Can this Company Fix America’s Broken Food System? with Luiz Beling, CEO of Apeel Sciences

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:00) Today, we're talking to Luiz Beling, CEO at Apeel Sciences, about how they overcame a media smear campaign and are now working towards saving America's food system in their company's second act. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:20) I love what you guys are doing. I did a lot of looking into it. I knew about you before we set this up too. So I was researching you guys maybe four or five years ago. But for people who don't know, what is Apeel? What problem do you solve? What do you guys do?

(Luiz Beling at 00:00:37) Yeah. Think about Apeel. We are known. People think we're a plant-based coatings company, but what we are, we're trying to solve one of the biggest engineering problems in the world. If you think about, we're trying to actually, how do you move a living product through a global supply chain? A perishable product that has its days. Right? It's a living organism that, you know, once it's picked, has a number of days before it dies. Right? And our job is, how do we extend the life of that living organism, maintain its quality, its freshness, its nutritional value for a longer period of time so all of us can enjoy it. Right?

(Luiz Beling at 00:01:21) So what Apeel has done was a really interesting concept. Today, when crops are harvested, you know, there's a process that happens after they're harvested to make it to restaurants and retail shelves. There's a lot of pesticides that get used to try to control mold formation after it's harvested. There's a lot of waxes to try to also protect the fruit. There is single-use plastics. You wrap fruits and vegetables into plastics to try to control. There's refrigeration, cold storage, right, and distribution that you're just trying to maintain that fruit alive. We actually went about it a bit different. We said, what if we actually leverage nature to try to protect and extend the shelf life? Right? Every fruit and vegetable already has a protective layer. They come, and that's what actually allowed them to evolve from aquatic to land. They have this protective layer called a cuticle.

(Luiz Beling at 00:02:23) So we actually thought, what if, you know, what are those cuticles made out of? What if we extract them, formulate into a product, and reapply an extra thin layer on top of it? Do we help? Do we give more protection? So that's kind of how Apeel started. We basically, you know, allow fresh produce to stay fresh longer, increase their life. While now, lately, we've got into the digital space with a lot of cool technology, while also allowing the industry to know what condition the food is in at any given point, right? And we'll get into a lot more of that discussion. But that's what we've built: a way to protect produce, extend the shelf life, try to reduce the waste. One-third of the food produced today goes to waste, so we don't have a supply problem. We have a distribution and time problem. Therefore, that's what we're trying to do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:24) So you got a couple different parts of the business. One is this alternative to the petroleum waxes, synthetic fungicide type thing for the coating for transportation of the food. Right? And the second thing is the technology stack that you're building. Tell me about the technology stack.

(Luiz Beling at 00:03:42) Yeah. The technology stack, if you think about today, how do you assess the quality of the fruit? How do you know what condition the fruit is? So when a fruit is harvested, they usually, you know, if you think about the ways consumers buy it, let me start with the consumer and then work my way down. If you go buy an avocado, how do you know that avocado is right? People usually go with their, they're squeezing the avocado, they're looking at it, right? They're, you know, what color is it, and they're making that decision. Most of the times, they're not right because they're using just their hands and their eyes versus leveraging technology. So what we thought, there's a better way to do it. So the way the industry does today, they harvest crops, they have to cut the fruit open to kind of look at the quality on the inside. Is it hard? Is it not? What's the oil content inside? What's the dry matter? What's the sugar content? They have to cut the food open and do a lot of testing that takes a lot of hours and a lot of labor to do. We said there's probably a better way with technology. So what we've built is hardware through hyperspectral imaging that we can actually take a scan of the fruit. And then, through a lot of data collections, you know, sensors, AI, machine learning, you know, by just looking at this data over and over many years, we now have a pretty good idea of what the quality of the fruit is inside without having to destroy the fruit. And now, not only we have an idea the quality of the fruit on the inside, we can predict where is it going to be a day, two, three from now, right? Because it's a living organism and it's maturing. Right? It's changing color. It's changing texture. It's changing its nutritional value inside. So we can now know the condition by leveraging software and hardware, but also can predict what condition it's going to be, which allows then suppliers of food to make better decisions. So, what do I do with that food? If the food is almost mature, do I just sell it now? Do I turn that into an industrialized product? Because most likely may not make it to a retail or to a restaurant. This fruit has a few extra days. The quality looks really good. Well, I could probably ship it a little farther. Right?

