Building Brands Worth Talking About: Jesslyn Rollins of BIOLYTE


What does it take to build a brand worth talking about and supporting? If you’ve ever listened to the How I Built This podcast then you’ve heard the stories of successful brands rise to cult status.  What was it exactly that got them there?  When I hear those stories, something about them feels different than other founding stories.  They weren’t just entrepreneurs trying to figure out a way to disrupt an industry to make money.  They didn’t even always have the best product on the market.  Yet, over time, their brand became the preferred choice of many.   What was it that set them apart?
 
We briefly touched on what it takes to build a cult following in our last interview with Dan Garrison (who had great insight), but it’s something I’ve been interested in exploring more deeply for some time now.  After having worked with one particular brand for the last 6 months, I’m starting to get a better idea of how to answer those questions.
 
Let’s start with this: the founder/businesses’ vision and motivations behind starting the business are intertwined with how a business operates everything.  There’s no separating the two.  That means the vision gives a business initial momentum and lays the groundwork for the foundation of how a company operates (good or bad).  If there’s a good and strong foundation, the vision will continuously serve as a memento for inspiring passionate work and guide how decisions are made. 

What this all means: when a business is born out a deep understanding of what a customer needs, created by great people, and built for the purpose of having a positive impact, it’s a beautiful thing.  The business becomes so much more than a business.  It’s a living and breathing entity that gives life to those involved in the day-to-day operations and becomes infectious to those on the outside.    
 
Before I go any further, meet Jesslyn Rollins, Director of Sales of BIOLYTE.  Jesslyn is the daughter of the Anesthesiologist who, a little over 2 years ago, created the best rehydration product in the market.  The idea of BIOLYTE was born out of a desire to help Jesslyn’s mom, Jeanine Rollins, cope with the debilitating effects of chemo treatments.  Fast-forward to present day, with Jesslyn running the show, BIOLYTE has become a product that is quickly gaining a large cult following.  The product is amazing and if you haven’t tried it you should.  However, as amazing as the product is, without the story behind the product and how that has shaped the organization, it would not be where it is today.  Jesslyn and the family are passionate about improving people’s lives and that shows up in weekly meetings, email threads, and decision-making.  As someone on the inside, it’s been eye-opening to see in action.  Last month, I asked Jesslyn to share about some of the beginning days of BIOLYTE and how her passion for improving people’s lives has been the seed that’s helping grow a brand worth talking about.

Jesslyn Rollins

Director of Sales of BIOLYTE

Atlanta, GA

Let’s start with this, how and why BIOLYTE was created?


BIOLYTE was created because my mom had breast cancer.  When she was going through chemo treatments, she was having a really hard time getting treated regularly because she was so dehydrated and sick.  My sister and my dad were buying her all kinds of different sports drinks and nothing was working.  At the time, IV hydration stations had just started getting popular and my sister asked my dad if he knew about any product in the market that would, in a way, “bring the IV bag” home to mom. 
 
My dad is an Anesthesiologist and knows a ton about IV fluids and what it takes to get your body back to homeostasis.  So this question really peaked his interest and he started doing some research.  Over time, he realized there wasn’t anything on the market like this.  After that, my dad and sister got to work and that’s really how it all got started. 

So, for those who don’t know much about the product, what makes it similar to an IV bag?

BIOLYTE is the first rehydration drink with the same amount of electrolytes as an IV bag. That’s the equivalent of drinking 7.5 sports drinks or a jug and a half of the leading children’s rehydration products.  Dad also included other ingredients that help you feel better when you’re severely dehydrated; ingredients that help clean out your liver, helps with nausea and give you a natural boost of energy.

What were you doing at the time when this was going on?

I was at the University of Georgia studying Theater and Communications having absolutely no idea that my sister and my dad were working together on this for 4 years.

Ok, so four years. That’s a long time. What all was happening during that period?

So, BIOLYTE’s not the type of product that you can make in your kitchen, you know what I mean? They spent a lot of time looking into beverage groups that could help them make something that actually tasted good and bring it to market.  It took a really long time to get the flavor just right because IV fluid tastes like you’re drinking the ocean.

