Lisa Eberly Mastela From Bumpin Blends

Sam (00:03): Lisa, welcome to Beyond the Inbox. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us.

Lisa (00:08): Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to chatting.

Sam (00:12): What is Bumping Blends, and how has your background as a dietician impacted the work you do today?

Lisa (00:21): So, bumping blends are pre-blended, frozen smoothie cubes designed to support specific areas of health. So we have smoothies for anxiety, focus, trouble sleeping, stress, uh, sex drive, you name it, we have a smoothie for it. Uh, you just pop 'em in the blender at home, there's like six little cubes blended up with some water, milk, and you've got a perfect smoothie designed by dieticians every time. And so, um, my background is as a registered dietician. I have a master's in nutrition and public health. Um, and I just, I was really kind of sick of seeing all these health products out there that are just not actually healthy. Uh, you know, you've got all these brands saying that they're healthy, but they're just packed with like artificial sweeten nerds and natural flavors and all this stuff. And if it did actually have all of the healthy things with none of the bad stuff, it tasted awful.

(01:12): Um, and so my clients were like, don't, please don't make me that <laugh>. Um, and so I was working at a wellness startup on my maternity leave. Um, and I was making smoothies throughout my whole pregnancy, actually throughout my whole life, um, to sort of hack biohack my body before biohacking was like a thing. Um, and a lot of dieticians do this too, just because we kind of know how foods work in the body in a way that the average person doesn't. Um, and so I just, you know, it was my husband and my friends family were all kind of saying like, you could sell these smoothies. They're really delicious and they really work. Um, and then the idea for Bon Blinds was born.

Sam (01:53): I want to take you back. I was doing some research for this episode and there's a period in the company's life that really stuck out for me. This is an excerpt from another interview. When Covid hit, I lost my entire staff, my supply chains, my ingredients, my personal nanny, my shipping center, and my methods all without notice <laugh> for six months. I woke up at 4:00 AM to head to our kitchen and blend and package smoothies before my husband had to start work so I could be home by 9:00 AM to watch our daughter. Then after his workday was over at 5:00 PM I'd start my work for the day and work till 12:00 AM and do bath and bedtime with my daughter only to get up at 4:00 AM all while pregnant. Can you tall ud about that period?

Lisa (02:43): I don't want to <laugh>. Um, that was a rough period for us. Covid beginning of Covid was, was an amazing period for us, but it was really challenging. Uh, it was amazing in the sense that we just so happened to have a few influencers talking about us, that that made a really big impact on our business. Um, and everyone being at home and frozen and, you know, things were going really well for us business wise. So we business was booming. Um, but I was also in my first trimester of pregnancy. Um, and luckily, you know, the first trimester of pregnancy, I don't know if you know, is you're just vomiting and exhausted all the time, but then the second trimester of pregnancy, you just have this like, insane energy. And a lot of moms spend that energy like, you know, getting the house ready for baby.

(03:28): And so when I was doing that intense, like, you know, four hours a night to sleep, I was in my second trimester for the most part. And so I had like superhuman mom energy and I just funneled it toward bump in. Um, but for the first few weeks I was still in that like puking exhausted phase. So it was a lot of, uh, uh, just trying to suppress that. Um, but yeah, that was a really interesting time for us and it was definitely a, a major test to bump in because so many businesses went under it, especially small bootstrapped businesses like ours. You know, we didn't have a huge team. We didn't have fancy investors, nothing to get us through. And so up until that point, I had always prided myself on hiring stay-at-home moms. That was kind of our shtick at the time of like, you know, our entire manufacturing team, fulfillment team, warehouse teams, everything were stay-at-home moms who would come in after they dropped their kids off at school and then leave by 2:00 PM to pick up their kids.

