← Making It with Jon Davids
Making It with Jon Davids
259 - How One Woman Built a $100M Soda Business | Nicole Tanner, Swig
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This is Nicole. She sells soda, bringing in $100 million last year. And how she built this soda empire is actually kind of weird. The company is called Swig, and the founder is Nicole Tanner. And this whole business actually started because Nicole was trying to solve her own problem and just kind of stumbled into one of the biggest drink chains in the world. I'll break it all down and tell you exactly how she built this business without spending any crazy money on marketing. Plus, a big mistake you need to avoid when grow your business to a million bucks. 10 million, 50 million, 100 million and beyond. My name's John Davids. I'm the founder of Influicity, a marketing agency where we generate millions in sales for businesses just like Beast. And if you're someone who doesn't hate making money, this is for you. Let's go. You're listening to Making it with John Davidson. Rewind to 2010. Nicole just moved to Utah with her five kids. She's tired, she's overworked. She's a mom in need of a little caffeine boost. And as a Mormon, coffee's off the table. So she turns to soda. But Nicole's not really happy with the soda that she's getting out there at the restaurants she's going to, it's watered down and these drinks just aren't doing it. So she decides to start mixing up some drinks of her own. Blending ice cold soda with shots of lemon and pomegranate and coconut. And this stuff is really, really good. She's making it in her kitchen, and she figures that other people might like sipping this stuff too. So she leases a small space and puts a sign in the door that says Swig. Now it's time to sell soda. So Nicole prices every drink at just $1. And customers start lining up. First it's a lot of college students. Then it's other moms just like her. And then it's kind of. But there's a problem. You see, customers are asking for these crazy soda blends. BlackBerry, almond, hazelnut, cherry. They want it all mixed together, and the flavors never seem to stop. It's becoming a bit of an operational hazard. But Nicole doesn't want to say no. So she starts making every single combo on the fly. If you come in and ask for it, they'll make it. And customers actually come up with a name for it. They call it Dirty soda. And the lines are just getting bigger and bigger at swig. So by 2013, they can't keep up with these orders. They've hit A wall. So Nicole opens up a second spot and then a third location, then a fourth location. And people are sharing their dirty sodas on Instagram and TikTok. This stuff is trending. And then it hits the reality TV screen. The secret lives of Mormon wives, which I'll talk about more in a minute. Today there are 140 LOC of swig serving up a whole lotta soda. But the one thing sweeter than all this soda is the cash flow. A drink will cost you anywhere between three and seven dollars. Today they've raised the price from a dollar, and people are happy to pay for the novelty of the dirty soda. But Swig's costs are actually pretty low. We're talking syrup, ice, some flavor shots, and a cup. I'd say that's under a dollar all in. And check out these numbers. Swig is selling franchises right now, so this is plenty of public info. Revenue growth from 2024 to 2025 is 39% year over year. And in February 2026 visits were up 137% compared to three years earlier. This is really fast growth. Sales in 2025 totaled $100 million. Swig took a simple product and turned it into a lifestyle. This isn't actually about soda. The story's about a lot more than that. It's culture, it's status, it's fun. Just look at how people talk about dirty soda on TikTok. Swig dirty sodas taste test. So I'm here at Swig to try their most popular drinks. Here's everything I ordered at Swig. I ordered five sodas, pretzels, and a cookie all for myself. And we're gonna do a little taste test. Most of the sales at Starbucks, which is of course the iconic drink chain in the US Actually come from specialty drinks. It's not coffee. So this market is only getting bigger, and Swig is riding that wave. If your business is doing a million bucks a year or more in sales and you think you could be growing faster, head over to JohnDavids.com grow. I want to show you the growth system we've used at Influicity. With over 200 clients in just the last year, go to johndavids.com grow. Watch the short video, and if it sounds like it could be helpful to you, book a call on that page. And one more thing, guys. If you already have a marketing budget, spending on Google Ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, TikTok, LinkedIn, do not skip this. Go to johndavids.com grow and I'll see you there. All right. Now, there's a lot I want to get into around this business, but I want to start with the idea of the customer community around this brand, because Nicole did it so well. So you got this product at the center, which is ice cold, customizable soda drinks. It's fun to make up your own recipes. It's fun to share in your social feed. It's