The Startup CPG Podcast

Carrie Sporer
We have made a fair amount of mistakes like every founder and making them on your own dollar and being able to take that story when you're ready to fundraise and say this is what we've done wrong. This is how we've course corrected. Now your money can help us grow because we've made. Of course there's always going to be mistakes, but I feel like showing a growth story and course correction also will help get the right partner and get the right amount when we're ready.

00:34
Ketan Vakil
I think if you really believe in your products like I do, they're helping people, they're making a difference in the world. And you have and you can spare, don't put more than you're willing to truly lose forever because this kind of business is a money pit. So I think that's really the major word of advice.

00:51
Daniel Scharff
Bootstrap Heroes. Hello everyone. Today we're celebrating a few brands that got to $250,000 or more in revenue without raising any VC money. These days that is hard to do. Pre seed funding is scarce. I have told people that 2025 for me is the year of the side hustle where you keep your other job so that you have money to pay for the things you need rather than give away a huge chunk of your company. I love the bootstrap approach so that if or when you do raise, you get much more money for that piece of your company soul that you give away. So today we've got a call in episode where you're going to hear from a few brands who are my bootstrap heroes, how and what they did and their tips for early brands who want to follow the same path.

01:36
Daniel Scharff
And if your brand is a bootstrap hero, click the link in the show notes to apply to be on a future episode. We're also taking submissions for a few other fun topics. You can read about those in the notes. Enjoy. All right, welcome Ryan from Hazards Hop Water. First, can you just tell me a little bit about what is Hazards hop Water?

01:58
Ryan Hansen
Yeah, sure thing. So Hazards is a non alcoholic carbonated hop water. So we use same hops that we use in beer.

02:06
Daniel Scharff
We took it from zero to just.

02:08
Ryan Hansen
Under 500,000 within about 12 months.

02:11
Daniel Scharff
Okay. That is amazing. Even for somebody who has funding, I know how hard that can be. So where are you Getting all that 500k in revenue from? What kind of outlets are you selling in?

02:21
Ryan Hansen
So we definitely sell online because it's non alcoholic. I can ship it anywhere in America. So we do sell online. We have about 30 recurring buyers, 30 to 40 recurring stores locally to us, which is kind of where we decided to pilot this. So were tackling golf courses, bottle shops, breweries. Breweries sell a lot and it's working.

02:42
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so those must be some pretty high velocity stores because I've sold into chains that have 40 locations before. And you might. Those could be 5 or 10k a year kind of accounts, but you've managed to get to 500k. So those must be pretty good customers, huh?

02:57
Ryan Hansen
Yeah, some of our heavy hitters are going through about 10 cases of hop water, 24 cans, 10 cases a month. And just because their designated drivers wanted something crafty to reach for, obviously it fluctuates. So we sell a lot more during the summer, especially on golf courses where people are trying to stay hydrated. So, yeah, some of those were high turnover sites.

03:15
Daniel Scharff
That is fantastic. And so you've managed to do this without raising any money. What was that decision? Like, did you start off savings or you just pretty quickly managed to start making profit off those kind of accounts?

03:26
Ryan Hansen
My wife would not have let me put the house at risk. And so I had to figure out, how am I going to do this? I've helped multiple breweries as a brewery consultant start from scratch with very little initial investment or loans. And so I was like, you know what? In my head, I know how to do this. The one X Factor was partnering with my marketing and branding guy, Michael, because without him, I mean, that would have been a huge expense that I just couldn't have paid for out of pocket.

03:53
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so you were working in the business, obviously, kind of knew how to get something like this to market, thought about it, found a partner who you wouldn't necessarily have to pay, but could come in with you on equity and then you guys just kind of started doing it.

04:06
Ryan Hansen
Yeah, we started making test batches and kind of giving them away as samples at local breweries. So folks that I knew in the beer world and everybody liked it, and then I found out that it was the brewers themselves drinking a bunch of the inventory that they were buying. So I knew that it was sticking. If the folks that I really respected in the beverage creation world were appreciating and liking it, I was like, okay, we're onto something.

