Building a Profitable, Bootstrapped CPG Business with Sean Hall, Wellious

Jordan Buckner: [00:00:00] Anyone who has read any of my articles or posts on LinkedIn, listen to podcasts knows that I am a huge advocate of finding product market fit for your business and for your products. I think it's one of the crucial things that most founders skip over or speed through as they are looking to grow their business.

But it's the fundamental thing that makes or breaks having a successful business. It should be your number one priority. One of my favorite founders and brands who has really developed and talked through their product market is Wellious, founded by Sean Hall, and they have been able to take their simple almond based protein powders and really grow sales digitally in a way that I haven't seen before, quite frankly, and I think is a huge model for other founders to follow.

So Sean, welcome to the show today. I'm excited to talk about your journey and lessons learned along the way. 

Sean Hall: Thank you, Jordan. Appreciate the kind words and you always being a helpful to everyone in our space. 

Jordan Buckner: Of course, of course. So [00:01:00] for those of us who haven't had heard of your brand or our listeners, tell me a little bit about like, Wellious is where the concept came from and when you got started.

Sean Hall: Yeah. So the origin was a few years ago the story is that I had some personal health stuff going on. am know, kind of felt like crap for a few months, got really serious about cleaning up what I was consuming and ultimately realized that my protein powder was filled with the same horrible ingredients that I was trying to avoid in junk food sometimes even, even worse than our desserts and junk foods.

and so that led me on a journey to just try to make something better. A food that we have the intention of it being healthy not being healthy, really felt intolerable to me. And so yeah, just spent a lot of hours and still spend a lot of hours trying to make something truly clean.

Wellious is, the cleanest protein powder on the market is just four real food ingredients. We call it farm to scoop. A hundred percent plant based kind of solving the taste and texture problem of plant based protein powders as well. And then there's also some added benefits in addition [00:02:00] to the muscle support.

There's natural micro and macro nutrients that are good for hair health and skin health and gut health. So kind of an overall wellness supplement as well. 

Jordan Buckner: I love that. I love the simplicity of the product and that it came from your own experience. So as you were kind of consuming these protein powders, it was basically like, I let me see if I can make like a better, cleaner protein powder.

Did you start like mixing ingredients in your home kitchen? 

Sean Hall: Yeah, to a degree for sure. It was a lot of research and learning. So there was a lot of iterations in the kitchen, but it was a lot of just going super deep on protein sources and flavoring sources And sweetening sources. And I'm still, And there's not too many people in our space that like actually source the ingredients like the founder sources on themselves.

And I still do that like as close down to the farm level as possible. So yeah, really understanding it on a deep level, then figuring out, yeah, how do you combine that to the right taste and the right macronutrients and actually make a product out of it? 

Jordan Buckner: I had a friend who wanted to start a protein powder [00:03:00] business.

Eight years ago or so with the idea of making like a more natural product. And it was interesting watching their journey because what started off as this idea for like simple and clean ended up like working with a food scientist, which, you know, there's a lot of benefits of that. but at the end of the day, like it did not to me, like resonate as that clean protein source that they were originally starting out looking for.

And one thing I appreciate about Welli ous You stay true to like four ingredients. It's very simple. There's not all these like added functional things that people may or may not need or may or may not work. Like it's just very straightforward, which I think there's power in the simplicity of it.

Sean Hall: Yeah, and I think this, you know, might transition into our product market fit talk. but for me, it's like, it's really an intention thing. I, like I said, I started it out of some health stuff. That's something on a macro level that I care about a lot. I think there's a lot of issues with our food system. wouldn't have, But this product out, like it wasn't just a widget that, you know, I'm an entrepreneur [00:04:00] too. I love stuff. That's just like to be entrepreneurial. but I wouldn't have made this product specifically if I didn't end up figuring out how to make a great, if I couldn't make something that was, you know, on a functional level what it was supposed to be, but that tasted, you know, if it didn't taste amazing and it wasn't made from simple real food ingredients with none of the stuff I was trying to eliminate.

If I couldn't figure that out, I wouldn't have done it. And I think, you know, I got lucky that it was that hadn't really been done before and it was the right product, right time type of thing. And that people have gravitated towards it and, you know, really felt falling in love with it. I think like. 

Again, it's the intention of making something truly better for people. And that being like, it's not just a value prop, like that's the truth. And so like, it's as clean as it can be right now. Like I want that to evolve over time. Like, as we learn, maybe there's a better option than monk fruit. Maybe there's a better option than mixing chickpea and almond protein et cetera. 

