How I Sold Out My Gum on TikTok Without Ads | Nathan & Sons DSH #765

Gum is the natural saps have like their own flavor.

So the mastic, the spruce, they have kind of this herbal, piney, very subtle but enjoyable flavor that I like to chew on.

So once the mint's gone, I mean, I still love it.

And a lot of people really latch on to that unless they're a part of the crowd where like, no, I want it to be kick you in the face, like type of thing, but which we can do.

All right, guys, got Nathan here from Underbrush Gum.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Thank you.

Nathan and sons.

Nathan and Sons.

Underbrush Gum is just the gum.

Got it.

And we got some here.

Hell yeah.

Hell yeah.

Check them out, guys.

It's a unique twist on traditional gum, right?

Could you tell people why it's different?

Yeah, most gums use a synthetic ingredient called gum base, which is just more or less plastic and rubber.

There are a few other ingredients in there, talcum powder, stuff that...

Most people, I think, wouldn't want to chew if they knew it was in there.

But this gum uses all-natural gum base.

It's a mix of of spruce,

chicle, or chicle, so when you'll correct me on that.

Mastic gum, which is already kind of popular, Arabic gum, and a few other things in there.

And then on top of that, it's a functional gum as well.

It mineralizes your teeth while you chew it.

That's cool.

And I noticed all your ingredients are organic or natural, too.

Yeah, try to.

It's hard to get some things naturally.

Nanohydroxyapatite is...

you know, that's man-made, but you can't really find that in natural form, at least not in the nano state.

And it's not what makes it chewy?

No, no, that's what makes the it remineralize your teeth.

So what makes it chewy for the most part is just all the saps.

Each one by itself isn't that great, but I played around for God year and a half.

And I finally got it to where I'm like, okay, this is...

chewy just like regular gum, but it has a way better texture, at least in my opinion, than regular gum.

Yeah, I can't wait to try it.

And what made you want to start your own gum?

Because it's a pretty competitive industry, right?

Yeah, a few things.

I mean, initially it was just finding out what gum-based was, you know, reading the back of a package.

I wasn't sure what that was.

I looked into it and I was like, oh my God, these are kind of like you might as well be chewing on bottle caps or rubber tires.

And so I did a little diving in there and then I actually had a really bad toothache one day that took me forever to actually go ahead and get it fixed.

And I was like, oh my God, I got to do something else.

I got to

change my oral care routine so that way I never have to kind of go through this again.

And so I went down the toothpaste rabbit hole and I really like natural products.

So I originally was going to do like a toothpaste or like a toothpaste tablet,

but I already chewed gum and I thought, oh, how come there's no chewing gum that kind of cleans your teeth while you chew it?

Yeah.

And stumbled upon that.

And I just thought it would be a really cool product to launch in an industry that's pretty stale.

Yeah, and that's pretty unique twist.

Now, what about xylitol gum?

Does that clean your teeth while you chew it?

Yeah, that's actually what most dentists will recommend.

If you go to the dentist and you have cavities, they'll say, you know, normal things, brush, floss, mouthwash, but chew xylitol gum in your free time.

And so that's one of the most promoted things.

But xylitol by itself just isn't good enough.

It doesn't have any remineralization properties.

It's just a bacterial growth inhibitor.

And so it kind of stops those bad bacteria from reproducing, slows them down.

But there are a lot of other ingredients in my gum that kind of enhance that.

Got it.

That's exciting because I choose silitol, but I still have seven cavities.

Yeah.

I just went to the holistic dentist, which by the way, have you heard about these holistic dentists?

No, no.

So it's all natural dentists.

So I went to one in Vegas.

Shout out to a four-season dental spa.

So they take photos of your mouth.

And then not only that, they use AI to determine how many cavities you have and they show you.

on a computer.

Interesting.

So I had seven cavities and then the filling though is the cool part because because they don't use PFAs in their filling because a lot of traditional dentists there's microplastics in the fillings for cavities.

So there's all natural.

It's way more expensive, but I thought that was cool.

What do they use?

I wouldn't know.

I'll send you it after.

Okay.

But they said it's basically all natural.

And even if they knock you out for wisdom teeth, it's like a more natural anesthetic than the traditional one.

