 20 million Americans suffer from digestive issues every day. Whether it's the food they eat or the lifestyles they live, it's not always clear what causes these issues. This quest for better gut health led Sif and Nish, the co-founders of Array, down a rabbit hole of natural supplements. In their research and experimentation, they began to realize that herbs, minerals, and vitamins have the power to effectively solve the digestive problems they were once facing. It was a true eureka moment, and from that moment, Array was born. In today's episode, we discuss the step-by-step guide they used to close millions of dollars in funding, why clinically-trialed ingredients is misleading, and why they're investing $1 million into paid TikTok ads over the course of 2023. This marks a special milestone for the podcast. It's officially episode 200. Without you, none of this would be possible. So we just wanted to say thank you for tuning in every week, listening to the podcast, following, subscribing, sharing, and overall just being supporters and fans of what we're putting out every week. So we just wanted to say thank you so much for tuning in, and we can't wait for what the rest of the season brings. So let's get into the episode. All right, welcome to the podcast. On today's show, we're talking to the founders of Array. Thanks for joining. Either one of you take the question. What is the company? People don't know what it is. What is it? Go for it. I was looking at you. So we create 100% natural supplements that work in under an hour, specifically now we're focused more on the digestive health space. And what made you want to get into, of all the problems both of you could solve, why this problem? So essentially I struggled with my own health for a really long time, all across high school, my early 20s, and ultimately hit my breaking point when I ended up fracturing a rib from a chronic cough. Oh, no, that must have been quite the cough. Yeah, it was insane. And I remember going to my doctor, like first of all, in so much pain and they did the X-ray and they're like, yeah, it's fractured. And I'm like, okay, well, what do we do to make sure this doesn't happen ever again? And she just prescribed me codeine. And I was like, okay, that'll just, like, what am I going to do after this? I'm like 22, 23 years old, like it doesn't solve anything. And so from that point onwards, because there was no plan of action, I was like, okay, like what I've been doing up until this point hasn't been working. And I just, I can't live my whole life like this. I feel like I'm 90 and I'm like in my early 20s. So that's when I got really into holistic health and wellness and kind of started becoming like a witch doctor at home because I was just reading and researching so much and treating myself like a guinea pig. And obviously got Nish really into it too, you know, he... Well, basically like what happened is there was this massive array of different kinds of supplements in the house that we were just trying all the time. Just like individual ingredients. For different purposes. It was like immunity. It was like digestive issues. It might have been for better focus, whatever that might be. And we kind of experimented with a bunch of things that was really interesting. So Sif and I come from a beauty background in the sense that Sif was an influencer, blogger, writer, and she was specifically in the beauty background. Okay. And so we were really... Like fashion beauty or like beauty products? Like skin care. Skin care. Okay, got it, got it. And so our bathroom had like some of the best beauty products. And so I as a guy had like a 10 step skin care routine because I'm stealing all of her stuff. I'm like, this is pretty crazy. Like this stuff, first of all, works really well. Why is the beauty industry formulated by dermatologists? So there's actually a lot of credibility behind the products that they're building. And it's very targeted. Like you know exactly what to take for what specific skin issue that you might have. Like whether it's eczema, whether it's pigmentation, whether it's dry skin, whatever that might be. And then also the products are super beautiful. Like you can integrate them exactly. The branding is there. It's really beautiful. Like you want it to be displayed on the shelf. And so it's just so easy to kind of integrate that into your routine. And we found that in the wellness category that just wasn't it, you know, people were suffering from issues. Like I go speak to my girlfriends, everyone was bloated, everyone was anxious, everyone was, you know, dealing with all of these issues. And there was this almost like they didn't know what to use. If they did buy things like one, one, two things, they wouldn't know if they were actually feeling the results or if it was doing anything. And also they'd forget about using the products because they'd just stuff it into their pantry. It was just so sterile and ugly looking that no one would want to use it. And I remember, we know when I was a kid and I'd watched my mom with her skincare, it wasn't what it is today. You know, it was still back then very sterile looking. And over time, there's been this huge rise and interest in the skincare category just because of how it's evolved and how user friendly it is and how excited people are to, you know, use the products. And so that's kind of what we wanted to bring into the wellness category. So we decided we were going to solve, you know, issues which are really easy to understand, bloat, calm, then sleep. We launched as well. We actually are just coming off of our heartburn launch. So these are issues that like it's fairly straightforward. Oh, I deal with this. And it's all natural stuff. All natural gets you away from like chemically laden products, which you don't necessarily need to solve these issues. And when we say natural, we mean like the specific ingredients that are in the products, there's all there is, there's nothing else. So what you see is what you get kind of thing. Because even in the supplement world, you will have a lot of these other ingredients that put in there as fillers just to fill up the capsules. Or sometimes they'll have fillers, which they need to put in there to properly encapsulate the ingredients, which means basically floating greens through the capsules. But a lot of those products are also bad for you. And so for us, like we try to use as I mean, we first of all use no fillers in a lot of our products. And when we do need to, let's say, have something so that the ingredients