634. "I work a full-time job and my product business is my side hustle, how do I grow my business?" | Coaching Session

Being that it's a nice, shelf, stable product, we're like, let's start getting this into stores. So that's really where my focus is now. So it's just, it's just getting all the processes in place to get there.

Hi, I'm Jacqueline Snyder and this is the Product Boss podcast. I've helped launch and grow thousands of product based businesses, even one of my own. And over the last 20 years, I've seen behind the scenes of businesses just like yours. Whether they are makers, manufacturers, artists, or food and beverage businesses. I have spent so many hours studying it all. I've discovered what makes them successful, what mistakes they could have avoided, how did they turn their ideas into successful business? And what are the strategies that they have used to make more sales and be discovered by more customers. And this is what this show is all about. Whether you're just starting out or you're looking to become a million dollar product boss, or I'm here to give you the permission to chase your dreams no matter how big or small. All you need is the right mindset, a little courage, strategy and support, and you too can be the next million dollar product boss. Let's do this. Hey, Product Boss. And welcome back to another coaching session on the Product Boss podcast. I'm Jacqueline Sater. I am your product biz coach and podcast host for this episode. So today I'm really excited to bring this incredible, incredible coaching session with Julie of Savor Kitchen. Now, Julie and her husband have been selling gourmet nut mixes, barbecue sauces and salad dressing since 2016. Right. They've been in business for quite a while now, with most of their sales coming from local farmers markets. Julie is exhausted because this is not her full time job. This company is her side hustle. And so that's resulting in all of her date days. Like when her and her husband hang out. They hang out every Sunday at markets selling their product. Listen, she's been doing this for almost a decade. It's exhausting. And if you do in persons, you know how exhausting it is as well. So what I know is that they love what they're doing, they love the product they're making, but they're ready to expand beyond those in person markets. They're just concerned about their capacity being able to keep up and how to prioritize in the most effective way to grow their business without giving up more of their time. Because honestly, Julie doesn't have very much of it. So that's exactly what we're gonna get into today. All right, You Ready? Let's get started. So tell me a little bit about, like what you're currently selling and where you're selling it.

So I'm currently selling. We have gourmet nut mixes, we have barbecue sauces, and we have salad dressings. The bulk of my business right now is farmers markets and I kind of want to move out of that realm. So we've been in business since about 2016. We started doing the nut mixes. That was the bulk of it at the farmers markets. All of our customers started commenting on they were using the nut mixes on their salad. So that led us into the salad dressing. So they were. That's the correlation there. The salad dressings and the barbecue sauces have really took off. They're really where all our business is lying. And being that it's a nice shelf, stable product, we're like, let's start getting this into stores. So that's really where my focus is now. So it's just, it's just getting all the processes in place to get there.

Totally. Okay, so to jump into your questions for this session. So it sounds like your biggest struggle right now is time. So you still work, you have a full time job and this company.

I do.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah. Yeah. And I.

Because you're cooking.

Yeah, yeah. It takes forever. We did production yesterday and we're there for six hours. I did figure out, at least when we were making the sauces there is like that waiting time because it has to come up to temperature. And you know, obviously that takes a good couple hours for it to do that. While that's coming up to temperature, I make the nut. So I can take that kitchen time and I can divide the cost over different products which then that helps with that per batch. But yeah, I work full time time. Last year they promoted me. So there's that, you know, and I would love obviously at all, we all would. To get to the point where I don't have to have my full time job. But right now that's what pays the mortgage.

Totally. So who do you have that support for you right now in this business?

My mom and I were the ones that started it. So she obviously, she's a, you know, my great support. And then now that we're doing the sauces and the barbecue sauce, it's my husband and I do that side of it. So when I do production, it's him and I.

So.

So at this point, I don't have any employees. It's just the three of us.

Okay.

Doing.

Doing all the things and you Said six hours in the kitchen. That was a Sunday. So your weekend, you're cooking. And then let's say in that six hours yesterday, how much product were you able to make?

We made 310 bottles. Okay, so like 25 cases.

And how long will that take you.

To go through at this point? Well, going into the holidays, which obviously is a whole nother thing right now, that'll probably take me a few months to get through.

But.

But as I scale with wholesale, obviously it's gonna go down a lot faster than if I was just doing farmer's markets where I'm selling like four.

Okay, and then what's the shelf stability of it? So we've made it. How long will it last?

It's two years.

Oh, wow, great. Okay, perfect.

I know. That's the good thing.

All right, so you said in order to make this strategy session a success to you, you're looking for direction on how to properly prioritize what needs to be done first and what to do to make the biggest impact. So it looks like the two things you wanna cover, it all comes back to time. So when I said your biggest struggle, that's at. We're at. So you said the first thing is juggling all the things and knowing what and how to prioritize to get to your goals. You feel like you're always working on things and forever running into hurdles. And then the second thing is website analysis. So why is it not converting? I'm getting approximately 30 site visits a day, but nothing is converting. Well, I know that the website won't be my largest sales platform. I'd like to do something.

Right.

Sound accurate? Yes. Okay, so before we go to the website, let's go to, like, the biggest problems. So right now you have nights, you have maybe lunch breaks, mornings, depending on what kind of person you are, and then weekends. So let's. If we can work backwards from your goals, maybe we can come up with a math problem to solve versus a feeling like the. The world keeps getting in your way. Your business currently, you know, you're doing about $2,000 ish a month. Some months are probably higher, some months are lower. What for the rest of this year, for this last quarter, where would you like it to be?

