Hi Everyone,
The last time I posted here was in June 2024. Since then, I've moved away from my entrepreneurship podcast and recently began working on an ecommerce business called Killer Herbs. My business partner is a third generation herbalist in Indiana who discovered his great grandmother's work and decided to teach himself the craft of herbal remedies. He's been serving his neighbours and community at cost for a few years and I'm working on getting his most successful products out there on the internet so that they can help people nationwide.
Our big ambitious mission is to help a million people live pain-free lives with no side effects. The first product we're primarily focusing on is a herbal joint balm with just six ingredients: rosemary, peppercorn, stinging nettle, coconut oil, castor oil, and beeswax. The first three ingredients are all powerful, proven anti-inflammatories. Every tin is hand-poured in the USA. The primary effect is anti-inflammatory, which then reduces pain. This is different from products such as Tiger Balm which cool the area and distract the brain from the pain, while only reducing inflammation minimally by improving blood circulation to the area.
We plan to launch on Amazon as soon as we can. We've registered an LLC, opened a business bank account, and have a trademark in progress (primarily to qualify for the brand registry program on Amazon)
We have two initial success stories from early customers local to my partner:
1. A gamer with psoriatic arthritis who could not play videogames anymore because of the pain and stiffness in his hands. Our balm enabled him to game for hours pain-free.
2. When my partner's coworker Jake called off work because of his bad knee, my partner stayed up overnight to make him a fresh batch of balm. Jake said it helped him get through the next day. His mother thought it must be good too, so she stole half the jar for her own shoulder and hasn't stopped using it since.
We're thinking of including those stories in each shipment to a customer and asking them to send us their stories so we can collect more customer stories over time. Maybe we'll have a webpage dedicated solely to displaying all the success stories. Proof seems to be the biggest factor in exponential growth for a business (word of mouth and trust)
I started doing warm outreach to people I know online through Discord (mainly fellow gamers). Over the last 2 days, I DM'd 32 people. 4 people signed up to buy some, with 11 people signing up for free samples to test and give us feedback on. So about 50% got back to me with a positive response of some kind.
Some of the responses were really useful to realize we had other potential markets to target, like:
This was gold for us because we got to target three different pain profiles in one single shipment:
The military veteran angle was brand new for us and potentially underserved. Veterans with service injuries are a massive, loyal, underserved market who are often skeptical of pharmaceuticals and open to natural alternatives. If the balm helps my friend's cousin, that's a testimonial that opens up an entire community for us.
Even though our mission is to help a million people, currently if we even manage to help 10, that would feel great.
We'll be sending those shipments out tomorrow. As always, would love any advice or resources, and questions are always welcome. Currently reading "Ready, Fire, Aim" by Michael Masterson.
Glad to be back!
Vamsi
The last time I posted here was in June 2024. Since then, I've moved away from my entrepreneurship podcast and recently began working on an ecommerce business called Killer Herbs. My business partner is a third generation herbalist in Indiana who discovered his great grandmother's work and decided to teach himself the craft of herbal remedies. He's been serving his neighbours and community at cost for a few years and I'm working on getting his most successful products out there on the internet so that they can help people nationwide.
Our big ambitious mission is to help a million people live pain-free lives with no side effects. The first product we're primarily focusing on is a herbal joint balm with just six ingredients: rosemary, peppercorn, stinging nettle, coconut oil, castor oil, and beeswax. The first three ingredients are all powerful, proven anti-inflammatories. Every tin is hand-poured in the USA. The primary effect is anti-inflammatory, which then reduces pain. This is different from products such as Tiger Balm which cool the area and distract the brain from the pain, while only reducing inflammation minimally by improving blood circulation to the area.
We plan to launch on Amazon as soon as we can. We've registered an LLC, opened a business bank account, and have a trademark in progress (primarily to qualify for the brand registry program on Amazon)
We have two initial success stories from early customers local to my partner:
1. A gamer with psoriatic arthritis who could not play videogames anymore because of the pain and stiffness in his hands. Our balm enabled him to game for hours pain-free.
2. When my partner's coworker Jake called off work because of his bad knee, my partner stayed up overnight to make him a fresh batch of balm. Jake said it helped him get through the next day. His mother thought it must be good too, so she stole half the jar for her own shoulder and hasn't stopped using it since.
We're thinking of including those stories in each shipment to a customer and asking them to send us their stories so we can collect more customer stories over time. Maybe we'll have a webpage dedicated solely to displaying all the success stories. Proof seems to be the biggest factor in exponential growth for a business (word of mouth and trust)
I started doing warm outreach to people I know online through Discord (mainly fellow gamers). Over the last 2 days, I DM'd 32 people. 4 people signed up to buy some, with 11 people signing up for free samples to test and give us feedback on. So about 50% got back to me with a positive response of some kind.
Some of the responses were really useful to realize we had other potential markets to target, like:
This was gold for us because we got to target three different pain profiles in one single shipment:
- Friend: Knee arthritis + boxer's fracture + fractured knuckle (hand pain)
- Mom: Neck pain
- Cousin: Military back injury
The military veteran angle was brand new for us and potentially underserved. Veterans with service injuries are a massive, loyal, underserved market who are often skeptical of pharmaceuticals and open to natural alternatives. If the balm helps my friend's cousin, that's a testimonial that opens up an entire community for us.
Even though our mission is to help a million people, currently if we even manage to help 10, that would feel great.
We'll be sending those shipments out tomorrow. As always, would love any advice or resources, and questions are always welcome. Currently reading "Ready, Fire, Aim" by Michael Masterson.
Glad to be back!
Vamsi
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