Mom of 4 Sells $140k/mo with ONE product

Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Today we are celebrating a big milestone for one of our students who just recently crossed the million dollar threshold. My favorite student right now is Leah Boomsma because she crushed pitch week inside of the capitalism incubator. She shows up to every call, she plays full out. She's going all in on her brand and she crossed the million dollar milestone just recently at as a result of the hard work that she's doing in her brand. So we invited her on the show. This is her second time on the show because she came on previously to ask some questions about how she could cross the million dollar threshold and she did the work. Now she's pacing more like $2 million. And that's why we started this show to document the brands and the businesses coming from our community that were on their road to 1 million. To inspire you that you can do it too. So Leah is a mom of like 12 kids. I think it's four kids. But she's got a life and she's built a million dollar business that people are offering to invest in. It's in route to a multi million dollar business. She's going to sell this thing for an eight figure exit. Listen, if Leah can do this, why are you still sitting on the sidelines?

Let's go.

Whenever you're ready to start your road to 1 million, join us@capitalism.com 1 still the best opportunity for new entrepreneurs right now. Now one quick funny disclaimer. This was actually an interview with two of our students who crossed the million dollar milestone. But Jake Lovis audio was unusable. Get a new mic, Jake. Sorry Jake, we kicked you off the show but congratulations for crossing seven figures. Jake Lovis in our community also crossed the million dollar milestone and we're so proud of these two students for accomplishing this. We have hundreds more of these in our community and I hope you're next. Get off the sidelines. Let's get you to the first million. And now let's go hear this case study with my favorite student, Leah Bo.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran and I love to highlight our students that have crossed that 4 minute mile and built million dollar businesses. So both Jake and Leah have crossed that seven figure threshold in the last few months and we wanted to bring them on and hear exactly how they did it. So Jake, Leah, my first question to both of you is, do you feel different now that you have a million dollar business? Leah, I'll start with you.

I would say generally no, with the exception that I now believe it's all possible. So before I wouldn't have thought it was all possible, but now the confidence is there. There's enough evidence where I'm like, okay, I can go anywhere and do anything.

When did that switch for you? When did you have the moment where you said, I guess I can do this? When did that flip.

Really happened? When I just saw like some organic sales just explode. So, you know, a year ago in April, we had kind of a viral video and the sales exploded and I went, oh, this is actually like a real thing. When people see it, they. They want this product. I thought maybe I created something that just a few people would want. I had no idea that it could have such a broad reach. And once I saw that, I'm like, well, the opportunities are endless. Because that's just one person's post going viral and people buying on one sales channel for one product, like, I can do this and I can do it for more products and reach more people. It validates that, you know, once you've put in the hard work and you've laid all the groundwork, that once those opportunities hit, if you're ready for them, you can really take advantage.

So, Leah, you've been on the road to one million podcast before. Where we were, you had paced million dollar months, meaning you had paced over that $80,000 a month threshold, but you hadn't had a million dollars in sales in a calendar year. But you have now and you've continued to grow through that. Is there anything that you did differently to be able to maintain that that had an impact on sales or growth or the speed at which you were taking off?

Yeah, so originally, like, I was pacing to the million dollars because I had a couple of viral posts that people had put out there, but I wasn't confident that I could create that organically without the help of some random viral, uh, I felt like we were able to focus. Probably the biggest thing that changed is I focused on what, like who am I talking to and what am I telling them and how am I going to reach them and get. Not getting distracted by all the other possible things. The shiny object syndrome. And I just focused on optimizing my advertising, optimizing my reach to my customers, messaging through email or social media channels, having more consistent communication with my customers and reaching them, as you had suggested back in November when we talked. The building the community aspect of my social channels and that focus on the customers and not focus on the dollars made a huge impact because then I really. It's Interesting, because the numbers kind of people say, well, what caused this big spike? I don't know. I'm just talking to my customers and they're just showing up. I don't know specifically what's driving the results. You know, you can look at metrics, but it's, it's that, that organic conversation that's really improved.

