How a Kitchen Experiment Created a Category: A Product Won the Golden Ticket to Going Viral

We talk today about how to create a category and make a product go viral as we discuss the remarkable story with Llance Kezner, the founder of Millie's Sipping Broth, and how a simple kitchen experiment turned into a nationwide phenomenon.

Born from a personal quest for healthier hot beverages, Llance and his wife, Lori, created a savory broth-in-a-teabag that captured the hearts of consumers. From selling at Pike Place Market in Seattle to landing a major deal with Walmart, Llance reveals how customer feedback and adaptability were key to their rapid success. Join us as we explore the challenges and triumphs of scaling from small batches to widespread distribution, highlighting the power of seizing unique opportunities.

We dive into the entrepreneurial journey of turning a creative idea into a viral product, with insights on marketing, product development, and the importance of a minimum viable product. Llance shares the secrets behind the product’s appeal, tapping into wellness and nutrition trends that resonate with today's consumers. Get inspired by his advice on maintaining excitement and commitment in your work, and learn how to accelerate growth by getting your product to market quickly. This episode is packed with invaluable tips and an uplifting story of perseverance and innovation, featuring a special discount code for listeners eager to try Millie's Sipping Broth for themselves.

Try out Millie's Sipping Broth with a 20% Discount here

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Transcript

Eric Eden 0:02

Today we are talking about an awesome topic how to make your product go viral. It must be easy, or not, but we're going to talk about that today and we have a great guest to help us talk through that.

Llance Kezner 0:14

Lance, welcome to the show. Hi, eric, nice talking to you.

Eric Eden 0:18

So why don't we start off by you talking, for just a minute or two, a little bit about who you are and what you do? My name is.

Llance Kezner 0:26

Lance Kesner and my company is Millie's Sipping Broth. We're based in Bellevue, washington, and we created a product that basically helps people get between meals. Get between meals. They can use the product as a hot beverage when they're not wanting coffee, tea or cider or anything like that. It comes in a box like this and in a little tea bag. It's broth in a tea bag. We've been producing this for about 12 years. We started in our kitchen and we're now selling across the country.

Eric Eden 1:10

That's awesome. And what does it taste like? Are there different?

Llance Kezner 1:12

flavors. We have four different flavors. We have a tomato, basil, spicy tortilla, Thai lemongrass and delight pho. So that's a Vietnamese flavor and we kind of had fun with that name.

Eric Eden 1:27

Nice. All of those sound great. I'm going to have to try it. We are ready to be inspired and I think the story you have about how you created this product in your kitchen and how you made the product go viral is a very inspiring story. So tell us how this happened.

Llance Kezner 1:47

Well, the idea came from my wife. My wife, lori, was a teacher and she needed something during the day between classes to kind of hold her over. Between lunch and dinner in the afternoon Only had a couple of minutes to spare and coffee and tea and cider just wasn't doing it. So she used to take a bullion cube with her to school to have as a savory hot drink. And I said to her look, the bullion cube is just filled with all kinds of sodium and really bad stuff. Let me make something healthier for you.

Llance Kezner 2:24

So I created a mixture of spice, some herbs spices, some dehydrated vegetables, and she tasted it and she goes this is great, but all over the cup it's. You know, put it in a teabag so I can make it really quickly and it's just a clear broth. So we literally opened Lipton tea bags, pulled off the staples, put in the mixture, stapled it back together, made about 12 of them and she took them to the teacher's room at school and everyone went crazy over them and we looked at each other and thought, oh wow, we have something here.

Eric Eden 3:03

Wow, that's a really cool origin story. And so you started producing these in your kitchen just by hand. And how did that grow?

Llance Kezner 3:13

Well, we quickly realized that the category of a hot savory beverage did not exist. Hot savory beverage did not exist. Everything was sweetened or was bitter, like coffee or tea, and so what we did is we tried to figure out as quickly as we possibly could how we could scale this outside of our kitchen, and early early days we made it there just for testing purposes. We used to go to the Pike Place market and sell it at the market to travelers that came from all over the world, but we found co-packers who were willing to take our product and to help us make it in a scalable fashion. In a scalable fashion, and so it was a combination of finding someone who could make it, specialty food retailers who would buy it so they could resell it to their customers, and then finding as many direct consumers we could find to sell it to so that we could get feedback as quickly as possible on pricing, packaging, quality, on all of that, and that all happened in about a 90 day period.

