Orgain: Andrew Abraham

A life-threatening diagnosis changed the course of Andrew Abraham’s career and led him to found some of the most popular nutritional drinks and powders on the market. After recovering from his illness and attending med school, Andrew noticed that some of his patients—just as he had—struggled with keeping food down. So during his first year of residency, he developed the same kind of organic nutritional shakes that he’d made for himself when he was sick. Andrew launched Orgain in 2009 as a side business, but after he got a big order from Whole Foods, the business quickly grew, despite the fact that he was running it pretty much on his own—while practicing medicine. Only after joining his father’s clinic did Andrew realize his side business needed his full-time attention. He has continued to grow Orgain into a substantial wellness company, in which Nestle acquired a majority stake in 2022. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, with music by Ramtin Arablouei. Edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Sam Paulson. You can follow HIBT on Twitter & Instagram, and email us at [email protected]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 0:46Guy Raz?

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• 1:32Guy Raz?

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• 2:16Guy Raz?

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• 3:00Guy Raz?

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• 3:45Guy Raz?

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• 4:27Guy Raz?

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• 5:10Guy Raz?

  Hey, before we start the show, you know, we talk a lot about hustle here on How I Built This, and recently I spoke to the music producer Diplo, who told me about starting out as a DJ in Philadelphia. He was obsessed with turntable culture, and to afford the equipment, he worked at a lot of different jobs, like at Subway and even at the zoo. Now, he's DJing massive music festivals around the world and producing with artists like Justin Bieber. Check out my conversation with Diplo on my other podcast, The Great Creators. Just search for The Great Creators with Guy Raz wherever you listen to podcasts or go to thegreatcreators.com. And now, on to today's show.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Because I was a one-man show, I was the customer service guy. So anyone that would call me, they would ask me a question. I would answer very thoroughly, give them a wonderful answer. And they would ask me, what's your name? And I would say, Andrew. And they would say, OK, well, thank you so much, Andrew. But you're not the Andrew on the back of the package, are you? And I would say, yes, I am, actually. And many people thought that was great. But others didn't think it was that great because you're not a big company anymore. Right? Are you running this from your garage?

• 6:30Guy Raz?

  Yes, you were.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  And the truth is, I was.

• 6:39Guy Raz?

  Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 6:51Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how a life-threatening illness inspired Andrew Abraham to launch Organe, a top-selling brand of nutritional drinks and powders.

• 7:10Guy Raz?

  OK, this is going to start a little grim. But if you've ever been around someone dying or trying to recover from a physical trauma, you've probably been around Ensure. It's a brand that makes high-calorie shakes designed to help people get fast nutrition into their bodies. And almost every hospital, hospice center, and assisted living facility stocks pallets of these drinks. Ensure's been around since 1973, and it dominates the category. But in 2009, Andrew Abraham decided to enter that same category. And he did it because of a bad experience he had as a teenager when he was fighting for his life and had a hard time keeping down solid food.

• 7:54Guy Raz?

  So Andrew started Organe, thinking it could be an alternative for people recovering from surgery or cancer. But it took off in an entirely different direction and became a lifestyle drink for people on the go. And Andrew didn't plan for any of this. His intention was to become a doctor. He actually completed his medical residency. But as Organe grew, it became clear that he needed to ditch medicine and focus on business. Today, Organe is on track to hit around $700 million in sales this year, and it makes one of the best-selling protein powders in the United States. Andrew was born and raised in Long Beach, California, to Egyptian Coptic Christian parents.

• 8:39Guy Raz?

  In the 70s, his parents emigrated to the United States from Egypt. And when Andrew's family moved to California, his dad opened a medical practice as a pediatrician.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  He came here with nothing and opened a very small practice with what little funds he had. And so he treated everybody. So even though he was a pediatrician, there was adults that would go to him, and he was just the community doctor. And he was the hardest-working, most humble guy and would treat people for free all of the time. And he treated people for free when he didn't have really a penny to his name. And it stuck with me in such a big way.

• 9:20Guy Raz?

  It's quite remarkable to hear you talk about looking up to your dad as a kid, because a lot of kids, you know, of course, they look up to their dads and hope my kids do. You know, but, you know, right? I mean, the way you-- and I wonder, when you were a kid, did you think about him that way? If you sort of go back to your mindset back then, would you have thought, oh, I worship my dad, he's amazing?

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Yes, for sure. And I think it goes back to that just kind of unconditional love that he gave me. He was very busy. He worked extremely hard. He always made time for me, though. In particular, you know, my parents wanted me to be a doctor. My uncles were doctors, cousins were doctors, my dad was a doctor. He was building a practice. So at a very young age, basically, I was told, look, you could be anything you want, choose any career you want, as long as you become a doctor and follow in your father's footsteps. But, you know, I don't even know if it was really being the doctor part that really attracted me. It was, I just wanted to be him. I wanted to emulate him. I loved everything about what this guy did on a daily basis. So for sure, like, I saw him as a superhero, if I'm being honest.

• 10:27Guy Raz?

  All right. So the plan for you was eventually to graduate high school and to go to medical school, and you would actually pursue that. And we'll talk about that in a minute. But in high school, just a massively sort of both scary and life-changing and pivotal moment in your life took place. You, and it was a health, it was more than a health scare, it was a diagnosis. Tell me what happened.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was right, January 1999, right in the middle of my senior year of high school. So I'm the captain of the tennis team. I'm playing varsity tennis, applying to colleges. My grades are good. I'm feeling the best I've ever felt in my life, really. Come January 1999, I was taking a shower, and I feel this little lump in my abdomen. And I didn't think anything of it, but I thought, maybe I should just mention it to my father. Told my dad about it. He took a look and said, you know, if it doesn't go away by tomorrow, let's get it checked out. It doesn't seem like anything, but let's just be sure. Sure enough, it didn't go away. And next day, we went to a doctor to get

• 11:39Speaker 01

  an opinion. And he said, well, we should take a biopsy, just to be sure. And that biopsy, you know, they took the biopsy. We waited a few days. I got called back into the doctor's office. And the doctor tells me, you know, that we took this biopsy a few days ago. Unfortunately, you have a rapidly aggressive cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  And at the age of 17, I felt like kind of the world stopped when he said that because I didn't believe him. But again, I didn't know what that meant. And I thought, okay, let's just remove this and can I can I move on? And the answer ended up being much more complicated, unfortunately.

• 12:18Guy Raz?

  What was the prognosis? I mean, is that a I mean, you were 17. So it's different because you're younger and healthier. But still, I mean, what do they tell you about survival rates?

• 12:30Speaker 01

  I will tell you that this is an interesting thing. My father, I'd always ask him like, Dad, you know, what are what are my chances? You know, and he would say it's 99%. He'd always say it's 99%. You're going to be just fine. And then when I turned 18, I turned 18 midway through my treatment, they had to by law come in and tell me, you know, answer any questions that I had. And I asked the nurse, you know, can you give me an idea of my prognosis? And it was in the high 20s. So I liked my dad's answer a lot better than what he would tell me. So I stuck with that in my mind. But the prognosis was very poor.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  I had to undergo chemotherapy, radiation, additional surgery. And it was a year long of just the most intensive chemotherapy one can imagine.

• 13:21Guy Raz?

  So you I mean, you were this is the second half of your senior year of high school. And did you have to stop school?

• 13:31Speaker 01

  I stopped school. Yes, I was in the hospital getting IV infusions for 72 hours. I would stay in the hospital.

