Lessons learnt from selling 100 bottles of Hot Sauce

I had a really intense few days during the second week of the first lockdown where I convinced myself that society as we know it was going to collapse.

I went down a rabbit hole of researching rainwater collection barrels, ancient fire starting techniques, and home vegetable harvesting. I realised I'd gone too far when I'd spent a good few hours day-dreaming about how I'd protect my chickens from the neighbours (basically a big hole with a big bed sheet over it).

Obviously society didn't collapse, but at least one thing I learnt remained valuable.

Fermentation.

Fermenting is a natural way to preserve food (ideal for the collapse of civilisation) - It's also how your beer is made.

Fermentation generates some really unique flavours, acts as a natural preservative, and produces some good gut-friendly bacteria. What is not to like?

But more importantly, its a great way to make hot sauce.

I went fermentation mad during lockdown - I could not stop making hot sauce.

It was the perfect storm of having too much time on my hands, an addiction to Just Eat (my pizza crusts needed hot sauce to be dipped into), and a new found enjoyment of Hot Ones.

Lockdown was an interesting time for us all. But in summary, I developed a really good Hot Sauce out of it - and coupled with a curiosity of always wanting to figure out how to sell stuff online I set myself a challenge of selling 100 bottles before Christmas Eve.

I achieved that target at the start of this week (13th December), and here is what I learnt on the journey to 100;

Accountability is key.

There are two strands to this;

One is accountability to others, and the other is accountability to myself. Without these I never would have finished this challenge.

Let me explain.

Accountability to others - I created an Instagram page in September, and made it no secret what I was trying to do - It was a simple story of 'I am going to try and sell 100 bottles by Christmas Eve'. I admitted to everyone that I hadn't figured out how to make more than 5 at a time, and had no idea around the branding, packaging, legalities, etc.. of this. But that they would be coming along for the ride. If I never put that out there I would have just given up at the first or second hurdle - as no one would have known about it, and therefore no shame.

The second part, accountability to myself, applies to the brand itself. I'd given myself a few ground rules for this challenge - I didn't publicly announce them but they gave me a guiding foundation.

They were pretty simple;

• This is all for a laugh, If you're not enjoying it don't bother.
• This shouldn't leave the planet in a worse place than when you started.
• You have to do it all yourself.

Those 3 simple rules guided my decision making process - By having those key values it made every decision so much easier.

'I've been chopping veg all evening trying to nail this recipe, I've got blisters, I am not enjoying this' - Sack it off, come back to it tomorrow. You've a proper job, this isn't fun, it can wait.

'I can't decide between the cheap plastic lids, or these metal ones' - Go for metal, no single use plastics allowed.

'If I outsourced these logo designs, or the website build to someone else it would save me time and look way better' - Nope, this is about learning every aspect of building a product. (This value actually gave me a really good get-out-of-jail-free-card to use against people who wanted to get involved with terrible ideas.... 'Hey Russ, You should do an Instagram post where someone is bleeding from their ass*, to show just how HOT it is! Want me to make it for you?' - 'Sounds good mate, but sorry I have a rule that I have to make and do it all myself. Thanks though.' - crisis averted.

Enjoy the mistakes.

So, so many mistakes were made throughout this entire process. However, early on, I decided to share all my mistakes publicly, to own them, and to have a laugh with them.

Here is a just a few of the mistakes that were made;

• My Hot Sauce started exploding, just before I was due to start selling it.
• I tried using corks instead of lids on the bottles (eco friendly 'init') - they'd get trapped in the bottle neck becoming unmovable, or crumble into the hot sauce when used with a corkscrew - we ended up with recyclable metal instead.
• I ordered stickers 10x bigger than I meant to - these became freebies I started including with packages.
• I blinded myself for a good few hours - Lesson learnt - Multiple gloves when chopping chilis, avoid changing contact lenses shortly after. Level 2 food hygiene certification acquired.
• I bleached my hair at the start of the lockdown - This one isn't even related to the hot sauce, I just feel I need to publicly apologise for that.

This 'mistake embraced' approach allowed me to not have a full on meltdown when actual issues arose, like my label printer not working at all the night I was to start posting. Instead, laughing them off and seeing it just as the next fun problem to be solved.

Postage is difficult.

This continues to be a cause of frustration for me. Amazon, for all their flaws, have absolutely nailed postage, and ruined it for the rest of us. Everyone now expects free postage, delivered the next day.

The amount of complaints I received for charging ￡2.99 postage was ridiculous. The vast majority of us (me included) just don't seem to understand that ￡2.99 to cover the cost of someone packing, collecting, sorting, driving and delivering a package to your door is actually amazing value when you think about it. You'd pay ￡2.99 to get a bus 30 minutes down the road, why is postage any different?

