Advice Line with Shazi Visram of Happy Family Organics

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2:56Hello, and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show, who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. All right, let's get to it. This week, I'm joined by Shazi Vistrom. She's the founder of the baby food company Happy Family Organics and more recently, a new baby products company, Healthy Baby.

3:35Shazi, it's great to have you back on the show. It's so fun to be here, Guy. Nice to see you. It's great to see you. And you were first on the show back in January of 2020. And as always, to anyone listening, we'll put a link to it in the show notes. It's a great episode. You started Happy Family Organics around 2003 when you realized it was really hard for parents to find good-tasting organic baby food. And you became an advocate for improving nutrition and how children are fit in the U.S. And then about a decade after launching the company, you sold it. And right around that time, your son was diagnosed with progressive autism.

4:13And since we last spoke, I know you've started another company for new parents and their young children. It's called Healthy Baby. Tell us a little bit more about it. Yeah, well, I think along my journey and knowing so much about creating products for babies, I've learned that with autism and developmental health, There's just so much we can do to create a better environment for our growing babies. I think that as we are evolving as a society, we've been putting things into our bodies that weren't originally meant to be there. And so, yeah, Healthy Baby is a brand that creates the healthiest, safest, high-performing products for new families.

4:55Our diapers are kind of world-class, really high-quality, high-performing, made with no chemicals of harm. which in today's world, there are so many that can actually harm your baby's nervous system. We pair the product with meaningful developmental content so that parents can feel regulated and calm and ultimately have a more connected, healthier life. Yeah. I mean, what you're talking about, of course, there is a lot of momentum behind this. You know, I remember when my wife was pregnant with our first child, you know, in 2008, people were just starting to talk about bpa you know at that time now it's so mainstream and i mean the the the offerings haven't fully matched the momentum right and so i guess that's the sort of the thinking behind healthy baby which is you know you can develop a line of products that people can just trust they don't even think about it they it's just they know that all these things are not in there, VOCs and parabens and phthalates and all those weird things.

6:01I know it sounds crazy, but yeah, we have to innovate and we have to create better materials and we have to make those materials without the use of these chemicals and other things that we've relied on for so many years. I mean, and I love being innovative. It's like a cool way to use design and new fabrics and new materials and find a better way to make something because you care and also because it needs to work. yeah and you know that's what makes for a good business you can't just like care a lot and have a great mission and the product doesn't work yeah um i mean you've been through this rodeo once you have built a company you know how hard it is to build and the hardest thing is to build a brand it's even harder now than when you started happy baby it's easy the barriers to entry are easier in some ways but the brand building is so much harder because the our tension is just it's it's being divided, right, by a million different things.

6:54So what is the ambition? I mean, for me, I've already sold a business. And so the second time, a little bit of that pressure is off. At the same token, I think starting a business besides having a baby is the most creative thing you can do. And you can literally create a living, breathing work of art. Yeah. And Guy, I mean, you've contributed to making entrepreneurship cool. Like when I went to business school, I went because I wanted to like have better tools in my toolbox so that one day I could start a business that was big and meaningful. And what was funny is I was like one of the few entrepreneurs.

7:34And at that time, everyone was an investment banker consultant. And I felt like the freak of the business school. And now more of the younger generation are realizing, hey, I'm not going to live that norm. And if that track isn't going to work because the world is changing with tech and I'm smart and I'm adaptive and I'm entrepreneurial, I'm going to find my way. Yeah. And let them find their way. Yeah, absolutely. Shazi, I think we should take advantage of your expertise and experience and bring on some callers and see if we can help them out. What do you say? You ready? I am. I'm always ready.

8:07All right, let's bring in our first caller. Welcome to the advice line. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business. Hey, Guy. Hey, Shazzy. My name's Daisy, and I'm calling from the UK. So I'm the daughter of the founder of Freight Barefoot. So we're a family-run barefoot shoe brand with the mission to give people freedom for their feet by making shoes that allow natural movement with a focus on comfort and durability. Awesome. Welcome to the show, Daisy. We've done several big shoe brands like On and Hoka on the show and a couple others. And I'm very familiar with barefoot running shoes.

