On this episode, an ex-professional tennis player shares her journey from helping her partner beat cancer to launching and scaling a hugely successful purpose-driven digital native super brand.

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Welcome to the 2X eCommerce podcast show. On this episode, I’m joined by Kristel de Groot, the Co-founder, and CMO of Your Super, a superfood brand that aims to make healthy eating more accessible. Kristel shares her journey from being a professional tennis player to starting a health focus brand, the importance of clean ingredients, and the role of retention in building a successful eCommerce business.

Here’s a bit of the backstory of the brand. Your Super was founded in 2015 when Kristel’s partner, Michael, was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 24. After he beat cancer and went into remission, Kristel painstakingly ensured that his diet was ultra-clean, healthy, and vegan. This experience helped the couple to create a brand that made it easy for people to incorporate superfoods into their daily diets.

They started by creating a simple seven-day detox plan that included their signature superfood mix, the mix contained seven of the most nutrient-dense superfoods in the world and was designed to help boost energy levels, support the immune system, and improve overall health. The brand quickly gained a following and expanded their products line into additional superfoods including mixes designed specifically for immunity, gut health, and energy. Your Super is a thriving $50 million-plus in revenue business, believe it or not, largely from their eCommerce D2C operations, with a mission to make healthy eating easy and accessible for everyone.

Why should you read this episode? First, you’re going to learn about the importance of building a brand. Kristel stresses the significance of creating a strong brand image and how it has been a key factor in the success of Your Super. She explains how having a brand with a clear message and values helps build trust with customers and differentiate the company from competitors.

You’re going to understand the value of customer feedback. Kristel emphasizes the importance of listening to and acting on customer feedback and how it has helped Your Super to improve its products and customer experience. She shares strategies on how to collect and analyze customer feedback and how to use it to make informed business decisions.

Thirdly, Kristel discusses the benefits of using natural whole food ingredients in Your Super’s products and how it has helped differentiate the brand in a crowded health and wellness space. She explains the importance of transparency in ingredient sourcing and the impact it’s had in building trust with customers.

You’re going to also gain inspiration from Kristel’s entrepreneurial story overall. Kristel shares her successful journey from being a professional tennis player to becoming an entrepreneur that’s thriving. She provides insights on the challenges she’s faced along the way and how she’s overcome them, as well as advice on how to stay motivated and focused on your goals.

If you want a masterclass on the importance of building a brand with a clear mission, the power of customer feedback, and the value of prioritizing retention over acquisition among other valuable tips for building a successful eCommerce business, then pay attention. Without further ado, let’s get started.

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Kristel, welcome to the 2X eCommerce Podcast. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation.

Thank you for having me. I’m excited. We’re going to be talking about some cool stuff.

Brilliant stuff. First things first, where are you calling in from?

I’m in New York. 2023 is a funny year, we’re living everywhere and nowhere, but everywhere for 1 or 2 months. Right now, it’s New York.

I thought you were going to say California but New York. How’s the weather there?

It’s snowing.

We’ll move right on to the next question. Speaking about what you guys have done in Your Super, it’s been phenomenal. You’re going to tell your story. Let’s jump back to your back story. Who are you? You could even speak a bit about Michael, your co-founder, and partner. I want to know who you are and where you grew up. You sound European, not American. Could you give us a background on Kristel the child and Kristel the food and beverage entrepreneur?

I’m Dutch, that’s why I have this great accent. Michael is German so I have some German accent mixed there as well. I grew up in Holland, a pretty normal youth, around Amsterdam in a slightly smaller town. There are a couple of things and one is that I was a crazy tennis player. From a young age, I played a lot of tennis.

Playing sports at a young age teaches you a lot of things. I played college tennis in the US for 3.5 years. That has been a fret for my life. We always joke that when we stopped playing professional tennis, we put that energy into our business. It’s that obsessiveness that we used to have. He’s a tennis player as well. We met in college, both playing tennis. Another distinctive thing about my youth is that I had eczema.

I remember even when I was 10 years old, my mom also used to take me to more holistic doctors and everything. What I realized is that if I eat something, I would either get a rash or I wouldn’t get a rash. That made that connection between what you eat, your health, and your body. I was like, “There is a connection between those two.” That was apparent. We all have to learn that it does matter what you eat, you are what you eat.

It has been a journey. I met Michael in college. The story of Your Super started when he was sick when he was 24 and I was 22 at the moment, he got cancer. That pulled our lives upside down. He had surgery and went through chemo. During that time, I watched the movie Forks Over Knives and that was such an a-ha moment. In that movie, they talk about epigenetics, and if you eat plant-based, you can turn off some of those genes and reduce your risk for cancer.

I was like, “My mom had cancer when I was younger and he has cancer.” I’m plant-based the next day. For Michael, and I’m sure more people can relate to this who went through this, you go for chemo and then you’re cancer free. Your doctor says, “You’re cancer free.” On purpose, they say cancer free because he was not healthy. He lost all his hair.

As an athlete, his immunity was down, he had no energy and everything. That’s where the journey of health started. That’s where he was more open and I could step in, I was like, “We’re going to do a detox. We’re going to eat all these plants.” I had all the superfoods in my cupboard. I directed him to Whole Foods and he was like, “This is too expensive and complicated. I’m not doing this.” I had an empty jar and threw everything together, a lot of greens, especially for him.

I said, “Whatever you do, take this every single day.” He did and he started to feel better. That’s where it clicked, where we were like, “There are a lot more people like Michael who do want to use some of those powerful ingredients.” Superfoods are an easy way to get more plants into your diet but they don’t necessarily know where to start. That’s where our journey started to say, “Maybe we’re going to slowly start a bus business out of this.”

