YouSaid · the spoken record

Tara Bosch

lines on the record: 90
first: 2024-08-05
most recent: 2024-08-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Oh my goodness, I love sour candy. I love those live on this date if they're called live wires, but they're kind of like licorice that are infused with white cream.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I truly feel like it's like the mishmash of like the right timing, the right idea, the saying, you know, the harder you work, the luckier you get. But above that all, the serendipity was like a swear jar world when we were building because it was used so much. Now I use the word God, but that like there is something bigger than us out there. And if we let ourselves listen to that whisper in our hearts, it will guide us to where we're meant to go.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm able to. And so I'm grounded in such gratitude for that. And I don't know where I meant to serve next. I trust in the universe and whatever that path that leads me to do.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When it comes to trusting people and that sort of thing, yeah, I've gone through a lot of navigating for sure that has, I think, been a practice to not taint the inherent belief I have of like people are good. I think what it just means is that just like I really try and just root down in the gut feeling about like, is someone being authentic? And then when that's famous saying of like, when someone shows you who they are, believe them and trying to just always ground back down to like the gratitude. And I have such gratitude for the exact same feeling I had when I got the idea for smart suites of like, how am I so lucky to somehow have this idea to be in service of others in this way? How am I so lucky to have freedom of time and energy to be able to create whatever impact?”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't know. I thought, you know, adrenal fatigue, burnout is real. I had gone to naturopath, we validated this, had been in the hospital from severe chest pains. And then six months after that, I find out that I'm not slowly dying, but I'm six months pregnant and I'm going to have a baby in three months. And so that was why I took a larger step back originally than I had intended to from being operational pretty quickly after the transaction happened.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so originally, that really wasn't the intent. Originally, I was going to be still in a full-time capacity in like one week after I signed the papers slowly, slowly, slowly over the course of the next few months, my health starts to decline pretty rapidly.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Doing her and my relationship right if I didn't honor the freedom of time and energy to show up for her the way she showed up for me my entire life. So that was also a factor in timing too where I was like, you know, I need to show up for my Omen now.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, and I was like, we need to be pouring fuel on the fire to really actualize that vision of being the global leader. And so that was really what informed, okay, this makes sense timing-wise to bring on a partner. And so we began that process and started that journey. At the same time, my grandmother, who was the reason I started my company and my why my whole life, she was starting to go through her end of life. And she had the fortune of seeing the journey through, but because I was so intensely in building, I really wasn't showing up for her in the way that I wanted to time and energy-wise, but I really didn't feel like I would be”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, just when we entered into that fourth year, it was the first time that I was like, I don't have that same gut instinct that I feel like I have had so far on like, what do we need to do and what is around the bend to navigate that next stage of growth to get from 100 to 200 to 300 and then to grow outside of North America at the same time there were the low sugar space began to really grow and become something that was it was exciting because I was like this the vision is being validated like low sugar is here to stay”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think from day one, like I had clarity of the vision, which was to be a global company, Revolutionizing Candy, and to be the go-to candy brand that our grandchildren are enjoying. And I always felt like at some point in our growth, it would make sense to tap into a larger multinational company's manufacturing and distribution systems and to execute with a faster pace on that vision. And coming up in 2020, we crossed over the 100 million mark in revenue and really just begin to felt like a different stage of”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Totally. Yeah, and I think candy is such an emotional source of joy and comfort. In those times. And so smart sweets became something that was really an emotional support for some people through that time period.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think not having any attachment to my role in the business, just to having a really strong attachment to the mission and just to how I best served, I think was really helpful, Lens.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think always applying the filter in a non deprecating way, what do I suck at? And then how may I be holding the business up? Where do I serve best? And combining those three answers to kind of like indicate where I best show up. And that ebbed and flowed throughout the business in different stages.