Sometimes you have to adapt to the market and pivot. But do you know that your brand can fit multiple different platforms? Yes, it’s good to wear many hats! You can’t make everyone 100% happy, but that’s okay as long as what you’re doing stays true to your brand. Join the CEO and Founder of Orgain, Andrew Abraham, as he discusses how he grew Orgain to be more than just about whole foods. Learn how he adapted to the market by going into the lifestyle platform. Find out what Orgain plans to do for the future in today’s episode.

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Listen to the podcast here

Pivoting Platforms: Wearing Many Hats As An Entrepreneur With Andrew Abraham

I have been looking forward to this episode for a long time because, as all of you know, the aim and goal of this show is to give you actionable information, things that you can take back, contemplate, think, and put into effect right away. Andrew is somebody who I admire. By the end of this show, you’ll all do the same. He’s been on this journey for a long time and learned a lot along the way. I’m excited to have him join us and share a bit about that.

I won’t spend a lot of time having him recant his story. That’s widely available for those of you who want to read his amazing story. I want to spend the time with him on what it’s been like building a company, important decision-making moments for the company and himself. Andrew, thank you much for joining. Share with the audience who may not know you or know a little bit about you, Orgain and your background.

Thank you much for having me, Elliot. I’m a medical doctor by trade. I had no intention or business being in the food and beverage industry. Life circumstances have brought me here through a variety of things but mainly being diagnosed with cancer and realizing that a lot of nutritional products on the market weren’t very good for you. I wanted to change that, which allowed me to get into starting Orgain, which comes from the word organic and our mantra to gain health, energy and life.

2009 amid my residency of all times, I decided to start this business as a side business, even though I was supposed to take over my dad’s practice that he had built for me for 35 years. I started Orgain and dove in headfirst. It was trial by fire. It went from learning the language of medicine to learning the language of the food and beverage industry. There were a lot of mistakes along the way. It was 2009 when we launched the world’s first ready-to-drink organic shake. Here we are several years later and have expanded from 2 SKUs to over 120 SKUs and are in 50,000 retail locations across the globe and growing. We’ve been very humbled by the journey.

One of the things that you did that is somewhat a contrarian approach to what we see so many do is that for the first 5, 6 years, plus it was just you. Talk about why did you take that approach. Why did you stay lean, limited in a team and reach for long?

It was two things. Number one, being naive. I didn’t know any better. I wanted to take and do everything myself because the second reason was bootstrapping, trying to save as much money as possible and trying to do everything myself. On one hand, it was good in the sense that I learned every aspect of the business the hard way, made a lot of stupid mistakes and failed over and over. That was one of the things that stuck out to me but they say, “Failure is success in progress.” That was true for me. It was mainly being naive.

I should have hired earlier but I took it upon myself to do a lot of things. It served me well. There were a lot of lessons that have been lasting lessons for me because of that. I took the bootstrap approach as much as possible. I also didn’t want to raise outside capital early on, so I did focus on doing that. Looking back in hindsight, it was something that was a great lesson for me. At the same time, I would say a very valuable lesson learned and that I should have started earlier in having people around me.

What makes you say that? What would you have done differently in terms of bringing on people and capital for that matter too? First of all, it gave you a fantastic education and made you a very well-rounded founder because you knew your business intimately and there’s a benefit there. It gave you that freedom and flexibility for a long time without the influence of significant outside capital. At the same time, it’s pretty all-consuming. You have a family, it slows the arc of growth, all of those things. If you could go back and change some of those elements specifically as it relates to hiring and capital finding, what would those be?

One of my first hires was on the operations side. I did a lot of the operations. I would order the ingredients, ship it, arrange the manufacturing, negotiate the totaling, all of it, A to Z. The epiphany moment for me was hiring our VP of Ops, at that time. He is our COO now that has many years in the industry and is very well-versed. What I realized in the 1st week or 2 is that the things that I was doing that took five steps, he didn’t want. What I negotiated in a way that I thought was great, he did it in a way that made a lot more sense and lasting and truly developed a partnership with the manufacturers.

It opened up my eyes to the sense that what I was doing was fine to get me by but to hit the next level or do things properly from the beginning, it’s important to surround yourself with people that have deep expertise and learnings because you leverage that. It’s like you and I can go out tomorrow and build a house together but a guy that’s built 30 houses is going to be able to do it a lot quicker. You want to be able to leverage that expertise and experience. That was a very interesting, eye-opening moment for me.