I'll, I'm happy to evolve the [00:05:00] product to that, but like at the end of the day, people want. A truly clean product. And like, that's what I'm, you know, dedicated to create, creating. 

Jordan Buckner: So tell me about your sales strategy becauseWellious like where are the majority of your sales coming from right now? 

Sean Hall: Yeah. So right now we're a purely online business.

actually turned down quite a bit of large, large retail. And honestly, I mean, that's a whole conversation in itself, but honestly, we just haven't had the capacity. We've grown so much online and we've barely been able to keep up with it. And at times we're a little 

Jordan Buckner: loose that way.

Sean Hall: yeah, and we're bootstraps so is more just like , we haven't had the capacity to also add in, you know, very large retailers as well. That'll definitely come at some point. but yeah, right now we're on Amazon. We sell a DTC we've done TikTok shop. We are selling on like Grove Collaborative, which is a online retailer.

And know, we're, we're doing quite well there. I think any signals we've had towards retail, I think the product will actually do really well. You know, I don't have to explain it. 

Jordan Buckner: I always tell people, yeah, like stay away from retail as long as possible. If you can, if that's not part of your like [00:06:00] core strength and that you want to do, because it creates a large number of other operational in sales headaches along the way.

but I'm a huge fan of selling online. I mean, one of my favorite things I tell brands as well is if you launch your product on Amazon, like if it fits as You know, beverage is really hard and there's certain categories that are tough, but if you have a shelf stable product that's fairly light to ship, I would say like launch on Amazon because it'll tell you pretty quickly if people are searching for your product.

Like if there's a known demand of people like looking for products like yours or not, and it will give you a indication on what the hurdles will be to growing your business. And so when you launched on Amazon, did the product get picked up like pretty quickly? Did it take a few years for it to really catch on?

What was that trajectory like? 

Sean Hall: Yeah, I'd say I think there was momentum there pretty quickly. was something that. Yeah, I'm pretty bullish on Amazon as well in general, just to back up a little, I think that like you said, it's a great testing ground. fairly [00:07:00] easy, definitely.

Like you said, your product needs to fit into it. We're, I'm really lucky that like our category makes a lot of sense on Amazon from a AOV perspective, from a shelf life perspective, from a, you know, Just capacity of the market size on Amazon for it as well for a lot of people, it wouldn't make sense, but if your product does make sense there then yeah, there, it's a good testing ground.

Like we're in the top, like 1 percent of products within plant based protein powder there. And we're competing with like our categories crowded. So we're competing with hundreds of brands and a lot of brands that are bigger than us. Been around longer, bigger teams, a lot more money. I think.

it's a great way to kind of realize if you have a product market fit, I always talk about it too. Like, I think when you sell DTC, you have these really like funnel bread customers. know, you're doing a certain marketing campaign, getting them on to like, You know, this landing page that's well designed collecting, however, many of them in your funnel, then like email marketing a couple of times, and then you convert them and then you get to have that continued CRM with them and you send them the product nicely, like yourself or through your [00:08:00] 3PLWellious versus like Amazon.

It's a lot less luxurious than that for the consumer. And you don't really have any CRM with them at all. It's really your product. So if you figure out how to sell the product in the first place, which is like an indication that your value prop is right. But then people are coming back there and buying, which they definitely will, if you have a good product, that's a really good indication of true product market fit.

And like our repeat rates on Amazon are insane. And like our subscription growth there is insane. Our LTP there is insane. And like, that's probably the biggest indicator for an early stage company for. Like in my own mind being honest with myself that like, Oh, you really have something here. 

Jordan Buckner: Yeah. And I love that.

I mean, even to go back to what you said at the beginning of that, when I was doing demos for my brand Teasquares, like if I was in the store, I could sell our product, right? Like people would come talk to me, hear the story and they would leave p But I heard people who saw our product on the shelf and people who customers [00:09:00] literally came up, they're like, Oh, I actually saw this in the shelf and it looked interesting, but I did not buy it.

And that's because the product did not sell itself, and it did not have a clear value proposition which I learned over time, which meant it was very expensive to sell. And I think that's kind of what you mentioned, like, when you're doing the educational funnel to their own site and email list, like, with enough touch points, people might be willing to try your product and give it a shot, even if they aren't inclined to initially buy it.