So for the last quarter, I would like to.

I have.

How many do I have? I have like seven big shows planned so far. So I'm going to say on a conservative side, a thousand each show. So that's 7. 7,000 there, plus two extra days sitting in the wing. If I can get into those. So seven to nine. So that'll bring me up pretty good. My only potential hiccup there is do I have enough product on hand? So I haven't done that. I haven't backed into that number yet, obviously, but.

Okay, so the only way you're currently selling that I. That I know of right now is this. These in person markets. And you have about seven shows planned over the next three months.

Yeah, and that's on top of the standard farmer's markets that are every Saturday.

Okay, so you are doing standard every Saturday, Same location every Saturday.

Uh, one of. We have two. We do two. Um, one is every Saturday and the one is every other Saturday.

So do you guys split up?

Yeah, my husband does one and I do the other.

Okay, so your weekly, your Saturdays, what do those usually bring in in terms of revenue?

Um, anywh from 200 to 500.

And what are people buying at those?

You know, it's really a range. This past weekend, it was barbecue sauce. We sold like three cases of barbecue sauce. Like the week before it was all nuts. So it's really across the board. Like, if you look at our best sellers, it's literally one from each category.

And then are the same people coming to you at these markets, since it's a farmer's market, are they big markets? Are they small town markets? Like, what. How many people do you think come by?

I believe the. Each market gets about 2,000 people.

Okay. So they're. They're like a bigger. I'm thinking, because there's where my husband lives up, his parents live in Northern California. It's like at the church parking lot and it's just the locals and it's not a lot of people. Right. So I'm just wondering, like, the size of your farmer's markets.

They're probably two of the bigger ones in this air, like in my immediate area, they're really close to me, which is nice.

Okay, and do they, when you present them an 11, right? Is it 11 for the sauces? Yeah, an 11 sauce. Do people say that's too expensive or they like, yes, great, I'll buy a couple.

So full disclosure, I literally just upped to that price. They were. The dressings were eight and the barbecue sauces were nine. And I had up. And two years ago I upped those. When I did up them, people were literally like, it's about time. I was like, oh, okay, okay, well, that's good. It's like, all right.

They're like, just ask me for more money while they're I know, right?

Yeah. So now.

So have you tested this new price point yet at an in person?

I have, I have not. So I think, I don't think it's going to be a problem. But it was one of those things where prices, as, you know, prices have just continue to go up on everything.

Yeah.

And I'm like, I can't totally, you know, I'm losing money if I don't up it these few bucks. So.

Great. So, and I, the reason I ask is that it can be twofold. Right. Like a lot of people start with in person and some people feel like it works sometimes, some people don't feel like it works. And it also might come down to who your customer is there. Right. So if we're starting to charge a whole foods type price point for a dressing, we depends on the socioeconomic, like factors that go into the locals that come to these markets. Right. We sometimes we sell where it's the easiest. Like the lowest hanging fruit is our town, but maybe our town isn't built for the product we have. I had someone who did an in person market and she had a 90 candle and people were like 90 for a candle. But she could sell that all day, every day in a Nordstrom's. For example, I talk about Paloma Danger with her company and she had 18 reusable sponges in her small town. And I think it was Washington. People were like 18 bucks. She goes to Los Angeles or San Francisco or New York and she sells out. So sometimes it's where your customer is, it's misaligned with where your business is set up. And so I think this weekend you're going to test this new price point and maybe what we can do is come up with some sort of offer. The more they buy, the lower it goes down. So like if they want to get closer to that, like nine bucks or something like that, if they buy more, they can get it. So do you do any show offers when you're in person?

We do sometimes on a just an average daily farmer's market. I don't, but when we do some of the bigger shows, I do try to do, do some sort of incentive like that, you know, buy three and get like $3 off. So I always do it around like an odd number. So once you buy three items, then you start to get dollars off and then it goes from there.

Okay, so let's come up with some better incentives. So the two ways that you're gonna grow this business and make more money are gonna, it's either gonna Be lead acquisition, which means you're gonna need more customers to know you exist. It's a little bit like what you're saying, that 30 people or so land on your website. It's not converting. Well, we need way more people to land to have like the conversion you're looking for. Because if you think about all the people that land on your website, which percentage of those were looking for it versus are bouncing because they were looking something else up and they just happened to be on your site and they left, then it's usually like a 1 to 3% conversion rate. So for every hundred people that land there, one to three of them may purchase. So that shows you it's a volume play, but so there's lead acquisition. So how do people discover you? How do you get these people to customer acquisition? You're doing that right now at your in person shows because you're getting exposure to everyone through foot traffic that everyone's coming to these shows, whether it's the upcoming big shows or it's your weekly Saturdays. Okay. The second lever to pull is your customer retention. So once they buy, how do we get them to buy again and again and again. And that's really looking at the lifetime value of a customer. So knowing what your revenue is and then knowing each customer that comes in, there's going to be an average amount spent across all of them. So for example, the bigger your company gets, you might say, for every customer I get, like with all the data that comes in, it's like $180 lifetime value. Meaning? Meaning the more customers you get, you can actually mathematically compute, you know, if you get a thousand customers at $181 value, then you know, it's a hundred what, $181,000. Company I know that's getting a little mathy, but what I'm just trying to say to you is, is that when you can get your customers to come back in and buy again, it's way easier to get them to buy again from you than trying to acquire a new customer. So we're going to work on two different things here. It's going to be one. What you've got a consumable product. So how do we get them to use it and then come back again and buy again and again and again? That's the easiest way for you to make more money.

