EP:56 - Entrepreneur Inspiration - Key Strategies for Aspiring Entrepreneurs in the Retail Sector

Geoffery Schmidt is a dynamic individual with a remarkable journey in the business world. Geoff began his entrepreneurial path in 2009 from his kitchen, where he created the Florida Salt Scrubs brand. This venture exemplifies how grassroots beginnings can lead to substantial commercial success, as his products eventually adorned shelves across major Florida retailers like Publix. After exiting Florida Salt Scrubs, Geoff continued to innovate, venturing into new product lines such as sunscreens, further showcasing his ability to identify and capitalize on niche market opportunities. His approach, emphasizing incremental growth and strategic relationship building, sets a standard for budding entrepreneurs everywhere.

Today’s conversation dives deep into the entrepreneurial spirit that drives Geoffery Schmidt. Jeff shares invaluable insights from his experiences, particularly the evolution from homemade products to a widely recognized brand. He stresses the importance of setting realistic expectations and the significance of building one-on-one relationships to scale a business. Furthermore, Geoff discusses the challenges he faced while developing new products, like sunscreen, highlighting the regulatory and marketing hurdles that entrepreneurs often encounter. His story is a testament to the power of perseverance, innovative marketing, and the crucial role of consumer relationships in a product's success.

Key takeaways include the importance of starting small, the impact of standout marketing, and the necessity of building strong, personal connections within your industry. For those looking to enter the retail space or launch their own product line, understanding these elements can significantly influence your success. Keywords such as "entrepreneurial journey," "market strategy," and "product innovation" are central to this discussion. Geoffery"s experience provides not only inspiration but also a clear framework for turning a simple idea into a thriving business.

Questions Answered in this Episode:
1. How can an entrepreneur successfully launch a product from home to retail stores?
2. What are the key strategies for building effective business relationships in the retail industry?
3. What marketing techniques make a new product stand out on crowded retail shelves?

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Transcript

0:23

When I used to go into, you know, Publix or Whole Foods or CVS or Walgreens, didn't matter which store, and I would walk down the sunscreen aisle, I hate to say it, but every brand looked the same. They were all camouflaged within one another. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the OWL podcast. We're interviewing all these amazing entrepreneurs, experts, celebrities, pro athletes here on the OWL podcast. So if you're out there flying to South Florida or want to join us, just shoot us an email at feedbackatowl.com. And of course, every week we have experts like Jeff Schmidt to my left, joining us in the studio. So it's going to be a fun day where we learn all about your journey as an entrepreneur. So to kick things off, Jeff, tell everyone about your first business, right? Well, I know you have many businesses. Yeah. I guess the last one that you exited, Florida Salt Scrubs. Yeah. Because, you know, I know everywhere I would go in Florida, I go to Publix supermarket, I see it on the shelves. I go to fly out of Florida. I see it in all the airports, right? All the scrubs and the sunscreen. So let's kick things off by telling us a little bit about that brand. And when did you exit and what are you up to now? All right. So I started that brand back in, God, what was it? 2009. Okay. Literally out of my kitchen. Started making. It just seems like the best stories come out of the kitchen. Always, right? It's true because it's trial and error. And it's, you know, you get to, it's a low impact way to create something, test the market, see if people like it. And this market. Low rent. Very low rent. Extremely low rent. And an Amazon Prime membership too. So started in the kitchen, grew it. Started selling it at green markets in the early days, going from green markets to store shelves, from store shelves to bigger store shelves to eventually expand in the line. Okay. What is the secret for all the other entrepreneurs out there listening? Because everyone has a good product, but then it fails, right? Because it's not that the problem is not fixing a problem. It's not a good product. It's just like something's off. What is your answer to that? What is the main reason, would you say? Well, there's a few ways of looking at it. More than anything, it's setting the expectations out of the gate for where you're at, knowing where you're at and knowing what the next step is to move forward. I think too many entrepreneurs, when they want to come out with a product, they create this huge vision of where it's like the product's not even created yet, but they're already seeing it on store shelves everywhere, which they have to kind of scale that back, like they say, slow their roll and just kind of go one step at a time. Because every step forward you take, there's a litmus test to whether it's going to sustain or not. And if it passes, then you can go to the next one and then to the next one. That's how I did it. That's how I went about it. I thought you were going to say one relationship at a time. Well, that's it. Because at the end of the day, most businesses fail because they don't have enough relationships to get to the next level. At the end of the day, you have a product, could be this water bottle, but