Fast forward a little bit, you found a beverage manufacturer to work with and y’all are figuring things out. How long did it take before the manufacturer and your dad started to believe this could be a big thing?

This is where I step in the story. By this time, I had graduated and was working as a recruiter in Atlanta.  One night, my dad sat me down and told me that they had been working on this thing called BIOLYTE.  He went through his pitch about how it was the first hydration drink with the same amount of electrolytes as an IV bag.  Then, he told me he wanted me to be the Director of Sales because he thought I would be good at it.  No joke.  I was offered the job as easy as that (laughing).
 
My initial response was, “I really appreciate the vote of confidence but I have no idea if this stuff works.  I need to at least try the product out before I have a clue of what I could be getting myself into.”  My dad was fine with that and told me to try it when I needed it.  This is off the cuff, but he told me that he would recommend trying BIOLYTE after having one too many glasses of wine.  He said that the way our body metabolizes alcohol would put my body into a state of dehydration and it would be a perfect time to see if the product “worked.”  He said, unlike an IV bag you won’t feel it immediately, so be sure to give it about 30 minutes.
 
A few days after this, 10 pallets of BIOLYTE showed up in a tractor-trailer at our house in Atlanta (laughing).  So, I went out with some friends that night, drank too much, and woke up the next morning for work with a pounding headache.  I opened up a BIOLYTE, poured it over ice and drank the whole thing.  10 minutes passed by, and I’m still feeling bad.  20 minutes go by and I’m thinking to myself, “Oh no!  Dad’s drink doesn’t work.  This is horrible.  How am I going to tell him?”  Sure enough, 29 minutes in, I started to feel better.  It wasn’t like I wanted to bust through a wall or anything, but I went from sick to normal.  It was crazy to feel that. 

Was getting involved in selling a random product like this something that you ever imagined you would do?

I don’t see it as random.  This product is my family, and I am so family-oriented. I love my sister. I love my dad. I love my mom, and they blew me out of the water that they created a product like this. And so when I was invited into the business, and figured out that it actually worked, there was no turning back.  I don’t have any formal business training, but probably one of my biggest skills is improv and acting on my feet.  

The first places that came to mind, were high schools and country clubs.  So the first thing I did was loaded up my cooler backpack with BIOLYTE and went to my old high school, Lovett, to meet with the head athletic trainer.  I gave him my sales pitch and told him to put it to the test at their football game that Friday.  He definitely seemed skeptical, but first thing that Saturday morning after the game, I get a call and he was like, “Jesslyn, I want more of that product.  It’s unbelievable.”  Normally he had 10 guys that would cramp during games and after having BIOLYTE, 9 of them did not cramp. 
 
I thought, “Alright, I might be on to something with high schools.”  I spent the next few months figuring out the top football teams on the Georgia High School Association website and then driving around the state to meet with their athletic trainers.  They all had the same response as Lovett.  Reluctant at first, but always calling me back asking for more.

So at this point, you were testing out the product. How long ago was this?

This was fall of 2016. We had a product with very limited knowledge of what to do with it and who would want it.  I had my own ideas and experience with it but I knew that didn’t mean much.  Potentially, I could have had some internal bias because I wanted it to work.  I wanted to get feedback and hear what people thought.  Did they like it?  Would they buy it?  What did they use it for?  So, I focused on finding places in the community where people go and talk. 

When did you first approach a business to try and get the product in on their shelves?


My brother-in-law, Adam Szabo, is in wine sales, and we started talking about how he had connections with beverage distributors.  He thought it was great that I was hustling BIOLYTE out of my car, but he explained how we should go about getting into retail stores – what “normal” beverage companies did (laughing). 
 
He eventually connected us with a distributor named Savannah Distributing, which is a big alcoholic distributor here in the state of Georgia.   He got us a meeting, but at the time I did not have any accounts with any stores.  I thought I was going to walk in that meeting and they were legitimately going to laugh at me. 
 
