Felix: Today I'm joined by Dustin Riechmann from FireCreek Snacks. FireCreek Snacks sells better for you protein snacks that are the perfect marriage between clean ingredients and exceptional taste. It was started in 2018 and based out of Jerseyville, Illinois, and has sold over $1 million in snacks online. Welcome, Dustin.
Dustin: Thanks, Felix. Really a pleasure to be here with you.
Felix: Yeah. So, the story behind FireCreek Snacks. So, you discovered this FireCreek Snacks already at the brick-and-mortar shop. So, tell us more about that. Tell us about how you discover it. What was that experience?
Dustin: Yeah, absolutely. So, it was 2018. It was a really interesting time in my life because I had just left an 18 year engineering career. So that's my background's always been in engineering consulting, but I was wanting to try some different things. I had numerous online businesses and side hustles, and so I finally pulled the trigger in early 2018.
So, my mindset was kind of looking for new opportunities. I was working with some local clients, some online clients and helping do marketing consulting. So, I was in a new butcher shop in our hometown in Edwardsville, Illinois, which is about an hour from Jerseyville, and my wife, we're just in there shopping, checking out some of the selections. We got some hamburgers to cook, and I found this bag of jerky, and it said FireCreek Jerky. Kind of caught my eye because it had a really cool logo and I was into branding. So, I got it. Got it home, and when I ate some of it I thought it was really good. So I flipped it around and saw that it was actually made in Jerseyville, Illinois, which really kind of startled me in a way because that was actually my hometown. I grew up there until I was 10 years old and then moved away. It's a very small farm town. Yeah, 75,000 people, the county seat in a very rural area. So, it was really bizarre for me to see that this package was from Jerseyville.
So, it intrigued me and I did a little research, and I realized that the place I was at, the butcher shop, which is called Hansen Meat Company, was based in Jerseyville, Illinois also, even though it had a different brand name. So, through a friend of a friend I reached out and met the owner of this butcher shop and discovered that he indeed also owned this, it was called FireCreek Jerky at that point. 
So we got to talking and I actually ended up working with him, his name is Ryan Hansen, to market his brick-and-mortar butcher shops. That was kind of our first engagement there in 2018.
Felix: Yeah. So, you mentioned a couple things there I want to dive into. First thing was that you had mentioned that you always had these kinds of side hustles, numerous online businesses. Talk to us about that, because I think that a lot of people think okay, I got to get it right from the start and hit it out of the park from the beginning. You mention that you've had a lot of kinds of steps along the way. Tell us about some of the things that you learned along the way through successes or failures in previous ventures that helped you when you partnered up to launch FireCreek Snacks online.
Dustin: Yeah, absolutely. So, my very first online business, it still exists, it's called engagedmarriage.com. That's something I did with my wife. It was really growing out of our relationships and the things that we were doing through our church. So, it's kind of an online place for me to write and kind of have a creative outlet. Eventually we started creating digital products. We have a membership site there. So, on the digital side of online marketing and blogging and those sort of things, that's been a big part of my history and kind of where I learned a lot. We wrote a book, did a lot of live presentations and keynotes.
So, and again, that's still active. It's very much more of a passive part of my life at this point. But I did that and really started in 2009 but really it became a business and it became something significant around 2015 when I really just started learning about digital marketing, going to conferences, doing online training, and got a lot more sophisticated in how we were handling that business.
Then yeah, aside from that, I've done all kinds of different side hustles. I've done things like buy golf clubs locally, clean them up and I became an eBay power seller back in the day. So, I would buy them local and then sell them online. Then I had shin splints one time from training for a marathon, and so I came up with this way to get rid of the shin splints pain and I ended up doing a YouTube video on that that kind of went viral, and a business grew out of that, where I was selling these treatment kits. Icing ice bags, and different things that you could use, foam roller, et cetera.
So, I think what I developed through those years is just an eye for opportunities and that's a mindset. So, I do a lot of business coaching now, mostly online. A lot of what we try to unpack is what's the true opportunity that you are passionate about and who do you actually want to serve, because there's an infinite number of things you could do, so you might as well choose something that you want to do.
So, I did a lot of these f random businesses, things that were all based on my own life experiences. It kind of culminated in FireCreek and there's been a lot more success with FireCreek, but I think there's no way that would've happened had I not had this wide variety of experience for the, I guess it's 12 years, going back when I started Engaged Marriage.
Felix: Yeah. It sounds like the kind of methodology that you took was just to try things. Try things out, and I think the question that will pop into someone's head one day, are just trying things, is how far do you take it before you know that okay, this can be something, let's keep moving forward versus okay, let's kind of pull it back and try to see what's next, what else I should be doing.
Dustin: Yeah, for sure. I 100% believe in trying lots of different things. That's a quality I've really tried to instill in our three kids, try to help them be entrepreneurial. It's a big mantra, and it really culminates in my life around 2018. I quit my job, I was getting in better shape and doing keto, so part of the reason I had an eye for these healthier meat snacks. Then leaving my job, I was trying to do that for like three years, and this ties into what you're saying, but I finally came to the realization that leaving my engineering job was not a permanent decision. 
I had put so much of my identity in it, and I had a master's degree in it, and I had a successful career. So, it seemed really crazy to me to leave that and become self-employed. What I finally figured out, and I guess I had my own epiphany moment, was hey, you know what? If I go and I do my own thing, and I have some other businesses, and I suck at it, I can just go back and do engineering. This is not a permanent decision. It took a lot of pressure off my shoulders.
So, I think for anyone who's thinking about starting a business or maybe they have a business and they're not sure if they want to go full force into it, that's a healthy mindset. It's like you can try things without this permanence and this heaviness that it's all or nothing, because a few decisions in life are permanent, but almost no decisions in life are actually permanent.
