Why This Creator Built a Tech Company Instead of Another CPG Brand | Sam Cutler, Mindful

22:15Sam Cutler:Yeah. And now focus maybe a little bit more practical. So like, how does Mindful actually work? Like, what does it do on a daily basis for users, etc.? Yeah. So users have meal plans every single day. Everything is video based from a content perspective. So there's coaching. There's also mindset exercises and tools to work through some of your boundaries with food. If you are trying to understand and be more mindful of your eating, we have a number of different exercises, understanding where you feel full, all those different things, as well as coaching, expert guidance, and then video-based meal plans.

22:49So user would go on to the app, they would go through onboarding, share with us, you know, their biggest like journey with nutrition. So again, it might be that they're struggling with fertility or something that they're very aware of. To be honest, most people come to us because of a physical thing like bloating or skin, and then they end up realizing the link between that and a hormonal imbalance or that and a, you know, overall chronic inflammatory condition or autoimmune condition, etc. So it's not always like the awareness piece around the bigger. So as they go through onboarding, we are able to send them to specific programs within the platform tailored to those needs that they're after.

23:29They are given a program to get started with. And we have a number of different programs that layer on top of each other. So our whole thing is that we don't have laps in programs. So you're always like going through a next level. So it's gamified that you would move through a program and then when you're done that, you go to the next one right away. Obviously, you can not do it or pause it or traveling, whatever. But the idea is that there's building consistency over time in a fun way. Everything is gamified through community challenges. So you are tracking your progress. You're sharing it in community.

23:59Some of the actual exercises involve connecting with other people in community and sharing your wins with them or understanding what theirs are so you can support them. So that becomes just from a product perspective becomes like a strong retention tool and it gets really sticky and people love to connect with each other. And ultimately you're logging how your food is making you feel. And we're turning a lot of those qualitative habits into quantitative metrics that wouldn't traditionally be. So your bloating, your skin, your energy, your sleep, all of these things which I think are really important.

24:33Like we have a lot of wearables and it's great to get that data. But how those things feel for you, in my opinion, is actually more important because you can have a wearable come back and say, hey, you're really tired today. But if you don't feel tired because you're actually a different place in your cycle as a woman and your hormones are in a different place, it doesn't mean you shouldn't go to the gym. It doesn't mean you shouldn't, you know, maybe exert yourself that day. So you have to take the science and the data combined with your own learnings and your findings about yourself. And so that's what we really do is aggregate that together to give you the best sort of guidance forward and also give you correlation analysis between the different ingredients that you're eating and how they might not be working for you or how they might actually be working in a big way.

25:15So I kind of think we sit like in the intersection of health tech and ed tech in a way because we're really empowering women with a lot of information, not just on their bodies, but also nutrition education. Because once you learn something, no one can take that away from you. You know, the power of that. Like if you know the benefit of a banana, it's like, you know the benefit of that. You know what it does for you. Calories just locks you into a box that you need to count. And so once you have the information, you're empowered.

25:43Sam Cutler:Well, as the fit for tell, you have built an audience of over half a million followers across social media. And you obviously have leveraged that to get users from Mindful. Do you have any information on kind of like the amount of users that are organically coming through your audience and actually Mindful users versus non-SAM followers? I mean, right now I'm the main channel. So I would say most of our users are coming through us. I can definitely like pull up those numbers if you want to see them just to actually see what channels they're coming from. But they are mostly coming from my pages and the mindful page as well.

26:18So the thing that happens with social media, which is really powerful, is viral content is so common right now. And you can be Jennifer with a thousand followers who mostly post their kids and you post this really funny video with your husband and it goes viral. And all of a sudden you're like, I've had friends text me where this has happened to them and they go, what do I do now? Like, do we need an agent? Am I famous? Like, am I going to wake up with a bunch of followers overnight? Probably not. But what happens with social media is that all of your content is shown to your audience, like your niche core audience.

26:50And it's shown to more of your audience. And depending on how it performs, it's shown to, it's distributed across Discover and a wider audience that's like very similar and might like it. So what we do is we focus on getting the best content for our existing audience and driving people from there. But the best it can perform for our community is how we get to, you know, the wider community. Now, once you get to that wider community, you need to have something that supports them right away. Everything needs – this is how I think of things. You know, hopefully it's helpful for people. In my opinion, everything needs to somehow deliver value and everything needs to somehow convert.

27:28because if you have that video, like my example of, you know, the woman who might just randomly post their kids and then has a video that goes viral and is like, I've always wanted to be a creator. Great. Now what do I do? When they come to your page, even no matter how great that content is or how viral it is, if everything on your page has nothing to do with what that video is about or doesn't deliver value for a reason for them to follow you, their mates save that video and they're never going to follow you. And that doesn't deliver anything. And you also can't capture them. So if you have a piece of content that goes viral, now if that person had a bunch of videos, even if they have like 20 views on them, but they're all about her online shop where she's selling these shoes.