can mix and match together properly, those ingredients that we use are organic, good for your ingredients. And so there's never more than like five or six ingredients that work really well together. And that's really, that's really it. And also you were so particular about kind of making sure the products that would actually work, that we run our own clinical trials in the products. So here's a really important distinction. People will come up nowadays and be like, Oh, look at our clinically trialed ingredients. So what that means is you go onto Google, you have a bunch of ingredients, you type in the ingredient, it'll have a clinical trial around it. All of a sudden you have a clinically trialed ingredient. So anyone can do that. There's no real filter for that. Absolutely not. No, I mean, that's why people have to be discerning when it's like clinically trialed ingredients versus clinically trialed, right? Like the whole, exactly. So when it's an ingredient, for example, a turmeric, let's just use that. And we don't have that in our products, but turmeric as an ingredient has been clinically trialed on its own, like thousands. It's actually the most clinically trialed ingredient that exists. Right. So if I used a product that includes turmeric, I could say clinically trialed ingredients because turmeric is clinically trialed. Doesn't mean I ran. Everything else could be like poison. Yeah, or like, and it's not necessary that I've clinically trialed my whole product to ensure that every single ingredient in there is working synergistically together, you know, because just because you can make claims about every single individual product doesn't mean that they're actually working together. In fact, there's actually studies that show that when you have a bunch of different clinically trialed ingredients together, it may not be effective. It's actually complete for some other purpose. Or you may not need that amount of ingredients. You know what I mean? Like just because there's 15 like buzzy ingredients within something doesn't mean that they're all like doing something that they need to be doing. You know what I mean? So was bloat your first product? Bloat in combos. Okay. So in my head, I go, all right, we're going to solve bloat. Cool. Let's do this. The four of us. Let's go. All right. And then, and then you go, okay, I should probably start doing some research on what is the cause maybe or what is the fix. And so then sort of walk me under me through your thought process around, we're going to go ahead and attack the bloat issue. Here are some things that are natural that relieve someone who's bloat. So we launched bloat and com together and we worked with a doctor for those four that those two formulas and with every other formula. So we work with a doctor to formulate everything. That was actually really important to us. Because again, like if we look at a category like skincare, you see either chemistry dermatologist, why not a doctor when it comes to our category. So we worked with a doctor to formulate everything. And in terms of specifically a doctor who kind of specializes in digestive health and also mental health. And does everyone bloat for different reasons, every human? Or is it a certain trigger that, you know, you can, you can sort of fix with something in your product. So the digestive system is actually quite complicated and you could be bloated for a number of reasons. You know, for you, maybe it's like hypothetically gas buildup or, you know, your inability to have the right amount of enzymes to break down specific foods. It could be for a number of reasons or a combination of those reasons. And what our bloat product does is it targets all of those reasons. So whatever your reason is for bloating, the six ingredients that we have in there kind of targets, like different issues or different reasons why you could be bloated. So basically what we said is, okay, what are some of these top, top things that would cause bloat? Right. And then. And then you put all of those things. You put of those things. All those agents into the, okay, got it. And then the, the cool thing about the digestive system is that, you know, for majority of people, there is a certain set of triggers that kind of cause bloating. Now there's a smaller subject of people where their digestive system really requires a different type of repair. And so there's multiple other factors in play. But with this product, we said, okay, we know kind of what affects 80% of the population. And so let's go and put in high dosages of those ingredients that will solve those specific issues. Like SIF said, we have things like digestive enzymes, because you may not be able to break down the certain type of foods. Another one could be for gas buildup. Another one is to actually help move the food through your digestive system. So those are a lot of like, like you want to reduce your transit time in the system, basically. And transit times mean the amount of time it takes for the food to process and move through your intestines. And before you got to this, I want to solve the problem thing. I mean, how many things did you guys try? Like probiotics? I mean, I could just imagine the list of things you guys must have gone through because there's so much like science, pseudoscience, so many things you could believe, don't believe, so many influencers saying this fixed me, right? I'm just trying to figure out like at some point you go, this is it. This is the thing. We have the science. It's real. Yeah. So again, working with a doctor definitely speeds up that process because we weren't kind of going by what we were reading on Instagram or, you know, like the latest wellness trend. It was really someone with 15 years of experience who had real life experience with patients. You know, and when you're working with a real expert in their field, then they'll be able to kind of weed through the bullshit. So for me or Nish, even though we're like incredibly passionate about this area, we could say like, oh, like we like these ingredients. But in order to really be able to formulate the best possible product, it's like really important for us to work with a doctor who knows their shit, you know? And so that's kind of what happened. So for example, like probiotics, great for a digestion, right? And that's kind of, it's important for like overall gut health. But if you're bloated in the moment, you take a probiotic, your bloat isn't just going to disappear like that, you know? So we wanted something a little bit more fast