Ep 590: How WeNatal Grew to 30,000 Families With $0 Paid Ads (Bootstrapped Supplement DTC)

0:00Vida Delrahim:Our darkest moment turned into our life's mission. You sometimes don't see the why when it's happening to you, but something great can come out of the darkest moments of your life. And we are here as living proof we didn't do any paid media. It wasn't about fancy seating boxes. It wasn't about like, you know, the girl with like 2 million followers. It was the doctors, the doulas, the midwives, the people who are experts in their field, word of mouth, through very trusted practitioners. Our biggest PSA in creating WeNatal was that you have a couple months, both partners to step up so you can show up knowing you put your best foot forward.

0:47This episode is brought to you by Contentful. Marketers, you know that feeling when your creative clicks, when that social post sends engagement through the roof? When your outside-of-the-box campaign hits ROI positive, when a personalized homepage turns prospects into customers, it's utter marketing bliss. Contentful helps you create tailored omni-channel experiences without working overtime. No stress, no limits, only possibilities. Get the feels at contentful.com. Vita, welcome to the D2C podcast. I'm really excited to connect again and rediscuss WeNatal and your vision there. How are you doing?

1:27Vida Delrahim:Great. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Okay. So let's take us back to the beginning. Why did you create WeNatal? It's a great question and one I never actually saw on my own roadmap. And so what happened was Ronit and I met in our young, early single days in our corporate careers at Nike. I was a senior marketing director. I grew up there. I was there from an intern. I spent 20 years at Nike perfecting like world-class events for athletes, marathons, races, and thinking through like every detail to make these athletes better and stronger. And the irony is when me and my husband wanted to start trying for a baby, we literally skipped all the prep that I knew was like appropriate for anyone to do anything.

2:10Vida Delrahim:And we literally just went to like, we're, we're young, we're healthy. We should just try. And fast forward, I did get pregnant. Actually, around the time my best friend Ronit was having her first child, I was past the first trimester when you're told that it's safe. I told everybody, went in for a routine checkup, and I noticed my OBGYN's face just dropped. And the room went silent, and I was waiting to hear a heartbeat, and I saw him. And sadly, I heard these words like no parent-to-be ever wants to hear, and he just looked at me and said, I'm so sorry. There's no heartbeat. And I, I mean, the gut punch and the devastation was so real.

2:51Vida Delrahim:And really what he told me was, it's so common, just keep trying. And I remember sobbing, asking for like, could it be because of this? Could it be my work, my stress, the coffee, too much coffee? Like I ran through the gamut. He just like said no to everything, was loving yet dismissive. And he ushered me back through this waiting room of all these glowing bellies and I was just sent on my way. And luckily for me, Ronit was like the first person, my best friend I went through. She had just had a baby girl. So forget the fact that it like shattered all my dreams of having a kid with my best friend and having maternity leave together and like doing all the things.

3:30Vida Delrahim:We left Nike to work alongside Dr. Mark Hyman, who's amazing, big name in functional medicine. And she encouraged me to go on beyond what was just showing up as normal. My normal labs, my doctor kept assuring me, you know, you're fine. You're fine. I dug deeper because of her. I found out of Hashimoto's, which is a thyroid disorder. I fixed up my eating. I cleaned, added supplementation, added some medication. I literally did all the things and went on to have my healthy baby girl, Dahlia, who's now eight. And I thought the nightmare was over. I figured she taught me what I need to know. I perfected my routine.

4:06Vida Delrahim:Fast forward to early 2020, we were trying at the same time for our second children and I went in for another routine checkup only to get that same devastating no heartbeat and stopped dead in my tracks for the second time but was again assured that this stuff just happens and I didn't know better so I went along with it the only thing that changed this time is a week later Ronique called me with the same outcome. So there we were, two best friends who had actually done all the things. We had done all the things that people tell us. We thought we had this perfect care prenatal and we were, you know, two losses, two best friends, zero satisfying answers.

4:49Vida Delrahim:There was literally nothing. And she wasn't willing to accept that. She's like, I'm not going to try again unless you tell me there's something I could do differently. And so she went into the research rabbit hole. She started digging. And Eric, I remember the day she called me when she uncovered all this research and she said, did you know men are 50 % of fertility outcomes and men are 50 % of miscarriages and pregnancy loss. And it's like so intuitive. It's the biggest like, duh, of course there, we know it takes two to make a baby. But yet I was there with two losses. My husband was in the room every single time.

