Kyle Landry - President at Delavie Sciences | Revolutionary Skin Science from Nature

I was doing my masters. It took me a year and a half before I got any positive data. That was very disappointing. Dr. Kyle Landry is a scientist turned entrepreneur redefining innovation. From earning his PhD in food science at UMass Amherst to founding Delaby Sciences, he's applied cutting-edge research to create revolutionary products like Aeonia, an age-defying skincare breakthrough. Besides running the company, my main thing is driving the R&D in a meaningful way. I'm the only one there for us for food science. When I graduated, it was only me and one of the kids graduating. Food science, in my opinion, is one of the most applied sciences you can go for because your goal is to make something that everyone will eat or touch. It's one of the most underappreciated jobs with one of the highest job placement rates. Name to the 40 under 40 list and honored as an outstanding young alumnus, all driven by his passion for merging science and business. This episode is about transforming knowledge into impact and building brands that challenge the status quo. Science is the same thing. All the techniques that I you learned in use can be applied to all other science. On the International Space Station, the water systems are filled with bacteria biofilm. If you have a good product coming out, there's always time to reinvent it and tweak it if it's successful in it goes. Family first. Having a good relationship with your family gives you a good foundation to take risks. Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Cleary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast never, but HubSpot doesn't just have great podcast. If you're an entrepreneur, if you're a builder, they've got your back. Now, why is that important? Because if you're building anything, you know that marketing in 2025 is absolutely wild. Now, why is that important? 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Transform your business with FreshBooks today. That's FreshBooks.com slash pricing, dash offer for 60% off. Today's episode is brought to you by Vanta. Now listen up, this matters for your business. And today's digital landscape security isn't optional. It's essential. Without it, deal stall, sales cycle stretch on and scaling becomes very difficult. Now why? Because investors, customers and partners all expect businesses to demonstrate strong security practices before they commit. If you can't prove trust, you lose opportunities. So whether you're a startup founder, trying to land that first big client or an established company, scaling your security program, Vanta helps businesses of all sizes prove that they're trustworthy by automating compliance across 35 frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001 and HIPAA. The exact certifications your prospects are demanding. Here's why you need to pay attention. Vanta gives you back precious time that you're currently wasting on compliance. Their platform automates up to 90% of the tedious compliance work. It helps you respond to those endless security questionnaires at the five times faster and it connects you with experts to get your security program running immediately. The results speak for themselves. A recent IDC report found that Vanta customers achieve over 535,000 dollars per year in benefits and the platform pays for itself in just three months. So you're going to join over 10,000 global companies like Atlassian, Korra and Factory who use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time. And don't miss this. For a limited time only, my listeners can get a thousand dollars off Vanta. That's real money back in your pocket. Visit Vanta.com slash Scott right now before the software expires. That is V-A-N-T-A.com slash Scott. How would you describe what you do for a living? Okay, that is a very interesting question. So right now I mean consumer product goods and cosmetics. But what I do I would say is try to innovate and fill gray spaces in areas and cosmetics is an interesting one because there is innovation but the actual innovation there is very thin in terms of you know real depth and science behind it. So because of my background, I'm able to really dive deep into the science and do it. So I guess my besides running the company, my main thing is driving the R&D in a meaningful way to actually make creative, creative, but functional ingredients to really help people. But cosmetics is just one thing I also teach at Boston University. You know I have a few other side businesses and you know I have my general life that I have an idea with. Family kids, family kids, hobbies, lack of sleep, so all those things but you know it's all over the map. Yeah I mean your background is interesting. We'll talk about it but even right now forget your background even what you do right now is interesting. I don't know you juggle a lot of stuff. You juggle a lot. Your entrepreneur, your scientist, your you know husband, father, but take us back to I want to talk about even some points in your life where you could choose different paths. I think that's fun. I just learned about I learned about the history about where you could have gone into TV and film but even before that growing up what was your household like? Was there science? Was there entrepreneurship? What was it? My dad was a cop. My mom was a nurse so none of it. Nope and rest of my family was basically blue-cold workers construction workers, electricians, pipe fitters, bank tellers, manufacturing people and machine shops. Not really much going on in the science world. And then even in high school and I was going to graduate high school I didn't even want to go to college. I actually was going to enlist in the Navy and my father goes just apply to one school. Just please do it. I was like ah fine so I applied to one small school and I didn't know what I wanted to do but there was this major called food science and I'm like I like food. I like science. I'm just going to go with it and that kind of started but yeah my family one thing my father and mother did they love collecting things and that kind of segues into stuff I talked about early which we'll cover later on but they love collecting things very hands on always building things around the house doing a lot of construction yard work hands on stuff of cars and motorcycles so I really had the hands on aspect which is why I think I fell in love with science and specifically what I did in school because it was all hands on I'm working with my hands I'm purifying things creating things and that's what I still do now. You chose the degree the undergrad that basically shaped your entire life like people choose a liberal arts degree. Better believe it so. So what happened? So I was like I'm going to go for this degree my dad Googles it and he's like you're going to be making twinkies like what the hell are you doing food science? What is food science? So I go to an open house and there's a professor there and he's like I'm the only one there for us for food science the school I went to when I graduated it was only me and one of the kids graduating so it's a very very small degree at this university and he's like oh I got to run to a class but I want to show you something so he holds up these test tubes he's like do you see what this is I'm like I don't know my parents are behind me like this guy's blacked and he's like look at this and he puts it under UV light in one fluorescence blue one fluorescence green and one fluorescence red and he's like these are all the toxins and peanut butter and milk that come from just you know fungi growing on the crops I'm teaching about toxicology and I turned my dad's like I like this this is fun exciting so that's literally how I picked it yeah and I actually didn't do well in college but you graduated so my first year I almost failed out my GP I was like a 1.3 something like that was it because was it because high school was easy and then when you get into college you realize that you can't just drift through and now that I think about it so in high school yeah it was I kind of I didn't really have to try I kind of would just do it my father would always be like I don't understand the only high school kid would know homework and I'm looking up and I did the homework but I you know whatever um so I I do bad the first year but then I get my act together because my dad's like you better do better you get kicked out listen then the school's like you're gonna get kicked out um so then I was on Dean's lesson presence list every year after that I only graduate with a three point something after all that time and effort but I still graduated and went on to grad school after that but that was also just a a whim decision grad school yeah um the other journey that you could have taken in life you're very entrepreneurial I think that that I mean that the things that you did growing up you still see that you still apply the same I don't know entrepreneurship uh you know through it to build things like that has always been a through line so I know that when you first uh we're going to school there was an opportunity for you to go on to TV and you know you talk about your brother and how you both like collecting things and from a young age you're very entrepreneurial you're well with arbitraging um collecting what buying collections and then reselling them either at auction or online yeah so uh I want to understand you know what the opportunity was before you chose to do your postdoc because it took correct me from wrong I haven't done that much school so it's undergrad which is what I did that I did my MBA which is like grad and then after that is PhD then postdoc yeah so I did my bachelor's then I did my master's then I did my PhD and then I went on after as a visiting research scholar okay so after you did your PhD uh what was your other life you could have pursued before you chose the postdoc so my brother and I had the opportunity to uh create a reality TV show called Kings of Pop and was produced by um members of the A&E team um and it was all about collecting collectibles reality TV and because at the time uh my brother was you know he he was on travel channels toy hunter again ready for antiques road show um and it was all about collecting so we went to the director of the Blair Witch Project at Water Sanchez house talk looked at a star was collection filmed a few episodes and that was in 2015 and that was right when I was graduating my PhD so at the end we did the pilot it was screened we were like okay am I gonna go into reality TV or have this opportunity that came up at Harvard Medical School like what do I pick and I already did what uh 10 plus years of college and I was like uh do I want to risk it all to go film for six months and have the show flop and lose this opportunity or kind of go with what I know so I ended up going to you know the medical hover map and at this at this point what what is your you have a very interesting life I'm just gonna say that because we're gonna go through it and your life is actually very interesting all the different things that you've done but at this point um what is your what is your what is your uh passion what kind of science do you care about after four year undergrad in food science you do your masters in food science so now you love PhD in food science so it makes a lot of sense that you're probably gonna figure out how to have a career in food science um when you go through everything you have your PhD and then you're going to your postdoc and also food science I know longevity longevity farm to genetics what does that mean like what kind of job is food science what are you what are you solving for humanity with food science so every single thing people drink from that winter water or any food they touch a food scientist has worked on it and food science in my opinion is one of the most applied sciences you can go for because your your goal is to make something that everyone will eat or touch so you could be in food micro food safety product design so developing you know cookies or chips or the next snack bar or healthy foods or you can be food engineering so actually working on the machines that make the food processing in the food processing plants it's phenomenal um I think you know based on my experience what I know being on the board of a department a few other things it's one of the most underappreciated jobs with one of the highest job placement rates in general because everyone needs to eat we have finite land the population keeps growing so somehow we have to provide food for all the people while we're losing resources and food science is an interesting thing so originally I was going to be a professor so I started teaching at Boston University when I was 23 that's young no yeah it's pretty young so I was teaching classes in the graduate undergraduate for in the department of health sciences at Boston University my goal after a graduate my PhD go there full-time and teach there but the opportunity to Harvard came up and what made you switch from food sciences to longevity that was an opportunity so I was doing my PhD and I remember I got a phone call Boston area coach I thought it was BU pick it up and this is guy Davidson Claire from Harvard Medical School he's a big deal I had no idea who he was and he's like hey Kyle I read some of your papers you're the only person in the world doing this type of work how about you come to my lab and work on this when you don't your PhD and what he was asking me to do was in the wheelhouse of what I did so like let me step back like you know how math is like a universal language science is the same thing like even though I'm in food science all the techniques that I learned and used can be applied to all other sciences whether running protein gels or sequencing or doing enzyme assays yeah I applied it for like in my case beans sprouts but all those techniques I could use in your genetics and longevity so even though it seems like a big stretch scientifically my the toolbox I had fit like a glove so I decided to go there was there ever a point in your career when you went back and used some of the food science all the time all the time so believe it or not cosmetics are very similar to food a lot of the ingredients in cosmetics of food ingredients so you making emulsions or delivery systems or stability even the cadence of creating things and the business sense for margins and production scale timelines kind of mirror that of the food industry so I use it all the time believe you're what we're spending so much time studying food and food science what are some I would say scary unnerving things about the food that we eat that people don't quite know there's a few things I'm in the mindset of moderation is key so yeah there's some negative attributes to foods maybe some of the preservatives are the colorants but everything in moderation you know should balance out fine it's even like if you McDonald's like fast food like eating it now and then isn't going to destroy you but having a moderation mindset is is good my biggest thing pet peeve is like kind of the marketing side where people market things as like the cure for something or help alleviate something and the science is there but it's not science that's actually been proven out as rigorously as some people think well I see so where I'm going with this is people speak a lot about seed oils oh yeah that's people speak a lot about why they feel every time they go