with Raoul Benavides (Heart Soul Heat)
Our guest today is a serial entrepreneur who shuns the hustle & grind and instead focuses on enjoying the journey of starting a business.
"I have had many ups and downs but one night I had a dream about my grandfather and hot honey and the name heart soul heat all came into focus."
We're joined by Raoul Benavides, founder of Heart Soul Heat, a purveyor of ghost-pepper infused honey.
"As someone with a big entrepreneurial spirit and roots in Mexican food culture, I want to incorporate the best of my family’s legacy into some new products that I could share with everyone."
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
3/22/2022
Kurt Elster: Today, on The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, we are talking to a purveyor of one of my favorite things, hot honey. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried hot honey, but it is an unexpectedly fantastic flavor combo. You use it in situations where you would normally use like a Tabasco sauce.
Paul Reda: Kurt’s my hot honey.
Kurt Elster: No! Paul Reda had to jump in there and he just couldn’t hold back the truth of our podcasting relationship. Anyway, so I love hot honey, and a listener sent me some of his own hot honey, and I thought, “Man, I bet there’s a story here. I gotta hear this.” And so, I am joined today by Raoul Benavides. Did I get that name right?
Raoul Benavides: Yes. Or close enough.
Kurt Elster: Okay. Thank you. Good. Or close enough. Okay, so our guest today, Raoul, is a serial entrepreneur who came from a family of entrepreneurs, so he’s a generational entrepreneur here, and he’s trying his hand at this fabulous hot honey. We’re gonna talk through that journey. And the first, we were talking in the pre-interview, and I said, “Well, where’d you get the idea?” And he immediately says, “A dream.” I said, “All right, hold. Stop there. We’re just gonna start the interview.” Raoul, so let’s start with first of all, your brand. Heart Soul Heat. HeartSoulHeat.com. What is it? Tell me about it.
Raoul Benavides: It’s a bunch of things, right? You know, at the beginning, at this stage it is a one product store. I make this 100% American made hot honey that only has three ingredients. The name, the idea of hot honey all came from a dream about my grandfather, who has long passed away, but he started this company called La Gardena, which means the garden, which is still around today. It’s a candy company that kind of specializes in hard sugar molded candies. It’s just… In this very woo woo way, it just… I got the download, and it came at the perfect time in my life with COVID, and I just started working on this thing, and it started… You know, passing it to family, and friends, and of course I got the dot com right away because I love Heart Soul Heat. I love the name. It's just it all kind of came in very into focus.
Kurt Elster: So, when did you start it?
Raoul Benavides: Basically a year ago.
Kurt Elster: Okay, so we’re early on. What were you doing when you decided… What were you doing before, when you-
Raoul Benavides: I’ve had many lives, Kurt. I’ve had many lives. I mean, my childhood dream was to be a photographer and literally I’ve lived my dream. I started as a photo assistant at 16, sweeping up photo studios after dark to try to get closer to the camera. I worked as an assistant and kind of I played every position in that world, which is kind of no longer, and then I started making intimate location portraits, everything from… Oh, I know the band, Meshuggah.
Kurt Elster: Oh, okay. Good metal band.
Raoul Benavides: Yes. Making portraits and sending these little postcards to magazines. And then I started getting all these jobs. You know, from photographing rappers, to CEOs, are kind of the same kind of play. We’re talking about visuals that have to do with power, and purpose, you know? And it just kind of built into this wonderful career. I created all kinds of portraits with this 8” by 10” cherry wood and brass camera.
Kurt Elster: Oh, so like a big, large format camera.
Raoul Benavides: Yeah. Large format. I mean, and a Hasselblad, all these magical tools that nobody uses anymore. And you know, that world kind of ended, and then I started a grip house, which is a lighting rental company for photographers. So, of course, incredible intimacy with all the stuff, and what was happening is that the location photographers weren’t really traveling with lighting anymore because the budgets got cut, so when they came into Minneapolis, I would rent them equipment and worked with everyone from Annie Leibovitz, the who’s who, you know? And I ran it for 10 years and kind of was very successful, but I was just… I was at the end of it.
And I had started a whole bunch of other things, multiple failures. I was a crime scene pick up-
Kurt Elster: Crime scene clean up?
Raoul Benavides: Crime scene clean up, yes. I did crime scene clean up. I did all kinds of stuff. A whole bunch of things I can’t even talk about.
