Aug 22, 2018
PODCAST
Today we are interviewing Hannah Crum. Now Hannah Crum is a case study that I think Seth Godin would just gush over. She's got an amazing business that she's built all around a unique passion of hers; brewing kombucha. She's transformed that over many years from serving a small audience, a small local group to a thriving eCommerce business. And is even building an association and scaling this up in ways that you could not believe, and I'm sure she never would've imagined possible when she started out. She's got a lot of great information and stories, on how you can organically grow your brand, create good content and build a thriving business based off it. Lots of good tips in here today and I'm excited to share them with you
Key Takeaways
[02:18] What is Kombucha [03:11] How Hannah started her Kombucha business [05:22] Why Hannah decided to teach others how to make Kombucha and created Kombucha Kamp [6:31] How Hannah transitioned to online [9:37] Hannah’s traffic drivers and how she keeps her customers excited about Kombucha [13:15] Learn how Hannah used the success of her book to drive sales [17:59] The biggest challenge Hannah faces when working with traditional marketing teams [19:36] Why it’s important to give something away [20:46] How Hannah takes her potential clients from reading content to purchasing products
Hannah Information
Kombucha Kamp Free Kombucha DIY Guide Kombucha Kamp Store Kombucha Kamp Facebook Hannah Crum, the Kombucha Mamma Facebook Instagram LinkedIn YouTube The Big Book of Kombucha The Artist's Way Kombucha Brewers Organization
Transcript of Podcast
Kyle:
Today we are interviewing Hannah.
Hi Hannah, welcome to The Story Engine podcast. Hannah:
Thanks Kyle. Glad to be
here. Kyle:
Now I'm excited to interview you
because you've been involved building up a business around kombucha
which is a somewhat new or maybe not new at all, but recently
reemerging home brewing DIY kinda phenomenon, and you're right on
the edge of this with your business. So why don't you introduce
yourself and tell us a little bit like what is kombucha?
Hannah:
Sure. I'm Hannah, known as the
Kombucha Mamma. I've been brewing and teaching people about how to
make kombucha since 2004. Kombucha is fermented tea, so just like
sauerkraut is fermented cabbage, wine is fermented grapes, beer is
fermented grain, salami is fermented meat, cheese is fermented
milk. Right? We eat all of these fermented foods on a regular
basis, sometimes we don't realize they're fermented like chocolate
is fermented. But kombucha is tea and sugar, so sweet tea, to that,
we add our culture. The culture has a special name, it's called a
SCOBY, which stands for Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast.
And those bacteria and yeast immediately start consuming the sugar
and the tea and break it down into these healthy organic
acids. 
Kyle:
Awesome. And so take us back to
2004 when you got started in this. Did you ... Were you brewing
kombucha before this or was this when you started teaching and
helping others do it themselves? Hannah:
It was ... I actually probably
started a few months prior to then. I had first met kombucha while
visiting a friend who lived in San Francisco. It's a pretty groovy
town if you've never been there. You definitely gotta check it out
and at that time of my life in 2003, I was very standard American
diet, didn't really understand health or how the foods I ate
impacted that. And I say that by way of meaning that it's really
easy to do this at home and anyone can do it. When I first met
kombucha, we didn't even have a chance to try it. It was just a
friend, they had jars and they were covered and just mysterious
things floating around which was the kombucha. So of course, it's
one of those weird words, it stuck in my mind. I came back to LA
and of course, at the Whole Foods, there were shelves and shelves
of it. So I grabbed a gingerade off the shelf and cracked it in the
store and my first sip ... Have you had kombucha, Kyle? Do you
remember your first sip of kombucha? Kyle:
I'm familiar with it. It's not ...
It is a bit of an acquired taste in the beginning.
Hannah:
Right. Exactly right. Even your
first sip of coffee maybe was an acquired taste, right?
Kyle:
Of course. Of course.
Hannah:
And now you can't live without it.
So kombucha, a lot of people get sour face 'cause it is an acidic
acid ferment like vinegar. For me though, it really reminded me of
pickle juice, which I had an obsession with as a child.
