"Together Talks" feature 144 with Wellious and Founder, Sean Hall

4-Ingredient PROTEIN POWDER. Wellious, farm-to-scoop protein powder. A brand you can trust, finally.

In this post, we cover our interview for our "Together Talks" campaign, with Wellious and Founder, Sean Hall. Innovative food and beverage company dedicated to building a happier, healthier world. Makers of Wellious Protein Powder - Plant Based, Delicious, Clean Ingredients, and naturally full of other nutrients, vitamins, and minerals, for overall wellness.

"Together Talks" feature # 144: Wellious presented by KLS - Dedicated Logistic Services for Excellence -Driven Businesses In The USA

Story of how it was created?

About three years ago, I had some personal health struggles come up. I had a few months that I felt pretty crappy and ultimately just started to clean up what I was eating. I became super conscious of what I was consuming. Through that journey, I realized that my protein powder, which I was using pretty much daily with the assumption that it was healthy was actually filled with many of the same bad ingredients that I was trying to avoid in junk food.

That was kind of the origin. I just needed something better and the more I dug into it, the more I realized it didn't exist. I've spent thousands of hours trying to develop a protein powder myself that had this pretty strict criteria of not having any of the bad ingredients I was trying to avoid, only using a few real food functional ingredients. I needed it to be non-whey because that was bothering my stomach. But every plant-based protein powder I tried was pretty awful taste-wise, so I also wanted it to have amazing taste and texture.

It was a pretty long laundry list of needs out of the product, but I ended up figuring out how to do that. Because it was so difficult to develop that, I knew it was a special product. I launched it in early 2022, a soft launch. Still had a lot of production and infrastructure to build out, but I wanted to put into the world to see what people thought and fortunately it took on a life of its own pretty quick.

People really were on the lookout for the same kind of solution. People started to buy it. And then when they tried it, they had this tangible reaction of, wow, this tastes much better. But it's also making me feel better. A lot of people experience immediate bloating, cramps, other gastro issues that they didn't with ours.

What is the meaning behind the name?

It's funny, no one has really asked that. Honestly, I had a name at the beginning that was different. And I saw there was a media platform called that name, so I decided to pivot. I made this big list of options, I knew I wanted this to be a wellness company. It wasn't going to be a protein powder company, it wasn't going be a sports nutrition company. It's about wellness, physical, mental wellness, and obviously products that really support that and speak to it. On a larger scale be a platform of my own wellness journey that people could come on with me.

I started to write out all these different wellness words. Honestly, some of them that I liked every time I was looking up, there's already products somewhere in the world called that. I see this more now that people make up a word for a company even with well, there's a couple different well plus some things. But at the time, I really hadn't seen that. I just was thinking people make up some of the biggest brands we know that are just random words or combinations of letters.

I wonder what happens if I take well and I add in some kind of prefix or suffix. I think the first one I did was, was Wellious. I thought that's kind of funky, but I kind of like this. I wrote it down. And then it just stuck in my head. I just like the way it sounded. I liked it being this idea of an adjective describing you and your journey towards wellness, which I ended up defining it as being in the pursuit of health and happiness, which is our tagline.

What separates your company from competition?

I think the thing that people experience with the taste and texture with most plant-based protein powder is sometimes this metallic taste, sometimes kind of a really bad aftertaste, and then texturally this chalkiness or dryness. Whether that's just the mixability of it, or more when you're actually drinking it and consuming it. But even when you put it in things like yogurt and oatmeal and the ways people use ours, it just made a difference.

It wasn't really adding to the texture, it was taking away from it. And that's caused by the main protein source in almost all vegan protein powders being pea protein, like yellow pea protein. If you try it on its own, it's pretty rough. It has that metallic aftertaste, it has a gritty texture, a dryness, and so that's what it is as an ingredient itself, and you're just trying to cover that up with a bunch of stuff. And then even a lot of the other soy protein, a handful of the combinations that people use to make plant-based protein powder, if you try them by themselves, they're just really rough to consume.

We ended up using something called almond protein, which is still a pretty new innovative protein source. We take almonds, we extract all of the saturated fat by cold pressing the oils out of them, leaving a super high protein per gram per calorie almond and we grind that down really fine and that's the base of ours. Then we do something similar with chickpeas too and we combine those for the right amino acid profile, etc. Ultimately if you just try those on their own they're pretty tasty because of the almond, it's just better taste wise.

