The Startup CPG Podcast

Lisa Mastela
When I was a dietitian, I'm recommending smoothies to people every day. And I was recommending smoothies that were, like, specific to certain needs. So, like, if someone was really having trouble focusing or having trouble sleeping or having poor digestion, I'd be like, okay, you need this list of foods. Let's pack them together in a smoothie and make it taste good.

00:27
Ben Bacon
It was during COVID my wife and I started eating more plant based. She made lentils for me one night. I was two bites in. I'm like, what am I eating? And she's like, it's lentils. And then I just started seeing it everywhere. Like Tim Ferriss and Reese Witherspoon and Dua Lipa. They're all talking about how much they love lentils. And like, you go to the store, there's no lentils. And so that was the first dot.

00:46
Jack Schrupp
So in 2024, we cracked the $2 million revenue threshold. With only 2 employees, Lens was a big achievement for us, but it didn't seem that way because it's. We're five years into what has been quite the grind.

01:03
Daniel Scharff
Startup CPG ers. Welcome to what is going to be, I'm calling it now, one of the best episodes of the year. This is Bootstrap Heroes episode two. And this is going to be a total banger. The founders on this one have completely blown my mind. I am telling you that you're going to agree with me after you listen to this. We've got bumpin blends, Lentiful drink, wholesome. They just blew my mind about how scrappy they've been able to be. They really just knew their niche and explored it. Found ways to save money I never would have thought of while operating extremely lean. This one's incredible.

01:39
Daniel Scharff
I can't wait for you to hear about it and just think about ways that you could potentially give up less of your company while also growing and trying to have the impact and financial outcome that you're looking for. Enjoy. All right, Bootstrap Heroes. All right, we've got Lisa here today. Lisa, can you just start us out with some numbers? All right, what have you guys gotten to? How many doors, how much revenue? Please brag about it.

02:08
Lisa Mastela
It's so funny because I feel like we often, like, hide the numbers a little bit, so it's funny being asked that question. But we have just launched in the past six months, four SKUs into 3200 retail doors as well as our online business. So we're doing did about 2 million in revenue last year. And we're on track to do about 10 million this year in revenue.

02:25
Daniel Scharff
As a bootstrapped brand.

02:26
Lisa Mastela
As a completely bootstrapped brand.

02:28
Daniel Scharff
Well, that's amazing. Maybe the best thing I've ever heard. So congrats. You are going into the hall of fame of bootstrappers.

02:36
Lisa Mastela
I don't know about that, but thank you.

02:39
Daniel Scharff
So, all right, so how did you do it? Take us back to the beginning. How'd you start? How'd you decide to bootstrap it? Where was the money coming from? All the good stuff.

02:47
Lisa Mastela
Yeah. So I was a registered dietitian by trade. I was working with clients to help them be healthier. And I'd gotten the idea for bump and blends. When I was eight months pregnant, I bought the domain. I tinkered on the idea and I was like, you know what? I'm going to take my maternity leave three months. I'm going to build this business with 15,000 of my savings, and if at the end of three months I've got a profitable business, then great, I'll quit my job. But if not, I'll just go back to work and be out 15k. And so luckily I got to quit my job, which was really fun. And I just like converted my garage into like a mad scientist smoothie lab and was making these smoothie cubes. And then I actually put out onto the Facebook moms group.

03:24
Lisa Mastela
If any stay at home moms were dropping off their kids at the elementary school down the street from us and wanted something to do during the day that their kids were in school, come on over to Lisa's garage and make smoothies. And I had like three or four moms start coming over on weekdays making smoothies for like three, four hours while our kids are at school. One of those moms is now our director of operations. And it's just kind of grown very organically from there. And we just been able to be successful because we are so scrappy and always look at problems or financial challenge.

03:56
Lisa Mastela
Like, kind of look at everything from a very unique perspective of, like, even though there are other frozen brands that have done this before, rather than just copying what they do, how can we look at this problem from a different perspective? How can we look at it as a fresh thing and maybe we'll be able to solve it in a cheaper way because we're not doing it the way that everybody says you're supposed to do it when you're funded.

04:16
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so what year was this that you started it?

04:18
Lisa Mastela
This was 2019. So I launched the business February of 2019, in my garage, just in LA, only driving deliveries myself to deliver them by hand to our customers. And then we launched nationwide in May of that year. So within like four months we launched into like nationwide shipping because were getting.

04:36
Daniel Scharff
Well, my respect for you continues to grow. This is amazing.

04:41
Lisa Mastela
Thank you. I kind of set goals for myself where I was like, okay, once I get 20 people ordering these smoothies, I need to have some moms come over to help. Okay, Once we reach 50 requests for smoothies outside of LA, once we have 50 people email us asking us to expand, then we'll expand doing things in a scrappy way. We started nationwide shipping out of this is like so not allowed. I hope it doesn't get around too much, but I knew someone who worked at Amazon and Amazon, one of the perks of being an employee there is that you can send personal packages to your grandma or whatever using Amazon's two day shipping rate. And Amazon obviously has a large volume, so they have wonderful rates. You can ship something today across the country at Amazon for like eight to $12.

05:27
Lisa Mastela
And I was like, well, if I know one person who works at Amazon, maybe I know 10, maybe I know 15. If each one of those people brings in two to three boxes to ship to grandma each week, I could have a really thriving business shipping nationw. And so that's what we did. We had like these moms and sometimes myself literally bring like a dolly into the Amazon offices to drop off boxes for people to take to the shipping center and ship their personal packages. And we did this until Covid closed the offices.

05:58
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so you also just won the Scrappy Hustler Award.

06:02
Lisa Mastela
Scrappy Hustler Award for sure. Yes.

06:05
Daniel Scharff
So, okay, and where is the demand coming from at this point as you start scaling? Is this word of mouth? Are you doing ads?

06:12
Lisa Mastela
A lot of word of mouth. We never did any paid ads until literally just a couple years ago. We did a lot of word of mouth, a lot of gifted influencers and a lot of like pop ups just being in person around la. We were, for instance, in the beginning we really targeted like new moms and pregnant women and were all about targeting those moms because those are the people who are going to buy if they think it'll make their baby healthier or if they think it'll make their life easier. And so for instance, I would go to like Hatch, which is like a bougie maternity clothing store in Brentwood, and just with a handful of Dixie cups and a blender bottle full of smoothies and just like have smoothies for people to taste when they're checking out at Hatch.

06:52
Lisa Mastela
And when I was there, Miranda Kerr, who's a celebrity, she came in and she tasted the smoothie and she like loved it so much. She was like, can you provide smoothies for my event? Can you sign me up for a subscription? She had like her assistant sign her up for a weekly delivery and had us at her next event that with all of her friends who were also celebrities and stuff. And then a lot of like me hunting down who could I somehow contact to get us closer to this celebrity or that celebrity and get it into their hands and if they organically share from there, then great. So that's how we got like Chrissy Teigen to be really excited about the brand and become a customer.

