What happens when one of the most chaotic moments in modern history inspires a business that transforms homes across America?

In this episode of the Growth Mavericks Podcast, Adam Callinan sits down with Sabrina Gardner, founder of Salt by Sabrina, to discuss how organizing her own home during the uncertainty of COVID sparked the idea for a custom home organization company that is rapidly disrupting the storage industry.

Sabrina shares the journey from launching a premium custom product during global supply chain chaos to moving manufacturing from China to the United States before tariffs reshaped the industry. She explains how relentless problem solving, operational discipline, and customer obsession have helped Salt by Sabrina achieve rapid growth while remaining profitable.

The conversation takes a deeply personal turn as Sabrina discusses navigating two simultaneous cancer diagnoses while running a growing company and raising a family. She explains how hardship reshaped her priorities, strengthened her leadership, and ultimately made both her business and personal life stronger.

If you're building a business, leading a team, managing manufacturing, or simply trying to navigate life's unexpected challenges, this episode is filled with practical lessons on resilience, entrepreneurship, leadership, and creating opportunity through adversity.

Key Takeaways

How COVID inspired the creation of Salt by Sabrina.
Turning a personal frustration into a scalable business.
Building a premium custom manufacturing company.
Why moving manufacturing from China became one of the company's biggest advantages.
Growing a profitable ecommerce business without outside investment.
Building strong B2B partnerships with builders and designers.
Lessons from launching and failing on Amazon.
Why entrepreneurs must believe every problem has a solution.
Building a business while undergoing cancer treatment.
How hardship creates perspective, resilience, and stronger leadership.

Chapters

00:00 Building a business during COVID

01:45 The idea behind Salt by Sabrina

06:20 Manufacturing custom products

10:45 Launching the company

17:00 Growing through builders and designers

20:30 Scaling production

23:45 Entrepreneurship and family

26:10 Running a business through cancer

31:00 Leadership, perspective and resilience

37:00 Building a people-first company

39:30 Final thoughts

Explore

Salt by Sabrina
https://saltbysabrina.com

Growth Mavericks Podcast
https://www.growthmaverickspodcast.com

Pentane
https://www.pentane.com

Creators and Guests

Host

Adam Callinan

Adam Callinan is the founder of Pentane, a financial and advertising command center that empowers brands to drive predictable revenue and intentional profit. Previously, Adam co-founded BottleKeeper, a bootstrapped consumer brand that scaled to $8M in sales within three years – without employees – and was later acquired in 2021 as an eight-figure business with a team of four, marking Adam's second successful exit.

What is Growth Mavericks?

This podcast dives deep into the tactical moves that drive business success, as well as the mental and physical resilience required to sustain it.

Hosted by Adam Callinan, a seasoned entrepreneur with multiple exits, an avid outdoorsman, and an family man with crystal-clear priorities, each episode unpacks real-world challenges, actionable insights, and the mental and physical disciplines that fuel long-term personal and professional growth.

Whether you’re scaling a startup or refining your mindset, disrupting your default is how business and life strike a balance.

Sabrina Gardner (00:01.482)
Is this better? Okay.

Adam Callinan (00:02.946)
How much better. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. The whole the all these systems always like try to like brute force you into using headphones and it kind of doesn't matter as long as you're not in a place that's super

Sabrina Gardner (00:17.17)
okay. Yeah. I was looking that up this morning because I haven't done the remote podcast. I've usually been in person. So good to know.

Adam Callinan (00:25.89)
Yeah, yeah, there you go. Well, since you haven't done a remote podcast, note on this, when the video will be way better when it's done. It just records funny. when we're done, like we do kind of like a sign-off thing, don't hang up. the podcast in in case like it breaks up or does something weird, it's actually being recorded on your computer and it's uploading into the system. And sometimes we have to just stay on for 30 seconds or a minute, depending on how long it takes just to let it finish uploading. So

Sabrina Gardner (00:38.411)
Okay.

Sabrina Gardner (00:53.132)
Sounds good.

Adam Callinan (00:55.662)
do you have any questions? Any anything special?

Sabrina Gardner (00:59.274)
I don't think so. maybe I would love to hear a little bit about you and how you got into this and all that.

Adam Callinan (01:07.243)
Mm.

no not by choice. man. I mean, I've been an entrepreneur for forever. I've been in a number of companies and been very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time on a couple of them and and have some exits, which are great. Some one in consumer products. My last company was a a company called Bottle Keeper, which was a consumer product brand that my cousin and I started and did that in a very unique way. that we that got acquired in two thousand twenty one. And that's a whole long story.

Sabrina Gardner (01:13.394)
Ha

Adam Callinan (01:39.256)
But so I've I've been through all these fun, like insane ups and downs and and now I have a software company from that experience. And the podcast, like this is partly because I'm at a phase, like my current chapter in life is built very directly around just helping as many entrepreneurs as I can, like other particularly early stage e-commerce operators as I can from the prior decade of experience. And this is a way to do that.

Sabrina Gardner (01:43.05)
Yeah.

Sabrina Gardner (02:08.342)
I love that so much.

Adam Callinan (02:09.066)
We s we spent a lot of I like spending a lot of time in the things that are not headlines. Like look the reality in our bottle keeper experience, we did 10 million in revenue in three years with no employees, no investors. We did 60 million in total sales, got acquired by private equity, went on Shark Tank, had a ton of patents. Those are the highlights that sound awesome. All the stuff below that that was so hard and so painful and incredible and horrible and

Rock bottoms and tops of peaks, like all of that stuff is where all the value is. So that's that's what I like to.

