May
15, 2019

2 min read

Hershey’s will add emoji to its chocolate bars for a limited time this summer in what will be the first time the company has changed the look of the iconic treat. And let’s just get this out of the way: the poop emoji will be featured.

The Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Emoji Bars will come in six packaging designs, will feature 25 of the icons and come in standard and snack sizes.

Image credit: Hershey’s

“Our classic Hershey’s bars were made to be shared with others,” Kriston Ohm, senior manager of Hershey’s brand, said in a press release. “By adding an emoji design to each pip of chocolate, we hope that parents and kids are inspired to share a chocolate emoji and make a connection with someone new.”

Related: This Young Entrepreneur, Who Has Raised $6 Million, Is on a Mission to Kick Sugar Out of Candy

Citing its own research, Hershey’s said that 87 percent of kids would want to share the Emoji Bar with others. The bars have a suggested retail price of $0.99 and the snack size bags of $4.09.

Hershey’s, which will turn 125 this year, has had steady revenue for the past few years, with a reported $7.791 billion in 2018. Candy Central, a candy supplier, says that the Hershey Bar is the fourth most popular chocolate bar in the world.

May
14, 2019

5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

About 42 percent of startups fail because there’s no market need for their product, and almost 30 percent don’t make it because they run out of money. So, what does it really take to succeed in business, especially when you’re bootstrapping? We asked these top entrepreneurs and Advisors in The Oracles, including Hint Water’s Kara Goldin, investor Tai Lopez, and designers Emily Current and Meritt Elliott, to let us in on their secrets.

1. Surround yourself with people you trust.

When you’re bootstrapping a business, it’s paramount that you work with people you really trust. We self-funded initially so that we could stay true to our vision and control the quality of our products no matter what the conventional wisdom dictated.

People told us unsweetened flavored water would never work, but we were determined to help people lead healthier lives and remove all the ingredients that contradicted that goal, like sugar, diet sweeteners, preservatives, and more. Now we are the No. 1 independently owned non-alcoholic beverage company in the U.S. —Kara Goldin, founder and CEO of Hint Inc.; creator of The Kara Network, a digital resource for entrepreneurs; and host of the “Unstoppable” podcast; follow Kara on Twitter and Instagram

2. Calculate your VRIN score.

Select a business idea that will generate cash flow quickly, which you can estimate with a VRIN score. “V” stands for value, meaning it’s something many people want. “R” stands for rarity; so the market is not flooded with that exact product or service. “I” stands for inimitability, meaning your ideal customer can’t do it on their own. “N” stands for non-substitution; so no one is doing anything similar.

Rank those factors on a scale from 1 to 10. If the average isn’t eight or higher, it won’t have a positive cash flow for a while. For example, consider the NBA. People love it, so its value is high. It is the only professional basketball league in the U.S., so it’s rare. I can’t get people together to play basketball and entertain me like that, so the inimitability is high. Can I substitute other things? Yes, I could watch football, baseball, or hockey instead. So, non-substitution might be a seven out of 10. But the overall average is high, which is why the NBA is a multibillion-dollar industry. —Tai Lopez, investor and advisor to multiple multimillion-dollar businesses, who has built an eight-figure online empire; connect with Tai on Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube

3. Get your hands dirty.

Roll up your sleeves! One of our mentors always talks about how a successful business starts with leaders who are both the “chief cook” and “bottle washer.” No job is too small or insignificant in a startup.

If you start this way, you’ll have a full understanding of how your organization works from the bottom to the top as you grow. This also sends a message to your team to think outside their job responsibilities, be comfortable doing tasks below or above their pay grade, and pitch in whenever, wherever, is needed. —Emily Current and Meritt Elliott, co-founders and creative directors of the global lifestyle brand Emily + Meritt and women’s apparel line THE GREAT; follow Emily and Meritt on Instagram

4. Master direct response marketing.

Even if you are low on funds, my No. 1 tip is to master direct response marketing or find someone who has and give them a key role in the business. For five years, I struggled with my business and stayed around six figures. Once I mastered direct response marketing, where consumers are prompted to respond immediately to your pitch by signing up for a newsletter, for instance, I grew to multiple millions in less than two years.