there's a lot of water bottles on the shelf. So at the end of the day, it's like what makes one water bottle different than another? Hey, it's great marketing. At the end of the day, we know that, like smart water. There's got to be something good about smart water. And they're charging $5 versus a dollar. But also just those relationships, right? How they got this water bottle at an airport selling at $10 or $5 at times, it's because they knew someone at the airport and it took one relationship to continuously grow. And you must have done a lot of relationship building because you traveled all across the state of Florida. Yeah. And you told me some cool stories. So share with our audience some of these stories where you built an opportunity off a relationship. Well, yeah, no. Relationships go a long way. But let me just get really clear on that. Is in order to have those relationships in the first place, you can have the best relationships, but you have to have a product that sells. End of story. Like if they put it on their shelves, people have to come in and be willing to take it off the shelf, walk to the cash register and exchange money for that product. So once you have the product on the shelves and it's selling, then yeah, the relationship even becomes more critically important because now you're developing that relationship and you're building a greater sense of rapport and trust and understanding with the buyer or the store owner, whoever you happen to be doing business with. And that becomes extra valuable because they start to join your team because you're on their team because it's a synergistic relationship where it has to be win-win because the better you do, or sorry, rather the better they do, the better you do. And the better everybody does, the more excited everybody gets about each other. And then before you know it, some of these relationships you've started, created and planted the seed for, they're referring you somewhat like we got a lot of business down the line just through referral from retailers saying, well, you should be in my friend's store. You should be in this, this, and that. And what products were you selling? Our audience might not know a Florida Salt Scrubs. They could be in California and they don't see much of your brand and they might not know of it. So what were the main products? Well, the main, the cornerstone was the Salt Scrub. That's what the company was built on. And then from Salt Scrub, we had spray lotion, lip balm, bath bombs, soap. And then eventually we got into sunscreen, which was a huge, huge move. I take one bottle to the beach and within like an hour it's empty, right? Somehow we went from an environment of a bottle that lasted like two months, three months to one day, right? It's quite impressive. And it's so much easier. So we all went to spray cans. But there was something wrong with a lot of, well, you found there, you know, there's issues with a lot of spray bottles out there, right? They're not the same based on the ingredients, correct? Right. They're not all created equal. They're definitely not. And that's the thing. When you're developing products out of the gate, especially if you have no experience with a particular type of product and you're trying to figure it out, there's so much trial and error along the way. Like there were times back in those days where I was about ready to just throw in the towel on the sunscreen because it's not just like the formulation and it's not just the packaging. And it's not just like everything that goes into it. But now you have government agencies, you have the FDA, you got all kinds of how did you do it? I mean, a lot of people on our lab are running into the same problems that you, that you did run into. And I'm assuming you had to reach out to people in your Rolodex, right? You call people, you texted people, you reached out to people, possibly on LinkedIn and say, Hey, could I pick your brain for a moment? So explain to our audience how you, you, you figured it out, right? Cause sunscreen, you know, it's not like your other products at the end of the day. No, it was, it was different. It was a new play. There's no two ways about that. One of the big distinctions that made the difference was I just saw an opportunity to get into the market in a way that nobody else had before. Like when I used to go into, you know, Publix or Whole Foods or CVS or Walgreens, didn't matter which store. And I would walk down the sunscreen aisle. I hate to say it, but every brand looked the same. They were all camouflaged within one another. So for me to have gravitated towards a particular brand that would have meant either a somewhere place, or somehow I was aware, made aware of this brand for some reason. But unless that was the case, I don't, I didn't know what the hell the difference was between all the different ones. So when we came out with the sunscreen, my aspirations were to have packaging that jumped off the shelf, that if you walked up to the sunscreen area, there was packaging that just literally screamed like a blinking green and yellow neon sign saying, come at least look at me, say hello to me. You may or may not buy me, but at least you're going to look at me, you know? And that's what we created. And that was, I don't want to describe that. That was literally like that through a monkey wrench into the whole industry, because I had a lot of people telling me that we can't put your product on our shelf because it stands out too much or it doesn't look right. Or that, or the best one I used to get is that's not how things are done. Oh, and then I used to say to him, I'd be like, welcome to 2023. It's like, come on. It's like, if