Shopify Happy Hour

Hear from Shopify founders, operators and experts on growth marketing strategies, lessons learned from the trenches, and other nuggets of wisdom shared over a different drink each episode.

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Shopify Happy Hour

Building a Supplement Brand with No Shortcuts and a Lot of Hustle with Zac Curhan

May 10, 2026 • Dan Cassidy • Season 1 • Episode 22

0:00 | 46:01

Launching a supplement brand is hard enough but building one around clean ingredients, outdoor performance, and spiritual alignment instead of hype and artificial formulas? That’s a very different approach to wellness.

In this episode of Shopify Happy Hour, Dan sits down with Zac Curhan, co-founder of Truwild, a natural supplement brand creating clean hydration, kombucha, and performance products for people who push beyond the gym. From bootstrapping the company with just $5,000 to scaling across Amazon, Shopify, wholesale, and TikTok, Zac shares how intuition, adaptability, and relentless experimentation shaped Truwild into a growing force in the supplement space.

You’ll hear how Zac:

Built Truwild from scratch with just $5K and reinvested profits to grow the business organically.
Created products designed for hikers, surfers, endurance athletes, and outdoor adventurers — not just gym culture.
Developed unique formulations using natural caffeine, kombucha powder, electrolytes, amino acids, and functional ingredients.
Leveraged customer feedback and surveys to shape future products, flavors, and packaging formats.
Pivoted away from underperforming SKUs and learned difficult inventory lessons along the way.
Used Amazon as a primary growth engine while strategically narrowing focus across sales channels.
Built wholesale relationships through cold calls, product seeding, and direct outreach to independent retailers.
Used TikTok seeding campaigns, local events, and brand collaborations to drive organic awareness and traffic.

We also get into the bigger picture:

Why electrolytes are far more important than most people realize.
The realities of building a profitable supplement brand without outside funding.
Why customer reviews and social proof are critical in modern e-commerce.
How TikTok, Amazon, and organic content now work together in the customer buying journey.
Using AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and automation systems to streamline operations and decision-making.
Zac’s philosophy around meditation, intuition, spirituality, and connecting to a “higher self” for entrepreneurial growth.

🌿 Whether you’re an e-commerce founder, wellness enthusiast, or someone interested in the intersection of business, health, and personal growth, this episode is packed with practical lessons and unconventional insights.

Brands & Mentions:

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Truwild & Its Mission
02:45 Why Electrolytes Matter More Than You Think
05:20 Reinventing Kombucha as a Powder
08:10 Building Truwild with Just $5K
11:00 Early Product Development & Scaling Challenges
13:30 Why Amazon Became the Core Growth Channel
16:20 Organic Marketing, TikTok, & Community Events
19:00 Influencer Seeding & Brand Collaborations
22:15 The Realities of Paid Ads in Supplements
24:00 Wholesale Strategy & Cold Calling Retailers
32:30 Customer Feedback, Product Iteration, & SKU Decisions
35:40 Meditation, Spirituality, & Entrepreneurial Intuition
40:40 Using AI & Automation to Scale E-commerce Operations

Dan Cassidy (00:02.79)
Welcome to the Shopify happy hour on the show. You'll hear from Shopify founders operators and growth experts

on marketing strategies, lessons from the trenches and real e-commerce insights, all shared over a different drink or snack each episode. Today's guest is Zac Curhan, co-founder of Truwild, a 100 % natural supplement brand built for people who push beyond the gym. From hikers and rockers to surfers and endurance athletes, Truwild is on a mission to deliver clean, effective supplements without the artificial ingredients and empty promises that dominate the industry. Zac, welcome to the podcast.

Zac Curhan (00:38.543)
Thank you, thanks for having me on, great intro.

Dan Cassidy (00:41.166)
Thanks much. much. Yeah, luckily I've done enough where we can kind of roll this out pretty easily. So stoked to have you on excited to try the products and talk through your journey. But before we kick things off, let's let's have a proper cheers with truwild out to crack open the kombucha looks like you got the hydrate over there. So cheers.

Zac Curhan (00:58.085)
Okay.

Zac Curhan (01:03.473)
I the hybrid, got sticks, got bags, old bags, and it's already in here too, so I'll choose you.

Dan Cassidy (01:10.23)
How nice, good stuff, awesome. Cheers, cheers.

Zac Curhan (01:11.843)
Yeah, which is.

