PJ Jonas is the founder and CEO of Goat Milk Stuff. Yes, you guessed it they sell stuff made from Goats milk. It started with soap and has grown to all kinds of things! It’s a family business that started on the kitchen table, and now turns over in excess of $1million a year.
Product is everything from soap to fluid milk, yogurt, cheese, gelato, fudge, and caramel
On a highly customised X-Cart
In the USA, selling worldwide
Getting Started
PJ originally got dairy goats because she wanted her eight children to have healthy raw goat milk, and she was unable to find it elsewhere. She began making the soap for her children because she didn’t want soap with a lot of chemical ingredients, but when her husband began using it, his fingers stopped cracking and splitting. PJ realized that if the soap could solve her husband’s problem, which he had struggled with for years without finding a suitable remedy, it could help other people as well.
With eight young children to raise and homeschool, eCommerce was the obvious choice for Goat Milk Stuff because of the flexibility to fit it into the family.
PJ is also using the business as an educational tool for her children. They learn math, science, English, concise writing with attention to detail, customer service, and professional people skills.
The Team
The children, aged ten to twenty, all help, and PJ’s husband works for the company full time. They also have six other full time employees.
Listen to learn why PJ doesn’t outsource the marketing of Goat Milk Stuff.
The Most Awesome Thing Right Now
Getting to teach her family, work together with them, and help people with skin and dietary problems are awesome. PJ gets emails from people with eczema telling her that the soap has relieved their symptoms, and the goat’s milk helps people with allergies to cow’s milk or lactose intolerance who can’t have regular cow milk or ice cream.
Their Demographic
PJ had expected their demographic to be mostly people like them, who simply wanted a more natural, less chemical product. While they do have a big portion of those customers, they have an even larger portion of customers who have skin issues that the goat’s milk helps resolve.
Listen to learn how customers with eczema or psoriasis became their biggest brand ambassadors.
Tips for Growth
Goat’s Milk Stuff received a lot of publicity early on due to their good story. Most people had never even heard of goat milk soap, so PJ and her family were one of the biggest players in the field very quickly. PJ prefers slow and steady growth over sudden spikes, which can be expensive and hard to maintain.
Listen to learn why publicity can be difficult, and why they don’t do publicity anymore.
There are three ways to grow a company
get more customers,
get your customers to buy more things,
get your customers to buy more often.
PJ recommends focusing on one of those at a time for a set time.
Tips for Efficiency
When companies are trying to improve efficiency, there are two areas to look at. The first is small, incremental changes. These are constant small process improvements.
Listen to learn two examples of how small changes have saved Goat Milk Stuff hours of time.
The second is massive foundational shifts. These are looking at things you’ve always done in a completely different way, which is much harder than making small process improvements. PJ recommends bringing in someone outside the business and asking them what they would do differently. It sometimes takes an outside eye to have a new look.
Listen to find out about the mistake that PJ made when she shifted to adding a physical store to her internet store.
Listen to learn how Facebook Live helped grow their company during the kidding season.
Tool Top Tip
Evernote Scanner
Start Up Top Tip
Have five diverse people, such as one older, one younger, one male, one female, and one minority, visit your eCommerce site, and then tell you what they did and did not like about the site before you go public with it.
Listeners can get a free bar of soap by visiting this page.
This episode is sponsored by: dotmailer
dotmailer is a SaaS marketing platform that enables companies to create, test and send data-driven automated campaigns, including email.
The technology integrates with key business systems such as ecommerce platforms and CRMs, providing access to rich insights in real time; a powerful advantage in today’s customer-centric market.
Head over to dotmailer.com for a free platform demo or trial.
This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience, for advertising and to analyse our traffic. You consent to our cookies if you continue to use this website.Got it!RejectRead More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
