We recently connected with Roxanne Reitler and have shared our conversation below.

Roxanne, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

Overall I love being a business owner. I own this business with my husband and we always joke that if we weren’t in this together, we would never even see or get to communicate with each other.

We do have moments where we talk about what it would be like to have a regular jobs. I can’t even really think of any specific moments that lead to this thought anymore because we have been at this for so long and faced so many moments of this. When you own a business, the weight of that whole business, and what seems like the world, is on your shoulders. Your successes and failures are all in your own hands and they all ultimately affect you and you alone at the end of the day.

When we run into issues with production in our manufacturing kitchen, everyone is looking at us to fix them. When an ingredient runs out or something is on backorder, the stress of that is solely on you as the business owner. We love our employees and they care about us and our company and we are so lucky to have them but at the end of the day, if something can’t get done or goes hugely wrong, they get to go home and not think about it because it does not effect them and it is not their responsibility to fix it. We go home and not only think about it but problem solve it, research it, call everyone and anyone who we think can help us; it really is tough and there really is no shutting off.

I am pregnant right now and getting close to 8 months. While all our friends around us in the same scenario are on their maternity leaves, I sit with the reality that I don’t have one of those and neither does my husband. I guess these are the moments where it really hits us that if we had a “regular” job, we would get more of the normal perks that others have in similar situations to us and that is sometimes a hard pill to swallow.

Even through all this, we end up looking at each other (maybe not in that exact moment but at least a couple days later) and knowing that we would still prefer to work for ourselves. We get to work together every day and we have each other and an amazing team. We would not know half the wonderful people who have come into our lives had it not been for this business and we are grateful that we get to do what we do and do it, mostly, successfully.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My husband and I started Meet The Source back in 2016 with the mission to bring people a healthier dessert and snacking option. We actually started off before that with a company called Rawmond Milk, where we made raw almond milk in different flavors and sold it at our local farmers market. That is how we got our foot in the door of the food world which neither of us knew anything about. I went to school for international business and he went to school for communications/ marketing and neither of us feel like that helped us any, ha!

When we started Meet The Source, it was almost a happy accident of sorts. Because we were making so much almond milk, we had a ton of almond pulp that we did not know what to do with for the longest time. We tried dehydrating it, making muffins out of it, composting it at our local farm in San Juan Capistrano, everything. We finally made a raw carrot cake out of it and that was what started it all. We starting taking our experiments to the farmers market, where we had already grown a following of customers from selling our almond milk, and just handing them out for free. We then had those customers asking for more and wanting to purchase the goodies we were making to have as snacks and desserts throughout the week and that is really how we got started. We have the best customers ever and some of them are still shopping with us; we are very grateful to them.

I think what sets us apart from others is that we have built a brand on honesty and transparency in every area of our business. We talk about the hard days, we talk about our excitement as we get into new stores, and we always ALWAYS tell you what is in our products. I think people have come to trust us and know that if they see our name, they won’t see any weird ingredients and can trust what they are buying and putting into their bodies because they know we care. We try to announce anything and everything new on Instagram and then will always send email blasts to subscribers as well. I think that is what we are most proud of as well; that we have created this loyal customer base and they are some of the kindest people that we get the honor of chatting with daily via our socials or emails. In all the years we have been in business, we can count on one hand how many “bad” encounters we have had and I think that says a lot about us and the people who support us.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Our audience on social media has been built very slowly and steadily and it has just been organically grown by word of mouth and the sharing our page amongst people on the platform.

The biggest advice we have for people starting is to get yourself and your brand out there. Join your local farmers market, get involved in the community by being part of a pop up at your local coffee shop or join a maker’s market any time during the year but especially around the holidays. That is where people will find you, meet you, and really get to know you and follow you because they actually like you and not just because you look fun in the moment and then get unfollowed later.

Be patient, don’t buy your followers, and engage with your community in whatever way you feel is comfortable for you. I feel so awkward on camera and I actually have never put myself on there speaking but we have still been able to grow because people see me at the farmers market or events and I just lay it all out there honestly with my words. You don’t have to have your face on there talking to the camera every day if that is not your thing and you should never let anyone tell you that that is the way. The best way, is the most sustainable and least draining way for yourself. You are the owner, you need to do what is right for you and keep up with it!

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

We keep in touch with our customers via social media (mainly Instagram) and our email list. We have yet to do any formal marketing of any kind so everything we have and have grown has been done via social media and then through our email list. Email has been fun and we are working on ways to use it more effectively because it allows us more space to really get to know our customers and let them know about us. Instagram is amazing and we will always use it but people like shorter captions there and can get bored with long stories so email is really a great place to go deep or discuss any issues we have been having and we have found that the people on our email list, want to be there; they are more likely to be reading through our words because they opted into them and it is really a nice feeling when we send an email blast out and customers actually reply back. We do a little happy dance every time.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.meetthesource.com
• Instagram: meetthesource
• Facebook: meetthesource
• Yelp: Meet The Source