Felix: Yeah. I think there's this belief that it's hurtful or damaging, where you believe that there's only one story, right? Those stories are retold and you just kind of follow that path, but it's kind of much messier than that. You try a bunch of different things, you pull back, and so on. Don't think that any particular decision, like you're saying, is permanent. 
One thing you had mentioned about how you're getting better, you've gotten better over time at deciding what to try is developing this eye for opportunities. Can you say more about that? What does it mean to have an eye for opportunities?
Dustin: I guess I'm inherently a problem solver. So, my engineering background really helps with that. I can typically see the end result and then the steps to get there. So, that helps me be a good business coach, it helps me sell snack sticks. It helps in a lot of ways. So, yeah, when I say eye for opportunity I mean maybe a great example is my kids last year during the pandemic, and they were home from school, and they were bored and we couldn't go anywhere, they said, "We want to be able to make money." And I'm like, "Well, just think about some ways you could do that." So, they considered some services around our neighborhood. So, they talked about picking up dog waste, they talked about a few different things. So, I helped them just kind of think through that. What's the opportunity here and is this something you'd want to do? What would kind of be your hourly rate?
So, two of my kids decided they were going to do a trash can cleaning business. So, they did that, and actually they did really well. So, they did that last summer and they kind of got through everyone in the neighborhood who wanted that service. So, this year, I said, "Hey, now we've got a customer list. You've got people that really love what you did last year. We've got their testimonials. Do you guys want to do it again?" Sure. So, I helped them post in a neighborhood Facebook group, they made flyers, they kind of expanded and now they do egress windows, because what I told them, I was like, "Well, when you start meeting your neighbors and you do a good job, they're going to tip you, they're going to want you to do other jobs, they're going to want you to weed their gardens, they're going to want you to do these egress window clean outs." So, to me that's just an eye for opportunity. People drive around our neighborhood all the time. There's dirty trash cans, and this is the first time I've ever heard and I've lived here for eight years, of anyone doing this kind of service.
So yeah, it's just this idea that opportunity is everywhere. I mean, everyone's got problems to solve, everyone's got life experiences that put them one step ahead of someone in a given path, and those are opportunities for businesses and opportunities to serve people.
Felix: Yeah, and when you're thinking about an opportunity, what do you look at to determine if it is an opportunity worth pursuing? Because you mentioned here that you are just a natural problem solver. So, I think there's two parts of that, which is one, what is how to identify the problems, and then how to identify the correct solution for it. I guess those two things come together to highlight opportunities. Talk to us about those two components of it. Identifying problems and identifying the right solution for it.
Dustin: Yeah. So, like I said, there's a limitless number of problems to solve. So, it really comes down to where's the intersection of what you have skills in, what you're passionate about, what your experience makes you excited to pursue. So, my kids aren't necessarily excited about cleaning trash cans, and there are circumstances in life. They can't drive yet, this was during the shutdowns, there was not a lot of other opportunities. So, they had a really nice set of boundaries, controls that said okay, you have a very limited thing that you can do. So now within that, what are the opportunities? So, we looked at neighborhood services in that case. For me, I'm probably not the best to answer the question of how do you find the right opportunities because it has become problematic, right? It's easy for me to take on too much because I'm like, "Oh, that sounds exciting, and that's exciting." So, I can sometimes have too many projects going on at the same time, but whenever I coach other people, I mean, kind of where we start is almost all of them are doing something based on their own life experience, right?
So, say I've been coaching a client who does online coaching for women with chronic illnesses. So, why that? Why that opportunity? Well, it's because it was her life story. She had juvenile diabetes when she was 17. She's had two organ transplants, and she's come through that with this attitude that that's her reality, but she still gets to choose her future.
So, we honed in on that and that's the opportunity. So, once you define something you're really passionate about, you've got experience in and it's something you can really help people with, that's the perfect combination of problems and solutions. So, for me, FireCreek was an excellent opportunity because I was eating, I still do, I eat keto, low carb. My kids have gluten intolerances. One kid has a food allergy. So, I'm a label reader. It was a local brand, it was from my home town, and it had this amazing opportunity in the sense that it was only sold locally at the time that I found it, and I had the ability to partner and bring it online. So, there's a lot of factors there that made FireCreek an opportunity that was really worth my time.
Felix: Yeah, definitely want to talk about that. That moment when you made that connection and that partnership and brought it online. Before we get there, one thing you mentioned earlier was around identifying who you want to serve. I think that this one is often maybe skipped over, where I will serve anyone that will give me money or that will pay me for my product. So, tell us more about that. Is that a trap? How do you make sure that you're not just taking money or rather serving anyone that's willing to pay you?
Dustin: Yeah. So, when it comes to identifying your audience, I mean, it typically comes pretty naturally. It's the people that you like to serve, it's the people that give you energy. It's often people that you're a few steps ahead of in the journey if you're doing more of a high touch coaching, or consulting, or services. So, most people kind of gravitate towards a niche based on their own life experiences.
So, in FireCreek we have many different audiences. So, they're not all going to be my best friend, but there are certain ones that if I'm going to partner with them on a promotion or be on their podcast, or do something with their email list, it's going to be because that particular segment, that particular target audience is someone that gets me excited, is someone that I know I can serve really well based on my own personal experience.
Felix: Is this something that you can just kind of, is like a thought experiment where you're just thinking, would I be excited to work with this person, or how often is that accurate enough? Just like you're thinking about going through a thought process of asking yourself whether you'd be excited to partner with this person or be excited to have this person as a client or customer.