(04:25): And I loved that model because I feel like stay-at-home moms are often a really overlooked workforce. Um, and of course, like that Friday when everyone got the notice that all schools were closed, now kids are sitting at home on Zoom, I was like, oh, I don't know if I'm allowed to say what I wanna say. But, um, it was, it was very scary and very bad. But luckily, you know, my husband and I, we put our heads together and you just have to make it work. You know, when you run a small business, when you're an entrepreneur trying to build a startup, you just have to make it work. Um, if you believe in the product and you believe you'll get through it, and we did, um, we were able to act. It actually ended up being so incredible for our business too, because I was like, okay, who, while I'm, I'm picking up the slack of everyone, not the slack, but, you know, picking up the empty space of, of needing somebody needs to blend these smoothies.

(05:14): So I'll be there blending and then at night I'll figure out how to build a staff back. Um, and luckily within, not luckily horribly within a few weeks of covid happening, but somewhat luckily for Bump and Blends, people were getting laid off like crazy, especially restaurant workers because it was just looking like restaurants were just not gonna open back up. Um, and same goes for la. We're in LA a lot of actors were outta work and, and struggling. Um, and so I turned to out of work actors and waiters and waitresses and hostesses from restaurants, um, often overlapped with each other. But, um, and I hired, um, a few waiters and waitresses from Nobu and who were laid off, uh, or if they weren't laid off, they were just like on pause while their boob was closed. Uh, as well as a couple of chefs, uh, who were outta work.

(06:04): And I, those people changed our business completely. Like to have a, a real professional chef blending our smoothies and giving their feedback and making tweaks here and there. It made our product sensational. Um, and then the people who had worked at Nobu were able to kind of take a few things that Nobu had done right and wrong and apply it to our kitchen. So, you know, some of the people I heard there, one of them ended up becoming our operations director because she was so fantastic. Um, Nobu was really sleeping on her as a weight, as a hostess. Um, and so it was, it ended up being so great for us.

Sam (06:39): It's a fascinating story and super inspiring to hear. I know balance is very important to you and I wanted to ask you how difficult it must have been to strike a healthy work-life balance during that period?

Lisa (06:55): Um, you know, it was definitely an all hands on deck situation, uh, with my husband and I and our kids. But you know, if you balance is something that you really just have to prioritize that you have to make sure that you have hard and fast boundaries, um, and that you're able to delegate and let things go when you can so that you can pick up space for more important things. You know, for me, spending time with my kids, seeing those milestones being a part of it, breastfeeding, like all that is, is are non-negotiables for me. Um, and so I never want my kids to feel like mommy's ignoring them for work. And that's like my, you know, my driving force is like, you know, my kids are only this age for right now. It's so fleeting, it moves so fast. Um, and I never ever want them, well, one, I really don't, per selfishly, I don't wanna miss out on these times.

(07:48): Are you kidding? They're the cutest things ever. And then pretty soon they're just gonna like, not wanna hug me in public and, you know, gimme attitude. I don't, I don't wanna miss this. But also for them, like, I don't want them to ever have memories that like, mommy was working and she couldn't play with us. Um, and so there were other things I had to cut out in my life to, to make space. But when it comes to like balance, you have to just like set really firm boundaries, <laugh>, um, and just remind yourself also, like even if you run a really exciting startup, even if you're running the most successful smoothie business in the world or whatever startup you're running that is changing lives and everything, it's, it's just a startup. Like it's just a company. It's just a business. You know, we're not, I'm not putting people on the moon. I'm not like securing world hunger. I, I can, I can get to that email later. Like, you know, they can wait. And so like that's my biggest thing is like e you email me, it will take me two weeks to reply. I don't know how long it took me to reply to your email about this podcast. Like it can take a long time, but like, I don't care. I'm spending time with my kids.

Sam (08:54): I really about my sorry

Lisa (08:55): To everyone who's emails me. No,

Sam (08:57): It's, it's, uh, it's such an important point to, to emphasize I'm a dad too and my son is four and a half going on five. And I totally agree. Those moments off leading and it's something that you really have to hold onto and the work will always be there when you get back to it.

Lisa (09:17): Yeah. My daughter's like, yeah, right in between four and a half and five. And so you definitely know, like, it literally you blink and they go from this like newborn to a cute toddler to now they're like this child with just very strong opinions and all that. So it's, it's crazy how fast it flies.