Kurt Elster: No, actually I knew someone who did this, so I know, asking about it you’re just opening up just an endless series of traumas, so we’ll move past it.
Raoul Benavides: Yes. Well, luckily that little thing didn’t go very far, and I didn’t really pursue it too hard. I got some jobs, and they really opened my eyes.
Kurt Elster: Yeah.
Raoul Benavides: Yeah, but I opened up a record store. I owned a record store for three years because I was interested in opening up a record label, and it was wonderful. I met a whole bunch of people that love music and they’re still friends to this day, and it was successful, but I’ve never been in a store before and I felt like I was kind of stuck in this box, and it was kind of driving me batty. Oh, a whole bunch of stuff, Kurt. It goes on and on. On and on.
So, I call entrepreneurial endeavors the beautiful struggle. For me, they’re supposed to be hard. That’s what makes them good. I love starting things. I think the beginning of starting a new project is the… It’s kind of for me the most romantic, fun time, especially because I have all this history, and at the beginning, when you have a project, you get to be scrappy and really agile. And I just think that 2022 is one of the most wonderful times to start a new CPG brand.
Kurt Elster: Why?
Raoul Benavides: Everything, I mean a lot of things are available, you know? Shopify, if you don’t know Shopify that well, it’s kind of overwhelming. As soon as you get into it, you realize, “Oh, this is actually super doable.” Like just the whole Shopify ecosystem is really easy to manage. And even if you want to hire a couple consultants, you can do all that stuff kind of for pretty cheap.
Kurt Elster: You’ve had such a series of entrepreneurial experiences, and they have spanned time long enough where you have seen things change.
Raoul Benavides: Yep.
Kurt Elster: How would you compare starting a business now, because you have just started this very modern business, a direct-to-consumer brand. How would you compare that to how things were in the past? What’s different now? You, in your experience, what has changed?
Raoul Benavides: As small as this company, this one product company is at this point, it’s also the one with the most reach, you know? It’s replenishable. It’s a condiment. And it’s one of those things that everything that I was doing that was very limited, the idea of chicken feed is such a small thing, but the food and condiment space is… If you’ve got a mouth, you can be a part of it. And it’s scary, and it makes you vulnerable, but it’s also incredibly rewarding because of all the people you can connect with.
Kurt Elster: Well, by people you connect with, retail store, you meet people face to face. Here, you’ve got this… The advantage of the internet is you can develop these one-to-many relationships where you really can develop a… You can talk to a city’s worth of people in a day with an internet business, and that’s kind of the strange and wonderful thing about it. Going to this hot honey, three ingredients. Did you know any… It came to you in a dream. You want to get it made. You know what you want to do. What do you do next? Did you know anything at all about hot honey or making a condiment? Because you had a lot of entrepreneurial experience. None of it’s food related.
Raoul Benavides: Yeah. It isn’t food related but I also… I’ve been an investor in a couple restaurants, and I knew a whole bunch of chefy people, so I reached out to some people and because it was COVID, it was kind of a beautiful time to just play, which is kind of not something that we get to do. COVID kind of granted people the space to be someone else or do something else, and I just felt that this whole thing kind of lined up for me, and I just took advantage of it.
Kurt Elster: What’s step one? After you get the idea, where do you go with it?
Raoul Benavides: Well, step one, one way or another, whether it was gonna be honey or not, I got the dot com. I secured all the socials.
Kurt Elster: And that’s Heart Soul Heat.
Raoul Benavides: HeartSoulHeat.com. Yep.
Kurt Elster: Where’d you get the name?
Raoul Benavides: It came in the dream.
Kurt Elster: Okay. So, that’s the first thing, is we know we have the name.
Raoul Benavides: Yep.
Kurt Elster: Did you then… Did you also know, like what else did you know implicitly from morning one?
Raoul Benavides: Oh, from morning one I knew I wanted to do a spicy-sweet combination.
Kurt Elster: All right, I’m with you. I love spicy sweet.
Raoul Benavides: Yeah. Spicy sweet. I thought about doing some spicy hard candies, but then the more… It just kind of developed. Every day, it just became something else. It kind of snowballed and then it got stuck here with ghost honey, and I just had time to play with it. I made a mash with vinegar and ghost peppers I chopped up, and then I infused it with honey. I infused it with maple syrup. I infused it with a whole bunch of other things, but the honey kind of just stuck. And then I knew a friend that’s a part of this pollinators… Kind of a save the bee organization. And she got me hooked up with some Minnesota beekeepers. Bought some honey and it hasn’t… Put it in the bottle. My life has changed, you know?
