Derek Halpern shut down the biggest business podcast in the space, walked away from millions of dollars in cashflow, and started a turmeric company with $30,000 split three ways.
Eight years later Truvani is in more than 14,000 retail stores, including 4,200 Walmarts, it shipped 450,000 units in a single month, and it has never raised a dollar of outside capital.
We break down the sampling strategy that built demand before the product ever hit a shelf, the one paragraph on why most good D2C brands die in retail, and how he decides whether something is worth winning.
Links mentioned in the video:
► The eight-step plan to a million-dollar business: https://capitalism.com/100K
Derek is running the same three-part system I mentor clients through on the way to their first $100,000 a month. The whole model is laid out in one video:
► How we take a business from zero to $100,000 a month: https://capitalism.com/model
(0:00) Why he shut down the biggest business podcast in the space
(1:56) "I was an accidental teacher": the real reason he quit
(3:52) Just under $1 million in year one, one course, one employee
(5:37) It wasn't a protein company. It was a turmeric company.
(7:15) August 2017: three people, three skill sets, one phone call
(8:00) The pre-sale that broke the plan: 5,000 bottles ordered, 35,000 needed
(9:09) What leaning on an influencer partner costs you later
(10:57) Turmeric to bone broth to protein, still not sure who they were
(13:00) Facebook banned them over hemp, so they reformulated in eight months
(14:05) The three parts of the seven-figure system, running inside Truvani