Since then, I’ve used my direct response marketing techniques to grow another million-dollar business and help dozens of others scale to tens of millions. Like sales, I believe direct response marketing is a vital skill to master as a business owner, or at least understand. —Rudy Mawer, founder and CEO of ROI Machines and RudyMawer.com; Facebook marketing and ad expert, who built a multimillion-dollar business by age 26; connect with Rudy on Instagram

5. Burn the ships.

When Hernán Cortés arrived in Veracruz, Mexico, in the 1500s, he ordered his crew to burn the ships. Forward was the only way off the beach; there was no turning back. After advising and running a number of businesses in a variety of industries, that is my advice: burn the ships.

If you are trying to start a business while keeping your old job, don’t. Quit your job so there is no going back. If you see so many opportunities you can’t decide which to choose, pick one and burn the ships. Trying to be everything to everyone will never get you where you need to go. Do just one thing you’re passionate about, and do it better than anyone else.

Don’t let your ego and sense of control take over. Be willing to let go. Make it easy for investors to help grow your company by being willing to burn the ships again and move forward. —James Daily, founding partner of Daily Law Group, which helps high-profile clients with fiduciary abuse litigation, including fraud, crisis management, and business and family disputes; connect with James on LinkedIn

Want to share your insights in a future article? Join The Oracles, a mastermind group of the world’s leading entrepreneurs who share their success strategies to help others grow their businesses and build better lives. Apply here.

For more articles like this, follow The Oracles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

May
13, 2019

3 min read

For Tara Bosch, her business SmartSweets will be the future of candy — it’s just a matter of “reverse executing against the future.”

“That conviction has helped us to move forward and overcome the challenges that come with the roller coaster ride of entrepreneurship,” she said.

Related: When Her Mother Was Diagnosed With Breast Cancer, She Started a Popcorn Company to Raise Money for Research

Bosch, who admits she’s a “candy addict and a sugar fiend,” founded the company in 2016 when she was 21 after a conversation with her grandmother. The 89 year old said she had regretted consuming so much sugar over the years, which caused Bosch to reflect on her eating habits.

“That sparked my quest to explore finding a candy I can feel good about,” she said. “It opened my eyes up to sugar, and the shocking reality of what it’s doing to us.”

She dropped out of school (the semester had already ended), ordered a gummy bear mold off Amazon and started testing recipes in her basement kitchen. Three months and more than 200 iterations later, Bosch had a product she felt she could take to the market.

Image Credit: Courtesy of SmartSweets

“I watched Shark Tank and Dragon’s Den religiously, but I didn’t have the confidence to act on any ideas because of my unhealthy relationship with food,” Bosch said. “The second I turned 13, I got a job at McDonald’s and Domino’s and was working full time, but I didn’t have the confidence at that point to actually believe that I could create something for the world.”

Related: The Makers of Exo Cricket Bars Are Launching a Line of Cereal That’s High in Protein and Low in Sugar

SmartSweets products are made without artificial sweeteners and colors. Each serving of the candy — it has products that are substitutes for gummy bears, Sour Patch Kids and Swedish Fish — only contains three grams of sugar (a serving of typical gummy bears has about 19 grams of sugar). SmartSweets can now be found in 10,000 stores across the U.S. and Canada, including Whole Foods, Target, Bed Bath & Beyond and GNC (the company expects that number to double by the end of 2019). Bosch initially funded SmartSweets from her savings. The company says it has raised a total of $6.1 million.

“There’s really no limit to what you can create,” Bosch said. “The vision for SmartSweets from day one has been to become the global leader in innovating confectionery products that kick sugar. We’re focused on innovating non-chocolate and just taking candy that consumers already know and love and bringing it back to their everyday lives.”

May
12, 2019

7 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Raising a family is never easy, especially when you’re an entrepreneur trying to launch a business. Not only do you have to worry about providing for your family financially, but there’s also the struggle of trying to balance your work life with the emotional needs of your family.

In honor of Mother’s Day, Green Entrepreneur talked with three of the countless working mothers of the cannabis industry to learn how they manage to make it all work.

Erin Gore of Garden Society

Erin Gore is a mother of one and the founder and CEO of Garden Society, a cannabis wellness brand for women. Gore, educated as a chemical engineer, spent much of her career in the corporate world working for the consumer goods manufacturer Henkel in a management position.

