Have you been living up to your full potential?
The dictionary definition of Azoth describes it as a “universal remedy”
To the team at AZOTH Nootropics, AZOTH is a tool to unlock your true potential by helping you live the life you truly desire.
They describe true potential as living the life that YOU truly desire. The life that YOU want. Not the one society or friends and family want for you.
Prady Tewarie is the Founder and CEO of AZOTH, a supplement created to increase productivity and help users reach peak performance.
Prady wanted something that could be used to optimize your brain’s ability to focus, enhance memory and your ability to learn, rebalance your brain’s chemicals to eliminate stress, anxiety, depression, and more. Most importantly, he wanted something non-toxic with very little-to-no side effects.
“At the end of the day the world is run, changed, and moved by those who get sh*t done and all the skill, talent, and money in the world can’t make up for it.”- Prady
Learn more about how AZOTH can massively improve your productivity by listening to this episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur above and don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – Spotify –Google Play –Castbox – TuneIn – RSS.
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0:01
Welcome to the thoughtful entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, founder and CEO of up my influence.com, where we turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. So we believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. Even you stick around to the end of this show, where I'll share info on how you could be our next guest, three times a week, five to 15 minutes each learn from successful business owners and professionals. It's time to get inspired. Let's go. Prady Tewarie, you are the founder and CEO of Azoth, which I'll have you tell us about that. And I just want to say thank you so much for joining us. You've done a lot of stuff. I'd say the last 10 years have been pretty busy for you.
0:56
Yeah, man just been just like yourself. We're talking live. Before we record, you're trying to squeeze out as much as you can, you know, when I was younger people used to ask me, what's your what's the superpower that you want? Some people wanted to fly, some people wanted all kinds of strength for me was just like, I want more than 24 hours, that was my thing. So I've always been super fascinated about how to do more in your day and being more productive. So that's what I've tried to do. And that's why, you know, the last few years, I've been trying to do more each time because that's what makes me happy. And that's what my purpose to get more because we all have so much within us. Like if we're trying to just happen to three 1% of more than what we're what we do. I mean, man, the sky's the limit.
1:36
It really is. So you started a supplement company while in college. Is that right?
1:42
Yeah, I started my first company. Actually, when I was just just my first semester in college, I was 18 years old. We were basically distributing supplements on campus with a 20 minute delivery, instead of a two day delivery on amazon prime or anything like that. So I'm buying wholesale. And then I would bring him an hour to say if you want the supplements, here's a website, order them. And we deliver it to people on campus with a bike and it was 20 minutes. Oh my gosh, yeah, so was a great idea. At the time, at least I bought when I started, I heard so many people say hey, we have this problem. We don't know we want our supplements. And most people aren't very good at like ordering three, four or five days in advance. This was 2009 when you know Amazon wasn't really a thing. Even though amazon prime it takes a day or two. And so I saw there was a big need. And so you know, basically what I did is I called up a couple of distributors and told them hey, I want to get some of your inventory. They said Who are you again, I was like I just have a little store in college and I want I just want net 30 terms because I couldn't pay for all the inventory. And they said you know what? Yeah, so yeah, that and the rest is kind of history. We were basically had bikes and we would deliver it on campus to people within 20 minutes that was our that was our gold standard. And it was a it was kind of a pretty I wouldn't say it's a huge success but it was a success as in it was a business was profitable. We able to scale it have employees and end up kind of selling my stakeouts which, which which I really wanted to do so I can focus on the next thing. But yes, starting businesses and growing businesses has been my my passion. And I feel like that's that always gets me super excited, man. So there's now right now CEO of another of another company. And it's just always it's like you almost starting from scratch, and you learn new things each time. And
3:23
that's amazing. So, so you've actually grown and exited from many companies. Is that right? Correct. Yes,
3:31
that's always been my thing, come into company, either starting from scratch. But I found my niche being companies that are already existing, maybe they're kind of stuck in their revenue, really small businesses, and then find a way to scale their operations. And we can talk about know how, what I necessary, look at them how I do that, and then exit out of them. So that because that's been always my thing, I look at business as an asset. And then you scaled in a kind of yourself being a little bit more unemotional about it and it but it's easier to be unemotional when it's not. So you started yourself as opposed to when you're the founder. It's a little bit difficult sometimes, but that's been kind of my niche, man, my bread and butter.