I, it's not in my wiring to follow the status quo. So I was like, this is not how things are done today. But once you put my sunscreen on your shelf, this is the new paradigm, whatever for the future. So like I said, it was hit or miss in the early days. Like a lot of people said, no, a lot of people said yes. But the ones that said yes, you know, it did very, very well. Back it up a minute though, before you even got to that point to be able to even market it, you had to build the product. So like, how did you get down that line? Like, who did you reach out to for tips and how did you get those people on phone calls or zoom meetings or, or in-person meetings? Well, it's, it's really all about, so if you want to, you know, create something like that, you just have to literally start Googling to see where it can get done, how you can do it. Yeah. And all your, all your information is on the internet, you know, finding the information on how to do something. That's the easy part. Anybody can do that. The challenge is, is navigating the mind field for each component of putting something together because everything has to be right for it to work. It's for it. You have to have a perfect storm in order, or rather you have to have the perfect conditions come together to have a perfect storm. And if you can't create those conditions, you're not going to have anything. So the packaging has to be right. The product has to be right. You know, you can sell a product based on great packaging and have crappy product, but no one's going to come back and buy anymore. You can have an amazing product that has crappy packaging and that product will never get a chance because of the crappy packaging. No one will ever buy it. So you literally, and here's the other component too, price point. Your price point has to be in alignment with somebody's mental and mindset perception of the packaging they see, the product they use, and the price they pay. So if it's a mediocre product with amazing packaging, but yet it has a luxurious price point, it's not going to get a repeat buy. However, if it's like, let's just say, you know, you have a, and this actually happens a lot in the luxury market, but if you have a great product, okay, and you have a great packaging, then you can command the higher price point if you so choose or you so desire. But again, it all comes down to business at the end of the day. You got to know your distribution channels. You got to know who's selling what, how much they're selling. Make your price based on the margin you need to make based on the volume. It's a complex formula. So like I said, the how-to is the easy part. There's enough YouTube videos and enough information on the internet to do anything you want to do. Being able to put the conditions together and to time them correctly, that's the real, that's the skill right there. And then just making sure everything's in alignment, you know, because all, like I said, all it takes is one thing to be off and your product's going to be dead in the water. So what I'm doing while I'm playing around with this phone is I'm just put Jeff available. He is listed under the featured owls. So go ahead and give him a call. Right now, you could call Jeff and let's see who calls into the show. It's the first time we're doing this because in the past, we've done a lot of outbound calls. It's more controllable. Of course, we could go into the app, search for someone that is available to chat with one-on-one and then call them. But we want to switch it up a little bit. We'll see. Hey, while we're live, oh, we got one. Hey, Araya McGowrie, how are you doing today? I am doing great. I'm watching your amazing show and watching Jeffrey and I thought I'd support and I love what he's talking about. Perfect. Perfect. Well, do you have a question for Jeffrey today? I do. I do. Jeffrey, I'm loving what you're talking about. I'm loving this mindset because so many times I find that is the downfall. You've got one part of your business going great, but then other things are falling apart because you're not managing it right. So for the new entrepreneur, somebody who's trying to get started, which is a lot of the people I work with, what is your best advice to help them have the best mindset to balance all these things you're talking about, getting those right pricing and situating yourself correctly? Because you're so right. You can Google how to do anything. So how do they differentiate themselves and get off to a great start? Well, I'm going to say the most important part, hands down. And it doesn't matter what business you're getting into. But any new venture is first and foremost, you have to be aligned with yourself. You have to know yourself. You have to know what you're about. And you have to have it because you're going to get thrown curveballs along the journey. And people that get knocked out by curveballs, it's generally from a lack of just real self-understanding, knowing their boundaries, knowing who they are and what they're all about. So I'm going to say that that's the first and most important aspect is knowledge of oneself and being connected. And then number two is being real. Know your resources, know what you're working with. I see businesses all the time that get started and they have amazing ideas. There's amazing energy, but guess what? They run out of money. Or guess what? The owner only wanted to put in like three, four hours a day into work. And then they wonder why the business doesn't happen. The reality is, is there's a lot of talk that you can go on Instagram or whatever, Facebook and people talk about, yeah, I just want to work a few hours a day, blah, blah, blah. I don't know. I've