Welcome to this episode of Build Your Tribe. You're gonna love this one. It's really a unique episode.

Welcome to Build Your Tribe with your host, Shaline Johnson.

Box subscriptions are you one of the 16 million households that receives box subscriptions every single month?

It's a relatively new and very competitive industry. Difficult to make it unless you've got a way to stand out.

And what's inside is a curated collection of the best of a particular item that you trust the expertise of the person who's put the box together or the expertise of the organization.

Well, one of the box subscriptions that my family loves is one from butcher box. Now that might sound crazy to you, but what we receive each month is a curated package filled with grass-fed, grass-finished meats.

But more importantly than that for us is we know that these are products not only of the highest quality, that the company that is curating this meat has a very high ethical standard for the treatment of the animals.

Today, you're going to hear from the founder and CEO of butcher box. That's Mike Selgero. Mike has grown this business to over $30 million in less than two years.

But what I love about Mike's story is that this isn't his first venture. The venture that he walked away from was one where he raised millions and millions of dollars in venture capital.

So he's got this really unique experience, a different perspective from doing venture capital versus his own Kickstarter and bootstrapping a business.

And today, you'll get both perspective. He's going to share with us the pros and the cons of both sides.

This is a fascinating interview on so many levels. I mean, we talk about buying domains, what it's like to work with venture capital, what are some of the constraints.

I mean, we just unpack so many cool details, things that you might not be thinking about right now in your business, but maybe you've had a question in your mind, like what would that be like and what would be the pros and cons.

You'll have all of those answers today. And by the way, if you are interested in subscribing yourself to butcher box, Michael is also put together a special discount.

A special offer for build your tribe listeners, you get $20 off your first box plus free bacon. And it's not just any bacon. This is bacon from Heritage breed pork.

The quality is insane. And so is the treatment and the care of the animals. So if quality means a lot to you, then take advantage of the special offer by going to butcher box dot com forward slash build your tribe.

Michael, it is so awesome to have you here today. One of the reasons I think we're going to have a lot to talk about is you are one of those people that's passionate about a lot of things, which led you to the business that you're in today.

So tell us a little bit about what you were doing before butcher box.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. So my story getting into butcher box actually started with some elimination diets. My wife and I were really focusing on our diet trying to clean up the way that we ate and we did an elimination diet.

We did a whole 30 diet and both these programs mentioned grass bed beef and that grass bed beef was truly the right way to eat beef. And I didn't really know anything about it, but started on the hunt to find grass bed beef.

Went to our local grocery store couldn't find it and I ended up finding a farmer who I'm from Massachusetts who lived in New York and ended up buying a what's called a quarter share, but basically it's about two trash bags full of meat.

Ended up buying it in a parking lot. So shady. Yeah, we've had lots of customers say that they've had the exact same story.

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