Hire Smart People Who Reflect Your Values: Interview with Mike Kurtz, Founder of Mike's Hot Honey
I recently went one-on-one with Mike Kurtz, founder of Mike's Hot Honey.
Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
Mike: I grew up in Amherst, MA, a college town about 3 hours north of NYC. My mom was a great cook and inspired me to learn more about food and cooking and my friend's family owned a pizzeria growing up so I was around pizza a lot too.
I started working as a dishwasher at age 13 and began working prep in the kitchen a couple years later. I was a food delivery guy in high school and college. When I started the honey business I was working in a pizzeria making pizzas on a wood-burning oven at Paulie Gee's in Brooklyn. Working in food service and delivery gave me an appreciation for the labor and hospitality that goes into the restaurant business. That's helped me a lot along this journey.
Early on when I first started working at Paulie Gee's, I brought a bottle of my product (at that point without packaging) for the owner of the pizzeria to try on a pie. He liked it and asked me to make it for the restaurant. We started drizzling it on pizzas at Paulie Gee's in the summer of 2010. The customers went crazy for it and began asking me where they could buy bottles. Later that year I started bottling Mike's Hot Honey and selling it off the bar at the pizzeria. That was the start of the business.
The biggest challenge I faced in growing the business was scaling up production. There was no template for how to make Mike's Hot Honey at scale because I was developing a totally new product that didn't yet exist in the market. That process took a lot of research and perseverance. It took roughly three and a half years to scale up from small-batch production to a commercial-level production line.
Adam: How did you come up with your business idea? What advice do you have for others on how to come up with great ideas?
Mike: The inspiration for my product came while I was studying abroad in Brazil. I visited a small pizzeria that had jars of honey with chili peppers in them for drizzling on the pizzas. I instantly loved the flavor combination of honey and chili peppers on pizza and continued to think about it. When I returned to the States a year later, I started testing out different techniques for infusing chili peppers into honey until I finally settled on the recipe that we still use today and Mike's Hot Honey was born.
It's not easy to recognize when you have a viable business on your hands. I had the advantage of being able to see people's reactions to tasting my product on pizza at Paulie Gee's. I knew people loved the product right from the start before there was any brand built around it.
My best advice is to make sure you test your product/service with people before diving wholly into scaling a business. Pay attention to their response/reaction to your product. Does it draw out an emotional response? If so, you probably have a viable business on your hands.
Adam: How did you know your business idea was worth pursuing? What advice do you have on how to best test a business idea?
Mike: Being a good listener is instrumental here. Pay attention to how people react to your product. Try to test your own ideas/assumptions with the public. Don't stay in your own bubble. If it's clear that no one wants what you are selling, move on to something new. Don't fight against the current. Try to keep iterating until you find a product or service that the public actually wants. Start small and don't scale until you know you truly have a viable business. Look out for ideas/products that draw out an emotional response. Those are often the keepers.
Adam: What are the key steps you have taken to grow your business? What advice do you have for others on how to take their businesses to the next level?
Mike: I had very little formal business experience when I started Mike's Hot Honey. There was great enthusiasm for the product among consumers, retailers, and restaurants but I lacked the experience needed to scale the business efficiently by myself. I was very fortunate to partner with our CEO, Matt Beaton, who joined the company in 2015 and has helped us grow exponentially. Matt came on board with an MBA and possessed a skill set that was very complementary to my own. He brought valuable business experience that I lacked and together we made a great team. From there we were able to continue to grow the business and along the way have built a truly talented team of people.
I think it's important for entrepreneurs to know their own limitations and understand their own strengths and weaknesses. Know when to ask for help and try to understand the skills you should be looking for in a business partner or first hire.
Adam: What are your best sales and marketing tips?
Mike: Be authentic. Be generous. And always have an elephant to entertain your customers. People like being entertained. If you can weave entertainment into your sales pitch it will be more memorable. I carry a briefcase filled with my honey bottles to meetings and trade shows. It's modeled after the briefcase from Pulp Fiction. It's a small detail but it disarms the potential customer, makes them smile, draws out an emotional response and ultimately endears them to the brand.
Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?
Mike: Effective leaders lead by example, showing staff a work ethic and respect for others that they hope is reflected by their team. I think transparency is important as well. Giving your staff the opportunity to see and fully understand the how and why of business decisions and strategy is important.
Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams?
Mike: Hire smart people who reflect your values. Look for people who have shared values with the leadership of the company and the brand. Hire the smartest person in the room, not the person who has the most acutely related business experience for the role.
Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?
Mike: Clearly define your brand values before growing a company. These will serve as a compass for all future business decisions and forks in the road.
Maintain humility throughout growth.
Be a good listener.
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?
Mike: Push through the thin pane of fear and doubt and vigorously pursue what you love.
Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one-on-one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.
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