How We Grew Our Supplements Business To $3.8M Per Year [Update]
This is a follow up story for Lost Empire Herbs. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 5 years ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
I’m Logan Christopher, co-founder and CEO of Lost Empire Herbs. Today we bring in about $320K per month, which is about a 15% increase since our last interview!
My two brothers and I started this company simply to fund our own supply of high quality herbs for our own health and performance, and it has grown into a successful seven-figure business since that time.
We sell all kinds of herbs from across the world that help people with different aspects of health and performance from cognition to sex, athletics to sleep and beyond. Our flagship product is Pine Pollen, literally the pollen of pine trees that is rich in phyto-androgens which helps to optimize the human hormone system.
Although we started this business on a kitchen table having no clue what we were doing, it has grown into a mid seven-figure company well loved by its customers.
Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?
We were stuck at a revenue plateau for a number of years. When the pandemic hit we made the hard choice of cutting some of our workforce, which included most of the marketing team. We were in debt and needed to survive. So while revenue took a dip and then stayed relatively flat, profit went up over the next few years. And I’m happy to report that 2023 was our best year ever both revenue and profit wise.
I would encourage you to not go into debt if you can avoid it. Either with your business or personally. Having done both I can say it is much better to move a bit slower but on a cash basis. One of the biggest mistakes that most entrepreneurs make is not understanding their finances.
In 2023 we got back into releasing new products which we hadn’t been doing for some time. This included Elk Velvet Antler, Mushroom Brain, He Shou Wu Spagyric Tincture and others.
Based on the supply chain disruptions we saw start in the pandemic, we’ve made one of our aims to source more from within the USA and less from outside of it, particularly China which roughly half of our products currently come from.
Nothing against the Chinese people, just with the political and economic realities, there could be problems in the future with importing. The Elk Antler comes from a farm in Wisconsin as an example and was a step in the right direction for us.
We continue to innovate on quality as well as the transparency to showcase that. Earlier this year we released our updated heavy metals grading system. The goal was to be able to showcase just how clean our herbs are compared to others (who tend to not even share this information).
Even the grade D is better than many have, though most of our herbs are straight A’s on this. Each product page has links to all the third party independent lab testing done on them like this for Shilajit (which has some justified heavy metal concerns from other suppliers).
So much of our marketing is focused on what our happy customers say about us. On the third party review platform TrustPilot we have 4.6 stars out of 5 with over 4,000 reviews. Let me tell you that that score is not easy to get as a supplement company! This is a matter of quality products, great customer service, solid education and the going above and beyond that we do.
As an example of the education piece here is a three part series I wrote on the topic of ADHD. This is the regular type of content we put out to our tribe.
Of course, like any business of the last year, we’ve been playing with the AI tools like the LLM’s.
We recently rolled out our AI chatbot on the website. Those that interact with it have a 15% conversion rate compared to our website’s normal ~4%. It’s not perfect but it is helpful in most cases and it is improving over time.
What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?
New customer acquisition has continued to be a struggle for us. We have made some strides, hence the growth last year, but it’s still not something that we can easily scale up. In the last year we’ve:
- Worked more with affiliates
- Buying ads on rentable email lists
- Started advertising on Facebook again (stopped for many years due to ad account shutdowns but just got started again)
- Started advertising on Pinterest
- Hired a podcasting outreach agency to put me on more podcasts
- And more
A lot of our focus has gone into our loss-leader offers built with dedicated direct response type of funnels for one penny plus shipping/handling deals for Pine Pollen and the same kind of offer for Tongkat Ali.
All of these things are working to some degree, but still not quite being where we want them to scale up traffic.
I’ll let you in on a little secret.
One of the places that has worked best and most reliably for new customer acquisition for us is the alternative social media platform Gab. They’re a truly free speech and privacy oriented platform unlike anything in Big Tech. That also means the targeting isn’t so refined. But we’ve found it works well for us. Here’s one example of an ad running there:
At the time of running this ad has been bringing in sales with a 122.77% ROAS (return on ad spend). Of course, this is one of the better performing ads. Lots of testing. Lots of failures but some positive results which is why we’ve been using this platform for almost two years now.
What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?
My personal life has been difficult from 2020 to 2023. First my house burned down in one of the California wildfires. Then coping with my wife having Lyme disease and mold toxicity which made things truly difficult and chaotic. Over this time span we moved six times including several out of state moves. That all made business difficult to say the least! Fortunately, with a good team behind me, it was survivable. But these things have been getting better, allowing more focus to go into business.
