Growing Lean
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Growing Lean
Electrolyte Innovations and Entrepreneurial Insights from Gary Kleinman
What if you could supercharge your hydration without even needing a single sip of water? This episode features Gary Kleinman, the innovative CEO of ElectrolyteBoost.com, who shakes up our understanding of hydration with his unique electrolyte formula. Gary sheds light on this groundbreaking approach, which allows absorption through the tongue and cheek, thereby bypassing the need for water. We dissect the significant role of citicoline, a major component in this formula, that supports focus, muscle activity, and neural sparks.
Ever wondered how to acquire your first 100 customers in the highly competitive physical goods marketplace? Listen keenly as Gary shares the grassroots techniques his team deployed, emphasizing the power of sampling and word of mouth. The conversation takes an interesting twist as we discuss how his team navigated the pandemic-stricken industry landscape, transferring their strategies to capitalize on the digital-first world.
As an aspiring entrepreneur or established business owner, understanding your market and strategically positioning your product is paramount. Gary couldn't agree more and shares insightful advice on how to make your product a necessity in your customer's lives. He stresses the importance of having a clear, well-defined objective that guides your business decisions. We wrap up with various ways of staying connected with Gary and ElectrolightBoost.com, plus potential job openings within the company. So why wait? Join us and glean insights from Gary's wealth of experience and innovative approach.
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Hello folks, welcome back to the growing lean podcast. This is your host, ethan half-eyed. I'm happy to be here with Gary Kleinman. He is the CEO of ElectrolightBoostcom. He is a serial entrepreneur and I want him to introduce his current business right now. Gary, welcome, tell the audience a little bit more about yourself, ethan nice to be here, appreciate the opportunity and the conversation.
Speaker 2:Electrolightboost was created really with eSports and gamers in mind because we noticed that they were on the verge of dehydration or actually dehydrated from long gaming sessions. They were exhibiting brain fog, lack of attention, focus and general fatigue, muscle fatigue and general psychological fatigue. The problem with electrolyte formulas that are out in the marketplaces are all dependent on water. You got to take these packs, mix it in water and then drink it. Well, nobody guzzles it, so you're only getting the electrolytes as you're getting them and then the more water you drink, the more electrolytes you get. As soon as you go to the bathroom, and what ends up happening? You excrete the electrolytes. That made no sense to us as a group. Look at our science team and say get rid of the water. They say what do you mean? Get rid of the water? Because electrolytes are all basically salt and nobody's going to take a handful of salt and throw it in their mouths.
Speaker 2:So it took what I thought would take. Two weeks, took a year and a half to get the formula right. To hide the salt no sugar, very few calories there's four in each of the packets and you get electrolytes instantaneously, which means it's absorbed by your tongue and your cheek, in your blood system as soon as it starts being absorbed and you're not consuming a whole lot of water, so you're not going to the bathroom. And as we were developing that for gamers, what kept coming up was all the other use cases, whether it was truck drivers, football players, tennis players, teachers that only get a break in the morning, in the afternoon, you know, pilots, all the people that don't want to do bathroom runs but are on the verge of dehydration. And then we found out 70% of the population is chronically mildly dehydrated, which means you're on the verge of brain fog. You're really not performing optimally. And electrolyte boost is the only product literally in the world that replaces your electrolytes instantaneously. And we added an ingredient called citicoline and that is oh, it's a little.
Speaker 1:Colleen is in it that's responsible for focus and muscle contraction, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so citicoline is in it. It's actually the largest ingredient that is in it and I'm great. It's great that you know citicoline, because most people don't. I did not until who has now? Our chief science officer introduced me to citicoline and everybody should be taking citicoline every day. It does improve your memory, attention and focus and your muscle contractions and your neural stimuli simulator so that you will actually react faster, and there are no other products that contain citicoline the way that we do. Just put it in your mouth and that's kind of a longer elevator ride than I generally give about what electrolyte boost is and why it is.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, we're going to get into the business side of things a little bit more because of this podcast, but before we do that I actually want to talk about like that's. I didn't know that, you actually didn't tell me that the first time, but now you were kind enough to send me a large shipment of electrolyte boost and I was hooked on the flavor and I know about the benefits of electrolytes, right, because I played sports growing up. I played sports and especially on the hot summer days. They're like electrolytes, electrolytes.