Dustin: Yes. So, I guess a good example is a business coaching client. I can look at the surface level and see what they do. Is it something I believe in? I don't want to do something that would contradict deeply held personal beliefs. But in those cases, my first step is always a free consultation call. Some people view that as me trying to do a sales call and get someone to sign on as a client. For me, it's the exact opposite. It's very much a transparent conversation. I want to understand their goals, their beliefs, their life experiences, how they're trying to serve and who they're trying to serve, because I want to be a really good partner for them if I'm going to do something as deep as business coaching. So, it's more of a screening process to see if we're compatible. I mean, it's not as serious as a romantic relationship, but when it comes to those types of relationships it's like dating, right? You have to see if your personalities jive, and if you're just a good fit. 
That's true to a 10X level when it comes to business partnerships. We were just talking about promotional partners or coaching clients. Those are important that you're compatible and that you can really serve that person, but if you have a business partnership, like I have with Ryan, and I've had a couple in the past, that's much more like a marriage. It's a pretty high level engagement. It requires a lot of trust and communication. So, it's just the more mature, deeper version of some of these more surface level relationships.
Felix: Got it. One other thing I want to touch on is around this thing you're doing where you're cultivating entrepreneurship in your own children. For other entrepreneurs out there that want to start teaching their kids or seeing if there's interest in entrepreneurship, what recommendations do you have here about introducing children to entrepreneurship?
Dustin: Yeah. I think it is setting that example for them. In my case, it was a fairly extreme example of I went from being gone all the time working to being home all the time, doing my own thing. They're very used to me saying, "All right, I'm going to be in my office doing a call. Please, watch the dog." So, they kind of see how that works in a practical day-to-day sense. For me it's really just trying to cultivate their natural skills and interest.
So, I talked about my two kids cleaning trash cans. Again, I have three kids. The middle one had no interest in that at all. So, was I going to force her to go clean trash cans? No, not at all. My oldest is my only son, and then my youngest daughter, they're both very hands-on people. They like to be outside, they like to get dirty, they like to fish. So, that was a good fit for them. My middle daughter is very artistic. So, she's not the type that you would talk to and think, "Oh, she's entrepreneurial." However, heading into the holidays last year she got really into calligraphy and hand lettering. I said, "This is awesome. Do you mind if you do a few samples and I could post them online, on Facebook and some friends and family and see for Christmas gift tags or custom things for Christmas gifts." So she got super excited about that. For her it's less about the money, it's more that wow, people would want my stuff. She's 14 years old. So, she did that. She got a lot of business. She was very busy heading up to Christmas. A lot of custom gift tags and things like that.
So again, that was just meeting her where she's at. I'm not forcing her to ... I think the chances she goes on and is a business person and an independent entrepreneur, probably low. I mean, it could be though, but she loves art. So, artists can certainly be entrepreneurs. So, I felt like that was ... I was really proud of her and really proud of that connection that she made that her things have intrinsic value but they also have a market value if you put them out there and have some confidence in yourself.
Felix: Yeah. What I'm hearing about your approach to children and to your clients and anyone else that's coming to you for advice is that you're getting them to lean into their skills. So you said meeting them where they're at. Try to figure out what they're interested in rather than kind of looking for the fastest or the biggest buck. I think this goes back to the idea of this scarcity mindset, where you touched on the fact that there are infinite problems that need to be solved. You want to pick one that you're actually passionate about. I think this is a lesson that a lot of people get, but it's hard to live it. Maybe give us your own experience about where you can end up, if you do just optimize for what's the biggest profit or what's the biggest business you can grow rather than looking at your innate skill sets, your innate interests.
Dustin: Yeah. So, I mean, I guess an example of that was when I was doing engineering I was good at engineering. It was a good job. It was something I was very proud of at the time. I was a partner in the engineering firm, it was a privately held company. So, in a sense it was a bit entrepreneurial, but I just realized after a certain amount of time I was no longer challenged. I wasn't feeling nearly as excited about that day-to-day. 
So, it wasn't about the money, and so maybe that's where I'm a little bit unique. I'm probably not the type of guy who's going to go ever be a CEO at a very large company and wear a suit and to the nine-to-five and kind of go that route, even if it was big money. For me, I'm much more driven by doing things I enjoy. I feel like I'm serving people, feel like I have freedom and I have the ability to have kind of almost unlimited upside in what I do, but it's not going to be the big payoff real quick. That's not what drives me. So, I tend to attract clients that are also more purpose driven. I think that's funny, because people would look externally at what I most visibly do, which is FireCreek, and they could sell, "Well, you just sell snack sticks. You sell snack sticks online." But what you don't see in that is the customer service, the passion, the going and sampling, and being part of families' lives that are trying to eat better, and kids with food allergies.
We're doing a lot with snack sticks that isn't what you see if you just walk into and see it on a shelf at a gas station. There's a lot more behind the brand than that, and that's important to me. So, that's part of the reason that FireCreek is one of the main things I do. It's because it's much more than just a snack stick.
So yeah, I mean, that's my mindset. If you would've asked me 10 years ago. I did a lot of side hustles and things like I mentioned earlier that they just kind of happened or they were opportunities. It was a way to make some money, and pay off some debt, and help put food in my kids' mouths when my wife decided to stay home from work. So, I was doing things out of necessity, and you can do that for a while, and you can grind through that for six months or a year, but for me I found that well, once I realized there's a lot of other opportunities, it's like I might as well be a lot more conscious about what I take on and enjoy it. 
