How This $10M Superfood Business Is Betting on Amazon to Grow Sales 10X | Entrepreneurship | Lisa Curtis | Presented by Amazon

Lisa Curtis built Kuli Kuli into a $10M+ superfood business, but it took ten years to become profitable. Her biggest turning point came when she shifted focus from leading with the mission-driven messaging that makes up the core of the business to highlighting how her products directly benefited customers. That lesson now shapes Kuli Kuli's growth in Amazon's store, where sales are doubling year over year. In this episode, recorded at Amazon Accelerate 2026, Lisa explains how entrepreneurs can use Amazon's seller tools to understand customer demand, refine products before bigger launches, and drive repeat sales. In this episode, Hala and Lisa will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (00:57) Discovering Moringa and Founding Kuli Kuli (04:33) Expanding From Retail Into Amazon's Store (08:58) Creating Demand Through Customer Feedback (10:09) Amazon AI Tools and Product Testing (15:24) From Superfood Sourcing to Repeat Sales (20:37) TikTok Virality and Amazon Customer Insights (25:04) Crowdfunding and Ten Years to Profitability (30:55) Kuli Kuli's Mission and Retail Breakthrough (36:32) Amazon Fulfillment and Inventory Management (38:48) Amazon Seller Assistant and Founder Advice Lisa Curtis is the founder and CEO of Kuli Kuli Foods, a Certified B Corporation specializing in sustainably sourced superfoods like moringa and baobab. She founded the company in 2014 after serving in the Peace Corps in Niger and has grown it into a brand sold in 11,000 retail locations nationwide and in Amazon's store. Before founding Kuli Kuli, Lisa drafted political briefings at the White House under President Obama and served as a United Nations Environment Programme Youth Advisor. She has been recognized on Forbes' 30 Under 30 and Inc.'s Top 100 Female Founders lists. Sponsored By: This episode is sponsored by Amazon and recorded at Amazon Accelerate 2026, Amazon's annual seller conference. More than 60% of sales in Amazon's store come from independent sellers, most of which are small and medium-sized businesses. Amazon provides tools and services to help these entrepreneurs grow their businesses. To learn more about how Amazon is helping independent sellers succeed, visit https://sellingpartners.aboutamazon.com. Resources Mentioned: Lisa’s Company, Kuli Kuli Foods: kulikulifoods.com Lisa’s Amazon Storefront: bit.ly/LC-Storefront Lisa’s Website: lisamariecurtis.com Amazon's Seller Tools: sellingpartners.aboutamazon.com Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new LinkedIn Creator Club - Skool.com/linkedin-creator-club Disclaimer: This episode is a paid partnership with Amazon. Sponsored content helps support our podcast and continue bringing valuable insights to our audience. Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Passive Income, Online Business, Solopreneur, Networking

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:45Speaker 00

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• 1:08Speaker 01

  Nobody goes onto Amazon or walks into a grocery store and is like, "What is the most impactful plant I could buy? What's the best product for the mission?" No, they're saying, you know, "What is the best product for my health? What's the product that's going to taste good? What product will my kids like? What will my husband eat?"

• 1:25Speaker 00

  Lisa Curtis, founder and CEO of Cooley Cooley Foods. Lisa built a national superfood brand around moringa, an ingredient most Americans had never heard of when she started. Today, Cooley Cooley generates more than $10 million in annual revenue, and its Amazon business does about $1 million a year, and that's been doubling year over year. The mission doesn't matter if you're not profitable.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  I like to say, "No market, no mission." That is what we live and die by. And so really, we've transformed our marketing over the years to be much more about what are the functional benefits to you as the customer?

• 1:56Speaker 00

  What did you do to make moringa something that people felt like they were willing to try and made it more like accessible to people?

• 2:04Speaker 01

  We were in front of our customers, doing constant events, constantly sampling, constantly talking to people, constantly learning from them. And that has really been the way of like, almost our customers educating us.

• 2:16Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  And then us using that to like...

• 2:19Speaker 00

  When you were creating this category, how did you get like your first big retailer to accept your product?

• 2:26Speaker 01

  Well, I stayed up all night making these bars by hand. I walk in, "Single best sales meeting of my life."

• 2:32Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  That buyer, you know, looked at me, looked at these like handmade bars, and she was like...

• 2:38Speaker 00

  What's up, yap-bam? Hala here, coming to you from Seattle at Amazon Accelerate 2026, which is Amazon's annual seller conference. Today's conversation is part of a special Howie Profit series featuring entrepreneurs who have found success selling an Amazon store. My first guest today is Lisa Curtis, founder and CEO of Cooley Cooley Foods. Today, we're breaking down how Lisa created demand for an unfamiliar product, finally reached profitability after a decade of building, and now how she uses customer behavior and feedback in Amazon's store to decide what products to launch, improve, and scale. Lisa, welcome to Howie Profit.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

• 3:18Speaker 00

  I'm excited to be here, too. We're here in Seattle together. You're the first of many interviews that I'm doing with Amazon sellers, and I'm just so impressed with what you've built with Cooley Cooley. So for those who don't know, what is Cooley Cooley exactly?