5:24Vida Delrahim:No one even turned to him to ask him a single question. And I know through all the self-blame and the guilt and the doubt that I had, it didn't even dawn on me that a single thing that he did could have caused this. And so while it is so intuitive, it was mind-blowing for us. And additionally, the research showed that antioxidants, high-dose antioxidants, could four to five times improve the likelihood of men helping their partners conceive and have a healthy pregnancy. And so those two pieces of research basically changed our lives. We're like, how could it be that no one's talking about this?

5:59Vida Delrahim:How could it be that no men's prenatal exists on the marketplace? As all founders say, there's a gap in the marketplace. It was a personal journey and that stopped us down our track. We literally, our first concept was a men's prenatal because no one was talking about this. And then when we pulled back the covers of the women's space, we found that they all fell in two camps, either super expensive, a lot of capsules, hard consumer experience and you had to get it like through a doctor's office or super accessible, maybe something you could get at a convenient or a drugstore, but the dosages were too low to make a difference.

6:33Vida Delrahim:The forms of the ingredients were suboptimal. And then there was a whole paragraph of like additives, fillers, other junk that should not be in your vitamins. And we quickly realized, okay, we need to reinvent this space. We actually need to make this a great experience for both partners. And given our background, treat fertility like a team sport, one in which we know, like, Eric, if you decided to run a marathon, you wouldn't sign up today and run tomorrow. You would get the gear, you would get a coach, a training plan, find the right shoes, find the right apparel, you would do the thing. So you show up on race day and don't fall flat.

7:08Vida Delrahim:And so our biggest PSA in creating WeNatal was that you have a couple months, both partners to step up and put your best foot forward. So there's no guarantees in life, but you can show up with the best outcome and show up knowing you put your best foot forward. And so the impetus behind WeNatal was to create the best supplements that are clean, that are third-party tested, which is a whole, third-party tested is a whole side note, vitamins are the wild, wild west, and there's no regulation. And also empower people with resources, education, and empowerment, which we weren't given. We found it very dismissive.

7:46Vida Delrahim:we found fertility to be this black box of misinformation. And that's essentially, that was our why. And we haven't looked back since. Well, thank you for sharing that. I share, you know, some challenges in that space and incredibly psychologically, you know, traumatizing a little bit, that powerlessness feeling. And especially as the guy as well. It's also interesting. I was recently reading about saunas and cold plunges and how we've just assumed that they're good for everyone. But another study came out and really drilled in on women and saw in this one particular study that cold plunges were maybe not as good.

8:23There was the shocking aspect of it was bad for some reasons. But it's just sort of like a lot of medicine is done with like men in mind. And women are kind of an afterthought in some ways. I've heard that sentiment across the medical system. So it's interesting that what you've done is kind of flipped it on its head in a way where we put all this focus on women, but kind of let men off the hook in a lot of ways. I think this is changing. My friend just got a pair of underwear for his sauna that he wears that has like cooler packs in it to save for, you know, to like that's the first product of its kind I've kind of seen in that space.

8:52Vida Delrahim:Well, you're absolutely right. You know, at Nike, we used to say brands shrink it and pink it. There was like no thought for the woman except like the color and making it smaller. Our biochemistry is different. Our anatomy is different. Everything about us is different. Yet you're right. The research is not there. And then for, you're right, the irony is that in fertility, the sole focus is on the woman, what she ate, what she drank, how she slept, you know, her physiology. But yet literally the male is like in most counts, not even checked until maybe a year of struggling or more. Maybe if you're IVF, but also the stats are alarming that 25 % of couples going through assisted reproductive technology, the male partner isn't even checked, which would take a whole nother podcast to say, okay, so you're putting the wife or the partner through medicine, through expensive procedures, painful procedures.