to Europe they lose weight and they feel healthier versus when they're in the US obviously pesticides and plus like every second fitness guru on Instagram has their own view about food and what you should eat in this diet and that diet but not many people are scientific and I'm curious what actually holds weight or what actually is true outside of just some you know Instagram influencer spouting off the latest trend so like seed oils and other things that a pro inflammatory things that drive inflammation you know inflammation is bad information causes a lot of problems but there are a lot of other things that are inflammatory as well like my favorite is like you know I don't want to eat you know seed oil or something but I'll go drink alcohol every night and you know what I mean it's like you have to in the it has to be a whole lifestyle change right and even some diets like paleo diets or or some of these other things they're not necessarily sustainable for a long period of time they're good to cut weight or they're good to like you know get you feel good for a little bit but you can't live on those your whole life it's difficult so like I always say like moderation and try to stick within the 2000 calorie 2500 cow because that alone that would sleep in good hydration will make you feel amazing because a lot of people don't realize how many calories are actually taking in and if you try to stick with the 2000 calorie 2500 calorie whatever you want to do you'd be like wow I actually like can't eat the snacks or the chip so the things I go to all the time but there is one you know things to say to whole whole foods or minimally processed foods we get a lot of fiber a lot of nutrients right nothing will replace those it's just our biology and how fast things absorb how you feel after glycemic index things like that that impacted feelings is part of the work that food scientists do and I guess this I it's not like a conspiracy but it sounds like something that is a little bit nefarious like including ingredients and foods that make them addictive is that so I guess I'm going to say no like it's not intentional but food is designed for what to sell yeah right like if you're a food company and your goal is to sell you want to make foods that people want and people want certain foods because we're biologically designed to want high calorie foods because back when we were in the caves we didn't know when we would eat so we we have that craving for high calorie foods like high fats stuff like that because we want to pack on as much as we can but now with our sedentary lifestyle you know all these different things is kind of counteracting are still craving the same foods but we don't move in everything's accessible right I can go down to the store and buy a bag of chips for 99 cents that's amazing that's great you know so it's a different you have to look at all facets you were working with bean sprouts yeah yeah so bean sprouts I think they've sort of carried through all of your work because what I'm looking at here they impacted your work with David St. Clair they also impact some of the things that you did in space with NASA a whole bunch of so talk to me about bean sprouts and this is work that you were doing when you were still in school yeah so my PhD was all about beans sprouts of all things but beans sprouts are incredibly dirty and I say dirty as they have a lot of bacteria a lot of bacteria on bean sprouts in their minimally processed which means you know if you have some foodborne pathogens on there and you eat them raw you get sick so one of the things around bean sprouts is bacterial biofilms and these are basically structures that bacteria builds like on your teeth you know like you don't brush your teeth and you scrape it like the stuff come that's a bacterial biofilm it's the same thing happens on produce on bean sprouts same thing happens on the international space station the water systems same thing happens with some of the stuff we're working with David with and I was trying to figure out how to stop them and so I developed a novel disinfectant it's this is patented where I would make spontaneous nanomulsions of carvercrawl oil it's a essential oil and we're basically disinfect beans sprouts and seeds and make them safer we actually went and pitched this to commercialize it but the manufacturing process in your overall like a cost per unit was just a little too high for farmers to really adopt because the margins on bean sprouts are like razor thin like you're not making a lot so adding you know an extra 10 cents per it kills it kills it so but the technology was sounding great it just was an example of something that wasn't commercially viable because the economics didn't plan out so how do you take that into longevity research so one of the so there's another technology I was working on with a bunch of these enzymes and these enzymes break broke down components of bacterial biofilms and there's one specific part that broke down DNA and believe it or not bacterial biofilms are held together by extraneous DNA so DNA that bacteria release and it acts like a glue so longevity wise the organisms that this came from are called extremophiles so these are organisms that live in extreme environments and this one organism was able to grow at 55 degrees centigrade that's like 135 hundred thirty seven degrees Fahrenheit and why David was interested was how can this organism survive for a long time without taking on a bunch of mutations and mutating and dying right so we're looking at like DNA repair mechanisms and the enzymes associated with it because with longevity damaged your DNA accelerates the aging process and this is some called epigenetic drift where over time all the environmental stuff we get exposed to whether it's food, pollution, sunlight makes these damages over time where eventually we we're not what we used to be in this series of cancer so we were trying to figure out how we can hijack these extremophiles and use them to protect ourselves and understand aging and that led to another patent that ended up bringing us into the bio defense space which is a whole other thing. Was there was there anything that you discovered that is currently used commercially? Yeah yeah so the enzymes are used in some of our commercial products like face cleansers toner stuff like that now the commercial okay okay and then the stuff from space is used in sunscreen stuff like that but the delivery system that hasn't been licensed or incorporated but the technology the fundamentals around the technology are being incorporated in other areas. Well I meant like in terms of DNA protection. Yeah so not commercially used but in a lot of research for whether it's astronauts' health on the way to Mars. Not how that gets one of the things. Okay one of the things yeah so I wouldn't say it's not on the market but it's the foundation for a lot of research now that's moving forward in the space. When you when you when you patent these like very novel technologies or is that the right word technology? Technologies. What's the path from when you start working on it until somebody can go buy it and then use it for themselves for whatever longevity practice. So it depends on the type of product right so for example with the space ingredient which we'll cover we proved it in lab we did all the clinical testing we submitted it for patent but then we have to go from a test tube to scale right like doing something the lab is great but if you can't scale it to the masses it's useless so then you have to scale that and then once that scale then you got to put it in products and then you got to scale the products you got to test the thing goes to market so for like the ingredients for a lot of the products we have maybe three, four years may five years depending on how complex it is the the space ingredient that was when you say space ingredient just to clarify that solves the DNA protecting ingredient that one that's sun protection and sun protection and DNA protection DNA activation that's one of them yeah six, five years give or take. When these products actually roll out and somebody can buy them based on your work with Davis and Claire and a lot of the other longevity items that you worked on what is that actually in your opinion mean for the human lifespan, health, wellness, disease, mitigation. It's actually a big deal. I have no doubt it sounds like a very big deal. So it's exciting and I'm still blown away every time I see products that feature our ingredients in them. I'm like wow I can't believe like it's real like you know I'm just like blown away nothing's cool. You're on bleeding edge. Nothing's cooler than you know seeing something you develop you worked on for years and years and years now be accepted and adopted by the industry. It's phenomenal but like for one of the ingredients helps protect from sun damage and sun damage is a huge thing and it actually is added to sunscreens and helps increase the sun protection factor. You know skin cancer is a big deal. People are craving for innovation brands and companies are craving for innovation because there's almost no innovation in sunscreen protection at all in the US and it's just great to see something that we worked on that start I was a novel research project ended up changing an industry. No, I know I have no doubt I mean it's phenomenal. Well I mean even looking at just so from what it sounds like when you when you do this research you target you will target sun damage is one of the most practical applications for this but there's a whole bunch of other applications that can eventually be applied but you're probably focusing on the most commercially viable application or the most whatever the most useful application of this technology. Yeah you have to like juggle it because time to market is a big factor and then obviously you know you got your tam and and where it can go especially when you're in regulated spaces you got to figure out okay if this is regulated by like a drug agency is it worth the 10 plus years and X millions of dollars are you going to recoup that when you when you finally launch in our case the answer was no so we went another way and went into SPF boosting where it's not the main protection that's in a sunscreen but it boosts the current protection and makes it more effective. That was a faster timeline to market a shorter cost of entry and production was a lot cheaper than making a drug so we decided to make that decision to go to market faster so we can actually start generating revenue to fuel some of the other R&D projects we have on bill. How many how many longevity products life saving product disease prevention products never see the light of day because of the economics not working out well just look at drugs right so people will put in decades and decades of work on a drug they'll put millions and millions of dollars then all of a sudden it fails safety or you know you'll go through phase one you'll go through phase two but then when it goes to phase three trials which you know takes you years 10 plus years to get there it fails right so they're more often than not products fail whether it's in the drug space or in the commercial space in the commercial space is interesting because you could still go to market with something with some scientific claims but it may not actually work per se like some of the supplement industry stuff like that but in regulated spaces where like a sunscreen for example where there has to be efficacy you know that's you have to make stuff work there um was there anything that you were working on that would could that could significantly impact some how long somebody can can live yeah there was and is this like a telomeres thing is this like anything to do not that's the job there no um I always hear that word associated with the length of telomeres that's questionable in my opinion honest opinion but you know we have a sister company a drug company and they're in five phase two trials working on various indications linked to agent with all novel compounds so that's like the exact opposite so I'm in the consumer product space you know get to market to help the masses the other arm of the business which I'm part of I'm not involved with them day to day but we're in the same groups uh is going to drug route where they're targeting very specific indications linked to aging uh with a bunch of novel compounds and uh so those are going to be monumental because they target some of them are vast vast uh indices like diabetes or acute kidney disease and also some very small ones as well niche markets um that will be game changes too so that's that's a big deal that's the drug side drug so I mean um when I think about some of the work that you've done I want to talk about before we go into into delivery and what and what you do now um I think that it's interesting to just talk about how at certain points in your career to find these extreme of files you were going 5,000 feet underground and to abandon minds like talk to me about the day in the life of somebody like a scientist like what are you what are you doing to find novel technologies and novel what's an extreme of file what is it an organism? yeah an organism that lives in extreme environments yeah where are you finding these organisms that impact a consumer good uh somebody on the space station like so how do you even for a second think if I go 5,000 feet underground this is what I'm going to discover there's going to have so many other applications it's all in the mindset so I started out with extreme of files 2009 and what I did was I put in insemination glove on like for cows it goes all over my shoulder and I shoved my arm into pile of dead animals and feces and I pulled out samples and from that I isolated maybe 20 new species of extreme files so I've been working with extreme files since 2009 these have a million different applications millions and millions of different applications now um I've even worked so I'll give another story so during the BP oil spill this was 2010 I think or something like that um my lab was contracted I was contracted by an environmental group to try to find like a bacterial remediation for the oil spill so I went to a pine forest and I isolated samples from pine tree roots and you make it why the hell would you go to pine tree well pine trees secrete pine oil and I know it's not the same type of hydrocarbon structures oil but pine oil if enzymes can hydroize that and bacteria can use that for food there's a good chance they can hydroize petroleum based products so we actually found three organisms that could break down oil and was so crazy I remember getting buckets and buckets of oil like oil tarballs all this stuff from the beaches of Alabama and working on it day and night trying to figure this out we actually found three organisms that could do it um and a way to remove the oil from the sand and we sent that over to the environmental group in BP and they used it for some time uh to to break down the oil so that was 2010 so it's thinking what can you use like the mine for example yeah uh in the mine it was full of pro-oxidants things that drive oxidation or promote inflammation so if these organisms could survive in an environment that would normally oxidize or break down or destroy DNA they're they must be doing something to survive so I go down there I find them do some stuff in the lab and then I find out what they're producing or what compounds they make that protect themselves and