This episode is brought to you by Sendlane.

 

There's "a beauty" to starting a company with one product, says Raoul Benavides, founder of Heart Soul Heat, a brand that makes DTC spicy hot honey.

 

"The direct-to-consumer space is difficult enough already, and I'm excited that I have the wonderful idea of starting with one product and making the mistakes and watching it grow," Raoul says.

 

Right now, that product is an American-made, ghost pepper-infused raw honey.

 

"I'm not driven by money because I know that money will follow where my happiness is," Raoul says. "For me, it's taken me so long to figure out my recipe for happiness. And now that I found it..there are no other gears but my own."

 

For Raoul, the arena of e-commerce comes down to two things: creativity and vulnerability. The challenge is: What can you do with what you have?

 

In Part 1, Raoul talks about:

 

* Gratefulness for the mentors who have guided him along his path in entrepreneurship.
* Why he's happy to start his company with just one product.
* How his journey revolves around his happiness and not the money.
* The closer you are to your product, the more vulnerable you are. And that's a good thing.
* The zen of Walt Whitman's philosophy of "containing multitudes" - you can be two or three things simultaneously.
* The joy of reinvention and clarity.

 

Join Ramon Vela and Raoul Benavides as they break down the inside story on The Story of a Brand.

 

For more on Heart Soul Heat, visit: https://heartsoulheat.com/ 

 

Subscribe and Listen to the podcast on all major apps. Simply search for “The Story of a Brand,” or click here to listen on your favorite podcast player: Listen now.

 

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This episode is also brought to you by Sendlane.

 

If all DTC companies were forced to turn off Facebook ads, they'd be dead on arrival. Why is that?

 

They over-invest in paid acquisition and under-invest in retention.

 

Luckily, Sendlane makes it easy to solve this problem. Sendlane is an E-Commerce Customer Experience Platform helping hundreds of DTC brands to tighten their existing customer relationships.

 

Sendlane automates personalized customer experiences through Welcome and Abandoned Cart workflows, SMS, Deep Data Integrations with Shopify and WooCommerce, multi-store functionality, and much more.

 

Plus, they don't stand for lazy customer support. Their San-Diego-based team has an average 1-minute response time from a live human, making sure you never get stuck in a chat queue ever again.

 

Curious about how Sendlane can help your DTC brand grow? Schedule a demo with a Specialist. Visit https://www.sendlane.com/story