Episode Transcript
Nina Huchthausen (00:09.39)
All right, welcome everybody to the Make His Business Try podcast. In this episode on this beautiful Wednesday morning, I have the honor to have a conversation with Justin Snyder from Forest Superfoods, an eight figure health conscious product business that he founded in 2011. So that comes to what? 14 years, 13 years. Goodness me.
of running and growing a business. So Justin has a lot of expertise, experience, hurdles that you have overcome and successes that you have had along the way. And when we first connected, the key thing that I was like, my gosh, Justin, can we have a conversation about it? Is the topic about what
do I do? What moves should I make once I'm ready to scale my business and I can't be that octopus and one or two man band anymore that does everything from making, selling, picking, packing, customer service, running markets, going out and spreading the word and the love about my product, but actually having to find and build a team.
because there two options. We can either find different partners that are experts in their field and outsource certain parts of our business, or we can build out these functions in -house. And that's a really important step to take. And there are a lot of things to consider before you just make that jump.
because you can't do things in house today. And if you're like, it's not working out, then just hand it over to a partner tomorrow. And if you don't like them, take it back. So it's a thing that it's a decision that you want to make wisely and consider a lot of data points. And because Justin has gone through that struggle,
Nina Huchthausen (02:33.438)
and has found a lot of insights and wisdom in the decisions that he's made because it took his company to eight figures now today. But I thought, let's have that conversation so that we can share it with our listeners, with our product -based businesses that are probably in year two or three and about to make that jump. So thank you so much, Justin, for joining. Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you. So yeah, before we delve into this question, the key question, in -house or outsourcing, can you share a little bit with our listeners about your company and that key dream that drove you to build this in the first place? Yeah, it's a long time ago, but I started
straight out of high school, I started selling leather bags. And I was going door to door. This was back in 2002 when there wasn't really an online business. And I was selling door to door. And every door I would knock on, they'd say, nine out of 10 doors I'd knock on would say, we're not interested. And the 10th door would say, the boss isn't here. Come back later. And it just seemed like such a huge waste of time just to be going door to door, physically going door to door. And I thought, there's got to be another option. And so I thought, maybe
online business would make sense because then I can sit at home and do it and I can approach the whole world. And so I started learning programming and website design and all that kind of thing. But I was doing it on business there wasn't any demand for. And I always thought it would be so much better to have a business that was going after existing demand rather than trying to create demand from scratch. Because I was doing these flexible, bum bag kind of things that were a very niche area. And I always thought that there would be a
a market for improving your health naturally. You know, I'd always thought that like, there's certainly a place for pharmaceuticals, but they have a lot of complications often with side effects and that kind of thing. And I thought there's a place in our, in the health of an individual where you can improve your health through plants like we did before pharmaceuticals even existed. And so it was something that interests me and something that I'd
Nina Huchthausen (04:53.454)
discovered I'd done a lot of backpacking through India. I'd spent a couple of years backpacking through India. I discovered spirulina, which is a big part of the diet there, and turmeric, and ashwagandha, and all these different kinds of foods that are part of Ayurvedic medicine. And I felt like this could be a big, industry. And so I just one day started from my spare bedroom. And I bootstrapped the whole thing. I think I had $500 to put in or something to buy a few samples. And I built the website myself and did everything
myself that I was that octopus that you spoke about because you have to be the start. You don't know what you're doing. I think even if you did have endless cash, which I've never wanted to take money from anybody because I think then you'll be holding to them and it can take a lot of fun out of it because now they own a piece of your business and you also, your decision making is influenced by what's going to be best for them rather than what's going be best for your customers.
I've never taken a sip from anyone, so I've bootstrapped the whole thing. so 13 years ago, I thought I'd start this business. And so I did in this bedroom. And I would go to the local health food stores and buy in bulk the products I needed. So I'd buy five kilos and then divide it up into 500 -gram lots and sell it online. And then it just kind of grew from there. And we rode the whole wave of, I don't know if you remember, but probably like
8 to 10 years ago, superfoods were massive. And there was this whole thing in the media about superfoods just hype. Why can't you just eat a blueberry? All this kind of stuff. And that conversation doesn't really happen anymore. It's really become its own market that's established now and well -respected as a market. And it keeps evolving. And now the mushrooms have become a big part of that. And they represent a big part of our business, especially because we're doing Australian grown.
lines, main and ratio in quarter steps, whereas everyone else is bringing it in from overseas. And so we have a point of difference there from everyone else on the market. And we don't do extracts. We just do the whole mushroom or the whole acai root. We do whole foods rather than extractions. And so that's given us another point of difference. And through those points of difference, we've been able to get a reputation of having high quality products. you buy something and it helps you to sleep better. It helps you to feel less stressed or have more energy or improve your
Nina Huchthausen (07:15.79)
immune system or whatever it is, you go and tell other people. And so that's really helped us to grow rather quickly. think, you know, it's not uncommon for us to do an increase of 40 to 50 % in revenue a year. And, yeah, we've kind of been very lucky when we got involved in the way the business has been tailored to people who want high quality products, we've managed to find a really good audience base. And, you know, the business is still growing even during these times when
you know, the economy is pretty poor. And, you know, I feel very lucky that people love what we do and that people feel like they can spend, you know, the hard earned money that they have on on on what we do and it represents value for them. Yeah, because I mean, the fact of the matter is, especially when things are a little bit tougher, the number one thing to get you through is your health. Yeah.
If you lose that, you get nothing. That's right. And often we take it for granted until we get sick. then we realise, wow, our health is just the only thing that matters. If you can't get your health right, it affects every other aspect of your life. think the amazing thing about the superfoods is that they're just foods. They're just mushrooms. They're just plants. They're just leaves and roots.
