Dave Gulas:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Beyond Fulfillment podcast. I'm your host, Dave Gulas, and this week, my guest is the co founder and the CEO of Resist Nutrition, Drew Letterman. Welcome, Drew.
Drew Lederman:
Thank you so much for having me.
Dave Gulas:
Yeah, thanks for being here. If you could, for everyone, can you tell us what resist nutrition is and how it got started?
Drew Lederman:
Yeah, 100%. So, resist nutrition makes nutrition bars designed for balanced blood sugar. We're a medically advised and clinically backed brand. We have three flavors, and we sell online and in stores.
Dave Gulas:
Okay. And so the. The way this came about was through some. Some health challenges that you had, which led you to create this product, is that right?
Drew Lederman:
Yes, that's right. So, when I was 18, just starting college, I was diagnosed with PCOS, or polycystic ovary syndrome, and insulin resistance. At the time, I didn't realize how prevalent these issues were, but PCOS affects around 15% of people with ovaries, and insulin resistance affects around a third of people, so huge populations. But at the time, I'd felt very alone. I felt like there weren't a lot of resources out there to learn about how to handle and manage these issues, and certainly not those holistic methods more. So what was out there was about different medications you could take and also all the scary facts of how it can develop and if you're 50% more likely to get diabetes later in life. So I wanted to focus on my health and find ways to do that without getting on lifelong medications and using a combination of western and eastern tactics. And a big thing for me was nutrition, and it was the most impactful thing that I did for my health.
Drew Lederman:
Eating more blood sugar, stabilizing foods was a big one, and adding rather than subtracting. So including more healthy fats, protein, fiber into my diet, and never having naked carbs. So my carbs would be, you know, I would include protein, healthy fats, and fiber when I was eating carbs. And it revolutionized the way that I was eating. My skin cleared up, my hair grew back. I felt so much better. The constant fatigue that I had went away. And these kind of normalized common symptoms, acne, fatigue, weight gain, that are associated with hormonal and metabolic imbalances, all started to slowly heal.
Drew Lederman:
But these things take time, not necessarily that quick fix, but it taught me so much about how to eat and how to make small changes to influence my body without, you know, totally, you know, cold turkey, anything that I really loved. But the one thing that I found I had the most trouble with was when I was on the go or when I was traveling, it was really, really hard to maintain that style of eating and that lifestyle. I found I could. I could cook really well at home, and I could make food for myself, but it became a challenge. And so that was when I realized there was kind of this gap in the bar space. And I was always a bar person. But the bars that I was eating were either sports nutrition bars, low in carbs, high in protein, but they use a lot of artificial ingredients. And those artificial ingredients can mess with your gut, they can mess with your hormones, cause a whole bunch of inflammation, which, again, is an issue when you have disorders like those, and then you have more natural bars, but they use oats or dates or honey, and they're higher in sugar.
Drew Lederman:
And despite them being natural sugars, when you have a sensitive blood sugar system like myself, blood sugar's going to spike energy, crash, fatigue, inflammation, and very similar symptoms as kind of those artificial ingredients in those other bars. So I teamed up with my co founder, who's got a master's in nutrition, and our medical advisory board, and we started working on how can we make a better bar here? Is there a way? And it was incredibly difficult. No wonder no one had done it before. It was really difficult to find the right mix of ingredients. And we're honestly, to this day, still in making improvements to our recipes. We're constantly learning. We're constantly making new versions to make the best product possible, which was an incredible learning lesson for us starting before we were ready. Kind of getting out there, getting a product out there, getting feedback from customers, making tweaks, and doing it all over again, rinse and repeat.
Drew Lederman:
And that's kind of been one of the big tenants of our business, is listening to feedback, not just making the healthiest products in the market or the best macros that we could find. We are also making a product that is incredibly tasty and works into people's lives easily, which is one of the reasons I went with a bar format versus something that people would find more difficult to include into their daily lifestyle. Because, really, the mission behind our product is to make it easy to eat on the go for balanced blood sugar and healthy hormones. So ease is really a big part of what we're doing and why we went for that more convenience style product.
Dave Gulas:
Wow. Okay, so, quite a story. So, I mean, starting college as a young adult is hard enough, and then you get diagnosed with this. This medical condition, and you have to change a lot of things, right? So you do that, health improves, and you get this idea to basically with this mission driven business to really help others in your same predicament. But like you said, it was really challenging. So what's it like when you have this idea, you have this vision and you want to get started, but you know how to turning that idea into a tangible product. Like what was that process like, you know?