acting that would give people. How much testing goes into it? So once you guys had like the solution and, you know, things seem to be moving in the right direction, do you then just give it out to all your friends or is there some sort of crazy amount of testing that has to be done before it starts to happen? Yeah, like each product takes about a year and a half to make because of the amount of testing. So actually the formulation piece is not the biggest proportion of it, is the testing and making sure this works in the way that you want it to, that's the hardest part. So basically what we do is like we'll go and build out the formulations by working with the doctors. What we think is the best guess of what's going to work. And then we'll go and actually test our products with different types of issues. So we'll have it tested with people who have IBS, we'll have it tested with people without IBS. We'll have tested people who are men and women and so we'll essentially run kind of our own pre-clinical trials on these products to get some data and also just to be like, okay, this is doing what it's doing or maybe it's not doing what we needed to do. And then we'll iterate on the product based on that feedback. Is that expensive, that whole process? Yeah, it's very expensive and it's very time taking because like it's expensive because it's very difficult to do this at a small scale. And so essentially like we have had to create a pipeline and work with a bunch of different manufacturers and build out these relationships so we can go ahead and do that again and again and again for every single one of our products. And so, yeah, it's quite an expensive but it's expensive and also very timely. Yeah, in terms of like when you guys went through the trials, was there anything that you either learned in a positive way? Like, oh, this also solves these issues or maybe in a negative way where it was like, ah, we sort of missed the mark. Yeah, so what's really interesting is we started off kind of being like, okay, our bloat supplements, some of these other supplements, you take it on an as needed basis. We said, if you're feeling bloated in time, you kind of take them and then you know, it'll get rid of the bloat for you. And so that is true. But then after you ran the clinical trials, what was really interesting is like, you're actually supposed to take these every single day because over time, you like literally start fixing the digestive system. And so what happens, we saw clinical trial data that came in where after three months of use, like your level of bloat that you experienced was just less even though you were having the same foods. The kind of heartburn experience would be less even though you're having the same foods. So it's like you're fixing the overall gut health? Yes. We knew that this is something that you could take and feel immediate relief. But you know, on top of that, what clinicals taught us was that there is actually accrued benefits as well which was really cool for us to learn. So this whole process of you creating the bloat and calm, you didn't have to go through FDA testing, is that correct? So we're a Canadian company which means that there's like stricter rules. And so we had to. So there's basically the equivalent of buying Canada, which is called Natural Health Canada. And so you have to go through a series of processes where you have to get it actually approved by Health Canada in order to sell these products. So that's good. That's kind of where I was going with this was because I believe in the U.S., supplements don't have to qualify. And I'm wondering, so you said it was very time consuming and expensive to go through. But on the other hand, that to me as a consumer is a good thing that I know that I'm not just getting, like you said, ingredients that aren't going to solve the problem that have like that have been clinically tested, but not together in conjunction. And so I'm wondering if you see that as kind of like, I mean, a plus and a minus of being time consuming, costly, but also you're actually getting what the product says it does. And do you see any, any reason why like, you know, America should top that like ASAP. And now that you're selling in America, I guess you don't have to worry about that. But is that something that you guys are working towards like as an industry wide goal? I really think so because it is so easy to build a supplement like you could go tomorrow, talk to any random manufacturer and be like put some random ingredients in it. And what's really crazy is that some of these manufacturers are so easy going with the rules that you could probably sneak in ingredients and not even list them on the label. Like that is how lax the rules are around this. And so it is just so important. Like for us, we are being so transparent with where we're getting our ingredients from. Who would it like showing certificates of how we're getting these types of ingredients, like showing certificates of the fact that there's nothing else in here than what we say there is. But I think this is a more of a matter of trust. I'm talking about that again and again. And so I really feel like consumers have to make noise about it and sort of asking the questions and also looking out for certain things. Like, for example, if you are buying from a US based company and they're not sold in Canada, for example, then like looking at things like making sure that the company has like their GMP certifies a good manufacturing practices. That means that, you know, that's like a good manufacturer that they're using and they like abide by certain standards. So that's like a really good example or even better is if the company of origin is like either Canadian or European because the regulations are just a lot stricter. Like we're not allowed to just make whatever claims we'd like. There's serious consequences to that. So whatever claims we make have to be approved by natural health Canada. So that is also like a helpful tip for consumers. As you guys were starting this so you're in a year of clinical trials. Are you still working? Are you still like what is your personal life like at this time? At this point, it's kind of like a side hustle. Yeah, the very oath of yeah. So we launched the company March 2020 and good time. Yeah, great time. Honestly, I kind of a good time. Yeah, people started caring. No, but there's everyone was at home, anxious and bloated. And there we were bloating calm like, you know. So in that sense, yes, for like a consumer needs standpoint, it