I'll be 42 here soon, so I feel like I'm at a point in my life where I've done the grind and I've done that stuff. I don't need to do that anymore, and so I want to do things that really make me excited to get up in the morning and also allow me to have really cool relationships. That's another thing that I've come to really value the past several years, is just the relationships. Again, whether it's a business partnership, whether it's a promotional partnership, whether it's a client. It's important to me to like the people I'm working with on a regular basis.
Felix: Yeah. One thing you mentioned was about how you work with a lot of clients and you yourself are purpose driven. Is that something that comes easy for you or is that something that, or even your clients, or do you have to help people develop this sense for what their purpose is?
Dustin: It's a good question. It comes pretty easy for me now. Again, 25 year old Dustin, probably not. I was probably just trying to make as much per hour as I possibly could doing engineering work and working overtime. A lot of clients do come to me with a ... So, a lot of the way this happens is people have a story. They have done something that they are passionate about but they don't have the business foundation worked out yet, right?
So, the health coach example. She's had a personal experience. She's worked with numerous people and people have paid her money, but how do you take that and make it an actual business? Because there's a difference between having a hobby or having something you're passionate about and having a business. To make it a business it has to have a systematic way to get leads, and clients, and systems in place to take care of those clients and all the necessities of business. So, a lot of times that's kind of the piece I fill in, is getting them a lot more clear. People come to me usually when they feel stuck. Like hey, I've made some progress, I've got what I think is a really good business, or at least a good business idea, but how do I actually make this a consistent thing? How do I get it out there? How do I market it and find high quality leads that I know I'm going to love working with? 
So, that part a lot of times people aren't clear on because it's a different question than ... You can answer what are you passionate about, but some things you can be passionate about that would never be a business, but finding the intersection of something you're passionate about and something that has market value is kind of step two. Then step three is actually making it in a business that is going to give you whatever income and whatever freedom that you personally desire, right? That's kind of the customization part of, that's the best part of being an entrepreneur and be able to create these opportunities for yourself.
Felix: Makes sense. Well I want to jump now to how you discover, once you discover FireCreek Jerky, you mentioned at the time, you were able to identify the owner of the brand and connect with them and partner with them. Tell us about that, because I think a lot of people don't consider that, where it's like I want to start a business from scratch myself, but you identified an opportunity to collaborate and partner with an existing company or an existing product, existing brand. Tell us more about that experience.
Dustin: It's really interesting in hindsight to see how the dots got connected there. But like I mentioned, I met Ryan. We kind of hit it off. We're similar in age, similar in family, kind of similar in values. Grew up in the same hometown, even though we didn't know each other at all. At the time I was two years ahead of him and I moved out, like I said, when I was 10. 
So, kind of what was going on there in that mix was he had this jerky brand. He had some partners in that. They had done for a couple years they'd been trying to get some local distribution. It just never really got any traction. It was a very difficult product to make, to make consistently. He was trying to do an all natural jerky with no sugar added. So, it was difficult, it was expensive. So, he was kind of frustrated with that. He knew the flavors that he had developed were amazing, and so he wanted to put them into a snack stick format.
So, for your listeners that aren't familiar, a snack stick, the traditional thing people would think of is Slim Jim. So, we're kind of the anti Slim Jim in the sense that we're craft, all natural ingredients. So, it's very different, but that's kind of the format of the snack. So, he was making that transition. His partners at that time were not really interested in being on that ride, and so he was getting out of that. He was in this point of transition where he had just taken over his family business full-time, the butcher shops, and he had this brand that he believed in but knew it needed a change, a pivot. That's about the time I was working with him on his marketing.
So, we just started collaborating in late 2018. Another big thing of mine, a big belief of mine is that you lead and give other people wins as much as possible early on, and that's exactly what I did. He was paying me for the marketing for the brick-and-mortar. I said, "Hey, I would love to work with you on this FireCreek thing. I'll help you rebrand it as FireCreek snacks, because it's not going to be just the jerky product anymore. I will build the website." So, I built the Shopify site in 2018, all for free. I said, "We'll work it out. If the online sales start to come, you can give me a percentage of those. We can come to an agreement." So, that was the origin of all of this, was basically working for free. I knew it was going to be a great product. I knew that it would have legs online. Ryan believed that too, he just didn't have the ... He had only done local business, so he did not have the skills or the ability to get it online and just didn't kind of know where to start.
So, it was a really great timing for both of us. Then as that transitioned in 2019, we started selling online. It was slow, and it was just kind of a steady grind as far as the sales on Shopify, but we actually jumped into primarily in 2019 was wholesale, selling into other brick-and-mortars. So, we got into a bunch of golf courses. Ryan and I traveled to a dozen trade shows in 2019. So, we were gone a lot, going to things like Ace Hardware shows, true value, some convenience store shows, the national hardware show. We went to the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, it's a golf show. Basically getting our boots on the ground, him and I and sometimes some friends for larger shows, and just sampling like crazy. I know I've given 5,000 people toe to toe samples. That did a lot of things for the company. It got us some client or it got us some sales, it got us some placement as far as being in different brick-and-mortars throughout the country. It gave us a lot of personal credibility and confidence that this is a really good product. 
It's not just us that think so, it's every person that tastes it is like, "Oh my gosh. This is amazing." And it gave us some objections that we knew we had to overcome, and it gave us kind of the bullet points that you'll find on our website now. What do people actually care about? Because you find that out really quickly whenever you're standing in front of them, and you've just convinced them to try something they didn't want to try, because they think it's like the other brands out there, and then you see their eyes light up. 
We saw our target audience completely differently. I mean, that is expensive, it is time consuming, it is stressful. I'm an introvert, so it was very tiring to be 12 hours standing on a trade show floor talking to people and getting their feedback, but I got to say, I don't think that we would do it any other way because that was baptism by fire, immersion into client or customer research and development.