28:03And then that video goes viral about these shoes that just like don't hurt your feet. That's great because they're going to end up on her page and it backs up the story of when it hits, right? Like it finally hits and now you have things that back it up. So everything we do, we think of how do we continue to build that story so that when people land on our page, although we're doing so organically, like I said, it gets shown to other people that aren't core, like, hey, I know who Sam is or I know who Mindful is. I know what Mindful is. When they land on our page, they have a good enough understanding.

28:33And in every single piece of content I put out, you'll see this now as you see my content, Scott, but there's always a CTA. And sometimes that CTA is more salesy, like, hey, we have this new program, join the program. But a lot of the time, the CTA is just to acquire customers or give them a sense of what Mindful is or give them a sense of who I am. So it might be like a free grocery list or it might be a sample bundle of recipes on the app. But what we do is we have something ready for when an audience that doesn't know us or know me ends up on our content that we can capture them. So yes, a lot of our community comes from or all of our community right now comes from my videos and comes from mindful videos.

29:16But we strategically have placed ourselves in a way to acquire those customers either to an email list or directly into the app and also segment them into what their problem set is. So if they don't sign up for the app, I still know that this customer has hormone imbalance. I still know that this customer is focused on their skin and their beauty. So we can continue to speak to them targeted to what they're dealing with. I think any creator that's looking to build a business, make sure, like, don't just half, don't dip a toe in, like go fully in, even if it's for a short period of time and you're not sure if that's what you want to do, fully commit and step into that phase of your life and that role as the founder, the CEO, or, you know, even the owner of that one product.

29:57Because when it hits, you'll have enough backstory for someone that lands on your page to then decide whether they like it or not. And you can sit there and say, oh, I haven't had a viral video. So like, I don't know if anybody really actually wants my product. Just keep creating content around it and And it will happen, in my opinion, but really have like it set up properly, have your many chats set up, have your flow set up. Like that's where you're really going to see if you can actually drive customers.

30:24Sam Cutler:Yeah, and I think the whole goal and all purpose of these creative founder brands is that you have a built-in audience that you can leverage to put free eyeballs on your company. And that can really help you accelerate that zero to one and one to ten phase. and where you can also really use yourself as a guinea pig to figure out what type of content resonates best to turn viewers into customers. And once you nail down the customer persona, and that's obviously something that you have a lot of data now on, now you can actually take a lot of ad budget and deploy it exactly in that type of persona.

30:56Sam Cutler:Let's talk about the 1 to 10 and 10 to 100 phase. So what is your acquisition strategy that is going to go beyond your own socials? I just think we have the playbook. Like I've, I really have the playbook for connecting with women and not just the content that connects with them, but also how to share that story organically. The next phase of growing mindful will look like bringing on other creators that will also share their stories. And at different phases, you know, we've, we've started building out this like heel in public army. And we've talked about this before, but I have been this heel in public voice.

31:31voice. And I have been this person that shared, here's what I eat in a day. And you could literally go back years on my page and see, I look completely different, but I'm still sharing what I eat in a day. And then you'll see, you'll notice how I slowly realize dairy doesn't work for me. Then it comes out of the what I eat in a day. It's like, there's been this sort of playbook of how to share that and how to build trust, really. So our expansion plan with Mindful to go to the next level is really, okay, I did this with half a million followers across all of our community, all of our different platforms.

32:06How do we take this and replicate it and build this for, like I said earlier in this call, but different demographics. So I'm here, I'm Canadian, I live in the US. Great. That's North American demographic. But this is a global conversation. We have members in 120 countries around the world. So culturally, food and diet culture are different in those different communities in different countries? How do we have ambassadors that represent what that means in those different geographic places and our top markets as we look at expanding? How do we also have women in different walks of life, different hormonal phases, right?

32:42I might not resonate so much with somebody who's in college because they're like, oh, great. Yeah, it's easy for you to do that. You're home with your husband in your house, da, da, da. But also I might not resonate necessarily with somebody who's 45 post or perimenopause going into like so that demographic has to be represented by different creators so that's real and different voices so that's really how we plan to expand and own all the different markets within women's health and i think like i think the product is a big piece of that as well building the best product that people trust because i really do feel like our community trusts me they trust our content how do we make that the best experience and how do we make it the non-negotiable for them to need to open every single day multiple times a day so that they are supported in their health journeys and that they're telling all of their friends and their sister and their best friend and their mom and so that becomes this just viral pump of of like hey i'm doing this challenge let's do it together like there's a reason why group fitness classes work.

