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

Episode Date: September 28, 2024

Discover how Nathan from Underbrush Gum sold out his natural gum on TikTok without spending a dime on ads! 🌟 In this episode of the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly, Nathan shares his journey of... creating a gum that's not only plastic-free but also helps remineralize your teeth. Tune in now to learn about the natural ingredients that make Underbrush Gum stand out in the competitive $50 billion gum industry. 🤑 Join the conversation as Nathan dives into the world of holistic dental care, the dangers of synthetic gum bases, and how his TikTok strategy catapulted his brand to success with millions of views. Don't miss out on this packed episode full of valuable insights and unexpected surprises. 🎉 Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀 CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:25 - Underbrush Gum Benefits 02:16 - Toothpaste Ingredients 03:33 - Cavities Prevention Tips 06:49 - Microplastics Impact 09:52 - Wisdom Teeth Facts 11:06 - Chewing Gum Industry Insights 14:36 - LUMI Gum TikTok Success 17:52 - Handcrafted Gum Process 23:08 - Gum Base Ingredients 26:57 - Retail vs Online Sales 27:59 - Two Piece Packaging Advantages 28:30 - Nathan's Gum Packaging Design 31:14 - Importance of Natural Products 32:33 - Vaccination Rates in Children 34:35 - Autism Rates Today 35:05 - Where to Buy Nathan’s Gum APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: Jenna@DigitalSocialHour.com GUEST: Nathan & Sons https://www.instagram.com/nathan.and.sons https://www.tryunderbrush.com/ https://www.tiktok.com/@nathan.and.sons SPONSORS: Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:01:03 So the mastic, the sp 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 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 like type of thing, which we can't do. All right, guys. Got Nathan here from Underbrush Gum. Thanks for coming on, man. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:01:31 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.
Starting point is 00:01:40 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 spruce, chicle, or chicle, so if go or correct me on that, um, domestic gum, which is already kind of popular, um, Arabic gum,
Starting point is 00:02:09 a few other things in there. And then on top of that, it's a functional gum as well. Right. It sterilizes 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 manmade, but you can't really find that natural form at least not in the nano state and that's not what makes it chewy no no that's the what makes the uh it remineralize your teeth so what makes it chewy for the most part is
Starting point is 00:02:37 just all the saps um each one by itself isn't that great um but I played around for a year and a half. And I finally got 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 base 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 I actually had a really bad toothache one day that took me forever to actually go in and get it fixed.
Starting point is 00:03:23 And I was like, my god i gotta do something else i gotta 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 i originally was going to do like a toothpaste or like a toothpaste tablet um but i already already chewed gum and i thought oh how come there's no chewing gum that kind of cleans your teeth while you chew it? 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 a pretty unique twist. Now, what about xylitol gum? Does that clean your teeth while you chew it? Yeah, that's
Starting point is 00:04:01 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 choose 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'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. Cause I, I choose xylitol, 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.
Starting point is 00:04:45 Shout out to a four seasons 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 they don't use PFAs in their filling. Because a lot of traditional dentists, there's microplastics in the fillings for cavities.
Starting point is 00:05:05 So they're 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. 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.
Starting point is 00:05:21 Cool. I like that. Don't feel bad. The stat status like 90 of adults have had at least one cavity so 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
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Starting point is 00:06:19 With a variety of exciting features, BetMGM offers you plenty of seamless ways to jump straight onto the gridiron and to embrace peak sports action. Ready for another season of gridiron glory? What are you waiting for? Get off the bench, into the huddle, and head for the end zone all season long. Visit
Starting point is 00:06:35 BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older. Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? For free assistance, call the Connex Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Where we started baking things and eating breads and sugars, that cavity has really started to become a thing.
Starting point is 00:07:02 If you go way far back, it looks like most people didn't really have that kind of issue. Wow. 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. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:07:15 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
Starting point is 00:07:46 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 screwed that's an interesting take actually well now the lifespan is 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 on why that is i think it's
Starting point is 00:08:24 a lot of things there's so many different ways we're being attacked right now without us even knowing like 5g wi-fi um lights uh diet 70 of diets you know processed food so that's probably a huge one western medicine's not solving anything it's just i think a band-aid yeah like basically everything yeah there's so many different ways i mean literally just breathing air yeah that's where you're at but that could be bad for you yeah and i was 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 really got microplastics in antarctica it's like in the air it's like oh my god wow we're screwed so 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 the stat is 90 something percent of plastic water bottles or
Starting point is 00:09:17 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. Because this juice only lasts 60 days. Plus this is a special type of plastic and it never gets exposed to sunlight. 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.