04:29
Daniel Scharff
And so what do you credit your success with? Because there are other hot waters out there, but it's a really growing category. Is it because they love this product more than any other that they've tried? Is it because you just have done a really good job leveraging your branding, which Is obviously hazards having to do with golf, finding the right outlets for those appealing to golfers, that kind of stuff, which just happen to be really good places to have this kind of a product. What do you think?

04:53
Ryan Hansen
A little bit of our niche. So that is definitely untapped territory for a lot of CPG brands that are non swag or apparel. And so we think that there's a lot of room for growth there. It also allowed us to focus. But I think the biggest key to success is putting the right people on the right seat of the bus. I couldn't do what my marketing partner does. Our COO makes sure that we're legal and getting things tested and doing all of that. And then our distributor partner is key to distribution and shipping. So all of the puzzle pieces kind of came together once I figured out who to put on the right seat.

05:28
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so you guys have a nice business now, 500k in revenue. And are you paying yourself? Are you still doing your other work? Consulting? Are you planning to fundraise at some point? What are you thinking?

05:41
Ryan Hansen
So we're building this to sell it. And so we want to get it to a point where we actually have a really good valuation, sell it, hand the reins over so we can move on to either what's next or a new product within Hazards. The next steps are just. We're trying to get on Amazon. We just launched on Fair and Air Goods, so our campaigns are going for that. Our next biggest step is to change our formula to include a functional stack.

06:07
Daniel Scharff
So.

06:07
Ryan Hansen
So think Ashwagandha vitamin B12 to actually make it a functional beverage, which is.

06:11
Daniel Scharff
Pretty cool for us. Okay, and are you planning on going after big retail chains, you know, indies, natural chain, national retailers? What's the plan?

06:21
Ryan Hansen
The usual suspects. We've already started the conversation with Whole Foods, but before we can start tackling those, we really need to nail down that functional stack and get everything tested for, you know, quality control.

06:33
Daniel Scharff
How did you identify that opportunity with the functional stack? Is that something you just always wanted to do? Are you hearing it from your consumers? Are you hearing it from the buyers? Good question.

06:41
Ryan Hansen
We wanted it for ourselves. So we've tried everything in the NA market and really there's some that have just a good functional stack that are relaxing and calming and help me focus. And I said, I want that in my hop water. So hop water, inherently, there's no sugar, no carbs, there's no bs. That's our whole thing is keep it as clean as possible. Hops are naturally antimicrobial. So we've always been able to say, hey, this is gonna make your golf game better because you're hydrated. So instead of eight beers, you've had three, and then mixed in hop water in between, then it's a win. But if we can also add functional. Come on, that's a winner.

07:17
Daniel Scharff
I mean, it's not just hydration, though. Like, if probably if you're playing golf against your buddy and you're not drinking eight beers and he is drinking eight beers, you're gonna win. And winning's fun, right? There's gotta be a good marketing campaign in there. Yep.

07:29
Ryan Hansen
And that's really what we're leaning into, is just kind of that you don't always have to have alcohol in front of you to be able to have fun. You can also mix this in or replace alcohol completely. So it's a win. And there's a lot of NA options out there. But for anybody that's a beer person up water too thing, I love it.

07:46
Daniel Scharff
Well, I can already imagine the super bowl commercial that you can do one day with, like, a buddy get there pretending to drink eight beers while his friend gets trashed and then loses a big bet to him, and he's like, surprise, I was drinking hop water. So last question here, Ryan. Doing it over again. Obviously, you guys are only 12 months in, but if you just hit refresh day one, is there anything that you would do differently or that you would tell somebody else in your situation to do different? Is it, you know, trying to get that functional stack in from day one or anything that you would be spending money on or not spending money on?

08:17
Ryan Hansen
Yeah, we started by producing locally. So I myself, as a brewer, I know my way around a brewery. I could do it myself. And I quickly realized that was not scalable. So I was doing, say, 2,000 can batches. They're 16 ounce cans, and that would take me 20, 30, sometimes 40 hours, including cleaning and brew days and all that. When it's 114 degrees outside in central California. That's brutal. So I would probably find a low MOQ co packer to boot. We are switching to co packing now, which allows us to use our functional stacks and all those things because they're certified locations. I would probably just save up and have a large order, say, a pallet of each SKU and just tackle it that way from the beginning.

