Tag Archives: Marketing

Developing a customer persona: How “Pam” has improved the ButcherBox experience

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Have we told you about Pam?

She is top of mind here at ButcherBox. To be honest, sometimes, she is the focus of most conversations.

In fact, at a recent meeting to discuss the content we are creating — recipe books, videos, and the like — Pam was discussed by almost every person who spoke about the projects they are developing.

That’s a pretty impressive feat for Pam seeing that she is a figment of our collective imagination.

You see “Pam” is what industry people refer to as a “customer persona.”

Businesses develop customer personas for a number of reasons. Among the reasons that companies create a non-existent person to plan around are the need to grow, in which case the persona is an ideal target customer, or the need to cultivate, to continue to support and enchant your most important customers.

Most often, customer personas are built by consumer-facing businesses, but that isn’t always the case. (For a good breakdown of how to develop a buyer persona, check out this HubSpot blog post.)

For ButcherBox, we developed a handful of different customer personas, each typifying a different customer profile; however, our primary focus at this moment is “Pam.”

To me, it’s become obvious that we are working with a niche audience, selling a niche product. The vast amount of people out there have no idea what grass-fed beef is. This topic so surrounds us in our everyday work, that we sometimes forget that there is a significant swath of the population who don’t have the same understanding of our products — not only grass-fed beef but heritage-breed pork and free-range chicken— as we do.

So we picked a user profile, “Pam,” to focus on as a way to make sure we give an easy-to-access, yet robust ButcherBox experience to both new and devoted customers. Pam is someone who has recently been awakened to the importance of eating healthy meat. She is thinking more about things like antibiotics and hormones in the food she eats and cooks for her family, as well as whether what she is eating is raised on a feedlot or has been on a pasture. She is drawn to ButcherBox because we make healthy, high-quality meat more accessible.

Pam isn’t the only customer we are building more products, offerings, and support for, but she is the one who we think most closely aligns with our own mission. It makes sense for her to be top of mind because of our shared passions. I believe this is a pretty great way to build a business.

Developing this persona has guided a lot of the marketing decisions we’ve made recently. One example of how it benefits us is that we have a better idea of who we are targeting on Facebook and other social media platforms. It isn’t so much that we are trying to onboard as many customers as possible; instead, we are trying to make those who are already part of our tribe aware that we exist.

This also impacts the influencers we want to work with and the companies we want to partner with. If it isn’t a person or a company that Pam would approve of, they are not a good match. This ensures that business decisions are very closely aligned with the beliefs of our existing customer base and those who will join.

Everyone on the team is aware of Pam and why she is a primary focus.

I’ve never gone through a persona exercise, so the whole process has been new. But from the experience thus far, it is evident how beneficial it is to have a clear understanding, across the company, of “who” we should focus on as we continue to grow.

It is also quite clear that what is good for Pam will likely be good for all of our customers.

*While this is all a bit of “How the sausage is made,” we think it is important to be transparent as we build this company for many reasons. The most important, we believe, is to help other entrepreneurs as they build their companies by sharing the lessons we are learning along the way.

MikeFarm

The difference having a product makes: What has surprised me most about building ButcherBox

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Although this is my second time leading an early stage venture — the first go-around being at CustomMade — I’ve been surprised by some of the differences building and growing ButcherBox.

What has been most exciting is the realization that I really, really love selling a product.

CustomMade was, from when we started the company, a marketplace that allowed talented makers, tradespeople, and creatives to connect with customers in search of unique products. While various items were sold through the site, we were only an intermediary. (That has since changed, as the current iteration of CustomMade, still run by my co-founder Seth, is now focused solely on jewelry.)

The experience of selling an actual product with ButcherBox, being able to deliver high-quality meat directly to our customers’ doors, is so different. You just have so much control over what your customers receive — in both price and quality. More than that, it has been astounding to see the impact that a great team can have on a business when working with a product.

And that’s really awesome.

For example, it is empowering to have the ability to tweak how much chicken we send out in one month or to cut the beef in different ways. Having this type of control is so much better than relying on others to delight and meet the needs of customers.

Also, when you get up to a certain volume of sales, what is fun is figuring out how process improvements can impact the bottom line. There are tremendous savings that can be made just by looking at places where the customer gets no value, but where you are paying a lot. With a product, you can target those areas and try to figure out how to improve them.

Take, for example, a way we improved a process that we initially thought was the only way we could procure meat.

Before Michael Billings, our amazing meat expert, arrived at ButcherBox, we would buy meat from one part of the country and ship to another to get cut — at a cost of 57 cents — and then we would ship it somewhere else after that — which cost us 35 cents more. So that process would make each piece of meat have an additional 92 cents per pound cost attached to it.

