This brand turned GLP-1 into a listerine strip.

0:00We are about to launch. It's called Sink Wellness. We're the first ones in the world to bring a plant-based alternative to GLP-1 drugs in a Listerine strip. My mom was going through cancer treatment and she couldn't even swallow water or food. I just couldn't find literally anything in the market that solved that problem. The metabolic health in the nutraceutical market is so broken. There are side effects like we're seeing bone density loss, muscle loss. Welcome to the DTC Insider Podcast, where online business owners come to find actionable tips and tactics to grow their businesses. Now, here's your host, Brian Roizenthal.

0:46Hey, welcome to another episode of the DTC Insider Podcast. I'm Brian Roizenthal, your host, and today I'm joined by Leica Baez. She's the founder of Sync Wellness. Hey, Leica, thanks for being on the show. Thanks, Brian. It's good to see you again. Excited to be here. Yeah, it's actually the second time you're doing this. So it's amazing. Thank you for coming back to the show. Thanks for having me. Let's do this. Yeah. So for those who didn't watch the first episode, of course, that we record probably a year or two ago, could you please remind them who you are and what your background is? Yeah, so I am a very long time, more than 15 years, CPG executive.

1:25So I've worked with amazing companies like Procter & Gamble, Ariel, Still Otter, Private Equity. I was on the founding team for Jailo Beauty. Then I built my first venture, which was LV Lab. It still exists. It's a skincare brand for everyone. And now I'm building my second company. We are about to launch and we are in early access mode. It's called Sink Wellness. And it's basically we're the first runs in the world to bring a plant-based alternative to GLP-1 drugs in a Listerine strip. So think vegan and Zampik in a Listerine strip. Right. And could you please walk me through in the audience, of course, how you decided to make this jump and create this company?

2:07Wild story. So basically, you know, I was like still obviously running my skincare. And then I think during that time, last time we chatted, actually, my mom was going through cancer treatment. And for some times when, you know, some people have really intense chemo, like they're unable to swallow anything. And for my mom, it was the case like she couldn't even swallow water or food. So we had to put a GI tube in her stomach to give her just the basic necessities, which is water and liquid food. So what that did was she became extremely malnourished. All her vital vitamins were super low. And typically in chemo, you lose a lot of weight.

2:41So you're losing all the nutrients. and that's when I was like god are and I couldn't find any supplements because right they're capsules or like gummies or something you have to ingest orally and I just couldn't find literally anything in the market that solved that problem so that was my first aha moment I was like wow the metabolic health in the nutraceutical market is so broken so I actually went down the path of creating a micro needle patch because you know it goes directly to your bloodstream didn't work out because of FDA regulations. And I had a friend who's the CEO of a pharma company and who was creating a Narcan in a strip, an oral strip.

3:16So I'll give you a quick demo of the strip in a second. But what strips do, it's called subling wool delivery. So imagine a Listerine strip, right? You just put it on your tongue. It absorbs directly into your bloodstream. So what that does, it bypasses your gut completely. When we take capsules or gummies or even food, right, it goes to our gut into our stomach acid and it completely breaks it down. So you end up absorbing like maybe 20 % on the high side, 30%. So you end up taking a lot more to absorb very little. And then it also, there's an overload, right? Like as human beings, we're not supposed to take five, 10 supplements a day.

3:51You're only supposed to take like what your body needs. And our food is so processed that we're just relying heavily on supplementation also impacts kidneys, liver, pancreas, all of it that, aids digestion. So what I wanted to create was something that goes directly to your bloodstream. You don't need too much of. It's fast acting and works like magic. And right now with the GLP-1 fads, what we are seeing is that people don't even understand what these drugs can cause long term. So I really wanted to create an alternative for everyone that at least starts with, you know, mimicking what GLP-1 drugs do, but naturally no side effects.

4:29Right. I mean, I have a lot of questions about that already, but I want to start with the thing that you just mentioned. It's about what are the long-term consequences that you were referring to about, you know, consuming those supplements. So I think just like for, from an education standpoint, I think, do you know, I'm going to ask you a question. Do you know what GLP-1 is? Okay. So GLP-1 is a peptide, which I think a lot of people also don't know because peptides, it's like a buzzword. Everybody wants to take them. They're injecting themselves. Like somebody I knew last week was taking 17 shots a week of like different peptides, which is wild.