Kurt Elster: So, the honey you’re able to locally source. We need mash, which is vinegar and peppers. Is it ghost peppers?
Raoul Benavides: Yep.
Kurt Elster: Excellent. Love some ghost peppers, though extraordinarily hot. Have you ever had any incidents with them?
Raoul Benavides: Extraordinarily hot. Oh yeah. Yes. I would say even toxic. It is… Yeah. Ghost peppers are… Yeah. I’ve had a couple incidents when I was mixing some stuff in the house and yeah, it was like literally got into my lungs. It was an issue. But you know, live and learn. Live and learn.
But you know, the thing that I’m really interested in is I’m interested in finding a way to reinvent the idea of 100% American made. You know, I think that we all have an idea that it looks a certain way, and I want to use this, I want to use Heart Soul Heat kind of as a platform to change the discussion. There’s a lot of Hmong refugees here in Minnesota, and I’m working on trying to collaborate with them and bring all the ghost pepper farming into Minnesota. It’s got a limited season because it’s so cold here, but I want to… It’s my kind of like next year goal is to really put faces of diversity into these simple products and into this brand, because I think a lot of people don’t talk about that or don’t highlight that as a selling point when people think about this 100% American made.
Kurt Elster: So, we want to… You’re locally sourcing this honey. Our ghost peppers, we want to get locally sourced. I suppose you could grow them indoors in like a… I grow a large quantity of hydroponic basil in my basement year-round for our rabbit, so I’m a hydroponics enthusiast. And I guess vinegar is just vinegar?
Raoul Benavides: Yeah. Vinegar is just vinegar. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: You started this in the midst of a supply chain bottleneck. One of the things people ran into is like, “Oh, I can source this stuff to make my product,” but then it’s like the packaging becomes the issue. Did you ever run into issues with supply chain shortages?
Raoul Benavides: Yeah. I had some bottling issues, sourcing bottles and lids. It resolved itself. It’s kind of the nice thing about starting something is that you don’t have tons of volume, and the issues that I had, I could sort of patchwork a little network of suppliers of bottles, and it took care of it. Now I have one and it’s easy. Whatever issues I had; I don’t have anymore.
Kurt Elster: Currently, you sell a single product. But it’s a single product that is… You sell a single product, but it’s a consumable good, and so the advantage, the risk with selling a single product is what’s my customer lifetime value? How do I get repeat customers? Because I’m always acquiring new customers and of course they are the hardest. A repeat customer is significantly more likely to buy than a new prospective customer who’s never purchased. And the workaround, and that’s the danger with single product, but in this case, consumable good, okay, they could keep rebuying, rebuying, rebuying, as they run out. Did that scare you? Did people try to dissuade you? Or did you go into it eyes open?
Raoul Benavides: Oh, I went into it totally eyes open. You know, and I also… I use Amazon in a different way than people do. The thing, what I love about Amazon, Amazon never lied into what it is. We all know what it is. It’s what we’re gonna do with the information. So, I do very little advertising on Amazon, and I also don’t do FBA. I literally ship out everything and I ship out everything, and every bottle, and every package I send from Amazon people have QR codes. You have questions? You want to know more about the brand? It all goes back to the site. So, you can in a very subversive way, you can use Amazon as a channel as long as you don’t forget what Amazon is.
Kurt Elster: It’s a marketplace.
Raoul Benavides: Yeah. It’s a marketplace. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And the advantage here, especially as a new brand, I think the way to view it is marketplaces, and not just Amazon, but like Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Walmart, you’ve got several options now, and I think they’re pay to play, like you pay to be on their platform by either you pay a monthly fee or you give up a cut or both. I think with those, though, the thing that you’re getting in exchange for that is they’re providing an audience to you. They’re delivering that audience to you. And for you with a consumable good, oh, fabulous. You can sell the same thing on your website as the marketplaces and then… So, they discover it there, because maybe I know I like hot honey. Maybe I’ve bought a different hot honey in the past, or maybe… Sometimes I’ll just go on Amazon and just searching for spicy foods. And so, you’ll discover stuff like this. It becomes a discoverability engine.