Kyle:
Oh, wow. Hannah:
Like I was sneaking it out of the
fridge. My mom would yell at me, "Oh, there's too much salt in
that." Maybe I was having a salt deficiency, I don't know. But it
just ... I love that kinda savory, yummy flavor and I think the
fact that it was alive and because I wasn't eating foods that had
that kind of alive quality them, it just really struck me. I felt
physiologically the impact of consuming the kombucha and like
everybody, my thirst dug through my budget, and because I had seen
somebody making it themselves at home, I was like, "Well why can't
I do that?" So I went to the library, checked out every book and
started making it at home and of course, those first batches just
like any time you try a new recipe, weren't necessarily all that
tasty. But this is where doing the practice, engaging in the
brewing process, you kind of hone your skills, you learn new things
and I just really fell in love with it. And I took an Artist's Way
workshop, I don't know if you're familiar with the Artist's
Way. Kyle:
I've read the book. Yeah.
Hannah:
Yeah, exactly right. So I did a
workshop format of that, which was really great because by the end
of it what I had uncovered is what I really wanted to do, which was
to teach people about kombucha. Now that wasn't a career choice, it
was just something that I felt impassioned and really wanted to get
authentic information into the world. And that's when I started
Kombucha Kamp as a workshop in my home where you come and learn
about kombucha, see the whole process, try some of my homebrew and
then, of course, I would have cultures to give to people so they
could start with their own at home. 
Kyle:
That's fascination. So you at first
iteration of this business was just inviting people over to your
house and maybe having tasting parties or showing them the process
of growing this or- Hannah:
Exactly Kyle:
Yeah, creating it. Fascinating. And
so how did that go? How long were you just doing kind of your ...
the at home kombucha parties and how did you transition into an
online format? Hannah:
Well, it was interesting. Now we
kind of take for granted all of these websites with video tutorials
that teach you everything you wanna know. But back in 2007, they
were just getting started and so I think I responded to an ad on
Craigslist, where they wanted to find people who taught interesting
things to do a video series. So there was a really great video
series on ... I wanna say eHow. I can't remember if that's the name
it still has right now, that shows my whole Kombucha Kamp in my
home and that was kind of an early genesis and then I started
blogging about it because again, I was frustrated by the lack of
authentic information about kombucha on the internet. And even
today, you can go and read these like circular references where
everyone repeats this same thing, but there's no actual original
citation. And so I just wanted to put authentic information out
there and then when I started the blog. So in 2007, I put it online
and just started sharing that information through this new format
to reach people and people started reaching back. First of course
with questions and then asking, "Hey, do you have any SCOBYs? Do
you have this? Do you have a that?" And so that then led to putting
a couple PayPal buttons up on the blog so that people could grab a
SCOBY if they needed one. 
Now my husband has a film background. He worked
in documentary film and production and all kinds of things like
that, and he was kind of in transition considering maybe a career
change into doing a video for bloggers. And so as a test case, he
decided to help me out and shoot some videos of the brewing
process. I needed some educational videos and things like that. And
through working together, we found that we actually had a very
productive partnership and then around this time in 2010, when they
took all the kombucha off the shelves at Whole Foods, we kinda had
a surge because all of a sudden people weren't able to access their
kombucha. They were kinda freaking out and so, of course, they
wanted to make it themselves, and we had already developed a couple
of packages at this time. It wasn't a storefront at this point, but
that kind of inspired us to get an eCommerce site off the ground
and that's when my husband dove in. He learned HTML, CSS, got us
onto an eCommerce platform like he really became this driving force
behind everything we were doing, and that's basically the launch of
our business. Now, of
course, both of us still had jobs at that time. This was kind of
our side hustle. It's just organically evolved from there and I
think finally in 2014, I let go of all of my other side jobs and
things like that and been doing kombucha full time ever
since. Kyle:
That's beautiful. And so leading up
to then and maybe since 2014, I would really like to know what are
the main channels that you're getting to spread your message out
there. You've mentioned you started with video and right now video
is very, very trendy, very, very powerful, and if you've had that
much of a head start, then I'm assuming that's one of your best
channels. How are you driving traffic to your site? Is the blog
generating a lot of traffic and yeah, what's keeping people excited
right now? Hannah:
Well ironically, although our start
was in video, we have since founded a trade association of which
I'm a part-time president in my spare time, and we've also launched
a book, our Big Book of Kombucha, which an Amazon bestseller. We've
sold almost a hundred thousand copies in just two and a half
years. Kyle:
Oh, my goodness.