5:03I mean, her stomach was like blue everywhere. But what people don't understand is like peptides are not like your natural products, especially GLP-1, right? So GLP-1 drugs mimic a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1. So it has kind of like a single pathway. So these drugs were created as diabetes medication to kind of regulate your insulin levels, your blood sugar. and these drugs basically override synthetically not naturally they override your system with a constant signal saying that okay i'm not hungry anymore at the same time it delays your gastric emptying so you know sometimes when you travel the first couple of days you're bloated and you can't go to the bathroom so imagine being that way all the time so like when you do also eat food you feel nauseous so you just end up eating less now what that does is like fine calorie deficit you're eating less, you're losing weight.

5:52But at the same time, there are side effects like we're seeing bone density loss, muscle loss, because the first thing that it targets, it's not your visceral fat. Visceral fat is that hard fat that you just, it's layered over your stomach kind of thing. That's just like one example. That's a problem area for me. But there's, it also targets your muscles. So when you don't have muscle around your bone, it impacts your bone density down the line. So there's pancreatitis that we're saying there's 3 ,800 lawsuits actually on no more nor disc because of these side effects. The problem is when FDA approvals happen, they're targeted for weight loss or insulin regulation or like specific purposes.

6:31People don't know what's happening with their body, right? Unless you're like doing functional health, like every six months and like tracking our biomarkers. Like I'm very good with health, but I still don't know like every month what's happening with everything I'm taking. So I think it's very important for people to understand like how their body is functioning and how we would react to something long-term. The biggest problem with the GLP ones that I personally have, I think I support the obesity drugs. I think, look, if you have a health problem, you're unable to lose weight, you have hormonal issues, you just can't get to that healthy baseline, please take the drugs, right?

7:04Get to a baseline that's healthy for you. And that way, a lot of people that are overweight or obese don't have prediabetes or diabetes, right? Diabetes to me is like the root cause for a lot of diseases. So once you fix that root cause of the problem and bring your A1C down to like a very healthy level, then how do you get off the drugs? And I think that's where the biggest issue is today that once you start replacing your body's natural signal with a synthetic drug, you cannot stop because now your body stops producing your natural GLP-1 and now it's relying on an external factor. So when you replace something for too long, it's loss of natural appetite and dependency on the drugs to maintain those results.

7:44And that's why people gain the weight back when they get off the drugs. So our mission is to like, please go take the drugs if you are in that category. But once you want to get off, move to something natural that can still keep you at your baseline. Does not, I mean, it mimics the same effects, but just naturally with plant-based actives. You mean naturally? What's the difference? Sorry, go ahead. That's a good question. No, it's okay. I was asking what's the difference, like you say, once you achieve the desired results, move to a more natural solution. So what's the difference between one or the other?

8:22So like I said, you know, drugs usually have a lifelong dependency. It's almost impossible to get off of them. And I think with what we have created is that there's two types of consumers that we're targeting. One's that we want people to get off of the drugs, right? So we're not trying to compete with pharma drugs in any shape or form. We support GLP-123s. Go for it if you need it. And if you qualify for it. We sit between pharma and supplements. So what SYNC does, we use plant-based actives that are delivered through a strip and it bypasses the gut so it absorbs directly on your tongue. So all the actives that we have used, we have seven actives.

8:55They're all plant-based. And what they do is they work together to create signaling of appetite regulation. The main thing that we have seen in our studies, on human studies, it's blood sugar regulation. When you fix your blood sugar, good example, when you eat, we crave dessert, right? Immediately. Because we're like, I just want something sweet. Because what happens, your sugar spikes up. And that's when you're like, my sugar is spiking up in the body and it's signaling me to eat something sweet. So your glucose goes like this. When you take our product, what it's designed to do, it's supposed to do this.

9:26So you don't get those crazy spikes. It just regulates your blood sugar. And then it's like five metabolic pathways, which is blood sugar, visceral fat loss, AMPK, metabolism, and mood. So combined together, we take plant-based actives to mimic the end goal of the GLP-1 drugs, but naturally. So of course, it doesn't replace anything in your body. It enhances and supports what your body already does, but at a faster speed. Thanks for explaining. So one thing is clear, you saw a deeply personal problem and you wanted to fix it. But for those listening that are going through the same or went through the same and say like you spot the problem but how on earth did you come up with this solution?

10:11Because I see many problems in life and some seems to be including this one like there's a high entry barrier to saying okay I'll solve this for once and for all. Some could be you know easy fixes but this doesn't look like one is a fix so how did you go from this you know from the idea to the product and how did that entail what did that entail launch glp1 i was actually creating supplements and we did like a small batch of supplements just for like personally use right for my mom and then after my mom passed i was just hearing a lot of noise um around like women a lot of my friends are addicted to the glp1s like they're very skinny they're 98 pounds or it's underweight But I think what's what's happened is that I started seeing a trend of like people don't know what a peptide is.