Powerful stuff there. First of all, tennis. I play tennis, not professionally. The one thing I’ve picked up from tennis is the fact that’s an individual sport despite it being a team sport behind the scenes. It’s down to you when you’re on the court. A question I have is, how’s that sense of complete ownership on court translated into business? What’s the name of the movie you said you watched?

The movie is Forks Over Knives. There are a couple of good movies and Forks Over Knives is a great one. The Game Changers is another fantastic movie that I always recommend people to watch. Tennis is individual. Only in college, for me, it became more of a team sport. If you go to tournaments, you’re by yourself. You learn many things, you learn winning, and you learn losing from points to games, all of it. You learn so much discipline from it as well. It’s independent. I’m an independent person.

As the company skilled further and the team also became big, I also had to learn to work more in teams. Working by myself is something that goes easily, which is probably also part of tennis. I’m like, “I’m by myself. I’m doing my thing. Go for it.” As we know, as the company scales, you get more people, it’s also really important. It’s like, “How do you do both as well?” There have been many different things but it’s that piece of up and down that you have in a startup so much.

From the outside, it always looks like one big success and we only hear the success stories but it’s not like that. Business is only ups and downs. Sometimes even within a day, you hear 2 amazing things and 2 things where you’re slapped in the face but you keep going. That’s the pieces that we’ve learned. It’s very much also a mental aspect and resilience that we’ve learned in our youth.

We’re going to do an exercise now. We’re going to go back in time. We’re going to get some timestamps clear. The first thing is Michael’s diagnosis of cancer and where he was. Was he in college in the United States? In my notes, the fact that you started operations initially in Europe, I want to match that up.

He was diagnosed in 2013, early in the year. He finished his Master’s. He did his Master’s in Germany and he came back from a four-month India where he finished up his Master’s. On top of the world, kind of. He came out of college, he studied abroad again in India. Even being athletes, you have this full trust in your body because you’re playing a lot of sports, and you are more in touch with your body too. For him, you would lose trust in your body there as well.

We started the business a year after that. We started in Amsterdam originally. We had a little apartment there and we started mixing different powders by hand. We had a little certified organic room. I was 23 years old when we started the business. I was an absolute baby who didn’t know anything. I never had a real job besides some internships. A year after that, we moved to Berlin. We have been to different European countries there as well.

Did tennis have to take a backseat at the time? Was tennis exclusively, “This is what we’re going to do in college and that’s it.” Were there other prospects of tennis beyond college but you decided, “This is bigger than tennis.”

It’s interesting now, you’re older and everything, you look back. At that time, we were both pretty clear. We love that tennis gave us the opportunity with scholarships to study in the US. That felt good and we had a fantastic time. We were also clear that we didn’t want to live that life of traveling across the world to all the little tournaments. We only see the top ten and it’s such a fantastic life but to get there, that’s a long road ahead. we didn’t want to do that. We’re excited to also start that other part of our professional career and try to figure that piece out as well.

You took an even more challenging route, which is entrepreneurship and building out this fantastic good-for-you brand. Right now, you have a lot of SKUs. How did you make a decision on the first few SKUs? Did you align with some of the stuff you are making Michael over his recovery from chemo?

Yeah.

I’d like to know what your initial products were and how you brought them to market.

You’re going to be shocked, there were seven. My first recommendation for anyone starting a business is to start with 1 or with 3 SKUs and not more. Don’t start with seven, a big mistake, little did we know. We started with seven. One of them was Super Freen that we still have and that was similar to what I made Michael originally. That was definitely part of it.

Not a lot of people noticed but all the way in the beginning, we had something on the website built out where you could mix your own mix. People could choose ten scoops of superfoods and personalize their own mix. However, what we quickly realized is that people were buying our pre-mixed mixes. If they did mix something together, I was scooping it in for them, and I was like, “This is going to taste bad.” People didn’t know how these ingredients tasted and how to combine them also for health benefits. Pretty quickly, that went off the website.

A text textbook example of the customers does not know what they want.

They don’t know what they want. They saw us as the expert and wanted us to put that together and simplify it for them. We were young and we didn’t necessarily know what we were doing. We have done this every step ourselves from mixing the products together. We went to the farmer’s markets. I used to pack and ship the boxes out myself. I did the customer service. every piece in the business, over the years, we have touched. Probably at some point, we’ve split up more. We’ve done a lot of things by ourselves to learn and then from there on, give it to someone else.

In terms of roles, how have you split your roles as partners? I’m going to ask this double-barrel question within the business. Working with your life partner at the same time, how do you split the business from the personal?

We always get that question. Everyone always has this big question mark on their forehead, it’s like, “How do you do this?” Un the business, it went quite naturally. I took on more of the marketing eComm selling. The product innovation was a little more split but more the formulation. As I was more the health person, that was more me. We always joke that anything but marketing was my fault. More the supply chain, finance, and HR were all more on his side.

In life, this sounds maybe funny but when we came out of college, he spoke German, I spoke Dutch, and we struggled at that time. It makes me laugh at this point but we’re like, “How are we ending up in the same country if we don’t speak the same language?” Getting a job only speaking English in Amsterdam is not as easy as when you speak the native language. In Germany, it’s the same.For us, starting a business together also solved that too where we’re like, “At least we can live in the same country. We could spend time together.” That was very much also a piece of it where we’re like, “This is great.” We like spending time together.

Obviously, it’s not always easy. There are years when we talked about business and we’ve learned to balance it out more. We get to work together, which we enjoy. The tough part is that we are direct with each other because we are so close. In a business setting, sometimes you might have a little bit more of a business etiquette and we don’t have that.

There’s a beauty to that and a strength to it because you’re radically honest with each other that sometimes certain things that someone else will probably not give you that feedback and you tell each other that. Also, sometimes that is hard because it is direct. It’s something we’ve learned. At the same time, we’re grateful that we get to spend all the time with each other as well.