I really believe in perpetual evolution of this product or products in general, it's hard if you're trying to make something that's the best, the cleanest, the tastiest, if you don't change it over a 10 year period. It's probably not going to be at the top anymore without innovation. I've gone to extremes to continue to do that. We do something really interesting with our flavoring, we're one of the only companies that doesn't use natural flavor. We use real cacao or real vanilla extracts. We just did a peanut butter chocolate, we used organic peanuts.

But even within those, depending how you source it can really change things. Our cacao, I couldn't actually find the perfect cacao, even though I tried dozens. So we do a blend of different ones to get the right fat content, right pH content, to make it have a really unique taste. I'm always even messing with that a little bit messing with the amount, little tweaks to constantly test if it can 0.1% better, but over time, that kind of compound.

What have been the biggest challenges?

Luckily, demand hasn't really been a challenge. For us it has been supplies as the challenge, which is a fortunate place to be in because it's good to have demand. People want our product and there's growth opportunities and obviously lot of work has gone into that as well.

But we're truly a bootstrapped company. I started it with $3,000. We haven't raised one dime. Doubling your production run, every time you do it, it's almost an impossible kind of puzzle to solve. From a cash flow perspective, it's difficult from a lead time of ingredients perspective, from a manufacturing perspective, from a distribution perspective, logistically doing that without a lot of cash figuring out the right partners in all those places, having to change partners when people weren't stepping up.

It's been a lot of time and painful experiences. A lot of things that fail along the way, no matter how proactive you are, I always take accountability for all of it, no matter how much, it seems like someone else's fault. I could have done it even earlier. You're just relying on a lot of people along the way that are outside of your control. When things fails and then you're behind and that throws everything off. Being out of stock has been a blessing for the demand, but also it has been our biggest challenge to maintain and build further momentum.

Reflect on a goal you set and how it made you feel to accomplish it?

I set a lot of goals personally, professionally within the business. More like benchmarks and timelines when you're building a business, you need that to work backwards from. I think certainly getting to a million dollar run rate was a goal from the beginning. You want to do $10,000 a month and the idea of doing $30,000 a month is awesome. Then getting to 80,000 and hitting that becomes the goal and we're doing six figures a month and there's a whole new goal and I'm thinking about the next level.

It moves pretty fast, getting to that million dollar run rate, especially doing it without raising any money and doing it as fast as we did was a whirlwind. The target immediately moves we are onto the next thing, but I try to be proud of that because I think statistically it's kind of rare to get there, to get there fast, to do it well, do it the right way and on your own dime.

Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?

I think in a very straightforward manner. We are really trying to 10x the business, which seems significant, but we're on a path to do so. We haven't entered retail yet or wholesale but have a lot of that in the pipeline. We're doing really well on D2C and Amazon and TikTok shop. There's a lot of clarity of how we can really press the gas and grow there.

I really try to focus on just building a great business and those results being a byproduct of that. I'm not as motivated by the money or the numbers. It's a good tracking method. But for me, it's how do we make the unequivocally the best product possible? How do we provide the best user experience as we scale? How do we create that all on top of a business model that's efficient and actually makes more than expenses so it could be a real business. How do we create awareness and demand and in a really interesting, smart way? We are chasing a high ROI. As we get customers, how do we create the best kind of community and DRM to make it something special for them?

Because if you do all of those things and you really focus on those things and scaling those things up, then you'll have all the byproduct results of top line growth, bottom line growth, cool grant things, et cetera. But you could just try to force those goals without caring how you do it when I really think it's you got to focus on great product, great UX, great business.

That's really the day to day work.

What concerns did you have about making this transition?

I was an entrepreneur prior, I had made that crazy decision already, but I started my first company at 22. It was also in packaged food, but we did a completely fresh product, cold shipping and logistics, I'd already done it the hard way, and then had also built a media company that has a small portfolio of publishing properties around food. It was within my wheelhouse, and I was already working full time as an entrepreneur. I was lucky to be paying myself from those gigs, but I still took a lot of learnings when I decided I'd make this into a business because really it started with just trying to make this product for myself. Then as I got to a point where I realized this is great, let me see if I can turn this into a business.