So, through that, through learning all that we learned there we've changed all our packaging, all our messaging. The brand has evolved. So, it was a year of torture in some ways but it was also very exciting. So yeah. We can talk about the details, but then kind of heading into 2020, we had continually grown our online sales, but everyone knows in 2020 what happened when COVID hit.
So, we were already focusing on growing our online sales based on all that we had learned at these trade shows, and then the shutdown started, a lot of people started being more comfortable with selling online. So, we had a huge spike in our online business, but we were well positioned for it because of our experience in 2019.
Felix: Awesome. So, I think the key thing here you mentioned was about how you're sampling. So you're giving away things for free, but you got a lot and maybe invaluable feedback coming from that. You mentioned a couple of things here, which was getting these brick-and-mortar clients but also building your own confidence, which I think is really key here. I think it gives you that fuel to keep going. That people actually like this and it helps you keep going, right? That there is something here. Now the most kind of actionable things that came out of it, or maybe more practical things that came out of it, was to be able to have the sampling actually write the marketing and develop the marketing and the messaging for you. You mentioned how to, rather what the objections were. Tell us more about that. What were some of the objections that came up that you discovered through sampling and how did you address those objections in your marketing?
Dustin: Yeah. I mean, the number one is the need for education in our market. The massive problem we face is what I mentioned earlier, it's not just someone just throwing Slim Jim as a brand under the bus. There's Jack Link's, there's lots of national brands that sell a variety of meat products, and they all have their mechanically separated chicken, they have artificial ingredients. People have this memory of picking them up at a gas station and then having a headache after they ate it because it has MSG, or soy, or different food allergens. So, that's the reaction that we got way more than we would've ever expected.
So, I think I can share a great example. We went to the PGA Merchandise Show, again, it's a golf show. It was our very first trade show. It was in January of 2019. We had no idea what we were doing. It was very expensive. We flew down there, a ton of samples. We expected golf pros to be there, not like PGA professionals, but if people go to a local golf course they typically have a club pro. So he's a member of the PGA and he is, and I say he because they're almost all male, there's definitely females, but most of the people who manage golf courses. That's who we were thinking about as being our customer at this show, because we wanted them to sample and then sell them at their golf shop or sell them on the course.
So, they were there, of course. A lot of middle-aged men, and we thought, "Hey, we sell meat snacks. These middle-aged men are going to like meat snacks." And that was true. What we didn't expect was the moms and kids who came along to the trade shows. So, they would come by and hey, I would love for you to try this, and they're like, "Hey, I know your four year old daughter would love this teriyaki stick." And they would just look at us like we're crazy, like, "Oh, we don't eat that stuff." Because in their mind it was this unhealthy full of junk and it would have a bad texture, and then they wouldn't be able to get the film off their mouth. That's the experience people have with meat snacks in the past. So, that's the number one objection, is like I'm just not going to like it. I can't eat that. I can't have soy, I can't have gluten, I can't have MSG, all the stuff that's in these traditional impulse snacks. 
So, the health things were a big objection, but even bigger than that was the fact that people just assumed they wouldn't like it. They assumed they wouldn't like the taste and texture. I say people. The people who are not your traditional gas station contractors grabbing a snack at the local gas station on their way to a job site.
So, we originally thought that was our customer because that's the traditional demographic that's been targeted in this market. What we very quickly discovered is those people will eat it but they only care about taste. Then there's the people who would only eat something uber clean who don't care about taste at all. There's other products in our category that are really, really, really clean, all grass-fed beef, Whole30 approved, but in my opinion their taste and texture is just not good.
So, what we learned was okay, we need to lead with the taste, because people don't care about the health claims if it tastes horrible, the people that we want to talk to. We're not at a national health symposium, we're at a trade show with golf people and golf families. Once we convince them that it's going to taste good, all I have to do is get them to try a bite. Now they're convinced that okay, this actually tastes awesome, the texture is really good, this is different. So now the exciting part is okay mom, I want you to look at this carton, look at the nutrition facts, there's no five syllable words, there's no dairy, wheat, soy, all these major food allergens that us as parents are dealing with out there. There's no gluten. So, the clean ingredients becomes this super bonus. Oh wow, not only do these taste good, but I can actually feel good sending them to my kid in their lunchbox so they can take them to the youth baseball games because they don't have allergens in them.
I mean, that's the big message. On our website you'll exceptional taste, clean ingredients. That's kind of the two sentence summary or two phrase summary of how we market. People care a lot about taste, our people do, but they also value clean ingredients. So, that's what we learned. Now we know, after looking back two years after that, 65, 70% of the people that order from us online are female. So, they may be eating them themselves, they may be buying them for their family, or their kids, or their husband. Women are the primary grocery buyer in most households. But man, you would've told me that in early 2019 I would've thought you're crazy, and most people assume our audience is all male and it's actually not at all. It's actually primarily female, which is something we would've never guessed had we not been through these different experiences.
Felix: Yeah. What about how it plays out in your packaging? You had mentioned that you had changed that over time as well. I would assume changing a website, changing the copy in a website is way cheaper, right, than changing a packaging. So tell us about your experience with evolving the packaging.
Dustin: Yeah. I mean, our initial packaging was about as cheap as you can get. It was just plastic and we had stickers with the different flavors. That was kind of similar to the stuff that Ryan sold in his meat shop, the kind of family looking old fashioned type of label. Then we went to, when I got involved and it became FireCreek Snacks, we're still using stickers because stickers is just a cheaper way to do packaging, not on a per unit basis, but the startup cost to go beyond stickers is pretty high.