Naively, I hadn't considered the actual human time it takes to pack parcels either, with me averaging about 10 parcels packed an hour the money I made worked out well below minimum wage. I was making more when I was 15 working on a milk round for? 'Jay the Playboy milkman' then I would have been now if this was my proper full time job. Not ideal.?

Coupled with the actual packaging itself it becomes even less profitable...

It was a real surprise to me just how much packaging costs. The protective materials to keep the bottles safe, along with the box it all goes in costs real money.

I learnt that cardboard is just like Centre Parcs, expensive and useless in the rain.

Finally, I went with Hermes as my courier. Admittedly, I knew they had a bad reputation going into this, but they were the cheapest around so thought I'd give them a chance.

Genuinely, they've lost/stolen 15% of all my posted packages. Combined with an impossible to navigate website, and blame-free complaints process. It's costing me more to keep using them.

Interestingly, this is the Google definition of Hermes;

: a Greek god of commerce, eloquence, invention, travel, and theft who serves as herald and messenger of the other gods.

Clearly, I am not bitter.

I'm moving to Royal Mail in the new year and raising postage costs. I trust Postman Pat, but he'll have to keep the cat away from the sauce.

Problem solving is what I enjoy.

The biggest buzzes I got from this entire process was wherever I was working my way through a new problem.?

• How do I make loads of sauce at once?
• How do I stop it from exploding?
• Where do I buy bottles from?
• How do I make bottle labels?
• How do I ship this?
• How do I send customised emails to customers?

Etc..

Etc..

I'd find myself losing spark for the process when I'd get into the groove of the work, like spending hours chopping veg (although it did allow me to box off a lot of new podcasts/albums).

It sounds silly now, but I never knew I enjoyed solving puzzles or optimising processes in this way. It's something I've incorporated into my personal, and professional life now. Throwing myself into difficult challenges in a way I wouldn't pre-sauce, pre-spice.

Everyone has an opinion.

The postage situation taught me that people aren't afraid to share their opinion. In fact, I learnt this early on. Suddenly announcing that I am going to start selling Hot Sauce is daft, I get that, but it did surprise me how many people would try and talk me out of it, or mock me into stopping the entire harmless process completely. I couldn't imagine the pressure people must feel when they try and go into actual proper full time businesses, with real risk on the line. Learning to filter out the noise and focus on constructive feedback helped massively. And in all honesty, the majority of feedback received was all positive, but as humans we are wired to focus on the bad.??

End of the day, if you are having fun doing it, and no one is getting hurt - then crack on.

Word of mouth is powerful.

The vast majority of my sales came from word of mouth. I'm not just talking about my mum telling her mates, but people who followed along, told their families, friends and colleagues. People who actually liked the sauce and liked it enough to tell others.

Candidly, I didn't really expect to sell to anyone I didn't know, but my third order was from an unknown and I'd say the majority of my orders now are from unknowns. Which is scary, but very exciting. Interestingly, the people who made the most noise about buying when I launched didn't actually tend to follow through with a purchase - instead, there was lots of people out there who you never even consider, ready to get involved and support you.

I believe that word of mouth isn't something that can be artificially generated and will only come from delivering something that people care about and enjoy - I use this as motivation to not take shortcuts and ensure everything I do has those individuals in mind.

Just as easily someone could say 'This sauce is shit' and I'm back at square one.?

(Please don't say my sauce is shit.)

That covers a few things I’ve learnt through this process that I fancied sharing on a Thursday evening (is LinkedIn even allowed outside of work hours? tragic really).

To wrap up, just a couple of closing comments please;

• I highly recommend you dabble in your own side hustle, the lessons you'll learn, the focus it'll give you, and the laugh you'll have is invaluable.?
• Please don't take any of my comments above as sound business advice, or even worse, try and approach me for PPC or marketing services for my sauce (remember my get out of jail free card)
• To preempt any questions, I source my ingredients as locally as possible, my packaging/labels/bottles are from Northern companies, I use Adobe Spark for all my graphic design stuff, and Shopify for the website.?

If interested, check out my actual sauce website here, or follow along the rest of the journey on Instagram. There's still a few fun things I'd like to achieve with the brand (stocked in a shop, billboard, sponsor a sports team, etc…)

Thanks,

Russ.

?

*There's a whole sub-section of the Hot Sauce community who are just obsessed with the idea of bleeding from the ass, or vomiting through EXTREME heat. I really don't understand it, I think it is from some false sense of extra spice equaling extra masculinity. Full on product lines called things like 'Satans Big Bloke Prolapse', and 'MOTHER FUCKIN' KILLIN' SPICY DEATH DROPS'. It's wild. Last thing you want to be thinking about when eating. My sauce is a nice warm comforting glow, no shame in that.