You know, there's, I can't say there's no side effects, but it's virtually zero and it's just ways that you can improve your health through the foods that you consume. And I think as a society, we need to be thinking much more about what we put into our body and the impacts that have on our overall wellbeing. And I think a part of that shift in thinking towards, you know, what are we putting in has been the catalyst for this industry growing so much and,
becoming such big industry, particularly in Australia and America. Yeah. And I think it's also deeply connected to us just becoming more conscious of the impact that things have, right? The impact of our actions, the impact of our nutrition on us. And for such a long time, it was so disconnected, right?
Nina Huchthausen (09:39.182)
I've had so many conversations with people who are so conscious about what they're putting into their cars, yeah? Petrol, oil and all of that stuff. Yet they're like completely oblivious to the foods that they're putting into their body and couldn't understand the relation. So in your car you would never put petrol into a diesel. Yeah.
what never occurred to you, right? And you're choosing premium oils, yet you're eating like white bread and feel like your body can keep handling that and feel like. Exactly. And we live in a society where we have so many choices and we have so many options and we have so much freedom, you know, more than any other humans that have come before us. But with that, we have to be far more educated in terms of what we do and we have to be far more
aware and disciplined with ourselves and do what's right for ourselves rather than just do what's easy. It's so easy just to go and get fast food rather than cook dinner. But what are the long -term repercussions for that? And how does that make you feel compared to if you are cooking the food yourself? yeah, think I always think about this quote, that the mind is its own place. And in itself, it can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven.
We have this incredible world around us and we have so many options, but it's up to us to decide what's best for us and just take time to become aware of ourselves and to become aware of what is the best fuel for our bodies and take care of our bodies as best we can because, you know, it's the only one we got and it's aging every day. Yeah, yeah. And I really appreciate that about you, your company and your mission, because I know for myself, I'm a really busy person.
I forget to eat. I try to make the best choices possible, but I know that without supplementation of the right things that really give me a good boost, I wouldn't be as healthy as healthy as I am today because it's like, you know, I love doing my thing. you know, cooking and preparation takes time and you, you providing
Nina Huchthausen (12:00.366)
in small doses, the thing that I really need so that I don't have to spend an hour making the most beautiful nutrient -dense salad every day. Thank God. Thank God. You know, millions of people keep realizing that every day. And I know for myself, since I've become a mom, my gosh, I'm so time poor. Yeah. So like,
Beyond of just what you said, it's like, honestly, the work that you're doing and what you're providing is so critical to moms that are busy, that forget to eat because they're using their attention, their energy, everybody, everywhere else. Right? Number one. And number two, it also helps me greatly to get the best nutrition into my children because you can hide stuff into food and get it into them. You know? Yeah.
Now, a nutritionist came up with a product last year, last year called chocolate milkshake. And the kids love it because it's just chocolate banana and dates and you just add whatever milk you want, but it's got wheatgrass, barley grass and kale hidden in it. And the kids don't realize. And so it's like a way to get, you know, and the kids ask, you know, I've had parents tell us the kids are begging for it every day and it's a way to get nutrients into particularly fussy kids. But I think, you know, the superfoods, goes so much further than that as well. Like so many of us are so stressed.
And the ash of gunder helps to reduce the cortisol levels naturally, which has a massive impact on all the systems of your body when your cortisol is firing too far. Brain fog is such a common complaint nowadays. And lion's mane can really help to improve brain fog and help you become more productive. And I've been doing this for so long, and I still get blown away by how incredible these plants are and these mushrooms are and what they can do to just improve our lives. And they're such incredible tools that I'm
I'm not surprised more and more people are using them every day. It's a no -brainer. There's very little risk and huge rewards. Yeah. And how big is your range today? I think we've got about 50 products at the moment. Yeah. And are you still finding, developing more? Yeah, we're always finding and looking at new things to do.
Nina Huchthausen (14:24.93)
We're very careful in that we won't do any isolated compounds. We'll only do whole foods. And we don't do isolate compounds because I think they're untested and they're a bit risky. I don't want to be selling something that then turns out to be damaging to people in some way. So we just do whole foods. we don't do theanine and things like that, which
which are isolated compounds, we do the whole food versions, which give people the benefits in a way that it's food that your body recognizes. We don't really know what happens as a society. We don't know what happens when you take an extract of lion's mane in the body. We know what happens when you have the lion's mane mushroom because humans have been eating that forever. So we just go with the whole food version. I believe there's
it becomes more bioavailable because your body goes, that's lines made. Where it's in an extract in water or alcohol, I'm not so sure your body recognizes what it is. So that's our philosophy to do things as close to how they appear in nature as possible. Yeah. I like that. I like that. And it also adds to the simplicity, I would assume, when it comes to creating this and knowing what's in it.
Yeah, because you mess less with the raw ingredient. Yeah, exactly. Just try and find the raw ingredient, the highest grade possible. It's kind of like I think about when you go to like I spend a lot of time in Spain as well, you know, and you go to some of these incredible restaurants and they serve you the most incredible food that's got three ingredients, you know, and it's incredible because those three ingredients are the highest quality on the planet and they have
incredible flavor. And I think about the same thing with our superfoods as well. Like if we can just give the highest quality as close to its natural state as possible, I think that's what gives people the maximum benefit and the maximum value for their money. So I think that's a really great segue into what, because if one of your biggest values is highest quality possible on this planet, right?
Nina Huchthausen (16:38.734)
Then that's, that's it to me, a key anchor point that probably drives a lot of your business decisions. Yeah. And has driven from the start, right? Because I would assume you didn't start with 50 products. That'd be crazy. You know, that'd be a lot of arms to, to, be making maintaining, but that value, how did that, did you use that? Or maybe you didn't at the start. How did you, how did that translate into?
and making the product because at the start you bootstrap you did it at home I would assume but at some point you're like this is crazy I can't do that. So I was very lucky growing up that I worked at my grandfather's stores on weekends and it was the best time of my life working with my dad and my grandfather all three generations in my grandfather's jewelry store in Coburg in Melbourne. They used to always tell me
that you can't be working on your business when you're working in your business. And that was something that I always thought about. And obviously, when we started the business, we didn't have any money and didn't really have any options. So we would pack all the product ourselves, do the customer service, and bid that octopus that you spoke about in the introduction. we got to a stage where, and so we would just buy the highest quality we could find, certified organic and Australian grown, that kind of thing. And when we got to a stage where we could
negotiate with suppliers and suppliers would talk to us. We went direct to the suppliers so we could ensure we're getting the highest quality. got our organic certification sorted out so we could pack certified organic products ourselves. And then it got to a stage where there just wasn't enough time to pack all the product and do the customer service and work on the website and do the advertising and accounting and everything else that went on.
