This Facet Hustle Highlight Q&A is Colorado-based entrepreneur Boone Whiteside, 29, Ben Medaly, and 28. Whiteside and Medery are co-founders of Highland, a hair care model that started as a DIY ardour venture of their Denver condominium and grew into an eight-figure enterprise over three years. Responses have been edited for size and readability.
Picture credit score: Offered by Highland. Boone Whiteside, left, Ben Medery, proper.
When did you begin fuss in your aspect and the place did you discover the inspiration for it?
Whiteside: When Ben and I grew to become finest pals throughout our third 12 months at CU Boulder, it was our shared want to construct our personal. Nevertheless, this shared ardour won’t seem lengthy after.
After I first started dreaming of a hair product firm that went past styling hair with poisonous sh*t, I used to be working for an e-commerce startup in advertising and marketing and operations roles. We had been a small group and the corporate was struggling to ascertain ourselves. I discovered a ton of drawback fixing early in my enterprise, however I pulled one foot out of the door and drew my calling to be my entrepreneur.
Associated: This 17-year-old highschool scholar has a month-to-month intercourse voyage of $20,000.
Ben labored for a payroll expertise firm within the function of an analyst, however the precise function modified dramatically throughout his tenure as he hated doing the identical factor each day. I dabbled in juggling gross sales, studying code, dealing with threat evaluation, advertising and marketing and development. Neither of us had been glad with these profession trajectories.
Uninterested in old school legacy manufacturers dominating the hair styling area with low cost, chemical-based formulations and wasted packaging, I used to be searching for a model that was disrupting the business, so I stumbled over the thought of ​​fixing my shopper wants. I assumed this problem would resonate with folks like me.
What was step one you took to get the edges off the bottom?
Whiteside: Step one revealed naturally occurring plant-based substances that may collide with a Google machine (in entrance of a BAI, or AI) to interchange the plastic’s endocrine yoke method. Regardless that I had no expertise in chemistry or cooking with my identify, I began ordering waxes, clays, oils and different plant substances and began mixing them in my shed.
Fortunately I used to be all the time a weirdo so it was bizarre sufficient to start out placing these failed concoctions into my hair. Have all my pals do the identical, give suggestions to my roommates and inform me how odd Ben is to me.
Picture credit score: Offered by Highland
Are there any free or paid sources that can be significantly helpful for beginning and working this enterprise?
Medalie: Some high-tech standouts are Klaviyo for electronic mail advertising and marketing, Shopify (and all its nice plugins), all the good plugins to reinforce our web site, triple whale for belonging metrics, Adobe Premiere for purple seize, and finally Figma for Designer’s appear like Rembrandt.
Whiteside: Ben coated many of the paid ones. Free and the very best useful resource we leveraged was our courteous sustainability in requesting help from different enterprise builders. Folks typically wish to assist, however you may’t be afraid to ask. We just lately obtained espresso with Justin Gold, the founding father of the peanut butter model Justin. This mentality helped us construct Highlands technique from scratch and create an extremely useful community of people who find themselves serving to us keep away from the errors that different founders have made. So, make it irrational – simply be well mannered about it.
Associated: The couple began a aspect stomping to enhance their “badly made” toilet. The enterprise presently makes greater than $3 million a 12 months.
Should you might return to what you are promoting journey and alter one course of or strategy, what wouldn’t it be, and the way would you hope you probably did it in another way?
Whiteside: I feel Highlands will get a excessive mark to do that earlier, however I wish to strive it sooner. Take your unit economics very severely from day one. Be taught what your complete margin is. Make a plan on how you can beat the gears over time and know that each penny is vital. Take your funds severely and perceive how and when you may enhance what you are promoting profitability. For now, like most companies that filmed this route, there isn’t any longer a time once they perceive how you can increase capital and generate income.
One of the vital magical days in Highlands was when the guide was closed in June 2023, with a revenue of $113. We’ve discovered methods to make our enterprise impartial. That meant our runway was limitless. Discover methods to generate income, do not die, and scale successfully.
However I’ve no regrets. Journey is a journey, and it has formed us. Allow you to form you.
Relating to this specific enterprise, what do you discover significantly difficult and stunning that individuals who take part in this kind of work ought to be ready, however that they don’t seem to be?
