Are you struggling to create a standout product in the competitive pet food market? Then you'll love today's episode featuring Kyle Feigenbaum, founder of healthybud, who turned a passion for pet nutrition into a booming business. Initially inspired to create pet treats that mirror human nutritional standards, Kyle has developed a product line of deliciously healthy meals that most pets prefer.
With an impressive 70% of pet parents declaring they would be devastated if healthybud disappeared, the brand has quickly become a go-to solution for health-conscious pet parents. Join us as Kyle dives into the healthybud startup journey, sharing how an obsession with customer needs, strategic market positioning, and financial discipline transformed his idea into a thriving business..
In today’s episode of the Harvest Growth Podcast, we’ll cover:
Strategies for identifying and filling market gaps in your industry
The importance of bootstrapping and financial discipline
Leveraging customer feedback for product development
And much more!
You can listen to the full interview on your desktop or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Or, click to watch the full video interview here!
Are you a pet parent seeking high-quality, nutritious treats for your furry friend? Visit www.healthybud.co to discover how healthybud's innovative products can transform your dog's diet.
To be a guest on our next podcast, contact us today!
Do you have a brand that you’d like to launch or grow? Do you want help from a partner that has successfully launched hundreds of brands that now total over $2 billion in revenues? Set up a free consultation with us today!
Prefer reading instead of listening? Read the full transcript here!
Jon LaClare [00:00:00]:
Two things I want you to take away from today's interview, how to make your business profitable as quickly as possible while ensuring you maintain profitability as you grow. And the ideal question to ask your customers to learn the best ways to market your business.
Jon LaClare [00:00:35]:
Welcome back to the show. I'm excited to have on with us today Kyle Feigenbaum. He's the founder of Healthy Bud. It's a line of dog treats. He's going to describe exactly why these are different, why they're better than other treats and snacks and foods and other products on the market. And we'll get into the story behind his business as well. He's got quite a cool track record that you're going to enjoy, I'm sure, hearing from today. But, Kyle, first of all, welcome to the show, John.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:00:59]:
It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me on the Harvest Growth podcast. It's. I'm looking forward to this conversation.
Jon LaClare [00:01:06]:
Likewise. So for our audience's sake, can you talk about the how did you develop this line of products and how is it different? What are the kind of key characteristics of Healthy Bud in your line of products?
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:01:16]:
Yeah, definitely. So, I mean, great to meet you all. The premise really behind Healthy Bud was that as a modern pet parent, myself, you know, speaking as myself, and also to the market that we're really catering to, people want to be feeding their dogs and their pets for that matter, more like they feed themselves. And so oftentimes, you know, when we're shopping for our dogs, we're looking for some of the ingredients that we also care about, love, and want to incorporate in our own diets. And so with Healthy Bud, what we're really trying to do is modernize the way that our dogs are eating to feed them better than we feed ourselves and to provide lots of unique ingredients for dogs to thrive.
Jon LaClare [00:02:01]:
And I like to pick out the package. And if you read from the back, I think you can probably see this on the website as well. The ingredient list, I can actually pronounce all. It's real food, as you said. Right. It's like this particular one is turkey, vegetable, sweet potato, buckwheat, flour. Everything on there is real food, just as you mentioned. We want to eat not, not all of Humans do either.
Jon LaClare [00:02:23]:
Right. We eat some stuff we probably shouldn't.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:02:25]:
Right.
Jon LaClare [00:02:25]:
So, but it's what we want to, we want to eat healthier and it gives that option to our, to our pets as well. What kind of benefits have you seen? I mean, you've been doing this a long time. So have you, I'm sure heard stories back from some of your customers on changes in their dogs or you know, after they started consuming healthy Bud products. How has it changed their dog's lives?