Hannah:
Yeah. So it's a really-
Kyle:
That's huge. Hannah:
Right. But then writing the book
and all that ... So ironically, we've gone away from video, but
it's definitely something we need to come back to. So we do have a
YouTube channel, but you probably haven't seen any new videos on
there in a little while. What that means though is we have a very
robust Facebook group, we another forums site and then we also have
Instagram and just do a lot of social media. We write for other
publications. So really, anyone who wants to know about kombucha,
we're there to do podcasts to talk about. Really, I see myself as
an ambassador for the culture. Right? I'm here to tell you why it
means you no harm, it means you a world of good and of course
through cultivating the industry. Right? By supporting the industry
through the trade association, what that means is we've also
created all these jobs. Right? So because kombucha has somewhat of
a low barrier to entry similar to craft beer in that you can be a
homebrewer, love it as a hobby and then actually turn it into a
viable business. And because probiotics and microbiome and
understanding that we really need to get our nutrition from what
we're putting into our body, not just in the form of pills or
powders and things like that, kombucha I think is at a very
influential point in its development. We see it as the 21st-century
yogurt. Right? Kyle:
Oh, okay. Hannah:
Well, you and I probably remember
when yogurt was sold in the stores, but a generation before us, you
had to be a crazy hippie making it at home on your countertop. Like
you couldn't just go to the store and buy yogurt. Now, of course,
it's multi-billion dollar industry and sold on the fact it was
probiotic and helped people live to be an old age. And so kombucha
I think is experiencing a similar phenomenon right now, and the
reason I mention all of this is because, think about it like this.
The more people who've tried kombucha from a store, the more who've
even heard the word- Kyle:
Yeah. Hannah:
And then if they end up like me
where their thirst outgrows their budget, at some point, then
they're gonna wanna try to make it themselves. And so we've kind of
fueled this whole trend of course towards people knowing about
kombucha, reincorporating it into its popularity ... It's had
actually multiple points of popularity throughout time, but of
course, there's nothing like an internet to consolidate all of that
information and make it easier for people to find instead of little
sheets of paper that they get passed around with a weird SCOBY in a
bag. Kyle:
Yeah. Tell me about ... I'd love to
know a little bit more about your book and how ... Was there a way
that you designed your book to drive attention and traffic back
your site and your store, and can you tell me some of the strategy
on how you leveraged the big success of your book to really ...
Because I think a lot of people when they think about books, it's,
of course, nice to think about retiring on just book royalties
alone. What I find books very useful for and how mine have worked
really well is by ... They're like a first step in the process. You
introduce them to an idea and often I find a popular strategy these
days is to give something that you can collect, their emails or
give them a next step to engage with you in the book. Is that a
strategy you used? Hannah:
So ours is with a traditional
publisher. So we were limited in how exactly we could ... We were
able to put 'Founders of Kombucha Kamp' on the book, which was
really important. In fact, it is a way in which a lot of people now
find us. Unfortunately though, sometimes will find other brands and
they also have our book, but ultimately, of course, it does bring
them to us. And you just have to google kombucha and you're a stone
throw from any of our content. We've done a great job with SEO and
really writing the book actually put us on hiatus from doing all of
that, and so now we're ginning back up the content. But prior to
all of that, the book really came ... it came from the blog. It was
turned into a 100-page pdf handbook that came with some of the kits
and cultures that we had for sale, and then we were able to
leverage that into the 400-page book deal. Right?
So it had its own kind of natural evolution as
it went and these days, I don't know how easy it's been for you to
get book deals Kyle, but it seems like they want something similar
to like a record deal. They wanna see do you have a platform
already, can you actually sell this, are you viable, whereas in the
past it used to be, "Oh, I have this interesting idea that nobody
else has had. Here, let me write a book about it." Right? These
days they want demonstrable ability to sell that book before they
wanna engage with you anyways. So that's ... All of that has worked
really well in getting the word out, but it's also because there's
a low barrier to entry, because the culture's so highly
reproductive, it's also led to a lot of competition from sellers on
Craigslist and eBay and ... As much as people understand the
difference in quality for vehicles, right? Everyone knows the
difference between a Lexus and a Toyota, they don't always
understand the difference in quality when it comes to something
that ... like a kombucha culture, when in fact there is. There's
always a difference in quality whenever you're considering what
you're gonna put into your body. 
