Building a Business: The Vitaminis Story

Speaker 1: [Music] I found that as a solo founder I tend to have a lot of opinions on things but the most creativity and Innovation comes when I open up to other ideas Our Daily Greens product that idea came from our customers where I literally just asked our best customers what do you think we should do next and they're like it would be great if we had a green vegetable shot I was like oh okay I've gotten all sorts of great ideas from contractors customers retailers so some of is asking for that and some of it is being open to it I'm Melanie bar welcome back to the Sheil it podcast your go-to place to empower you to live the life and business that you crave I'm here to talk about everything from Having the courage to make life and career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech Innovation I'm here to celebrate your wins and navigate through your challenges I live in the City now but I grew up in a town of a thousand people I've navigated major life leaps a senior level corporate career worked in professional sports and now as a successful entrepreneur who loves business technology family and making meaningful connections with you and the Sheil it Community I also love a good workout and dose of selfcare magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so turn up the audio open your favorite Notes app grab your favorite drink and here we go welcome back to the Sheila podcast thank you for joining us lesie you are the founder and CEO of vitamines tell us about your background and what led you to start your company yes my background in my personal life I've always been really passionate about nutrition I really believe what you put in is what you get out in terms of your health and I've always lived my life that way and professionally I worked in Consulting for Consumer products companies then I worked in the beverage industry and the alcoholic beverage industry while I was working in the alcohol industry we saw a lot of research and data coming in about how consumers wanted better for you nutrient dense clean label foods and that really resonated with my personal passion but I knew being an alcohol we were never going to do anything with that so then during the pandemic I had the chance to actually pursue this idea that I had for vitamin E when I was working for a hotel company at the time that shut down and out of my routine thinking about how to meet nutritional needs make sure our immune system were strong in the face of covid and not really being satisfied with all the supplement options out there pills powders gummies and had the idea for vitamines and ran with it I love that and when I buy things I think what is in this and I have a 10-year-old daughter who keeps trying to tell me things are healthy and I said okay read the ingredients can you pronounce them cuz if you can't pronounce them then maybe we should think about this so love what you're doing getting healthy options to us more easily what was the Gap that you saw in the functional food and beverage Market that vitamin E aims to fill so specifically supplements are becoming more needed people are understanding more why they need to think about vitamins nutrients and adding these things into their diet there's a bunch of different reasons for that but some of them are industrialized farming a lot of our produce that you buy so even if you're eating all the fruits and vegetables it doesn't have the nutrition that it used to and if you're eating a lot of processed foods it can actually affect your gut so that you can't absorb the nutrients that you're getting supplements and fortified foods are becoming more important but a lot of the options out there are just a drag pills are no fun I read some statistic that said I think it was 75% of the population takes some sort of supplement but only 22% say it's enjoyable it's aure and then 40% of people can't even swallow pills and most supplements are pills and if you look at ingredients on pills they have some weird things in there that like help with the manufacturing process process so they're just not the best solution then you've got gummies which has been growing hugely but it's so full of sugar sticks to your teeth dentist isn't warning us away from it and it's creating like a candy habit every day you're going to eat a handful of candy I just looked around and thought like where is that natural food-based solution that has the extra nutrients in it but without all the trade-offs of sugar and strange ingredients and difficult to digest and did not see that and I still don't really there's other shots out there but a lot of them are just juice like ginger or turmeric or something but they don't really have that nutrient addition in there that's interesting I've never thought about my supplement being enjoyable but you bring up a good point CU it probably is possible that it could be and you drink all the ginger things and you're like I'm doing this because I need to you're forcing it down but it's nice that you're thinking about a good way that we can have something enjoyable and do something healthy for our bodies yeah totally why not enjoy it tell us about vitamin E what flavors do you offer what goes into them yeah so I have two products the first one that I launched during Co is this immune support for obvious reasons so it's orange pineapple juice with as much vitamin C as three oranges as much zinc as four avocados and as much magnesium as five cups of spinach so it's a really packed little thing but it tastes like juice and it's shelf stable so you don't have to refrigerate it but can dump it in your smoothie or pop it in your purse or whatever and then our second product is got heal it's got Berry banana juice with as much fiber as a cup of broccoli and as much probiotics as two cups of yogurt no added sugar and we're about to launch a third product called Daily Greens that has all the vitamins that you would get from dark leafy greens vitamins a d e folate Etc in a green fruit and vegetable juice I love it and I love the minis too because when you think of drinking something healthy for you that you're doing it for a reason it's nice that they're small small get it get get it down feel good about yourself not have the gummy stick to your teeth that was the whole vision is that it should