I'm so happy you're here because I love people with big dreams who are making things happen. I live in sunny Santa Barbara, California with my hubby James, my 7-year-old son and our pup Motley. While these days I spend most of my time analyzing real estate deals, planning renovations and growing my company Atlas Vacations, my true passion is the early-stage of entrepreneurship. I'm excited and thankful to finally have the time to do this podcast and help inspire other entrepreneurs to take the leap and make it happen!

My Story:

I LOVE the nitty gritty of making things.

Whether it’s a new recipe, a DIY house project, a business, or a new product for the market, I love the process of figuring it out. I visualize it and then get to work bringing it to life. 

This started in high school when I got a sewing machine and taught myself how to sew. Little did I know that skill helped me land my first job after college with Diesel Footwear in product development.

While I was at Diesel, I had a little art studio where I would make custom leather handbags (give me a glass of wine, a pile of leather and a sewing machine and I’m a happy camper).
 

Instead of starting a business then however, I took a job with Burton Snowboards as a Product Manager for footwear, bags and accessories. At Burton, pushing the limits in product development was not only encouraged but expected… as was snowboarding before work (no complaints there).

During these seven years at Diesel and Burton, I traveled to China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan multiple times a year working with factories and materials suppliers and learning the most important rules of product development (1) where there’s a will there’s a way and (2) don’t take no for an answer.

Despite the amazing perks at Burton, I started getting bored. I had so many ideas and I found myself day dreaming about starting a business and working for myself. Deep down I knew I could do it.

Finally, I decided to take the leap and I quit the dream job to set out and create a product that stemmed from a personal need, a lighter, healthier wine.
 

While quitting my job was scary, it was also crazy exciting and exhilarating. Of course, I thought I’d have it off the ground in a year and have nation wide distribution in no time. Little did I know how much time, effort and planning goes into bringing a product to life and getting it on a retailer's shelf, especially in the alcohol industry.

As the reality of quitting my job settled in, I went through my savings, cashed in my 401K and was bartending nights to work on my business during the day.

As I was figuring out how the hell I was going to make this beverage (keep in mind, I had no experience in the wine industry so all of the professional contacts I'd made in the previous 7 years were useless), I realized it wouldn’t hurt if I learned more about the business side of things and needed to expand my network.

So I painfully studied for the GRE's and went back to school for my MBA at USD, to study entrepreneurship and marketing.

While at USD, I wrote my business plan and started entering business plan competitions. After a year and a half of pitching hundreds and hundreds of investors, I closed a half million dollars in seed funding from angel investors as a pre-revenue company. It was off to the races.

Then things got tricky. I was working my ass off building a website (an ecommerce website in 2010 was more expensive and time consuming than it is now), setting up meetings with retailers, navigating all the regulations, developing the packaging & product, and getting ready for production. At the time, there was only one bottler who would take us and, while they had a good reputation, what I didn’t know at the time was that they were in a downward spiral about to go out of business.

Our first 5000 bottles that came off the line had tomato floating in them. Yes, for real, tomato from a bloody mary mix. From there, it was one thing after another and in total we lost over $100K in inventory on that first production run.

As if that wasn't devastating enough, the inventory that “passed inspection” was shipped to our fulfillment center, but as we started shipping boxes to customers, the boxes were showing up soaking wet… all the caps were leaking. Double devastating.

Six months later, that bottler was out of business, and I was faced with the unthinkable after all of that work. I had to let go of my staff and figure out what to do. To say the least, it was not a fun time, it was tough and took a lot of yoga to push through it. After six months, I went back to a bottler who originally wouldn't take us and negotiated and begged until they agreed to take us on.

From there, as a Hail Mary, I applied and got on ABC’s Shark Tank and made a deal with Mark Cuban (season 5, episode 28). Later, appearing again on ABC’s Beyond The Tank.

Shark Tank was a wild ride, catch the episode "My Shark Tank Story" to hear all the details!

Despite growing sales, increasing distribution and forming some amazing partnerships, the reality of the lack of profitability in the alcohol industry set in. Even with Mark Cuban on board, the low-alcohol trend that I knew had so much potential was in its infancy, and it proved more expensive than we realized to educate an entire industry and customer based on the benefits of a clean, low-alcohol option. Turns out, I was about 5 years early (the category is now $4 billion+).

We expanded distribution across the country, and I was reinvesting every penny back into the business, but it wasn't enough. I knew we needed more than money, we needed a partner in the alcohol industry who had leverage with the distributors and retailers. So I set out to find a partner (watch Beyond The Tank to catch that process!). 

I ended up making the hard decision to 

I’ve definitely had my share of bumps in the road and I’ve met many other entrepreneurs who have overcome the many unique challenges that come with producing, selling, and distributing consumer products.

When I was starting out (and still now) listening to other peoples experiences, lessons and strategies has been invaluable. I love the entrepreneurial spirit and process and was inspired to create this website as a resource for other entrepreneurs like me who are launching and growing consumer products businesses.

Instead of trying to figure it out yourself (or pay expensive consultants or an outrageous price for an MBA like I did) I hope you can use this site as a resource to find some shortcuts and get your business where it needs to go a lot faster.

It takes creativity and passion to bring a new product to life, which I know you have if you’re already here.

I can’t wait to connect with you to learn more about what you’re doing. And I look forward to helping you any way I can to launch and grow your amazing product for customers all over to enjoy!
 

Cheers!
 

Jayla