One of my clients, we will call her Jamie, just managed to secure a contract with a regional high-end food chain which will put her jam into regional food stores and up her name recognition 100-fold. The town news published an article about her accomplishment, and suddenly people were asking her advice about how to ‘go big’ themselves.

Here is what the article left out:

Jaime began creating her jam 9 years ago. Her family grows peaches and she initially wanted to have a great little jam to sell in their roadside stand. The next day she had another thought. Why not make jam to sell at the local fairs and events? That brought up more questions. If I sell at events what size would sell? How do I make the product attractive enough to catch people’s attention? How do I make sure they want to come back for more? Jaimie was off and running (and she has not stopped).

Jamie made her first three batches of jam 9 years ago. She kept careful records of her various methods, down to identifying from where the peaches originated. She asked her friends to offer feedback and they provided it in abundance over the next 3 years, addressing more aspects of her product than she had ever thought about. They urged her to improve on the taste, texture, color, whether it spread well, whether it separated over time. Jaimie became part scientist, and part confectioner. She discarded batch after batch as she learned more about her trade. Her number of notebooks increased.  

Over the next two years Jaimie took her six favorite batches of peach jam and subjected them to more scrutiny from a larger group of jam aficionados. Only two of the six received the reviews she desired. She identified the methodology difference between the two batches and then looked at other factors like cost of the product, size of the jars, and made her decision on her jam. At this point in time, she had reconfigured her product over sixty times. That is, sixty “failures” as some would say, or… sixty “experiments,” as Jaimie says.

Jaimie was ready to go local, but she needed to acquire a Retail Residential License to cook her jams at home and sell her jams at local events. To acquire the license Jaime had to update her kitchen. She spent months searching for and obtaining the right equipment for the kitchen and finding dependable suppliers of jars of varied sizes and patterns. She designed a logo for her product and made labels in the evening. She labeled her jars herself in the early mornings before she started work on the farm. Jaimie created a beautifully packaged and extremely tasty product, and it sold well.

Jaime sold her small quantities of jam in local events and farmers markets for a year, then rode with another vendor who had a food truck to local events and advertised it there. After 3 years she had another thought (stimulated by listening to recurring customers). What if I could sell in regional specialty stores? She began to query her events customers about what store they use, and who the owners were, what amount of jam they might require, then she visited both the stores and their websites. She studied their branding, mission, the ambiance, and layout of the store, and then she began her marketing campaign. She had a well-planned proposal for each of them.

After at least ten rejections, Jaimie walked into a store which was, coincidentally, also in the process of expanding.  The owner was creating a small regional chain of high-end stores. Jaimie and the owner connected instantly. They saw the benefit to both parties in joining up, and Jaimie soon had a contract to sell her gourmet jam in the new locations. This required tightening up on all aspects of her business, creating consistent production, packaging, labeling, delivery, and adding in other peach orchards as back up. Her family hired new employees and resource professionals. As the new locations open, they too are expanding. Its not smooth sailing, but it never has been for Jaimie. Her interest in seeing what she could do to create a product of value, her drive to learn, and her ability to listen and be open-minded to others feedback drove her into and through her challenges, “failures,” and rejections. She is an entrepreneur in the works, and we all wonder what she will do next.

That’s the answer to how to go big.

– Karen Elise