07:29
Lisa Mastela
So we really just a lot of contacting people's people and just trying to get in their face.

07:34
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so let me try to describe your product for people out there who are just mind blown right now about like, what is going on? Like, is it. Do you live in a different world than the rest of us where it's just super easy for you?

07:46
Lisa Mastela
So it was not. None of this was easy for sure.

07:49
Daniel Scharff
It's. I don't know, I think you know how to do some stuff that none of the rest of us do. So. Okay, everyone should check out the Bump andBlends website, bumpinblends.com and if you look at it. So these are smoothie cubes. And if you look at the website, you can see they almost come in one of these packs. Like if you've ever had sucrets that are like throat lozenges, they come in the little silver foil and they have. Yeah, the little tray. So that's kind of what it looks like. And they're just little cubes. And then you have some bags as well. You've got the nice collaboration with Barbie smoothie cubes. Strawberry dreams. Okay, looking cool here. And so if I'm looking at this, I'm like, oh, well this makes sense because like smoothies are healthy. I want smoothies. Making smoothies sucks.

08:30
Daniel Scharff
It's a big time commitment. I could just have these cubes and then I have a smoothie and I'm done. Is that what's going on here?

08:35
Lisa Mastela
A hundred percent. I was like, when I was a dietitian, I'm recommending smoothies to people every day and I was recommending smoothies that were like specific to certain needs. So like if someone was really having trouble focusing or having trouble sleeping or Having poor digestion, I'd be like, okay, you need this list of foods. Let's pack them together in a smoothie and make it taste good. And then when I was pregnant, I was like, okay, I've got swollen ankles. I got nausea. I got headache. I got all these things. So I started making the smoothies, and that's where I learned, like, smoothies stuck. Making smoothies at home sucks. Like, it is time consuming, messy, never tastes good. You have, like, the wilted spinach in the back of your fridge.

09:10
Lisa Mastela
It's like judging you when you throw it away because you were like a different person when you bought two pounds of spinach. And so I wanted to relieve that experience because people love smoothies. And your choices are like, $20 erewhon smoothie or sugar bomb at Jamba Juice or making something at home that's gonna stink. So we did these little trays and smoothie cubes. You just mix it with water. And then when we launched in retail, you can't really launch D2C designed Packag retail. And so we redesigned it into these two serving bags for retail, and we have the Barbie launch as well.

09:40
Daniel Scharff
Okay, like, you've really blown my mind here, Lisa. Because Frozen, typically is just such a hard category to do. Most people don't even ship it direct to consumer. But I think maybe, like, one thing you have working in your favor is that you probably have a decent price point, but actually, like, it's not even that heavy of a product because they're like cubes. But they're probably expensive because it's much better than making a smoothie. Like, how much does it cost for. For, let's say, one of these trays? And how much do you get for it?

10:05
Lisa Mastela
So to buy it online, to get a single serving smoothie online, it can be as cheap as $8 to the customer for that smoothie. This is not like strawberries and bananas. Yes. Per smoothie, $8. And this is a smoothie that's got, like, chia seeds, flax seeds. Like, it's really, like, a packed smoothie and $8 online. If you're like a subscriber getting your smoothies every month and stuff, it can be as cheap as $8. And for us, making this movie actually cost less than $3. So for us to make those direct to consumer trades are, like, $2.50 or so, maybe up to $3, depending on the flavor. And so when you have that huge margin, it seems incredible. And we are profitable. We do have good margins. But then you have to Factor in the shipping costs and the dry ice costs.

10:50
Lisa Mastela
And I think that's where a lot of frozen brands screw up, because they price their product at a normal profit margin, and then they have to somehow get it to the customer well, then.

10:59
Daniel Scharff
The product's heavier also. And then the price points are not as favorable for most categories as this very premium one that you found where, yeah, I would pay eight bucks to not actually have to make the smoothie myself. Probably people have pretty high income who are, you know, regular smoothie drinkers. I'm guessing high education.

11:17
Lisa Mastela
And these are functional too. So it's like each flavor has a specific job. Like, we have a smoothie for sex drive. And if you can drink an $8 smoothie that will make you jump out of your pants at the end of a long workday, I would pay that.

11:29
Daniel Scharff
It's a lot less than the Erewhon smoothies, whatever it is.

11:32
Lisa Mastela
Exactly. And they each have, like, a purpose. If you have trouble focusing or sleeping, like, you'll pay extra money for something that will truly help that.

11:40
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so this makes a lot of sense. And then because you were basically like a cash cow for you at that point, you're growing your direct to consumer sales. It's probably feeding itself at that point because you have a nice profit margin, your costs are low. At some point, do you get off that, like, Amazon model to, you know.

11:56
Lisa Mastela
Yeah, we did have to get off that Amazon shipping model, unfortunately.

12:00
Daniel Scharff
Yeah.

12:00
Lisa Mastela
Because it got to be so big that the people who worked in the shipping centers were like, this is odd. There's something happened. We have a pile of 100 boxes going out today from this one company. It's like, it started to get a little shady, and I definitely didn't want the people who worked at Amazon who were helping us to get in trouble. And so as soon as it started getting shady, and that was the reason it was so shady as well, was because it was like, nobody's working in the office. But then there would be these, like, 10 guys would come in once a week to work in the office.

12:28
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, just another 10 boxes for me for personal use to grandma.

12:33
Lisa Mastela
Yeah. And so it started getting a little bit like, this is getting too big. And I think shipping, especially with frozen, there's, like, the way to do it by the book that everyone does it, but nobody thinks, like, well, why don't I just, like, start from scratch and try to look at this from a different perspective? And so we, like, instead of using air gas or like, the big dry ice companies that everybody uses I found like a tiny mom and pop dry ice store that's just a couple guys working there. And I built a relationship with them and they charge, typically they charge more than air gas does. But I like built a relationship with these guys. My team like drop off subs for them every Friday and give them great Christmas gifts and like hang out and chit chat with them.

13:12
Lisa Mastela
Like this group of women just coming to like hang out with them. And we cut our dry ice prices in half because of that relationship that we built with them. And so it was like, okay, well now we're paying half price for dry ice. Great. How do we do the same kind of thing with the coolers and the boxes and the shipping? You know, how do we kind of look at each piece of the puzzle for shipping frozen and say like how do we cut the cost? Even by a few cents on a box can make a big difference at scale.

13:37
Daniel Scharff
So this is incredible. And as you start growing more and more it ever really daunting especially as you start getting into retail. Just the amount of capital that's going to be required with the frozen supply chain and you can still just support all that with the profit that's coming out or you have to think about financing.

