Aja Horsley — Scaling, Storytelling, and Selling Up: A Founder's Story

In 3, 2, 1.

Welcome back to Becoming Preferred, the podcast to help you level up your game and become the best version of you.

Today we're exploring what it takes to turn scientific expertise into a market disrupting consumer brand and scale it all the way to a major acquisition.

Our guest today is Asia Horsley, an environmental scientist turned founder who took a passion for pollinators and natural foods and built Drizzle Honey into an award winning consumer packaged goods brand across North America.

Before being acquired by Wisdom Natural Brands, Asia transformed a sleepy commodity category into an innovative, functional and purpose driven brand.

Today, she continues to lead Drizzle's North American expansion, specializing in brand strategy, retail expansion and consumer packaged goods innovation.

Whether you're looking to disrupt a traditional market, navigate national retail growth, or build a company with an exit in mind, Asia's story offers an incredible playbook for building a brand customers truly love.

Join me now for my conversation with Asia Horsley.

Well, hi Asia, welcome to the program.

We're delighted to have you.

Thanks for having me, Michael.

Excited to be here.

Well, I'm excited about this topic.

I love talking to entrepreneurs.

I love talking to people who have started businesses from scratch, built them up, scaled them.

And because a lot of our listeners are trying to do that, they're busy professionals, they're entrepreneurs, they have their own companies, they work for organizations and companies.

So we, we're looking forward to your insights and how they might be able to apply them to their day to day lives as well.

But before we get started now, where are we speaking to you from?

Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Well, that's my hometown.

I'm in the studio.

That's right.

Yeah, I'm in this born and raised.

Well, excellent.

Another Alberta girls.

Good for you.

Well, our podcast goes everywhere, but our studio is actually in Calgary.

We're not in studio, but we are online.

So nice to meet you.

Now, before we get started, I always like to get a little background.

You're a CEO and queen bee of the organization.

Basically you're the senior brand manager for Drizzle Honey.

But we're going to talk about that story.

But let's go, let's go back to high school first of all.

So you're in high school, you're in Alberta, you're deciding what you want to be when you grow up.

Take us there.

And how did you get into this?

What brought you on this path to start your own business and become an entrepreneur?

Yeah.

Okay.

Going back all the way to high school, that's.

I was interested in science, always.

I'VE always had a strong background in science, but like any good Alberta girl, I was looking at oil and gas for a career path and got into summer student work doing that.

And just really, it didn't resonate with who I was.

It didn't excite me.

I'm.

I'm much more creative than that.

And I did go through university after high school and I got my environmental science degree and just really fell in love with protecting the environment.

But also I had sort of a knack for business.

At the same time, in high school, I sold Avon.

I used to always try and sell.

I ran like nail salons on my front lawn and just, you know, was always hustling things.

So I think I had that in my background and ended up going through oil and gas a couple different companies and then decided to quit.

I needed a break.

I started up a gardening company and then went through the summer, that summer and got offered a job at sait just here in Calgary.

And they had an applied research department and they were starting up at that time some urban agriculture research, which is really about growing food in cities and how that relates to, to research and business.

And I got put into a bunch of projects there, including one that was for rooftop beekeeping and how we integrate honey into the culinary school, but also looking at rooftop beekeeping as an enterprise.

And then that's kind of where the whole story begins of drizzle.

Well, you started as an environmental scientist working with urban agriculture and pollinators, I believe.

And many entrepreneurs start with technical expertise, and you had that too.

But they struggle to turn it into a commercial product.

So what was that exact moment or insight that made you realize, hey, this isn't just a passion project for me, there's actually a scalable brand here.

Yeah, well, there was a lot going on at that time with bees.

So everybody loves bees, they love honey.

And I, I just saw this opportunity to put something onto the shelf that really resonated with millennials.

And at the time it was really just squeeze bear honey.

There wasn't any interesting flavors on shelf.

The packaging was not good.

It was usually just tubs of honey.

Often it was just the farmers putting product out, even if it was at mass commercial scale.

But there wasn't anyone millennial aged doing things on Shopify with honey, doing sexy packaging, doing different interesting superfood flavors.

And at the same time, I also saw a way to promote bee health, which was a huge topic then as, and it is still very relevant right now, and how we could work with beekeepers in A sustainable way and talk about that with what we were doing.

