This week I spoke with Lori and Scott Levine, the founders Scott’s boiliesto delve deeper into your journey in the health food industry. Their boilie company was quickly gaining popularity and I desired to discover their success story.
You can take heed to our entire conversation above, and I’ve highlighted three key takeaways below. I hope you discover their observations as motivating as I do.
1. Struggle results in opportunity
“Out of nowhere, I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017,” Lori says. “I had no family history or reason to consider this may occur; it just happened. It was a terrible time in our lives – I needed to undergo surgery and treatment. I live on Long Island and the hospital I selected for surgery was at New York University. I had to remain in the city for 8 weeks, five times a week, undergoing radiotherapy. I have great friends and family who gave me rides back and forth, but I ate on the way. I ate protein bars. there have been loads of them. The parking zone was right next to Insomnia Cookies and I made the decision that every time I had radiation therapy I used to be entitled to a cookie.
“When the treatments were over, I stepped on the scale and looked in the mirror. I said, “I have to do something here.” I didn’t have a clean, healthy snack to help me get through it, but I decided I was going to get into the best shape of my life. I went to a dietician and I had never felt better at 52, but she said, “No more protein bars.” They’re on the shelf. They have preservatives, soy, sugar and who knows what. We just think they’re healthy because they’re called protein bars. I would go home and complain to Scott the former CPA/CFO and he would say, “I need something, I’m in a hole.” He told me that I had been through so much and he felt like he couldn’t really help or stop it. “I’ll make something for you,” Scott said. And that is what he did, he created this little peanut butter and cocoa protein ball, and the rest is history.”
Timestamp – 2:49-4:42
2. Product creation is done by trial and error
“Honestly, the development of Scott was a process of trial and error,” Scott says. “We needed a solution to Lori’s problem and I said, ‘You know what, I’ll think about it.’ In reality, this meant that I was going to test everything possible to find out what her body needed, since I knew nothing at first, after a lot of experimenting with mixing this or that amount, finding a flavor we liked and figuring out after taking into account the calories and the amount of protein, we finally decided on a recipe that worked. It contained 80 calories; it was the right size, had just the right dessert flavor and luckily it worked in large quantities it really came down to math which I am good at. I was literally sitting in the kitchen at night with a mixing bowl and lots of ingredients on the table. I felt frustrated from time to time, but it was terrible until I finally managed to create something really special.”
Timestamp – 7:43 – 9:08
3. Slow and regular wins the race when capitalizing on retail opportunities
“We had a lot of opportunities to talk to the retailers that we actually approached
knock them down,” Lori says. “We decided you only get one chance, and we couldn’t make enough to go into 400 stores. We were lucky to have interest from some big names in the industry, but these decisions were made strategically and slowly. It’s a difficult decision every time an opportunity arises, but lately we’ve been taking a slower approach and now our supply chain is strong. We have been self-financing all this time, and now we have a co-packing company. We are hosting our first kosher run next week, with formal certification and much more in the works.”
Timestamp – 21:58 – 23:00