And then, as we saw in the Shopify eCommerce trends for 2022, is their recommendation was take a single hero product and list just that on a marketplace. Okay, well, in that case, that is fundamentally what you’ve done. So, you’re able to acquire, use it as discovery, acquire new customers that way, and then do they keep ordering on Amazon and we’re thrilled to have the money? Or are you able to get them to your website?
Raoul Benavides: You know, a little bit of both. A lot of times, if I get press, like I’ve had a couple of local TV spots. I was so surprised that my Amazon blew up. You know, people use it as a… People kind of don’t think about websites, I think because we obsess about them. I think that people are just trying to get the product in any way that that it’s easier for them, you know? Yeah, I think Amazon’s a wonderful play if you think about it in the right way.
Kurt Elster: Condense it down for me. What’s the right way to think about it? As this acquisition channel?
Raoul Benavides: Acquisition channel but use it. Don’t let it use you. Entrepreneurial eCommerce space kind of falls into a bunch of different categories and one of them is the seven-figure dreamers, and these people that get caught up in these… they have some product that they want to launch on Amazon, and they think that they’re gonna be driving the Lambos, and when it doesn’t happen they just don’t know what else to do. So, I think it’s Amazon is a wonderful thing if you’re trying to build a brand as opposed to selling a product.
Kurt Elster: And how do you get them… Once they’ve acquired, do you do a pack-in? Do you have any way to add some kind of offer to get them from purchase to back to your site?
Raoul Benavides: Yeah. I have a QR code on the bottle and then I also do a little postcard with another QR code which goes to a Octane AI quiz, and with a nice discount. So, I know where they came from. Just trying to keep them on the site or ordering directly from us.
Kurt Elster: You know, one of the struggles when people first start the brand is getting those initial customers, getting that awareness, and then later, once you figure out what does and doesn’t work, scaling it up. When you’re just in the dark, not knowing what path to go, that’s so much harder than deciding, “Okay, well, which way are we gonna continue to scale?” It’s like that initial zero to 100 orders. Talk me through that. I know you said dropping it off at friends and family, so getting those people involved.
Raoul Benavides: Yeah. No, I like friends and family to sample things, but I don’t really hit up my friends and family to buy things. Where I got a lot of traction is in podcast advertising.
Kurt Elster: Oh, really? Oh, man. All right, how do you approach this?
Raoul Benavides: Well, first of all, it’s a food product, right? And when I think about listening, because I’m also a big fan of podcasts and just audio media in general, it’s a personal, sensual act. And when you think about food, it’s hard to… I think in 2022, it’s hard to describe food in a photo or video anymore. It’s that channel is a little bit broken, you know?
Kurt Elster: You think we’ve just seen it so much?
Raoul Benavides: Yeah. We’ve seen it so much and now it’s kind of pushed toward the outrageous and the TikTok. I think that there’s something about having a trusted host, especially that’s in a demo or a podcast that’s the opposite of food. And of course, they tried the product before they committed to the ad read. You know, podcast hosts are really big-time influencers and that’s where we’ve had a lot of luck.
Kurt Elster: All right, so you’re doing… In podcasting with ad reads, with sponsorships, there’s two kinds. There’s host-read ad and then there’s like those goofball inserted, like dynamic inserted ads. And you can always hear those, because suddenly the volume and the quality gets weird, and they don’t necessarily fit, but dynamic ad reads way cheaper options than doing host-read ads. But often more accessible, because you apply to I guess an ad network. For getting these host-read ads with your podcast sponsorships, how’d you do it? Did you do it? Did you start emailing podcasters?
Raoul Benavides: No. You know, I would have if I thought they would answer, but I don’t think they do. I started really basic on this company called Podcorn. You kind of… You do a little campaign. I’m looking for a business podcast, this is my budget, and then people just kind of submit. “Oh, we can do… These are the dates we’re available. This is how much we charge for mid roll. This is what we charge for this or that.” And it was a really cheap way to start and to kind of get my feet wet with it, and I highly recommend the Podcorn if you’re new to it. But now we signed a big contract with PRX and yeah, we have-
Kurt Elster: Oh, wow. PRX. Public Radio Exchange?
Raoul Benavides: Yeah. I think Public Radio International.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. PRX… Well, if you listen to like NPR, in Chicago our local NPR affiliate I listen to every morning, WBEZ, but how many of the top 20 podcasts are PRX shows? This American Life, The Moth, Ted Talks, Snap Judgment, they have a whole bunch of them, so I can only imagine what getting into PRX’s network costs, but I bet it’s effective.