Drew Lederman:
Yeah, I think, yeah, 100%. It was something that I had never experienced before. I think launching a business two years out of college, just at the tail end of the pandemic as well, was no easy feat. And looking back, I see where I could have made some stronger choices. So basically it's going on the search for a strong supply chain and you know, without knowing too much about the industry or not knowing very many people in the industry either, I put my feelers out there, I used trustee Google and I became a part of community groups. So there's a great one for the food industry called startup CBG. So posting in there, getting people's feedback, looking into which manufacturers and co manufacturers that I could potentially work with, and there's also different, you know, types. So you can do a commercial kitchen and that's you in a commercial space, shared space, working on a product and packaging it, or like I said, a co manufacturer.
Drew Lederman:
We went with the ladder and again, part of that was because we were working in the pandemic and not being able to go into those commercial spaces started to become a hindrance. And so basically that was, that first step is finding a manufacturer that had order minimums that we could meet that didn't have too high of upstart costs. And so kind of looking back, a mistake that we made was trying to find the most affordable option as a new business with totally bootstrapped, no initial funding. Also as students with not a lot of capital behind ourselves, just couldn't invest really much into the business ourselves as well. So we were looking for the command that we could afford to. And looking back, I wish we had spent the extra dollar and extra time on some of the more expensive co manufacturers, knowing that we could have stayed there for longer and expanded faster, but instead we could afford. And I think that's totally normal for the time and good life lesson as we expand on our supply chain. So that was getting our co manufacturer, getting our recipes tested, making sure they ran well on the machines, getting our, you know, other parts of our supply chain like shipping set up.
Drew Lederman:
So three Pl versus, are we going to ship ourselves? And we decided to start by getting a warehouse and shipping out everything ourselves. And I think that was 100%. The right move gives you so much more personal touch into your shipments. It gives your customers the real sense that, you know, you're a small business and you're still growing. You can also catch things faster. So it's totally normal when people will, you know, say, oh, I did this wrong. Can you put this into my order instead of that or, or whatnot? It can be hard to catch those things if you're working with a big three Pl. But for us, being, you know, boots on the ground and being able to, you know, make those changes quickly, in addition to add in, like, surprise and delight items, really generating a, like, vip cohort and creating our cost.
Drew Lederman:
Our early customer evangelists who would go out and, you know, tell people about us and get more people on board. We also threw in things like coupon codes for their next order or cards to get a free product in stores to go support us in our retail. So highly recommend doing that before moving to a three Pl. Now we're in a three Pl, and it's awesome because it frees up a lot of our time eventually. It's just if you're spending 16 hours a week or more focusing on shipping. As a founder, it's really difficult, especially when the holidays roll around and suddenly your orders have just doubled. But that was our path. I think that it worked really well for us in the end.
Drew Lederman:
And then other things like packaging. We've moved around a few packaging suppliers, which has been really interesting. I think getting lots of quotes has always been something that we've done. I think that has been a super big learning, is to not all packaging players, not all manufacturers are playing in the same kind of amounts. I think that trying to find better prices and better deals, especially as you grow, that was something we did pretty early on. Trying to just reduce our cogs, get that contribution margin up, get our profitability up as soon as possible, was another lesson learned. And now we're super on top of those numbers. Um, because at this stage, you gotta be, you gotta be focusing so much on where, where each dollar is going, everything counts.
Dave Gulas:
For sure. For sure. And just to back up with the story one bit. So when you went into school, did you have the desire to have your own business? Did you know this, this was like a path that you wanted to go down, or was this like a total 180 from, from what your plans were?
Drew Lederman:
It was a total 180. I studied acting and journalism in college. Did not really know what I wanted as I was in my senior year. I'm a 2020 graduate, so I did graduate right at probably the worst time in terms of the job market. And I also planned to go into entertainment. So talent agencies were kind of on a standstill. Production companies were kind of at a standstill. So that was when I started thinking a little more outside the box on what I could potentially do.