33:49There's a reason why women heal together in communities. It's that we talk. When we feel good, we talk. And we talk about it and we want to tell people. Let this, you know, basically let women do what they already do in a way that's strategic and supported and let us build the best product that allows them to talk about that. That's really, I think, how we continue to grow.

34:11Sam Cutler:Yeah. And now you have bootstrapped the company, but obviously to execute on improving the product, on the go-to-market strategy, on building your own team. You need capital. Earlier, you already mentioned that you're currently talking to investors. So what has your experience been like raising capital as a creator entrepreneur? Do investors see it as a risk? Do they see it as a moat? Do they see it as both? Definitely both. I think it depends on what stage of investor and how seasoned they are. What's something that's interesting is a lot of investors will say automatically think about the creator economy when they think about me.

34:44I think the creator economy is, you know, a growth engine for us. But we don't build for the creator economy. We're really building in health tech and fem tech. And so, you know, in a lot of ways, it's been a benefit because it can get you in the door, but it does have a certain stigma to it and definitely can have people underestimating you. I don't know if you know Michelle Romanow, but she is an investor. She's also on Dragon's Den, which is the Canadian version of Shark Tank. And she's an investor in our first company. And she posted this morning about women always talking about, you know, I was overlooked because I'm a woman in tech or in startup space.

35:24She had this interesting video that was people underestimate you because the right people, well, first of all, from investment, the right people that believe in your mission, that believe in you will align with it, whether that's because you're a creator, or like whatever you're underestimated for. But she says, I'd rather be underestimated than overestimated, right? And show people what you can do. So I think from a creator perspective, there's this stigma around creators, which is really funny because I think creators have to hustle so hard, especially if you're going to make a decent living and like continue to expand.

35:56But there is a wave of creators that kind of emerged in the pandemic days of, I have a video overnight, I'm famous, and I don't know what to do with it. And now I'm like getting all these brand deals. and I think I'm it. But then there's creators who it looks like that happens, like the Alex Earls of the world, but they've been hustling. Like that is a workhorse. Like she knows what she's doing. Somewhere in between, I think we're seeing like a great divide in the creator space right now with people that have been, that are maybe underestimated and really actually do have the business sense and know what they're doing.

36:27And then we do see people who just want to live like a freedom lifestyle and they might say, hey, I want to build a product. And that's where it's perfect to just like co-brown something like slap your name on it but you'll learn really early on that that's not for you if you know once like pretty quickly once you have to sit in investor meetings or you know ship tech product or whatever it is so yeah I think like it works in my favor in some cases definitely to get in the door it can be held against you but like so what every like everybody has something always held against them you just decide if you're a victim to it or if you're going to, you know, use it to your advantage and let people underestimate you and then prove them wrong.

37:11I always think it's funny if somebody like doesn't want to invest, I'm like, I can't wait till you're sending me the email in five years from now laughing about that conversation we had when you pass on investing and you lost, you know, millions of dollars. So that's how I am. But I'm a competitive person.

37:27Sam Cutler:I'm completely the same competition is everything for me. So even if I get a rejection post for something very, very stupid, I'm like, okay, now I'm going to prove you wrong. So thank you for actually giving me that extra bit of a motivation. Yeah. You just mentioned something very interesting about creators and that's like something very funny about us. Like although we are investors in creator and celebrity brands, we actually say that 98 % of the celebrities or creators should never launch their own companies just because launching a company is so much different than actually just being a content creator.

38:00Sam Cutler:And also now that you're a content creator, that gives you the USP to actually launch your company because you can leverage that built-in audience to put free eyeballs on your own company. However, if you launch your company, you now need to actually focus on doing that. So that means that you can spend less time on actually creating content and you kind of lose your USP, the reason that gave you to exist in the first place. So I'm curious, how do you manage the balance between being a creator and being an entrepreneur focused on building mindful? I have always said to anybody who's a creator, your value is also based off of what else is going on in your life.

38:37Like your pricing, if you're pricing yourself, is based off of what else is going on in your life and pulling you away. So if you're a mom, your time is limited. If you're a founder, your time is limited. If you're a C-level executive, whatever you have going on. If you're a professional athlete or you're doing sponsored deals, like you're not making content all day. So what matters in that is if you want to build something, know that your time is going to be so limited. So align strategically. Like I still do sponsored content and I do partnerships. 98 % of my content, probably 99 % of my content is about mindful.