Raoul Benavides: You know what’s interesting? It doesn’t cost that much.
Kurt Elster: Oh, really?
Raoul Benavides: It doesn’t cost a lot because you’re not buying 100% of the voice. You’re not buying 100% of the audience. They only sell it in like 25% increments, so 25% of all the people on this national things. It’s just more of a bite-sized thing. It doesn’t cost that much and what I like about it is that it’s one of those things that works for me with this product. You know, like I said, it’s kind of how you express an idea without seeing it. I think a beautiful host-read ad is… I don’t know. It works. And I really kind of advise anyone to kind of get their feet wet with it. It’s kind of fun.
Kurt Elster: It is fun. I do enjoy. I’m on the other side of it. I greatly enjoy podcasting. I recommend… If it’s something that interests you it’s really not that tough to get into, whether it’s as an advertiser, a guest, or trying to run your own show. So, the other thing I noticed on your site, you have recipes. And I think anytime you’re selling anything food related, your immediate secret weapon that you would be utterly… should just be punishable if you don’t attempt it is listing recipes. How long have you been doing that? Have you seen success with it?
Raoul Benavides: You know, I’ve just started doing it recently. I photograph… I shot all the pictures and kind of came up with all the recipes, and I use the recipes as a way to do basically Instagram engagement ads with people who are interested in cocktails. So, it’s not my usual audience, but it’s a way of getting people into the brand and kind of growing the following, and some of it is I always think about… I don’t do conversion ads, or I’m not really interested in Facebook ads in general.
Kurt Elster: That was gonna be my next question.
Raoul Benavides: Yeah. What I’m interested in the most is engagement. You know, I want to find a way to get the energy to bounce around. And then, of course, you can retarget them later. But the recipes work because people remember them and they’re not hard sell.
Kurt Elster: Right. It’s like, “Here’s free valuable information. Yes, we encourage you to use our ingredient with it, but you don’t have to.” It’s self-help. It’s educational. I don’t know. Recipes, I view our show as edutainment. I think recipes fall into that category. Like you don’t want that… everything to be the hard sell, sales letter, sales pitch, right?
Raoul Benavides: Yeah, of course.
Kurt Elster: It doesn’t work for everything. I mean, some of these drinks just sound great. It’s a little early in the morning, but Autumn Ghost Honey Bourbon Sangria sounds fabulous.
Raoul Benavides: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Say sangria correctly for me.
Raoul Benavides: Sangria?
Kurt Elster: Thank you. Oh, every time I say it I’m self-conscious about it.
Raoul Benavides: Oh, that’s funny. That word doesn’t seem that complicated but everyone’s kind of got the thing, I guess. Sangria.
Kurt Elster: Not becoming fluent in Spanish may be my biggest life regret, truly.
Raoul Benavides: Well, and there’s also like which Spanish?
Kurt Elster: Right.
Raoul Benavides: That’s the-
Kurt Elster: In this case, my mom’s family is from Mexico, so that’s my definition of what my Spanish would be.
Raoul Benavides: There’s still time.
Kurt Elster: There is. And then I always… A year later, I’m like, “Should have done it.” Year later. Should have done it. Really, I should just do it. Where do you go from here with the brand, right? You’ve got one product. We’re seeing success with podcast ads. We’re seeing success with marketplaces. We’re doing some retargeting. We’re getting people to reorder using QR codes and pack-ins. We’re starting to do some organic SEO with these recipes. What’s next? What else?
Raoul Benavides: Well, you know, what I’m really interested in is using it as a platform for philanthropy. You know, imagine collaborating with like Joe Rogan on a hot sauce and every penny of the hot sauce sales or proceeds go to an organization like No Kid Hungry, or imagine connecting with like a graffiti artist, like Futura, famous urban artists making a hoodie, or a shirt and every dollar goes to inner city arts programs.
Kurt Elster: I love this idea because we know brand collabs, limited editions work well. We know cause marketing when it is genuine works well. And I’m cynical, so that’s why I always hammer on like, “All right, if you’re gonna do cause marketing, you better actually be doing it.” And in this case, all right, we could combine both of those in a genuine and authentic way. Again, one of our 2022 trend keywords here, authenticity.
And so, combining all these concepts, I love it, and as far as like product development goes, really not that crazy, right? It’s still the same product but we’re changing the label and the messaging.