• 13:38Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  I was nauseous. I was vomiting. I had no energy. I was in bed. So and that went on for 12 months.

• 13:44Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  You know, as you can imagine, it was a very trying time on my family and I. And my father was with me and my mom was with me, you know, every step of the way. And my dad would tell me, you know, I'm praying not that God takes away this cancer. I'm just praying that he gives it to me. And, you know, on the first day of my chemotherapy treatment, you know, I woke up and I heard my dad like in pain. And it turns out that my dad, on the first day of chemotherapy that I had, he was rushed to the hospital with severe flank pain, back pain, and was diagnosed with kidney cancer.

• 14:25Guy Raz?

  Which is a very, very difficult cancer to be.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Extremely difficult, absolutely, absolutely. So while I was getting hooked up to an IV infusion on one floor, my dad was being wheeled in to the OR above me to have his kidney removed. And my poor mom, of course, was between upstairs and downstairs between the two of us. So, you know, I would say, to say that year was extremely difficult would be an understatement.

• 14:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So you're in a year of chemo treatment. Your dad is being diagnosed with kidney cancer. He begins treatment. Tell me how you, how you got through, I mean, you know, it was a cycle of like treatment, feeling violently ill for a week, feeling really lethargic for another week, starting to recover, and then starting the cycle again for a year. Presumably you lost weight, you lost your hair.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Yes, that's exactly right. I mean, it really takes a toll in every way. You know, my weight kept dropping, cycle after cycle. My weight would drop, you know, five pounds, three pounds, you know, so I was 140 pounds or so, and then I got down to 130, then 110, then about 100 pounds.

• 15:45Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  And it was that point where my doctor said, we need to get calories in you. They were hooking me up to IVs that had nutrition in them, but he said, I need you to consume your calories through liquid. And he handed me a bottle of the conventional shake in Shore with a stack of coupons and said, I need you to drink as many of these as you can per day.

• 16:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah, just to gain weight.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  And, and of course, my mom heard this and she went out and bought every flavor imaginable, flavors I didn't even know existed, and came home. And I can't tell you how happy she'd be when I would consume one of these because it would give her a little bit of joy, knowing that her son was at least getting some nutrition.

• 16:27Guy Raz?

  So that's good and it probably was working, right? It probably, probably were started to put some weight on.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  You know, I, I put very little weight on with them. But I, I was maintaining my weight with them, but I felt horrible. I didn't feel well. And, and that's what set me on this journey. So, you know, one day I picked up a book and, and this book was about nutrition. This book was called, it was something along the lines of prescription for nutritional healing or prescriptions for nutritional healing. I didn't know what it was about, but I picked up this book and I started reading, you know, the first 10 pages and I was hooked, you know, integrative medicine, nutrition, but not just fats, carbs and protein, more like metabolic health.

• 17:14Guy Raz?

  And it probably felt empowering because you, when, when you are dealing with a health crisis, you, you are feeling very disempowered and, and because you don't always have control over what's happening. But I guess reading these books kind of gave you sense of, okay, maybe I can take control over some part of this.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Exactly right. It gave me, it gave me some control and it gave me a lot of hope. And between those two things, that's why I ended up reading 150 books that year because I, I wanted as mu- I needed as much hope and I wanted as much control as possible.

• 17:48Guy Raz?

  And, and I'm assuming like, you know, I, I, I read a bunch of books on nutrition too. I'm a, you know, and I, you know, I don't know if all of them are accurate or true, but I mean, basically like the message is eat whole foods, you know, try to avoid, you know, too much meat and, and sugar, you know? And was that sort of the main message you were getting from it? Like a lot of, you know, whole foods, fresh vegetables, leafy greens?

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, that's exactly right. As I was reading these books and reading these ingredients that I should put in my body, these foods that I should be consuming, I was also reading about ingredients that I shouldn't be consuming. And the more I read, the more it opened up my eyes and the more I realized that these conventional shakes that I were drinking were actually full of all of the ingredients they're telling me not to put in your body when you're healthy. Let alone when you're sick. It was referring to high fructose corn syrup, sugar, genetically modified maltodextrin from corn, genetically modified soy protein, artificial flavors, preservatives. And I saw these shakes, everyone had them. You know, all the kids around me on the pediatric floor had them.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  I saw them all throughout the hospital. So I was under the impression that it was good for you. But the more I read, the more I realized that even though it said nutrition shake on the front, it was anything but nutritious.

• 19:14Guy Raz?

  What's so interesting about this is that you came from a family of healthcare providers, people who know how the body functions. And even you, even your family, wasn't fully kind of clued into this stuff. And you guys were on the front lines of medical care as a family.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's the irony of all of this, actually, is not only my family, but I would say medicine in general puts very little emphasis on nutrition versus medication. And I think for me, we have this full medicine cabinet in our kitchen. And even during my residency, before I took out a prescription and wrote a script, we would talk about diet and exercise, but in a different way, where it was really tangible.

• 20:04Guy Raz?

  All right, so going back to you and this discovery as a 17, 18-year-old kid, you realized that maybe if you start to put different things into your body, you could have an impact on how you felt, at the very least. Obviously, you were still going to have to go through the chemotherapy. But what did you, I mean, you were having a hard time eating food, right? So I have to assume you were still focused on a liquid diet.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Yes, it would have to be liquid. I had a very tough time with food. Even the foods that I loved before, I couldn't even tolerate the smell of them. So my mom and I went out, we purchased a blender, and every day, we'd go to the market, buy organic fruits, organic veggies, organic protein sources.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Mix them all together and blend them together five to six a day. And I would drink these. I can't tell you that they tasted delicious. But the one thing that I noticed is that I started to feel a little bit better. And then I started to gain a little bit of weight and I gained some more energy.

• 21:08Guy Raz?

  All right, so you you get through it. And you you you go to go on to pursue your bachelor's degree with the intention of becoming an M D. So you go to UC Irvine and and I'm assuming you did pre med. You were a pre med student there.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  I was a pre med student there. I arrived late, so I was a couple of semesters behind, but I started there, yes.

• 21:32Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  And then I ended up finishing college early because I didn't want cancer to be the reason why I would be set back in life. But I was certainly watching my diet very, very closely and applying all of the learnings that I had.

• 21:45Guy Raz?

  But but your intention was to go to medical school and and to become an M D. And you did. You went you you continued right right after you graduated, went right into medical school.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Went right into medical school with the intent still, of course, to take over my dad's practice and and really make sure that I was going to, you know, live up to his dream and my dream, that I would be taking over his big practice that he had built in Long Beach.

• 22:11Guy Raz?

  The intention of taking over the practice, I imagine you were thinking, I'll become pediatrician like my dad, but I really want to understand nutrition and wellness as well.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  That's right. And and during medical school, I remember we had about two weeks of nutrition, you know, and it was very high level and we went through it and then it was done. And I remember going up to one of my professors afterwards and said, you know, do we get nutrition again? Do we go through that again in a little bit more depth? And he looked at me and he said, nope, that's it. And I was, I was completely floored. I thought that nutrition was going to be one of the cornerstones of medical school, one of the things that we talk about the most for prevention. But it ended up being something that they just had to check the box and move on to the next thing.

• 22:56Guy Raz?

  You end up getting your, doing your residency with Kaiser and was it in California?

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Yes, Kaiser in Riverside, California.

• 23:03Guy Raz?