I decided to outsource to a co -packer, a contract manufacturing company. And so we started working with this company. And in this beginning, it was fine. I'd give them an order. They'd pack it. And then all of a sudden, then a couple of months in, the order started to not come back. So they'd say, we're going to have your order ready by the 1st of September. And it'd become the 15th of September. And we'd see what happened to the stock. And it'd become the 1st of October. And we'd what happened to the stock.
Nina Huchthausen (19:04.958)
And I'd keep hassling them. And that takes time, right? That takes time and energy to keep going, where's my order? What's going on? And they would kind of go, sorry, we had a big order that came in that we had to fill. And eventually, I realized that what was happening was we were a very small fish in a big pond. And they had very big customers who were demanding their orders get filled. And so they would push our order aside in order to do the orders for the bigger companies. Because that's where their revenue is coming from.
not from us doing 100 or 200 units. from the people doing 10 ,000 units or 20 ,000 units or whatever it was. And so eventually I left that contract manufacturer out of frustration and found another one and went to another contract manufacturer. we supply. often these contract manufacturers, want to supply you with the product because they can make more money because they can make a markup on the packing as well as the product itself.
we wanted to, but I wanted to supply the product myself so I could ensure that it was going to be the highest quality. And so we do that. And then we had, it was going okay with company. And then there was an order at some point down, at some point where they sent the order, we got it. We started sending it out to customers. It was something like, it was Australian greens. It was a product like that. So it was a green product. And the customer called and said, it's something we was Australian greens. It's purple.
And so I got one of the bags off the shelf and opened it and it was a Sai. You know, it wasn't anything dangerous. It was just a Sai very, but they'd stuffed up and put the wrong product in the wrong bag. And so then we had to, you know, email those people and say, throw it away or, know, it's just a Sai. can use it if you want or whatever. We had to, there was a long process involved in fixing that and again, new stuff packed and it was, you know, it was a headache and it took me away from being able to work on growing the business.
And so we stayed with them for a bit longer and then we moved. As we kept growing, we kept kind of like being able to at least get more attention from contract manufacturers because a lot of the time they got very high minimum order quantities. But as we kept growing, we were able to fulfill those minimum order quantities and then went to another couple of companies. then, you know, we had there was one point where a pallet load of stock got lost. A truck fell over between here and Queensland and all the stock was damaged. And so we lost all that stock.
Nina Huchthausen (21:27.27)
It was back and forth all the time. then at the same time, this was about six to seven years ago, I was traveling a lot just before I got married. I couldn't do anything in -house. There weren't any employees. I couldn't do anything in -house because I was traveling. And so I outsourced the Pick and Pack as well. It's this company that specializes in doing Pick and Pack of orders. And they were really good. They made less mistakes than I did. They would get the orders out on time.
But it was so expensive. Every order, it's like $4 or $5. Pick that order. If there's an extra item, that's an extra $0 If you want to put a flyer in it, that's an extra $1. If you want them to send it internationally, that's an extra $7. There was just cost over cost over cost. so I thought to myself, because when we got married, my wife had an organic store down the road that had a spare warehouse.
It's like a shared more than warehouse, but on the property. And so it wasn't being used. So I said, I'd use half of it for the business. So I took it back from the Pig and Pat place and started doing it. I actually went to the Pig and We were doing quite a lot of orders then. We were maybe doing maybe like 400 grand to 500 grand worth a month. Like it was a reasonable amount of orders. And I said to them, look, I'm doing 10 times the orders I was when we first started with you. Give me better prices. We do five volumes. Make it worth.
make it more worthwhile for me. And they said no, because it's so labor intensive for them. Because every order has to be picked and packed. They don't really get any efficiencies from getting more orders. They get more sales, they need, there's only so many orders one person can pick in a day. And so they just need more customers. So it's not the kind of business that can scale very well. It doesn't get economies to scale. And so they said no. And I said, all right, I have to take it in -house then. And so I bought it in -house.
I found some software that plugged into our website so we could just print up all the orders, print them off on the stickers, and then just stick them on the box. And I hired staff to do it in -house. think looking back, that was a massive milestone in terms of bringing things back in -house. And I think it actually, it was great because it gave us the flexibility to be able to become more customer -centric. And so what we could do is, for example, if we stuff up a customer's order,
Nina Huchthausen (23:54.862)
When we resend the new order, we can put a handwritten note in going, so sorry we stuffed up your order. Here's a $20 voucher for next time. And when we decided we wanted to, you we recognize the customer has placed 20 orders and we want to put in a little free gift, we could just put in like a little free sample and go, thanks so much for your support. Here's a free gift. And when I want to put in, you know, catalogs or flyers or whatever, we can do that kind of stuff. And when a customer contacts and goes, you know,
I want to cancel this. So I ordered the wrong thing. I want to cancel that order and order saying else. We got no worries. We can just delete it from the system before it's picked and refund their money and they can place their new order. And it just gave us a huge amount of flexibility. And looking back, a big part of being able to do that was having the right systems in place. That's a huge part of it. And that's because that's what I learned from the outside the pick and pack places that there was nothing really special about.
what they were doing, they just had good systems in place to minimize mistakes and to make things efficiently. And so we found software. I tried three or four different programs and I settled on one that worked well with our website. And we started doing all the pick and pack in -house in that big shared slash warehouse. And then we outgrew that space pretty quick. I think, I thought that space would last us a couple of years, but within three months we had to buy.