never experienced that. All the businesses I've started that have been successful in the early days, at least I put in like 16, 17, 18 hour days because it's just like the trial and error never ends until it ends. If you don't know when it's going to end and if you're committed to the outcome, meaning you know what you've signed up for and you are determined to make that happen, you are going to keep going trial and error and trial and error until you finally figure it out. And once you figure it out, then it's obviously worth it. But the other thing too that people don't realize is once you do figure it out, guess what? You have new problems. Now you've got to figure out the new problems. Yeah, it doesn't end. It's kind of like this. It doesn't. Growing pains, growing pains. I mean, we can see it on the outline right now. I like that he's addressing it too. Well, quick, quick example is like, say, for example, you're driving a Toyota Corolla. Okay. That's a nice, reliable car. It gets great gas mileage, low overall annual maintenance cost. Okay. You're loving that car. A to B. Perfect. Beautiful. Well, now you're making some money. You're doing well. You say to yourself, okay, I'm going to upgrade, upgrade. And you keep going along the lines. One day you find yourself with Lamborghini. Okay. Lamborghini, cost of ownership, high maintenance, super high. You better have a lot of cash to support that lifestyle with that Lamborghini. And that's the thing I think people often will lose sight of. And this is where I talk about being grounded and staying real with yourself and knowing, you know, what do you have to work with? How long do you have to work with it? And knowing what you're going to do with it. And once you get what you want, how are you going to then parlay that to the next level? Because I always tell people when I grew my businesses, I've grown every single one out of cash. I've never taken a loan or a nickel from anybody. So it was kind of like, imagine going into a casino and you started a $5 a hand table. You win a bunch of, you know, you like win the pot. Then you go up to the $10, $20. And every time you move to a table, it's frigging scary because you're betting the form at every new table you go. But the silver lining to that, and if, you know, guys like Grant Cardone are listening, they're not going to like what I'm saying, but that's fine. The silver, because he's all about leverage other people's money, is the silver lining to that is when you go to exit, guess what? It's all yours. You don't have to pay anyone. You keep it all. And if you have enough confidence in yourself and belief and self-control, then play that game. If you don't have self-control and somebody's out there and they like to make excuses and they like to complain and blame the environment, blame other people, then borrow the bank's money. The bank's used to dealing with that stuff all the time. But if you're truly a confident person who's focused and is willing to do what it takes and be more resourceful instead of asking for resources, then by all means, invest your money, put in your time, energy and effort and make the win. That's what I got to say about that. Jeffrey, I love that. And I love Jason. We're allowed to talk to people like Jeffrey here on the OWL app. It's so phenomenal. We can pick up the phone and have these conversations and get insights from so many amazing people and experts. And I love what you said, Jeffrey, about that four hour work week is not real. I know there's a book on that, but I've never drank that Kool-Aid that you can have a four hour work week. And I also love that you said that it's a constant learning process. Because when I talk to some of the millionaires and billionaires, when I talk to them on my show, one thing they'll agree on is that if you can have 52 good days out of the year, you can be a millionaire and multimillionaire. Because the rest of the days, you are solving problems, putting out fires, dealing with the stuff that needs to be done. It's not a cakewalk. It's not you're going to get into business and everything's going to go right. So I just love what you're talking about, Jeffrey. Thank you. 100%. And I'll just finish it with this. All you need is one big win. That's it. You just need one big win. It's good. It's like investing in stocks. I learned this one in my early 20s. You know, you buy 20 different types of stocks. 19 can be losers. But if one skyrockets, that makes up for the 19 losers. So you just keep going. I love that. That's great because everybody hope. Well, Jeffrey, I'm going to call you again. I'm going to let more people call in and talk to you now. I don't want to hog the phone. But the OWL app is absolutely amazing. So I'm going to talk to more people over there in the OWL app because I'm live and I'm loving this show, Jason. Thank you, Jeffrey, for being a phenomenal guest. And that is Araya McGowrie. So go ahead and look her up in the OWL app. She is a TV show host, Emmy winner. Yes, Emmy winner. Not many people can say that. She has her own podcast. So, Jeff, you guys better connect on OWL because you got to be her next guest, of course. Thank you for joining us today on the OWL podcast. Thank you. Thank you. I love it. I love it. Yes, Jeffrey, we'll be in touch. Awesome. Have a great rest of the show. I'm watching. Okay. Okay. First of all, tell everyone your experience just there while I try to get someone else to call you. How was that? It was pretty cool, right? That was cool. Yeah. The app is amazing. It's a good app. So, you know, the technology right there is incredible because you could literally go live at a moment's notice while you're sitting at the beach, while