4:08
And so when you started a sauce, so a sauce is in a category called new new tropics. Yep. Correct. And so can you kind of explain what that is?
4:20
Yeah, so pretty simply explained, new tropics are basically what they would title as cognitive enhancers. So basically, you know, things that affect, you know, the way that your brain works. So I would basically say there are vitamins for your brain. But where we see a lot of people using them was as an alternative to caffeinated drinks, and to energy drinks and stuff like that. But what's interesting about them is that they don't work at the same way like caffeine does, because with caffeine does, it's an exogenous source of energy. And it kind of stimulates all the chemicals in your brain, your tropics are different, they basically increase blood flow to your brain. And they basically bring stuff back everything back to balance. So the way you supposed to feel when you take the right and tropic is like having the best night's rest ever. You know, when you have the best night's sleep, you wake up and you feel calm, focused, and you have a little more mental clarity. That's what the tropics are supposed to make you feel like, and I stumbled upon this randomly on the internet. One day, I started seeing that the Russians were giving this to their astronauts and their pilots and stuff during the space race. And they were giving it to get a little bit of an edge. And I was like, Man, this is fascinating. I want to I want to try what this is all about. And then the next thing I started the business around it and being with people that really latched onto it was when I was in law school. Of course last will be very competitive, very academically focused, a lot of students were, you know, study drugs and caffeine. And yeah, when I heard that I had this product, they wanted to try it out. And that's where basically my my first foray into the new traffic space started giving, giving it and having a lot of my college and Well, basically law school colleagues try it out.
5:58
And so, you know, maybe you had some experience with the supplement industry previously. But what's the first step when you're like, you know, this is the formula that I want? Like, how do you get it?
6:11
As far as like, the ingredients and stuff? Do you mean?
6:13
Yeah, right.
6:14
Yeah. Yeah, a lot of it is research, looking at like, scientific studies seeing which synergies work and not but the rest also was just a lot of trial and error. I'm a big believer that, you know, when you start a business, don't start a business for the sake of starting one, I see this a lot. I see a lot of younger people do that you're like, Why just want to start a business? Well, I don't know what to do with my life. I don't like the nine to five, I don't like working for other people. And those are night, that that's cool on a personal level. But for the marketplace, you know, the market, the market doesn't really care, they just want the best product possible. They don't care, right, on a razor what their struggles are. So I really believe in having product to market pool, which basically means you have a product that really serves a deep need, that people have, and you being one of the only ones or the ideally the only one to provide that. So I looked at the market again, and I and as a heard from conversations from people over and over again, man, I don't want I want to have something that feels like caffeine, but I don't want the crash at all. I don't want him headaches. And I don't want it to be I don't have a tolerance build up where we caffeine take some you got to take more and more and more each time. So I try to look for ingredients that work together in synergy. And put that together. But it took a lot of tried to think about I think we took about hundred and 80 tries it was years of testing that I that I did. I had a you know, I was I was lost by Boston University. And I had a buddy of mine who was working at the chem lab there. And we we put a lot of effort and back and forth. And we had manufacturers send samples and we had tried on so many different people. And I remember it was one day where I'd given it to one of my friends and we're going to the gym big dude 6465 to 70 amor, we're going to the gym and he almost starts tearing up and I was like, oh man, like, what did he What did I give you that you have this reaction? And you had never seen something like this happen? I was like, Dude, are you okay? And he was like, man, whatever I just took, I've never ever felt so good in my life. Like, I feel like I've I like it's like the first. I feel like I haven't slept for so many years and just taking this makes me feel like a new person. And I was like, wow, that's crazy. And I knew at that moment that we might have had something that might have been good. So went back, I should turn the car around when back when I started using this form on myself and started giving some of my friends and long story short, that's what assets became, of course, we have to we tweaked the format a little bit. But that's been the standard for, for the format. But the answer being it's never something that you can have an ingredient and the first time it's going to work, you got to keep testing it. And I will say this is it like this is the best doesn't ever felt like until then I don't think it's worth to build a business around it. So
8:44