40 foot container to put on the property because we just couldn't fit everything in. And then we feel the 40 foot container and then like, and at the same time, was at that time, you still have the, the contract manufacturer getting the products to you. so the first thing you took back was pick and pack. First thing we took back was pick and pack was cause I thought that was, that would be pretty easy to do. mean, you don't need any council approval to do that. You know, like you do with manufacturing.
You don't need any equipment to be able to do that except a computer and a thermal and a label printer basically, and you can do that in -house. Also, it's much easier to train people to do that. We did that in -house. Actually, before that, I decided to use a VA for customer service. I heard about how great VA's were. I trained a couple of VA's and it was awful.
Nina Huchthausen (26:13.537)
They were really nice people and they were really lovely and they were trying really hard. But they didn't understand the Australian culture. A lot of the time, they misunderstood what the person was actually asking. So it had to go back and forth. And I thought myself about when I have a customer, when I need to speak to customer support, like with a bank or with a company or whatever, and you ask them one thing and they reply something different. It's so frustrating. It's so annoying.
And it wastes the time. I thought, my god, we've become one of those annoying companies. And so I got rid of the VA that day and brought that in -house as well and started doing customer service in -house in Australia without direct phone number. Anybody can call us during business hours and we'll actually answer the phone, which is unusual for an online business, I think. But we started doing that in -house. I just thought, if you you, if, like,
I think there's so much competition, particularly now, you know, in this industry, like looking back, there was no competition then, but it felt like there was a lot of competition back then. But there's, you know, there's, and you, you can't give people a reason to go somewhere else. You know, that's what I keep thinking about. It's like, if you give people only need one reason to go shop somewhere else. And if they're, if their order takes forever or you get the order wrong or the product arrives damaged or you send them.
annoying emails or the customer service person doesn't understand their request or whatever it is. You just only need to give them one reason and they won't come back. They'll go somewhere else. And so I think that that's probably just something I want to highlight this because
There are not many products out there that don't have comparable products on the market, right? So probably 90 % of people listening, I was like, yeah, there are comparable products on the market. And just this notion that you said, if you want your customers to stay with you, because it's the customer lifetime value, right? It takes a long time to acquire a customer, to build trust with them, for them to start using your product.
Nina Huchthausen (28:29.573)
Yeah. Right. So it's super critical for any business, my business included, right? I want customers to stay. Yeah. So justice, I love this, this, this mantra because putting that on the wall to be like, Hey, we don't want to give people a reason to go somewhere else. Yeah. Then from what I hear, what you've been doing is looking at every single part of your business and see, could that be a reason? Yeah.
for people to go somewhere else. And then from what I'm hearing is then you went on and like change that to be like, we're going to cross out that, that potential reason. it doesn't just apply. You know, I I know a lot of your customers aren't very online centric and that, a lot of your clients and people who are listening are very much focused on wholesale and being in stores, but the same rule applies, you know, your product and the labels wrinkled don't send it out.
If you wouldn't buy it with a wrinkled label, don't expect someone else to buy it with a wrinkled label. If the packaging looks a bit crumpled, make sure when the packaging arrives to the store that it's in perfect condition. Even if that means it takes you more time to pack or it means you need more packaging material, you need to hand deliver it, whatever it is. As a business owner, you have an opportunity to create the kind of business that you would love to shop with. That's your opportunity.
And if you walk through a store and you see this beautiful packaging with a little handwritten notes and whatever else on it, and that fills you with joy and makes you want to buy it, give that same kind of experience to your customers. If it annoys you when you need to speak to a company urgently, or you want to speak to them on the phone and there's no phone number, if that annoys you, make sure you have a phone number. Be the kind of
What's that saying? Like, be the change you want to see in the world, you know, but be the business that you want to buy from. Be the most amazing business you can possibly imagine. You've got that opportunity. You've got that freedom as a business owner to create something epic. So don't, you know, don't, don't, it's not, it's not worth being mediocre. And that doesn't mean, you know, being a, be a perfectionist and don't ever get anything done and don't ever change anything because it's not perfect. means
Nina Huchthausen (30:50.135)
Just do things, present yourself and your company to your customers the best you can. And if you know, like the other day we had, so we had a really generic email that goes out to customers once they place an order. And I changed it for a new one that's got all these links to these amazing courses they can do on our website and blog posts written by nutritionists, special offers and all this kind of stuff.
You know, I didn't want it. took me an hour and a half to change it. And now people get this amazing email that they want to use it. And I'm constantly updating it. I've updated it three times since. So I don't wait until it's perfect. It's never going to be perfect, but make it the best you can and put it out there and then continually improve. Like that's one of our core values in the business is continual improvement. And that, you know, that ties in really well with pick and pack stuff as well, because for a while, so we've got to, you know, there's probably, I don't know, 12 or 14 people.
in the company at the moment. And customer support people would just go, if there was a problem with an order, they would just put a new order in the system. If we send the person Lion's Mane, but they ordered Turkey Tail, they would just put a new Lion's Mane order in the system and cancel the old order so that it balanced out. But the pick and pack team weren't getting the feedback that, you sent out a Turkey Tail when someone ordered Lion's Mane. And so they couldn't improve.
