The Come Up highlights successful business ownersâ & operators âcome-upâ stories in an easy-to-read, written interview format.
All content is transcribed from live interviews, this one, from Feb 2023.
Know someone who would make a great interview? Nominate them here!
For the sixth issue - an interview with Barumba Play founder Sara Feldstein!
Quick Stats:
đ¤Business Model: E-commerce
đ°Annual Revenue: $950k+
đNet Profit Margin: 20%
đĽHeadcount: 1
âłTime In Business: 21 months
âŠBest Growth Channels:
Facebook
TikTok
Instagram
#ď¸âŁBusinesses Started Prior: 0Â
Life before BarumbaâŚ
I was one of the kids who knew back in high school what I wanted to do.Â
I decided in grade 10 that I wanted to be an accountant - not surprising considering I come from a family of accountants. My father, my grandfather, uncles, great uncles - every branch of my family has chartered accountants, so I don't know why it was a surprise to me.
I knew very early on which was both a blessing and a curse, because, on one hand, I was able to be focused, type A, and go for what I want.Â
On the other hand, I put blinders on to other opportunities from basically age 16 on, which came back to bite me, when I was completely burnt out but had never explored any other option in life other than accounting.Â
It also meant I very heavily tied my identity to my career from a very early ageâŚÂ
I didnât become a person and then find a career, I grew up with this intention of âI'm an accountantâ, so it created a pretty unhealthy sense of selfâŚ
I worked at a bigger firm for a few years - typical sweatshop, seven days a week, midnightâreally horrible culture.Â
After that, I moved to my father's firm and worked there for 10 years and became a partner.
On burn outâŚ
I think it took years to realize I was burnt out, because I just kept ignoring it.Â
It wasnât until February 2020 - a couple weeks before the pandemic that I hit a wall and started thinking, âI can't keep going this way anymore.â
Part of it is the nature of the profession - you're always putting out fires and doing a million things at once. Our primary client base was people in trouble with the government so the consequences are high.
They haven't filed in 10 yearsâŚ
Theyâre being audited...Â
Theyâre locked out of their bank accountsâŚÂ
We had people who had to live in their car, with their finances wiped out, so if you didn't do something fast enough, something bad could happen.Â
It was a high-stress environmentâŚÂ
I didn't even know I had anxiety at all, but in Feb. 2020, I basically thought I couldnât do it anymore.
Then the next month, COVID hit.
Calls with clients freaking outâŚ
their businesses were closingâŚ
Reviewing files at 11 o'clock at night with employeesâŚÂ
Every day I drowned a little bit more⌠Eventually, I stopped being able to process information - a basic tax return that I could normally review in two minutes would take me 45.
I was just slowing downâŚ
I was becoming detached from work.
I started blowing off meetingsâŚ
Things were falling apart but felt I had no choice but to continue - when I went to work for my father, I knew I was agreeing to be the future of the succession plan. Joining him meant never leaving, so I was loyal to a fault - I cared way more about the firm than myself.
I never struggled with any mental health issues before, but by not making a change and trying to keep up an impossible pace, I became very depressed.Â
That is when I ended up leaving, not by choice, but because I no longer was capable of doing the work. Burnoutâs one of those things that you can't ignore, and if you don't make a change, your body's going to make that decision for you and shut you down.Â
It becomes physical.Â
On climbing out of the holeâŚ
I thought in my head, âLet me give myself three months to kind of get better, get out of this hole.âÂ
I tried to layer on improvements, but in the beginning, even going for a walk felt impossible. August was a blur - I think I just slept August away.
In September, I started climbing out;
regular sleep;
exercising;
making sure I got outsideâŚ
I tried all the typical self-help things⌠journaling, meditating, cold showers - every trick people do to try and work on themselves.Â
Some stuck, some didnât.Â
Then suddenly, three months went by and I felt like, âNo way could I go back to accounting.âÂ
I felt lost because accounting is all I knew. I didn't know who would hire me or for what, because the thing that I could do, I no longer wanted to do - I felt completely unhireable.
âWho in their right mind would hire me!? I guess I have to be self-employedâŚâÂ
That was the thought process.Â
Why E-commerce?
