Glonuts
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[00:00:00] Nat, I've got pretty big news. Tell me. Tickets for Female Founder World Summit. Just went on sale. Yay. Okay. I need to know though. Who are the speakers? Okay, we've got look These are the speakers I can tell you about right now We have some more that we're gonna be announcing but we have Katie Storino She is the founder of Megababe, which is honestly one of the most impressive brands.
We have Karen Dhanajaya. She's the founder of Bloom, which is this amazing wellness supplement. The reason why I wanted to bring her in is because they've hit number one on Amazon in their category. She just launched in Whole Foods and it's genuinely an awesome product. an awesome product and she's such an amazing founder.
The reason why I wanted to have her speak at the event is because she started with, this one product, which was like this powdered supplement. It's like a smoothie mix, right? Oh yeah. I've used it before.
I love that. And then she, and they were going really well, but then she launched this new product based on customer feedback and what she was seeing in the market, and it was called Super Belly. And this product just blew up. completely propelled the business to a [00:01:00] different level, and I find that really interesting.
So I want her to speak on a panel about how she did that, answer questions all about how other people can learn from that, because I think for those of us who are like building up businesses, getting some momentum, but like we're learning and iterating, we want to get that one product that is just a hit.
She's a great person to learn from. We also have Lowe Bosworth, the founder of Love Wellness, and she went from DIYing everything from building her website and doing all of her own marketing to hitting eight figures of revenue and launching in Target. Wow. So we're going to learn from her.
Katie Storino, the founder of Megababe, they have some of the biggest stockists on the planet and they're a beauty brand that tackles a lot of the kind of more taboo body issues. So she's in Target, Ulta, Walmart, Goop, Anthropologie, Nordstrom, like all of the ones. Laura Henshaw, my Australian listeners 100 percent know who she is.
She's the co founder of Kik and one of the most beloved. business owners in Australia, I would say. She's got a fitness community that has two and a half million people [00:02:00] in it. Her app has been downloaded 750, 000 times. So impressive. And she's going to be in New York for the event. We've also got Melanie Mazarin from Gear.
Love Gia. We love Geva Uhhuh. I always run around the city looking for Gia before an evening . We love Gia.
We also have Cindy Ramez, the founder of Chill House. We have Desiree Veyo, the founder of Hyper Skin, and so many more big ones that I haven't even announced yet. I am honestly just blown away by the people that we've been able to lock in to speak at this event and also lead breakout groups, do workshops.
It's gonna be really practical. I am so excited for this. I also am so excited for everyone to see how awesome this venue is. I know. I feel like last year, last year sold out pretty quickly and we had a great venue. I think we could fit like 500 in there. This year we've gone bigger. We're going to have 700 people and I put tickets on sale as of recording this yesterday and we have sold through quite a lot of the tickets and we haven't even sent out an email to our list, like we haven't [00:03:00] posted on TikTok, like we're just getting started with the promotion.
So I think if people want to come, nothing makes me sad other than getting the DMs Oh, like I saw that you're sold out. Can I get a ticket? And so I, if you're thinking about coming, please just please get the ticket if you need payment options, let me know and let's figure something out because I don't want anyone who is in this community to miss out on the event.
So we're going to have noteworthy speakers, an incredible venue, but what else are we going to do? This is tequila bar. Oh! It's a party, but I want this to be the end of year party. holiday party for entrepreneurs. I feel like we often don't get celebrated in the same way that if you're like a corporate girl, you get celebrated at work.
And so this is a space to like, yes, learn, meet people. This is the best community in the world for female founders. I truly believe that. And I want it to be a celebration and a place where we can get together and be like, yeah, we did it. Whether or not you hit all your goals this year, I don't care.
You're still here. I love that. I'm so excited. What else do we have that I can tell you about? We've got a Business Bestie Lounge with something very cool happening in [00:04:00] there. We have a few little treats and surprises for you to really immerse yourself in this community. I have brought in literal everything.
MBA college professors who are going to be doing small group sessions. Often say on the podcast, I ask founders who have an MBA was it worth it? Did you actually need an MBA to run a business? And they, most of the time no, but there are a few things that I really learned that I think were worthwhile.