39:09That's the product I'm selling and that's what I do. But it's not, you know, salesy because it's mindful evolves so organically. I just keep talking about health and nutrition and what I'm eating and, you know, my origin story. And then there's a CTA and then everything comes back to mindful. There's never a post like, hey, guys, I'm the founder of Mindful. Please join today. So it's about like all the content is organically going back into your product. It probably has evolved to like a lot more about it being that story because I've switched a little bit from like strategically from Heal in Public to Build in Public because I think it's really cool to see like the again, the origin story of the creator.

39:45But, you know, you're going to have to step away like from some of those brand deals. But again, that doesn't mean that you're not going to make money off of them. you just have to be really clearly aligned. And now as a founder, especially with me looking at like other people that will have vested interest, every single brand deal that I do has to also be complimentary to Mindful. So you can't afford to say, oh yeah, but they're really going to pay me a lot. So I'll just like kind of throw this under the radar, even though the ingredients don't really align, which is again, not something that I would do, but a lot of creators do.

40:17They preach and preach something. I mean, you talk about this. Sometimes people just like launching a brand that's so misaligned with what we were talking about the JLo example, so misaligned with what they talk about every day. Creators do this all the time. They're like, yeah, maybe the post won't perform that much. Nobody really sees that there's dairy in it, even though I talk about how I don't eat dairy. So you can't do that anymore when you have a brand that you stand behind. You can, but it's going to impact the brand, right? Even brands do this sometimes that don't have a burst in the face of it.

40:46But it will ultimately end up not just hurting you as a creator, end up hurting your brand. So everything you do has to first go through the lens of does Sam, the fit fatale, like this product, believe in it? Do I have time for it? And can they hit these, you know, the fees that are now associated with the fact that my hours and my time going towards this would be pulled away from building a business. And now that's worth more to the point that I was saying originally. So that's the first filter. Then it goes through the filter of would I put this product on mindful? Would I tell people in my community to have this?

41:17Would I align Like if we're in a event, do I want to be next to this brand? And I think of that. Now, a lot of people don't, but I do because my focus is on mindful. And I will walk away from I don't care how much the brand deal is if it doesn't then pass that secondary filter that it has to go through. So I just think that's smart business. But also you have to know what your product is. Like if you're, again, selling matcha and you're going to make a couple thousand dollars off of selling matcha, and then you have a huge deal that might be competitive with that, but they're paying you$100 ,000, Maybe you should probably take that brand deal.

41:49But if you're building a tech company that has the potential to be a billion dollar business, to me, the trade-off's not there to negatively impact that or my role as a founder. So you just have to look at it through that lens. I also never had a manager until I built Mindful. And then I was just like, all right, not do it.

42:05Sam Cutler:It's fun. It's fun to manage the sales side of it when it's just you. But I've handed it off to an incredible team and they build mega brands and mega people so they know what they're doing and they look everything through the lens of Mindful as well. You just have to have those people on your team. Yeah, it makes sense, right? It was the right timing. And yeah, at that moment, you kind of need that extra pair of hands to help you grow as well. So yeah, the final question that I have, what is next for Mindful and what are you most excited about? Launching the new app. So excited about getting this into the hands of our customer.

42:38I'm so excited about getting other women to be the voice of this story and this conversation. I knew right away, back to that origin story in that conversation with the wedding. The fact that that was so global, I knew that that wasn't just my story. Like I'm just one person who's gone through one silo of an experience as a woman, but everybody, so many people have these incredible stories, whether they're trying to heal or they have heals or how nutrition has come into play with what they're dealing with. And so I'm really excited to see those voices get amplified and that conversation just go so far beyond me because I think it's like, that's where you watch it grow.

43:16It's like you have a child and it grows up and you can be the parent that you don't want them to go off to college. You don't want them to excel and succeed. But for me, I view this like business baby as I can't wait for everyone else to get to for it to just grow into everyone else, like leading that story alongside me and hopefully, you know, far beyond me. So that's really what I'm excited about. And then obviously, like from a near future thing is just getting this this new app into into everyone's hands.

43:42Sam Cutler:Yeah. And to end, where can people find you? Personally, you can find me, TheFitFatile, on everything. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, all the places. And then mindful is mindfulwith2Ls.so is our website. Also our Instagram. All of our social platforms are the same. If you guys want to chat, shoot me an email. Sam at mindfulwith2Ls.so. Super easy. I think you have a lot of creator founders that listen to this. I'm always open to connecting and supporting other people in their journey as well. So please reach out. I will make sure to put that all in the description as well. Sam, thank you so much for being here.

44:18Thank you, Scott, for having me.

44:20Sam Cutler:Thank you for listening to the Hot Start VC podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe and leave a rating or review. It really helps us grow. You can also subscribe to our newsletter at hotstart.vc for more breakdowns on how celebrities and creators build billion dollar brands. Thanks again for tuning in and we will see you in the next episode.