Sabrina Gardner (02:41.044)
Yeah. And honestly, like there's there's no entrepreneur that I talk to that has it different. I you know, you hear like the the overnight success that's ten years in the making. Like it just yeah. Yeah. I've never seen it.

Adam Callinan (02:49.262)
I know. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (02:54.702)
Exactly. There's no such thing. And that's important to talk about because it's that it's those sorts of stories and headlines and the nonsense that we read in the media and and why like we couldn't get until we went on Shark Tank because then they had something to talk about. We couldn't get media coverage. We were doing tens of millions of dollars a year. We could not get media coverage in Bottlekeeper because we didn't have a fundraising headline because we never raised money. Like it's just the media leads this fake narrative that everything is an overnight success and it makes it

Sabrina Gardner (03:17.409)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (03:24.674)
For us entrepreneurs that feel like we're on islands make us makes us feel like we are like truly living on islands and we're the only ones struggling. And it's just not true. I think it's important to talk about and that's why we do this.

Sabrina Gardner (03:32.065)
Yeah.

Sabrina Gardner (03:35.734)
Yeah, I love that.

Sabrina Gardner (03:39.614)
in fact, I had a a message from a friend this week that's also an entrepreneur and she was just saying, you know, hey, we're just struggling, like we haven't hit our goals in a couple of months. So I texted her privately and I was just telling her, hey, these are some of the challenges we're going and through. And she she was like, my gosh, I didn't need anybody to solve my problem. I just needed to know that I wasn't in it alone. And I think that's such a key part of this entrepreneur community is almost just that validation of.

Everything that you're going through is totally normal. You're gonna navigate it, but we're all going through it.

Adam Callinan (04:14.902)
Yeah. And occasionally you get to hear a story,

About someone dealing with real hardship. Like real, real hardship. And those, yeah, you know, I I kind of I try to surround myself with those people. Like, and I've interviewed a couple of them on on this podcast. Like my really close friend here in Montana, like was flying his own plane, crashed shit, had a leg amputated by choice a year later. And I hunt with that guy in the backcountry and he crushes me with one leg. And it's like

Sabrina Gardner (04:45.377)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (04:46.42)
I can't I you know knock on wood, I don't have to go through that experience, but there's so much to be learned from someone that has has gone through that like truly life altering thing and what I perceive as difficult or hard is reset. That perspective we can really reset by hearing those stories of other people that are like truly truly hard. Like

A friend that was born with no arms and legs in Iraq. His mom was exposed to chemical weapons and he she left him in a shoebox in a park and a nun picked him up. I mean, and he is the happiest person I've ever met in my life. And he crushes life. I mean, he did 12 tour concerts opening for cold play. Like the guy crushes life. And I have spent a lot of time with him. And I can tell you that everything he does is hard. Like it's a whole nother level of hard.

Sabrina Gardner (05:31.012)
my gosh.

Sabrina Gardner (05:35.85)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (05:37.848)
But he is the happiest human you've ever met. So I just, I don't know, I I like live for sharing those kinds of stories because it does help to reset the perspective of like, no, now you hear that, you get around that. It's like, well, this business thing is, it's not that it's easy, but it's like the perspective is different. You get to look at it differently.

Sabrina Gardner (05:43.542)
Yeah. Right.

Sabrina Gardner (05:51.7)
Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's an important step back of when you look at that, you go, it's not everything. I have so much. And this is a piece of it and it's a hard piece. But it it's like that, yeah, that like big world view of this isn't everything. It's not going to be everything, and it's not going to crush me or ruin my life if it doesn't work. And also, again, like relating to these other entrepreneurs who

have failed and then pick themselves up and it's the third or fourth time that they've succeeded. And so seeing that you're not in that alone either.

Adam Callinan (06:29.88)
There is so much education in in that pain, in that experience, in those like what we call failures, but are they really failures? Like that is that is the

Sabrina Gardner (06:37.248)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (06:40.834)
Like that is that is the epitome of education. And it might take a couple of times and they're not going to be fun, but you know, getting getting really comfortable in that discomfort is is is valuable. It's really valuable. I think as a society, we've moved away from that where like we just seek everything we seek is about comfort. It's like if the temperature goes up one degree, we gotta put on the air conditioning. If it goes down two degrees, we gotta go get a sweatshirt. And we gotta it's like everything is about this trying to find this just like homeostatic.

Sabrina Gardner (06:43.701)
Right.

Sabrina Gardner (06:54.762)
Yeah.

Sabrina Gardner (07:01.289)
Yeah.

Sabrina Gardner (07:09.993)
Like perfect. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (07:10.254)
Comfort. Yeah, which is which I yeah, I don't know. We can talk about this for for a long time. I have strong opinions on that, but yeah, awesome.

Sabrina Gardner (07:15.009)
Yeah, for sure. Well, and even my son, he he wants to be an architect for Disney. And I just tell him all the time, I'm like, you can do it. It is it's just it's the entrepreneurial mantra, which is problem solving and grit. And if you're willing to just go after it and do the things that you need to do, you're going to get there. And I have faith that you will get there.

But it's like, are you willing to get in the trenches? Are you willing to do what it takes? And that's what ultimately makes an entrepreneur. It's not that everything goes perfectly. It's like, what are you willing to solve? How far out of your comfort zone are you willing to go? And those are the beautiful success stories.