I’d also say that on the raising capital side, because I was bootstrapped in the beginning, I was able to instill that in everyone that I hired. I was saying like, “Every dollar matters to me.” My wife was our accounts payable and receivable. When she wrote a check for $50,000, she didn’t understand why we couldn’t decorate the kids’ rooms. I was trying to explain to her, “We’re going to get a check back for 40,000.” This is how it works in the beginning.

It’s one of those things where we took a very disciplined approach on making sure that we preserved every dollar in the beginning and we’re very careful. The business should be at scale but we still take that same approach. It’s hiring that deep expertise, whether it’s operations or sales. Sales is another one. As I hired our first salesperson, it was eye-opening, the connections that they had and how they were able to hit the ground running versus me knocking on doors and getting the door closed on me over and over.

It’s relationships and being able to have that deep sense of experience and expertise that helps founders early on. You pick which categories you need the help the most on. In the beginning, it’s building the infrastructure and getting sales out there, surrounding yourself with people that are smarter than you is invaluable.

One of the things that I suggest and you can agree or disagree is sometimes there isn’t the optionality to add right away but it’s important to know when to add and who to add. Sometimes we do that org chart-wise by what our advisors or investors push us. I find that the best way for entrepreneurs is to do it in a grid. You have a grid of four quadrants, which the access points would be the high value, low value, high cost and low cost.

As you are doing activities, what are the things that you’re doing that are of high value and high cost? What are the things that are low value and low cost? Begin to look at those quadrants and then take the things that aren’t your highest value activities and maybe are the lower-cost things. Get those taken off your plate first. As a founder, the business needs you to manifest the best version of yourself. It needs you to be spending the most amount of your time doing the things that matter most. That’s how you’re going to grow.

It couldn’t be more accurate in what you described. Put your time and effort into what you do best. It’s ROI. Whether that’s marketing, sales or your team, think about how much you’re going to get out of every minute that you spend in the day. What you outlined is critical. I learned that the hard way. We all know that being an entrepreneur is jumping off a cliff and building a plane on the way down. The piece of the plane that you put together is the team.

You’ll quickly find out that a lot of people start putting things in the plane before putting the wings on. That exactly goes back to the model that you described. Focus on the wings, engines and the thing that’s going to move the business forward, alleviate you and reduce some of that pressure and stress. I think back to those first 3 to 4 years when it was a one-man’s show. The amount of burden and stress that was on my shoulders was almost debilitating. You almost can’t do what you’re supposed to do because every day you’re too involved in the weeds.

This goes back to the mission of Orgain but you have to walk your walk. Health is at the crosshairs of what you do and you’re ignoring your own because you’re putting so much burden and work and self-care isn’t part of it. How did you begin to build that in? Knowing you, a big part of who you are as well is what you do to take care of yourself and your family. I want that to be heard by other founders who sometimes self-diminished that as an important part of being a founder.

It goes back to every time we get on a flight and they give you the safety instructions. They say, “Put your oxygen mask on yourself first so you could help others.” There’s a lot of truth to that in terms of how it translates to an entrepreneur. You have to put your oxygen mask on first and that means taking care of your mental health, body, nutrition and all of that becomes important.

It becomes lost in the early days. Honestly, I’m busier than ever. However, there are some non-negotiables. 3:00 to 4:00, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I go to the gym. There are no meetings or calls. I come back and stay in the office until late but those are some things that are important to me, making sure that I’m taking care of my diet and nutrition.

You can’t help others unless you’re functioning at your best. It’s an important point and I’m glad you brought it up because I see a lot of people that almost see that self-sacrificing is a goal of theirs to show how hard they’re working and how well the business is going to do like, “I haven’t slept in five days.” It’s counterproductive. I didn’t sleep a lot in the beginning at all.

Looking back, it’s not smart. My most effective days are the days where I sleep very well. I’m measuring my sleep with this Oura Ring. I’m measuring all kinds of stuff to make sure that I’m optimized so that I could give the most to my business and family. At the end of the day, the most important thing is your health, family and wellbeing. You have to take care of that first. If you have that optimized, your business will thrive as a result.

As a founder, the most important asset in the business is you. If you’re not extracting the best out of the most important asset, you’re setting yourself back. How do you discern what’s important to what’s interesting? The example you used is staying up five days straight and being busy. A lot of founders fall into this trap of confusing activity or effort with results. What have you learned about that, the importance of focusing on results and not effort and the importance of being able to discern, “What’s cool and interesting,” versus, “This is important to the business?”

It brings me back to something that’s become very important for me. The best business decisions are not the yeses. The best business decisions are the ones you say no to like all of the shiny objects. As entrepreneurs, every day, we are attracted to launching more products to get into more stores. I’ll give you an example. I remember I went to a show and it was a speed dating show. It was ECRM. I went by myself. I didn’t know any better.

I was in Texas or somewhere. It was exhausting but I wanted to push it. I did as best I could to present to everybody. I came out of there what I thought was the game changer where Walgreens accepted Orgain and it was 7,000 stores. I thought that was the beginning. That was the tipping point and where it catapults Orgain into the next realm. In terms of doing what’s important and not just doing things for the sake of doing, that was one of our worst decisions early on.

Imagine the number of unsaleable and nickel and dimes that they were taking along the way. It was 7,000 stores and it was a shiny object. It looked amazing but did it help? At the end of the day, it did more harm than good. It was one of those things that took so much of my time that, looking back, I wish we had pushed that off many years later.

It’s always trying to say no and making sure that you focus on what’s important. Sometimes you do have to step back and think about what’s best for the business and think about the North Star of the business. I think of Elon Musk. He doesn’t come out and talk about the specific features of the cars. He’s always talking about his mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.

I have to step back sometimes and say, “Our mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to health and wellness through Orgain.” Sometimes you have to extract yourself from the weeds, think about that and think about what moves the needle the most to get you to that goal versus trying to pick up the small wins here and there. You do have to extract yourself sometimes and think big picture.

The most important trait is discipline, knowing your noes. How did you challenge yourself to know what to say yes to and no to? You still do it, I assume. What’s the filtering mechanism?

It comes back to what you said. “What is the return on this?” Even when the marketing team or sales brings me something, I always ask, “What are we going to gain from this? What’s the size of the prize? To what detriment? How does this push us forward?” I always ask myself ten different questions as we evaluate opportunities. It’s not just getting into stores.

“Where are we going to be placed? What’s our anticipated velocity? How are we going to be able to think outside of the box here to make sure that it’s a wild success?” If the answers to those questions come back and they’re not satisfactory, we’d like to pause and say, “Maybe this is another Walgreen’s moment for us. It’s a shiny object and we should wait.”

We have this huge marketing campaign. “Does it make sense to spend all this money? What’s going to be the return? Should we spend it more on Amazon or D2C to where we see an active ROI?” These are all the questions that come to mind. It comes through learning the hard way. It’s being able to mess up twenty times to have one good one that you realized and then apply that moving forward.

That’s a question I always encourage people to ask too and some of the questions you said are fantastic. The key one is, “Am I convinced we’re going to succeed? Do we have a path to success there?” The other is the antithesis of that. “What if we crash and burn? What if this is a disaster? Is this recoverable? How is this going to impact the business if it goes wildly wrong?”

For those reading, our good friend, Grace Ventura from Grace’s Goodness, who is a long-time health and wellness coach, is offering to any founders listening as she is happy to help you in your self-care and to reach out. Thanks, Grace. We’ll share that. Another question was texted to me, they’re looking at the books on your desk or behind you on your shelves and asking which of them have been the most influential. I’ll round it out and say, how do you continue to educate and improve your knowledge base? How big of a level of importance do you put on that?

As part of self-care for me, 30 minutes on my calendar, before I go to sleep, every night I have to read. I try to target a book a week. There’s nothing that I’m good at. I don’t have any athletic skills or anything like that but I am a speed reader. I read quickly. I love absorbing information. A book a week, pushing the envelope is the best that I can do. Even then, that’s a stretch.

It’s one of the things that helps me unwind, take my mind off things and go to sleep. It also helps me absorb new information. I love reading books on health and wellness. I also love reading books about keeping things in perspective. I do have the unfair advantage of almost dying. It’s allowed me to put so many things in perspective.

There’s a book I read called When Breath Becomes Air. It’s an incredible book that continues to keep things in perspective. For entrepreneurs, it’s important to always keep things in perspective and understand what is important in life. From there, there’s a variety of books. Shoe Dog is a great book that was the Nike story and their adversity. Atomic Habits is another one that forces you to adjust, adapt and take small steps into making meaningful changes in your life.

There’s a variety. I got to think of which ones have been the biggest ones for me. There’s been a lot. I got to look back and see which ones have helped me the most. The Nudge is one that I’m reading that talks about how people are influenced, even as kids in schools. If we put the apples at the beginning of the line, how many more apples will you eat? It’s the same thing in marketing. If you put your best foot forward in the beginning, in your email campaigns, and so forth, what effect that has on your consumer?

It’s a variety of topics. What I do is I keep a spiral-bound notebook by my desk. From these books, I extract the key learnings for me. I keep this book on my desk. Once a week, I flip through it to take all of the key learnings from the books. It’s not just reading. It’s taking away the 5, 6 key highlights that grabbed you and you keep those close to you because there’s a wealth of knowledge out there.

I’m a reader too. It’s important to do. There’s a different absorption and thing that happens in my experience and to the synopsis when you take information in that way versus watching TV. It’s taking that time to close things down a bit and absorb. I would encourage folks to do that. I enjoy it very much as well. Fernando has a question here. He’s given you the right of a refusal in its answer because he says he’s worried it’s too specific. He’s particularly interested in how your ambassador program works and its results thus far.

We have two different ambassador programs. One is healthcare ambassadors. These are the nutritionists and doctors of the world, those who align with us on making sure that they’re trying to bring clean nutrition to patients. That’s one of the key ambassador programs. What we do is we send them free samples. We educate them and they educate us. They become real stewards of the brand and help us evangelize about the brand to their patients. That’s on one side.

On the other side, it’s our regular influencer ambassadors. That’s on Instagram and Facebook and so forth. What we do is we find people that are genuine advocates of Orgain and use it. We reach out to them and ask them if they want to become an ambassador. Existing Orgain users and those that we think would benefit from using Orgain and wanting to try it, we send them free products. We have a dialogue with them and they work with us to promote the product organically. It’s not ads. It’s more like them incorporating it in their smoothies every day and a variety of different occasions that becomes more organic.

In terms of effectiveness, picking and choosing your ambassadors is the most important thing. You could spend a lot of money and lose your shirt very quickly or you could align with those that aligned with your values and brand that are willing to do it at a reasonable rate. The most important thing is making sure that you’re not just spending money on ambassadors for the sake of spending money but you’re aligning yourselves with those that are going to evangelize for you and get the brand out there. Once you’re able to do that and scale that up, that’s where the magic happens because their audience tells others. That’s how your brand gets out there in a very meaningful way.

Another question comes back to self-care. They’re asking if you can share a little bit more about some of the self-care rituals that you have. That’s top of mind for a lot of people coming into the end of 2021. These have been very challenging months for everybody frankly but the entrepreneurs have felt the effects of it deeply.

Four pillars, for me, are critically important. Number one, first and foremost, is nutrition. You are what you eat and there’s a lot of truth to that. If you start your day with coffee and donuts, you’re going to feel that way later as you get an insulin or sugar spike and stress hormones versus starting your day with a plant-based organic smoothie. Not that I’m advocating for Orgain but comparing if you put frozen blueberries and fiber. Make sure that what you put in your body is going to benefit you.

The other most important thing for me is exercise. That’s weight training or even taking a walk. A lot of people say, “I don’t want to exercise.” I say, “Start with a 30-minute walk. You’ll feel better. Your body will thank you.” Being active, getting outside, exercising is the second pillar for me. Sleep, I was neglecting sleep for a very long time. Almost took it as a badge of honor that I slept three hours. I still don’t sleep that great now but I’m significantly better.

I monitor my sleep and make sure that I’m getting enough sleep. I’ve learned that if you get to sleep early and wake up at 4:00 AM or 5:00 AM, those few hours in the morning are my most effective and productive hours of the day, rather than trying to stay up until 2:00 AM, being half-asleep and trying to get work done.

Then stress, your mental health. What do you do to take care of your mental health? For me, it’s watching funny YouTube videos, playing basketball with my kids and hanging out with friends. Those four pillars have to be there. You have to build the foundation. From there, it’s being consistent. It’s one thing to say, I’m going to try to sleep well. It’s another thing to do it.

These four pillars, if you pay a lot of attention to them, you build that core foundation. You’ll notice a dramatic difference in your health. We don’t know how good we’re supposed to feel. The body is this incredible engine. If we feed it the right things, we take care of it and you’re optimized, you operate at a completely different level. I would encourage all entrepreneurs and founders, as we’re under a tremendous amount of stress, to keep these four pillars in mind.

I can speak to it personally and say that I lost that for a while. It’s very easy to add the self-narrative and explain in a way the importance of self-care. It’s an easy thing to tell yourself, “I’ve got a lot to do. I need to get this done. I need the support. It’s okay if I do this. I’ll catch up my sleep later or I’ll eat better the next day.” It catches up with you and you begin to see the impact of it. Fred Hart made a passing comment saying, “Let’s not let this crisis go to waste. Let’s use it for something.” One of the things I used it for was a reawakening of that self-care. I do think to all of you reading that it’s hugely important. 

I’m going to turn it into some more business questions. One of them was your original go-to-market strategy. I talk about this for brands, especially in the early days, to drive discovery and try to get as close to where the need status is most acute or the problem most pronounced. My understanding is that it’s very much what you did at the start of Orgain. You’re originally solving your problem as you were being treated for cancer, finding that nutrition and hospitals are horrible. Can you talk a little bit about those early days of your go-to-market strategy?

That was the initial go-to-market strategy. I thought it was for nourishment and for those that were going to be sick, had wisdom pulled and digestive issues. That was the intent but there was a pivot. I was going into hospitals, carrying a case of Orgain and walking in, thinking it was an awesome thing that I was going to give this nutritionist a free case of Orgain but I would turn the corner and there would be a palette of Ensure. It was defeating and very tough. I knew that I was up against Goliaths.

One of our first accounts was Whole Foods. What I realized very quickly was Orgain became a lifestyle brand. I thought it was for nourishments and for those that were sick, then all of a sudden, it was moms on the go, business professionals, students and athletes. As much as I was focused on the need and how important it was, there was a pivot there that I had to embrace. I said, “I was going towards medical nourishment and all of a sudden, all the people that are using it are not the people that I thought would be. What do you do? Do you embrace that or do you still focus and push down the medical realm?”

I was getting a lot of pushbacks on medical and realized that my checkbook was a little bit different than habits. I embraced that. Orgain very quickly became a lifestyle brand. I knew that it was going to be much more than a medical shake company. That’s been the case. We’ve evolved quite a bit but you go to where you want to go first and then adapt to what the market tells you. You could try to push as much as you want but you have to go with the flow in terms of what’s pulling your product off the shelf and who’s pulling it.

In the beginning, I wasn’t sure about new products. I would listen intently to every single one of our consumers, their questions and complaints. That helped me a lot. The number one measuring stick for which direction you should go is your consumer. I read the emails intently. For everyone that wanted a phone call, I would call them personally and spend a very long time understanding what worked and what didn’t. From there, I would develop the go-to-market strategy. New products evolve directly from our consumers.

That is the art of brand building. Branding is a verb. It’s the activity of aligning what you want people to believe with what they believe. You have a choice to either move the consumers and the shoppers to your end of the continuum, meet them somewhere in the middle or go towards them. Sometimes brands get far too enamored with what they want or aspire to be. At the end of the day, coming back to you the reminder of what your mission is, by moving that and pivoting, you’re speeding the ability to accomplish what you set out to do. It’s just you’re doing it differently.

It comes full circle. The whole medical realm and everything that I wanted to focus on is becoming a focus of ours. We’ve built this lifestyle platform, have built out a medical team and feel very strongly that’s an area of major opportunity for us but it wasn’t on year one. It’s year twelve that we’re going to take a very disciplined focus and carve out a division specifically for that. You do have to adapt, listen to your consumer and meet them right in the middle.

The next question is about the innovation pipeline. You started with 2 SKUs then have over 100. How has that worked? How have you made decisions and known when to introduce and where to introduce? As a larger company, you have some benefits of data and expertise but in those early days, you began to proliferate SKUs a little bit about that process.

There’s a very strong bull in the beginning for entrepreneurs to go after a lot of different products. We love launching products. The idea of new products is very attractive but listening to your consumers and launching them in a very methodical strategic manner is important. I listened to the consumers. In the beginning, I wasn’t sure if we should launch a kid’s shake or not but more moms and dads were saying, “I’m giving my son half of the shake. It’d be nice if there was a smaller size. I wish there was straw and be more convenient.”

Frankly, it was a major capital outlay to launch a new RTB. As I waited, I saw that there were thousands of requests for this and realized, “This makes a lot of sense.” I started to preview it with the buyers and show them, “This is the response we’re getting on the adult. These are the inquiries that we’re getting from our consumers. Would you be open to adding a kid’s shake to your set?”

This is before we even made it. The response was very positive from the buyers, so then we decided to proceed. Operating in that manner is making sure that you have the demand, verifying the demand, previewing it with buyers or people that you trust and then taking a calculated bet. Otherwise, I wouldn’t launch 20, 30 products in the beginning with 6 or 7 flavors of each and we would have failed.

It’s okay to take imperfect action and talk to a buyer about an idea or a thought before it becomes a prototype or a final product. My experience is many buyers respect, appreciate and get more involved because you’re coming to them.

I’ll give you another quick example. One of the inflection points for the company was we started in ready to drink, which is very difficult. I was also consuming these plant powders because I knew they were healthy but they tasted bad. When you mix them up, it was like concrete and when you drink them, you had to plug your nose and hope for the best. We had a new format that I came up with. “What if we got into powders?” It was such a crowded space. “How do you bridge that gap?” These companies are extremely well-funded. Orgain is a small company at the time. It has no place going into powders. How do we compete against these huge companies?

We worked on a formula for almost two years, developed a formula and in stealth mode, started presenting it to buyers and was very honest. I said, “We know it’s a very crowded category. I used to drink these myself. They taste horrible but we’ve disrupted the category and we’d like to preview this product with you.” That was our first big break. We went straight to Costco with it. We got to buy in and had people come into it first.

When I saw Costco, Whole Foods and others all saying, “Yes,” we decided to go into a whole new format that transformed our business. If we were an RGB business, we’d be a fraction of the size that we are. That was a very eye-opening experience for me. It was like, “It was a whole new format and platform. Do we have permission to go? Do we have the demand to go? Can we execute in a way not going to collapse the business and then make a calculated decision to proceed?”

You used something I want to dig a little bit, which is permission to go. Explain to those reading what you mean by that.

A lot of brands get into the space, start with one format and then feel that they could go and do six different things, categories or platforms. Permission is from your consumer, buyer and P&L but it’s something that’s going to be margin accretive and that you have the capital for it. Permission comes from your resources, the margin from the product and the demand. As you’ve previewed people, talked to your existing consumers, sent samples, talked to some buyers and advisors you trust, permission comes from all of these people. Before it used to be, I would ask myself, “Should we do this,” and then go and that’s the more naive approach.

We’re able to test things online on D2C on Amazon. We live in a completely different time than when I started in 2009. We could decide tomorrow that we want to launch a pumpkin spice latte and ask our consumers if they like it or not. Would you want a pumpkin spice latte or a peppermint hot chocolate? We email 500,000 people and they tell us yes or no. They have a pretty good idea of what you should do. Starting off, you don’t have that reach but you do have the benefit of doing that on a smaller scale. You could make more informed decisions that way. Permission comes from a variety of different people and resources but it is important as you launch a new product.

Nadia with Naya Foods is ready to be an evangelical bag carrier for you saying that she wants you to take on Ensure and focus on medical sales because patients deserve to know and use Orgain. West with Snooze is asking you to put and channel your inner clairvoyant for a minute. Where do you think things are going for the CPG industry post-COVID? What’s changed that isn’t going to revert? What’s your vision for the future?

I’m optimistic about the future of CPG. There’s a lot of things in COVID that accelerated online, like Amazon. We’re five years ahead of where we were supposed to be as a result of COVID. Everyone is coming into better for your products more and more. My mom, who didn’t know how to use the internet, is Instacarting and doing all kinds of stuff like a subscription on Amazon.

It’s accelerated where we thought we’d be by about five years plus. The other thing that has happened is more and more people have tried taking care of themselves. That’s not going to change. It’s going to be everyone that’s reading this that’s in the industry because better-for-you products are going to become top of mind.

Everyone I’ve talked to has said, “COVID has opened up my eyes to what I should be doing for my health and how I can improve my immune system, digestive system or whatever it may be. I’m trying to make sure that my fridge is filled with all of these products and my cabinet has all of these products.” We have a well-primed position for brands to expand and capitalize on that if we do it correctly. We’ve accelerated the online presence and the better-for-you movement, which is great.

We’ve expanded the better-for-you movement to mean more than just better for us individually but better for the planet is important and better for the communities we operate in, whether it’s the communities that we source from, serve or employ. It’s important to ask yourself, as a founder and entrepreneur, “What aspects of those things can we be doing better?”

It’s okay if some of them are aspirational. Maybe you can’t do everything you want to do for the climate because the packaging that you want to use is out of reach or you can’t do as much to fight for social justice because your voice is too small but you want to do more. All of that is fine but it needs to be the fabric of the business. That’s what consumers expect. They want to buy products that are doing right for the people, the planet and communities.

It’s not where you are but where you’re going to your point. Even as a small brand or a brand that has tiny revenues, it doesn’t matter. People relate to and want to see the ethos of the brand. The reason why Orgain has been successful is the authenticity of the brand. Mainly because we didn’t know any better. This is who we are, how we operate and how I run the business. I tell everyone I hire that, “My title says CEO but I’m the furthest you’ll find from the CEO. I happened to have that title because I was the first employee.”

Everything that matters to me is instilled in the fabric of the business. Anyone that can’t afford the product that’s dealing with cancer or whatever it may be, we ship it, no questions asked. We’ve done that since day one. All of those things are important. What matters most to you and you taking care of your brand and of the world in whatever way that is, sustainability or giving back, all of those things shine through. It’s the difference between a good brand and a great brand.

I couldn’t agree more. We hear a lot of disparaging things about business but the truth of the matter is when harnessed for good and businesses are aligned with the right values, there’s very little else that can be as impactful as a change agent. That’s what you built towards. A question here that came through our online community was about tribalism. There’s such tribalism in food. You’ve got your plant-based vegan eaters, keto eaters and paleo. How do you manage that tribalism, either leverage it or mitigate the risk of it?

It’s very hard to keep up. Every day it’s something different and there are different tribes. What we stayed true to is a core belief that clean nutrition permeates through all of that. We are not 100% plant-based. We started in dairy. We have a very big plant-based portfolio, collagen and three different platforms. Some hardcore plant-based people can’t believe we’re selling dairy products and vice versa.

You can’t always make everyone 100% happy and that’s okay. The most important thing for me is that we offer the cleanest products with the best nutritional profile with the most superior ingredients. Whether that’s plant-based, dairy-based, whether someone is keto or not, we try to adapt as much and focus on different trends. Rather than focusing on keto, what’s more important for me is that it’s a high protein, low carb and low sugar. That’s something that’ll apply to all of our products and it’s keto-friendly and the person that’s paleo will accept it.

What we try to do is cast the widest net and appeal to everybody. Sometimes it’s difficult because you are trying to make sure that you’re capturing every segment in a way that’s true. The foundational core of Orgain remains the same. That’s helped us a lot, even though we’re in three different platform proteins.

As a founder, you have a choice to cast that widest net or acknowledge that you need to stay in your center circle. It’s okay to do one of the other. Where it becomes difficult is to talk on one side that you’re staying in your center circle and try to appease a broader audience. You have to decide because once you do go wider, you are not going to please everybody because of this tribalism. Some folks discount brands that don’t follow the narrow belief system that they have and that’s okay. We live in a big world and there’s a lot of choices.

One thing I want to make sure we spend a little bit of time on because it’s been an important part of Orgain’s journey is culture. We talk a lot about this and the fact that I believe that a lot of founders wait too long to start bringing consciousness and intentionality to culture building. They think, “I have such a small team. It’s a couple of other people and me. Culture is something that we’ll worry about later.” As they began to build a team, they realized, “It’s already self-propagating and built itself. I’m trying to reign it in and recreate it.” How have you been intentional about culture? How important is it to the success of the brand and the building of the business?

It’s extremely important. I interview everybody that joins the business, whether they are on the executive leadership team or working in shipping our products. I tell everyone the same thing. “All egos are checked at the door here.” It’s not a business where there’s a hierarchy. Culture is the most important thing for me. “You have my cell phone. You text or call me if we’re doing something wrong. We want to always improve. There’s a relentless focus on improvement. This is our North Star of the business and we all have to align on it. It’s not the products. It’s the fact that we want to make a meaningful change in the lives of health-seeking men, women, families and children.”

The other thing is that I work. In our leadership team, I always harp on making sure that we work alongside everybody. Nobody’s on top and everyone’s working under them. We work together and alongside each other. That’s important to me. Fostering a collaborative culture that embraces that and everyone is on the same page.

We are a fast-moving company, granted we’re at scale and growing very quickly. We have to be okay with wearing several hats. I’m in the warehouse shipping something. “If someone’s here, I’m going out in shipping.” That’s okay, whatever it takes. That culture and fostering that culture is important to me. We worked very transparently on that. Anyone that’s not aligned with them, we want to know early on because our culture is paramount.

Aligned with that, when you start as a founder and you’re an entrepreneur, suddenly you look up and realize, “I’m a leader,” and that’s the expectation. What have you learned about that? How have you evolved from being entrepreneurially focused to being both entrepreneurial and recognizing the importance of your role as a leader? 

I realized that not too long ago. I wish I had realized it a long time ago. We have a monthly town hall and there are 120 people in it. All of a sudden, I’m realizing everyone is listening to me for an hour. The most important thing a leader can do is lead by example with how they operate, what their work ethic is like and what’s most important to them. Anyone can come to me with a work problem or a personal problem.

In a world where you could be anything, being kind is the most important thing. A lot of people realize that our leader will take it and run with it into some new role where they have some superpower and that couldn’t be further from the truth. A leader leads by example and has to be kind. The other thing that I’ve learned in being a leader is to always be calm in the face of adversity. We’ve had our fair share of challenges all through the years.

The key is to be calm in the face of adversity. Being a leader, you are that face of the business. How you react to when things go right and go wrong more importantly, is what defines you as a leader. Those are the things that have stuck out in my mind that separate a good leader from a great leader. I’ve tried to do that as much as I can. I have my shortcomings but I try my best to always improve and realize what responsibility it is to be a leader.

You just realized it and that is interesting to me because that’s not uncommon that suddenly you have this awakening to the importance of being a leader. Sometimes that’s frightening and other times, it’s emboldened because you know that you can make a difference. Kindness is different from being nice. Sometimes leadership requires you not to be nice but you can always be kind. I know that’s semantics but it’s a pretty important difference.

To that point, it’s not what you do. It’s how you do it. Some tough conversations have to be had and there are different approaches to doing it but it’s how you do it that is defining it. You are a leader the first time you pick up a phone call and deal with anyone in your business or the first time you hire your first employee. That’s a lesson learned from me. You are a leader on day one when you start your business.

I know how important family is to you. As your kids have watched this journey, what do you hope they’ve learned from watching you as an entrepreneur and build a business that they take into the world with them?

My kids have grown up in this business. I have pictures of my son, Isaac, in an Orgain onesie when he was born. What I hope to have instilled in them is that they see their dad with a work ethic that’s unparalleled but balanced by the fact that I understand what’s important. My dad was a pediatrician and the most amazing human being I’ve ever encountered. He’s no longer with me, but the lessons have stayed. He treated everyone the same way, whether it was a janitor or the business that he built as a CEO. I remember being inspired and following him to work. He would talk for 15 minutes with the janitor and 15 minutes with the CEO. It was the same.

I hope my kids realize the importance of that and value that, understanding how important it is to work hard, even with success, and understanding in the face of adversity, how you deal with it. You’re defined by how you deal in the tough times. “Do you shy away or do you adjust the sales? What do you do?” I hope my kids have seen that. I’ve tried my best to operate in a way that would garner respect. I would hope that they could grow up to have some of that instilled in them.

As a father of three adult children, it’s true. It isn’t about what you do. It’s about how you do it. Entrepreneurship is such a great lesson for our kids because it shows work ethic, resilience, tenacity, opportunity and all these life lessons. It’s a gift to our kids. Sometimes we, as entrepreneurs, feel the guilt that it pulls us away from them sometimes, that we can’t be at soccer practice, dance recital or school event, that we come home and exhausted, but we’re teaching them by doing. It’s important. For the readers and people that are aspiring to be in the next-door game, what would you want to share with them and want them to take away?

There are a few key lessons. First, seek the advice from mentors and others who have experienced success in the areas you want to learn about. Start early. If you’re able to hire someone early, do that and learn from them. Be a leader on day one. Don’t do what I did and try to be a cowboy and do everything. There were a lot of valuable lessons in there but surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. That goes a long way and will help accelerate your business quicker.

Plan for a bit more resources in time. It takes a little bit more than what I thought in terms of what it takes to succeed. There are a lot of failures along the way. Don’t be discouraged to fail. There are going to be a lot of hard lessons. You’re going to fail over and over again. If we focus on the failures, that’s another very long episode that we can have.

The most important one is taking care of yourself. I can’t emphasize that enough. At the end of the day, our health is our most important asset. I wish I did a better job of it. I’m a cancer survivor, I should have but I wanted the business to succeed at all costs. Looking back, I wish I would have incorporated more health-oriented things so that I could take care of myself.

I’m doing it. It’s what I love doing. I love health and wellness. I read about it every day but I wasn’t implementing it in my own life, which is crazy. Make sure that you build the foundation on the four pillars we talked about on your health so that you have that foundation and can build the business that you want. Lastly, I’m happy to help. A lot of people are shy about asking, “This guy may not have time.” The truth is I’m busy but I’m happy to help. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me.

Thank you. At the risk of almost sounding parental, the best way to say it is I’m proud and thrilled that you have discovered the importance of those four pillars. It is one of the great risks of doing what we’re doing. One of the very important reasons I’ve wanted you to be a guest is that you’re emblematic of what this industry can be and is in terms of deeply ethical good human being leading change and doing what’s right. It excites me to bring support and empower those trying to do the same thing. I appreciate you taking the time to share what you’ve learned along the way. Thanks, everybody, for joining. We’ll see you in the next episode.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Andrew.

Important Links

• Orgain

• When Breath Becomes Air

• Shoe Dog

• Atomic Habits

• Nudge

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