  Tell me how you started to, I mean, you, I have to imagine you've been thinking about these shakes that you'd been drinking, that you'd been making in your Vitamix like six years earlier for a while. But there must have been a point where you thought, maybe I could try to turn this into a business. I mean, did you start to think about that during medical school?

• 23:25Speaker 01

  I didn't, not, not in medical school. It was really during that first year of residency. And I'd never thought of it as a business. I thought of it as a need, you know? So I had patients asking me for more protein. Hey, I'm on the go all the time. I'm looking for more nutrition. Is there something I could just grab?

• 23:43Guy Raz?

  Right. And Ensure was the option, basically.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, conventional nutritional shakes, Ensure. And I said, you know, I would tell them, no, please, you know, this shake changed my life. And I would give them this long list of ingredients. Go buy a blender, blend all of these together. It's going to change your life the same way it changed mine. The issue was compliance, you know? Out of 20 people, maybe one would do it. So I knew that giving them this list of ingredients and having them blend them was not the answer. It wasn't going to be a sustainable solution for my patients.

• 24:16Guy Raz?

  You were in your late twenties at the time, maybe 29. And when you, when you thought to yourself, okay, let me start a company that makes a drink, you were thinking, this could be like a sort of a whole foods or natural version of, of what was available, like a better version of, of Ensure?

• 24:36Speaker 01

  That's correct. So my wife has her master's in holistic nutrition and we basically took out a plate and we asked ourselves, what would we want in a perfect meal? Let's work backwards. And I wanted to take that concept and put it in a ready to drink shake for patients. So we wanted to have organic protein, organic complex carbs, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants. And we laid it all out and developed Organe.

• 25:02Guy Raz?

  You developed an idea of what you wanted there, but that's it's one thing to make it in a Vitamix, right? It's another thing to manufacture it and put it in a box and then try and sell it. So there's going to be a long road ahead for you. But let me sort of, take me back to, this is around 2009. And you decide, I'm going to start a company making these. Still, by the way, still thinking that you would also be a doctor?

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Yes, this was going to be a little side business. I would sell it online. You know, I thought, how hard could it possibly be? I would do this on the side and then I would practice medicine during the day.

• 25:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I got you. So the idea was it was a ready, you were going to make a ready to make make drink in a, in a bottle or a tetrapak or something like that?

• 25:50Speaker 01

  That's right. I actually had no idea what would it go in. You know, I wasn't sure is it, is it a tetrapak? Is it a bottle? I didn't even know the difference. But, you know, I contacted food scientists all over the United States, got a lot of rejections, of course, you know, and I got a lot of crazy quotes on how much it would cost and what was involved. And there was one food scientist that clicked with me and we became very good friends. And he said, you know, why don't you meet me in Texas? Let's run a trial together and with these different options and see what happens.

• 26:22Guy Raz?

  How did you, by the way, how did you find, how did you find him?

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Just? I just searched and searched online and was calling random food scientists and I didn't know who was good or who was bad. But this was the one guy that was willing to talk to me. So in my mind, he was great and he ended up being excellent.

• 26:39Guy Raz?

  So you go out there, he's based in Texas?

• 26:41Speaker 01

  He's based in New Jersey.

• 26:43Guy Raz?

  In New Jersey, yeah.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  But the place where you trial these is in Texas and he met me out there and we developed some concepts and prototypes before. We tried a bunch of them, you know, they all tasted absolutely horrible in the beginning. And then- One formula that came off the machine, I take a sip and I said, this is delicious. And I was so happy that we were able to finally get all of these ingredients in and have it be enjoyable.

• 27:13Guy Raz?

  So let me, let me understand how this, this worked. I mean, this is around 2009, right? Like it's, it's sort of, if you want to start a cosmetics brand, right? You would find a white label co-packer and you would go there and you would, you would have thousands and thousands of different ingredient options to choose from. And that, that would be the basis for your, your brand. And many cosmetics brands do this. Was it, was this facility like that? They had like 25,000 powdered versions of, you know, powdered banana, powdered kale, powdered, you know, vitamin E. I mean, and you just kind of say, let's put some of that in there and some of that in there and some of that in there?

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Not at all. I wish it was like that. So we had to ship all of our ingredients in. We had like dehydrated, freeze dried fruits and vegetables. We had organic proteins. We had everything just shipped and we would experiment. And the other thing is no one had made an organic ready to drink shake. It had never been done before. So it was uncharted territory.

• 28:13Guy Raz?

  So when you, when you came up, when you finally landed on the flavor that you wanted, was it, and it was, because I know you start out with vanilla and chocolate. Was it a vanilla flavored drink?

• 28:24Speaker 01

  It was chocolate to start and then we made a vanilla. That's correct.

• 28:27Guy Raz?

  And the idea was this is going to be a great option for patients who are recovering from, or who need it for health reasons, like who need to gain weight, who need more protein. Like that was the market you were looking at. It was like people in hospitals. Cause I think anybody who's been to a hospital, you will see like pallets of Ensure. You will see them all over hospitals.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I thought that was going to be our demographic. It was going to be people in the hospital, people that had GI issues, maybe someone that had their wisdom teeth removed and they couldn't eat for a few days. That's what I initially thought would be the demographic and where this product would go.

• 29:02Guy Raz?

  But then what? I mean, then it was what? I mean, this was a food scientist and, and I mean, for one thing, you had to make something that was not going to spoil or go bad. You had to package it and you had to market it. So, I mean, that's a lot to do from there. So. I mean, at this point, once you landed on a flavor you liked, great. But then what do you do?

• 29:27Speaker 01

  I didn't know. And to be honest, I flew home. You know, I asked my food scientist and he's, like you said, he's a food scientist. He makes the product and you're on your own after that. So I thought, first thing I'd need to do is come up with a name. And the name came to me while I was driving one day. I wanted it to have the word organic in it. And I thought about what people would benefit from this. People would gain health. They would gain energy. They would gain life. And I combined organic and gain into this word organe that would stick. So I had a name and I had a formula and that's all I had. So when I came back to California, I was talking to people, researching online.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  And someone told me, you know, there's this trade show that just so happens to be in three weeks in Anaheim, California called Expo West.

• 30:17Guy Raz?

  Huge trade show, one of the biggest natural food shows in the US, if not the world.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  That's, that's right. It's one of the biggest natural food shows in the world. And it just so happened to be a few weeks after we came back from Texas. And it just so happened to be 15 minutes from my home. So I called them and, you know, I don't even know what this, I thought it was like a farmer's market. I don't know anything about it. And I sign up to, to register and it's $5,000 for a booth. And it was, you know, for me, that was a lot of money at the time. But I thought, look, and I gotta get this out there. I'll just sign up and go, really not knowing what to expect. So I sign up for Expo West. Three weeks later, they have a load in day where you're loading in. And I didn't know what that meant because I'm walking in with two chairs and a folding table.

• 31:06Guy Raz?

  Did you even have a, did you have like a logo or, or anything at that point?

• 31:10Speaker 01

  I had nothing other than a formula in blank packaging and a name. And I see these massive booths being put together. Some of them, some of them look like small homes.

• 31:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  And, you know, I'm with my wife and she looks at me and she goes, we gotta go. This is not what we expected. And I said, I know, but we paid $5,000. It's non-refundable and we're going to set up right there and we're going to talk to people about this.

• 31:36Guy Raz?