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:02:44]:
Yeah, that's a great question, honestly. And, and we consider ourselves a pet wellness brand. And so what does that mean? It, it, it, it goes bey. And we really love to hear from our customers. So I'll give you, there's so many stories, but I'll give you one in particular. There was a customer recently who reached out and they have a Bernese mountain dog. And this dog wouldn't eat, so it stopped eating its traditional kibble that it was continuing to get. And what the customer did was they included a little bit of the healthy butt freeze dried bites into the dog's meal.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:03:15]:
And what they noticed was very, very interesting. So when the dog went to eat, they actually picked out what was the healthy but freeze dried bites. This, I think was a, I, it was a beef protein that, that they were on and picked out the bites, ate the bites and left their kibble. And what's, what's crazy about that is that the kibble and the bites, I mean to the human eye looks very, very similar, you know, to you and I. And so what the dog is doing is dogs are much smarter maybe than we give them credit for. And what the dog in this case was doing was it was picking out which bite or which piece of food that it felt was the, not only the best smelling and the best tasting, but maybe the most nutritious. Right. And, and dogs as pack animals, they know intuitively which foods are more nutritious than others and they will go for the food that is more nutritious.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:04:00]:
And so in that case, they were going for healthy butt over their old food. And I mean, these are the type of messages that we receive from our customers. And we pride ourselves on one thing above all else. And it's, we are the pet brand for the picky eaters. Right? So our favorite customers are the ones that, you know, at first the pet parents will come over to us and they'll say, oh, my dog is super picky. I really don't think they're gonna try your treats or they're gonna try your Food or they're gonna like your food. And we say, well, let's just try, you know. And the response that we get on that is out of this world.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:04:30]:
Especially on small breeds, picky breeds, dachshunds, chihuahuas, bulldogs, things like this, where the dogs might be a little bit more cautious with what they're eating and maybe even allergic in some cases. And that's really where we set ourselves apart.
Jon LaClare [00:04:46]:
And if you check out the website, which by the way is HealthyBud Co, there's a lot of different products on there. Maybe for our audience's benefit, if they go check it out, what are a couple of the most popular or most commonly purchase products. And also I think you mentioned there's a new launch that just came out as well, if you want to share that.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:05:02]:
We did, yeah. So. So definitely. So I have it right here actually. This is our, this is a product from our best selling product line. So we just launched these new. They're really tiny training treats. What's great about these is they're only one calorie per treat.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:05:15]:
You get over 500 in a bag. They're super soft and they're great for, you know, any new pet parents trying to train a puppy or small dogs, you know, whatever you might want to use them for. We do them in a salmon protein, a beef beef protein and a chicken protein. So these have very quickly become our best sellers, both in stores, online, any channel that we're selling it to. Pet parents are absolutely loving them.
Jon LaClare [00:05:41]:
Awesome. And you have a little tote that you launched recently as well.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:05:44]:
We do. You know what? Yeah. So we, we're just launching these. So with the launch of the training treats, we wanted to do something a little bit special and people are always using these little treat pouches. So this is not usually what you can expect from healthy but really that food and treat brand. But we did this because this is really fun. So it's a little training treat pouch. It says my dog eats better than I do on it.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:06:06]:
That's kind of our thing now. And, and yes, super convenient. So you can always, you know, train on the go and keep your dog entertained. It's, it's been super useful and our community is loving it.
Jon LaClare [00:06:17]:
And for those that are listening, you can check out both of these products or their whole line of products at their website or of course come back and watch the video on YouTube. But go to healthybud.com cow let's talk about your background, how you got started in doing all this. It's a little bit I say non traditional, but everyone I interview, all the founders I talk to, there is no normal path. Right. So nobody does like, oh, all I do is launch products. No, that's kind of what I've been doing for a long time. But I'm the weird one. Everybody else has been something else first and they kind of transition when they've got a great idea.
Jon LaClare [00:06:45]:
But your background in particular is in finance. Can you talk a little bit about your background and how that has helped you to succeed with this business?
