SEAMEN: Forged by the sea and a love for Horchata. Here to make waves 🌊
- KLS
- Jun 12
- 19 min read
Updated: Jun 13
For the 191st feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with SEAMEN and Co-Founder, Chris Liberty. All hands on deck for the smoothest sip on the seven seas. Seamen Original Horchata is pure, classic refreshment with no dairy, no nonsense, just rich, creamy horchata flavor with a splash of cinnamon and a wave of sweetness. Made with real rice and natural ingredients, it’s the perfect drink for thirsty seamen and landlubbers alike. Whether you’re kicking back in the galley or charting a course for adventure, this is the captain’s chose for smooth sailing. Sip and savor Seamen to stay the course.
"Together Talks" feature # 191: SEAMEN presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
Story of how it was created?
It is really deeply rooted in my naval background in the United States Navy. In 2009, I joined, my grandfather was in, my father was in. I wanted to serve my country, and 9-11, I still remember. I did the whole Navy route, and I was just a Florida boy before. Loved the ocean. I joined, and that was my first time actually experiencing more than just one state and actually seeing the world. I actually did my first, not really a deployment, it was more of we were moving from Virginia to San Diego, so we had to go around the Horn of South America. That was actually when I first got introduced to horchata, they're amazing. But realistically, they actually are very unique between different people, and different cultures make them a little differently. Everywhere has their own little special sauce. I got the experience all over South America then to San Diego on the West Coast, I realized horchata is everywhere, and it's in every food truck. All the Mexican markets had concentrates. What I would do is, because I was kind of addicted to it, I started actually just getting the concentrate and making it myself for everybody. It's kind of weird how a drink really impacted you, but I think it was honestly, it was so good.
I felt that because I was on the East Coast, and I lived so long without ever having it, that I was almost mad that I never had the opportunity to even try it before until I was 20. You know, that was really unique and I'm actually just kind of having that epiphany now. That's why I had so much passion behind it, because this thing is awesome. It's got all the flavoring. You can have it breakfast, lunch, dinner, any meal. It didn't really matter. It just was so good. I pretty much did the three years in the Navy after that year. I did three more years, did a couple tours, had Osama bin Laden on my carrier my last deployment, which is pretty cool. There's a lot of sea stories, but that one was pretty impactful.
I initially had an idea to bring Horchata to the East Coast, because that's where I was going back to in Florida, and just selling it on the beaches or something. Maybe having a little cart myself. But it just didn't really sit right. Instead I went and got my degree from Florida Atlantic University. I minored in business. What's interesting is I actually, my first business was not this. I started a CBD company really early on. And that was mainly due to my crippling anxiety and panic attacks that I got with the PTSD and everything from all the stuff that happened. Because we were at the Haiti earthquake and all this other stuff, but I got my disability for that for the VA, which is nice, they're helping. But CBD really made a huge impact on my life. I finally felt normal again. It's not that I felt better. It's just, I went back to being normal. I wasn't having irrational anxiety or anything like that. When I tried it, I was like, I need to sell this, but it was so early. It was the wild west with CBD, nobody really knew the laws.
Just for example, to get a bank account, right now with Seaman, I went to my local Bank of America and was able to open one instantly. But for the CBD company, I had to call hundreds of banks all over the country. Every one of them said no or they weren't sure because of the laws. I'm bringing them law showing it was allowed, but they still didn't care. I finally found a bank in Oklahoma, flew there, got a bank account. It was so sketchy. It was in the middle of nowhere.
But then that's just one battle. That took us about five, six months of just doing that. Then, we were D2C, we got an e-commerce business. Well, we need to sell on our site. Well, problem was at the time you had to make your own site because Shopify and Squarespace and Wix, they didn't allow CBD companies. We had to make our own website. Then we had to get a merchant account to process payments. Nobody would do that. It was too high risk. So I eventually somehow – and a lot of this is just luck and persistence at the same time. It's not just luck or persistence. It's kind of both. But I got in touch with somebody at Square who happened to know about an alpha program when it came to CBD products that they were wanting to experiment with and see if there was any chargebacks. And I got on that program because we didn't have certain elements on our site like bongs or – our site didn't even have green on it.