11:01People don't know what GLP-1 is. People don't know what synthetic drugs are. People have no idea what vegan is or natural is versus not natural. Right. I think there's just a lot of misinformation and lack of education with the consumer. So that's what drove me to actually create this alternative where I'm just like, look, weight loss is here to stay. What can we do to help this? So for me, that was the goal. And the end result to me was like, why are people hooked on to this GLP-1 drug? And how do we make sure that our reliance on pharma drugs for lifelong therapy for people that don't need it is not there?

11:36Because there is, you know, we're actually improving longevity and lives. So I think we have a huge mission behind every product that we create, but we're starting with the GLP-1. How I started is my friend who actually was the CEO of the pharma company, is a pharmacist. And we have a functional medicine doctor on board as well. I come from a family of physicians, so I think I have that secondhand medicine knowledge and I've studied Ayurveda, so I'm certified in that. So I understand product innovation, which has been bulk of my career. And I also really deeply understand natural ingredients and what they do.

12:07So we went about basically we did 75 iterations of this formula and found these seven actives that are backed by human studies and animal studies to make sure that the way we combine them in a certain percentage is mimicking the end goal of what people want out of these drugs. But without the side effects, right? You don't want to have muscle loss. You don't want to have like burden on pancreas and stuff. And all that is gone already because more than the formula, it's a delivery technology. And when you combine the two, that's where the magic happens. So the technology was very, very important for us.

12:42And then, of course, the formula, because it is so strong and, you know, we have done so many iterations with so many ingredients, tested, failed, stabilized. The taste masking, which is also another problem. Luckily, I have the supply chain background to be able to do that. But it is an expensive product to manufacture. But end of the day, we are building a full oral dissolving strip technology across GLP-1, peptides, hormone health, vital vitamins. We have also created a really fun skew. It's called Alcohol Replacement Euphorics. And what that does is, you know, there's a lot of people that cannot drink much alcohol.

13:18So when you go out, you pop a strip and you feel the buzz and you get the dancing feet and the happy feeling without taking any alcohol. And there's no downtime. There's no side effects. So, yeah. So we're building a whole product line just around longevity. Wow, I love that. So I don't want to get into the technical details, but only the tip of the iceberg, let's say. How do you test such a product? How do you go about testing? And for those who have never experienced that in their lives. Okay, so let me just give you a quick demo of the product so people can get the demo and then I'll tell you how to test.

13:51So this is our lab sample. So right now we are in early sampling stage and we are taking pre-orders. So people get this kind of sample different colors. So this is what the strip would look like. This thin. You put on your tongue. I like to stick it to the roof of my tongue because I'm going to talk. But you can leave it on your tongue. So anywhere in the mouth, it sticks immediately and then it just disperses. So you take it. I just stuck it to the roof of my mouth and it's just going to stay there until it dissolves. So what we did, and this was really where formulation became hard, was we wanted actives that had clinical evidence behind them already.

14:25that improves AMPK, it improves blood glucose, that targets a visceral fat. So we took, we had, I think, 11 actives before. We shrunk to seven actives that have human studies and animal studies showing that it targets all of these pathways. And when you combine them, it works, right? The second thing that we did is after our formulation was finalized, we actually did three different human testing. So it's not full IRB, but we have done third-party lab testing with about 100 people with our strips to make sure that we are seeing the results that we are claiming. So the best results, like I said, is blood glucose.

15:04We have seen blood glucose go down in human specimens, especially people with a higher BMI from 120 to 85. And then we also tested if you stop using the strip, what happens to your blood sugar? Literally in two days, it pops back up to the hundreds. So like for us, that was like to me, if I can solve the problem of managing your glucose. I think I have solved, helped a lot of people. And to me, that's like the real issue, which is the blood glucose that causes a lot of downstream effects, especially with health. We have seen weight loss. I mean, as early as in two weeks, half of our specimens lost about four to seven pounds with two strips a day.

15:44So our recommendation is that, you know, you take one strip for weight maintenance before your meal in the morning, and you take two strips like this twice a day before each meal. And if you continue that, then you are going to get weight loss as expected. So in a six-week study, every single time we studied this, we have seen results anywhere from eight pounds to 16 pounds in weight loss. That's because like, what is the effect that causes them to lose weight that they don't want to, they are not that hungry, like you said before, they don't crave dessert and lose stuff. Yeah. So like, I think when your blood sugar is regulated, you don't have the cravings, right?