Adam Callinan (07:56.537)
That take a decade or two. Like they don't happen overnight. It's all part of a a very long, you know, s kind of intentional, maybe a little bit unintentional process.

Sabrina Gardner (07:58.07)
Yeah, and take a decade or two. Yeah. Never.

Sabrina Gardner (08:08.979)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Adam Callinan (08:10.498)
So how did you find your way to entrepreneurship?

Sabrina Gardner (08:13.823)
You know, I I've always worked. and I worked kind of in marketing. I had a background in photography and graphic design. So I helped brands with like their brand storytelling. And I got to this point where I'd done that for about 16 years and I was looking for something different, something that was scalable. I think I was just kind of hitting a different phase of life. and I remember it was

February of 2020. so this was like right before COVID blew up, and I had written down this goal to start a business. And it was just in the notes file on my phone, I want to start a business. And I think there's something so intentional about writing things down where then that kind of thought is working in the back of your mind. And then we were in the middle of a move. We moved in March of 2020.

It was I the day we moved into our home, we found out our kids weren't going back to school. My husband's in restaurants, not a great time to be in restaurants. there were earthquakes here in Utah. It kind of felt like maybe it was the end of the world. And I remember craving order. And so we were just in the middle of moving, there were boxes everywhere. My kids, my family, we all felt this uncertainty of what was going on.

Adam Callinan (09:18.435)
Yes.

Sabrina Gardner (09:39.226)
And I spent six days unpacking my house from top to bottom, just absolutely down to the last pencil in the drawer. And there was kind of two significant things that happened. The first one was I realized that there was power in organization. there was a tangible change in my family because our house became this safe haven from everything that was going on outside. Because it felt calm. It felt like this peaceful retreat that we could.

go to to kind of get away from everything happening. And then the second thing was I realized that there was a gap in the organizational market for products that actually worked. trying to find a drawer organizer that actually fit your drawer was pretty much an impossible task at the time. And so I think just this idea of I want to start a business combined with a problem that I needed to solve in my own life was really the start of salt. And

kind of where the idea came from.

Adam Callinan (10:41.923)
My wife is out of town right now, very briefly, for work in LA. We live in Montana. And there is a note downstairs on the top of the counter that says clean junk drawer. The frequency at which this drawer goes from being r almost empty to just full of crap is wild.

Sabrina Gardner (10:52.523)
Ha ha ha

Sabrina Gardner (11:02.697)
Yes. Yes. And honestly, that's one of the things that's so great for us is it's such a democratic product. Like everybody has a junk drawer. You say the word, they can immediately relate. And no one has been able to successfully solve this problem until salt. And and this is this is the idea is I wanted to create something that actually worked, that was a product you could buy and it would last because I believe in that. I believe invest in the products that you're gonna put into your home and

Adam Callinan (11:12.599)
I know.

Sabrina Gardner (11:32.597)
They should work forever. Like they should not break down. And and this, this really truly solves it. And I wanted to create systems that worked individually for your space and your home and how you use it, because we all use a space differently. If you and I were in the same kitchen, we would organize it completely differently based on the things that we do in a day. If we like to cook, if we like to order out, if we do, if we have kids that do homework in the kitchen.

and so that's really what SALT is all about is is custom or custom organizational systems for your home.

Adam Callinan (12:07.833)
So from a custom standpoint, are you what does that mean in this context?

Sabrina Gardner (12:14.88)
So we make every drawer one at a time. So we've got over 60 layouts and everything from junk drawer, kitchen utensils, silverware, bathroom vanity, you name it, we've got it. and you're gonna put in the dimensions of your drawer, length, width, and height, rounded down to the nearest half inch. So it's really easy to just eyeball it in a couple seconds. And we custom make it and ship it to your home in just a couple of weeks. So it's

It's really a revolutionary approach to organization. and it allows you to use every square inch of space in the drawer. A lot of times people are frustrated because they don't have enough storage space, but a lot of it is we're not using what we have efficiently, especially in a deep drawer. And we're the only company on the market that does a deep drawer organizer. So we'll do those eight 10-inch drawers.

Adam Callinan (13:08.175)
How do you manufacture it?

Sabrina Gardner (13:09.696)
This is actually maybe what I'm most proud of is that in a world of minimum order quantities, we make a one-off product for an affordable price. I mean, it's a premium price because it's a premium product. and originally we started in China. And I still to this day can't believe we talked a factory into doing this for us. I still think it's a miracle. And and it's like one of those things where

when things are hard, I think it's an opportunity to change. And every time that we've run into something hard, we've made that pivot and adjustment and we've ended up in a better place. And China was awesome. They, I mean, their quality, they were so good to work with, but ultimately the timeline to get product was too long for our customers. So we actually moved manufacturing to the United States right, I mean, it's been about a year and a half ago.

And then and we had a manufacturing partner that also was came with its own set of challenges. And ultimately we brought it in-house at the end of last year. So we've been doing our own manufacturing for less than six months. And we've completely revolutionized everything that we're doing. We have patents on a new construction process.

we make it faster than ever, we have better quality than ever, our customer service because we can respond instantaneously. it's just absolutely changed our business and we can produce more for a third of the cost than we've ever been able to do before right here in the US.

Adam Callinan (14:55.363)
And you dodged the tariff mayhem.