I recently went full time in the business as CEO, at the end of 2023, whereas before that I was still splitting time with my other business Legendary Strength. This has been amazing for my focus and concentration. It’s not like I don’t have enough ideas for a single business, let alone two! In doing so I feel we’re getting much better traction because I’m better able to drive the business forward.
In all that time we doubled down on what worked, and kept things quite simple. This is how we were able to become much more profitable even while mostly just thriving on our current customer base.
Furthermore, with greater profitability we were sitting on cash. Within the business this got invested into assets like precious metals and Bitcoin. With both gold and Bitcoin hitting new all time highs recently, this has proved to be a wise decision. We didn’t bet the farm or anything on such assets, we still held a strong cash reserve necessary for operations, but it made sense to diversify away from the dollar whose value is being inflated away.
It’s my belief that holding some reserves in such assets will become much more commonplace by businesses in the coming years.
While the focus is often on growing the business, that is not always the best focus. If your profit margin is 10%, it means you need to make $1000 for every $100 in profit. If you can cut a subscription you’re not using that costs $100/month you’ve helped as much as if you’ve made an extra $1000. So make sure to keep your expenses under control.
What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?
While we have some capsulized herbs these have been done through vendors. But last year we purchased our own capsule machine and built out the room to run it. Since we deal mostly in powders, which can be inconvenient and some have strong tastes, being able to offer our great herbs in capsules should definitely help.
This year we’re looking to greatly expand our subscription offerings. Everyone knows these are great for eCommerce and supplements but we’ve been lagging on do so due to inventory control issues. Those should be solved so that this year we’ll drive up our MRR significantly.
We are currently looking at acquiring a stake in one of our suppliers. I have no clue if this will come to fruition or not, but if it does, it would be a step in our greater vision of vertical integration. From the farm or nature to the finished product delivered to the customer this would best allow us to control the quality and share the story along the way.
One other very exciting update is we just signed the contract to run the first ever human study on the effects of Pine Pollen on men’s testosterone levels. Specifically, it will be using our Pine Pollen Tincture. (Some of those Bitcoin profits are being used to fund this expensive venture!)
What’s the best thing you read in the last year?
Here are three of my favorite business books I read in the past year:
- 2 Second Lean: How to Grow People and Build a Fun Lean Culture at Work & at Home by Paul A. Akers - This book had me look at process improvement in a simple and fun way (can you save 2 seconds?). This has led to many improvements and I feel like we’re just getting started in building this into our culture.
- The 80/20 Manager: The Secret to Working Less and Achieving More by Richard Koch - One of the areas in which many on my team and I could use some help is in better managing. This book shows various great ways of doing so all built around the 80/20 principle.
- Dare to Lead: by Brené Brown - This being a family business, and my family being raised to avoid conflict, the process of “rumbling” has helped us address some of the deeper issues that have been preventing growth.
One of the things we’re doing in my executive team is to have a quarterly book club where we all read a book and discuss it monthly and look at implementing its practices. All of the above have made the cut and therefore made an impact.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?
Times are tough right now. It might not officially be called a recession, you have to be looking a blind eye to not see that people are struggling. As such it is going to be tougher than usual to grow a business. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. And that does open up opportunities that wouldn’t be there otherwise.
I would encourage you to not go into debt if you can avoid it. Either with your business or personally. Having done both I can say it is much better to move a bit slower but on a cash basis. One of the biggest mistakes that most entrepreneurs make is not understanding their finances. Take the time to gain proficiency in this area. I can guarantee it will make your life easier if you do.
While the focus is often on growing the business, that is not always the best focus. If your profit margin is 10%, it means you need to make $1000 for every $100 in profit. If you can cut a subscription you’re not using that costs $100/month you’ve helped as much as if you’ve made an extra $1000. So make sure to keep your expenses under control.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
While we were looking for a new marketing assistant, by the time this goes live we should be filled here.
For the most part we aim to promote from within the team. So right now we don’t have any open positions.
Where can we go to learn more?
Our website is the best place to see what we’re about.
You can, of course, also follow us on social media and elsewhere:
- Lost Empire Herbs on Facebook
- Lost Empire Herbs on Instagram
- Lost Empire Herbs on X
- Lost Empire Herbs on Pinterest
- Lost Empire Herbs on TikTok
- Lost Empire Herbs on Amazon
If you want to reach out to me personally you can do so at: [email protected]
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