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Cooley Cooley is a superfood brand. So we source amazing ingredients, maybe ones you haven't heard of before, like moringa, baobab, and others, directly from small farmers. We really rely on ancient wisdom, and we translate that ancient wisdom into modern wellness products. So you can find our powders, capsules, and gummies all over Amazon and in 11,000 stores nationwide.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  Wow. And you essentially like created a category with moringa. Like, nobody knew what that was. So this is like your first flagship product. What is moringa exactly?

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this is, this is kind of my baby here. So moringa is an amazing plant. It's actually a tree, grows all over the tropics, and the leaves are incredibly nutritious, packed with protein, calcium, iron, and vitamins. What we hear from our customers is that when they take moringa, they feel like they have steady energy and better digestion. So it's not caffeine, but it's really all the vitamins, the B vitamins, that are giving you that energy, and it's really rich in fiber as well.

• 4:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I literally had not heard about it. So it's like you still have a lot of education to do, so we'll talk about that in a bit. But first, how did you discover it? Take me back to Niger.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I joined the Peace Corps in Niger, West Africa, way back in 2010. And so it was placed in a really small village. If you can imagine, like, no running water, no electricity, was living in a mud hut. It was very, very different than, than this Seattle center. And it felt like I was just feeling really tired and really sluggish, off a diet of mostly carbs. And so I asked some women in this village health center, you know, "What can I eat to give me more energy, to give me more nutrients?" And they literally pulled these moringa leaves off a tree, mixed them into a local snack called Cooley Cooley, and said, "Eat this. This Cooley Cooley moringa will transform your health." And I was like, kind of skeptical. I was like, "What is this? Tree leaves? Like, I don't know."

• 5:30Speaker 01

  But I was feeling awful, and I'm like, "Whatever, I'll try anything." And so I did, and it had like such a transformational impact on me and just really opened my eyes to the fact that there are all these plants that are used medicinally all over the world that most Americans have never heard of. But they can do so much to transform our health and transform the communities that grow them. So that's really what Cooley Cooley is all about.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  Really cool. And from my understanding, you actually use like local communities to help you get these superfoods. Talk to us about that and why you decided to source that way.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we source directly from small farmers, about 4,000 farmers in total. And so that, you know, on its own, just like that sourcing model has a huge impact. But we also reinvest 10% of our profits into those communities.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  And we do it in a really special way. We don't go in and say like, "Hey, we're going to build you a school," or "We're going to build you a whatever." We say like, "Hey, where would a $5,000 to $10,000 grant make an outsized impact in your community?" And you would be amazed, like, $5,000 to $10,000 in the US doesn't go that far.

• 6:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  But in rural Uganda, it funded clean drinking water for 800 kids.

• 6:35Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  In Mozambique, it built a solar installation that powered an entire village. So we do a lot of cool stuff that is really, you know, the fuel for me and what keeps me excited about Cooley Cooley.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  I could ask you a million questions about that, but this is how we profit.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, let's talk about profit. Let's talk about profit.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, let's talk about numbers. So what are your biggest distribution channels? How do you just distribute everything?

• 6:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so right now, we're in, you know, Whole Foods nationwide, we're in 4,000 Walmart stores, and we're in Amazon. So those are kind of the big distribution centers for us. We're also in thousands of natural food stores.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  So you basically started in retail first, and then you went into Amazon, I think in like 2018?

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  What made it the right time to start selling on Amazon? What was like the turning point for you?

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, honestly, I wish we had started selling on Amazon sooner, and I wish we'd started ramping on Amazon sooner because I think so many people are going to Amazon to find products like ours. And I also think there's like a big opportunity for us to tell our story way more than we can tell on like a retail shelf. But for us, we just started to, to follow the consumer. You know, I think when we started way back in 2014, there were not a lot of people who were buying food products off Amazon. That has totally changed.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  Now more people are doing that?

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, Amazon for supplements is growing 4X retail. So this is where the market is headed. This is actually the first year in history that there will be more supplements sold online than in all of US retail.

• 8:02Speaker 00

  I can even think about it with my own experience. I never bought supplements on Amazon, and now I always buy my supplements on Amazon because it's like you actually see reviews and you can really understand like if it's a good product or not, so it's more trustworthy now.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  You know, that is exactly the thing about supplements is people really want to understand that they have a trusted, high-quality product. And so that is, you know, we take a lot of care. We test everything three times before we sell it. We go straight to the source, test the soil, you know, inspect the processing method. And I think we're able to tell that story online in a really compelling way, which is, you know, why we've been doubling every year on Amazon.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  That's absolutely amazing. So what are your biggest like product categories?

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we really play in that like broad category of superfoods. Within that, we have a few different formats. So moringa is obviously a big, you know, category for us. In US retail, we're about 70% of the market for moringa.

• 9:03Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  So we are huge.

• 9:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  On Amazon, we're just getting started. We're like fairly small right now, but I am determined over the next two years that we're going to be at least 70% of the market for moringa on retail. And then we have, you know, gummies, capsules, and then we also have lattes, like instant lattes, you can just add hot water. So in each of those categories, we're kind of competing in a different set.

• 9:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, what did you learn in terms of like how people actually wanted to consume moringa? Like, did you find a certain product worked the best?