8:44I don't use them as much anymore, but I still like them for exercise and working out. So tell me about how Freak Barefoot was started. So it was started by my dad after he'd been suffering with knee pain. This is about 15 years ago. Someone introduced him to barefoot shoes and it just kind of completely changed the game for him. And it seems so simple, but allowing his feet to move naturally and move all the muscles within the foot meant stronger feet, which in turn meant less pressure on his knees. And he now often boasts that his knees are better at 60 than they were at 40. So through that, he started his own barefoot shoe brand, Freight, with my mom.

9:25And the name literally means Freedom for Freight. So we make a range of products from barefoot hiking boots to barefoot leather sandals, trail running, kids shoes, gym shoes. Kind of got quite a lot of skews now as we've grown as a brand. And primarily you sell through shops or online now? So when we started, we were primarily wholesale, especially, you know, in Europe, there's a really big barefoot shoe market. But as we've grown, I'd say that our D2C has grown a lot. And that is by pairs sold. I think we sell about the same wholesale and D2C. But D2C is the big profit driver for us now. All right.

10:10Tell me a little bit about your sales last year, for example. How did you guys do? So last year we did 2 million revenue in dollars, and that's across three regions. So that's UK, US, EU. But our biggest market currently is the UK, where we're kind of most well known. Got it. And are you, Daisy, are you taking over the company from your dad? Yeah, so that's the plan. At the moment, I've kind of come in as sales and marketing director because of the last 10 years, that's what I've done myself. But the plan is sort of from next year, I will take over the business full time with my dad still supporting on product side of things.

10:48Got it. OK, before we jump into your question, just a question for you, which is how do you guys position your shoes in a way that differentiates you from, you know, whatever else is out there? So we're really well known within the industry for the level of comfort that our shoes have. We feel that that differentiates ourselves from other competitors who have maybe called themselves barefoot, but maybe not truly wide fit as we are and will always be. I'd say the other thing is really our outdoor background. So my dad, big outdoors man, we're a big outdoors family. So our shoes, they're built for the outdoors.

11:26They're built to go hiking in and kind of have all of the comfort and the durability that people may not equate to barefoot shoes traditionally. All right, cool. And tell us your question that you have for us. Yes. So Shazzy, in your episode, you talked about a few of the key pivotal moments for growth for Happy Family Organics, which was so interesting. As I look to grow our brand in the U.S. and have our own breakthrough moment, there are so many potential levers, so PR, B2B expansion, digital influences. How do you decide what to sort of truly prioritize in order to scale the business in the States?

12:04All right, Shazi, I want to bring you in. Say hello to Daisy from Freight Barefoot. First of all, before you answer the question, do you have any questions for Daisy? well um it's such a great market for children as well and i'm just wondering is there any science that that you can leverage to kind of showcase how much proprioception or how many nerves or how much a compressed foot uh develops differently than a free one because i'm assuming that i'm assuming the foot is really well designed by nature yeah exactly there are so many muscles in our foot. And obviously when you're wearing, especially little kids with little feet as they're growing, if you're not able to use that full function and all those muscles in the foot, your foot naturally becomes weaker and more reliant on kind of support through more traditional shoes.

12:56So definitely there's plenty of science to back up our brand and what we stand for. As a parent, whenever someone tells you that there is a better way that actually supports your baby's developing body, your child's developing body, I feel like it's easier to kind of hook them given how crowded the space is in running. And I can't help it. I'm a baby person. But I think what I love about baby food or diapers is it's FMCG, so fast-moving consumer goods. I remember, you know, as soon as my son would find a pair of shoes, if it was the right fit on Zappos, it was basically all I would ever do is every five months, I would be buying the next half size up.

13:40And I could see that with your brand and your business, so you're getting their repeat purchase. I would think that that would be kind of a holy grail. I mean, because I would want you to have that FM part of the CG. I agree. I think that, you know, I'm looking at your website here, Daisy. And, you know, I don't get the sense that you're leaning into the benefits of this. And there is research. I mean, obviously, you want to be careful because, you know, somebody can always say, hey, you know, you promised this and you didn't deliver it. But there is research. And so you can position from the get-go this idea, maybe like the way humans were designed to move or the way we were supposed to walk.