Yeah, if you look at the website, it's. I'm working on building it out, but I have a recipe section because I really like to give people alternative ways to use it, yes, it's salad dressing, but it can be used as a marinade. That's. I use it more as a marinade personally. It's just how, you know, we're big grillers, obviously because we do barbecue sauce, but even different ways to use a barbecue sauce. So I, so I, I'm. My goal is that they feel like they're getting more value out of that bottle than just, oh, I have to do barbecue to be able to use it. No, you can use it for other things.

Well, but what I'm trying to say is like they run out of the bottle. And so data that you might want to look at and you don't have a lot of online data. So it's not like we can pull a report. But you may either from just knowing the people who come to you and seeing like, oh, this person, they came up to you and they said, hey, I ran out, I need more. Is there a way that you can look at your transactions or we to kind of see, okay, looks like they come back to me every 45 days. They come back to me every two weeks. This is the data because once you kind of know if you can, let's say, start to grow your email list. So these people, could you get them to buy and then do a subscribe and so then like, you know, they can order it, they can be replenished to them, you know, like every 45 days they get a new bottle. Every 30 days they get a new bottle. Or when you grab their info, you set up some sort of backend way of contacting them. It's like, you know, hey, Jacqueline, you running out? Like, let me get you some more. Hey, we're going to be at this market. Let's fill up your, fill up your stock. Right? It's harder right now with you online, but this is when we're thinking about your website long term, this will be a great way to work on the back end. So to talk about raising your revenue at your in person markets to crush these goals, what we need to do is we need to get those customers to spend more with you when they're there. So that's why if we can come up with some good offers to get them to spend more, the same amount of customers will still come by and, and have like a convert with you, right? They'll still buy, but how do we get them to buy more? Even $5 more is huge. You know, $10 more. Like you get somebody to double how many bottles they buy. Now you've doubled your revenue to the same amount of customers. So that's like the easies. You can sell to the exact same amount of customers. But if we can raise our average order value, that's where the money gets made. So from a bottle perspective, from your intuition and your data, how many bottles does the average person buy when they come and shop with you? Like how many bottles of sauces or dressings combined?

I think that usually it's two. So like by two dressings or like a dressing and a barbecue sauce.

Okay, so now that it's 11 bucks. Ish. Right. They're going to be spending about $22 with you versus 16 to $18. Could we make it something that if they buy three, like, it drops in price. So if they're on average buying two, can we get them to buy a third?

Buy one more.

And the more they buy, the closer it'll be to the original price. But they're spending more with you. So then what I do is if I go to. If I go to checkout now and they're constantly trying to upgrade my cart or. Because if you're already getting someone's credit card out and they're going to spend with you, how do you get them to spend even more? So they might say, like, hey, I want to do the three bottles of. And they can mix and match between the sauces and the dressings. Then once they do that, you can say, hey, you know, by doing this, we actually have this other offer that that is like, get, you know, three packs of nuts, get the fourth one free or something like that. Right. And it's just X amount of dollars. And that's how you start to get somebody. When they're like, they're in the buying mode. They're going to try and buy from you. You. You make them an offer and then a better offer and something that they can't say no to because they're like, oh, my God, that's such a good deal. Yeah, okay, I'll do it. It's the same way that grocery stores try and sell us magazines and gum at checkout. Right. It's at point of sale. That's how they get us to spend more at stores. Okay.

I like the. I was thinking about doing the best seller bundle, but I don't know if I can get the boxes that I would need for it for the holidays at this point. I don't know what the lead time is.

Don't overcomplicate it. Just sell it to them. Okay. As a pack of them. Okay. Like, it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be gifted in a certain way. I mean you could like. And you could charge them extra, right? Like you could have there like some cellophane and a basket and some, you know, crunchy paper and you'd be like, would you like a gift wrap for an additional $5? Yeah, that'd be great. Come back.

Yeah, I did boxes last year. I sold a ton of those because it was like ready packaging done. You know, people just put it in a bag and hand it to people and people love to barbecue, so yeah, I like that.

And even like Uline or some sort of like online thing, you can get like cardboard. It's just about putting it in something. I remember when I bought it from Paloma, I saw her at Renegade Craft fair last year. It was holidays and I ended up buying and it was not cheap. I bought, I think it was like close to 100 bucks. And I bought this like reusable kitchen gift set for my mother in law. And it was like, and it's great product and I bought one for myself. It was like three products in it, but she had it bundled in a nice giftable way. And it was just in a cardboard box, like looked like a lunchbox, but it wasn't, you know, and it was just kind of in there with a pretty bow on top. So it was just the fact that I could like, it had a little bit of ribbon and it was something I could just like hand her and I did not have to wrap it. So don't over complicate it. Yeah, okay. Just solve for pick them. I'll put them in, I'll tie a cute bow. Here you go. Here's your like. And it could be like if it's for a guy, right, because guys love barbecue sauces and stuff. Like you can have like a gifts for him section, a gifts for the hostess, a gifts for whatever. They just need you to make the connection for them. Oh. Like I bought my husband from one of our students her entire hot sauce pack. It was like seven hot sauces and it came in a thing and he got that. And then other people might do that and you might say like, hey, you can buy the five dressings, the four or whatever. And they're actually, they make great stocking stuffers. Like just suggest to them ways that they can save by buying more and then they can gift them out separately too. Does that make sense?