Dan Cassidy (01:16.854)
Nice. Good stuff. Awesome. Yeah, super. It's like, it's very

Lemonade pink lemonade, I would say so so the kombucha According to the packaging which good job on the packaging. I will say the woman on the package It looks like she's doing something with her leg that would cause my hip to break off if I tried it But good for her for being able to do that So according to packaging kombucha probiotics and prebiotics good for microflora gut health and enzymes And this is a lemon raspberry watermelon, which to me is like a pink lemonade like pretty tasty kombucha

Zac Curhan (01:50.213)
It's kind of like... Yeah, it's, mean, pretty simply just kombucha in powder form. And we tried to take that trilogy flavor and we pretty much identified, pretty much made it similarly the same as that flavor. If you got like the GT kombucha trilogy, it's the same flavor as that.

Dan Cassidy (02:04.674)
Yep. Nice. I've never heard of or seen a I guess a dehydrated kombucha. So that's awesome. You guys have that and what are you drinking over there? Talk to me about the hydration sticks.

Zac Curhan (02:16.568)
So we have three different flavors. We've got passion fruit, guava, and watermelon lemonade. I'm drinking the watermelon lemonade. Electrolytes, I know there's a lot of electrolytes on the market. What makes us unique and different is we have aminos in ours. We have ocean minerals. We use trademark ingredients of acumen, L-glutamine. So it's a hydration and recovery formula all in one, compared to just salt.

Dan Cassidy (02:39.222)
Awesome. So I've been going down the electrolyte rabbit hole a little bit recently and would love your take on what are they and why should we be consuming them?

Zac Curhan (02:50.997)
Yeah, of course. mean, if you think about it, everybody sweats, either if you're sleeping, you're walking, you're working out, and when you sweat, you lose electrolytes. So electrolytes are basic forms of salt, magnesium, potassium. They're all...

I tell people electrolytes are energy that your nervous system, that your cells need to produce and work functionally and have them talk to each other so you can like function throughout your day. And a lot of people, who don't drink water are dehydrated, right? I mean, people don't realize this as well as that you can drink a ton of water, but you're not going to be hydrated because you need those key electrolytes to keep your body moving successfully.

Dan Cassidy (03:32.813)
Nice, I had a moment a couple months ago where I was dealing with some brain fog and couldn't tell what it was. I was sleeping fine, it didn't seem to be diet. I drank a lot of coffee, I worked out a fair amount, so I was like, all right, maybe it's something with that, I wasn't sure. So I started consulting with our new favorite doctor, Chat GPT Chibbette, right? And I'm going back and forth on different things and it basically said, make kind of a homemade electrolyte mix and have a banana.

Within like a half hour, I was completely clear headed and out of it. It was kind of crazy how quick of an impact that the electrolyte blend I was having could impact just mental clarity. So at that point, I was like, yeah, there's definitely something to this where even if you're even if you're hydrated, you might not be giving, I guess, your brain the ingredients it needs to perform.

Zac Curhan (04:26.818)
and your neurons to talk to each other. And I tell people to, when they wake up, the first thing they should do is chug at least 12 to 16 ounces of water. If you want another hack, add some pink human site of salt with lemon in it. And that lever helps detoxify your liver as well. And that helps jumpstart your day. And then you can have electrolytes post-workout or before during a workout as well.

Dan Cassidy (04:51.0)
Fantastic, fantastic. And talk to us about the kombucha. What are the benefits of that?

Zac Curhan (04:56.548)
Uh, so Miami pre and pro-biolix. mostly gut friendly for bacteria for you. Um, and how we make it is pretty interesting because there's not a lot of kombucha powders out there in the market. So it's a shelf stable kombucha powder. We take a Scooby, we freeze dry it and we add apple cider vinegar, digestive enzymes, um, inulin, which is like artichoke, um, in there for fiber. And so it really does, it just really helps you kind of detoxify your body and helps with your gut. So there's a lot of people have gut problems as well. And I believe that your gut is your second brain.

Thanks.

Dan Cassidy (05:28.066)
Nice. The first time I ever had kombucha, this is...

25 years ago, 30 years ago, was in a Whole Foods and I didn't know what kombucha was, had no idea about it. And I go to checkout and I think I had, you I was getting like some prepared food and I grabbed whatever drink I could in a glass bottle that looked like it would be tasty and hydrating. And I get to checkout and I walk through and as I'm about to drink it, I just shake it up real quick, you know, cause I'm like, oh, this has gotta be some type of juice blend or something like that.

and just explosion all over the chicken aisle. And yeah, then I was like, this is kombucha. What is this? This is new. And that's what I learned what kombucha was and that not ideal for shaking. But what's cool about the powders is you can shake them up and then you just, yeah, it's not gonna, it's not.

Zac Curhan (06:16.866)
Yep. doesn't also, another thing too, it doesn't have that carbonation vinegar mouth fuel. So I know a lot of people love that. Some people hate it. I don't like it. So I told a manufacturer to make it a similar, the same health benefits as regular kombucha, just not that same like mouth fuel, carbonation, vinegar taste to it.