Cool.

I like that.

Yeah.

I don't feel bad.

The stat is like 90% of adults have had at least one cavity.

Damn.

I was shocked because I actually don't eat sugar that much.

Yeah.

But I eat a lot of fruit.

So I'm thinking it might have been that.

Yeah, that could definitely be it.

One thing that I thought was kind of interesting is I was doing some research into like just burial grounds and the skulls.

And it's crazy that a lot of these mouths have full sets of teeth and beautiful teeth too.

And there's a fun little rabbit hole down there where you can find out that it wasn't until like modern age where we started like baking things and eating breads and sugars that cavities really started to become a thing if you go way far back it looks like um most people didn't really have that kind of issue wow and that's actually crazy yeah no i was blown away and then the one thing that they all have in common too is they chewed tree saps

so yeah so that's like a natural just gum right yeah i mean i don't think it was magic

that's crazy though because Back then they say the health wasn't as good, but if they don't have cavities, that's pretty interesting.

Yeah, they say that, you know, I'm still a little skeptical because we can't like kind of judge it the same way we do now i mean of course they had a lot of infant mortality and i feel like that really skews it but i'm not like a hundred percent convinced that people weren't just as healthy you know

in general i mean a lot more things that could kill you that you know you didn't have antibiotics but if you were able to live through those things and were able to be an adult i've read a lot of studies that kind of made it seem like okay that we weren't that much better off and in some ways we're actually not wow that's a whole mind shift, if that's true.

Because people just assume you look at the lifespan, right?

And it's like double what it used to be.

Yeah, you know, half the kids die.

So, I mean, of course, it's like.

Yeah.

So the numbers are scooted.

That's an interesting take, actually.

Well, now the lifespan's actually dropping in the recent years.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like dropping by years, actually.

Like, I think males is down to 72 from 76, something like that.

What's your, do you have a theory on why that is?

I think it's a lot of things.

There's so many different ways we're being attacked right now without us even knowing.

Like 5G, Wi-Fi

lights diet 70% of diets, you know, processed food.

So that's probably a huge one.

Western medicines not solving anything.

It's just putting a band-aid.

Yeah, it's like basically everything.

Yeah, there's so many different ways.

I mean, literally just breathing air.

Yeah.

Depends where you're at, but that could be bad for you.

Yeah, and I was looking into microplastics.

Like, okay, is it possible to actually remove these or reduce it?

And going deeply into it, you really can't.

I mean, they got microplastics in Antarctica.

It's like in the air.

It's like oh my god wow we're screwed that's just unavoidable at this point yeah i mean you know you can do things like avoid brushing your teeth with plastic toothbrush or avoid drinking out of plastic bottles i think this that is

90 something percent of plastic water bottles or at least the water contained microplastics jesus um but yeah no it's kind of unavoidable yeah so these don't he just came on the pod i asked him why this doesn't have microplastics they're the plant because uh this juice only lasts 60 days plus this is a special type of plastic and it never gets exposed to sunlight oh so the problem he said is when they're transitioning these plastic bottles to different states it gets hot and that's how a lot of the microplastics are getting in the water got it yeah that makes sense i mean you see them outside the store they're just sitting out in front of the store in sunlight yeah it's disgusting and then that ends up causing disease yeah yeah and they're finding microplastics i've had heart surgeons on i've had people that do surgeries they're finding it in organs

it's it's disgusting any of them have any insight on how to help get rid of it?

I don't know.

I'm doing P EMF mats.

I don't know if that helps.

Have you heard of those?

PEMF mats.

It kind of removes all the radiation and damage from your body.

I don't know if it removes microplastics.

I do infrared son under detox.

I'm doing what I can, but who knows?

How does that work?

Do you notice any difference?

I just started a week ago.

I mean,

not really, to be honest.

Maybe I need more time.

Okay.

Yeah, because I saw that come across my feet.

I was like, huh, it might be worth trying.

Yeah.

There's so many different things you could do, but who knows

if any of it works.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah, totally.

But this sounds like it's pretty good for cavity.

This gum.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A lot of people, I mean, just the reviews have been kind of insane.

I think on the website, we have a little over 1,500.

And I couldn't be more happy.