Drew Lederman:
I started working freelance for other brands. So working on their growth, marketing, email marketing, copywriting, content creation, which definitely gave me my first taste of what it was like to work at an early stage brand and working freelance, it enabled me to get a sense for what was working and what wasn't. Athenae. Not so much similar brands, but brands in the CPG space, brands that had benefits better for you brands, and it makes it a lot less pressure when you're, you know, you're being handed a budget and you're, I don't want to say like playing around with other people's money, but, you know, that's kind of what it feels like sometimes in marketing you are testing, especially when you know, that brand hasn't necessarily done a lot of marketing. You know, it taught me a lot with, you know, not the pressure of spending my own money or working with my own brand, really learning what worked. And of course, you know, every brand is different and what works. What works one month will be different, works the next. But it definitely gave me some of those, those early skills that I use today with my business.
Drew Lederman:
And, you know, even things like journalism, you know, we write our own blogs for our website and we're, you know, SEO optimized, and that brings in a lot of organic traffic for us. And then drama. I think that all theater kids out there probably feel the same way, but it's really helpful for public speaking and for pitching. So I feel like, you know, it wasn't a waste to get those degrees either, but you never know how you're going to use them in the future.
Dave Gulas:
Wow, that's really interesting, too. So it sounds like all these different skills and experiences that you had, whether from the drama and the journalism and then the freelance marketing. Right. Even though it's not the way you intended it, all those experiences turned out to be beneficial for your business now.
Drew Lederman:
Yeah, 100%.
Dave Gulas:
Okay. And speaking of the CPG space, because I talked to numerous CPG founders, the one thing I hear is it's so competitive, margins are tough. Right? Shelf space, it's a, of these major retailers is incredibly expensive. Like, it's just people in that space typically have a very tough time. So what was it like kind of growing a business in that area? Particularly coming right out of the pandemic.
Drew Lederman:
Oh, my gosh, it's a great question. I think that it's so funny because we are truly as a bar company, we are in the most saturated spot in CPG, um, and even though in the grocery store, I believe that a bar section is one of the biggest sections, um, for a singular type of product that you can find in a grocery store, outside, maybe beverages, um, and it is competitive since, certainly really competitive. And there is lots of turnover. The same way that it's, you know, easier in some ways to get people to try a new bar, it's just as easy for them to switch to a new bar after they try you. So there is lots of turnover. Um, so really the most important metrics that we focus on is retention, um, and returning customer rate, lifetime value, average order value. I mean, they're all really important, but, you know, getting the people to come back in, um, and stick with the brand is, is an ever evolving challenge. Um, on the retail side of things, I think it's even more competitive.
Drew Lederman:
Um, so what we have done is we have alternative channels. So we're not just focused on traditional retailers. We're also focused on alternative medicine offices, dietitian offices, we're in studio gyms, health food stores. So we're focused more in that sense on alternative as far as kind of conventional grocery goes. And then we also focus on pharmacies. So being a medically backed and clinically backed brand has really helped in that sense. So we can kind of separate ourselves in some ways. Another benefit, and this is something that we're still working on as far as strategy, is moving into the pharmacy section of grocery stores.
Drew Lederman:
So the problem with the pharmacy section of most grocery stores is that either they're in value packs, they're not in singles. That makes it really hard without brand recognition to get people to try. And the other thing you could do is spend a lot of money on demos, but that can also be challenging as far as cost. But moving into that pharmacy section, we're a much more disruptive brand there. Whereas the other brands are very clinical, feeling Atkins, fiber one, they're very medical, they're very old fashioned, and honestly, the macros are not very good. They use a lot of artificial ingredients, so there we would be very, very disruptive. But I, as a product that, you know, not a lot of people have heard of yet, um, it's harder to get people to try a box of four or a box of eight versus in the bar section where you can sell those singles. So it has been something that we've been working on and testing with some of our key retailers, um, of getting, getting in that section as a single, um, as you know, box of twelve.
Drew Lederman:
But people can purchase in singles, um, and then eventually getting them to, as we have better and better velocities to bring us in as a value pack, which is something that we do on our website, but not in very many of our retailers. So it has been an interesting step forward, not necessarily something we fully strategized or kind of finished testing. We're still doing our testing there to see what works best. But yes, because it is so saturated, I think going alternative has been a huge value add for us, but then also having a big focus on direct consumer. It is so much easier to find our target customer online than it is to find, you know, in stores. You don't know who's looking, um, but you can easily, I'm not easily, but, you know, easier to find. You know, we're looking for people in metropolitan cities who know about ingredients, who know what's healthy, who know how to recognize artificial ingredients. They can understand the value of, of our high quality and all natural ingredients, and then they also have a diagnosis or they're looking to stabilize their blood sugar.