was really the perfect storm. But from an operational standpoint, it was really challenging. But you know, I think every company goes through challenges at different stages. But at that time, Nish was working full time at a very demanding job. And I was still working full time as an influencer. So like we were we were really hustling to kind of we were essentially working full time on both things. Yeah, I had like this crazy job where I had to fly to India and Japan every single month. What were you doing? So I was in the FinTech world. I was used to for a company called Paytm. And they're like essentially one of the largest financial services provider in India. And this company was like on as a rocket ship. So this went like this grew super, super fast. It went public just very recently. And so we were helping the company through that process. And so and I was the head of product for their advertising team and their consumer team throughout my career there. And I mean, I was amazing. I was so much fun. And so essentially it came to a point where the CEO of the company was like, Nish, I really want you to go and lead product in Japan and like move to Japan when we were building a free launch. Yeah, we're just starting array. And then this guy offers this and like it comes with like a crazy salary. Like Japan sounds so cool as well. And the company's about to go public. Like, you know, this is like a very lucrative opportunity for sure. But, you know, we were working on this. And when we first tried their products, I was like, this is pretty crazy. Like it works. This is going to work. Yeah, like we just knew that. Wait, why didn't you say yes to the salary? To the salary? Yeah. I was in Japan. I was so I wasn't going to move to Japan. She was not going to move to Japan. And I was just like, OK, I really want it. It was like, but it's like secure. Oh, it's going to be really good. The pay for the apartment, I was going to make like over a quarter million dollars a year minimum. Stock options, this and that. Right. Like this is probably a multi-million dollar package, honestly. But when this happened, it was just like, oh, we were six to eight months into the business at this point. And it was growing, but we're not like making money at all at this point. Right. And so I was using my salary at that point to fund inventory and whatnot for the company. But it just came up at eight months where I was getting burned down with how to make a decision because I was like, we either do this or we do that. So Sif and I took a trip to Greece together and we took two weeks off and we're just like, this is crazy. Like this company is really growing. And I was like, I'm not going to quit until we hit our first million dollars and we hit our first million dollars like 10 months into the business. And then I was like, OK, this is no brainer. We're going to quit. So you saw the signals and you felt comfortable enough to get out. Yeah. When you guys first launched, did you come into it with two products or was it three products? Just two. Just two. Yeah. And then we launched Sleep and actually this past July. OK. And then how were you guys funding it outside? Was it just your basically your company? Yeah. OK. And then this salary is like both of them are salary. Yeah. Yeah. And then at some point do you guys open this up for investment or are you? Yeah, we did. That wasn't... It was like well over a year into the business though. We like funded it ourselves because it was really important to us to really understand how to build the company and not just give it away or like, you know, get outside funding right from the get-go and I think that it made us I don't know like very smart about things like unit economics like understanding like how to manage burn because we didn't really have a choice, you know? And so it like forced you to have good business basics before we raised money. So we didn't raise outside capital until like a year and a half for the company. Yeah. OK. And then at a year and a half you're raising capital and do people get it or are the investors like what is this? This is crazy. I'm getting like 100 of these decks. So you know what's really funny? When we were trying to raise capital so Sif and I haven't raised capital before. So the issue was that we were bad at raising money. Like how bad were you? Like what do you mean? We just hadn't perfected our pitch. So that was about it. Very honest to say by the way. Yeah. When you're in it it feels like it's pulling teeth your first raise especially if you don't come from that background and you literally don't know anything and any one because it's not like, you know, we were in the space and we knew all these. Like we were literally nobody's from Toronto. OK. Like we just had a successful company and we were like finding our way. And so when when we were in it it felt like forever. But I look back at it now and I spoke into a lot of other founders. It was actually a fairly quick process for us in comparison. Like if you look at the data behind what we did we didn't we didn't talk to hundreds of investors and have one or two of you say yes we talked to 30. OK. And then 10 said yes. You know what I mean? And do you know why they said yes? What was the thing that they saw? Well, is the company the company was doing so just doing well. The company was just doing really well. OK. So you had the metrics that would say OK, look exactly. Exactly. So in fact, the investors that we lost along the way and I still remember like a very pivotal moment where we really liked this one venture fund and we had like our first like two to three conversations were great with them and then we met with like the bigger committee and Nish and I pitched to the bigger committee and they said no like an email obviously later but we were like really devastated and we realized it was because we didn't know how to pitch to people and so at that point that was the turning point where I remember Nish being like Sif like our pitch is bad like we got to fix it otherwise it doesn't even matter what the company metrics are doing I feel like you sell them on the dream and the story and that has to be just as strong as your metrics because otherwise they won't get it if they don't understand the industry they won't get it and so after that like you know we really practiced and we nailed it so I think it was 48 hours 48 hours we fixed the pitch we fixed like the data we were showing in a different way and we all we did was represent the company in a different light and a different