Come learn it at the event. Yeah. Save your money. Save your money. Don't get an MBA. Come to Summit. But we didn't tell you to do that. I fully support higher education. But yeah, so come and learn from these professors that we're going to have on the spaces in the space as well. We're going to have breakout groups and ways for you to learn in a way that is going to feel very female founder world.
So learning, celebration, connection, that's what this event's all about. Will there be goodie bags? Oh my god, Nat, they're gonna be, the goodie bags are so amazing. They're worth like [00:05:00] five times the ticket price. Yeah, they really, they always hit. If you want to grab a ticket, I'm going to put a link in the show notes for everyone or head to femalfounderworld. com. You'll see a link on the site right there to get your Female Founder World Summit tickets. This is our biggest and best event of the year, and I cannot wait to see you all in New York City on the 2nd of
Hey, business besties. Welcome back to the Female Founder World podcast. I'm Jasmine. I'm the host of the show and the person behind all things Female Founder World. Today, I'm chatting with the co founder and CEO of Glow Nuts, Kristen Charbo. Kristen, welcome to the show.
You are now entering female founder world with your host, Jasmine
Garnsworthy.
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Give us a little intro to Glow Nuts. You guys are creating clean, healthier, doughnuts. Give me a little bit more. Yeah. So we call them healthy, yummy doughnut things. We say things because they're not exactly like a one more, for one replacement of a donut, it's more to give you the feeling of eating a donut [00:06:00] without the feeling you get after eating a donut.
And they're made from clean ingredients that help you glow from within, like coconut, almonds, sweetened with monk fruit sweetener, so there's no impact on blood sugar. And they are gluten free, vegan, and one gram of sugar each. Amazing. And you started in 2019. You had been working in Sales and like the hotel industry.
Why did you start a food brand? Great question. I ask myself that every day. We, so my boyfriend is my co founder and business partner. He and I really wanted to do something together. We wanted to create a lifestyle business that we could grow together. And so we had this idea to create a coffee cart as a side hustle.
So we created a. It was going to be a full coffee shop, but we created a coffee cart to start with nitro cold brew on tap. We made glow nuts to go with the coffee and we thought we just gained some traction in LA before opening a brick and mortar. While glow nuts took off, they essentially went viral on [00:07:00] Instagram at the time and it was very clear early on that we needed to pivot and become.
a donut business. But why we made glow nuts the way that they are is really a part of my personal health journey. I grew up eating a lot of junk food, eating a lot of hostess donuts, and had a sweet addiction. I ate a lot of Had polycystic ovarian syndrome and when I was 22, I had a football sized cyst on my ovary that had to be removed along with my ovary.
And when I was sitting in the hospital saying, to the doctors, how do I make sure this never happens again? They just looked at me and they said you just stay on birth control. That's all you can do. And so it took me quite a bit of time to understand. How much of a role diet and lifestyle can play in your personal health?
Not just from a weight perspective. I had gained a lot of weight and was over 220 pounds at one point And that's really [00:08:00] when I stopped and said something Needs to change and what? Took a look at my diet and my lifestyle and saw how it was affecting how I felt. And I started to cut out processed foods and eat a cleaner diet low in gluten and sugar.
That's that actually like really resonates with me personally. When I was, I don't know, I've always had like really bad period pain. And I remember going to the gyno and saying this can't be normal. And them telling me, you might have endometriosis, we have to do a surgery to diagnose it, blah, blah, blah.
What we would really recommend is actually just getting pregnant. And I was like, okay I'm like 21 and I've got some shit to do before I'm ready to have a family. And that doesn't really sound like a great a great cure right now. I think it's going to add some other things into my life. So yeah, I totally get you on the, Yeah.
And it's [00:09:00] unfortunate that, that's what we're met with when we go to the doctor's office, even now today, me, so many years into this journey, I'm still constantly met with, Oh, that's normal. Or Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I don't even, your pain is there's nothing wrong with you essentially, and it's such a frustrating experience that, makes you don't really want to go to the doctor ever, but we can do another podcast on that. Maybe this is my next podcast, Be My Pal World, and then I'm going to talk about. Yeah. That'll be my next one. Okay. Okay. I want to understand how you made this switch to figuring out, okay, I'm not a coffee business.