So, I did some research and I learned that Savannah was family owned and the CEO (and a multitude of CEO’s before him) were all UGA Alumni and members of SAE.  My dad was an SAE at UGA.  That was my in. 
 
About a month before our meeting, I went around to a bunch of different convenience stores, pharmacies, and small independent stores, around UGA, walked in and tried to sell BIOLYTE to them.  We didn’t have any formal pricing structure set up but we actually got into some stores.  Then, I scheduled a few speaking events at fraternity chapters, including SAE.  I told them that the doctor who made the product was an SAE and explained the benefits.  They were all on it like white on rice and so excited to try it.  It was such a hit that right before our meeting with Savannah, SAE bought 900 bottles for their parent’s weekend. 
 
To be able to go into that meeting with Savannah and be able to say we were in a few independent stores but also talk about the purchase SAE made was huge.  The meeting went really well but a little bit after we met, they came back to me and said, “hey, listen, we’ve got a connection at Kroger.  We’ll give you an introduction and if you can sell BIOLYTE to Kroger, then we’ll bring you on.  If you can’t, then we aren’t interested.”

So then what happened?


It was pretty overwhelming.  I was selling to these tiny independent stores and now I have to go talk to one of the biggest grocers in the US.  I worked really hard on my pitch.  I went to the Atlanta Tech Village and had them critique my presentation.  I had plenty of other people critique it.  I was expecting to be at the head of some boardroom, you know, talking to a larger group and having to point things out on slides. 
 
Day of the presentation, I show up to the district office for Kroger in Atlanta and I’m feeling ready to go.  I was really prepared.  As soon as Randy Waters, the head of the all-natural division of Kroger, came and got me and took me back to his tiny cubical. I started shaking like a leaf and was sitting there with my computer ready to show a presentation.  He looked at me and was like, “Alright, so talk to me about it.”  I started mumbling about it and caught myself.  My expectation of how this meeting was supposed to go was completely throwing me off.  I said, “You know what Randy, can you give me a second?”  So I gathered myself and give him a copy of the presentation and we start over. 
 
The whole time I’m talking to him he’s sitting there stone cold like a brick wall.  At the end, I’m thinking there’s no way he’s interested.  He finally says, “Alright, so here’s where we are going to put it.  We’re going to put it in all the coolers that Savannah owns in Kroger.  We’ll sample it in about 90 Kroger’s.”  I was shocked.  All I could think to say back was, “Okay, Randy sounds great. Just to confirm, you like the product?”  He said, “Yes of course!  I want to put it in my stores.”

Did he say anything about why he liked the product?

He said that so many water companies come into the office and 99% of the time he says no.  The reason he said yes to us was because he liked my passion and my enthusiasm.  I walked out of the meeting with my rolling cooler (which by the way, he didn’t try any of the product) and I called my Mom and just lost it. 

Beyond just Kroger, what do you attribute all of the early success to?

My Dad and my sister made an unbelievable product.  The only thing that I did was ask people to try it and get their feedback.  Getting it into people’s hands, truly listening to them, and applying this feedback is what made this take off. 

So you’ve talked about some really cool success stories, tell me about a time where you fell completely on your face. Or maybe a time where you caught yourself thinking, “Man, I have no clue what I’m doing.”

I constantly have to push through feelings of doubt and nervousness.  Even though we’ve had great successes, every single success that we’ve had, I’ve walked into it saying, “I’m shaking like a leaf, but I’m going to do it anyway.”
 
As far as failure, I hit a breaking point in trying to do everything the company needed.  Whether it was selling, or packing/shipping, working on marketing, I was doing all of it.  I remember taking a quiz back when I was a recruiter that shed light on strengths and weaknesses.  I got a 10 on positivity and a 0 on logistics (laughing).  So, naturally, people were missing packages, getting things late, product was being destroyed, and it was horrible. 
 
I remember one afternoon when I had about 100 orders that I was sitting on.  I had no help and called a few family members to help and no one could.  I think I got through 25 boxes and sat down on a wooden pallet and started crying.  I had a total breakdown and was feeling this mixture of guilt and anger. I was falling into this trap or idea that I needed to wear all of these different hats and do it on my own.  That’s when I realized I had to hire someone.  I ended up finding our Logistics Manager who is a master at his job and makes our customers so much happier.  Whenever I feel that way, I know now we need a new hire.

