Aimy Steadman: Inside the Strategy to Disrupt Beverage Alcohol With Portable Party Punch

As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Aimy Steadman, Justin Fenchel, and Brad Schultz.

Brad Schultz is the Co-Founder, CMO at BeatBox Beverages. Justin Fenchel Co-Founder, CEO Co-Founder, CEO BeatBox Beverages, LLC. Aimy Steadman is a Co-Founder and COO at Future/Proof, creators of BeatBox Beverages — the World’s Tastiest Portable Party Punch™.

Future/Proof, recently awarded one of Inc. Magazine’s Top 5000 Fast-Growing Privately Owned Companies in America, is a disruptor in the beverage alcohol market that provides innovative solutions that drive incremental profit in high-growth categories.

Drawn together by their love for music and the entrepreneurial spirit of Austin, Texas, the founders of BeatBox Beverages always believed experiences are more fun when they are shared with friends. So began their journey to mix friends, fun, and flavor into something that could help everyone party beyond basic. The result? The World’s Tastiest Portable Party Punch, for those who understand that not all parties are created equal.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

Aimy: I met Justin in Entrepreneur club during the first semester at McCombs Business School while we were pursuing our MBAs. I was running an online marketing agency at the time and was trying to grow my skills as an entrepreneur. Justin recruited me to join the team. At the time I was also a DJ on the student radio station KVRX 91.7 FM. Justin, Jason, Dan and myself were the MBAs who always wanted to go to concerts together. Music was at the center of our social lives and so we wanted to create a brand that was all about bringing people together with music.

We had seen boxed wine at every party, tailgate, and river float trip, but no one loved the wine they were drinking and the brands did not appeal to our generation. My business partners Justin, Brad, Jason, and Dan came up with the idea to make boxed wine less boring.

We created many prototypes, tested out different radio type packaging with different designers printing stickers we put on boxes, we emptied out wine bags and filled them with our own concoctions of alcohol, lemonade, and other mixers, and tested the product out a ton! We went to parties, large apartment complex pools, tailgates, etc. and got more than 1000 points of feedback on the product and launched the product in stores on March 2013, right before we graduated with our degrees. BeatBox was the world’s first ready-to-drink party punch in a “boxed wine” format.

Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?

Aimy: We are pushing this industry forward in terms of product innovation: flavor, packaging, format; how we connect with our fans on digital and in-person experiences; and business model: we are in the process of becoming B Corp certified to further embed our commitment to sustainability and diversity, equity, and inclusion in the alcohol beverage industry.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Aimy: Literally the first idea for the whole company was illegal: putting a vodka based punch in a 5L BIB container.

In fact, a lot of the things we wanted to do in the early days are not allowed due to alcohol beverage law. We learned to be flexible as entrepreneurs, which helped us evolve our product as we got feedback from customers too. The product line we have today is the result of a long evolution and it’s so much better because of that evolution!

We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?

Aimy: Tito Beveridge and Clayton Christopher are legendary alcohol beverage entrepreneurs and both took time to meet with us when we first had the idea for BeatBox Beverages. Tito is amazingly blunt and doesn’t sugar coat anything. He helped prepare us for the realities of the road ahead of us. Clayton helped us find some important connections and hires. We are so grateful that the people who were successful before us take the time to help the next generation here, especially in Austin.

Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.

Aimy: “You can’t build a $100M just by yourselves” — Mark Cuban emphasized to hire strategically to level up our company. To this day, getting the best possible team we can to grow our ideas has been the best strategy.

We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?

We are coming out with new flavor innovations next year and building more sustainability into our business model. In Q4 we became Plastic Neutral certified, which means for any plastic our company creates, we remove the same or more from rivers, oceans, and other in-need areas.

Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?

How I Built This hosted by Guy Raz is an incredible podcast.

We love Shark Tank for its impact on households for the past 10 years and encouraging entrepreneurial stories to be told in living rooms across the world. We have an awesome story: When we appeared on Shark Tank, a college student wrote to us and said he wanted to be an intern (Austin Maxwell). We brought him on as an intern, and then he eventually worked for us full time on our sales team. During that time, he came up with his own idea for a business (Kanga Coolers) and pitched the Shark Tank producers. He got an investment on the show and then left our company to go be an entrepreneur on his own. That really shows that while Shark Tank was making my dreams come true in 2014, it was also inspiring the next generation of entrepreneurs. I can’t wait to see what other young entrepreneurs come up with next.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

We were able to sit down with Tito Beveridge for breakfast when we first started our company. We were exhausted, broke, and extremely “It’s Rock and Roll Man” — Tito Beveridge

You are all people of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Aimy: Our generation of working adults needs to be actively involved in evolving our global economy to be regenerative and inclusive: ie: make sense for all the living things on this planet for the long term. How that plays out for me as an entrepreneur is to lead my company along those lines and work with other entrepreneurs to collaborate on it.

Everyone can take action when by voting, strategically deciding how to spend money, and taking on changes at work.

How can our readers follow you online?

Follow @beatboxbeverages @beatboxbevs
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aimysteadman/

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!