then see how it impacts your skin so it seems like a lot of a lot of the work that that you've done is you you find organisms in one environment and you figure out how they can impact everything else yeah and that's the easy part the hard part is bringing it to market like commercial life figuring out how to produce it it's okay you have to prove out it's a variety of tests and long process so it's safe yeah figure out how to manufacture it and all that stuff yeah it's very interesting so talk to me about how bean sprouts then went into extremophiles and then eventually ended up on the space station and working with NASA and I have a word here and I'm gonna I'm gonna say it but I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right uh basilis lysate that's right it is okay right so here's the story uh so the extremophiles that I was isolating produced enzymes that could break down bacterial biofilms on the international space station the water systems are filled with bacterial biofilms and there's no way to clean and why is that it's just been up there for decades and bacteria oh it's not like a space thing it's like a it's just well remember we go up to the space station we shed bacteria all over the place it colonizes it's not like they're up there with bleach like bleaching things because they'll oxidize all their computers all their components all their delicate equipment and these bacteria grow and some of them even short circuit the computers like bacteria will grow on the circuits and blow out like cause electrical issues it's crazy so we're working with um JPL we did some subcontracts and did some research on removing bacteria biofilms uh that linked to space station and then we started looking at dead bug bodies on like uh the Mars rover and uh so perseverance and insight two things that went to Mars and we figured out how to remove those and trying to figure out you know what what's going on there so while we're working with them they go hey we did this experiment you know 10 years ago or something and we have this organism that survived outside of the space station for a year and a half and when we brought it back down it survived UVC radiation maybe you can use it for something maybe it'll just give this to you and it'd be like figure it out well we're like hmm all right maybe it's for a sunscreen and they patented it they had they had a JPL had a patent on it for some applications like UV protection stuff like that so we took it in the lab now UVC is not it's relevant to us but our ozone layer blocks it we came out for about UVB UVA so after about a year and a half two years of work we were able to extend its protection into the UVB and UVA range and when we started putting it in sunscreens it significantly improve the sunscreen factors some protect your fact so we said hey we have something and then we looked at the market and we're like wow there's not a lot of innovation here going on in the sunscreen space everything's like zinc or titanium or you know avabend zone or almost list later also sounds not so healthy well yeah there's a lot of issues with some of those things which is why a lot of people are getting rid of them or some of them are banned now they're phasing them out so there's need for innovation and then we said okay how do we make this a product and then the journey started but working with NASA and JPL a lot of those pride I mean going to JPL campus going to the simulated sunroom seeing mission control playing and messing around with the Mars rover it was it was awesome yeah the one thing that I thought about when you said it survived outside the space station is if it's surviving outside the space station it's definitely not dying once it's inside my well there's no real bacteria in it right we extract we extract the compounds that it makes to block the radiation so you're not actually getting back to this extra living thing no it's not like a probiotic where you eat the live bacteria the bacteria is grown and then we extract and pull out the act of components so this is how an organism's ability to survive radiation in space that translates into human skin benefits is the skin benefits exactly yeah um I have a note here that clinical trials show a 48% reduction in melanin yeah yeah so explain to me how because melanin is found in your skin already so does this work twofold it blocks it blocks the sun but then it also impacts like age spots you know dark spots yeah exactly so the ingredient is really cool this is where the longevity factor comes yeah so when we did the UV testing we're like this is great but we're like this has to also do something else because blocking UV is one thing but there has to be something like mechanically going on to kind of protect it so we start to look at various things the first thing we looked at were sertuins and sertuins are these ancient enzymes are like DNA repair they're linked to longevity you know activating them has been shown to extend lifespan and yeast and and worms a whole bunch of other things and that's one of the key you know pathways linked to you know epigenetics repairing your DNA damage stuff like that so we found that this turns on sertuins and we're like wow that's a big deal the second thing it did was outside of you know helping with UV it absorbed and blocked radicals or things that promote oxidation from sun exposure that lead to accelerating skin aging so not only does sun you know come in and potentially damage your DNA but it can also start cross-linking things in your skin like collagen elastin all the proteins and this blocks that and then we found out that our products impact male overexpressing melanin cells which are linked to age spots and in dark spots and we this we didn't even know so we did the clinical trial and all the people came back you know like hey can I talk to you about something we're like yeah what is it we thought it was hard you know like like my age spots are going away and that wasn't like something that we were told to look for now so what now like yeah like all of our age spots the little things they're they're gone like I started putting on other parts of my body to get rid of them so we look oh we got to go back to lab so we went back to lab we figured out the pathways it inhibited what it blocked and we're able to reproduce it with enzyme assays and also tissue culture assays that land up with the clinical data we did on humans so this isn't just now at this point you discover it's not just impacting like melanin and it's not just protecting from the sun but then it's actually addressing like other visible signs of aging so what's actually happening with the other parts of the the age spots that are disappearing yeah so what it's doing is it's sequestering so with the DNA repair which are two ends and then the up regulation of hyoronic acid in your cells the protection from the strong antioxidant protection from radicals all that stuff you we say it's bio optimizing this it decels it's it's getting the cells back to the best possible function they can be at that time it's getting like the nutrients for it and it's impacting all these key pathways like tyrosinase which is an enzyme that leads to hyperpigmentation it's slowing that pathway down it's helping these other DNA repair pathways kick up and it you blew us away like we weren't expecting that and that's what we're like you know what we really have to like come out and really make something with it outside of good diet sleep take care of yourself are there any other ideas that maybe the Instagram health and wellness longevity influencers put out that are actually helpful so like things like coal plunges hyperburet chambers saw ir saw saw and as things like that like fasting stuff like that there's so calorie restriction is so far one of the only proven ways to extend longevity and that's intermittent fasting type of things right the other things yeah they're scientific evidence behind it but doing the fundamentals of sleep exercise and hydration and diet so those four things will outweigh any of the benefits you get from a coal plunge you know like those things are are small like if if you do those things but you have a horrible diet a horrible lifestyle you're going to counteract any benefit that's there so you want to do the most impactful things first then if you get to a point we're okay I'm running a lot I need to you know I want to increase my bio to math I want to start you'll fine tuning your body that's when you can go to those other things and really see if you can bio hack yourself but if you go in a coal plunge and then go sit on the beach get sun burnt go have a drink all day drink all day go eat taco bell three in the morning you know this is yes I feel like people use some of these like these health and wellness hacks as an excuse for a bad lifestyle and they're just like they make it they make them it makes you feel good about yourself if you coal plunge after you drink all night I just think that I mean if you're gonna do it if you're gonna do it like do the basics first and then and then all the other stuff is icing on the cake yeah yeah exactly your point if you're drinking if you're eating like shit if you're not sleeping like why why why why yeah why are you doing that you know what you you have a very specific approach to clinical testing that differs from the industry standard why is that important it's very important because I come from a drug development heavy science background so I want to know the products actually work more than just doing the subjective questionnaire a lot of cosmetic products or consumer care products well just do subjective questionnaires where they ask 20 30 people does your skin feel smoother than it did before the product yes or no like that's literally the answer and that's why you'll see things like 98% of people think their skin looked better after using it for a day right so we do a very intentional study where we do uh scientific proof for us so we look at tissue cultures uh enzyme assays x vivo data so a lot of in lab data then we go to the clinical testing we do clinical testing we do instrumental measurements so we use instruments to measure things we do expert grading so we have experts in the industry actually grade they look for wrinkles they look for smoothness then we do before and after and we actually computer analyzed before and after just to get solid data then we do subjective questionnaires and the icing on the cake is when every single one of those things line up and that's what happens with our products and that's why we release all the data on our website for people to see a big thank you to indeed for supporting success story because hiring people is one of the hardest things you're ever going to have to do as an entrepreneur as a founder as somebody who's trying to build a business it's important to hire well and find the right person but it takes so much time 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it gives you one source of truth for your business you get the visibility and control to make quick confident decisions while others are guessing you're working with real time data insights forecasting you're basically looking in the future of your business with actionable data whether your company earns a couple million or even hundreds of millions net suite helps you respond to immediate challenges and helps you grab your biggest opportunities and speaking of opportunities they put together the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at net suite dot com slash scott clary this is the playbook for understanding how to use AI for your business the guide is free that is net suite dot com slash scott clary I think that first I didn't realize how low the bar was for for taking a product to market I know listen I come from a sports background to a degree and I know how how interesting the supplement industry is yeah I don't know much about the cosmetic industry but I guess it's very similar very same and it's it always blows my mind at how lenient the got how lenient the rules are about what you can say a product does and I mean if we go back there's been products that not only are you know they're very lenient about their claims they actually have like band substances in them and what's interesting is you can go to market not do any testing based your claims on the ingredients you have in the product but you don't even know if the ingredients are active in your formulation so you can put something in there and be like oh this ingredient has been shown to do this yeah but you don't know what percentage it's in there you don't know if it does anything because you don't have to test it what percentage of the cosmetic or supplement industry is most most almost uh big chunk yeah big chunk so for the person listening who actually wants to buy products and do what they say they do I mean it's a mind field it's if you go into any outlet any store you read the packaging and you look at the claims and you see the little asterisk and you see it's made with 10 people yeah it's like 90 90 percent of subjects said they love the product out of 10 people and you they don't really show it someone will show before and after photos but they don't highlight like they're so small and grain you can't see what they're showing yeah you know you go in the store you what does the FDA allow this because it's not regulated by the FDA it's not what was it regulated by nothing the FDA now has some called mocha modernization a cosmetic act uh which they're trying to regulate it but that's more for safety and accountability like if there is an issue if a bunch of people have a reaction or get burned or something they can trace it back but claims are just unless someone files something with the trade and you know the trade but why does the FDA care about a bag of Doritos and not like a pre workout because one's a supplement and one's food that's such as that's such a such a horrible answer though that's what it is though why was I mean do you know the history I don't know the history like was there one point when someone said hey you're putting this this supplement into your body let's not classify it under the FDA it's it's a whole it's like it's such an obvious it's yeah it's an obvious thing and it's basically on the company to do its due diligence to make it safe and uh if that's why there's so many issues with a lot of flash tiktok products yeah the celebrity gets on it promotes it then you never see the brand again because it was just a money grab out of all the different it's horrible it's it's scary it's hell it's super scary I shouldn't be laughing but yeah you know it's it's very I remember like there was a pre workout that used to exist called like Jack Jack 3d yeah and it had one three dimethyl yeah which stuff works I know it works because I know it's a band substance but it works what is what is that it was like a party drug or something I remember it was a stimulant that was in yeah I remember so back in the day when I could workout before kids and everything I would take out my body and I'd like see spots yeah I know and there's been there's been there's been there's been guys that have gone to jail because they put like steroids in their in their supplements it's a wild world man it's a wild world all the like I mean all people want to do is go into a GNC and not get shit that's going to kill them that's all that's all they want but you know what was in your research career and I knew you're doing R&D now too but