Mystic Gum Sees Early DTC Success

Braxton Manley first appeared on the podcast in 2021. As a college student, he had launched Braxley Bands, a maker of Apple Watch bands. Last year he returned with an update on that business after operational and sales challenges.

He’s back, having launched his latest company, Mystic, a direct-to-consumer maker of health-focused chewing gum. In our recent conversation, we discuss the origins of Mystic, marketing plans, early successes, and more.

The entire audio is embedded below. The transcript is edited for length and clarity.

Eric Bandholz: How’s business?

Braxton Manley: Braxley Bands, our Apple Watch band company, is surviving in a challenging climate. We’re operating from a profit-first mentality. We grow as much as possible and, based on the prior month’s profit-and-loss statement, scale back if needed. It’s multiple scale-ups, then pull-backs. My brother Zach and I run the business, working remotely. We haven’t taken a salary in a while and are focused on the business’s long-term stability.

I’m involved with three direct-to-consumer ecommerce businesses now. My fiance, Maddie, started Peace Love Hormones about three years ago. It’s a direct-to-consumer supplement brand for women’s hormone health. I have an executive role there, functioning as CEO so that Maddie can pursue her doctorate in herbal medicine and focus on the product. I focus on the marketing and operations.

Our third business, Mystic, just launched. It’s chewing gum for women made with sap from a mastic tree, which grows on a Greek island and has a ton of health benefits.

We’re trying to build a family holding company to operate multiple DTC businesses. At this point, they’re all relatively humble — six and seven figures in annual revenue.

Bandholz: Tell me about Mystic.

Manley: It’s square chunks of organic gum. It costs $38 for a can. It’s a beauty product for women and is categorized that way on TikTok. It’s different from regular gum. It’s not sweet at all. It’s palate-cleansing. It relieves indigestion and promotes oral health. You can develop an appreciation for the flavor.

The business is six months old. We’ve been fulfilling orders for just a week. The beginning stage was figuring out what the logo would look like. We did a beta test last year. We invested about $3,000 and ended up selling $20,000 worth. We realized we had a viable product.

We then raised $90,000 from friends and family. We developed custom packaging and produced 5,000 gum units — enough to make our first $200,000 in revenue.

Bandholz: How are you marketing the product?

Manley: Well, we’re a week into fulfilling orders. So it is fresh. We’ve spent much time on a TikTok Shop. We believe TikTok is a good product fit.

Affiliates are important to us too. Maddie, my finance, is an Instagram creator in the health and wellness space. She has an incredible community, which produced our first Mystic orders — about $5,000 in revenue. By Q4, we’ll be doing six figures monthly. This can scale quickly.

We sell recurring orders, but we’re not using the terms “subscribers” or “subscriptions.” Instead, we sell memberships to a gum-chewing club. We have cool hats, a club logo, and patches. The idea is to build a culture. We will charge more for our first subscription and less for renewals. It’s $38 for a one-time order or $30 to join the club for recurring shipments.

Bandholz: Where can people buy the gum and follow you?

Manley: Go to MysticGum.com. You can follow me on X, @Braxtonmanley, or LinkedIn.

Successful Entrepreneurs Don’t Overthink

Corey Wilks is a clinical psychologist turned business coach. He helps entrepreneurs and creators improve their mindset and overcome self-imposed obstacles. He says a common obstacle is overthinking a problem. Others involve perfectionism, doubt, and even fear.

In our recent conversation, he addressed those mental hurdles and more. The entire audio is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.

Eric Bandholz: Tell our listeners who you are.

Corey Wilks: I am a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in cognitive behavior therapy, the practice of helping folks overcome unhealthy thinking. I now coach entrepreneurs and creators to build a values-aligned life and business and overcome beliefs holding them back.

I write a lot of articles on my website and for Psychology Today. I’ve appeared on a couple of prominent podcasts.

I received an early coaching boost from Ali Abdaal. He’s a prominent productivity expert, YouTuber, and entrepreneur. He put out a 45-minute video about the eight things he struggled with in life and business. It was exactly what I help people with, so I dropped everything and, in a day, wrote an article on how I would approach his pain points.