I was kind of afraid launching it because I wasn't sure how I made the product to my liking and I wasn't sure if people were going to like it as much as i did but it was just overwhelming and so many people anything from helping them stop smoking to going back to the dentist and saying oh my dentist asked me what i'm doing different because my cavity either shrunk in size or it's gone

um a lot of really interesting stuff some things that i wasn't really thinking of um

some children with autism that have some sort of oral fixation.

I've gotten a lot of people that really like the gum for that.

Really?

Which I wasn't planning on, but not complaining.

That's interesting.

I didn't know you could reduce cavities, too.

Yeah.

So my seven are going to be gone then with this.

Hey, maybe.

I mean, at a certain point, you can't really do much of it, but you know, you've always heard stories like, oh, I went to the dentist and they were saying, oh, what'd you do?

Your cavity is gone now.

Obviously, there's something that can be done to a certain extent, but after a certain point, I mean, you can't fix a black tooth.

Did you have a lot of cavities going up?

I had a handful, definitely, you know, for sure, like most people.

You get them pulled or filled?

Filled.

Yeah.

Probably got some PFAS in there right now.

Did you get your wisdom teeth out?

Yeah, I do.

So now there's new studies on that how there's infections in a lot of those.

I think 80%.

Interesting.

And that's causing some mental health issues.

So the wisdom teeth that they leave in, the bacteria is kind of going into their bloodstream.

Basically, yeah.

The ones that they take out, yeah.

Huh.

Okay, well, I guess I'm glad I got mine removed.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, we'll see.

I don't know.

I still have mine, but they hurt.

Oh, oh, really?

Yeah.

They've been telling me to get mine on since high school.

Why don't you take it out?

Just, I don't know.

I don't like being knocked out, actually.

That's part of the main reason.

Oh, okay, okay.

I'm not a fan of that.

I guess we'll know if you go crazy, we'll know what happened.

It's definitely hurting.

Like, some days I feel it.

Do you put like an oral gel on there or anything?

No, you just tough it out.

No, it's literally sideways, like almost 90 degrees

right here.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, it's pushing on my tooth.

Yeah, I remember when mine started to do that, and it was, I don't know how you're doing it.

It's unbearable since high school.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Chewing gum is a $50 billion industry.

Did you know that?

I knew it was kind of around that.

There were a couple different numbers floating around, but something like that.

That's so high.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

It makes sense, though, because you've got to buy it all the time.

Yeah.

So it's like consumable.

I used to eat five gum.

You remember that brand?

Yeah.

There's probably some bad shit in there, right?

Oh, yeah.

I looked in there.

They have, I mean, all the gums for the most part have the same ingredients that are in store the only thing that's different is the gum base is a little bit different you know make me a little more stiff or a little softer um but it's hard to tell because they don't really tell you what's in it yeah bigly chew you remember that one yeah yeah i used to have to do the whole thing it had no flavor that's the number one uh like comment on my videos of gum that where they're basically like screw your gum big league chew for life that's like the most liked i leave it in there i like look watching it dude it has like five seconds of flavor.

Yeah.

Same with juicy fruit.

Yeah.

Nothing.

Why does it go away so quick?

You know, I don't know because when you're using synthetic ingredients, you can get around that pretty quickly.

Like my gum doesn't have the longest lasting flavor.

The, you know, the natural mint and organic mint, you know, it's like spearmint oil.

It only stays.

flavorful for as long as that's in your mouth but with the synthetic gums they have nanoencapsulated flavors uh

essentially just little micro micro beads.

And while you chew, it breaks open more flavor.

Wow, and so you can get it like most gums won't last longer than 10 minutes, even with the nano encapsulation.

Um, but they'll get pretty close, some maybe slightly after it kind of depends on the person.

But anything that's like a natural flavor gum, I mean,

gone in like five minutes.

The nice thing about my gum is the natural saps have like their own flavor.

So, the mastic, the spruce, they have kind of this herbal, piney, very subtle but enjoyable flavor that I like to chew on.

So once the mint's gone, I mean, I still love it.

And a lot of people really latch on to that unless they're a part of the crowd.

We're like, no, I want it to be kick you in the face, like type of thing,

which we can't do.

Yeah.

I looked up the most popular flavors.