Sabrina Gardner (14:58.676)
We would have been out of business. I mean, and this is this is what's crazy is like at the time I was just dying under this. We've got to move manufacturing. How do we find a partner? How do we get? And then you look back and you're like, my gosh, what a blessing. Like this is incredible that we made this move at that time. So yeah, whenever it's hard, just solve the problem, move forward, and know you're gonna be okay.

Adam Callinan (15:00.437)
man.

Adam Callinan (15:23.279)
Yeah, those are the really unique things that happen in business, particularly as you get to do it over a longer period of time and and get to stay in the game. And we'll we'll definitely spend some time in that rabbit hole. But is is being in the right place for luck like that to happen and you always look back at it. You don't rare you know, rarely I think we're in for at least from a technology standpoint, I think we're in an interesting place right now that is, you know, fairly you don't need to be a wise philosopher to see the the interesting things that are happening in tech. if you've

Sabrina Gardner (15:52.393)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (15:52.976)
You're like reading or doing anything, but generally you look back at it. Generally you look back and go, Whoa, that was lucky. And it's usually timing related.

Sabrina Gardner (16:02.049)
Absolutely. Yeah. And it's interesting to see where you end up when you look back and have that 2020 perspective. But again, I think it's that mentality of just if you have a problem, just figure out how you're going to solve it. And if you have that sort of grit and, you know, don't be defeatist. Don't ever think there's a problem you can't solve because there always is a solution. And the entrepreneurs who are successful are just the ones that are willing to figure it out.

And to never have that mentality of this isn't gonna work.

Adam Callinan (16:36.483)
Yeah. How did you sell your first product? So if we go back, you know, to the beginning, you have this you've manifested into reality via a note on your phone that startup needs to happen. We need to build something. And then you have, you know, this kind of aha moment in the midst of in you know, like a once-a-century crisis that we all got to live through. And y you have an idea to do this thing. What was your first step?

Sabrina Gardner (16:56.469)
Yes.

Sabrina Gardner (17:03.69)
So I'm very detail oriented, as you can imagine, from somebody who built a company based on obsessing over organization. And I knew I needed to build, I wanted to build a premium brand. And so I needed to have the operations to really launch that successfully. So I spent about a year and a half building the back end. So we built a website, we created content, we had samples.

We got the Instagram all teed up and ready to go. And we launched in late August of 2021. And, you know, as always happens, I think I didn't sleep for the 36 hours before that, you know, going through every image and every link on our webpage, making sure things worked. And and of course, you learned so many things immediately out of the gate. But yeah, we had our very first.

Sale that first day. I think it was probably friends and family on those first couple of ones. But you know, I remember the third day after we launched, I got a sale from New York City. And I just sat there and looked and was like, my gosh, a product I made that somebody across the country just purchased. And it was just one of those like beautiful sacred moments.

Adam Callinan (18:26.511)
We're and you were ma that was at that point manufactured in China? Had you already set that up?

Sabrina Gardner (18:32.049)
Yes, in China. Uh-huh. And so we and it we were able to make them fairly quickly, but it was the shipping time. So it was about six weeks for delivery. And then of course all the COVID nightmare happened. And then that became like eight, twelve. At our worst, it was 16 weeks. And that was just an unsustainable nightmare. So that was really, really difficult to manage. But at the same time, we were building the brand. So it's not like we had this flood.

Adam Callinan (18:34.764)
Thanks.

Sabrina Gardner (19:01.107)
That we couldn't manage, but it was just one of the stages.

Adam Callinan (19:06.775)
Yeah. I mean the COVID we don't need to spend a lot of time on that, but like was obviously so disruptive in the in the the manufacturing space. But if you could get product acquisition costs and you could fulfill product, the cost to acquire a customer came down dramatically in that period. It was it was a really bad period for a whole lot of reasons, but it was a really good period for our e commerce business at the time. Like completely changed changed the year.

Sabrina Gardner (19:29.275)
Yeah, I think it was it was one of those things that disrupted the market but created opportunities at the same time.

Adam Callinan (19:36.653)
Yeah. So how how do you grow that business now? Is it all social media related? I mean, do you have an opportunity for wholesale or retail distribution?

Sabrina Gardner (19:49.822)
Yeah, you know, it's been an interesting thing because if you think about it, when somebody builds a home or they remodel their kitchen, their first purchase is a drawer organizer. I mean, that's like what everybody goes out to do. So we really started kind of we've had these organizers, designers, builders, cabinet shops really reach out. And now we're kind of doing outreach as well. but we've built this network where

We're rolling it up into home builds. It's it's just another line item on the bid sheet. So you've got cabinets and you've got organizers. And it's so convenient for the homeowner because they're gonna purchase it anyway. So to have that installed and just part of their home is an incredible value add. and then it it allows an upsell for the builder or the designer or the organizer. So that's been kind of this really interesting B2B play that we've been building out for the past year. And

Has accelerated our growth, which has been really exciting. And then our D2C, I mean, we were up 90% over last year. Even with kind of everything going on with the economy in Iran, it hasn't seemed to really impact what we're doing, which is we're so grateful for. But again, I think it's that everybody can relate to it, and this is a solve for a very common problem. And once we get a customer,

The quality, the customer service, and that helps us really retain that customer and they become a customer for life.

Adam Callinan (21:20.802)
The fact that you I'm making a presumption here, I don't see how this could work otherwise. Can't sell on Amazon is such a blessing.