Sam (09:33): It is. Switching gears a little bit, let's move to the present. There is so much I wanna talk about when it comes to how you're marketing the brand, I wanna start onsite. The first thing you notice when you go on the website is almost a gif in the bottom right hand corner of you waving at the visitor. Can you tell us more about Tasty and how you're using it to engage inside visitors?

Lisa (09:59): It it's a very effective tool. Uh, tool store is great, especially for small businesses with founders who are very much the face of the company. Um, which I think if you run a small business, especially any kind of CPG brand, um, direct to consumer, if you're the founder, you need to be the face of the business. Um, and I, I'm someone I really hate being on camera. Like nothing makes me more uncomfortable than like filming something like that tool story or it, it just, yeah, I, I hate it and I hate being in TikTok and I, I just, I hate all of it, but everyone I've worked with on the marketing side, everyone who can see our numbers and understand it knows that like when customers see me or hear me talking about something, it just goes off like gang busters, <laugh>, and if it's anyone else talking about it, it doesn't, it Flo.

(10:47): So, um, I thought, how can we apply that to the website? Um, because on Instagram and stuff, or TikTok, people like to see me talking about the product and, and hearing my story, um, podcast, et cetera. And, and so I was like, how can we bring that to the site? And Tulsa is great for small businesses too cause it's super inexpensive. It's really, it's, it's like, I think 20 bucks a month or something super small. Um, and you can, you can, like I I think especially a lot of CPG brands, they wanna take their customer on the journey. Like if I could just literally sit next to everyone who lands on our website and like hold their hand and kind of explain things, I would like, I feel like when, when people interact with us at an event or something like that, like they get it in a way that not everyone does when they're just landing on the website.

(11:38): Um, cause people, you know, they land on the website, they're, what is this, how did I get here? And they might leave, but you have the founder literally waving to them in a corner like, Hey, I'm right here, I'm here to help. And it's like I'm holding your hand through the process. If you're a bit, especially like we have a subscription, you gotta select flavors. It's not like a click here. Like, it's not like Amazon where it's like buy now, click done. You have to select flavors, you have to think about it. And it's a big purchase too. It's not cheap

Sam (12:07): On the subject of engaging visitors, you also have this quiz and it's very common in e-commerce to have quizzes, but I feel like you do it really well. How are you using told the story with quizzes and what is the goal with the quiz?

Lisa (12:23): So the quiz was something I wanted like from the get-go. Before I built the website, before I had the company, I was like, I want a quiz, I want a quiz, I want it now. Uh, and I couldn't afford it cuz being on Shopify and having developers build up a custom quiz was like, hmm more than I had invested in the business originally. And so I was like, my goal as soon as we hit, I think my goal was like, as soon as we hit a hundred K in revenue or something when we first launched, I'm gonna invest in, you know, building this out. Uh, and so the quiz was always super important to me. Um, and yeah, now everyone does quizzes and I like to think they all got it, the idea from me, but probably not. Um, but the quiz I wanted, because we are not just a smoothie company, like we are not just getting you like Rassas and Strawberry Banana and sending you on our way, our smoothies are functional and that's what sets them apart.

(13:14): They are designed by dieticians to work for your body. And so if you're like just ordering them because you love the peanut butter cup, that's great. Like our cookie dough flavor will blow your mind. But you know, they're also functional. And so if you're someone who struggles with like digestion issues or headaches or low sex drive, like we have smoothies, that will literally help you, they'll change your life. Um, like we've had customers say that like our sleep smoothie is better than ambient for them and they were able to get off taking ambient every night cuz they switched to our smoothie and it's like, yes, that is what this is about. And the quiz really puts that front and center for you because you get to personalize the experience, you get to have the hand holding of a dietician next to you. You just select what you need support with and we will curate an exact list of the smoothies we recommend for you.