Kyle:
Absolutely. So just retracing the
steps of your story, what I love is like this is a ... Yours is a
case study that I think Seth Godin would go crazy for because you
saw a problem, you saw your passion and you wanted to work in that,
and then I think a lot of the questions that I get from my readers
or listeners is, "What do I need to do? How can I like ..." They
wanna cut straight to profit or straight to having a successful
Kickstarter campaign because that's all they see. They see all of a
sudden this new invention on Kickstarter and blam, it's a huge
raging success and I think that's a very rare case, that it's
actually just kind of a spark out of nowhere. But what you've done
is again like you were saying, organically you started solving a
problem, creating content around it, having conversations and
always focusing on serving the people that were right in front of
you right away, which brought more people to you and spread the
word. And I'm sure ... I
wanna ask you about your SEO in a moment because I'm guessing like
for the first while, you probably weren't that concerned about it.
You were probably trying to just solve a problem and describe it as
best as you could, and those took care of itself. And another thing
that I loved that you told me is that the book that was this
incredibly successful book, was originally just a small handbook
that you were giving away to help your customers succeed, which
again, a lot of people enter book marketing hoping to just get
their ... get the results that you did. You were designing
something to be helpful from the ground up for the people you were
already serving and I think that that's a really, really powerful
story that a lot of people who are in the early stages of a
business, no matter if it's in health and wellness and any kind of
industry. Just learning how to start these conversations, create
good content, tell a good story and share your story online and if
you're tapped into the right place, then people are gonna find
you. Hannah:
That's exactly right. And what
you're hitting on the head is helping others because ... and it's a
lot of hard work, like it doesn't just magically grow itself. You
have to put in the work and the other side of this is we have a
product based] business, and that comes with its own host of
challenges. Right? You have to figure out shipping and managing
inventory and all of those other aspects that go beyond just I show
up and write a blog. It's very different ... And more than that,
we're not even selling a ready to drink product. Like you can go to
a store and think, "Oh, I've never had a kombucha. Sure, I'll try
it once." But to take home a culture and decide you're gonna
ferment and make it at home, that I think has been the biggest
challenge with working with traditional marketing teams or a
traditional SEO because what works for widgets doesn't always work
for a lifestyle. 
And really, it's giving people the information
that they need knowing that when they're fully informed on a
process or they understand what it is they're going to be
undertaking, that they can move forward into that with more
confidence. Not everybody's gonna read everything before they dive
into something. A lot of people just wanna jump in and get their
hands dirty and kind of learn that way as well. So there are many
ways to kind of approach that, but it's just been by like
absorbing, reading, researching. That to me is fun and interesting,
to kind of learn all of these details, this minutia, and then to
have my husband who's this wonderful balancing force. I'm the like,
"It's a miracle. It's gonna save the world.", and theoretically
that could be true, but you always have to balance that kind of
enthusiasm with, "Okay. But it's a food like any other and no one
food is ever going to be everything you need to consume ever
because that's not how human beings are designed."
And ... So it's also not getting
totally caught up in the drama or the excitement of the thing that
you're working with, but really staying focused on how do we serve
the people who need this information, because you're gonna end up
answering the same questions again and again and again. But it's
important that even if you're tired of doing that, you still show
up with a smile and present the information to that new person
because for them, you're creating a relationship, you're creating a
contact point. They're like, "Oh, I can trust this person because
they didn't ask anything of me, and yet they gave freely of their
information." And so we've had a freemium for a long, which you
probably talk about in many of your shows- 
Kyle:
Yeah. Hannah:
About how important that is to give
something away and that's been an important part of being able to
build a list. And then ... Again, marketing to them is very
different than to other widgets. Kyle:
To that point, I'd love to hear
kind of what you have set up right now about ... How do you do to
take them from their first point of contact, they're consuming your
content, to making a purchase in the store? How do you guide them
through that process? Do you have ... You've got a freemium play
right now. So what do you do to kind of level them up and show them
the value that you can create? Hannah:
Yeah. Well obviously where we're
going to maximize value, not only to them but to us, is by selling
our higher priced packages. Right? And again, most people aren't
gonna ... who just occasionally drink kombucha aren't gonna think,
"Oh, let me drop $300.00 on a kit that's gonna help me make
kombucha all the time." So first, you have to be someone who's
really excited and into it. And so when you get our ... It's an
email a day for five days, so we try not to over inundate people.