story but the company is the same and the metrics are the same and it's still doing as well can you give people some examples of like the things you've changed so they can walk away with the saying oh interesting okay yeah for sure so I think one of the things is that we walk them through the customer journey really well so like you know the issue of why we came up with this so just making sure people understood why is this personal it's personal why is passionate 100% that's the number one thing that's the number one thing I look for every founder because if it's personal like you said you've experienced the issue that you were trying to solve then I know you're willing to try almost anything that's fixed it yeah because you know the pain point so well that it's like it really for me I created a rate for me right like I am our customer like everyone else is secondary you're an expert and you're driven yeah for people listening always the one it's always the one I look for yeah for sure what's the second one number two is there's people out there who would be like oh I want to go build a billion dollar business they will say that because they want they think investors want to hear that and then there's people like us who actually want to build it but we weren't saying it and so I think that also the way you say if you're going to say something like that like backing up why that's going to happen for you and so what happened is we're like okay we genuinely want to go and build one of the biggest businesses in our space and by the way here's why we think you can do that and so then we presented like this entire kind of map around why we could do that what products we're going to build what the vision is and like a very realistic track on doing that so that was really important because there was a point where somebody came to us and it's like like Nishin said you did not represent to this other investor how ambitious you guys really are but to me you told me because you're you're just really easy going and you piece it together for them exactly yeah so that was a really really important also big super important always that's number two cool that's what's number three I think showing metrics that also matters that's number three show me the data yeah so when it comes to the data like not just vanity metrics like we did a million dollars in this period of time which is great by the way but also things like what's our repeat customer rate like does our acquisition cost make sense like unit economics and just prove that like you know what you're doing it's not just that like your revenues are high because you you bought the whole thing you know that like your brand actually has equity that people come back for it that they're buying it because there's like a real need for it so and like what's really interesting about the metrics is that I think the first pass like the first review of the metrics investor sees is the most important because you can't so for us you remember how we said we got 10 yeses after the 30 interviews the first 20 were the no's and the reason there was a no was because these metrics weren't presented correctly and also our numbers like you know we talk about all these metrics I've talked about but there's a very specific way to think think about them and so being really clear about how you're presenting them and just like understanding them completely yourselves where if they can ask a hundred questions on every single you know every sell and excel sheet kind of thing you should be able to explain why the number is what it is and so near the end we got so good at explaining because we built them all out ourselves right in the beginning we hadn't built them all out ourselves so one of the things about raising capital that always trips me up sometimes is if when you're doing it you're talking to an investor and by default they're usually not they're not in the yes position yet right you have to like walk them through the yes position and the problem with that mindset is always they're almost playing like the red team where they're just trying to poke holes in your business and a part of this can be like terrifying for the entrepreneur once they leave that meeting and they have to sleep at night they're like oh my god have we you know it can it has a way of instilling fear into the entrepreneur did this happen for you guys or you take some calm and you're fine I honestly the amount of calm I went through while fundraising like it's just I mean it was insane but I think yes to what you're saying however the one thing I will say is that in our experience our current investors didn't play games with us and so I feel like we did speak to investors who like led us on for a really long time and they were on that red team and they kind of just like tiptoed kind of came to green went back to red and like this happens so often where I feel like founders they keep being led on for a really long period of time so I feel like you should be able to get your investor to a yes pretty quickly and like I think you can tell by the energy as well so I'm a little woo in that sense and so like I really like do believe in that but like really our investors and I remember one of them specifically was like I'm not going to play games with you we're going to have a couple of conversations and I'll tell you really early on and that's exactly what he did like he said yes pretty early on and then from there it was like continuing to go through the diligence and ensuring that like he was like fully comfortable and could present that data to his LPs as well you know same with our lead investors same thing where like it was like three conversations in and we knew that they were like 80% of the way there there was this misconception in our minds that like if one of those investors kind of doesn't say yes and pulls out and the other ones would pull out then there was a thing that happened we were so scared that's a real thing yeah that's a real thing if your lead backs out or they're all waiting for the lead how big of the lead when are they closing show me the wire exactly it's like it's a real thing so by the way tip here is that I think have a really strong lead like do not have a lead who's playing games with you like that should be your partner through the whole fundraised process our lead told us that I don't care if somebody else is in or not like I'm in and this is like a big check right they're writing like a million plus check and they're like if you're like we're believing you let's continue