Meet The Disruptors: Stephen Houck of SLRRRP Shots On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Don’t be afraid to change your mind. Working on Slrrrp is a balance between art and information. We can have what we believe is a good Idea and review the data afterward seeing less than favorable results. It’s okay to move on if something isn’t working.
As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Stephen Houck, CEO of SLRRRP Shots.
Stephen Houck, co-founder and CEO of SLRRRP Shots, is an entrepreneur and seasoned veteran of the alcohol industry. Throughout his nearly 20 years in the industry prior to starting Slrrrp Shots, he was a leader with Coors Distributing, Oskar Blues, and Stone Brewery. He led international expansion for Oskar Blues and spearheaded Stone Brewery’s international presence.
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?
I’ve done just about everything in the beverage industry: fulfillment/data entry, truck loading, merchandising, sales management, regional and international business development at both the distributor and supplier level. I was a sponge, a beer geek, and loved learning about brewing processes. This ‘Fan Boy’ was in heaven hanging out with brewers.
When the co-founder of Slrrrp Shots, Ed Farley, reached out via Linkedin, of all things, and told me he had something he’d like to share with me. It was very unusual but made a ton of sense and sounded like an incredible amount of fun. I let him know it would take a lot of work and discipline but it sounded like something achievable. When we started Slrrrp Shots, I’d already spent 18 years learning the ins and outs of the beer industry which was critical to honing in our process and developing a Jello shot we would actually enjoy as consumers.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
For me, Slrrrp was finding an amazing thing: Jello Shots. Everyone knows about them, and there is no set standard for making them. We spent over 18 months fine-tuning the formula to create the perfect balance between texture and flavor before introducing them to the world. We decided to move forward with a proprietary plant-based blend for our gelatin which fits the texture profile we were trying to achieve. The fact that this makes our product vegetarian-friendly is an added bonus. If you’re bored, You should Google how traditional gelatin is made — we’re happy we could find a great alternative to that process.
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?
There are lots of funny mistakes you make as a Jello shot company. In the beginning, we had some issues where the shot tops would stick a bit too much. This caused the user to squeeze the shot for more leverage while trying to open them — creating a pressurized situation when the top actually came free (insert head slap right here). Needless to say, I’ve shot myself in the face with SLRRRP Shots more than once. We’ve improved that aspect of the user experience significantly since launching the product.
Lesson — continually look for improvements in all aspects of your product and packaging, doing your best to “fail forward”.
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?
In the 80s and 90s, I watched my mom tirelessly climb the ladder at Coors Brewery. As a kid she was my idol. I did a research report on brewing in the 3rd grade, spent my youth at the Coors Softball fields, and over weekends would play hide and seek in the engineering department as my mom tried to progress her career.
I was close with my mom, I saw her struggles growing up and how she fought to be the provider for the family and try to do her best for her children. It’s really had an effect on me and the philosophy of our company — I believe in taking care of the people on our team and celebrating them with work from home and a great environment where we have no expectation of people working weekends or having to choose between career and family. Slrrrp’s ‘Celebrate Everything’ philosophy extends to how we treat our employees. We encourage our team to take the time they need to stay healthy, both physically and mentally, investing time in family and experiences outside of work.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
Wow, this is like a 5-part question. Disruption, in the alcohol industry, is often a good thing. There are a lot of really cool things that we have put together and miles of runway in this brand-new category. We have really fun smart people who are hitting their stride and constantly thinking about how we can improve our approach as we essentially lead the development of the Ready-To-Drink Shots category. Conversely, I think how you treat people matters. Being disruptive with a new/fun product or package and how you go to market with it takes TLC.
There are a lot of brands that get really excited about things like celebrity endorsements. They see a ton of initial success but don’t think past ‘this will be really cool’. The question you need to ask yourself after something like that is ‘what’s next?’ — if you are not brand-focused and continually working on improvement from within — that big win you had will fade quickly. It’s about taking time and scaling all aspects of your business to keep up with the disruption you are causing.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
It’s all coming full circle!
- If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. Even if the answer is no, there is tremendous value in understanding why.
Example: Slrrrp is in concert venues and stadiums. We ask for those placements and we hear “no” more than “yes”, but now we are in 20+ large venues which are driving a great deal of volume. - You can’t always control what happens but how you react is up to you.
Example: There are always setbacks in business, projects take longer than expected or something doesn’t go right the first or second time. Working on large projects, it’s really important to understand that you can set the tone for the whole project. Bad news is inevitable. - Don’t be afraid to change your mind.
Working on Slrrrp is a balance between art and information. We can have what we believe is a good Idea and review the data afterward seeing less than favorable results. It’s okay to move on if something isn’t working.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
We have lots of great ideas! We recently launched Cinnamon Whiskey Slrrrp Shots. To my knowledge that’s never been done before. We also have our seasonal football packs leveraging shot color combos to drive regional excitement (I’m a big football fan so I really love these packs, especially the orange and blue pack one, since I’m from Denver).
Lots of new flavors and styles are coming out that we will work with our distributor partners to finalize before we share them.
We also have been making big moves as a business and how we go to market. We will have a big announcement coming soon…
Last but not least, our company is actually SLRRRP Alcohol-Infused Innovations. That leaves us a great deal of room to explore different categories within the industry.
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?
Oh, My God! Anything by Malcolm Gladwell! No Joke, in 2007 (or so), I had the privilege of hosting Oskar Blues Brewery Founder Dale Katechis in a suite at a Rockies game. I had just finished my master’s degree and had read The Tipping Point, Blink, and I think Outliers had just come out. Anyway, I start talking with Dale and he had just read the same books. We talked about a lot of the amazing inferences Gladwell would tie together. Later when I started working at Oskar Blues with Dale, in the middle of a meeting after he was done speaking, I would look at him and just say “Gladwell”. He would just smile and laugh at me.
To this day I still use Dale as a sounding board, and Malcolm Gladwell still comes up from time to time in our conversations.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
This one is deep for me — I am a Columbine High school survivor and my journey has led me to this, “don’t take life too seriously, you’ll never get out alive.”
To me this is about making the best of every day.
You are a person 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. 🙂
Be the change in the world that you want to see.
How can our readers follow you online?
@slrrrp on Instagram & Facebook
https://www.instagram.com/slrrrp/
https://www.facebook.com/slrrrp/
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
Meet The Disruptors: Stephen Houck of SLRRRP Shots On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