I am a. Food business. You landed a a big account and that kind of helped shape that for you. Tell me that story. Early on in the journey, Grover and I were, we did not know how to ship this product because it is a refrigerated donut. Because it is made with whole food ingredients and we wanted to keep it fresh.
So because we didn't know how to ship it, we didn't go direct to consumer like so many brands were [00:10:00] doing at the time. We only knew to go door to door in Los Angeles and find wholesale accounts. Where we could retail our product. So we started doing that. We went to Erewhon and Alfred, and we actually had a lot of success getting into these doors early on in our journey.
I know it's very different now. It's extremely difficult to get into these doors because there is so much competition. Luckily, when we started, we were able to get in before the rush. And they were two very pivotal accounts to our growth. And without a marketing budget, we were able to really get in front of the right people that wanted to share the product and tell their friends and created this flywheel effect of word of mouth marketing.
So interesting what you say about 2019 getting in before the rush, because sometimes I'm just like, Is it me? Am I just seeing that there are so many new brands starting? I think like post 2020, it just feels like [00:11:00] things really just got dialed up. Or is it just because I'm embedded in this, is it just because I'm embedded in this space or is it really happening?
Are you? As you look out at the food and beverage particular like landscape now, how does it feel? Do you feel pressure and anxiety around new brands coming in? Do you feel like you guys have carved out your space? Like I'm really curious about how you feel about that now. I feel anxiety every day.
I think being a founder will, we'll just create a level of anxiety that you have to get comfortable with because I say you have to be. You have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable because it's just it's a very difficult journey. I think not just in the food space, any kind of entrepreneurial journey is that way.
I'm inspired by all of the brands coming into the space especially better for you brands, because as someone with health problems, I really want to see a change in our food system. And so I hope that, we [00:12:00] can flourish. And I hope that even other doughnuts that are coming into the space are just proving that there is demand and a category for, better for you sweet treats.
And we can eventually take down hopefully big food someday. That's a big goal. But I think my, ultimate goal is just to see healthier products available to everyone at an affordable price point, because I think that will help people live healthier lifestyles, right? We just have to make it accessible and affordable.
I think people want to do the right thing. They want to make good choices for themselves. Just sometimes they don't have the options. It also needs to taste good. That's a major key. Like it can't be, it can't be too much of a sacrifice. Yeah.
Okay business besties, I want to just pause for a second. I've got Natalie here on the Female Founderboard team and I want to ask, Nat, are you ready for the holidays? Honestly, no, and I feel like it's coming up so [00:13:00] quickly. It's coming up so quickly and that's why I wanted to take a second to chat about this season's presenting sponsor, Vistaprint.
It's honestly the best place to start holiday shopping and right now Vistaprint is giving all Female Founderboard listeners an early holiday gift. Up to 50 percent off holiday cards, wall calendars and more. Oh wow, 50 percent is a pretty, pretty good deal. How do you even have time though for all this holiday shopping?
I know, honestly, like I, I'm usually pretty disorganized but I've been quite on it this year and we've also been sending out these really cute thank you packs to fans. different founders who have been on the podcast, speakers who have been at the events, we've printed really cute like little fleece blankets, we have embroidered caps and also stuff for my family as well because you know everyone's going to be wearing the Female Founder World merch.
Oh of course, you got to bring the family into it and I I personally love a branded tote bag, but I also didn't know that they did embroidery. That's pretty cool. The embroidered caps are particularly cute. Oh, I love that. [00:14:00] Highly recommend. So everyone, go and get your holiday shopping buttoned up with up to 50 percent off custom holiday cards, wall calendars, and more at vistaprint.
com. Use the code HOLIDAY50 at checkout. Okay. Let's get back into the show.
You had this turning point where you'd been making these doughnuts from home. And then at some point you had enough traction that you're investing. I think you invested like your wedding budget into the business. What was that? What was that decision? Yes, great question. So Grover and I, in our first year in our home kitchen, we made, packed, and delivered over 100, 000 doughnuts, just the two of us.
You delivered them as well? Yes. Whoa! Literally everything. We would get up in the morning, we would coat the doughnuts that we had made the night before. Grover would stay back, clean the kitchen. I would go deliver the donuts we had just made. We'd come back at four o'clock. We'd get back into the kitchen and we would start making the donuts for the next day.