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:06:53]:
Yeah, you know, it feels like a different life, honestly. It's like it's been five years already in Healthy, but so finance is quite far in the rearview mirror. But yeah, I mean, I started my career in finance. My last job was at a boutique asset management firm. So really what I took away from a lot of that was how to deal with people, how important relationships can be. Focus on the customer. In our case, we were focusing on the client. Now it's more customer community over at HealthyBud.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:07:19]:
But I think that was really the biggest takeaway from that experience as well. As people like to say I have good financial hygiene. I heard that recently. I kind of like it. So making sure that the company is a smooth and oiled, properly functioning machine to the best of my ability. Because that's always tough with a startup when you're talking about cash flow and whatnot. But things are going well, I'm happy to say, and grateful for that. But yeah, I'd say the biggest takeaway from everything in finance was actually dealing with the customer, you know, and that is something that we continue to focus on today, you know.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:07:55]:
So, John, if you want to, like, talk about product development, one of the things that, you know, I would tell you, how do we develop product, it's by listening to the customer, you know, and always going back to the customer. You asked me about reviews, right? Like, these are the types of stories that I like to take home. I like to, you know, think about how do we listen to the customer, understand what their, their, their wants and desires are so that we can improve our product development, so can improve our offering to better meet what they're looking for, you know, and, and that is really what it means in our minds to be the, the pet brand for the modern millennial pet parent, you know, for the next generation of pet parents.
Jon LaClare [00:08:35]:
And you know, I mentioned how it's called a quote unquote non traditional, but again, there is no traditional background. The nice thing about running a business, launching a new product is really any experience, almost is going to be helpful. Right. So you've got to have finance background to. Or I shouldn't say background, but understanding or grow to understand or get the outside. If maybe that's not your acumen or your skill set, but it is an important part of running a business, as is marketing and the creative and product development and engineering. There's so much we can't have experience in all of it. So it's just realizing, okay, what are your strengths you're bringing into the business and, you know, how are you going to help use that to help you grow? I want to get into product development, but I'm going to.
Jon LaClare [00:09:12]:
Let me table that for a second. Let's stay on the finance topic just for a second. So I know you've got some particular expertise, both from your previous background as well as running this business in terms of raising capital, when to bring in money. So what's your advice on when's the right time to bring in outside capital versus bootstrapping and doing it on your own? And maybe the early days.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:09:34]:
Oh, it's a great question. I mean, bootstrap for as long as you can. That's really, I think the common misconception actually amongst, you know, those who are, who are aspiring to be entrepreneurs is that I'm going to start a business to make money. I think that's a common misconception because businesses and starting up a company take a very long time. So the reality is that those who come into this with a greedy mentality, well, they're not going to last the test of time because the reality is at the early stages of a startup and at the early stages of a business, oftentimes you're investing in that business. So that business is going to cost you. You're not going to be benefiting from that business for some time. And so the early years are a struggle.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:10:17]:
The best possible thing is to prepare yourself in a way where you have that mentality coming into it. Where I really want to see this business succeed, I'm going to put my time and effort into it and I'm going to also invest in this business or maybe not take salary or high salary from the business until it really gets off the ground. Right. Take care of your team before you take care of yourself is usually the saying that I go back to. And so how do I get money and how do I do that? Well, it could be investment from yourself. It could be a friends and family type of thing where you're raising a little bit of capital. And I would really Suggest that you look at grants and low cost loan opportunities. And that's something that we really, really focused in on.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:11:00]:
Like we are a Montreal based company, we are from Canada. The Canadian government has a lot of grants out there available to startups like ours. But it's the same on your side of the border in the US too. There's a lot great state grants, federal grants that can be looked into and taken advantage of. Because the grants are out there. You just got to do. The entrepreneurs are the ones that have to do the work to find out which ones they're eligible for. So free money is the best money to build on and that is the kind of money that I would really recommend you go for.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:11:34]:
Now, when you want to raise capital, once you've developed your brand to a certain extent, you found a little bit of product market fit and you feel that you're ready to go out and raise, you know, whether it's angel capital, VC capital, you gotta get your ducks in a row. You gotta have a proper pitch, you gotta have a proper business model. You gotta show that if it's not profitable today, it's gonna be profitable in the future. And have a real good investment thesis for these individuals because they're gonna look through everything they want to. At the end of the day they want to support the best brands, of course, but they want to make a return on their investment. So you gotta be, you got to be ready before you graduate, let's say to that stage.