Speaker 1:But these days I'm sitting at a desk all day. I'm working. My brain is working so much, right. So now you just showed me that I can replace my ZIN. I don't have ZIN, if you know what that is, and I only take that because Andrew Hewerman he's the head of Stanford Neuroscience Lab and he talks about the benefits of nicotine because of acetylcholine release and it puts your brain in a focus like state. So if you're looking to learn or you're computing a lot of information at one time, it's very beneficial. So I think electrolyte boost is still good for me, even though I'm like a mental athlete. Now you know, when you're running a company, you can relate. You have to always be on mentally. So yeah, there's no question, there's no question.
Speaker 2:The acetylcholine is a pretty good reason why our product works and our chief science officer, Dr Sue Kleiner, created the first sports nutrition performance protocol with Bill Belichick in the New England Patriots about 14 years ago. And what's interesting about her? She is one that introduced me to citicoline about a year and a half ago. It works well in our formula because it's flavorless. But what she found is not only the citicoline and the electrolytes that science has never looked at hydration or dehydration through the lens of electrolytes. It's always been about fluids, right.
Speaker 2:So when people think about hydration, drink, drink, drink, drink, drink, drink, drink. And they drink a whole bunch of water and they get bloated and they don't feel any better and then they go to the bathroom. And that's because electrolytes are as important, if not more important, to forestalling dehydration or hydrating, depending on which level of fence you're looking at. And so she started studying, because of us, electrolytes without water, and what's really come out of that from a science standpoint is, if you don't take them together, you actually keep more fluids in your cell by taking electrolytes without water, because the water has a tendency to flush things out. So you're always better off. We are not as a company saying don't drink water. Drink when you want to drink water, but there are times when you're sitting at the computer and you've got to interview somebody and you're going. I need more focus and I need more attention.
Speaker 2:And we're perfect for that. If you're stuck in traffic for two hours and you want to get off and go to the bathroom and try to find a gas station, you won't have to pee because you're not consuming water, but you are getting the benefits of attention, focus and reducing fatigue and what have you. So it's a unique space in the market and the Citicoline is, as you pointed out, a great advantage, as an ingredient in our product base.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. So. Now talk to us about the business behind the product, right Like how did you get to market with electrolyte boost? How did you get your first 100 customers?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a really good question. We were fortunate enough to launch at Super Bowl this past year in February. We were invited to participate in a pretty significant event because the president of the organization was given the product somewhere somehow from our team and she loved and said you got to be at Super Bowl so organically with athletes and some of the charitable things we do in the sampling programs, and what have you that we do? Oh my God, I can actually feel better and not drink another 8 to 12 ounces of water. There's no way. And because it's so unique and it works and it tastes good.
Speaker 2:So I think one of the key elements in why our first 100 customers plus KMA Board is the surprise after you take it. There's this sense of where's the medicinal feeling coming in, when's it going to get sour? On me and it actually gets sweeter in many respects and has a longer pleasant tail. And then people say, okay, my kids have to have this right, because they got ADD and I've got grandkids, they won't take pediolite any longer, they just want to take this. And it tastes like it's a cross between pixie sticks and pop rocks. To a certain extent, some of that's nostalgia.
Speaker 2:So it's really about putting product in people's hands. We sell to a couple junior college football programs because the football players love it, because they're not consuming a whole bunch of Gatorade full of sugar and very few electrolytes, esports arenas. And then we sell on Amazon and that continues to grow. And we sell on our website at electrolyteboostcom and what I have seen is that the initial orders for somebody would be one pouch, which is 14 sachets in it, and now those people are ordering two, three, four and five pouches because they're getting to the point that they're saying, if I take it daily, I feel better and citricoline is, or does have, a cumulative effect. So you are better to take citricoline every day as opposed to hey, I'm going out for a run today and I need it today. It works for that. But if you can do it religiously every day, there is a benefit. So the first time we really came word of mouth on organic, we've done no advertising to date. We're starting to do some social.
Speaker 2:We're starting to do some social, we're starting to populate our Instagram and our TikTok with a bunch of athletes and go to regular people that are busy every day, that need to perform better, and we can essentially give you, depending on what you're doing, two additional hours of feeling good without drinking any fluids.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. I mean, you have a very grassroots approach to growing a company and I love to see that because it's all very relationship based. A very straightforward product speaks for itself. Put it in their hands and we're good to go. So tell me elaborate on that a little bit what specific tactics or tools have been particularly effective for growing your business.
Speaker 2:We're fortunate as a team to have lots of really good relationships in a lot of articles, not the least of which is sport, collegiate and professional.
Speaker 2:So we get the opportunity, like last week, brett Hunley you know an NFL quarterback as a chair had a charitable walk for epilepsy because it's an important condition affecting his family.