So in other words, we stopped, we took our numbers, our eye off the numbers and onto customers and that changed the number 100%.

That's entirely, it's completely flipped the game for me.

I'm so glad to hear you say that because that's just how it works. Because, Leah, you're having a lot of organic conversations with your customers, but 90% of your sales come from Amazon. So how are you having those open conversations without having direct access to people's data?

Well, currently it's that they reach out to me so they'll find us on social media after, after they buy on Amazon, they'll find us there. And so I talk to people through mostly Facebook, Instagram, and then we have. At least often I'll get emails and things from people asking questions or even the contact us part of our website. I'll get a number of people that'll just message me there with either reviews or thoughts or comments. But more recently, we've been trying to actively engage our Amazon customers to get them onto our own list. And so that's kind of the next step or next phase is to try to drive them through other programs to get them interested in engaging with us on our website so we can get them on an email list.

But where were you a year ago before those viral spikes were coming or those influencer shout outs were starting to get you consistent sales?

Yeah, I will. I'm going to jump back and go two years ago just to give context, which is I had created my product way back in 2013 and brought it to market in 2016. Two years ago, in 2020, March of 2020, my manufacturer shut down and I had been selling about $1,000 a month. So I about abandoned ship. I said, never mind. This has been an interesting hobby. I'm going to walk away.

I decided you're doing $1,000 a month and then your manufacturer shut down.

Yep.

I didn't know this part of the story.

Oh yeah. So my manufacturer shut down in Covid. March of COVID they shut down. They said, no, I manufacture in the U.S. everyone shut down. And they were just like, nope, we just going to close up shop. And I had enough inventory to last Me, you know, through the summer. So I thought, well, I'm just going to ride this out. For whatever reason, in that May, my sales went to $3,000. And I thought, well, if my sales tripled, maybe I should find a new manufacturer. And I thankfully did. And I did stay about $3,000 a month from that May until the following April of 2021, which is a year ago.

So a year ago you're doing 3,000amonth, consistent sales, which is like a sale a day. Yeah, right? Yeah, it's like a sale a day.

Yeah. My product.

10 sales a day of your product. Okay.

Yep.

And for a whole year you were doing that and then something happened in 2021.

Yep. So I was, I was at that benchmark and then all of a sudden it was April of 2021 and one person posted one thing on TikTok and it just kind of took off for about a four day stretch and we sold the first day. I was just in shock. $38,000 in one day from that TikTok video. And that's when I said, if I can sell $38,000 in one day of this product, then I have something I need to actually put effort into this and make this a real business. So I, that was the turning point. But that was one year ago. One year and a month ago and it was.

Did you do anything to make that happen or did that happen outside of your control?

Completely outside of my control. Just a random person who had bought my product, decided to share about it. So it's just a random customer and she didn't even tag us in it. She just, you know, posted it on TikTok and she didn't even have a following. She actually, that video launched her entire TikTok channel. She went from having a few thousand followers to by the time, you know, three or four days of that video running, she had over 25,000 followers and now she has well over 100,000.

Wow, that's actually really incredible. You could have never predicted that by, by any stretch of the imagination. So what's interesting to me is you're this, this success happens, this win happens kind of out of nowhere and you decide, okay, I think I have something here. But you didn't have a strategy that you could then implement. So what did you go and do differently as a result of this big short term win? Do you understand what I'm asking?

I'm understanding exactly what you're asking. And the answer was two things. One, I bought your book and read your book. Thank you. And that was huge. And then the second thing that came out of that is I decided I need to build a brand around this. And so I joined the incubator to do that.

You build a brand around this as opposed to having a product?

