www.reducetarian.org/podcast" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.reducetarian.org/podcast</a>.  Follow Reducetarian: Twitter: <a href="http://twitter.com/reducetarian" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">twitter.com/reducetarian</a> Instagram: <a href="http://instagram.com/reducetarian" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">instagram.com/reducetarian</a> Facebook: <a href="http://facebook.com/reducetarian" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">facebook.com/reducetarian</a> LinkedIn: <a href="http://linkedin.com/company/reducetarian-foundation" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">linkedin.com/company/reducetarian-foundation</a>