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, so that's really been part of our core DNA is like listen to our customers, listen to how they're using it, and then develop products from there. So we started with the pure moringa powder, which, you know, I still use every single day. I don't drink caffeine. I'm like not a coffee person. All this is where I get my energy from is moringa.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  I gotta try it.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  You gotta try it. You gotta try it.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  I'm addicted to coffee.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  Seriously. I mean, you could pair it with coffee. You don't have to give up your coffee. But then we started hearing from a lot of our customers that they were mixing moringa powder with matcha and like making their own latte. And this was like reading lots of Amazon reviews about this. And I was like, "Oh, we should just make that easier for them. We could make them a delicious matcha moringa latte."

• 10:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  So we launched that. And then we started hearing from folks that like, "Hey, you know, I'm traveling a lot." Like, you know, post-COVID, and people like travel started to pick up. And it's like, "I want, I want to bring my moringa with me. How do I do that? Can you guys do capsules?" So we launched some moringa capsules.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  Really cool. What would you say the breakdown is between retail and e-commerce? And is it primarily, it's mostly Amazon, your e-commerce, right?

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, we really focus on Amazon. We don't, we do some on our own website, but for us, that's more of like a brand storytelling platform. And Amazon is really where we push revenue. I mean, right now, we're over 80% retail. So I think there's like a huge opportunity for us.

• 10:56Speaker 00

  So you're really just getting started.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  We are just getting started. Yeah, it's kind of wild because it's like, I've been running this business for 12 years, and in some ways, we're like building a new business within.

• 11:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  To really go hard after e-commerce.

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• 14:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's been a journey, let me tell you. I mean, when we first started, the way that we would get it out there, and I honestly think this is like good for any brand to do, whether or not they do retail or if they're just, you know, on Amazon, is like we were in front of our customers doing constant events, constantly sampling, constantly talking to people, constantly learning from them. What did they like? What did they not like? How are they using it? And that has really been the way of like, almost our customers educating us.

• 15:27Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  And then us using that to like update our packaging, to update all of our infographics on Amazon, to update all of our messaging to say like, oh, okay, this is what customers like about meringue. It's like steady energy and digestion. Like, let's ensure that every single piece of content we put out there talks about that.

• 15:45Speaker 00

  Hmm. Help us understand on Amazon, like, what features enable you to actually educate people? Like, what are you using to maximize the way that people can find information about your product?

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I am obsessed with AI. I think the world is like changing so fast. And you know, last month was the first month, there were more bots searching the internet than humans.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  And so when you think about education, it's like, it's not for humans anymore. We're educating bots. And how do you educate bots well? And so we actually just did a huge project to redesign all of our Amazon PDPs to really be focused on like, how do we work within Alexa Seller Assistant? Like, how do we ensure that, you know, we are answering customers' questions in the way that they are typing them into Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT? Because it's really different. Like, people aren't, search bars are going away.

• 16:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  So that's something that I'm super excited about. And Amazon has done some really awesome updates, even this morning at the conference.

• 16:47Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:48Speaker 00

  What did they do?

• 16:49Speaker 01

  So there's a new updated Seller's Assistant, which is basically powered by Anthropic, so powered by the folks behind Claude. And not only can you interact with it through Amazon, you can also take all of your Amazon data and plug it into your own Claude Co-Work, which is awesome, because we run our entire business on Claude Co-Work. So I'm super excited about that.

• 17:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's really cool. So in terms of Amazon search analytics, how has that like changed the way you think about your products? Or what new products you're going to be putting out? Or anything that you need to change in terms of how you market your product? Like, what have you learned from that?

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm really obsessed with this Product Opportunity Explorer. So there's a cool feature, again, AI-powered, but you can look at all of the things people like and don't like about your competitors. There's like AI summaries, you can look at your own products, and then you can look at like potential products that you could launch. And you can also see what, to your point, what people are searching and how they're finding you. So one of the things we've learned recently, so the ube latte that's behind you, we found that people weren't, like, people were searching for ube and they were finding ours as a latte. And they were, that was not the use case they were looking for. They were looking for it as a baking product.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  So we're actually relaunching it in new packaging as an ube mix. Same exact product, but like repositioned to tell consumers that, yeah, you can make muffins with this. You can, you know, put this into baked it. And we literally wouldn't know that if we hadn't just like looked at in Amazon Insights and found that.

• 18:28Speaker 00

  And then you also use Amazon Vine, which is like feedback and reviews, right? Tell us about how that works and what you learned from it.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Amazon Vine is really critical. Every time we launch a new product, we do Amazon Vine reviews. It's almost like the most enthusiastic of Amazon customers that do it. It's kind of crazy to me. We always get these like very long, detailed reviews. But it's a really good way for us to, A, get reviews on our listings, and also get like early signals of like what people, you know, what these kind of super consumers like and don't like. And one of the things that we do is we always launch with a pilot run. So we launch with like a smaller amount, so like call it like 5,000 units. And we'll launch that on Amazon, we'll start to get reviews, we'll see what's resonating, we'll see what's not resonating. And then often we'll make tweaks.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Often it's mostly packaging tweaks, but sometimes we even make product tweaks.