14:25Because I think that that is, that's the key. I mean, part of, even though there are other brands out there, it's still an educational, sort of educational led product. You're still educating people around this. Because a lot of people, even now, decades after this movement has started, are like, really? Don't you need cushioning? So I'm curious, have you used any marketing channels at all that seem to be working or worked or gave you sort of data that suggested that there was a return on that? Yeah. So I use Meta ads and I use them in the US and I find a really good return on those. And I really like tracking through that.

15:10So we obviously do organic social as well. But for me, yeah, the paid ads on Meta have been the best. That's been the best. Okay. What else? We use Google ads, but again, it's not something that I see a huge return on investment. We work with a lot of barefoot influencers within the US. So there's Anya, Anya's Review. She's a really well-known, respected influencer. So we've got a brilliant relationship with her. Has she helped sales as she moves sales? Yes. Yeah. And she has a code. So we know that, you know, she's brilliant for kind of getting our brand out there. And we go to trade shows in the U.S.

15:47And kind of we're trying to just make our presence more well-known there. And what about PR? You haven't tried PR yet? So we're just starting PR. Actually, we've just brought on a small team to help us with that from this month. So I'm really excited to see how that kind of has an impact. But it's brilliant to hear your and Shazzy's point of views on the angles that we should really be focusing on. So that's brilliant feedback to have. Well, I also think, I don't know about you, Guy, but chat is like my best friend in terms of, I mean, I just bought a house in Colorado because chat identified the house and we bought it.

16:23So, but if he can help me find, his name's Saul, my chat, but how are you findable on chat GPT for the next generation of sort of search? Because what I've found, especially with Healthy Baby, is because we have so much science, and I keep going back to it, But the science that is validated third party with doctors and based with research, it tends to actually allow people to find us because chat is identifying not just the product, but also the work and the research and the science. So I'm wondering if you have like a chat strategy. Yeah. So I went to a brilliant conference in the UK about AI recently.

17:08And after that, I went through our entire website and especially like the about pages and the technology pages and sustainability pages and made sure that they were optimized in a way that chatbots like ChatGBT can easily pick off information. We also we use Shopify and through Shopify, I think there's a function that allows the chatbots to help shop through and kind of find our products through them. But yeah, I'm sure there's more that we could be doing. I'm only saying it because there are a billion diaper brands and Healthy Baby shows up in chat as the safest or the cleanest one if you ask I don't know if it's just doing it to appease me but um but it is I it is the the best new shopping tool I think and the place for discovery when people start asking we recently last month we were in a big UK national newspaper and voted like the most comfortable barefoot shoe brand.

18:05So I think having that backlink and having that has really kind of helped us be recommended within chat. And it's helped sales overall, of course, having kind of a regarded publication say that. So hopefully... What was the publication? The Guardian. Yeah. Why isn't that on your front page? Name the most comfortable barefoot shoe by the Guardian. Yeah. Yeah. Like right at the front. Yeah. Yeah. We do need to talk about it more. Yeah, I mean, I think that's something you should push. How are retention rates or reorder rates? I mean, do you have data around that? yeah and it's it's good and we often we have people maybe come in through their kids and then the mother's looking for a good pair of shoes their kids and then they buy their own pair or we get people who come in through um definitely hiking and trail running and then once they've got one pair of freights that's it like they are now like oh do you do a sandal for my holiday do you do a um like a gym shoe you know once someone's got one pair of freights they become quite a loyal fan, there's not normally any going back.

19:10In your case, it sounds like you've got strong retention, strong fan base. I mean, the value of repeat orders, especially in your case, is like infinitely higher than right now than the customer acquisition costs, because the customer acquisition costs are high for everybody. That's just the way it is. They're very high right now. And you can use your existing customers as force multipliers. I see that you've got some testimonials on the site, but what about seeing if you can create user-generated content? You know, have your fans show how they use the product and offer them a 20 % discount coupon or 25 % if they're willing to post it with a hashtag or something.