Sabrina Gardner (21:31.113)
That's interesting that you bring up Amazon because we actually sold this was probably one of our learning experiences was early on, I did have some in-stock products. So right now, like the majority of our business is our custom products. But we had a line of baskets and stuff, and there's so much noise. There's so much competition in that space. And I think naively I assumed, hey, if you buy it, then

Adam Callinan (21:33.284)
No.

Sabrina Gardner (22:00.158)
Like people will, or if you stock it, people will buy it. That is not correct. I think at this point we could sell it because we have the audience, we have the trust. We did not at the time. And so we ended up trying to sell on Amazon. That was a nightmare, a colossal failure. But what's interesting is that Amazon now has the ability to do custom. And so that is something that they do. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (22:05.136)
Yeah.

Sabrina Gardner (22:30.271)
they have a it and it's actually pretty incredible. So you'll you're gonna see more and more custom products show up on Amazon and we may be one of those.

Adam Callinan (22:40.194)
It okay. The difficulty with Amazon, from a brand standpoint is that you and maybe this is different in custom. If you're having a custom-build products, this might be different. This might be the only place where it's different. You don't you don't own the customer, you don't know the customer, you can't communicate with the customer. It is not your customer, it is Jeff Bezos's customer. And

Sabrina Gardner (22:57.417)
Yeah.

Correct.

Sabrina Gardner (23:06.043)
Yes.

Adam Callinan (23:07.926)
If you're, you know, the the brand experience that it sounds like you're providing with the epic customer service and the incredible high quality, like they'll still get the quality because they're they're getting the product, but they they if they have a customer service problem, yeah, they're not reaching out to you, they're reaching out to Amazon. It's a totally different experience. So you you you tend in a in an a consumer brand to not own the customer in that space. It's an okay way to sell product. but that might be entirely different in the custom world.

Sabrina Gardner (23:23.826)
Right.

Sabrina Gardner (23:36.135)
Yeah, I think there is a little bit more interaction with the customer. but what's interesting about our model is because it is custom made, there's obviously no returns because we're making it specifically for you. So that helps us and it's FBM versus FBA. So we're fulfilling so we don't get hit by all those Amazon fees. We don't get hit with the return product. So we're hoping to avoid some of those pitfalls that we've had to deal with in the past with Amazon.

Adam Callinan (23:54.351)
Yeah.

Sabrina Gardner (24:05.207)
but it is something where people do want to buy and there is a level of trust with Amazon. So as a brand, it can be a new channel that you can open up and leverage, but you definitely have to understand that Amazon, like Costco, like retail, everything is just its own ecosystem and you have to learn how to operate within that ecosystem.

Adam Callinan (24:27.108)
I'm surprised that they'll let you in the prime infrastructure not do returns, even if they're custom. That strikes me as a thing that they would just like make make you take returns, even though it makes zero sense whatsoever.

Sabrina Gardner (24:42.426)
Yeah, it's it's an interesting new thing and I think it's fairly new for Amazon. but I have seen more and more, I mean, even like the t-shirt companies, you can now like select the color, you can select the print that you want on it, and then they'll custom make it for you. So I'm sure there's some we fully warranty all of our products. So if anything were to arrive damaged, we automatically replace that, no questions asked. So that fits very well into their policy. and our delivery times are fast. So

It's almost like prime shipping for custom, which works out well. but I'm sure we will learn a lot and see if it's a viable channel for us. I mean, you know.

Adam Callinan (25:19.258)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean that

As a starting point, that solves a lot of the problems. I mean, the FBM part is good. We got into FBM at toward the end of the company as well in order to control that, which was great. And it did reduce the cost. we were operating in a little bit of a different time. We were we were still at the time and place where you could have a different price on Amazon versus your website. So we would mark the things up on Amazon to try to drive people back to the website or only offer products that we were discontinuing on Amazon because I was just a lunatic about keeping the people in our ecosystem so they could experience our like.

Sabrina Gardner (25:34.78)
Yes.

Sabrina Gardner (25:47.601)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (25:53.997)
insanity of service and communication and everything, which was a big part of the business. But but had we been able to do custom work in Amazon that fulfilled by merchant that couldn't be returned that we could have direct communication with that that's a totally different situation. So that's

Sabrina Gardner (25:59.815)
Yeah.

Sabrina Gardner (26:14.0)
Yeah, and that's kind of the reason we're looking at it is because the environment has changed.

Adam Callinan (26:18.692)
Yeah. Yeah, that's great. So you are you spending a lot of time then out creating relationships with big build you know, builders? I I assume probably locally in and around where you live is the easy low hanging fruit. But I mean, do you go to like Pulty homes or one of these like mega builders that are, you know, cranking out twenty eight billion homes a year?

Sabrina Gardner (26:44.658)
Yeah, it kind of our what we decided to do is I mean, so we're just about to celebrate our fifth birthday. And really, you know, last year was entirely focused on manufacturing and really making that move. And and we've now created this really good ecosystem on direct to consumer. So this year is kind of about the Amazon play. And then what we want to do is build out Utah and show that we can do that successfully.