But what Amazon does, because it removes a lot of that Upfront kind of storytelling. It really gets down to like the harder, easier product providing clear value to a customer. Yes or no. Right. And will they buy it? And then will they come back as if the quality is good, if they like the story, they can learn more about it kind of on their own.

. It gets rid of a lot of that noise. And it's great to hear that you found that repeat rate. And so when you felt like you had something like, what did it look like when customers started coming back? Like how often were they purchasing and what were their order sizes increasing?

What were those indicators? 

Sean Hall: Yeah, This could [00:10:00] be a longer story, but we don't have the best analytics, but recently I was able to throw like our entire history of orders into AI pretty much and analyze it in a really in depth way. And like four. Historically, a hundred percent of our lifetime sales looking over that and looking at like 12 month cohorts.

So people that, you know, have been around a it was like well over 50 percent of people reorder and every single person that reorders. On average orders 10 more times in the year and spends 40 something dollars. So it really comes out to every single person we retain is spending over 400 a year with us.

And it's over half of the people. So every single customer we acquire on average ends up spending over 200 a year with us. 

Jordan Buckner: That is incredible. Like you don't see that with many other products in many other categories. 

Sean Hall: Yeah. Yeah. So obviously like for us, if you, yeah, if you really kind of understand the space, it's really awesome.

It gives us a lot of room to be far worse [00:11:00] on all of those numbers and still be a really good business. but yeah, I think it's like, you know, there's statistical stuff like that. And then there's very anecdotal stuff where like, you know, you have to be honest with yourself.

We're all trying to like tell a story of how cool and great people love our brand and product. but like. The truth of Wellious is, I think it's far exceeded, like, the affection for the product has far exceeded what I even hoped for, like, I was like, hey, this tastes great and it's cleaner than what's on market, like, awesome, I'm going to use it every day, it's worth putting out into the but for, like, the way other people speak about it and, like, the multi paragraphs that I get, it's an understatement.

Now, daily and messages and emails that say like, you know, them and their family members have certain you know, health conditions certain intolerances, super picky kids during their pregnancy, they couldn't eat anything. And this was the only thing, you know, that agreed with them. And it's just like, actually.

Like is helping people in a very real way that again, like I try not to be like, you know I [00:12:00] don't think I'm changing the world with this product But it's like it actually is providing very positive value for people and like at the end of the day It's food And so I've always thought like the instant tangible reaction people need to have is that it tastes great and like I think really does And so that's a huge thing, but they also like People were suffering a lot of bloating, cramps, et cetera, from other protein powders and from the additives and just feel great on ours.

So like, I think there's, that's really been an amplificate, like why it's been so amplified through people is they try it and they just love it so much on a lot of different levels that they really want to talk about it. And so. It turns them into kind of these diehard customers. Like we just get emails all day long saying like, I'm a forever, I'm a forever customer forever fan after like trying, you know, at once or but they're also like telling other people about it too, which has helped with our organic growth. 

Jordan Buckner: Yeah. And I think that's amazing. That's the sign that you actually. Are delivering value. And my own like self criticism for Teasquares was that our product [00:13:00] wasn't really solving a true problem for customers.

I think the problem that we had was valid in that, right. Our whole mission was to help people stay focused and energized throughout their day. People were picking up a second or third cup of coffee. We had a snack that was made with. Caffeine from tea. And so I was like, instead of having a second cup of coffee to have in the eat your teeth through through these delicious snacks.

That was a big behavior change and a big jump. And when they actually, we surveyed our customers a few years in over 50 percent of them actually said that like, Hey, I actually don't. No, if the energy benefit is there or not, but I actually buy it because of the taste and texture. And there's this big disconnect of like, Oh, what problem are we actually solving?

And does that align with why our customers are buying? And a big learning opportunity for me along that was that the problem I want to solve around energy and focus was not misaligned with what our customers were buying us for and really had to step back and see if like We were meeting that goal or not in the way that [00:14:00] customers wanted it met.

And the truth of it was that we were not. And the product didn't survive, you know, because of that. What I think is really powerful about the stories and the data that backs it up with Welli you are directly solving a clear problem. People are currently using, a lot of them are currently using some type of protein powder or protein source.

They're looking for a cleaner one that, It's good for their bodies and their health and it meets that need, right? Like it's a very clear story. You say, Hey, where are a, you know, almond based protein powder with four ingredients. Like people get that immediately and can decide if it's for them or if it's not right.

Some people want all those additional additives. That's their choice, but like they understand it. And I think that's, what's core to having a great product like well, yes. And that why it catches on because it solves the problem and it's incredibly easy to understand where no one has to like think twice about it.