I posted it on X, and enough people shared it that he finally saw it. We worked together for about six months. I didn’t know him before then.

Many good things have happened since then. When I see somebody struggling with something, I send them either a video or an article that might help. If they want to work with me, that’s cool. If not, they still have that resource to check back on.

Bandholz: What does your coaching look like?

Wilks: Being a psychologist, all of my work is around mindset and prioritizing strategies. Common obstacles of entrepreneurs are limiting beliefs and personal narratives. Most of us know what we want or how to get what we want, but we second-guess ourselves and listen to what others think. We question our intelligence or worthiness of success.

Many entrepreneurs struggle with self-doubt and perfectionism. They blame a lack of money, resources, and intelligence for not getting the things they claim to want. But that is very rarely the case, especially with how accessible information is online.

They talk about it, but they never take action. And that typically comes down to fear. So much of my work with business owners is about identifying and overcoming these limiting beliefs or clarifying what matters. We then figure out where the disconnect is.

Bandholz: What’s your advice to people with expectations that exceed their capabilities?

Wilks: Intelligence after a certain point can be a hindrance because you overthink everything. Entrepreneurship is about identifying problems and creating solutions. Smart people are good at solving problems. But there are an infinite number of problems, and it’s easy to get paralyzed.

I know many more successful entrepreneurs who are intelligent but do not necessarily have a high IQ. They don’t overthink. Plenty of mediocre people are high performers because they’re not overthinking. That’s a big thing.

Bandholz: I’m curious why you left psychology.

Wilks: I got fired from my job as a behavioral health provider — a psychologist. I specialized in addiction treatment, working in rural West Virginia. I had peak job security. During Covid, I accepted a remote telehealth position in Kentucky. Two months into that new contract, I got an email stating I was fired in 30 days.

In the U.S., the patient has to reside in the state where the therapist is licensed. I’m licensed in West Virginia, not Kentucky. I couldn’t find another remote job out of West Virginia and wasn’t willing to move back.

Getting licensed in Kentucky would have taken four to six months. It’s a lot of red tape. I had 30 days and three paychecks to figure out my life. I spent 12 years getting my doctorate, and I couldn’t practice therapy anymore. What do I do with my life? I had to take all this knowledge and apply it to something else.

I got certified as an executive coach, which is like a four-letter word among therapists. Coaching is unregulated. A 14-year-old with a TikTok can call himself a life coach.

I decided to pursue coaching because the therapy world defines wellness as the absence of illness. Coaching is about helping healthy people flourish, thrive, and reach their potential.

I had to learn how to set up a business and create a WordPress site. I did a lot of Googling and YouTubeing. I met some kind and helpful entrepreneurs on X. We became friends. They took me under their wing and showed me the ropes.

I’ve taught myself. I produce valuable content to help folks attract friends and customers. I tell people to just start and then iterate.

Bandholz: Where can people follow you and learn more?

Wilks: My site is CoreyWilksPsyD.com. I’m @CoreyWilksPsyD on X, or add me on LinkedIn.

Natural Dog CEO Is an Acquisition Entrepreneur

Bill D’Alessandro is a 14-year ecommerce owner. Natural Dog Company, an omnichannel seller of canine health products, is his eighth brand. “My niche is acquisition entrepreneurship,” he told me. “I’ll buy a small brand, grow it, improve it, and eventually sell it.”

Along the way, he’s learned lessons such as focus, industry selection, and product pricing.

He and I recently discussed those experiences and more. The entire audio of our conversation is embedded below. The transcript is edited for length and clarity.

Eric Bandholz: Tell our listeners what you’re doing.

Bill D’Alessandro: I am the CEO of Natural Dog Company. We sell dog supplements, fish oils, and topicals on Amazon, our website, and in about 6,000 retail stores. I’ve been in ecommerce for 14 years. This is my eighth brand. My niche is acquisition entrepreneurship. I’ll buy a small brand, grow it, improve it, and eventually sell it. I’ve done that seven times now, and Natural Dog Company is what I’m working on now.