(Luiz Beling at 00:06:10) That information first, a lot of the stuff, it's destructive tools that are used today. It's all done manually in paper, and we've turned all that information into a way that is digitized, right? You can use more modern technologies to assess the quality and make more useful and timely decisions without destroying the fruit. So there's also savings in the fruit and savings in the labor that it takes to conduct those tasks. So really cool technology and allows the industry to know, at any given point, what's the condition of the fruit.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:44) I love that you guys continually just take modern technology and apply it to your industry because, you know, we've been scanning stuff to detect tolerances in mass production forever. We scan ourselves at the TSA. Your rental car now, I was in California last week, and I returned my rental car, and they scan the rental car as it's coming in for any defects. So they don't even have people looking at it. So this scanning concept is everywhere, and it's just you guys have applied it to this industry.

(Luiz Beling at 00:07:16) Yeah. And think about how it was used. Right? You had to first visually look on the outside and make notes of whatever observations you have, and then you had to cut the food open in many different ways, and then, in some cases, do testing in a microwave to dry it, to understand the dry matter, to understand the oil content. You can do now all with this technology, scanning technology, hyperspectral imaging, and you can have both the outside quality. You can measure the size. You can measure, you know, if there are any blemishes? Are there any scars? Then you can actually measure the quality on the inside all without touching it or destroying the fruit, which just saves millions of pieces of fruit and most importantly saves a lot of labor and allows you to do more value-added work, quite frankly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:06) One of the coolest parts for me personally about your story of the company is how you were on this massive rise, and then something happened, and you guys had to, you're resilient because you're still here today. You're growing. You're doing great, but you almost lost it. Tell me about what happened.

(Luiz Beling at 00:08:25) Yeah. We were, I mean, the product, like I said, the product, if you think about the coating, started with the coating. Right? It protects, gives that extra layer. It doesn't let oxygen come in, which reduces the oxidation. It doesn't let the water come out, which maintains the fruit hydrated, right? So we were able to prove to retailers early on that, retailers, you can actually have a more ripe, mature fruit, which that's what consumers really want, and stay longer in your shelf, which gives you more time to sell versus have to either throw it away or discount it or, you know, have to turn into guacamole or other things to sell it before it goes to waste. Right? And we were able to prove the performance and the product performed really well. And then through that, man, we went from zero to, at one point, we were coating 60% of the avocado market in the US. So think about that. And consumers and retailers really happy. And then an organized intentional attack on us, which is, I laugh today because, you know, we were so naive when it happened, but we've learned so much since. An organized attack came on us, and they basically linked our product, our brand, to a cleaning product in the UK that had a very nasty product spec sheet. Right? And they put our brand with their spec sheet and said, here's what Apeel is, Apeel is very toxic, therefore, you know, you should not, this should not be on our food. And there were completely two different products, right? One was a cleaning product that happened to be called Apeel made out of a different company out in the UK and us. So when that happened, we were naive, we thought it was just a misunderstanding, we can put the facts out there, hey, here's our company, this product's from this other company, and this will go away. What we didn't realize is how intentional and organized it was.

(Luiz Beling at 00:10:22) So the messages dropped at the same time, multiple different places, same pictures and graphics. And then, over time, we understood, no, this isn't a mistake. This actually is someone behind intentionally targeting us and creating fear. Through that fear, what they were very effective, Joel, is they basically got retailers to be concerned. They got consumers to be concerned, which then started asking questions from retailers and asking retailers to stop treating with Apeel because the technology was so bad and, you know, created all these problems. And retailers actually, because of the inbound of consumers, actually stopped treating Apeel. So we went from zero to 60% of the market back to zero in a matter of probably two years. Right? And we've learned a lot. Right? We now know it was an organized attack, well funded. We don't know exactly who's behind it, but it took us a while, because again, we were a bunch of scientists developing these cool technologies.