I always had a bit of an interest in e-commerce, and I had a number of accounting clients who were in e-commerce, so I understood the industry and knew the tools pretty well.
Plus, it was something I could do from home, and after years of client services, I did not want to have to talk to people too much.Â
I wanted something where I could say, âhere's my price,â you pay it, and then I can deliver the goods or service.Â
At this point, I was kind of out of the depression, but still very low-energy, so coming up with some giant company was not really the goal.
I didn't want to have to haggle over bills - it was the antithesis to billable hours.
âWhat can I do so I can have as little stress as possible?âÂ
That was the goal of the business - nominal stress.
Why kids furniture?
Working from home during the pandemic was exceptionally difficult - obviously, I couldn't just let my kids watch TV all day.Â
Sometimes Iâd have to take a client call, so Iâd give them a toy, but realized very quickly, no matter how many toys you have, none of them seem to actually keep kids entertained for very long.Â
Or, âOh, you're playing with this one and it's dry clean only,â or it breaks the first time you play with itâŚ
So weâre cycling through all these toys and Iâm thinking, âWow, we have all these toys and most of them are crap.âÂ
We needed something that would entertain the kids for longer, something that kids of different ages can play with together.
And again - pandemic, WFH - you're noticing the clutter in your home, and it's bothering you more. There are so many toys.
So I started having all these âtoy philosophyâ thoughts and ended up looking into âplay couchesâ because it was a big trend in other countries, but at the time, it wasn't available in Canada. I was able to kind of take my own twist on it, based on the negatives that people complained about, and make my own version of it.Â
And my brother had an e-commerce business, so it was easy to get answers to some of the questions around things like insurance, quality control, safety testing - things like that. I wasn't starting from scratch because I knew enough people who knew the answers to all my questions.
On launching as a presaleâŚ
I purchased my first container of inventory about $80k worth.
And was like, âOh, my God, I just used up all our cash. How am I going to sell all these things?âÂ
I felt the pit of my stomach when I wired that much money, but I launched as a pre-order so I could have sales coming in before the product actually arrived.Â
I started selling on May 27th, but didnât have inventory ready until the last couple days of October - so, five months of sales before my product got here.
And by then, itâs rolling into the holiday season, and I was actually out of inventory a couple days into December. After that, I decided to move to manufacturing here in Canada, so it was another few months without inventory, but I was willing to wait.
On building small & slowâŚ
Yes, I have stunted my growth, and if I wanted to build this bigger, it could have been built bigger.Â
In 2021, I was paying $4 for a sale on Google Shopping back thenâ$4!!!
Now it's like $30 or $40, so I could have put way more money in ads early onâŚ
I could have bought more inventory or borrowed money to buy more inventory instead of selling out, but I didn't want to borrow money.
It would be easy to throw more money in front of things, and I probably should strike when the gold is hotâbut that was never my intention, so itâs okay. I was recovering out of burnout, so it wouldn't have done good to put myself in a high stress, high volume situation.Â
I don't have major growth goals - I don't want to be a 40-million-dollar businessâŚÂ
I want to be a lifestyle businessâŚI want simple.
With interest rates going up, I don't want to borrow money and pay expensive interest rates. I want to be able to bootstrap and make mistakes.Â
I'd also rather make mistakes at a smaller scale and build processes.Â
It's my first company; I'm doing it on my terms.Â
On staying flexible with goals and progressâŚ
So I manage everything myselfâŚ
All the social media,
the TikTokâs,
customer service,
fulfilling orders,
replacing inventoryâI do everything.Â
I didn't want employeesâŚ
I've done the employee thing for a lot of years, and I just wasnât interested.
Itâs a lot to take on, but a lesson from my therapist was about setting yourself up for success, not failure - and if I made goals for myself like,âyou must do this task by this day,â and I didn't do it Iâd feel a sense of failure. Inevitably with the kids out of school because of COVID and schedules constantly changing, I had to be realistic.
Blocking tasksâI really wanted to do that, but it didn't work for my lifestyle.Â
Now I have a kanban board where I basically move things into my day, tomorrow, this week, this month, but if something doesnât get done, I donât beat myself up, I push it to the next day and start again.