Jon LaClare [00:12:14]:
In my opinion, and I think part the process itself can be very helpful. You mentioned investors, but also in the early stages, the grant process, you've got to have some ducks lined up, right? So you got to figure out what your business, how you're going to make money, what is it going to be. Getting that story and being forced to do it. Whether you're going for a loan or a grant or an investment helps you to make sure that you're doing, putting the time in right to figure out the strategy behind the business. Having to share it with third parties sometimes is really helpful. Even if you end up not getting or taking a grant or an investment or, or a loan, it's going to be a helpful process of something highly recommended. I want to share one quick story on that. We've got a client that is in a, I won't divulge too much confidentiality but they've got a product category or product that is pretty well known.
Jon LaClare [00:12:59]:
It's a massive seller on Amazon and direct to consumer, you know, millions of dollars a year. And they've got a competitor that's actually much larger and very well known and we've been helping our client for quite a while and driving capital or cash into the business, driving profits, but always looking ahead at this competitor, like how the heck are they spending so much more? Like we see them everywhere and just, you know, trying to really understand what are they doing that's so different. Well, turns out they have just announced kind of behind the scenes so far, but publicly soon, this competitor that they're going bankrupt. And really as you peel back the onion or peel back the story a little bit, what we realized is they had big investor cash infusion and sometimes that can be very tempting to blow it out, spend a ton of money, get awareness out there where it's seen everywhere. But if you're not driving cash flow and driving profits, it eventually it goes away, right? You can't do that forever unless you're constantly bringing in more and more investor capital which they kind of ran to the end of the rope. Now look at our, our client which is still also very successful. A little smaller right, than this competitor, but they've built it within a healthy way with cash flow, with profits, etc. And this I just reminded me because you talked about bootstrapping as long as you possibly can.
Jon LaClare [00:14:15]:
When you do that, it forces you to make sure that you're profitable, right? Get to profitability, get cash flow coming into the business as quickly as possible. That way when, you know, maybe you do get a big infusion from investors down the road, but you've got now the discipline to make sure you turn that money into profits. Just sales or not just awareness that has a lifespan, right? And unless you can get to profitability, it's, it's going to go away. So I love that advice. Again, it doesn't say you shouldn't get investment coming in or loans etc, but bootstrap as long as you pos. As long as possible.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:14:46]:
That's exactly, that's the point, right? Like I think everybody wants to see that 2x3x top line growth. But the reality is that if you are driving incremental revenue and building a sustainable business, that's when you see the long term success, you know, and there's no better way to learn how to build a business than with your own money, right? And so look, I started a business, my first business in university, which was before healthy but, but I really would classify myself as a first time entrepreneur because there's so much to learn, you know, and, and now we're Five years into growing the brand, just about. And I'm a completely different entrepreneur than I was. Right. And there's so much learnings along the way where you feel throughout the process like there's some kind of a bias, like am I the right fit? Am I the person to, you know, be the one who's co founding and running a company? And you have this sort of in the back of your mind always, I feel as an entrepreneur. But the reality is you got to believe it, you got to keep pushing and then every day you're going to grow, you're growing, you're growing. And really the best, best way to learn is personal growth. And no better way to do it than putting your, your money where your mouth is, so to speak.
Jon LaClare [00:16:00]:
So you mentioned before learning and you know, kind of learning from your customers, talk to people that are buying your product and, and how do you take those learnings to further grow, further improve your business? What, what methodologies or techniques have you used to touch base with your customer to help them or have them help you in your product development?