(14:03): Um, and from a marketing perspective, we funnel you right into checkout. Like it, that sounds terrible, but like, you know, once you have your recommendations, it does take you right into checkout. Um, which was tough because when I first built the Shopify site, uh, like I said, we're a very scrappy business. We've never taken investor funding. I invested 18 k in the beginning of the business to just get it off the ground in my garage. And that's that like, we just spend what we make and we stay in the black. Um, and so for me, buil moving to Shopify and building out the quiz and everything, I could only afford like a freelance developer who was like really scrappy and he was like, I could kind of make this work. And originally the quiz couldn't take you to check out because I could not afford it. Like plain and simple, I couldn't afford it. And at the time I was pregnant, I had a toddler, I was like, I'm not gonna like take out a loan or something for this. We're just gonna make this work. And so the quiz didn't take you to check out. Um, and then it eventually we like upgraded <laugh>, uh, for it to take you through checkout and it made a huge difference. <laugh>,

Sam (15:12): Were you asking for the email and that's where the journey ended or what was the end of that journey

Lisa (15:19): Before for the quiz originally?

Sam (15:21): Yeah,

Lisa (15:22): So for the quiz originally we gathered the email in the name that is like also huge part of the quiz. It is our main email collector. Um, so in order to take the quiz and see the results, you need to input your email. It is our biggest email jump collector because people just write like f off. I don't wanna give you my email@gmail.com and then they get their quiz results. But that's fine. It's also our hu like it is. Um, so let's see what is, uh, it collects 7.5 times more emails than all of our other email collection efforts combined.

Sam (16:02): Wow.

Lisa (16:04): To put that number into perspective. So our popups, our onsite subscription, anything else we use to collect emails, the quiz collects 7.5 times more emails, like that's not a made up number, I just ran the numbers just now. Um, and so it is like the primary way we get people's contact info and then we put them, of course once you finish the quiz, sure we take you right to checkout, but if you don't immediately check out within three minutes, you're getting an email like, hey, your quiz results. And then 15 minutes later like, here's a discount code quiz 15. And then the next day like the discount code's expiring and then, you know, and then they're in our funnel. Then we just welcome them into the family because you know what, they took the time to fill out a whole quiz on our website, they're interested, um, but there's just something keeping them from checking out.

Sam (17:00): I want to come back to email in a moment. Going back to the popup, I see that you are asking for the mobile number and I wanted to ask mm-hmm. <affirmative> how and why you're using sms.

Lisa (17:10): SMS has, uh, well one SMS is so affordable as well. It, you know, a lot of email partners, it can be a bit pricey and you know, it's hard to make those numbers work unless you have like a massive email estimates really, you know, worth it. Um, but SMS is much more lower hanging group in terms of like, it is super affordable and it is all the rage right now and everyone's really into it. Uh, and we also, I'm gonna sound like such a jerk. We also did text messaging before the text me messaging apps were like even, and it was a thing like before the launch of Postscript, before the launch of attentive and emotive all those, or at least before they were popular or anyone knew what they were, we did text messaging because that was another part of the nutritionist dietician offering of ours, was that every subscription came with your own 24 7 nutritionist.

(18:07): And that's still the case. We used to do it manually with Google Voice <laugh>. Wow. Um, it did not, you know, it was just not scalable or sustainable, but we did it. Um, back in 20 18, 20 19, we were literally texting our customers with Google Voice, um, which is just so funny to me. Uh, but now luckily we use, we use an app for it and um, it's great. I think it's a really fun way to interact with your customers and I think customers are looking for that. You know, they email marketing can come off as marketing a bit sometimes if you do it wrong, if you do it right, it can be much better than that. But SMS is an easy way to interact with your customers in a really natural, organic way. If you do it right, if you do it wrong, it's really annoying.

(18:55): But we use SMS as a way to pull and survey our customers quite a bit. You know, hey, we're bringing in a new flavor for spring, would you wanna see an orange smoothie or a coconut smoothie? And then it just gets them engaging with you, you know, they're replying to you and, and going back and forth. Um, we don't do it as like spammy marketing stuff when we do have a big campaign or like a limited time product, we will push it on s m sms, but um, we just like to talk to our customers. It's like a really fun way to engage.

