Building a joyful, purpose-driven brand

Interview summary

Bella explains how community, business, and life are interconnected, influenced by her upbringing in Hawaii and commitment to collective success.

Bella’s transition from independent curator and arts executive to serial CPG entrepreneur highlights her creative drive and comfort with uncertainty.

Bella and her lifelong friend Semira built Better Sour from their shared background, a shared love for sour flavors and an opportunity they uncovered in the candy market.

Bella shares her experiences building community in her personal life and in her business, showcasing how Better Sour's early partnership with Disney’s Moana helped the company reach millennial families and expand beyond foodie audiences.

Bella emphasizes patience, data-driven strategy and grit as essential traits for navigating the slow-moving but rewarding CPG industry.

Good founders have good instincts ... and then you always need to go out and find that data to back up your good instinct.

Bella Hughes

Transcript

Bella (00:00)

There's no difference between community, business, and life. They're all together. So I will say, whatever I've done, this sense of community is just inherent and a reflection for who I am and how I'm living my life. And it's very, very wonderful and very humbling to see community get behind whatever you're building.

Barrak: (00:20)

You're listening to Joy of Business, a collection of audio essays, timely discussions, and stories featured on digitalentrepreneur.com.

That was a clip from Bella Hughes, co-founder of Better Sour. In our conversation, she shares how she built successful consumer packaged goods (or CPG) companies doing what she loves, with people she loves.

Stay tuned to discover how she blends personal connections, passion, and grit into all her endeavors.

Bella: (00:56)

Joy is the New Success is such a beautiful phrase. And I feel like I'm very much living that. For me, it means intentionally working with people that you love. And Joy is the New Success is exactly what I am privileged to do every day, which is working with my lifelong best friend. So I've co-founded Better Sour with Semira Nikou. We met when we were a year old. And she's more than a best friend. She truly is my sister in this life.

Barrak (01:25)

That's so beautiful and I'm so happy that you have that as part of your journey. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you got to this stage in your entrepreneurship journey.

Bella (01:37)

Well, when I look back on my life, I realize that I am a forever founder. I've actually only been formally employed for about six months when I was very young, when I lived in the UAE. And I worked for the agency building The Louvre, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. And I

I guess I'm kind of a bossy person and and I'm very creative and my nickname for myself is bossy Bella, but I mean that in a good way. I'm very comfortable being bossy and I just I want to do what I want to do. And if you're that kind of person and you're stubborn and very very unafraid of the unknown, entrepreneurship is a wonderful route and I took that route initially.

For many years, I was an independent curator. I was a nonprofit executive. I co-founded Honolulu Biennial, which is now known as Hawaii Contemporary, putting on the Hawaii Triennial. And I was the Dubai editor for Art Asia Pacific.

And I think just operating independently in the arts and not within an institution, it really is like the skill set that has served me now well for the last decade or so in entrepreneurship within the consumer packaged goods space. Because when you're in the arts, you essentially are pitching institutions or galleries why they should curate a show that you as a curator want to do.

Barrak (03:01)

I love that you draw from so many different industries, so many different facets of your own passions and interests and kind of have just honed and honed and honed it down over the years. You were telling us a little bit about this very personal side of Better Sour and how you co-founded it with your best friend. I'd love to know more about the story and the backdrop to it, what sparked the idea

Bella (03:26)

Yeah, so Semira and I met when we were a year old at a Noroo's party, which is Iranian New Year, but it's celebrated across West and Central Asia. ⁓ The first day of spring, spring equinox, and you know, my mother's from Iran, both of our parents are from Iran. And so in the late 80s, we're just part of a very small diasporic community. There just were not a lot of Iranians in our hometown. We were both born and raised in Honolulu in the Hawaiian islands. And so like, think immigrant communities everywhere, you're just sort of forced to be friends. We probably at first glance don't seem naturally like we'd be best friends. have different personalities, but we're like yin and yang. We really are a true match. And I think we have a lot of similar values and interests, even if we have different, you know, maybe archetypes of personalities. And so we grew up together in this diasporic kind of little community. And over the years, our friendship just deepened as friendship naturally deepens. And a big part of our friendship has always been, ⁓ obviously, not only our shared Iranian heritage, but our love of food. We are obsessed with eating and cooking, we are sending each other alwaysphotos of what did you make last night? What am I eating? She and her husband are the best home chefs I've ever, ever met.