19:57Yeah, yeah, that's really nice. We did one piece of UGC recently and then I boosted that and it performed so well for us. We've almost sold out of that product in the U.S. warehouse. So I think our customers and the people that like the brand want to see that authenticity coming through. You know, now that you're investing in PR, know that if you don't leverage it, it's like did a bear shit in the woods because that's a really great honor to say the most comfortable shoe. And now you're about to start getting all of these PR hits. And I feel like in my prior life, I've gotten such a ton of press and it was more meaningful then in a purchasing decision-making situation than it is now.

20:44So when you get the PR now, you have to leverage it for the digital ad to make sure that it continues to live on because people see it asynchronously. Yeah, yeah. You know, it used to be like if everyone's watching the Today Show together, we're all going to learn about this baby food company. But it's not that way now. So you might be on the Today Show, but you need to leverage the clip all the time. So just be ready with your team to sort of make that a machine. Yeah, that is fantastic advice. You need to leverage it a lot more, I think, than I have been. Well, I think, I mean, listen, you've got your marching orders, Daisy.

21:21So go forward, go forth. The brand is called Freak Barefoot. Good luck with it. Awesome. Congrats. Thanks so much, guys. Thank you. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, another caller, another question, and another round of advice. I'm Guy Raz, and we're answering your questions right here on the advice line on how I built this lab.

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25:21Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is Shazi Vistrom, founder of Happy Family Organics and Healthy Baby. Shazi, you ready for another call? Yes, let's go. All right, let's bring in our next caller. Welcome to the show. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business. Hi, I'm Rachel. I'm calling from the greater Philadelphia area. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Sprinkle Bites, and we make the world's first protein sprinkles in a single-serve packet. Wow. Okay. Welcome to the show, Rachel. I love that. Protein is king.

25:54Protein has exploded. It's protein water, protein gummies, protein. So protein sprinkles like sprinkles you put on ice cream. Yep. Like Jimmy's. Like Jimmy's, right. Jimmy's. Are they just the chocolate and then the colored ones, like the candy colored ones? Right now we just have chocolate and blueberry. And blueberry. Okay, cool. Oh, yeah. A lot of questions for you. How did this idea come about? I mean, you can put protein in almost anything, but sprinkles? Who knew? Well, my co-founder and I are both full-time working moms. We are very busy, and we only get about two hours a day with our children.

26:35And we don't want to spend those two hours fighting with them and negotiating with them on what to eat. And we just wanted to be happier with them in the little time that we had. So Nicole came up with this idea around sprinkles because she's Dutch. And in the Netherlands, they eat 30 million pounds of sprinkles a year and they eat it on toast for breakfast. So we thought, well, why don't we use that as the Trojan horse and sneak in some function and protein and fill them up if they love eating sprinkles so much? So this is a, this is something that I think a lot of people in the United States would find really weird that and it's also in Australia that they take bread and they spread it with butter and put sprinkles on it's called fairy bread and I guess in the Netherlands it put chocolate sprinkles on bread and that's breakfast so so that's a thing right that's a thing and that was the that was sort of the inspiration behind this behind starting this exactly if we can make sprinkles mainstream here in the states it has to have a better for you you know, angle to it.

27:39One in seven school-age kids don't get enough protein. A lot of them are picky eaters. So it's really hard to get my kids to eat meat. And my middle one has ADHD. So his medication suppresses his appetite. And making food fun helps with getting them to eat in general, but also try new things. And what makes food fun? Sprinkles. Yeah. All right. So five grams of protein, so a little bit less than an egg. By the way, How much do you have to eat to get five grams? One single serve packet. I got you. Okay. And tell me a little bit about sales right now. You're selling direct to consumer only, mainly?

28:16Yes. We launched our product in August. We are at - Of last year. Of last year. Yeah. We've surpassed 100 ,000 in sales. Since then, okay. Since then, yep. We've sold on our Shopify site with meta ads. And then we launched in Thrive Market in December. We got reorder in 30 days. So we were moving 80 eight-pack boxes a week for 13 weeks straight. Got it. Okay. Before we dive in further, what is your question for us? Sure. So as you know, in CPG, it's very hard to manage cash flow and to get early traction. So should we consider private labeling to allow a larger retailer or larger brand establish our category of functional sprinkles on shelf and educate the consumers for us, since that can be costly when you're trying to disrupt something and create a new category?