At the peak, I owned eight brands at once. We had 62 people in the company, which was not enough. Owners with one brand frequently have the idea to buy another. You might have all the employees, the third-party fulfillment provider, and the infrastructure. It seems pretty easy. But it underestimates how it fractures your focus. You do two, and then you do three, and then you do eight, and before you know it, you’re surface level on everything, and you can’t go deep.

In 2024, ecommerce is hard. It’s data and keyword-intensive. Ranking on Amazon is tough. There’s a lot of competition. Dividing time across multiple brands is how you get smoked. One plus one does not equal two. It equals one and a half. It took me years to realize that.

Running a single business is hard enough. Something goes catastrophically wrong at least once a year, and you have to fix it. If you own eight businesses, something goes catastrophically wrong every six weeks. There’s constant firefighting and reacting if you’re trying to be CEO of all the businesses.

You need to install highly competent, highly compensated management. You can’t be CEO of eight. You need CEOs for each of them. They will make $150, $200 grand a year or more. The business has to be big enough to accommodate that overhead.

Bandholz: How do you pick the right industry?

D’Alessandro:  Bigger businesses are easier but require bigger markets. And that was what I realized. We had eight brands — seven were collectively 25% of revenue, and one was 75%.

It was the 80-20 Pareto principle in real life. These other brands sold, like, natural sunscreen and athletic detergent. I didn’t see the potential. But a ton of people are getting dogs. That market is growing. So I said, “If I’m gonna spend my time, my one precious life here, I want to focus where I have the most headroom to grow.”

There are other components beyond the industry. We had a business with an average order value of $14. That’s harder to make work. By the time you ship it and pay Amazon fees, there’s not a lot of room left. But a price point of $100, $200, or $800, that’s a lot easier. To me, the perfect price point is $70 to $170. It’s low enough to convince somebody to buy quickly but high enough to cover shipping and customer acquisition costs.

Bandholz: You’re omnichannel now with digital and in-person sales.

D’Alessandro: A couple of years ago it was clear ecommerce was getting harder. In-person retail was attracting more interest. It’s different than getting on Amazon, where you hustle for a week, set up the listing, and you’re done.

A retail store or chain might have a line review once a year, perhaps in October for on-shelf placement in April. If you wait until October, you’ve missed the review for an entire year. And don’t expect approval on the first pitch.

Big retailers such as Walmart want proof it will work. They only have a few feet of shelf space for a product line — each inch of shelf space could be worth millions of dollars a year in sales. The best way to convince them is to show results from other retailers. We started in the most accessible places: independent mom-and-pop pet stores.

We scraped Google Maps and started calling pet stores. We said, “We’re a natural dog food company. We’d love to send you some samples.”

We built our entire funnel that way. We called, sent samples, and followed up. We got better over several years, eventually selling in thousands of independent locations. It was a grind. Once we were in 2,000 or so, we started pulling data. We learned about average monthly sales, unit sales, etcetera. Then we approached small chains.

Smaller chains don’t typically have as rigid review cycles. We went ad hoc with those guys. After that, we approached big regionals, those with 300 or 400 locations, using data from the smaller outlets. Only then did we approach national chains.

We climbed the ladder. Our product works, and it’s selling through. That’s how we did it.

Bandholz: Where can people learn more from you?

D’Alessandro: Our site is NaturalDog.com. I host a twice-weekly podcast called Acquisitions Anonymous. It’s about buying and selling businesses. My own website is Billda.com, and my X is @BillDA.

Retailer 2BigFeet Shifts to DTC

For years Brandon Eley’s online shoe company, 2BigFeet, prospered by reselling prominent brands. But the profit margins slowly narrowed as did the sources for large footwear sizes, Eley’s niche.

The solution is Michael Ellis Footwear, Eley’s direct-to-consumer brand, launched in 2021. “We finally decided to take matters into our own hands,” he told me.

In this second appearance on the podcast, he and I discussed the evolution of 2BigFeet, the launch of Michael Ellis, custom manufacturing, and more. Our entire audio is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.