When we're traveling, it's always like, where are we going to eat? What restaurants are we going to go to? I mean, we literally live to eat. And so food is a big part of our life. And then when you get to the flavor sour, if you're familiar with Iranian cuisine, it's probably the most central flavor.

Because it really makes its way into everything from our favorite snack called Lavashak, which is a sour dried fruit leather, and then a lot of our savory dishes. It makes its way into goresht and our stews, whether it's a pomegranate molasses or you're having like plums or apricots. There's always that tartangy element. And then growing up in Hawaii, where there's this incredible Asia Pacific culinary heritage and influence with all the fresh tropical fruits that are tart and tangy from lilikoi, which is passion fruit, or a calamansi lime. ⁓ if you're having a fresh mango, there's a nice tart tang. It's not super sweet at first.

So I think it's just that confluence of our love of food, travel, food brings people together, And when we looked at wanting to do a business together and wanted to do a business together since we were like years old, she has had this incredible career in so many amazing, impressive organizations from the United States Institute for Peace to being a top attorney. I have been in the arts, as you heard, then CPG. I led my last company through an acquisition and it was just a good moment and she was ready to leave that corporate life and, the founder journey. So we were like, let's do something rooted in our favorite flavor and something we saw that was missing from candy because we are obsessed with sour.

We did not see any sour candy that really reflected these global flavors, these flavors we grew up with. We also did research and looked at the candy category and we saw that non-chocolate candy was a huge white space and it was growing double digits. ⁓ But when you look at the non-chocolate candy space and specifically gummies where millennials and Gen Z are over indexing in their purchases, of this, you know, sector in candy, there's nothing really for foodies. If you go look at the chocolate category in any grocery store in the United States, you're going to find like 20 to 50 different exquisite, interesting foodie options plus traditional candy, like traditional chocolate. You go to gummies and it's just kind of like, the basic flavors. So that is a long winded story of how we decided to do this and sort of what the total addressable market was and the exciting opportunity. So we launched in 2023 in May in just about, at that time there were only nine Erewhon stores, today there 10 Erewhon stores.

Barrak (07:35)

I'd like to zoom in a little bit of that feeling that every entrepreneur wants, where there's the overlap between here's something I love and then here's the opportunity. And then that Venn diagram closes in. And I just want you to go into that moment or maybe series of moments where, you know, you and your BFF are

Bella (07:46)

Mm-hmm.

Barrak (08:01)

talking about this flavor profile that you love, you're doing this research and then you have this like, my gosh, there's all this white space. It's like green fields, blue sky, as far as the eye can see. What was that like?

Bella (08:15)

Well, I love how you just put that that Venn diagram moment and like where it's your passion and your interest and something you care about. And for us, it really is rooted in something personal. it's a reflection of our story and our flavors that we love. We've got guava gummies, we've got pomegranate gummies. It's the Middle East and whole Asia Pacific vibes just come together. But exactly to your point, it's not just something we're passionate about and that we want to see come into the world. There's actual real market data that this is an opportunity. ⁓ It was a wonderful moment. It was a wonderful moment because you definitely, think, always want to start a business that is more than just your own passion. There has to be some product market fit once you produce the product. We'll get to that in a moment that people actually want to buy it so you have a good unit velocity story, repeat data. Customers are saying they want to choose you over other products in the market.

But before you even decide to invest some of your own capital and then later on go out and raise capital, you need to at least have those basic data points that the category is growing. So when we saw that, it definitely gave us that aha moment, like we should 110 % do it. And I think one of the things over the years, being a repeat founder across an array of fields and also just knowing a lot of founders is,

Good founders have good instincts and they're sort of just a pattern recognition there. And then you always need to go out and find that data to back up your good instinct.

Barrak (09:51)

is really solid advice. And I'd like to hear a little bit about how you took this deep personal friendship and this love of this flavor and these data points and this opportunity and how did you put that all together and hone it into this brand that you have today? And how did you hone it into the particular products and flavors that you developed?