Do you know them?

Of gum.

Of gum?

Yeah.

I mean, got to be mint and cinnamon.

What's after that?

Good guesses.

Yeah.

First was spearmint.

Second was peppermint.

And that's as much research as I did.

Yeah.

That's all you really need to do.

I didn't see cinnamon, but it's probably up there.

Yeah.

I mean, you just think, you look at the store on the store shelves, like, they're not going to sell the least popular ones.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What was your favorite gum growing up?

You know, I really, I hate to say this, but I really liked

the Wrigley's spearmint.

Wrigley's.

Oh, the light green one, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I liked the juicy fruit, too.

I never really got into like the Big Lee Chew

flavors.

I'm not really like a huge fruit flavor person.

Yeah.

But growing up, I did like those the most.

Juicy fruit was good too.

Just didn't last long enough, man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Literally five seconds.

I liked the pink one that rolled up.

I don't know what it was called.

You remember that?

Oh, the bubble tape?

Might have been bubble tape.

Yeah.

I would stick half of it in my mouth.

Yeah.

Well, you can make the flavor last longer if you just constantly put a new piece in.

That's probably why they did it that way.

But I was a freak and I would open it and break it in half and just put it in my my mouth.

Oh my god, same with Big Lee Chew.

I would eat half the pack at once.

Yeah, it was nuts, dude.

Um,

how did you blow up on TikTok?

Because, from what I've seen, you didn't even spend money on marketing to blow this brand up.

No, no, I spent very little, maybe like

$500 in the very beginning.

I did, I ran some before I even had packaging in, I ran some Facebook ads just to see if it was something people even wanted or would pay for.

And so, I think I I did like $50 a day.

And I had a handful of people reach out, hey, or I reached out to them after they bought it and said, hey, you know, this product, I don't have any packaging for it.

It doesn't technically exist.

But if you want, I can send you some samples

and you can give me some feedback.

I can refund your order or I can move your order to pre-order if you like it.

And everyone was like, yeah, shoot me the samples.

They liked it.

Those people were really, really awesome because for probably a couple months after that, they allowed me to keep sending samples to them back and forth and um that was super helpful nice but that was as far as marketing goes that was all i really spent that i don't even know that was maybe more r d than marketing but um tick tock that i mean that's the beautiful thing about that platform it's just a discovery platform and so you don't have to have any followers um oftentimes you don't even need experience but as long as you have an idea of how content works and what makes good content you can post one video and then make a life-changing type of move as a lot of people have done.

Absolutely.

But yeah, no, I just posted that first video.

It was just supposed to be a practice video.

I said, okay, I haven't posted on TikTok before.

I'm probably going to have to experiment a little bit to see, you know, make sure that I'm on the money with what content works on the platform.

But that first video, I was blown away when it got 600,000 views in like the first couple of days.

I had just gotten 2,000 or 2,500 pieces of packaging.

That was gone.

I was super happy with 600,000.

And then

once it sold out, TikTok kind of throttles the video.

It doesn't want to show

anyone, which makes sense.

You know, if they're pushing TikTok shop, they don't want to show these videos if there's no product available to sell.

And so in December, I was just waiting for more packaging to come in.

Still super happy.

I got 600,000.

Then towards the end of December, I'm like, you know.

It's not a million view video.

Yeah, I still got some work to do.

But I didn't realize that when I put it back in stock, it was just going to start pumping again.

And that video, I think, has like almost maybe, yeah, four million views.

Holy crap.

And so I got lucky with the first video.

But yeah, that was it.

Damn.

So what was the actual video, though?

It was just a video of me making the gum.

And the way I shoot my videos, it's like a combination of ASMR,

like first person, the camera is strapped to my chest, and I'm just making the gum.

And then I have, I speak over the video.

And I just talked about, it was really simple.

I just talked about what makes my gum special.

what are in the other gums that people chew.

People kind of latched onto that.

And then, so that's just kind of been, okay, that's my style now.

And the last video I posted, which every time I go back and stock, it still sells me out.

So I haven't been able to really post any more content after that.

But that one's at over 19 million.

Holy crap.

Good problem to have.

Yeah.

That's what everyone wants.

That's enough.

So you made this by hand?