09:05
Daniel Scharff
All right, that does sound brutal. Pun intended. Thank you. I wouldn't be me if I didn't call that out. All right, Ryan, thank you so much for joining Us today on Bootstrap Heroes. I think there's a lot that we can all learn from you. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

09:19
Ketan Vakil
All right.

09:20
Daniel Scharff
All right. Don't go anywhere. We've got another Bootstrap hero right now. All right, Carrie from Swear Hair Bootstrap Heroes. So first, can you tell me about your business?

09:30
Carrie Sporer
Sure. Swear makes time saving hair care for people who work out so they can stop choosing between actually doing their workout and their hair. My co founder, Meredith and I met while marathon training, and we hated the fact that we had to wash our hair after every sweaty run. Tried everything on the market and couldn't find anything that was really effective on sweaty hair. So we started calling labs to bring our dream product to life.

09:54
Daniel Scharff
Okay, and what is the product like? How do people use it?

09:57
Carrie Sporer
Yes. So this is a Shelfie award winning showerless shampoo. It's our hero product, and it's actually a wet product. So you spray it on your sweaty hair and then you towel dry that out because it mixes with the dirt and the sweat. So when you do the towel dry process, you're physically pulling the dirt from your hair. So I say that it's like that quick clean cycle on your dishwasher or washing machine, and you get clean hair.

10:23
Daniel Scharff
All right, Amazing. So we are talking about Bootstrap Heroes. So first, can you hit me with some numbers? So what have you gotten to in terms of revenue? How long did it take you to get there?

10:33
Carrie Sporer
Sure. So we've gotten to about 350,000 in revenue, and that took us about four years to get to.

10:41
Daniel Scharff
Okay, that is amazing. Right? Okay. And so you've managed to do it without fundraising. Tell me, how did you manage to do all that? Did you start with some savings or were you pretty quickly to be profitable? How did you do it?

10:54
Carrie Sporer
So we started with savings, and 2023 was our first year that were profitable. So when you are bootstrapped, you have to look at every single dollar, and profitability is really your lifeline. So were always looking at that. But between my co founder and myself, we put in some savings, really just to get us legally incorporated as two co founders. We felt really strongly about having a very solid agreement between the two of us. So we spent on a lawyer that we probably should not have, but zero regrets about that. Having a really solid agreement about what our partnership is and then doing our first production run. And in our category and at the level of ingredients that we're using, we spend about $30,000 to launch a new product. And that is really just on the hard cost and not the marketing.

11:47
Daniel Scharff
So actually, I mean, that lawyer expense doesn't sound bad at all because I've seen those kind of things rip people apart or just have one party feel it was really unfair what they were putting in versus what the other person was putting in. That can ruin a friendship too. Any really high level takeaways from that agreement that you think be good for other people in a co founder relationship to try to implement for themselves.

12:08
Carrie Sporer
Just the crux of that agreement and just my partnership in general is really brutal honesty. And you need to be in a partnership with somebody that you are not going to hold back saying the hard things and somebody that you're both comfortable kind of getting into the ugly conversations. And I think having those first, what you both think that you deserve based on the time and money that you're willing to put in terms of percent of ownership was a really hard thing to both come out of our mouths at the same time. Almost like a rom com moment between friends where it's like, okay, just say what you think that we should each get because were putting in different time and financial portions and we still are to this day, putting in a different amount of time.

12:46
Carrie Sporer
I work on the brand full time and my co founder Meredith is part time. So I really think just honesty and then the really hard questions, things you don't want to think about, like if one of you wants out, what happens? If one of you becomes unable to work, what happens?

13:01
Daniel Scharff
I mean that sounds really good, right? Just so everybody understands kind of going in. And I like those. I really like what you said about the brutal honesty. Although it makes me nervous to hear people say that just because I feel like a lot of people out there, if I ever get like a text from, I don't know, my parents or something that's like, we need to talk to you. I'm like, what is this thing? Like, I don't know, like very afraid of that until I actually hear what it is from them. So I would probably appreciate the honesty, but it have to be delivered to me.