9:42Vida Delrahim:It's not a hundred percent full proof. And you're not even like looking at the mail to see if potentially the other 50 % could be optimized. So there is so much education that needs to happen in this world, but we are seeing the tides flip a little bit. We are seeing male fertility on the forefront. I don't know if you saw there's now like people racing people's sperm against each other and it's like sperm oh i did not see sperm racers i mean i think it's fun because for men it makes it competitive i think for a long time sperm was like shameful and men didn't want to do these tests but now it's so accessible it's a barometer of your overall health it is nothing other than like blood work and you can check your sperm or semen to actually just check biomarkers of your longevity your health and what's so cool for men is you guys are the superheroes in this equation because you're generating sperm every second of the day 1500 sperm a second and so in about 72 days about three months with diet with lifestyle with these changes you can have a completely different situation than what you started with i want to dive in your go-to-market a little bit but talk to me a little bit about the state of fertility in the world my my sense like almost everyone i know having kids a little bit later, but most of the people I know are going through different, you know, being very conscious of the fertility.

11:00Maybe they're using IVF or, but I think it was taken for granted that you'd just be able to have a kid, you know, and I think there's so many people that it's a challenge for these days.

11:10Vida Delrahim:Absolutely. So when we, in 2020, when we incepted weenatal, one in eight couples were dealing with infertility and that's a global issue. It is not something in certain states, in certain countries, in certain socioeconomic statics. This is a global issue that's happening. And when a few short years later, we launched two years later, it's now one in six is what the American Health Organization is saying. That is like literally we all know somebody. And what you realize is it's multifaceted, of course, but our birth rates are dropping below our replacement rates. So between every relationship, if you consider the replacement rate is 2.1.

11:48Vida Delrahim:And most countries now are falling below 2.1, with like South Korea at 0.8. The US is about 1.7. We are not making more humans. So if you care about, you know, the human population, we could be an endangered species. We are not growing at the rate. And there's some alarming articles saying that like sperm can be at zero by 2045, which is around the corner. And so it is a global fertility crisis. We're seeing miscarriages on the rise. We're seeing erectile dysfunction on the rise. We're seeing all these issues. And of course, the whole assisted reproductive technology world is booming. It's a multi-billion dollar organization and one that people need to be educated and empowered and not just a crutch to say like, oh, I tried, let's go to this.

12:34Vida Delrahim:There are underlying issues. And that's why we actually just had a panel with Dr. Natalie Crawford, and she said so beautifully that health and fertility are hand in hand. It is one biomarker of your health. And so it's not okay just like, oh, when we want to have kids, let's turn on the fertility checkmark. These are things that we all should be doing, nourishing ourselves, movement, prioritizing sleep, cleaning your home of toxins. All these things are parameters for call it longevity, call it overall wellness and fertility. And so we'd like to like people to understand that it's important no matter what stage your life you're in.

13:09Vida Delrahim:And if you're ever wanting to consider children, this problem of this toxic soup we're living in is sadly helping the world get more infertile and we need to do something about it. Entrepreneurs always do better when they have like a real challenge they're cracking. When yours is like the continuation of the species, it must be extra motivating extra and listen like ours came from heartbreak and loss and yeah you know i i literally was just telling a friend like while that was like the most devastating moment of my life i'm so grateful for the those two little souls that came into me and ronit's world because if they didn't come for that short time and if we didn't have those losses a week apart we may never have created we natal and oh by the way we're over 30 000 families that we've supported to becoming parents.

13:54Vida Delrahim:We've gotten baby shower invites and ultrasound pictures, and literally our darkest moment turned into our life's mission. And I share that only to say that you sometimes don't see the why when it's happening to you. You sometimes really question and doubt, but something great can come out of the darkest moments of your life. And we are here as living proof. And we have now, to your point, helped thousands or tens of thousands of babies being born, which the reason we're in this global fertility crisis, a lot of good reasons. Women have entered the workforce, we're going to schooling, and we're choosing to have kids later in life, but we're talking about the people who want to have kids who are struggling.

14:33Vida Delrahim:And if we can help those populations, we can help overall. Yeah, it sounds dire, but the whole world population is at risk. And help marriages too. It can be such a stressful time, such a stressful thing to go through. and just being able to take it on as a team, you know, putting the we in prenatal, I think is such a valuable thing as well, which is good for your body and your physiology, but tackling the challenge together and being accountable together is gonna help the relationship going into this situation as well. Couldn't agree more. It makes you more empowered. You're doing it together and it strengthens the relationship.

