The Flax of life

This week, I’ll share with you a story of the first business I ever started to give you an idea of what the road to here has looked like from my point of view. 

About six months into my career as a manager, I discovered the thing I thought I for sure wanted to be when I grew up wasn’t what I wanted be.

So I got more serious about my side hustle - the Flax of Life. 

I bought flax seed from a wholesaler, ground it up in a coffee grinder, and packaged it into 500g and 1kg resealable bags. I stuck a label on it with my business name, logo, and product information. That was the easy part. The hard part? Finding customers that wanted to buy it. I thought it would sell itself on the merit of it’s health benefits alone. 

I discovered that getting a meeting to pitch my flax products to businesses - grocery stores, gyms, health food stores - was almost as hard as getting the sale. I didn’t know anyone in any of these industries, I just opened the phone book and started cold calling every business I thought would be able to make money selling it.

After a few rejections, the doubt really started to beat me up. Who was I to dare think my product was worthy of sitting on the shelves of the store beside Bobs Red Mill? Bobs Red Mill probably had a big factory and a big product portfolio and a big distribution chain. All I had were 2 bags of flax, a kitchen, and a Honda Element. 

A local gym agreed to meet with me. I was so excited. They had a smoothie bar, so I pitched the idea of offering it as an add on option to to their smoothie, like an ice cream topping. Smoothie drinking athletes would surely see the benefit of adding flax seed to their drink. 

The gym didn’t see it that way, and said no.

The next pitch I made was to a health food store. I asked the owner to stock my products. To my surprise, she agreed, and invited me to set up a table so that her customers could sample it. 

I took a vacation day from my job as a manager, set up a table, and tensed up with terror every time the door to the store opened. If somebody I knew, or worse worked with, walked in the door, I would die. I beat myself up for seven solid hours with all the reasons why I was stupid and childish for doing this. 

Combined with the cold call rejections and weak resilience muscles, I folded my Flax of Life business. I applied for a different job, was offered it, and turned it down because the salary was less than the one I was making. 

I’m sharing this story with you because I encourage you, all day long, to do what you want to do, even if it hurts really bad. Even if it’s really embarrassing. Even if you get rejected 1000 times. Eventually, you will know your product is worthy of being on the shelf, and that is worth the price of all the flaxseed in the prairies.