(Luiz Beling at 00:11:34) Yeah. Trying to really save the world, reduce food waste, reduce food costs, increase access to, you know, more affordable fruits and vegetables. So we thought it was a genuine mistake, not realizing we were under a significant amount of attack.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:49) I know who did it. The avocado gangsters.

(Luiz Beling at 00:11:52) Dude, that's tough.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:52) You went in there. In one year, you took 60% market share of a massive industry, probably hundreds of millions of dollars. You go in there. You take this market share, and then, yeah, somebody's gonna be upset about it.

(Luiz Beling at 00:12:09) We have a lot of money. There's a lot of people. If I, we don't know yet. We have a lot of breadcrumbs that leads to suspicions, but we don't have facts that we can bring, you know, a case against a person or a company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:21) Doesn't matter because you guys are winners. What you're gonna do is you're gonna adapt, overcome, grow, and go out there and just become even bigger and better.

(Luiz Beling at 00:12:30) That's exactly, and that's what we have done. Right? Because through that period, I mean, we went from a darling, a big business growing, scaling really fast, hiring a ton of committed, you know, vision-driven, mission-driven people, to zero having to lay off and really rethink about the business. And we've actually evolved. We actually became better. Right? We are now, we, you know, what we learned, if you think about technology, companies are so worried about cybersecurity. Right? But very few are worried about narrative security. And you, quite frankly, need both now. And we learned a lot. Hey, owning your narrative, actually getting your facts out there, being transparent about what you do, engaging in the conversation is important, and you can't stay out of it because then an opinion gets formed without, you know, people. We actually invited a lot of the attackers on Apeel to our headquarters. Come see the technology for yourself. Come see the ingredients that we use. Right? We got nothing to hide, so we have become a lot better. We've adapted our business. We used to be heavily retail-focused, and now because what the product and the technology that we built does, right, allows to know the quality of the fruit at any given point, allows you to extend protection, and allows you to actually ship long haul fruit. We've actually turned ourselves into more of a supply chain player versus really a retail brand, where we're actually solving real problems for growers, for packers, for shippers, right, by leveraging the tech stack that we built. So we've become a lot better and we actually are re-engaging back in the US market in a different way by working with providers of fruit more directly versus just retailers. So we've learned a lot, we've evolved, and it made us actually better in the long run.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:30) It's been amazing. We've seen this, you know, culturally, we've got this image in our head of, like, the pitchforks in, like, the 1800s, you know, like, the whole town. But to see that translate online has been fascinating because now instead of a little village, it can be, like, a large portion of the world. And they're not sitting there saying, hey. We wanna have a nuanced conversation and understand the facts. They're just like, angry. Yeah. Angry. Yeah. And we've been seeing it pop up. I did an interview the other day with some, there's a lot of stuff going on with data centers and electricity and all this stuff. Yep. And it happens in all of these pockets. It happens, and then they'll pull celebrities into it. Like, you guys, they pulled in Bill Gates, right, to the whole attack situation. And how did that feel? Like, you guys are sitting there making this product that's, like, genuinely better, healthier for, like, what the American, well, I'm assuming you're global, but for people. And you're, like, waking up every day with this mission, but then you're just watching this chaos unfold online. That must have been pretty hard.