Times outside of business, do you speak about business?

Yeah, it flows. Life and work are, for me, not completely separated, sometimes I wish they would be. Our work is also our life’s mission so it’s not like, “I truly care about it.” Because of that, they all integrated into each other.

If you think about the old days when everybody was a farmer, you lived where you worked. It was work, eat, and play. Everything was integrated anyway. It’s about striking that balance.

Isn’t it funny, a lot of us work now also from home? That’s all happening that way anyway.

It’s a full circle. The other thing I’ve noticed here on your website is you have 21 SKUs. Has this always been the case with 21 SKUs for a huge business?

We have twelve mixes, it’s individual. At some point, we also had stick packs that were never online and super successful for us. People would rather buy the full can. That is something we learned over time. A huge unlock for us has been the bundles and that is also where you see why we have more SKUs. We make these programs and bundles. For example, one of our heroes is the Detox bundle that contains all these different mixes plus a five-day program on how to use the mixes and what to eat for five days. We did a clinical study on this as well. It’s a shocker, it works.

For us, that has been an unlock because as you know, in eComm, your AOV, especially on the first order, is important. That put our AOV from the first order originally when we started. We struggled in the beginning too but it was 50/60. With the Detox bundle and advertising and focusing more on getting that first order to that bundle, it suddenly jumped to over 100. Your CAC and your first-order ratio become different right away. It helped us to also scale faster. It makes it easier for people to use and know what to do.

Especially when they have a variety of products. There’s a bundle here with five products, your Forever Beautiful, Plant Protein, Magic Mushroom, Plant Collagen, and Moon Balance. You get the pack, you try everything, and you might stick with 2 or 3 tops. That also sets a tone. I was speaking to an entrepreneur and their AOV, which they’ve established, they’re a small business, is £30. Their trial pack is £7. They’re finding problems with moving £7 purchases to £30 subscribers. A £7 customer is not a £30 customer. You need to set the tone up front.

It’s interesting, we used to have a trial pack as well, and it was a little more expensive, it was €15 or something. From the seven products, we started with seven sachets. Whenever we started to push that, I was like, “This doesn’t add up.” I get that. Obviously, not everyone is going to come back and buy a full can. Over time, we’ve killed that SKU. It can be interesting if it’s not too expensive to produce.

For us, it economically didn’t make sense. What I did originally is edit the order as a freebie. It then becomes this interesting marketing campaign, which can be fantastic. It’s like, “You get this if you order over this amount.” You use it as a marketing tactic. Selling it on its own and going for that low AOV in the eComm world we live in now where CACs only have been getting higher, that’s a tough one to break. To your point, it is a different customer.

You also mentioned the fact about sachets or tubes. I know there’s a difference between sachets and tubes but I don’t have the terminology for the tubes.

We call them cans.

When you have sugar sachets when you go to a coffee shop, some food brands tend to put each serving in a tube or sachet. The perceived value is different from a sachet, like a pack of 30 versus a tub with 30  servings.

It’s interesting, it operates in European and US markets. In Europe, people don’t like it naturally for their environment. They’re way more sensitive to that and they do want to do good. In the US, you see it also more in the supermarket so people are more used to it. For retail, having sachets makes total sense, putting it next to a cashier, picking it up, and the product trial. It’s super powerful. Obviously, it’s the nature of the product too.

Not everyone wants the whole day to take this little sachet of superfood everywhere they go. What we’ve learned is they use it in the morning when they’re still at home.That is more their use case. When they travel, yes, there might be an occasional family trip, holidays, or a business trip that might be slightly different but then they might still take 1 or 2 of the cans that they use most often. At the end of the day, every business is going to be different.

What’s super important is to understand who is your customer, when are they using your products, and how are they using the products. Get to know them. What I’ve done in the early days is that I did many customer calls where I would interview customers for half an hour on Zoom and ask them everything about the products and their life.

I wanted to know who they are and their story. I’ve recorded a lot of those stories too and some of those stories we’ve used in our advertising too. It’s funny how even though it was not necessarily the intention because I wanted to get to know them, their stories were powerful that I got inspired by their stories. It was like, “We need to share these.”

For readers who want to get some context, how big is Your Super from a revenue standpoint if you’re allowed to share that?

In 2021, we were $60 million so that’s also on the web somewhere. As a little Dutch European founder, we are a good size. What I’ve learned is the revenue is just a number. For me, it’s way more about the number of people we’re impacting and that’s always the number. I’ve had to remind myself that over years. If you raise money, you can get so stuck on that number. You see all these numbers but it’s important to realize what these numbers mean. Tony Robbins says this and I truly agree, business is more of a spiritual game. They’re real people and you’re touching their lives and it’s truly understanding and having that right intention of, “How am I helping them and how can I do better?”

That’s why I made the decision to focus more on actual physical products versus Software as a Service. To me, I feel more connected in a way with physical products.

We make our lives a little more difficult. There’s this piece when you create something and when you build something, you can touch it. It hits differently.

I 100% agree. Playing the timestamp game again, how long were you bootstrapped for and when did you realize, “For us to make this impact we’re looking to make in the world, we need to raise capital.”

For a year, we only went to the farmer’s market, blended by hand, and it was a fantastic time and hard work. About a year after, we did that and we’re like, “To make the next step, we need to start producing something.”If you want to produce something, the quantities were a little higher. We raised a small round, it was $100,000 or something from friends and family. It was funny because we thought, “This is it, we never need to raise money anymore. This is great.”

By the way, something important for people to realize is you don’t need to know. We were naïve. It’s great, you don’t need to know what you need to know ten years down the line. Start with steps 1 and 2, don’t worry about step 100. You’re going to figure it out over time. We often get stuck on steps way further down the line and try to figure those out without starting with steps 1 and 2.

