15 Year-Old Entrepreneur Abby Kircher Shares How She Built a Million-Dollar Peanut Butter Business

Audio Transcription

How would that work? Does a 15 year old freight in line of healthy peanut butter products that can now be found in over 1000 grocery stores? Has a 15 year old entrepreneur go about making her first prototypes said, how does a 15 year old find a commercial kitchen that has a 15 year old young woman go about creating your own branding and marketing materials? Did legally protect your product? How did she overcome fear? On today’s show, the founder of Abby’s better nut butter shares, how to get your product into 1000 stores and much, much

What?

Yes,

today’s show we have a super guest by the of Ms Dot abby. Now, abby is a little bit different than most young ladies out there. She started her business three years ago at the age of 15 out of a desire to create healthier alternatives to peanut butter, but never quite. Oh, you know, wouldn’t. It would never sacrifice taste, it wouldn’t compromise taste for health, her company is called Abby’s better and her company quickly began, began to gain the traction, and she has now created a variety of products that can be found in over 1000 stores around the planet and she is on pace to break through the $1,000,000 in sales mark by the end of this year during her short three year career as an entrepreneur, she’s been featured on how I built that Forbes Magazine, Entrepreneur magazine, and now as a result of great trickery, she has made a poor life choice and she has joined us on the thrive time show. Abby, how are you?

I’m fantastic. How are you guys? Good.

Doing good. We are excited to be here with you. Clay stares. A former school teacher turned millionaire, became an entrepreneur at the age of 47 on the other side of the brain. You became an entrepreneur at the age of 15. So I want to ask you, where were you, when did you first get the idea to start? Abby’s better?

Yeah. Well, I was 15 years old and that was at my house in the summer of 2016. I love peanut butter. It was pretty much everything, but I didn’t want all the artificial sweeteners and peanut oils found in traditional peanut butter. So I said, you know what not being forwarded it. I’m just going to make my own. Using some of my favorite nuts, like cashews, almonds and natural sweeteners like fruits and honey. So it was all my house and whipped out a food processor and I’ve just started making different recipes, mixing different nights with different flavors and I came up with the five flavors we have now, like within a week. And I. I loved them. I shared it with President’s family and they would just rave about how good it tasted while being so healthy. And then that’s when I approached my mom and I said, what if I started a business called the abbey better and we could sell at different farmer’s markets in the area. At first it was just going to be a hobby, something to look on, a college resume, but it soon grew into something much bigger than I ever expected it to.

I have a question. It’s gonna sound like one of those backhanded compliment kind of questions here. Um, but I, I really don’t get the most sincere of intentions when I asked this question. If you don’t like, you can just hang up on me and I’ll pick up on the clue there. Um, when I started DJ connection, my first company Dj Connection Dot Com that I have since sold. It’s now the nation’s largest wedding entertainment company. It started because I was asked to attend an organize these students against drunk driving dance. The sad dance for dazzle completed high school. And the DJ was so impossibly terrible with a side of sarcasm mixed with disorganization and everybody hated the Dj that disliked the DJ. The Dj wasn’t very good and I just was so enraged by how bad every disc jockey was at every school dance. And I thought to myself, you know what?

I’m going to devote the next 12 years of my life to becoming the best dj possible. I don’t know that I had thought about 12 years, but I thought I’m going to figure it out. So I figured out what equipment I needed to get, what gear I needed to buy, and then I made this statement, which is crazy, but the lady who organized the event, she looked just like Teri hatcher from Lois from Superman, the show. I said, hey, ms.ms dot paige, Ms Dot Paige. I would like to Dj the next show. And she said, clay, you’re 15 years old. What do you know about Dj? And I said, I know that I could not possibly be worse than this person and I will do. You don’t have to pay me anything that we typically have 200 students that show up. I would just like to keep $5 per head after the first 200.

And she said, well, okay, this class, do you guys, are you approved? You know the student council, do you approve of this? They said, yeah. So then three months later have exhaustive Dj bootcamping teaching my every myself, everything renting equipment from a pothead named Oswald. I promoted this event with flyers. I made myself that I made in Microsoft paint. I got 500 kids to attend the dance. I clear $1,500 in one night and people say, why were you so obsessed with dj? So I’m gonna ask you the same question. Why were you so obsessed with peanut butter? Why don’t just let it go? Why don’t I just say let it go, let it go. Whatever you want to just say, put peanut butter. It’s not that great. We move on. What were, why did you get so obsessed about peanut butter?

Well, I think it was mix of like my passion for food in general and then out of a desire to want to come up with healthier options. But you know, not many people think, you know, they create a healthy recipe. They don’t think I’m going to share this with a lot of people, but I think the entrepreneur in me just wanting to find a way to share this idea with as many people as possible and the first way I thought about doing that was starting a business. No matter how small scale I thought it would be at first, but just being able to sell it and get out, get it out there to as many people as possible. It’s just the goal that I like you said, became up steps with it. I think that the passion that still drives me now you realize you’re supposed to be chasing boys. People told me, clay, you’re supposed to be chasing girls. You’re supposed to be socializing. People say, how come you’re not going to youth group? Why are you not socializing? Why are you not going to dances? Why are you spending every second of everyday learning to become a disc jockey? I asked you the same question. Why not have life balance Abby and just focus on what everybody else is doing. Why aren’t you spending more time on Instagram, airing your feelings? Why are you focused on building a company? You’re not even 20 years old yet.