So we found ways to improve this system, shifted how we buy our meat, and now we buy right in the same city that we have it cut. Now, a process that once cost close to a dollar costs us only 6 cents in shipping.

The customer received no benefit from the way we were operating before. It is just waste. No one was getting any benefit other than the companies getting paid to move the meat from one end of the country to the other. We have decided to focus on these areas where customers get no value, but we are paying a lot and to change them one by one. In the process, we are building a much better customer experience while focusing on driving the most value possible for our customers.

Now we are able to take that money saved and put it back into the Box; we can give customers better value, give them more product. We can do this by being more efficient with operations related to the product.

And, whats more, having a product to work with has allowed for our teams’ creativity and operational excellence to flourish.

Whats cool about this company is that we have two types of people here. Our marketing team is like this really “blue sky” crew. For instance, one day recently, someone just chimed in during a meeting and said, “Let’s do a ‘Bacon Day.'” And everyone was immediately like, “Yeah, let’s do ‘Bacon Day.’”

And then we have this crew on the operations side that gets really fired up if they save a penny on the product. A penny!

But in reality, that makes an enormous difference. Saving penny per product on a trailer-load of our meat ends up resulting in $400 we don’t have to spend. So let’s say we do two trailers each week, saving that penny ends up as $800 a week, or about $40,000 we save per year; and that is a salary to add someone else excellent to the team right there.

I love that working with a specific product lets us get to be “blue sky” about some things, where the team has the mindset of “Let’s do this, this will be fun.” But I also love the operations side, who get thrilled figuring out how we can save 15 cents per pound. It is amazing.

What I’ve discovered with ButcherBox is that when you are in a product business, when you sell an actual product, and the volume of that increases, you can do things that just aren’t possible when working on a marketplace or app.

What’s most exciting is that in the end, through these processes, we are able to delight our customers more.

Photo by All Bong on Unsplash.

7 books that helped me figure out how to be a better leader as ButcherBox has grown

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As ButcherBox has evolved over the past couple of years, one area that I’ve had to work on personally is my development as a leader.

My role, however, changed quite a bit from the early days of the company when Mike and I were quietly building ButcherBox out of Soldier Design’s Harvard Square offices. Now, we have more than 25 employees and deliver our boxes across the country.

As ButcherBox has grown, I’ve also needed to develop. While some aspects of leading larger and more complex teams come naturally — especially since this is my second go-around as a startup co-founder — I’ve learned that there are situations that could arise that my past experiences haven’t prepared me for.

And so, to make sure that I am the best leader I can be for ButcherBox, I did the one thing that everyone should do when there is an experience-gap that needs to be filled: I emailed a couple of people in my network whom I think are really great leaders, and whom I respect, and I asked for their advice. I told them where I am at, where the company is at in terms of growth, and my new responsibilities. The reality was that I needed to grow personally at the same rate as the company.

So they sent me some great feedback, which was helpful. But more importantly, they sent a bunch of book recommendations on how to be a better leader. So I immediately went out and bought seven books on leadership. Many you’ve probably heard of, including classics like Andy Grove’s High Output Management, The Effective Executive, Primal Leadership, and The Charisma Myth. And I kept going from there.

I like to read books. And when I do, I like to take notes in the margins. I always have a pen in my hand. If you look at the books I’ve read, all the corners are folded over, so I can look back, and there are notes on almost every page. I think to get the most out of these types of books, you have to be an active reader.

Here are some of the books that I’ve found have been most helpful as ButcherBox —and me  — continue to grow:

Mindset – This book is focused on the reality that there are two mindsets: A fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. The fixed mindset is exemplified by people who might suck at math in second grade and tell themselves that they will just never be able to get better at it. Individuals with a growth mindset approach the same experience and tell themselves, “I just need to work harder, or learn math in a different way, or get a tutor.”

So I am trying to apply that growth mindset here at ButcherBox, fostering a culture of personal growth versus fixed, which has been interesting thus far.

The One Thing: This is a good example of how I have been able to apply something I’ve read to the culture here at the company.  I read The One Thing,  which both my co-founder Mike and another entrepreneur had recommended. The premise is that if you want to get extraordinary results, you need to spend an extraordinary amount of time doing whatever that one thing is that is going to move the needle. The book delves into the importance of focusing, how multitasking is bullshit, that your inbox is your enemy, the power of habit, and the importance of time blocking.

So I tried to figure out what the “one thing” was for me that really moves the needle at ButcherBox, and then I had to make sure that every day, I blocked out two to four hours to just do that.

My one thing changed. When I read the book five months ago, my one thing was “To get customers.” So, I’d look at what we were doing with our automation email series, and try to figure out how to improve things there, can that move the needle? Then, I looked into what we were doing on the affiliate, the sales side, referral, etc. I’d dive into these and help other team members improve.