A year later, we raised a little seed round from 500 startups. We did an eComm training. Their Asian fund invested, which has been funny. Khailee, who invested, was also plant-based. He saw it. They normally invest more in tech. We did an eComm training with them and that’s where I started to learn more about eCommerce because we were trying to figure it out but we had like a one-month immersion.

What year was this?

It was 2016. In 2017, that’s when we made a decision that we wanted to go to the US market. We were struggling in the European market. We were early. In Germany, which was the market we focused on most, we were in Berlin at the time, we moved to Berlin, and we were still explaining what a smoothie was. Let alone trying to sell them powder. It’s like, “You need to use wheatgrass. You need to use Maca.” There were many steps further.

We got a bunch of orders from the US. 10% or 15% of orders were from the US. We called the customers up, like, “Why are you ordering from us?” They’re like, “You’re not using Stevia. It’s clean. You’re sourcing differently.” That was this moment and it was very much a feeling also,it was like, “Let’s go to the US.” We had some European investors, not a lot but some, and mentors and stuff. They’re like, “You first have to make the European market work before you’re allowed to go to the US.” We’re like, “No. We’re just going to go.”

We knew, logically, maybe it didn’t make sense and it was naive but at the same time, it felt like we needed to do it. The US is the market that scaled. We moved there in 2017, launched the US business around the beginning of 2018, and it still took us 4 or 5 months to figure it out. Once we had that unlock with the bundles and understood how to story tell, people were ready. We didn’t have to explain some of those basics to that market so that helped. The funny thing is that Europe also started to scale 1 or 2 years after that. We were just too early.

There’s a lot to unpack from there. The first thing was what you said about you don’t need to know and it’s okay. You don’t need to know till you know. Learn, experience, let the novelty come in, face new information, process it, and go forward with it. The second was around 500 startups. It’s odd to me that, first of all, the Asian arm of it invested in you. They tend to do tech. Did you have other eCommerce or consumer brands in your cohort or was it just you?

It was us. This is a funny story because we were over the place. In the beginning, we didn’t know if we were only eComm brand or also retail, and we didn’t know what markets. Somehow we ended up having a booth at the Web Summit in Ireland. We did a lot of crazy stuff. It was fantastic but it was hilarious because we were standing there between all these tech companies and we were handing out smoothies from our little booth that we were blending up.

It was one meter and we would give people smoothies and they were like, “What do you do?” It was obviously what we did but we said, “We source all the most powerful ingredients from all over the world and we put them in these mixes.” They’re like, “It’s fascinating. It must be hard, a physical product.” I was looking at all these tech companies and I was like, “I don’t understand one bit of what you guys are doing.” We were such an odd bird there and somehow we met Khailee for 500 startups there. He was plant-based, loves making our products, and always made movies in the morning. There was this instant connection. He took a chance on us.

It’s funny how sometimes putting yourself in those situations. I remember me and Michael were standing on the street and we were like, “Shall we go to this Walmart party? We’re tired.” We knew he would be there and we wanted to talk to him, like, “What if he invests?” We’re like, “Let’s just go.” At the dance, we connected with the smoothies. That’s life, you need to put yourself in those situations and follow your gut instinct and your intuition.

That’s powerful. That’s the biggest point you’ve made in this conversation. It’s not exactly an actionable point, you just have to try and try. It’s not an exact point where it’s like, “Yo increase AOV, you need to do this.” Create opportunities by meeting and connecting with people you never know. Serendipity comes for those who expose themselves to it.

That’s the same whether it’s hiring or business decisions. We have this tendency in our world to always go right brain, logic, and be like, “I need to look at the data because that’s where the answer is.” I’m not saying the data is not important because it’s supportive but to truly make a decision, in the end, you have to make a decision. You’re not going to find the answer anywhere but in yourself.

I have learned to trust my feeling because if I look back where I have not and listen only to my mind, those are sometimes the wrong decisions and not always. It’s important to match the two up together. We don’t value our intuition in business. I don’t think we get taught to listen to that often enough. It’s ignored. I don’t even know why it is that way but it’s important to value that piece in business as well.

I liked a Tweet from Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz back in the day. Reading it out now, it’s like, “The best markets and opportunities are usually the least measurable.” That resonated with me, which is what you said. Another weird question I want to ask is how do you make a powder? I can understand if you’re a nutritionist and you’ve been taught in a university or a course.

As an individual, most of us make smoothies. You put it in the juicer, make a smoothie, and say it’s healthy. You put your kale, matcha, or whatever you want to put in there and you make the juice. To come up with a powder as an individual and have a room that’s certified organic and do it, where did you learn to make powders?

A couple of pieces there and one is my mom and aunt are nuclear nutritionists so I do have that background in my family of learning about food and health and that combination. I had them to go back and lean on. Over time, I have become a health coach, which is not a nutritionist. I’ve always been that nerd. Yes, I studied business but I was only reading health articles. I was very much immersing myself in what was happening and always learning about new things.

You don’t always have to learn something in uni, you can also teach yourself things, deep diving, and educating yourself. A super sidetrack, I had a baby and I can tell you a lot of things about birth and pregnancy because I read over ten books and I’m probably a big nerd on this topic now. People are like, “How do you know all this stuff?” I’m like, “It’s because I want to know, I want to be empowered.” From there, with the powders, I was using a lot of these products myself but always in individual bags. I use spirulina and I did use wheatgrass. I was always interested in those products.