Eric Bandholz: Tell us about your business.

Brandon Eley: I started a company 24 years ago that sells shoes to guys with big feet, up to size 21. It’s called 2BigFeet. Our most popular sizes are 16, 17, and 18.

We added Michael Ellis Footwear, our own shoe brand, in 2021. We have been selling roughly 40 other brands for years. It’s always been a struggle to find items that our customers want. We beg and plead with manufacturers, these big national, international brands, multi-billion dollar companies. But they will not invest in extreme sizes and widths for the popular style. After years of begging, we finally decided to take matters into our own hands.

Bandholz: Are custom shoes an option for extreme sizes?

Eley: The cheapest custom shoes we’ve seen are around $600 a pair. They’re handmade leather soles, hand-stitched with hand-cut leathers. The manufacturers make cardboard templates and cut the leather by hand. It takes a long time, many months. They’re ugly shoes, not anything a young guy would want to wear.

Parents call us desperate to find shoes for their kids. Clothing is a problem if you’re 6’8″, 300 pounds, with an enormous foot. It’s hard on a lot of these kids going to school. We empathize with them. Those sizes — 21 and higher — are not huge moneymakers, but we want to say we’ve got shoes for everybody.

Bandholz: So anyone sized 21 and up has a limited choice.

Eley: Yes. To my knowledge, Bogs is the only company besides us that makes a 21. The rumor is it’s for Shaquille O’Neal, the basketball player. He’s reportedly a 23, but that’s in Nike, and they’re not true-to-size. Shaq, or somebody like Shaq, wanted a pair of hunting boots, and Bogs made them. They already went to 18 and now have sizes 19, 20, and 21. But that’s it. And it’s only in medium width.

We make ours in four widths: medium, wide, extra wide, and extra-extra wide. And then each whole size up to 25.

Bandholz: How do you know they won’t sit in inventory, unsold?

Eley: We order only a few pairs of each color, size, and width. We know the customers who will buy them. It takes a while to manufacture those units, and then they sit on a boat for a month and a half. We don’t want to be out of stock for long, but we’re also not going to order a dozen pairs of each.

It’s a small market. There’s a good chance we’ll never recoup our initial mold costs on sizes 22, 23, 24, and 25. Again, that’s not the goal. We want to be known as the company that has shoes for everybody with big feet.

Bandholz: You’ve found a niche.

Eley: We fell into it. My former business partner has big feet. It was a struggle for him, but that was the idea for our business. Building a successful footwear company targeting everybody, all sizes, would be much more difficult. There are thousands of those brands. Many are venture-backed and spend millions of dollars on advertising.

We’ve worked at our Michael Ellis brand for several years. It’s a slow and expensive process, and we’ve invested a lot of money. It’s a risky proposition, but we saw the margins shrinking in reselling name-brand products. We’ve been in business for 24 years. At about 18 years, making a decent profit with pure retail started getting harder. We’re a small family-owned business with fewer than 10 employees.

Bandholz: What are the lessons thus far with an in-house brand?

Eley: We started our manufacturing journey in India. We had intermediaries between us and the factory, not knowing what we didn’t know. We skipped a few steps in quality control and then tossed a good portion of the first container of merchandise. The quality was bad, and the sizing was off at least a third. And then the delays with the back-and-forth on creating samples, testing sizes, and, again, quality control.

We missed much of our fourth-quarter sales last year with our sneaker launch. The container got here on Cyber Monday. It easily cost us $150,000 in revenue. We still made money on them, but it will take time to turn that inventory because the first half of the year is much slower. That means less cash flow going into other styles.

We quickly learned the importance of personal relationships at the factories. The factories we work with now, in China and Brazil, are second- and third-generation owners, and the founders, their children, and their grandchildren are active in the business. They employ high-skilled workers — craftsmen and artisans.

Bandholz: Where can people buy your shoes?

Eley: Go to 2BigFeet.com. Our Michael Ellis brand is there and at MichaelEllis.com. We’re on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. I’m @beley on X.