But now, my one thing is to develop as a leader, and that can involve me sitting down to read for two hours or reading articles about management or talking to mentors.

We even had the whole marketing team read The One Thing recently, and everyone loved it.

So now we are doing a “one thing” challenge, which is trying to see how many days of the workweek everyone can focus on doing their one thing. It’s been great, but it has been difficult for a lot of people, including myself.

A Guide To The Good Life: This book, which digs into the wisdom of Stoic philosophy has taught me the importance of only focusing on what you can control.

Most of the things that stress us out in life are out of our control, however, we can control our response to these challenges. This book has been helpful in a fast-paced startup environment where new challenges arise daily.

Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth: This is a great book for Internet businesses and shaped our marketing strategy here at ButcherBox.

Unbroken: This Laura Hillenbrand book about Louis Zamperini, a track star and the survivor of a World War II tragedy, is just straight-up inspiring.

Shoe Dog: Phil Knight paints a great picture of the startup roller coaster and how even companies like Nike can start from the humblest of beginnings.

Ego is the Enemy:  This is a great read that teaches you the importance and power of humility. This is key to us at ButcherBox where staying humble is one of our core values.

I hope you get as much out of these books as I have, and I hope you’ll share some of the books that have inspired or helped guide you in business or life in the comments section below.

Mike Filbey (left) and Mike Salguero (right).

6 things I’ve learned by being a co-founder twice by age 26

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I usually like to keep my business life separate from my personal life, but for some reason, I recently felt compelled to share a quick update on life and work on Facebook. The response has been great, so I thought I’d share with the ButcherBox family as well.

In the last four years, I’ve experienced a great deal.

I have started a company, dropped out of college, closed down a company, started another company, and read a lot of books. My hope is that sharing the key things I’ve learned may be valuable. 

Knowledge is worthless unless shared.

You can divide my 26 years on this earth into two periods. The time before I dropped out of college and that after I dropped out. I dropped out after my junior year; I was 22 and it was summer. I had just turned down an internship with Ford because I wanted to focus on growing my startup.

Instead, I moved from Wisconsin to Boston and brought my two co-founders with me. We were at a stage where we had hacked through the jungle for two years without success. It was a humbling experience. We were pushing a boulder uphill and I was too naïve to admit it; the business we were hoping to build could not work.

Eventually, they moved on from the startup — as they should have — and I was back to where I was when this all started at age 19. Except, this time, I had nothing in a bank account and was now 24-years-old.

At this point, I had to decide whether to go back to school and get my degree or to continue in the startup world. Everyone I talked to agreed that I should get my degree, after all, I only had one year remaining. So I re-enrolled and chose some classes. About a month before school was going to begin, there was something that just didn’t feel right. I felt like I was going backward not forwards.

The thing was, I wasn’t ready to go back.

So I shopped myself around the job market and got a few offers. One was a way to help cancer patients, one was a startup hoping to disrupt the airline industry, and another was this radical idea to sell grass-fed beef through the mail.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I eventually decided to sell grass-fed beef in the mail at ButcherBox.

Why? Because of the company’s founder, Mike Salguero.

Mike was someone I knew and trusted. He was my go-to advisor with my first company. I was confident that I would learn a ton from working with Mike, and, even if the business went nowhere, it would be a valuable experience.

There’s a key lesson here: Don’t make decisions around money, make decisions around opportunities to learn. I never got into ButcherBox thinking I’d one day make a bunch of money, far from it.

Fast forward nearly two years to today and I am happier than ever. I haven’t made a bunch of money, but I have learned a lot, a lot a lot. This business could collapse tomorrow and I’d be fine, I’d be happy; because it’s been one hell of a ride so far.

And so, here are the six more valuable lessons that I have learned up til now, having grown a lot since dropping out and being a co-founder twice:

1.  Life is all about how we treat each other.

2.  When it comes to work, follow the advice Bill Belichick got from his dad Steve, “Keep your head down, work hard, keep your mouth shut.” Be humble. Nobody likes a show-off.

3. Self-care is extremely important. To be your best you need to feel your best. This means taking care of yourself. Make time to work out, eat healthily, and spend time with friends. You are doing your friends, family, and work a disservice if you don’t first take care of yourself first.

4. There is only one YOU. You are unique. Only you know what makes you happy. Not your parents, not your friends, not your boss, YOU. So make your own decisions and believe in yourself.

5. Read books. They open new worlds and can teach you how to live a better life. I attribute a lot of my recent success to two books, Traction by Justin Mares and Guide To the Good Life by William Irvine. The former is about marketing; the latter about philosophy.

6. Talk less, listen more. By listening, you show respect, learn, and become more likable.

So on that note, I’d love to hear from you. What do you feel compelled to share? Thanks for reading. 

co-founder-twice