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Beginning, it was really just finding people that could wear all the hats, so that were really generalized. Like we had our first five were like Marketing, sales, ops, and finance. And it was really people who got the vision, who like left their ego at the door. And most importantly, I think we made sure to be really clear about the what's in it for them. So everyone had equity in the company, but those first five people, they all had at least 1%. To your point of never being a supervisor and that sort of thing, I was really, really good at inspiring people. But I wasn't that great at knowing how to keep people engaged and inspired and motivate them weekly one-on-ones and that sort of thing drained my soul to its core. Not because I didn't care, but because it just wasn't a strength that I had.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was just Beth and I, it was easy for us to have quick response times. And as we scaled, it had to be really intentional. So across the board, we always had a 12-hour response time for social media, whether it was DM in our comments, hashtags, posting photos of smart suites when we came to emails. It was 24 hours. We were obsessed with making sure that our friends, we called them our friends, felt seen and understood at the end of the day by us. And it sounds like such a simple thing, but as we scaled maintaining those KPIs became really hard to do.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there were counted two filters that I always had, and one was just being obsessed with are we always out exceeding the value proposition for the consumer? The answer was always no. And so I never felt the need to dig further. And then secondly, the other filter was Are we creating a customer experience that can't be replicated? So we were obsessed with making sure that our consumers felt like our friends.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was interesting because it didn't feel easier. I was still getting, they weren't necessarily outright nose, but there were nose in the sense of it was a yes with, okay, I need this preferred share. I need it to be structured this way. I need this valuation, which made it a no to me because I was very clear in my philosophy of what felt congruent for me and what was honoring team and how I wanted our cap table to be structured. I had the blessing of meeting two people who became my two formal advisors. And so once they supported me, we closed the round in two weeks and had a really clear philosophy about this is common shares. So there was never any preferred shares. And that was it. And we didn't share financials or anything beyond just like the four-page deck that we had.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and mentorship from Peter Deal and the most powerful thing about that was the peer group, similar to the first accelerator I was in. All of a sudden I was around these people where I was like just so wildly inspired and just like it really”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think really through that just like mindset of like you don't know unless you try, you know, even if never in a million years did I think I would actually get that and the reason why I wanted to try was because it's strings free cash at the end of the day, which when you're a startup, you can always use strings free cash.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those bags did not, so I knew I needed to find a new manufacturer. I was like, okay, I'm just going to go show up at this Moltown manufacturer who had been running the business for generations. And so the dad and the grandfather sit down and I'm talking with them and they get the vision and they say they'll take a chance and that ends up being the manufacturing partner that we launch at Whole Foods with and that takes us through to scale.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I realized okay, we have seven months to like find a new manufacturer, change and evolve our branding to be able to meet this national launch with Whole Foods.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sketchy things start happening. There's metal that's starting to be found in some bags. There's like a call from the place that was packaging our product because at that point it was manufactured in one place package in the next saying, hey, someone just came in here with a GoPro camera filming our facility and then they ran into a getaway minivan and sped off. And I learned that was the manufacturer.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, totally. Like, just population wise, the whole population of Canada, I think, is less than the population of California. Yeah. And so, yeah, when Whole Foods, when we're like, okay, we're doing a national launch with them simultaneously at the same time the first manufacturer that we had.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it was a couple months after that, a producer from Fox Business in New York reached out to me on Instagram and she was like, hey, I'd love to do a feature on your story in Smartsuites. Would you like to come to New York? And go to New York, film this segment. The segment airs. And three minutes after the segment airs, I get an email from the global candy buyer at Whole Foods saying, hey, would you be interested in a global candy lunch with Whole Foods? And I call Beth and I'm like, I just got a spam email, but that would be amazing if that was real. Can you imagine if that was real? That would have been so cool reply to him fully thinking this is spam. And it's not spam. And we ended up doing a global, it was our entrance to the USA national from day one, about eight months after that.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All offered a deal at double the valuation I had gone in there for. On ARI had accepted a deal. Offair chose not to go through with it just because it didn't make sense anymore. But I was so grateful that they all saw what I saw in terms of vision and potential.