Building Buzz: The Sweet Bee Sisters

[Music] what's up guys Aldo here today I'm outside Denver Colorado to meet the sweet bees sisters three young entrepreneurs turning beeswax into sweet profits can't wait to meet them this is the hustle in this episode of The Hustle you'll learn how sisters Chloe and Sophie took an idea creating organic lip balm made from beeswax and grew it into a thriving skincare business we'll see how they use feedback from customers to develop and launch their product position it for a target market and take it to the next level I'm Sophie I'm 19 years old and I'm part of the sweet be sisters I'm Chloe and I'm 21 we run an all natural skincare business we actually started our business because our parents are very entrepreneurial what a better way to instill that Spirit than starting a business in teaching us how to do that young to start their own business first they needed an idea when Chloe was and Sophie was only five their parents started beekeeping but the girls realized that selling honey wouldn't cut it we started off as sweet bee honey Co but then we found out that we didn't make enough honey to sell it to more than friends and family while they couldn't sell enough honey to make a profitable business they did realize they had something of tremendous value that most people might Overlook and we had the first honey Harvest and once you separate the honey from the honeycomb you have a big clump of beeswax left over we didn't want to thr away because the bees actually work 15 times harder to make the wax than they do to make the honey the sisters were in a stage of Business Development known as Discovery it means that the girls were coming up with ideas narrowing them down and testing the best ones to see what was achievable one way of testing an idea is seeing if it solves a problem with plenty of beeswax and no allowance that's exactly what Chloe and Sophie needed to do we started researching what we could do with it and lip balm was like the number one thing to make out of beeswax we decided to just get all the ingredients and make lip balm and then we sold them in a couple craft shows and the business kind of started from there with their idea all set a $200 investment from Mom and Dad got things moving their older sister Lily helped them make their first batch of lip balm so when we started we had one flavor of lip balm just peppermint we sold it at one Christmas craft show that was just for kids to sell their own products at first it was just a hobby and we did that same Christmas craft show for like three years and we realized that we actually really enjoyed what we did one batch at a time the girls mastered their craft from getting the right supplies to timing out the process it was definitely a learning curve they even gave me a behind the-scenes look into how they get it done this is an awesome Workshop walk me through the steps of what it takes to make one of your lip balms first we start with our tray of empty tubes this is what the Robb's wax looks like Alo will you put this in the pot for me absolutely so we have our Melting Pot on this side there's a spet and once everything is melted we'll just open the spet and pour it over this tray of tubes so this tray is designed for catching all of the excess lip balm and when that happens and it hardens then we take this little scraping tool and we scrape across the top and then we remelt everything and pour again until all of the tubes are perfectly [Music] full with Discovery over the next thing on their list was selling lip balm they showed up told their story and started building some major Buzz before long customers were swarming while there are many companies out there that make great skincare products we found a very unique Edge because how many young sisters have a skin care business of locally made products and we found that people more than buying our product they bought our story they bought into our business they wanted to support the young entrepreneur rurs the sisters learned that making a better product takes feedback that means finding out what people like about your product and using that to improve it when their customers gave them feedback the sisters listened when we had one flavor of lip balm we were like oh like what other flavors do you think we should have it's really important to get that consumer feedback because they're the ones that actually want your product having the open-mindedness to say what do people actually need and how would they like a product to fit into their everyday life 20,000 tubes later the sweet be sisters have dozens of flavors so these are four of our flavors of lip balms they're in 20 stores and their beeswax lip balm is flying off the shelves they've also sold their lip balms to companies who want to put their own labels on the tubes and they've even made national news we knew our business had quote unquote made it one day when we were actually camping in the sand dunes in Colorado through spotty Wi-Fi my dad got a text saying hey you're your kids are on the front page of CNN that's a pretty big deal for any business let alone a 9-year-old bu we were just on there apparently somebody had seen us at a craft show and said look at these great young entrepreneurs and so at that point we're like oh dang this isn't just a hobby anymore this could actually be like a full-on business people love a great product especially if it's got a story behind it but that's not enough to pollinate the market to find new customers and scale their business Chloe and Sophie had to hustle so marketing has changed over the years we first started out in craft shows and just talking to people in Word of Mouth was how we would sell our products and then we decided to start selling in stores we targeted small boutiques that want one-of A- kind unique items and they would buy at wholesale pricing and then sell retail to their customers and so we were able to build some really cool relationships with store owners and people would be like oh I saw you in this store across town or whatever and walking into these small boutiques and just being like hey is there a man our owner we could speak to and they'd come out from the back and they we'd show them what we had and we'd say we think that this would be a great place to sell our products and sometimes we got rejected and sometimes I said you know what come back in a few weeks when I'm doing all of my ordering and we can talk then and sometimes they bought them right then and there and we walked out empty-handed getting sweetbee products into stores wasn't easy but talking to store owners was a huge help to understand why people might want to sell their product Chloe and Sophie had to learn more about their target market your target market is a specific group of people you want to reach with your product reaching them means thinking about your product's features who they benefit and what feedback from customers or store owners might be telling you people were asking us to make more products and so we expanded to eight different flavors of lip balm we make four different scents of lotion bars we've expanded into soaps and some other products as well new products can be risky knowing what you're going for and what's already out there is essential it can be the difference between Sweet Success or the sting of failure and there's risks of even our products we have expanded our product line without consulting our customer base before and realize that there's actually not really a market or other companies are doing it better than we were we ended up having to just discontinue them which isn't a problem um but it is some wasted time and resources that we could have done the research for ahead of time as Chloe pointed out trial and error comes with the territory and you have to sacrifice honestly like when you fail it's not like how big the failure is it's whether you get back up what's their advice for anyone starting a business I think one of the biggest learning curves is just how to have good time management being kids you just want to play you don't really want to put your effort towards work but as we've gotten older we've seen how cool of a payoff this has been because we've been given amazing opportuni these the business world is the real world you got to buckle down and do some work if you want to get good results as the sweet Beast sisters continue to grow their business the youngest sister Phoebe is joining the team she's only 11 but Phoebe's already learning the ropes so what did we learn today from the sweet be sisters in order to start a business you first need an idea for a product or service that solves a problem once you've got it get feedback lots of it learning what people like about your product helps you find ways to improve it knowing who your product benefits and why it stands out can help you reach your target market put your business on its way to being the buzz of the town I had a blast in Denver want to give a huge thank you to Sophie Phoebe and Khloe for showing us around their business and teaching us what being an entrepreneur is all about let us know what you guys think about this episode in the comments below see you guys in the next [Music] episode Cheers Cheers M so good so good thanks so much for watching the hustle to make sure you don't miss out on any more videos like this please subscribe at prageru.com today