So it was really a twofold thing where I wanted to support Canadian beekeepers and sustainable beekeepers support what they were doing.

Also getting a high quality honey product out of it and then finding a way to package it that was going to speak to people and make people want to eat more of that type of product.

Well, you took, you went away from those plastic bear bottles, I know we see those.

And you went to, I believe glass jars.

And obviously we know about plastics and microplastics and things affecting it that way.

As far as the actual process for has it changed much how hives.

I've been watching some TV programs on how it works and how they get the queen bee and she can last a long time.

From what I understand, a bee lasts about a month, is about their lifespan and they're gone.

But she can last a year or two, so she's in charge.

And then that process to collecting the honey, has that process evolved at all or are we still doing it the way it was when it was, you know, same with the little smoke canisters and they're going in and taking care of.

Are those still the processes today?

That's it.

It's a pretty ancient industry there.

I mean there's some supplements you can give the bees now and there's ways of getting higher production and there's regions that are higher producers.

So northern Alberta would be one because really long daylight hours.

The bees, they work.

So those worker bees, there's a reason why they're called worker bees is they work from sun up to sundown.

And in northern Canada you have a really long day.

So it's an 18 hour day sometimes.

And so they will just keep working bringing honey in.

So most of the hives are up there, but.

But the technique is the same.

Like it's really.

You go out there with your smoker.

I mean the guys that are doing it commercially are much quicker.

They're maybe covered in stings already, are just so used to it that they're not as careful as, you know, someone with something in their backyard with their little smoker and they're well covered.

But yeah, beyond that, it's pretty much the same process.

Well, I think it's having that eye for that like you saw, you spotted an opportunity in a sleepy market.

Right.

Like honey is.

It's been around forever.

We've always had honey.

It's been used for literally centuries.

I know the Egyptians used it preservatives, a lot of the mummies it's great.

So how do you take something that.

And disrupt it in the way that you did and elevated the branding of it so it became more than just a commodity product.

So I think that's probably the first insight is a, that you saw that or you had the sight to see that.

Let's talk about category creation versus premiumization.

Honey is historically viewed as a basic commodity on grocery shelves.

How did you approach pricing, packaging and brand positioning to convince the retailers and consumers to pay a premium price for raw, functional honey?

I didn't give it that much thought.

I didn't have a business background.

I just said, wow, this product came off of a rooftop at the time.

Or I spent all these hours taking this product out of the hive.

It's so beautiful.

Each bee only makes five or, sorry, one teaspoon of honey.

So 5 milliliters of of honey in their lifetime.

And it was this gorgeous Canadian, raw, pristine honey.

And I just thought people should be paying for this.

There's no reason why, like, I just was like, why is everything else so cheap on shelf?

So I said, here's this beautiful product.

I'm going to tell you a story about why you should pay more for this.

I'm going to tell you where it came from.

I'm going to tell you about the bees and their little lives that they live and in turn talk about the farmers and support supporting the farmers and like how your dollars are going to, to a good thing and then come up with trendy products that do command a bit more money because some of the ones that we came out with are on the superfood side of things.

So people are just willing to pay more.

And I positioned it more as a health food product.

And in that sense too, people will pay more for a health food product as well.

So at the time, I didn't know what I was doing.

I just had.

I was so enamored with honey and bees and I just.

And now I look back and of course I did the, all those P's, the pricing, positioning, all that, but I didn't even know what that was at the time.

Well, I think you hit the nail on the head with the story.

It's the story that romanticizes it.

So if you think of all your commodities, like think sugar, take another product, a sweetener.

Sugar.

Sugar, right.

But what would be the story?

Well, maybe, hey, it came from canes that were done in a sustainable thing with the way we harvest it, the money goes back to the villages.

People want to know about that story.

And that's purposeful and your generation is excellent for that.

Mine, you know, we're baby boomers.

We just let's produce the stuff, sell it, get the commodity out there.

Right.

So the power of story.

And I think you stumbled on it, but I think you discovered something that's really valuable because that's what romanticizes it.

That's what people go and they connect with that.

And it has to be authentic.

You have to tell this story.

But I think by not having business training because there's business schools don't always teach this, you kind of found it out the hard way, but it worked out for you.

So congrats on that.

Let's talk about scaling retail distribution, though.

You started in Canada, getting onto retail shelves in Canada is notoriously tough for any brand.

