Danielle Brooks: From the margins to the main thing, on how she grew Honey Truck from one hive to luxury brand.

Today I'm sitting down with Danielle Brooks, the founder of Honey Truck, a boutique honey brand. Danielle and I met through a podcast matching platform. In her pitch to me she told me that Honey Truck was built in the margins of her life. She didn't have the luxury of building fast, so she had to learn how to build intentionally.

It felt like she was speaking directly to me. I mean she was, but more specifically, she was speaking to a circumstance I am all too familiar with. I too am building in the margins of my life, constantly hunting for the path through the trees that gets me out and into the horizon of the future I want.

I learned a lot from Danielle, but the lesson that leapt out to me was how she didn't manufacture a differentiator. She paid close attention to what was already special about her product instead of searching the competition for where she fit in. She noticed her honeys looked different, tasted different, depending on where her bees lived. And she built her entire brand around that. As a marketer, that's what I'm always looking for. Not something engineered, and as founders that’s a lesson you need to pay attention to.

We also get into the mechanics of building a product-based business, from wholesale pricing to the question I think every founder building in the margins needs to ask themselves: Do I have a business or do I have an expensive hobby?

And Danielle shares a version of work-life balance that is the opposite of hustle culture. It's about doing the next right thing. Even when it's painfully slow, even when the gap between where you are and where you want to be feels impossible to close.

Honestly, that's the version of entrepreneurship that I designed this podcast to tell. If your scrappy beginning has you wondering whether you're doing it right, this is exactly what you needed to hear today.

Connect with Danielle:

Website: www.honeytruck.com

Social media: @honeytruckco

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