Those things never any interest in me as much as other people. I was always a more introverted person so I wasn’t the type to always be out at a party or anything. I liked being home and just learning things and like I said, cooking in my kitchen and once I had this idea, it just seems so much more important than all the other things and I especially when I started getting into the stores and the business started growing, I realized that this could be my future, this could be my career and that idea was just so exciting and something that I never thought could have happened otherwise. So it was really a really a a blessing. Once it started to grow up.

How did you go about making prototypes and testing the product and now you got outta food processes are of some kind, but how did you go about? Because so many people who are in their forties and any clay stairs, if you can, if you can vouch for me on this, right? There’s a lot of people you work with diamond be on my forties. Yeah, but I mean do we not work with a lot of clients were in their late forties, fifties, thirties, whatever, and they just anxious over making a prototype. They can’t seem to do it completely complete. How did you abby go about making prototypes and testing the product?

Right? Well, I mean the first thing I did was researched. I researched as much as humanly possible about the food industry and CPG businesses and also food safety laws in North Carolina and how I could safely sell these products at farmer’s market because, you know, like I said, I was 15. I had zero background in really anything, let alone business. And so I just researched as much as I could and we found out that since I have a dog, I couldn’t make the products in my own kitchen. So I just started researching different commercial kitchens in the Charlotte area, found one, um, went to them and just say cut us a deal off the bat just because people love the story and they wanted to support a young entrepreneur. So things just started falling in place once we started making these decisions and developing packaging, we actually knew friends who had a Kombucha company and they gave us a contact who created their logo. So we go in touch with him and it was just one thing after the after another, just working as fast as we could.

Got Hot. I’m just cracking up here because abby, you’re saying that that you found out that because you have a dog, you’re not able to use your own kitchen to make the peanut butter. I think that probably nine and a half people out of 10 would have said, oh, okay, well that was an idea. I guess I’ll go back to facebook, but you, you said that won’t stop me. I’m going on and you went and found a commercial kitchen. That is amazing. Congratulations.

Thank you very much. Yeah, I mean, you know, I, I’m sure as you guys know, you faced those moments every day. Where do you think. Oh, another wall that I used to work past, but I think it just made me more like I just wanted to push past all these off as much as I could and yeah, they were discouraging at the moment, but there’s few greater feelings then approaching an obstacle like that and getting past that, getting past the next and the next was just such a rewarding, fulfilling feeling. Wow.

See, that’s it clay. She has this spark. She’s got the cue. I call it the dragon energy. Yes, the Dragon. I was writing a new book about this, but again, I’m sure you’re aware of who Kanye West is and obviously president trump, but, but it’s interesting. But Kanye West sent out a tweet to Donald Trump and he said, you know, I love him. He has my institute has a dragon energy and then trump responds and they cross the political lines and this is what I have defined and I’m. The new book is entirely about this. When you tell me no, if someone says no to me, I am more energized by it and I, I, I am entirely fueled off of what I call haterade. Here’s gatorade. You’ve heard of Gatorade, gatorade. Top athletes will drink it during timeouts. Haterade. When people say no to me, it motivates me.

I remember getting that first. I remember I started deejaying this sad dances at the same age that you were when you started your company. I remember I called a guy, a speaker, rental company. I said, hey, I want to rent some speakers, and they say, okay, and they can tell my voice because it’s like, hi. And they’re like, how old are you? I remember them asking, I’m like, I’m 15. Right? We’re not going to read your speakers. Okay. I called the next company, next company, next. Can we finally get a hold of a guy? And the guy is totally stoned, and he say, yeah Bruh. I’ll read it for you, but you got to come pick it up. But I’m 15. I can’t during the munchies. So I had to have another adult drive me. I could tell you. Endless adversity. I want to ask you, how did you find the commercial kitchen? How’d you do it?

How do I find a commercial kitchen? I just researched commercial kitchens in the Charlotte area and I first had the kind of research, the concept of just shared kitchen space because I didn’t really know at the time what, what that term was or what that was called, but then I found that there were commercial kitchens all over the place where different like small businesses could come and use shared space to make their products and so I started researching different ones in different areas and I think we came to two. We talked to the different managers and found the one that we lived in Charlotte and of course now we have our own manufacturing facility, but then it was just was a great opportunity being able to find them and go in there and grueling horse of the day usually after school and just make as much product as possible.

What hours did you go in there after school? Was it like 5:00 at night? Seven o’clock at night. What hours did you go in there?

Yeah, it feels like five to five to 12 sometimes and I remember one time I had just gotten my learner’s permit and I’d like to drive home after work from, um, from the kitchen and I was like stressed about it because I was like, I can’t get stopped, but yeah, just, just, you know, 12 hours after school, but again, when you have that passion and that drive, it makes it so much more doable versus going to, you know, some other job where I’m working for someone else doing something that I’m just not passionate about.

Is Your Dad self employed? Is your mom self employed? Is. Tell us about your mom and dad.