• 19:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  And then that's before we do the like, you know, 50,000 unit run.

• 19:30Speaker 00

  Walk us through like a real example of that.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  So I will walk you through our sea moss and blue spirulina gummies. These are ones that I just love. And honestly, if you want to try them, they are so good.

• 19:42Speaker 00

  I'll try one, I'm hungry.

• 19:47Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  So, one of the things we found when we-

• 19:52Speaker 00

  Oh, these are good.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  I know. Aren't they so good? So, one of the things we found when we first launched these is we had people who were really concerned about the color, because it is a natural color and it is like-

• 20:07Speaker 00

  They didn't like the green?

• 20:09Speaker 01

  They didn't. They, it came out a little bit darker than like what they had expected.

• 20:14Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  And so, basically, we, and this was just like two months ago. These launched nationwide with Whole Foods and then launched on Amazon at the same time. And so, we went back to our cobacker and said like, hey, we actually need to match this like blue-green that's on pack and that is critical for the success of this product. And so, after the pilot run, everything else-

• 20:34Speaker 00

  Because people were like reviewing like, oh, these are like pitch black or-

• 20:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, these, these gummies are too dark. They don't look like the pack.

• 20:42Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, it's like things you might not expect, but like, you know?

• 20:47Speaker 00

  Because it didn't change the quality of them, but they perceived the quality of it.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  They perceived it like not being the same as what was on the front of pack.

• 20:54Speaker 00

  That's so interesting.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  So, it was a fascinating-

• 20:56Speaker 00

  So, you've expanded into sea moss. It started with meringue. What other superfoods are you doing now?

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, these have sea moss and then Baobab, which is one of our core superfoods. So, you might not have heard of Baobab, but I bet you've seen it because-

• 21:11Speaker 00

  I've heard of it in like hair oil. I use hair oil.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Okay. So, it is great for hair and skin, both as a topical and as an ingestible. It's like, it's kind of like the nature's beauty fruit.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  And it's the tree that you've probably seen in The Lion King. It's the really cool, this like upside down sort of gnarled looking tree that Rafiki hangs out in. And that's a Baobab tree.

• 21:34Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  The thing that is crazy for me about Baobab, so I first came across it about four years ago. I went to Zimbabwe. I was talking with all these women who have just like beautiful skin. And I was like, what do you guys do? Because I need to get in on that. And they like literally picked this like gourd up off the forest floor and cracked it and opened it. And there was this like tannish white powder and they're like, try it. And it tasted really good. It was like kind of tangy. And they're like, this is what we do. Like this is the secret. Like this has vitamins A, vitamins E, vitamin C. It's like really good for skin health. It's great for gut health. It's 50% prebiotic fiber. They're like 98% of this is just rots on the forest floor because nobody knows about it.

• 22:14Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  And I was like, well, let's make some people know about it.

• 22:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's so cool. So, basically, like when you want to go look for a new superfood, do you just like go to different, like how does, what does that process look like?

• 22:25Speaker 01

  No, it is. Like literally, we like go to like the most rural parts-

• 22:30Speaker 00

  Like you have an idea of like, okay, I want to explore Baobab or I want to explore sea moss. Or, or you find it by accident.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  We like ask people. We're like, what are the plants that you use that are like great for your health, great for your skin, you know, great for your digestion? Like what are you guys using and how do we partner with you to grow more of them and introduce them to the US?

• 22:53Speaker 00

  Would you say that local sourcing gives you like a cost advantage? Or is it something that you're sacrificing for your mission?

• 23:01Speaker 01

  You know, it's a really good question. I actually think that direct sourcing gives us both a cost advantage and more impact, right? Because we're cutting out the middleman.

• 23:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Because often if you were, you know, to buy meringue or buy Baobab in the US and you're, you know, maybe just adding in with a bunch of products, you're going to buy it from like a commodity broker who bought it from somebody else who bought it from a farmer. So, at the end of the day, you're paying markups along the way.

• 23:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Versus we really go direct to source, which gives a lot more money to the farmers and a lot more money to us.

• 23:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it gets you to like have this great marketing strategy of, of this mission, where people feel like they're not only going for the product, they're going for the mission. Were there any early situations where you were talking too much about the mission, but not the product itself?

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. Yes. You hit it on exactly. So, I'm like a bleeding heart Peace Corps volunteer. Like I came out of this and I was like, oh, yeah, you guys should totally try this product because it's like great for women in Africa. And everybody's like, I'm not going to buy a product-

• 24:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're like, it sounds good. Maybe I'll get it once.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So, that is something that's really been hammered into me over the years. It's like, nobody goes onto Amazon or walks into a grocery store and is like, what is the most impactful plant I could buy? Or what is the most impactful product I can buy? What's the, what's the best product for the mission, for the world? No, they're saying, you know, what is the best product for my health? What's the product that's going to taste good? What product will my kids like? What will my husband eat? Whatever. So, for us, we really try to like get granular on like, what is the benefit to Americans? What is the benefit to Americans who don't give a blank about the sourcing and the impact? And the fact that it's all made in a recycled plastic water bottle packaging? Like, they don't care about that. Like, what is the benefit to them?