  So you've got this little booth and so sometimes people would stop, but probably 95% of people just walked by because there was no, like, what is, like, did it, it said Organe Protein Drink or Organe Nutrition Drink? Like, what was the description on the sign?

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, Organe Organic Nutrition Drink.

• 31:54Guy Raz?

  Great, okay. And that was it?

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's funny because, as you say that, I remember a moment where there was a guy that I spoke with on the side. He didn't know I was presenting at the, at the show. And he had been there for 10 years and he was telling me about it and I was listening in earnest. And he said, you know, you have this guy over here that's selling this iced tea that wants to take on these big iced tea companies. He goes, over here, there's this other guy that has some organic nutrition drink that wants to take on these big pharmaceutical companies. He goes, these guys aren't going to be here next year, is what he said.

• 32:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  And, and he was talking about me. And I remember that moment sticking in my head that now my new goal was that I was going to come back next year. To be honest, we looked a bit foolish and we weren't buttoned up. I mean, people are wearing matching uniforms. Some of these booths have like two or three floors, right?

• 32:48Guy Raz?

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  So I'm sitting here, like, with my blank packaging, looking up and wondering, okay, what am I doing? But just continued, anyone that would give me just a couple minutes, I would tell them about the product, try to tell them a little bit about the story and the genesis of it. And the show went on and one guy came up to me and spent five minutes with me. And I told him the story, what we're doing, the plan. And he said, can you come, share it with me? And I said, absolutely, I'd love to. And, and I thought he was maybe a physical therapist in the Anaheim area. And, and he turned his badge and he ended up being the global buyer for Whole Foods.

• 33:24Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 33:27Guy Raz?

  His badge was turned around because I think a lot of times they do that. They don't want you to know who they are when they're coming to your booth.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 33:33Guy Raz?

  I mean, given, and he tried, did he try the drink?

• 33:35Speaker 01

  He tried the drink, he liked the flavor profile and said, can you come out to Austin? And six weeks later, I was on a flight to Austin, Texas.

• 33:44Guy Raz?

  And by the way, in a show in 2009 at the Expo West with thousands of booths, there were no other, I mean, protein powders were out there, you know, extras like post-workout powder companies were out there. There was nobody out there doing sort of the, and I keep by shorthand saying a better-for-you version of ensure, I shouldn't really say that, but just shorthand version. Nobody's doing sort of an organic version of what was already on the market at the time?

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Not at all. No, not only was it not there in Expo West, but I remember when I was sick and beyond there, I would call all of these random companies in the United States and beyond in the world to see if anyone was doing it.

• 34:26Guy Raz?

  It's, it's hard to imagine now. I mean, of course, today there's hundreds of protein powders and things on the market. But 2009, you were the only one there, so it makes sense. I mean, I can understand why this Whole Foods buyer stopped because they're always looking for things that just aren't, nobody else is doing.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, he probably thought that, obviously, that the packaging and the design, you know, was completely underwhelming, which I, which I agree with. But I think he was intrigued by the story, the fact that I had, you know, developed this formula that tasted good, that all of these ingredients were in there, and he gave me a chance.

• 35:04Guy Raz?

  But you had to prepare for a presentation for that. I mean, that's kind of a, I mean, when he said, come, come present, did you know what that meant? Because you had, up until that point, I guess, been thinking, this is going to be really primarily purchased by hospitals, not, not grocery stores.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  That's what I thought, you know, and I thought maybe some grocery stores could entertain it, but I really thought it would be in hospitals and we'd be selling online. And I prepared in every way that I possibly could. I remember very specifically getting there, I had a, like a suit. I was, I was extremely prepared in every way, except when I woke up that morning, the one thing that I didn't have were my shoes, my dress shoes. So I got there, I'm waiting in the lobby and out comes Heather Mills, who's had just divorced-

• 35:56Guy Raz?

  Paul McCartney.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Paul McCartney.

• 35:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  She had a full team with her and they presented a vegan line of frozen foods there. You know, they had all kinds of paperwork. It looked like they had given a laser light show presentation.

• 36:08Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  And I was up next and I have my sneakers on and I have 10 pages that I had printed in Kinko's in color. And I was just completely honest. I said, you know, the truth is, I don't have anyone here with me. I don't have a fancy PowerPoint presentation prepared. But what I do have is a product that I firmly believe is going to transform a category and change people's lives for the better. And they tried the product. They didn't give me that much feedback. I think someone said, I like the taste. I didn't hear anything else from anybody else in that room. And I went home. And, you know, four or five weeks later, I got a phone call and an email that said, you know, can you handle a national

• 36:53Speaker 01

  launch? I didn't know what that meant, of course. And I said, absolutely.

• 36:58Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, Andrew runs into a problem that could upend the business when his nutritional shakes start to solidify. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 37:21Guy Raz?

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• 38:03Guy Raz?

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• 38:47Guy Raz?

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• 39:29Guy Raz?

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• 40:52Guy Raz?

  One more thing before we get back to the show. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show and it's totally free.

• 41:08Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2009 and Andrew has just hung up the phone with Whole Foods and he's kind of in shock because not only do they want to order his nutritional shakes, they want to do a national launch. And suddenly he has a lot to do.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  I knew it had to be shelf stable, but I didn't know what that meant at the time. And so as soon as I got that phone call, prior to this, I had been working with a small agency to design the package to make sure that it looked nice.

• 41:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  And I just was gathering as much information as I could. I was taking all of these notes every day. And then when I got the go ahead from Whole Foods, I contacted a manufacturer, you know, and I got rejected and it was very hard to get capacity, especially as a small brand.

• 41:59Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Somehow, some way I was able to convince a manufacturer to take us on and-

• 42:06Guy Raz?

  Where was the manufacturer? What part of the country?

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Savannah, Georgia.

• 42:10Guy Raz?

  And they were, but they made, they made all kinds of beverages there?

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Yes, they made everything from chicken broths to other protein shakes and so forth.

• 42:20Guy Raz?

  Got it. And so they would be able to not just make the product according to your specifications, but also to package it?

• 42:29Speaker 01

  That's right. So I would send in every single ingredient to them, give them a formula, how to mix it, how to process it, what to do. And their job was to essentially blend the ingredients and put it in the package that I sent and charge me a tolling fee.

• 42:42Guy Raz?

  I got you. Okay. Now, the question is, when Whole Foods said, we want to roll this out nationally, how many cases of this stuff were they ordering?

• 42:52Speaker 01

  You know, it was tens of thousands. And I didn't know what I was doing at all, but I just started placing orders and really trying to make sure that I could deliver for them. And I placed the orders on ingredients. Some of them had longer lead times. The organic cocoa was going to take six weeks. You know, the organic protein was going to take three. And I was trying to merge them all together. And then you always have one lagging ingredient that's going to take 10 weeks. I'll tell you, I didn't even know how to arrange trucks, right? So I'm on like freightquote.com, trying to manage trucks and get trucks to different places. It felt like every step, there was an obstacle.

• 43:31Guy Raz?

  Before we get to how it was sort of received at Whole Foods, let's go back for a moment to the time between the order and then getting it made. How did you finance that? I mean, Whole Foods is not going to pay you upfront. They're going to pay you 30, 60, 90 days later. You had to finance this. So where did you go? I mean, did you get a loan from your dad or from other people? Because you needed a hundred, I'm assuming, a few hundred thousand dollars.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  It was over a hundred thousand for the initial run. But interestingly enough, I had started a business in college where I was really into cars. I loved cars. And I built and designed custom cars for trade shows.