Right, Because I'm just one product. I mean, that was. That was my thinking at the time. That was my mindset. I have one. One product. That's all I am. And so even though in my mind that was kind of like a brand, it really wasn't, because I wasn't focused on the customer. I wasn't focused on a journey or any other aspect that a brand would have. So that was. I read your book. Then it changed my mindset about what I'm building in terms of a business. Am I building a product or am I building a business? And. And that's when I decided I'm building a business.

And what about the incubator or what you discovered or who you met in there has impacted the way that you approach this business moving forward?

So many things. I probably couldn't list them all or do it full service, but good.

I'm glad.

But the start of it. I mean, the curriculum of the incubator starts with. There's so many aspects, but one of them is the mindset around how you structure and set up a business. I had no perspective about that. I was just kind of going with the flow. So it gave me a good insight on structure so I could be strategic about how I was spending my money. I mean, when you have a lot of money coming in, you got to know how to spend it right. And. And put it in the most effective places. And that was one thing that I've learned.

And most people don't. They do not.

No. And it's. It's easy to watch that money go, slip away. So it was helpful to know how to do the business side right. But the other thing, and the bigger thing was I went through a really long reflective process, building who is my customer and what is my vision for my business. I had never thought about either of those things. I said, well, it's a product for kids, so of course, my customer's a mom. And for a vision, I thought, well, I'm just gonna sell as many of these plastic holders as I can.

That was my strategy until I joined the incubator. And I got to think way more introspectively about that and spend a lot of time reflecting on it and building it out. And because of that process, it's made everything else easier. The community building the advertising, how to speak to my customer and, and where to focus my time has all gotten so much easier. And that is the most significant change, I guess, that the incubators brought.

Leo, one of the things that you did in the incubator is that you pitched during Pitch Week, and we highlighted that on the podcast. And I know that that was a very mind expanding experience for you. First of all, having to do all that work of putting together the pitch deck. But also you had people offering you money to invest in the business, which is exciting and scary at the same time. So what was going on in your brain? How did that impact the way that you thought about your business when you had people offering to write you checks?

Well, the first thing it did is it validated for me that my business has value. Like that. That was something. When you're preparing for Pitch Week, it's hard to feel like you're not an imposter. Right? I have this business. I might have had these sales records, but you still don't feel like a real business, or at least I didn't feel like a real business. As I prepared the pitch, I still felt unsure. How do I value my business? How do I decide what's the next strategic steps to take that I'm going to talk about in this pitch? But once you get the clarity that that process brings and going through the full thing and actually making the pitch.

You start to believe your own story. It's just kind of one of those where I got to the end of it and I was like, okay, I now believe this. I believe my business is worth this valuation. I believe that this is the trajectory I'm on and this is where I'm going to go. So from that perspective, it built just a whole level of confidence that I sincerely did not have before I did the pitch. The other side of it, though, was, you know, when people are then offering to join your business and they're interested in providing you money to be part of your business, it's a lot of competing emotions because this is something I've put all of my time and energy into for years. And so you start thinking more critically about who am I going to get involved in my business? Is this the right time to bring somebody on? To if I do bring somebody on is, you know, in terms of funding or in terms of advisory, in what role will I be able to get value out of that relationship? Can I set it up in a way that I'm serving them and they're serving me, you know, together? So that we're, you know, growing this business really well. So I, I felt like that was the, a big stepping point for me to start thinking like an owner of my business as opposed to just somebody who's working in my business.

So as far as I know, you have not accepted any of the offers of people investing in your business. So walk me through a little bit of the mental conflict or the mental decision to go in one way or the other.

Yeah, so I have not accepted any of the offers that I've received yet. And I say yet because I haven't written off the idea. I do see value in it. But what is in conflict for me is the combination of having a vision for my business and then the idea of bringing in somebody else. And if I'm bringing them in, they're providing me funding or money that I'm going to use for my business. I want to have, in my mind, I want to have a really strong and direct plan about how I'm going to use that money and where it's going to take my business. And I didn't feel I still am at the stage where I'm still deciding what that looks like and if that infusion of money is something I can use effectively, because I don't want to give up a portion of my ownership just to take on money just for the sake of taking on money. I want to have a plan for it. And so that's, that's really the conflict for me right now is deciding I have a vision, but I can achieve it without taking on funding. Will taking on funding, Can I set it up where taking on funding will allow me to accelerate that? That's, that's where I'm, I'm at.