But we do have partners from all over the country. We have a huge, I would say Texas, Florida, California, the Northeast, Tennessee, those are kind of like our really, really big markets. we've got good partners in all of those. But there's so many opportunities right here in Utah where we're able to have that face to face. They can come see our operation. where we want to do that and kind of set the standard and work out.

you know, how do we deliver? How do we partner with them in a way where we just slip into their ecosystem, adding value without adding any friction? so this is kind of our learning year. And then the idea is that then we would, you know, scale nationally within the builder market. And that's where the exponential growth really is. You know, direct to consumer is a nice steady kind of doubling year over year. And then we've got Amazon, which could mirror that and then do another double, you know, so

It's sort of looking at the big picture of what are all the verticals that we can go into and how do we do that successfully while also maintaining quality, customer service, production and all of that, which is kind of a dance, right? Like, okay, let's create the demand, let's up the production and then, you know, make sure that that matches and neither gets ahead of each other.

Adam Callinan (28:25.935)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (28:34.51)
Yeah. And and even in Amazon, part of that will be it's just inherent to the way Amazon works in in that direct to consumer space. Part of that will be cannibalistic. Like part of that will be people go, you know, see an ad or see a organic post and put the website and buy it on Amazon because for exactly like you said, like for the trust, for the convenience, for the whatever twenty seven reasons. but but that is yeah, that is an entirely different world. What is what is not working? Like what are you struggling with in the business today?

Sabrina Gardner (28:43.144)
Yeah.

Sabrina Gardner (28:54.056)
Yeah.

Sabrina Gardner (29:05.438)
Weirdly, right now, like knock on every piece of wood in my office, things are actually going pretty well. I would say it's ch production has been a major thing, figuring that out, but we've actually made, I mean, just like these crazy gains. it used to take us an hour to cut a sheet. We can now do it in 20 minutes. Like

It's but it's it's this innovation. It's so hard to to kind of figure out everything. It's always just one thing at a time. I think the hardest thing for me to manage right now is that we've been really, really scrappy. I mean, kind of your model of let's not take on investment, let's keep the team small. it's very small. So our production team is obviously full-time, but all of my other employees are remote. And I'm the only full-time employee.

And I'm working so much that I'm just drowning. And so that's been difficult to manage, but I really have wanted to do this in a way where we we hit profitability and stay there without, you know, because I watch some of these brands making $20 million and they're not profitable. And so I want to have that operational discipline, but it means there's sacrifices to that. And so I think that's the hardest thing is I wear all the hats and and that's

Exhausting фізики, менталі, all the things.

Adam Callinan (30:37.424)
And how do you yeah, this is I as a parent, like these are things that I struggle with a lot and spend a lot of time reflecting and building around. Like how do you how do you wear all those hats and also be, you know, mom or dad?

Sabrina Gardner (30:54.683)
I don't know that there's a way to do it perfectly. I think as an entrepreneur, you know, there are times where the answer is, hey kids, mom's gotta pull an all-nighter. Like we got something going on. It's Black Friday. You gotta understand. And then there's times where I gotta jump out of work and my kids need me and I prioritize that. I I actually built my home office, it's right off my kitchen so I can throw in a load of laundry, do dinner.

Help the kids with homework and jump in and out of meetings. But it's definitely, I I try to involve my kids too. And when we go on vacation, a lot of times we talk about, hey, we're able to do this because mom and dad work. And and one of the things that has been maybe an unexpected thing is how much this has impacted my kids to see my husband and I really working as a team where

I cook during the week, he cooks on the weekends, we both do laundry, we both work full-time. If one of the kids has an orthodontist appointment, we kind of go, okay, who's got the less busy day? You take it this time, I'll take it next time. and really seeing that give and take modeled, that wasn't really how I was raised. I was raised in a more, you know, it was a different generation. But I'm really grateful, especially for my daughters, to see a different ecosystem modeled for them.

Adam Callinan (32:19.194)
Do you talk to your kids a lot about entrepreneurship and sort of like problem solving and all the things that you obviously you spend basically all day doing?

Sabrina Gardner (32:29.447)
All the time. Yeah. It's a constant conversation. And you know, if we it's funny, we were at Disneyland a month ago and we had a record sales day while we were there. And I was like showing my kids on Shopify, hey guys, it's been a really good day. And they're like, Well, mom, we're at Disneyland. So I guess it means we have to stay. So you continue to have record sales days. I was like, doesn't quite work like that. But

Adam Callinan (32:55.854)
Yeah. There's a correlation, not causation example.

Sabrina Gardner (33:00.373)
Exactly. But it's been fun. You know, they've seen the challenges, they've seen the heartache. I mean, we've had we've had some really tough challenges. a couple of years ago, I was diagnosed with two kinds of cancer at the same time. I was diagnosed with thyroid and breast cancer within three weeks of each other. I spent seven months

Undergoing five surgeries, including a double mastectomy, thyroidectomy. And, you know, it it's one of those moments that puts everything into perspective, you know, the work, the family, and this kind of, I mean, if I had to go through it again, I don't know if I could do it. But you get this beautiful perspective at the end. and it it kind of shrunk my life down to.

very few things because it was really about surviving. It was like, how do I keep my family running? How do I keep business running? And how do I get through cancer treatment? And it sort of clean slated my life a little bit where I got rid of everything extra. And at the end of treatment, as I started to recover and feel better, I was very intentional about what I added back. And most of the things that I let go of

I don't miss. I really have, I feel like my life is full of the things that I love and that are important. And that that was like a very significant reset for me because I was just a like, yes, girl, I'll do it all all the time. I'll make it work. I would, I didn't need a lot of sleep. Now my body's different. I do need a lot of sleep. And so yeah, I think just understanding.