Eric Eden 4:33

I've been out to the Pike Place Market in Seattle and it's definitely the environment where you would need a drink like this, because it rains in the Seattle Washington area quite often. You quite often need a warm beverage when it's very rainy and cold outside on many days throughout the year.

Llance Kezner 4:53

Hey, well, look at the sweater I'm wearing. It's cold right now.

Eric Eden 4:59

We are having right now, today, even in Virginia, we are having the bomb cyclone storm, so it's just raining and I, in particular, am a coffee addict. That's not a great thing, but what you have created seems a lot healthier than people drinking multiple cups of coffee throughout the day to try to keep warm and sustain themselves between meals. Keep warm and sustain themselves between meals. So, as you did that, as you ramped it up and you came up with the ideas over 90 days, how much did you scale making in your kitchen? How crazy did it?

Llance Kezner 5:34

get. We literally had people that we hired to come in and help us do some packaging. I think once we figured out who could make it for us, we were still shipping things from our house. We shipped about 5,000 orders out of our house, you know, through Amazon and through all these various different places like our own website. But we realized that, you know, in order for it to be a food safe product, for it to be scalable, that we really needed that partner. And so, yeah, within that 90 days, we were up and out as far as making it. And, again, everything that we did before that was really more for testing, not really for sale. But once we got the product that we could sell, yeah, we were still filling orders out of our living room and I got to tell you it was painful, the pains of entrepreneurship.

Eric Eden 6:33

So how were you able to then grow this and scale it?

Llance Kezner 6:39

I think the biggest, the biggest asset we had was communication directly with customers and customers who were consuming our product.

Llance Kezner 6:53

What we didn't realize was what they were really using it for.

Llance Kezner 7:00

And we had the idea of creating it for Lori so she could use it as a, you know, as a kind of a way to have a snack during the day. But what we didn't realize was that people were using our product to help them with their anxiety, to help them kind of calm down and to be comforted during the day when they were stressed out. And over and over again, people would tell us I really appreciate your product because it makes me slow down. I have to make it, it takes me a couple minutes to make it, I sit back and relax with it and I really get some time to kind of refocus during the day. And oh, by the way, it's only 10 calories and it's, you know, it's great for my wellness routines. You know I might be on keto, I might be on Weight Watchers, I might be on any of these things, so it fits perfectly with that. So we use that momentum and that feedback to help us focus in the right areas where those people were looking for those kinds of products.

Eric Eden 8:17

I think that's critical. Talking to customers and finding out what their story really is, rather than just what you think their story would be, is a big hurdle that a lot of people struggle with in marketing. So that's great that you were able to pretty quickly come to that realization of how people really wanted to use it.

Llance Kezner 8:39

Yeah, I mean, we did that. We also had some ideas about where we thought people would want this, ideas about where we thought people would want this, and you know we weren't always correct, but in certain circumstances we would. You know. We would say maybe people would like this in their company break rooms as an alternative to the coffee or tea or even the Cheetos that are there, or you know, one of the things that we really want to happen is for it to be available on airplanes, on the carts, the beverage carts. Those are presumptions that we have that don't match where the market is early on, but it still took listening to the early adopters to continue to service them and realize that we had a product that was totally different than soup because soup is used for cooking every once in a while, where our broth was used daily, right, so people were buying our product over and over again because they've integrated it into their daily routines, which was a big deal.

Eric Eden 9:48

Amazing, that's fantastic, and so you got a big break right. Talk about the big break that you got. I believe it happened around the time of COVID, right.