13:27
Carrie Sporer
Well, a quick thing to that point that I think has been wonderful for our partnership is we have a one hour touch base every week. We're obviously talking to each other all day, every day. But we have this one hour that we sort of leave for the nitty gritty. So that way if there is something big to talk about, it's always going to come up in that meeting. Like if it's a hard decision that we have to make, oh, let's table it till the Thursday 10:30 meeting. And then we know that's when we're going to be head down talking about the ugly stuff.

13:56
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so. And then back to just how you're actually bootstrapping it. So it's been a couple years now. Have you also had other income sources on the side or really it's just office savings and you know, you have other family income or how does that work? How do you manage to get to do this as you get it to profitability and then the point where it's like actually profitable to pay you a salary.

14:16
Carrie Sporer
So currently we're still not taking salaries from the business. We've decided at this point that we still prefer to put everything back into the business so that we can launch new products. I will be very honest, I've already told you of my style. I'm only working on this full time because I have a spouse who is able to pay our mortgage. And that's why my co founder still has a full time job because we're not taking money from the business and she has a very high level job. So we've decided it makes sense rather than having to pay her what she needs, we can afford four or five freelancers and let her stay doing the top level work.

14:53
Carrie Sporer
So that's a really strategic decision that we've made is to pay other people with more granular expertise than to bring her on with a more similar role than to what I'm doing. And I kind of have that all day, every day cover.

15:06
Daniel Scharff
It makes a lot of sense to me because. And it is strategic because you also could have given away, let's say a quarter of your company to get to the point or more to get to the point that you're at now. But, but you're basically delaying probably. If you do eventually fundraise, when you do it and you give away some of your company, you'll get a lot more money for it. So it sounds like you guys were pretty thoughtful about that from the start. What are you thinking for the future then? Are there milestones where you do want to start paying yourself or where you want to fundraise at some point?

15:35
Carrie Sporer
I think that we would like to fundraise when we think we can go out to market with around a 10 million valuation. I think that it's definitely in the future, but we see a pathway there and it just feels like the right number to us at this time.

15:53
Daniel Scharff
And you're thinking about it that way because you're like, okay, if we're raising at a $10 million valuation, if we raise X amount, then we can give away just kind of X percent of the company and have a lot of money to really propel our growth at that point.

16:05
Carrie Sporer
Exactly. And we know that when we get to that point where we're going to have a great proven track record that will allow us to choose the right strategic partners. And also I think that I don't know if I'm confident enough to take on, you know, certain partners at this moment as I'm a first time founder and still really learning the business. And that was another reason why we wanted to bootstrap. We have made a fair amount of mistakes, like every founder and making them on your own dollar and being able to take that story when you're ready to fundraise and say, this is what we've done wrong, this is how we've course corrected. Now your money can help us grow because we've made.

16:42
Carrie Sporer
Of course there's always going to be mistakes, but I feel like showing a growth story and course correction also will help get the right partner and get the right amount when we're ready.

16:51
Daniel Scharff
I really like what you just said. I just would add, I don't. I think everybody's going to make those mistakes, even very experienced founders, they'll just be like, well, this worked at my last brand, so let's invest in that. Like, whoops, that was a bad move. Wow. That I think that's just so such a sophisticated way to throw. Think about it. And I think it's a message that'll probably resonate really well with investors once you go out to them and they're like, oh yeah, we get a very rock solid investment at this point. We don't have to worry about some of the learnings that you'll have along the way and having to pay for those. So.

17:23
Daniel Scharff
Well, I guess, you know, just looking back then, is there anything that you would do differently, a major strategic decision you do differently along the way, that if you know somebody else is going to kind of go the path you're talking about that they could learn from.