Yeah. Um, well my mom and dad, they’re incredibly supportive parents. My Dad had a job when I started the company. My mom did not. She quit her job when she had my oldest brother Aaron decided to become a full time mom, but she doesn’t like to be social, to be constantly doing stuff. And so when I came up with the idea of the business, she was like, I’m all about it. Let’s do this full speed ahead. And now we’ve actually hired my dad and my oldest brother.

So it’s the role. Do you know who td Jakes is? I do not. If you get a chance to look him up, his name is t dot d dot jakes and his attorney is the same attorney that that I have. It’s Wes Carter and td Jakes is a consultant for Oprah and the movie she does like Selma and he has one of the top 10 largest churches in America. Td jakes and I just want to give them a little piece of wisdom to you that you are not asking for, but I give it to you because I care. You have the Dragon, the dragon energy, which means you have a. You have something that’s exceptional. I believe it’s a gift that you’ve cultivated and so it’s going to happen is he talks about this, but whenever you are exceptional at something and your case, you’re upset, you’re, you’re exceptionally driven.

Most people won’t understand you and I would just encourage you to remember this moment and never let people who don’t understand it bring you down because you’re going to have $100,000,000 company. It’s going to be huge and I know it’s going to happen for you. It’s going to happen, but the thing is is that like most people won’t understand you and they’re gonna. Say you’re an Alpha, you’re so anal. What is your, what do we call them that you’re so it’s going to happen is they’re already happened to you in some extent, or how are you? Are you pretty much getting nothing but encouragement because you’re such a young, incredible person?

Oh, I’m not definitely not just encouragement. I’ve experienced both sides and there are people that are very encouraging and supportive and want to see me succeed, and then some people of course in the beginning that just say, you’re crazy. You’re 15, 16, what do you know? You don’t realize what you’re getting yourself into. I heard that so much and of course it can be discouraging, especially if it’s coming from someone who has more expertise or at that time like older and I’m like maybe I don’t know what I’m doing, but again, like you said, hearing no and you can’t just makes you want to work harder and go further.

Dragon Energy. Now, how did you know that you’re a peanut? Butter was finally sellable. I mean when did you know like, listen, this is good now, but now I can sell this because a lot of people, you know, drought, they’re trying to sell a product that just is terrible. People are selling products that suck, but they’re not selling vacuums. That’s an issue. Unless you’re selling vacuums, this justin, you should not sell a product that sucks. So how did you know that your product was good enough to sell?

Well, I, you know, once I stopped five flavors, I just shared him with as many people as possible. People who are uber health freaks and for the exact customer type, I would buy this product. And then also people that weren’t used to eating healthy food and they’re used to just in Peter Pan and I, I finally found recipes that really worked for everybody and everybody’s lifestyle and everybody’s most people’s taste preferences. And that’s why I decided I’ve got a great product because I believe that no matter how driven you are, um, if you don’t have a good product, people just aren’t going to buy it. Once I started the recipes, um, and we had that commercial kitchen, we had packaging yell down. I was just fired up and I was like, I’m ready to do it.

Thrive nation. If you’re out there today, do you have not been to abby’s better.com? You got to go there. Listen, it’s the kind of product that my wife would buy. And Abby, I want you to commit to me. I want you and we get off the shell. I want you to email to [email protected], founder of [inaudible] dot com. And it just email me and say, how many do you want to order? And I’ll make sure that my wife ordered some stuff from you because this is the website right now. I’m telling you my wife’s and if you’re out and I don’t want to attack the listeners out there, we have, we have hundreds of thousands of listeners, but if you’re out there and you’re thinking about it, but we’re thinking about what is the best holiday gift. There it is. Here’s the question I asked you what way to say I love you then with the gift of healthy peanut butter.

Okay, we continue. So a lot of people are, are, you know, get caught in the illegal zone. They go, oh, how do I protect my idea legally? What do I need to do? I just don’t know. To try to make an LLC, should I be in a sole proprietor should make an escorp? Should I form a committee, a committee? And then all of a sudden the fear overwhelms them. They go on legal zoom every night. They’re listening to these podcasts about the law and they want to protect their idea. And so they never get off the launching pad because they’re so afraid of protecting their product or their idea. How did you go about protecting your product or from a legal perspective or. Or did you even go through the process of protecting your product?

Yeah, once we got family and friends raise in the beginning we’ve been a company a few months. We had a family and friends raise and that was the first thing that I wanted to do. I was like, I don’t want to spare any expense. I will find a good lawyer who will protect the business and protect us because in the end that’s the main important.

What do you mean family and friends raise. I know what you mean, but a lot of people don’t know that jargon. What do you mean by family and friends? Raise.

Alright. So it’s initial raise of money usually gathered through friends and family. So not necessarily professional investors, but people who believe in the brand and in the entrepreneur, which is so important. And we’re willing to invest at an earlier stage than most investors would.

Got It. Okay. So, so please continue. So you, how did you go about protecting the idea?

Yeah, so once we had the raise, we found a lawyer who works with CPG companies and obviously we met with a bunch of different people and found one that worked incredibly well with us and he’s with us to this day and you’ve been tossing to have. And so that was really just something that was a main priority for me. I was like, you know, there’s a Bill Julian, things we could do with this money, but priority number one is finding a great lawyer.

What does CPG mean for listeners out there?

Consumer packaged goods.

