Exactly How I'm Launching my Next Business

Happy Friday!

Once again, I write this from the passenger seat of a Toyota Sienna. This time we are driving back home to Texas. I’m looking at the snow capped mountains of central Utah, and I’m ready to be back home.

Today’s newsletter will be very different. I’m going to take a risk and completely pull back the curtain on how I’ll launch my next company. I think you'll love it. Usually I write about either

1. How I have launched something in the past

2. How I would launch a specific kind of business in the future

But this will be the first time I’ve written a behind the scenes of “how I am actually building or launching something in real time.”

Spilling the secrets in this email will either help or hurt me when launch time comes (this will make more sense later on in this email). It’s risky, but I’m cool with that.

Ep 05 of Koerner’s Corner just went live minutes ago at the links below. I’m going to make it more curated starting next week. I’ll have business owners queued up in advance to ask me questions live. They can ask anonymously or otherwise. This will help prevent both awkward pauses between speakers and low quality questions. I’m stoked! You can consume them below if you don’t join us live:

1. Spotify

2. Apple

3. Youtube

If you have any small business question, respond to this email with a brief outline and I’ll invite you on the show to ask it live a week from today. 

What I’m about to write is a specific, detailed plan, not a wish, a theory or a hope. When I say this will be my next business, I mean it’ll be one of my next businesses, because I have no idea when we’ll launch. It’s lived in my head for 2 years and this is the first time I’ve written anything down about it.

This is proof that you can take steps to launch something before ever writing down a business plan…

I’ll split this email into 4 short sections:

1. Thesis

2. Research & Samples

3. Production & Launch

4. Post Launch

Thesis

The product in question is busyjuice.com. It’s a powdered drink mix that I’ve been drinking a gallon of every day for the last 2 years. I “invented” it because I:

1. Wanted to drink a gallon of water per day but

2. Found water quite boring but

3. Didn’t want to drink a gallon of unknown food dyes and additives like Mio or Crystal Light.

So I invented a lemonade that has:

1. A modest 24mg of “healthy” caffeine per 12 ounces, less than a coke.

2. Stevia, a naturally occurring sweetener made from a leaf

3. Lemon

4. Water

That’s it. That’s the whole recipe.

Granted, there are many more nuances to this recipe that I will not divulge, but my point is that it’s a clean, simple recipe. It’s something I feel great about drinking a gallon of per day. It provides me sustained energy, with no crash, and tastes like Chick Fil A lemonade with almost no calories. It also helps me focus for long periods of time.

I have a list of “bucket list businesses” that I dream of launching one day, and one of them is a food or drink product sold in stores. This could be that product. Why is that a bucket list business of mine?

1. I think it would be rad to see a product that you created on store shelves.

2. Food and drinks are highly recurring. If someone falls in love with your product, they may eat or drink it daily or weekly for the rest of their lives.

3. I’m a massive foodie.

But this email isn’t a sales pitch. I have no idea when it will be ready. Maybe 3 months and maybe 30. But we’re working on it. If my launch plan were only to pitch it to you, my loyal newsletter subscribers, then it would likely be a small business.

Research

As of right now, this student is helping me source ingredients, manufacturers and gusset bag packaging suppliers. I sent him samples to taste and work with. I’m providing him very little oversight, but he’s a killer!

The power of a cold email…

Am I paying him? No. But he knows I will once we launch, and it may well turn into equity as well. He trusts me to follow through with that and I trust him to not steal my recipe. Isn’t it cool how that works?

He’s hoping for upside and placing his trust in me, and I don’t take that lightly.

He has more than proven himself in another venture we are testing together.

Ingredient sourcing has been going well, and it’s looking like I’ll be able to source ingredients for over 80% less than what I’ve been buying them for via retail.

V2 and V3 will have electrolytes and/or collagen, but one SKU at a time…

Once we have all the ingredients and a manufacturer/co-packer lined up, we’ll do a run of samples with different recipe profiles.

I love my recipe, but I don’t know if it’s the best for mass market. I like my lemonade more sour than sweet, but that might not be the case for everyone.

Once I have several different samples of different recipes I plan to mail them out to friends and family to solicit feedback.

Production & Launch

Like Henry Ford once famously said about his Model T,

“You can pick any color you want, as long as it’s black.”

That’s how Busy Juice will start. One SKU. Why? Because I used to own a 3rd party logistics company called Send Eats, and I’ve been running eCommerce businesses for 13 years.

A high SKU count is often the death of businesses, especially in food. Managing shelf life, expiration dates and humidity can be very difficult.

We’ll start with one, maniacally listen to feedback, and eventually launch more based on what we learn.

Let’s talk marketing. **Rubs hands together in anticipation.**

This is what I’m really excited about. This is the best part of this email. Here’s how I plan to market Busy Juice:

1. Send free product to all of my friends and contacts on Twitter, unsolicited. No ask, no request, just free product. Assuming they love it, they’ll be happy to sing its praises on launch day.

2. For 3 years I was an assistant wrestling coach at Bob Jones high school. (Okay where is he going with this…?) Every time we’d go to a wrestling tournament a black market would immediately appear, with wrestlers from other teams wanting to buy Bob Jones wrestling T-Shirts. Why? Because they simply said “I ❤️ BJ Wrestling.” High school humor…So with every Busy Juice (BJ) order I ship we’ll send stickers that say “I ❤️ BJ.” And some of those stickers will end up on tumblers….and many of those stickers will start conversations…you see where I’m going with this? How could a product and brand like that NOT have viral word of mouth marketing?

3. I own the unused domain name LiquidAdderall.com. On launch day, on Twitter, I plan to jokingly announce that as the name of the product. Liquid Adderall? Will the markers of Adderall send a cease and desist? Absolutely. But not after some virality has taken place…(note, if my lawyer tells me to not do this I will not do this, and she just might…)

This product should have good enough margins and a recurring revenue profile to support paid ads, but I only want to pull that lever if I have to. Twitter will be the backbone of this launch, which is clearly a risk. Why? Because it hasn’t really been done before on RE/SMBtwit, and that makes me nervous.

Launching a VA agency or a real estate fund on Twitter is safe and proven. Launching a powdered version of red bull for white collar SMB bros is not. But I’m willing to be the test subject.

Post Launch

We’ll only sell online for a while, because this is easy and familiar. I’ll keep the weight of the product below 13 ounces so we can qualify for the cheapest USPS shipping. But eventually, after launching 3-5 SKUs I’d love to get it in stores. Which stores and how? Well, I haven’t really thought that far ahead yet, but I have some ideas…

This business is wildly different from ones I normally start, because it’s not as asymmetric. This is a lot of work just to see if there’s product market fit. And a good chunk of change as well.

But if it does work then it could be a big, profitable business with multiple product lines. And I love the name and the brand. It’s a passion project with high upside, but not one I’m sinking a ton of attention into right now.

Mind voting below?

Conclusion

Thanks for reading, I hope you learned something or at least chuckled a bit. I’m going to keep this one behind a paywall of some sort so only you are able to read it freely, but feel free to share with close friends.

We’ll see you next week!

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As always, thanks for reading!

Chris Koerner
chrisjkoerner.com