When we started, I used Google trying to figure out, “Where would I find these kinds of ingredients?” The first thing I figured out is you have suppliers that have a range. They would have 30 or 40 different ingredients. That’s how we started because we would buy five kilograms in our little room. I remember particularly, we ordered wheatgrass from Germany, which was expensive, and wheatgrass from China, which was cheap. It’s a huge difference in pricing. I was like, “Let’s order both because I’m curious about the difference.” One was green and smelled like grass and one was yellowish and didn’t smell like anything.

That was such a pivotal moment in our business because we were like, “Where we are going to source these ingredients is going to change completely how it tastes.” A lot of them are in the market and they always add flavors and stevia. I’m always like, “Flavor it up.” We use 5 or 6 ingredients and that’s it so it’s clean. They still taste good because of the way we source them.

We split that supplier nowadays and we go and work with people from countries where those ingredients are originally used and grown. Maca comes from Peru. Spirulina, we get from Chile. Acai comes from Brazil. It’s different parts of the world. Some local as well. Wheatgrass is easily sourced from Germany or from the US. If we can source that, we will. What we’ve learned over time is that it’s best to get the powders from the countries themselves.

If something is grown, you want to dry it right away and mill it to preserve most of the nutrients. Also, if you think about it from an environmental standpoint, it’s a lot better for the environment to ship powder than it is to ship whole fruit and make powder from it. We work with partners across the world. Our Shatarvari and Turmeric come from India. We get the powders to either our production facility in the US or Germany and that’s where everything gets mixed and then filled in different cans. We have two supply chains set up.

When you say two supply chains, one in the US and then one in Europe.

Yeah.

Your facilities in Europe and America are mixing facilities.

Exactly.

Your competitive advantage is the visibility of your supply chain and the quality. You’re not going to have any nasties. It’s your premium stuff.

Especially in the US, which is normal for most brands, you go to a production facility and they source for you. However, their incentive is different. Their incentive is purely to buy the cheapest and sell it the most expensive to you. That is something that is different. We have a whole list of questions before we even take one of our suppliers from one of those countries.

We always want to have the option to visit and we have visited quite some farms over the years. If they’re like, “We don’t want you to visit.” We’re like, “If he never wants us to come over, we’re not going to be working together. We’re not coming over to copy your business. We come over because we are truly interested and want to connect to the farmers and want to make sure everything is good, that’s all.”

It makes a lot of sense. That supply chain piece is important. Is that Michael or you? Whose territory?

The supply chain side is more on Michael’s side. I have visited farms too because they’re the best trips. Obviously, from the consumer side, it is an important piece as well. One of our first hires was a supply chain manager and he’s fantastic. That piece has been the core of building it up and many people go, “How do you find these people?” I’m like, “I don’t even know.”

Over time, whether it’s Google or whether it’s going to different fairs, you keep finding these people who grow ingredients the right way. It’s organic, everything they do but they also grow it often in a biodynamic way. They look at everything like the soil and everything works together, the crops are rotated. We don’t even talk about that.

For a lot of the ingredients, that is the case where it’s not a monoculture. It’s fun. If you meet the farmers, how much love goes into food? I always want to remind people even if something is in a package, it does matter where it comes from, it does matter where it grows, and there goes a lot of hard work and love into those products.

We operate a food and beverage brand called Lean Caffeine and another called Clean & Pure. It’s giving me more respect for farmers, the absolute lifeblood of the planet for all of us, for which we should be thankful. Speaking of your supply chain, your expertise, and your in-depth knowledge of nutrition as a medicine, that’s the way I see it, and going all plant-based. You have a book called Your Super Life. What’s it all about? I hear it’s plant-based recipes. What should readers get excited or expect to get from Your Super Life?

There are a lot of different things in there. It’s not just a book for plant-based people. The recipes themselves are simple, a lot of under twenty minutes. We all want to eat more plants, that’s the core. Even if you change one meal or if you say, “It’s one day per week or one meal a day,” start switching it up. In the recipes themselves, we integrate also superfoods, and we do some singular superfoods. There’s also a page if you want to use Your Super mixes. You can use the book completely without Your Super mixes.

A key piece in there is we talk about Your Super way of eating, which is nine principles that we talk about, basic things. You can start changing the way you eat. I often have a tendency to focus on what I call the Crowding Out principle where it’s not about what you cannot eat but it’s more focusing on eating more of the right things, let’s all focus on that.

The society we live in is all focused still on counting calories, counting fats, counting carbs, and protein. It’s all those macro ingredients where our health often is way more ingrained in the micronutrients like our vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, enzymes, and antioxidants, and we forget about that. Those are found in plants. They’re found in your fruit and veggies. 9 out of 10 people in the US and 8 out of 10 people in Europe don’t eat enough fruit and vegetables every single day.

We’re talking about the minimum required amount. We see in studies that the more you eat them over your minimum required amount, the healthier you do get. There’s much power in eating that variety of colors and eating real fruit and vegetables. That is the core piece of the book. Our story is in there. We explain superfoods and we talk about Your Super way of eating. I’m a huge fan of teaching people how to make their own recipes with whatever they have in the kitchen.

There are ten sections in there, the how-to section, of how to make pasta in five steps or how to make curry in five steps with whatever veggies you have at home. I hope I truly inspire and can teach people something and that they start eating more plants. I’ve felt a difference myself. I healed my eczema. I changed a lot of things in my health. I’ve also seen it from hundreds and hundreds or probably millions of customers at this point from Your Super on the difference it can make. Also, doing the detox and eating more plants and what it can do. I want everyone to experience that.

I’m not plant-based but I eat a lot of plants and I encourage the kids too and that’s because of watching my parents. My parents are in their mid-70s and eating vegetables and taking fruits has always been a part of our lives and it didn’t go away. I’m thankful that I don’t eat much junk food per se. It’s not the norm at all.