Okay, now abby. Oh, Paul Graham, the legendary entrepreneur behind a lot of products people know Airbnb, reddit.com, dropbox via web. We want one of the first online shopping carts. He sold to Yahoo Y combinator. He said you found market price when buyers complain, but still pay. What was your process? What was your process for determining a price for your product?

Yeah. So, um, in the beginning we just kind of researching a lot about cost of ingredients in costs of packaging. When we came up with an sop that we still have today at 12, 99 on the course, it can fluctuate depending on the retailer, but we picked up price and it was perfect. We will go into stores, you would look at the peanut butter and nut butter aisle and just see kind of where the other products for it and we found a medium that we were very comfortable with.

Now what does SRP made out there? Man? You’re using so much language here.

It’s a suggested retail price

and what a cpg meet. Again,

consumer packaged goods

and she’s 18. I’m just telling you, these are things that people ask me every day and I know when you start calling store buyers, they’re going to, hey, hey, what’s your srp? What’s your CPG? And like, uh, I’m done with OPP. You know what I mean? Yeah. My, my, uh, my 18 year old is going, Omg, yeah, I got some dvds and raise whatever, you know, whatever. Okay. So now what methods did you first use to market your product? And I know clay stairs has some questions for you because a lot of his clients, he works with her again in their thirties, forties, fifties. They have a new product or a new idea and they’re struggling to get their products into stores. And you’ve got your product now into over a thousand stores. What methods did you use to market your product into those thousand stores? Or did you just wait for the phone to ring?

Definitely didn’t wait for the phone to ring. I don’t know if that works for anybody, but it definitely didn’t work for us. So we will just hit the ground running. We wanted to start at the local level so we would go to different local retail stores, go into the store, ask to speak to the grocery manager, bring the product, and I just sit down with them face to face and say, this is my story, this is my product. I’m really passionate about this. And I promise every retailer said we will become one of the top selling nut butters in this category we promised. So I’d give them the product. They would try it. And because the butter’s really are so good, a lot of them were welcoming to bring it into the store, especially because of the story and a lot of practice to this.

Right.

Okay. Okay. So you showed up at people’s businesses that you did not know. How could you possibly got over the fear of rejection? How do you showed up? How many stores did you show up at abby?

Uh, probably 20 different. Just in the Charlotte area. 20 different stores.

How many people kicked you out, shut you down? It was probably the first one just welcomed me with open arms and said we’ll take 15 cases.

Usually we go into the store and of course they would act disinterested and didn’t really care whose teenager dogging me. I’ve got, you know, things against you. But honestly I would, I would find their phone number and I would call and I would email and I would just, you know, basically just show these grocery manners how passionate I am because I think a lot get used to just the drudgery of same old big corporate food companies coming in here. But I was like, I’m, I’m passionate about this because consumer will be passionate about it because I’m passionate about it. And that’s when we started getting into local retail stores and then we started getting into change because of proving ourselves in those locations.

Chains. Are you now in the listeners out? I went to go buy this product today. They say, you know, I could go to abby’s dot com and buy it there, but I’m, I have carpal tunnel. What store should I go to? Want to physically go to the store? I can’t buy it online. What? What’s, what store? What stores are you in right now?

Earth’s fare as well as some local change and the North Carolina, South Carolina area. We’re also available on Amazon as well.

So you’re saying your product is, is available. What would be like your three biggest stores you’re in right now?

Meyer. Do you also go and Wegmans

and it’s Redmond. How do you spell that? Red m o n d

w e g n e n f. it’s a store in the northeast.

Got It. So you, you are a. again, I want to make sure we’re getting this because I’m not arguing with you. It’s a polite when you argue with a guest, abby, but there’s some listeners out there going, well, the reason why she got in stores is because she’s a young girl and she has a story, but I wouldn’t say this. If you were 35 and you had this idea, you would still get into stores because you have the dragon energy. You have the honey badger spirit, you just cold call you cold email, you dream 100 and you view rejection. This is how you. This is how you hear rejection because I hear it the same way. I literally. This is not a a metaphorical idea when people tell me, no, I hear this. You’re on the verge of something awesome. Asked me again, this is literally the drum beat I hear in my head. I don’t understand the word. No clay stares. You have some questions on behalf of your clients that struggle because they haven’t yet either found the drag, drag dragging energy. They haven’t developed the dragon energy. What tough questions do you have? Yeah, for

Ms Dot will. Well first of all, again, just the fact that, that uh, you know, in the kitchen I couldn’t do it in my kitchen and you just went and found a commercial kitchen. That’s awesome. I do have. And Scott, you know who you are out there. I’ve got one client that we’ve been trying for the last three weeks to just print off, just hit print on his schedule every day and it’s not happening. And we had a great meeting today about that just hit print every day, you know, but, but so, so many. And I remember even when I started with clay because like, like he said, at 47 years old I started my company. It took me that long to, to kind of get a grip on it, get the idea, but 47 years old and I found when I first started out that it was all of the emotional things that kept me shut down. It was like the fear of doing a cold call. Yeah. I could go talk to that person, but they probably wouldn’t end. Those emotions would begin to creep in. And I w I made so many decisions based on emotion, but somehow abby, you, you, you, you, you don’t seem to do that. You seem to be able to go beyond the emotion and make the decision out of this passionate desire to achieve a goal.