(Luiz Beling at 00:15:34) Oh, think about it. Think about the excitement of the founders, right, early in the days when they were actually able to take, again, if we just take the ingredients from the food itself, that protective layer is mono and diglycerides. You find it in olive oil, you find it in human breast milk, right? Natural things. You find it actually in your gut as it metabolizes. They actually thought, how do we leverage nature to protect nature, right? And they actually proved that, hey, if you extract those ingredients that exist in the peels and skins of the fruit and reapply it, you give that actual protection. And they pitched that to the Gates Foundation, really excited. And they got a grant, right, about two grants, one in the hundred thousand range and then another of a million. Really excited because the Gates Foundation wanted to develop, you know, a product for, you know, the sub-Saharan Africa in cassava, and we were really excited. So think about that. And then now to be associated with Gates in a significantly bad way, right? Gates has never really been part of the company, right, never really owned any shares, never had any management. His foundation just gives a lot of entrepreneurs money to build, you know, great technologies, and we were one of those. Right? So just to see it in that nature, like, man, we thought it was a good thing that, you know, we were able to prove our technology works and we were gonna help people in Africa.

(Luiz Beling at 00:16:59) Now, being associated with Gates is a bad thing because of the reputation he's gained over the last several years. It's kind of hard for us to reconcile those two things. We thought it was a good thing and now being associated—but to us, the mission's still worth fighting for. That's kind of how I see it.

(Luiz Beling at 00:17:19) You're looking at the data center discussion and the electricity. It's like you can't lose the narrative because AI is here to stay and is actually a good thing. It's actually gonna create a lot of jobs. It's actually gonna redevelop technology. It's gonna accelerate productivity. You have to regain that narrative. Otherwise, you're in a tough spot. And that's what we learned—their algorithms run faster than the facts.

(Luiz Beling at 00:17:45) So if you don't actually participate in the conversation and actually bring others to participate in a conversation, the narrative gets set by those that want to derail you. And I think that was one of the key learnings because this information wasn't the surprising factor. It was how fast, watching these algorithms just outperform the facts. And not being part of that discussion, that's the key learning. And we've seen since—we have engaged online a lot more, have others come visit us, learn about it, talk positively about it. We invited the detractors. And we are now finally regaining the narrative. Not regaining because we needed it. It's because now we got the facts and other people now know us a little bit more. We're a lot more transparent. Therefore, we're part of that conversation. But something good turning to something bad by being associated with Gates—it's just crazy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:47) It's like a leadership lesson almost. You can tell your team that you have an open door policy, that they can come to you with anything. You can say it once, and then five years goes by. You're like, I said it once. I said it on opening day. You have to constantly just remind people, and you have to be there. I think you're very smart because I always like lessons that come out of difficult moments. And this lesson of not losing the narrative and then being proactive about being out there and involved is so important. Because if you can go out there and say, "Hey, we're changing the world in this positive way. This is what we're doing," and that's your first impression with someone and that's what they see, then when something viral goes or they have something to associate it with, they'd be like, "Yeah, there might be some nuance to that because I heard them on a podcast interview or I watched their—read their reports or whatever it was." So I think that is a really smart move.

(Luiz Beling at 00:19:43) Yeah, and we're now letting people meet the founders who are involved in the business, heavily involved. And, Joel, they were so careful with how they wanted to develop the product. The thought into the ingredients, how to leverage nature to protect nature, what was gonna be allowed to be used, what was not gonna be allowed to be used—and that story wasn't being told. And now I think we got the founders actually speaking more openly through the process to which they developed the technology and how careful they were because they wanted to build a better system. And that narrative was missing. And you have to engage. To me, there's a couple of things. Once you go through that storm, you can second guess yourself many times, and you can suddenly think you're not as good. And I think what got us grounded was: Is this mission still worth fighting for? Helping reduce food waste, reduce food costs, doing it in a more natural, sustainable way, replacing these legacy technologies—is it worth fighting for? Is the technology good and safe? And then, can we fight this? And once you got yes to those answers—yeah, the mission's still worth fighting for, the technology's good and safe, and we're not gonna let these lies define us. We're actually gonna come back and focus on the things we control. We regained just the energy back into the company, and now we've been rebuilding the business. And it's been fun because the business is slowly rebuilding in the US. In Europe, it actually has taken off.