• 24:49Speaker 00

  The mission doesn't matter if you're not profitable.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. I like to say no market, no mission.

• 24:53Speaker 00

  I love it.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. That is what we live and die by. And so, really, we've transformed our marketing over the years to be much more about what are the functional benefits to you as the customer?

• 25:04Speaker 00

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• 25:48Speaker 00

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• 26:17Speaker 00

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• 27:01Speaker 00

  Go to getmarksbook.com/yap, buy one copy for $32 and get a second copy free. So, you can keep one for yourself and give the second to a friend, future co-founder, or someone who needs a little push.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  Hello, young and profiteers. If you're running a business, getting website traffic is only half the battle. The real key to profiting is turning those visitors into paying customers. And I know checkout friction can quietly kill your sales. That's why I always say, serious entrepreneurs build on Shopify. Shopify is a commerce platform that helps you launch and run an online store without needing to be super technical. You can build your storefront, manage your business, and make it easy for people to buy. And here's the major advantage. Shopify Checkout with Shop Pay converts up to 36% higher than the competition. With Black Friday coming up, now's the time to get your store ready and simplify your checkout experience. If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday,

• 28:01Speaker 00

  go to Shopify.com/profitting to start your free trial. That's Shopify.com/profitting. Go to Shopify.com/profitting today to hear your first- How important is repeat business? Like, subscribe and save is a feature on Amazon. Is that helping you like forecast? And, and is that something that you feel like if you just got more people to subscribe and save, that it would be very helpful for you?

• 28:26Speaker 01

  I mean, especially given the business we are in and given our whole mission as a company is real nutrition that you can feel. And so, our goal and, you know, what, what makes you be able to feel it is longevity. Like you need to be able to take it over time to continue to feel the impact. So, we, you know, again, we're, we're small, but we have about 3,000 subscribers today. That's about 20% of our Amazon sales are through subscribers. I want to get it to 40. I think we can be there in the next year or two. We're really, really pushing it. And I think we've seen even in just like the messaging that we're doing around it and an increased uptick where people are like, oh, yeah, like if I continue to take these meringue capsules,

• 29:11Speaker 01

  like it's going to make, continue to like improve my energy, improve my digestion.

• 29:16Speaker 00

  How much is your annual revenue right now and how much of that is Amazon?

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, annual revenue, we're, you know, over $10 million in revenue.

• 29:25Speaker 00

  Congratulations.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Thank you. And Amazon is still pretty small, so we'll do about a million in Amazon this year. But we have some pretty big goals. I think we can be a $10 million brand on Amazon by 2029. That's our internal goal. It's like, we're going hard.

• 29:42Speaker 00

  Some of your products like sea moss, I feel like is really popular right now. And I feel like it's just like kind of leaning into what people are actually looking for. And how are you learning what people are looking for so you know like what superfoods to go after next?

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Honestly? TikTok.

• 29:59Speaker 00

  Really?

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Trends start on TikTok. And so that's one of the things we've been building up a lot with the idea, not so much as like, we need to have a huge TikTok shop presence, but like TikTok is where trends start. And if we can be playing more on TikTok, then we can drive sales to Amazon and we can also drive sales in retail.

• 30:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. So it's basically taking people from social platforms, driving them to Amazon. How do you do that effectively today?

• 30:27Speaker 01

  So we had a video, this sounds totally ridiculous, but I was in Tanzania with one of our moringa farmers and was answering like a TikTok question of somebody was like, what does moringa look like? Do you eat the leaves or do you eat the flowers? And so I just filmed a little video of me at the farm showing, you know, what moringa looks like, showing how it's grown, showing these women harvesting it. It got 2 million views.

• 30:51Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Within like a week. It was wild and it totally spiked our sales on Amazon. It spiked our sales, you know, on Whole Foods, Walmart, Sprouts, like everywhere.

• 31:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  I'm like, wow, how do we do more than that?

• 31:04Speaker 00

  And as you start going viral on social media, it's super important to be on Amazon because it takes out like the, like where people live factor, because anybody can buy it on Amazon. And with retail, it's like, just depends on what's like local to you in a store, right?

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And we do see like a strong correlation of like, when we spike on TikTok, we spike on Amazon.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  So are you just like putting your link on the, on the post or are you damning people who engage? Like, how are you doing it?

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we have just built up a whole social team. So we have one person whose job literally is just TikTok affiliates and DMs, just like living in DMs and talking to affiliates and sending out creator briefs on like the type of content that we want to create. Then we're, you know, running all those videos, we're looking at what performs well, and then we're listing them as ads if they perform well.

• 31:57Speaker 00

  How does the data that you get from Amazon as a seller help influence the products that you want to put out, whether it's like going into a new superfood, whether it's like bundling certain products or upselling to certain products? Like, how does that influence you?

• 32:12Speaker 01

  It's huge. I mean, again, back to like, listen to your customers and Amazon is the best way to have a direct connection with thousands and thousands of customers and really get those insights. So one of the things we realized is like, there are a lot of people who buy our moringa powder that actually wanted a much bigger size, which to me, I was like, a lot of people don't know what this is, we should start it, you know?