• 44:15Guy Raz?

  Wait, wait. Sorry, what? This is a new story. You built cars?

• 44:21Speaker 01

  So I had a car. I had a small car that I would take to trade shows that I really enjoyed. And I would fix it up, you know, and you would put rims on it.

• 44:28Guy Raz?

  What kind of car was it?

• 44:29Speaker 01

  It was a Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder.

• 44:31Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  And what happened was at these trade shows, I would get these companies that would come up to me and say, we really like what you're doing. Can you feature our TVs in it? For example, Panasonic or Xcelavision or one of these companies. And what I would do is I would feature their TVs. They'd give it to me for free. And then they would pay me to go to these trade shows to display it.

• 44:56Guy Raz?

  And wait, in the car, you would have like a television monitor integrated into the exterior of the car?

• 45:04Speaker 01

  Into the interior, it would, it would come out. So before like the shows on TV, I was very early on in integrating TVs and custom interiors into cars. And I would build and exhibit these cars and they would pay me for it.

• 45:21Guy Raz?

  You would go to like junkyards and buy parts or what? Like, how would you? A million questions. First of all, how did you even learn how to work on cars and do this?

• 45:29Speaker 01

  So I wasn't the guy actually working on the cars or sanding down the fiberglass. I was the guy drawing the concepts. So I was really more the creative behind it. And I found guys that this was their specialty. This is what they do. They could take a 27-inch TV and mold it into fiberglass in the middle of the dash.

• 45:48Guy Raz?

  Wow. This is like a, this is a wild side hustle. I've never heard anything like this.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was, again, not intended to be a side hustle. It was just a personal hobby that turned into this business that ended up funding a good portion of Oregon. And my father also provided a loan for me in the beginning.

• 46:07Guy Raz?

  All right. So with the, this money from this totally different part of your life, learning all these new things all the time, you, you were able to finance, and then, and with a loan from your dad, you were able to finance the, you know, this production run, which, as you say, was over a hundred thousand dollars.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 46:28Guy Raz?

  And, and over a hundred thousand dollars and that was going to make? Thousands of cases of, of organ.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  That's correct. And, and I would ship it to Whole Foods and hope for the best. And I knew it was a big risk. I didn't know, you know, I, I spent this much money. I really didn't know how much would come back. I just made it and went forward.

• 46:50Guy Raz?

  Okay. At this point, were you still planning to become a doctor, to take over your dad's practice?

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 46:58Guy Raz?

  How were you doing the residency and planning to provide Whole Foods with a national, a national rollout of your product? I mean, residency, you don't, you're working like crazy already. That's a, that's a grind. That's like 10, 12 hour days already.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. And every third day, we worked something called a Q3 shift. So every third day, you worked a 30 hour shift with little to no sleep, you know, whether there's a code blue and you're running a code blue or managing all of the patients on the floors. You are the doctor at that hospital and it was extremely exhausting. And the ongoing joke, you know, with my residents and even my superiors was, you know, Dr. Abraham is the guy that will see a patient, step out of the room, order 20,000 pounds of organic cocoa and go back and see the patient again.

• 47:47Guy Raz?

  And, and how much time did Whole Foods give you? They said, you know, they, after you went there, they, six weeks later, they said, we're, you know, we're ready if you want to do a national rollout. The clock started ticking. How much time did you have to deliver?

• 48:01Speaker 01

  I had about 90 days. And to be honest, I failed in, in reaching that timeline. I was a couple of weeks late. They were very upset, but the product made it on shelf. I had $0 for promotions, $0 for marketing, and it just went on shelf. And they didn't even know where to put it on shelf because it was a whole new category.

• 48:22Guy Raz?

  But that's still crazy to make. Thousands of these boxes in 90 days and get them distributed. How did you manage that? I mean, you yourself admit you didn't know anything about, about the food business, let alone how to run, how to run a business.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  I didn't. And it was really just sheer willpower and I dedicated my whole life and was consumed by making sure that I was going to deliver this. So every waking hour where I wasn't working at the hospital or seeing a patient, I would dedicate every minute, every second to making sure that I was going to make this happen.

• 49:00Guy Raz?

  How did you deal with the bureaucracy and logistics of working with Whole Foods? Not to say they're bureaucratic, but once you work with a big organization, there's a bunch of forms to fill out and there are, you know, there are different units that you have to talk to and there's, and you needed people to, to do that with you, I imagine.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Typically, you do. And I filled out those forms and, you know, I would write my, my mom's name as one unit, my wife's name as another unit, but all the numbers would be pointed back to me.

• 49:35Guy Raz?

  Unit, meaning like accounts payable or?

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Accounts payable, accounts receivable, operations, you know, food safety.

• 49:43Guy Raz?

  So you just basically put your, you just put your relatives' names?

• 49:45Speaker 01

  Relatives's names and my number and kind of went with it, yes.

• 49:49Guy Raz?

  And, and did Whole Foods ask you any questions? Did they say like, how big is your operation?

• 49:55Speaker 01

  They didn't. They knew that I was starting off. They knew that I was able to produce it, but they didn't initially ask how big was the operation.

• 50:05Guy Raz?

  Cause you didn't have an office.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  I didn't have an office. I didn't have, I didn't have anything. I mean, I ran Organe by myself for almost four years as a one man show.

• 50:14Guy Raz?

  All right. So you had to get, get this to Whole Foods in 90 days and you managed to convince this co-packer to make the product for you. What was the reason why? What were the challenges that you had to be? Was it the ingredients coming in? Was it the production process was slow? What was it?

• 50:33Speaker 01

  It was a learning process every step of the way that further delayed things by one or two days.

• 50:38Guy Raz?

  How were you managing?

• 50:41Guy Raz?

  The residency and doing and getting this to Whole Foods, that's what I'm trying to figure out. How did you find the time?

• 50:49Speaker 01

  It was very little sleep, honestly. You know, I look back and I think about the sacrifices I made. And that year was the biggest sacrifice in terms of just getting it out the door. We had our first child that year. My son, Isaac, was born in April 2009.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  You know, residency was your internship year is your toughest year. And that was the most hours I've ever worked. And then launching Organe and getting it into stores. So it was extremely difficult, but there was just a conviction that I needed to do this. And I wanted to see it succeed. So I really dedicated every waking minute I had to it.

• 51:28Guy Raz?

  All right, so you got a lot going, you got a lot going on in 2009. By the way, what did the, your colleagues at the hospital say? They were like, wait, you're launching a product at Whole Foods? Did that register with any of them? Or did they just think this was like a weird, like, side gig that you were, you were working on? Like a side hustle?

• 51:44Speaker 01

  They all thought I was crazy, really. I mean, they were barely hanging on with what they were doing with our residency. And, and to see that, you know, my office was full of papers and, and packaging and like displays and things, they thought I was out of my mind.

• 51:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah, and I mean, you kind of were, right?

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Probably was, it probably was, yeah.

• 52:04Guy Raz?

  All right, so the product gets to Whole Foods in, what, the fall of 2009?

• 52:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:10Guy Raz?

  And this is a national rollout. It's not just like Whole Foods in Southern California.

• 52:14Speaker 01

  Every single Whole Foods in the United States.

• 52:16Guy Raz?

  Okay, you had no budget to market this, right?

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:21Guy Raz?

  And they presumably wanted you, wanted the price point to be fairly aggressive. So I have to assume that maybe on that first, that this first order, you weren't going to make a whole lot of money. Is that right?