13:55
Lisa Mastela
Yeah. So we are, we're crossing that road now. We're doing our first funding round this month. We're starting it which is great. I'm very excited about it. And we're doing our first raise. So we did get one angel investor last summer who is an influencer and customer of ours who just is not angel investor but loved our product and wanted to invest. So they just invested last summer which was so helpful just getting us into stores because of the upfront manufacturing costs. It was great to have help with that. But even looking at things in a scrappy perspective, rather than using settle amplify all the things that people use, we worked directly with our manufacturer and put in certain guarantees in place, certain contracts where were able actually to release two and a half million dollars of product without paying upfront for it.

14:42
Lisa Mastela
And that's not to brag like we didn't pay for our product. No, we definitely are paying for our product but were able to work and build. Like I started meeting with my manufacturer that we use for retail. So we do manufacturing for direct to consumer in house manufacturing for retail.

14:56
Lisa Mastela
Coman I built this relationship with this co man starting in 2019 so we didn't start using him until 2023 but he and I would have dinner or have long phone calls and like we built this relationship built on trust and mutual respect that now I can have million dollar invoice from a manufacturer and he trusts that we're paying it, but I don't have to stress like, oh, the interest rate on this and I need to get 20 loans to just cover this and he needs to get paid in 30 days or our products are getting released. And it's like that can be removed because we built a relationship.

15:28
Daniel Scharff
Incredible. I mean, that's better that you figured out how to do all of that with favorable terms and approaches. You mentioned Settle, so I'll just also put in a quick plug for them. We really appreciate how much they support female founders in our community working with us. So they, yeah, they're great. They do female founder booth giveaways with us and really special curated dinners. And so we just wanted to say how much we appreciate them.

15:50
Lisa Mastela
I have loved talking to the people at Settle. They are really fantastic. And that's like, Settle is a great example of like a relationship that like we are building of, like, we're not using them yet because there's not that exact need yet. But like, oh, we're building that relationship. We have those conversations and like, I think as a founder, it's so go, go. We're so in the moment of doing what we need right now that like, building the relationships over time is like so crucial.

16:13
Daniel Scharff
That's awesome. Well, they will also be very lucky to get to work with you. And so it sounds to me like you're kind of good at everything. What do you actually spend most of your time do? Like, you go deep on ops. You go deep on the strategy, the product. Like, what are you really spending most of your time doing right now?

16:29
Lisa Mastela
Oh my gosh, everything. It's really. Because we're so scrappy and we're bootstrapped in terms of full time employees. It is just me. And so I do everything. I'm literally on the phone with Khee asking why they didn't pick up when they scheduled a pickup. And it's sitting and waiting. I'm overviewing all of our TikTok ads. I'm building the five year strategy of expanding to other categories and with new innovative products. I'm checking inventory, I'm making sure we got every invoice paid. It's very much everything. There is no concentration, which is tricky.

17:04
Daniel Scharff
Do you get out much?

17:05
Lisa Mastela
I have two adorable kids. I also should say I do work very hard when I'm working, but I think we're just very efficient and scrappy and like really are like, we work on what we need to be working on and nothing extra. Like, I very often say no to meetings 50 times a day. And so it's. Yeah, I. I feel like I have good work, life balance, hopefully.

17:25
Daniel Scharff
Well, now I feel especially honored that you said yes to telling your story on this podcast. I know.

17:31
Lisa Mastela
I love startup cpg. I feel like the Slack channel is probably my most distracting element of my work life right now.

17:38
Daniel Scharff
All right. We love it.

17:39
Lisa Mastela
In a good way.

17:40
Daniel Scharff
Yes, yes. We'll be very proud to claim you as one of our members. So you said you have somebody who is running operations for you, but you also said you don't have any full time employees.

17:50
Lisa Mastela
So she is a independent contractor, 1099. And she runs all of our direct to consumer operations and works 10 hours a week, maybe 20.

17:59
Daniel Scharff
Do you have other contractors as well? Are you relying on that to scale?

18:03
Lisa Mastela
So I built out our direct to consumer manufacturing and fulfillment center myself in 2020. We actually like signed the lease in like March for first week of March 2020, of course. And then of course I'm like, I'm locked into this very expensive lease and great, super love that for me. But she has a team of like six people in there who do all of our manufacturing and fulfillment for direct to consumer and they're all independent contractors. I'm a big believer that emerging brands should not be hiring full time unless it is like absolutely needed. And then I have an assistant who is also an independent contractor part time who works maybe like five to ten hours a week. And then we have, yeah, lots of independent contractors and freelancers we use for like photography and PR and things like that.

18:49
Daniel Scharff
Okay, last question for you, Lisa. Tell me about Barbie. I know everyone listening is like, why don't you ask about Barbie? What's going on with that?

18:57
Lisa Mastela
I was at NAJ and like I was interviewed there and I was expecting all these interviews about Walmart, Target and everyone. Like it was just 10 questions about Barbie. The Barbie partnership has been great. And that was also like a scrappy put together. Like I was at the gate at LAX waiting for a flight to Bentonville, Arkansas. So the entire gate is just like a networking dream for a small emerging brand. It's like you can meet anyone. And our flight was delayed for three hours. So I was like, okay. Rather than like, everyone just pulls out their laptop and starts working. And I was like, I'm going to just eavesdrop on as many conversations as I can and see if there's anyone here. It might be worthwhile to get to know.

19:34
Lisa Mastela
So I'm eavesdropping every day I see the Barbie team and I'm like, okay, now who looks like the most important? Who's the boss here in this conversation? I sit down next to her and she was talking about sleep training her toddler son. Great, I know how to talk about that. So I jump into the conversation with chit chatting about our sons and sleep and we just build the relationship. We're chatting, we're exchanging resources, I'm helping us three year old boy sleep. And then she's like, oh, what do you do for Mattel? And I said, I actually don't work for Mattel. I run a small women owned smoothie cube brand. And she's like, oh. I was like, what do you do? I'm the VP of global partnerships for Mattel, for Barbie. And I'm like, you must have had.

20:11
Lisa Mastela
This was right after the Barbie movie came out. I'm like, bravo on the past year. Incredible. She's like, yeah, we're still working on like, you know, riding that momentum. And I was like, well, if you want some hot pink smoothie cube, I'm your gal. And like, kind of almost jokingly, but very much like pie. And she was like, yes, love that idea. Here's my card. Let's exchange information, continue the conversation. And by the time the plane landed in Bentonville, we had a meeting on the books for the next day. And that was literally like February or March of 2024. And the product launched in stores in June of 2024. So we already had the Target and Walmart partnerships and the Sprouts partnership.