I have a strong auditing process of prior experience and knowing what would this product need to have for me to feel comfortable making it a business. Even with all that said and it feeling semi lower risk, I still remember the day of ordering the first bigger ingredient order, which it's only a couple thousand dollars, but there's a lot of hesitation of, should I do this, should I spend the money? Should I start another venture? Should I try it?

Obviously, I'm very glad I did. And like I said, it was one of those cool things where I'd seen enough even from the first Instagram post of it, the reaction to it, I realized we are on onto something and I can really do this the right way and slowly because I've had a lot of experience.

How have you dealt with being the face of the company?

it's been wildly uncomfortable.

My first two companies I built very quietly. Part of that is I didn't really think I had anything to talk about or share or be the face. I was learning and we were small and looking back we were doing pretty cool stuff and having success and I probably should have shared that journey more.

Really I was just in my zone learning, building, figuring it out. When I launched Wellious, something I said to myself was, I need to do this a little more publicly. Obviously that was becoming more of a thing. There was more outlets for it. But I realized there is no downside.

I want to share this a little more. I want to be a little more of the face of it because I think there's a lot of upside and the only real down side is my own insecurity and fear of doing it.

So I did that and it's definitely been the best thing ever. It's definitely led to opportunities, it's definitely led to extra awareness, but really, it's led to friendships. Getting to know other founders and becoming friends with them and if nothing else, having an outlet for us both to essentially have, therapy sessions and talk to someone that gets it.

But on top of that, it's also been tactical to have people to bounce ideas off of, it's led to cool collaborations, it's led to opportunities for myself and my own life and as a business leader.

I highly recommend it. Definitely spend most of your time building. Some people I think just want to do that, they just want to be the face and live life like an entrepreneur. That's 0.001% of it. Focus on building. But since you're doing that, if you can document some of it, if you can share some of it, I think it's going to be very net positive.

What have you learned from being an entrepreneur?

It's interesting because I've definitely learned so much through all of them. there's always a couple main takeaways. For Wellious, one is definitely, it's hard, which is obvious, but it's really hard to do under-resourced. I think that measuring stick moves depending on your goals, but you're probably going to get to the next level and the next level where you want to be bigger and you just need more resources to accomplish it.

It is pretty much just having a little more belief in yourself and the idea that you're going to at least get it to that level. I'm someone that takes things very step-by-step, and I almost need to feel it from the very bottom. But if I started this over or I started the next thing, I would definitely begin with a a little more cash, a little more resources, a little more all-in right from the get-go.

What is the next thing you need to develop as a leader?

The infrastructure to move faster on without wrecking any quality assurance in the product, the distribution, the user experience, all the things I talked about. That's a hard balance. On one hand, you need those pieces, which means more partners, more teams, cash flow solutions, et cetera, so that we can just move faster.

We can knock out the list of things we want to do. We can say yes to the opportunities that are there. We can maximize them. All that stuff in a much more expedited timeline. But we can't just throw any manufacturer in place, and any 3PL in place, we have to have a plan and process set up.

You need great relationships. You need to work out those things at smaller scales, so that if something breaks or doesn't go right, it's not this massive loss that derails the company, which more importantly means it derails the user experience at scale, which really sucks.

I think we've been doing that. I've been building for the last six months, because we started growing so fast in the beginning of this year and had so many massive opportunities that we had to reevaluate our systems.

What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most?

The challenge of it, the creative challenge of it. I think a lot of people would answer something along the lines of freedom, which there is, there is a freedom in choosing how you want to work, no one's ever really telling you what you have to do, which I definitely appreciate. But I'm also working probably five times more than the average person. The freedom comes from the creativity and accountability.

This huge creative challenge, which certainly some days is stressful and frustrating. Entrepreneurship is the intersection of just figuring out creative solutions, but within a practical model with all these certain walls that are there. It's really fun. It's never done. There's always something new to figure out. I think there's a ton of white space in the better for you food and beverage industry.

Even in my specific business, from a product standpoint, there's so much that can still be done. There's perpetual innovation on our core product. There's so much to figure out from. a user experience standpoint, figuring out how to scale it all personally is fun and challenging to me. I'm just passionate about it, I said, if I sold a business for $300 million, I'd probably enjoy it for a couple of weeks, then I'd be itching to create something new.