Sam (19:29): Are you getting a lot of surprising feedback when you're sending these text messages? Things that you wouldn't have considered? Always

Lisa (19:39): Nothing too surprising. I am always surprised when people engage with it. Like certain texts will send, we'll just like go off like gangbusters, like getting like thousands of responses. Um, and then certain texts just crickets. Uh, and so it's interesting to see what our customers are interested in. Um, and I'm always surprised to see, I'm not always surprised, but a lot of the times I'm surprised to see like certain poll answers where I'm like, really everyone loves that flavor? Like, are we sure? And then they like, yeah. So that's really fun to see. Um, and it, it's just also cool to kind of, we're small enough that I can kind of know some customers. Um, we used to, like I used to know every customer's full name and address. It was very like up until we had like 50 customers back in 2019. Uh, and then once we got to have like, you know, 500,000 whatever, I, I've don't have all their names, but sometimes randomly I'll recognize a name.

(20:36): Like maybe what I, who I recognize are the customers who have caused trouble with uh, support. Um, so if a customer is like raising hell with the support team and they're so angry and we're getting like profanity lashed at us, I'll be looped in. Um, and then randomly like I always am, it's fun to see like that customer is then replying to our text message with her favorite flavor for spring. And I'm like, seriously, you just, you wreaked havoc on our CX team and you're just chest uh, telling us your favorite flavor that you want to come back <laugh>. So that's sometimes fun to see on text.

Sam (21:15): I wanna go back to email because we talked previously and you shared some really interesting automations that you are using. We talked a little bit about car abandonment. I know you have a welcome flow where you're introducing the brand and you and what others are saying and the quiz. What other automations are running the business?

Lisa (21:36): So the quiz flow is our biggest one because it's where we're getting the most customers and the welcome flow is really for only the customers that sign up with the pop-up or um, the onscreen thing. And then, um, we have our abandoned cart course and our browse abandoned flow, which is great. Um, and we also have a win back flow, um, for anyone who's canceled a subscription. We have a separate win back flow for if you canceled subscription above a certain price point. Um, so for instance, if you had a subscription for under a hundred dollars and you had it for only like a month or two, we have one win backflow for you. Cause I can kind of tell who you are. Um, and then if you were someone who had like a $200 subscription for six months or more and then you canceled, I have a different win backflow for you.

(22:26): Um, and so we have just different flows just targeting our customers in different ways. Um, we have a pretty robust loyalty program, so we have some good flows around our loyalty program, encouraging people to use points. Um, and then we have a flow for, uh, upgrading your subscription. So if you are someone who's ordering our smallest bundle for under a hundred dollars every two weeks, but you've like received three bundles, you clearly like it, you're in there, you're updating your flavors, you haven't skipped a box or tried to cancel flow for you to upgrade you to a bigger monthly bundle so that we are spending less on shipping and you are spending less on smoothies. So it doesn't make sense to get seven smoothies every other week when you can get 14 monthly for the same, for like a lower price.

Sam (23:14): You also talked about running marketing experiments and I'm curious, are there any marketing experiments that you've run recently that have surprised you or maybe

Lisa (23:24): Yeah. Um, marketing experiments? Yeah. We are, I think part of our success and some people are gonna really hate, but I say this, I'm sorry. Part of our success is that we were never big on meta ads like the Facebook, Instagram ads that were insane in 2017 to 2019 where like any average Joe could throw a few hundred bucks at meta adss and all of a sudden you've got a million dollar business. Um, we never took advantage of that. And at the time I was really pissed about that because I was just like, ha, we could be this $10 million company if I just paid the meta gods, but, um, we never did. Uh, and part of that is just, I, I really didn't understand it and I didn't like throwing money at something I didn't understand. Um, but now I'm really grateful for it because those companies relied very heavily on those ads.

(24:22): Um, and they're all just floundering now. <laugh>, a lot of them are, or they went under because they, their only way to survive was their, their cac. Um, and their, you know, the, the, the meta ads being successful and then when Meta Ads started doing their thing, they all kind of like didn't know what to do. And so I've always made sure that every quarter we have some new different strange marketing initiative that is might work and it might not, but I usually, nowadays I set aside 10 to 15 grand each quarter. Actually no 20, 20 to 25 grand each quarter to experiment with something different, something strange, something that might totally fail. And we will never say that 25 grand again. Um, and so for instance, maybe it's paying macro in influe, you know, paying influencers with over 5 million followers and seeing how that goes.