Drew Lederman:
So it's been easier to find those online on Amazon. And then, you know, we also know in the pharmacy section, if people are looking for, you know, diabetic friendly foods, blood sugar friendly foods, they're going to be looking for things like Lucerna and fiber one. And we can be that disruptive young Gen Z founded brand that is not only delivering on fun and macros, but also clean ingredients.
Dave Gulas:
Yeah, and that's a great point too. I mean, do you know how much of your audience or your target audience is Gen Z? Is it a large percentage?
Drew Lederman:
It's a great question. Yeah, we do have a decent amount of our customers. Our Gen Z, we find our audience really skews female. So we have a lot of young women, not a lot of people kind of in that middle, like 35 to 45, very few. And then we have a lot of older women. So we seem to be catching people at that inflection for menopause, inflection for diabetic diagnosis, but then also the younger generation, Gen Z and millennial, who are much more in touch with what is natural and healthy. And they also are getting the, you know, PCOS diagnosis happens usually around like, reproductive age. So getting that PCOS diagnosis or getting an insulin resistance diagnosis, those are much more common in younger women.
Drew Lederman:
As we're getting a lot of education online of potential unexplained symptoms of acne, weight gain. These ones that earlier generations just were like, that's just what it's like to be a woman, or those symptoms are just common. Everybody has them, everybody has acne, whereas our generation is much more like, no, this isn't normal, and there's something wrong, and I'm going to get a hormonal panel, or I'm going to get tested for a chronic illness like Hashimoto's. Maybe I have that much more informed about potential issues. I think that Doctor Google is something that we joke about, but it has been helping us get more and more diagnosis. When I was diagnosed, for example, when I was diagnosed with PCOS, the statistic was 10% of people with over reason women, and today it's 15%, projected to be one in five, because diagnosis is commonly undiagnosed. So as we get more and more people getting educated and getting a diagnosis, I mean, just going from ten to 15%, that's pretty crazy as far as medical statistics go. And that's just.
Drew Lederman:
I mean, when I was 18, which was eight years ago, that's just eight years. I mean, it's pretty staggering. So I think that's also a part of it. And it's interesting because we do have maybe, you know, 75% of our customers are women, and maybe, you know, a third of them have a diagnosis, and then the rest are very health conscious people who think that they have a diagnosis or think that there is something that they could be working on, or rather know that there's something there they could be working on. Um, I mean, there's a huge prevalence right now for biohacking. Um, and it's the last thing I'll say on this. I could really talk about this forever. But, you know, biohacking is really huge right now.
Drew Lederman:
Um, and it's people just trying to understand their bodies better. And a big tool that people use for biohacking is continuous glucose monitors. And so maybe they don't have a diagnosis, or maybe they have, like, an insulin resistance diagnosis like myself, where, you know, it's not diabetes. You don't really get the same kind of, you know, blood sugar awareness that you maybe would with, you know, diabetes. And they're tracking how their blood sugar reacts to things that they eat. And that's been an incredible kind of tool for our community, people who use continuous glucose monitors, because they can watch our products work in real time. And I think that the prevalence of those tools is also really helping people understand how food works in their body and how to tailor the food that they eat to their individual needs. So things like that, people, younger generations, Gen Z, millennial, are just getting more in touch with that and more interested in their health?
Dave Gulas:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And like you said, there's so many tools available now, whether it's, you know, you have the wealth of information at your fingertips via the smartphone, the Internet, the CGM's. Like you said, a lot of people are using those for biohacking purposes or if they have a diabetes or whatnot. Like, you know, they're monitoring how food affects them being, you know, as you recounted too, with the challenges and all the things of growing a CPG brand. Do you think because this is a mission driven business and this, this product is so personal to you that that was a big help in you just sustaining the early part of what it's like to get a business like this.