So, once we realized hey, it's time to go to a fully printed film, which is what we use now. It's a much more premium look. It gives you a ton of surface area to put messaging on. It's front and back printed. So actually if you flip over the back on one of our snack sticks, the full ingredients, nutrition panel is on the stick itself. So, once we knew we're heading that way, we knew we wanted to update the messaging. So, if you look at our sticks and if you look at the cartons that are on display at a store, for one, they're very bold colors, because we want people to understand there's now four different flavors and that they are very different flavors. So, they actually have food imagery on them. So, I'm looking at our sweet heat barbecue. It's got like a barbecue sauce, some peppers, and it almost looks like an all natural food. If you didn't know what was in the box you would never guess it's a snack stick. But it's also got all the claims that people actually care about, the health claims. So it says gluten-free. That's a big objection in our space. Seven grams of protein, because we primarily get a lot of high protein, low sugar type people. It could be keto, it could just be people who don't like to eat a lot of sugar. No MSG, no soy. 
Then the other thing you might notice on there is it's product of the USA. That's a big differentiator in our space. A lot of our more clean competitors who are using grass-fed beef, a lot of that actually comes from Argentina, Tasmania, New Zealand, and then of course a lot of people get their packaging supplies overseas as well for cost, but we're pretty proud of the fact that we're a Midwest US company. We currently only sell in the US. We'll expand that eventually. So yeah, that product of the USA is another thing that we found out people found important, and it's important to Ryan and I personally. So, that's also featured on our packaging.
Felix: Yeah. As you're learning these things and changing your packaging. Again, so we had mentioned that it's very expensive to do this. Are there ways to test that out or just to be ... I guess, what approach would you take to make sure that you limit the number of times you have to change your packaging?
Dustin: Yeah, for sure. I mean, one of the basic things we would do is get prototypes of the cartons, the things that would be on display in a brick-and-mortar store. I think there's a fancy name for it, like some kind of visual acuity test or something. But basically we would go into a local retailer, grocery store, and we would put it on the shelf next to the competitors and then step away and try to, or have our wives come, people who aren't quite as wrapped up in it, and does it stand out? What's the first thing you notice? Does it look different than the things next to it? That's really helpful at the carton level, the kind of display level. We also have a floor display that some retailers will take, and it's like a freestanding floor display. It's got those health claims front and center right on there too. It's got our logo up top, which looks like a big flame, so it kind of catches your eye. But on the sticks themselves, like what you would see on our website, because people are primarily buying loose snack stick, different quantities or different sampler packs. Yeah, the visuals there, I think the thing that most people notice is the significant difference in each package based on the color. 
So, that was kind of crowdsource. It's asking. We had the benefit of having two brick-and-mortar stores. So, Ryan could put stuff out there and ask people for feedback. Same thing when we're developing new flavors. He is a meat genius. I didn't mention, he's a third-generation owner of this family business. So, he's done this his whole life. He's really, really good at it. So, I value his opinion highly, but we'll take it to our friends and family, which is good, but you kind of get skewed feedback. So, the best thing you can do, whether it's trying out a different packaging or trying out a different flavor, is have real people buy it in his actual stores and then get their feedback on the spot. 
So, we do a lot of that. We're not super sophisticated in the sense of doing big market studies. We are much more hands-on. We like to let people try things and give us immediate feedback, and kind of press them to be honest, because people tend to try to be too kind.
Yeah, so I think I mentioned we're on our fourth generation of packaging. I hope it's our last for a long time, because if people are not familiar with consumer packaged goods, when you're getting the individual stick packaging, and the cartons, and then we've got cases that hold the cartons. We've got this floor display. These things are all very expensive to do the initial run. You get plates made, and so it's costing thousands of dollars to get one of these things made, but after you get that initial investment the per unit cost is actually much cheaper than doing it the way we did previously. The fully printed film is very efficient, but it's expensive to set up. So yeah, changes are a killer. 
The other thing with our product is it's USDA inspected. Because it's a meat product and it goes over state lines, our manufacturing partners have USDA inspectors on site, federally inspected. So, it's got that on the packaging, but that also means all of our nutrition facts, it all has to be sent off for verification, certification. So, it's also a slow process. So, our fourth flavor, so we have original, which is like a jerky flavor, we have kicker, which is a spicy version of that. We have teriyaki, which is our most popular. Our newest is sweet heat barbecue. 
So, we actually started developing that. We had the recipe, we knew exactly what we wanted last February, and then COVID happens. So the USDA approval took like seven months. Then we had delays in getting materials. There was like a plastic shortage this year because of supply chain. So, I mean, that took like ... We ended up releasing it I think it was March of 2021. So, it took over a year to get that from knowing exactly what we wanted to actually having it in our hands. So, it's a tough process if you're trying to make changes.
Felix: Yeah, makes sense. Now, speaking of things that can kill your business. One thing you mentioned too was about how you almost went bankrupt due to the way that you jumped into Facebook Ads very quickly with a big agency before you're ready. So, tell us more about that. What happened?
Dustin: Yeah. This was a major lesson learned. So, like I said, 2019, the very beginning, we're doing this trade show and then we're kind of going to the next trade show, the next trade show. We realized quickly that we're getting overextended on our wholesale business. That it's tough, it's going to take time, the profit margins aren't very good. So, of course we wanted to get more online business. I should mention, there is a period here where I'm kind of working for free. I'm advising, helping Ryan, I'm doing the online marketing, but I had no part on the business.
So, he had a friend of a friend who had an agency, and they were very good people, but they were very expensive. So, for their thousands of dollars of fees they wanted to immediately spend a ton of money on Facebook Ads to kind of justify their fees. They're used to working with big brands and things like that, and this is very much the startup stage.