Now, every time a mistake is made or there's room for improvement, you have to, as one of my staff members, tell the person about it. If somebody gets offended or they're eager, gets hurt, then it's probably not the right company for them. Because our whole thing is just about continual improvement as individuals and continual improvement as a company as well. You should see that one thing of customer service
communicating with the pick and pack team about the errors that they made has, you know, now there's like the errors of, you know, one in 200 or something from maybe one in 70 or one in 60, like it made a huge difference. Because what was happening was the box wasn't clearly, you know, the container that came to the Turkey Tail wasn't clearly labeled or like, you know, one thing looks similar to another. And so just by having that trigger of like,
Nina Huchthausen (33:08.991)
wait, is this the right one? Because I remember I got told I said the wrong one last time. That changes the way the mind works. And you'd go off autopilot, and you go, and you correct yourself, and then it never happens again. And so those kind of things, I think, make a huge difference. And you can do that when it's in -house as well. When it's not in -house, you don't have any control. And even if they do a good job, can't. You could say you guys made a mistake with this, made a mistake, and they'll say, no worries. We'll credit you the cost of shipping for that.
but that it doesn't really fix the issue. And when you have people in -house, you just have so much more control over the culture and the amount of effort that people put in and the quality of the work that you don't have when it's outsourced. You just don't have control over that. And I think it's a lot cheaper to do it in -house. I think it's not about cost, because I think in -house should always be far cheaper than outsourcing any stuff.
I think it's about time management. And I think if you don't have enough time to be able to pack orders or to manufacture the product, then employing somebody on site to do that, I think that made a lot of sense for us. It then freed up my time to be able to work on the business rather than in the business. But it also meant that I could keep control over the processes. And I didn't have to waste all this time and energy
going, where's my order? Did they put the right product in the right bottle? Is my order going to get to the co -packer? Is it going to get back? Is their invoice correct? It's just little things. We were just learning, so it's bound to happen. But we used to get orders from one of the co -packers, and we didn't check it off. We would just see they put on the boxes. It's got 75 units of
turkey tail in it. And this has got 92 units of a side bear, whatever in it. So we would just accept it. But turns out there were massive discrepancies with that. And they would put 92 units, but there'd only be 84 units in that. So we'd put 92 units into our inventory management. And then all of a sudden, we'd be sold out. But it would still say there's eight units left in stock. So when we do stuff in -house, people feel responsible to make sure that they get that kind of stuff right.
Nina Huchthausen (35:33.517)
They are part of the team, and they know the flow -on effects. And they know that if they say there's 200, they've just made 200 units of cordyceps mushroom, but they actually put 150 on the shelf, that's going to have flow -on effects for customer service and pick and pack and advertising and all the other departments as well. So they're way more connected with the brand and way more invested because they're part of the team rather than outsourced.
who does 20 different companies and they don't care. It's just like pack 200 of these into these bottles and they just do it. It's a huge difference. And then with manufacturing, we were outsourcing that for the, that was the one we brought in house maybe only 18 months ago we brought in house. So we, I bought a warehouse which is, which was pretty close, which is in the Yarra Valley. And we got council approval. We did all the,
all the stuff we had to do. So we had food grade permission to be able to do all that stuff in -house, order the machinery. If you buy machinery in Australia, it's about 150 grand. But you can get the same one from China for 10 grand. So we bought it from China. But we had massive issues with the machine not working. And it took me months to get the machine working properly, because there's no instructions. there's, you know, it's.
It came half -broken and there's a big learning curve as well. once we got that working, it was great because now we can say, manufacturing can log on to the day and go, wow, Moringa sales have tripled overnight. We need more Moringa and we can have more Moringa packed within a couple of hours. Whereas if we were outsourcing that, it's eight weeks if you're lucky. So bringing that in -house has given us more flexibility and it's allowed us, again, to make sure
that our systems are really strong and that when they're packing reishi mushroom, it's reishi mushroom that's growing the product because they take a photo of the bag, we list down the batch number and the best before date, we track that all the way through to when the customer receives the order. So we have all of that traceability. We have really, really strong traceability. And because we're certified organic, we're required to have really strong traceability, far more than just council approved stuff.
Nina Huchthausen (37:55.553)
We go beyond that as well, beyond what's required by organic, because we want to have the highest quality product. And I think there's so many brands out there that say we're premium, or we're the highest quality, whatever. But I think if you don't live it, I think people know. if they don't know, they discover that really quick. And it's not going to.
You're not going to be able to grow through word of mouth and that kind of thing. And you're going able to grow exponentially if you don't walk the talk. And I think it's better not to say that if you're not really committed to doing the highest quality stuff. so that's, we look at everything we do and go, how do we do is the highest quality. And a lot of the times it's by creating relationships and agreements with Australian producers, because Australia has such an incredible reputation for.
high quality farming and agriculture. So a huge amount of our products are made in Australia rather than overseas. And then it's avoiding extracts because if you think about it, extract is mostly alcohol or water. Whereas we go, no, no, we don't want any of that in our product. We just want it to be pure and just have, if it's ashwagandha, we just take the whole root, freeze dried, ground it and put it in the capsules. That's it. There's no extraction, there's no water, there's no fillers, there's nothing else.
So what I've kind of pulled out because I've been taking a lot of notes, right? It's really that your decisions have been driven deeply by this. You want to create the business you love to shop with and creating something real epic. Yeah. Because if I say, if that's the mantra, right? Hey guys.
we want to create something that people love to shop with. And that's like real Epic and real different to anything else that's out there from a business perspective. Apart from the products, then that will attract people that want to live that too, that want to be part of that train. That the pride themselves of creating Epic work of creating something that's
Nina Huchthausen (40:13.815)
custom of not just clocking in and off on and off and just doing the thing. Yeah. And from what I'm hearing, the it's it's the culture ultimately that you've created in -house because you can't create that culture of creating something epic. If you have a manufacturer that's doing their thing because they got a different culture, different mantra, different management that you can't control. Yeah.
Right? Same if you had pick and pack somewhere else, same if you have customer service somewhere else. It's really the leadership and the management and the joint vision that you have created of like, want excellence. I want Epic. I want people to just love doing business with us, whether it's B2B or B2C. And because of that,
I'm bringing in the people that want that too. Yeah, exactly. I think also, you know, I think, I think it allows you to have far more control by doing things in house, but it also gives you the farmer flexibility and far less risk. think like, think when we bring this delphin, what are the key flexibility points that you have realized that this approach of in -house gives you?