So looking back at your early retail expansion, what was your strategy for pitching major distributors and retail buyers when you were still just a small team?

Yeah, I again made sure that everything was looked really nice.

I was very professional with everything I did.

I think one thing I did have as an entrepreneur was a bit of a professional background because I had had.

I wasn't just in my early 20s, which a lot of entrepreneurs in the food business seem to be when they're launching products.

So I just made sure everything looked good before I put it out.

I made sure I had the website and all that.

But a big key piece of it, which I do need to give a lot of praise to, was being part of a business accelerator that Arlene Dickinson from Dragons Den had here in Calgary.

And that did really help me accelerate into distribution and into retail and help just professionalize what I was presenting and gave me those connections that I needed to have that were just so much faster going through the accelerator.

And when you can say, and I did get an investment from her, and when you can say you have an investment from someone like that, it also a lot easier.

Yeah, yeah, no kidding.

Having those investors good.

So you obviously had a good product, somebody to help you.

So what were the key elements you learned from that accelerator?

What were the things that were in your mind were must dos.

If somebody entrepreneurs are listening that maybe can't get on to a program like that or get into an accelerator.

What would be two or three things that you learned or gleaned from that experience that hey, you know, find an investor, do this.

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but what would you recommend?

And looking at your margins right away was a huge piece of it.

And just understanding your cost of goods.

And then what it takes to be on shelf, what margin you need when it all comes back to you.

So your distributor is going to take 20%, the retail store is going to take, you know, 35 to 45%.

Then you're going to have to pay your brokers then your cost of goods and what are you really left with?

How can you run a business on that?

And they say margins for food products really can't be below 45%.

Otherwise you're just not going to be able to withstand going through the tough business of grocery also building a cohort of other people.

I think that's something that everybody needs to have and that that program really did give to me and they did say that's going to be the biggest thing you get out of it.

And I couldn't believe it at the beginning.

But having that cohort of other entrepreneurs that you're just in there grinding it out with and having the support from was super important to me.

And I'm still friends with a lot of them.

Like you're eight years later the ones that have made it through.

I mean not everybody did, but you know, the 10, 15% that actually did make it through, still see them and still talk to them.

Oh, what else?

Yeah, margin is huge.

Just knowing your, your numbers, your finances, being able to understand the accounting and your P and, and your balance sheet, super important.

And if you don't have a business background, you need to learn that.

And now thankfully we have AI and I just cannot believe how easy it would be now for someone to start up a business.

I say the same thing, there's no excuse anymore, is there?

There's no excuse.

And I, I was reading textbook when I started 2026.

Yeah, it was 10 years ago, I bought from Amazon business textbooks and now I could just go on AI and it would walk me through everything and teach me all, all that I need to know.

So it's a very different landscape really having AI in mind.

What you can glean from that, it really is the relationships thing that would be the biggest thing is, is make a network of other people around you.

No, I think you're bang on.

I think so the must haves are you got to have margin, you got to know what your business is set up, you got to set it up properly, make sure you've got some profitability or at least moving towards profitability.

You need to know your acquisition costs.

How much does it cost you to get a new customer?

I'm assuming you got a lot of repeat business with your product.

So you're getting turned.

Yeah, we do.

Yeah.

For sure.

Yeah.

When we become for honey, I'm imagining it's probably four or five turns a year maybe.

I don't know.

Are people buying it every month?

But we buy it.

But I don't buy it every month.

I buy it.

It sits on the shelf for a few months and.

But always use it.

And it, it's a natural preservative, so it lasts forever anyway.

Yeah.

A lot of seasonality.

So cold weather, of course, makes honey sales.

So we go quiet in the summer.

A lot of the time we're quiet in the summer.

Summer, I think that's twofold.

It's just not hot drink season.

But also I think people buy from the farmers market, to be completely honest.

So they're just not buying in their traditional grocery avenue.

Yeah.

Now are the, the bees hibernating in the winter time?

So because it's seasonal, are they?

Yeah, it has nothing to do with.

Yeah, so that's, that's an interesting point because all of the honey gets harvested now.

So basically we say in Calgary stampede week is when honey harvest starts.

So that's beginning of, well, mid July.

Heavy harvesting right now.

We might get another bit of a crop in the beginning of September and then we take that year's harvest and then use it for the whole next year.

So it's not like sales of honey are seasonal in nature.

We sell most of it from September until February, March.