Starting point is 00:09:41 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 PEMF mats. I don't know if that helps.
Starting point is 00:10:07 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 sauna to 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.
Starting point is 00:10:22 I mean, not really, to be honest. Maybe I need more time okay yeah i saw that come across my feet i was like 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 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 1500 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.
Starting point is 00:11:13 A lot of really interesting stuff. Some things that I wasn't really thinking of, 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 wow not complaining that's interesting i didn't know you could reduce cavities too yeah so my seven are are going to be gone then with this hey maybe 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 why would you do your cavity is gone now obviously there's something that can be done
Starting point is 00:11:48 to a certain extent but after a certain point i mean you can't fix a black tooth yeah did you have a lot of cavities going on uh i had a handful definitely you know for sure like most people you get them pulled or filled filled yeah probably got some pfos in there right did you get your wisdom teeth out yeah i did so now there's new studies on that how there's infections in a lot of those i think 80 percent 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 and 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
Starting point is 00:12:31 but they hurt oh oh really yeah they've been telling me to get mine out 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 probably the main reason oh okay okay i'm not a fan of that i guess we'll know if you go crazy we'll we'll know what happened it's definitely hurting like some days i feel it uh how do you put like a oral gel on there or anything oh no you just tough it out no it's literally sideways like almost 90 degrees uh-huh 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 Yeah, I don't know. Chewing gum's a $50 billion industry.
Starting point is 00:13:10 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.
Starting point is 00:13:21 So it's like a 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 big league chew you remember that one?
Starting point is 00:13:45 Yeah. I used to have to eat the whole thing. It had no flavor. That's the number one comment on my videos of gum where they're basically like, screw your gum, Bigly Chew for life. That's the most liked. I leave it in there. I like watching it. Dude, it has like five seconds of flavor. Same with Juicy Fruit?
Starting point is 00:14:03 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 natural mint and organic mint is like spearmint oil. It only stays flavorful for as long as that's in your mouth. But with the synthetic gums they
Starting point is 00:14:25 have nano encapsulated flavors uh essentially just little 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 but they'll get pretty close some maybe slightly after it kind of depends on the person. But anything that's like a natural-flavored 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.
Starting point is 00:15:05 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 type of thing, which we can't do. Yeah. I looked up the most popular flavors. Do you know them? Of gum? Of gum?
Starting point is 00:15:19 Yeah. I mean, it's 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.
Starting point is 00:15:34 That's all you really need to know about that. 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. What was your favorite gum growing up uh yeah i really i hate to say this but i really liked um the wrigley's spearmint
Starting point is 00:15:52 wrigley's oh the green light green one right yeah yeah and i like the juicy fruit too i never really got into like the big league chew okay flavors not really like a huge fruit flavor person yeah but um 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 like the pink one that rolled up.
Starting point is 00:16:14 I don't know what it was called. You remember that one? 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 mouth. Oh my God. Same with Big League Chew. I would
Starting point is 00:16:32 eat half the pack at once. Yeah. It was nuts, dude. 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 five hundred dollars 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 did like fifty dollars a day and um I had a handful of people reach out, hey, or I reached out to them after they bought it. I said, hey, you know, this product, I don't have any packaging for 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
Starting point is 00:17:22 everyone's like, yeah, shoot me the samples. Um, 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. Um, but that was, as far as marketing goes, that was all I really spent. And I don't even know if that was maybe more R and D than marketing, but, um, tick tock. 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.
Starting point is 00:18:01 There's a lot of people have done absolutely um but yeah no i just posted that first video was just supposed to be a practice video i said okay i haven't posted on tiktok before i'm probably gonna 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 i got 600 000 views and like the first couple days the. 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.
Starting point is 00:18:34 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. And towards the end of December, I'm like, you know, it's not a million-view video.
Starting point is 00:18:52 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 right now. Holy crap. And so I got lucky with the first video um but yeah that was damn so what was what was the actual video though it was just a video of me making the gum
Starting point is 00:19:12 and the way i shoot my videos it's like a combination of asmr um like first person the camera's 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 and the camera's strapped to my chest and I'm just making the gum. And then 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.
Starting point is 00:19:42 And the last video I posted, which every time I go back in 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's saying. So you make this by hand? Uh, 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. Um, 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.