How do you, how do you do this? Get the. Is it the butter? Is, is it about it? That’s what it is. Because I just bought, I just bought two, two tubs of butter right here. That’s why I’ve been typing on it. I just bought two tubs of butter. Okay, nice. So tell me, how did you get beyond the emotion? Because come on, you’re 15 or 18. April. Now she’s a dean, but she was at what point?

Yeah, I mean, first of all, I have definitely made very emotional decision in the business. Everyone does. And I think that’s one of the toughest parts about starting your own business is you have so much passion for, but your emotions can get caught up and you find yourself just overwhelmed and wanting you to succeed and having to fear of failure. Um, I think part of it was like emotion helped because it gave me the passion to go forward, but I’ve also always been a very kind of rhetorical black and white thinker and I, I just knew, I said if I don’t try, I’ll never know if I can succeed. So that thought just text me pushing. It kept me going back into the store and back to the grocery manager and basically not taking no for an answer many of the time

that, that is just fantastic. Thank you for saying that because again, I, I know that that is a battle that I had to fight through so many, not all of my clients, but many of my clients find that same barrier and they just get stuck. And so thank you for saying that. And, and I just want to, I just want to give a shout out to shout out to everybody I knew and just say what you just press on, press on. Don’t get caught in that emotional whirlpool that keeps you stagnant.

Just so you know, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re in North Carolina. Is that correct? To Charlotte?

I am. Charlotte area,

it’s a class here. I’ve got my haircut there. One time before I interviewed a guy by the name of Terry Powell, who has sold more franchises than anyone else in the world. Terry. Boom, boom pal. I’ve been there before a few times. Boom class. It’s a classic community. Tulsa. What happens is at weddings, have you been to a lot of weddings? Abby?

Uh, I’ve been to a few. I’m not quite at the age. All my friends are getting married, but I’ve definitely been rough.

Well, it tells us what happens is at a wedding they’ll have a bigger best man’s toast. And whenever you give a Caucasian male from Oklahoma the mic at a wedding, 60 percent of the time they’re going to go, well, I’ll tell you what, I’m a. before I get up here and knew a dude. Whoa. Where I want to do is I’m gonna. Give a shout out real quick. Shout out to billy. Billy back there, man. We went through a lot maybe and they forget that they’re not on a call in radio show like a good. And they just start doing. I’ll tell you what little [inaudible] back there that’ll mitigate come off. So that’s what clay was doing. He was having flashbacks and we’ll work through this. Now you’re A. Marketing is weird. You’re marketing is weird. It’s weird because it’s weird to say the word queered that way. It’s weird marketing and your story’s even more weird. And people remember the word Queer when you say it that way because it’s not probably how you should say queered. So your marketing. I look at your website,Abby Kircher. And Are you, are you familiar with WHO Seth Goden is?

I am.

Okay. We just had seth on the show two days ago. Yeah, a seth is a awesome guy, great mentor. A wonderful person to know. A Seth Goden talks about are you have to create a purple cow. You have to create a marketing in a world of brown cows. You have to create a purple cow that stands out, that gets people’s attention. And so I’d like to ask you, um, I’m looking at your website and there’s like a picture of Chewbacca, but it’s like a nut dressed up like Chewbacca. You have like a Michael Jackson not and you have like a beetle, a sticker and you have James Bond and you just have a lot of just weird things that people don’t traditionally use to market peanut butter. How has the weird marketing and your story helped you to gain traction?

Oh, I mean the. We decided to come up with the merchandise just a few months ago because you know, I’m passionate for food, but I also just love pop culture and I said, how fun would it be if I could incorporate that into my business? So I decided to create a variety of nuts characters and you different artists as well as movies and that’s how I came up with that and people are loving it because it’s fun. It’s lively. Different people can relate depending on when you were born. And so I really enjoyed that area of the business as well.

Now you are having a lot of success now, but do you remember what the first store was that began to carry your products? The first door that said yes. And kind of what you felt when they said yes.

Yeah. The first store was actually a healthy home market, which is a local store here in North Carolina, and that was the greatest feeling. Once we got into those stores. They were about six, I think here in Charlotte, and they started carrying the product. The minute we walked in there with the butters and we just. We were. I was just determined to make ourselves as amazing as possible in that local storage because I just wanted to start straight off the bat, you know, doing great and so that was such an amazing feeling and really can’t be beat still to this day. Every time I get a new chain, I just want to show up and down with joy because it’s just more people that are going to be able to try the product and more people that believe enough to keep growing. So

hypothetically, if we were living in a parallel where a

man in his fifties had an awesome product that he believed in strongly and he was concerned about calling stores for fear, that people would steal his idea even though he was legally protected or fear of calling stores because of the fear of rejection. What advice would you give to a 50 year old man or a woman who has a great product and they’re just afraid of the rejection and that’s why they don’t call store buyers?

Yeah, I’d say that if you have a product and you’re passionate about it and it’s a genuine product, the fear of rejection will never feel as bad as realizing that you did not do anything with that passion and that you didn’t take the chance to see if it even got anywhere. Yes. There are instances where people create products and they think it’s going to be great and it just doesn’t, but at least they know that they did everything they could to try. So I’d say the worst thing you could do is let feel fear cripple you into not seeing what could happen. Because if you’re passionate about it, you can convince other people to be passive about it.