Llance Kezner 10:00

So we were discovered right before COVID by a lot of Weight Watchers members, and so the Weight Watchers International reached out to us about having our product be featured in their online store that was marketed to their four and a half million subscribers. We had to go through quite a bit of testing and compliance for their internal usage, but we got a zero point rating, which meant that that's the best rating you can get for a food in the Weight Watchers system, which means people can consume your product without impacting their point allowance for the day. We got that zero point rating, we got integrated into their online system for drop shipping and I think maybe six months after that, covid hit and we just went crazy because everyone was at home, everyone was trying to figure out how to keep their weight down and it was just an amazing opportunity and it gave us an awareness that boosted us to the top of. We were the top selling broth on Amazon. It just gave us all kinds of awareness that we didn't have before.

Eric Eden 11:23

That's great. You made your own luck by having a really great product and then you were in the right place at the right time as well. That always helps too when circumstances like that come up. But you got the opportunity because you were able to get that zero point rating and then people integrated into their lives like you were saying. I mean, that's living the dream right.

Llance Kezner 11:43

Well, I think the takeaway is never disregard an opportunity that's laid in front of you. If it's laid in front of you, take it, even if it looks kind of odd or you might not be able to do it, just go for it. And you never know what's going to happen. And it's just like my cold plunge every morning I know exactly what's going to happen, I'm going to get freaked out for a couple of seconds, but when I get done I know I feel so much better afterwards. And so those many challenges when you're building your business, the big breaks come from a combination of all of those many challenges that you have built. And it may not be right away, it takes months and years, but they all build on each other.

Eric Eden 12:39

And so you've had good success distributing your product on Amazon over time. Has that been good for you guys?

Llance Kezner 12:49

It's been good. That's led us to other things Again. We started this business in our kitchen 12 years ago, and last summer not the summer before last we were encouraged to apply for a program that Walmart had for products that were made in the United States, and so they required some samples and one paragraph. They had 7,000 products apply to this program. It's called the Open Call.

Llance Kezner 13:21

We were chosen to come and meet with them in person. So they chose 800 companies only 400 of them to come and meet in person on their campus. In one day we went there and we got something that's called a golden ticket, which means we got a deal on the spot, and then we had to keep it quiet for about a year until we launched into their stores just last month. So again, all of those things kind of built on each other where we were able to point to our success with the Weight Watchers community, with our success at Amazon, and that gave Walmart the confidence that this crazy new idea, this new category of the sipping broth in a teabag, was something that they wanted in their soup aisle, right next to Campbell's Soup.

Eric Eden 14:16

Wow, that is really remarkable. You got the golden ticket from Walmart. It doesn't get too much better than that. I mean, having to wait a year probably was a bit frustrating, but getting the golden ticket nonetheless is still really amazing. Building on your past successes over the years most successes aren't overnight, but you built on them and then you got that and now you're in thousands of stores with Walmart creating this new category. That must feel really good it does feel good.

Llance Kezner 14:49

The challenge now is making sure everyone knows about it and everyone goes to those stores to find it and tell all their friends about the product. That's the idea Once you get in on the shelf. That's challenge number one. Challenge number two is getting people to go back and buy it. Challenge number three is making sure it's still in stock. Those are the things that we're focused on, and they all require all kinds of different disciplines and approaches, but they're all good problems to have.

Eric Eden 15:29

Yeah, great problems to have when you have the golden ticket, and I had two thoughts about you know the product. You can tell me if I'm on track here or not. But the first is one of the health things that a lot of people advocate and that I try to follow. Is you got to drink more water, right, and it's sort of hard just to drink a couple liters of water a day. So sometimes if you can drink what's almost all water with just some additional flavorings or nutrients in it, it really can help you get to that goal. Is that part of the magic you guys have?

Llance Kezner 16:08

Well, I think yeah, that's part of it A lot of people will integrate this into their wellness routine, so they may have like a keto diet. Yeah, that's part of it. A lot of people will integrate this into their wellness routine, so they may have like a keto diet right, where they're looking for very low carbs and they may be hungry during the day and they just don't want to blow their calories or carbs. So this literally has like one gram of carbs, 10 calories, and it's savory and satisfying. So you're getting the liquid. You, and it's savory and satisfying. So you're getting the liquid, you're getting the savory and satisfying. They may combine it with an unflavored protein so that they can get more protein during the day. We also have people that use our product as a seasoning for their cooking. They may be putting it on their avocados to have, you know, an amazing flavored avocado. We have hundreds of recipes on our website and on our social media that we do almost on a daily basis with our product, from drinking to, you know, using it for cooking.