Wow. Yeah. So I mean, I just I want to talk about it's like I want to talk about the the new tropic here, I wanted to talk about like the health benefits, I normally talk more about the business side of things. But you know, I could just tell you personally, you know, I used to drink an energy drink or two every single day. And the downside of that, of course, is the crash. Yeah, also, I would become irritable, I would become like it can really trigger like even like anxiety and stuff like that, you know, plus, there's all the artificial sweeteners in there. And I didn't want to drink the full sugar ones, because I don't want all the calories. So it's tough, right? You can't really, it's like what you want, it's like you want to try and find that perfect sweet spot of feeling energized, motivated. But you know, caffeine is a mixed bag, you know, it's and it's not, I wouldn't say I've just from experience, you know, I don't know, it's it's necessarily just the caffeine, but now you're dumping in, you know, again, all the weird artificial sweeteners and all the other chemicals that are a part of that, that I don't know, I I've kind of learned through experience just doesn't really
9:49
work for me very well. Yeah. And the big question is, will Why are people taking energy drinks? Like, are they doing it because they like the taste? Or is it just the energy, but I found that the people that were we're kind of in my target audience, or why I was using it was I just want to be more productive. Like that was the reason. So it wasn't as a means to an end. It wasn't the end itself. It wasn't like, oh, man, I'm really craving Red Bull. It's just, Hey, I'm feeling sluggish. Right now I need something to get going. Let me take some Red Bull. So when I'm thinking about productivity, though, you know, productivity isn't just feeling energized, it's feeling you gotta motivated, you got to be in a good mood, you can't have a lot of stress. And you got to be focused, without any brain fog. So trying to find ingredients that do all that in a synergy. I mean, that was a huge task. But that's what nutrients are supposed to do. But ours takes a little step further where we have stuff for, that's going to combat stress, reduce cortisol levels, so it took a lot of work for short to, to get there. But that's what you know, that's why we've been able to scale the business. And because we had a product, you know, that people really want. And so our customer return rate is extremely high. It's so high that we started a subscription service for it, which has been a biggest success, which has been very tough in the supplement market to do because supplements, people use a protein powder from a Yeah, another pre workout from be like, there's no brand loyalty. So it's very tough to get people a customer attention when it comes to supplements I will try for the first time, but they really don't come back. So one of the challenges that we had is like and I wanted to basically overcome was like, how do I build a product that people really want? Like, it really helps them? That's kinda market neat, that we're solving productivity.
11:24
So how important is it that you build a like a community or this culture around your product?
11:32
Yeah, I think I honestly think it's, it's everything, right? Because and this is from a business standpoint, to any human needs standpoint, right? Because think about if you have a if you have a business right now, people, it's easy for people to leave your business or your product, but it's harder for them to leave a community. Because you know, people don't like to move out of a place that they live forever, where their friends and whether have an emotional connection. But if you're living in the big city where you don't know anyone and just an apartment building, like you don't have any real connection to it, right? So for us, we build a community around around the product, that was the biggest focus of what we did, for a couple of reasons. Number one reason was that a lot of people use supplements, and I started seeing that they wanted to go to a place to talk about their supplement like now that they are more productive. What did they do with it? What do you do? So we are the only ones in the supplement game that we we build a community after they purchase the product. So we're very focused on the post purchase part of the product. And so we do everything we do some really seems kind of unrelated bizarre things, but we have seminars in there, we have ebooks, people, you can call me, you know, I have a people, I think I get like dozens of calls every single day one to one, there's an accountability group and this stuff is there's no extra charge for it. So as long as you buy the product, and you're getting the product every month, you're automatically enrolled in this Facebook group in this tribe and all the seminars just totally free. So but that part of it that has made people feel so emotionally connected to the brand that, you know, the vitality of the product, and people recommending it to their friends has been just really multiplied the business 1020 fold, and without us putting in a lot of capital or effort or VC money or loans, or No, none of that is totally bootstrapped. Almost It was me just by myself growing the business. And that's how I've been able to do it. The post purchase aspect has been huge. and building a community around the product has been everything.
13:24
And you and I were talking again before the interview, Prady and you were you guys did some pretty clever stuff at the beginning to gain visibility. What did you do?