Yeah. And I, I, you know, and you kind of said it. Well, I tend to like, oh, I'm going to do A gift set. Oh, I need to put it in a box. Oh, I need to make it, you know, brand worthy and all pretty with each thing. You know, rather than just, you know, let's just put it in a box and put a bow on it.

Yeah, yeah. Make it easy, keep it simple, seller, right? Don't over complicate this that you don't get to it. Just make it, just solve for it. Like, we don't need beautifully branded boxes, especially for buying in a market. But if I could just pick my sauces and put them in. Or you're like, here's the bestseller, here's the hostess gift, here's the gifts for him. You might just put signs out that say it. So I want you to come up with some good offers in which you can sell more than two bottles. If on average they're buying two, then they can pay full price. If we want them to do three or more, maybe they could get a discount. That would be with the nuts, that would be with the sauces and dressings. We just want them to buy more of it. You can go in and make more if we need to, but what we want to do is we want to drive the revenue there. Because when you can prove to yourself that you can sell more, you're also gonna have more confidence in buying more raw goods. Do you see what Julie and I were able to figure out? So when it comes to growing your business and lead acquisition, one of the best ways to not have to continually market and bring in more customers, which by the way, takes even more time and is something that Julie just does not have right now, is to figure out a way to have a compelling offer or an upsell to increase your average order value. So for Julie, that may look like potentially adding on an upsell during checkout to try and get her customer to buy a third bottle. Right? So if they get a third bottle with each purchase, or she can offer a bestselling bundle of sauces. So it's an easy yes for her customers. The is we want them to buy more than just one thing. So by getting our customers to purchase more with each transaction, not only does she save herself from having to market and bring in more and more customers, Right? She can just sell more to the same customers. It's going to allow her to boost her revenue, which I know is what she wants, right? Less effort, more money. So I want you to always try to think about working smarter, not harder. And remember that it's a lot easier and more cost effective to get your current customers to purchase more than it is to constantly be working on bringing in new customers. It's exhausting. I know. It's this blend between the both. So now let's dig a little deeper into Julie's nut offerings. Yep. She sells nuts as well and how they may or may not help her grow her business. Or, you know, another option is you get nuts made by someone else if the sauces are hard to make somewhere else. Right.

I've thought about that. There actually is somebody in my area that could completely do that. So I just need to talk to her.

So. Yeah. So if nuts is something that you want to keep on board, if, if you feel like your nuts are important or you're calling them salad toppers. Right. Like, maybe there's a different way to differentiate yourself than just like trying to compete with wonderful and all those things, but outsource that so that you only have to worry about the sauces and the dressings. You know, it's. I know you can do them at the same time, but there, there's just probably better efficiencies that you could make. Right.

Yeah.

And. Or you decide that you're not going to do nuts anymore. If you felt like where the company is going is in the dressings and sauces. I'm also going to give you permission to let go of the nuts.

That's definitely been a conversation. We've really thought about it and I do want to try to keep them being the fact that, you know, one of them is our best, one of our best sellers. But I need to, I want to position them as like, for charcuterie trays. And that's it. Which was their original premise. My mom was a cheese specialist and a gourmet grocery store. So she came, she was. This whole company was her brainchild to start with because she's like, she wanted to retire, but she's like. I'm like, but you need to do something. Do something. I don't care what you do, do something. And she's like, we're gonna make nuts. And I'm like, for what?

Okay. You know, she's like, I've worked my whole life and I get to retire. Like, no, mom. Become an entrepreneur and start a product based business.

That wasn't quite where my head was at.

You're like, how's the beach now? No, I mean, I, I totally get it. So, yes, that's how it started, but that doesn't mean that it has to be your full story. So a couple things with nuts is that one. It's processed in a facility with nuts. Right. So there's always, always nut allergies. From an in person market perspective. Yeah, Nuts tend to sell well. They get to try them. They're like, oh yeah, I'll get them. Maybe they're snacking on them, whatever. But from a growth perspective, and this is just my gut, it's not with data. I see you being able to scale the sauces and really becoming. Because nuts are like a commodity that I feel like a lot of people can get, if that makes sense. And so even if you go into any grocery store or not any, but let's say whole foods, like they have bulk nuts that you can just scoop out. Right. Or it's like majorly packaged, put on by some big corporation nuts. So there has to be this like differentiator that really allows you to scale the nuts versus the sauces. Have these like. And the dressings have a taste profile that is proprietary and it's a recipe you've created. So I'm not going to tell you to turn off any faucet, but as you're going through this, just start to consider, you know, that's could be the thing that you do during the holidays, but you don't do the rest of the year. Right. So there's options for you to do it. Like when people are hosting and it makes a lot of sense for gifts and hosting, whatever. Sure. Maybe you add those on and you don't necessarily make them or you cope. You co brand with somebody. Like you don't even make them anymore. You get her to make them, you put your own label on them. Like there's so many ways that you can do it. Like white label nuts. But I don't know that that is the, the thing that's making you stand out is your. I think your packaging is. Am so good job, dear. I don't say that to everybody. So good job to you and your team that created that. And then it just feels like it might have more. Right?