what was your most significant scientific disappointment all right that's a good one so first um when I was doing my masters it took me a year and a half before I got any positive data that was very disappointing you know I was like I'm a bad scientist don't but and then the second thing was when I started my phg I started on a project um working on like an antibiotic uh something from an organism and I lost the strain so this was a cool bacteria that produced something that could kill E. coli for foodborne illness and then I was sloppy in the lab and I lost it awesome this is technical ran away like what do you know this is technical but the the genes are put on a plasmid and a plasmid's like a piece of DNA that's outside of the chromosome and I didn't maintain it properly from the temperature temperature growth conditions keeping it under certain pressures and it lost the plasmid so then it lost its ability to kill E. coli 0 and 5787 but that happened my advise was very upset but then I switched to a new project and I got five papers in a patent and then did a bunch of other stuff so it was kind of a blessing in disguise you can you can't recreate that though why not no because it was a specific and I didn't sequence it at the time so I didn't know what it was I was still doing like the rough stuff so once it's lost it's lost it's sad that's incredible when you think about like a take-to-market strategy for innovation and new technology and organism how did you think through that you didn't want to just keep it for yourself or so it was kind of already built in it was too late so when we started we discovered the SPF aspect before the longevity aspects and we were thinking more of an ingredient play so we were going to be an ingredient supplier for sunscreens but then after messing around the longevity aspect in our you know backgrounds and history in it in our connections in the industry in academia we thought let's make a longevity product the skincare product outside of the sunscreen and it was already too late we had other companies who were working with it for a year and a half already putting in sunscreens so we couldn't be like oh guess what you you can't do that anymore that is because it was licensed licensed out it wasn't really licensed but you know it was already kind of built into their supply they've already did the regulatory stuff to get it to market they already invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on their end to make a product so it would have just been you know bad bad business to say hey guess what you could have patented it yeah you could have you could have blocked them from using it in theory in theory we could have but originally we were going ingredients and then we decided to try skincare on a whim so we weren't planning on making serums or anything but the chairman was like hey Kyle just trying to make a serum see how it does only make like a hundred bottles see if it's unlikely we can make a hundred bottles you have to make a few thousand and we launched October 2022 and by the end of the year we almost did half a million dollars in like two months with almost no advertising so what what was the what was the thing that was made the product so attractive people just loved it it worked they would say they noticed something in like a week or a few days and it was all word of mouth that spread the product so we were like wow we actually have a good serum here if we did a cold start yeah minimal advertising if any I did like an Instagram live I think you can't have a lot of and I know I don't have any and this is before I had social media so I was invited on an Instagram live with Davidson clearance to ruin a prune they have a lot of followers and that jump started and then I finally got on the social media van wagon last year late last year I think I'm like 300 dollars whatever but I'm trying not trying to go grow this will hopefully send a few more your way I want to talk a little bit about so the first product the delivery launch was obviously sun protection yeah the ingredient the ingredient but when you obviously are a scientist so when you think through what you're going to launch there's more than just that one particular piece of it so what other sort of novel skin care ingredients that you include yeah so when we launched the serum it was very intentional so we knew a bacillus lysate worked on what it did so we view like bacillus lysate as the engine but it needs gas to go right so the other ingredients we added were like the fuel to help drive the pathways that the bacillus lysate activates and that's from decades of not just my experience I don't have decades in it but you know David Sinclair and Harvard Medical's longevity type of understanding of the pathways we we fine tuned it to really work on those things okay that makes sense I know I want to I want to talk about skincare and skincare myths like what's useful and what's not but with your products what would be sort of like the theme around all the products that you actually launch so our products we don't have a lot of skews a lot of skincare companies will come up with 30 skews and you confuse as a consumer which one to use you have five different serums 10 different moisturizers right so we formulate it with intentionality so we will like okay let's make a serum let's make an eye cream which is very niche because eye skin is different let's make a general moisturizer and then we're coming out the sunscreen this year that's it for the aionia line which has a space ingredient our new line that's coming out uses novel enzymes from an extremophile to cleanse exfoliate and unplug your pores so this is what you use first to get your face ready for aionia with all the beneficial ingredients so we're very intentional again maybe we're gonna have three skews in there face wash toner and a mask that's that because we design things that work we show things that work clinically and we're not out to sell 50 different things you know there's a lot of noise there's a lot of yeah I want to be efficient as possible so I would just want I mean it's bad business I guess I should be making 8000 I don't think so but I mean I don't function you can build businesses different ways yeah I don't think it's bad business I think it's I think it's when you have confidence in your product you aren't trying to cross sell into things that people don't need because it compromises the integrity of the company now if you don't have a science-based understanding of your product then you just have this this little survey you send out and you can send it a lot of surveys about a lot of different products and well you know I can cross sell and upsell and increase the LTV of the customer because all of our stuff works to some degree but it's not science-based but it seems like the market receives it well I don't know I like the way you build businesses better what are some of the biggest misconceptions because obviously most people have some sort of skin care routine I need I need I need a better one than just moisturizer I like in my mind I just want like a moisturizer that has everything in it because I just don't want to put on like five different things because I'm because I'm the guy I don't know but one of the biggest misconceptions about the average person's skin care stack that they have right now what do they need what do they not need yeah you basically need a good face wash yeah a good moisturizer and a good sunscreen not it doesn't different brown out it does a different product because what ends up happening with you have a dozen different products they can start causing negative reactions between one another that's why sometimes you'll add one thing and all of a sudden you have breakouts right and then you change something you'll have breakouts just like what I was saying with longevity like diet exercise hydration sleep basics for skin care find a good face wash that works find a good moisturizer and a serum you know for extra active as you if you want those and a sunscreen for protection see how that works because I've talked to a lot of people and they're like oh I got 15 things it takes me 45 minutes and like do you need all that they said well I'm afraid to not use it I see someone's a marketing reason why don't you just try doing the basic essentials for like two weeks because you can always go back to using what you used before it's not like you're gonna age exponentially in two weeks right so just see what you can cut back and if you notice anything and then you'll feel like liberated and self empowered and that's like one of the things like I like to talk about my aionian daily being what we go for it's like we want to give you things that work so that you feel like self empowered you're not like bogged down with 20 different things and you have to do this routine it's like just use these things and go with it and you know free up a lot of time is this where is this where the sort of the joke that guys don't put anything on their face and they always look good and then like women put on everything and they always have like skin condition I mean there's hormones and stuff too built in there but I mean unless you're using like junky soap and stuff like that but if you use a basic moisturizer and a good face wash like you're not you're not stressing your skin remember the more products I mean 12 products yeah that's stressing the skin so you're wondering why you're always trying to like you know you're suffering from some kind of skin condition and now there's a big push and understanding in the skin microbiome which wasn't here 10 plus years ago now we are starting to understand what these products do to your microbiome on your skin which can lead to acne, boil, scarring right and again we were I don't want to say head of the curve but we were very intentional we made our products we made sure they were healthy and beneficial for your skin microbiome they're actually certified beneficial for your skin microbiome which again there's something that we're trying to show how our products are intentionally designed what does it mean when somebody says scientifically proven versus clinically tested yeah so scientifically proven and clinically tested or clinically proven at two different things scientifically proven is done in a lab test to tissue culture not done on humans clinically tested is done in a clinical setting on humans with subjective end points and time points so a lot of consumers don't realize that they think well if it's scientifically proven it must have been tested on people that's not true they could have just done an enzyme ass or did something in a tissue culture plate showed that it worked but there's no guarantee that it translates over into actually working on the body if you think about all the other skincare trends like micro needling chemical exfoliation what's useful what's not like exfoliation why the because there's some good stuff there but there's also a lot of like hype and marketing pull in there you know a good exfoliation cleansing unplugging your pores removing the dead cells that is necessary micro needling is good to help get things deep into the skin um but again too much is a bad thing I mean you can go and if you have so much damage occurring to your skin over and over again it's not going to you know be able to rebound as if you do it in smaller increments same thing with lasers right like people will go get lasers and then their face will be all inflamed and then they'll get hyperpigmentation because they damage their face and it's like how do you prevent that well now you got to use something else well maybe you shouldn't have done you know 10 laser treatments you know it's it's a balance you know it's a balance what what claims or ingredient what ingredients do you think make claims that are just super hyperbolic super exaggerating or and or are just downright false and dangerous so it depends um if you look at the products if they test on the products the claims are around the product it's of it's hard to pinpoint individual ingredient so they just bulk because they bulk it all together um if they do an individual ingredient you have to question was this ingredient tested by itself or was this ingredient or endpoint tested with the final product it's hard to say if it's dangerous or not because they're all they all have to be safety tested right there ought to be stuff in there it's just is the dose that's in there actually causing the outcome that they're claiming in the final product and that's where having where you do the scientific testing the clinical testing and then testing the ingredient by itself is needed to support about very few companies actually go out and do that because a lot of them just buy ingredients from ingredient suppliers like they don't create their own ingredients they buy them put them together and it's the same ingredient you'll get in one brand as it is in another it's just a different product and a different celebrity on it but without naming brands are there anything is there anything that's actually dangerous if people should stop using things with a lot of acid very low pH a lot of the chemical peels things like that can cause some damage things that react in the sun like a lot of products that have high retinal stuff like that that actually reacts in the sunlight and can cause damage to the skin so you gotta be very careful with what you use when you use it and how you read the use case in instructions some people don't read instructions they just put it on whenever they feel like and then they'll have like user error user error but they you know like they'll go on the sun if they put on like retinal cream stuff like that and then cause get burns and stuff you do have to have a podcast I think you do have to have a podcast because you see people spending outside of the fact that you have a company that has good products that are science based and science back the research has actually been put into it the education around how to use it and also just the exceptional amount of money that's wasted on products is not good it's it like I don't know I always when there's products it impact your health obviously every company needs good marketing but sometimes when you have great marketing and a product that hurts you know hurts your health and well being I'm not really a big fan of that yeah there was a woman on the plane when I so you should at my point is yeah you should have a podcast so you can educate so I can educate people on food and cut all space art whatever you we haven't even spoken about art yeah it's a whole other it's a whole other side it's a funny funny thing though there's a woman on the plane when I was flying down we were talking and she heard herself running she's springed a ankle and something with a tendon and she bought these peptide pills for $80 she's like do you know what this peptide is I was like no that's like a trademark like random peptide and she said that the advertisements were saying they would help improve muscle growth and and damaged ligaments and stuff because it improves collagen and I was like I don't know if that's good and she's like well you know I spent $80 I took it for two months and I didn't notice anything I'm like yeah that's usually what happens with those sounds like the the upscale version of the gas station of Viagra that's the bee pill yeah yeah yeah when you go weed I think yeah exactly that's exactly what it sounds like because I mean I know a little