From Zero Business Experience → $150k/Month Biz Selling Natural Deodorant

🏖️ Creative Entrepreneur fun one-liner:

Why do entrepreneurs make great DJs? Because they know how to 'mix' the right strategies!

Onto Today’s story….

Stacia Guzzo, was a teacher who didn’t have any experience starting a business.

Yet she did it step by step and built  SmartyPits , a natural deodorant business doing $150k/month.

Even if making deodorant isn't your thing,

Stacia's story gives superb useful tips for creating a business,

with a strong purpose that deeply connected with people.

Here we go…

SmartyPits was inspired by the experience of Stacia's mother as a breast cancer survivor.

When her mother discovered the lump, it was directly underneath her armpit.

The cancer was incredibly aggressive.

They had no family history of breast cancer,no genetic predisposition, no family history at all.

In fact, her doctors at the time told her it was likely environmentally influenced.

This led Stacia to do some research.

She discovered some studies that found links between aluminum, and breast cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease.

Knowing how aggressive this cancer was,and now having an immediate family history, she tried to go aluminum-free.

The only problem?

She simply couldn't find any natural deodorants that actually worked well enough.

And so, Stacia reluctantly continued using her regular antiperspirant.

She was working as a school teacher at this time.

Then she and her husband moved to a much more rural location, and they became hobbyist beekeepers.

They wanted to do this for some time and now they took the decision and did it.

With their first honey harvest, they had excess wax.

She decided to do something with it.

Stacia decided to try her hand at making lip balm.

She found a lip balm recipe on the internet, and used the wax to make it...and it was awful.

It was hard and crumbly, and she was so disappointed!

But she didn’t give up.

Through research and persistence - 16 more formulations to be exact,she cracked the code on creating the perfect smooth and moisturizing lip balm.

She was then hooked on learning how to make skin care products.

She began voraciously learning everything she could about formulating skin care products.

Soon she experimented with soaps, lotions, bath salts and more.

She grew obsessed with endlessly tweaking and perfecting different recipes.

She then started selling at small farmer’s markets.

She saw that customers liked her products.

When she felt confident enough in her newfound skills in 2014,

Stacia left teaching to officially launch Handcrafted Honey Bee.

Starting out, operations were extremely small-scale.

Using a double boiler and mason jars in her home, Stacia produced just six products at a time.

She then started selling her honey-infused goods at local farmer's markets, craft fairs and in a couple of shops.

She made $40,000 that year.

She made lot of pricing mistakes , but she was learning from them.

That is when she got the idea to make her own deodorant.

Just like with the lip balm, the first iterations of the deodorant weren’t the best...and yet, people wanted to buy it anyway!

It was clear there was a need.

In fact, deodorant quickly became one of her most popular products.

They would take a formula to a farmer’s market or craft show, sell it, get feedback on what could be improved,

and take it back to their home studio to tweak the formula.

Stacia's very first online presence was on Etsy.

She had no idea about how to run an online shop or market her products.

All she did was put the product up on the etsy, and mentioned to her friends on Facebook,

that she was selling her lip balms and soaps for Christmas.

She made $1000 off of that Etsy shop the first December she put it online, which felt like a million dollars to her.

She was floored.

Within a year, demand for Stacia's handmade skin care grew.

While still using humble home equipment, she scaled up production enough to manufacture 500 items in a day - a major upgrade.

She built a simple website on Shopify and made it look professional.

Traffic slowly started increasing to her website.

The deodorant was quickly becoming their #1 selling product.

But there was a big problem: people couldn’t remember the name.

At the time, it was simply called “Handcrafted HoneyBee Deodorant.”

It just wasn’t a name people could remember.

In late 2016, a name struck Stacia: SmartyPits.

She was in her car, driving home, and the name popped into her head.

She literally laughed out loud thinking about it.

As soon as she got home,

she contacted her trademark lawyer--they filed for an intent-to-use trademark later that day.

They rebranded the deodorant line as SmartyPits in April of 2017.

Stacia says that it was that single move that changed the entire course of their business.

All the foundation work they did before had primed for this moment.

Online traffic increased exponentially.

Revenues swiftly surpassed $15k/month, with SmartyPits contributing to 90% of the total revenue during this time.

Their return customer rate for SmartyPits more than doubled.

They continued to grow.

They found online influencers and worked with them to spread the word.

They were also featured on The View and The Rachel Ray Show on TV.

The Rachel Ray Show was an unexpected media hit.

So when sales suddenly skyrocketed one morning, they scrambled to figure out the source.

It was quite exciting for them to discover it was Rachel Ray!

It was a valuable lesson for them: always have inventory ready, You never know when an unexpected hit will come.

SmartyPits continued to grow.

Now they are making $150k/Month.

As an entrepreneur she had to learn a lot of things like marketing, figuring out how to connect with suppliers,

distribution, storage and other things.

Stacia says “fast is not always better.”

“Learning these things one step at a time is way easier, than being forced to figure it out all at once,

and possibly making some critical mistakes because of it”.

She adds “Plan, plan, plan...then leave a little wiggle room for the unexpected.”

5 reasons why she succeeded:

1. Idea from Personal Problem:

Stacia was inspired to create a natural deodorant after her mom's breast cancer.

When she discovered the lump, it was directly underneath her armpit.

Her research showed it could be linked to aluminum-based antiperspirants.

She built SmartyPits from her own personal problem.

2. Tenacity through initial failures:

it took Stacia 16 tries to perfect her lip balm,

before she created a sellable product.

Not giving up after the first few tries is key.

3. Tested small first:

Instead of mass production out the gate,

Stacia tested demand by selling at farmers markets first.

This allowed her to gather customer feedback,

tweak the products based on it, and prove her MVP.

4. Solved one key customer problem really well.

For Stacia, it was natural deodorant that actually works.

Customer wanted a deodorant, without any chemicals

and she solved that problem for them.

5. Built a foundation first.

Despite no skin care experience,

Stacia began teaching herself cosmetic formulation.

She then learnt about branding and building products.

Later on when she introduced SmartyPits, it quickly became a huge hit.

She didn’t get lucky suddenly, she prepared for it.

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

Keep Rocking!

Yours “Making you Win” Vijay Peduru