Yeah, most for the most part by hand.

In the very beginning, everything was by hand.

The only thing that's different now is I have a big mixer

It's a Z-blade mixer and so it takes the gum base warms it up and then just mixes it all together I can add ingredients because yeah making it by hand in the video if you've watched it I have just like a pot and I'm just whipping it around.

Yeah, and even though I do like 70x speed I can get it down to like you know seconds It's like an hour or so of sitting there just wow mixing it and mixing it.

So the the mixer definitely helps, but it's it's still hand-rolled, hand-cut.

I hired chefs to actually come help me make this because it's more of like a, you have to have a really good palette to be able to do it.

There's a lot of with natural products, there's a lot of little tweaking that has to go on.

You have to taste it kind of at every single step and decide what needs to be adjusted.

Wow.

But very hard to make a consistent product.

And I can see why.

They decided to switch to synthetic ingredients.

Yeah, I didn't know that much went into it.

Yeah, I probably probably wouldn't have done it had I known it was going to be that much work.

Yeah, but it makes sense why they would switch to scale at mass.

Yeah.

Because this probably isn't scalable with the current setup.

No, no.

It's, I mean, it's, it is to a certain extent, but not, you know, 50 billion or half of that market cap work.

Yeah.

Yeah, but it's cool that you just didn't spend any marketing and it, you know, it could be a million dollar company.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're.

We're going to do that this year, I think.

Holy crap.

That's impressive.

All from TikTok, too.

Yeah.

You should try IG reels out.

I did.

I did.

I posted a couple.

I think I kind of messed up because I haven't been on Instagram in a really long time.

And way back in the day, I used to manage Instagram accounts.

And I remember that, okay, you don't want to really switch to a business account until it's absolutely the right time because they kind of want you to pay for visibility.

And I forgot about that fact, switch it to a business account.

And then now it's like no one really sees it.

Just a few people that filter over from TikTok.

Have you tried YouTube Shorts or Twitter?

No, I'm on Twitter.

I'm mostly just kind of a lurker on there.

Yeah, Sam.

Twitter's a lurking platform.

Yeah, yeah, I love the reading, but I've tried to like write tweets.

I'm just like, I don't want to write

these long form tweets.

I feel like things I have that are interesting to say are so much easier for me just to talk about.

And then I have to sit there and write it.

I see those top 10 lists on Twitter, and then each tweet's like 100 characters, and they do like a whole list.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And everyone's, there's like the formats that go in style.

Then someone finds a new one and it's just like all the same.

Then you see like the same topic just destroyed over and over again.

Yeah.

Okay.

I don't even want to compete with that.

Yeah.

I'll be on crypto Twitter lately though.

Oh, yeah.

How's that?

I don't know.

Crypto Twitter is pretty hateful actually.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Are you into crypto at all?

A little bit.

I was more into it during the last run.

Yeah.

This one I was like, you know what?

I'm not getting sucked.

I'm just going to hold this, sell when I feel like it.

And I don't want to sit here and all day long, oh, here's something new, here's something new, and watch the charts.

But yeah, no, I was super into it.

And the last run,

that was pretty awesome.

That was a good time.

It was a good run up and then sure wreckage after.

What's your theory on what's going to happen moving forward?

Solana to a thousand, which would be nuts.

Yeah.

If that happens, I have something.

I might end the podcast.

No, I'm just kidding.

Ethereum to six.

Not financial advice, guys.

$6,000 to Ethereum.

Bitcoin 100.

Unless he's right.

Yeah, unless I'm right.

Then I take credit for it.

Bitcoin to 120.

Okay, okay.

Time frame?

I was thinking this year, but now it's looking weird.

And this president, it honestly depends on this presidency.

If Biden wins, I don't think it'll hit that this year.

If Trump wins, I think it might.

Why do you think that?

Trump's pro-crypto.

He's been talking about it every day this week, how he's like about crypto.

Okay.

And Biden is the opposite.

So he's going to put more regulations on it.

I mean, there's already a shit ton, in my opinion, but yeah.

Okay.

I'm going to keep that in mind.

I'm going to take that financial advice.

Yeah.

We'll see, though.

You're in Cali.

That's a left state, right?

Oh, yeah.