bit about peptides I've had some people speak about them but most of them are not a lot of them you take through a pill format usually injection yeah because you get denature in your stomach or the bacteria break them down and it's people I mean this is my again outside of just like health and wellness influencers a lot of companies take advantage of someone stress out about about how they look how they feel and hey for 20 bucks yeah which is like maybe a few days worth of coffee you might as well try to see if it works and you multiply it by 100 million people but then forget the fact that somebody spent 20 or 80 bucks like if it isn't effective then what's in it what's what's in the filler in the pill or what's in any of it that you're putting into you methyl cellulose which is just nothing rice flour that's the best case scenario yeah that's the best case yeah the best case is it doesn't that has like a neutral impact yeah what when you think about you know moving from scientists to entrepreneur and you'll always be a scientist but now you're you're building an actual business what would be your biggest challenge in taking like cutting edge research science backed products and then bringing it to the market yeah this is a big one because scientists and academics want to drill down and get every answer and be perfectionist and that's not what's needed you have to get it to a point where it's acceptable and it's functional and I'll make an impact in the market launch with that and then make innovations and improve it as you go because you will be killed by trying to make something as perfect as possible and as someone who is in the space I will always see imperfections it's like if you build something right it may look amazing but you know we're all the imperfection and you try to go and fix it it's the same thing with products and then you'll end up in a downward spiral where it's like oh I got to wait to fix that go to wait to fix that wait to fix that and then you never go to market it's it's death by analysis or over overthinking if you can get a good product consumers like it's going to be impactful you launch with it and then you take that feedback and you make the appropriate changes because what you think is important may not be what is important for the market or for consumers right like we're going through this now like I love the bottle I love the dropper but consumers find it confusing and I would have never known that unless I launched it right and now we're trying to change it we're moving you know we're adapting as it goes but I've known a lot of people and we have a great idea but they say it's not ready it's not ready it's not ready and then someone else comes out with it and they get scooped and then there's nothing right and that's uh so you have to know when to call it you have to know when to call it you have to know how to take a complex product and find a way to tie it into existing user behavior as well to your point about the dropper there was a point where I tried to launch a a Trans-Dermal Vitamin patch company and telling somebody that instead of drinking a coffee in the morning versus putting on a patch with caffeine it's a hard user behavior to crack right like they're not they don't want to put on a passive natural no they have to have this whole experience of drinking a coffee and to build a business I would say that trying to modify human behavior is one of the the highest friction points you can overcome so if you don't have to don't do it find a way if possible to take what they're already used to and then just layer on a better product that's even a slightly better product i mean in your case it's a significantly better product but even a slightly better product tied into existing user behavior is going to be probably the easiest way to take some of the easiest in the consumers will think it's amazing because it's better than what they have yes and what they know and even though you know there's more you know you have it is room for other improvement but it's for any business you gotta think like that i'm curious if like the scientific messaging helps or hurts your marketing yeah it's that's a big problem so when we launch we're very very science heavy and it almost scares some people i just think so now we're we're we're dialing it back we're going i don't want to say rebrand but we're dialing back on more of the crazy innovation and more of things that support why the innovation is good so testimonies reviews before things that are digestible it's very hard to digest all the crazy stuff that goes into it because people just want to use it and see if it works they don't care about the science and it was good to cut through the noise but now as we're maturing we're understanding okay we have to dial it back and instead of being science forward and then everything will be like oh here's why it's great here's what people are seeing here's the benefits and guess what you can trust it because it's backed by all these things it's backed by oh here's all the credibility if you want to look into it yeah i would so change i was one because you have to you know you you as an entrepreneur you have such a heavy science background but you have to think like a marketer now exactly yeah watered down the things that drive like click like even we found like we can get people to our site and when you look at the flow maps it's like they get i want to say they get lost in it but we're redefining the flow maps it's a lot of stuff that goes into like you said human nature what you expect i have no doubt um when you think about the R&D that you're doing right now and the potential for new products normally when like i'll speak to an entrepreneur it's pretty easy to figure out the the the tam the total address will mark an opportunity because i don't usually recommend people do red ocean products uh i have blue oceans you but i recommend they don't do blue ocean just find an existing market and then sell into that was a slightly better version of what already is there but when you think about like all the different opportunities as a as an entrepreneur that can literally invent something new that's never been done before how do you sort of weigh out the possibility where you want to spend your time and energy and resources the shiny object is very hard to come out no doubt the good idea theory should be shot out of the sky right and this was something we started out with in the beginning because we had you know where daily we spun out of we were a very unique company where we were developing products to solve and address some really serious problems everything from new gels new polymers even working on submarines type of stuff and to go into skin care it's like you have all that stuff in your back pocket but you need to focus and be good at one thing and make and become known for that so we focus exclusively on ingredients and skin care for that and we are slowly building out but that doesn't mean other companies or groups who want to partner with us will come in and be like hey you know i see that being used for this and i'll be like okay let's do an agreement or partnership to go after that i'm going to stay focused on what we're doing but we can work with you to go into this new market and return for royalty with certain sunset stuff like that so it's diversifying without being too distracted and that is another thing that because everyone will give you good ideas like wow i want to do that i want to do that but then you pivot so much you end up in the same spot you just go around a circle over and over and over again so you got to be very disciplined on what you do and if opportunities come that are outside of your focus but you think they're a good idea maybe you can leverage a group or partner or something else to co-develop something into an area that you don't see yourself going a quick shout out to the HubSpot podcast network for supporting success story now if you like success story you're going to love other podcasts in their network one of my favorites is create like the greats it's hosted by Ross Simmons obviously brought to you by the HubSpot podcast you're going to join Ross on create like the greats Ross dissect the genius behind histories most remarkable creators and their legendary work so you're going to get this blend of history and business and creativity he has a great voice always good for a podcast and he has a decade of practical experience he's going to break down some of the best creative processes that built influential companies brands and stories in a way that anyone can apply so whether or not you're fascinated by history creative thinking or you simply want to improve and systematize your own creativity without sacrificing productivity this podcast is your perfect listen go listen to create like the greats wherever you get your podcasts a huge shout out to Langota for supporting today's episode now if you're ready to master a new language Langota is the online language platform trusted by over 100,000 students worldwide Langota offers live classes with the real teachers available 24-7 you can choose from German English business English French Spanish or their newest addition Italian what sets Langota apart the smallest class size in the market it's just you and up to five other students or if you want you can go one-on-one for personalized attention their native level teachers don't just teach language they share culture too and you'll speak confidently from day one with Langota's flexible scheduling and proven curriculum students report being able to navigate real 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non-business people that are sort of product first people I think like a PhD or a CTO engineer developer like somebody who is so obsessed with the product can build a great product but has never built a business around that product so for that kind of founder what is your advice to them yeah that's a hard one it's letting go I would say because you can be so involved with around the technology you want to make it the best you can but you have to listen to what the business people if you're strong but good people are saying and be like okay I'm going to weigh what they're doing I don't agree with them exactly on the tech development or where we should launch what we should do but they have a better understanding of the marketplace than that like I said knowing when to launch or knowing when to put your flag in the ground to go to market is a big one and understand that there's always time if you have a good product coming out there's always time to reinvent it and tweak it if it's successful and it goes and you know the market will tell you yes or no if your idea was good right away right you'll know and then you be like that's great I want to build upon that it's you know I'm not a business person I have like some business strand of a certificate business you're figuring it out you figuring it out I know a lot of people that like you figured I would say you have figured it out successfully I know the I know the business is like still work in progress it always will be but I'm talking about the incredibly brilliant person who is just paralyzed with fear because they have no idea how to do just just try it just go out there there's a lot of tools surround yourself with good people like find people who will work with you who share your vision who understand the technology leverage your network that's another thing you'd be surprised at the people you know who know someone else and and you can work with that I never valued networking I'll tell you when I was in graduate school I was like conferences networking why do I need that now all I do is network and it's amazing because I'll be in a bind and I'll call something like oh yeah I know something does this and you know they give you a warm introduction and you can go from there and allows you to grow so really understanding your network's worth is very very important you probably have more than most I always laugh when people are so concerned about their IP when their IP is insignificant it's nothing but you actually have IP that is significant you have you have intellectual property that that no one else very few people else on his earth that can understand our access to right so if you think about that from a commercial or a business lens how do you decide when to patent something versus when to keep it a trade secret or how do you protect your IP when IP is actually integral to your business a lot of founders they're worried about their you know their secret sauce getting out when there's really nothing under the hood but you actually yeah exactly we have a great legal team and we always go for composition of matter right which is like everything that is could possibly come out of something and then we like in our patents we'll disclose what it uses what it can be used for its efficacy but for example we keep a lot of trade secrets so like the way the organisms grown how it's maintained all that's trade secret that's not you know available so somebody gets your product they can't reverse engineer it yeah they can't because it's not alive it's not living you know it's an extract from the organism we have complete control the organism you know it has to be grown maintained a certain way and even though we have manufacturers that produce it at mass of scale we just hand them something and they just do something they don't actually know the secret sauce or the stuff that goes into it right so it's like being intentional on because patents are published right yeah I know that's what I mean so when you publish it yeah you'll see you have to be very intentional and understand that's where good IP lawyers was luckily we have really really comes into play where you can publish your novel and you know innovate a thing but not completely give it away and then some things are pure trade secret we have some pure trade secret things you know patents are not always the best strategy but it's always good to have an opinion or something look at it what would be the most important I want to just unpack some some like entrepreneur lessons that you've learned throughout your life and your career and your journey but building a science-based business in particular what would be a very important lesson that you've learned it takes a lot longer than you think it takes a lot longer I mean coming in not being in this space I mean I basically went into the business where right out of like graduate school after my stuff right so I wasn't really exposed and something that I thought would take you know three months took like eight months listen that so you have to be patient right and you have to understand that there's a lot of ups and downs nothing is as easy as you think it is one other big thing is we did a lot of work in the lab but we didn't realize that some of it wasn't transferable to scale up technology so like the methodologies we're using the R&D lab we're incompatible we're bringing it to markets we have to tweak it so you know in hindsight if I would leverage time manufacturing consultants more and then like hey we're trying to make this at scale here's what we're doing is this compatible they would have probably said no and then we could tweak it and save things a lot of time money is always an issue right you know whether you survive by grants or you go and get VC money or private money learning to pitch is something that is very very important and one thing I learned to