My kids have never had a McDonald’s. I have an 11-year-old boy, a 6-year-old son, and a 2-year-old son. They’ve never ever had a McDonald’s in their life and I pride myself on that. I like your perspective on micronutrients. We don’t speak about micronutrients enough and we talk about macro, particularly in health and when you read mainstream health magazines and stuff like that.

To your point, health often becomes only about the way you look. Health is about how you feel and how much energy you have. That is true health. It’s not about having the most ripped body. You don’t have to be healthy to have a ripped body. Those are two completely different stories. That is a shift that needs to happen in our minds. It’s not about like, “I have to lose weight. I have to look a certain way.” Let’s fuel your body with the right thing so you have the energy and you feel mentally good so you can do the things you want to do in your life because that’s what it’s about.

Also, empowering people with this knowledge because cuz a lot of people say, “I’m time-poor. I don’t have the time.” You say, “This would only take twenty minutes of your time. Make sure you get the ingredients, they’re not expensive, they’re accessible in stores, which is quite interesting. Do it.” Is Your Super Life a recipe book format? Is it a big colorful one?

It’s a hardcover and it has beautiful pictures, which I’m excited about. It’s important also to see what you’re going to make. It hits differently. That’s all there. Also, from meal plans and recommended grocery lists, there’s a lot of information.

It’s certainly a book that should be in your kitchen library. Let’s go back to the unit economics of Your Super. What is a geographic mix now in 2023? I would think it’s the US but what’s the percentage? I searched for Your Super and I’m seeing Your Super in many marketplaces like Target and Amazon. What’s the distribution like if you don’t mind sharing and then what is the geo split?

It’s 75% US and 25% Europe.

What about the UK?

Within Europe, the UK is our second biggest market. It’s Germany first, then the UK, and Holland, which I’m a proud Dutchy. For a long time, we were very much only D2C and very much focused on that.

From a D2C perspective, how big did you grow being pure play D2C?

It’s smaller now. iOS hit us. That was something we had to adjust. When we were at $60 million, it was probably 95% of us that was D2C.

That’s incredible.

Amazon is something that we started growing years ago and it has been steadily growing. That is becoming more and more. We’re now getting more to probably the 8% or 10% of the business. We have launched more in Target online already. Also, we’re in Target stores. We’re in The Vitamin Shoppe and Sprouts. In Europe, things are happening too. In Europe, it has also been more of a focus on selling more distribution deals with different countries.

In the US, that shift has become more important with the skill we were at but also with the changes that happened online, we’re like, “Getting into a store is also a brand marketing play.” It’s like getting in front of the Discovery Channel and building that up. That was a shift we made. I sometimes think we maybe should have done it a little bit earlier. We were relatively late with the skill we were at.

You cannot do everything, which I thought, in the beginning, you could. There is power in focusing on something and becoming good at it. You don’t have to do everything, that’s an important piece. Maybe, in the beginning, you do a little more, you see what sticks, and then you go deeper and focus on the things that stick and you become good at them. You don’t have to become good at everything.

That’s powerful. This is all with your twenty or so SKUs. You haven’t necessarily expanded your SKU count. It’s that focus.

It’s a focus. We did try bars one time because our existing customer base was asking for them. We sold some to the existing customer base but we were like, “We don’t have to do this.” I’m not saying we’re never going to expand. We look at it now more and more also at day parts, a lot of our products are being used more in the morning, and some at other parts. Still, the majority is used in the morning. People tend to use more powders in the morning. At the end of the day, people tend to use fewer powders but are more indulgent. We all go through that curve where it’s like, “I do want to have my piece of vegan chocolate at night with my cup of tea.”

It’s been a long day and, at that point in time, your willpower diminishes later in the day, which is fair.

Can we do something that is indulgent but still healthy and functional and maybe helps you sleep better so you can wake up refreshed? There are things we’re thinking about. I also always look at my own life too because I look at my own habits and I’m like, “Yes, I make 100% my green smoothie in the morning or my oatmeal.” At night, I do crave that little bit of something and it doesn’t have to be anything crazy. There are still fun things ahead.

We’re very much focused more and more on females. You don’t necessarily see that when you look on the website but 95% of our customers are females. They buy it also for the family. It doesn’t mean men are not using our mixes. Our audience is very much females. To be fair, in the health world, women are trailblazing, they are truly committing to their health, and they’re like, “We’re dragging you guys along,” which is also totally fine. We want to go deeper there.

One of our mixes, Moon Balance, is for hormonal balance. We also see opportunities within her life. For me, also having gone down through pregnancy, and menopause is another one, we can help women along their health journey because it is a little different than men. Men are a little more stable so to say. Women go through a lot of changes throughout their life with their hormones. It’s something I’m personally also passionate about and I’m excited to see how we can support her more.

I don’t think we appreciate women enough. I was listening to a podcast and a huge point was made, which I’ve reflected on many times in my life, which is women are the only ones that can bring life to this world. Women bring life, they determine the next generation of humans, communities, or people, and they undergo a lot of changes. We need to appreciate and celebrate that.

One last thing because it’s something I’m always passionate about, I 100% agree, and it’s interesting. One of the things we’ve introduced in our company is called Moon Days and that’s one day a month for women when they have their period and they can do whatever they want. That can mean you’re at work but it helps you take a day off or you can sew your meetings. You do what you can basically. A lot of the workplace is still very much built by men and women entering the workplace. Still, we adjusted to operate more like men in there.

If I think about the next ten years in the world and also in the workplace, how can we, as women, show up in the workplace but also truly be in our femininity and not only pretend we’re equal and we’re men? We have to accept we are different. It’s not just accepted, that should be celebrated because it’s not something bad. We create life. Yes, I’m hormonal and that is my superpower because some weeks I’m creative and some weeks I’m more this. I haven’t figured it out yet. The way we operate is masculine but how can we bring a bit more of the powerful feminine in the workplace as well and celebrate it?