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:16:22]:
Yeah, I mean we, we are always surveying. So you know, Jotform is, is a particular tool that we're using to survey some of our customers through email. We're also using Instagram, so we have a nice following on Instagram where we, we're able to communicate with our community members and, and we're able to, you know, do very, very short surveys. Like even if it's just a, a quick multiple choice Q and a type of thing where we're posting a story that's live for 24 hours, like all of that feedback is very valuable for us. I want to tell you though, there was one thing that we recently did that I thought was very interesting. So there's this survey type of questionnaire that you can follow and we did. I actually recently posted about this on my LinkedIn. So for anybody that wants to check out that post, you can find me on LinkedIn, Kyle Fagenbaum and see it there.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:17:12]:
But what it is in summary is basically how do you find product market fit? Or can you, can you ensure that you have found product market fit? And so the one most important question, and there's a series of questions, but the one most important question was how disappointed would you be if healthy, bud? So this is in the case of our own brand, if healthy but was not available for you tomorrow. And so then you have the multiple choice questions and the questions are going from, you know, answer A, which is very disappointed, then somewhat disappointed to not disappointed at all. And the logic behind this type of questionnaire is that if the majority of people are saying that they're going to be very disappointed, then you know that there's something about your brand that is creating a loyal following. Right. And so in our case, it was incredibly humbling experience because 70, almost 70% of the respondents said they would be very disappointed if HealthyBed was not around tomorrow. And so, you know, you want to dive a little bit deeper to figure out, well, why, right. Why is that the case? And the reality is we learned three very important things. And one was we're picky eater approved.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:18:24]:
Right? So this is the first thing that I mentioned to you. It's the one real separator, that healthy budget, just for multiple reasons, whether it's texture, taste, size, it appeals to that picky dog. The second thing was healthy ingredients. So we use clean, novel, nutritious ingredients. And you know, the next generation of pet parents wants to feed their dogs just like they feed themselves, like their own babies, their own, their own kids. And the third thing was for us that we use very limited ingredients. So there's a lot of dogs that are, that are allergic to different ingredients out there. There's, you know, you look in the, in the pet industry and you flip over a bag and you look at some of these ingredients.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:19:05]:
Well, you know, sometimes half of them you can't even read. Right. And there's a huge ingredient deck. And people, and pet parents in particular, are just really looking for clean ingredients, just like you and I do when we go to the grocery store, if I flip over a bag and there's certain ingredients that I don't really know what they are and don't really feel comfortable, then I'm just going to look to the next product. So that is really what was interesting for us. And it was, like I said, a humbling experience because there were so many respondents out in our community that said they would be very disappointed. So we were happy to see that, you know, we're doing something that, that is unique and something that people are gravitating towards.
Jon LaClare [00:19:44]:
And I think, you know, that's a great result. It speaks to obviously the quality of your product and the experience your customers are having. But even if you ask that question, and let's say it's 10% of the audience would be extremely disappointed, it's still, I love that question because it still affords you the opportunity to learn from them. So now you can ask other questions and filter them for just those respondents that would be really Disappointed. Right. And finding out, okay, who is really our ideal customer that loves what we do and how do we find more of them? Right. Find, find attributes and aspects about it.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:20:13]:
So they get to tailor your marketing plan towards what? Even if it's a very small subset, 10% that say they'd be very disappointed, then it's up to you to figure out why would they be so disappointed. And then repeat, rinse and repeat. Right. Keep, keep doubling down on what you do. That is at least attracting a small group of people to love your product.
Jon LaClare [00:20:33]:
I love it. Well, Kyle, this has been a lot of fun. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you think could be helpful for our audience?
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:20:39]:
Yeah, I mean, nothing comes to mind in particular. It's a good question. You know, I would say we covered a lot today and it's been great to, great to chat with you, John. Really appreciate you taking the time. For anybody who's listening or watching and wants to check us out, HealthyBud Co is our brand. And yeah, we're available now across Canada, across the US we're shipping online. We're in a lot of local pet stores. So.
Kyle Feigenbaum [00:21:04]:
So feel free to reach out. Feel free to follow us on Instagram healthybudco and we'd love to hear from you.
Jon LaClare [00:21:11]:
And as always, you can check it out in the show notes if you're driving, check it out later. HealthyBud co. We'll include a bunch of other notes from this great interview. Kyle. I really appreciate the time and for our audience. Did you know you can meet with a member of my team absolutely free for a 30 minute strategy consultation? We've launched and grown hundreds of products since 2007 and learned some of our strategies while growing Oxiclean back in the Billy Mays days. We're here to help, so please go to harvestgrowth.com and set up a call if you'd like to discuss further.
コメント