17:35
Carrie Sporer
Yeah. So we actually apologize and fully answer your question before about taking outside capital. We did take a loan from Daintree Capital this year right before the end of the year. And I feel like were a bit naive about some of the great opportunities to work with lenders. I think that there's some that have been. A lender doesn't have the greatest reputation, but you know, we found Wonderful people to work with. For other female founders that are listening, Daintree Capital works exclusively with female founders and we actually connected with them through bags, who I know has a great partnership with startup cpg and they've really helped us manage our finances on this bootstrapped journey. So I would say look into loans that may be specific to who you are as a founder.

18:20
Carrie Sporer
Whether it's a female founder or a minority founder, there's a lot of great money to be had out there.

18:25
Daniel Scharff
Got it. I love it. Okay, so you managed to use non dilutive funding to propel your business, which I think is an incredible way to do it. So kudos to you on that and I think that is a tool that a lot of people would look to just not give away their company. Well, okay, we have to pay some points on it, but at least we're preserving that big amount that we're the big slice of flesh that we're going to give away of our company so we can get more money for it, which will help us grow a lot more. And can you just talk a little bit more about your actual launch strategy, like how where do you go and get doors and all of that revenue for your product?

18:58
Carrie Sporer
Sure. So right now we are still just on our website, squarehair.com and on Amazon. We're launching with Macy's.com any day now. One thing that's been really meaningful us to drive the channels that we're in is partnering with gyms because we are a fitness adjacent product that works on sweaty hair. So rather than focusing on selling in specialty doors, we've actually been focused on providing product. Sometimes it's for free at our expense, depending if it's a place that we really want to be. Or sometimes we'll ask for some support from the Gins to stock their locker rooms with our product. And that's really helped to drive a lot of customers to our website and to Amazon.

19:39
Daniel Scharff
All right, great. Carrie, thank you so much. You are truly a bootstrap hero and we're really excited to follow along the rest of your journey.

19:46
Carrie Sporer
Thank you so much. This has been really fun.

19:48
Daniel Scharff
All right, thanks. All right. And we got one more bootstrap Hero. Kayton Gorman Foods Bootstrap hero. Let's get into it. So can you just tell me a little bit about your business first?

20:04
Ketan Vakil
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So thanks for having me on. My story is I've had stomach problems for a long time. Since I was a teenager. It took me. I'm 40, what, 44 now. It took me into my 30s to figure out what it was. That food was really the reason for my problems. And that specifically the FODMAP content. FODMAPs are simple. Carbohydrates are lots of different ingredients. They were really the cause of my stomach problems. These fiber are really high in levels in garlic and onion balls, which are in every packaged food as we know. And they obviously taste great, and so you don't want to lose those flavors. So when I figured all this out, I and I learned that a billion people have irritable bowel syndrome. Two out of three people say they have digestive challenges weekly. It's. It's a huge problem.

20:45
Ketan Vakil
I reformulated broth and seasonings because to me, those two product lines are what you need to make anything great tasting. We remove the garlic onion bulbs and replace them with other parts of the plants that taste about the same but are really gentle in your digestion. So think about chives and the green parts of scallions, the green parts of leeks. And we've just found really awesome ingredient replacements that taste great, but they're really gentle on you. So we launched Gourmet to have gourmet products that really mend your health.

21:13
Daniel Scharff
Okay, amazing. So we'll get into how you actually did all that in a second, but can you hit me with some numbers? So how far has Gourmet got? Bootstrapping. What are you at? You know, revenue, door count, all that good stuff.

21:25
Ketan Vakil
So I started the business online. It's really online only until fairly recently, so we're just finalizing numbers over. We'll close out 2024 at like 850,000 ish, which is pretty cool. And that's up 60% or so year over year. So pretty exciting. Yeah. Doors with 160, 170 doors as well. So things like Moms Central Market. We just got into Erewhon. I got a bunch of cool independents all over the place.

21:50
Daniel Scharff
Okay, amazing. So still heavy D2C revenue and diversifying into retail as well. Great. Okay, so that is awesome. How did you do it, man? What did it look like in the early days, you were using your savings and taking a loss or, you know, how did you manage to fund the business to get up to 800 +K in revenue?