However, despite the trappings of success, Gore wanted more for her life. Not only did Gore feel unfulfilled in her job, but it also consumed much of her time and made it difficult to start a family.

“I had a really great corporate career,” recalls Gore, “but under the surface I was unhappy.”

Frustrated with her lack of fulfillment, she decided to take a leap of faith and start her own cannabis brand. For Gore, starting her own business had less to do with finding financial success and more with building something that valued her as a wife, a mother, and (most importantly) a woman.

Although starting a business and starting a family may seem like two opposing goals, for Gore, the opposite is true. Because she owns her own business, Gore is able to spend her mornings with her 19-month old son before heading into the office; a luxury not afforded to many working corporate jobs.

However, while entrepreneurship affords a certain degree of flexibility, there are times when sacrifices must be made, as when Gore recalls an incident where she had to cancel an important meeting because of a family emergency.

“I once had an investor flying in to see our facilities and my son had an allergic reaction to amoxicillin. My husband was out of town, so I had to call that investor and tell them ‘I’m sorry, I can’t meet with you, I have to take my son to the doctor.”

Fortunately, the investor, who also happened to be a mother, was understanding, but Gore says that these are the kinds of choices that entrepreneurs have to make.

One of the ways that Gore has been able to balance her work and her family life is by seeking out those and surrounding herself with those that have similar values and life experiences, a sentiment shared by Beth Stavola, the Board Director and Chief Strategy Officer for iAnthus Capital Holdings Inc. (CSE: IAN).

Related: The Canna-pocalypse of Small Brands Is Upon Us – But All Is Not Lost

Beth Stavola of iAnthus Capital Holdings

Beth Stavola is a mother of six, with five girls and one boy ranging between the ages of 22 and 11. She got her start in cannabis in 2012, when she was approached by a deal broker to invest $1 million in MPX Bioceuticals, a medical cannabis company based in Arizona. Although Stavola initially intended to serve as the company’s Chief Financial Officer, she was forced to take a more hands-on role when her business partner proved to be unreliable.

Undaunted, Stavola was able to steer her company through troubled times and eventually the company was acquired by iAnthus, upon which she was appointed to her new position as Board Director and Chief Strategy Officer. According to Stavola, one of the benefits of entrepreneurship in the cannabis industry is that not does it allow you to be more flexible with your schedule, but it also allows you to be more flexible with your employees as well.

“I’ve been known to rock a baby for one of my employees during a conference call or to run out of the office to pick someone’s kid up,” Stavola says. “Everyone goes the extra mile when they feel they’re taken care and that their family is being taken care of.”

Sometimes, however, it can be difficult to make family time with a heavy work schedule. That is why Stavola always makes it a point to have at least one family meal on Sunday night, regardless of how disparate their schedules may be.

“Sunday dinner is always a must at my house,” Stavola says with a chuckle. “No one is allowed to have an excuse for Sunday dinner.”

For working mothers hoping to make it in the cannabis industry, Stavola suggests surrounding yourself with good people and doing your best to take care of them. One entrepreneur that does just that is Liesl Bernard, the founder and CEO of Cannabizteam, an executive search and staffing company for the cannabis industry.

Related: The Cannabis M&A Boom Is Looking Like the Dot.com Boom. Here’s How to Avoid the Bust.

Liesl Bernard of Cannabizteam

Bernard is a mother to two sons, one 15 and the other 18. Because of their age, it can sometimes be difficult for her to sync up her schedule with theirs, which is why Bernard makes it a point to see sons off to school in the morning.

For nearly two decades, Liesl Bernard served in various positions at Robert Half Executive Search, one of the world’s largest executive staffing firms. In 2016, Bernard noticed the explosive growth in the cannabis industry and saw the need for an executive staffing firm.

“I said ‘if I don’t do it now, someone else will,’” Bernard recalls. “So I took all my savings as a single mom and started Cannabizteam.”

As an entrepreneur, Bernard greatly values the freedom that her job affords, and she does her best to provide that same freedom to her employees. At Cannabizteam, employees can work from 9 A.M. to 3 P.M. in the office and from home in the afternoon if they want to.

According to Bernard, working in the cannabis industry is particularly attractive to women because it is not quite as rigid as other corporate jobs. “I think the cannabis industry, in particular, has a lot of benefits for women entering the space because, there’s a lot of creativity that goes into it,” Bernard says. “It’s also not as structured as some of the other industries that are out there.”