Oh Man. That’s fantastic. I’ve got just building on that point right there, Abby Kircher. I know that that being a business owner myself, at some point the business gets bigger than you and you’ve got to bring on other people that can actually help you take that, that vision and make it bigger in the community, but it can be so hard to build a team to find people that actually share your core values and can share your passion. Would you mind talking a little bit about about your experiences with, with finding and building a team at your age especially, but finding and building a team and and probably be what would be really helpful if you could share maybe a couple of horror stories about if, if maybe you ever did hire a a terrorist or something like that. That made it really hard.

Right? Absolutely. That was, I think, one of the biggest things I was most important for me, especially as just trying to surround myself with as much business expertise as possible and like I always like to say, know what you don’t know. And I knew I didn’t know a lot so I was just reaching out to different entrepreneurs in the Charlotte area and they’re really so many. It’s the same topic. Place would be, I’m just asking to speak with people, get on a phone call, communicate over email, and a lot of these people ended up becoming, you know, partners with ideas better. Someone, uh, Robert Maynard who own a, the restaurant chain or here in North Carolina and they seen tremendous success, but he’s been with us since the beginning and like you said, it’s so important to find people who are, are not only have the expertise that you don’t share the thing

for you. Yeah.

Story, um, and really believe in you. And I think that’s what’s been amazing. And also I like working with my family. There are pros and cons of course, but the pro is that no one’s gonna work as hard for your company as like your family and people who are really invested in it.

Wow. Now, okay. You are a an absolute just wealth of knowledge, so there’s so many people out there right now. We’re just taking notes left and right. It’s so exciting. I’m just telling you I can. I can see it happening right now. People are getting out notepads there. They’re taking notes all across the nation and so the the accounting part of the business. I find that people with dragon energy, myself included, don’t like accounting. Now I have learned that accounting is the most, one of the most productive activities you can do once you begun to degenerate, a lot of revenue, so now I really become a fan of accounting, but at first by default, people with this dragon energy, this inspirational mindset, this disability to fight through adversity typically aren’t super excited about going into quickbooks. How do you stay on top of your accounting demands?

We actually work with an accounting firm and man we work with is a close family friend of ours and they’re based here in Charlotte and like you said, that was a very daunting task and I just knew that I couldn’t do it as well as someone else until that was a decision where I said, okay, this part of the business, I’m gonna hire someone else to someone that I trust, someone that I know will be smart, um, and I can work closely with because I also think one of the hardest things about owning a business is having to give away tasks and having to kind of delegate different daily tasks to people because you kind of want to be over everything and you want to have your hand in everything.

Do you do here? I’m a big shout out. You want to give to your accountant or a certain account or you want to to again, a gumby.

Um, yeah. Uh, I don’t,

you don’t have to give his name. You don’t want to give respect if you don’t want to. Here’s the deal. If you want me to put a link on the show notes, I’ll do it and I won’t ask any more redneck question or somebody’s out there going, well, back out. I need to find that guy because a lot of people don’t have a good accountant. A good bean counter. Okay, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll move on. I’ll just counter not counter. Sorry.

Yeah. We work with and his contact information.

Awesome. Now your process on a daily basis, your, your process for how you’re staying on top of things and a lot of people become reactive as they build a business. You’re, you’re very proactive in and you’re beginning to build the success. You’re, you’re on the precipice of some massive success here. What advice would you give your younger self three years ago that would have saved you a lot of time and money where you go, Gosh, why did I do that? Why did I do that? What, what was I thinking?

Right? Advised off. So much advice I give to my younger self and I’m sure you guys would understand. Um, yeah. I would say learn to be okay with trusting others. I think that’s a big thing that’s always been an issue because you know, it’s, it’s in the sense like your child and your business is your baby and you want to take care of it, the nurturing, you don’t trust anyone else with it, but I just really had to learn to let go when I needed to let go and trust other people to do the job that I know that I can’t. Um, while at the same time always remaining involved. So

yeah, you, you, you learn to trust people that you follow up and you verify they’re doing their job and all things are well be going to delegate and then not follow up and that gets crazy. But you’ve obviously built a great team by, by following up and, and know Thomas Edison once said, he said, vision without execution is hallucination. Why you believe that? Why do you believe that you’ve been able to execute when, when, when? Frankly most people just have ideas and if you’re from Oklahoma you might say, we’ll manage all that idea. Coming next. Netflix. I was going to do that, man. I was here in Oklahoma and say I got an id, I got an ID right here. Alright, so I want to ask a lot of people that are Monday morning quarterbacks of entrepreneurship. They go on. God could have had that audio. I did have that idea. I’ll tell you what their label. So why do you believe you’ve been able to have success when a lot of people just, you know, just don’t really have success.

