Heroes in Business - Luke Edwards, CoCreator Bitchin Sauce, Songwriter, Bitchin Music Group label

Episode Date: October 28, 2022

It is Bitchin. Luke Edwards, CoCreator Bitchin Sauce, Songwriter, Bitchin Music Group label is interviewed by David Cogan celebrity host Heroes Show and founder of Eliances entrepreneur community.  

welcome back to alliances heroes where heroes in business align to be part of our super community and find out more about alliances visit www.alliances.com that's right and welcome back to the show too and thank you i love it keep that feedback coming keep it coming keep it coming make sure you go to alliances.com e-l-i-a-n-c-e-s.com thank you for the feedback i continue to get when i interviewed the guitarist for the band corn so go to alliances.com that's e-l-i-a-n-c-e-s.com all right let's talk about our next interview. It's going to be one bitchin' interview. Oh, I hope I'm allowed to say that on the radio here, but it is going to be a bitchin' interview. And I am because we have with us, are you ready for this?

Luke Edwards. He is the creator of Bitchin' Sauce. Yep, I buy it all the time. In fact, I buy it at Costco. He's a songwriter also, and he's also Bitchin' Music Group music label. You can reach him at BitchinSauce.com

Alright, Luke, let's jump right in. First of all, this is who came up with the name? My wife Star came up with the name. Yeah, she was going through the dictionary. We were kind of stumped on what to call it. Awesome Sauce was taken.

So B was next. Bitchin' Sauce. I love it. First of all, it's such an easy name to remember. Like, you know, there's a gazillion different brands that are out there. But this brand, this name of the brand definitely sticks. Yep. Yeah, that's kind of just a fluke that we're happy that it does.

It kind of grabs people in the store. They say, hey, what's pigeon sauce? I'll give that a try. It's cool. You know, just thinking it's kind of funny, and then they actually like it. It actually tastes good. Incredible. Yeah, and I buy mine at Costco.

I mean, and now you've got so many different flavors, so many things that are going on there. But how do you manage your working hours through the week, taking care of both the bitchin' sauce, bitchin' music, music group enterprises? Like, you know, that's a lot to manage. First of all, it's a lot to manage one thing. Yeah, that's been kind of the learning curve as we've grown is asking for help, knowing when you need to, and then finding a good team. And also having a good schedule in the day. So kind of wake up, hang out with the kids, get to work. It kind of follows our tour schedule. We do kind of our admin work in the morning to afternoon, and then night is studio or showtime. All right, so let's first start, and we're going to talk more now about the bitchin' sauce. Then we're going to talk about your music and that.

How many, like, who came up with all the different type of flavors and stuff out there? Because, you know, you've got how many flavors now? We have 16 flavors now. And it's my wife and I that do all of the R&D and product development just at our home kitchen, just like we always have. We just kind of listen to what people are asking for, what we think is going to work, and then essentially just try it in our home kitchen and let the kids try it. If they like it, we see if a customer wants it.

And if they do, great. Luke, it's very hard, though, to get product on shelf. I mean, everybody, you know, dreams of having, who are in the food type business and all that, all want to have their product. And getting the shelf space and that. What are some of maybe the secrets you could share of how you were able to get, you know, prime shelf space? I would say patience. You know, we are not a young company. We're 12 years old and we were in the farmer's market only for a lot of those years and then just regional and not comparing yourself make the customers happy. And yeah, I would say just being patient. If you have a good product and if it sells well,

and if you support it, the retailers will come on eventually. Excellent, excellent. And again, we've got with us Luke Edwards, creator of Bitchin' Sauce, songwriter of Bitchin' Music Group, music label. You can reach him at bitchinsauce.com because you're watching, listening to me,

David Kogan, host of the Alliances Hero Show. So make sure you go to alliances.com, E-L-I-A-N-C-S.com. All right, Luke, tell us about the Bitchin' Music Group music label. Sure. Well, music has always been going on simultaneously with Sauce. When we started Sauce, I was on the road full time. And then we had our first baby. So I wanted to get off the road and needed a way to make money at home. So the Sauce was something that my wife had. So we started doing farmer's markets.