• 52:33Speaker 01

  I didn't know. I had no idea. And, you know, I knew the retail price point was going to be $299. I knew that the check that I would get from Whole Foods may likely offset the amount of money that I was going to spend, but I just went for it. But the, the really amazing part is this product went on shelf with really no marketing, no know-how from my perspective. And

• 52:58Speaker 01

  It started to sell and the velocities, you know, and all of a sudden I'm sitting at my desk and I get this email that has a purchase order. And it's, you know, a replenishment order for Whole Foods. And that, at that time, it happened much, much sooner than I thought. And quite frankly, much sooner than what Whole Foods told me. And, and the interesting part, you know, I know you and I talked about, I thought this was going to be for sick patients or people dealing with cancer. That ended up not being the case at all.

• 53:28Guy Raz?

  Right now, if you see a bot, if you see a pack of Organe, right? The grab and go drink. It says, you know, organic nutrition on it, right? On the label, it says 16 grams of protein, 21 grams of carbs, whatever it is, you know. Did it, was the label like that? Did you, were you very clear about what was in it on the label?

• 53:50Speaker 01

  It just said Organe and it said our, you know, gain health, gain energy, gain life. And it said, uh, organic meal replacement when we first started. And it said high protein on the front. That was it. And we were very fortunate to start at Whole Foods because that customer picks up every product and reads the ingredients. And we wanted that. Yeah. We really wanted people to pick it up and read the back.

• 54:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah. All right. So this starts to sell at Whole Foods, but you're still not in it 100%. I mean, you are, but you're still doing your residency. And were you committed to finishing the residency?

• 54:27Speaker 01

  Yes, I was. I was committed to finishing the residency. As a matter of fact, my last year of residency, I became the chief resident. So I had 17 residents under me. So I very much enjoyed what I was doing. I was very good at what I was doing and I had every intent to continue practicing medicine. And my dad was super happy. You know, my wife is a physician's assistant. She's a PA. And both of us, upon the completion of my residency, went and worked with my father in his practice in Long Beach, California.

• 54:57Guy Raz?

  This is in 2011?

• 54:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:00Guy Raz?

  So you, so you started this in 2009 as a resident. You had three years of residency and you were launching this product. So. That was, that was three years of craziness.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Three years, two sons, and Organ being launched was, yes, it was the most difficult three years, I would say, of my life.

• 55:24Guy Raz?

  Okay, so once Whole Foods made that second purchase order, you knew that you were on to something. And how quickly before you actually started to turn a profit? I mean, you had no expenses. It was you and you and you, and you had some freelance designers, but that was it. I mean, you had to, obviously, you had to make the product, but I have to imagine you were profitable pretty quickly.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had no, essentially no overhead, right? I was working from home. I would also work from a coffee shop. I would work at Pete's Coffee. So we actually became profitable very early on. And it was in the first 12 months where Organ shifted to profitability.

• 56:04Guy Raz?

  And it was all, I mean, and you could do this by yourself because Whole Foods would make more orders, and then you would do the same thing. You would just have that co-packer make more product, and then you would kind of, I don't know, with duct tape and glue and patchwork together, like some freight trucks to distribute them?

• 56:24Speaker 01

  That's right, and deal with problems all along the way. And I'll tell you, at Whole Foods, about eight months into being on shelf, I remember very clearly, they called me and they said, "We have a problem." And I said, "What is that?" And they said, "We're getting some complaints about your product, that it's a little bit clumpy, and we're not sure what's going on." And I remember getting into my car, rushing to Whole Foods, buying two chocolate, two vanilla, going outside, opening it, turning it upside down so I could take a sip, and nothing came out. It had solidified on shelf.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  And this goes back to this idea of kind of not knowing what I was doing. Like when you make a product that's shelf-stable and it's 26 organic ingredients, no one had done it. So if you're not using organic ingredients, it's much easier to use like, you know, artificial gums and different things to make sure that the product stays a liquid. When you're certified organic, you're very limited on what you can use. And what happened was the product solidified on shelf. And I remember almost collapsing to the ground, realizing that that was it. I had to issue a voluntary withdrawal, which is, you know, it's not a safety issue, but you are withdrawing product from stores.

• 57:46Guy Raz?

  How much did that cost you?

• 57:47Speaker 01

  That was a major hit. That was a, about a $50,000 withdrawal at the time, which for me was catastrophic.

• 57:56Guy Raz?

  You just had to destroy all those products.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  You just throw it away.

• 57:59Guy Raz?

  And how did you solve the problem? I mean, you, you had the ingredients, but now you had to make something that was going to last beyond six or seven months on the shelf.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  So I had to make a very tough decision. We went with my food scientist, made some adjustments. And I said, like, how sure are we that this is going to work? And he said, I'm not sure. And I said, well, you know, what's the risk? And he said, I don't know. It's, it's, it's a, it's a risk. So I made the decision to proceed and like, just put faith in that, look, the second time, we've got it figured out. And it went back onto Whole Foods shelves, taking the risk. And every day I was worried for that phone call. And thankfully, it didn't come.

• 58:41Guy Raz?

  And it was just a slight adjustment, but the flavor profile remained the same.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Slight adjustment, flavor profile remained the same. And we were able to, we adjusted the protein a little bit and it worked perfectly fine. But that year, you know, my worst nightmare was waking up to have that problem happen again because, you know, one, you're forgiven, two, you're permanently blocked.

• 59:02Guy Raz?

  Right. That's right. Right. Whole Foods is like, they give you a couple of chances and that's it. And then you're done.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  That's it. Yeah. And quite frankly, I wouldn't have been able to afford another issue. But I took a major, major risk.

• 59:17Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, Andrew takes yet another risk when he decides to pursue Organe full-time and walk away from a much more stable career. Stay with us by listening to How I Built This.

• 59:49Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 2010, and Organe has just come through from its first big crisis and fixed its problem with clumpy, solidified shakes. And Andrew has hit about $1 million in sales, but he's still doing his medical residency and still doing almost everything himself.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  And one thing that happened was because I was a one-man show, I was the customer service guy. So anyone that would call me, they would ask me a question. I would answer very thoroughly, give them a wonderful answer. And they would ask me, what's your name? And I would say, Andrew. And they would say, OK, well, thank you so much, Andrew. But you're not the Andrew on the back of the package, are you? And I would say, yes, I am, actually. And many people thought that was great, but others didn't think it was that great because you're not a big company anymore, right? Are you running this from your garage?

• 1:00:49Guy Raz?

  Yes, you were.

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  And the truth is, I was. Yes, I was.

• 1:00:53Guy Raz?

  So when you were, I guess my question is, once you hit $1 million in revenue, why didn't you hire somebody to run operations so you could continue focusing on your medical work?

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  I thought I couldn't afford them. And I thought, again, that this was going to be a side business. I would manage it accordingly. I wouldn't even know how to hire someone. So I just kept doing it, thinking like, this is going to be something you do on the side. You could manage it. You'll be fine.

• 1:01:20Guy Raz?

  So you're running this, you're bootstrapping this. And by year two, I mean, the cash flow is financing the business. And it's just growing steadily purely through...

• 1:01:34Guy Raz?

  Just people going to Whole Foods and seeing it on the shelves?

