Sean Corcoran

Alcolyte Business Updates

Final Edition

Watsup party people, been awhile. Major update - We’re going to be winding down Alcolyte 😱. It’s been about a year since we relaunched the company selling our famous (not really) electrolyte-infused cocktail concentrates and it’s been an awesome experience. I’ve learned an insane amount and felt all the emotions there are to feel throughout. But, I’ve ultimately realized that building a CPG company is not where I want to take my career.

I’m still determined as ever to build a remarkable business that delivers big-time value to the world. I've just come to realize that Alcolyte is not the highest leverage way for me to achieve that goal. The plan as of this writing is to pivot to building a software-based venture (I have a CS degree from Cornell & currently work as a software engineer during the day). As a result, I’m looking to expand my network there, so if you know anyone with experience building successful software startups I’d love to connect.

I’ve thought very deeply about this decision and don’t take it lightly. If you are receiving this email then you helped Alcolyte in some way and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. As my first business, I had no idea what I was doing most of the time. Many of you still graciously gave me the time of day & your guidance/support as I stumbled around trying to figure it all out. I will always be grateful for that and try to pay it forward as I continue on my entrepreneurial journey.

I’ll wrap up with 10 life lessons & 10 tactical business lessons I wrote down while reflecting on my chapter with Alcolyte. This is just me talking to me so filter it through your own lens as you see fit but thought I’d share in case the lessons help anyone:

10 General Life Lessons

Lesson #1: Reflect often on what achieving your goals looks like, where you are relative to those goals currently, and what is stopping you from achieving them. Take your time & write it out. How do you expect to get anywhere cool if you don’t know where you are, where you’re going, and what’s in your way?

• “The road to hell is not paved with good intentions. It is paved with lack of intention.” - Dr. Gabor Maté

Lesson #2: Prioritizing (i.e. deciding how to allocate resources) is hard but it is the foundation of living a fulfilling life. Relatedly, There are only a small number of things that actually matter. Amplify those signals and drown out the rest as much as it doesn’t kill you to do so. This means letting some fires burn.

In practice this looks like spending 4-6 hours per day working undistracted on the highest leverage things (i.e. tasks that give you the most output per input of your effort). If you don’t know what those tasks are then the highest leverage thing you can typically do is identify them (i.e. strategize). A good question for figuring out what’s important is asking “What one thing, if it were true, would make all my other problems go away?” (creds to Alex Hormozi for this).

Lesson #3: Align your environment with your goals. Who you spend time with, what you do on the weekends, where you live, how much you drink, etc. all impede or facilitate progress toward your goals. If you care about your goals, then friction between your environment and goals feels really bad. For example, going out late partying then trying to make strategic decisions for your business the next day = guilt while out -> incompetence, frustration, & pain the next day.

Lesson #4: Conviction & focus are force multipliers on work, meaning you get more output for the time you put in. Working on high leverage things exponentiates output per unit of work. So, to get insane returns on your work, have conviction, stay focused, but, most importantly, work on high leverage things.

• “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” - Archimedes

Lesson #5: Assign an inspiring mission to your work no matter what it is.

Lesson #6: An hour of undistracted solitude can change the course of your life. Schedule time to think & reflect without any distractions (e.g. take a walk without your phone). Breaking away from the noise lets you pick out the true signals. I often start these sessions with addressing my own mortality because it helps me figure out what is actually important and what is just noise.

Lesson #7: When receiving advice, take into account who is giving it. If the person giving you advice is not in a position you’d like to be in, it’s probably not great advice. For example, if you want to be exceptional at tap-dancing, filter the advice from most people on tap-dancing (even other tap-dancers) as most people are not exceptional at tap-dancing (by definition of “exceptional”). On the flip side, find people who are exceptional at tap-dancing (or books & content if you can’t access them directly) and learn from their coaching as much as possible. Small caveat: Do make sure the expert advice is directed at your current level of proficiency (e.g. don’t start with advanced tap-dancing techniques).

I want to clarify - there are many exceptions and I think you can learn something from everyone. But, at the same time there’s a lot of noise in the world so I tend toward only registering recurring, major signals from trusted sources and dropping everything else. This is not the type of thing to be absolute about though.