science is great in a pitch but too many plots and graphs and too much science is this news fast you know you have to again understand that everyone is as excited about the science as you are yeah you'd be great to do it but they care more about like ROI like how fast to go there what milestones what they could do for it and really understanding that and leading with that and then coming with the science instead of being science I mean I've seen a lot of scientists present in pitch at events and everything is graphs and data and this and that then they have one slide on like products and impact on market maybe two slides that's what people care about when they're putting in the bankers and they care about that and they only need like two slides of science to show that it works right and that's it type of thing so that's another thing yeah if you think about just personally building this business what has it changed in you as an entrepreneur even as just as a person like but coming from a science background into building a business being an entrepreneur what have you had to adjust yeah so I don't want to say I've been like a risk taker but I don't mind taking risks like I have started and created a handful of companies some of them failed I had a baby clothing company that failed an AI company that we had to close down after a handful of years but understanding like what I can handle in terms of workload what my limitations are went to ask for help what to go for you know a lot of people as a founder think they have to know everything they don't want to show weakness right but you know you're as only as good as you're as strong as your weakest link and if you're the only link and you can't do everything so you know I had to start being like okay let me pull in other people to do that from that it's uh but it is doable like you can learn a lot of things if you put the time and effort in and really listen and be open-minded to people and that let's you know just take input from all different angles you can build a pretty good roadmap on how to move forward um I think that I think that understanding your own like weaknesses I think that's the key being the cell the massive amount of self-awareness I mean for me I always have to understand my own shortcomings it's successful and I think that when the sooner you can get rid of the ego it's probably big thing that's when you find yourself being successful because the ego is going to it's going to block you from making good hiring decisions from delegating from asking for help all all these cliches but they're so so so necessary um if you think about sort of a personal truth you've had to accept about yourself as an entrepreneur or as a leader what was that truth of that that one thing that you are not good at that you need someone else to help out with obvious one is marketing is I'll say that straight away marketing um um but the first thing was um like I understood the business I understand the model I didn't understand all the pieces that were necessarily there and in the beginning I think I oversimplified it I was like oh just this and this and this um and unfortunately I only learned about the hiccups when I hit the hiccup and I was like oh man I have to do that so I think you know fully understanding everything the best you can no matter what business it is to to the best of your ability not just jumping into something blind and saying you'll figure it out on the fly but being like okay this is my roadmap this is what I want to do here are some of the hurdles and it may seem common sense and obvious but now our entrepreneur start if you're doing a thousand things right and you're trying to to build everything and yeah I have a team we have a big lab you know we we move forward but it's still not like a 200 person enterprise right it's still a startup and you know we're in the millions for what we do for products and stuff like that um but we're still building it and and understanding that's very very important one thing that I think um you've done exception well and people don't know that you actually do other things outside outside of being a scientist and teaching and running an incredible skincare company um you also have other you know businesses uh passions whatever um but everything you jump into you seem to do it with so much confidence have you never had imposter syndrome and anything that you do uh a lot of people suffer from that yeah so imposter syndrome is something interesting um I'm just thinking about different all of your worlds are people who don't know like he also has an art business he also has a real estate business outside of this so and then I've done other business that have failed the AI business yeah yeah clothing company and uh I was actually going to create a non-profit for something but I decided to wait because I got too much going on but I witnessed something so instead of creating what I just do it out of my own uh goodwill without any you know stuff but imposter syndrome I think because I'm passionate about it and I invest to understand it I'm I'm not like oh my god I don't I don't belong here like what art like I love art I've been around art and collectibles for a long time and I just feel comfortable with it yeah I don't know all the small nuances that go with it but because I'm invested in it I'm willing to learn and do it and that's like oh my god I don't know how to do that I'm afraid to do I'll be like you know what I'm gonna do it I'm just gonna go and do it and that's that's one thing I can say is that you know I'm not afraid to you know some people like oh I don't know how to create an LLC I don't know how to do this and then they get afraid I'm just like let me what are the steps oh these are the steps let me do it let me do the next thing how do we do this what's the next thing and it's just taking the first step and I always say something um you know inch by inch life's a cinch yard by yard life is hot and that's what I like I go with like if you take things in incremental steps it's easy to get somewhere but if you want to create a company and you want to make it like a million dollar company the next day that's impossible it'll be overwhelmed over one of the fact that it's impossible to do but if you take it small pieces at a time you build confidence like wow I did that while I did that while I did that while I closed my first deal while I got into my first store even though it's small you did it and then you just build on that and that gives you the confidence to go you do so much um and you also have a family and that's that's the only reason why you haven't started a podcast yet is because you have kids like a three kids certainly you can't return them so I can't I can't return the kids so I'm stuck with the three daughters that's fine that's that's fine um but if you think about balance I think that that's something that a lot of entrepreneurs have an issue with and I'm curious if you have advice and if if you haven't done it perfectly that's also a good lesson but do you have advice on how to balance family and other relationships outside of work yeah so uh when I first started before had kids there's work work work all the time I think work I have no doubt go home work all this sounds like it's well do that um but what I learned is things can wait emails can wait text can wait you know I work in a lot of different time zones and that's another problem I mean there were times what I'd be taking calls from Australia three o'clock in the morning in a closet so I wouldn't wake anyone up and the guy I remember I'm the guy's like what's around your head I'm like oh I'm gonna close it he's like why the hell you want to close it because I don't want to wake anyone up and and this um but yeah so now it's like okay I do all my work and then when I get home I understand the emails can wait but that's very hard to do your phones ding all the time emails ding all time you're like oh my god if I don't answer this calls god never call me back just remember everyone else has lives too it seems people seem to forget that the bank you're doing business with probably has a family or probably wants to go on vacation so even if you respond right away they may not respond right away and I think once you understand that and you're like okay I'm here do your life balance you work out you know you're with your family and you try to work out for yourself whether it's exercise or doing hobbies to help recharge you you'll actually perform better at your work right instead of being drained and tied oh my god I gotta do this oh my god you do this and you get worn out and you don't know what to do uh make time for yourself I know it's so fun I still suffer from it now I'll be like at the dinner table and like um I'm like oh I gotta take this email to send that and like no and guess what I don't I wait two hours when the kids are in bed everything's done and then I'll just do it and the same thing happened as before it's it's funny because I think that you made a really good point that it's really hard for like an ambitious high-performing person to to understand this but when you do have those hobbies or you create space for that leisure activity or movement or gym or family I do believe that it makes all my work more focused because now I know what what is it um it's not uh it's not Pareto's principal it's 80-20 what's the other one that the work expands to the time that you give it I'm blanking on the actual term more but that's the that's the theory the work you put so much effort in because you know it's your time to do it's so efficient you have to be efficient and you have to you have to shut off distractions and you have to work on urgent important and and a lot of us work on things that are they make us feel good because we're doing stuff because they're easy to do but it's not really required and I even when I mean when when Jean is at a town and I don't have anything else to do at the end of the night I'll find myself posting like three more posts on Instagram because I'm like well what else am I gonna do like it's really not gonna make that big of a difference in the grand scheme of things like it's really or even worse I'll start thinking about other things I can start like complete other businesses and I'll start going you know and and coding up a website in my spare time because like because I just but really is that gonna make a difference in your life most more often most often it's not but I think that even some of the other businesses that you have I actually think and I'm curious if they act as hobbies for you to a degree yeah everything is a hobby like yeah I see that now and that's why you know when you first told me about the art business I'm like that seems like such a disparate idea and business like why are you art over here and then your science and skincare over here but I think art is a creative outlet to a degree so yeah makes money good your hobbies can make money but it it balances yeah there's a lot of hobby that drive my wife nuts yeah I got some Lego sets like a pinball machines I fix I used to work on cars and motorcycles I got all the things to keep my hands dirty because like I say when I was younger I did a lot of stuff in my hands and yeah I can do stuff in my hands now but it's not the same thing right like the stuff I work on it takes years to see it come to reality we're like like last summer I built a 750 square foot deck of my house just well my wife said let's do a little deck I'm like let's make it bigger and then she wanted even bigger and that's like I don't know and it caused an argument but anyway built the deck I did it all myself my dad came and help you know dig some holes pour some concrete piles but then I did the frame everything else myself did everything and people like why do you do that that's so stressful I said no it's like relaxing I don't have to think I it's a different type of outlet where I see what I'm building instead of working with microscopic things I can't see you know it's in same with all the other hobbies yeah yeah the businesses I think it's important I think it's important sometimes to like focus is good but also taking space to be creative to think about something differently I've always found that helps me solve problems in the main thing I always find out what would be the most difficult or or darkest moment that you've experienced as either a scientist or an entrepreneur something that hasn't gone the way that it's supposed to go really but it was a lesson that you learned but you wouldn't wish that lesson on anyone else yeah um I don't want to say like false profits but there's when you're beginning you're starting out and you're trying to find people to help help you mentors mentors or people that actually help with the business you want to make sure they'll actually help you and do things not just give you like support or ideas like you need people to actually help you to do the grunt work to get stuff going not just people like pontificating pontific oh be great to do this all you should do that and I've known a lot of friends who've had startup companies and stuff and they get these really cool people to help but they actually don't help they they want to latch on exactly and noticing that um right away um as an issue now I haven't experienced that myself but I've seen people do that I've been very lucky where the ecosystem of people that I've been around with are very like minded they want to get into trenches they want to see it go I mean my mentor had I think 27 companies at one time spin out small different things he's been in the arena it's been in the arena and that's like prices information but I've seen other people you know they're very desperate they grab onto anyone to help and it's almost like uh it kind of drags you down because you think you're gonna get actual help interaction but it actually just piles more things on you and then you get more nervous because you don't know it and then you find out that person actually doesn't know they never did it they just were in a meeting where someone said the same thing I think that I don't know I I've had to develop a pretty good like BS meter for people um it's tough though it's very tough people are very compelling go very compelling I mean I don't know what advice that I would give outside of if you have the luxury of it see how people work for an extended period of time before choosing to take their advice yeah yeah exactly I mean some of the people that take advice from I've known them for years and I've you know been to their wedding or I've seen you know their kids grow up and at this point I've seen how they navigate work and business and entrepreneurs spend their own lives and then I can sort of trust their their advice but when you're first starting out you latch on to anyone and anything that seems like they're gonna guide you towards what you want to accomplish but a lot of people just want to latch on take a little bit of equity that's yeah and they don't do much so you you can also protect yourself like I mean it's important to understand like investing schedules and and setting up contracts it specifically outline what they're gonna contribute and KPI whatever you want to do but I mean first time entrepreneurs definitely they're not thinking about don't think about all this just thinking and same goes for raising money too like raising money is also not the best thing to do raising money from the wrong people it's gonna put more stress on