Just so that people are like, this is what we mean by flexibility. Yeah. mean, it's what I was saying before in terms of know, Moringa starts selling like crazy and we can get more Moringa on the shelf within a couple of hours. Meaning that your manufacturing team, can just say like, guys, systems shown, this is going down. And no matter what the manufacturing schedule says, we can just change it. We have the flexibility.
Exactly. And nobody charges you or tells you, no, no, no, you are not done. You're manufacturing isn't scheduled until next Tuesday. You can be like, we just slow with the energy. Exactly. And the manufacturer can, can get in touch with me or with the manager or whatever and say, Hey, these seals, there's something weird with these new seals. They're not sealing very well and we can swap it out.
Nina Huchthausen (42:34.125)
manufacturer, go, we've got to get this job done because we've got to start this next job tomorrow. Just put the seals on. Don't worry about it. Send it off. You know, they're not, they're not committed to providing the highest quality like, know, like we are, but also like, think that that idea of providing the highest quality is fits in with that idea of creating the kind of business that you want to shop at. Because, know, I think about if we go out for dinner,
And the options are $20 to go somewhere mediocre or $20, $20 a meal for saying mediocre or $28 for something incredible. That's going to blow your mind. You're always going to pay the extra $8, you know, point otherwise you might as well just stay home if you're going to have something mediocre. And I think it goes for the same for consumables and other products as well as like, you know, people don't necessarily, people don't want the cheapest price. They want the best value and the best value isn't necessarily the cheapest price. I think as business owners, get.
too caught up in pricing, rather than finding something else to help us distinguish from all the competitors. Because at the end of the day, someone can always survive for less than you. Someone who can always survive can eat for cheaper than what you can. And I think you don't want to get into a war of prices with your competitors. I think you need to go, well, what would be more important to me than price and focus on that? And for us, it was about having
high quality, whole food, Australian grown, organic, as close to nature as possible. That's what, me, was what I wanted to buy. if it was between that and another product, is slightly cheaper, which was growing overseas in questionable conditions and is mostly alcohol or water, I don't particularly trust the company, and it's not certified organic, and all these kind of things, I'd rather buy the more expensive one.
So how much time do you take in this little segue, how much time do you take educating your B2C customers as well as your stockists about all of this? Do they sell that? Do they know about what you go through versus other companies?
Nina Huchthausen (44:52.045)
The B2C, the B2B stuff is really, it's tricky to communicate that stuff because they've got 2000 different product lines that they're trying to, they're selling, they're not necessarily interested in yours. So we provide, we make sure our packaging really communicates that. So we use glass packaging with metal lids and with beautiful transparent labels that are printed onto the bottles, not stickers. We make sure that, you know, the products
that they're nice and we make sure that we provide flyers and marketing material and that kind of stuff. And we also do consultations with the store staff, if that's something they're open for as well, to talk about the products and what works best for them. A lot of the time, a lot of our stockists are actually clinics, nutritionists and naturopaths and Chinese medicine doctors and that kind thing, actually use our products themselves and want to give them to their clients. So they're already
well aware, they're the kind of people that do a lot of research before they buy these products. And so they kind of know a lot already. And so they're able to communicate that and educate their clients as to why they should buy the products from us. with the B2C stuff, it's much easier because we send out, I think we have 50 ,000 active newsletter subscribers or something. So that gives us a good platform to be able to talk about why freeze drying is better than spray drying and why we've decided to make
know, grow our cordyceps in Australia and why we're doing whole foods rather than alcohol based extract. And, you know, why we think rhodiola rosea is, you a product that you should buy and, and all these kinds of things. have that platform to provide the information as well as a blog with, you know, thousands of articles and so, and videos and all that kind of stuff. And so I think B2C is easy to do that on your website. And I think I'm a big fan of QR codes as well.
I really like the idea of having swing tags on a shelf with a QR code that people can scan that then gives them information about that product or a video about that product or something. And that's something we're looking at implementing in the near future. I think the first step, think when products are on a shelf, it's kind of like social media advertising. If you can't stop people scrolling or if you can't stop people in their tracks,
Nina Huchthausen (47:17.889)
You're never going to get anywhere. And I think the packaging is pretty much that whole way that someone's browsing around a shop, and they stop and pick something off the shelf. That's the packaging that makes them do that. The packaging is really important. And not just in terms of making it beautiful, but it needs to communicate what are your brand values? Is the brand high quality, or is it value for money, or bulk, or buy bulk and get it cheaper? Or is it Australian grown?
whatever it is. so it's also about making sure that, you know, and that comes to what we talked about before about the product not being creased and not looking shabby on the shelf. Because if does, people just aren't going to pick it up. And it's the same with, you know, social media advertising. Like if you can't stop people scrolling, well, then the rest of the ad doesn't matter. And so it's a similar idea in a shop. But in the shop, it's your packaging that stops them scrolling rather than your creatives. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.
I, that's a conversation that I hear so many times that people are like, they've spent so much time in making the product and then they just designed the label on Canva and you're like, yeah. Okay. What is this? You know, and they're like, printed the labels already. They don't do. Yeah. have to, you know, like as business owners, we get so stuck in our business that we.
you know, we have blinders on, but you need to step outside of your position as a business owner and think of yourself as the consumer, you know, and would you buy that product? And always think about it from, you know, what's going to be best for the customer? Because in the end, that's what's going to be best for you. And that's what's going to grow your business is is appealing to the customer as much as possible. And that's, you know, that's the customer service. That's the quality of the manufacturing. That's the
The pick and pack, that's the packaging, that's everything. The customer experience from when they first hear about your brand to when they go to reorder, that whole process has to be incredible, including every email, including the packaging, how the product works, including answering the questions they might have about the product, everything.
Nina Huchthausen (49:38.079)
And I know I've made that mistake in my first business where I hired a social media manager and it was just so painful. But I was like, just don't, because I was pregnant at the time and I was like, it just has to do. It's okay. And the whole time I was so ashamed of what was going out at times because I was like, this is just wrong. But I accepted it.