(Luiz Beling at 00:21:25) And if you think about Europe and the US, just to give you some statistics: in Europe, only 400 ingredients, preservatives, coatings, products are allowed on food. 4,000 are allowed here in United States. So Europe is a lot more restrictive in what gets put on their food, and our product is actually approved and widely used in Europe and actually celebrated by retailers and consumers. We still carry the sticker, proudly display it. People buy it, they know it's better, they know it has extra days. Where in the US, we're now fighting this thing. And we're slowly rebuilding, and I think we're rebuilding the business a lot smarter. But it's this irony of—we developed here for Americans to actually have a better way and more days and be able to enjoy it, and we lost temporarily the narrative to social media disinformation. And Europe is taking off, and our business is thriving over there. It's kind of crazy to see this dichotomy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:29) And it should only do better. You guys are hardened now, and you've got a different way to approach the market. And I love it. Now, you entered the market as a food coatings company, and now you're a full stack supply chain technology company. Why was that the right second act?

(Luiz Beling at 00:22:47) Yeah, and we're calling this the second act. We're calling it second act because after what we went through, it just gives us a chance to kind of step back and assess what do we really do. And we are not a coatings company. That's what we were known for. We're actually a technology platform. And what we actually help is—we help growers all the way to retailers just manage their produce better, know the quality, know where to use it, know the nutritional value at any given point, the condition of that food at any given point, and then be able to apply a plant-based coating that can extend that condition for a few extra days or weeks.

(Luiz Beling at 00:23:34) And we were given a second chance. We were given a chance to say: Instead of just focusing on the consumer and retailer, there's so many problems we can solve for the supply chain. So why don't we just really invest our time and effort in rebuilding the business that way? Providing this digitization of the produce quality so that every piece of millions and millions of fruit—you have actual information. Every piece of fruit going through the supply chain if you're using our technology. You can extend the shelf life, and you can actually preserve, you can actually ship to places that today the fruit can't make it, or if it has to make it, you have to fly the fruit over so it makes it with the right quality. Now you have an opportunity to actually basically have fruit available and vegetable available twelve months out of the year with great taste, highly affordable, with high nutritional value. Because the legacy systems, you lose a little bit of the affordability and, quite frankly, lose some of the nutritional value when using the legacy systems. Now we're able to deploy our tech stack from growing all the way to delivering that allows us—consumers, I listen a lot to consumers. One thing I spend a lot of time with is customers in general, consumers and then the supply chain customers. Consumers are asking for: I want less chemicals on my food, I want it more affordable, I want it fresh, and I want high nutritional value. And those are all things that we can solve by deploying our tech stack across the supply chain.

(Luiz Beling at 00:24:58) You can envision a world where you can pick a fruit—why are certain fruit not as tasty and not as good when you consume it? Sometimes they're picked too early and then put through a lot of stress to make it to the grocery store. Now we have technology that would allow a grower to let the fruit sit longer and mature that has a higher sugar content, it's more mature, and then you can preserve that quality throughout the supply chain. Suddenly you're enjoying a more tasteful, more nutritional piece of fruit than you were before. And that's what the second act has been. We actually have reinvented ourselves and we actually now are not only deploying coatings, but we're actually digitizing that experience from the growers all the way to the consumers. And it's been fun to watch. It's been widely adopted. We're starting to get our business back—Colombia, Mexico, US. We're in South America. We're in South Africa. We're in Europe. Soon we expand in Asia. So it's just given us a chance to—and we're doing it by owning the narrative too. By putting the facts out, by letting people in, seeing the technology, using it, having customers actually share their experiences. So we've actually regained the narrative of something that we think is important. I mean, the mission of the company is an important one, and we're very committed to it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:48) Well, if you're helping other companies, like these suppliers and stuff, if you're helping them get their fruit places on time or the right time for whatever that lot is, that's gonna affect their bottom line. So when they're making these decisions, they're like, "Hey, we need to improve our product and service. What tools are available in the marketplace to do that?" And then they find your technology. And they're like, "This is gonna be great. It matches with what the consumers want. It makes us more money. Everybody wins." And when you can do that, it's just gonna be a matter of time before, you know, you bother another industry, another 60% of the gangsters, they come after you. No. But I love what you're doing because you're building something that's bulletproof now. You've got the technology angle. You've got the coatings. You've got a lot of stuff going on, and it's all in service of a better experience for our food, and I love that.