Wow. And it was [00:15:00] like that pretty much all of 2020. But what it proved to us is that we had significant product market fit. that this product was really resonating with people. It was extremely differentiated. There wasn't a product on the market that tasted really good to your point, had, less than one gram of sugar and was made with clean ingredients that you felt good eating.
And so we were getting tons of messages on Instagram, in our email, and people were just keeping us going during this process. But it also proved to us how much a product like this needed to exist. With all of that information, we felt comfortable investing our wedding budget into the brand.
That's when we hired DayJob, a local L. A. design agency who's incredible. We worked with them on our website, on new packaging made more for retail. At the time, we were in plastic deli containers that you can buy. We literally bought on Amazon and they designed a better package for us that [00:16:00] would help us get on more retail shelves and be better for distribution and shipping.
So that was the key. Catalysts for us into the next phase of the business, which was our commercial kitchen phase and growing our distribution. That was probably the hardest time of our life working in a commercial kitchen. I still can't get over this hand making and delivering a hundred thousand donuts from your home.
Yeah, that's crazy. Okay. So how do you make that shift to a commercial kitchen? It was challenging, however, I would say there are now more businesses that are set up for emerging brands to work in commercial type kitchens. So we used amped kitchens, which is a popular place that a lot of smaller emerging brands work out of.
What's great about it is that it is turnkey, so you can get your health care permits pretty quickly, like within 30 days it's also great because [00:17:00] you have like your own essentially like an apartment, but it's your kitchen, right? So your own lock and key and they provide storage and some other amenities for you.
But the cost of it was very high. To the point where I'm not really sure how many businesses could actually afford it. And you started to see that the companies that were going in there and taking up larger spaces were raising quite a bit of money to do that. Okay. Yeah. So then how do you what's the decision then?
Or what's the process to find something that is affordable? Is it?
So I would encourage anyone trying to do this to skip the commercial kitchen phase if they can and ideate, learn in your home kitchen in an affordable way. You can get permitting for that too, right? You can, absolutely. In the state of California, you can, it differs by state. And then once you have, a minimal viable budget.
Product and you give [00:18:00] it to some friends to get feedback. Then I would say start looking for a co manufacturer co manufacturing is complicated and challenging for quite a few reasons. Number one. They're difficult to find sometimes their minimums can be quite high and so the investment it takes to work with a co manufacturer Off the bat can be significant.
So if you can gain any kind of traction before going to a co manufacturer, that's just going to work to your benefit for us. Our product, even though it's a donut, which seems very simple to create and there would already be infrastructure for it. There was not. Our product is made in a completely different way than any other donut is made.
And so we had to design sort of our own. custom manufacturing line and process for this product, and that took us almost four years to, to figure out. So we were hand making donuts in the process while we were also working to solve our manufacturing and scaling [00:19:00] challenges. in evenings and anytime that we weren't making donuts.
So that was really hard for us. We did end up having to hire a consultant at some point to help us figure out what exact machines were going to make the product. Other types of tooling we needed to do to find someone to do that. That's a great question. How did we find like such a specific skill set?
It is. It really is. It's you have to talk to a lot of people. And that's what I learned is you're, you may not get to the right person right away, but eventually you'll find them. Our greatest resource was talking to other founders. Yeah. And we weren't shy about doing it or even early on in our journey.
We were reaching out to the founders of Coconut Cult who were super helpful to us. And we were still in our home kitchen. The founders of Dream Pops were helpful. So I really love those brands so much and I have so much respect and gratitude for those founders that helped us so early in our journey because , they didn't need to and they [00:20:00] did take the time to talk to us.
And so much of what we learned came through introductions from other people. Yeah. That's just personally as I've been. building female founder world as well. There are a handful of people that I think about and I'm like, there is just no way that I could have done this without having just pure like kindness.
And it's because somebody helped them and then they want to pay it forward because they're like, this is how this works. And this is you know how this ecosystem builds and grows and Yeah. I just think it's so powerful. And exactly what you said. It's you've got to be willing to also share your idea and like what you're doing.
