Here’s the Buzz on Honey Network: An Interview with a Young Entrepreneur.
By: Abbey Acevedo
In this article, you'll learn about a young entrepreneur’s vision, entrepreneurial spirit, and defining moments in the evolution of his business, Honey Network.
THE MAN BEE-HIND THE BRAND
Honey, if you’re a young entrepreneur that needs energy to fuel your next business idea, then you’ll not only want to try this product, but you’ll want to take notes from this young entrepreneur’s energy honey business.
They don’t call him BEE-lon Musk for no reason! Here’s the TEA on what the BUZZ is all about…literally.
He is the founder and owner of Honey Network, a carbon-neutral, data-driven, and community-focused honey retailer. His company sells energy honey, which combines honey with caffeine from green tea extract.
This unique combination of honey + caffeine helps to:
keep blood sugar stable for hours
promote restful sleep and
improve cognitive functions and enhance memory.
BEE-yond those incredible benefits, Honey Network also sponsors young local beekeepers around the world with the goal of decreasing the median beekeeping age.
And that is a BEE-autiful mission that we BEE-lieve in.
We have used a lot of funny puns, but in all seriousness, this young entrepreneur’s entrepreneurial spirit is no joke and we cannot wait to introduce you to him.
In our exclusive interview with Robert Schulte, below, you’ll learn about some sticky situations that only made the success of his business, Honey Network, taste that much sweeter!
AN INTERVIEW WITH A YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR
HUMBLE BEE-GINNINGS
Be Helpful Podcast:
Let’s dive into the origin of this family business, this entrepreneurial spirit that you have, and all of the businesses that you've started from this beekeeping business.
Robert Schulte:
Yes! My family started beekeeping just for fun. About 13 or 14 years ago, my mom wanted to get chickens and my dad very quickly shot down that idea! They agreed on bees as the middle ground.
We started with one beehive then grew to two, and then we started to collect a few more at our place in North Carolina.
We got very involved in the beekeeping community in North Carolina and South Florida, where we also had beehives at the time. It became integral to who we were as a family.
It was something that growing up, I kind of also kept as a side thing. I didn't really embrace it. It was just something that I did quietly on my own and I didn't talk to my friends about it.
But, then I got to the University of Florida.
I had mentioned it to someone very briefly in conversation and he was like, “ Wow, that's awesome!” That made me realize that people were very intrigued by it. I also realized it was a cool way for me to build my brand, and in college, that was something I wanted to do.
A few years before that, our family started selling the honey for baby showers and wedding events. It was a cool way to show other people our honey. In college, I really started to own the business and take a lot of pride in it when I saw how I inspired other people.
Ultimately, as a young entrepreneur, the mission for all my future businesses was to get young people excited about beekeeping. Something that's always blown my mind is how the average age of beekeepers is 60- 65 years old. That's crazy to me given how important bees are! One in three foods we eat comes from bees and cross-pollination.
So, if there's one thing that I can accomplish through the Honey Network, and with my entrepreneurial spirit, it's inspiring young people to become more aware of local honey and bees in their local area.
Going back to the first family business, Karen’s Bees, we were selling our own family honey and I was studying engineering at the time. I was dead set on pursuing a technical career. It was really cool to apply some of the engineering stuff I was learning in my classes and technical concepts to the beekeeping business. For example, I was using Lean Six Sigma to identify shipping root causes using root cause analysis. I implemented an inventory management system to make sure we were keeping track of everything that was going on with our honey equipment in different states. I built an E-commerce site. So, it was really cool to apply the tech concepts and that's ultimately what pushed me to go into more of a business and consulting role. That was my big inspiration there.
After Karen’s Bees, it was kind of weird. There was a little tension because I kind of stepped into the role of the business runner or I guess, president.
I felt very weird barking orders to my parents because they were the ones tending the hives at home when I was at school. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to step away and try something on my own.
That's when I created Pollen Pals, which was a beehive rental service. I was renting beehives from the local Gainesville area to the University of Florida Agricultural Department. They were growing an experimental tangerine plant and needed pollination support. So, initially, I started that, but then it became a little too difficult, logistically.
I then had another business where I was trying to import honey from across the world with this algorithm I built to find out where the best honey was located based on plant sugar data. Trying to import stuff from Budapest, New Zealand, and different parts of the United States was also a logistical nightmare!
I kind of felt very lost at that point. But, I still had that entrepreneurial spirit and that core vision that I wanted young people to get involved with beekeeping. I knew it was something I was passionate about as a young entrepreneur.
I started to really think and ask myself questions. What's a way that I can touch young people? What are the things that I do every day in my life?
I drink caffeine. I have coffee and I have tea. And randomly, one day, I had the idea of caffeinated honey! I actually sat on it for a while before I mobilized the idea.
Today, we are selling caffeinated honey. It's honey infused with green tea extract. I mix the honey with natural green tea extract and other ingredients to create a nice coffee alternative. You don't have to refrigerate it. Students can take it to the library. Honey on its own helps with natural muscle growth; it has amino acids in it that stimulate muscle growth. So, it’s a great supplement if you want an all-natural, healthy pre-workout. We’ve been piling it into some local gyms as well.
Through all these different businesses, I've created and failed along the way.