I was trying to make CBD more of an everybody did this thing, mainstream thing. And I actually researched a lot about Prohibition and how companies like Anheuser Busch and how they made it to what it is today right after Prohibition. What they did was they just normalized it. They just made it normal, not fringe stuff or anything like that. That happened to work out well in our favor. Then we were off to the races. We did several million dollars our first year. And I had no idea what I was doing, literally not a clue. I was constantly worrying about regulation and law and all this sort of stuff, getting expert witnesses to testify to certain things. It was crazy. I mean, we helped so many people. I loved that business so much just because of that, of the emails of people that we would receive. It helped me as well because I was getting CBD at a discounted rate now, so I didn't have to pay that much for myself. But honestly, because it was my first business, I think that's when I learned. I was an entrepreneur that could take anything to tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, but I've kind of realized that at that time, I was an entrepreneur that could take something from zero to 10 million, and that was kind of my limit.
After that, it honestly was a barrier. I really didn't know what the right things were to do to get it past that, and I was not really risk averse. I was not a fan of risk at that time. I learned a ton, but I more or less from that company learned so much more for than anything that I now know the steps to get us to 100 million, or at least I believe so. I know that I don't want to be in a high-risk industry anymore, period. It was just, I woke up every day, not in a panic attack, but ready to take on the biggest challenges that a company could ever face, and the adversity that you have to get through for anything like that is insane.
I give props to anybody in a high-risk industry, and they're doing really well at it. But I'd rather just have fun. I'd rather more focus on having fun with what I'm doing rather than being on the edge of a panic attack every single day. That kind of led into , which once I got my feet wet in the CPG space, I started – this wasn't just like a boom. I started having visions of and did all this and named it that and started a formulation. What I really did was just – and this is what helped with LinkedIn – was I just started studying the industry because I was on the fringe side of CPG. I think CBD or any type of marijuana or hemp or anything like that is just – on a different category. The industry is full of people that, I mean, I'm all about you believing everything about your product, that it's the best and everybody should know it. And it's going to change or revolutionize things. But so many people claim thy are disruptive because they have more probiotics than another product or one less gram of sugar. In my opinion, if you have to compare to someone, how really disruptive are you?
I'm on LinkedIn now, posting every day, getting a lot of impressions, and this and that, and it kind of seems like I just came out of nowhere. But I've been on LinkedIn for a little bit, just studying, not saying a word, and seeing all the flaws, seeing how big-headed some people are, how, unfortunately, just how people are just stuck in their own bubble, and then also how other people will support their bubble. I kind of saw a trend that if everybody loves you, that you're probably either you've already made it, so it's a safe bet for them to support you, or they really don't care about you at all. They're going to forget about you the next day, and you move on off to the races on a horse that's never going to win. And then that's when I started bringing my passion with horchata, I knew it was going to be called right away.
I looked up for the trademarks on the USPTO. I couldn't find anything, contacted my trademark attorney who laughed at me and she was like, "we're trying to trademark what?"
Once I secured the name, because that's part of our identity is not necessarily the product, although I love horchata, people can come out with another horchata drink, right? Just like with Olipop, somebody can come out with another probiotic or a healthy for you soda or whatever and slap whatever name on it. There's no proprietary in that. Securing our name was the proprietary part that we were trying to build with this brand.
After I got that, I really just started talking to people, a lot of my military buddies, and just randomly e bringing it up. asking what would you think about a company called or a drink called SEAMEN? They kept telling me that's freaking awesome, like, hell yeah. Now, I understood there could definitely be bias and that's part of the reason why we did this soft launch on LinkedIn. I want to see what they think. Most of these people are not my core demographic at all. My hypothesis is that the military and veterans will love it, then it can probably go beyond our core demographic. I was honestly thinking about it being an alcoholic beverage, to be honest. I don't drink alcohol personally, but I thought that that was a requirement, that it had to be that, and that was the better setting for it. Because of my hatred for red tape, alcohol is no different. The people that start alcohol companies now, either they don't know what they're getting into, or they have a ton of money backing them to get through all that. And there was the part of me that just honestly, I wasn't comfortable with even one person getting a DUI, or killing somebody, and one of my products is in their car, was the reason. That doesn't sit well with me.