Priorities and what's important. And that will continue to change and evolve throughout the whole process and times of life with your kids and ages and all that.

Adam Callinan (35:03.984)
Can you give an example or two of s something or some things that you let go of that you don't miss?

Sabrina Gardner (35:11.597)
Yes. I used to play tennis like three hours a day. And I played league and I was super competitive. and there's a lot of drama in tennis. and now I just actually play for fun in with my dad in our backyard. And it's amazing. Like none of the drama. It's like a quick, I can hop out in the yard for 45 minutes, play a quick match, come in and get to work.

And I thought I would miss that, you know, because it was such a big part of my life. And I, you know, the ratings and all the things, but it's like another rat race. And I loved stepping out of that and adding it back in a way that brings joy and not something else that's stressful. So sometimes it's not even completely eliminating it, it's just changing the conversation.

Adam Callinan (36:04.132)
Yeah, sort of reframing it.

Sabrina Gardner (36:06.011)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (36:08.152)
Yeah. I mean you know, we started this conversation off very casually, which is sort of how this works, talking about the all the ways to reframe and generate new perspective. And I give you some examples of of people, you know, that have had pretty extreme things in my life, that I learn a ton from. And the reality is like from an outsider, this is easy to say. I'm sure it doesn't feel like this in in your position, but like

What a gift to you know, it's that's a horrible thing. I'm sorry that you had to go through that. You know, I'm certainly glad to see you on the other side of it, but like the to be able to have that amount of perspective reset,

You know, it's is pretty it's pretty amazing.

Sabrina Gardner (36:53.201)
Yeah.

It's it's one of those things that, you know, I don't know if you've ever read the book Solve for Happy. it's Mo Gad, he was the chief business officer at Google. Absolutely fantastic read. It's solving the equation for happiness. but I very much felt I you know, I it when we look back at our lives as a whole, almost no one would change it because we always like who we are on the other side of the hard things.

And that's one of the things that he shares in the book. And I very much felt that. And I think, you know, I look at everything I've gone through as an entrepreneur, and I never feel picked on. Like I always just feel like, well, why not me? You know? And that really carried me through cancer because I never felt like a victim. I never felt like I was actually so grateful it was me and not one of my kids. And, you know, and so.

I was, I I think I was because of everything I went through as an entrepreneur, I had that perspective. And I was raised in an entrepreneurial home where it was just like, hey, this is just a problem. We got to solve it. And so I very much looked at cancer that way of like, okay, this is just the challenge of the day. We're going to get through it. And I'm very grateful for that. And then I love everything that I learned from that because I feel like that has made me a better business owner, a better mom.

So, yeah, I wouldn't change any of it. I wouldn't want to go through it again. I would opt out of that.

Adam Callinan (38:29.378)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it yeah, it's it's a consistent it's a really consistent theme again amongst the the people in my life that have gone through, you know, in the case of Emmanuel where he like born in a box, that's all he's ever known. but in the case of like Cal who was plane crash, his he's an entirely different I didn't know him before I met him, like right when he was in the hospital for the amputation after the crash, it was like a year in between.

Sabrina Gardner (38:45.083)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (38:57.156)
But from everything I understand, he's an entirely different person on the other half of it. And he is unbelievably grateful. Obviously, he would never want go through that whole thing again. Like, very grateful of the impact that it has had on his life. For my friend Yanni, who was who jumped into the ocean and got paralyzed and is now, you know, in a wheelchair and same kind of thing. But the impact that he has had, I'll have him on the podcast here in the next couple of weeks. The impact he has had on other people's lives because he started a nonprofit doing

Sabrina Gardner (39:05.583)
Yeah, no.

Adam Callinan (39:25.002)
you know, spinal cord, this thing called locomotor therapy, which was pioneered with Christopher Reeve getting people to like regrow around their injuries. And now, I mean, he has impacted hundreds and hundreds or thousands and thousands and thousands of lives. so but it but it is, you know, good on you for for seeing that on the other side of it and building that reframing in into your life. I mean again it that what a horrible thing to have to go through. But at the same time like

Sabrina Gardner (39:38.715)
Amazing.

Adam Callinan (39:55.311)
that wake up call or n maybe not wake up calls or anything to say it, that just like force reframing is incredibly powerful.

Sabrina Gardner (40:00.241)
Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And one of the things my dad taught me, he's he's an entrepreneur, and he said, build a great team. And that has been sort of a theme of my life. really surrounding myself with great people, people who uplift me, inspire me, and really truly through cancer, that was something that made all the difference because I had so much love, I had so much support.

And then even from a business perspective, I had a great team and they all stepped up and carried that extra load during that time. And I think when we go through those difficult times, if we're surrounded by wonderful people, it makes that survivable.

Adam Callinan (40:47.886)
Yeah, the team d obviously doesn't extend, isn't just a business term. I mean, it's used as a business term, but it very much is not. I I grew up, you know, similar, not really in an entrepreneurial household as much, but my mom always used to say, You're the aver you know, some equivalent of like you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And that's and I heard that later on in life a lot, like Tim Ferris used to say this all the time. and I so that was kind of always ingrained in me. Like you are you are who you surround yourself with. And so I've always been really diligent, particularly in my later years, like.

Sabrina Gardner (41:03.8)
Yes.

Adam Callinan (41:17.72)
really, really, really diligent about with whom I I I spend time with and and being sure that there's a give and take of of positivity and growth in all of those relationships. Cause you have a limited amount of time. You have to be careful where you spend it.