Raoul Benavides: Of course. Of course. It’s basically it’s being the medium for these two things that live separately, and having them join together, and just finding collaborators who want to do cool stuff and give. It’s actually incredibly easy if you find someone that can help be the medium.
Kurt Elster: Have you started that process?
Raoul Benavides: I’ve talked to a whole bunch of people, but I didn’t want to get over my skis because I wanted to have some time and make sure that… You know, in a certain way you have to start on a very solid footing before you go into inviting too many people. But I have a lot of things in place. I just need a little more time before I tighten the shoelaces.
Kurt Elster: You don’t want to rush into it. You want to have all your ducks in a row. You have this wonderful photography background and the photography on your site, quite extraordinary. Really excellent. I assume that has helped you with social media content. I assume that is a wonderful skill to have. Do you have any photography tips for folks? As that’s a great, great skill to have.
Raoul Benavides: You know, well, this is the nice thing, is it’s all really accessible. I think that the photography tip is give your product to people who are passionate about food, or about whatever you’re working with. I mean, UGC is the way to go.
Kurt Elster: Interesting. The pro photographer is like, “Don’t take the photos yourself. Get your customers to do it.”
Raoul Benavides: Yeah. But not even get your customers. Get people who just are passionate, you know? I think it’s… The photos on my site were done by a good friend of mine in Milwaukee who’s a professional food photographer, Kevin Miyazaki, and I love giving the product to photo friends of mine and being like, “Do something with this.” You know, I love the idea of just giving people permission to have fun.
Kurt Elster: There is a lot of freedom in that, and I think that’s also probably a mark of a good leader, is knowing to just get out of the way and not be prescriptive. Instead, like, “All right, I’ve identified…” You identified someone where you go, “I know that you take great photos. Here’s my product. Have fun.” And that’s such a great way to phrase, “Look, I’m letting go. I’m stepping back. You do your thing. I have faith and trust in you.”
Raoul Benavides: Yeah. Yeah. It’s also the part about dealing with professionals, you know? It’s like you know it’s gonna be good. You just don’t know what it’s gonna be.
Kurt Elster: It’s true. Well, do you have any other pro tips on managing independent contractors, like photography professionals? Other than pay your invoices on time, of course helps.
Raoul Benavides: Well, you know, when I had my rental company, I had a fleet of vehicles and so many employees, I think what I’m so happy about sort of eCommerce now and that I love the idea of being a solo entrepreneur, a solopreneur, and hiring skilled professionals to do very focused tasks.
Kurt Elster: It is… It’s satisfying when it works. Currently, we have a whole series of projects going, and everything is going swimmingly, and it is… When I stop and think about it, it really… It’s deeply satisfying. And I’m not even doing the work. It’s funny, it’s like how satisfying it is when you just get out of the way and let people do what they’re good at. Where you really drive yourself crazy is when you’re like, “All right, I’m not a carpenter, but I’m gonna get in there with this hammer and help these carpenters out.” They didn’t want you there.
Raoul Benavides: Yeah. Well, some of it is it’s all about kind of where you are. I love the whole thing about starting is so much fun. Because, you know-
Kurt Elster: I fear that maybe we’re romanticizing the hard part of the journey.
Raoul Benavides: Because I know that when you get to the middle, and then when you actually succeed, there’s so many things to be accountable to that the romance falls away quickly.
Kurt Elster: So, it’s like year one’s the excitement. Year two, oh crap. And then that’s where make or break, things get real, and then we end up in year three where it’s like, “All right, now I’m accountable to CPAs and potentially loan officers or investors.” Scaling, yeah it works, but the excitement of the journey gives way to more administrative aspects, standard operating procedures. I don’t know, some of the romance goes away.
Raoul Benavides: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Given your experience with entrepreneurship and your successes and trials, and now with Heart Soul Heat moving to this interesting single product consumable brand, we’re gonna add a social mission to it, you’re doing everything right but also being intentional, mindful, and keeping it… I don’t want to say… Simple is the wrong word. Keeping it efficient and focused. What advice would you give yourself? Would you have done anything differently?
Raoul Benavides: I mean, I wouldn’t do anything differently. You know, I have just really big Sagittarius energy and it is literally taking all my energy to not have 16 products and want to talk, want to be in every retailer in the country.
Kurt Elster: Again, it’s not wanting to get over your skis.
