🍭She made $360 million as the next Willy Wonka

She built herself a bittersweet business.

Author

Zachary Alabre
December 08, 2023

This 26-year-old made $360 million selling a low-sugar, healthy type of candy.

“I tried to think of challenges as opportunities hidden in disguise.”

- Tara Bosch: Age 26, CEO of “Smart Sweets”

🍬Hey there sugar!🍬

I’ve got a business for all of you with a sweet tooth! This week, we are going to take a look at Tara Bosch and her company Smart Sweets. Smart Sweets is a candy company that sells a healthier option to satisfy your sugar cravings!

And in 10 minutes or less, you’re going to learn:

✔️How her business solves one of the 4 pillars of profit

✔️How she used “clout hacking” to get her product in stores

QUICK SUMMARY
TLDR:

Tara Bosch was just 21 when she started Smart Sweets. One day when she was speaking to her grandmother, they got onto the topic of health, and her grandmother said that she regretted eating so much candy when she was younger. That is when Tarra thought “Why can’t candy be healthy too?” So she decided to start making candy that would be healthy, have low sugar, and also great tasting. She bought a bunch of ingredients from her local grocery store and tried to make some candy herself, and that is when Smart Sweets was born.

She gave her first batch to her friends and family to try. All of her friends loved the product, so she went all in on her business. She dropped out of college and took out a $100,000 loan to start producing her product. Then, she contacted hundreds of local stores to get her product on the shelves. She was even featured on her local news channel, and on Dragons Den, the British version of Shark Tank!

Her product sold like crazy in stores, and she was able to expand to over 18,000 retailers, including Target, Walmart, and Whole Foods! In her 4th year of business, she brought in over $125,000,000 in revenue, and she sold a majority of her company for over $360 million!

Goodness gracious, 360 million!?

That was a sweet deal!

………You see what I did there?

What’s crazy to me is that Tara started a business in the food industry, a very hard business model.

Also, she started from SUPER humble beginnings.

1. How she girl Bosch’d it up.

Everyone hates big corporations.

That is because most of them only care about 2 things.

Their money.

And making more money.

Look, there is nothing wrong with wanting to make some dead presidents.

But there’s a problem when you’re living like Mr. Krabs, literally worshipping money.

The businesses that make the most money truly care about their customer.

And they want to make a true positive impact with their product.

And that is exactly what boss babe Tara Bosch did with Smart Sweets.

Tara was a junior in college when she started Smart Sweets.

While living college life, she was chilling with her adorable 80-year-old grandmother.

Her grandmother mentioned the fact that she regretted eating so much sugar when she was younger.

This really resonated with Tara, even as a young adult.

I mean we’ve all been there, right?

We eat junk food.

We feel good for like 10 minutes.

And then we feel like SH!T afterward.

And the unhealthy cycle repeats.

Well, Tara was done with that cycle, and she wanted to make candy that was healthy and great tasting.

So she started creating her own candy recipe and bringing out samples.

She was literally becoming the next Willy Wonka!

……Without the Oompa Loompas.

Thank god, they scare me.

So this is how Tara developed her first product prototype:

1. To create the candy, she ordered a gummy bear mold from Amazon and got all of her ingredients from her local grocery store. She called the first prototype “Stevia Sweets” because she made the candy with Stevia instead of real sugar.

2. She would test different recipes, and give samples to her friends and family to see which one was the best.

3. She had no idea how to create packaging or how to find manufacturers, so she went online and emailed different founders and CEOs in her area who could help her. She met a couple of people who became her mentors and helped her build out her first few bags of product.

It took her almost 4 months to finish her prototype, and this is what it looked like!

The three keys to Oliver’s business being successful were:

1. She created a product that improved people’s health, which is a high-value solution.

2. The industry she chose spends over $1 trillion a year, so she knew that there would be plenty of buyers.

3. Building her product took a lot of time and a lot of money (almost $15,000) so that ensures that her brand could not be easily copied.

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Takeaway and Tips:

When building a business, make sure to tackle the 4 problems that almost everyone has. I call these the 4 pillars of profit:
1. Health
2. Wealth
3. Love
4. Happiness
If your business can help people solve problems in these 4 categories, it’s almost guaranteed that you will have customers lining up for your product.

Solve your own problems first when building a business. If you have a problem, there’s almost a guarantee that someone else has the same problem. So if you solve it for yourself, other people will pay you to solve it too.

Build an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) as quickly as possible. When Tara started her company, she literally made everything in her kitchen. Your first prototype doesn't have to be fancy, you just need to get your product out there so that people can try it and give you feedback.

2. Everyone else thought her idea was sweet too.

So after building her prototype and getting feedback, Tara was ready to start making more product.

But there was one problem.

She was broke as a joke.

Now this is where I respect Tara’s hustle the most.

She took out a $100,000 loan to start her business!!

With her back against the wall, Tara knew that her next step was to get into retail stores.

And since she had no connections, she did the next best thing.

She sent a BOATLOAD of emails.

She emailed every local grocery store to try to get her product on the shelves.

The first store that gave her a chance was Safeway.

After messaging them over 50 times like a crazy ex, they finally said yes to her product.

Tara going to the same Safeway for the 50th time

So after her first store, over the next 6 months, her product was in over 40 retail stores.

And this is when her big break happened.

A reporter from Fox News saw her product and wanted to interview her.

And of course, Tara seized the opportunity.

The interview became a huge hit, and it was so big that Whole Foods slid into her DMs.

Whole foods trying to hit her up.

Using Whole Foods’ name, she was able to launch in over 4,000 other retail stores like Kroger, Target, and Costco!

These amazing feats were all possible because she leveraged her success and notoriety from her interview with Fox.

MARKETING
Takeaway and Tips:

Use someone else’s platform for growth. How Tara grew so fast was because she was able to land an interview with Fox, which put millions of eyeballs on her and her brand. I call this “clout hacking”. If you would like to build your own platform, I suggest starting a social media account and documenting the journey of building your product.

Use someone else’s credibility to grow your business. After Smart Sweets was able to get into Whole Foods stores, tons of other retailers started joining the bandwagon and it exponentially grew Tara’s business.

🎮You just leveled up your mindset today!

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Thank you for reading like always!

- Zach