(Luiz Beling at 00:27:39) Yeah, and think about—one thing that we used to call ourselves: the company fighting food waste. But after now I've been here almost two and a half years, a little over two and a half years, waste is an information problem. You didn't know exactly the situation of the fruit. Therefore, you don't know what decisions you have to make. And because you are using manual inspections and things like that, you perhaps can't make the right decision on time and that fruit ends up going to waste. Now, with the technology, because information is key, we have a lot of data on the condition of the fruit. It allows these suppliers to decide: This fruit actually only has two days left. I'm gonna channel this fruit to this because I know in two days it's gonna be consumed. I cannot ship it to a different market that's gonna take three to five days to arrive. This fruit is in this condition. It has more legs. I can funnel to this route. So it has just allowed people to make more informed decisions faster with real time information, all aggregated with predictive analytics. Here's where the food's gonna be a day, three days, five days from now, and allows just the suppliers to better market their fruit and the condition of the fruit. And that's what's been fun. It used to be just plant-based coatings to reduce food waste. Now it's really an information data company that allows suppliers to make better decisions. And one of them could be to treat with coatings that extend shelf life because you only have a few days left. Another one could be: Change it to this other market because you have a better price or you're gonna market differently because of the information you have on that fruit at your fingertips, which is key.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:34) So you joined right when this thing, the chaos, was occurring. Is that right?

(Luiz Beling at 00:29:38) That is right. Right after it had just started.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:42) You just, like, grab your fire extinguisher, walk in the front door on day one. You're like, "I'm here." But you're the right person for that. You've dealt with a lot of stressful situations in your life. I wanna hear about the kidnapping situation.

(Luiz Beling at 00:29:55) Yeah. It's something that I—you know, it has defined me as a person. That's why I usually don't have a problem with sharing because it has built who I am. So I grew up in Brazil. Being here now for almost thirty years, but grew up in Brazil. And I had an instance where—Brazil has many beautiful parts and there's some shady parts of the country and in some large cities, some shady parts within cities. And I happen to live in Brazil, and I was driving through a bad neighborhood where actually my sister lived. And I was gonna stop, pick her up because she was gonna drop me off at the airport, and she was gonna stay with my car. And as I parked and got out of the car to ring the doorbell—and she lived actually in an apartment complex, so you'll ring one of those intercoms—two guys approached me. I didn't see them coming. They approached me with guns and told me to get back in the car. And, you know, when you're raised in countries like that, you were taught early on to not fight because you can escalate and then get worse. You just do as they say. So rightly so, one person got into the driver's seat, the other and myself got into the back seat, and we went for a ride.

(Luiz Beling at 00:31:00) That ride was—I had a gun pointed on my head, and they were asking for all kinds of things. First, they wanted money. Obviously, first thing I did was turn out my wallet. "Here, here's my wallet. Take everything you have." As we're driving to the city and they're browsing through my wallet, I didn't have a whole lot of cash. They said, "That's not enough money. Therefore, we're gonna keep you for a long time until you can give us more money, until we find what we wanna do with you." So through that stressful situation, I kind of thought through, what are my options? And I said, "What if we stop at an ATM machine and I'm able to cash out, take more money, and give it to you guys? Would you guys just let me go?" After back and forth, they agreed to that idea, and we actually pulled up to an ATM machine. I got out of the car with one guy following me, put my card in, took out the daily limit, which was roughly, at that time, probably $250. Took the daily limit, and then got back into the car, handed over the cash to them and said, "Well, that's all I got now. So can you guys just let me go?"