But we're using that harvest from right now for the entire year.

So we do have to forecast appropriately to make sure that we have enough.

Yeah.

Let's talk about product innovation.

One of the signature moves that you introduced was functionally was infused honeys like turmeric gold or turmeric gold, I guess you would say it when introducing line extensions or novel concepts.

How do you balance innovation and keeping the core brand heritage clear?

We really looked at who's our consumer.

That was the biggest piece of it.

And because we were talking to health based, health conscious people, we knew that they would fall in love with what was trending still.

And at the time was these functional products.

So the superfood trend started as superfoods and now it's sort of turned into wellness and now it's turned into functionality and, and it's all spun off of these different ingredient types.

And now it's moving into the longevity trend.

But it all is kind of the same thing.

We just keep calling it something different.

So we looked at just what are our customers interested in?

And it made that decision Fairly easy to come up with flavored products that they would resonate with.

I just, I know they got ginger and it's a cacao or cocoa.

It's cacao.

Raw cacao in that one.

Yeah.

And then we've got a hot honey too, a spicy hot honey, which is.

I bought it, my daughter turned me onto it and she actually turned us on to you and how we found you for this.

And I actually went and bought my own and I drizzle it on pizza and it's amazing when I eat pizza it's like, wow, this is fantastic.

So no, it's good.

And so it's finding that niche in those verticals and then in today's world you can scale to that accordingly.

So I think that is an important element to it.

So speaking of scaling and building a purpose driven brand like you have that scales, you maintained a strong commitment to sustainability, supporting B health local sourcing.

Many founders worry that saying too true to eco conscious values ease into profit margins as they scale.

So how did you maintain your mission without sacrificing operational efficiency?

Well, we're lucky in terms of calling something local and sustainable.

We have that product really readily available here.

I could see how it would be hard for somebody that's sourcing all of their product from China, for example, to have it not eat into their profits.

But for us, this was the real opportunity was to use the Canadian product.

We could have mixed honey from Brazil and we could have mixed honey from Thailand and it would be a completely different product at that point.

And we just didn't feel like we could talk about the product the same way if it wasn't a pure product.

So for us, keeping in with the sustainability, it's really key to the business.

We're a certified B Corp. We meet the highest social and environmental transparency certification in the world.

And that does again speak to what our customers are willing to pay for.

So we know on that piece that it's not going to eat in necessarily to our sales, it's going to enhance our sales.

So it's really balancing that is what are people willing to pay for?

And at the same time, where are you sourcing things and can you still get them at a price that's going to give you the margin that you need?

So it is, it is a fine balance and it's something we're always working on.

But for us, we have just found that to be able to charge the premium that we're charging, we need to have that story.

And so that story comes at a premium cost to us, but then also premium cost to the customer.

How about the actual honey itself?

Is there are some who say honey is honey.

In other words comes from this beer or that beer.

You said Brazilian or from Thailand or different.

Is honey honey or do they mix it with other things?

They cut it with different things.

It diluted different things.

Absolutely.

Explain that.

I'd be curious myself.

Absolutely.

It is cut with things and you do need to be wary where you get it from.

If you have a pure Canadian product, of course you know it's going to come from hives that are here in Canada and there's certain standards and responsible ethics that we work on here.

We do have a huge honey fraud issue in North America.

The largest food fraud that was ever committed in North American history was on honey and that was about 10 years ago.

It was honey coming into the US and it was not real.

So barrel like truckloads and truckloads of honey, semi trucks came in on a ship.

It was not real honey.

So it goes so far as them cutting honey with chemicals that mimic the chemistry of honey when it's really just a water, sugar or water corn syrup, maybe a bit of honey in there.

Real true honey.

But a lot of the time on the shelf.

If you're not getting a product that is true sourced, you need to be careful where it comes from and that goes for a lot of food.

But honey is absolutely in that high.

I wouldn't have guessed that.

So thanks for clearing that insight.

I think that's an important thing.

It's pure ingredient.

Don't don't chintz on your honey.

It lasts a long time anyway so it's never going to go spoil on you.

I might get hard but heated up and is still good to go.

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And now back to my conversation with Asia Horsley.

Well, you built a business and what a lot of our entrepreneurs and business professionals look at is, hey, I want to exit that business one day.

I want to build something that I can exit and go do other things.

You had that went through that process.