So you're not a fan of Trump.

I wouldn't say that.

Actually, I answering before

I thought where you were going to say something different.

I'm not left-leaning, and I don't even live in a left-leaning town.

Oh, yeah.

I live in a tiny town called Placerville, and they still put American flags along the freeways there.

Oh, wow.

So it's like the Orange County of where you're at.

Yeah, yeah, kind of only much, much smaller.

But going back to Trump, no, I don't have any problems with Trump.

I think he definitely could have done some things different, could have picked some better people.

Yeah.

But I'm very far from being a Biden supporter or a Democrat.

Yeah, I mean, the videos I see of that guy, he needs to hang it up, man.

Yeah.

I mean, the people behind him, at least find us another puppet because it's not even funny to laugh at him anymore.

Yeah.

No, it's like old news at this point.

Yeah.

Like, I don't even get shocked at a video now.

Yeah, I used to laugh at the gaffes and laugh at him tripping on the bar.

I'm just like, dude.

Now I just feel bad.

Yeah, exactly.

There was one video you made going after this ingredient in a lot of gums called gum base.

So what exactly is gum base?

So I talked a little bit about it earlier.

It's

can be a bunch of different things, but the two main ingredients are usually going to be...

butadine styrene and polyvinyl acetate which is just plastic and rubber But they can put any number of other ingredients in there.

And most companies, they consider it a trade secret.

So they can kind of get around telling you exactly what's in it.

But it's going to be a combination of plastic and rubber,

usually talcum powder, either in the mix or on the gum on the outside as an anti-caking agent.

That's crazy.

So people are literally chewing plastic.

Yeah.

And most people don't even know.

And that probably goes in your bloodstream, too.

Yeah.

Because

I read some study that, and there aren't a whole lot of studies on this, but I read a study that said that the gum itself,

the most damage it does is when it's actually spit out and then it degrades.

And then that's where you get the microplastics that seep into the groundwater.

And then people end up drinking that.

Wow.

Yeah.

People be spitting their gums like in the ocean, outside.

It gets in the water.

I think it might be Singapore where I don't think gum is legal there for that exactly.

Wow.

Don't quote me on that.

It may not be Singapore.

That's not.

Yeah.

Some people spit theirs in the toilet.

You know?

Yeah.

Definitely in the water.

Some people just swallow them.

I used to do that.

I can't tell you how many people have emailed me or DM'd me asking, can I swallow this?

And at first, and I was like, oh, it's just one or two people.

But so many people are like, want to know if they can swallow because they have no intention of chewing it without swallowing it.

Wow.

So what's the verdict?

Can you?

I always tell them.

So it's biodegradable, non-toxic ingredients.

But I never like to tell people like, yeah, of of course, go ahead and swallow it because it's still, one, a choking hazard.

Yeah, lawsuit.

Yeah.

And two,

chewing gum isn't necessarily meant to be swallowed, even though some of these saps were used medicinally, like you would swallow some spruce sap or some mastic sap to help with digestive issues.

We're talking really, really small amounts.

Yeah.

And but I did have one.

Crazy lady email me the other day and she was like, this gum made me so sick.

And I was reading down her email.

She's like, I ate two packs of it and i had the worst stomachache and i was just like oh my god holy crap this wasn't a person i told it was yeah

remember that saying that if you swallowed it stayed in your body for seven years yeah yeah it might be true with with plastics yeah that's true yeah that's a very good point which is nuts yeah because the gum obviously leaves your body but who knows if the plastics leave yeah we'll never know yeah poor old lady though man yeah no she was she was not happy i had to refund her two packs

Why is she eating two packs, man?

I don't know.

It says.

There's 10 in each.

That's like 12.

Oh, 18.

18 in each.

That's 36 pieces.

And on the back, it says

one to three pieces.

You're supposed to chew.

Dude.

Per day.

Why is she eating two packs a day, first of all?

She swallowed them, too.

Jesus.

Non-GMO.

So some gum has GMO in it.

That's crazy.

Yeah, well, like the flavorings and some of the other ingredients, usually in those gums will be GMO.

Yeah.

Almost Almost on every single pack of store-bought gum on the back, it says contains bioengineered ingredients.

