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Austin Robinson, PhD and Sofia Sanchez, RD co-founded Beet Strong, a company that makes protein brownies with real ingredients like dark chocolate and almonds, contain no added sugar and about one serving of beets. Beets contain a compound that promote blood vessel health, Austinās area of research.
City where youāre from: Originally from Chicago, now re-located to the Philly area
Hobbies: Exercise!, cooking, gardening
Favorite quote:
āWhether you think you can or you canāt ā youāre rightā ā Henry Ford
Twitters:
- Austin @ubuntu_fitness
- Sofia @sanchezsofia
Why did you decide to become an entrepreneur?
During Austinās doctoral studies, he and Sofia began making protein chocolates for themselves to cut costs on buying pre-made protein bars and to avoid junk in popular protein bar products at grocery stores. āOur school was hosting a startup competition, so we thought āWhat the heck, letās enter our bars.ā We ended up winning second place out of 60 teams and decided to make it into a real business,ā says Dr. Robinson.
Who were your biggest influences? Was there a defining moment in your life?
Gary Vaynerchuk, an NYC entrepreneur has some incredibly motivational, inspiring and hilarious content on YouTube that weāve come across, and his work has been pivotal in our business decisions. Weāve had a terrific support system through friends and family, and winning 2nd place in the startup competition led to many great Chicago-area business connections for feedback and advice.
Now
What are you working on? How did you come up with this idea?
Weāve been tinkering with our protein brownie. Right now weāre focusing on marketing and getting our name out there. As a nutritionist, Sofia understands the additives, oils and preservatives in many protein bar products and Austin has the expertise in exercise. They teamed up to create a delicious tasting nutrition product as something that theyād both enjoy.
How is your product/service different and unique? What has been your favorite moment with it? Whatās the vision?
Beet-based nutrition products have been on the market for some time as a means to promote blood vessel health and exercise performance. However, many of these products donāt quantify how much beet is in their product (needed for athletes to dose for their exercise) or contain a lot of sugar or not enough protein. Our products uses responsibly-sourced ingredients like fair trade 100% dark chocolate, non-GMO and organic ingredients, and no added sugar. We use the highest quality, cold filtered beet powder that is lab-certified.
We love seeing the product go from conception to finished product and sales. Our alma mater, University of Illinois at Chicago, featured our product in a story, which generated our biggest sales to date. It was such a surprising experience to have real customers order from us across the country.
How do you uniquely market your company?
Weāve been experimenting with Instagram, Facebook ads, and creating short, captivating videos. We will also be launching an Influencer campaign in the next month or so.
What was your biggest failure and biggest success? What did you learn from them?
Perfecting our made-to-order operations has been more of a challenge than we thought. From changing our recipe to details on our packaging, we learned create mass numbers of bars was hurting us because if we changed one thing, weād end up with a lot of leftover old inventory, which is not a good thing. Especially in the food business.
Value-add questions
Give the readers the best entrepreneurship advice you have.
Be open to feedback from others.
Teach us something about {internet marketing, social media ads, fundraising, sales funnels or another topic} Can you recommend any favorite websites to learn that topic?
Gary Vaynerchuk is an excellent, free resource on this subject.
While working on your project, have you come across any interesting bit of knowledge that youād like to share?
Austin: āAs a researcher in cardiovascular physiology, I am always coming across new scientific studies that give me ideas on new ingredients or flavors we can add to our healthy protein browniesā