Bella (10:18)

I wish I could say we did this, this and this and this, but early on it's like soupy and messy. So we were doing a lot of things at once. sort of like when you're cooking with like, you know what the end dish is gonna taste like, but without a recipe. There is definitely some muscle memory there for me having, this is the third time I've been a CPG co-founder. But you're working with a graphic designer and creating a brand identity while concurrently working with a food scientist and a culinary director to put together the flavors.

Barrak (10:47)

And I love that you use a food metaphor to describe your process.

Bella (10:50)

Okay, we're totally obsessed with food, as you can tell.

Barrak (10:53)

I am too, so that's great. One thing that I'm also interested in is the way that you go about business. So the connections that you make and the relationships you build with growers, suppliers, communities, partnerships, it's something that's really special, something that I've observed across a lot of the different kind of work that you've done—

Bella (10:55)

Yeah,

Barrak (11:17)

A lot of the different ventures that you've developed. And I was thinking, you know, other founders might be interested in hearing about the way that you, prioritize and develop and navigate those kinds of relationships with the growers, with suppliers, with communities, with customers, with partners.

Bella (11:36)

I think, you know, the sense of community just comes from my island upbringing. It is such a beautiful community and such a privilege to be born and raised there. So innately, it's a we culture, not an I culture when you're from Hawaii, it's sort of in your DNA to just be we people, not I people. So I think it's just the way you move through the world with that intentionality. It's, I mean, it's just a vibe that you carry. It's a value system. It's how you live your life and it's how you operate, how you create business. So to me, that business and community, they're the same thing. There's no...

There's no difference between community, business, and life. They're all together. So I will say, whatever I've done, this sense of community is just inherent and a reflection for who I am and how I'm living my life. And it's very, very wonderful and very humbling to see community get behind whatever you're building. There are moments in my life that I truly have tears in my eye because to have something that is just an idea in your head. It's just a ridiculous idea. And then to have people believe in it, like that means I could cry just talking to you.

But it means so much. Like you could choose anything and you decided to choose this one, this idea. And every time someone gives you a chance, it means the world. Every time a customer with Better Sour picks up our product over the bevy of other options, it means the world to us. And then on the investor front, I mean, the data behind you know, how difficult it is to raise capital for all founders, but particularly women founders, it was at 1.9%. It's gone down to around 1%. When investors are backing us, it's always high risk to back an early stage company. So building community is part of just doing life, doing business.

Barrak (13:33)

Yeah, it really feels like a very holistic way to the way that you work. And it seems like the way in which you embed those personal values into the business values, it's so clear and it's so apparent. I love—

Bella (13:48)

And can we talk about the first team members that actually want to join? That's so cool. We're a full-time team of four people right now. So it's Semira and I and two awesome guys that are full-time. We have a director of sales and a director of sales operations. They can work for any startup. They want to work at our startup and help us build this dream. That's also very humbling to just the people that want to help you build the dream.

Barrak (14:16)

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. And on top of that, you've also built some really thoughtful partnerships. And I would love to hear you talk about the partnership with Disney's Moana.

Bella (14:28)

I mean, a pinch me moment. I mean, we were only going to be two years old in retail next month. we're in, just around 4,000 doors. We're super, super new to be able to secure that partnership so early. It was honestly a big surprise and really, really exciting for us, for Semira and I, I mean just you know, being born and raised in Hawaii, Moana being such a strong female lead, so independent, so community minded. And then with the island connection, we were already planning to do a passion fruit flavor, which is probably one of Hawaii's most, you know, popular fruits.

We were able to not just do a character license with the bag, but also do the world premiere partnership and a national marketing campaign. We did truck wrap. So it was a really great way to also reach a secondary audience Which are millennial families and some of the Gen Z families our primary audience has been thus far really those foodie customers that are millennial and gen Z's, adventurous eaters, people who love to travel, not necessarily directly marketing to families and kids, but this with the Moana branding was like, and you have kids, they're going to love it too. So it's been, it's been really amazing.