Once you fix your supply chain and you start having inventory under control, do you want to get into retail?

It's not really a goal of mine.

Necessarily, I wouldn't mind it.

I've had a ton of like mom and pop shops reach out, which all those people are super nice.

I've just told them I'm not quite ready yet.

I mean, I can't even keep my own store in stock, so I don't want to give anyone else that problem.

But I wouldn't wouldn't mind wouldn't mind retail but I don't necessarily care I think most stuff's kind of going online anyways and this is a better online product yeah retail is tricky too because you got to front the product yeah you got to like 90 days sometimes sometimes even 180 days depending on the store yeah and these stores are so strict like I one of my employees used to work for a fulfillment facility who worked with Target and just the story she told me of all the things that they had to go through just with dealing with Target.

But yeah, fronting all the product.

Target had a gripe with something on their label.

So they had to remake all their packaging to send the product in to Target.

And yeah, no, it just sounds like a nightmare.

I wouldn't want to do that unless it was someone else's job to do it.

Yeah, that's rough.

Yeah, you'd have to completely outsource that and not deal with the personal headaches.

Yeah.

And the packaging is probably a lot when you're dealing with tens of thousands of units, too.

Yeah.

I mean, that packaging, I didn't choose the easiest packaging to do.

Yeah, this is two pieces.

Yeah, I noticed that.

Yeah, so it's not why you decide to do that.

Um, I really wanted like a side dispensing feature, and I wanted the packaging to look way different than any other gun packaging

out there.

Uh,

it just, yeah, it just looks different.

I like it.

I spent a lot of time working on it.

I didn't know you could dispense out the side.

Which side?

Uh, you rip up, you rip that tab in the back, and then

you can slide it up, and there's another perforated square on the side.

Got it, and you can can just kind of shake it out in your hand.

Wow.

Yeah.

You designed this yourself?

Yeah.

Impressive, man.

Do you have a background in design?

I had a design agency

type of deal.

It was actually, I have a flavor and aroma company on the side that also has a design arm for companies that just happen to need that service.

And it ended up being.

a much bigger offering than I initially intended it.

But I've always loved doing packaging.

And

yeah, it's just something that I really enjoy enjoy doing i know that for all my products i want to be the one kind of working on it i do have designers that i work with that'll help me with like the fine details the templating i mainly is i mainly want to focus on just the feel of it yeah placement of the the features i love it i actually watched a documentary on five gum last night preparing for this and Part of the reason they took off, I think, was their branding and packaging.

Yeah.

Because it appealed to like teenagers and stuff.

And I remember when I was in, I think, high school, it just took off.

Everyone was chewing it yeah it's so it's so strong now that people still in my comments will reference those ads like

yeah but does it feel like chewing five gum you know they have this

like i don't know man falling through ice or something they say it's the uh the axe body spray of the gum industry i could totally see that it's a good comparison right yeah yeah yeah really good yeah but they fell off man they're not they're not the same anymore no they got too corporate i think because they were edgy back in the day huh like they were willing willing to appeal to an edgy audience.

Were they always owned by the same company or were they a smaller company that sold?

That's a good question.

I'm not sure because I only watched half of the documentary so far, but that is a problem when these smaller companies sell out, especially in the health consumer goods space.

Yeah.

Because then they start removing all the good ingredients and making margin.

Yeah, they take...

basically switch everything up like uh people always blast burt's bees yeah yeah i stopped using them.

Poor Bert.

Yeah.

Because they used to be all natural, right?

I don't know what they use now, but.

It's like seed oils now in there.

Yeah.

Why would you put seed oil on your lips?

You gotta fry them.

Yeah.

I'd buy just coconut chapstick.

Yeah.

Just one or two ingredients.

Yeah.

Because I used to use chapstick.

And have you read the ingredients on that?

No, I haven't.

It's terrible.

There's like 50 different things in there.

How can they fit that on that little lip?

I know, right?

It's not natural, so I don't use it.

Interesting.

You're not a big chapstick person.

I see a lot of people doing like tallow.

Beef tallow?

Yeah.

Yeah, on their lips or?

I think on their lips all over their body.

I don't know if I want to kiss someone that's using beef tallow.

Yeah.

You know?

Be a little weird.