Drew Lederman:
Off the ground 100%? I was actually just talking to my co founder about this, that I believe that, you know, mission driven brands are the ones that last longer, because it's very, like you said, it's hard. It's hard to get through those early stages of a business. There's trials and tribulations, there's twists and turns. But, you know, having that drive to get the product that you're working on out there, it goes beyond just, you know, some. You know, as a consumer brand, sometimes we look at the tech founders and it's just a whole different ballgame. They have lots of funding and they're working with big vc's and it's just very different in that sense. But we watch a lot of them close and it's so different being an emission backed brand where the founders are much more. I don't want to say more resilient, but that less, like, more hesitant to give up.
Drew Lederman:
And I think that something. I'm a founder in residence at NYU, and so I talk to students maybe twice, three times a week. And something that I say to them is the founder that has that ten year old business is not necessarily the founder with the best idea or the best product. It is the founder that didn't give up and worked to make their product better and worked to make improve their idea through feedback. It's the founder that just persevered through, and it's really hard. I think that one of the reasons why being a mission backed is so helpful is because it gives you that purpose. And it's that little voice in the back of your head saying, don't give up. Literally every time we get a positive review or someone sending us in a screenshot of their continuous glucose monitor data showing we kept their blood sugar stable, you know, it's proof to us that, you know, we are making an amazing product and we're doing good in the world.
Drew Lederman:
And, you know, having. Having that mission behind us is what keeps us going. When things get hard, especially as founders, you know, it's very easy to get into the like, I could be. I could just be going to a regular nine to five and shutting my computer at the end of the day and only working 40 hours a week. You know, things could be so much more simple, or I could be making more money working at another company rather than, you know, building. Building up this dream. It's very easy to fall into that trap. And so that's why having the, you know, mission behind it and the drive, personal story and drive to keep it going, I think, is that's what keeps the business alive at its core.
Drew Lederman:
And when I, it has its benefits and its detriments, I think when things are going really well and when things grow and the issues seem like a distant memory, it's going to be amazing. And we're going to be able to look back on those moments and be able to go on podcasts and talk about how those mistakes prepared us. Those mistakes at a low level, at an early stage, with a smaller budget, prepared us to not make those same mistakes with a much larger budget. We're going to, you know, be excited about those things, and then also, you know, in the moment, it's the, it's hard, but I think it definitely, it takes a certain kind of person to, to, um, to be able to think that way. And to me, to maintain optimism, I think founders need to be optimistic.
Dave Gulas:
Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Right. Because when you start, you have this grand vision, and you, you always think you're going to do better and it's going to be easier, and there's a lot of stuff you don't see coming. So when those challenges do hit you, you have to have that resilience. And like you said, having a mission and something so personal helps so much in sustaining you through those times, so.
Drew Lederman:
Absolutely.
Dave Gulas:
So with everything you've accomplished, you're two years in. You know, like, like you mentioned when we were talking off camera, you're in over 200 retailers right now. Online sales continuing to grow. Like, what's next for resist nutrition?
Drew Lederman:
That's such a great question. Oh, my gosh, there's so much that we're working on right now. But in the next few months, I'll talk about the next six months. So the next six months, we're going to be working on opening up new points of distribution. So that's on the horizon, those new points of distribution. So that's really going to help us expand into more metropolitan areas, which has been our focus. In addition, we're working on two new flavors. So I'm very excited about that.
Drew Lederman:
Having gone on two years with, with only three flavors has been awesome. I think that focusing our attention on really perfecting those flavors so we can bring it across to a much larger product line has been awesome. So we're working on that right now. And, you know, a big focus for us in the next year is going to be growing our retail partners and working with partners that make sense. Um, so that's going to be huge. And putting, putting more effort into our alternative channels and again, meeting our customer where they're at. So that's kind of on the horizon for us. Um, we got some big goals coming up, uh, that we're trying to hit before the end of the year.
Drew Lederman:
So, yeah, I got my, I got my big monitor over here with all of my different, my goals and our, you know, forecast. So, yeah, really excited to zero in on those things and continuing to really just forecast and prep and not let anything surprise us.
Dave Gulas:
Okay. And if people want to get in touch with you, learn more about what you're doing and the product, what's the best way people can do that?
Drew Lederman:
Yeah, you can find us@eatresist.com and also on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Geneva, literally all channels.
Dave Gulas:
Okay. All right. And we will link all that in the show notes for everyone.
Drew Lederman:
Awesome. Thank you so much.
Dave Gulas:
Yeah. All right, well, Drew, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. We really appreciate it, and that is all the time we have for now. We will see you next time.