Barrak (15:44)

That's an amazing opportunity. And it's really cool to hear how it also opened up new market segments for you. when I was in one of the stores with the gummies, I was with my best friend. I bought them and she saw that it had Moana on it and it's her son's favorite movie and she was just so delighted to share it. You know, there's just a lot of joy in that connection. There's joy in that. connection to the flavors, just even like the partnership itself, I think produces that sense of feel-good familiarity. I think that that's a really cool way to think about partnerships too. How is it extending the feeling of the brand?

Bella (16:24)

No, exactly.

And like how can you use a partnership like that to reach, you know, new audiences and bring new customers to your product, which has been very rewarding for us. So really a lot of fun.

Barrak (16:40)

I imagine that getting into stores, getting into doors is a major hurdle, major challenge for any CPG brand. So do you have any strategies from your many ventures, strategies for distribution, strategies for knocking on that door?

What advice would you have to early founders who are starting up in the CPG sector?

Bella (17:06)

My God, the advice I'm still giving to myself, because I think a lot of founders probably are really impatient. I'm impatient. I want to go faster, quicker, but I tell it to myself every day. Deep breath, be patient, because it is a slow process. ⁓ Most categories, whatever category you're in, there's once a year of review. If you're lucky, there might be once a year.

A big review and then a reset and then a mini one but a lot of stores have moved to just annual reviews very few stores ⁓ And if they do they're probably smaller chains. So like the door count is gonna be a smaller win are just ongoing ⁓ Like the review product if they like it, they'll bring it in like in two weeks later two weeks time, know often time you're waiting maybe the review is I'm gonna hypothetically say in January and then the reset is in November or so you pitch it in January, find out maybe in June if you're gonna get in, but you won't actually get on the shelf till November. So it's just a long, long sales cycle. And patience is truly queen in this industry. And that's hard, because I think a lot of founders just wanna move fast and they're nimble and they wanna go.

You know, always focusing on the doors that you do have open and how can you create with what you have a better data velocity story? Because it's not always about more doors, of course. It's like far more impressive if you're in like 5,000 doors and you can figure out how to do 20 million in sales than 20 million in sales and 20,000 doors. So how can you make those doors that you have work for you.

And then I think, you know, this third time being a co-founder in CPG, very mindfully, Samira and I wanted to ensure that we had data both in the natural channel and at the same time, just general grocery stores. So that's been really, really neat because a lot of times if you are on the more innovative natural set, you can get some pushback and say, ⁓ you might only just work in natural. So it was really, really nice to be able

in the first year to win doors and have, if it was only a handful, like 50 or 100, and say, actually, our product's not just working in the natural, more specialty premium doors, but we've got some legs and some really great data stories in traditional retail grocery as well. So I think that's the advice I'd give, and I do give early stage founders, like don't just focus on...only one channel early on, And that's also more attractive to investors because they want to invest in a brand that has the potential to cross markets and reach a broader audience, of course.

Barrak (19:46)

Yeah, and in an age of move fast and break things, and pivoting, I think being patient and trusting those instincts and really grounding yourself in data, I think all those things really make a lot of sense and are worth remembering. In addition to...

Bella (20:05)

Yeah, and also just remembering how busy the grocery buyers are I always am trying to think about being in their shoes they have hundreds of thousands of items. You're just such a small small part of what they have to think about being a grocery buyer sounds extremely stressful. They're being pitched, day in day out. They have hundreds of emails so

Just really coming from a service mindset. I think it's really really important again not me me me be like like an Iii It's more like how can I be of service to you because you have to be bringing them value every single You know one tenth of a square inch in that grocery store is a valuable retail space They have KPIs they have key metrics they need to meet for sales goals

And if your product is not selling and not bringing new customers to the category driving that incremental growth, you're not valuable. So just coming in with that humility, but also that service mindset of how you can be of service to them, ⁓ which often is going to your point, Barrak about data. It's not like, this is my friend, this is my story. It's like, this is my data, and this is how great I'm going to, I've worked here and I'm going to be able to hopefully do that for you. And here I am, how to support you is a better pitch and a better angle.

Barrak (21:22)

In addition to building brands, you've mentioned before that you're a mentor, you're an angel investor, an advisor to early stage brands and founders. I love that you give back to so many different communities in the entrepreneurial space. How have those various experiences shaped your view of what early stage entrepreneurs really need?