20:49
Lisa Mastela
And then I was able to swap out the one flavor for the Barbie flavor, which obviously Walmart and Target were like, yes, you can do that.

20:57
Daniel Scharff
All right, that was quite a tale. Honestly, I feel like you might be one of the like most quiet killers that we've had on this podcast. So thank you so much for taking the time to explain why you are just one of the most heroic bootstrap heroes that we have had on here. So Lisa, thank you.

21:15
Lisa Mastela
Thank you so much.

21:16
Daniel Scharff
Absolutely. Everybody check them out. Bumpin blends dot com. All right, don't go anywhere. We've got another bootstrap hero right now. All right, bootstrap heroes, we've got Ben from Lentiful back to talk to us about bootstrapping his business. So Ben, you are one of my bootstrap heroes. Can you first of all just start us out with some numbers? So what have you managed to grow your business to revenue wise, door count wise, whatever numbers, please brag away.

21:43
Ben Bacon
I don't know if it's bragging. We just wrapped up our second year. First year, right out of the gate, were just almost entirely D2C, like 95% Shopify. And a lot of it was tied to our inventory and our production constraints. We could talk about that, but in my head I'm like, all right, I'm going to produce. I think it was 120,000 cups. And if I sell them all, you know, we'll do roughly half a million in sales. And kind of went a little bit over that. We did about 5,50 in sales that first year and I think we probably took a loss of, I don't know, 50k, like all in. So it wasn't like a bloodbath. Right. So that was good. We just finished a second year. We just got shy of 2 million and were actually profitable for four or five months.

22:21
Ben Bacon
And then towards the end, I accelerated some spend into 2024 and we took a slight loss for the year. And then this year, 2025, my goal is I think we can do 4, 4, maybe 5 million. I think we'd actually be profitable.

22:35
Daniel Scharff
Well, this is awesome. And what's the biggest challenge on the profitability? Is it paid ad spend, that kind of stuff or you know, what's the biggest challenge to getting profitable for us?

22:44
Ben Bacon
We're very lean. Like, you're talking to the only full time employee of the Landfall. And let me have a caveat to that too. I think this is not talked about enough. I. I'm a little bit older. I'm 48. Right. And so I have a little bit of. I was in corporate America a while. I have some money saved up that I can kind of flush down the toilet and it'd be fine. And like, this would be a great. I'm not spending anything I can't lose. Right. I also have a sugar mama. Her name's Brooke. We've been married almost 25 years. She has high W2 income, great medical benefits. For over our 25 years, we've kind of taken turns as like the breadwinner in this phase of life. She's kind of crushing it and kicking ass in her career.

23:21
Ben Bacon
It was time for me to like take a swing. We had that luxury. We still have four kids in the house. I'm effectively a stay at home dad of four while I'm also working and building this brand. So we have a unique situation there. It kind of lets us take our time and slow Things down like some people on the surface. I'll see. Okay. Ben, is he providing for his wife and four kids with a food company and it's. No, that's not the case. I'm not even taking a salary yet. The hope is one day too. But right now that it's something that I think I like to get out there because this is a very expensive business, as you know.

23:55
Daniel Scharff
Yes, this is true. I was just wondering how many of your kids meals are lentifulls at this point?

24:00
Ben Bacon
Quite a bit. Those cogs are pretty low and so it's. I'm always looking.

24:03
Daniel Scharff
Oh good. It's delicious. So they're lucky. Okay, so when you were winding up to this, how did it happen? You were like, all right, it's time to take a swing. What do I want to do? I want to do this. Or the idea struck you and you left your corporate job and dove in on this. How did it come about?

24:20
Ben Bacon
Well, there's a transition. So I was in corporate America. I don't know, call it 15 or 20 years. And then about 10 years ago, I got involved with a food company here in Colorado. I was not a founder, but I kind of had a front row seat into how to grow that business. And I kind of led all their online Shopify and Amazon stuff. I saw, you know, what to do and what not to do and they stepped on a lot of rakes and things like that all the while where, you know, you start going to Expo west, you meet these founders and you're like, you know, they're not that much smarter than me and I could probably do this. And if I had the right idea, then maybe it'd be worth giving a shot.

24:52
Ben Bacon
It was during COVID my wife and I started eating more plant based. She made lentils for me one night. I was two bites in. I'm like, what am I eating? And she's like, it's lentils. And then I just started seeing it everywhere. Like Tim Ferriss and Reese Witherspoon and Dua Lipa, they're all talking about how much they love lentils. And like, you go to the store, there's no lentils. And so that was the first dot. And the second dot was, we're always in a rush. We have no time to make lentils. I was grabbing a purely Elizabeth instant oatmeal cup and I heard that rattle one morning and I was just like, can we make instant lentils? And is that a dumb idea? And so that kind of led me down the journey of like, okay, let's at least explore it.

25:24
Ben Bacon
And then from there it was really getting scrappy to develop the brand, develop the product, find a co packer and we could talk all about all that stuff.

25:31
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so you figured out you could do lentils. At that point, you're no longer at your corporate job. You go down this path. How does it start? Is it like, okay, we have savings, my wife has this job. You have an opportunity cost, right? Because you also were at a cool, well paying job, probably with like, you know, 401k pension, all that nice stuff. But you're okay because your wife is earning well even though you have four kids. Are you looking at this as like, hey, I have X number of years to do this or X amount that I could lose doing this before I see if it's going to be successful or not. And you know, I'll caveat by saying that like, probably now you feel pretty good about it. But did you start that way thinking about it?

26:09
Ben Bacon
I started out thinking, okay, let's launch this thing and hopefully one of two things happens. One is we're going to get a lot of green lights and that will give us the confidence to keep going. Or two, we get a lot of red lights and then we're going to shut this thing down. Because I think what for me and being in my prime earning years and things like that, I think it was going to be hard for me to spend 10 years on this thing and at the end of the day not have a lot to show for it financially. That would be hard. But you know, we've done well over the years. We have money saved for kids, colleges and stuff like that. It was okay for me to take a swing on this one all the while.

26:41
Ben Bacon
And honestly, I still have this in my head kind of understanding, like this thing can all go to zero pretty quickly because I've seen it happen quite a bit. I think it's like with entrepreneurship you want to be very confident, like this thing is going to work and I'm going to make it work. But you also want to be like realistic, like, but the odds are this is a very tough industry and you just always have to keep that in the back of your mind as well.

26:59
Daniel Scharff
It's interesting how you talk about it because yes, when you gave me the yearly revenue, I'm like, wow, first year you had 500k. That's uncommon to get that high first year, second year going for 2 million. So, you know, I guess I think that's a little bit more possible in E. Com. Unless you're like some major founder that just has all the friends that are going to turn on distribution right away. So, okay, E Comm. But yeah, I mean, for you, we would tell some small brands like, hey, go small in your own backyard and test and learn and all this stuff. But for you actually, like, the opportunity cost is very high. That, yeah, you want to get to that green or red light much quicker. Right.