be easy and tasty I hear all the time especially for older people or kids that they have trouble drinking a lot you give your kid something healthy and they take one bite of it and you're like oh they're not getting it all in there so it is yeah it is definitely meant to be easy and quick how does Vitamin E's maintain its commitment to clean labels and sustainability while scaling production so clean label has always has been really important to me from the beginning because I believe in eating that way so I knew any product that I was going to make had to be I call it no mystery ingredients we were talking about that in the beginning there should be no what is this on the label but I will say that I understand now having gone through this process why most products are the way they are because the whole system is set up around a particular type of product even my formulator when I said okay here's my vision here's what I wanted in I don't want any added sugar he multiple times sent me back product with added sugar and I thought wow this tastes really sweet I'm looking I'm like wait there's added sugar and I'm like hey I thought we said no added sugar oh but you have to add at least something you have to add at least some sugar no one will buy it you have to have some colors in there because if it doesn't look bright then no one's going to buy it so there's like this ingrained assumption that products have to be a certain way and if you want them to be different you have to push against the grain at every opportunity and the same goes for the packaging it is in plastic it's fully recyclable I would love to transition to something either biodegradable like corn-based plastic packaging or something different but there's no options out there and so that's one of those things where I think if I can build a product that gets scale and gets big enough then vitamines can be the company that creates demand for a better solution in terms of packaging so it's interesting because it's easy from the outside to be like why would you just do it this way but until you actually get into the system and especially as a start you have no leverage you're kind of operating within the system until you're big enough to change the system yeah and I even think about that if I use a paper plate or something I'll think do I really need to use this or can I use a regular plate but it's great that you're thinking about that in terms of growth and how to change the system when you get big enough yeah hopefully someday as a leader how do you Foster Innovation and creativity within your teams I found that as a solo founder I tend to have a of opinions on things but the most creativity and Innovation comes when I open up to other ideas Our Daily Greens product that idea came from our customers where I literally just asked our best customers what do you think we should do next and they're like it would be great if we had a green vegetable shot I was like oh okay same with Marketing sales how are we going to actually approach these different retailers or how should we try to position our product I've gotten all sorts of great ideas from contractors C customers retailers so some of it is asking for that and some of it is being open to it and it's a balance because you also as a soul entrepreneur you have to have a vision you have to drive your vision the example I gave about like the clean ingredients that was me pushing my thing but then there's other times where I don't know what the right answer is and so if I push what I think is best I might be missing out on something better yeah and I'm sure as a Founder your instincts and go with your gut we have friends here from Australia and her kids won't eat the bread because she says there's something in it that's a processed something and she said they just won't eat the bread which I found interesting interesting yeah and I've been running half marathons I have twins there are 10 but I ran marathons before didn't know if I'd run another one now am into halves but I'm loving hearing about this because you need to get so much into your body when you're putting in that amount of miles so I would assume that you would be popular with athletes as well yes I actually WR a marathon two years ago and I have put vitamin E in runner box we did around with Runner box and I do think it does well with that and we've talked to some student athlete groups as well it's an interesting balance because there's certain populations that need a lot of nutrients but maybe don't think that they do and then there's other populations that know they need a lot of of nutrients and so with young generally very healthy people is I hear a lot of I don't really need vitamins I'm fine I eat healthy I exercise so it's interesting because they do but they don't realize it versus other populations like we're right now also doing really well with a menopausal group of people who are aging and know they need to make better choices and invest in their health as they get older that population is like ready to move so yeah it's interesting I definitely think there's a usage for that but maybe it comes down the road when vitamin E is more mainstream and in these early days we focus on people that really want and need it as a way to get off the ground and I think sometimes you don't know what you don't know I remember a few years ago my cousin said what vitamins are you taking and I said nothing and then I thought maybe I should probably be taking something you think you eat relatively healthy you're watching what you eat you're paying attention you do probably need that and then I was also running the other day thinking I have not put enough food in my system to do this run there's always a balance throughout the day of am I putting the right things in my body totally yeah it's like a machine it's like you got to feel yourself yeah what do you think is the most important element of leadership when scaling a business goes what we're were talking about like having a but also being flexible I think what being an entrepreneur is actually like is different from what I thought it would be I thought it was hard because you have to work hard I was like oh I can work hard I've done that before as not the problem it's this mental thing where nothing's guaranteed you don't really have any external information