How to Build a Content Strategy + CPG Brand Lessons | Isaac Medeiros (Mini Katana, Kanpai Foods)
The Peel with Turner Novak
Turner Novak
4.6 • 11 Ratings
🗓️ 21 August 2025
⏱️ 75 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Isaac Medeiros is the Founder of Mini Katana and Kanpai Foods.
Isaac’s content gets over 1 billion views per month. Our conversation gets into content strategy from a high level down to tactical decisions, differences between the TikTok and YouTube algorithms, and how AI will impact content creation.
We also get into Isaac’s origin story building consumer brands, why TikTok made food an interesting category for new products, how to get a product into retail stores, and why you shouldn’t sell into retail.
Isaac also shares how tariff’s impacted his company. They became unprofitable overnight, and he had to move his entire supply chain from the US to Mexico in 60 days.
Thank you to Sean Frank @ Ridge and Kevin Espiritu @ Epic Gardening for their help brainstorming topics for Isaac.
Special thanks to Ramp for supporting this episode. It's the corporate card and expense management platform used by over 40,000 companies, like Shopify, CBRE and Stripe. Time is money. Save both with Ramp. Get $250 for signing-up here.
Timestamps:
(3:46) 165 million views in two days
(5:15) Followers don’t matter, build a binge bank
(11:21) How to monetize an audience
(14:36) Identify outliers for content ideas
(17:13) Should founders make their own content?
(19:34) Starting Mini Katana
(23:39) $10m revenue in two years w/ $0 CAC
(25:56) Difference between TikTok and YouTube algorithms
(29:38) When to experiment with a second platform
(32:20) Starting Kanpai, a freeze-dried candy company
(36:54) Why freeze-dried candy wasn’t popular
(38:22) Why you shouldn’t sell in retail
(41:12) Why you should sell in retail
(47:05) Downsides of selling to large retailers
(49:52) Should CPG brands raise money?
(57:59) Moving manufacturing from US to Mexico in 60 days due to tariffs
(1:04:20) Why you don’t want to be first in a category
(1:08:06) Other CPG creators Isaac follows
(1:09:15) Elon Musk, Charlie Munger, Mark Cuban
(1:11:55) Labubu’s
Referenced
Previous episode with Kevin Espiritu
Previous episode with Sean Frank
Follow Isaac
Follow Turner
Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | A lot of creators, they kind of just make what's viral today, |
| 0:03.6 | but long-term, they're not really building this format-driven binge bank. |
| 0:08.2 | Think through it. |
| 0:09.2 | Somebody in a year for now finds your videos. |
| 0:11.7 | Ideally, you don't want them just watching your one video. |
| 0:13.7 | You want them to follow you, and you want them to start watching all of your content |
| 0:17.4 | and going through your catalog. |
| 0:18.8 | The only way to do that is consistency, focusing |
| 0:21.5 | on specific emotions you want to elicit, and providing the audience with kind of like that value |
| 0:25.6 | around those formats. Organic content compounds over long periods of time, you should build that in |
| 0:31.2 | mind from day of one. Welcome to the Peel. I'm your host, Turner Novak, founder of Banana Capital. |
| 0:36.1 | Today's guest is Isaac Medeiros, founder of |
| 0:38.9 | Mini Katana and Konfi Foods. In terms of unique viewers, we get about a quarter billion a month. |
| 0:44.7 | We spend the next 75 minutes talking content-driven businesses. Mini Katana has 20 million subscribers. |
| 0:50.4 | That doesn't mean anything. I think of Isaac is the Mr. Beast of Short-Form video, |
| 0:53.9 | coming off 165 million views on one video in two days, and he gives us advice on high-level content strategy. |
| 1:00.0 | I think that's why most people don't break through. There's just like post five videos and like, it didn't work. |
| 1:05.0 | I'd experiment with new channels and platforms. |
| 1:07.0 | On TikTok, the algorithm is very transient. |
| 1:10.0 | Anybody can go viral just like that. |
| 1:11.6 | YouTube is very different. |
| 1:12.6 | And the platform rewards you for building an audience and prioritizing that. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Turner Novak, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Turner Novak and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.