And I think that the more I find that the more that I, when I get on a call or I meet someone and I have that just like gut intuition of, okay, this is a good person. I just, I'm a pretty open book, and then I find that people reciprocate 99 percent of the time. And so it's just worth being upfront like that.
I feel the same way. Yeah. I'm generally an open book. It is difficult to know how much to share and not share sometimes, [00:21:00] especially when you have something proprietary. But yeah you just have to feel it out. I think. To your point. Yeah. I agree. Something that's really interesting about Glow Nuts is I look at the brand and if people haven't seen your branding, they should go to Instagram, go to your website, check it out because you look like a DTC brand, but you're actually mostly wholesale and you've built up these like pretty significant retail accounts.
Yeah. First of all, why? Like why did you decide to go that way with with the branding and the presentation and how has that translated into retail? We chose to lead with a very fun, colorful brand. It's really cute. Thank you. And we wanted it to feel like a little fun and quirky. I think when it comes to health food, and I'm saying health food with quotations because it doesn't taste like a health food.
Yeah. But when it comes to health food, people are so used to things not tasting good being boring, dull [00:22:00] just not excited to eat it. And so we really wanted to lean into fun, make this something that anyone would be excited to pick up off the shelf because it's so beautiful and colorful and playful in the way we talk to you.
And we hoped that would, resonate and get people to be excited to eat something that's good for them. That's why we went that direction. As far as why we went the retail route, it was because we were a refrigerated product and so shipping required gel packs, liners Insulated liners that would keep the product cold and Express FedEx shipping.
So all of that was really expensive. At the end of the day, our margins for retail, even with a distributor included, was, they were way better on the retail front versus, D to C. We're still primarily retail focused, even though we do have D to C as an option. We're now in about 400 and, 50 ish stores or stores around the country and [00:23:00] growing and long term, that's really the route that I think any CPG product wants to go is they want to be, in retail stores just to make it easier for people to get the products.
What are some of the stores that you're in? So in LA, we're in Erewhon, Alfred, Bristol Farms, Lazy Acres and and In the Northeast, we've launched recently, so in the New York tri state area, we're in Citarella, some select ShopRites. In Texas, we are in Central Markets, and we're scattered in some, great shoppy shop stores around the country.
So the best way to find out where we are is on our store locator. Talk to me about working with the distributor and what that process has been like. And also, what comes first, like the big retailers or the distributor? Ooh, that's a good question. So it can work either way. I would say generally there's different types of, let me start, there's different types of distributors.
Yeah. There are larger national distributors like Kahee and Unify, [00:24:00] and then there are what's called DSD distributors, more regional specific distributors. As an emerging brand, I prefer a DSD distributor for a lot of reasons. Number one is the direct relationship where you can have with the team. I never know or I never question who I need to ask.
There's always someone to ask, someone that's going to pick up the phone and help me. They're pretty good about paying on time and they are just in the stores more. So I think they have better relationships with their stores on the ground level. I also think that they can really help you saturate a region in some of the smaller accounts where, a UNIFI may not go because they can't meet the minimums.
And I like those types of accounts because I think. That's where, people are shopping in their neighborhood market and a lot of these larger cities where I consider key markets for Glow Nuts. So with our distributors, our DSD distributors, [00:25:00] we had a good amount of accounts before we handed our business over to them.
Specifically in LA. In New York we worked with a DSD distributor that we didn't really have a lot of accounts but they felt like the brand had a lot of potential and that they could put it in a lot of doors quickly. And so that relationship in New York worked out really well for us. With Kahee it's tough.
I would say don't do a national distributor until you're ready. Until you have a really strong anchor account that's going to bring you in and just know that. As in like a Whole Foods. A Whole Foods or Sprouts or for us it was like Central Markets until you have a good anchor account because it's really expensive and there's a lot of fees that you're not prepared for.
That's really good advice. In, I think it was pretty recently you did the Target Accelerator Program. Yeah. How did that come about? Yeah. So we were in the Target Accelerator Program last [00:26:00] year which was honestly one of, one of my proudest moments that we were selected for it because only 10 businesses per year are selected.
I didn't realize it was that few. It's pretty, pretty small. Yeah. Wow. And. It was a, an incredible learning experience for us. So the packaging that you see here, that's our latest and greatest packaging. And if you watch, you can watch this on YouTube and see the packaging if you can't see the video. Yeah.