Yeah. No, I agree with you on the nuts. There were. We did have eight flavors and we've dropped it back down because some of them, they just, the turnover with them wasn't there. And I'm like, I'm not going to just sit and make them and just sit on them and like, let's just get rid of them. So we now have, we have, now we have six. We had five, now we have six. Because somebody challenged me to make something really hot and I did it and everybody loves it. So, so I'm like Okay. They're super easy. So I'm like, okay, we'll keep those for right now. But yeah, I was even contemplating on those dropping it down to like three flavors. So that could be like, maybe they only come in a bundle and you can only get those three flavors and you have to buy like the whole like charcuterie starter pack or whatever you want to call it, you know, and that's the only way the nuts come, if we do them and continue to do them at all. Like I said, it's definitely been a conversation that we've talked about. So.

So looking at your nuts, your bestsellers, you've got your sesame glaze pistachios and pepitas. You've got some that are consider considered toppers. What are your best sellers out of these?

The Sesame glazed pistachios is by far the number one bestseller of all the nuts. That one followed by the cheesy jalapeno peanuts. Those are the two top sellers.

And are people eating them as like putting them on their yogurt or their salads? Are they just eating them out of the bag like nuts?

It's really kind of across the board. I have some people that specifically buy them. Like, she literally keeps the container in her car and like that's what she eats. Like snacks on the. While she's driving. I have another lady that gets. She makes a slaw salad and they go in that salad. I have another lady that puts it on. She'll only eat a salad with the sesame glazed pistachios on it. Like things of that nature. Where the peanuts, the cheesy jalapeno peanuts, like those are just a snack, you know.

Okay, so you know, you sell em for 6.997 bucks. Nine bucks. Like it's not. They're not like make or breaks. I know that your company is still small, but either you call them, you know, when you call them toppers, like, I don't know of make sense if it was on a shelf. So you might need to use language that it makes sense as, like, could be topper, but it's like for salads and yogurts or granola, you know, it's like almost like an alternative to granola in a way. It adds extra flavor. But I'm not gonna tell you to stop making them. But it is, it takes you from a snack company to a sauce and like a dressing company. And they are very different even in your production. Do you see where I'm leading Julie here? I really want her to think about what products she wants and should offer going forward. Now, while Savor Kitchen started off as a nut mix company, she found more success with selling her sauces and her dressings. Does that immediately mean that she should just stop selling nuts? No, not necessarily. But if she's going to be looking for the easiest and most scalable route for her company, then she's going to want to lean into focusing on her products that her customers want, right? Which with her sales are proving that her customers want the sauces and the dressings. Plus, right now, she's bordering between a snack and and sauce and dressing company, or a combination of all three, which are kind of different companies, right? Sauces and dressings can be one, but snacks and nuts are a totally different type of company. And this is difficult when it comes to production. This is difficult when it comes to marketing, right? We really want to think about how if she's feeling overwhelmed and she's feeling confused, it's because it's over complicated. And it might be time to start to pull some things away to simplify this process. Now, I say this all the time, but especially in Julie's case when she's already so low on time and knows her customers prefer her sauces, it might be time to keep it simple. Seller. So simple may seem boring. I know, especially for my creatives out there, right? We're like, no, I want to keep making. I have all these ideas. But you know, what's better than just making and having all the ideas? Making money, right? Buying back your time. When your products start to sell and they sell well, then you're actually going to have more time that you can have a hobby. Maybe Friday you still make, but it's not making to try and sell stuff, but it's something where you get to to explore your creativity. So what I really want you to think about is simple, maybe boring, but simplicity is what grows and leads your business to success. So now let's discuss the root cause that's preventing Julie from being able to actually expand her business, which actually is her lack of time. And I know we all feel this way, too. Happy holidays. Okay, don't think. Jacqueline, what are you talking about? It's still warm outside. I know, but guess what? We want to get you uber prepared for this holiday season, because what we want is that you can get consistent sales, right? Have steady growth and keep growing your business beyond always having to offer a discount during the holiday season to drive sales. So if you want to get prepared while it's still warm outside, you can jump in and grab 101 content ideas beyond the Holiday Discount. And it is a bundle of content, prompts, tools, hashtags and templates. And it includes a three month calendar with things to say every single day from October to December. It is so helpful. So go out, enjoy the sunshine and feel uber prepared for the holiday season when you grab yours. Now just head to Holiday contentideas. Com. So move through this year. But I think, I think that the concept of raising your prices for these sauces and then trying if they want, you're going to test this new price point in person might be harder than long term. So you're just going to have to play with the numbers. I know that I, that you're looking at my price structure and yeah, like you're probably, you're paying. It's hard for you to get to that because of your cost of goods and your labor. Right. You're not at scale. So if you can find out at scale what you can do your production for, you might be able to drop back down to that 8,9ish. Let's say if you find that people aren't buying it at that higher price point or the customer's not aligned and then you just know that you're within range. Where it gets hard for me with people, I had this one person once, it was like, I wanna compete with like, just imagine like a really high end denim brand with all their rips and stuff like that. Like you pay for that hand. People like to do denim with holes in the knees. Like someone's hand sandpapering those knees. So that's why it costs more. My grandpa used to be like, how why are you paying more for holes in your jeans? I was like, grandpa, like this, you know, costs more because there's more labor involved. And I remember somebody who wanted to hire me, she's like, I want to create jeans that look like that, the 180 jeans, but I want to sell them for 25 bucks. And I was like, hey, not possible. Because if you're going to sell 25 jeans, you either need to be an H and M or a Zara that's doing like mass production overseas and doing all sorts of things that aren't aligned with a small business or we have to actually work backwards into what an actual price point is. So we looked at manufacturing facilities and companies to say, okay, if we did a hundred with you, if we did 300, if we did a thousand, because at some point the price is going to hit a max price break and you can't Go lower. So in your brain you might say I want to do it at this price but it actually may not be feasible. So that's really where I just want you to play in. From what I've kind of positioned in my programs for pricing to what it's costing you right now in small batch, small way of doing it. And then if we worked with a co packer what that would look like because that might give you a. Then you might price to that where right now you're not making as much of a margin. But we know we're more closely, accurately priced for when you do get there versus charging more right now because your labor costs more. Because we haven't been able to scale to a co packer yet. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, it's definitely something I've, you know, I know and like I said, I just raised the prices because knowing I needed to charge more. But at the same I don't want to price myself out of my market either. And I think it's like a, like a kind of a fine line of.

Yeah, you're going to test and try. So from everything I've said so far, how are you feeling or what did you hear me say that you think you want to enact into your business?

So far I am definitely going to do the, the offers, the special deals when you, you know, buy more, get more idea and then I'm interested in further looking into the co packing item is something my husband and I kind of really talked fairly long about last night because of course we were just finished production so it was like really fresh in our head. Like do we, you know, continue to do it ourselves, build out our own facility, hire people to make it and do it that route or do I just, you know, turn it over to somebody else and find somebody that can make it properly?

Yeah, and I think in answering that is before you build out facilities, we need proof of concept. And so what we need to do is we need to prove this concept. You're doing it right now in person and limited to the places you're going in person to where you are located. And then proof of concept is really going to come down to can you sell a lot more of these? Can will grocery stores buy from you or will small food specialty markets. So before you worry about that, I would rather you work with a co packer where you free up your Sunday, right. You get your weekends back. You would probably all day every day take less of a profit if you could. It's basically buying back your time and then you work on scaling the company and growing it and selling more of it, versus in the kitchen. Your time is not best spent in the kitchen. Your husband's time's not best spent there. Your mom's time is not best spent there. What really is better is that you're all working on the vision, the marketing, the sales. Because it's not a business without sales and someone else should be working on the making of it. So one of your very first ways to do it could be that you're both not in the kitchen doing it. One person does it and you switch off or you hire someone for 15, 20 an hour. Depends, like where we are located in the world, like what our minimum wages are and what you think. And you train them on it, you know, or you train them on a certain part of it so that you have more time to do it. And I know the company's not making a ton of money, but like you said, you're so limited and in, in the expansion or you make a decision with your husband where you're like, hey, babe, I need you to. This is how I did. Hey, babe, I need you to be, you know, cooking on Sundays while I do, while I'm at the markets on Saturdays and then on Sundays I'm going to be working on X. Right. Because we just need you all, we need to multiply your efforts in more places than the doing.

Yeah, we do it together because it's one of those. It's. There's no automation to it, so we kind of need two people. You know, it's hot and it's heavy, so.

Right.

You know, I can't lift the buckets. And that's what he's for.

So then could you then hire somebody, high school kid, a friend that needs extra money to come in for those six hours once a month and be that assistant. Right, right.

That makes sense.

Yeah. Another option eventually is you hire someone to run the markets for you. So I had a student of ours do that, where she was like, I'm done doing these markets by myself. And she trained people and they went to market. So she paid them an hourly fee, she trained them into how to do it. They hauled it all over, they set up the tent, they sold, they came back, they got paid their fee, she made the money from it. She did not have to physically be there. So I know this is kind of like going down the road a little from where your revenue is, but I just want to show you potential of there's other options than the way you're doing it right now and you may not be ready to jump into those other options. But I want to just. If I seed it in your mind, it will blossom into something else else down the road. You won't feel so stuck.

Yeah. Other things to think about and get my head out of the same mindset that it's been in.

Yeah. Feeling stuck at what you know now versus what you don't know. And I think just you're doing a good job and you've already done it with the co Packers. You're doing a job like fact finding. So going through and saying what do I need to know before I decide? Like you're piecing all the pieces together to know then what your next move could be. So if an obstacle feels like packaging, just ask that question. And it might not be a thing that you're doing this very moment in the holiday season because it sounds like you're also very busy, but maybe it's a 2025 goal. And I do think your stuff could be on Amazon prime and you could reach a lot, you know, a lot more people. And then knowing like is like again, if you use keto or sugar free or like there's certain words that people are going to look for the thing to point out to you. And we had, had Dave's hot sauce. No, not Dave. We had a hot, a hot sauce company on the podcast years ago. He's a huge company. Do you know that at grocery stores they pay like $25,000 to be on that shelf? So grocery stores is a game. Like same with the books at bookstores. Sorry. At airports they pay for their books to be on the shelves at airports. It's not just like the bookstore buying it. So knowing this world that you're stepping into, it may not be that you want to do that yet or it could be that you go to a local market. Like there's H E B in Texas, there's Whole Foods. Or like you can go to your local specialty grocery store and say, hey, I've got this, I'm a local. I'd love to do a pop up with you. And they'll also do things where you could just set up a booth there the same way that you do in person and do like a taste day, for example. And if they start to see traction, they might buy a small amount of it and say like a local business and have it in the grocery store. So those are the ways for you to get your foot in without thinking. You need to go super, super big to get into A specialty market or a store, right?