Speaker 2:So we went out there and gave all the walkers a sachet and as soon as they were done we've done that in several other charitable events We've been asked to do actually now a handful of more. So we're kind of scheduled out for the next six months and for us, sampling, as you referenced, is really there's nothing better than giving somebody a sample. I mean, we can talk about it on our website. We can talk about the science of electrolytes, we can talk about the silence of science of citicoline. We can have, you know, sports performance experts talk about the value benefit, but when you have a major league baseball player that says, oh my God, I wish I would have had this years ago, because none of these athletes want to go to the bathroom, especially during a game, and then people can relate in their own life of what they're doing, where they just want to feel better and perform better, and this will allow you to do it, so there is no replacement for hand to hand sampling.
Speaker 1:Gotcha, gotcha. So you know. And then I'm not in the physical product realm. You know we, everything we do. You know you can't really touch what we do unless it's through a phone. We do software development, right. So how have you adapted to the changes in your like physical good industry over the years, if any right, because from my understanding I know with COVID the supply chain was disrupted. Did that affect you guys at all or have there been?
Speaker 2:It didn't actually was beneficial. I've owned an experiential marketing agency for ever. In a day doing large events for the NFL, for MLB, for Warner Brothers, sony lots of you know pretty significant clients that died. The event business died.
Speaker 2:Covid obviously hasn't really come back. It's starting to come back and what we kept saying is that more people are gaming and that's why we developed product for gamers and their digital first. So they're used to Amazon, they're used to looking at a web page, they're used to going on social media channels to see what's new and cool and different and relying on on their friends. So we just had to morph to the extent that we couldn't put product in people's hands per se, but that we could show people using it and sharing it and hopefully those people go on. That looks good, it's something that would benefit me and therefore I will go on your website or Amazon and purchase it. So it changed.
Speaker 2:But I think what COVID did is it removed some of our top line tactics. It didn't remove all of them and, as any entrepreneur running a business knows, you know you have a strategy and you have an objective and those are generally written in stone. Your tactics change all the time. You try stuff and it works. You try stuff and it doesn't work. And you have to be sensitive to the metrics and make sure you measure what's working and not, so you get rid of the things that don't and COVID just made us look at different tactics.
Speaker 2:It didn't change the strategy of product in people's hands. It didn't change the strategy of education. It just changed how we did it, how we got it in people's hands.
Speaker 1:Love it, love it. So now talk to me about you know I have so many questions. You know experimental marketing.
Speaker 1:I was going to say I got all day so yeah, like you know, part of this is selfish, because I want to pick your brain, because you've been so successful and I've realized now like in my stage of business, if you can do marketing and sales, you can be a very successful founder right, and then at a certain point it comes down to systems. So it seems like, since you own an experimental, an experience-based marketing agency right, like events, and what have you?
Speaker 1:you learned a lot about marketing and sales, to where it now it sounds like it's second nature to you. It's like you've downloaded that code into your brain.
Speaker 2:I think it is second nature, with the caveat that every event is different. The people that are going to be there are different, your psychographic demographics are slightly different and you really need to understand who they are. I generally work backwards and say who are they, what do they need and what do we need to do to position ourselves as a value in our ultimate customer's life, where I find a lot of products say well, you need us because of this. I kind of don't look at it that way. I look at what the customer thinks or the audience thinks that they need, and tailor and develop our tactics so that we're answering that. It's kind of identifying a problem for somebody that doesn't even know that they have the problem until they see it and they go oh my God, that's great.
Speaker 2:I didn't realize that. So I think I said when we talked previously, it's really easy to find a gap in a market. It's really hard to find a market in that gap and when you think about that, the market and the gap is really important and you can look at. I think the biggest failure in a market, in a gap, is Quibi, the short quick-bite video that came out in COVID. You had Jeffrey Katzenberg, meg Whitman and $1.5 billion budget, and I think Ninja, one of the biggest streamers.
Speaker 2:Everybody in the world wanted to work with them and they were out of business in six months. And they were out of business because they identified what they thought was a gap in the market and never really spent any time saying but is there a gap in the market? Right, there's no quick video format out there with high quality content. That doesn't mean people want it. You can almost look at eSports right now and the challenge the eSports ecosystem is facing is that nobody's making money and digital media companies are closing and teams are closing and the theory is three billion people game, so therefore you need to monetize it.
Speaker 2:And having been in that world, I thought the same thing and never looked at it from well, where is that market? How do you monetize it? And ultimately, gaming is about people wanting to game and that doesn't mean you want to monetize it. So we went into electrolyte boost and saying is there a market for people that want to perform better and feel better, reduce their water intake? Because of the inconvenience of water or the lack availability of water? Football players can't really take it because there's no place to go to the bathroom.