• 32:34Speaker 00

  Start small.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  Small, blah, blah, blah. But like, no, there are a lot of fanatics out there who were like, no, I want like

• 32:41Speaker 00

  Bulk, yeah.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Bulk. And so we started selling bulk, we made a larger size and then we made a two pack of that larger size and that has done phenomenally well for us on Amazon.

• 32:51Speaker 00

  How did you like, give me like, how, how did you discover that? Like, what was the process of discovering that?

• 32:55Speaker 01

  That was another one where we used the product opportunity explorer and we looked at like some of the questions people were asking us of like, do you have a bigger size? We were also looking at what our competitors were selling and we were seeing all these like one pound bags that we're doing a lot. And we're like, oh, okay, we could do that.

• 33:14Speaker 00

  So it's like leaning into like these super fans rather than like trying to get all these new people to learn about moringa and buy it in small amounts. You're like, well, let's just lean into the people that are really wanting it and wanting to buy bulk.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you know, there was like $50 million of moringa sales on Amazon last year.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  It's, you know, the niches get reaches kind of thing. Like you can do a lot.

• 33:39Speaker 00

  So let's talk about how you've actually funded this brand because it's super interesting and different from most folks that I talk to. So you actually started with crowdsourcing.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. So if you can imagine, I was 22, came back from the Peace Corps, had never worked at a business, let alone started a business and started talking to investors and they were like, no.

• 34:02Speaker 00

  They're like, get out of my face.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  They're like, get out of here, no way. So what we ended up doing is all of our first funding came from an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. At the time, it was the like best performing food campaign they'd ever had.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  It was really cool. It was 800 people from like 90 different countries all backing us. Which was really, yeah, it was an amazing way to start and that gave us enough money to do our first production run. Then we launched with Whole Foods in Northern California. And then we actually did a second crowdfunding campaign in 2016 when we launched nationwide with Whole Foods.

• 34:37Speaker 00

  Cool. And then you started getting investors.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Yes. So we've raised a little over 10 million in investments and we also got a $4 million working land of credit, so debt as well.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  So more recently, you, you're not going to give up equity for investment, you're going the debt route.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:55Speaker 00

  Why is that?

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Well, we, I think one of the coolest things about being a social enterprise is that, you know, there are lots of different types of organizations that want to align with you and want to support you. So we actually found a family foundation that is willing to lend to us at an extremely low interest rate because our mission matches there.

• 35:15Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  And so that's a really great way for us to like be able to grow and scale. And, you know, we are a profitable business. So really what we're trying to fund is like the inventory.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  When did you launch your business? What year?

• 35:27Speaker 01

  I launched it in 2014.

• 35:28Speaker 00

  So you launched in 2014 and I read that you weren't profitable until 2024. So 10 years, is that right?

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 35:36Speaker 00

  How, how?

• 35:37Speaker 01

  It takes a while.

• 35:39Speaker 00

  Well, I know that when it comes to raising money and investing, you're more judged on growth than profitability. So was that really the reason? Like you were just reinvesting, reinvesting, focusing on growth? And then at what point were you like, okay, like we need to be profitable? What was like the story behind that?

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we're investing heavily in growth, to your point. I also think we were like, in many ways, like failing our way forward. Like there were a lot of products we launched that we killed. There were, you know, some people we hired, we fired. Like we've learned a lot. I've learned a lot about how to run a business over the past 12 years and made a ton of mistakes and I'm, you know, the first to own up to that. And I think what we found was that like having some investor capital to be experimenting with really helped us then get to scale and like figure out the things that were working and then double down on those.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. Help us understand some of the big mistakes that you made. Like was it not, you know, cutting products fast enough?

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, oh my gosh, so many mistakes. So one of my biggest mistakes was when we first launched, we launched with this one women's cooperative in West Africa and all of our seals for like the first like two years were from them and, you know, all of our marketing was around them too. We like had pictures of the farmers, et cetera. And then we got the call from Whole Foods, they wanted us to launch us nationwide. We're like, okay, amazing, let's do it. And so then about like three months before our national Whole Foods launch, I get the call from this cooperative in Ghana, there'd just been a huge wildfire and the entire farm had burned down.

• 37:13Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So talk about a lesson in supply chain diversification.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  So you, you need a backup, right?

• 37:20Speaker 01

  We needed a backup.

• 37:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  So like, we thankfully managed to find this family farm in Nicaragua that had some moringa on hand, they were able to supply us. But it was this like big moment for me where I was like, wait, all of our brand has been about West Africa and it's been about women's cooperatives. Like, is this okay? Can I do this?

• 37:42Speaker 01

  And then I kind of went back to like, no, like what we're trying to do is provide super healthy products that transform people's health and also support small farming communities. And we can do that outside of West Africa and we need to have multiple suppliers to make this thing actually work and scale. So yeah, we pulled off the national launch by like the skin of our teeth.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  But it was definitely a big lesson. I think another lesson, and this one is like a little bit harder to share, but I'm going to do it anyway, because I think it's important for other founders to learn.

• 38:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  So I started this company with my childhood best friend. We grew up together, we like, kind of like sisters. And it got to a point in the business where we were fighting sisters. And it was really, really damaging to the business. And so probably the hardest thing I've ever done was firing her.