So you navigated the whole merger and acquisition process.

So Drizzle Honey was acquired, but I believe by US Based Wisdom Natural Foods.

So in the health product section, for the founders listening who built with an accident, you know, build their business with an exit in mind.

What were the most critical steps that you took to years before the acquisition to make Drizzle an attractive M and A candidate?

So you just said it.

Build the business with the exit in mind.

Because there's a lot of founders that do not build the business with the exit in mind.

I don't think they ever have that goal set for themselves.

Whereas right from the beginning I told myself the day that we started the business that I was going to sell the business and I gave myself five years.

It did not take five years, it took eight and a half years.

Nonetheless, we did go through Covid.

I have two pregnancies, two babies.

I all sorts of personal things that happened in between.

And I do feel like eight and a half was a good time to sell.

You do need to sort of time your sale there.

So that's the biggest thing is, is have that exit in mind when you're growing the business.

So everything from the systems that you have in place, meaning that there are systems in place and it's not just relying on you.

And I was able to test that when I went on maternity leave.

And I think this is something one of those mom superpowers that a lot of business owners don't get to have is that you leave the business.

You literally leave your business for.

I mean, I didn't get a traditional maternity leave of 12 to 18 months like most these great maternity leaves other Canadian women get.

But nonetheless, I did leave and I was gone for weeks and sometimes months at a time with once in a while checking in on emails.

And so I had that able to work for me when I went to sell the business.

That was, I think, very attractive pitch to both the brokers to ask them to Sell my business for me, because that's.

Step one is trying to find a broker that thinks their business is worthy of their time.

And then step two is finding someone to actually buy your business in an extremely competitive environment.

And so just having it not reliant on me was a really big piece of it.

Having my margins right was a big piece of it.

Having revenue growth showing was a big piece of it.

I do think that having the previous investors as part of the business is a great piece of the story that just shows, you know, someone else.

It's a trustworthiness.

Someone else saw something in it as well.

Yeah, it's really just about.

About the numbers and I think the way it's structured and having even within the company programs in place.

Like we had an inventory management system running.

So again, it's not based on our wacky spreadsheets that only are in our heads.

It's run through an inventory management system.

Everything was kind of there so that it could be passed off really easily.

Well, you made some interesting points.

And their buyers are looking for clean financials, protected ip, strong brand voice, all the things you've identified, repeatable customer acquisition channels, operational systems that can run without your involvement.

And that's probably a hard part, was stepping out from that.

And I'd be curious about where that was.

The other point I want to make here is, you know, we're in the United States and cabaret all over the world, but in Canada, women get 12 months to 18 months for maternity leave, and in the U.S. you don't.

You might get a month if you're lucky, if your employee is lucky.

And my American friend and say, oh, well, you guys are a socialist guy.

I'm going.

Here we have a story of a capitalist starting a business, entrepreneur building a business, building an exit strategy and selling to an American company and still entitled to those benefits.

But because you work for yourself, there's no 18 months into it.

So I get that, I understand it.

But it does exist.

And so the two can coexist.

We want to label systems all the time, but really we're in a great foundation, I think North America, we're in a great place to start a business.

So it doesn't matter where you started as long as that you do.

But I think what you said, having the systems in place, was it tough delegating off and letting go of certain things?

Yeah, of course.

Of course it was.

Yeah.

But it was.

There's preparation for it.

You have nine months, you know, when you're pregnant, and so you do have nine months.

It's not all of a sudden.

One of my kids did come early, so that was a shock.

My first came a month early and so I really was relying on that last month to make the official pass off.

But you do get people ready.

People will step up for you.

You have to give your staff more credit a lot of the time.

And if you're already a manager, that's not micromanaging, which I wasn't.

Well, I don't think I was.

Maybe my staff would say something else.

They're empowered already before you've even left.

And so when you do leave, and especially we did have a team of other women, they really do step up to allow you to have that time with the baby.

Because I think everybody knows how important that is.

And it's not like I was completely gone.

If they needed something, send me a text.

I'm not dead, right?

Like I'm just at home.

And I was lucky enough my partner took some time off in there too and I would jump on it in evenings and it was enough to keep the business running.

Well, you women are amazing.

I have several daughters that have their own businesses.

They're also moms and new moms and they're juggling all of those things and issues and wearing all the hats that women do.

So I think that works.