Sabrina Gardner (41:32.228)
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, right before I got my cancer diagnosis, I actually went on a a business trip with other female entrepreneurs. And I kind of I went into that trip knowing I might have cancer. So I was in a really, really weird headspace. And we went to Morocco. So very outside of, you know, comfort zone. I ended up getting super sick. I had a coli. Like it was just this whole thing. But

Adam Callinan (41:48.816)
Wow, yeah.

Adam Callinan (42:01.169)
She's

Sabrina Gardner (42:02.055)
The experience and the relationships, these are some of my closest friends to this day. And it was just, it was like this amazing experience, you know, when you're thrown up on the side of the road and you've got somebody like rubbing your back and bond for life. But it's those people, and I think uniquely because they're all entrepreneurs and can relate to everything that I'm going through.

Those have been incredibly positive and impactful relationships in this journey.

Adam Callinan (42:35.598)
Yeah, the all those adventures. I mean, you know, the the good and the bad, they all sort of qualify as adventures and that's there's just so much growth and opportunity in all of them, including the entrepreneurial part.

Sabrina Gardner (42:45.827)
Yeah, absolutely.

Adam Callinan (42:48.784)
Well, this is epic. I mean, I would generally go down the what do you do to survive the hard things that but I think we pretty much covered that. You you threw in the the incredibly valuable curveball of of dual unsimultaneous cancers and all the bads and goods that have come from that, which is just insanely valuable for other people to hear because we not having gone through that knock on wood, can learn so much about.

resetting our own perspectives from those stories.

Sabrina Gardner (43:20.644)
Yeah. And I think just having that perspective of, you know, life happens, but it's how we navigate it that defines us. And my goal is that whatever interactions I have, I leave people better than I found them. And, you know, we're never gonna do that perfectly all the time. You know, I've gotten mad at the traffic cop who's pulled me over or whatever. But but it's a general rule, really trying to see people.

for the value that they bring and and treat them accordingly, whether it's, you know, through an email with customer service or the grocery store clerk, but really leaving that positive impact. And I think when you go through these hard things, it gives you a level of patience because you can't solve it overnight. And I think again, that has helped me in business. So everything sort of interacts and plays together. And I'm just I feel incredibly grateful to

be where I'm at. And there's there's obviously so many challenges, the, the, you know, imposter syndrome, being a female in business, being a female in manufacturing, you know, there's there's all these things, but then so many wonderful things have come out of it. one of the things that we do at our with our manufacturing team is we offer a hybrid workday. So we have moms that can drop their kids off, come work for us, and then go pick their kids up from school.

And they'll just do like a five and a half hour workday. and that's one of the things I've been really passionate about is how do we change the work environment so women don't have to opt out of certain industries. And I love being able to to start to change the conversation in those spaces.

Adam Callinan (45:02.832)
That's super cool. I mean that that in an in another testament, like there are a thousand ways to do a thing. There are an unlimited number of ways. And as the entrepreneur operator, you get to decide. You get to pick how you build the car. However you want to do it. Doesn't have to be like anybody else. You get to make it up as you go, which is again it's that part of the controlling the chaos, but is is so amazing. Good for you. That sounds really incredible.

Sabrina Gardner (45:27.557)
Thank you. It's you know, it's also the hardest job because you know, if you're not gonna make payroll, you gotta figure it out. So it's absolutely. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (45:31.022)
Yeah, of course.

Nothing good comes easy. That's the reality. You have to have you have to have the risk and the hardship to have all the good that comes with it and the potential upside.

Sabrina Gardner (45:44.771)
Yeah, I think there's a certain level of masochism to entrepreneurship. That feels very appropriate. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (45:48.016)
Yes, the the glass eating. I talk a lot about eating glass. that comes up frequently here. Yeah. Awesome, Sabrina. Where do you want people to find you to find salt? We'll put links and everything in the show notes.

Sabrina Gardner (46:02.946)
that'd be great. you can go to our website at saltbysabrina dot com or at salt by Sabrina is our Instagram and social handle. We'd love people to check us out, give us a try. It will change your organizational life and relieve your mental load.

Adam Callinan (46:21.452)
I can tell you that we are going to because I don't like cleaning the junk drawer. And and I feel like we probably have a lot of drawer opportunities for s you know, they're like these big deep drawers that could be used dramatically better.

Sabrina Gardner (46:34.379)
It will literally change your life. And I can say because I've had mine in my drawers for six years, they still look brand new. Like they really do last. They're incredible. And it's like once you put them in the drawer, your kids sort of increase their level of accountability. Because when the drawer is messy, they'll throw the fruit snack wrapper and junk in the drawer. But this sort of looks so beautiful that you don't want to put junk into it.

Adam Callinan (46:36.408)
Sabrina Gardner (47:03.451)
So it will help you be successful in the long run.

Adam Callinan (47:04.046)
Gi it like guilts you away from from recreating the junk in the drunk drawer. I love it. Yeah, I'll take it. That sounds great. Awesome. Well thank you for coming.

Sabrina Gardner (47:13.219)
I love it. Well thank you so much. Yeah, thank you for having me.

Adam Callinan (47:17.498)
No, this is this is great. Thank you for for the deep honesty again. That's where all the value is. So really appreciate it.

Sabrina Gardner (47:23.918)
Absolutely.