Overdraft: Will the Viennese family's food business turn into a recipe for success?

In this series, we talk to people who know what despair is. Now that they've achieved success, they share with us their personal experiences with financial hardship and the lessons they learned during their down times in business.

Wian van Blommestein had a modest culinary hobby for over a decade – making dried beef, known as biltong. That hobby grew into a desire to start a family business, and then grow that business so that his loved ones could join in full-time.

In the words of Vien:

I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit. I would even say that all my family members have this spirit, with the possible exception of my father Stef. But we were making biltong for ourselves as a family hobby. At one point, we realized that we were doing something bigger than just beef, which, by the way, was becoming more and more popular with people. So, at the end of 2015, my brother Emil and I sat down and decided: "One of us has to take this opportunity and make it to such a result that the other one can join him."

I had some savings, but not enough. However, I realized that this was a unique opportunity, as there was nothing like our biltong on the market. I decided to leave my current full-time job, knowing that I would not have a salary, and that my well-being would depend on how hard I worked for my business. Our goal was to build a company and make it successful through several factors:

• increasing customer awareness of our products;
• increasing the transparency of our activities;
• naturalness of products;
• and simply offering healthier food options to all of America who may not be as familiar with biltong in general.

At the same time, we were happy to share the culture of South Africa , since this is where the recipe for making biltong originates.

Doing something on your own is always a tough decision. I had student loans to pay off. I didn’t have a salary for the first two years. But luckily, I had a family member who let me stay in his garage studio with my then girlfriend. But we had to sacrifice the fun of our lives: we didn’t travel for a long time, didn’t hang out with friends much, etc. I didn’t spend the money from the proceeds, but put it back into my business. My credit cards helped me find funds to live on as well as grow my business. I was able to build a profitable business by the end of 2017, when my brother was able to join.

But when we were growing the business for the first few years and even now today, it is still very, very difficult to do. We would go to each retailer and convince them that what we had was better than just beef and that we could sell our biltong in their store. We also supported our products with posts on social media. At the same time, I was building our online store , which allowed us to get to the stage where our business is today: being a financially independent company. But at that point, I did not have the finances to hire someone to do demonstrations in stores. All the demonstrations, support, advertising and marketing posts, photos - everything had to be done by myself, friends, family, or in exchange for our products.

Working with family is always a blessing and a curse. Luckily, we all get along well and are closely connected due to our South African roots. I was and still am very dependent on my family and their involvement in my business. At that time, every weekend we had to sit at a table and put stickers on our products - 1000 to 2000 a month. Everyone did it - my girlfriend (now my wife), my brother's wife, my mom, my dad ... anyone we could find.

As a first generation immigrant, I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity and justify the risk my parents took in leaving their family in South Africa to come to the US and give their children a better opportunity in life. They definitely understood the challenges I would face and were willing to help. But I never wanted to overburden them. We are definitely growing right now and just recently hired our first full-time team member in addition to my brother and me. The whole point of this whole venture was to build a company so we could help our parents with their retirement.

Illustrations by German Gonzalez