They also get a downloadable recipe as well as a brewing guide with
that. So you have some assets that you can work with immediately
and then we just kind of gradually walk them through what kombucha
is, how it can help and then leading up to why it's beneficial to
jump into continuous brewing, 'cause it really is. It saves time,
it saves effort, ultimately it saves money, but people have to
kinda come to that information themselves and our philosophy is to
trust your gut. That means don't do something because I do it. It
means listen to your body. When you're getting feedback, does this
resonate? Does this feel good? And so it's a very different sales technique
than, "You must have this now!" Or "Limited time! It's all running
out!" It's a very different approach because it's very gradual and
it's about helping people come to this decision themselves. And so
the way we do that is with just really quality information that
allows them ... Maybe continuous brew isn't for them right now,
they're gonna start with a smaller kit or a smaller package, and
then ultimately they know they can come back and get the pieces
they need from us. And the other point of specific differentiation,
is we try to invent products that fit our niche. 
Kyle:
Yeah. Hannah:
So we've developed a heater with a
thermostat at a time when there were no heaters with thermostats
for brewing and fermentation. There were kind of brew belts and
things you had to monitor on your own, but we came out with one
that has a thermostat. Now, of course, you can find a lot of these
in a lot of places, but we also developed a vessel that has a
unique shape and we work with a potter. It's made in the U.S.A., so
we continue to try to create these points of differentiation that
other people who just wanna sell some SCOBYs or whatever aren't
thinking of in terms of catering to the entire experience.
[bctt tweet="Create points of differentiation in your content and
think in terms of catering to the entire experience. -Hannah Crum"
username="kylethegray"] Kyle:
I think that's beautiful. I think
that's really exciting and being able to package a bunch of
different products into one big kit to show a lot of value, I think
is really powerful and essential for an eCommerce plan. I love what
you were touching on where there's much information in the digital
marketing world, especially where I live in all the time, which is
all this kind of high now urgency, kind of fear-driven copywriting.
And that's one of the reasons why I love content and building
relationships and aiming for something longer than just a quick
sale, which I think you've done so well and which is why I was so
happy to have your story here today. Hannah, you've mentioned a lot
of your different products, but where can we go to learn a little
bit more about you if people are excited about kombucha and ready
to start their own homebrew or just wanna learn a little bit more
about you? Hannah:
Absolutely. So kombuchakamp.com,
that's Kamp with a K 'cause I'm a word nerd. I'm [kute and klever].
Yes, those all had Ks. But Kombucha Kamp is the best first place to
go to, from there you can also go to our store. We do four cultures
in total. So we do kombucha, which is the fermented tea. We do jun
or jun, which is its green tea raw honey cousin. And then we also
do milk kefir and water kefir and all of these are in a living form
and we have loads of content for all of them. So if you're into
fermentation at all when it comes to fermented drinks, come check
us out because we have that information there. And then, if you're someone who wants to start
your own kombucha business, we do offer consultation, but then
there are also great resources at the trade association, which is
kombuchabrewers.org. So you can also find me there. We have a
lobbying effort. Our trade association has really grown quite a
bit. So we started with 40 member brands and we're over 300. So
it's just a testament to how quickly this industry is growing and
how much our efforts are contributing to that process. And of
course, people are seeing that there's an opportunity and we wanna
make it easy for them to take advantage of that because right now,
there's no one producer that can make enough kombucha to satisfy
the world's thirst. So it's really ... If you're considering
getting into a business and you're afraid of hard work,
fermentation whether it's drinks or sauerkraut or whatever,
everybody needs it. Everyone's sick and they need a good, local
option. So highly recommend that if you're not afraid of hard
work. Kyle:
Amazing, Hannah. Thank you so much
for joining us. Hannah:
Thanks, Kyle. Really great to be
here.