Overall this works out that we just stay away from red tape. Every post or every comment that we say or make is just, it's fun. I'm having a great time. I'm not worried about being sued or worried about somebody losing their job or worrying about a law change that now makes us impossible. It's like I could just be me for once and be authentic truly. Because even in the CBD, I couldn't be authentic. I couldn't just be funny or clap back at somebody who said something wrong like, there's no way. Now I get to be myself, which will help with longevity.
What have been the biggest challenges?
I did a lot of research on this as well in the background of actual disruptive companies, and I believe one of our major challenges is probably going to be local retail and distribution when it comes to that, simply because of the name, for whatever reason. The other we actually face is just the funding side. I put about $30,000 into it right now. We have formulation, we have an energy sku, we have an original sku, we have the partners and the media team ready to go, and this is not a pity party. I'm all about people saying no, but I've been researching and distributing pitches to very strategic investors, people that go pre-seed, that are pre-revenue, that are in the CPG space specifically, or have something in their portfolio in that category, and also are military, or they're veterans, or they have other brands that I would call disruptive in their portfolio. Surprisingly, we get a ton of responses back and these are people that are responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars, and they're emailing back.
I think that's a win in itself. Most of the time, every email back from an investor is always, "I love the idea. I love Horchata and or Horchata is irrelevant, but it just seems still a little too risky for me." What we're really focused on right now to get through these challenges is to make it less of a risk for the investor as much as possible. Because again, there were so many things that were like that, like Liquid Death obviously was one of the big ones. He got a ton of no's because people understand that there's no cans and you're helping the fight against plastic, that's all great. But how is anybody ever going to buy something that says Liquid Death? I get it, that's a huge risk. That's going to be our attack on it now with the challenge of getting investment is to mitigate risk for the investors.
How have you dealt with being the face of the company?
It's actually two points. One, I have to be the face of the company because I am a Navy sailor, I was a seaman. The story behind the brand is what truly, I understand that people can veer off to whatever they want with our company. It doesn't blow my mind at any capacity. But what we're trying to do is with me being at the helm, I can actually focus everybody back onto the story of the brand, which is what gives us our true identity rather than something else.
The second part is, I'm not some influencer guy or anything like that. I've thought about doing it here and there, but because I get to be authentic, because I don't have to build persona, or I have to be whatever the algorithm I think wants. Instead I can just be me. It's not hard for me to be the center and to spread this. To build it with my name attached.
I'll give you an example. My wife is a dog trainer, a very successful canine trainer here in Tennessee. She's beautiful and amazing. But if she were to speak her true mind, people would cry. They really would. Because at the end of the day, what I've learned just observing her is it's really not the dogs. It's 99.9% the people. But the people don't want to hear that, right? So she has to be conservative and hold herself back and present the information in a different way. But she has to always hold and reserve herself a little bit to appease the person.
For once with this company, I enjoyed that I don't have to reserve anything and either people like it or they don't. They either find it polarizing or they don't. I don't care. This is a fun project for me. It's just as much as it is a business that I want to be worth a billion dollars one day. It's no different. And I think that is what I found through my business, my wife's, and several others is that, that's what keeps you in this for long term. Otherwise, you're going to give up.
What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most?
I honestly think if I can answer this in the opposite way, because that came to mind first, and that's just the only reason. The one thing I kind of hate about entrepreneurship, I had the belief that if you really did try and people wanted things, you will get there. You'll win, for sure. I think what I've found reality-wise is that that's not always the case. I know people will actually say, that's not true. You absolutely, if you put your heart and soul into it and people want it, you're going to get there.