27:37
Ben Bacon
I do remember when were looking at co packers. I think the contract I signed that first year was quarterly production runs and we're going to do. And their MOQ was 8,000 cups per flavor. We wanted to launch four flavors. So that's 32,000 cups. And I remember going on a walk in my neighborhood with my wife. I'm like, if I can't sell 32,000 cups in a year, just like we shouldn't be around, right? And so luckily we got a lot of that early traction. We were able to get into that next quarterly production run and it just kind of built from there. I was a little strategic in how I developed the product. We could talk about that. I was not going to get into heavy wet liquids. My superpower as a founder is probably D2C and Facebook ads and stuff like that.

28:18
Ben Bacon
I know how hard it is to build up businesses for beverage companies relying on that as a customer acquisition strategy. So our boxes, you know, we have a variety pack. It's 1.7 pounds. It costs, call it $8 to ship around America from our warehouse in Chicago. You could start doing the unit economics on this and say, okay, then can we acquire a Facebook customer for under 20 bucks? And I think I can. And so for us, as soon as I found out that were first order break even on Facebook and that allowed us to turn up the dollars on that one, and then customers loved it. And then one of three came back and bought it. There was a, you know, a frequency and some sort of stickiness to it. It made everything else just 100% easier.

28:54
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so you know what you're doing from an E Comm perspective. You know how to sell stuff online. So initially thing I'm good at. So, okay. I mean, that's a pretty strong skill set to have. And you design this product around it. Right. So can you tell me about how you engineered this product to do well in those initial months selling online? Because it's, you know, you're creating the branding and packages and all that stuff to be a brand that could just get to 500k the first year on E Comm.

29:25
Ben Bacon
I think There's a couple of secrets to success on D2C and E comm. And one is you have to have something that is completely unique, but people kind of understand right away. And the good thing is, like, instantly, like, no one's heard of Instantanelles, but there is a big, like, everyone kind of knows what lentils are. Yeah, they're good for you. But when you put instant lentils, like, oh, okay, everyone keeps telling me, I should eat this. Here's a way to do it in a minute. Okay. So that's one, right. I think it'd be hard. And by the way, Facebook is the only place where I can see and learn about these instant lentils. I think it'd be hard to start, like a nut butter, right? Where every store you go into, they have nut butters.

29:56
Ben Bacon
And, you know, you probably have a couple of different brands in your pantry. If I was launching a new nut butter brand, I would have trouble on Facebook. But because we're the only instant lentils game in town, at least for right now, there's that. Right? So that's a little bit of a moat. You want to have a beautiful brand. Now we're bootstrapped. Like, I could not afford. You know, we have, like, Moxie, Sozo and Interact, and we got, you know, all of these great branding agencies here in Boulder that's going to cost 50 to 100 grand to do a brand kind of like, identity for a new company. I can't even afford the people that used to work at those companies that are out on their own because they're charging maybe 25 or 50 grand. So with entrepreneurship, there's always a third way.

30:32
Ben Bacon
You want to find the talent before they work at these agencies. They're in school a lot of times at colleges. One of my little hacks that I like to share is there's an Instagram account called Hedesign Kids. So the design kids, what they do is they profile up and coming graphic design majors in colleges all across the world. They're typically putting together case studies of fake CPG companies because that's like, their coursework and like, that's like their. Their final, like, project. And. And so to be profiled on this Instagram feed is quite an honor. I found out about this, and I remember getting up one morning, I was kind of scrolling through, like, with my thumb, and I just stopped. And I said, this is the person. This is the aesthetic I'm going for the brand that I want to build.

31:11
Ben Bacon
And I slid into her DMs. She was a college student at Berkeley. She had like a thousand followers. She was very just like, you know, just starting out. And I think I paid her like a thousand dollars per SKU for the four SKUs to do the packaging design work, another few thousand dollars for the overall brand kind of identity. And that was like, one scrappy way to develop a brand that was going to get a lot of thumbs stopping on Facebook when they're scrolling through ads.

31:37
Daniel Scharff
One thing I noticed about the branding, I think you got a lot right on this. Like it, to me, it's very easy to read. You don't have a lot on here, and it just focuses on the most important stuff. So lentiful. Your brand name, really easy to see and recognize and just says lentiful instant lentils. Okay, yeah, I get it. And then it has the protein, call out fiber, call out calories, and then it says the flavor homestyle chili. I think you resisted the temptation to try to put everything that you love about the product and can't help but try to fit in there somewhere.

32:11
Daniel Scharff
And so it sounds like you working with her and any updates that you guys did a really good job, especially for an early brand, to just know who you are maybe from the start, or at least you've gotten there now, and just speak to consumers in a very simple way.

32:27
Ben Bacon
Yeah, I appreciate that. The next part, you know, when we developed the brand, was finding someone that could develop the products. I'm not a chef. This is kind of like why we started instantly, because I don't know how to make lentils from scratch very well. And when I do, they come out mushy and things like that. I went around, I got, you know, bids from the typical, like, you know, food R and D kind of groups out there. And they range between, I got one for 50 grand for three skis. I got another one for half a million for four years. I mean, it was crazy, some of the numbers.

32:53
Ben Bacon
And I came across, you know, there are these universities across the country that have these food innovation centers, and they are like professionals, but they also work with students to kind of like, help train them up. And they typically work at a fraction of the cost. And they have no really intellectual interest in your IP or anything like that. They just almost like, serve a purpose for the community. And I kind of took a quick look at them and fell in love with our friends over at Oregon State, the Food Innovation center, and Sarah Missoni, who runs that. That group. They also had a experience in cups. They did Bob's Rednell cups.

33:25
Ben Bacon
They did I mean they, it's like they knew cups and so for me it was a no brainer and again I paid them a fraction of what I would have paid some of these other R and D labs. That's just another bootstrapping tip out there is you're looking to commercialize and make it shelf stable. Go look at some of these local universities and you'll be able to, you know, get some good pricing there.

33:42
Daniel Scharff
These are amazing tips, Ben, just to rehash these for everybody. If you're looking for some affordable design, check out the design kits on Instagram and just try to poach some of them. If the design kids is listening, probably that's a new revenue stream for you. Before we all figure that out, maybe get a little agency going for students. You can get nil rights and all that stuff.

34:03
Ben Bacon
And Daniel, one thing on this one, so I use and I'll give her a shout out. Edgy Katrina is her Instagram handle and honestly, like she'd never done a food company before and so we worked together. She now has well over a hundred thousand followers. She speaks at national branding conferences, she does partnership deals with Lexus and Adobe. I can't afford her anymore and I'm so proud of her. She's like 22 and she's crushing it.