fun to drink, obviously tastes good. So it's got all those viral mechanics built in, but it's actually more than just a drink. Because if you think about why this started in the first place, think about the origin story. Nicole makes the drink for herself because she can't drink coffee. And that's the normal kind of social daytime drink most people would have in Western culture. But Nicole can't do that. She's a Mormon. And there's another angle to the story, which is that she didn't like what was on the market. She didn't like the taste of the soda she was getting at restaurants. She thought it was watered down. She thought it wasn't sweet enough, not cold enough, not unique enough. After all, you can buy normal coke in a can. So why would I go to a restaurant and pay $4 for a cup? I want something unique and I want a caffeine boost. And let's layer on one more constraint. She can't have coffee. And this is all the perfect recipe for magic to happen. A desire mixed with a constraint. And when she eventually launches Swig in her town in Utah, it's their thing. It's uniquely their thing. We're not drinking coffee. We're drinking dirty soda. Well, on day one, it wasn't called Dirty soda, but it eventually becomes Dirty Soda. So that's the first piece. We have something that's new and unique, and it's ours. It's our thing. And by the way, we see this parallel all the time in music. When music comes up, think about hip hop, rap, think rock and roll, Think about grunge, pop music, soul, R and B. Any kind of new music genre. These are all community driven. They happen on the streets. They happen very locally. People feel personal connections. And that's the best analogy I can think of for a product like Swig. It's organic, grassroots growth. And that's how you build a brand like Swig. And that's important, especially for all the business builders right now who have a small business, a local business. You have such a crazy, unfair advantage. Use it. Your neighborhood, your culture, your school zone, your district, wherever you are. You have a crazy advantage when you come up locally. And there's a second thing too. I bet you guys don't know this. I know this because at Influicity, we've been doing influencer marketing for a decade. And I can tell you that Utah Moms are really influential on social media. Yeah, it's true. You want something to get big in the mom community. Utah Moms, if you pay attention to culture, that group punches above its weight online. They're really good at making content and getting attention in the feed. Also, Utah and especially the Mormon community has a very strong family centered culture. And that means a lot of women who are incredibly organized, community driven. They share recipes, they share routines, they share hacks. And when something catches on inside that network, it spreads really fast. You've seen this pattern before. Utah Moms helped fuel the early mommy blogger era. In the early 2000s, they helped fuel Pinterest. Pinterest really grew out of the Utah mom community. Crumbl Cookies founded in Utah. Stanley tumblers, that 40 ounce quencher thing, not sure if that started in Utah, but I'm pretty sure they had something to do with it. And that community latches on early to Swig. This is their thing. And that's how all movements start. We have a unifying belief. This is our drink. There's a common behavior. They're all mixing and matching and there's a clear action. And then it hits TikTok. People are stack ranking flavors, naming their own custom blends. The product becomes social currency. It's visual, it's satisfying, it's short form friendly. And then I told you the story was gonna get crazier. Wait for it. Fast forward to 2024. Hulu dropped secret lives of Mormon wives. And if you're a woman listening, you probably know what I'm talking about. And if you're a dude, it's a big show. Take my word for it. Look it up. Swig is literally woven onto the lifestyle backdrop of this hit reality show. It's a part of their everyday life. You couldn't build a better movement. This is all straight from my book, by the way. Marketing superpowers. You need belief, faith and action. So let's recap. You got belief. This is our drink. You got faith because you're seeing all this stuff on social media, on tv, and you have action. Go buy yourself a dirty soda. Oh, it works so well. Okay. Something else really smart that Nicole does early on in this story is the idea of channeling existence, existing demand. She took her own Personal constraint, the fact that she wanted a fun drink that gives you a boost. But coffee wasn't an option for her and she creates a solution for that. And then she hijacked an existing market. I want you to think about this for a second. Think about the beverage retail market. Obviously the big dog in the US is Starbucks and Dunkin too. They're holding their own, but Starbucks kind of owned drink culture. I would say it's well beyond coffee. You can get a strawberry sigh refresher. You can get a peach tranquility herbal tea. You can do frozen raspberry lemonade. They got a big menu. Even though Nicole has something new, these