Starting point is 00:20:18 Yeah. And even though I do like 70 X 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 still hand rolled hand cut um 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 um there's a lot of with natural products there's a lot of little tweaking that has to go on um 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.
Starting point is 00:20:59 Yeah. I probably wouldn't have done it had I known it was going to work. Yeah. But it makes sense why they would switch to scale at mass. Yeah. Cause this probably wouldn't have done it had i known it was gonna 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 is to a certain extent but not you know 50 billion or half of that market cap 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.
Starting point is 00:21:28 Yeah. You should try IG Reels out. 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.
Starting point is 00:21:43 And I remember that, okay, you don't want to really switch to a business account until it's absolutely the right time because, you know, 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.
Starting point is 00:22:08 Yeah, same. 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
Starting point is 00:22:22 and then I have to sit there and write it. I see those top 10 lists on twitter and then each tweets 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 uh 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 um during the last run yeah this one i was like you know what i'm not getting sucked i'm just gonna hold this sell
Starting point is 00:23:03 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.
Starting point is 00:23:14 That was a good time. It was a good run up and then pure wreckage after. What's your theory on what's going to happen moving forward? Solana to 1,000, which would be nuts if that happens. I have some of that. I might endana to a thousand, which would be nuts. Yeah. If that happens, I might end the podcast.
Starting point is 00:23:27 No, I'm just kidding. Ethereum to six. Not financial advice, guys. 6,000 to Ethereum. Bitcoin to 100. Unless he's right. Yeah, unless I'm right, then I take credit for it.
Starting point is 00:23:37 Bitcoin to 120. Okay. Okay. Timeframe? 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 i'll hit that this year if trump wins i
Starting point is 00:23:49 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 gonna put more regulations on it i mean there's already a shit ton in my opinion but yeah i don't know i'm gonna keep that in mind i'm gonna take that financial advice. Yeah. We'll see though. You're in Cali. That's a left state, right?
Starting point is 00:24:10 Oh, yeah. So you're not a fan of Trump? I wouldn't say that. Actually, I started answering before I thought 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.
Starting point is 00:24:28 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-smart-hearted Democrat.
Starting point is 00:24:47 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. I don't even get shocked at a video now. Yeah, I used to laugh at the gaffs
Starting point is 00:25:03 and laugh at him tripping on the bike. I was just now i just feel bad yeah exactly um 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 i talked a little bit about it earlier it's um can be a bunch of different things but the two main ingredients are usually going to be butadiene, 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
Starting point is 00:25:51 most people don't even know and that probably goes in your bloodstream too yeah because saliva i i read i read some study that and there aren't a whole lot of studies on this but i read a study that said um that the gum itself the most damage it does is when it's actually spit out and then degrades and 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 uh gets in the water i think it might be singapore where i don't think gum is legal there for that exact wow don't quote me on that it may not be singapore but that's not yeah some people spit theirs in the toilet uh-huh you know yeah definitely in the water some people just swallow them somebody i used to do that i can't tell you how many people have emailed me or dm me asking can i swallow this
Starting point is 00:26:40 and at first and i was like oh it's just one or two people. But so many people 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 course, go ahead and swallow it because it's still, one, a choking hazard. Yeah, a lawsuit. Yeah. 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
Starting point is 00:27:10 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 um but i did have one crazy lady email me the other day and she was 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 stomach ache. And I was just like, oh, my God. Holy crap. I hope this wasn't a person I told it was.
Starting point is 00:27:37 Yeah, that's wild. Remember that saying that if you swallowed it, it stayed in your body for seven years? Yeah, yeah. It might be true with plastics. Yeah, that's true. Yeah 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 18 oh 18
Starting point is 00:28:05 oh my that's 36 pieces on the back it says she did that in a day 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 there's some gum is gmo in that that's crazy yeah like the um the flavorings and some of the other ingredients usually in those gums will be GMO. Almost on every single pack of store-bought gum on the back, it says contains bioengineered ingredients. Once you fix your supply chain
Starting point is 00:28:37 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 um but i 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.
Starting point is 00:29:07 Yeah, retail's tricky too because you've got to front the product for like 90 days sometimes, sometimes even 180 days, depending on the store. Yeah, and these stores are so strict. 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. They have fronting all the product.
