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Duo turn juice into cash
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May 6, 1997: 9:45 p.m. ET
Young entrepreneurs find success with first venture Nantucket Nectars
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Some of the nation's most successful entrepreneurs got their start at a relatively early age. Tom Scott and Tom First, co-founders of Boston-based Nantucket Nectars are a prime example.
About seven years ago, the pair founded the company, which manufacturers a line of juice drinks that are marketed as a healthy alternative to soda.
The two appeared Tuesday on CNNfn's "It's Only Money" to describe how they got their start and where their business is going. The following is a partial transcript of their conversation:
CNNfn ANCHOR VALERIE MORRIS: This is quite a story. I think people would be very interested to know what they recognize as these Nantucket Nectars and they're in stores everywhere, but how you got the inspiration to start this company. Tom, it was you on a trip.
TOM FIRST: I was in Spain during my senior year of college and tasted a peach juice that I really liked. And I've always loved cooking, so when we actually moved out to Nantucket after graduating from school, I used to make the peach juice all the time with dinner for a group of friends that lived out there.
We had been running a boat business on the water -- sort of like a floating 7-Eleven , selling supplies to all the transient boaters in Nantucket and we were looking for a way to make it year around. So we started making and bottling juice by hand initially. Then the name "Nantucket Nectars" caught on, so we started looking for a way to mass produce it.
MORRIS: This has not been a real easy trail for you all. This has been going on seven to nine years. Talk to us about some of the downturns.
TOM SCOTT: There were a lot. I mean, I think that one of the things that caused us to be in business in the first place is we love Nantucket. We wanted to live on Nantucket. But along the way, we shucked scallops. We fished for scallops. We shampooed dogs, tended bar. I lived in my car. But we loved living there.
Neither one of us had a business background and we said, "Let's just keep working for ourselves. It's fun." It became almost addictive. And when you're into something that much, tough times are a lot easier to overcome.
MORRIS: Now you're talking about taking all these odd jobs, but this was after you had really dumped your entire joint savings of about $20,000 into this business. You actually did all of the work by hand on bottling those first bottles, right?
FIRST: Yes. I mean it was real scary to take everything you own and put it into a business that we had no idea whether it was going to survive two months or two years or less than that. I'll tell you one thing, we loved getting up in the morning and creating everyday no matter what it was.
We didn't know what marketing meant. We didn't know what POS meant, which is point of sale. We discovered on the job. And I think the fact that we loved creating and doing our own thing everyday was the biggest inspiration to keep going even when at times when we thought we shouldn't.
MORRIS: You all have a term that you coined, "early-preneurs" as opposed to entrepreneurs. Was it because you started this venture in your 20s?
SCOTT: That is a term actually that other people have said. We didn't coin it.
MORRIS: But it was attached to you
SCOTT: I guess so.
FIRST: Since we've been in business, we started to notice that there are a lot of people of our generation that are starting successful businesses which in our opinion are a little bit different than the businesses that we were exposed to growing up. And when we were at Brown University, they kind of looked at business as the evil empire.
MORRIS: We wanted to talk about what you say are your 10 tips for entrepreneurs who really want to get into business but aren't quite sure how to do it. So let's hit the list.
No. 1, find a good partner. Anything you need to say about a partnership, the ups, the downs?
FIRST: It keeps you going day to day. I mean there's plenty of times where you lie in bed and you say I've had enough, we're not going to make it, and you go to work the next morning, your partner is like in the best mood of all times. So it keeps you going.
MORRIS: We know you love Nantucket, but also love the product. Is that important for a young business and for a new business?
SCOTT: I think you need to have passion. And I'm not sure we realize at the age of 23 that we were going to have passion for fruit juice. And I'm not sure it's just fruit juice, but I think you have to your product and everything that's associated with it.
MORRIS: You also talk about accepting and learning from your mistakes. We're looking at the list of your top 10 now. We'll hit a few more of them.
What are some of the best mistakes that you two made in this business that is now doing so well?
SCOTT: We've had a lot. The whole issue of mistakes when you don't have a business background. Tom and I failed accounting in college. We started to make the product having no idea what it cost. We knew what it tasted like and we knew what the quality was.
It was almost a mistake that we were making it so expensively. In most businesses we'd say "You'd never make wine out of it." But that mistake alone, that's why people like our products. Now it just so happens we have to charge a little more, but we believe in the quality of the product.
MORRIS: And making money. Nantucket Nectars doubled its sales in 1996 to $30 million and expects to double sales again this year.
You all are known as, the juice guys. Do you like that handle?
FIRST: Yeah, we love that handle.
MORRIS: Specifically, does that kind of give part of the personality of your company?
FIRST: It does. When we were working in the harbor, there was a guy named Dennis who ran the moorings and he use to always say, "I'm the mooring guy and you're the juice guys." So, it came from Nantucket.
MORRIS: Before you can get even to first base, you have to have a business plan. When did you two do your first business plan?
SCOTT: It was several years in, it was probably our fourth year in business that we actually made a business plan. The truth is, we probably didn't know how to make one in the beginning.
You know, there's a lot of people that work hard in the world. There's a lot of smart people in the world. But when you become passionate about something, your ability to learn and your ability to make the right moves, I think, sort of multiplies.
FIRST: Initially, our business plan was complete instincts in the beginning. We didn't even know really what a profit and loss statement was until our third or fourth year in business.
MORRIS: Well to Tom First and Tom Scott, thank you both very much for joining us. Continued success! 
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Nantucket Nectars
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