And it's stupid because really if it's because if I had held up that mantra that you said so beautifully, create the kind of business you love to shop with. What creates the love? It's every touch point. Yeah, it's not just the product that's inside the bottle. It's the love of the bottle itself, because I want to display it on on my counter. Right. It's the
It's the brand that attaches to my identity because it looks like something that I should buy. It's the, have a question and someone actually answers it and that two weeks later. Yeah. And it's the trust that especially with, with, with supplements that there's actually in it, what's supposed to be in it at the highest quality because I give you my money. If I pay $60, $80, a hundred dollars on something.
I want to trust you that this does actually the thing that it's... Yeah, of course. And I think, you know, I think at the end of the day, like when you outsource something, they have very different goals and motivations to someone who's a part of your company. That's what it comes down to. And I think, you know, you can't do everything in house and you have to, you can't do everything yourself. So you definitely need people to help you. there's...
There's a time and a place for everything. We weren't ready to be able to manufacture in -house seven years ago or eight years ago. We just didn't have the skill set. We didn't have the space. We didn't have the software. We needed to outsource at that point so we could continue growing the business. And I think one of really important things that business owner is being able to say, what's the right step for my business right now?
Nina Huchthausen (52:01.673)
And I think what do you like because your step, the first step that you took was pick and pack in -house, right? Yeah. And then from what I heard you say with with pick and pack, well, first of all, if you if you have the processes mapped out and it's not the most complex process ever to figure out yourself of picking and packing, then you can hire people.
that are good at following process. Yeah. And that are as passionate about creating a good result for the customer as possible. Right. And you could even, could do a pick and pack in my office if I want to. Exactly. And I think we all start off doing it. I think most businesses start off doing their own pick and pack because there's like, you know, you've got three orders a week. Like what, you know, you can't outsource that. And then we kind of go, we outsource the pick and pack. then I think at a point where you go, well,
I could do it. You when you run the numbers and you go, I could save thousands of dollars a week by doing this in -house with a staff member and having the flexibility to do it the way I want to do it. It just makes sense a lot of the time. you can start with hiring a person two hours a day. And an hour a day that could be a mom who was like, yeah, I got, I got some, some free time. I'd love to do it. A hundred percent. My first employee was my, was my little brother.
And I still, it was in a garage in Northgate, we went out for the leather bags that he was, he was doing all the pig and pack for the bags. I'm, I can't remember what happened, but we had, we're very close now, but we had some argument and he sent me a very formal resignation letter. I was like, well, it's sometimes good to separate business from family. But I think from, for any business owner who's kind of like I'm strapped for time and what should I be focusing on?
What I love about pick and pack is because if you have someone making the product for you, you can check it. You can quality check it pretty much. Yes, you can't open the Ashwagandha bag to make sure it's Ashwagandha in it, but you can see if the packaging looks wonky. know, you can, there's a lot of quality control that you can do. And I think from a manufacturer perspective, if they know you will touch every product,
Nina Huchthausen (54:27.009)
they might also put in extra care than if they think, somebody else gets it. Nina doesn't even get to see it. You pay, says, hmm, you know, they would never pick this up. Yeah. And I don't even know if the junior who's there, you know, with a scoop packing products, I don't even know if they would even care about whether you'd see it or not. You know, they're getting minimum wage to just put, you know, put products in a bag or, you know, make things for you. just don't, I don't even know if that would.
you know, if they, if they would even care. But I think, you know, I think at the end of the day, like you can't, the most important thing is to work on your business rather than in your business. You know, the most important thing is to be continually growing and continually improving. And I think if bringing pick and pack in house is going to mean you don't have time to grow your business, but then it's not the right decision. And if you can go, I can bring, I can bring pick and pack in house. It's going to take me.
a week to train up one or two people to get done. And then I don't need to do it. And then I'm going to save thousands of dollars a week that I can then reinvest into the business. And I'm going to have more control over what goes into the bags and stuff. Then it makes sense. But I think the most important thing is you have to keep growing your business, particularly in those first couple of years. Because otherwise, you're just trying to make ends meet. And you're just trying to get your head above water. so yeah, making sure that you
prioritize working on your business rather than in it is super important. Yeah. And that's a good tip. And like I would personally also choose Pecan packing, having it with you because of what you said there. At the start, when we are acquiring customers, it goes such a long way when there's a handwritten note in it. It goes such a long way if like the other day from
I received like a little bit extra in my parcel because I think there was supposed to be like three stained remover sticks in it, but they just had a pack and they had one in it and said, hey, we thought you might like to test this. Amazing. I was like, that's so nice. Yeah. Unexpected nice things. can do those things, which will make me come back. what you said at the start as well was,
Nina Huchthausen (56:51.275)
word of mouth really can create a long -term ripple effect. And how do you do that? If you are able to delight your customer, whether something went wrong or not, it could be all right. And you're delighting me. But that delightness touch, you can do very easily through picking and packing and putting a lot of heart in. It's a little something or even just writing something on the parcel.
Yeah, go ahead on the password takes 10 seconds. exactly. And that's really cool. And then with customer service, because they know people are conscious of the money, right. But with customer service, what I think you took that as your second step. If you can stay close to the design of that perfect experience and continue and improve that and hire someone
who loves to make people happy, truly make them happy, then you can let them keep designing and refining the process and you'll receive it, but they want to share with you what they do. Yeah, exactly. And on that as well, think as a business owner, you should avoid, you should stop doing customer service as quickly as possible. Because I think, know, 90 % of the time when someone contacts you, it's when they have an issue or they have a problem or they
just don't like you or whatever. And I think it drives, it can really be distraction as a business owner to just be dealing with complaints all the time. I think it's massive to be able to outsource, to be able to give that role to somebody else who's not a business owner. So you can focus on the other 99 % of people who love what you do. And yeah, and I think, you know, make,
All you can do is your best to make sure everyone has a great experience. But the reality is some people just aren't going to, and they're going to want to return the item, whatever. That's fine. You can return the item up until the best before date with us, which is up until two years. And we get very few returns. It's 0 .05 % or something. It's tiny fraction of the orders we send out. But I think that can really taint your view of the business if you're just dealing with complaints all the time.
