Hello everyone and welcome back to the show! It’s Doone here - your host and hype girl. I’ve been SO happy to see so many new faces joining us in the Facebook group and asking all of the questions. Josephine and I will be digging into these topics every Friday for our Hype Girl chats. You can come and join us by clicking the link in the show notes and drop your own questions and challenges so we can explore them too.
Today we’ve got Mayssa Chehata back on the show - she joined us back in May 2021 to talk about her business, Behave Candy and since then Behave has gone through a massive relaunch - Mayssa made the call to pause for what ended up being 12 month while they worked through new packaging, new pricing and new formulations - so interesting to hear about this approach and the impact it’s had on the business.
Let’s jump in, this is Mayssa for Female Startup Club.
The TikTok Controversy
Mayssa posted a video on TikTok that we reposted, and it just went WILD. Check it out here. We ended up on the wrong side of Instagram and TikTok. It got to the point of violent comments. What kind of place do you need to be in to get to this point? It’s almost a cry for help.
What are your coping mechanisms for dealing with this, how do you decide to keep showing up? Boundaries. Turn off the comments, if something has gone completely out of control. I block anyone that said anything hateful on my page. There’s so much information being shared. To understand what’s happening around the world.
What’s happened since 2021…
Mayssa’s company is called Behave, all natural candy, as delicious and good as real candy (but less than 3% sugar per bag) - not spiking blood sugar
Last time we spoke, we were still DTC
June 2021, the second year of biz, we opened a small handful of retailers with a plan to test with some of those retailers before signing with the big names
We kept really close communication with those retailers we were in, 100+ demos
Same time with DTC, many customer interviews
What’s our customer saying? What do people think?
The price was too high
Started hearing the taste could improve as soon as we started expanding beyond the just super health concious stores
Our original packaging was plain text but the retailers came back that they need to show the gummies on the package
With all this feedback we realised we need to shift the direction of the business in 2022: go into hibenation, moved to a new co-packer (allowing us to reduce our price), everything we saved on our cost we passed on to the customer and we re-formulated
We took around a year to work on that and relaunched in 2023 (September)
The investors understood this decision and the pivot, agreed to not pursuing revenue growth for a year but instead putting ourselves in a better position
We took a year (it was meant to take 6 months) so it was definitely key to keep those relationships strong during that time
My COO and co-founder stood behind me and the pivot which gave me so much peace and love and support
I moved to Mexico allowing me to reduce by cost significantly, put a lot on credit cards this year & there was a lot of trust and faither and manifestation
The first 30 days have been insane. So much interest and excitement, exactly the validation that we were looking for
The growth plan moving forward
Really nurturing those retail partnerships. Existing accounts. & what’s next is opening up more retail. Really cement that DTC side of the business, then moving on to perfecting retail. Getting into hotels, conferences, workplaces… I love that, it’s wholesale AND marketing. Discovery is so cool. Especially at these natural places where you’re willing to try.
If you had to start a new CPG business tomorrow, how would you be starting again? Test the hell out of your product and iterate it a thousand times before you go into scales production and before you build out your brand. We were guessing: who’s our customer? What do they care about? It’s why we relaunched, we could change everything according to the wishes of our customer. Make 100. Have 100 people test the product, not people you know. Get the sticker of a QR code to a Google Form and stick it to you product, go out on the street and hand that out to people. Get strangers to give you feedback on your product. I wish I had been asking people to hurt my feelings. Tell me the worst about this. Make 100, iterate those changes. Make 100 iterate those changes. Make 400, find some stores to hold it, stand at the store and see what people think. Collect an insane amount of customer experiences. People miss the customer feedback moment, because it’s scary. They don’t have have truth perspective. You’re in an echo chamber surrounded by friend and family.
You are birthing a child when you start a business, you put so much love into it and it feels scary to be open to feedback. I was there, and I definitely regret that. I’m here to say don’t be scared of it. It’s not a reflection of you. You are not your brand. You are a human and you have a brand. Those are two different things. It’s so important to do that inner work to seperate yourself from the business.
“Don’t make a mistake more than X” ($10,000)
Resources mentioned: All About Love by Bell Hooks, Rick Rubin the Creative Act, Jay Shetty Podcast