It’s leadership, it’s putting more women like you, and giving more opportunities to women to thrive and lead. That empathy is top-bottom. That’s the only way you can effect change from top to bottom. It’s pushing that supply chain of women empowering girls to be more than what the stereotypical messaging and stories are saying girls should be. Girls could be anything. That next generation will change.

It has been changing. It’s always important to remember if you think 50 years back, it has been changing. Because it has been changing, it doesn’t mean it has to stop changing now. I talk about periods and all those things and people are like, “What are you talking about?” I’m like, “Yeah.” Maybe it’s not normal now but it’s going to be normal, watch me. It’s going to be normal.

There are personal situations in which women I know had high-flying corporate jobs and they go back and their spot has been taken and they can’t settle down and they have to change again. I see it over and over again. It’s not the way it is, it’s sad the way things are now. With more empathetic female leaders at the top, those things wouldn’t perpetrate themselves because the pattern is typically their boss is a man.

To be fair, sometimes it’s also women too. In the business world, there are those expectations. Sometimes even women in workplaces adjust to that and we also can become hard. I don’t think it’s always the man doing everything wrong, to be honest. It’s very much that energy where we then all start to behave that way. Empathy is needed. It’s the same with pregnancy leave or going through menopause, those are things that we need to talk about more, or periods, they happen.

Women are extremely powerful and strong and we are good at showing up and pretending we’re fine. If we’re in a workplace, we could have more of those open conversations and recognize that those things are happening and think about how we can support women through those times. I get it, if women are out for a year sometimes, in the US, it will never be a year. There are countries like Germany where it’s progressive, it’s like a year. Holland is only four months so that’s pretty short.

It’s super interesting and I’m still going through a journey as well. I started working a little bit but also not full-time. As a mom, you get a lot of things done in a short amount of time because you’re like, “He’s sleeping. I get to do this in a short amount of time.” Also, more part-time flexible work. Moms are super powerful. Your mind is still working when you’re doing something else and all these solutions come up.

It’s the 9:00 to 5:00, it’s that old model that is not great when you’re raising kids. How can we figure out something else and be open to that? That would work for women way more. There are a lot of moms out there that maybe now are full-time moms but would love to work a little bit as well. There are huge opportunities there.

I’m thankful for COVID. I was speaking to a neighbor of mine and he misses the pandemic. It’s nuanced but we connected as neighbors over the pandemic. Let’s circle back to Your Super. Let’s talk about what you think the future of the food and beverage industry is, an open thought, and its convergence with eCommerce. The other question I want to loop back into this is when you started to do retail, what was the data telling you with regards to your digital customers supporting you in-store?

Those are two big questions. It’s interesting, Michael went to Expo West and there was not something that blew his mind, like, “This is changing.” Where I would like to see the future go and where it’s going to go, but maybe that’s my very optimistic mind and I need to have that, is that I hope and see that products are becoming more and more clean. The ingredient label is becoming more and more important over the table and that’s something I talk a lot about.

One of my huge things in the book too is to stop reading this table and start reading what is the actual ingredient list. What is in the food that you’re eating? The consumer is changing and brands are either going to get that or not. that is truly what’s going to become important. We don’t want to have this long ingredient list with a bunch of things in there and we don’t know what they are. That’s a consumer trend. That’s going to take some time for all consumers to get there but that’s both moving. For us, our online community has been a huge support in retail even when we launched Target online and everything.

It’s interesting what happens to us being in those stores. They were excited and were like, “I noticed the brand. I’m already a buyer too.” It also made them a little more real for them too. It’s like, “Now it’s a real brand.” It gives you a little bit of that step of like, “You’re not just this online brand.” It gives you a little bit more realness authority, like, “They’re a real brand now.” That has been a funny experience seeing that. What is also funny is, like, “You must be huge. You’re sold in Target.” I see the sales numbers on Target and I see the sales numbers online, I’m like, “I’m not sure if that’s me.” Those have been funny things.

Does packaging encourage customers to continue the journey online? Let’s say the discovery point was a Target store, a pick-up, or a tub. How clear is the fact that I could go to YourSuper.com? Do you expect that journey to be siloed to store people like physical store experiences?

There are some little nuggets on the packaging where you can go and enter the online world. you have to be gentle though. Our logo used to be YourSuper.com and we had to change that. It’s gentle. I personally love having people in our online world because I get to educate more. You send them emails where you can educate them, it’s more personal, and I can share more of my story and what works for me. I always love sharing pieces of that. It’s a gentle one I would say.

I also like your point on the ingredients list is more important than the table. There are two nutritionists I follow on Instagram, one is Vani Hari, she’s called Food Babe, and she keeps calling out labels. She gives comparisons, “This is what this brand looks like n the EU versus this is what the brand looks like in the USA. They say there’s no sugar but these other sugar alternatives are still sugar and are still ruining your hormones the same way sugar will or even worse.”

There’s another one called Glucose Goddess, Jesse Inchauspé. She talks about insulin spikes and the glycemic index. She has this graph and it’s a propriety graph to her where she’s like, “If you eat this, this is what your sugar spike would look like. If you eat this with this, your sugar spike will lower.” I like those two influencers that are educating me about looking at the ingredient list rather than saying, “It says zero calories.” That doesn’t say anything.

The ingredients list means to know what you’re eating. Truly knowing what you’re putting into your body is important. For me, that’s the most important first step because then at least you’re conscious about what you’re eating and then it’s your decision. If you feel okay with putting this other stuff in your mouth, all good but at least know that it’s there and look at it.