What would you say has been the most rewarding thing you’ve done since you’ve been involved with BIOLYTE?

The most rewarding thing that I have done is creating relationships with the people that I work with. BIOLYTE has given me an opportunity to meet such amazing people and positively impact their lives with this product.  The life of building a business and having relationships with employees is so fulfilling and rewarding.  Where BIOLYTE started as just my family, it is now extended into pretty much an extended family.  The people that we work with whether our pharmacy partners, or our Logistics Manager, Operations Manager, Financial Director, they are all part of the BIOLYTE family, and it’s just so neat to get to build our story with them.

What has it been like to try and balance decision-making when it comes to what the family wants for the business versus what you think is best for the business? Has there been conflict there?

Probably the biggest thing that I’ve had to learn about that dynamic is recognizing the difference between an opportunity and a distraction.  When you are a fast growing business, you have so many opportunities and directions that you can go.  Everyone wants to give you advice and tell you what to do.  With me being the youngest, there wasn’t necessarily a lot of faith that I would make the right decisions about growing.  There was a lot of push to go national and go bigger and I’ve had to push back on that because I haven’t thought we were ready.  Things have turned out favorably so far and so I have really earned their trust.
 
That’s not to say I make all of the decisions, but I’ve learned to have conversations with the right people about certain decisions.  For example, if a decision I make is going to directly impact our pharmacy partners or distributors, I will go to them and have a conversation about it first.  I don’t feel like I make any unilateral decisions.  I take what many people tell me and mix it with my own decision-making process and intuition

What do you think it takes to build that kind of environment where people can still disagree and commit to the direction that you’re heading?

What I found is that a lot of companies rarely ask their people things like, “What do you think? How can we improve? Are you happy? If not, how do we fix that? What do you see is something that we should be doing?”
 
I really value our people’s feedback, and I think having your people understand that their opinion and their thoughts about the company matter, and you want to hear what they have to say really empowers people.  It helps give this sense of camaraderie and an understanding that we might not agree all the time but we are going to make decisions based on what is best for the business.   It’s important to create an environment that says there’s not such thing as stupid questions or ideas.  Everyone’s got creative ideas and those should be valued.

How has your opinion changed on what it takes to run a company? You didn’t have much of a business background.


I used to think everything needed to be linear and everything needed to make sense.  So many times when you actually look behind the curtain though, it’s a total mess, and that’s okay. The feeling of being under construction is normal, and it’s not going to go away 10 years from now.  Sure it will be very different, but we’re still going to be under construction.

There’s an image that I come back to when I think about this.  I think I was Googling things about what business looks like and I found this picture that explains it perfectly. 

It was a picture of an arrow shooting upwards and the caption was, “how you think business looks.”  And then there was an arrow right next to it and it was shooting upward but the entire arrow was like squiggles and doing loops through itself but still slowly moving upwards and it said “how business actually looks”.
 
That’s really been the biggest takeaway is getting comfortable with being under construction and messy.  Not knowing the answer but doing your best to figure it out.

Where do you hope BIOLYTE ends up 10 years from now?

I hope that BIOLYTE is the new standard for hydration. I know that it’s the best product on the market. I hope that when people are severely dehydrated from working outside, cancer, drinking too much, or anything else, they think, “I need a BIOLYTE,” rather than, “I need a sports drink.”  BIOLYTE is the most effective rehydration product on the market, and I want people to know that and be able to buy it wherever they live.  In 10 years?  I want it to be a normalized that that when you are dehydrated you get a BIOLYTE. 

What are some of the challenges you’re looking forward to figuring out the next couple of years?

I’m really excited about building our team. I can’t wait to see who is a part of it and the next few years. I can’t wait to see what they’re like and really keep extending the size of our family.

For more information on Jesslyn Rollins and BIOLYTE, be sure to check out the following:

BIOLYTE

Amazon