sweet ice cold soda drinks, she never treats it like a brand new market. She treats it like a twist on the existing market. So why is this so important? Why am I making this point? Well, because I talk to a lot of business builders and so many of them do the opposite. They actually take pride in doing the opposite. They make it seem like their product or their service is totally new and completely different. And no one has ever thought of such a thing before. And again, they see it as a flex. But actually it's pretty amateur. It's a novice move. Because when you ask what's the competition for this? They'll say nothing. Again, totally new. Nothing like this has ever existed before. Give me a break. Listen, unless you're inventing a brand new technology, I promise something like this kinda sorta exists. And if it's not a direct competitor, it's definitely a substitute. And this is important for your marketing because you can use that to your advantage. You can channel demand. I'll give you a simple example. If I was targeting a customer who wanted to lose weight, there's a bunch of stuff that I could sell them. Hypothetically, if I had access to any product to sell, I could sell personal training, I could sell a gym membership, I could sell a fitness app, I could sell a diet plan, I could sell liposuction or some kind of surgery. I could sell weight loss coaching. I could sell, again, a lot of different things. There's different stuff that I can sell to that person who wants to lose weight, because the demand is already there. They want to lose weight. So when Novo Nordisk or Eli Lilly come out with GLP1s, WeGovy, Ozempic, they didn't need to create demand. They didn't need to make people want to lose weight. People already wanted to lose weight. They simply needed to channel the existing demand. And make no mistake, GLP1s are actually a new invention. This is legit. Something that does not exist. But even these guys didn't need to create demand. They just channeled the demand that was already there. Sounds pretty simple, right? So tell me, why do 90% of entrepreneurs, mainly new entrepreneurs, get this wrong? I'll tell you why. Because they are obsessed with their product. And like I always say, no one gives a shit about your product. All that matters is the customer's problems. Always think about the problem, not your product. Their problem is first, your product is last. When you focus on the problem, it's really easy to find that existing demand and then you can channel it and then you can sell lots of whatever it is you want to sell. In the case of Swig, people wanted drinks, they wanted to socialize, they wanted something sweet, they wanted caffeine, they want to get that all together. They want all these things and they're not getting it from Starbucks or Dunkin or whatever. Just insert yourself. Literally. This is what Nicole did. She just wedged herself into that existing demand and offered a new solution. If you spend any money on Google Ads or Meta ads, I've got something that you're going to love. It's Influicity's AI Ads generator. And you can get it right now for free@johndavids.com ads. So here's the deal, guys. We took a decade of our best ads that we've been running for clients at Influicity. Literally something like 6,000 different ads that have all crushed on Meta and Google over the years. We put them into a database so that you can make ads that are just as good. Seriously, we use this thing internally all the time to come up with copy ideas, and it's so good. So if you spend any money on Google or Meta ads, I want you to head over to johndavids.com ads. Get it now for free. And there's another angle to this too. A lot of founders think competition means that you have to beat somebody head on. You don't. Swig didn't beat Coke. They never went up against Coke. They didn't beat Pepsi, they didn't beat Starbucks. They just sidestepped them. They took the existing demand and they pointed it somewhere else, to something new for a specific segment of the market. That's positioning. And I've talked a lot about positioning before. I did a whole episode all about chomps. And they've done an amazing job at positioning. If you can position your product, you can sidestep the competition and you can channel demand. So instead of asking how do I get people to want this? Just ask, what do people already want? Where does that demand exist? And. And that's my opportunity. That's the story of Swig, the hundred million dollar dirty Soda Empire. My name's John Davids. Get my best stuff to your inbox@johndavids.com if you sell B2B products or services and you want to generate more qualified sales opportunities, I want you to head over to JohnDavids.com grow. I'll show you the growth system we've used at influicity with 40 B2B companies in just the last year. Go to johndavids.com grow and watch the short video. And by the way, if you're already spending money on LinkedIn and trade shows and sales enablement and all the rest, this is even more important because it could give you a huge advantage in the marketplace. Go to johndavids.com grow and I'll see you there.