This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features Orlando-based entrepreneur Sean Hall. Hall has launched several ventures in “the better-for-you CPG space,” including his latest protein powder company Wellious. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Wellious. Sean Hall.
When did you start your side hustle, and what was your full-time job at that point?
I launched Wellious as a side hustle in late 2021 while I was working full-time running a digital publishing company called TOFM Media, which ran online publications around food and wellness.
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What inspired you to start Wellious as a side hustle?
In early 2021, I was dealing with some personal health struggles that made me extra conscious of what I was consuming. I realized that my protein powder was filled with the same harmful ingredients that I was trying to avoid in junk food. I thought it was intolerable that our “health products” were actually bad for our health. So, I became a total nerd about developing a protein powder made from just a few real food ingredients.
After spending thousands of hours on nights and weekends after my full-time work, I created Wellious. It was truly the cleanest and tastiest plant-based protein powder I had ever tried. I knew I had to share it with the world, so I started working towards soft-launching it as a side hustle.
What went into developing the product for Wellious?
People may not know this, but many food and supplement products are developed by the same labs for multiple brands, breeding very little innovation. I needed something that didn’t exist yet, so I had to develop it myself. I have worked in the food space for a decade, developed multiple products and am a student of cooking and nutrition, so it was in my wheelhouse to figure this out.
I became fascinated with almond protein, where we take California almonds, cold press the saturated fat (oils) out and then dry and grind them to make a high protein per gram and calorie almond protein. This provides a natural plant-based protein source with amazing taste and texture and so much nutritional functionality. I then combined that with chickpea protein to perfectly balance the amino acid profile and enhance the nutritional profile.
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Almost all protein powder brands use artificial or “natural” flavors to flavor their powders. “Natural flavors” are ambiguous white powders that can be made from anything under the sun to somehow taste like chocolate or vanilla — while scientifically it’s cool, why use chocolate-flavored animal parts when cocoa exists? (They do it because it’s much cheaper and easier.) However, I tried dozens of the best cacaos from around the world and then made our own proprietary blend of cacaos for the perfect balance of pH levels, fat content and flavor profiles. I did something similar with vanilla, even meeting up with vanilla experts to chat about vanilla beans for hours.
Lastly, I committed to using monk fruit to sweeten, which is 400 times more expensive than alternatives. It is the most natural sweetener in the world with no known gastro-upsetting properties. I tried dozens of varieties and sourced the purest one I could find.
I still source every ingredient myself, as close to the farm level as possible, with strict standards on quality.
We third-party test every single batch of product. When I say Wellious is “clean,” it’s not just a trendy value prop; rather, it’s a commitment to making one of the healthiest products on the market.
Finally, I engineered the entire manufacturing process from the ground up, including packaging design and price point. Many times, this would all be outsourced, but as a bootstrapped side project, I did every single element myself and didn’t spend a dime until our first production run.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Wellious
You launched with $3,000 and an Instagram post. What happened next?
Yes! I spent $3,000 on the initial ingredients to make around 250 bags. I made about 50 of those in a local commercial kitchen, had all of the business licensing in place, and a website made… so it was time to “launch.”
Honestly, the plan was that I would post about this and nothing would happen, and that would give me time to build actual production and fulfillment infrastructure and a hard-launch plan.
But within 20 minutes of that Instagram post, orders started coming in. This might seem like “duh,” but besides my mom, I wasn’t expecting people to be that interested right away. People immediately reached out, saying, “Wow, I’ve been looking for something like this.”
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The coolest thing was that within two weeks, people from all over the U.S. were buying products on the website, and the people who had bought a bag at the launch were coming back to buy two more bags because they were “obsessed.”
Demand has constantly increased every month since I launched, mainly because we have insanely high reorder rates and because it’s a product that people have wanted to share with their friends, on their social media and sometimes with their millions of followers.
How did you continue to grow the business, and how long was it before it turned full-time?
I moved to a co-packer so we could produce enough products, launched on Amazon, gifted products to influencers and created content on TikTok and other social channels, sharing my story of why I started this business. The orders increased every week, and I honestly spent most of my time trying to figure out how we could produce twice as much product every production run. My family and I shipped out thousands of orders ourselves. I was still running my other business, so there were a lot of late nights, and I worked most weekends, too.
The momentum was hard to ignore. We had celebrities buying and requesting the product, content going viral on TikTok, major influencers posting that Wellious was the best product they’ve tried and major retailers reaching out to us.
This was extremely cool, but the messages from customers were my biggest reason for going all-in. Every day, people would reach out and say that this product was a game-changer, that it was the only protein that didn’t give them bloating and cramps, that their family members with dietary restrictions finally had a product that they could enjoy and that their picky children asked for, that Wellious helped them during pregnancy and other mind-blowing anecdotes.
About six months in, I started focusing full-time on Wellious and then pivoted to running my previous business on nights and weekends.
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What were some of the biggest challenges you faced as you built your side hustle into a full-time business, and how did you navigate them?
Time and money. There are a myriad of roadblocks literally every day, but without time or money, many of these can make the uphill battle seem impossible.
We sold out of product eight times. It took weeks to get back in stock because of long lead times and how long I needed to wait to afford the runs.
We’ve had to turn down retail deals because I just couldn’t handle that much business myself.
There are never enough hours in the day, even when you’re full-time, so building this on the side was very difficult.
Now, I was extremely lucky to have the problem of there being too much demand, but it’s still mega stressful having to say no and move much slower than the opportunities that are presenting themselves.
I navigated all of this by focusing on being grateful that everything was going well. Keeping a positive perspective makes everything more palatable.
Otherwise, it was consistent, disciplined work. When you have 100 hours of tasks to complete to jump this next hurdle, and your time and resources are limited, all you can do is sit down as often as you can and put the work in. I would log back on at 8 p.m. and work for three hours — I would spend a whole Saturday working at it. Slowly but surely, I kept making progress and getting what I needed done.
This is definitely not for everyone, but I actually love the work. It’s a creative challenge that I can’t get enough of.
What do growth and revenue look like for Wellious today?
We are currently growing 600% year over year. We are now doing six figures of revenue a month and will do millions of revenue in the next 12 months.
As you look to the future of Wellious, what are you most excited about?
Making the best product and user experience that exists for customers. I believe in the perpetual improvement of products and working like crazy to keep making Wellious better and better. I also want people to enjoy the experience of purchasing, using our product and becoming part of our community.
If we can be excellent in all those things at scale, all of the other fun stuff will fall into place.
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What’s your best advice for aspiring entrepreneurs who want to start a side hustle or full-time business of their own?
One of my favorite business philosophies is, “The only real failure is never trying at all.”
$3,000 was still a risk for me, and I debated not launching this business. What a shame that would have been!
Becoming obsessed with making a product that truly solves a problem or deserves to exist is important. Don’t start something because “it seems like a chance to make money,” but rather because you think you can make something that will be really special.
But either way, none of it matters if it stays in theory, so bring it to life! Learn, iterate and keep working until the side hustle becomes the main hustle — whether that’s 10 months or 10 years. There is no timeline for chasing a dream.
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