you're at the pool, people are following you as you're completely, you know, marketing your own services. You turn things into opportunities on your downtime, right? And it's not always work when you're chatting and collaborating. So, we'll do one quick last one if someone calls in. If not, then we'll wrap today's show up. One thing I will definitely add is numbers don't lie, right? When you work with certain businesses, right? And you're able to literally show them the proof in the pudding, right? From your past ventures, but also your current clients. Like you can literally say, hey, I worked with this brand who was selling water bottles, right? And they were not on the shelves at Publix and they started with me and now they are on the shelves at Publix. And they were selling 10,000 units a month and now they're selling 40,000 units a month. So, I think a lot of coaches, they end up BSing, you know, the systems, right? They sell, you know, their services and they fake it until they make it where a lot of the successful coaches and John Maxwell could be a great example. Like he's out there, you know, you can't stop seeing this guy everywhere, right? Event after event, on big stage after big stage. And then he has a whole lineup of other coaches that learn from him and then he partners with them and they have an entire network. So, here he is, Coach Paul Litwack. Welcome to the Owl Podcast. You're our last call in for the day. Coach, do you have something you want to ask Jeffrey Schmidt over here? I do. This is an amazing show. Jeffrey, you rock. We're both NL peers. Jason will tell you I'm the real deal. Question I've got for you. How do we, and I say that as you and I, empower others to do the good things that we've done? I mean, for example, you've talked about all the great experience over the years. The question is, how do we transfer that to others? And I'm thinking metaphorically. Bette Midler had the best line. She says there are 80-year-old people out there, but they've only got one year of experience 80 times. So the question is, is how do we empower people? Exactly. With our experience, how do I help them? The best way is just to be the example, to put it out there and just be real, be grounded. Let people come to you. One thing I've learned over the years is it's impossible. It's like, here, let me put it to you this way. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't force it to drink. It's going to drink when it's ready to drink. So for guys like you and I, with what we do, it's much more advantageous to work with the horses that want to drink, metaphorically speaking, than trying to convince a horse to drink. Do you work with horses? Only Mr. Ed. He talks. He speaks English. From the horse's mouth, right there. From the horse's mouth. I love it. But really, that's what it comes down to, is trying to convince. It's just an uphill battle. Yeah, sure. If you studied NLP, there are ways and means to go down that road. But it's a lot of unnecessary extra effort, as opposed to really just embracing those that are looking for help, that are looking to make changes, that want to grow. That's the road I take. That's the road, the path I travel. I don't try to convince anyone. I don't try to persuade or anything like that. I let my background speak for what it is. What I can do speaks for itself. And for those that are interested in growing and reaching next levels, then they reach out. If not, so be it. Life goes on. Everybody has a journey, so you got to respect it. It's like what the Dalai Lama said. Takes all types to make a world. It takes understanding to live in it. Paul, he's not like me. He's not a hard closer. I'm a hard closer. I just go for it. I'm like, I'll try it. I will. You got to download this. And I just keep pressuring people until they do it. Positive persuasion. You text me every single day. There's some books on that. But there's no two ways to do it at the end of the day. One way is your way. One way is my way. But as long as you're leading with good intentions at the end of the day. What were your thoughts? I know you're new to the Owl App, right? I think that was your fourth or fifth incoming call. How did you feel about that experience? No, it's good. The Owl App, when you first introduced it to me, I think it's a needed app out there. And I think for anyone who's a professional and has knowledge, information, or something that can help somebody else benefit in some way, shape, or form, they should be on the app. Yes. Because the information that you have, there could be somebody out there who's looking for that. And it could make the difference. And law reciprocation, right? Where you just talk to different people. Now they know what you do. And at the end of the day, who knows? Maybe your next client is going to come from one of them. They weren't the right fit maybe for your services. But all of a sudden, they're like, hey, you have to speak to this individual, right? And we see that all the time. So if you keep just leading with kindness, leading with value, eventually it comes full circle at the end of the day. Well, I want to thank you for coming out to the Owl Podcast today. And we are really enjoying this experience. A lot of people have given us some positive feedback. They enjoy calling in and really being part of this podcast at the end of the day. So we're out there listening. Every expert in the future that joins us on the Owl Podcast is going to be$1. All you got to do is sign up at Owl.com, go to the App Store or Android store, sign up and give these folks a call. And looking forward to seeing everybody. Take care, everybody.

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