Let's talk about transitioning from founder CEO to brand leader post acquisition.

So after an acquisition, most founders or many founders struggle with the shift from owning 100% of the decision making to leading brand growth with under a parent company.

How have you navigated Leading North America's strategy for Drizzle within the Wisdom Natural brands?

How's that work for you?

Well, to be honest, I really like being an employee.

It is a lot of pressure off of me at this stage of my life.

Yeah, no, I hear you.

I have the.

I have that fantasy once in a while.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, for sure.

It's.

No, it's coming true for me right now and I'm enjoying it because I know it's, you know, maybe not forever and I do know what it was like during those times.

So it's interesting.

I was just talking to my operations manager about this this morning about working for somebody else and how there's.

Now you don't make those decisions and you need to ask them for permission to do certain things.

And you know, things get pushed back because they're not thinking about the same way as you are and their deadlines are not the same as yours.

Whereas before I just would make A decision and go for it.

And it's sometimes frustrating, but sometimes also just very nice to have the support of the.

That is a big reason why I pushed for the acquisition was to have other resources and also to take things off my plate that I didn't enjoy doing, which was accounting.

Not that I didn't enjoy doing it, I just wasn't an expert.

I'm not a cpa.

So asking me to do some of that, I didn't feel like it was always a good use of my time.

And so I think yeah, from what the listeners could learn is I do think there's a really beautiful place at the end of the acquisition where you can enjoy all the that you've worked for.

And I still have earnouts tied with my acquisition.

I up until the end of 2027, I still have a reason to be there which is sort of these bonuses called earnouts that come with three years of targets.

I still feel very driven to.

To hit those revenue targets, but also very supported at the same time.

And I think it's a really nice thing to be able to sell your business.

I feel very lucky.

Absolutely.

Ron.

You get different choices.

Well, the luck was there because you built something that made you lucky at the end of the day, I mean luck does come into it a little bit.

We'd be.

If we were honest with ourselves.

I've been lucky.

Timing can be everything.

All that.

I wasn't as fortunate.

I built some businesses in the 80s and waited too long for the acquisition, ended up selling out.

But it was too long.

Had I sold out a year earlier, we might not even be talking.

But that's how much a difference a year can make.

Right.

Let's talk about cracking different markets, particularly with the US market expansion.

So expanding from the Canadian market into the US It's a major milestone and vice versa.

But it represents unique supply chain issues, regulatory marketing challenges.

What's been the biggest strategic shift in scaling drizzle across North America post acquisition?

I would say just entering a country where it is a different consumer.

So our demographic is actually quite different in Canada than it is in the U.S. how so?

Not completely, but the type of person they're used to a different type of honey.

In the US a really liquidy product versus ours is not.

And so it's a different form of customer education.

And so we're just finding it's taking more education with this demographic than it is in Canada.

And so it's just people that are more invested in their health, like even more so.

Whereas in Canada we could.

Our demographic was a bit wider.

It seems to be a bit narrower in the US I would say also strategically, we just need to really think about our cost of goods coming over into the US we do get that bump from the exchange rate.

So it's a Canadian entity still.

So we do get that even though it's owned by a parent company.

So it all gets mishmashed in the end.

There's that and then.

But we also need to think about things like tariffs, which is something that has been up and down and up and down this whole last year.

We've been threatened, I think now three or four times.

And now officially, just recently, they did go in place.

So strategically, that's not something we had to think about in Canada when it was just, we're launching the product here in Canada.

Our consumer base knows what they're getting.

It's really easy to tell our story here because Canadians like to hear from other Canadians to then flipping over into the US and having to deal with anything from importing and exporting and duties and taxes and tariffs and new customer demographics and this huge market, like it's 10 times the market.

So you just really need to be careful that the territories that you enter, that's a huge piece of it.

Well, Canada's 5%.

It's about 5% of that total U.S. market.

It's like a state.

It's like having a different state of California.

You're just out of another California.

That's kind of like.

Actually, you raised an interesting issue.

And so for people who are listening, I think this is an important distinction.

We see the tariffs.

Tariffs have impact all of us.

So as a manufacturer, the product you work with an American company that purchased the brand, they sell in America, they sell in Canada, they distribute right across the country.

They're importing their raw ingredients, those ingredients into the country and they're being impacted by.

With those tariffs, and you've already got tight margins on there.