22:10
Ketan Vakil
Had another business for a number of years, marketing consulting. I still have that business. I saved up money from that endeavor. I had this idea and this notion for years. It took me two or three years to be like, oh, yeah, I really am going to do something here. So I kind of had saved some money to kind of go down this road, as you know. Right. It took a year even to find the right partners and figure everything out. So I was able to sort of dole out the money slowly during that fashion to kind of get to the first product which we launched the dearth of COVID from my apartment that summer. So yeah, this really savings has been doing it and kind of this other business going on, but of course being as lean as possible.

22:46
Daniel Scharff
Right.

22:46
Ketan Vakil
Not hiring a million people, trying to do things that I can do myself, just stay smart like that.

22:51
Daniel Scharff
So when you started, did you have a specific amount of money you were going to allocate? Like, hey, let me try to do this thing, here's 50k I'm willing to lose on this. Or how did you think about it?

23:00
Ketan Vakil
It's funny, I've been told by others you should have a number in your mind if you're not willing to go past that. But it's so hard because once this is your baby, you're like, well, it's working, people love it, people are buying it and you can sort of see the break even point and it's not that far off, that kind of a thing. So I don't really have a great answer to that. No, there wasn't really an exact number, but I sort of have like benchmarks in my head. I'm like, this is feeling a little dangerous or this is. I'm still feeling okay. But yeah, I mean that first year was probably kind of what you're saying, like the 50,000 was sort of just like burnt on sourcing.

23:29
Ketan Vakil
I hired a consultant to help me talk to manufacturers who won't pick up the phone from someone who's never done this before. So there was a lot of money spent on that sort of stuff early on.

23:38
Daniel Scharff
And have you hit profitability or are you still sinking money into it?

23:41
Ketan Vakil
Still sinking money or getting closer? It's a tough ride.

23:45
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so probably you're seeing good signs from the business, which is what convinces you to keep putting your own money. You've got your marketing consulting business and then you're taking extra money that you have in savings and redirecting it into this. And you've built a pretty substantial business here probably already. You could sell it if you wanted to, but you just, you see the proof of life there. So you're continuing to make your own investment to grow the business. Do you have like a number now where you're willing to do it or you're just like hey, you know, I just, I want to keep mining the well here or whatever.

24:17
Ketan Vakil
Obviously we'd all rather not keep putting our own money into this, you know, these kind of business at the end of the day. So my number one goal this year is to really get it to that break even where it can be self sustaining. It doesn't have to make, it's never going to make a ton. Right. And until you're really scaled way up, if I can get to the point where I'm not having to put in a hundred thousand dollars, more like that would probably be ideal. The real challenge with this kind of business is the front loading of production. We have to make a lot of some of our products in a go. So it's really. Cash flow is the issue.

24:46
Daniel Scharff
So is there anything that you've learned along the way that's helped you manage that cash flow or production challenges that's been more efficient on capital?

24:53
Ketan Vakil
Yeah, it's really trying to space stuff out in a smart way. Some of our stuff's really seasonal, but I'll try to pay in pieces. The farms we work with, suppliers who work with will do 50% now, 50% later. Do it in pieces like that. This for you? Get a line of credit from the bank probably. I looked into that because the other business helped. That storyline might have been hard otherwise. So that's been really helpful as well because it can help smooth out those issues. And it's like we talked about, just keeping things really lean. Right. Not hiring $100,000 agencies and you know, those kinds of things can really burn so fast.

25:24
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, I hear you talking about trying to get to profitability so that it can, you know, pay for itself. But I don't hear you talking about going out for fundraising. So is that just off the table for you? And if so, how do you think about that?

25:36
Ketan Vakil
I honestly wrestle with this with myself all the time. Like what's the right way to go here? I've toyed with raising. It's obviously been a tough market. I think it's getting a little bit easier. If I got this far on my own and we're kind of close, you know, do I really need to, should I? You know, you have to give up so much these days to getting $100,000 is not going to change the world for me. It needs to be a substantial amount. And then what? I'm going to get up 30% of the company when I'm already de risked it to a certain degree myself. I feel a little worried about that. But I also. On the flip side, if I had a million dollars, we could go much faster here.

26:05
Carrie Sporer
Right.