15:08Vida Delrahim:And honestly, what I wish I had, because during the miscarriages, it definitely strains a relationship. It definitely, the sadness of it and the blame and the bitterness and the anger. I went through all the emotions. It could have been such a more empowering chance to like look under the hood, improve our health, improve our lives. And instead it was met with uncertainty and like sadness. Okay, you're bent on making this product and making it better than what you found with the competitors. Talk to me a little bit about compiling the product and what went into your MVP, I guess. Yeah, so the initial concept was the prenatal for her and him.

15:45Vida Delrahim:We spent two years assembling the best medical board possible because, again, we were two moms from Nike. We did not see this as like we're going to do this alone. We assembled the best medical board that includes Dr. Mark Hyman, Kelly Levesque, Bridget Tigemeyer. I mean, really well-known names in the functional medicine space and the medicine fertility space. They spent what we thought we'd come to market, which I'm sure a lot of founders can resonate with. we thought, okay, well, like it'll take a few months, we'll formulate and we'll get going. Took two years to not only formulate, but find the right manufacturer that would actually produce it in small batches without the additives and fillers.

16:24Vida Delrahim:Like we were adamant about what we wanted to happen, get the density of like eight capsules into three. And so what I think hopefully a lot of founders can resonate with is that you think you're launching next month and next month, But that situation took over a year for us. So we assembled the medical board. They compiled research of hundreds of clinical studies, research articles of the best dosages for men and for women, and the right forms, the right ingredients. And oh, by the way, we share all of that on our website. So if there's ever like, why do you have this much vitamin D? And why is it in this form?

16:59Vida Delrahim:We share it. We cite the research articles. Like we wanted to build this from a true place of integrity. what we wanted to take, what we wish we had. And so after building the medical board and then doing the formulation, then came finding the manufacturer, which took a long time because a lot of people want to produce cheaply, which means adding the stuff to make it go through the machines easier. And we weren't willing to do that. And so it took a lot of trial and error to find a manufacturer to work with us. And it's operationally a nightmare. We do produce in small batches. Our expiration dates are not hundreds of years.

17:34Vida Delrahim:They're two years. Like we really took the burden of it so that our consumer could have the best product. And let me be honest, I see why big brands don't do it. I now see why VC-backed companies just want to produce things quickly, easily reduce your margins. And we are bootstrapped. We literally are doing this without the concern about the margins because we want to bring the best, highest quality product to life without that pressure. And so we might be growing more sustainably, but we're so proud of the product. And that's something we'll never sacrifice. What have been the major growth levers for the business?

18:09Vida Delrahim:Yeah. And that's what's fun to talk about because we are probably the non-traditional marketers. I think most of our friends with brands right now rely heavily on paid media. We didn't do any paid media. We literally three and a half years in dabbled with some, didn't learn much and turned it back off. We grew this thing from a root cause of it started with our medical board. The Dr. Mark Hyman's of the world gave us a jump out the gate because people who love and trusted these medical professionals knew that just their backing on it meant they're in. And so we literally started with him, Kelly Levesque, Bridget Tigemeyer.

18:49Vida Delrahim:We started with our medical board and grew organically, believe it or not. Ronit and I would go into OBGYN's offices and educate them on why we're different, why we needle exist, why men need to be on a prenatal. And by the way, most doctors get very little to no education on nutrition. So they were grateful, receptive. We have some of the biggest fertility doctors in LA now recommending us. And so our influencer, if you will, it wasn't about fancy seating boxes. It wasn't about like, you know, the girl with like 2 million followers. It was the doctors, the doulas, the midwives, the people who are experts in their field.

19:28Vida Delrahim:And so we penetrated that world first. And it was word of mouth. And it was through very trusted practitioners. Similar to this, Roni and I went on podcasts. And something that was actually the most interesting that was never intentionally made for marketing, even though we were both marketers coming from one of the best marketing brands, Nike, we always knew that like most medicine, pharmaceuticals, and vitamins came in very sterile looking bottles. What I was doing when Ronit told me what to take for my pregnancy journey, I would hide them in the cabinet and then I would forget to take them.