Speaker 2:Nobody wants to go to the bathroom on an airplane and stand in line and all that other stuff. The military on their MREs. They have very little access to water, yet they're training in their combat. So in talking to all these different groups we realized, well, yeah, if you can enhance my performance, I'm all in and that's my performance. If I'm a carpool mom taking my kids to extracurricular activities, be it educational or sport, or somebody training in a gym, or a truck driver, that's got to get 10 hours in and X amount of miles that we can keep them on the road next to two hours without stopping to go to the bathroom. They're all performing better at what they do. So, yeah, there's a market for people wanting to perform better. So we looked at that at the end and then said, ok, there is that market. And as we go back and all these little baby steps, what do we start with and what's our messaging and our value proposition? And then go back towards that objective.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Well, we are coming up on time here, but I do want to ask you two more questions. I want to say what advice would you give to other business owners looking to succeed either in your industry or just in business in general?
Speaker 2:As an from an entrepreneurial standpoint. Yeah, you better be comfortable with risk. What I find with most entrepreneurs is they think opening a business and having the independent is the holy grail. They don't realize how difficult it is. And if you're going to be afraid when you've got, you know, $1,500 in your bank account on a Monday and you got $5,000 in payroll on Friday, you don't curl up in a fetal position and go oh shit, what do I do? If that's who you are and that's fine, then being an entrepreneur and building a business is probably going to be a very difficult thing to do. So I think you have to be very, very, very, very comfortable with risk, and people generally are, or they're not.
Speaker 2:I think you really have to spend a whole lot of time answering a couple of questions. First is what are we doing? Why are we doing this? And we do this every day with everything you know. We, every Thursday morning, we have four internal meetings with different groups and one with everybody, and when everybody anybody says I think we should do this. The question they have to answer in writing and share with everybody is why do we need to do this and how is that going to ultimately deliver us to our final objective. And if our final objective in election-like boost is we want to be the number one a electrolyte support company or product not based on water, so everyone's got to. If you're going to say, hey, I think we should do this, how is that going to get us there? What are the steps?
Speaker 2:So I'm a firm believer in several things. One is strategy own your strategy. You can't just say, oh God, that's a great opportunity, let's do it. We were approached with a very specific sampling opportunity in January and on its face it's a great sampling opportunity, but if you really broke it down, the audience that was there as part of that charity was not in our top three audience segments that we believe we should be targeting. So, as much as it was a great opportunity, we said no because it does not get us to where even and it was a phenomenal opportunity with and you can argue it all day long but we have three customer segments that are core to us and that wasn't one of them.
Speaker 2:So saying no is important. I think you have to look at your company as not an extension of you. You work for it and you serve it, and I may be the president of Electrolye Boost and created this formula, but I work for it. It's not my company per se, and things came up this morning when a couple of people said to me I think we should do this and I disagreed, and they all kind of sort of outvoted me and said I go do it. I'm just a steward for the brand. It has a life beyond me, hopefully a long life beyond me.
Speaker 2:So I think entrepreneurs and business owners have to really break down why they're in business, what they're doing and providing, why there is a need, who their very specific customer is. It's not just a customer, it's a specific customer and you can't be everything to everybody, so be something to someone. And even in software development there may well be two or three verticals that you think are most robust for you and target those. Don't go to some other low-hanging fruit because I think we can get a job for X dollars. Really focus and get well-known in a smaller pond and you can always grow. I think businesses become unfocused very quickly and if you don't have people around you to lasso you in, it's very easy to say I'll take that because it's a job that we need the money and that person I know. I'll do them a favor. That doesn't grow your business necessarily, and I think it's really hard and critically important for business owners and entrepreneurs to really own what they're doing and 95% of the time don't go anywhere else. Just focus and hone in on that.
Speaker 1:That's a really, really good point. Yeah, it become a big fish in a small pond. Well, Gary, thank you so much for your time today. How can the audience find you? How can they stay in touch with you?
Speaker 2:Well, anybody who wants more information, you can always email me at Gary at ElectrolightBoostcom. I answer every email, every phone call, every text. You can order at wwwelectrolightboostcom or you can go to Amazon. Best way to search it on Amazon is ElectrolightBoost with Cognizant and it pops up and you'll see all the great reviews. Anybody that believes that they can bring value to the company we're always looking for valuable team members, so if somebody thinks that they have a way to foster what we're doing, happy to have those conversations as well. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for your time so much, Gary.
Speaker 2:And it is my pleasure appreciate the support.