I've learned small bits and pieces, but what has ultimately kept me going is my vision to get young people inspired and caring about beekeeping.
So, that was a very long-winded answer about my journey along the way!
THE DEFINING AGE & MOMENT
Be Helpful Podcast:
As a young entrepreneur, you've got this passion and entrepreneurial spirit for what your North Star is. You're simply trying to figure out the best way to bring young people into this environmental space of understanding the power of bees and how important they are to our ecosystem. And really, these successes and failures are all just you trying out new ways to solve that one problem. So, if you don’t mind me asking, what age were you when you started the first branch off business and Karen’s Bees?
Robert Schulte:
That's a great question!
I think the big defining moment was my freshman year of college when I was about 18/19 years old. I had been mildly involved with the business, but the summer going into my sophomore year, I was supposed to study abroad in Israel. I had a joint study session and internship all lined up in Haifa, and I was super excited. Three days before I was supposed to leave, it got canceled because there were some safety concerns in the area.
I wasn't able to go, it was too late to recruit for another internship, and summer had already started. So, I was kind of just left. I had a lot of free time on my hands.
I had this grand vision that I'm going to do something awesome! I had very ambitious goals for myself and that threw a whole wrench in the situation.
I decided to buy a plane ticket to Chicago. I was living with my aunt cleaning boats in the Chicago harbor just to have some kind of summer job. I didn't feel fulfilled but it was a very interesting working environment seeing the type of people that I was meeting. Sometimes, when cleaning the boats, I got to interact with the owners.
A lot of their stories were around stuff they created on their own and that's when I'm like, wow, maybe I can turn this hobby thing into something real!
That's when I started staying up late, teaching myself HTML and CSS to build the core look of the first website- and then realizing that wasn't the right way to do it- and then switching to a no-code solution. Then that is what kick-started the agile method of building the business.
When I got back to school that sophomore year, I immediately sent out applications to all my friends to be a part of the ambassador team so we could start selling more honey. I got a team of 30 people that I was managing, some I knew, some I didn’t. They were helping me promote my vision and that became more clear as the years went on.
That summer in Chicago cleaning boats was a defining moment and that's what fueled the fire and has kept me going.
ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT IN ACTION
Be Helpful Podcast:
People always say, “Test and learn and try something to figure out if it doesn't work.”
You've taken the old model of education- where you sit in the classroom, you read about how Microsoft did something, and then you read more about what happened as a result of them doing that thing- and coupled it with playing with a real business to try that thing. I think it's the real version of immersive learning and an interesting way for you to develop your skills as a young entrepreneur.
One of the typical kickoff questions with our guests is, “What was your first action for your business,” but I want to put a little spin on that question for you.
When you started with Karen’s Bees, could you compare what the first action was then to your first action with Honey Network after your entrepreneurial spirit got a taste of that real experience?
Robert Schulte:
I've never really thought about that. It’s a cool comparison!
It’s hard to think about what the first action was for the Honey Network. That’s because for me, it's always been the same mission as Karen’s Bees, so there is no fine line between the businesses.
I did get a weekend job at Savannah Bee Company just so I could better learn the market and get inside of an established honey company to see what it was run like. That's when I realized I was onto something with energy honey and that it was something worth pursuing.
I would be sitting in Savannah Bee Company getting paid to promote their products and then I would say, “I might be doing an energy honey in the future, what are your thoughts on that?” And they would tell me it’s awesome. So, I was using the store as an opportunity to test my own product.
So I did take action, but the entrepreneurial spirit was the same. What I wanted to accomplish and the vision has always been aligned and I didn't want to change that.
Even today, I onboarded a team of seven consultants from the University of Florida that are helping me with outsourcing, manufacturing, marketing, and sales initiatives. I kept stressing how important the vision is. I want young people to know more about bees and know how important they are and get inspired about getting involved in beekeeping. Whenever I think about the stuff we're working on, it always comes back to that. So, once I figured that out with Karen’s Bees, there was never really another first action.
It was always going into that end goal.
3 “FREE-BEES” TO TAP INTO YOUR ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT
As an entrepreneur, being helpful to other entrepreneurs is one of the most rewarding feelings and that’s namely why we’ve titled our own podcast, Be Helpful!
Here are 3 takeaways from our conversation with Robert Schulte to help young entrepreneurs BEE-come who they’re aspiring to BEE.
Test and learn. Fail and try again. Always question how it can be done, and then how it can be done better. Execute.
Always hold your vision. Stay in tune with your passion.
Ask for help and create a community. It takes a HIVE to thrive!
BEE-LINE IT HERE TO HEAR MORE
This is one instance where we hope you don’t mind your own BEESWAX so that you continue learning about Robert Schulte’s incredible journey as a young entrepreneur.
Head over to Be Helpful Podcast or Be Helpful YouTube Channel to hear the full story straight from the beekeeper’s mouth and experience his entrepreneurial spirit firsthand!
Whether you read, listen, or watch Robert’s interview, we hope that his contagious energy gives you a healthy dose of energy to pursue your own passions in the same way his energy honey provides!
Are you an entrepreneur, start-up, or business owner who is an expert on a topic like this too? Tell us your story and get your business featured here. Follow this link to apply.