Raoul Benavides: Yeah, yeah.
Kurt Elster: There’s value to that.
Raoul Benavides: Totally. Totally. But the beauty about this… You know, in a certain way, this brand is just a metaphor for me and where I am. I’ve lived lives, and I’ve done things, and I realized that all of that glitz didn’t make me happy. It takes you so long to figure out kind of your recipe for happiness, it’s fun when you know you. And I think in the middle of all this information that we get about eCommerce, and numbers, and things, and that, and the new app, or the new thing, if you aren’t happy, what matters?
Kurt Elster: Man, that is wise advice.
Raoul Benavides: It was a whole bunch of heartbreak to get to that point, but-
Kurt Elster: I heard someone say recently that a lot of success in life is really learning what doesn’t work for you, whether what doesn’t make you happy, or what you’re not gonna be good at, that is as or more important than figuring out what you are good at and what makes you happy. And unfortunately, it’s gonna be a lot of experience and heartbreak to get there.
Raoul Benavides: Well, and there’s also that part like if your heart’s not happy, what exactly are you pushing out into the universe, you know? For me, I’m just such an emotional person that if my heart’s not happy, I’m not doing good work.
Kurt Elster: Well, for sure. And I think the thing I notice for myself is it absolutely colors the way you see the world, right? And so, you have to every so often, you have to stop and take stock of okay, this is what’s going right, this is what is fueling me. This is… You have to look at like, okay, these are all the positive things. And refocus on that. And then suddenly you realize like, “Oh, I got too deep into the 20% of things that don’t make me happy and in the process, utterly ignored the 80% that do.”
Raoul Benavides: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: It’s tough.
Raoul Benavides: Yeah. It is tough. But I think it’s also this other part, like I’m a foolish man. I want to be a foolish man. I’m not interested in the numbers. I’m not inspired by making money. I’m inspired by creating. I want to make something that wasn’t there yesterday, and I want to find a way to touch people.
Kurt Elster: It’s just a purity of creative pursuit and that could take you far.
Raoul Benavides: Well, some of it is also too like that’s how I’ve lived my life. And also, I’ve gotten whooped. Kurt, I’ve gotten… It’s been ugly, you know? But it’s also true that I love working and I know that my way out of something is by creating something else.
Kurt Elster: I know sometimes like the days where I get really deep in my head are the days in which I just didn’t do much, and you know, the reality, like the days where I’m really… I’m like, “Wow, that was great.” That’s because those are the days where I’m like I sat down, and I made something creative. I was able to put my energy into making something. And whether that’s like a design for a client, or a drawing for my daughter, same result. It’s not necessarily that I made something productive. It’s that… I don’t know. I suppose I just made something. I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it that way, but you’re right.
Raoul Benavides: Well, because it’s also the opposite of that is not making something, you know? Or making something for someone else that you don’t care about. You know, I think that there’s this thing about eCommerce or about business and creativity in general. It’s you’re literally channeling some magic. This dream I had about my grandfather; this isn’t something that… This just came in. And I was in the right space to hear it. I remember this interview with Tom Waits where he’s driving and he’s stuck in traffic, and he has this amazing idea, and he talks to the sky and he says, “Come back later. I can’t take this idea right now.” You know?
It's this thing about creativity, it’s magical. There isn’t a way of making sense to it. If we’re lucky enough, every now and then we get to pick up on something. And we don’t know where the idea came from. We just know that it came and that we were mature enough or our eyes were open enough to see it.
Kurt Elster: That’s where we’re closing the show because that is fantastic advice. If I wanted to get some Ghost Honey Sweet Heat, where do I go?
Raoul Benavides: You go to HeartSoulHeat.com and I also have a little discount code for anyone who’s interested in sampling.
Kurt Elster: Let’s hear it.
Raoul Benavides: Kurt20 for 20% off your first order.
Kurt Elster: And if you like hot sauce, give this a try. I absolutely love this stuff. So far, I’ve been putting it on pizza, but I saw a photo where you put it on cheese, you put it on ice cream, cornbread, just goes on all kinds of things and it’s wonderful.
Raoul Benavides: Yeah. Fried foods.
Kurt Elster: Fried foods. Put it on some KFC. Okay. Raoul, this has been… I feel inspired. This was soup for the soul. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Raoul Benavides: Of course. Thank you.
Kurt Elster: HeartSoulHeat.com. Use code Kurt20. Check it out.