But at the of the day, there's so many products and companies and founders that have developed so many amazing things, but Walmart eats them up, or their distribution does a bad deal, or they just don't get any funding. Then a group goes and just does the exact same thing, but just puts a little bit of a twist on it, and they have the multi-million dollars of backing, and they don't even care if they lose. They just don't want you there, and there's actually a lot of that. It's not fair to say, there's gatekeepers and that's why I failed, or this and that. I'm not over here saying it. I think there's a lot more of it than what people want to believe, because I think if you bring up entrepreneurship, and they talk about it, they want you to believe that anything is possible. If you try hard, do well, and all this stuff, and honestly, that's not the world either.
But some things I do like about entrepreneurship, I love the networking side, and that kind of goes with my time in the military. The whole Navy, the carrier life, it's all networking, bro. You want to go eat when there's no hours to eat right now. It's not breakfast, lunch, dinner, mid-rads type thing. But you want a grilled cheese, well, you better be good with the cooks, right? But then if you want that, you better be prepared to give them something. It's not just free. So we did a ton of that. I had something as simple as a washer and dryer. You got 5,000 people on the boat trying to do laundry at the same time, you're screwed. But my department, we had a washer and dryer. Who do you think was on the schedule every now and then, the cooks. Or the logistics specialist that had the boots and all that stuff.
I love the networking side of entrepreneurship, the building connections and all that. It's a really fun part. That's my favorite part about entrepreneurship is the people and the connections.
What is your why?
Honestly, that's a great question, I'm going to say that probably after everyone, but I know the why is just to be the voice to people. People that do not really have a voice, I even talked about how I kind of suppress myself because the majority are just going, "yeah, good job!" even though you look exactly like that other company. It's like, no, not everybody thinks that way. Also, if you go on any of my posts, you'll see comments that are "You can never get me to buy" I'm like, okay, dude, you don't have to. My why is I'm here for the people that do see it and do understand it. The military and veteran, there are plenty of companies out there supporting them and giving them a voice. I just feel like there's not too many that are giving a true essence of the military. Because it's very different, man. And again, it's not conventional. I made a post about this. Most of the people that are going to support my product, if you were to see them dating your daughter, you would immediately try to get rid of that. You would immediately be telling your daughter, don't ever be with that person or anything, just because of how they talk or how they look.
But in reality, most of those people, like the military and veterans, are the ones that you would want your daughter with the most. Yes, we're crazy, but that's because we've been put in crazy environments. Yes, we have a bad mouth, but that's just how we talk. It's just adjectives. If somebody, if my chief told me to go do something and he said it like that, I would say, okay, he eventually wants that done. That's the only difference. But yeah, just being a little more authentic voice for the military and veteran community. And I know that voice exists in the regular world.
It's not just in the military because the military is just a combination of America. It's black, white, Hispanic, gay, straight, Muslim, Asian. It's a whole melting pot. And with the world being so politicized and everything being used against you or for you, the military doesn't have that. It could, but the general side of it, we make fun of race. We make fun of religion, everything. Everything gets it because we're all in the shit together. And I know that you have my back just as much as I have yours. That's a bond that's very unique, but I know it exists on the outside. I want people to be able to express that a little bit more and just go, "All this stuff we're fighting about and everything, all these worries, let's kind of be like the military in the sense of we're all here. We're all on the ship together. Let's just have fun while we're doing it."
What milestone are you excited to reach?
Right now our goal would just be the recognition side of things. This is all by design, but I want to be the thing that if we're on a shelf or we're online or there's a post or whatever, it stops you. Before, as long as you made a 30 second video, you were good. People would stay for that. Then it turned into you need a five second hook. If you hook them in the first five seconds, they're okay. Now it's really it's like two to three seconds. If I don't see something that I don't like on anything, it's not just social media but a direction of where we are in society as well. It's now like two to three seconds.
I want something that can stop people in their tracks in this market. That's what I want. And I truly, my hypothesis is that if they stop and they pick it up and then they buy it and then they try it, they will pick it up and buy it again. That's my goal because obviously with the name, but then they pick it up and try it and they've never really had a horchata. They may not know what a horchata is necessarily. They try that and go, "oh, wow, I can see what I like." This helps me here. This is so great with this food or I put it with my shot or whatever. Just getting people to stop and being aware.