So, again, this is all Ryan's decision. I'm not blaming him, I didn't complain too hard, but I was like, "This might be pretty risky." So, in that first quarter of 2019, while we're busy traveling and doing other stuff, he kind of says, "Okay, new agency, do your thing." And they never did get a positive ROAS. I think it was four month that he was paying their fees plus losing money on the ads. We got sales, but it was not nearly enough to justify it. Yeah, that was basically coming out of Ryan's bank account at that point, and it was not an exaggeration to say it almost bankrupted things. I mean, it was like oh my gosh, this was a big mistake. Yeah.
Then it kind of opened up an opportunity for me in a sense because he was kind of like, "Oh no, this is not going well." So, I was able to buy in and become a partner in that second quarter of 2019, and then have since increased my equity to where we're nearly equal partners now. Yeah, it was kind of, again, I don't really believe in coincidences. It was kind of like well, this was really painful, but it opened his eyes into the value of having a partner onboard. At that point I had been traveling, and selling, getting the online sales that we had without those ads organically, and then he could see the value of what I was doing. So, it kind of culminated in a really good opportunity for both of us, but it was definitely painful going through it and very stressful.
Felix: Yeah. What about today? Is that something that you guys invest in, in Facebook Ads or any kind of paid acquisition?
Dustin: We do. So, we've always kind of done. After that experience I basically handled the stuff. We've always done retargeting, just basic things to get our product back in front of people that had been to our site or abandoned carts. So, that's always very profitable. In I'd say the last three months or so we've engaged with a much smaller agency. We're not quite hitting the goals that we established with them, but their fees aren't nearly as high to overcome and they're very high touch. We talk weekly. They take my input seriously.
So, I think that we're going to stick with that route. We're not spending a ton. I mean, our primary marketing channel is partnerships. I mean, we can talk about that if you'd like. I think people would probably find it interesting, all the ways that we've grown our online business for free basically, without paying for ads.
Felix: Yeah. Let's talk about it. You mentioned earlier about the strategy of partnerships. Tell us more about how that works. What do you mean by partnership?
Dustin: So, basically just getting your brand, your product in front of someone else's audience. It's the most basic thing, right? In a way that's mutually beneficial. So, I'll come back to podcasts, because what we're doing right now is one of those channels, for sure. It's definitely the biggest for me personally because I love listening to podcasts. I like being on podcasts. But some other things that we've done just to kind of open people's minds is we've been featured in a lot of different subscription boxes. So, the financials of that can be handled in different ways, but if we're in a box of keto snacks, that's a really good way for us to get in front of a highly qualified customer, usually for free or maybe with a donation of some product. 
I've done things like getting email features from people in related industries that aren't competitors. So, an example of that would be I have a coaching client who is in the barbecue space. So, he's a brand ambassador. He does a lot of content with grilling and smoking meat. So, the people on his email list like meat and they like smoked meat, and ours are made with real hickory smoke. So, people who like that kind of flavor and nostalgia really like our product. So, he, I said, "Hey, if you'll do an honest review." He and his wife were already subscribers. I knew he liked the product. I said, "If you'll do a review, take some photos and send it to your email list I'll give you a discount code so that they win, you win. I'll give you some direct payment as sponsoring your post." So, that's a partnership. I got in front of a highly qualified audience. It was a win for him, it was a win for us, and our ROI on that was great, even though we did spend some money. I've done lots of other giveaways with smaller people or people that aren't quite as targeted where there's no money involved. There's maybe just giving them some product to try out and they can give an honest review.
So, that's a really basic partnership, but the primary thing that I focus on is getting in front of other people's online audiences. That could be a YouTube review or interview, it could be do an Instagram live. I'm doing that with some keto influencers here in about a week. We're going to do a giveaway, and then they're going to basically, all of them are going to promote it through their Instagram, all for free, just because they like me. The way it came about was I was on their podcast. So, we've developed a relationship. Then again, kind of the major thing that anyone listening would be familiar with is podcasts.
So, if you have a good story, if you have some things of value that you can offer to an audience, it's a great long format opportunity. So, we're talking for probably nearly an hour. These people will know the brand story, they understand what the product's about, the pains we've been through, the accomplishments we've had. So, a lot of people will just want to try it just to support a small business and just because they would like to eat this way too. So, that could be in a business podcast like this or an e-commerce podcast like this. I've been on kind of what I call gluten-free mom shows, people that talk about gluten-free eating. I've been on several keto related podcasts. So, in any audience there is our customer. Some portion of that audience is someone who likes to eat protein, they like to eat clean, and they just like a tasty snack, or they have kids that like tasty snacks. So yeah, and for me it's just fun, right?
So, for people listening and thinking about this, what I would say is there's the aspect of direct sales. I can give a coupon code today and hopefully some people will go buy some snacks. That's awesome. That makes it worthwhile on its own, but it goes so much deeper than that. The reason this is so much better, in my opinion, than Facebook Ads is it's long format, like I said, but there'll be great relationships that come out of our recording. So, now Felix and I know each other. So, he may know another brand that I should talk to, or a Facebook agency, or a potential partner. There's lots of people listening and maybe they have a brand, they have a Shopify store, they think they would like to sell our product as a wholesaler, right? Or they're a distributor, or they know someone. This literally happened to me. I met the lead snacks buyer for protein at Walmart because someone heard me on a podcast, because it's all about relationships. The cool thing about being in front of a reasonable size audience of people who are ambitious is they all either do things themselves or they know people, and I'll hopefully get emails, and we'll make connections. I'll have Zoom calls with people, and I just get to meet a lot of cool people.