I also only added things in layers - for example in the beginning, I didnât even have Instagram⌠It took me a really long time, but after a number of months of knowing how reels work, I thought âOkay, now I can do it faster, so let me add PinterestâŚNow I can do that pretty fast... Let me add TikTok.âÂ
My capacity grew as I learned each platform and each individual - I didnât come out of the gate trying to do everything at once.Â
Mentality running your own businessâŚ
I've said this a bunch of times before, but I actually feel like I'm on permanent vacation - I literally feel like I'm on vacation all the time.Â
The stress does not bug me.Â
The work doesn't bug me - I can handle all of it.Â
I have very rarely been stressed out by business because itâs nothing compared to how I existed before. I just didn't realize I was living high, chronic stress at all times.Â
Even now when I'm like, âOh, my God, I have to figure this thing out,â it's not really stress - definitely not in the same physical way, with my body feeling the results of that stress.
It's just, âOh, I have something in front of me, I have to solve it.â
Letâs be honest - the consequences are so lowâŚ
Someone got the wrong colour? Ok, Iâll send them the right colour.
Compared to the accounting firm, the consequences of mistakes are pretty low - itâs not nearly as consequential - it's toys, not people's lives.Â
On managing profitabilityâŚ
So I have a few options with the money we makeâŚ
Buy inventory,Â
spend on ads,Â
or let money sit untouched.
The best decision depends on what industry you're in - if you're in CPG or something where people are buying repeatedly, you might want to invest in more growthâŚ
You can almost afford to lose money on your first sale because you're going to get more down the road, whereas I sell big one-time purchases, so I have to be profitable on the first order - there's no way around that.Â
And because we're a toy company, we're especially busy during the holiday season.Â
I can throw tons of money at ads right now, but I won't get the same return as if I waited until the holidays, because less people are looking to make big purchases right now - itâs very seasonal.
On increasing customer LTVâŚ
Right now Iâm thinking about when to introduce another product.
Eventually I will, but it makes sense to focus on one thing until you really get it right - and I donât want to rush that process. If I listened to everything my customers wanted, I definitely would have sold more and increased LTV, but also, my whole company ethos is âtoys that do more.âÂ
If I sold random stuff, Iâm going against that and just adding more crap in your home so adding SKUs for the sake of it doesnât really match my vision.
I definitely want to do other toys, and I will this yearâŚand over time, I'll increase other skews thoughtfully.Â
What you wish you knew 5 years agoâŚ
Don't be loyal to other people, be loyal to yourself - even if it's family - you have to take care of yourself. I would have sat in that office sucking it up forever so I wouldn't disappoint my father because I didnât want to screw him overâŚ
There was always so much I wanted to do and be creative, but I felt very stunted, so I wish I would have given myself permission to look outside my little box at what else the world had to offer.
And if I had to start this business again, I would have said,Â
âdon't only have one giant product that people only buy onceâŚâ *laughs*
It was intentional at the time because I wanted to minimize volume, but of course, the problem then becomes you constantly have to find new customersâŚ
And play couches donât have fantastic margins - theyâre expensive so I have more dollars to play with, but it's a lower percentage, so it eliminates opportunities to do wholesale things like that.
I wonât make that mistake with future products - but again, it wasn't really a mistake - it was intentional based on what I needed at the time.
On the 2 year roadmapâŚ
My magic numbers - I would love $5M in revenue, with $1M in profit - so continue to maintain a 20% margin. If you look at how expensive this type of product is, you don't need to sell a ton to get to those numbers, right?
Right now, I'm at $669 - and obviously, at some point, I'll have to raise thatâŚ
But if I do want to do $5M, thatâs not even 7500 units - totally doable.
I just need to keep slowly doubling over the next few years, and I should hit those targets no problem.
On the biggest challengesâŚ
For me personally, itâs the constant need to create new content.