26:05
Ketan Vakil
Because of a lot of efficiencies and organic growth that I'm getting already. Right. We're barely spending anything on ads, so if I could, there's a lot of opportunity.

26:13
Daniel Scharff
What would you do with it? You have a million bucks in your bank account right now, and you have to spend it by the end of 2025. Where does it go?

26:19
Ketan Vakil
I have a lot of product R and D ideas, some stuff would go there. And I think it would be a lot of partnering with dietitians and food influencers. We do a lot of that already, but in a more robust way, I think would be super helpful. And then just more paid advertising would definitely help. And I think it would help us also on the store side, where we can fund more promotions, do more fun things on the store side. We have to go slowly there because you really can't afford to be in a thousand doors, I don't think, without a ton of cash in the bank.

26:46
Daniel Scharff
Yep. Makes sense. Okay, cool. So for brands who are hoping to kind of run down a similar path as you and fund their dream without necessarily bringing on investors, any learnings from how you've done it, like things that you wish you had done differently or you would tell new brand, hey, avoid this mistake that I made.

27:06
Ketan Vakil
Yeah, I probably rolled out more products a little. So we. I start with the chicken broth and one spice. And I always had in my head, I have a chicken broth, we need a beef broth, we need a vegetable broth, but they really go together. The chicken sells so well. The other ones go more slowly, which adds a lot of stress. Right. It probably would have been better. Let's just double down on the one that's really going well and maybe not spread it too thin. But I say this, and I'm still making the other. It's a tough thing. Be really choosy about where you go because the money can only go so far.

27:31
Ketan Vakil
And I guess I have so many ideas for other things I want to do, and I have to rein myself in because then you can really distract yourself from too many shiny objects. So I think being taught us into that.

27:41
Daniel Scharff
And so you've done really well. Obviously, on E. Comm. Is there one thing that you think you just did so well that helped you catapult up to that number that other people could learn from?

27:51
Ketan Vakil
On the E. Commerce side, there's a lot of things that all kind of add up. So we all stuff Is this low FODMAP certified? So the first hundred orders came from that certifying body that we have the seal on. I think everyone was home over Covid. They announced it and just like I never had a day like that.

28:06
Daniel Scharff
Really.

28:06
Ketan Vakil
Again, it was crazy. So that did it. And that was kind of the first foray. And then dietitians, we have a network of dietitians that are. Are hip to these products that's done really well. And we started to build out influencer network that we see products to home chefs, amateur chefs, professional chefs, dietitians, nutritionists, like all these kind of subgroups that would be interested in cool products like this. They're helping spread the word in a kind of an organic fashion because they're just. They enjoy the stuff. Google shopping has been running since day one. So we're up there. I put out a couple awesome content pieces for SEO and lead gen. I just turned on instacart ads for retail. That's doing really well. There's so many little things. Amazon ads has been very efficient. Much more efficient than Google Ads. Yeah.

28:45
Daniel Scharff
All right, a lot of good learnings there. So last word here as a bootstrap hero. Any final word to the other founders out there who would love to be bootstrap heroes.

28:55
Ketan Vakil
It's doable, but it's stressful. I think if you really believe in your products like I do, they're helping people, they're making a difference in the world, and you can spare. Don't put more than you're willing to truly lose forever, because this kind of business is a money pit. So I think that's like the major word of advice.

29:11
Daniel Scharff
All right. Words of encouragement, words to live by. We wouldn't have it any other way, though. All right. I love it. Thank you for being a bootstrap hero and sharing all those lessons here. We really appreciate it.

29:22
Ketan Vakil
Yeah, of course.

29:23
Daniel Scharff
All right, everyone. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. If you loved it, I would so appreciate it if you could leave us a review. You could do it right now. If you're an Apple podcast, you can scroll to the bottom of our Startup CPG podcast page and click on write a review. Leave your company name in there. I will try to read it out. If you're in Spotify, you can click on about and then the star rating icon. If you are a service provider that would like to appear on the Startup CPG podcast, you can email us@partnershipstartupcpg.com lastly, if you found yourself grooving along to the music. It is my band. You can visit our website and listen to more. It is superfantastics.com thank you everybody. See you next time. Sa.