Medalie: A very pure formulation (in every kind of issues, particularly in magnificence) may be very tough to get proper. We rapidly discovered why all those that got here earlier than us reduce corners they did and had been provided the identical method shortcuts that guarantee consistency and so-called “efficiency”.
By asserting that our merchandise are completely different, we bumped into issues on the left and proper sides. Our substances are unstable and dishonest. The early batches had been very completely different and so they had a a lot shorter shelf life than the merchandise we had been standing up. I misplaced hundreds of models and misplaced a failed batch, leading to a run out of inventory and questioning whether or not it was all value it. In the end, we broke by way of on the opposite aspect of this problem and redefine attainable improvements throughout the “higher for you, higher for the planet” formulation.
Picture credit score: Offered by Highland
Are you able to bear in mind a selected occasion when one thing was very mistaken? How did you repair it?
Whiteside: We have by no means raised the multi-million greenback spherical – a minimum of, not but, but it surely’s not spared the intense money circulate challenges. Proper after a spherical of family and friends we hit a tough patch. We labored to cut back our losses and slowly elevated our advertising and marketing spending, which meant we had been burning about $10,000 a month. Nonetheless, we weren’t too frightened. We had a 3 month runway and felt like we had an ideal line of buyers. I am prepared to put in writing a whole examine and convey the business experience and steering that Ben and I had hoped for. We had been arrange. Immediately, we weren’t.
The method was dragged for a number of months. Our checking account was drained. The deal finally collapsed. We needed to cease paying ourselves, reduce prices to our bones, gradual development plans, and take cost of tensions with our manufacturing companions. It was the primary time I would actually confronted the opportunity of dropping my firm, and it was a intestine examine.
Mederly: So we scrambled. We raised much less capital than deliberate, however we made it work. We saved our frontline confidently for our buyers, changing into lean and staying sloppy. Wanting again, it was among the finest issues that might have occurred. It pressured us to show our path to changing into money circulate and helped us to take care of extra possession. However that was a hard-earned lesson. Funding is just not actual till the cash hits the financial institution. And regardless of how promising the transaction is, you may’t construct a enterprise with simply the potential.
Associated: After dropping $5 million an evening at age 25, he began enterprise effectively at $50 million. That is the “mild bulb second” that made this occur.
How lengthy did it take to have a look at your constant month-to-month income? How a lot did you earn from Facet Hustle? What does development and income appear like now?
Whitside and Medalie: Till mid-2023, we did not begin to earn constant month-to-month earnings ($10,000-$20,000 per thirty days). Facet Hustle dates again to 2021, Ben and I made batches of glacial clay pomades in a KitchenAid Mixer, stuffed the models by hand, and offered at Shopify StoreFront and several other salons and barbershops. Facet hustles generated a mean of $1,000-$3,000 a month between 2021 and 2023.
Now, in 2025, it reached its first $1 million month, incomes practically two years of profitability after launching its third SKU. It is not a race. Will probably be profitable in a single day in 5-10 years.
What was probably the most pleasing factor about working this enterprise?
Mederly: Truthfully, sizzling take… to do all this with the folks we love and worth most in our lives. Individuals are consistently warning me to start out a enterprise with my finest family and friends, however this half was probably the most pleasing half. Day by day is completely different, and seeing your self and your mates develop, thrive and fail in entrance of one another is extremely highly effective and motivated.
Whiteside: What I get pleasure from most is waking up each day, fixing difficult issues with my finest pals and co-founders, and selecting our personal adventures in each side of what we’re doing. Being your personal boss is just not an overestimation a part of being an entrepreneur. It is extremely tough, but it surely’s additionally the very best.
Picture credit score: Offered by Highland
What’s the finest a part of particular and viable enterprise recommendation?
Whiteside: Beginning is usually probably the most tough half, but when anybody has it, I will provide you with recommendation from my expensive good friend and Shopbop founder Bob Lamey. Meaning specializing in lasers on what you assume your roadmap is for what you are promoting and you might be deliberately striving in the direction of these targets. Many emails, calls, pitches, and day by day duties might be distracting from what you understand you must work on.
This doesn’t imply that they ignore the chance to be born. It is a name to be accountable by defining your imaginative and prescient and dealing to make it occur. You understand what you must do. Do not distract the noise.