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I had applied back when I was respite testing in my kitchen but hadn't heard anything. And then one of the producers kind of serendipitously ate the product or something. And so they had reached out and were like, could you come to Toronto next week? And I was like, absolutely. I'm planning to be there actually anyway, which I was not, of course.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Year one, we were like pretty much almost at break even, but We were not technically profitable. And so I never planned for what if things go really well. And things went really well. And so I realized there's going to need more cash to do a larger manufacturing run to continue the train and keep the momentum. It maxed out on the debt financing available to us at the time. So I was like, okay, shoot, now I actually am going to really need investors. Beth was doing demos at a choices markets and met this woman. Her name's Shelly. And right away, she was like, I get it. I want to be involved. I met with her the next day at this restaurant and then kind of like in the cheesiest way possible she wrote on a napkin that she was going to give me 80 grand and her she signed the napkin i signed the napkin and we agreed we would sort out the terms at a later date and so that was a huge blessing to get us to our next run”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I always try to not operate out of fear, but to balance that with the dance of running like hell, knowing that 10 people are probably behind me working on this and that. Other people are going to be running at that too. And so it kind of used it as a motivator to just like continue to like run like hell, but to not get stuck in the fear of looking backwards at what they're doing.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that was inspired by HaloTops packaging, like the notion of, you know, three seconds or less consumers have to understand what you're doing and be compelled enough to pick it up off shelf.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we had messaged them about partnering together to push out a giveaway with their email lists and social. And yeah, they responded to us. We would often not message the brand's pages or the founders, but we would message like the director of marketing, the director of finance, the director of ops.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And then coupled with that at the same time, we were finding other brands like Halo Top. I remember when Halo Top responded to us and we had a call with the director of marketing. We were like, oh my gosh, I can't believe this is happening.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so one of the first communities that I was like, okay, this is going to create the most radical value proposition for are people who can't have candy. Because of diet choice, because of whatever it may be. They haven't had candy in years. And so focused on those groups at the time, I changed my Instagram name to Smart Suites founder. I would message people from that account. Really authentically, it wasn't a part of the messages copy and paste, but it was really authentic and being like, hey, like I think that you actually might really like this product. Can I send you some? And that worked. And so slowly, I remember with the Weight Watchers community as an example, within three months, SmartSuite seemed like a huge brand to that community.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We didn't have money, but I really didn't feel like we needed money to create brand awareness. I really felt like through this grappiness and just the blessing that existed with social media that through the sheer grunt work and just hammering it out on our phones, we could do it. So what that looked like really was sat down and thought, you know, okay, like who is this product creating the most radical value floor, focusing on that niche and then expanding through niches? And that was the kind of hypothesis I adopted for what we were going to do.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly how I positioned it to consumers, as you know, traditional candy is an occasional treat. With smart sweets, we're creating the ability for candy to become an everyday snack if people so choose for it to be.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely there is a lot on the line. I think the minute that I'd step into the room with the retailer or the phone call with the retailer, I stepped almost into like a different version of myself where I spoke with such conviction and always focused on what's in it for them and for the retailer. I focused on, you know, we're a higher ring per bag. They're going to make more money on smart suites than they are traditional sugar, penny candy in a bag”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and we are going to launch at the same time in my mind social media and just the power of at that time Instagram was really powerful. So I had the hypothesis that, you know, it's actually going to be less frustrating for consumers if we launch and create accessibility at a national level than if we launch regionally because now with social media we can reach people all across the country in such an effective way. So it's going to be more frustrating for them if they know about us, but they can't reach us. So my true goal was to find a national partner that we could launch with.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So by the time we're in the kind of spring of 2016, I've banged down the doors and got the first few yeses for stores. And they were primarily in the natural channel.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it was really just probably from listening to other people's journeys and how they think about navigating, creating value for the consumer and like honing in on who is she because our consumer was female primarily and where is she going in her day-to-day life. And very quickly I realized like, oh, she's not going to be having the forethought to buy this online two weeks in advance for her sweet tooth that's going to come two weeks later.