Sean Hall: Yeah. And I think it's like, you know, there's room for all those different things. Like great product is, you know, super subjective. And I always think about. You know, when I, if I go to the [00:15:00] local farmer's market, like I will find a better hot sauce than any one that's on the shelf and I'll find a better baked good than anything I could buy on a store from, you know, a brand that's worth a hundred million dollars and on and on.

 know, there's the difference of some things meant to be and can be super successful and loved at a, at a time. You know, a large scale and make sense to invest in it. Like those are all different conversations than like is a product really great. But if you are trying to do that, if you are trying to scale something clarity on value prop.

but also I think we're lucky that like we have a huge market size. Like there's just a lot of people. We have, yeah, a ton of people transitioning from the protein powder they were using. It's so much better. More people than I even realized. And then a lot of people that are getting into protein powders for the first time.

And like the whole, there's a lot of cohorts that are opening up there. and like our product is such a high LTV product category that it doesn't even take that many people to have a really big business [00:16:00] yet we have, you know, such a, a giant market to, 

Jordan Buckner: let me ask you about that too. When you started Wellious, I know you thought about it a little bit, like, I guess, how much did you think about, like, the category dynamics in terms of its size, the options, the price points, the margin, did you, like, spend time breaking that down, or did you kind of, like, jump in without fully knowing it?

Sean Hall: Yeah, I think I had a pretty mature thought process on And yeah, just like a strong auditing of a product cause I had started other things prior and so, and I'd started. Packaged food and bev products. my first company was fresh protein, granola bar. We made hundreds of thousands of them in a commercial kitchen and, you know, cold ship them all over the U S and had a bunch of local, like never again.

So I did it the hard way for sure. And I think it's like, yeah, I would, I'm really lucky to start this first. And as I developed other products over the years and this one that kind of happened serendipitously. Again, I wouldn't have brought it. to market if it didn't hit these certain things And You know, [00:17:00] so I thought a lot about shelf life and average order value and price point and channels that it could live in.

of that stuff, I think really matter. Now, I didn't think a lot about, you know, Tam and I think a lot of, and even like I didn't, someone was asking me the other day how I like had conviction to like, did I do a lot of surveying and testing? How did you have conviction to bring in the market?

And. weird. I really, I've never really done that with any of my products. I just like really believe in my own intuition and that mostly that I'm just a really harsh judge of if something's like a good, like I'm a food person when it comes to taste. Obviously I understand the nutritional side so I can know if it like, if I thought it was truly clean, like I talked about before.

And then if it tasted good, and then obviously like had a handful of people that I trust, family members, et cetera, try it and say like, oh yeah, that's really good. And that was really all I needed to Push it in the market. And I knew like people use protein powder. I don't really like it wasn't from the beginning.

Like, Oh, it's a 30 billion industry and we could [00:18:00] take 1%. Like, I think that has not too much to do with, withWellious 

Jordan Buckner: yeah, I think that having the initial understanding of how the category works, that is like super important. And most first time founders aren't thinking that way. It comes from that experience.

I think of being in the industry and having experienced something different. And it's something that especially now when funding from investors is extremely tight. I always recommend founders like if you're bootstrapped or low on funding, find progress market fit and break even as fast as possible because it allows you then to expand and make other decisions.

And a big part of that is understanding how the category works and what it takes to actually break even and make money, right? There's some categories where. You really have to sell a million units to even have a chance of breaking even. And there's other categories that are fast moving, high velocity, and you maybe only have to sell 20, 000 units to break even, right?

And understand like what that takes to get there and how it relates to [00:19:00] your potential to have a successful business early. 

Sean Hall: Yeah. And it's super important. I mean, food and beverage in general is just not like, is a hard thing to jump into and there's a lot of misconceptions And You know it's hard to find financial success in this space for sure.

And giving yourself the best chance of it. It's like, if you have a product that's really hard from a logistics stand to point, like it's cold and the margins are tight and, You know, there's breakage when you're shipping and different things. Like if it becomes a, an operational nightmare from a production and fulfillment standpoint, it's still going to be so hard to build all the other, elements that make a business great, you just have this whole extra part of it, that's 10 times as hard as a different product.