Bernard goes on to say that mothers hoping to make it in the cannabis industry should not underestimate themselves. While most people tend to focus on skills such as cultivation or extraction, there is a great need in the cannabis industry for people with diverse skill sets, from accounting to plumbing.

“I would encourage anyone looking to get into the industry to do it sooner than later,” Bernard says. “A little experience goes a long way in the cannabis space. Today, anyone with two years’ experience in the cannabis space is highly valued. There are so few people with cannabis industry-specific experience.”

Related: We Have a Problem: The Cannabis Industry Is Losing Women Leaders

Being a mother is hard, especially when you’re an entrepreneur, but that does not mean success is impossible. Although the cannabis industry might not be perfect, Gore believes that its relatively young age helps make it easier for mothers and women in general, to have a higher degree of control over their destinies.

“The beautiful thing about the cannabis industry,” says Gore “is that it is in its infancy and so you can create the future you want. It’s not as limiting as other industries.”

May
10, 2019

9 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Good customer service is crucial to ensuring your business will continue to grow. These nine experienced leaders and Advisors in The Oracles, including Canva founder Melanie Perkins and clothing designers Emily Current and Meritt Elliott, share their secrets for guaranteeing a world-class customer experience.

1. Turn feedback into an actionable list.

There are endless projects our team could be working on, so prioritizing goals is incredibly important. Keeping customers at the core of every decision makes that easier.

It is vital to connect and empathize with our community. As we grow, one of the challenges is ensuring that we have systems to actively listen and respond to our customers’ needs. We’ve had over 800,000 pieces of feedback across all of our channels; so we launched an internal tool to help us turn that feedback into an actionable list. We also host regular in-person workshops that are open to the public, called “Design School After Hours.” That way our team can see how people use Canva, and continually improve the product. —Melanie Perkins, co-founder and CEO of Canva, which is valued at over $1 billion

2. Ensure the entire team knows everything about your products.

We are constantly inspired and influenced by our customers. To best serve them, we ensure that everyone from the e-commerce team to retail staff knows the how, why, and where of our products — from the creative inspiration behind them to the fit, nuances, care, and durability. To disseminate product knowledge to the customer, it’s essential that our team members know everything there is to know.

We strive to be good listeners and keen observers, and use language that is polite, thoughtful, and educated. We tackle the biggest issues first, in a timely manner, and work our way down to small, easier issues. We value all feedback and questions and honor the fact that each person has invested in a piece that we’ve made. —Emily Current and Meritt Elliott, co-founders and creative directors of the global lifestyle brand Emily + Meritt and women’s apparel line THE GREAT; follow Emily and Meritt on Instagram

3. Hire the right employees and be consistent.

Taking care of strangers authentically and habitually day after day requires “customer-centric DNA.” Focus on hiring people with this quality. One of my favorite customer-centric interview questions is, “What is the temperature of the sun?” I don’t expect an exact answer; I’m interested in how they behave when they don’t know the answer. Do they respond with “Um, I don’t know … hot,” or “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out for you”? If they email me later with the answer, I’m interested in hiring them — because that’s how they will treat our customers. I won’t hire a candidate who doesn’t pass this test.

Your customers are looking for familiar, consistent experiences. They want confidence in your brand before, during, and after they do business with you over the phone, email, social media, or in person. Whether it’s your call center or billing process, evaluate which interactions cause pain points for them. Then focus on that area for an entire quarter before moving on to another. —Michel Falcon, entrepreneur and keynote speaker, with expertise in customer experience, company culture, and employee engagement; author of “People-First Culture”; connect with Michel on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook

4. Prioritize positivity, empathy, and resolution time.

Every time a customer contacts you, you have a choice: be like everyone else, or exceed their expectations and leave a lasting impression that turns them into raving fans. After handling tens of thousands of calls, emails, and live chats for our clients, we have found three keys to standing out and building a following: positivity, empathy, and resolution time.