Lesson #8: Radical life change is one convicted decision away. The act of actually making that decision is typically pretty easy (e.g. text your boss “I quit”). Acquiring & maintaining the conviction + discipline to make that decision the right one is typically pretty hard.

Lesson #9: Live like you will die in a year and plan like you will live forever. This means balancing a sense of urgency & bias toward action in your day to day with longer-term thinking & pacing for goals that might be years or even decades out. Expressing both a sense of urgency & slowness is naturally difficult but getting this wrong can lead to burnout (too much frenetic urgency) or not realizing your potential (too much thinking & not enough doing).

Lesson #10: Don’t take things too seriously. It’s hard to know what actions to take for maximal fulfillment or “living a life well lived” so just combine the signals from your intuition (“heart”) with your rational thinking to make the best guess. You can iterate as you go anyway so it’s not that big of a deal (remember, radical life change is just one convicted decision away!). Operate through life in a manner that will make you feel content with how you lived right before you die.

• “Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world” - Miyamoto Musashi

10 Tactical Business Lessons

Lesson #1: A business can only grow (i.e. increase enterprise value) by getting more customers (related to CAC) and/or making them worth more (related to LTGP). What I’ve come to understand through building Alcolyte & listening to successful entrepreneurs is that LTGP is one of the most important metrics for evaluating a businesses’ success potential. CAC is important but typically has a floor because it hits a point where the level of effort for the marginal improvement doesn’t make sense (there are exceptions for example if someone makes an innovative marketing strategy that lowers CAC by orders of magnitude relative to competition). That’s why CAC is decently similar across companies in a mature industry whereas LTGP has no ceiling and can vary wildly across companies. The more value you can deliver the more you can charge & the more LTGP grows. If the value is high enough for a customer there will be enough goodwill they market for you via referrals as well (LTGP & CAC both improve, win win!).

Lesson #2: The main levers to increase LTGP of customers are the value of the core offer & the brand (maybe there’s more I don’t know yet too but these are the two I see right now). You see this in the wild with what I call “brand first businesses” (e.g. Redbull & Nike) & “solution first businesses” (e.g. SAP). It’s a spectrum (obviously SAP has a brand) but it’s usually quite clear whether a company prioritizes brand value vs core offer value and that’s because the goals, strategies, & tactics tend to look very different in brand first vs solution first businesses.

Lesson #3: When LTGP is low (or CAC is excessively high), there are typically five variables you can play around with to try and increase it: Product, persona, problem, promise, placement. Since brand value & core offer value are the two main ways to increase LTGP, the effect of changing these variables is changing core offer value and/or brand value.

Lesson #4: Have high talent standards. Getting good talent is really hard but one of the most impactful things you can do for the business.

Lesson #5: Don’t blindly trust experience & ask lots of questions if something doesn’t feel right, even if it’s uncomfortable to do so.

Lesson #6: When faced with a decision, ask yourself if it is a type 1 or type 2 decision then apply the appropriate decision making framework.

Lesson #7: A valuable core offer is worth investing a long time to build. It is the foundation of LTGP and it is a boon to pretty much every other business activity you do.

Lesson #8: When working with a team, err on the side of collaboration & collaborative language even if you feel convicted about something and have thought it through a lot. It makes them feel less like they’re being told what to do and more like they’re part of creating the path forward (because they are).

Lesson #9: The goal of every meeting should be to produce a set of behavior changes that we think will make the business more money. A good way to do this is ending every meeting with agreed upon action items (“what”) assigned to specific individuals (“who”) with due dates (“when”) & rationale (“why”).

Lesson #10: Prioritize a beachhead strategy over a mass market strategy. Unless you’re going for mass market penetration (a “scale at all costs” strategy), a beachhead strategy lets you lower CAC and increase LTGP through tailored messaging, product alignment, and added value for a specific segment.

Appreciate you all ❤️ Onto the next 🚀

Keep conquering,

Sean

seancorcoran45@gmail.com

424-634-9101