Starting point is 00:29:32 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 um yeah this is two pieces yeah i noticed yeah so it's not why'd 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 gum packaging um out
Starting point is 00:30:12 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 oh this one you can slide it up and there's another perforated square on the side which side uh you rip up you rip that tab in the back and then oh this one you can slide it up and there's another perforated square on the side got it you can just kind of shake it out in your hand wow yeah you design this yourself yeah impressive man do you have a background in design i had a design agency type of deal um 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
Starting point is 00:30:56 and, um, yeah, it's just something that I really 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 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 those like i don't know man falling through ice or yeah they say
Starting point is 00:31:45 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 to appeal to a 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,
Starting point is 00:32:13 but that is a problem when these smaller companies sell out, especially in the health consumer goods space because then they start removing all the good ingredients and making margin. Yeah, they basically switch everything up. People always blast Burt and making margin. Yeah. They basically switch everything up. Like people always blast Burt's bees. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:32:29 I stopped using them. Poor Burt. Yeah. Because it used to be all natural, right? I don't know what they use now. It's like seed oils now. Yeah. Why would you put seed oil on your lips?
Starting point is 00:32:39 You've got to fry them. Yeah. I'd buy just coconut chapstick. Yeah. Just one or two ingredients. Yeah. Cause I used to use chapstick and have you read the ingredients on that? No, I haven't. It's terrible. It's like 50 different things in there. Can they fit that on that little? I know. Right. It's not, it's not, not natural. So I don't use it. Interesting. You're not a big chapstick person. I see a lot
Starting point is 00:33:00 of people doing like tallow. Beef tallow? Yeah. Yeah. On their lips or? I think on their lips or 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. Yeah, I'd be a little beefy. On the face I could see it's like a lotion.
Starting point is 00:33:18 I don't use any like fake lotions anymore too. Oh, what do you use? I actually use tallow or just coconut oil or anything natural. Like sunscreen, I don't use it anymore. Yeah, sunscreen's garbage. I have seen a couple brands coming out with 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 don't know what they put in it, honestly.
Starting point is 00:33:42 Yeah, there's an app called Yuka. I don't know if you've heard of it. Y-U-K. Is that the one where you scan it? Yeah. Okay. So I go to Target just for fun and scan all the beauty products. Most of it's trash.
Starting point is 00:33:53 Yeah. 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 for my body wash. I always thought Native. 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&J, right?
Starting point is 00:34:13 Yeah, I believe so. Yeah, so I don't think they give a shit about natural ingredients with all their lawsuits. Keep the packaging and just put all their shit in there. Yeah, with their baby powder billion-dollar lawsuit, that ended up causing a lot of issues. For them, it's just like a business expense. Yeah, that was the talcum powder.
Starting point is 00:34:29 Yeah. Yeah, and everyone was using it on their babies. Yeah. Crazy. You know, kids, 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 and some change?
Starting point is 00:34:46 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're like, all right, we have to do this. It's like, nope, not doing that. You could deny it?
Starting point is 00:35:00 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 maybe not threaten, but maybe imply that your kid could be taken away from you if you don't. This was like in 2021. Oh, during the pandemic. Yeah, the pandemic stuff was going on, and they really wanted to get him with a COVID shot. Terrible.
Starting point is 00:35:23 As soon as he was born, they wanted to inject him with a COVID shot? Oh, my. As soon as he was born, they wanted to inject them. Yeah. COVID shot. Oh my gosh. They wanted to give him the full show. When I was in school, I would just get them and I didn't even question it. Like I thought it was good,
Starting point is 00:35:33 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,
Starting point is 00:35:54 but it seems like there's definitely a difference. Wow. 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 uh because some of the kids that are his age they don't really talk as much um they still
Starting point is 00:36:12 have another kid another son that's uh a year and a half and some of the three-year-olds run when they run around they look just like my my one and a half year old like they're not as sure-footed um and he talks more than some of the three-year-olds that I've seen. Oh my gosh. Um, I mean, either way I'll take it, either I have genius baby, there is a huge difference, but maybe both risk it. Yeah. Maybe both, but that, that is very concerning. And the rates of autism are insane. Yeah. It was like one in three kids. Yeah. When we were growing up, it was nothing like nothing like 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
Starting point is 00:36:54 you know not like autistic autistic i don't know oh yeah there's a new word for it 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 uh this was fun man where can people find out the gum it's not sold out uh try underbrush.com and you can watch videos that are post on tiktok it's nathan.ann.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 gonna try out the gum guys see you next time 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.
Starting point is 00:37:26 See you next time.

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