13:36
Yeah, a couple of things, man. So one of the things that I've always been big on is to find ways what people call arbitrage, which is being kind of the first one, but not really being the first one being the only one but also being the best. And so there's three things that you need to do because people say it's which platform is the newest platform, but we got to be on the is it Instagram? Is it Snapchat? But the question is, are is your content good for that place? form of the answer is no, it doesn't matter if it's the newest form of content or not. And then the second being if you're the only one in that space, then you can really dominate there. So for us, it was back in 2017. And even before some of the other supplement company that had we focused heavily on podcasting, and when I say that I'm advertising on podcasts because people are tuned into podcasts. And I recognize one of the biggest issues and hurdles in our business and supplements is trust. People don't trust it, because for variety of reasons, right, you're putting something in your body. So I was trying to find a medium where how people can trust the product. And one of the best ways to have trust is where people you care about and that you trust refer the product to you that's by influencers have been massive for the supplement space. And Instagram really has been dominated by the fitness field. But I found when people listen to podcasts like this one, they make an intimate connection with the host like it's like almost like you I saw a picture where it's podcasting is like you know, you sitting on a campfire, you having a discussion everyone the listeners are listening in. It's like an intimate connection. So I found out that you know, if I was able to involve podcasters, or have a, even a small but loyal audience to talk about my product, that alone did momentous things for our business, because then we can cut through the clutter. And people are listening into like men, my favorite podcast host he trust that. So I'm going to trust it. So we didn't have to spend massive amounts on rebranding and making our coolest logo or the coolest site. What we focused on was the trust aspect. And we got that through arbitrage and the podcast advertising space.
15:34
Yeah, I absolutely love it. I couldn't agree more with you into podcasting is such a powerful medium. And, and and I learned this from studying family therapy and family science is that time together is really, it's gold. And if you know what's nice about the podcasting platform is audiences will spend 3045 minutes with a host and their guests. Yeah, that's that's just the norm. Yeah. So all that time together equals trust. You haven't let me down? You haven't let me down. You haven't you keep giving more and more value. And I'll just be honest, like in the world of advertising, advertising on podcast is kind of a bargain. In my opinion. I really think that it is. I mean, I don't mean to spoil any secrets here. But yeah, I couldn't agree with you. More, Brady. I love it. Oh, look, I really appreciate it. So right now, you can actually so is out there on the web, it's get a zappos.com. And so when did you start the company?
16:35
It started in late 2017. So it's just going to be about a year, a year and a half right now. So yeah, so it's just a short short amount of time I started totally, but then I hope people listening in because sometimes you listen to these podcasts and you're a beginner and you're like, man, I want to start a business I want to get into show us influencers, what should I do? How do I even get started and you see these big brands that are using massive amounts of leverage, and you get a little bit intimidated. But you know, part of the reasons why I wanted to this podcast and come on to is just tell my own story, not just really tell my own story, but hopefully inspire other people's like I started this totally by myself in law school, almost no capital. And right now we're full fledged business there's we have employees, we have office space, I'm sitting obviously with this view is awesome. But this is from doing figuring out what what I could do, like with my with my with the limited resources I had. And and really scaling that and putting all efforts into it, which I gave, I gave that away, which is just focusing on podcast advertising. And I myself, like to go on podcasts, I like to speak to people. So that's something that was when I got on the call with like other podcasters, I could find out their pain points and see how I could help them out. So that was a skill set I had in the beginning, you told me Hey, I have to be on Twitter or on Facebook. It's just not my strength, but I wasn't really using those platforms. So for me to focus on those things in the beginning, that I'm not naturally gravitate towards would have been a flaw. So I focused on the things that I'm really good at, and just really double down on those and are able to scale the business where it's today we've sold, you know, thousands of you, I think we're over 50,000 units that we've sold and we're selling in every country. So it's it's really been amazing. But it's something that anyone can can really do with just finding out elite, finding out what their strengths are and leveraging that to the maximum.
18:14
Well, pretty tomorrow you're the founder and CEO of a Zappos plus a dozen other businesses. You have a beautiful view. I know folks can't see what we're seeing right now. But I can see your backdrop they've got a beautiful view the skyline of Boston. So hey, I just wanna say thank you so much for joining us.
18:32
Josh has been a pleasure man. Thank you so much for having me on the show and you know, keep doing what you're doing man providing a lot of value to people. Awesome.
18:43
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