• 38:33Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Our families live five houses apart from each other, our, you know, our parents, our friends. It felt impossibly hard, but I did it. And honestly, she's now in a better place, I'm in a better place and we're finally friends again.

• 38:49Speaker 00

  I'm so happy that you guys are friends again. It's so hard, you know, with business partners. It's really like a marriage.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  It is, it is.

• 38:57Speaker 00

  And it's getting a divorce when you break up. It's really hard.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  So tricky.

• 39:02Speaker 00

  I'm more of a person of like founding companies on your own, because I just think having co-founders is just way too tough.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  It is hard, but it's also great in some ways. I mean, I love building with people, like I'm such an extrovert, I'm such a collaborator. I like want people to bounce ideas off of all the time.

• 39:20Speaker 00

  Was she your co-founder?

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:22Speaker 00

  That's tough.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:24Speaker 00

  That's tough. What does Cooley Cooley mean? I wasn't playing on asking that and then I was like, what?

• 39:29Speaker 01

  You gotta ask. You gotta ask. Yeah. So kind of going back to that like Peace Corps days in West Africa. So there's a traditional West African snack called Cooley Cooley. It's actually a peanut snack. And so that's what these like wise women mixed meringue into. The how they gave it to me and how they told me to take it every day was this like peanut meringue snack. And so actually Cooley Cooley's first product was that same snack.

• 39:56Speaker 00

  And then you learned nobody wanted to eat it that way?

• 39:58Speaker 01

  And then nobody wanted it.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. Nobody wanted it that way. Did you ever think about changing the name?

• 40:04Speaker 01

  We did, but consumers like really liked it. They like really gravitated on this like Cooley Cooley meringue, like Cooley Cooley. And we we kind of kept it as this sort of symbolic of like

• 40:15Speaker 00

  If you're your brand story.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're like bringing, you know, bringing these like amazing plants to transform health. And like, how do you do that? And kind of that, you know, that gesture of like, it started with a snack that transformed my health. And how do we do that for other people?

• 40:32Speaker 00

  So you guys are sourcing locally and you're technically a B Corp.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:38Speaker 00

  For people who don't understand what a B Corp is, can you really break it down? And some like the pros and cons of having a B Corp? And and did you think about that like very heavily before you decided you're going to go that route?

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm glad you want to ask to break it down because it is confusing.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  So B Corp is a certification in the way like organic, non-GMO is a certification.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  In addition to that, we're also a benefit corporation. So in the same way, there are LLCs, there are C corporations, there are also benefit corporations. So we're a benefit corporation registered in Delaware, which actually means that we were able to write into our corporate DNA that our goal as a company is not just to maximize profit, it's also to maximize impact. So we put people, planet, and profit on the same level.

• 41:22Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  And so, for example, like if we didn't have that, a shareholder could sue us because they're like, you're sourcing from small farmers, you're paying too much. Or your packaging is all, you know, upcycled plastic, you're paying too much for that. You're not maximizing profit.

• 41:37Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  And so it was really important for us to like put that into our corporate DNA. And it was really interesting when we first started fundraising, there were actually some investors who were like, no, I don't want that. I was like, cool, well, then we're not the brand for you. You know, you gotta find the people who believe in your company. And for us, that also means really believing in our mission.

• 41:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. Speaking of believing in your company, when you were creating this category, I know that you started in retail. How did you get like your first big retailer to accept your product?

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was wild. So if you can imagine, you know, I'd gotten back from the Peace Corps, was like literally living in my childhood bedroom with my parents and was like making these bars by hand. I had a day job, but like this was like my nights weekend side project. And I was doing consumer research at farmers markets, like testing, selling, like trying to get feedback. And there was someone from Whole Foods who came by, just someone who worked there. And they were like, oh, this is really cool. Like you should present this. And so she helped me get a meeting with the buyer at Whole Foods.

• 42:42Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  It was so cool. I stayed up all night making these bars by hand. I walk in, single best sales meeting of my life.

• 42:50Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  That buyer, you know, looked at me, looked at these like handmade bars. And she was like, you know, we don't have anything with meringue and I think this is going to be big. Like, you're in. It's like, is this the way it's going to go? Are they all going to be this easy? They were not all this easy, but it was

• 43:06Speaker 00

  But it got your foot in the door. And a lot of the times I've learned from other How We Profit episodes, it's like, once you're in a big retailer like Whole Foods, it's like a lot of people will just follow suit. Like actually people will go monitor the aisles of like these big stores and then reach out to brands they don't have. Is that right?

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, for us, I think the biggest thing was like, we had been so scrappy and it was a clear signal to investors. So we had like scraped together like half a million dollars. And then Whole Foods said, we're bringing you in. And then Whole Foods said, we're launching you nationwide like less than two years later. And so we were able to raise, you know, five million dollars like very quickly to make all that happen.

• 43:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. When it comes to like scaling that fast, like since you're sourcing locally and it's like farmers, is it hard to scale like that? Do you have to just find like many communities? Like you were saying, you need backups. Like, how does that work?

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that has been a big focus throughout our journey is like, how do we find?