20:02Vida Delrahim:And they were all ugly. They were like white, ugly plastic bottles. And so we did want to reinvent the space and say like, hey, maybe if it's like nice enough and part of your lifestyle, you might leave it out in the kitchen or your bathroom. And actually, a vitamin is only as good as if you're going to take it and make consistency out of it. So from the start, Ronit and I knew that like branding was super important to us. We work with one of the best brand designers. We created these beautiful glass jars and a refill system. And organically what happened when people started ordering it on day one, they got this box with the her and the him and they just started posting because it was, it was a category disruptor.

20:39Vida Delrahim:It was a vitamin that probably looked more like a beauty product or like a perfume or a skin lotion. It was so beautiful. the logo, the coloring, and people naturally shared in a world where like everyone's pay to play these days, you know? So it was organic through the packaging and that became probably one of the biggest disruptors. It was through experts in the space, not your typical influencers. And we didn't pay a single person. It was all through relationships. And you're selling in maybe not completely, but two times as much as someone just marketing to women in a way, right? Like, cause I bet most often you're having it bought by, for the male and the female side.

21:19And so you're actually, I always think of like the shampoo, uh, instructions, wash, rinse, and then some marketing genius came up with repeat, which maybe doubled, which maybe doubled their sales as well, which is, you guys have a much better reason for it, but it must help with AOV when you're selling to two people rather than just one.

21:36Vida Delrahim:And when we launched, we're like, okay, this is a new category. Will men even be into this? And like 50 % of our sales to this day are still the together kit, which is men and women doing this together. And so, and we have 20 % men doing it, you know, alone. And also it is so empowering to see like this conversation with men come full circle. Men are like eager to like see what they, like I always said, the men are well-intentioned. There just wasn't the focus on them. There was really no guidance. And now this is a low hanging tangible thing that they can do to support their partners in this huge moment.

22:11Vida Delrahim:And it's not just the genetics you're giving your kid to get through like a healthy pregnancy. The genetics you give them are their lifelong health. And so if we took a little bit of that responsibility of this golden timeframe, like, of course we should all do whatever we can. So yes, it definitely helps the AOV and, you know, the long-term value. But what we're also seeing is that I'm sure, you know, Eric, our food system is just depleted even if you're eating clean, even if you're eating healthy. And so it is important now more than ever for your audience listening to be on a high quality multi, no matter what stage, you could be done having kids.

22:47Vida Delrahim:I still take weanedal, I'm done having kids, but because it's a really great antioxidant immunity blend and you really want to make sure you're on something in this day and age. Our food is just depleted because our soils are depleted. If you consider our grandparents' generation, one orange back then is the equivalent of eating eight oranges today. So I don't know many people eating eight oranges. The point is that you could be eating all organic, a clean Mediterranean diet, all the things, and still not be getting enough. And I guess that's one of my questions for you is because you've got people for this period, maybe three months, maybe longer, maybe it's a year if they're if they're continually trying, maybe they restart it when they're trying to have children again.

23:32But what are your thoughts on bridging this into a postnatal supplement or something or a children's multivitamin for when their kids grow up? What are you thinking on how to expand the line?

23:43Vida Delrahim:It's a great question. So two things. On the women's side, WeNatal was specifically formulated as a postnatal. And that is a big, important note that people should take. A lot of people think, okay, I had the baby, I'm going to stop taking my vitamins. You are arguably more depleted at birth because you've just had a baby. You're now sleep deprived. You're likely waking up. You might be breastfeeding, whatever the case may be, both mom and dad are now needing the nourishment more than ever. And so our prenatal was formulated for pre, during, and post. And some articles actually say postpartum for women could last like seven to 10 years.

24:18Vida Delrahim:It takes a while for your body to recover from birth and like feeding and all the things. For men, it's equally as important. You're now a caregiver. You're now most likely helping, waking up, whatever the case may be. And We Needle for him was designed to be antioxidant support and a multi. And most people, most of the men have stayed on it simply because they feel better. They have energy, mental focus, better libido, that regrowth of hair. Like they're exhibiting signs of overall health. And that's what people also need to know that like fertility is not a check the box for this time of life.