34:25
Daniel Scharff
That's amazing.

34:26
Ben Bacon
It's a win for sure if you find the right designer.

34:29
Daniel Scharff
Wow, good for you. And okay, so that and then local universities, food science programs to work on the product development and probably some other stuff that you need like stability testing, all of that kind of stuff.

34:43
Ben Bacon
Yeah. And then the next piece would be finding somewhere to manufacture it. So again, getting back to the strategy, I mean there's nothing wrong with making it yourself in a local shared kitchen. For me it was like, I'm old, let's see if this thing works or not. Let's get it out there. And so I talked to some co packers that worked with national brands and it was a mix of finding the most reputable co packer that dipped down with the smallest moq. And a lot of it was just me pitching myself. I mean it was me and a vision. Right. And it's, that is another tip for founders. You are always pitching yourself. And I mean they took a leap of faith on me because they did not work with single person food companies.

35:20
Ben Bacon
They're very happy that they did because now we're taking up two weeks of line time for them every month. But I would say just network, really know your lingo when you go and approach Them and just really try and find that right fit.

35:33
Daniel Scharff
I was just thinking about, because you and I are Both in our 40s, there are some of these founders out there that are, we're like jealous of. They're in their 20s, they have all the energy doing all this crazy stuff.

35:42
Ben Bacon
They have all the time in the world.

35:43
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, for sure. They can fail like five times before they get to where we are. I think probably in some instances, being at this age, if you are going to negotiate with a co packer, maybe could work in your favor where they're like, oh, okay, this is an experienced person starting this thing. They must have had some success. It must not be their first go around, like, maybe I'll lower my moq for them because seems like they probably really know what they're doing because they're older. There's probably. I'm sure there's some of that bias in there. Right. Even though we might not. I mean you would have to know what you're doing to be taking this kind of a gamble at this point.

36:15
Ben Bacon
Yeah, and I remember some of those calls. I was so built with suspenders and I was like overly prepared and you just kind of have to be. You don't want to show up and half ass it on those calls.

36:24
Daniel Scharff
Well, it seems like it worked out really well for you, Ben. Okay, so tell me about the future plans here. So how much into retail do you hope to get to where when do you think you need to do financing or eventually fundraise or can you just hold on to this baby forever?

36:41
Ben Bacon
So one thing I was not expecting, and this is kind of like this was the hard part of bootstrapping. Not that I had visions of becoming like the next magic spoon, but I thought we would be DTC only for a few years to kind of just like build up scale. Get my sea legs as a founder as my first company. I think were a couple months in and that's when the retailers started calling and kind of forced me pretty quickly to see, all right, maybe we'll be more omnichannel sooner than later. So now we're in the fresh market. Walmart, Whole Foods, Wegmans, Hy Vee, thrive. All of these retailers approached us and you just kind of had to. So for us this is another tip.

37:12
Ben Bacon
Like be more willing to work with those retailers where it's maybe EDLP or no slotting fees like Wegmans and like these are great accounts. Walmart, there's no slotting fees. Like these are things that kind of make it As a bootstrap brand, you're able to get quicker return, there's not a longer payback period. And so While we started 95% DTC, I think last year were probably closer to 70% DTC. This year we'll be like 50. So we're very quickly becoming an omnichannel brand in terms of, you know, outlook and future and financing. I am going to try and boost around this thing as long as I can. You know that, you know this, the environment's not great for fundraising. We probably could fundraise. We've won a few big awards. I'm having too much fun right now to do that.

37:52
Ben Bacon
So to the extent, you know, working capital becomes the biggest name of the game, like were doing like 30,000 cups a quarter that first year, we're now doing 80,000 cups a month and that requires a lot of working capital. And the good part about being so heavily into Shopify is that money hits the Chase bank account a couple days later. Right. And it helps you like fund that next production run to kind of smooth things out a bit. We've been able to cobble together a few lines of credit through Amex and some Chase and Whole Foods lending we're starting to work with. So there are some cost effective non dilutive options out there. Pursue those as much as you can before you need to have to raise.

38:28
Daniel Scharff
I love it. I want to see you hold onto this thing forever and just have some incredible outcome from all of this. It seems like for somebody who's newer to doing cpg, I'm really impressed with just how many things you figured out. How to be scrappy, how to be really effective launching the brand, how to figure out all these hacks. And actually that's a really interesting perspective on Walmart that I haven't heard before. I personally have never sold into Walmart like, you know, my own brand, but I just always thought of them as like, you know, you got to be ready for Walmart because it's, you know, going to be lower margin, the price is going to be further down.

39:04
Daniel Scharff
But actually what you're saying, probably because you have a product that can have good margins the way that you've engineered it, you're like, your strategy is actually, no, that can be a pretty good account and it's controlled and you don't have to worry about all this stuff and it's straightforward and the slotting, yeah.

39:17
Ben Bacon
I would say you have to price it at a healthy margin. So for us it's before trade, it's probably 55 to 60%. And then when you factor in trade, we're kind of getting to that. I always wanted to try and price in 15 to 20% of trade spend so that we're a brand that has to be on promo. We have to do the tprs. People think lentils aren't going to taste very good, but then they eat it and they're like, oh my gosh, this tastes great. So we have to budget for that. But that's one piece of it.

39:41
Ben Bacon
And then the other piece is you got to stay super lean and use tools like AI and some other ones that we've talked about where not only is that top line growing, but you're really being mindful of the bottom line that hopefully, fingers crossed, good things happen as you kind of go year by year.

39:56
Daniel Scharff
I really like that approach, especially having personally been in kind of the Silicon Valley food tech approach to things, which is just raise as much money as humanly possible. Spend the crap out of it. Like, it's like burning a hole in your corporate pocket. Like just, we need to spend as much as possible so that we can get some more sales so that we can raise at the next higher rate. So I really like how you put it. Me personally, I'm a big fan of bootstrapping. I think just, I mean, obviously financially it can make all the difference for you in the kind of outcome that you're going to have.

40:25
Daniel Scharff
But then also, I think just in terms of your life, I don't know, Ben, you seem like a kind of relaxed dude and you have enough to worry about with the four kids and everything. So probably like reporting to investors is not the end. Like quarterly board reports and check ins and all that stuff is not stuff that you're so eager to add onto your plate.

40:43
Ben Bacon
No, no. Knock on people that have raised that or needed to raise. But you do kind of wake up in the night and you kind of think about those things. And to the extent I got enough things that are keeping me up at night, I don't need anything more. But I appreciate that.