• 44:06Speaker 00

  Enough.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Enough, enough small farmers that like actually meet our quality standards. Like, how do we put in, you know, all the right protocols and testing to ensure that everything hits our quality standards? So it's it's been a big investment of time and energy and resources. And we have an amazing operations team that like really handles that.

• 44:24Speaker 00

  So is the product and packaging also done locally?

• 44:28Speaker 01

  First stage of processing is done locally.

• 44:31Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Um, so that it's kind of similar to tea. It's like you harvest the leaves, you wash them, you dry them, you mill them into a powder for meringue. For Baobab, it's already powdered, so you're kind of receiving that powder. And then I we do like a kill step here in the US, just make sure everything's totally safe, good to go. Um, and then we do, you know, transform it either into gummies or into lattes or into capsules.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  Hmm. So I know that more than 60% of sales in Amazon stores come from independent sellers. What is something about Amazon that like the average small or medium sized business would not realize?

• 45:11Speaker 01

  You know, I think it, you probably wouldn't realize like how much Amazon really creates tools for you as a seller to succeed. And it's been really cool to be at this conference and to like learn about all these new upcoming features. And, you know, every time one of these Amazon executives announces a feature, they're like, we heard from you. We listened to you. And I think that feedback is like really ingrained into Amazon's culture. And I think that shines through in like the products they build. It's because small businesses are asking for them.

• 45:43Speaker 00

  Hmm. And are you using Amazon's fulfillment?

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 45:47Speaker 00

  How does that help you? Like, how does that help you save money, cost efficiencies?

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, before that, we were like shipping stuff out of our office and it was like awful. It was such a, you can't run a business and also like be, you know, running a shipping operation. In my opinion, it's just too much. So it's really nice to be able to like ship in pallets to Amazon and then Amazon handles everything from there. So it makes it way, way more efficient.

• 46:12Speaker 00

  So basically you're shipping all your products to one location and then Amazon fulfillment is distributing that out.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:20Speaker 00

  And you don't have to worry about any of that.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 46:23Speaker 00

  And is there, there's no cost associated, like, how does that work?

• 46:26Speaker 01

  I mean, there is cost, yeah.

• 46:27Speaker 00

  There's cost associated with it.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  For that.

• 46:30Speaker 00

  And you have to have a certain amount of product, I think, to also have.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you have to like really watch your inventory levels and make sure that, you know, you replenish before you out of stock. I mean, out of stocking on Amazon is like the worst thing in the world because you, you know, it's all about like the flywheel and like how you keep going. And if you add a stock, it really sets you back. We learned that the hard way.

• 46:52Speaker 00

  How do you prevent that from happening?

• 46:54Speaker 01

  I mean, honestly, we have now been prioritizing keeping Amazon in stock over retail. So we will out of stock our retail customers to keep Amazon in stock because it's hit us so hard that like we must have Amazon in stock at all times.

• 47:11Speaker 00

  Okay, one of my last questions too, you're here at Amazon Accelerate 2026. What is the, you know, most innovative thing that you've learned that you can't wait to get started once you get home?

• 47:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I'm so excited about the new seller's assistant. It's basically like a, you know, a Claude inside of Amazon that knows everything about your business, knows everything about Amazon and can help you set up and run automation. So running automations around your ads, running automations around reporting. It's like an Amazon thought partner in your pocket, which I think is going to be really transformative for our business.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  It sounds like it. So for all of our young and profiteers out there tuning in who want to copy you, they want their own consumer brand. Doesn't have to be superfood, but they want to get into this, they want to do retail, they want to do e-commerce on Amazon. What would you say is like your best piece of advice for a sustainable and profitable brand?

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, my best piece of advice, I'm going to give two, I'm going to

• 48:10Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah, go for it.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Is one, listen to your customers relentlessly innovate and kill stuff if it doesn't work.

• 48:19Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  And then the second one is just keep going. Like startups don't fail, founders quit. If you can keep yourself like build in good wellness habits, like sleep enough, eat healthy, you know, do everything to keep yours, you in a good place and you'll be able to grow your business.

• 48:35Speaker 00

  Amazing. Well, Lisa, thank you so much for joining us on How We Profit.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Thanks so much for having me. This was amazing.

• 48:41Speaker 00

  And that yap gang is how Lisa and Cooley Cooley profit. What stood out to me is that Lisa didn't just create demand for an unfamiliar superfood. She learned to follow the customer. That meant moving beyond the mission alone and focusing on why someone would actually want the product and then using real customer behavior to decide what to build next. And we saw that clearly in how Cooley Cooley sells with Amazon. Lisa has used customer reviews and search behavior to uncover demand for larger product sizes, reposition existing products and test new launches before committing to much larger production runs. Today, Cooley Cooley's Amazon business is around a million dollars in annual sales and it's been doubling year over year.

• 49:22Speaker 00

  That's especially relevant because more than 60% of sales in Amazon's store come from independent sellers, most of which are small and medium sized businesses. Amazon provides sellers with tools and services designed to help entrepreneurs grow. To learn more about how Amazon is helping independent sellers succeed, visit sellingpartners dot aboutamazon dot com. I'm your host, Hala Aha, and I'll see you next time.