But I just, I'm just curious, what would you have thought a year ago when you were doing $3,000 a month in sales to know that you were one year later getting offers at a seven figure valuation to invest in your business that you were saying no to?

I would not have believed it at all that I, I mean, sincerely, I, I would not have. One, I wouldn't have even thought such offers were going to come my way. And two, even if they did, I wouldn't envision the fact that I would even consider rejecting or moving away from any such offers. So, yeah, that's a big shift.

So, Leah, there's somebody who's listening to your story that is saying, all right, I'm at that point where I'm doing the $3,000 a month in sales and they can't predict or plan for the same sort of serendipity that came your way of you having a breakthrough and realizing, oh, we have something here. What would you say to the person that has been in your position or is in your position, that you were where they're getting low but consistent sales, waiting for that big breakthrough? What would you share with them?

I would say just keep laying the foundation. I mean it. Yes, the viral TikTok was absolutely a lucky break. I did nothing directly to make that happen, but what I did do was I set my business up to take advantage of that opportunity. So I had, you know, I had fully stocked inventory at Amazon. I had a manufacturer with a warehouse that had additional inventory that I had quick and easy access to, and I had all of my other structures built. I knew how I was sending my product, and I knew how my product was getting packaged, and I had all the systems in place. So when we went from selling, you know, 10 holders a day or 10 units, two packs of holders a day, to all of a sudden, one day, we're selling, you know, literally 10,000, 20,000 units in one day. We were able to go and restock that, or I guess I said that wrong. Maybe it was like a thousand. I'm trying to do the math in my head. Regardless, $40,000 in one day, we'll go with that because that's what the sales were. When that happened, you would think Amazon would be out, we'd be out of inventory, and we'd have nothing to sell for six weeks. No, because we thought that might happen in some outlandish, you know, world. This, this might occur in the future. Let's just make sure we have the channels lined up. When we had it, we were able to restock and keep it going. So we sold 40,000 in one day. Well, the next day was 30,000, and then it was averaged about $10,000 a day for a couple of weeks after that. And then we settled off and leveled a little bit lower, around $2,000 a day once the whole spike was done. But so that's, that's what my advice would be, is you just keep optimizing and building your structure and you just keep talking to your people, because you just have to have the right person. And it might. Might be somebody you know, and you might start that conversation that results in the viral post, but it might not be somebody you know. It'll just happen randomly and you got to be prepared for it. If you weren't prepared, you would have missed the opportunity.

There's a temptation to Sort of skip over what I call the grind. This temptation to skip over that time where you're laying the foundation, where you're having conversations with your customers, where you are getting reviews, where you were having those connections with people. And what I'm hearing you say is that that time was necessary in order to be able to welcome in the growth. Otherwise it would have been the hug of death. You would have exposure in sales, but you would have been out of stock. You would have been. You would have been toasted and then playing catch up from there.

Yeah, that's exactly it. And frankly, it's not just enduring the grind. It's kind of in the enjoyment part. Like, you actually need to find where you're comfortable and enjoying that. Because I was, I was comfortable in it. I thought, you know, this is good. I'm just going to keep optimizing. I'm just going to keep plugging along. It wasn't exhausting and draining. It just was exciting and I was, I was making progress. But you had to be ready.

Just what, what kept you having fun in the grind? Doing $3,000 a month for several months in a row?