Content dies pretty fast and you're always having to make new stuff - it can get a bit exhausting trying to feed the machine all the timeâŚÂ
You don't necessarily realize you're becoming a content creator when you start a business, and I've gotten used to it, but it's not something I particularly enjoy.Â
I would also say, I would say it's a bit isolating when you work from home alone as a solopreneur⌠Ironically, I don't want to manage a team or be client facing anymore, but you really miss out on communityâŚ
You learn a lot by talking to other people going through similar things, and Iâve found it challenging to make an effort to get to know more people on a similar journey.
Also now, taking stock of how I'm spending my time, I do think I have to start hiring freelancers more, and delegate - stop doing everything myself, because that's another area I've stunted my growth.Â
If I want to go a little further, I need to free my time up a bit.Â
My default thought is,âOh, I can do this, so why would I pay someone?â
Well - because itâs going to take 3-4 hours to figure out, and someone else could get it done in 20 minutes. LaughsÂ
Favourite books & resourcesâŚ
My favourite one that no one seems to have heard of, or maybe people have (that's not people I've talked to), it's called Never Lose A Customer Again by Joey Coleman.Â
E-Myth (The EMyth), that one's a classic.Â
But, honestly, my taste in books has evolved⌠I went through that period of reading every single business book that everyone recommends under the sun, and got tired of that.Â
Then I moved on to memoirs - Shoe Dog, for exampleâŚ
Iâm Not Really A Waitress - about the lady who started OPI nail polishâŚ
Just lots of memoirs, which are really interesting founder stories, where you learn a lot of the lessons, but they don't feel like technical; they don't feel like homework to read.
It's much more enjoyable.Â
How many times you almost quitâŚ
ZeroâŚÂ
In my mind, the only way you can fail is if you quit.
It doesn't matter if you have to change your product, change this, and change that.Â
As long as you keep going, you will never fail.Â
Everyone always says just start, but really, that kick in the butt for anyone who wants to start a business is looking around and seeing, âHey, that person's not smarter than me; that person doesn't work harder than me,â and realizing the difference between you and them as they just went out and did somethingâŚ
They did somethingâthey started.Â
You're going to make mistakes; but mistakes are part of your learning.
I forget who it was, my brother or a friend who says starting a business is like an MBA - every time he screws up and loses money, it's just like paying for another course for an MBA. For me, when I screw up and things go bad, instead of getting stressed, I say, âAh, that's part of the journey, it's part of the story.âÂ
And honestly, since being depressed, I view life very differentlyâŚ
To me, everything I'm doing now is just a giant game.
Best growth channelsâŚ
Obviously for everybody, it depends on where the customer is, but for me, I'd say Facebook. Facebook is great - moms live on Facebook. laughs
Instagram is great at showing a portfolio of my products, but doesnât get new people through the door - I have to get them to find me and follow me on Instagram.
I consider TikTok top of funnel - usually they come from there, and follow on Instagram until theyâre ready to buy.
I donât get much traction offline - part of that has to do with the awareness journey.Â
I tried exhibiting at the baby show and some in-person events, but it's not an impulse buy - itâs a larger purchase so itâs not until Christmas or a birthday rolls around, that a purchase typically is made.
On survivor biasâŚ
From my accounting days, I saw hundreds of companies die - and every single time it was because they had no money. The reasons as to run out of money might change - whether they priced things wrong, couldnât collect payments fast enough, or they blew it on advertising...
It doesn't really matter how they got there, they all died because they ran out of money. So, maybe I am overly cautious and keep a stupid extra amount of cash in the bank that could be spent on advertising or growth - but this is my safety net of cash.
We all hear those famous founder stories - âOh, we barely made payrollâŚâ and so on⌠It sounds great when they're the winners and can tell it like an adventure novel, but Iâve seen the ones who didn't make it - and you never hear their story.
It can happen 100 ways, and it doesn't take much.Â
The businesses that would say, âOh, we want to get to this number and this number,â and they have it in their head they're going to be a billion dollar company - those were the types of companies assigned to meâŚthe ones that crashed and burned trying to grow faster than anyone could keep up with.
So I just donât buy into the hype really, but thatâs just me.
I'd rather be small and profitable than big and not profitable.Â
Thatâs it for issue no. 6!
To learn more about Sara check her out on LinkedIn or Instagram!
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If you, or someone you know would like to be featured, or just want to connect, feel free to message me on LinkedIn!