(Luiz Beling at 00:32:26) And we went to the psychological threat of, "We don't know what to do. We don't wanna release you. Maybe you're no good to us anymore. Maybe we just kill you and drop you," and all those types of things. And through that whole process, it just forces you to think of what's important to me, and what do I want out of the situation? And for me, the only thing that was important was my life. Therefore, I didn't care about the car. I didn't care about any valuable thing I had. I was just asking, "Hey, you guys got everything. You can keep the car. Just let me go." And after forty-five minutes—seemed forever, but it was between forty and forty-five minutes—I was able to convince them to pull over and let me out. And, obviously, once that happened, I got out. And they took the car, and I found my car three days later completely stripped down, destroyed. Anything of value in the car they took—the engine, the tires, the wheels, anything.

(Luis Belling at 00:33:31) Because they were really looking for quick money to get out, right? It was very common. Those things were happening in the eighties and nineties in Brazil, you know, quick kidnaps where they would hold you hostage for a couple of days to try to get ransom, or these quick car rides. And the fortunate thing is I was able to get out, and that was a defining moment because I had family living in the United States. I was trying to make a career in Brazil, and I said, why don't I try this wonderful country that my parents are enjoying? My family, my brother, sister were living in the United States. Why don't I just join them and see what life is like in a country like that?

(Luis Belling at 00:34:11) Right? And that was a defining moment. I came to the United States and never really looked back, have lived my life here since. It's been such a great fortune to really live in a country where, you know, you don't think about those things. I think there's a lot of discussion these days of the situation of the US and this and that.

(Luis Belling at 00:34:32) I'm like, you guys have no idea what you have. Go to these other places and then come back and then be thankful because this country provides so much to people that sometimes I think people take it for granted. And it has defined me, right? I remain calm during a stressful situation. I knew what the goal was, you know, how do I get out of here without being hurt? And that has defined me.

(Luis Belling at 00:34:59) I take this experience at Apeel when we're going through those attacks and we're having to lay off people, and I'm like, hey, is the mission worth it? What's the mission? Let's stay calm. Let's rebuild it. Let's be resilient.

(Luis Belling at 00:35:13) Let's not lose focus. What are we trying to do? Let's not let the distractions and emotions get in the way. And that's how I go about life now after this incident in Brazil. It actually has taught me a lesson that if you know what you want and you stay focused and calm, you know, eventually you get what you want.

(Luis Belling at 00:35:35) And that's the journey we're on with Apeel. It's like we never lost track of the mission even through the toughest, you know, darkest periods of the company here in the last two years.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:49) Well said. I like you.

(Luis Belling at 00:35:53) That was good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:54) Yeah. This is good, man. I like that you took this moment. You have a fork in the road, right, where you can let it consume you and destroy you, or you can leverage it as power, take lessons from it, and use it to push yourself forward. Not everybody chooses that path.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:11) Some people choose the path of victimhood and weakness, and then the rest of their days they have this horrible story, and that's why their life is the way it is. Other people use it as fuel. You chose to use it as fuel. We are similar in that way, and so I always love meeting people like you.

(Luis Belling at 00:36:30) No, Joel. Again, I appreciate the conversation. It is. It has defined me. I've used the story in many different situations.

(Luis Belling at 00:36:38) I had a very hostile negotiation with a customer one time, and they were pounding their fist or threatening. I'm like, that won't work. I had a gun pointed at my head, and I kind of worked my way out of it. So you pounding and yelling at me, it's not gonna work. Just tell me what you need.

(Luis Belling at 00:36:55) Let's figure it out, right? So I've had other situations in my life where you just go, you know, put things into perspective, right? What's important and what's not? And, you know, let's be, let's have common sense and work through it. But really appreciate the conversation.

(Luis Belling at 00:37:12) Love getting to know you and really enjoyed it as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:15) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.