So yeah, I think that like, you know, usually people don't start like two cold products in 12. And the others are. The first time, or maybe you did something else the first time and then you do it the second time. but from like, so I think it's really important for you to do that, [00:20:00] to give yourself the best, think through that stuff, to give yourself the best chance, but it's funny from like on the investor conversation, which is a conversation a lot of us founders are having these days.

 know, it's weird because. Sometimes investors will invest in that category that is that hard, like with that is really low margin and can only live in retail and is like a not that high LTV type of product and like is glass and can't be online and doesn't have shelf life. And. You know, I'll talk to that same investor.

That's like, yeah, we're not really sure about, you know, protein powder just as a category. And I'm just like, you don't have to invest in ours, but you should invest in some protein. Like if you're going to invest in, you know, glass condiments, like you should definitely invest in protein. Well, God, you understand you're going to have some losers, but you know, why I want to have some winners too.

Jordan Buckner: I love that with everything that you've been through with Wellious is now, have you been able to reach a point of break even or profitability with the business? 

Sean Hall: Yeah. We're, I mean, it's a true bootstrap. I know that can mean a lot of different things, but like truly bootstrapped, I started it with 3, 000.

That was the all in budget to launch which was really just the [00:21:00] cost of the initial, you know, whatever, a few hundred bags I made. And since then, you know, supported a couple production runs with a little more cash. And that's literally it. And we don't even really have a credit line or great terms.

We Only grown off of profits. And every production run has been twice as big as the previous one. So. I've come to realize, I did not realize this when I started, but now it's become more apparent that we're in a very small minority of people, brands that you know, I'm growing fast, but I've done it truly efficiently where we're Even at a small scale, have a business model that really works and makes more money than it spends.

 at the cost of like, I think about we could have grown way faster if I had, you know, capital and was willing to burn it into it. yeah, I mean, the goal right now, you know, as a low seven figure brand, Is it necessarily to be super profitable? know, I'm pretty much pouring everything back into the growth, but it's interesting on months where we're tight on inventory or something and I'm, [00:22:00] I pull off the gas and I'm not really doing much marketing spend is just cause some of our organic and evergreen stuff Like to see how the bottom line shakes out where, I mean, we literally had months this year where I think we made more profit than most brands that are 10 times our size.

We'll make maybe even the year in that month or losing money, but like, also like, you know, if we just ran the business like that, and I went for super conservative growth, like I could live my life and make decent money off this business exactly where it's at. And it's funny because a younger version of me would be like, I mean, that's kind of the goal for everyone.

And now I'm like, well, I really want to build this into or something. 

Jordan Buckner: It's so hard. I mean, cause one of the biggest challenges, right. You just mentioned is like. the cash needed to fund future production runs because there's still that outlay where you have to buy product up front before you can sell it.

I think there are more debt options available to do it if your margin can contain it but that's still one of the reasons that even though you might be [00:23:00] profitable it still requires cash to grow the business further. 

Sean Hall: For sure. Yeah. And I think that's, you have to really be in it to understand that like, yeah, even for us who are super efficient and like I said, definitely has a much stronger bottom line than even businesses that are a lot bigger than us.

It's still such a tight game. There's at the end of the day, you're just an inventory business, physical product, and it costs money. And yeah, with lead times it's a hard puzzle to solve. That certainly makes me understand why people take on capital. It's for most people it's necessary, but even if it wasn't, it's certainly very helpful.

but I think the cool thing about it, like, My story with this, if nothing else is, I think people start saying that it's like impossible and I think it shows that it's and I think like my story just represents more people were like, it's not like when you start a business like this, you know, for the majority of Americans don't have the option like, Oh, I could raise a million out of 5 million pre seed, or I could bootstrap it with my 10, [00:24:00] 000, like, No, it's, I can bootstrap it with whatever savings I have.

For nothing. That is the only route, and it gets kind You know, pessimistic out there when you start seeing that most of brands that you see kind of blowing up and making it have raised a lot of money and we're well connected and et cetera. t so I think that's been cool to at least be like well, you know, with enough, if you do the right thing, which is certainly takes a certain amount of luck, but with like enough discipline and ingenuity and hard work, you can also You know, go out and at least do what we've done, which like, we have no shortage of investors that want in on what we're doing.

So you could build that opportunity you know, in a very practical way. 

Jordan Buckner: Well, Sean, I'm very excited because I want more businesses to launch and grow like you are and have the optionality to continue growing on their own or take on debt or take on investors. But having that optionality is key.

And so I love the product, love the brand, love how you've been building it. And excited to see where it [00:25:00] continues go from here. Thanks so much for being on the show today and sharing that story. 

Sean Hall: Yeah. Thanks a lot, Jordan.