16:19So it does regulate your appetite. So you don't have the crazy cravings. It also targets your visceral fat. So we don't have the gastric emptying, like we haven't done that or any of that. We don't want to want that. So it is basically like it controls your cravings and your hunger goes down. And when your blood sugar is managed along with it, it also like there's one active that speeds up your metabolism. So it's all of it combined so it's appetite metabolism blood glucose when you combine your ampk when you combine all of that that's when you start your body actually starts to lose weight actively on its own so right now what's the current status of the of the company let's say you are in pre-launch yeah so we we are fundraising right now so we are in pre-launch we have product samples so we are actively giving out samples for creators and, you know, building all our channels.

17:13So if anybody wants to sign up, we have a founder's special price, which will be locked in for your future orders. So the product will be priced at, this is going to be like basically our lab sample box, but it has 30 strips. That is going to be priced at$70. But with the founder's special on our pre-order website, it's going to be$49. So that becomes your price going forward. And have you defined the marketing slash promotion, promotional strategy? What channels are you going to do? How do you figure it out? So I think TikTok is going to be a main one. I mean, this is very much of a TikTok product.

17:50So TikTok is definitely our main one. Most of our consumers live on Meta. So Meta has to happen along with that. We're going to be launching D2C and Amazon. But I think by month three, we're going to be in select retail. We like to take our time with retail, generally speaking. but it's going to be mostly online. So, yeah. So do you have, I don't remember from the previous company's experience with retail as well, like going into retail and - Yeah, big time. Because you said month three, you were very specific and you said select retails. Why? Like, again, for everyone who's listening to this and never, I don't know, went into retail, they don't know what it entails from a founder's point of view.

18:30You know, here's, I will say, a lot of brands, and especially I will say when founders are desperate, which we are desperate a lot of times, right, for cash. I will say I don't recommend launching with retail now unless you're launching with like a big celebrity and you have big budgets and you know that you have done enough PR. We're in a standpoint that a person like you and I is willing to walk into a Target or a pharmacy to be like, oh my God, XYZ celebrity launched this product and I have to go get it in the store. That's the only time you should launch with retail. Of course, there are some exceptions to this rule, but generally speaking, you should think about the fact that if I'm going to launch in retail, a person walking the door and just rushing to go to their checkout, how would they even come and look for me?

19:16Have they ever heard about my brand? Is there any brand awareness behind my name? And if there is no brand awareness behind your name, don't launch in retail because your product is going to just sit there. You're going to pay merchandising fee, which is astronomical right now, especially for small brands. and you're going to be charged with marketing dollars and you're not going to get your ROI. And then after a certain number of months, depending on who the retailer is, you will be kicked out and you will never be able to enter that door again. So it is very strategic for brands. I always recommend when I do my consulting, do not launch with retail if your brand is not ready.

19:50So like make sure you have enough runway and make sure you have enough brand awareness and marketing dollars to be able to actually succeed in retail. And then it has to be a full funnel machine, well-oiled machine, of your DTC, of your, if you're on Amazon, your Amazon, but like a strong omni-channel split. So if one thing goes down, like we saw in COVID, all the brands that were retail heavy, all the legacy brands, oh my God, it was an overnight, like massive blow to their P &L, right? So you cannot rely on one channel to be a bread and butter. It has to be like a very healthy mix of omni-channel activities with your marketing dollars.

20:24Yeah. And, you know, you have like a lot of experience. I think it's, You sat in 15 years or over 15 years of experience scaling brands and you built some brands yourself, including this one. So what are some of the top mistakes that you would like to avoid or experiences, let's say, only mistakes that you would like to do differently this time? I think for consumer, because like obviously we're having like a kind of like a consumer D2C podcast, I'll keep a digital. I mean, I've already discussed the retail as like a red flag, right? times there's so many mistakes i mean i can talk about founders like founder side mistake or would you tell me like which mistakes specifically because there's so many that i want to give you three but i want to make sure i cater to the audience like maybe it's at the top of your mind or not but like because this is what i mean like whenever you start a business or it happens to me at least i go like okay this time i'm going to do x y and z right because you know already that it's within you that it was something that probably you didn't like to go down uh it went down last time so you want to do it differently so maybe it's something you know that when when you start reading sync that well i don't know it would be i won't hire as fast as i hired last time or i will hire faster than i hired last time my first hire instead of being this it will be that role uh pitching investors or fundraising approach so i would say for me fundraising has definitely been a really good learning like when i first started my first company i had no idea i read books i had mentors i will say when people it's easier to sell and not with the vc it's easier to pitch your product and raise money when it is an idea stage pre-launch right because as founders you're building a vision and you're selling a vision.