So this is our two pack and Target was really a driver and helping us redesign our packaging so that it spoke better on the shelf in retail so that the front was just more organized. It got the benefits across really quickly and still stood out on the shelf where you could read it. The other thing they really helped us get across the finish line was price.
So we knew that we were going to have to change our price at some point and reduce our cost. So we were in a three pack selling for [00:27:00] 7. 99. These now retail for 3. 99. And Target was a huge kind of eye opener for us where we learned that to be in mass retail, like our price point was going to need to be cut in half essentially.
How do you do that? Because so like all well and good to be like, Oh, we need to cut our price in half, but like how? I know it's really hard, especially when you're young and not profitable. Most businesses of our size are not. And so to give up margin is a very scary thought.
But there are ways now I will say when we were in our commercial kitchen, we had a lot of overhead. Our labor was quite expensive because we were trying to pay a proper living wage to our employees. And, We were in boxes and we had just like beautiful packaging, but a lot of packaging. We were also ordering ingredients in really small quantities.
When we moved to our co manufacturer it's in a different state, so we were able to cut our labor costs quite a [00:28:00] bit. We were able to order in much larger quantities, our ingredients and our packaging. So that cut the cost down for us. And then going from our three packs to our two packs, there was an external box on the three pack that added costs to the product.
So we were actually able to cut our price quite a bit by just implementing some of those changes. But it doesn't work that way for everyone. I will say that. economies of scale as you grow, like your price on ingredients goes way, way down. When you can start ordering in larger batches. Yeah, that makes sense.
So is the goal to get into Target after you do the accelerated program? Yeah, absolutely. Target's definitely a goal for us. We have a great relationship with our buyer and Target overall. They're so good about not just getting you know, cutting ties with you after the program's over, they really still carry on a good relationship.
And so we're fortunate for that. So we just have to go now [00:29:00] through the review cycle, like all other brands do and hope to get in next year. The whole, like wholesale building out your stock strategy thing, I think is one of those really it's like the last gate kept piece of business, I think, because it's just, it's hard to go into the granular detail.
In any kind of like mass media platform is hard to do it on the podcast. And I'd love to know if there were any other resources or people or agencies, anything that's helped you as you've been figuring out your pricing and your margins or your packaging that other people who maybe won't get into the target program or hopefully will that haven't gotten in yet can go and check out.
Is there anything specific that's been helping you and why not? Aside from our. relationships with founders. And also we went through a round of fundraising from friends and family, but also was fortunate to get some key investors that were also founders of food brands. And having that [00:30:00] that kind of guidance has helped us a lot.
I can't point to any tools specifically. I would say Startup CPG is a great tool for businesses that want to start a food business. There's a lot of resources there. I actually wish I knew about it. before, like way earlier in my journey. The other thing I would say on the sales side, I would say I don't have a lot of resources I can recommend except just using LinkedIn to your advantage and know that you can find anybody's email by just You know, putting the pieces together.
You can hack your way to getting an email address. You can hack your way absolutely to finding an email address. And so I just think cold outreach on the sales side is the way to do it. But aside from that, I think it's really just having guidance from people in the industry. If you are starting a business from scratch and you have an idea, I think the best way to.
learn and put together a [00:31:00] proper business plan is to just go to the store, right? So if you know you want to create a candy, go to the candy aisle and five different retailers and see what does the packaging look like? What does the price point look like? What are the ingredients? And that's a really great starting point because, We weren't trying to start Glow Nuts, we were trying to start a coffee cart and so we didn't do that to start Glow Nuts and so we are making up for that now.
That's why we've changed our packaging again, that's why we've changed our price point again because it wasn't exactly right for the area that we wanted to sit and where we wanted to grow to. So if you are trying to start a business from scratch, I think that's a perfect place to do your research.
I want to talk about money for a bit because, the building a business is expensive. How you, that original kind of wedding budget got you so far, but how have you continued to fund the business after that? And can you share, I don't want to put you on the spot and share [00:32:00] what you're comfortable with, but like what you put in the beginning to get this thing off the ground and the momentum going.
Yeah, so aside from our wedding budget, Grover and I invested our savings, like our 401Ks, into the business, too. We then raised a, I'm gonna say it's a small amount of money, but it's not a small amount of money. We raised 700, 000. thousand dollars, which is a large sum of money to go from our commercial kitchen into a co manufacturer, do that research, keep both of those businesses running at the same time.
It's an expensive business and we needed to do that. We raised from friends, family, angel investors. That's how most businesses of our size are going to raise. It's an extremely difficult. Raising environment when we raised that amount of money in 2000 and 21, 2000 and 22 it was very hard. It was my first time ever fundraising and honestly like it was such a wild concept to me when I started fundraising [00:33:00] because I grew up in a like family environment where you just didn't ask for money that wasn't I didn't even know that was possible, fundraising seems so crazy to me because I was like who's gonna just give me 100, 000, and then and then it registered later after some coaching that, this is, you're not asking for money, you're selling a piece of your business and there's value to that.
And so the mind shift was something that needed to happen. I'll also be honest in that those early conversations with investors were extremely difficult for me and people said yes and then said no and that was dark. It was really dark to feel like everything was working out and then have it ripped from you and not know if you were going to be able to continue.
We had set a much larger goal than 700k to get us to our co manufacturer and grow our business and we came. Far under that because people did pull out, which wasn't just happening to [00:34:00] us. It was happening to everyone at the time but I didn't know it at the time. And so it felt horrible. But you just have to know that in any business in life in general, you're going to hear a lot of nos and that's okay.
You're going to hear way more nos than you hear yeses. And you just have to know to keep going because sometimes it will come back around. If it's meant to be. And so that's been a mind shift that I've also had to become okay with, is just knowing that whatever is meant to be will be sometimes, which isn't comforting.
But sometimes you get to a point, it's like, what else is there to say? What else can I do? There's, you know that you're working as hard as you possibly can, and if it's not happening, know it's for a reason, and maybe you weren't ready for it then. I think, especially when it comes to investors, you want people invested in your business that you want to talk to, that you trust, that are going to support [00:35:00] you, that are going to make you feel good, and some of the investors that I was talking to early, that Pulled out honestly made me so nervous and uncomfortable every time I would have to talk to them that I know ultimately it wasn't right for us.
Yeah. So what kind of investors ended up investing in the business? Was it like, successful founders? Yeah. Or high net worth individuals? What kind of people actually invest? primarily, aside from our friends and family around, which are very small checks, like five to 10 K.
So we have tons of people on the cap table. The angel investors that invested in our business were some founders like Tara Bosch from smart suites, Vanessa do from a health aid, kombucha, fly by Jing Gao from fly by Jing. Emily from from Pop Up Grocer. Yeah. And so I'm really proud to say I have so many incredible female founded That's so cool.
business founders Yeah. in our, on our cap table. What a great crew to be able to call for advice. It's the [00:36:00] best. Yeah. And all of them make me feel so good, and it's an easy conversation with them. And I think looking for people like that to invest in your business is a good starting point.
Are you and Grover is your partner slash business partner. Yeah. Are you able to pay yourself from the business yet? Or are you doing consulting work, side work, which is what I feel like everyone is doing and hear a lot about. We don't have other jobs. Yeah. But I will. Be frank, we don't pay ourself very much money at all.
We are still living in the one bedroom apartment that we started Glow Nuts in. We're rent controlled, which is incredible. And you make a lot of sacrifices with the, optimism that it's gonna flourish and all pay off someday. Yeah. Good for you. Aren't we all what's the end goal?
Like what, when you picture life in five years, 10 years, I don't know how far ahead you're thinking. What does it look like? What does the business look like? I really want to grow and be [00:37:00] a sweet snacks platform. I would love to be the siete to sweet snacks or, The lesser evil to sweet snacks all of course with clean ingredients and focused on like low sugar and blood sugar management.
Because I think that is such an important category, especially for where our country is from a health perspective right now. Over 70 percent of America is overweight. or obese. Almost 50 percent is either diabetic or pre diabetic. There's a huge rise in colorectal cancer for young adults over 50%.
I see an announcement of somebody who is under 40 and is diagnosed with this. It's going on. It's crazy. And I think part of it is food, part of it is environment. And so we just need to do better. So I think I want to see glow nuts, With a lot of options way more than just two flavors of doughnuts.
And I want to see us everywhere, especially on [00:38:00] planes and air, airports, hotels. I just flew from Australia and I ate 17 times on the plane. And if there is something a little bit healthier. I think that's for me as someone who was in sales and traveled for 15 years. It was like such a pain point for me because I was traveling and I wanted to eat healthy and there were no options for me.
So I really can't wait to see us in airports, hotels, coffee shops around the country. Amazing. How do you see your role within the business changing? Are you Co CEO, is there a specific like area of the business that is your kind of superpower that you want to lean into? Something I talk about with my with my leadership coach is like, when you think about growing in certain ways, what feel feels good and what feels like, tightness in the chest and like stressy.
And sometimes you just have to go with the tightness in the chest, stressy things, because that's just like a part of the growth of the business. But when you look at what your role [00:39:00] is, what makes you feel excited and open and, energized. Yeah, it's funny because you have to wear so many hats that aren't comfortable to you and so for me that's operations.
I really do so much with operations and feel so foreign to me and I feel so slow at it. And so I can't wait to let someone else that's really good at operations do that part. I'm more of a people person. I love building relationships. I love talking about. the brand and, where I see the brand going.
So for me, it's more like sales, marketing, partnerships. Yeah. That's what excites me. Grover is an exceptional, he's exceptionally creative as well. And he's such a good storyteller. He really runs like our, weird social media because it's not like any brand on social media. Like we're not posting, we have no photography of [00:40:00] our product.
We, it's just like him talking about the highs and glows of building this business. Which there are many. And so he's really good at that. He's also a designer, by the way, I forgot to mention that. And so he was highly involved in our product. Product design and worked very closely with day job when we were going through that whole design process.
So creative director is probably where he'll end up sitting. Very cool. The last thing I want to ask you about is for some resource recommendations, if there's anything that's been helping you, either just like really tangible, specific tools that are helping you in the business, people that have helped you, or I guess just some stuff that's been helping you shift.
You mentioned that. big mindset shift that you've had as you were fundraising, like what's helped you to do that as well as a leader? So the tangible tools I would recommend would be just Startup CPG again, I think it's a great resource. I think really going to, trade [00:41:00] shows even early is such a good resource because number one, you can meet founders that you respect and start to forge a relationship that way.
So I would highly recommend going to Expo West, even though it's massive just getting a walking pass and checking it out. Same with Nosh. Do you put some samples in your bag? Absolutely. It's the best way to, to attend. It's called, you're a backpack brand. That's what they call it.
And it's fun. It's so fun. You can make so many great relationships that way. I think Nosh is another one. Nosh and BevNet host a smaller kind of conference in LA in December. And that's a great conference to attend because it's more intimate. You can really actually meet buyers at that conference.
So I love conferences for that reason. Obviously they're a little bit of an investment but. I do think they're worth it. Day job was an incredible shout out day job. They were like so great in our creative journey and really helping us create a [00:42:00] brand that felt very different from everything else on the shelves at the time.
That also really incorporated our own unique voice. I really think Grover and I. Like our dorkiness is like very much in the brand and a lot of the copy lines they just got us. So I can't speak highly of them enough. And then as far as like tools for just getting through the journey on mental health, I think therapy for me was was transformative.
It really helped me look at like my insecurities from. My childhood and beyond and just address those because if you don't address that like you can't show up for your partner You can't show up for your business Journaling if you can't obviously therapy is expensive I think journaling is a great free tool that we can all use to just release And it I always say like to anybody I recommend journaling to you don't have to [00:43:00] be a good writer I don't consider myself a good writer You And you just need to put something on paper and just let it out.
And when you let it out, you feel this release. I think if you need a starting point, just start with gratitude. What are you grateful for that you wake up? It could be something as simple as I am grateful for this delicious tasting cup of coffee. And when you start focusing on the things that are in your life that are giving you those little moments of joy, you start to see everything in a lighter way.
I love that. Kristen, thank you so much for coming on the show and congratulations on everything you've built. It's very cool. Thank you. I hope you'll take some glonads. Yeah, I'll take them all.
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