So when they import that I'm assuming according to leadership out there, and I don't want to get too political about it, but does the.

The brand.

Does Wisdom Natural Foods just absorb all of the costs of those tariffs we've just seen, or does that get passed on through the food chain?

Because it has to.

We don't know yet because these just went through.

So we have not done our first shipment into the US yet with these tariffs in place.

What I'm thinking.

So I speak briefly.

Yeah, I did speak with the CEO and the cfo.

We'll probably, for the first little bit here, do it as normal and we'll absorb those costs.

We're also hoping our manufacturing facility who we co pack the product so they help us with the supply chain and getting it all in and then we pay this fee.

We hope that maybe they'll help a little bit with buffering that a little bit for us and then yeah, the rust is going to be absorbed for us.

We do not have room on the shelf price to increase the price at this point in time.

So we're already a premium high priced product on shelf and I do not believe the consumers especially as a brand new brand.

Yeah, I really don't think we have room because the rest of the honey on shelf is, is mostly American honey for the most part and would probably not increase in price.

So we can't just have a new brand all sudden increasing the price when.

But it impacts the American ownership, doesn't it?

In other words those costs have to be absorbed and eventually from a sustainability if on forever and we don't expect it.

Well they're on again, off again, on again, off again.

It must cost something just to do that.

You're gonna that cost get absorbed through distribution, through retail, normally through the food chain.

So the consumer ends up paying more for.

Because your inputs are higher.

Right.

Your input costs are higher.

So you're eating it for a while until you can't and then it's, it's the business sustainability really.

But I, I think it's going to be short lived like everything else has been.

So we hope for the best.

I hope so.

I hope so because yeah, you're right, it's not sustainable long term like I said.

Well for this first a couple shipments we'll maybe absorb it and after that we're going to have to go back to the drawing board because you cannot shrink your margin that much and still stay in business.

Let's talk about mastering marketing across digital channels.

Drizzle's built a beautiful cohesive community across Instagram, TikTok direct to consumer digital channels.

What role does social proof and digital storytelling play in driving velocity for a brand that is ultimately purchased at a physical level?

Mm.

Very important to have that social proof.

And that's something right at the beginning that I really took seriously and luckily was at the beginning of a lot of content creation and influencers.

Those were just people coming on board in 2016, 2017.

That industry has exploded and is rapidly changing still and even I would say some pieces of it are decreasing in popularity at this time.

But we were right there to, to ride that wave and be able to use that content and that social proof like the proof metric on it.

They say when you, you see a brand you need to see it seven times before you're going to purchase it.

So we used, you know in store you're going to see it but you might also see it at a consumer event, you might also see it at a trade show, you might also see it online through ads, through the different social media platforms, through an influencer.

So we just tried to use all of those touches points to build the brand equity behind it and hope that people would recognize the brand so that when they did finally go to make that purchase they felt like they could trust it.

Makes sense.

How has your role changed then that you've handed off to a bigger company.

You're now the senior brand manager for this particular product and products.

So you're kind of like that ambassador out there.

Is better role for you enjoy that role.

And is that something that most founders ought to try and evolve to and let the day to day operations take care of themselves by people looking after those things?

Yeah, I think it's a good spot to be in.

I get to represent the brand now and I'm really focused on sales.

So I'm naturally just good at selling and good at those relationships and getting in with the buyers and being able to convince people in a large scale to bring the product into their store.

So I gravitated to that but also because it helps me get my earn out bonuses.

So of course I want to hit the sales as much as I can.

So I've enjoyed that transition and I think there's a lot of opportunities for post exit founders.

So if you can get to that, that place.

I feel like so many doors have been opened up to me now and I've had so many opportunities come to me.

I hope my CEO doesn't listen to this podcast.

Just the amount of jobs and consulting and advisory and all these things.

Sure to me nothing wrong with that.

We want.

You want your people as a founder.

I want my people to be, you know, come and be interested in.

The worst part is when nobody wants your people.

And so I'd rather have corporate, you know, be worried that's that's a better place to be.

So it's a good point.

But, but I understand.

Last question for you.

Our show is all about becoming the preferred choice, the emotional favorite in your marketplace.

And you've given some great insights on how entrepreneurs and business professionals could do that in a crowded environment where consumers have Endless options.

What is the single most important advice that you have for entrepreneurs?

Trying to build a brand that customers genuinely love and will stay loyal to.