Nina Huchthausen (59:12.077)
think that's another one which is really important to take off your plate so you can really focus on growing the business and not dealing with individual issues, but rather looking at business as a whole and how you can reach more people. I love that. I think that's the challenge with customer service because it's so individualized as it can take a lot of your time to just dealing with one customer that places $70 order. Yeah. If you're spending an hour on that,
person, my gosh. And it can really drain your energy because it's exhausting. And if you don't have that creative energy to funnel into something that creates growth, it's just, you know, you can burn out from that if you are not a hundred percent. And if you, know, if you're in that, if you're in the beginning stages where you are the octopus and you're doing everything yourself, you know, you just got to keep grinding. You know, you keep
believing what you do, keep grinding, keep growing, keep moving forward. You you're not going to go from no sales to eight figures overnight, but just keep moving forward as best you can and thinking about what can I do to grow my business and to make it a little bit better and just focus on today. In harnessing and protecting that brain capacity so you can think about continuous improvement.
and making it better and finding ways to make it more epic. I think that's a really important thing and not getting yourself sucked into things that throttles that creative energy. For sure. For sure. And that's one of the great things about having a business that grows and gets to six or seven figures is you can start offloading a lot of those roles that are sucking your time that aren't necessarily growing the business and that you don't like doing to other people.
And that's massive, that's something to really look forward to if you're in the first couple of years of your business, that idea of being an outsource, all the stuff you don't want to do to someone else. So you can focus on the stuff that you love and the stuff that you do that no one else can do. And you can focus on growing the business. And then the last thing, I mean, you said only 18 months ago, you made the jump into manufacturing.
Nina Huchthausen (01:01:35.561)
in -house. Can I ask at what volume stage were you for you to decide now it's time we are able to make that jump or we should make that jump? I don't think it was about volume. I think it was about frustration with the outsource manufacturers. Okay, so you were at a certain level of frustration that was... Yeah, a level of frustration.
worked out, you know, there was a warehouse we could buy that was that we could afford, bought the warehouse. And then I thought, now we can do it in house. Now we've got space and we can dedicate an area for manufacturing. We can do that all in house. You know, it took 10 years, or 12 years or whatever it was to get to that stage. But, you know, looking back, it was a good move for us. I don't know if it's a good move for every company, but for us, you know, I like the idea of
I think we've got a really good team and really lucky to have such a good team of people who work well together and being able to do everything in -house has really made the business run more smoothly and allowed us to be poised to scale. Our sales could droop all overnight and we'd be able to fulfill those orders. Yeah, that's awesome. And I'm super excited to keep following your journey and see where that leads to.
But think it's also good to understand, hey, manufacturing, like finding a good contract manufacturer is not easy. But I think at the start is probably the way to go if you can't, if you don't have the capacity to do, to keep doing it in -house by yourself. a contract manufacturer who fits with your level of business. know, don't go to someone who's got
an MOQ of 5 ,000 units and convince them to let you do 500 units. Because it's just not going to work. You're just not at the right size for them. And they're going to end up pushing you away and not prioritizing your work. You're much better off finding someone who has an MOQ of 100 or 200 units, and you give them 500 units. It's that whole thing of being a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond. I think you need to find someone who's going to fit with your business size.
Nina Huchthausen (01:03:51.553)
you know, and then as you grow, then, you know, you probably end up moving to other contract manufacturers who are more aligned with the size of the business that you are. Yeah, awesome. And I think the second thing would for me also be really looking at what are their values as a company, because every company has values that they live by and a management style. If you understand, okay, this is how they think and act internally.
And you can see, well, does that when things get, when there's a little bit of struggle or rumble, could we figure things out and do they move and think the way we would do things? Yeah. And if you have issues with contract manufacturer now, find another one. You're not, you're not stuck with them. If you're not happy with them, find someone else, you know, the worst thing you can do is just ignore the problem. If they keep making, if they, if you keep having issues and they, you know, they keep
not doing things when they say they're going to do things or making mistakes or being unreliable, whatever, find someone else. There's plenty of companies out there. Make calls, find someone else and reduce your own level of stress and reduce the energy you need to put into working with a contract manufacturer that's not aligned with you. Yeah, yeah. Don't settle for mediocre. there's so many said that before. know? Exactly. Awesome.
Thank you so much for all of your wisdom, Justin. The last question that I have for this is based on you having been a business owner for 13 years now in this business before the handbags, what's your number one advice that you would give to a product business owner at the start of their journey?
Nina Huchthausen (01:05:44.493)
Keep growing. I think as people who are at the beginning of their business, it's very easy to get caught up in being the octopus and all the different roles you have to fulfill. the most important thing, I always thought business was about the numbers. I thought if you buy it for a dollar and you sell it for $5, you're going to do well. But it's not about the numbers. It's about the marketing. And if you can't get sales, nothing else matters. Your priority has to be grow the business. That's it. Everything else is a secret.
Awesome. Thank you, Justin. It was such an epic conversation. I took so many notes and I was like, will apply this in my business, even though it's a service business. That's why I love these conversations. It's magic happening in my brain right now. So thank you so much for your time, Justin. I will, of course, put links about you into our show notes.
Yeah, so because I would highly recommend people for people to check you out. I know you've been on other podcasts as well because they're more exciting stories about you and about your company and also everybody check out Forest Superfoods because it's a really awesome brand. And as Justin said, he's aiming to always deliver excellence and something epic. So I would test that out and see how epic it is, you know, for your own inspiration.
Thank you, Justin. It's been good chatting with you.