It's not a money motivation as much as I've just found something I love doing.

Share a mistake and what you learned from that experience?

I'll say there's stuff every day. This is more of a broad answer, you're constantly making the wrong decision. In a sense, I'm constantly doing work that goes unnoticed. For example, you send out 200 cold emails to whoever and 10 get returned, but 190 went unanswered. In theory, those were the wrong decisions, but if you didn't send out all 200 of those, you wouldn't have gotten 10 replies.

I think that's really the lesson for me personally is I've had to plant just so many seeds, which is to have ideas and execute on them. A lot of them are bad ideas because they don't work. But that doesn't mean they didn't really work. It's just a numbers game. There's people on the other side of that, but if you've stopped, if you've stopped making those decisions that could be bad. If you stop executing constantly, then none of the things would happen that are good and move you forward.

If I wasn't kind of failing on a daily basis, which never feels great to get, a negative message in return or no message in return or whatever it is. But if I wasn't getting those, then I certainly wouldn't get the positive because the negatives are much greater. And so then the business would ultimately be dying or be stale if I wasn't failing constantly.

What is your why?

Selfishly it is the creative challenge we spoke about earlier. Another selfish one is certainly the idea, the incentive that if this works, it can help take care of of your family and give some level of safety and security. But I do think within Wellious, within my role in CPG I really do believe in a healthier, happier world. It's our tagline and it could just seem very ambiguous and fluffy, but I feel okay about it because I really believe in it.

I think that we have the resources and technology and people and know how that a lot of the issues could be solved and specifically within in food and beverage spaces. We're making a lot of things that are harming people. And the only upside to it is that a very small amount of people are getting rich off of it. Everybody else loses. from it. Actually creating a better food system, being an example of what that can be, holding myself to strong integrity standards of what that can be is imperative. Our product is an option for that, moving the needle on that, even on the small scale that we have, and on a bigger scale as we get bigger and have more influence hopefully. That matters to me. I've seen people suffer, that I care about with a lot of health stuff, I've had my own small scale suffering.

The idea that we'd contribute to that as businesses really upsets me. If we could be some kind of force of good, it's something I genuinely care about.

Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?

I don't think I have a specific one. I think it's important that you continue to have those. I think if there was some kind of high that happened two years ago and I haven't felt it since, it's just too much work you'd, really hate your life. For me there's just constantly new ones. There's, like you said, you really appreciate those Yeses and those things that go right because so many things don't that keep you in check. Like last week I was in New York City at a really cool meeting, that might lead to something cool today.

I got a great email about someone loving our product. Every time we get a DM, or an email, which now is pretty consistently about somebody's experience with the product and people just say the most insanely cool, nice things about how this product has helped them. Those are just constant highs. It obviously is balanced out with plenty of negatives, but I guess you don't want to get let either of them get you too high up or too far down.

But I try to enjoy those highs. I try not to let the downs get me down and slow me down, but still like just enjoying those little wins. And I think having more to look forward to when you have a bunch of stuff in the pipeline when your product is resonating with so many people and it just starts becoming constant that there's these fun wins each week, it makes you excited for the job.

Piece of Advice

You have to be practical, but you just got to go for it, because life is short. However you want to look at it, the idea of not pursuing when we have this crazy opportunity to chase a dream just leaves so much to the imagination. Being able to pursue something, even from the bottom with no money, like I did., but if it excites you and you have an idea, you have a passion, you have a talent, and to not go for it in some capacity just because of anxiety or someone thinks it's weird or it seems a little risky because people are going to judge you or you're going spend a couple of years making less money than you would, isn't a reason to not try.

It's better to chase your dream, again be practical. Don't bet the farm. I believe putting in the work and figuring it out but you have to pursue it in some way, especially if you know you want to. Some people are trying to find that passion, that thing that's going to make them tick, but if you, now the thing you want to do, it sounds exciting, don't waste your time not going for it. I truly think if you work at something 40 hours a week for 10 years straight, you're going to have enough success in it to do it as your career.

So at the very least, you could do something that sounds fun as your career versus some job you hate.

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In Closing

KLS wants to thank Wellious and Founder, Sean Hall., for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!

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