Making Soap Inspired by Their Love of Cowboys idea → $300K+/Month

🏖️ Creative Entrepreneur fun one-liner:

Why did the entrepreneur love old maps? Because they're always looking for undiscovered territories!

Onto Today’s story….

Danielle Vincent was working a soul-crushing office job, when she and her husband Russ dreamed up a wild idea;

Starting a soap company inspired by their love of adventure and the outdoors.

Outlaw took off. and now they are making $300k+/Month.

Here is how they did it.

Danielle was working long hours behind a cubicle at the Oprah Winfrey Network in LA.

She felt trapped in a lifeless routine.

Danielle and her husband Russ, craved adventure.

Both of them were very involved in the Burning Man culture, which often involved venturing into the desert,

to create large-scale art before setting it ablaze.

On their honeymoon, they picked up a single bar of soap from a farm store.

After coming back home, Danielle smelled it every morning and refused to use it and always kept it new.

She says she still has it to this day.

It reminded her of their wonderful honeymoon, of staying in a cabin in the woods, of walking on the beach,

and of the general wonderfulness of their adventure.

One day, Danielle looked at her soap's ingredients and noticed it had only a few ingredients.

She talked about this with her friends, and they thought they could make their own cold process soap quite easily,

and they could make it smell with the scents they wanted.

Why not make it smell like things they loved like campfire, leather, and whiskey?

They started making the soap and launched their business, with a meager $13.72 of supplies from the grocery store.

Their total start-up costs were about $200.

With practically no startup capital, Danielle and Russ taught themselves how to make cold process soap by watching YouTube videos.

They experimented with recipes in their small apartment, often staying up all night boiling soap and hand wrapping each bar.

After many trials and errors, they finally crafted their first market-ready body wash product called Blazing Saddles.

It smelled like a tack room after a gunfight, with leather, gunpowder, sandalwood, and sagebrush scents.

A cowboy / western scent for people who loved the raw ruggedness of the Wild West.

Danielle named the brand Outlaw Soaps to evoke images of the Wild West.

They started selling through an etsy shop.

They launched their online store after just two months of development.

Sales trickled in slowly at first, from friends and family.

Then they got a big order from an online retailer.

They started making money, So Danielle quit her job.

Russ was working as a handyman and supported the family.

But money ran out quickly. Danielle pulled money out of her 401k plan.

She also maxed out her credit cards.

Sales slowly picked up and they were making $23k/month.

By this time, Outlaw’s soaps also developed a cult following.

Blazing Saddles became their bestselling body wash soap.

As demand grew, production became a major bottleneck.

Danielle and Russ moved operations out of their apartment into a small warehouse.

She also started a blog called Life in the Soap Lane.

She focused on SEO to get organic traffic, and it amounted to 20% of their sales.

Her customers started providing ideas for new products.

She also started a weekly newsletter, where she shared about building her little company, express her excitement about a product,

or recount a particularly amazing product review.

She showed that she was a regular human being running a company.

They offered incentives and new product launches just for their newsletter subscribers.

Next they started selling on Amazon and also started a subscription box service.

Sales slowly started to grow.

Then the 2020 pandemic stuck.

They had just moved into a large new production warehouse to meet rising demand.

With adventure put on hold, the crisis threatened to sink their rapidly growing company.

Danielle pivoted the brand to meet customers’ shifting needs amidst lockdowns.

Outlaw introduced self-care focused products to their line, like stress-relieving bath salts.

Danielle also doubled down on digital marketing to drive online sales.

Leaning on grit and adaptability, Outlaw not only survived the pandemic but thrived.

They also changed their company name from Outlaw Soaps to just Outlaw.

They started selling more products, like cologne, Lip balms and Air Fresheners.

They started Facebook ads, and it turned out to be very profitable and they started getting lots of sales.

Danielle says…

“We try never to lose sight of the fact that business, and especially our business, is supposed to be fun.”

“We always try to put a bit of ourselves and our humor into everything we do”

Danielle and Russ failed countless times, whether recipes gone bad or losing money due to website crashes.

She says…

“If you can recover from a mistake, don’t even look at it twice.”

It’s not worth wringing hands about or speculating over what went wrong, you just have to move on.

Business doesn’t have time for a pity party. Acknowledge the error and move on.”

In the beginning, she says every day felt like a barrage of self-criticism.

These days, she does not try not to even think twice about a problem.

“It has been a very useful life skill overall” she says.

Now they make over $300k+/Month.

When Danielle felt unfulfilled and trapped in her day job years ago, starting a scrappy soap business is likely the last idea anyone would have expected.

But through relentless obsession and grit, she took that kernel of an idea and built it into a thriving brand touching hundreds of thousands of lives.

She showed that with the right amount of obsession and tenacity, you can turn even the craziest dreams into reality.

9 reasons why they succeeded

1. Business inspired by combining their obsessions

• Danielle and Russ loved adventure, the outdoors and experiences like Burning Man

• They also loved the old wild west

• They created an adventurous, outdoorsy soap brand.

2. Bootstrapped the business with extremely low cost

• They launched Outlaw Soaps with only $13.72 spent on initial soap ingredients

• Total costs to start were around $200 invested upfront

• They started making their soap in their small apartment

3. Learnt skills as they went

• Danielle and Russ taught themselves soap making from YouTube videos

• Experimented with recipes and techniques until they had a quality product

• Also learnt key business skills online for free instead of through formal school.

4. Developed a niche, memorable brand that told a story and elicited emotion

• Named their business as "Outlaw Soaps" with branding that made customers feel adventurous and rugged.

• The smell of Blazing Saddles soap made their customers feel like they were in the wild west.

• They stood out by telling stories about their brand that made customers feel a personal connection.

5. Started small

• She launched an Etsy shop first

• Once she got some sales, she built her own website.

6. Focused on free traffic

• Danielle started her blog "Life in the Soap Lane" and optimized with SEO

• This drove 20% of total sales from organic search traffic to her site

7. Quickly adopted during crisis.

• At the pandemic onset, she introduced self-care focused soaps like stress-relieving bath salts.

8. Had Tenacity

• She stayed resilient through countless failed recipes and website crashes.

9. Made it a fun brand

• She shared stories from her life as a founder in a humorous way in her newsletter

• Her branding on her products evoked humor.

Hope you liked the story and the tactics which made them successful.

Let the good times roll for you!.

Yours “Anti-Stress” Vijay Peduru