Yeah, we've kind of started doing that. There's a couple local ones in the area. Now that we're getting to the point with our own production and making it ourself, making as big a batch as we can each time. Rather than like, oh, we just want to go to the kitchen for three hours, we'll make whatever we can make in three. No. Now it's like, no, I'm filling the kettle to the very, very tippy top and I'm going to make as many bottles as possible. That way I have it and then I have time once it's made to then go sell it. So now I have some backstock where I can get it into the stores and not worry about, you know, oh, I can't fulfill this order that they want, you know, in seven days.

Well, you're operating from the way that certain online websites that sell wholesale have kind of trained people these days to be more reactive than proactive. Typically when people are buying wholesale, they understand that there's a production lead time. So when you do eventually sell, you will take orders and then you'll go into production on it versus you need to be sitting on inventory and trying to sell that inventory. That is more direct to consumer model versus no one can roll up to Primal Kitchen and say, like, handy, you know, a gazillion bottles tomorrow. They may or may not have the inventory, but most likely they've been making the sales ahead of time and they, they have projected out, oh, our shipment in January. We need X amount of bottles to. To send out because they've already received the purchase orders. It's not on demand, so you might operate that way to start. But I also want you to know that long term, if you do get an order from a grocery store, it will be. You will tell them, I need, you know, 45 days for production. Great. We'll have it in the store October 15th. Right. Or whatever day it is.

Right. And I think that also would, you know, aligns more with the. Some of the bigger stores where they're ordering not a case at a time, you know.

Correct.

So.

Right. So for everybody that's either listening or for you, traditional manufacturing people take orders and then they go into production. It's not the other way around, but the way that things have kind of moved. What that's called is immediate or open to sell. Open to sell means what do you have open to sell? What's available in your inventory that I can buy from. That's an immediate and smaller Stores, people newer to the industry, they might be looking to fill in holes, but the way that you really establish presence in a store. I talk about this with one of our students in msm. She has a gift store, plus she has her own blanket. And she said she's like, if I want to order anything from Ty, which is like the Beanie Baby manufacturer, she's ordering it, like, a full nine months ahead. She doesn't get to order today to get to her store next week. So stores are working with bigger companies or even small companies that have set up this precedent. And then they might say, what do you have open to sell? Oh, I've got, you know, I've got two cases of X on the shelf, but then I can get the rest to you in 45 days. Great, we'll do that. Or, oh, we'll wait 45 days. Or in apparel, it's three months for production. So that's just, again, another mindset thing to realize there are other ways that this can be done versus you feeling reactive. The reactive is keeping you safe, stuck. So I want to, like, help you think about, because one of the things you said is how do I properly prioritize what needs to be done first? So let's set some goals. So from all the markets over the next three months, October, November, December, I'm going to push us to. You could be making anywhere between like 12,000 to 15,000 over the next three months. Does that sound reasonable?

Yeah, that'd be reasonable.

Okay, so it's about $5,000. Let's just do $5,000 months.

Yeah, that's what I figured.

Okay. But depending on when the shows are, it might shift. So one month might be an $8,000 a month. Another month could be $3,000 a month. It just depends on when your markets are. I want you to work backwards, and I want you to think, if I were to make a thousand dollars from each show, how many orders do I need to get at what average order value to hit that? It turns into a math problem. So you might be able to look at your Saturday markets and say, I sell maybe 20 people, 30 people, a hundred people. I don't know how many people typically buy from you on a Saturday. You probably look up some of that, then say, okay, let's say 20 people buy from me and they spend $20 each when they buy from me. That puts you at a number. Right. We're making 400 bucks, which is right in that kind of, like, average. So you might say, okay, if they're spending about 20 bucks with me. Can I get them to spend 25? If you can incrementally, just think, what offer can I make them that's going to get them to spend five more dollars? Or maybe it's like, hey, because you've purchased this, you can pick any net for five bucks. Let's just say something like that, right? Just think, how can I get them to spend $5 more or $10 more? Thinking about your different offers, you can test and try, see what sticks. Everything's test and try. And now it's a math problem. Now you're like, great, I normally make $300 on this show, but now that I know how to sell this, I'm gonna make four to $500 every Saturday because I know exactly what to offer them. And the Saturdays are gonna be great tests for then the seven big shows. It's the same idea. If I wanna make about a thousand bucks. And on average people spend. Do you know what your average order value is on the old pricing?

If they're buying two, let's say like 18.

Okay, so I'll go with it. I'll go with the 20 bucks. Seems like it was pretty accurate. So you need to make 50 sales at those shows at 20 bucks each to make your thousand dollars, right?

Yeah.

So knowing that if we had that thousand dollars and we divided by 30 instead of 20, now you only have to make 33 sales. Yeah.

It doesn't seem so like such a big number when you break it down.

Do you see how that works? So the 50 sales could still come and we can up the average order value or if we get less than that, still upping the average order value, getting more people to spend more with you.

I have all sorts of ideas for incentives going on now. So this is good.

And that's what I want to push towards you is like math, not drama. And that's what I do with my launches and everything that I do, I work backwards. And the last two times that I've launched a product, I have been quite accurate it on the revenue brought in because I know my conversion points, I know what my average order value is and I know, I know the total amount of people I need to bring to convert them. That's very mathy, but it makes my nervous system better. So it's the same math and it's just getting into your math part of your brain. Unlike, I just need a little bit more money spent with me. Every transaction. Math, not drama. Simple. You'll hit these goals. You just look at it like and you test and try offers. And so thinking about your overwhelm, I.