40:56
Daniel Scharff
All right, well, Ben, thank you for being one of our Bootstrap Heroes. I think you're officially inducted into our Bootstrap Hero hall of Fame. Thank you so much for sharing all of these tips. I hope this is really inspiring for people who are thinking about doing some kind of a launch and just at least to consider this kind of an approach. Obviously it's not feasible for everybody given people's financial situation starting out. Maybe you have to Raise money. Maybe you prefer that approach, but I just really think it's a great perspective for everybody to consider, even though we don't all have Ben's secret sauce of how to actually do it so well right from the beginning, it's definitely something that we can all learn from. So, Ben, thank you again.

41:35
Daniel Scharff
And I'm excited to be able to check you out at all of these great grocery stores and probably tons more where you'll be expanding too soon.

41:42
Ben Bacon
Thanks. Appreciate it, Daniel.

41:44
Daniel Scharff
All right, see everybody? All right. And we got one more bootstrap hero. Bootstrap heroes. All right, everybody, we are here with the team from Drink Wholesome. We've got Jack and Tessa. Jack, I'm starting with you. Can you just tell me where have you guys gotten to as bootstrappers with your business?

42:01
Jack Schrupp
So in 2024, we cracked the $2 million revenue threshold with only 2 employees, which was a big achievement for us. But it didn't seem that way because we're five years into what has been quite the grind.

42:16
Daniel Scharff
All right, so 2 million in revenue. That is very impressive for a two person bootstrap team. So you are definitely bootstrap heroes. All right, so take me back. Why did you start this thing and why did you decide to bootstrap it?

42:28
Jack Schrupp
The idea for Drink Wholesome was born out of personal need. I was a two sport college athlete, which meant I was training all the time and using protein supplements, specifically protein powders, as a convenient way to fill in gaps in my diet. But despite my best efforts, I couldn't find one that didn't upset my stomach. So I made my own. And this was something that I made for myself and use myself for a long time before considering that someone else could benefit from it.

42:54
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so you were taking this on your own to fix the stomach problems you were having from other stuff that was out there, and then you just started to go for it, like, where did you have savings? Where did the money come from? And how do you decide? Like, hey, I'm going to put this out there and create branding and packaging and order product and try to start selling it.

43:11
Jack Schrupp
Absolutely. So I started brainstorming ways to turn my idea into a business immediately after graduating college. At that time, I was working full time as a boarding school teacher, coach, dorm parent. And two perks about that line of work are that one, you get the summer off, which afforded me time to think about and actually pursue starting this business. And two, I got free housing, so I was able to save some money given that I wasn't paying rent. And I invested all of that, which was basically all of the money. I had about $20,000 into my first batch of product. Almost all that money went to buying ingredients and packaging.

43:49
Daniel Scharff
And how did you get it off the ground? Where did that product go so that you had money to start putting back into the business?

43:54
Jack Schrupp
So I was fortunate enough to partner with a local organic granola company who made the product. And I actually picked up that first purchase order myself in a U haul and drove it to my basement where the product lived. And it lived there for a while because then, unfortunately, we finished that first purchase order in February of 2020. If you remember, in March of 2020, the world shut down. Today we are direct to consumer e commerce brand. But at the time, I was hoping to sell at local grocery stores and demo at local events like triathlons and road races. And all of that became impossible almost overnight. So it took a while to move that inventory. But eventually people with stomachs, sensitive stomachs, they definitely had stomachs.

44:34
Jack Schrupp
People with sensitive stomachs found the product, started telling their friends, and bit by bit, the business grew, its online presence grew, the brand visibility grew, largely thanks to word of mouth.

44:45
Daniel Scharff
That's amazing. And did you have to put money into marketing that way in the beginning, or was it really word of mouth that was finding you those initial direct to consumer customers?

44:54
Jack Schrupp
I spent positively $0 on marketing for at least the first year. I just didn't have any money to spend. And all the money that I spend came out of my own pocket, so it hurt to spend it. And if I didn't see a very obvious return on investment, I wasn't going to open my wallet.

45:11
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so it was probably a lot of individual selling to people then. If there was no paid media in the early days and you had just, you know, you knew how much you had sitting in your basement that you had to sell through talking to people. They liked it. Maybe they were telling a few friends. So I'm imagining a pretty, you know, maybe slow but consistent build for the first year.

45:29
Jack Schrupp
Absolutely. It's been slow growth since the beginning. I wouldn't say we've seen our lucky break yet. And I will add that we don't spend a whole lot on marketing today. We're about five years in. We are obviously selling a lot of protein powder, but most of our marketing comes from. And Tessa can speak more to this. Cold outreach, hard work, consistent promotion. And I'll let Tessa explain what our most powerful marketing tool is.

45:58
Daniel Scharff
Tessa, take it away.

45:59
Tessa Schrupp
Okay. Yeah, that's my introduction. So for us, our most powerful marketing tool would have to be relationships, and specifically the relationships that we have with practitioners in the digestive and gut health space. So we spend a lot of time nurturing those relationships and doing, as Jack mentioned, cold outreach. Just so people in the digestive health space are aware of, drink, wholesome, and have the chance to try out our products. So as part of that marketing spend is the product itself. So I would say we don't skimp on sending free product. We want people to have it in their hands, see the ingredients that we're using and how they're different from alternatives on the market, and then be able to authentically speak to the value proposition that makes sense.

46:47
Daniel Scharff
I think it probably also doesn't hurt that you guys have a lot of very good ratings on your Amazon store. How big of a channel is that for you guys? I mean, I see like 604 ratings on your chocolate egg white protein powder with really high, like ranking high on search. Very nice price point as well. I can see it's about a 5050.

47:06
Jack Schrupp
Split between our e commerce platform, our website and Amazon. And those reviews didn't come easily. I think less than 1% of Amazon customers leave reviews and those reviews skew negative. So to all those who left a positive review, thank you from the bottom of our heart. We really appreciate it. And because we don't spend a lot on marketing, are a very powerful discovery tool. People do trust Amazon reviews, despite reasons to be skeptical. And so that is something we try and nurture, although we don't have a whole lot of control.

47:39
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, that makes sense to me. If I see something new, even if it's on Instagram, I'm like, is this a real thing? I'll go check Amazon and see if people like it. If it's very heavily marketed to me, probably it's not a great thing on Amazon, but yours is doing really well, so that makes a lot of sense. But so how did you come by all of these reviews? I mean, was it just the 1% over time that added up, or did you have a special tactic to try to encourage more people to leave reviews for you?