human pressure and I think that just taking a step and understanding that taking like a step back and understanding okay what do I really want to build how faster I want to build it why am I doing this who do I want to line myself with what evidence that I have that they're actually gonna help me versus hurt me whether or not it's money or just mentorship advisory I think these are all just pause for a second before you jump into anything legally definitely yeah money is the big one because everyone needs money right but you have to understand some people who come and will money have a certain milestone or you need to exit in five years or exit three so you want to make sure you want people who will walk a who have the same mindset and will walk with you to get to your goal but I can understand also as an entrepreneur you're trying to raise some money you know any money you eventually see is better than no money because no money you're out of business so try to do the best you can't define someone or have terms in their contracts that allow you to you know still grow without having to be forced into something I think it's I think it's so smart and that's why I hope that when people listen to this they can understand that like you don't have to speed run entrepreneurship you don't have to rush it you only have to be successful once in your life that's that's really it and that's that's that's you'll make more more money than you ever thought possible I mean you've been building day levy like how many years if no but I mean considering that first bean sprout yeah so that is what led to this company yeah first bean sprout in the actually the Dan animal pile led to it too so a long time I've been working indirectly with this since 2009 2010 and I had no idea I was going to end up here it's amazing you know pathway but just goes to show to keep doors open don't assume that you have to say in a rigid pathway that's it that's another big lesson is like be open to any opportunities that come around I know a lot of people even scientists they're very stuck in their ways it has to be this way I want this to be like this I want my product or this invention to be just like this when in fact if you just pivot it a little bit yeah it was outside of your comfort zone a little bit but that would have had more of an impact it opened up more of a market than you know being stuck in your ways and that's another big thing out of all the things that you've learned what was one thing you had to unlearn to get to where you're at today it's a very good question I had to unlearn believing everyone has good intentions I think is a big thing you have to assume everyone has good intentions but at the same time you have to assume that they're not going to be as invested as you are in your idea your thought process when you hire people you know way as an entrepreneur and you create a company you create something you love it so much but the person you hire is not going to love it as much as you and you have to understand that like that's what I'm saying finding people who work with you believe what you're doing want to put in that grant work to do it because some people will just say oh it's a nine to five job whatever I'm just I'm just in for for whatever I'm doing the two-year thing and going to a new place luckily I've had a lot of employees they've stayed four five six seven years eight years because they love the product they love what we're doing yeah some leave for personal reasons stuff like that but none of them are like I'm only here as a step because it's very driving and powering thing but that is a privileged tab is not normal and I know a lot of people too of like oh I got this great tech company I love it I love it but my engineers leave like every six months because they use it just and you have to understand that it's kind of you know part of it it's it's tough it's really hard to find good people it's hard to find people that are aligned with with the mission that you have do you have any advice on how to on how to find those people I mean that's that's tough it's very tough and I think it's gotten more tough in 2025 when people can work from home with any company in the world so the incentive to stay is diminished it's not because they live within a 20 to 30 minute commute and that's the incentive and you're the only company that they want to work at within their you know local area so it's you have to first of all you have to be a good person and a good entrepreneur and that's like the that's like the bare minimum at this point like if you're an asshole people are gone but outside of that one idea that I've always had and maybe you have some ideas as well but one idea is that you make a contract with the person forget the employment contract but a contract with the person that so that while they're contributing part of their life to building your company you're also seeing where they want to go and you're helping them get there but being not not just giving it like lip service but being purposeful about okay so if you want to make X amount of dollars or have this title or do this kind of work let's figure out a path to get there and I don't know if the people in your I don't have a big team like I used to so I haven't tested this theory in 2025 I used to work very very well pre-COVID people weren't as transient in their jobs pre-COVID as I think they are now so the people that are four or five years in that are still working with you do you see like a thing that you give them that makes someone to stay there yeah so the biggest the hardest thing with a startup or anything is that there's not a lot of growth right there's not a big ladder so it's like you have a team 10 15 12 people but you're not going to have 12 vice presidents of course yeah you know what I mean so you won't be around for a long time right so you know it's been a challenge but we offer a great work environment you know competitive benefits and salary in my I don't like to micromanage sometimes I do micromanage depending on how urgent the stuff has to be like if this but normally I give the employees like freedom to be creative as long as they hit the milestones and deadlines for certain projects that are required you know they can do other research look for new things it's it's a work environment that is more free and forgiving for you know it's not just you doing this every day not blah blah blah type of thing because it's it's very hard to do that and when I hire people I look yeah you get the resume you get the credentials but I look for like grit it's hard to explain but it's like people who've like done a lot of different jobs not not like every year but like okay maybe they did landscaping or then they did something else or when you interview them you ask them and they they're not just like oh I did this I did this and that's it they stayed in one lane someone who's kind of had they've had to learn an upscale repeatedly success exactly where they have to like overcome things and they they've worked with different types of people different you know work ethic stuff like that because in a startup you have to wear tons of hats and if you come in and hire someone who's only known you know pure industry nine to five they do one thing they may not like having to do marketing one day and armed the another and help with this and then they're like well I just want to come in and do my task and leave so I always look for that type of it's a hard person to find but when you can't find them is there a way that you found works to hold on to those kinds of people like like are they people that are passionate about skincare I don't know is that like an x factor is it just they like working with you like I'm trying to figure out what keeps somebody around I think it you have to have an interesting job there's a lot of stuff going on keeps their interests you have to have a work environment that supports them whether it's financially or or conditions in the work environment and you have to have like an obvious goal direction that is an improvement right like if you're just making the same widget there's no like stimulus in like be like wow I get creative freedom I get to actually build something oh you're going to feel like you're dying every single day a little bit more yeah yeah totally agree and because we're ingredients and skincare and innovation there's a lot of freedom creative like creative freedom it's like okay like what's it indication want to go after what's missing let's work on that together and then they get so excited about like oh I want to work with packaging oh I want to work with regulatory or I want to help do the clinical studies so you build this ecosystem of the team and yeah our team is separated we have some people who just do R&D in the lab some people just do like ingredient manufacturing some of that just does like logistics manufacturing of packaging stuff marketing but they're all working together as a goal because they all know how one person influences the other so they all kind of come together and help so it's an interesting interesting place no I mean you built a you built an amazing company you built a company the people stick around and want to and want to help build with you and it's just from all of my friends that are currently building it's not easy to find great people that are on for the long for the ride um what are we not going to we went through a lot a lot of this art uh we didn't talk about art yet hobbies whatever whatever you think is interesting doesn't that um I think I think our it's a little bit interesting uh because I I mean it's it's totally a 180 from what you from what you've you know spoke about so far but I think the level of detail that you understand the different hobbies that you take on is it's I don't know there's something to be said for just how you think through a problem maybe I don't think at all maybe that's the answer maybe that's no I do I do think but how does how does art how does art um it help you with the rest of your work do you find that it gives you creativity I like the idea of art um both the creative side but also the market side um so like speculation whether it's art watches cars um now that tangibles becoming a massive commodity in almost investment grade type material um just seeing that with what I love like when I was a kid and even when I was working my brother like I appreciate it but I never thought like the magnitude of the scale of the just like anything right like coffee for example you can love a Starbucks coffee but when you start digging into coffee you look at the espresso machines at your house and all the fine beans you can get it's like an infinite wormhole and then you feel like wow there's a lot more to coffee than just the dollar net worth seven dollars now coffee I get right and it's like the same thing with art like wow I like it's interesting wow I like all the stuff and then you start going down and you're like wow there's a whole industry around and there's a sub industry and then there's the industries that influence that industry and that's tied to the markets and markets are tied to capital and capital rate and it just fascinates me this is gonna be stupid but when I was younger I always love to play like city games like sim city where you manage you know you try to manage eight thousand things like I get the roads the traffic the water the taxes yeah the farm plots the commercial the police and you're like wow I have to plug all these things to make it work in unison to to make a successful thing and I love that challenge like I I love it I'm like wow this does this does that this is that this is the map to get it how can I tweak it I tweak one thing it changes and I guess that's what excites me what business is an entrepreneur because like each business is similar but they're all different but you see you like you like building an ecosystem that leads to an outcome exactly I love the idea of working on something that ties into so many different things that all leads to something successful how did you get involved in art so from my brother actually so my brother um he's on antichrome show he has a big art gallery an art auction house um and he introduced me to the world of contemporary art and I've always liked art but I never really appreciate you collected everything else as a kid I mean I collect I have I collected cereal boxes so I have like this is gonna I feel like I'm so bad for your wife people are gonna judge me now but like I have like unopened cereal boxes from the eighties that are graded graded silly potty I used to have like a collection of orchestra whistles I have pinball machines um yeah it's embarrassing but yeah anyway um so I liked collecting like interesting things not just like oh this because everyone collects it it's like well I like this because of all the detail like pinball machines for example if you open up a pinball machine it's a mass network of wires yet each of them impact something else and if one of them is off everything feels just like building cities you apply science to everything and just like the science part of your brain I see you apply it to literally everything yeah I yeah I just I'm like wow there's so many different things so many factors and I'm getting excited because I'm like yeah this is so cool like this little thing impacts this you ever like take apart computers and stuff I build I build computers all the time cars cars I've rebuilt so I have a 1969 AMC AMX I rebuilt that with my father in 2005 we rebuilt a 1966 Pontiac GTO I rebuilt two motorcycles I build house I do construction decks plumbing electrical um heating system like all that stuff and uh because they're all connected and I like you know I apply that to science I try to connect all the dots okay so anyways your brother got you into art he got me into you you know more about art than like we were talking before Christopher you know more about art then maybe the art market but I learned it all for my brother I'm not taking credit my brother knows a lot and he taught me a lot and I have a lot of mentors and stuff in the art space art series art collectors so you started in our business yes we started in our business and uh it was fun I mean we it's called variable additions we're kind of hiatus now waiting for the market to come back but we know you can't you can't you can't just overview we just did a hard 80 into art you gotta go to the weeds uh no it's very interesting so talk about please like educate I've never had anybody on this show who has ever spoken about art yeah really never a lot of entrepreneurs never never really a science or skincare either you you actually have a lot of different things to offer that I've never been able to bring on before so I appreciate you um so you got into art uh taught you you were telling me before that we are in like an art recession for yeah for certain types of art like a lot of art prices are down yeah there's some that are doing really well but usually uh when the markets are not performing well tangible assets especially art is some of the first to be hit because people want to be more conservative and hold on to their funds um then I don't want to say risk it but then put it into things that aren't uh guaranteed nothing's guaranteed but you know it's a little less risky little less risky and this is this is so the question I had just to tea that's people understand the context so um the art like the war halls or the Picasso's that are bought by