our process I'm sure we'll gather the other people around it but that was when I was like whoa like this is like like this is what a really strong kind of you know venture partner kind of looks like yeah one thing whenever ever I'm fundraising I just cut to the chase I'm like look at the end of the day you're betting on me yeah exactly yeah and I tell on that like as soon as I get all these fear-based questions I'm like look Paul look whoever like you're betting on me if you don't believe me it's not personal but I'm gonna build it I'm gonna do it and you're gonna watch me do it from the sidelines or you're gonna watch me do it with the front row seat the choice is yours because I'm not going anywhere and then this usually gets them to go no it's true it's true so something that Nish and I realized like actually at the end of our fundraising process and we were like we're like almost end of the fundraising process where we were like it was our first time we were like quite like meeker almost or meek you know and I remember we were at this point where like Nish and I were freaking out about something and my dad was there and he's like like why are you guys behaving like this like you if you don't have confidence and don't believe in yourself then like why would someone else believe in you you know and really if you think about fundraising for anyone that was crazy so true yeah for anyone who's gone through fundraising you'll know that it's like a lot of it is about FOMO and the way that you present yourself as well if you don't have any confidence and you're like no one really like why would someone believe in you yeah totally I remember there was a deal I was working on and at the middle of it I was like oh my god this is not going well and then I was texting a buddy of mine and he's like it sounds like you need to remind people who you are it's exactly and I was like I'm gonna get that tattoo it was exactly what I needed I slept like a baby that night it was unbelievable a good baby yeah as soon as that happened like as soon as we had this conversation with my dad who was essentially like am I allowed to swear on this podcast yeah absolutely essentially what he was saying is like you guys are being a bunch of pussies and like that's really what we were like we were acting like idiots you know you're being a big pussy yeah like and we just our company was doing well and yet we were acting like we were so desperate like we was like he said if we were at dinner and so her dad's a very like so her dad's in business okay this guy's like built a massive business and he's doing you know he's just a very calm person you've seen it before he's done it he's done it a lot yeah he's done it before and he and by the way he's done it from scratch okay like no investment nothing like that so his demeanor towards business is just like I don't care about anything because I will do myself anyway kind of thing and so one of his rules is like when you're at the dinner table you know we don't pick up the phone and this is in the middle of a fundraising process and I'm getting phone calls I spoke to this morning he's like I'm telling you if you answer the phone you're not gonna get the money and so ooh great advice so we're seeing a dinner I didn't answer the phone you're sweating though you're like oh my god I was like dredged like it's gone I was like it's gone you see the dollar signs floating away the dollar signs floating away he's gonna pay for this dinner this is the dollar's gone 30 minutes later guys email send me the wire details for your bank account here's half a million dollars but like I'm not even joking that was for real like for real so your dad's like a mentor in that way in some way or someone to just like a nice sounding board yeah yeah so like I think what I learned from him is that you just have to be stoic about business because initially you know when you're going through your early days it's just you're so like emotionally I feel like your entire self-worth everything is tied to your business and your business is a very fickle thing is what I've learned right and I think to protect your sanity and like build something sustainably to be stoic as the way to go and I think like that's something that yeah that's a real thing from him so yeah I love the story all right let's let's talk about something else so in some way you're an influencer you have all of this sort of you know the game of socials right and so that's a I'd call that like an X factor as it relates to building a product and so how do you view it today right so it's such a changing landscape YouTube shorts is now a thing I don't know what's happening with TikTok but let's call them like the the leader at the at the time being Instagram Reels just feels like a grandparent that's about to happen like it just feels like they're confused how do you guys view advertising and again I'm trying to do this for like people listening today in today's economy marketing brings up in the product in 2023 what are the things that you guys are doing as a business that you think everyone should be doing but that you know is working for you today I think that when it comes to social specifically people have to emotionally relate to and buy into a brand okay so it's really important to be able to tell your personal brand story because really gets people stopping their scroll and like really interested in a brand and like root for it is how they feel about it you know so telling your brand story our founder's story all of those things are just really important because people also like to buy from people they like to support people you know it's not just a product so I think that age is just kind of over so that is really important from a social standpoint anything you'd add to that well I just I think that is really interesting because I was talking about this yesterday where we have a couple of friends who've built 70 million dollar businesses off of not running a single paid ad and then you know there's other people who have built the same business only running paid ads and so I look at these two discrepancies and when I talk to the ad business I'm like oh somebody's going wrong he's like oh yeah yeah I just got to go fix my ads and then you talk to the other business 70 million dollar business she's like I just got to go create a bunch of more TikToks and so what's really interesting is in in that world there's generally we're in a really interesting time where venues to be able to get to people in in in two different ways like really