How This Mom-Daughter Team Drove More Than $7.5 Million In Sales In Their First Business Year

“I really feel like I adopted a variety of her traits,” says Lexi, who’s 26 at the moment, and says she’d slightly work along with her mother than begin her personal enterprise. “I see how a lot goes into it. It is not like, ‘Oh, I am a CEO, I might create my very own schedule this and that.’ She actually works 16 hours a day, seven days, eight days every week.”

Lisa’s entrepreneurial journey started in earnest again in 2011, when she based Beaming as a “wholesome grab-and-go” enterprise. She grew it to 10 areas, principally in Los Angeles. (Lexi was managing three of these shops as an adolescent.) Lisa bought the corporate to Earthbar in 2018, making it a hit story by any measure — however the expertise taught her that if she needed to make severe cash, she wanted a special idea.

Beaming was a retail retailer, which meant that progress might solely occur via new areas. Lisa needed her subsequent firm’s merchandise to journey additional and quicker — which is why she constructed the wellness firm Kroma in 2020. It makes “extremely purposeful, superfood-rich merchandise” — issues like broths, snacks, adaptogen lattes — that may be mailed or carried anyplace. It was an idea she thought traders would love much more than they’d appreciated Beaming — however as a result of she launched throughout the pandemic, she additionally knew the conventional fundraising tour would not work.

So she got here up with a brand new technique: She reached out to traders simply to supply them Kroma’s flagship product free of charge. It is an “anti-cleanse cleanse” program, as she calls it: A program of every day meals and drinks to scale back bloating and weight, enhance sleep and focus, and enhance power.

“We actually went to angel traders and stated, ‘Right here, we’re supplying you with this, strive it. Inform us what you suppose,'” she says.

The technique succeeded. She acquired 130 folks to strive it — with Lexi hand-making and packaging each order — and raised $4.5 million within the course of. (The corporate has gone on to boost a complete of $9 million.) Phrase of mouth unfold. Pals of mates needed in. By the point Kroma launched in July 2021, the media protection included photographs of Odenweller with Jessica Seinfeld, Gwyneth Paltrow and Amy Schumer.

“I didn’t know any of those traders earlier than I began the method,” she says. “Folks assumed that I had entry to them. I simply one after the other by one acquired to folks of affect that believed within the merchandise.”

By the top of its first 12 months, Kroma had performed greater than $7.5 million in enterprise with solely $100,000 spent on paid media — with Odenweller as CEO, and Lexi as senior advertising and marketing supervisor.

The mom-daughter pair spend a variety of time collectively (and even lived collectively throughout the pandemic). Lisa says two of the large keys to preserving their relationship intact had been, and are, smiling and compartmentalizing.

“We giggle lots. We actually do. We crack up on a regular basis and giggle on the easiest issues, placed on music, no matter it’s to create an power of pleasure,” she says. “Actually, I might say we’re actually good about boundaries. When she and I’m going out to dinner or no matter we’re doing, we’re out to play. We do not sit at dinner and discuss enterprise. After we’re in play mode, we’re in play mode.”

Lisa says constructing Kroma with Lexi by her aspect has additionally helped to assuage her guilt about being a single working mother.

“This was at all times a giant whisper at the back of my head that weighed closely. Was I there sufficient?” she says. “Lexi began working for me when she was 13. Having her by my aspect, witnessing her progress into an incredible businesswoman, has not solely bridged that ‘mother guilt’ that we seemingly all carry regardless of how current we’re. It turned it into an unbelievable journey.”

[Image credit above: Kroma]