Yeah, I’d say I’m not getting discouraged. I’m not getting discouraged by people saying no by people giving bad advice or thing that you’re not going to make it because that’s something you’re gonna face everyday and owning a business and like I said previously, learning to surround yourself with expertise, knowing what you don’t know and really just, you know, full speed ahead, never letting your passion died because of what other people say because that’s so easy to let it get in your head. I’m like you guys were talking about when your emotions get involved, you become so sensitive in a way and it’s hard to, you know, not be too sensitive about something up. So important to you,

how would you describe your entrepreneurial journey so far? You know, Reid Hoffman, the famous entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, investor behind paypal, a Lynda.com. Linkedin. He wants road. He said the entrepreneurial journey starts with jumping off of a cliff and then assembling an airplane on the way down. How would you describe your entrepreneurial journey thus far?

That was a. We accurate. Uh, um, I would definitely say it’s, it is like taking a leap of faith and not knowing what to expect. I’m not knowing the daily hurdles you’re gonna come across, but you know, just falling in blind faith and pushing forward regardless of what happens and you know, never losing hope.

I think a lot of our listeners out there would like to buy your product right now. Just want to give it a try. I did. And why did I tell you what? I went up there and I got my son that nut butter nut butter. I’m abby’s better.com. That’s the website. A bb. Why s better.com? Is there a hot promotion you’re running right now or a certain special or a certain product that you would recommend? You say, we have some great products, but if you’ve never bought our stuff, why don’t you try at least this first? Is there a certain hot promotion you have going right now?

Yeah. Well Day Pecan is very popular in the fall season, especially coming up with Thanksgiving because it tastes like pecan pie in a jar, so I highly suggest everyone trying to flavor and what’s it called? Black Friday? Yep.

What’s the, what’s it called? What was that product called again?

A date pecan nut. Butter flavors on the. We have a black Friday sale coming up very soon, which will be about 40 percent off, so that will definitely be the time she’d get on the website and try as much of our products. Is you want to.

Is this actually healthy?

It is very healthy. Our Gay Pecan has four ingredients, dates. We’ll actually just three dates for causing salt. No oil, no artificial sugars or anything.

Okay. I got the strawberry cashew. Did. Did I do okay?

Yes. You did. Strawberry. Cashews. A very popular flavor.

Yeah. And then, uh, let’s see. I think I also went with that, uh, that they’re a coffee, that coffee, coffee, coffee.

The almond people love to put that in. Smoothies. It was bananas. Some people put it over ice cream. They’re just very good.

Are you still living at home? Are you on your own now? Right now, are you on your own or are you still live at the house?

Oh, still living at home with my family. It’s kind of become the abbey better office.

What was your parents’ names? What are their first names? Arabic. Anna and Anik. Enter an eric. How do you spell that? E R I c. okay. So Anna and Eric. Sorry, a little skype connection there. So Anna and Eric. So what am I doing all the listeners out there? I’m going to give you just a few minutes to go ahead and do it. I’m going to queue up some, some music to give us some time and some space. Some people need some time and some space. Let’s go support Anna and Eric. We’re calling this the Abby Kircher better and she’s moving out campaign. I want everybody out there to support Anna and Eric and I want you to go ahead and take a just a. I’m just going to queue up some music. We want to create that romance. We want Anna and Eric. Are you the youngest child or the youngest child?

I am the youngest.

Oh, there it is. So here’s the deal. If you want to create some romance in that health, you want of that Abbey, move on now. You just want to support the mom and dad were I want you to do right now. I don’t want you to go to abby’s Beta.com. You might be saying, you don’t know if I have the time. I don’t have the money. Listen, I don’t care what you have to do. You get a home equity line. You Max out a credit card, you go to Miami and a Abby Kircher it’s better dotcom because you’re going to bring some romance back into that health record. She isn’t going to be on out just like a bird flying. Even the NAF director. That’s okay. Hopefully that works. Hope everybody has a purchase your stuff. I’m excited now. John Maxwell, New York Times best selling author who I just booked on the show today, 21 irrefutable laws of leadership, huge. Uh, I’ve been rejected by John Maxwell perhaps more than anybody else. He writes, the secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda. How do you spend the first four hours of your typical day? Ms Dot Abby Kertscher

horse four hours in a typical day usually starts with a meeting with our other team, fam, uh, team members and family just because that’s really important to have a unified front and know what we’re each going to do throughout the day. We delegate tasks, we talk about what we’re gonna do and that’s so very important. Yup. Um, and then from there we just go forward with the day can change on a day to day basis. I usually schedule a lot of calls and meetings in the morning because I like to get them done firsthand. And then commissioner, different tasks or tasks to those, I’m sure with the rest of the day

you got to school. Are you at school? You’re in college or high school, what are you doing?

Uh, I graduated high school about two years ago and instead of going to college I decided to just focus on the business full time. So it’s really a job for me. Right.

Can I give you a little bit of an encouragement real quick here? I’m the neighbor not looking for. I would encourage you for the love of all that is holy and all that is sanctimonious and all that is pure and all that is good. Now that is true to not go to college. Clay stairs. Can you grab me a coffee? That boom book real quick? Yes. I would encourage you to not go to college no matter what. No matter what anybody says, because in our workshops, by the way, if you want to come in December seventh or eighth, I would love to have you at the conference. We have a 20,000 square foot facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and we have a lot of people come. We have Michael Levine who is the PR consultant for Prince, for Nike, for President Bush, President Clinton, Pizza Hut, Nike, the branding guy.