whatsoever that what you're doing even makes any sense you're getting rejected multiple times you've got Sometimes some positive things lots of times feedback or rejections and it's that balance of continuing to get up and try again but also taking the feedback and adjusting as necessary so it's balance one thing I try to do is take breaks instead of quitting it's like there's a day where I don't know what to do or I've got up against the wall okay I was going to take a little break and come back with fresh eyes and there then you're not quitting but yet you're still taking care of yourself and giving yourself a breather if you will so that you can continue on because in this journey it's been two and a half years there probably been hundred times that I could have easily Justified quitting this retailer told me that my product is never going to work or this investor told me I'm wasting my time or so many examples and so you have to take the feedback that you want but yet carry on it's great that you're taking those breaks because I'm sure you come back with fresh eyes and probably more energy and out of the hundreds of women I've talked to and interviewed some of the most successful companies will tell me I sold my car to do this I was told no a million times I almost quit and walked away and now they're running highly successful businesses so good for you for sticking it out I was thinking about that the founder of IT Cosmetics she's wrot written that book and it's amazing to read about what she went through because she and her husband were co-founders both of them had nothing and it's amazing you can read those things and think oh they're just special people or maybe this person has qualities that make them able to do this but I can't do it but that's not true you just have to keep going you just have to get up and do the next thing and sometimes it's because you don't have an easy way to quit the reality is I've put in a lot of time and my own money into this business I can't just leave it and it also will make you stronger going through these moments doesn't feel like it but it will and if you listen to the Sheil to podcast I've talked to people who've taken out mortgages on their homes who've taken out loans who've sold their car and said I just have this crazy confidence in myself selling your car kind to need your car to get around but now she's running a highly successful business how do you balance the demands of being a CEO and we just touched on this a little bit with your personal life and wellness making time for what refreshes you because running your own business is endless it could be a 24 365 job so trying to just carve out that time to get a workout in or meet a friend or get outside even if you feel like you should be doing something else you have to realize it's a long game it's a marathon so to speak not a Sprint and then I personally two with my family life so I have four kids and I try really hard to compartmentalize as much as I can so that when I'm with my kids I'm not distracted by work and when I'm working I'm really working and not distracted by my kids because what I found is when I don't have good lines in between that's when everybody feels short changed or I feel get into a good job at work or I'm frustrated or my kids don't feel like I'm listening to them so that's another thing I really try to do is create some very strict Lin which might mean I don't really get much done after the school hours from 3:30 to 5:00 even though I could because the kids are popping into my office and want to show me something they made at school so I have to think about that okay I'm not going to schedule anything important in there so maybe I can get some work done but if my kid comes and wants to show me something I can give them that attention it's such good advice and as a mom of twins I completely understand I don't have four so good for you for building your business with four but you're so right I wake up 6:00 a.m. then you get them out the door then I work straight through and I was just talking about this the other day I was trying to run in the morning and then I was feeling like I wasn't getting enough done so now I drop them off at their practices whatever it is they're doing and I run during that time my kids are old enough now that I can do that there was a time I couldn't but it's so interesting how you have to figure out how to adjust life and make it work for you so good for you for setting up that time you can feel good about the things that you're doing yeah because that's important to me too and everyone has their own values I think that's the thing is it's like what do you value and make sure that your time reflects that if you value being in shape make sure you're scheduling workout if you value going to your kids games make sure you're doing that because where you can really get into trouble is where you value something and you don't carve out that time then you're going to feel guilty and sad and upset so true thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your health and wellness wisdom with us please tell us where we can find vitamin E how can we find them and buy them yes so hopefully you'll share a link with your listeners to drop their email and I'll send them a coupon for our website so our website is that's where I love people to come because then we can talk to you we know you and you'll know us but that's vitamines brand.com but we're also online at Amazon so sometimes you have to search vitamines juice or add a couple more keywords to find us in there because if you just put vitamin E sometimes the vitamin Brands pop up and we're also just as of a couple weeks you on Walmart marketplace also so you can find us there and then if you're in the midwest we are in 80 retail locations here fresh time and the Fruitful Yield as well as some Independence and we have a store locator on our website and hopefully more places soon we're also on social media Tik Tok and Instagram and Facebook is all @ vitamines brand so find us there too thank you for joining us today I'd love to hear from you reach out to me at hello Sheil it.com on our shetit website or @ sheb builted on social thank you to my editor Rich draino who always makes us sound good until next time let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you crave