On the face, I could see it's like a lotion.

I don't use any like fake lotions anymore, too.

Oh, what do you use?

I actually use tallow or just coconut oil or...

Yeah.

Anything natural.

Like sunscreen.

I don't use it anymore.

Yeah, sunscreen's garbage.

I have seen seen a couple brands coming out with some sunscreen.

I don't know the names, but it looks like there's kind of a pushback and people are moving in the direction of creating natural sunscreens.

I think they put, I don't know what they put in it, honestly.

Yeah, but there's an app called Yuka.

I don't know if you've heard of it.

YUK.

Is that the one where you scan it?

Yeah.

Okay.

So I go to Target just for fun and like scan all the beauty products.

Most of it's trash.

Yeah.

Like, but if it's above a 90, I'll buy it.

But I had to switch from native because I was in the 70s, 80s to Dr.

Bronner's.

Interesting.

For my body wash.

I always thought Native, I don't, I never used native, but I always thought their whole thing was being healthy.

I know it's aluminum-free.

Did they change it after they sold?

Probably because they sold to J and J, right?

Yeah, I believe.

Yeah, so I don't think they give a shit about

natural ingredients with all their lawsuits.

Keep the packaging and just with their baby powder shit in there.

Billion-dollar lawsuit.

Yeah.

I ended up causing a lot of issues.

For them, it's just like a business expense.

Yeah, that was the talcum powder.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and everyone was using it on their babies.

Yeah.

Crazy.

You know, kids are, if you're one years old in America, you have to get 40 vaccines now?

Yeah.

I mean, I knew it was up there.

Is it just 40 or is it like 40 instant

change?

You get an option for 60.

40 plus.

There's probably some optional ones, but 40 mandatory.

Crazy.

Yeah.

When I had my first kid, man, they really wanted to shoot him up.

They were like, all right, we have to do this.

It's like, nope, not doing that.

You could deny it?

yeah you can but they put a lot of pressure on you they make you feel like you're doing something wrong and they also kind of like

um

maybe not threaten but maybe imply that your kid could be taken away from you if you don't this was like holy crap in 2021 oh during

yeah the pandemic stuff was going on and they really wanted to to get him with a covet shot

um but yeah

as soon as he was born they wanted to inject him yeah covet shot oh my gosh they wanted to give him the full yeah show when i was in school i would just get them and I didn't even question it.

Like I thought it was good.

But now, if I have kids, definitely not.

For most of them, I probably wouldn't get them.

You know what's funny too is I have some friends and I've seen people with kids like the same age as mine.

And the ones that haven't been vaccinated and the ones that are, I don't want to say I can tell the difference, but it seems like there's definitely a difference in like cognitive skills, motor function.

At that age already, you could tell.

It seems like it.

And how old are they?

My oldest kid just turned three.

And you can already tell.

Yeah.

Wow.

There's, because some of the kids that are his age, they don't really talk as much.

They still, I have another kid, another son that's a year and a half.

And some of the three-year-olds run, when they run around, they look just like my one and a half-year-old.

Like, they're not as sure-footed.

And he talks more than some of the three-year-olds that I've seen.

Oh, my gosh.

I mean,

either way, I'll take it.

Either I have genius, baby, there is a huge difference, but maybe both.

I'm going to risk it.

Yeah, maybe both.

But that is very concerning.

And the rates of autism are insane these days.

Yeah, it was like one in three kids now.

Yeah.

When we were growing up, it was nothing like that.

Yeah.

Like, not even close.

Yeah, you had maybe like a specific class with like a couple of them in there.

And now it's like autism's crazy.

And then also you can just kind of be on the spectrum, but you know, not like autistic, autistic.

I don't know why.

Oh, yeah.

There's a new word for, I know what you're talking about.

Yeah.

People are flexing that.

I'm on the spectrum.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's times are changing, man.

But

this was fun, man.

Where can people find out the gum if it's not sold out?

Tryunderbrush.com.

And you can watch the videos that I post on TikTok.

It's nathan.an.sons.

On Instagram, same name.

And

that's it.

Perfect.

We'll link below.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Cool.

Appreciate it.

Thanks for watching.

I'm going to try out the gum, guys.

See you next time.