You know he’s going to be speaking, um, you, you would love this guy, a Schmidt, the branding expert for Harley Davidson. He’s the guy who turned around how he got hired by Harley Davidson in 1985 to turn the company around because they were on the verge of bankruptcy. He’s going to be speaking. It is awesome. December seventh and eighth. If you want to come. I know people would love to hear what you have to say and I will make sure that everybody buys your stuff or I will question their character, but I want to make a list of people that have done well who didn’t have a degree in that way. Maybe you could take some notes and the folks at home could do. Okay. So Abraham Lincoln, no degree, Apg, and one who started the modern banking system. Bank of America. No degree. Andrew Carnegie who started the modern steel manufacturing industry.

No degree. Benjamin Franklin. Obviously we know the famous American diplomat, the Franklin Stove, the guy behind the bifocals, the lightening rods. No degree. The US postal system, by the way, Bill Gates, the guy who built modern software, no degree. Dave Thomas, the man who started windies, no degree. David, the guy who built a billion dollar company known as Hobby Lobby. No degree. David Oreck, the billion dollar vacuum cleaning company founder. No degree debbi fields, fields, cookies. No degree. Flink Frank Lloyd Wright, the world’s most successful architect. No degree. Henry Ford who modernized American vehicle. No degree. You might say, well, that’s enough. I’m good. No, you’re not. You’re not ready though. Know Ingvar Kamprad, the guy who started Ikea. No degree. Wayne High Zinga blockbuster video in the modern trash pickup systems. No degree. You might say, well, I’m getting close to done know James Cameron, the guy who started Avatar, titanic, the most successful movies of all time. No degree. John D Rockefeller, who created the modern petroleum industry and who invented college.

Seriously, true story. No degree. Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of Oracle. No degree. Michael Dell, the first person to make just in time personal computers. No decree. Milton Hershey, he was making us all fat. No problem with that. Milton Hershey, no degree ray KROC, Mcdonald’s no degree but up, up, up, up, no degree. Richard Branson, virgin records, Virgin Mobile, Virgin Air. No degree. I feel like there’s rush limbaugh, the most successful talk show guy of all time. No degree. Russell Simmons, the guy who got hip hop music and apparel into the mainstream. No degree. Puff Daddy, p dot diddy, puff sean comes whatever his name is. No to agree. Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple. No degree. Steve Jobs. No degree. Simon cowl no degree. Thomas Edison, who invented modern electricity. No degree and he started Ge. No degree. The guy who invented the modern light bulb, no degree recorded audio. No degree. All Thomas Edison. Wolfgang puck. Never heard of them.

No degree. Walt Disney. I don’t know. He has no degree. Vidal Sassoon. I just feel like I want to know him, but no degree. Famous Amos. No degree. Clay Clark. No degree. You know, degree. There is no degree of of encouragement that I could give to you that exceeds this. Do not waste your time studying and being in classes taught by people who’ve never had success because you are blessed with the Dragon Energy and you just need to do it and then they’re going to ask you to speak at colleges and you’ll go, yeah, yeah, I remember this. The thing I didn’t go to. I’ll be happy to teach there. I’m telling you, you are. That’s what happens. So again, if you’re out there, go to. Abby’s better not come buy her a peanut butter. I have one final question for you, and I know clay stairs does to Abby Kircher. You’re obviously a younger generation, which means you’re very familiar with, with podcasts. I’m very familiar with ebooks, very familiar with a tangible books as well. Is there a certain book or a podcast or a certain learning source you’d recommend

for all the listeners out there?

Oh, well, I mean I’ve been listening to your guys’ podcast for so long and so it is one of my favorites as well as how I built that is a great one and I was a teacher on there which was an incredible experience and I really just, everyday I searched for just the latest entrepreneurial business podcast that I can find it. I love going to new ones that I haven’t heard of before. So that’s just incredibly amazing learning experience and just a greater way that I can further the business and further my knowledge of business.

Oh Man. I am so excited. I’m so excited for your future. Clay stairs. What final question do you ever Miss Abby Kircher? Hey, just just to all the entrepreneurs that are out there and want to be entrepreneurs that are out there right now that are in a place where they feel stuck in a place where they feel overwhelmed in a place where they feel like, well, it’s good for abby because she’s a teen, you know? And and the, they are just frustrated and in a spot where they are confused and don’t know how to move forward. What would you have to say as an entrepreneur that has been able to blow through those walls of emotion? What would you have to say to them as we finish up the podcast today?

I would say never be discouraged by confusion or what you don’t know. I was so confused. I mean nothing when I first started, but it’s the desire to learn and the desire to grow that pushed me and pushed the business to where it is now. So never, no, never fear learning and never fear growth and oftentimes I’ve learned the most about myself and the business through failure and so it’s just a part of licensed something that as an entrepreneur you face everyday, but just it. What the importance of that. You use your passion to push, push past the daily struggles.

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Abby Kircher. You’re a wealth of knowledge. As you know. We’d like to end every show with a boom and boom stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. It’s big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum here. We go,

oh, you’re serious about growing your business. Do you want to save yourself a bunch of time, money and well, with this situation requires is for you to take some massive action. It’s time for you to sign up for the world’s most affordable and effective education for entrepreneurs today at Thrivetimeschool.com