Eric Eden 17:07

I mean Weight Watchers aside, I think a lot of people are focused on the health thing aside, I think a lot of people are focused on the health thing.

Eric Eden 17:17

I use the one mobile app, myfitnesspal, and I scan the barcode for everything I eat to track all the different variables of the things that I'm consuming.

Eric Eden 17:26

I'm trying to be healthy and I remember I was giving my kids the soup containers, as you know, lunch or a snack in the in the afternoons after school years ago, and one day I looked at it I was like holy crap, this stuff is like packed with all kinds of really bad stuff, like a lot of sodium, like you were saying, and I was like I didn't even realize that I was giving it to them for a long time and then I felt really bad and started giving them, you know, healthier, healthier snacks. So I think you know people, there's a tools out there like the Mind Fitness Pal app there's. There's a number of them out there like that, that like let you track and measure these things a lot easier than than it was five years ago or whatever. So I think that's also part of it, like the original origin of it, what you had done for your wife of. Let me give you a healthier option. Broadly, I think that that probably resonates with with a lot of people would be my guess, based on even my own experience.

Llance Kezner 18:33

Oh, absolutely, yeah, I mean Lori, and Lori was I, just I just came up with the stuff that's inside, but it was her idea to put them into a tea bag. And I think the convenience, the fact that we're using real herbs, vegetables and seasoning. We're not using, you know, fake sprayed on stuff that dissolves. And we do have sodium in our product, but it's 75% less than like a bouillon cube that you would have. It's you know. It's about the flavor.

Llance Kezner 19:03

Our idea and we work with a lot of nutritionists, you know our idea is, if you satisfy yourself with something upfront, then you don't continue to want something down the road which can build up Right, and you know, so that seems to work for a lot of people when they're, when they're using it. Listen, a lot of people drink our broth before they go to bed. They may be hungry and they realize, oh, I shouldn't eat something, but I want something to kind of, you know, make me feel satisfied. And the broth is, is amazing. You know there's no caffeine in it or anything like that, but they're getting there, you know their mind is getting satisfied and and so, anyway, you know we didn't start off by by thinking that we were going to do this, but it's just the way that people have been telling us and we were kind of leaning into those benefits for people and they really seem to resonate.

Eric Eden 19:57

That's fantastic. So my next question is what advice would you give to other entrepreneurs who would like to go on a journey like this and get a golden ticket of their own Broadly? If you were sitting down over a cup of broth, what advice would you give?

Llance Kezner 20:17

Well, I think you know number one, have a a really high level goal in mind. You know, when we first started, we didn't really have the the goal of helping people deal with stress and anxiety during their day, and that that kind of came to us. We, you know, it's not something we were looking day and that kind of came to us. It's not something we were looking for, but it kind of came to us and we adopted that. So definitely look for that thing, that overarching goal.

Llance Kezner 20:46

The second thing that I tell people is to find something you're excited about, because the thing is is that if you're not excited about what that on a day-to-day basis, right for years, may mean nothing for you to invest time in. The next thing is is that your product into hands as quickly as you possibly can. Don't overthink it. As quickly as you possibly can, don't overthink it. Do the MVP right, the minimum viable product, as quickly as you can, because you will learn. You will learn if it's the right thing, if it's the right price, if anyone likes it. You're going to learn those things quickly and time is something that is very valuable.

Eric Eden 21:32

Absolutely Great advice. Well, I'm going to link to your website so people can learn more about the product and get it and try it. Recommend everyone, do that. I am going to do that as well, and I will put that link as well as a discount code that I believe you can share with us in the show notes there so that people can try this out and see if it makes sense to integrate into their life. Excellent, that's great and we really appreciate you being with us today. Thanks so much for sharing your story and these entrepreneurial marketing tips with us today. We really appreciate it.

Llance Kezner 22:13

Thank you for being on the show. Thank you, eric, really appreciate the time.