billionaire those will always have a set value those but kind of the emerging artists the ones that are on their way to be blue chip or on the way to be institutional artists those are very susceptible along with just the budding artist right because um so we made a company where um it's called variable additions and we would have an artist make a line drawing and then on top of that they would do an original piece of artwork because what happens when nobody knows it so like artists when they go to galleries there's like usually a stipulation where gallery has is can only sell the original works of art but artists can make prints and reproductions of things so because we had them make a print of a line drawing and then they embellished it or made an original on top of it it was kind of outside of that legal agreement with the galleries yeah for the galleries um and it allowed us to bring unique pieces of artwork to people who couldn't necessarily pay a hundred thousand dollars or fifty thousand dollars for an original piece of art um and it was it was great it was fun the artists loved it we were very good to the artists compared to some of their other deals and the customers loved it because we gave them access to high quality art from artists that they could only dream or hope to have access to um and this led to a lot of connections and introductions to people in the art space um you know and my my brother being an antiques roadshow is a big deal he does pop culture on their comic books trading cards stuff like that but that still is a big big deal um and that's why we did a tv show or tried to do a tv show before i split and yeah that was that was that was the decision tv show or postdoc and now yeah so now i can but i can still do tv if i wanted i guess i think i think i start with a podcast that's for and i didn't even realize this and people are going to be probably surprised i mean it just goes to show you how you should support you should support the smaller guys if you can but um if an artist is not selling or if an artist loses relevance for a period of time yeah they could be gone forever it's i have learned that it's almost like their careers over in some cases forever so if you are not trending on social media and say you're you're not selling you know you're not selling blue chip art but you're selling 50 thousand a hundred thousand dollar piece which seems like a lot of money for but if you're not trending then someone else will replace you and then it's very hard to get that traction back so it's not like it's not i don't know how art markets work now i do a little bit but it's not like a stock market where yeah okay if some some stock tanks well the company's still operating you know you'll come six months or whatever it's going to come back that's not the case for some artists that's not the case they'll become irrelevant and then they end up just being a bargain piece because it's because that's right so all their pieces get dumped on the market and just tanks their value as an artist yeah that that's like a big a big problem like secondary markets impact artist value all the time so if you're in a recession people are exiting this problems with the art and then the artist can have to do a complete change of careers and it's unfortunate because a lot of artists are very talented and stuff like that but they just seem also talented that's what i don't understand whenever i see a piece of art and or right here yeah i know you walk around you see art everywhere art basil yeah i know some of these people are not making a lot of money but i see their works and i and i follow some of them on instagram and in some of them record how long it takes and the energy required to put these pieces together and i'm like man like you're spending like weeks of your life putting something together that doesn't make you any money at all it's a tough business it's a very very tough business very tough business yes so it's how do you break out do you know any opinion on how you break out as an artist i wonder for example when there's so many i mean i don't know any artist i mean i see alec monopoly everywhere because we're in Miami but first of all i have no idea how he sells this shit for so much money but i also see a ton of talented artists that i feel are not making much money at all and i i can't figure out like why that piece is worth you know half a million dollars versus the other one is the art game it's it's who's collecting it who's promoting it what gallery are in what feature you're in that drives the hype for the limited piece that there's only one out so it's you see socials like the biggest that's like hype hype beast type art and stuff like that is kind of you know that took a huge hit because that was based on just social media excitement not necessarily lineage of artwork lineage means time the artist has been how long been around what museums you're in what art shows you've been in where your piece is located all that stuff impacts the overall i don't want to say trajectory but the overall holding of the art and it's fascinating i mean even comic books are fascinating how there's some that a millions of dollars and there's some that aren't and it's all graded so there's a certain grade it drives value you know it's just and there's people leveraging that now with all these limited editions right the only problem now is people are actively saving and collecting them where the original spider man's the original comic books people never thought they'd be worth anything so they threw them out which is why there's a demand where there's no supply but now everyone's saving everything that's a limited edition so in 20 years there'll be a million of them so there's no there's no value where the high-end comics kids ripped them they threw them out they wrote on that that's what created the value and that value because people like wow i want to relive that but there's not any left or not a lot left that are actually in good condition so now you're fighting for it where now a kid will buy a comic book and i even read it put it in a drawer thing you'll be worth money but a million other kids are doing that so now you have a whole other market pushing limited editions based on what the they see from the price value of comics or other collectibles that there were never limited editions up are there any are what what in your mind this is not investment advice but what in your mind is a place that you could put your money that's not in stocks i mean people talk about you just know collectibles i don't know what you know i mean people talk about shennels or burkins or Rolexes or but outside of that i don't know anything about comic books or cards or is there anything that you i mean your brother deals with all the time brother deals with all time i got to have him on talk about all that i'll tell you there's actually funds that invest in comic books they will there's funds that buy comic books hold them and liquidate for returns i mean you have whole companies like masterworks is a great example is an investment thing where you buy a piece of a of a piece of artwork with the idea you'll sell it in a few years to make money art art people know are there are there some categories that people don't know that you think people should put money into at least look at i mean everything's a gamble right and there are some things like name brand things like Rolex watches stuff like that they'll always be you know they'll always have a floor you don't really know what the ceiling is because it's based on demand but you know you there'll always be a good chance that you'll do that high end comic books are becoming more in that category people laugh at them but comic books sell for millions of dollars cards cards to Pokemon cards magic to gather in card my brother didn't appraise on antiques roacher where woman brought a box of magic cards and it was appraise of $250,000 and like she was i got to go get money say i got to go get stuff right you know um yeah it there's a lot of things out there you just have to be smart and do your research right there's a lot of people trying to pull fast ones especially things that aren't regulated if you don't know what to look for you know you can easily think wow this comic that has this is worth this but it's not right so you just like any investment you want to be educated on it do your diligence figure it out and don't look at this as like your main main way of making income be it like it's fun like oh i like this comic book i like this video game i like this when i was a kid i want to put it on my shelf and look and if it's worth something in the future if people actually end up do if people do want to put money into it i know that um uh one of the the paul brothers bought like a fake charizard for some ridiculous amount of money in the hundreds of thousands i think it was some something stupid but is there like a body that gives you the okay yeah this grading there's grading companies um that will grade the card basically the quality of it the authenticity of it all that stuff in it it it basically gives it a set value right so like if i had an open card or an open comic book there's no real way to say oh this is worth a thousand versus five thousand but when you have something grading or authenticated you know it gives you a certain number out of ten like five out of ten or eight out of ten and then you'd be like okay this is this this this is this quality so therefore it correlates to this value which is why graded cards comic books graded baseball cards graded coins you said you have graded cereal boxes yeah i have graded cereal boxes and i actually have graded silly putty from the 1960s unopened it uh yeah it's you see how much it's worth cereal cereal boxes some of them a few hundred five hundred dollars for some cereal boxes unopened summary yeah some a few hundred dollars yeah so if you're gonna put money to any of this stuff not cereal boxes yeah but i did it because uh i collect a lot of ghost buster things so i collected some ghost buster cereal box but anyway that's god bless your wafer putting that with that's why she wants me to start purging with the three kids and all their stuff now it's like okay so now i'm just trying to get rid of stuff to make up space dude you never know maybe maybe you sell something and you make more money than you make with your company who knows who knows i know what i have and i don't have anything there yet i i i i would know right away because i would already be gone a college would be paid for for the girls right away if i had something like that i love it dude um okay where where should people connect with you if they want to find out about what you're working on yeah so i'm on instagram at chialandry phd i'm on linked in if anyone wants to go to the business route um but besides that you go to dailyvsciences.com and you can reach out to us we can talk to you about stuff but otherwise just instagram and linked it i'm always open to talking to people i've helped uh mentor a lot of students a lot of students come up with new companies so i help them create new companies uh work with them to you know help them not fall into the road pit set the things that i did over the time but you know you have such a diverse set of hobbies and passion and this is just a tip for you what else do you do there's a lot uh you got to come back right yeah i'll have to come back there's a lot of interesting things outside of that um that i that i've done the fun raising and community work and stuff like that that's all very important you have you should you should put up a website at some point get this yeah that in a podcast and if you if you put me on the on a zoom with your marketing team you're gonna have a whole personal brand built out oh my god selling t-shirts um at the bare minimum all I want is a podcast that are you because you have a lot of wisdom so please start please start maybe next time by the next time you come on yeah yeah we'll have to we'll have a podcast to push people to um last question i like to ask out of all the different things you've learned in your life um say you have to pick one that you want to pass on to your kids what is that less than and why family first and why that's important is um having a good relationship with your family gives you a good foundation to take risks a lot of people and i'm not saying of the perfect relationship with my family my wife wherever there's always ups and downs but knowing that i have a solid foundation there someone i can go to whether it's my father my aunt whatever to to talk things out allows me to take risks out worrying nothing's worse than being successful in business and then having a family issue and then that will impact your bit you know like uh understanding priorities so like the kids the wife and like i said not them everything perfect like i'm still working on a lot of things uh but understanding that you like i said like work like balance like that is very important because you know businesses can come and go but your family is there and you want them to be there to help you support you understand and eventually work with you is the ultimate goal um and that's easy to lose sight of right i mean it's very easy like i said before kids um it just be working with my wife same things she's very high performing as well she's very uh top rigorous job excellent what she does we just work work work work work and it was fine single right and then when the first kid came along okay we could still balance it now i have three right a six-year-old a two-year-old that's going to be three in April and eight-month-old and um that's not doable now something someone always is losing uh so having that balance to make sure everything is solid there so then when i go to work i can focus on work i can focus on growing expanding and not worrying about the other things and that's so easy to lose sight of um i think that's one of the most important ideas i appreciate you sharing that i speak a lot about how the person that you pick like your spouse is one of the most important business decisions that you're ever going to make because if your house is chaos and it it bleeds into your business it bleeds into everything but i can only imagine the spouse for sure but if you don't have a a healthy like safe household with the kids as well everything else in your life you won't be able to commit a hundred percent of yourself to it yeah it's uh and i will tell you like you don't realize it because you'd be like wow i'm doing this business i'm working hard to raise money for them but they don't care about that they want you as a person to be there to engage with them to listen that is worth more money than any money you can save for them to go to college because you need to build a relationship with them so that they want to be around you when you're older like honestly like i want to hang out with my kids and my family and stuff i don't want them to be like peace out then i'm never you know i'll talk to you once a month type of thing and people lose sight of that yeah they lose sight of them then they on the other side of the exit then they're trying to repair they're trying to repair and it's not the same because the damage is already there and like i said i still struggle with that now i tried the best i can but i can't say everything's been rosy there's been really good times really bad times and now i'm just you know trying to work work it out so everything is okay