I'd say the past two years, the best relationships, business relationships I've had have been because I've been on a podcast and someone resonated with some part of my story and reached out. I always give my email address. I'm very open to those opportunities. Then kind of the more technical thing is it's great to SEO, because there'll be backlinks from different websites if you're on their show. It gives you a lot of credibility, in my opinion. I've been on like 20 podcasts, so it makes FireCreek seem legitimate. 
A lot of the coaching I do with business people is getting their business dialed in and ready, and then helping them get on other people's platforms to benefit their business. So, I have a health coach. We can find podcasts to talk about chronic pain, and chronic illness, and get her on there because she has a lot of value and her story is extremely touching. But don't get on there until you're ready and you have a call to action, and you have a business purpose. 
So, I think anyone listening who's got a Shopify store, if you sell a product or if you do services in this area, there are some podcasts, probably some that you listen to, that you should prepare to try to get in front of those audiences and serve them. Do a really good job and then you'll see the returns, and it's a lot of fun, and it's a lot better than spending thousands of dollars on Facebook agencies if you can avoid that.
Felix: Yeah. Speaking of having a call to action, you had mentioned that you have a discount code for any listeners that might be interested in purchasing from your store. Can you share that with the audience?
Dustin: Yeah, absolutely. So, the store is just firecreeksnacks.com and the coupon code is just Shopify. So, if you've been in Shopify at checkout, I'm sure everyone on here is familiar with the Shopify checkout. It'll take 15% off your order. Yeah, I'd love to get some snacks in people's hands and get their feedback.
Felix: Yeah, and speaking of your website, one thing that I noticed was that on the main landing page it's not structured like a typical kind of a landing page, a typical homepage of any other website. It's almost reminiscent of almost like a sales page that you would come across. Talk to us more about the design decision into making the main, I guess the landing page of your website designed this way.
Dustin: Yeah, some people think this is clever, some people think it's cringey. For me, it's just kind of how it happened. So, if you go to firecreeksnacks.com, that's actually a WordPress site. So, I'm very adept at WordPress and I can do the landing pages and all those things. Then when you click buy now or shop, it takes you to shop.firecreeksnacks.com, which is a subdomain, and that's where now you're on Shopify, right? So, one of the reasons it probably looks different is that main homepage is not actually Shopify. Shopify is on a subdomain of it, to get technical. But it works really well. It's a simple page. It's kind of like our main website. It just has the landing page you mentioned, and it's got nutrition facts, and it's got a review section to see all the different testimonials and a contact form. But any time you click anything on that site that says shop, you're now immediately on the Shopify store page, which probably looks more like a traditional Shopify store with all the products right there and then the product detail pages below those. But yeah, it's worked out really well. 
Our conversion rate is 10 to 12%, which is really high. Now, that's skewed because not all of our traffic makes it to Shopify, but once people get to Shopify they're very highly converting. So yeah, it's something I may modify in the future, but that's kind of how it ended up and it's worked really well, so I haven't changed that. I didn't want to change it.
Felix: Awesome, yeah. One other thing I noticed too was that you lead with video kind of testimonials and reviews, which you don't see too often, but I think that's a great thing to try. Just lends more credibility too to the reviews that are given by your customers. Now, I want to ask one other thing about the website. Are there any particular tools or apps that you rely on to help run the business?
Dustin: Yeah. So, one that you mentioned, some of those testimonials is called Loox, which is L-O-O-X. That's basically our testimonial review capture tool. So, that's an app on Shopify that automatically prompts people, I think it's two weeks after their order, to come back and leave a review. Then if they leave an image or video in that review, then they get a coupon code for 20% off. So, it really incentivizes people to leave good reviews. 
A big mistake, I only started collecting those maybe last October or something, and I think we're over nearly 400. It's not a ton, but it's a huge improvement over zero. So, you can see in the Shopify portion of the site and that homepage site, and really when we run promotions and we have landing pages I always have a bunch of those reviews on there with real people, their faces. That helps a lot for me to get that education piece. When people see it's a mom or it's a kid eating the snack stick, like oh wait, this is different than what I think of when I think of snack sticks. So, it's kind of an instant way to not only give credibility but kind of qualify people.
So, that's looks. We use bold subscriptions. Subscriptions are a significant part of our business. When people usually they buy a sampler pack the first time through, and then what they do is subscribe and save. They save additional money and they get regular shipments. 
Then we are currently adding, I'm right in the process of adding one click upsell. So, we've had tons of success and I've done digital marketing for all these years, and we have never even had an upsell on the site, which is a huge opportunity lost. So, we're adding that. The other thing we're adding here this month is Postscript, which is an SMS marketing tool. We've also not been collecting SMS. So, we do a lot of email marketing, and email marketing is our primary revenue driver from our existing customers, but definitely excited to get into SMS.
Felix: Awesome. Yeah, firecreeksnacks.com is the website. I'll leave you with this last question. What would you say has been the biggest lesson you've learned over the last year that you're now applying moving forward?
Dustin: I'd say my biggest lesson in business is that partnerships are everything. I described several levels and several types of partnerships. So, when I say partnership, it's not necessarily a formal partnership. It's the win-win scenario, right? If you can provide value to someone, it's inevitable that that's going to come back to you. I describe that as a partnership. So, in business there's lots of ways that those can come about, but that's my number one lesson. I'm always on the lookout for great partnerships, for new relationships, new friendships, new mastermind counterparts. I love to learn and I love to give and help people with the experiences that I've had.
Felix: Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your experience, Dustin.
Dustin: Absolutely, Felix. It was awesome. Thank you for having me.