It makes sense. This is the final question before we go into our lightning round. Our lightning round is a segment of the show where I ask you a single question and if you could answer with a single answer, we’re okay. This is the final question before we get into that, what are the retention rates like online? Did you make the transition on Shopify back in the day or did you move to Shopify somewhere in 2017 or 2016?

We were OG Shopify.

We could talk for another hour but I want to be respectful of your time.

Maybe we talk one time about Shopify. I love Shopify. It has been quite a journey with Shopify.

Let’s do it.

We were on Shopify. Retention is super important. We were always a little bit over 30%. It’s interesting because we come out of an era where it has been strong and acquisition-focused. I’ve been guilty of that as well. Right now, we’re retention-first. Retention is fun. If you are going to look at your retention, first look at who is your customer and try to understand your customer.

From there, you can then say, “What is the customer journey? How does it need to change based on what I’ve learned about my customer?” Whether that’s your email marketing flows or SMS, retention is everything, it’s your confirmation page, and it’s the package they’re getting. Every single step of the customer’s point is retention. Retention can feel overwhelming because acquisition is straightforward, you see your numbers and that’s it.

In retention, what is your CX doing? Are they giving surprise experiences? It’s one of the biggest opportunities to increase your retention. There are many different buttons you can turn if you think about retention. I invite everyone to have a lot of fun with that and pick one area at a time. At some point, we said, “Let’s do, per month, one deep dive in one area.” If you do it all at the same time, it can feel a lot.

It’s overwhelming. What’s your take on retention at the level of a product? Let’s say taste. Some people always talk about retention from a point of view of, “It’s email marketing. It’s going to be your customer support as the post-purchase experience.” In food and beverages particularly, having the right taste profile is important for people to say, “I’m not necessarily addicted but hooked to this taste. I will buy it again.”

We’re funny in that way because we’re more of a health product. I’m not saying taste does not have an effect because I see that some of our better-tasting mixes do have higher retention but people often buy it first for health and not for taste first. That is an important distinction. If you think about more of a snack, 100% taste first. It’s super important.

How we’ve looked at it in the past is we do a lot of customer surveys but also the reviews and setting that properly up and analyzing that data. We’ve made some changes to some of the products, not for margin reasons, which our customers are like, “How can you do this for margins?” I’m like, “This was not for margins. This was to make the taste profile better and to make it easier for you to use those mixes.”

A lot of the mixes are used. We have latte mixes and smoothie mixes, some are in water nowadays. Especially in water, the taste is more important. With a lot of the smoothie mixes, you get to decide also how you want to make them taste. We don’t add sweeteners. We want people to put a banana in their smoothie if they want to have it sweet versus making the sweetest and best-tasting powders mix. We have the most potent and healthiest one and that has been our goal.

You own the taste, whatever you want to do from a sweetener standpoint. It makes a lot of sense. Let’s jump right into the evergreen lightning round of questions or else I would take another hour of your time. What advice would you give yourself five years ago?

Enjoy the ride more. Enjoy the ride because it’s not about the end game. Truly enjoy the journey and the ride of building and interacting with customers, building the team, and all those things.

You’re deep into the outcomes. Are you a morning person?

Yeah.

What does your morning routine look like?

I had a set morning routine. With a baby, I’ve learned to be more flexible. However, it’s still the same but I’m more flexible. I drink water and meditate sometimes longer or shorter, it doesn’t matter. I moved so either I do some Pilates often for 15 or 20 minutes at home quickly. I like to go at least for one walk a day. I will quickly journal my highlights from the day before. I read a couple of pages in a book, 1 or 2 pages, that’s it.

This is quite a lot. I realized I do all these things. They don’t have to take a lot of time. While I walk, I might listen to some affirmations. This is more recent but I listen to affirmations from Louise Hay. She’s fantastic. She passed away but she’s one of the OGs of affirmation. She’s fantastic. To get those positive sentences about how you think about life, your belief systems are important, I’m a huge fan of that. Also, a huge green smoothie or a berry smoothie but a big smoothie. If I’m still hungry, because I’m still nursing so often, some oatmeal as well.

I like the routine. I know you’re a sports person and you’re into sports. What’s your favorite team or athlete?

I feel it has always been changing over the years. I still like Djokovic because he gets also the food part. He’s eating differently. He is using more holistic healing methods to power up his body. He sets a great example for other athletes as well.

What two things can’t you live without?

I can live without my phone. I cannot live without good filtered water. Let’s put it this way, I don’t drink any water. Good filtered water. Right now, with my family. Michael as well as being around Leo, that’s everything, and it’s the most important.

What book are you currently reading or listening to?

If I Could Tell You Just One Thing…

The final question is what’s been your best mistake to date, by that, I mean a setback that’s given you the biggest feedback?

We’ve made many mistakes over the years. Our biggest setback, which I don’t know if it was a mistake, was Michael being sick was the biggest setback probably in our lives. He always says, “It was the best day of my life.” For everyone, your worst day can become your best day. Over the years, there are more of those moments. It’s not that magnitude but other moments have happened. If I look back, it’s always okay. It’s interesting because at the moment itself, sometimes it’s hard to see.

What I nowadays tell myself is everything happens for a reason. That’s a belief system of mine. Even when there are low moments, I tell myself that and trust that only good out of that situation will come. That helps you. Even when things are not going good in the business, I used to be like, “If the business was good, I was good. If the business was bad, I was bad.” It’s an unhealthy relationship. I decoupled that not even in life or business, whatever is happening, I can have that steady emotional line because of that belief system and that trust.

I 100% agree with you. Kristel, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the 2X eCommerce show. For those people who want to find out more about your brand, it’s Your Super. Thank you for coming on to the 2X eCommerce Podcast.

Thank you for having me. We already talked for so long.

This is 1 hour and 20 minutes. If you give me another hour, we’ll be at it.

Next time.

Cheers.