(25:21): Maybe it's paying smaller bloggers to blog about us and see how that goes. Maybe it's some different SEO technique. Maybe it's um, inbox insert trade with other small businesses. Maybe it's paid inbox inserts with some massive business, you know, whatever it is. I try to set aside money each quarter to try something we have never done before and to be totally okay if it flops. Um, and it, it does kind of suck sometimes cuz if we are spending that like 25 grand on something in a quarter and it flops hard, um, that can really affect our numbers and that kind of stinks. But I feel like it's really important to continuously be experimenting with marketing because if you rely too heavily on one marketing channel, um, what if it's, what if it fails? What if something horrible goes wrong with it, then you're just screwed.

(26:17): So I kind of like to know, um, it's a good way for me to learn too, cuz I can know what works and what doesn't. And why did that work and why did it? Like for instance, with the macro influencers, we just did that, um, this past quarter and we've had macro influencers talk about us before, but we've never paid them to. Um, it's always, you know, we've had Chrissy, Tegan, Amanda, Coots, like all these big people talking about us, but we've never actually been like, here's money to talk about us. Cause I, I always felt like that wasn't organic. Um, but this quarter we did, uh, just to tinker with it and one influencer with just a million followers brought in like 70 sales, which is pretty good. And then the other influencer with almost 8 million followers brought in two sales. Like, it's like they did the same thing. They posted about the same product in the same way and they had the engagement as well was, um, the almost 8 million follower influencer had great engagement 10 times that of the 1 million follower went, but only two sales. And so now I'm like, I get to dig in and experiment and be like, what, what was the difference here? Who is the audience? Like cuz that can tell us a lot about our customers. So that's kind of what I meant by <laugh> experimenting.

Sam (27:34): Yeah, it's, it's super interesting and it's so funny what you say about influencers having these large followers, but those followers don't necessarily translate into customers, which is what it's about when you're paying influencers to promote your brand. I'm just being mindful of time wrapping up soon. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and I had in my notes here, I wanted to ask you about community and what community means to you. It's important to a lot of founders and coming full circle in the beginning of the call we were talking about you being the face of the brand. How do you put all of this together?

Lisa (28:08): That's a good question. I don't always do it super successfully. I've seen brands that do it wonderfully, um, and build a really strong community, which is so fun to see and, and it's fun to kind of not copy cap, which is learn from. Um, but I think that, you know, when you have the email marketing, the text message marketing, the social media, the founders face and story, uh, the website and then like the loyalty program, all of that, and you have the inbox experience, um, you have to wrap it up with a bow. You have to make sure it all ties together and that you have emails about the loyalty program. You have text messages about the Instagram giveaway. You have the founder's story in the box somehow you have the contact info for the 24 7 nutritionist in the box. Like it all has to sort of connect.

(28:55): And the way I do that is honestly with a whiteboard or just like paper, I have to be able to draw out the web, tie it all together and make sure that it's all being addressed and organized, um, in a way that makes sense for the customer journey. Um, and I don't always do it successfully at all. I have a lot always to, I always have a running to-do list of how to improve this. Um, and we're constantly working on making it better. But I think that like knowing the customer experience, polling your customers, serving it, making sure that like, cause we have customers like who didn't even know we had a loyalty program or didn't even know we had a blog or didn't even know the founder story. Like to find those customers and figure out how that happened, I think is really important.

Sam (29:38): Well, Lisa, this has been a fascinating conversation. Where can our listeners go to learn more about bumpin blends?

Lisa (29:46): Bumpinblends.com or Instagram Bumpin Blends.

Sam (29:50): Perfect. Well, thanks again for taking the time to join us, Lisa, and thank you so much. All the best in the future with Brent.

Lisa (29:58): All right. Thank you so much for having me.

Sam (30:00): My pleasure.