Colorado -based entrepreneurs in this side Hustle Spotlight Q&A BOONE Whiteside, 29, and Ben Meddali, 28. Are co-founder of Whitcide and Meddali MalayA haircare brand that began as a DIY passion project in a Denver apartment and developed in eight-sky business over three years. Reactions have been edited for length and clarity.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Highland. Boone Whiteside, Left, and Ben Medicie, Right.
When did you start your side, and where did you get inspiration for it?
Whitecide: When Ben and I became the best friends during our junior year in CU Boulder, one of the things that used to bring us was our shared aspiration to build our own thing-9-5 working on the dreams of someone else did not follow the path. This shared passion will not appear for much later, though.
When I first started dreaming of a hair product company, which was beyond styling someone’s hair with toxic sh*T, I was working in an ecommerce startup in a marketing and operation role. We were a small team, and the company was working hard to establish itself. I learned a ton about solving the problem through the early stages of the business, but I had a leg from the door, pulling me towards my own entrepreneur.
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Ben was working in an analyst role in an analyst role in a parole tech company, but the real role changed a lot during his tenure as he hated to do the same thing every day. Juggling sales, learning code, handling risk analysis, dubbing in marketing and development … Their manager was constantly breathing his neck to “focus” on “his main role”. Neither of us were happy with those career trajectory.
Unclaimed heritage brands dominating on hairstyle space with cheap, chemical-based ingredients and useless packaging, and unsuccessful in my search for a brand that disrupts the industry, I stumbled into an idea that solved my own consumer’s needs. I had a hump, this problem resonated with people like me.
What were some of the first stages you raised to get a side hustle from the ground?
Whitecide: The first step was to be naturally occurring, killing the Google machine (before Bai, or AI) to highlight the plant-based materials, which could change plastic, endocrizing formulas. Without licking chemistry or cooking experience for my name, I started ordering wax, clay, oil and other vegetation materials and started mixing them on my stovetop.
Luckily I was always a strange, so I was quite strange to start pouring these unsuccessful cones into my hair, it was quite strange to all my friends to do so and to react and to be unbalanced by my roommate, telling me how strange I am … soon to become a hair strange.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Highland
Are there any free or paid resources that have been particularly helpful for you in starting and running this business?
Medici: Some technical standouts include: clavio for email marketing, shopfi (and all its terrible plugins) to power our site, triple whale for atribution metrics, amped for lead capture (now mailchimp), now mailchimp, adobe premiere for content creation and feel like a garbage look of a garbage and end of the rampage. Figure to do.
Whitecide: Ben covered most of the paid people. For free, the best resource we tapped was our humble perseverance in demanding help from other business builders. People usually want to help, but you cannot be afraid to ask. We recently caught Coffee with Justin Gold, Founder of Justin, founder of peanut butter brand, and they expressed it well: “Being Inappropriate.” This mentality has played an important role in the creation of an incredibly supportive network of those who have helped us to make a highland strategy from the ground and other founders to avoid mistakes. So go to be inappropriate – just be humble about it.
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If you can go back to your professional journey and change a process or approach, what would it be, and how do you want you to do it in a different way?
Whitecide: I think Highland gets high marks to do this hurry, but I want us to do it before. From the first day, become very serious about your unit economics. Learn what your gross margin is. Make a plan for how you will bring the Cog down over time, and know that every money matters. Get serious about your finance, and find out how and when you can do your business. For now, the days of raising capital and how to find out how to become profitable later, because most of the business taking this route are.
One of the most magical days of Highland was when the June 2023 books closed, and we had $ 113 in profit. We came to know how to make the business self -sufficient, and this means our runway was unlimited. Be beneficial, do not die, then find out how effectively on the scale.
But apart from this, no regrets. The journey was a journey, and it shaped us. Let you shape.
When it comes to this specific business, you should be particularly challenging and/or surprising that people who come in this type of work should be prepared, but not the possibility?
Medi: Formulation (of any kind, but especially in beauty) which are really natural, are incredibly difficult to be right. We rapidly learned that all that came before cutting the corners made by us, and we were offered the same formulation shortcut that ensure continuity and so -called “performance”.
It was adamant that our products would be different, we ran away in left and right issues. Our content is unstable and abused; The initial batch would be very different, and they had very little shelf life than the products we were going up. Many times, we lost thousands of units to fail, as a result, went out of the stock and questioned whether it was all worth it. Finally, we broke from the other side of the challenge, now define again what innovation is possible within the “better, better for you, better for the planet”.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Highland
Can you miss a specific example when something went very wrong? How did you fix it?
Whitecide: We have never raised a multi-million dollar round-less than less, not yet-but it has not spared us from facing serious cash flow challenges. Just after our friends and family round, we hit a thick patch. We were burning around $ 10,000 per month as we worked towards reducing our loss and gradually increased our marketing expenses. Nevertheless, we were not very worried. We had a three -month runway and what felt that the right investor stood in line – someone is ready to write a complete investigation and brings industry expertise and mentorship that Ben and I only expected. We were set. As long as, suddenly, we were not.
The process continued to drag for months. Our bank account dried. The deal eventually fell through. We had to pay ourselves, cut bone expenses, delay development plans and stress relationships with our manufacturing partners. This was the first time we actually faced the possibility of losing the company, and it was an intestine investigation.
Medici: So, we scrambled. Gathered less capital than the plan we had planned, but we worked it. We remained a confident, thin and scary for our investors. Turn back, it was one of the best things that could have been. This forced us to prove our way to become a cash-flow positive and helped us maintain more ownership. But this was a hard -earned lesson: Funding money is not real until the bank hits the bank. And no matter how promising a deal looks, you cannot make a business on a potential alone.
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How long did you take to see continuous monthly revenue? How much did the side hustle earn? What does development and revenue now look like?
Whitcide and Medici: We did not start earning continuous monthly revenue ($ 10,000- $ 20,000 per month) until mid-2012. Side Hustle kicked back all the ways in 2021, when Ben and I were making batch of our glacial clay pomade in our kitchened mixer, packing units with hand and selling them on our shoppiff storefront and salon and a kidney of salon and barber. Side Husters probably generated an average of $ 1,000- $ 3,000 per month between 2021 and 2023.
Now in 2025, after launching our third SKU, we hit our first million-dollar month and remained directly profitable for about two years. This is not a race. Become an overnight success in five to 10 years.
What do you enjoy the most in running this business?
Medici: Honestly, Hot Tech … This whole thing is to be done with those people we love and cherish the most in life. People always warns against going into business with the best friends or family, but this part has been the most fun. Every single day is different, and is incredibly powerful and motivational to grow, grow and even fail in front of each other, growing up and even friends.
Whitecide: What I enjoy the most is awake every day with a purpose, solving challenging problems with your best friend and co-founder and choosing your own adventure in every aspect of what we do. Your own boss is not an overrated part of being an entrepreneur. This is incredibly difficult, but is also the best.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Highland
What is your best piece of specific, actionable business advice?
Whitecide: Starting is often the most difficult part, but if anyone has, I present a piece of advice from my dear friend and Shopbop, the founder of Shopbop: “Beware of the incoming call.” This means to be laser-focused which you think the roadmap is for your business and is trying to those goals with intentions. Many emails, phone calls, pitch and day-to-day functions become an distraction that you know that you need to work.
This does not mean that they ignore opportunities because they arise – this is a call to define your vision and make it accountable in working to bring it to life. You know what you need to do; Do not distract the noise.