Well, part of it was that it was kind of my escape. So one of the things I probably should have added when you said, where were you a year ago versus now. A year ago I was working full time. Now I'm not. Now I'm working on my business. So it was. I saw it as an outlet. I was working full time and it was fun to build my, you know, to do a random website page or to write up a random email or to create a social ad and just see how it does. And there was no pressure on the business to be anything in that time, so I was able to enjoy that aspect of it because it. I'm not saying it was a hobby, but it had that energy of being my escape from the daily grind of actual work life.

Yeah, it was. It was fun. It was light. It was a release rather than a burden.

Yep. And my customers are in my friend range. Right. Like I'm a mom, they're moms. So I enjoyed engaging with them. That part's fun.

And I think that is a really interesting lesson to highlight because there are so many entrepreneurs who get into this game for the short term money that when there isn't immediate progress, they give up or they choose something that they think will be palatable in the marketplace rather than something that they're curious about. I try not to use the word passion because passion has this heaviness, like there's only ever going to be one. But curious enough about to keep going, something that they enjoy enough, whether that be the person in Leah's case or it is the development process in Jake's case, something that fuels the curiosity to keep pounding the pavement to get through that slog, to get through that grind period. And then something hits, whether that is meeting someone or a customer talks about you, or you get the ranking on Amazon, and it takes that grind period to get through. Leah, what would you say to the person that is starting out and going through that grind period? What advice would you give them? And I know you're, you're on a lot of our coaching calls for this group inside of the 1%. So tell, tell them what you repeat over and over on those calls to.

Get somebody through that time just to keep going. I mean, whether it's, it's.

Whether you think it's going to succeed or fail isn't really as relevant as just learning that next thing and be excited about learning the next thing. So you just got to keep going to the next step. So I, one of the things I often hear is, well, how do I do this and how do I do this and how do I do that? And the answer is, you just kind of figure it out and you do it right. And once you've done.

Builds momentum and you just keep going. So there's always a question of somebody saying, well, I was trying to sell on Amazon, but it was too hard to set up the account. And I was trying to figure it out, but I couldn't figure it out. You just kind of just keep plugging along, and if you didn't get it done in one day, fine, take two days, takes you a week. Take a week. If it takes you a month, takes a month. And I mean, I honestly and candidly, it took me six months to get up on fba, you know, Amazon fulfillment channels. I was on FBM for six solid months because I just thought it was too intimidating to go to fba. And I made the switch and I went from selling a few units a week to selling 10 units a week at that time, which was a huge improvement. Right. I just had to keep going. So you just have to find that next thing and do it and know that none of it has to be perfect. I'm a bit of a perfectionist. That was a huge hurdle for me. So take, take action, imperfect action, and just go.

Now that you have accomplished what you thought was impossible a year, year and a half ago, what do you do about Going beyond that, what does the next chapter look like for you?

Well, I would have guessed that if I got to this point, I would have sold my business and just gone off and hung up with my kid. And so it's funny because I was thinking about that just this week and reflecting on it. I see. No, I love what I'm doing so much that I have no interest in abandoning it or selling it or moving on. I want to. I want to grow it and I want to see what kind of impact I can have on people. That's the thing I'm most excited about. So I'm honestly not tracking. I mean, I'm following the numbers and tracking the numbers because I'm a wise business owner, but that's not my metric. My metric now is I want to get. I have several product ideas that I want to get. I want to create them and I want to get them out there to see if I can make the impact that I want to have. And that's. That's my focus. And I just feel like that's. I'm tunnel vision on that right now. So I'm not even thinking about exit. I'm thinking about running this thing and going and having as big of an impact as I can.

Amazing. Well, I am. I am so ridiculously proud of the two of you for sticking with it, for being all in our community, for hitting the hurdle of a million dollars. And I am so all in on where both of you are going next. The two of you come up in conversations quite a lot around here because I think you both are doing it right. You've crossed that threshold and now you're casting visions. They're going to take you way beyond where you are right now. And I truly believe that this is just the beginning for both of you. So, Jake, Leah, congratulations on crossing seven figures and thanks for sharing with us. It's great to see you both.