The next goal after that is to make horchata a well-known product and category in the United States. There is not that many. A lot of other companies have done limited runs with horchata. Blue Moon was a good one, they had a horchata-inspired beverage. Apparently, you go on the reviews right now, people are begging for it to come back. They want it so bad. I think we have the best shot at making horchata a well-known Mexican-American drink and bring it throughout there. Ultimately, and this may sound counterintuitive, I want SEAMEN to just go to being normal. For example, I don't want it to sting. I want it to just be like, "Oh I want a SEAMEN." I want horchata to be representative of and turn into the Dick's Sporting Goods or Mike's Hard Lemonade, just common vernacular. It's a three-stage process that I'm trying to get to, and I think we can obtain it, honestly.
Piece of Advice
I thought about this answer really deeply because I saw some of the layout. It sounds cliche, but really life is way too short. This travels with you with business, family, relationships, religion, whatever it is. Truly life is so short and it can be cut off at any time. You don't know. You could be the best vegan on the planet who does marathons every other day and lifts all this time and has every vitamin known to man and is trying to live as long as possible. But what I believe is when God calls you, you're done. How I figured this out was a little bit early and we kind of talked about it before with the Haiti earthquake when my ship got stationed under Operation Unified Response. Half the ship was out looking for people and the other half was, which was me, was helping medical.
We were the only true hospital anywhere around that entire country. I saw more dying and dead kids than I ever want to remember. I saw more people, women, men, crushed skulls, screaming in a language I don't know, and then eventually succumbing to their injuries. I would just hate, I hate to imagine the big ones, the kids. I'm telling you right now, if you're over the age of 21, you should be so thankful to just be alive, because a lot of people don't even get to see that.
I understand our average lifespan is like 78 or whatever, but just because it's average doesn't mean it's everybody. If you're going to be doing anything, whether that's scheduling for a year out or you're running your business or with your marriage or whatever, just understand, man, thank somebody that you woke up that day. Seriously, whoever it is to you, to me, it's Jesus. But seriously, thank somebody that you woke up because a lot of people didn't.
I think that really helps me with everything. I'm a little bit too relaxed. I'm trying to find the benefit. I'm trying to be happy. Again, happiness is not the goal. Because if that's a goal, you're never going to fully achieve it or you'll only achieve it in a little spurt. But just being just appreciative of life, every breath that you take, every time your heart beats, I really think doing that will help you through everything.
When I was at CBD Ops, it was hard, but that was my business side. But when I wasn't doing business, I was actually, you ask anybody, I'm just a generally happy person. It's not really happiness, it's more just content. I'm content with, I could be going through a bad day, or bad things are happening to me, but if I can go, "hey, at least I'm alive, that's great." I think that's what I would hope any reader would get out of this, is just, man, be so grateful you woke up.
Community Callout
I have to honestly say, as a former atheist, I have to give a shout out to God, honestly. I really consider this his business. Any business I've had, I look at it like whatever he wants, and I'm just an instrument through it. I know that that may be a cop-out answer, but it truly is. And my testimony is very creative. I physically felt him, and I'm a full atheist. I wasn't a jerk about it, I wasn't criticizing people. Do your thing, you're over there, that's cool. Ten I physically felt him and I knew immediately. And I didn't want to know. It wasn't like I was like, if I could feel Jesus. But, yeah, that's honestly the most influential person on just my business. But more importantly, on my marriage and how I walk through life.
Again, I'm not a good person, man. I'm not the best prime example. I don't do good things all day, every day. But I strive to, and I have somebody to look to as an example. And that's what I try to do that way. And I don't want to take away from anybody who hasn't.
Mark Huber
Super, super amazing guy. He's actually taught me a lot about failure with him. One of his sayings is, "He hates when people glorify failure because he failed once, and he lost everything." Of course, failure is good, but to glorify it as something like you need to go through, he's like, "I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy." He literally lost everything, his house, his marriage, his friendships. He lost everything, money, and he still built it all back as a multimillionaire now.
In Closing
KLS wants to thank SEAMEN and Co-Founder, Chris Liberty, for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!
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