effectively and I think that especially when it comes to the social stuff like I've been learning from this person a little bit and like they're taking every opportunity to showcase what is like to be part of this business right even with us as an example you know we want people to know who is on the team the names of the people on the team what each person is doing what the behind the scenes of working at Array is like we just bought a Array headquarters where it's not an office sorry we rented a place where it's like people are going to come in and have a space just like you guys have over here hot coals sauna therapy all this kind of stuff and you can work out of there and it's like you know this is the kind of stuff that gets people excited whether it's you're attracting talent or there's like people getting to know what it is that you work with because you know this is not corporate America this is like a startup and also startups have a bad name in a certain way as well because people are so exposed to the you know tech startup situation where it's like offices and there's a lot of parties and whatnot but then you have a scenario here where we are building this team where they genuinely are so excited to work with us people are coming in the office which is like a home where they get to you know live a very natural life of theirs and people really resonate with that because that's very real and so I think that being able to showcase that through social media is like such a powerful tool and are you guys doing that today through tiktok or like what's your avenue of choice Instagram stories like all all fronts all the time yeah yeah and mostly just you guys sharing your personal story or is it oh it's it's also our team right like we like right nish and i are not available like there's a lot of behind the scenes that's always shown yeah like any any chance that we get where something interesting is happening like it's it's being showcased it's not just around nish and i it's it's about also like the brand beyond us do you have a cool story where a certain tiktok landed you x amount of dollars something like that well actually we launched our tiktok channel like june 2020 so it's still pretty early and our first viral tiktok was nish in the video with like a bunch of labels being printed and that went viral on tiktok back then and we got such an outpouring support from like people and like just like buying the product and then we'd see like people reviewing the product on tiktok because it was like tiktok made me buy a type thing so that was really cool that was before we had like measuring abilities but like it was just kind of we saw it clear as yeah clear yeah that time too and it was a video that had nothing like we didn't even talk about the company it was just me labels yeah I was just like a small business yeah yeah you know the label printers that says print labels sure packaging at home yeah and it's literally in our apartment I'm sitting there being like there's so many things to pack like being super grateful but at the same time it's just like printing hundreds of labels and people are like wow this is crazy and then that made them and then they're curious even more why so many people are ordering it like what am I missing out on yeah and like I think also people like to support small businesses you know and so we were really just showing the behind the scenes of what it's like to build a small business and like everything that goes through your head which is like you're so grateful but then there's so many challenges along the way and it's like so you know you're pulled in like these two it's you oscillate so much between the highs and the lows when you're like a brand new business so something you touch on before so you have two friends one built with no ads one's built business with ads at some point you have to you have you have to have a vote right or at least you have to think about like how do you think about that so if you would if I put both of them in the room when it comes to these two people I think like one is very creative and the other one probably isn't is that spot on? yeah spot on yeah spot on yeah okay and um in in this you can you can also you know add into this but I think both of us are probably in the same line of thinking where like I think that in order to build a really like large business it has to be a combination of the two both tap out at certain points you know especially like right now with iOS changes I don't think you can build like a billion dollar business on just ads anymore you know so I think it has to be a blended approach oh hundred percent I mean like this is exactly why we decided to work together like I think one of my favorite things is just watching some of the biggest businesses in the world are ones where the founders are completely different than one another like you have one person with a completely opposite skill set and interest and just say a spike and ability to do things in the other than the other person and then when you bring those people together that is always where the magic happens I think businesses is art in that way and I don't think a lot of people understand that but it's like if when I think about like an album or a real estate development project I think people just see like oh some a contractor used materials and built a box and like what I see is you had maybe a team of four architects you had a team of maybe 10 engineers you had a team of artists you had a team of someone sourcing materials and at the end it's like really a symphony and when people come in they know if they like the sound or not by how they feel but that's a very woo-woo thing to say to most real estate developers who use an excel sheet they're like what is that what does that excel sheet tell me and I think I think but that's what I love about business in general is what I've learned is the more people you bring to the table and the more they're able to sort of bring their strengths the better everything is everything exponentially 100% and it's like it's just such a better yeah I love it Nish can you clarify what you mean when you say businesses that only rely on social media versus businesses rely on ads are you talking about like traditional advertisement and media or yeah I'm talking about like spending money on direct response advertising okay I'm talking about things like Facebook ads Instagram ads TikTok ads TV ads like you are putting out an ad for direct response advertising got it I bring this up because I read an