Took off from there. And then fast forward, you know, eight years, this team, you know, like I was saying, is there to support so enabled us to get more involved back in music um then in 2020 when the uh when covid stuff was going on we came back off the road because we'd been touring again um and we started the label to kind of help other artists to release our own stuff. So, yeah, we partnered up with Universal Music Group and we've been releasing my stuff. And then just looking to help artists who having a label is kind of like being an investment banker in a way. A lot of times you want to be involved with something that's already successful or they've done a lot of the work for you and just kind of ride their coattails.

But this is focused on being more of an artist friendly and getting involved from an earlier stage and being more involved with the production. We have a recording studio and then just all the other facets that people aren't really willing to get involved with unless you're already a successful person on TikTok or Instagram or whatever these days. I love it. I love it. Now you can see what's behind me. Those of you that are listening and stuff. So behind me, you see all these photo frames. So there's all these photo frames, these tickets, you know what those tickets are too? Are these tickets? Those are the Grammys. So various years with the Grammys and that. So yeah, all different types of things. So love it that the fact that so various years with the grammys and that so yeah all different types of things so love it that the fact that you're involved within the music and that uh so tell us about the music project you've got going on um now yeah well we're going to release uh

a new album here for my band ellie edwards probably early 2023, and this will be the first one that we've cut at our own studio under Bitchin' Music Group, so it's pretty exciting. Yeah, we recently went over to Europe, so we're looking forward to supporting it over there. It's a great market there, and then

also touring around the state. Excited to see our own release on our own label from our own studio. This is kind of the first little, our own start to finish project. Yeah. Luke, with everything going on, how do you like just share with us more of the detail because, you know, you've got the sauce and you've got the music and all that. How do you make the shift between one and the other and also to manage both? I mean, it's so much work just doing one. It is a lot of work. Yeah, I think just having the team and

having people to help out, having a good schedule, you know, daily schedule. You know, if I say, hey, you know what, at five o'clock, I'm going to, it's time to go and write in the studio. And that's, and it doesn't happen every day, honestly. And you just try to make it happen as best as you can and just try to make as much progress as you can. Yeah, that's awesome. Awesome. And both industries you're involved with, too, are as competitive as could possibly be.

They are, yeah. I didn't really realize that about the food space, but it is very competitive and we've been very blessed to be so successful. It's tough to make it out there. There's a lot of competition, any business you're in really. And you mentioned about farmer's markets, right? And a lot of people get their start at a farmer's market, right? Right. So what secrets can you share of them being able to make that transition of the dream of being on a shelf, having spent time at first at a farmer's market? I would say be easy to work with. If you go and approach Costco or Whole Foods and you say, hey, I would really love to be on your shelf.

And they say, great, we'll take it. You better be ready to deliver a quality product on time, in full, and continue to do so if it is successful and they want to expand to other places. Be careful what you ask for because when that demand happens, you need to have your operational side fully ready to deliver. Easy to work with. We like to say yes to our customers because at the end of the day, we are in a service industry. Providing people with something that they like. And the other thing, too, I'm going to share with you one of the secrets of what got me to buy yours is that they were doing samples yep that's been a cornerstone of our success is you know we're

a nut based dip which is a very new product for a lot of people they haven't tried one ever in their life so that's always been you know from the farmer's market days is getting people to just try it they're going to like it it's not weird it's not you know it doesn't taste like a uh alternative or like a substitute for cheese or anything like that it's just its own thing and it's good it's just something that you haven't tried before you play the piano uh not not very well no all right and yeah but there's a piano in the background that's why i asked well. And congratulations, too, on the success and everything. I mean, Luke, you've created several companies. You continue to build and grow them all from bitchin' sauce to music. sauce songwriter you can reach him at bitchin sauce.com this has been david cogan with the alliance's hero show check out this music luke