Bella (21:43)

Well, that is a great question. I think early stage entrepreneurs, first and foremost, need more capital. I think there's very little capital early, early stage. So I hope there are more angel investors out there. I hope there are more early stage funds out there to support them, particularly in CPG. It's just an industry that takes money to make things or making physical products.

So it's just a capital intensive space. So hopefully more people Invest in this space because it's a wonderful industry and everybody needs to eat and there's a lot of great innovation out there one of the things I've learned is it really is about the person and a sense of grittiness and

You know one of the things when I talk especially to students that are considering entrepreneurship Are you the type of person the question I always ask that if you were told your idea sucks And it's never gonna work out that you and because I'm told this all the time still I you're always gonna be told that if you decide to live a path that there is No real roadmap and no one's it before that is what you're signing up for

But if someone says this sucks and it's not gonna work, how do you feel? Do you feel I'm gonna prove you wrong and I'm gonna win this no matter what? Or do you feel defeated and shitty and that you have to go cry? And you can feel shitty and like you need to go cry, but then you need to be like, no, I'm gonna win and I'm gonna prove you wrong. If you're feeling at the end within 24 hour cycle of hearing that news is—

I'm gonna prove you wrong, I'm gonna win, then you have the grit. Like at the end of the day, it really is like a personality thing. And I think there's been just so much glamorization of entrepreneurship. Being a founder, particularly with all the shows and the shark tanks and all that. And it really is a mental sort of grit and if you don't have that I don't recommend this path for you because it's a lot of highs and lows and probably 55 things every day are gonna go wrong and if you're like Shit, that sucks. I'm gonna figure it out and you're kind of excited about the puzzle that you don't know what it's gonna look like at the end and all the no's just rile you up like I'm gonna win no matter what like you're gonna figure it out then you're probably on the right path like you've got the psychological framework to be a founder I just see a lot of folks once I get to know them and they are founders that I don't think they have the right background, you know, the right tenacity, that this is probably not the right path for them. It is really, really hard. It is the hardest thing to be a founder. Maybe the other hardest thing is to be an artist, because being an artist is like being a founder.

Barrak (24:25)

Yeah, I do completely agree with that. I love that you are sharing this advice that, you know, we need the capital. We need the money. We need to help build these businesses and it needs to come in early, right? And we need to create more opportunities for underrepresented founders and underfunded founders as well. And then on the other side, you're putting it, so that's like, that's the external influence. Then you're putting also, that internal work, that internal drive that an entrepreneur or founder needs to have, the tenacity, the drive, the grit, the motivation, the resilience. And I think they're so intertwined as well. And just dealing very frankly with rejection, dealing very frankly with those no's the doors slamming in your face. I think it's really meaningful to hear you juxtapose both of those things because you can't have one without the other. I have one last question for you. A digital entrepreneur, we're big on reconnecting entrepreneurs with the joy of business. When things get hard, what helps you get back to feeling joy in life and business?

Bella (25:35)

Well, again, I feel very, very thankful I get to work with my best friend. So I truly just, when things get hard, I call her. In my last business, I worked with my other best friend, my husband. ⁓ So I think choose a co-founder wisely, a good talk with them, and just having that sense of camaraderie, like we're in it together. I have so much respect for solo founders.

You guys are incredible. You are the toughest of the tough. I don't know how you do it. I would never be a solo founder. Mad respect. I need the companionship. I need the camaraderie. I also like to do the things that I'm really good at and compliment that with another co-founder that is really good at the skill sets I don't have. ⁓ I'd rather lean into my strengths and not try and do the things that are more challenging.

So my joy is my joy goes back to who I co-found things with just being that camaraderie and then I end up usually going back to food cooking some great meal because I need to decompress by not thinking about the challenges and the time my mind goes blank is when I'm cooking and then feeding and feeding my family throwing a dinner party. I love hospitality. I love hosting

And that's just, that's what I do. That's joy.

Barrak (26:56)

Well, thank you so much, Bella. It was such a joy to chat with you about your journey and the adventures along the way. I really appreciate you sharing your insights and the lessons with everyone at Digital Entrepreneur. Thank you.

Bella (27:16)

Thank you for having me on. This was a lot of fun connecting and reconnecting.