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  It was at Whole Foods going on shelf and then I started to take this story to others. So I would take the story to Sprouts here on the West Coast, to Wegmans on the East Coast. You know, I made a listing on Amazon. I was one of the first protein companies to put an Amazon up, Amazon listing up. And slowly but surely, it got out there and people would ask quite more questions and there would be more purchase orders and it started coming from different directions.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  And the business grew pretty rapidly.

• 1:02:09Guy Raz?

  At what point, you know, did you, you finish your residency? You know, did you realize that maybe you need to not pursue medicine?

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  I finished my residency and 2011 immediately started working with my father in his clinic in Long Beach, along with my wife and he could not have been happier. He was just over the moon happy that I was seeing his patients. His patients were happy. The nurses were happy. You know, that he had achieved his lifelong dream of his son and his daughter-in-law taking over his practice and I would see the patients, you know, work really hard and then go home and work on organ until two or three in the morning.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Wake up at six and get ready and go back to work and it got to the point where it just wasn't sustainable. I was, I was barely functioning and I had to sit my dad down and tell him that, you know, I really want to take this leap of faith. I, you know, I started this company. I truly thought it was going to be a side business, but it's overtaken my life and I want to focus on it full-time.

• 1:03:22Guy Raz?

  What did he say?

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  It was beyond comprehension for him. You know, he looked at me and said, you know, Andrew, I don't, I don't understand, like you literally just spent seven years after college and you're going to go and sell milkshakes for a living? Like you're a doctor. This is for you. I built all of this for you. And I told him, Dad, I know and I totally understand, but I feel like I could help more people this way. I told them, you know, you and I on a very busy day, if we see 30 patients each, if we see 60 patients together, Dad, like that's the most we can do, right? And he said, yeah. And I said, I think, I think with this organ thing, I think I could reach hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people. And, and he didn't

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  get it, but he, he was supportive. And he said, look, you know, it's, it's your life, but understand this, I'm slowing down. I have to sell the practice. There's no going back here. And with that, I decided to focus on organ full time and I, and I left the family business to focus completely on organ.

• 1:04:25Guy Raz?

  And, and he, he understood. He accepted it.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  He accepted it. He didn't understand, but I will tell you, like, I started sharing with him the, the letters that were coming in, some of the cancer patients that couldn't tolerate the conventional shakes that were now relying on organ as their sole source of nutrition, how people were using organ and how it changed their lives. I'd say six months after that discussion, he became our, our number one fan. And it was less so about the success or the revenue or anything like that. He never talked about that, didn't care about that. But he loved the impact we were making. And he passed about six and a half years ago, and he couldn't eat his last 18 months of life at all. And he sustained solely on organ, those last 18 plus months of his life. He would drink five to six shakes

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  a day and it sustained him.

• 1:05:15Guy Raz?

  Wow. Did you, I mean, initially, in that first year or two, when you had two products on the shelf, you had vanilla and chocolate, and they were meal, the advertisers meal replacements.

• 1:05:31Guy Raz?

  Did you have anyone saying to you, hey, you've got to, you've got to have like seven, 10, 15 SKUs, you've got to have a bunch of different, you have a bigger product line. You can't survive with two products, two different flavors. That's it. You've got to expand now.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  They did. Initially, I hired a consultant and he said, look, you need to have four, five, six flavors to get that shelf presence. You know, it's not, you're not going to win with just chocolate and vanilla. You're going to be, you're going to look really small on shelf. You're not going to succeed. People are going to get flavor fatigue. But really, I just, I went with my gut. I told them, don't you think we should truly succeed with chocolate and vanilla first before we get into other flavors or before we get into other products? But I just went with my gut and I said, look, if I want to succeed with chocolate and vanilla and if more comes from there, great, but I'm not going to do that now. I just don't even have the resources for it.

• 1:06:22Guy Raz?

  All right. So for the first four years, it was you, you really, at this point, you're focused full-time on Organe. So who was your first hire?

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  My first hire was a guy named Todd and Todd was a, you know, doing demos at Whole Foods. He was demoing this chicken pot pie and he was this strong, very fit guy. And I asked him, I said, you know, shouldn't you be demoing like protein? And I took him over to Organe. I told him about it. He was our first hire and he helped me in kind of a lot of the day-to-day stuff, but also in getting the word out there for trade shows and getting the product out there. From there, it was ops. I hired someone on operations to help me and then sales.

• 1:07:13Guy Raz?

  How did you, as, as, because I think today you've got about 120 employees?

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  We're almost about 160 today.

• 1:07:20Guy Raz?

  At what point did you get an office? I mean, you were working out of your house for the first few years. When did you like get a separate space?

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  It was about seven years in that I got an office.

• 1:07:33Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  So we were working remotely, working from my house, working from coffee shops. So it was about six or seven years in that I got an office here in Irvine, California.

• 1:07:43Guy Raz?

  And what point, and six or seven years in, I mean, what kind of revenue were you doing by that point?

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  We were probably at that point at least 50 million in revenue.

• 1:07:54Guy Raz?

  Wow. You had a really significant business with a tiny number of people.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  Yes. You know, I think, I think we had made the Inc.'s, you know, 500 fastest growing company list and we had two or three people, or I wrote two or three people. We really had one.

• 1:08:09Guy Raz?

  This is in 2013. You made that list with three employees, including yourself.

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  Including myself.

• 1:08:17Guy Raz?

  And, and was, at this point, by 2013, you're five years in, still primarily the, the bulk of your revenue coming through Whole, Whole Foods purchases?

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  Through Whole Foods, the natural channel, and it was ready to drink at that time. And I was trying a lot of plant-based powders at the time and they all tasted horrible to me. I remember I'd have to mix them up. They, they looked like cement. They tasted like, you know, cement. And I would just, you know, plug my nose and hope for the best. And I thought, someone can do this better. And I worked very, very hard with our food scientist and around that 2013 time period, launched a plant-based protein powder that was completely innovative and disruptive. It was new to the space.

• 1:09:03Guy Raz?

  Innovative in which way?

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  It tasted delicious. It, it bridged the gap between like dairy protein and plant protein. And, you know, I brought this product straight to Costco, but I brought it to them and I said, look, I have something here that I think is completely disruptive to the space. And they said, look, we appreciate it, but we have these dairy powders. They taste much better. And I said, I just want you to try it and give us a chance. And, and they tried it and they said, look, it tastes much better than other plant powders, but we have these dairy powders. They do very well for us. And I said, yeah, but that's like the, the muscle crowd. That's the guy that wants to bench press 350 pounds. I want to bring in an incremental audience to this aisle, like parents on the go, business

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  professionals, people that are actually reading their labels. And she said, look, this is what I'll do for you. I'm going to give you 20 stores as a test. And it went into these 20 Costco clubs and the numbers came back and it exceeded expectations in every way. And a few weeks after that, they said, can you bring this into all clubs at Costco?

• 1:10:12Guy Raz?

  So that happens in 2013, 2014 timeframe. And I'm curious about, I mean, obviously, you've got now team being formed, right? But I'm curious about the decisions that you made that, you know, certainly in the first five years, when people probably came up to you and said, you should do this, or you should do that, or you shouldn't do this, or you shouldn't do that. What were some decisions that you you made that were the result of those kinds of suggestions that you regret or you wouldn't have done?