At this point in time, looking back on it, become the preferred person yourself as much as the brand.

So it's really.

Which is not everybody's comfort zone.

Right.

Nobody necessarily wants to be out there on LinkedIn or even be the face of the brand.

But I do feel like that was a big piece of this whole brand that I didn't really talk about earlier in the podcast, was sharing my story.

Who am I?

I'm an environmental scientist.

And those are the reasons why you can trust me when I'm selling this product.

And this is why I'm in love with the product and why I feel like you should be as well.

And I always presented myself really well.

I'd get dressed up for trade shows, and I just wanted everybody to fall in love with the product as much as fall in love with me.

And it's kind of a ick thing to say, but at the same time, it's what helped promote the whole brand and everything along the way.

And it's being vulnerable and putting your story out there.

And I am More active on LinkedIn now, and I am allowing people to see part of this journey that I went through.

And I did that throughout.

I was on Instagram and I was on Facebook talking about this is what we're doing behind the scenes.

And.

And people fall in love with that as much as they fall in love with the brand because they want to see what we're doing.

They want to see what the girls that work with me are doing as well and help envision themselves in.

In that role, and it helps them connect with the brand.

Well, it's like you're saying you got to be a product of the product, be good as an ambassador.

You got to love it, live it.

If you don't go find something you can get excited about, if you can't get excited about it, why bother going to sell it?

So, lots of.

Lots of good insights and advice there.

Lots of good opportunities.

You probably see them all the time.

And it's a matter of where the time and energy.

Where do you want to put your time and energy into it?

So, Asia, thank you so much for being our guest today.

Lots of good insights.

If you had a superpower, because we know what you talk about from your background.

If you had a superpower, something, then you can brag here that, hey, I think we got it already, but something maybe our listeners don't Know that you're, you can brag here for a minute and go, hey, I'm really good at this.

What would you tell us it is?

I'm really good at closing a deal.

I'd say that I'm really good at closing a deal and I feel like I shine in that like last, that really tough part of conversations where people sometimes back off or get a too nervous or they feel like what they're offering is not worthy of the price they're selling at.

I would say I'm good at that piece of it and I'm proud of that.

Excellent.

If you had kryptonite or a weak point, what would that be?

For me, it's detail.

I have to have people around me who are excellent at diesel and organization.

That's what keeps me organized.

So I have systems and I have people.

That's because otherwise it's, you know, a more 30,000 foot perspective.

What would be Asia's Kryptonite?

My distraction.

I get distracted super easy.

So it is.

And it's probably just.

Yeah, exactly.

Very much so.

I'm always like ping ponging around with so many things and I've never been diagnosed with ADHD and I don't care to go through that process.

I've reigned it in and I think it's a superpower.

But that was my, my biggest thing is staying focused on what needs to be done and you know, like really honing down on what's going to be good.

I had a guest in last season and she speaks on neurodivergency.

And there's a spectrum like any spectrum.

And I think a lot of entrepreneurs are on that spectrum, me included.

Oh yeah.

I get you chasing shiny objects and it's like you got to stay focused on task, I think.

So that's important too.

And it's not a bad or good thing.

It's.

It gives you a superpower because you look at things differently.

Right.

And matter of fact, in my latest book, I actually detail case studies with neurodivergent people.

People are worried, how am I going to survive in the age of AI?

And you know, Microsoft has whole programs where they hire neurodivergent people because they see the world differently and it creates uniqueness.

And so I think those are all important things.

But hey, lots of good insights.

Lots of things you showed first.

When people want to get hold of you, we'll have all, everything in the show notes.

But if they want to talk to you from an engagement point of view or consultant point of view, I'M sure they can get hold of you or advice or you can at least point them in the right direction.

So thank you so much for being our guest today.

Thank you for having me.

I enjoyed it.

As you are listening to this episode, what is one idea that you've heard that's caught your attention and why does it matter so much to you?

And who is one person who you can share that with, either sharing this episode or just sharing that insight that occurred to you while you were listening?

Perhaps it is to build your company with an exit in mind and design your systems and margins from day one so the business can run in the sell without you.

Or maybe it's the reminder to be the brand's face and how sharing your authentic personal story builds the emotional connection that drives true customer loyalty.

Thank you for listening, for learning, and for investing in yourself so that you can become the best version of you.

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Goodbye.