48:06
Jack Schrupp
I just left one review every day for the past three years and they've added up. So we make protein powders for sensitive stomachs. We target people with digestive issues, people who are sick and tired of protein powders and protein shakes that upset their stomach or cause bloating, make them run to the bathroom. And we target them because drink wholesome solves a problem. It Allows them to supplement their protein intake without digestive issues. And for that reason, people are very grateful to have come across drink wholesome or have been put on to drink wholesome. And that's where those positive reviews come from. Largely. It also tastes good. We try to offer a really quality customer experience, and that's what Tessa is in charge of. But at the end of the day, drink wholesome is a solution.

48:52
Jack Schrupp
And I feel like if you solve a problem, especially a painful problem, positive reviews will follow.

48:57
Daniel Scharff
It's funny because I'm trying to ask you, like, hey, what, like, secret tactic did you use to get all those reviews? And you're like, no, this is a good product that people really like. So they leave reviews the way it's like, supposed to happen, that organic way. Like, oh, that sounds like a secret. That's amazing though. So coming back to the bootstrapping topic, like, do you ever plan to or you feel like it's just good and we are really comfortable growing at this consistent rate that we've hit now, like, do you feel like you ever would want the money to just like go for it faster or you're really happy with the control and lifestyle that you have? Having bootstrap, I hope to never raise.

49:32
Jack Schrupp
Money unless I absolutely have to. But Tessa knows that having a larger advertising budget would allow us to work with more influencers, to sponsor more events, to attend more trade shows, all of which are fun. I mean, this is our business, this is what we do every day. So we would love to engage in those fun marketing activities. But the benefits of bootstrapping until you can bootstrap no more far outweigh the advantages in the fun that would come along with a bigger marketing budget. Tessa, do you have anything to add?

50:03
Tessa Schrupp
Yeah. And adding to what you've mentioned as an advantage of fundraising would be the hiring piece of it. And yes, we are two people right now. And so we've been really thoughtful about who we bring on to the team and how to do so in as budget conscious a way as possible, contracting with people to see if they're a good fit. And we would also most likely do that if were to bring on a third person to the team full time, just having a good handle on who they are and how they contribute to the team before making a long term commitment.

50:34
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so Tessa, let's say someone gave you right now 100k and you had to spend it in 2025 on marketing. What would you be putting it toward?

50:43
Tessa Schrupp
Sure. In that case, since I've mentioned that Our practitioner outreach is. Is so valuable. Having an extra set of hands, helping with the boots on the ground, cold outreach, that would be. That would be huge. And also, since we work with customers that have sensitive stomachs, one thing we've done in the past is partnering with either nonprofits or digestive health specialists that work with people in the digestive health space. And so we would love to get our product just out in the world more. So that would probably be large scale sampling too, at some impactful events, and then having educational material alongside that to really hone in on what makes drink wholesome special.

51:24
Daniel Scharff
I like that answer a lot because I wasn't sure what to expect because I'm not really a great marketer, like, oh, no, I blow it all on paid ads or something. But it really wasn't that. It was like just something that was very in line with how you've actually successfully grown to date. So just like, you know, hitting the accelerator on more of that. So that's a great answer. But okay. So, Jack, maybe just one last question for you, which is for me, one of the main benefits of bootstrapping. If you can do it successfully and kind of get to a place where you're more comfortable, which I hope you are, at being at 2 million in revenue. I think it's just the mental benefits of it of like, okay, now, like, it was really hard getting going.

52:00
Daniel Scharff
I did not have help, I did not have money. This was. I had to like bust my butt while I'm like helping these kids in the dorm and stuff and do this. I didn't have, like the resources. But now I've built this business and I'm in control of it and I don't have to do quarterly board meetings or more frequently. I don't owe people a quick exit on this thing. I don't have all the pressure of it. Do you feel like you feel that in your life? Do you feel like you're really stressed out or do you feel like, actually, no, this is like more sustainable and relaxed and, you know, especially for somebody who might have stomach issues or something. I can imagine, like, you probably appreciate just kind of like a more relaxed life. What do you think?

52:37
Jack Schrupp
I think that I still have some soul searching to do when it comes to determining what my relationship with the business is, or rather what I want that relationship to look like. Because if this is a lifestyle business, then I've achieved something special and sustainable and I am happy to be where I am today. But if this is a business that I'm trying to grow and exit or turn into something that's truly disruptive in a big industry, then either have to work a lot harder, build a better team, raise money. Something needs to change because we've come a long way from where we started, but we are nowhere near where we would need to be in order to achieve what many people would consider a significant industry disruption or have a significant industry impact. We're still a small business.

53:28
Jack Schrupp
We help a lot of people, and I'm so happy about that. Tessa knows. She talks to them every day. We really do solve a problem, which is very rewarding. But we're not on the COVID of Inc. Magazine.

53:37
Daniel Scharff
So is there anything that you would do differently going back five years, the way that you grew this business, or just some advice you would give to another founder? Going this path of bootstrapping, any different kind of investments you would have made or something you would have changed about your product, packaging or anything like that, where, like, hey, that would have been a really a big difference if we had done this differently.

53:57
Jack Schrupp
Well, Tessa knows she likes to keep track of these to keep me humble. But I've made about every mistake you could. I've burned tens of thousands. I mean, it might be a hundred thousand dollars at this point. I've literally just burned it, wasted it. Now, obviously, I was trying to do good. I was trying to grow the business and make smart changes. But mistakes happen. Sometimes unfortunate circumstances come across your path. And I try not to linger on those moments too much. But I wouldn't change anything. I love bootstrapping a business because it requires us. It gives us the opportunity rather to constantly iterate or iterate at a really high frequency. If I had $2 million in the bank when starting this business, I probably would have purchased $2 million with a protein powder. And my first recipe wasn't very good.

54:41
Jack Schrupp
The packaging didn't look great. I didn't have a strong business to support the product and the brand, so I'd probably be still sitting on that inventory. But because I didn't have access to a lot of resources, I made a smaller purchase order and I was able to move that and then improve the product time around and do that over and over again. It's still very much happening. We just did a rebrand. We are always iterating and changing what we do, and we're able to do so because unlike some big businesses, we don't produce once or twice a year. We're constantly producing product, which means we can constantly improve.

55:17
Daniel Scharff
I love it. Thank you for those very thoughtful answers. You guys are definitely already bootstrap heroes. And now I think if you ever did want to fundraise at this point, you'd at least get a lot more capital for the slice of soul that you give away and hopefully let you achieve all of your dreams, however big you decide they may be. So, Jack, Tessa, thank you guys so much for joining us here on the podcast today. I hope you have inspired a lot of other people to become bootstrap heroes. Everyone check them out. Also, yeah, everyone check them out@drinkwholesome.com or buy them on Amazon and leave a a five star review.

55:54
Jack Schrupp
Please do. All right, thanks so much Daniel.

55:56
Daniel Scharff
Bye everyone.

55:57
Jack Schrupp
Bye bye.

56:01
Daniel Scharff
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 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.