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so there were basically two things that were the front of my priorities every single day to wake up with my bullhorns and run at. One was the debt financing to sort the manufacturing stuff. The second was get the distribution, get the access that consumers can actually reach this product with. So I always felt clear that e-com, I think, for us was going to be a surprise and delight, but that candy is an impulse purchase. People are going to want to have a suite tooth and pick up the bag in store.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so Future Preneur is a program that kind of has that ethos around it. And so the thing that I had to do was to put up my Honda fit and I had to take out life insurance. So the loan was tied to me personally, of course.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's a gracious probably valuation for it. And so I applied through one program called Future Predc, the Bank Development of Canada. And then at the same time, I approached another lender. There were a bank called Man City. So I went to the one bank and said, hey, I'm talking to this other bank, went back to that bank, said, hey, I've progressed in the conversation with this bank. In the meanwhile, I'd share them updates like, hey, I'm talking to this retailer and this retailer. These are my projections and just really focus on the vision and just really being like, if you take a chance on me now, I promise you that I will not squander this opportunity. And it worked. They both said yes.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was just spitballing in my mind different names and that sort of thing, and this concept of just like smarter choices in my own journey with food. And it's just smarter choices really resonated with me. And I also wanted a name where you could read the name and you could get the nuance that they're trying to do something better, but also that it doesn't lean so far that it feels like it's like health niche. So once that name came that's when I was like, okay, I'm not going to get money from investors at this point in time. I'm going to need to get debt financing.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, what I did at this point, this is like just before Christmas in December of 2015. And I realized, okay, I'm going to need to raise money. I don't have this saved up. I start linked cold, emailing investors on LinkedIn. And thankfully, graciously, a few of them did reply. Nobody was interested in trying the product because of the name Stevie Suites and the negative connotation at that time to the negative aftertaste of Steve Stevia. But it was the biggest blessing because it caused me to pause and be like, oh, Stevie Sweet is not the name. And that's what gave me the smart suites evolution.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So for this manufacturer's minimum, their payment terms were also different. So they needed the money up front. Their minimums were higher. And I was going to need $105K up front to be able to just move forward with them.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Went back to another manufacturer that had said no and went to them in person this time and really focused on specifically sharing the vision, specifically painting for them, my forecasts that I had made up and had no idea what those actually would be.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The minimum runs and the quantities were very significant for what would peak the manufacturer's interest. So it really focused on sharing the vision of what smart suites will be, what's in it for them, and this is happening in the candy industry, whether you move on it or not. And there was one manufacturer that said yes. We put a launch date for December of 2015. Come second weekend to December, they call me and they say, hey, we are As the balking agent, and immediately I knew what they were telling me was, We're going to give you a recipe that's actually not digestible, that's going to blow up people's stomachs. That manufacturer took the recipe and ended up going on to launch a product themselves. So at that time, pretty much overnight, I was like, oh my gosh, I need to find another manufacturer to launch this product.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There were two main things that I realized quickly. One was that all candy manufacturers, their machinery needs sugar in order for the products to be able to be made because sugar is 99% of what is candy for it to run on the machine. The other thing that I learned quickly was that”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I wanted to feel kind of whimsical and evoke the emotions of joy that Candy brings and nostalgia. So I found a local graphic designer and then was kind of just like, this is what I'm able to pay are you able to do it? At that point, I was pulling from the savings I had in my bank account. And she said yes. And so we met at a coffee drop and she hand drew the logo and we iterated on that and that became the Stevie Suites at that time logo.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first kind of run and then packaging my guest mit was that I was going to need around a hundred grand to be able to do that.”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, in the Kandy aisle by the register, the kind of concept was one bag, one serving, because with candy, I would always eat the whole bag and then turn the bag around and be like, oh, that was 2.5 servings. Well, that contributes to how I feel about having eaten that whole bag now”
2024-08-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SmartSweets: Tara Bosch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT