episode 0080- the toothache that sparked a multi-million dollar business with underbrush gum founder nate mal
What happens when you flip over a pack of chewing gum, dig into the ingredients, and realize you're chewing on essentially plastic and rubber? Nate did exactly that. Sparked by an oral-health crisis, combined with his background as a chef and flavor guy, he went deep into research and built Underbrush Gum from scratch. Nate takes us behind the scenes of his micro-batch experiments, the [borderline insane] cost of ingredients, the early pricing mistakes, the moment the business proved itself with 30 orders in a week, and the company's rise to prominence with over 100,000 orders per month. For anyone stuck on the sidelines with an idea, this is the kind of interview that shows what it truly takes to go from "I should do this" to "I did it".
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Show Highlights:
1- Nate tells us the origin story of becoming a gum maker. (6:40)
2- What were you seeing in the industry that made you decide to do something about it? (12:15)
3- What was step one to getting the idea out of your head? (14:15)
4- How did you figure out what ingredients to use, and at what ratios? (18:45)
5- What are people getting from chewing your gum that they aren’t getting from other gums on the market? (25:25)
6- How did you set your price point? (29:00)
7- How has your team grown? (33:40)
8- How is business going today / what are your sales? (36:50)
9- What mistakes did you make along the way? (39:10)
10- Where can we find more of Nate or purchase the product? (40:35)
11- What is your flavor development process like? (43:10)
12- Listener question: What is your advice to someone wanting to start a natural care product? (44:15)
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Follow Nate on Instagram: @nathan.and.sons
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Transcript:
Welcome to the Witness Business Podcast, episode 80. I don't know why the, the, the ones that are divisible by five, they just always, they're, I'm just get so excited about '
em. They get you going, gets the people going. Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know what it is, but, uh,
it's just, it
feels like a milestone each time.
'cause I mean, if you, if you had, if you had told us we would make it to eight, back in the beginning, I've been like, ah, I don't know.
Yeah, I think Alex Lagos was episode 74. He said most, he's a kind of a podcast guru, and he said, most podcasts don't make it past episode eight. So
yeah.
Here we are, eight times 10.
Look at me doing math. Yeah. And hurt yourself today. Today, uh, we got a good one. I, I love this interview with Nate Ma of, um, I know. Is it, it's Nathan and Sons Underbrush Gum. Kind of a yes mouthful. Pun and pun, son. Pun intended, pun
intended. Is that, is that what you were doing there
and, and Nathan was kind enough?
He's got some of this like, um, what do you call it, functional gum? Would you call it functional gum?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's got different elements to it, like hydroxy appetite.
I come from like a fitness bet. When I think functional anything, I'm. Is it, is it giving me, it's not crazy caffeine, is it giving me green tea extract?
Like, but his is more functional for the teeth. Yes. And he was kind enough to send us some, we got to sample it and, uh, yeah, and it's, it's really good. I gave some, I gave some to my wife before, uh, the show. So she tried it and she was gonna thank me for it, and I said, no, no, no. It's meant to be shared.
I felt the setup coming on that.
So I'm onto
your, I'm, well, you know, you could feel a joke coming, pun. I know. You too. I just know you too. Well feel a pun on the way. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. It's gonna be, it's gonna be pun full for sure. Now, moving away from pun full and into painful, Nate, share a story with us about how, um, an experience that he had with, with some, some.
Dental issues that kind of changed the trajectory of how he viewed gum. And he started to read, you know, the. Elements of what goes into your chewing gum and kind of found some, we'll, we'll call it, some, would call it interesting, others would call it horrifying discoveries for what's in your standard chewing gum.
So he set out to, to change that, to make it different and um, you know, we appreciate his time and his explanation of how he got into it and what the steps that he took just for the procurement. Like not just to to create the product, but to procure the different elements that went into the product and figuring it out and fine tuning it.
So, super interesting interview. I think we, we think that you all are gonna really enjoy it.
Yeah. What I love about this show is when somebody comes up with an idea and they're like, Hey, that would be a good idea. And instead of just like letting that be, that actually running with it, um. Even when it's in an industry that you have no business being in.
And I, I love this story today with Nate because it's, that, that's the story is, you know, he had an issue with his own, you know, dental circumstance and, uh, decided to do something about it. And so we're excited to share this conversation with you. Without further ado, let's witness business with Nate Ma.
Alright, Nate of Nathan and Sons Underbrush Gum. Thanks for jumping on the Witness Business Podcast. How are we doing today?
Doing fantastic. Thanks for having me on guys.
as you may or may not know, one of the things we'd like to start off with, uh, in doing these episodes is this question, what would you say is the worst job you've ever had?
Yeah, I did actually think about this one because you guys do it on every episode, and it's a good question. I would say stock shelves in the grocery store 📍 and, uh, I did that. Not even as an employee of the grocery store, as an employee of a company at the grocery store, outsources to do this horrific job.
And so you come in really late at night and stay till really early hours in the morning, um, and you're just doing the same thing on repetition over and over and over again. And, uh, as a, a creative person, I feel like that's like the most soul crushing thing you can do.
you have all the time for ideas, but you know, a, a job can either be backbreaking or it can be monotonous. It can't be both.
Yeah,
Yeah. What would you say, is there anything you could pull from that experience that maybe propelled you into being successful today on the other side of that job?
yeah. Trying to avoid ever being in that situation ever again.
Yeah, we get that a
Very
The a, a lot of times the answer is more, you know, philosophical or deep, and other times it's like just that I didn't want to do that and I needed to do something or build something, so I never had to do that again. So we can appreciate that answer.
and you usually get pretty, you know, you get bosses that, I mean, no one really likes a boss for the most part, at least in those types of positions. But I knew early on that I was not gonna be very employable because I just don't mesh mesh well with, uh, authority type figures.
You are your own boss, and so you don't have to worry about it. Now let's, but let's, let's get into that how you, how you became your own boss. So I, I found your, uh, your company through targeted ads. So shout out to good marketing, right? But I started, I went to your website and I started reading more about you, and I was kind of going through the about us section and your origin story.
And the way that you'd kind of described it was that you were waiting for a flight, you were bored, you flipped over a pack of gum, and you're like. What, what, what's, what's in this, it's kind of like the, uh, pre-cell phone version of, of going to the bathroom where you're like, what's in the shampoo bottle?
You're bored and you just start reading ingredient lists. Can you kind of, kind of tell us like that story, how it all started?
Yeah, I mean that's the, um, the stuff on the about Us page, what's not in there. I was, I was writing, I'm like, damn, this is already so long. I'll just leave it a little more simple. But it was a combination of a few things. That, you know, discovering gum base in the airport. But I had actually gotten a horrific toothache, um, and I couldn't go into the dentist I needed, ended up needing to get a root canal, and I couldn't go into the dentist for like two weeks.
So those two weeks were just living hell, you know, staying up all night, not being functional like in the daytime. And I don't know if you've ever had a toothache that bad where it'll just be extremely strong, like sharp pain randomly, and it'll go away for like a few minutes. You'll start to feel better, and then it'll just.
Come right back again. And so I was driving to work and just tears running down my face just 'cause I was in so much pain, like, oh my God, I need to make sure that I'm never in this situation ever again. And so during that two weeks, I spent a lot of time. Just going down the rabbit hole of like holistic oral care.
You know what's available, you know what ingredients people are using. And that's kind of when, um, I saw, uh, nano-hydroxyapatite. 📍 It wasn't really that popular at the time in the US There were like a couple brands on, on Amazon, uh, David's toothpaste, which is a, a really great brand. Uh, they were one of the first ones that I saw, and along with that I saw that mastic. 📍
Was something that people were talking about on like the corners of the internet, and they were talking about the antibacterial properties of it. And so looking into that as like a chewing gum and then discovering that the first chewing gums in America were spruce sap, that which also had an antibacterial properties.
I thought, man, this would be really great if someone combined all these ingredients. I should, I should look it up and if it's around, you know, I'm gonna buy it myself. When I looked it up. I found nothing, and then that's when it hit me like, oh, I gotta make this.
no. So not a background as a gum maker No, the
Not from big gum.
no, no.
You're not coming from Trident or Bubbalicious.
Yeah, some things that kind of folded in really well with the gum that I had done previously, but definitely, uh, didn't work in a bubblegum factory.
I appreciate this story though, because honestly, reading your About Us I, and how you just like flipped over a pack of gum and then it, it reads like you were just like, I'm gonna start a company. And I was like, this, this guy is dangerous. Like if he just decides he's just gonna go ahead and do it. But that, that
had that, we've had that story on here before with um. Uh, Neven Eyewear, founder of, of Neven, uh, lost a pair of sunglasses and asked for, he had just gotten 'em and he asked for a replacement, and they were like, yeah, it's gonna be another 200 bucks. And
He was like, that's dumb.
that's dumb. I'm gonna start my own sunglasses company and I'm gonna have the best warranty policy of all time.
And now he's crushing it as, as a sunglasses manufacturer. But, uh. So is that kind of what happened? So you just, you, you're, you know, all these things are happening, the root canal, the, uh, kind of airport experience, and then you just decide, I'm gonna do this. Uh, how, like, again, I always like to put myself in, in your shoes here as, as the interview guest.
There's a lot, like I have, there's a lot that I don't know about how gum is even
I'm, yeah, I would say I'm, I'm most hung up on like, not only the sourcing of the products, but like, what do I put in it?
Because seen your, I've seen your videos on Instagram of like 📍 kind of heating it up and kind of mixing it around and it's gooey and like, how do you, how do you even begin to figure this out?
Yeah. And. I guess the third part of, kind of like that discovery story was I was already looking for like a product that I wanted to make. You know how you guys, before this call, we were, you were talking about how you call each other toss around half-baked ideas. I have a buddy that's just like that and he was actually my old business partner and, and um, I guess still current business partner, uh, but not in this company.
But, uh, always tossing around ideas. You know, we had a company at the time and I'd like fallen out of love with it for, you know, at least a year and a half. And it was a, a constant conversation of, you know, we should think of something else to do. Like, uh, I don't really want to do this anymore. And I feel like we're kind of constrained by, you know, the type of company that we are.
But, you know, we were selling, uh, flavors and aromas and so I've. Done a lot of formulation for flavors and aromas, and that helped me a lot with, with this company. But funny enough, he, uh, he thought that this idea was really dumb. Uh, and we were always on each other's ideas. And so this was the one I was like, Hey, you know, I think this is actually, there might be something here.
He is like, ah, no, you know, let's do a air fryer cooking spray, which was another kind of silly idea that he had. Um, but I think looking already being like in the mindset of looking for the product. Allowed me to see that this was an opportunity, like early on.
One thing I always like to ask, I mean, obviously I want to get back to the kind of the, I guess the alchemy or the chemistry of it, of like how you were putting these things together. But I, I want to get into like what about the current industry, what that you said. I'm not about this, like what we have currently is a problem and what made you decide that you could provide the solution.
Obviously you're actively providing it now, but you had to kind of reason through it, so I'd love to hear more about that.
Yeah, well, I've been into natural products for a really long time. You know, uh, I was an executive chef of a, a vegan restaurant. Funny enough. Uh, back in the day and then went on to start my own restaurant. So I was always in that sort of like health like world and, you know, my mindset was just like, everything in the store, like pretty much sucks.
Like 99% of the products in the store is just filler garbage. It's usually just products that they were able to make with waste from other products that they produce. Like all the process junk in the store is really just. Like waste product from, from making actual food or processing some other food. Um, the gum base was like the most shocking thing though, because at least the other stuff is like edible.
And with microplastics kind of being a really big topic, I was honestly just shocked that, um. Like people are chewing on, on plastic and, and rubber. And when I talked with other people about it, they had no idea. Pretty much everyone I talked to had no idea that that was the case. And I thought, why? Why is it like this, like this?
This should be extremely not okay. If people are freaking out about plastic straws and you know, plastic water bottles, why are so many people chewing on on plastic gum?
Yeah, you might be, you might be, uh, opening some eyes right now, just even by, by sharing that in and of itself.
I hope so.
And that's the goal. So then, so I guess like what's step one or, I don't know if we've covered step one, but like getting this out of your head then like, so you, you're, you're, you're uncovering that maybe.
you've worked four different careers at this point, chef Stocker, business owner of fragrances. Like you've done all these different things, your friend. You know, pours water on the fire of your idea, but you proceed with it by taking step one, which is what?
what? Yeah, that's kind of, that is the question.
Just researching. I mean, I was, at the time, we had tossed around so many ideas and I was actually getting kind of annoyed to the point where I'm like, okay, let's just pick one and do it. 'cause I'd rather do something than just keep tossing around ideas, you know, every morning. Um, and so when he said that he didn't want to do it, I was like, okay, well.
I'm gonna chase down this rabbit hole, Neil. We'll, we'll see what happens. You know, we'll still keep tossing around ideas, but, uh, I need to actually do something, you know, now. Um, so step one was just continuing that research, you know, looking actually into like the chewing gum industry as a whole. You know, it's super boring.
Uh. Outdated sort of industry. Like there's nothing really exciting going on. I did notice that there were, uh, a couple like natural gum brands, um, and there was at least one, maybe two, like functional gum brands. And I like the idea of gum as a delivery VI device for, you know, instead of a capsule. And I thought that that was something that had a, could have a lot of longevity, um, as a business.
And since I was already looking into like the oral care stuff, you know, obviously that was gonna be the, the first product. But looking into the various SAPs, you know, diving deep into the scientific research, um, mastic is one of Greece's like most prized exports, and they have one organization that controls the entire mastic supply of the world.
Uh, it's a SAP that's only grown in in Chios, Greece. And this organization, uh, Chios Mastic Growers Association, they want this to be a really prominent product. So they dump a lot of money into continuing the scientific research. And so there's a lot of, a lot of stuff you can read, uh, regarding mastic. Spruce as not as in depth.
But it contains, you know, some of the, the same compounds I saw. And then I started reading, you know, these, um, like indigenous, like herb books, um, uh, his historical books on, uh, just what, what they ate around the time, how they were creating medicine. And I noticed that spruce sap was mentioned a lot in every, almost every single book they mentioned spruce sap
And I said, okay, this, so obviously this works that they've. Used it like across multiple tribes for hundreds, if not, you know, thousands of years. And I really liked the idea of it being the first chewing gum in America. I thought that was a, a really fun thing. And I said, okay, well if I'm gonna do this, I have to include spruce sap.
Like absolutely as an American made company and, and revive this, this industry. And so then came, you know, beyond the, those ingredients, which were like the hardest to. Kind of do research and experiment with, uh, reviving like spruce sap, uh, as a supply chain. 'Cause it, it didn't really exist. You know, you could buy from a couple small sellers on Etsy here and there.
When I was first buying it, I was paying around $500 a pound for this stuff, for like clarified spruce sap. Um, you could buy raw stuff for about half that. And, um. The reason why it's half the price is 'cause it's a pain, a huge pain to, to filter spruce sap. It's so sticky and you have to do it while it's hot, but you can't get it too hot or you burn it.
Um, so that was a whole kind of, uh, experience in itself. But getting spruce s from American Forest, like into my hands in large quantities was a, a whole other set of challenges. So I'd say those were like the first steps of, of getting started.
Okay, so that's the primary iteration. I, I just, it's funny, I'm trying to think of a, a more fitting metaphor, but I'm just imagining like, my toddler kinda like making like a, like a mud pie, you know? They just take sticks and dirt. And all this different stuff and they put it in and they're like, look at this dad.
And I just imagined myself, like, if I were in your shoes getting all these products initially, it's like I have no idea how much to put in and at what ratio. 'cause I mean, looking at your website, you're adding mineral clay, you're adding SP spruce gum, which you mentioned. You're adding mastic and terpenes and Arabic gum,
eggshell powder
all this different stuff.
And it's like, not only do I want to add it, I want it to taste good. But I have no idea what ratios to do it. So were you just kind of playing mad scientists and, and throwing little hunks in your mouth and seeing what had good mouth feel and what would go well together?
Yeah, well, believe me, I've made a lot. Of really bad gum, like so much bad gum.
That's part of it.
But, uh, one of the, the easiest tricks for me to at least get like a starting ratio is I just bought like 10 of the top gum brands, you know, regular, uh, chewing gums and a couple natural gums, and then I weighed them before chewing.
You know, chew it for like 20 minutes or so and then weigh them after chewing. 'cause the two main ingredients, at least in in store-bought gums. It's just gonna be sweetener and then, and the gum base, you know, flavoring is used in very small amounts. You know, any of these, like anti-caking agents are gonna be used in very small amounts.
And so that gave me a rough idea of the sweetener to gum base ratio. And then it came, it came to figuring out the formulation of the gum base itself. And that was, that was much harder for sure. And that was definitely a lot of trial and error of just mixing different, uh, ratios of the SAPs together. You know, is this too sticky?
Is this too hard? Um, does this taste good?
That may be the, the, the leading one, potentially, depending who you ask.
W what would you say is the, like, uh, the amount of time and money spent before you ever had a product on the
$500 a pound for that, that
sap. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how fast you burned through that pound, but like
Yeah.
I, you know, I imagine, you know, you think like, okay, well making chewing gum, you know, maybe, I dunno, kind of offhand just thinking about it like, oh, shouldn't be that expensive.
But like, if you're making a lot and lots and lots of bad gum to figure out how to make good gum, like I imagine it could have gotten expensive fast.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean it, it's, yes, but also no, you know, you'll have people that will dump You know, 20-50 grand into developing a product and they get it and then it's, you know, not sellable. The, the nice part is I'm doing all the work myself and I'm able to control how much I'm actually making. So my first batches of gum were, you know, 25 to 50 grams on like a really small scale.
If I felt like I could make it good enough at that scale, then I'll make like a slightly larger batch and see if anything changes. Uh, but probably. You know, less than $5,000 to kind of get through all that. And I wanna say like, all in, you know, I built the web, the initial website myself, you know, labor's free for me.
And, uh, you know, we've definitely spent less than $10,000 to, to get it started for sure. I can't quantify how many experimental ingredients I I bought that I didn't end up using.
I mean, but it is one of those things that I think Steve's question's trying to demonstrate is that you don't have to have 50 K stashed in a bank account to be able to launch something and make something happen. I mean, from the way you described it, it's like make a small batch and then if it's terrible, make it 1% less worse each small batch until you finally, you finally get the final product.
I do
Well, and then real quick, the second part of that question was, I don't know if you answered it. How long did it take you to get ultimately to get a viable product on the market?
Uh, about a year, year or so, I think I shipped my first samples, um, like May, June, 2023.
I, I, I want to know, I guess I, I'm gonna ask maybe a, a two-part or two, like building off of you send out those first samples, like when did you realize that you had a, a true market for the product? Because obviously you identified a whole, but it's one thing to identify a whole and realize, and another thing to realize that you've, you're equipped.
To fill it. So like, what was kind of that moment for you? And then also I want to give you a moment to kind of talk about the benefits of your product, because obviously it's one thing to say, Hey, you're not gonna chew on plastic with me. But I, I also want you to be able to unpack for our listeners, like what the benefits are as a selling point for what you've created.
So that aha moment, and then the value proposition.
Yeah, once I have like a basic, like two page website up, which is just, you know, homepage and then product page. Uh, I think I spent, you know, $50 a day on meta ads for, I dunno, less, less than a week. And I probably didn't even have it on every single day, but I got like 30 people that bought the product. I didn't have any packaging, I just had a render of the product.
And so every time someone bought, I'd reach out to them and say, Hey, you know, thank you for your interest. This is just a, a, a new product that I'm experimenting with. I don't have any packaging for this, but I'll give you, you know, two options if you'd like one. I can refund you right now. You know, no hard feelings.
Two, when I get packaging in for it. Um, I'll ship you your order then, but I'll also send you like, samples of the gum. Now it's just not gonna be in the, the box that you saw online and everyone said yes, like, move me to pre-order. You know, they were so interested in the product that, uh, no one canceled, uh, on the spot and actually sending gum back and forth to those people.
It was extremely helpful, uh, over the next few months. And so that was kind of like the first moment where I was like, wow, this is actually something. 'cause if someone sent me that message, they'd be like, uh. Just refund me, bro. It's, it's cool. Let me know. Uh, keep me on the email list, you know, let me know when you have a, a product to, to ship in the packaging.
Yeah, don't send me like a Ziploc bag with stuff in it like I'm
Yeah, like what did I just do? Just bought some random, random person online.
Yeah.
And the, um, let's see, what was the, the second part of your question.
It was just kind of like the idea of, you know, you identified the, the whole. But we, I also want you to be able to kind of talk about the value proposition that you add with your product, because, again, more than not, than just being not plastic that people are chewing on. Like what are the benefits of what you've created based on all the different
are people getting from chewing your gum versus your other, you know, big name gums out there?
could, you could take it as free marketing if you want.
Yeah.
For sure, and I actually think like the, the plastic free angle is like the least interesting one, and I, I really just mention it because it's something that a lot of people don't know right off the bat. But you know, most food is plastic free anyways, and there are other natural gums out there. I think what makes Underbrush special is it's the first like functional, natural remineralizing chewing gum.
Uh, you know, the whole reason they put fluoride in the water is to remineralize your teeth. Uh, why not have something that doesn't come with the, uh, the downsides of fluoride? You know, in chewing gum format. And then why aren't chewing gums? If we're smart enough to make xylitol, chewing gums, which are supports remineralization, and you know, starves bacteria, why aren't we making a chewing gum that does more than that?
You know, these SAPs naturally have antibacterial properties. There are dozens of studies even. Infinite, almost an infinite amount of studies showing not just the ingredients themselves, but the compounds inside the ingredients and their effects on, uh, bad oral bacteria. Uh, to me it's, I, I was shocked that it didn't really exist.
It seemed like a no brainer. You know, if you're gonna be chewing gum, it should be something that's doing something positive for your oral health. Um, but yeah, I'd say that those are like the, the main points, the antibacterial portion, and. Remineralization and also as the kids say, get a snatch jaw. Our, our gum is a little more stiff than, than regular gum.
And so there are a decent amount of people that will, will chew for
It's good though. I mean, I mean, you were kind enough to, to send us some It is good. Like, you know, you can, you can chew on that forever and if you've, I mean, I've given it to my wife and she jokes that that help, she can focus because of it. She's like, she's not, she's, she can focus just on chewing the gum itself.
Do you? You sound like you have like a wealth of experience from other ventures that you've done. You talked about the, the fragrance and the flavor development. So did that kind of just naturally dovetail with different flavor production once you had mastered a a, an actual healthy gum base, if you will.
Yeah, I mean, it helped a lot. I mean, the. Thing that helped the most was just having that kind of culinary background. You know, always experimenting with new ingredients and finding interesting ways to combine things. And I think that that's ultimately why I could do flavor formulation. I mean, most people that do flavor development, you know, they have a degree and know they work like in a lab.
And I'm over here just using taste and smell to make flavors that people are willing to pay a lot of money for. And, uh. I feel like that helped kind of hone in my skills a bit, but by the time it came to the chewing gum, like I already had a good idea of what I needed to do flavor wise and how to balance things out.
You talking about having people pay money for your product. Another thing that I, I feel like I ask this question more commonly than, than maybe Steve does when, when it comes up is, you know, how do you go about setting your price point? Like do you want a specific margin and then you work backwards, or is it kind of dictated, especially because of some of the specialty products that you're buying?
Is it kind of dictated by your cost of acquisition that you then have to kind of pass on to the customer?
I actually got the pricing wrong. Uh, very wrong in the beginning, you know? Uh, we're more than we were probably, yeah, a little more than 50% cheaper when we first started, and I was just so excited to sell the product. You know, I have basically no overhead 'cause it's just me. I'm not thinking that far ahead as, uh, you know, like.
What is customer acquisition cost gonna like look like in the future? Um, I was really only thinking about getting the product into people's hands and getting that really good feedback that, you know, would allow me to improve it, you know, down the road. Um, and I was also a little, a little nervous just because even at half the price that we are now would still be the most expensive chewing gum like in the country by far.
And. People are super price sensitive. I'll, I'll say that one thing that gave me the courage to charge what we were asking in the beginning is seeing what native did. You know, you see their deodorants, they're like 12 bucks a stick, you know? And regular deodorants that you're used to seeing, like $2. I'm like, okay, if people are willing to pay a premium for something like deodorant, um.
And really the only benefit is not smelling. I think people would be way willing to pay a premium for a functional gum that also keeps your breath from not smelling, but does something positive for your oral health at the same time. And I was right. And we've, we've, we've done a few different price raises as we've kind of like refined what it should look like on our end.
But, um, price right now is, is dictated by largely ingredient costs. And, um, what we think, uh, they're gonna cost in the future. We try to get ahead of that now.
I mean, that's, that's exactly what, that's exactly what I wanted to know. I mean, you don't have to get into the, the nitty gritty of like, Hey, we have X margin, but just kind of like a, you know, kinda like you said in the beginning like, oh, it turns out we were underpriced. Like that's probably 100% a mistake I would make.
Are you still a one man team? Do you have a team of people working on this and, you know, where are you kind of manufacturing all of this? I, I know every, everybody tends to start small out of their kitchen or whatever, whatever they like legally or allowed to do, um, from a small scale. But as you've grown, you know, how, how has your team grown, if at all?
Or are you still kind of just a one man shop?
Yeah. Actually, real quick, going back to, you know, the previous question, what also. Was like kind of a shocker that made me realize, okay, we can charge a lot more for this and relieve a lot of the pressure of growing as I saw how much the knockoffs of our product we're selling for,
I was gonna ask you about that. I saw, just saw some, some content you made about that, about like seven outta 10 consumers are buying knockoff products that, that aren't, that are poorly made. I'll let you go ahead and I don't wanna steal your thunder, but I just, I just saw you post something about that.
Yeah, well as like the, the business has become increasingly more expensive to run and we're dipping our toes into, you know, meta ads and, and figuring all that out. I noticed that the knockoffs for our product where they're either shipping people like our box with different product inside, or they've now kind of switched to their own sort of branding as our trademarks have come through.
They're charging, you know, $40 for two packs of gum. And I can look at the history on Amazon and, um, use some other tools to, and these people are selling, you know, probably 500,000 to a million dollars, uh, of gum. And just at those prices, you know, we're not gonna go up to those prices. But I thought that that was really, really interesting.
And, you know, I think the product is unique enough that that's what allows that to happen. So I felt more comfortable over the last. You know, a year or so, making sure that we're not undercharging for this stuff. And, you know, if we want to sell a gun, we gotta be able to do it long term and we're only really gonna be able to do that if we can fuel growth.
Right. Um, okay. Sorry, I felt like that was an important, uh,
No, that's great.
No. Yeah, we appreciate that.
and, uh, sorry, what was the,
Um, are, are you still a one man shop? Are you, you know, how are you, how have you grown over the last couple of years doing this?
Yeah. Oh God, no. I, I was January last year, January, 2024. I was a one man show and I made my first hires in January. Right now we have more than 60 people that work here. We have three different warehouses We're sort of taking over, like as warehouses become available in our little business block, uh, taking 'em as they come on the market.
Uh, and we're still really, really strapped for space. But, you know, we have a full manufacturing facility that we've built out, which is, could probably be a whole podcast episode in itself, how insane of a process that was. Uh, and then we have a separate facility that's just for, you know, dry, good storage, uh, packing up into multi-pack boxes in the third facility.
That's just fulfillment.
Yeah. So not a one man show is what
you're saying,
That's awesome. Congrats. I think it's really cool to see like when somebody gets an idea out of their head, which is kind of the whole theme of this podcast, and that not only like is fulfills your dreams as an entrepreneur, but also creates a
and you put food on the table for other people.
Yeah, for, for people, you have employees that now depend on you to, you know, thrive at, with their families and, uh, and make a living for themselves.
So I, I always think that's a really cool part of entrepreneurship. If you don't mind me asking, like, how's, so you, you're, you know, 60 plus band shop now, uh, taking over a whole block, it sounds like. How is business? Like, what's your customer base? I don't know. Whatever you're willing to give us, whether that's dollars or gums sold or, you know.
Whatever, whatever
a,
you wanna talk in.
it's not a gotcha question. It's a, just give us an
Just curious like how, how business has been going for you the last maybe few months.
Yeah, it's going good. And I gotta also roll it back and say like, I've only been able to do this because of the, the team that I have, like I have. A super strong like management team and we've done some crazy stuff. Just worked insane hours, just making the impossible happen. And so as much as I'd like to take credit for everything, like my team is just not only talented, but extremely hardworking and dedicated to what we're doing.
Um, so I
I think that's a lot of the biggest names in business. Talk about hire people that are smarter than you, like you can't do it alone if you wanna scale. We talk about that on this show a lot too. It's like if you want to build a business. If you wanna get a business off the ground, you can probably do it by yourself.
If you wanna scale to, you know, multi 8, 8, 9 figures, like you're not doing that by yourself.
Yeah.
shout out to a good team, but you are the visionary. That's why we're sitting. That's why we're sitting here talking with you now.
yes.
you. And I still struggle with that. Like I'm, I'm trying to hire for like, marketing roles and man, it is so tough to find really, really talented people, at least in the marketing world. Uh, all the good
And who care as much as you do. I'm
Yeah.
that's, difficult.
Um, but as far as the, the business, you know, we've grown from, you know, I think our very first month we had like 20 something thousand in sales.
I don't know how many orders that is, but, um, you know, we're doing in the realm of, uh, a hundred thousand orders a month right now. And what's kind of funny is I went to an event and we were getting pitched by 3PLs and they were kind of going over their, their numbers. They, you know, what they could do for us.
And all I could think of in my head was like, we have a killer team of five people that are shipping a hundred thousand plus orders a month. And the system that you're pitching me and the cost, just, I think either my team is like insanely freakish or you guys have some stuff to tighten up on your end.
You. They came to you and pitched you and said, what if you paid more to do less
exactly.
I mean, a hundred thousand. Units a hundred thousand, like sales per month
Yeah. A hundred thousand. You know, various
orders. Yeah,
pack apac.
I mean, that's incredible. So congrats on that because I think anybody listening to this probably, you know, would've been happy with, you know. A handful,
Yeah.
like a side business like, oh, I sold a hundred packs of gum this month.
Like, that's awesome too. But the fact that you're selling hundreds of thousands of these is insane.
I mean, we, we had an entrepreneur on, uh, Bali Mendels. She talked to us about, she created a, a line of, of Currys, and she said that at her first trade show, she sold eight jars and four of them more to family. And that was enough for her to be like four other people wanted my
product. And that's, that's enough.
So I mean, you know, it all, it all starts somewhere.
Yeah, you can't
beat that feeling, man. The first time someone you don't know buys your product. The only thing that really beats that is when you talk to that person and they love the product. Man, I would do it all over again just for that.
the entrepreneurial high.
Yep.
I do wanna ask you though, 'cause like kind of an undercurrent that I'm picking up through this whole interview is like, you strike me as someone that's like very self-assured. Like, you do the research, you make the decision that you think is best and you kind of roll with it and you've got a great team that's around you as you, as you've referenced.
But I, I do kind of want to know like. Beyond. The only thing I've really heard you say that you wish that you could kind of do over is that you had revised your pricing point or had it set better initially. Is there anything that you would kind of say as a, I don't know, a word from the wiser of like, Hey, I did this and I wish I could do it differently.
I wish I had done it differently.
Well that's, that's awesome. I'm glad you think that 'cause it's just been terrifying and extremely like euphoric. The, the whole ride.
I think that's like, that's like parenting. You're like, this is great. I don't know what I'm doing, but
I mean, uh, you know, there's, like we were talking about in the beginning, you know, not everything is applicable to everyone and there isn't like just one set plan. And like, as cliche as it is, like, it's really, really simple. Like, if you want to do something, all you have to do is just not give up. And it doesn't mean just come up with one product idea and stick with that, like, forever.
Like, don't give up on trying to do it. You know, pivot, pivot, pivot, reiterate, reiterate, reiterate. But as long as you never give up, like you're just, all you have to do is outlast everybody else, and everyone gives up extremely easy. So, um, if you plan on never giving up, I mean, you're gonna, you're gonna make it really no matter what.
That's good advice.
people listening to this and they're like, I gotta try this stuff. Can you pitch for us, like, give us your socials, give us your website. Where can we find you? Where can we find, uh, the product? All things underbrush. Or all things Nathan. Nathan and Sons, I should
Yeah. Nathan and sons.com. And then on TikTok, Instagram, it's just at Nathan dot and dot Sons.
and all your pro, all the products are like on the website. They're easy to find.
got multiple flavors and then actually you, I think. You also did us a, a real solid in letting us sample an unreleased fa flavor. Right.
Are we allowed to talk about that?
Yeah, go for
It's a, it's a tease. Well, we'll let you go ahead and market it 'cause like we're, we're the one enjoying it. But you're the one that gets to distribute it,
Okay. I, I wasn't sure if that actually made it in there. So you guys did get honey bun.
We got honey
That is the one. And that was actually my favorite
Oh, love that.
out, out of all of them. So.
Yeah, it's a, it's a flavor that we've been teasing for like, honestly, almost a year. You know, we got the, the packaging and the, the launch time just didn't work out. Surprisingly hard to get organic honey in really large quantities and very, very hard to get like whole honeycomb with honey in it, like in large quantities.
So we had to. Figure that out. By the time we got it figured out, it was already summer and the gum is naturally softer than the rest of our one, our, our flavors. And I was afraid that it would be even more prone to melting in Arizona, a hundred plus degree weather, sitting in a mailbox for eight hours a day.
Um, so we pushed the launch back to fall this year, and so it uses whole honeycomb, like real Madagascar vanilla bean. Um, Mauna Honey in it, and we decided to move away from xylitol and erythitol just to kind of give people that we're holding out because, you know, maybe they don't, those ingredients don't agree with them.
Uh, we use Allulose, um, in this one. And so Allulose and Honey, it should, we should have something for everyone. Now with this in the mix.
Yeah, I mean, as I stated, the honey bun is my favorite. The berry is really good. Uh, my daughter, as I told you before, the show every morning wakes up daddy piece, piece of cinnamon, cinnamon, gum, cinnamon. So you got cinnamon, you got mint, you got honey bun, you got berry. So no matter your palette, uh, they've got something for you.
Well, real quick before we move into listener question, um, what's your flavor development process like now? I know in the beginning we kind of talked about how you started doing this yourself. Like now that you have a team, are you still like kind of the master flavor, you know, uh, flavor maker, if you will?
Or, or are you, do you have people on your team that are kind of experimenting in sort of like an r and d, uh, department, if you will, or how, how is that, how do you do that these days?
Yeah. Um, I encourage experimenting a ton and so anyone is sort of welcome to it if they're in the manufacturing department, but. Yeah, that's the most fun part of the job is coming up with flavors. I don't think I would just give that away to anyone. Like maybe I'd rather give away handling all like the paperwork, but I definitely wouldn't want to give away the thing that I enjoy doing most, you know, aside from like the content.
So I'll probably be in the, the driver's seat for flavors for a while. Um, that doesn't mean I'll be the only one doing it, but I, I, I enjoy that part a lot.
So now transferring into the listener question. So Nate, we have, uh, listeners right into us, right into me at Kyle, at witness business.com, and we kind of go through and we will aggregate all the different questions and we'll say, all right, well this is a good fit for this guest based on their background.
Or, you know, what, we're able to read up on you preemptively. So today's question says, uh, I have an interest in starting a company based on natural care products. What advice would you have? To get to start a business like that versus the conventional giants that exist.
Make it yourself. I feel like that's, in my mind, that's the real, the only way to make a product. When you haven't, you don't have really any experience and you don't have maybe the funds. Uh, but that was like a prerequisite for me. Every product that I wanted to develop, it had to be something that I could make myself initially because I didn't want to or couldn't afford.
Like product development and natural products have the advantage of being some of the easiest products you can make yourself. You don't have to do any crazy scientific techniques, you know, buy the ingredients that you think you want to use. Look at all the resources online. You know, depending on what you want to make, there's probably someone that's already done it that can at least give you a starting point.
But really just make it yourself, hand out to friends and family to see if people like it. Get the feedback.
to start tinkering at least though, or, or do the research like you did.
Yeah.
I love. I love that though, because you're right. Like when it's not natural, that's when you have to like take it to the lab and do all this experimentation and whatever else on it versus when it's natural. Just like buy the ingredients, make it in your kitchen.
When it's natural, you make a small batch, you decide it tastes terrible, and then you make another better batch. That's also small, right?
Yeah. Looks like he had the, the gummy guy that was on here, which I did actually buy his gummies online. Same thing. He was making himself and got to a point to where he
needed, needed a
rotten rotten gummies.
Good. I mean, I don't know if I'm, I allowed to, to say that while we're talking about my product, but geez.
Those. You did a great job with those.
see that's the way you do it, is that you go buy rotten gummies and then you're like, oh, my teeth, I need gum. I need something to fix it.
No, but it's less sugar. His rotten gummies are less sugar, so not as bad,
That's true. So then it's like over the top, it's like super healthy.
Hmm.
just made it to my gr my local grocery store, so I would, the rotten, rotten did. So I'm pretty happy about
that. Um.
and handed 'em out here. Mm-hmm.
They're pretty. Yeah, it's pretty good. Um, but yeah, love the store. We actually just made gummy bears with this guy yesterday or two days ago.
Uh, and they did not turn out quite as good as rotten did.
I gotta
There's more to it than just
there's a little more to it than just throw some gelatin in some juice and
Who to who to thunk it.
Yeah. Alright. But anyway,
we appreciate you joining us. I mean.
Yeah, and congratulations on all the success so far. I think it's incredible to hear how Underbrush has, has gone from just a few, you know, what, what'd you say?
30 sample packs to the initial few, to hundreds of thousands of these, uh, sold every year. So congratulations on your success. We're rooting for you, and we just appreciate, uh, letting you, let you, letting us pick your brain for a little while.
I was gonna say you have, you have fans, not just in between the two of us, but also, uh, some very happy toddlers who are very gum focused right now. So thank you for, for making something that's, that's not junk. Thank you for making something that has longevity and health benefits and, uh, you know, we're wishing you nothing but, uh, you know, continued success and we'll be cheering you on.
Awesome. Thank you guys for having me on. It's been great.