22:20Your vision has to be backed by factual real-time data with like consumer, of course, it's a product that has to be validated. You for sure yourself have to be a founder product fit, founder market fit and product market fit, right? So those three things have to check out before you can start fundraising. But I will suggest make sure you have enough cash in the bank before you launch because what's gonna happen if you don't, because a lot of founders get this advice. And this is my two cents. Honestly, I've like made a lot of mistakes. I don't think founders should like dissolve your entire life savings.

22:56Sure, there are some lottery tickets. Okay, sometimes you do and you're down to a penny. We have seen those, you know, it was not the Dell guy. I don't remember which company it was like the CEO. He had $5. He rolled the dice, put all of his one money from a gambling thing and paid his employees, right because he won the drag pot it doesn't really happen to 99 of the people so just be really cautious about where your life is and try to fundraise friends family angels don't be ashamed of asking for money because you know honestly 20 years from now you'll be like i don't give a shit about my identity i should have just asked ask people who cares about ego like if somebody believed in you they maybe would have invested in you like it's just a matter of asking ask anyone The second thing I will say, be very careful about who you get in bed with in business.

23:41We have been burnt. Like I had an advisor who got us into a really bad deal. And it was right after my mom had passed. I was not in the right headspace, which I didn't realize. So I signed a contract that was not friendly at all for me. And when I tried to get out of it, it became like this mess. And yeah, I think there's a lot of people that will not have your best interests. So be extremely cautious about who you get in bed with, whether it's your co-founder, whether it's your partners in business in any shape or form. So like vet them out, go with your gut feeling. And if something just doesn't feel right and you have like taken your time on that signature, really think about it because your mind was stopping you for a reason.

24:24Because that was the case. I delayed that, delayed that, delayed that. And I was like, I'll just sign it. And then you're married. So just be very cautious about that. And the third thing, hire slowly, but fire quickly. The longer you wait, the more you have created issues downstream that are not visible right now, but they will creep up. Yeah, there's a saying that goes something like, if you talked about that person, you know, in not the best way, you know, with somebody else and said bad things about them or mentioned things they have probably done wrong more than two or three times. probably it's a good you know yeah so you need to do something about it because exactly exactly they're not your children you know that you can coach them all your life so it's like you know give yourself a threshold of like how many slip-ups can you deal with and then it's like just cut it loose yeah in terms of fundraising i know that it's tricky there's no right or wrong on this but sometimes you know you just need the money to properly launch but sometimes as you said launching or fundraising with an idea is probably tougher so what's probably your take on you know doing like the mvp and show some kind of revenue and then fund fundraising and getting their deal versus fundraising before showing any of that i think look i think if you're on technology People get funded on an idea, okay?

25:52They don't even have a deck. I mean, it's like a joke that consumer versus tech makes, right? Because I have an idea and there's memes about it and they get funded. So I will always say create an MVP. Make sure there is repeat purchase behavior in that. Like you could have the best product if there's no repeatability. Investors are not even going to look at it, right? Have some early traction. But even then, that might not be enough. So if there is a way to dissolve your 401k or use your savings, take$100 ,000, create some kind of like evidence that there is real demand. I have sold all of this in my beta version.

26:30I need the money to be able to do a full launch. And I think that's where people are like, all right, there's conviction. But you know what? I've also seen amazing founders. I've seen amazing products. And this industry is also a lot about who you know. So as founders, we're apparently also we're supposed to be good at sales. We're supposed to be good at cap tables. We're supposed to be good at P &Ls. But networking is one thing that I will say, get yourself in rooms where you can network with these people, you know, just face to face. Because a cold email, you'll probably spend months on those cold emails.

27:04And now I have started to look at my time as like, OK, if I have two hours available after work, like, am I going to go to an event where I can meet these investors? or should I go to like a meditation class? I'll probably go to an event because I'm like, that's maximizing my time more efficiently versus like sending cold emails to people that don't know you and soft intros go a long way. I've become very shameless. If I meet somebody once, I have no problem emailing them and be like, hey, I need help. This is what's happening. And you'll be surprised how many times people are actually willing to help.