Our customer support agents are trained to smile and use positive keywords to brighten the caller’s day. Empathy is about active listening, reiterating what the customer said, and truly caring. Resolution time is how quickly you solve the issue. When there’s no immediate resolution, communicate an estimated timeline and do whatever it takes to beat it. Making customers happy is about expectations and actual experience. Whether you handle customer support or use a company like ours, your customers will love doing business with you if your support team commits to these principles. —Mike Peters, entrepreneur, philanthropist, XPRIZE Foundation board member, and founder of the Yomali group of companies, which has generated more than $1 billion in sales online

5. Streamline your client onboarding.

At Healthpreneur, our driving metric is not our revenue — it’s the revenue we help our clients generate. Everything we do is based on their goals and how we can help them win. We’re always looking for feedback and ways to better serve our customers.

We continuously improve our trainings so our customers get everything they need. We add to our team when needed to help clients overcome their issues. If a client is stuck in a particular area and there’s a gap in our offering, we bring in a specialist to support them.

We have a client concierge and a specific onboarding process that starts as soon as they enroll, to ensure they have everything they need and know exactly what to expect. The first seven days are critical for momentum, so we always have an immediate onboarding call with each client. Then we have a check-in call within the next 14 days to make sure they’re on track. —Yuri Elkaim, founder and CEO of Healthpreneur, former professional athlete, and New York Times best-selling author; connect with Yuri on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube

6. Be your own customer.

Hiring the right people is extremely important. Build a commission plan that aligns them with your vision. The customer’s voice should drive your customer service. They want correct, consistent answers and an easy and quick turnaround. They also want to speak to friendly people who are knowledgeable about your products and how to use them.

If you outsource customer service to another country, prioritize value, not price. I ran call centers around the world and saw how important it is that agents know your customer’s culture, so they can relate, connect, and personalize the conversation.

Finally, inspect your processes. Order your own product; call your customer service team; listen to calls; score them, and even answer some of them so you understand everything going on with your brand. — Craig Handley, co-founder of ListenTrust and author of “Hired to Quit, Inspired to Stay”; read more about Handley: Why These Founders Train Their Employees to Quit

7. Value people over profit.

There are three primary reasons you need customer service: your product or service sucks, you didn’t deliver on expectations, or your systems weren’t thorough. This underscores the simplicity of taking care of customers. They want a quality product or service delivered in line with promised expectations, and with simple processes to handle any challenges that arise.

We truly listen to what our customer wants and needs. If we can offer it, we will. We value people over profit and teach our customer service team to handle issues accordingly. For example, a customer purchased a $150 mala necklace seven years ago. It was so deeply meaningful to her that she wore it every day. When she accidentally broke it, she came to us very distraught. Because she took the time to explain the circumstances, we sent her another for free. It didn’t make the most sense financially, but we earned a fan for life. —Lin Sun, CEO at Tiny Devotions and partner at Crimcheck

8. Constantly improve the client ‘experience.’

“Client service” isn’t in our company’s vocabulary. We call it the client experience because it embodies every interaction we have with others. The entire experience is what people remember and talk about — not an offhand service. 

To remain a top priority, the client experience must constantly improve and evolve. We want our team to think about and explore how they can offer our clients a one-of-a-kind interaction. That doesn’t come from a training manual; it has to be part of their DNA.

We have a specialized “Secret Service Team,” an idea inspired by customer service expert John DiJulius. Team members from each area of our business constantly evaluate ways to improve the experience for our customers and their co-workers. Before your team can provide a one-of-a-kind experience to others, they must feel it firsthand; because if your team is getting a second-rate experience, you can bet your clients are too. —Casey Weade, CFP, retirement planning expert, author, president of Howard Bailey, and host of the “Retire with Purpose” TV and radio shows

9. Anticipate what customers want.

We’ve found that the best way to earn and keep customers is to anticipate what they want and need before they do, and then provide world-class solutions. This helps establish a relationship based on truth and trust. If you say you’re going to do something, do it.

We pride ourselves on being the first to integrate technology and other business advancements into our real estate services for corporate clients; it’s one of the things we’re known for. Our platform integrates these advancements with honesty, transparency, and frequent communication to secure the best deals for our clients and provide an experience that is impossible to get elsewhere. —Gail Corder Fischer, executive vice chairman of Fischer & Company, a leading global corporate real estate firm that provides consulting, brokerage, and technology solutions

Want to share your insights in a future article? Join The Oracles, a mastermind group of the world’s leading entrepreneurs who share their success strategies to help others grow their businesses and build better lives. Apply here.

For more articles like this, follow The Oracles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.