article that just came out recently where you were quoted as saying that Array is going to be spending just shy of a million dollars on TikTok ads in the in the coming year like what was that switch like for you going from organic posts to like putting down a serious chunk of change on sponsored posts and advertisements within that platform so now that I've been in the advertising industry for a while you learn that over time things only get more and more expensive and so when you see an opportunity where it's like the CPMs basically how much it costs for a thousand people to see your ads so when those CPMs and TikTok are so low they're like one tenth of what they are in Facebook and maybe they're not like that right now they're still cheaper but when you see that opportunity you have to really make use of that and so the reason you're doing stuff like this is because I know that is only going to get more expensive and even if you spoke five years ago when it wasn't that expensive people were still talking about how expensive it was and so every platform is going to continue to get more expensive but if there's an opportunity to be able to you know do this in a profitable way then we want to maximize that opportunity as much as possible and as early as possible as early as possible I think about this with like Facebook ads so people who need like a real thing and Facebook ads in 2010 I could like literally advertise to you like I knew everything about you and Facebook let you do that you know you could be like an 18 year old who lives in this zip code allegedly likes these books plays soccer like I could literally have that today you can't do that no you can't which is crazy that you could back then yeah and so I hear that point that makes a lot of sense yeah it's just like there's I have friends who built $15 million revenue businesses on just Facebook ads and that's you can't do that today you just can't do that today and so the playbook has changed entirely and so you know if we can even do half of that today with just that kind of advertising then why wouldn't you because five years from now you may not be able to do half of that you might be only able to build a $5 million business profitably on the internet again exactly or I think the ultimate example is TikTok might be banned in five years or might you borrow a hand right yeah that's the other kind of reality when it comes to what's next for you guys in terms of products you know what can you tell us we're focusing heavily on the digestive health space and even say for example you look at common sleep the reason we have those two products is because it helps with digestion as well we just don't see it that way for example like when we are anxious bodies going to fight or flight mode which makes digestion really hard similarly with sleep if you're getting bad sleep you're not eating the right things like your digestive system has slowed down significantly so right now our product trajectory is like way more digestive health focused so like really just focusing in on niche issues so we just launched heartburn actually just this week and that's such a niche issue within the digestive health category that people are just popping pepsid and tums right but they don't really have necessarily a cleaner alternative and so that's what we wanted to provide to them okay so it's a cleaner alternative of those two things yeah and then we have like other things coming as well but like digestive health is yeah I mean it's just that we've you know we've kind of been able to do a lot of research in this space and so because we've been in this space so much I think we understand like the health issues in in like the body of the digestive that your gut like very well and so essentially we want to be able to solve these problems for the majority of people by providing them the right combination of supplements or the right combination of or the right individual supplements for whatever they're dealing with and I just think that like that way we actually have the credibility and right to do that because first of all we've been doing this for for a couple of years and also on top of that we have the people and the doctors and the mechanisms to be able to help with that so we just want to be able to help people in this space and you know the the gut is the core of a lot of where these issues start from and so we just want to keep doubling down on that I love it where can people buy your product array.com array.com will you guys go to stores soon anytime is that something like we're at Aeroan already in LA and then we're at like a number of practitioners offices like different doctors offices and like beauty boutiques but our biggest one is Aeroan right now and how much does one of these like give people a sense of how big how many things are inside and how much the cost yeah so we were basically at a three-day supply so all of our products are a three-day supply and usually the price for each one is 48 dollars and you can go for a higher supply you can go for a 45 or 90 day and 180 day supply for the blow caps for example and the price for serving obviously becomes cheaper the more you buy but yeah on average they're about 48 dollars the heartburn product is 40 dollars but we always give people a three-day supply and I imagine there's a subscription components all this also that people can sign up for some sort of loyalty yeah if you subscribe you get 10% off and free shipping and that really saves you quite a lot of money actually especially shipping costs are insane these days but and then also subscribers they have a bunch of perks like we really value the subscribers and we really treat them very very well and so you know you get a bunch of perks like for example we get said for what are you talking about the perks some of them um yeah we have like essentially anytime we do PR mailers you have a chance at getting them so there's like a lot of different things that we do like we have events for our VIP customers where like you know we have dinners with our customers they get to hang out with us so there's like a lot of things that we do like community building efforts as well that's so intelligent well look thank you guys for coming on the podcast I appreciate it thank you guys we appreciate this conversation this was so fun yeah thank you hey you yeah you listening thank you so much for making it to the end of the episode make sure to follow us on instagram subscribe on youtube and we cannot wait to see you next week for another great episode cheers