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  So, you know, a lot of people told me not to go to Costco. You know, they said, you have to really wait. Costco is, you know, can put a company out of business. You have to be very careful. And I felt the opposite. And that was one of the best decisions that I made. But I will tell you that I think, generally speaking, I have a completely unfair advantage in life, in that I thought that I was going to truly die. Right? You know, there's one day that's seared in my mind that I'll never forget, as I'm thinking about it now, where I had I had just finished radiation treatment. I remember that day, I got so dizzy

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  that I passed out. And they called 911. And I'm in this ambulance. They pull out these pads. And I feel like I'm almost watching this in the third person. And I remember asking the EMT, I asked him, am I going to die? And he just, you know, he just looked at me and he said, hang, hang with us here, bud. And in that moment, I was almost sure that I was going to die. You know, and thankfully, of course, I was stabilized in the ER and obviously made it. But I gained this completely unfair advantage from that experience and cancer in general, that I would always go for it. You know, life is short. You know,

• 1:12:09Speaker 01

  in my mind, I've already won the game in my mind. So I'll never take the safe option to tie the game. I'm always going to go for the win. And Costco, for me, was going for the win.

• 1:12:23Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And you weren't going after the muscle building crowd. You were going after A different crowd of people who were not using protein powders.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  I wanted the everyday person that would wake up and instead of bacon and sausage and whatever they'd have for breakfast, that they would wake up and have an organic protein smoothie. And that would set the tone for the day.

• 1:12:46Guy Raz?

  Andrew, you know, one of the things that I, and I struggle with this a little bit. I use protein powders, including Organ. I've used, I used a bunch of different ones. I try them. I like experimenting with them with the plant-based ones. But I also really do try to eat a very good diet. But I kind of struggle with this idea of like powders, you know, being real foods or whole foods, or I don't know. I don't. And I guess, I guess maybe it's just, look, most people don't have the time. They need to just get, you know, nutrition in them. And this is a convenient way to do it. But part of me

• 1:13:28Guy Raz?

  is still kind of conflicted over this idea that we can see a powdered beverage as a healthy meal.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think it's a great point. I would say that it really depends on kind of what's in that powder, right? If you could consume whole organic foods and have a perfect diet on a consistent basis, that's ideal. The next best thing is to make sure that what you consume in your body are ingredients that are food-based, that are organic, that are clean, and that are companies that are reputable. And what we do is we make sure that we are a convenient solution to your health journey. Protein is top of mind now more than anything. So getting products that have clean protein, organic protein sources that you could supplement and push up that grams of protein per day, it goes a very long way to ensuring that you're achieving your highest health.

• 1:14:20Guy Raz?

  So you bootstrapped this company basically until, for the first 10 years, until 2019, when you did sell a majority stake to a private equity firm in LA that focuses on food called Butterfly. And I have to assume, because you'd been doing this for 10 years, and now was a chance to, you know, to take some money off the table. You'd been working really hard. And I guess it was a chance for you to just... Just kind of put some money aside.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  You know, I had gotten to the point where if something went wrong with the company, everything was on me. I was highly leveraged against my home, the bank, any kind of leverage that I could get, I had. And it got to the point where the business had just crone dramatically and it was at scale. And I was looking for a partner that would allow me to kind of continue with what was most important to me. I mean, there was a list of non-negotiables. These are the things that I would need you to stay away from. These are the things that we need help on. And Butterfly Equity proved to be wonderful partners in honoring that and allowing us to grow in a way that I wanted to carry out.

• 1:15:36Guy Raz?

  I think in 2022, early 2022, Nestle, a division of Nestle, purchased a majority stake from you and from the private equity group. And now they are the majority shareholders of Organe. What does that mean? I mean, that's a huge multinational company that can really turn us into a category dominant product line.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  Yes, I mean, they're the largest food and beverage company in the world. And Organe had reached a point where, you know, I had taken it to a certain level and we wanted to truly go global, right? And we wanted, we don't have the resources for that or to get in the medical channel. Now, the thing that's most important to me is making sure that there's a mutual respect. A lot of times you hear companies that get acquired by big companies like Nestle or others, and they get lost in the shuffle. I made it very clear from the beginning that products, our products cannot be compromised, ever. And they recognized and appreciated and said, this is what makes Organe special. And one of the things that

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  was interesting that they really respected is that anyone that needed its product or needs product today that can't afford it, we give it to them for free, no questions asked. So if you're a cancer patient and can't tolerate other products and Organe is working for you, but you can't afford it for any reason, we ship it to you, no questions asked. And that was something that was extremely important to me.

• 1:17:13Guy Raz?

  Andrew, you are still the CEO. You run the company and you have a minority stake still. You're 42 right now, I think, at the time of this recording. So you're still very young. What do you think? I mean, at some point Nestle can, if they want to, just, you know, they're the boss. I mean, they can, they can get rid of you and they can name their own CEO. I'm sure they're happy with you and your story's on the, you know, part of the company's, you know, origin, your personal story. But how long do you want to keep doing this, running the business?

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  I mean, this is something that I love, right? You know, Simon Sinek said something along the lines of, you know, when you work and it's just something that you don't love, it's called stress. But when you work for something that you care about or something that you love, it's called passion. This is still very much my passion. I'd love to continue to lead and shepherd the company into what it can become, which I think we're just scratching the surface. So, you know, and I'm immersed in this industry. I love the space. I started a private equity firm focused on better-for-you brands that I could work alongside other founders and help them realize their full potential. So I'm in this

• 1:18:32Speaker 01

  industry, I'm immersed in it, and this is what I'll be doing for the future.

• 1:18:36Guy Raz?

  Obviously, your, your battle with cancer was probably, I think, still the most trying period in your life. But, and I even hesitate to ask this, but I mean, I imagine without that experience, this company wouldn't exist.

• 1:18:56Speaker 01

  No, this company absolutely wouldn't exist. I wouldn't be the person that I am today. And, you know, anyone that's dealing with cancer, I have a huge soft spot in my heart. I want to do anything and everything to help them because I've been there and I'm not supposed to be here. But I wouldn't have, I wouldn't do anything or realize my full potential if it wasn't for cancer, which is crazy to say now, but is absolutely true.

• 1:19:19Guy Raz?

  Andrew, if you, when you look back on, on the journey that you've had so far, I mean, you know, I know that the- The acquisition is an undisclosed amount, but based on revenue for 2022, which I think is about $700 million reportedly, you can imagine what the company's valued at. It's a hub. You've made a lot of money. You've been very financially successful and you're doing what you love. How much of where you are do you attribute to how hard you worked? And how much do you think has to do with luck?

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  Well, if I was to sit here and tell you that everything that I've become and everything that Organe has become was just all a result of hard work, I'd be lying to you. I mean, I launched Organe at the height of the recession. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea what I was getting into, really. And I had no idea how difficult the hardships would truly be. So, don't get me wrong. I can tell you with confidence that I couldn't have worked harder. I made sacrifices that I never imagined making, even I would say to my detriment at times. But there was certainly, just like you think about that one basketball player that runs the hardest down the court and jumps the highest and finds this perfectly placed

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  lob in his hands every once in a while, and all he has to do is throw it in the net. And every time I found myself with an opportunity, I seized it with every part of me, but with a lot of purpose and a lot of gratefulness. So I would say definitely both, hard work and a few of those lucky lobs along the way.

• 1:21:01Guy Raz?

  That's Andrew Abraham, founder and CEO of Organe. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's totally free. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger with music composed by Rameen Arab-Luie. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Sam Paulson. Our audio engineer was Ko Takasugi-Trennivan. Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Casey Herman, Carrie Thompson, Alex Chung, Elaine Coats, John Isabella, Chris Messini, and Carla Estevez. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.