Have all sorts of ideas for incentives going on now. So this is good.

Write them. Great. Write them all down and then think about the first one you want to try. Right. Like confused customers don't buy. So don't make too many offers at once. But test, you know, test and try so you're ready for your big thousand dollar days.

Yeah. And I think the big, the big markets, that's going to be a, definitely a different incentive than what I'm going to do at my farmer's markets with the people that buy from me every week.

Yep. Yeah.

Because they don't need a bestseller bundle. They already know the product.

Yeah. So but connect for them. This is a great gift for him. Right. This is a great gift for the guy who loves to grill and cook. Right. This is a great gift to bring to people that are hosting you for the holidays. This is great for you if you're going to do X, Y, Z. And then it's just the way you're doing it already is good. And then we just want them to spend more. Okay, so when you're thinking about what do I do? I want you to just work backwards from your financial goals and just make it a math problem. And then you ask yourself, do I have time right now to get this on Amazon and go through all this hoops? Well, probably right now with the amount of time you have, you don't. So prove to yourself what you're going to do. I think 20, 25, you can go through the next few months, test and try these offers and hopefully by the end of the year you can decide, am I keeping nuts or dropping nuts? And what do these, what offers do really well. And then the other side of it is, is once you prove to yourself that you know how to make money and you can figure out these little levers, then can you get help so that on a Sunday you're not, you and your husband are not having to do it all because it's date day.

Is not spent in the kitchen.

You're either living your life. Right. And when you live your life, that's when the ideas come. That's when like the visioning comes. That's where the joy comes back into it versus the like in, in it sitch. And so that's how I prioritize. I. It's not a business unless it makes revenue. So I'd always work backwards from your revenue think. And then you could, with all your ideas, you, you can actually put in there, like, hey, I've got this idea and this idea. I'm going to test this idea next Saturday, and then the Saturday after, I'm going to test this idea. Just start to write down all the things in your brain that you need to get out of your brain and then plan when you're going to implement it. Keep everything else simple. Okay? So if you were listening, and I hope you were, did you catch how Julie's going to be able to solve her issue of that lack of time? So as we're kind of discussing here, it's actually twofold. The first part is figuring out who and what she can hire for. Right? Who she can hire and what she could hire for. Because her time is not best spent in the kitchen. Yes, you do need to make your product to be able to sell it. But if her and her husband are spending all of their time limited in the kitchen, then they aren't focusing on how they're actually going to grow their business. Right. How they're gonna market it, how they're gonna sell more of it. They're stuck behind the scenes or stuck back of house, as people in, you know, chefs say, back of house, front of house. So when it comes to making sales, you need to be, as the owner of your business, really constantly thinking about ways to market your products. Right? Market and sell. Otherwise no one will know you exist. And how do businesses stay in business? They make money through marketing and sales. So I want us to think about what Julie can hire for. That's one thing that we're discussing, right? Who can they hire for what, what help? And what can they afford for the help that they're looking for? And then the second step is to set their sales goals for the next three months and work backwards to figure out how they can achieve that. This will also allow Julie to figure out which sales platforms or channels will give her the highest return on her products. Right. When she makes those sales, what are the best sales channels for her without needing more of her time, without having to do more and more in person markets. And like I like to say, cuz my. My life coach, Stacy, always says this to me, it's math, not drama. Which is why when you know your numbers and the goal you're working towards, it's not so much of emotional decision, but rather we're looking at the data, we're looking at the math, and we're making a decision based on the math. I hope that makes sense. All right, let's wrap this coaching call up. Yeah. Keep it simple. It's not the packaging that's going to sell it. I mean, it is actually. Let me go back your new packaging to your bottles. It is going to sell it. I don't have a. It looks so professional that I would trust everything that's inside of it. It's the boxes that you put in for gifting. That's not a big deal. Great. I'm excited for you. So let us know how we can buy from you. Share support, all the things.

So it's savorkitchen.com that's s a v o u r e kitchen.com and I'm on Instagram @savorkitchen.

Amazing. Thank you so much. This is so fun.

I appreciate it.

I absolutely loved coaching Julie and I'm so excited to see where she and her husband take this moment. Business. Now, the main theme here is that if they want to continue to grow beyond selling locally, then they need to increase their average order value, right? And potentially narrow down on their product offerings and find ways to free up their time so that they can focus on their visioning and the marketing and the sales in their business. So if Julie and her husband are able to implement what we discussed, I know they'll be able to grow this business like they want to and buy back their time, buy back their weekends. If they can do it, so can you. I want you to remember, you can have a successful side hustle that is a product based business while having time to spend that time with the people you love doing the things that you love. You just need to know how. And the first step means that sometimes it means that we do something different, right? It's time to do something different. Because the way we've been doing it so far, it's not necessarily working out in the way that we want it to. So I hope this episode was helpful. If you haven't left a review yet for the Product Boss podcast, I would be so grateful if you would subscribe to the show, follow the show and leave a review you it's so incredibly helpful to me. That's why I ask it on almost every single episode. And if you're following the show, you'll know when we drop the next episode, which we drop to a week one coaching episode and another helpful episode to you every single week. And if you haven't told your friends about this podcast yet, please share. If you know a product based business owner out there that's looking for support and community, please let them know sharing is caring. Okay, I've done all my asks, but I'm so glad that you are here with me every single episode, every single week. And I'll see you in the next one.