Athletes Create “Chewable Energy” Gum

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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Friends, listeners, community, welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, I am your host. Welcome to a new week, I should say, episode 772. Now, once in a while in the program, we feature a product that I think, you know, I'm gonna go and try that out myself. Couple months back, we did Korean face masks.

Actually went and signed up for the subscription just to see what it was like. The verdict was they're kind of fun. So consider me a fan. Now, for the most part, there's no conspiracy here at World Domination headquarters. We're not taking free product from people.

The headquarters is not overflowing with marimba rentals and free paleo bagels, you know, all sorts of other assorted goods. Most of us are actually fans of decluttering and being intentional about all our stuff. So we don't want to have a whole lot of random stuff coming in. But the point is, today's story is something that I want to go out and try myself. So there's no sponsorship involved.

I just like to support a lot of the people that we feature on the show. And this product today, what I'm gonna tell you about is neurogum, all natural energy chewing gum. It's an alternative to coffee or energy drinks, or perhaps for some of us, it is an addition to those things. And it was created by two friends and high performing athletes who were looking for a way to get energy on the go without a nasty crash or sugar rush. So after concocting a simple recipe, these two athletes then create a chewing gum like no other.

At first, it tastes awful, but after more than 20 iterations, they improved the flavor and have now sold five million pieces of this gum worldwide. These guys both had full-time jobs. They'd never started a business before. So how did this come to be? Well, stay tuned and I will tell you.

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Kent Yoshimura and Ryan Chen are obsessed with trying to optimize their mental and physical performance. When the two friends first met in Los Angeles, they were both working demanding careers and performing as high-level athletes. Kent was a muralist for the city of LA who trained with the Japanese Olympic judo team. And Ryan was a data analyst who trained with the US Paralympic wheelchair racing team. This constant need to be at peak performance left the pair mentally and physically drained for the other tasks in their life.

For Ryan, this was made worse by his body's adaptation to being paraplegic, which was the result of an injury a few years prior. They tinkered with different supplements, tricks, and methods to get the most out of every day. They tried crazy sleep patterns, meditation, diets, and any emerging science that might help them get a little edge, but mostly they were reliant on energy drinks and coffee. Feeling this wasn't the optimal way to get energy on the go, Kent began experiments with different supplements in his makeshift bedroom laboratory. And he happened upon something called nootropics.

These supplements, often referred to as smart drugs, are scientifically shown to improve cognitive function and memory without causing a crash later in the day. Kent would experiment with different blends of these nootropics supplements, turning them into pills, which he and Ryan would take before sporting events or big days at work. After a few tests, they started to see good results, and they had the idea to turn these bedroom concocted products into a viable business. Why not share them with the world? But there was at least one big problem standing in their way.

That problem is making, taking, and sharing pills didn't exactly look great. If your boss or coach or partner walks in on you popping little white pills, it might look like you're aiming for high performance instead of peak performance. They needed a way to make the supplement look and feel a little less illegal. If it was gonna work, it had to be accessible, shareable, FDA approved, and free of social stigmas. After chewing over a couple of ideas, they came to the conclusion that they should turn it into chewing gum.

The supplement could still be taken orally, and it was far more acceptable to take and share pieces of gum at work or before sports. To turn this idea into a reality, Kent and Ryan set aside $20,000 each to invest into the venture, which they were now calling NeuroGum. Of course, this wasn't cheap, but this was money they'd saved from their day jobs and were willing to lose if the idea didn't work out the way they planned. The largest portion of their investment went into research and development to ensure they had a great product people would talk about. And of course, that this great product was safe, approved, et cetera.

To make NeuroGum, Kent and Ryan started by using thomasnet.com, which is a large international database of manufacturers. They were trying to find a US-based company to make their first production run. They quickly discovered, however, that many of those companies were owned by Wrigley's Gum, which would be a direct competitor and leave them in an awkward position if they ever hit it big. They began to look elsewhere and eventually came across a small private manufacturer they now consider to be part of the NeuroGum family. The official launch came through an Indiegogo campaign.

They set this up to make them back in simple and easy to manage, especially for two people who had never started a business before. They shared the campaign in a new tropic subreddit where Kent had been particularly active. To their surprise, they began to instantly receive emails of people backing their product. Within just a few days, NeuroGum had hit over $20,000 in pledges, which allowed them to pay for their first run of orders and more than validated their idea. There were some other challenges.

At this point, the product was still in beta. And one of the key pieces of feedback they received from these eager campaign donors was that NeuroGum tasted awful. Not amazing, not even tolerable, but awful. Customers loved the effect it had on their mental state, but it wasn't exactly an enjoyable experience to get those results. So Kent and Ryan devoted a large portion of their profits to tinkering with the flavor until they felt they got it right.

Now here's a key business point. NeuroGum packages sell in bundles and you can't buy an individual package online. This made the business model much more feasible and the time spent packaging, creating and delivering much more effective. For these small products, it takes the same amount of time to package and deliver one pack of gum as it does six. So that's why they sell six packs and 12 packs.

Also, while you can buy those six packs or 12 packs as a one-time purchase, NeuroGum focuses on a subscription model. Customers are much more likely to create a monthly subscription, which they can set and forget, then return to the site every time they need new gum. Subscriptions cost between $19 and $35 a month, depending on whether you buy six or 12 packs. Going forward, Kent and Ryan want to focus more on wholesale business. They want to get on the shelves of big chain drug and supplement stores.

In fact, as we were emailing about this podcast, Kent got some good news. They had just landed shelf space in 3,000 CVS stores. So it looks like they're well on their way. Perhaps something to chew on as you think about your ideas. [Music]

Awesome, as I said, it sounds like an interesting product.

I would love to try it myself, so I'll be on the lookout next time I pop into CVS or maybe I'll just go direct to their website. Now, this story reminds me of the mouthwash guys that we featured a while back. Episode 572, on-the-go mouthwash gets many makeover. This is the kind of product, both of these products, the mouthwash and the gum, are not things that are super simple because for it to be successful, you have to scale, you have to sell a lot of them. And that's why the startup costs are not minimal.

It's not a $100 startup. It's something that they really did have to invest some money in. But of course, at least they did so in both cases without taking a ton of risk. So one question I had was about the FDA process. How hard is it to become FDA approved?

So we have sent a query off to them. We're gonna follow up on that perhaps later in the week at the weekly recap. If you're out there and you're trying to create this kind of product, what is involved? How difficult is it? Stay tuned on that point.

I also think the pricing is really smart about how they're pushing the subscription, how they're pushing the bulk purchases. You can't just buy one pack online. You gotta buy six or buy 12, which is still not very expensive. But the whole point is if they were selling it for a couple bucks, it's gonna be really, really hard. But at least selling it for, I think it's $19 to $35, depending on whether you buy six or 12 packs.

It's still a low price, but over time with enough volume, hopefully it can work well for them. So excited to see what happens there. And I'm excited for your week as well. I hope you're working on something good. I hope you're gonna make some progress towards something that's important to you, something you believe in, even if it's just a small thing.

Even just write down one thing you can do. One thing you can do to get closer to an idea that you've had for a while, but it's not quite reality. Let's try to make it a little bit closer to reality or even all the way, full-on reality. How about that? My friend's inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.

Today's show notes, including links to these guys, the gum, everything else I mentioned. All right, sidehustleschool.com/772. Episode 772 is wrapped. Thank you so much. I'll be back again tomorrow.

My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.