Dan Cassidy (06:37.154)
Gotcha. Nice. Awesome. Well, let's start at the beginning. Why do you? Why'd you start the business?

Zac Curhan (06:43.204)
Yeah. Um, so I grew up around kind of the health sector. My dad's a doctor. My mom's a dietician. I grew up, grew up around health and wellness, um, big outdoor adventure freak, um, because of my parents and friends along the way as well. And anything, everything out there in the market really didn't like catered towards me. Right. So everything in the market was highly artificial, highly, um, fake caffeine full of ingredients that I couldn't really understand. And I was like, I want to make something that's clean, simple,

great and affordable.

Dan Cassidy (07:15.896)
Nice, good stuff. And you started with the hydration talk to us about how you well, sorry, go ahead.

Zac Curhan (07:20.584)
We started, sorry, yeah, we started with, so my partner and I started with $5,000 for a name. We started with the energy pre-workout. So those are outdoor active fuel. So we started that, we threw it on Amazon, it sold out in six months. And then we just reinvested. And over the last six to seven years, we've just, created 12 different products with bootstrapping the business ourselves.

Dan Cassidy (07:41.687)
Amazing, amazing. did you go from talk to me about how you went from that first $5,000 in I imagine you use an inventory and packaging, but how did you go from investing to building the foundational parts of the business and building that product out to then moving to a place where you were able to start scaling? Well, what do those early days look like?

Zac Curhan (08:01.348)
I mean, a lot of scrappiness, think, I would say at the very bare minimum, but like that $5,000 is more of like...

Um, the minimum order run with their manufacturer is working with them on creating a formula that not only tastes great, but actually worked. Um, that money went to our website, Amazon, um, and then just learning how to do ads along the way. And it's always, i mean, the foundation, I believe in any business thing, you always will be, there's gonna be a solid foundation that you have, but you're always going to be kind of pivoting and changing as you go. Um, cause you think in the beginning, you're going to go north, but really you're going to go east and

and then you're going finally get back to North at the end of the day. So it's all about being able to have adaptability and have a belief in your product.

Dan Cassidy (08:50.07)
Nice. How did you dial in the formulations at the beginning? Can you talk to me about what you wanted to have in the product and how you approve that concept with your initial customer base?

Zac Curhan (08:54.072)
Yeah.

Zac Curhan (09:02.916)
Yeah. So the first product was outdoor active fuel. And back then in 2018, there wasn't really like a energy something for the outdoors. And so at that time period it's my co-founder was actually the manufacturer as well. So I leveraged him and his team's expertise on this. But when it came down to like the ingredients and the benefits, we were like benefit first. So when we think about it, when you're out hiking, right, and you're out there for two, three, four hours, what do you lack? You lack energy, right? So you lack energy.

you lack hydration and mental stability, right? You're out in the wild, right? So you're not going to be taking a red bull. You're not going be taking a pre-workout because what happens when you take those, crash. So we once have been had sustainable energy. So that's from natural caffeine. So we use Yerba Mate, green tea, coffee bean. We had five trademark ingredients that really helped with like performance, mental clarity. So we used Pico-2, which is a...

our Ayurvedic adaptogen, so adapters to your body's physical and mental stressors. We threw in about thousand milligrams of coconut water in there as well for hydration. So we really want to build like an all-in-one sustainable energy product that like when you take one scoop and you're drinking while you're hiking, you're good for two, three, four hours.

Dan Cassidy (10:21.678)
Awesome. And how did you dial in the product in terms of flavors and what was in it? What did that look like from coming up with those first formulations to landing on the product set that you have now?

Zac Curhan (10:34.148)
So the first, again, I mean, we had a really good in-house R &D team that we would go back and forth on sampling. We told them, hey, this is what we want in it. This is kind of what we want to benchmark. And they did a really good job of kind of like providing samples, iterations, trial and error, right? So that was how we launched the first product. And as we got, we built the foundation. We had a little bit bigger consumer base. I mean, on Amazon, it's hard to actually reach out to those consumers, but on our Shopify website,

we would create like surveys. Surveys of, these are the products we're looking for. What's something that you want? And what would you enjoy? And what are the benefits that you're looking for? So we take a lot of their feedback. And then some lucky customers we actually sent samples to and be like, hey, we'd love to get your feedback. Mostly we kept it really internal.

And from there, just slowly building over time. And some of these products didn't work, right? So we've actually, I've got rid of three or four SKUs because some of them just don't hit the way that they should. And you have to learn to just roll off the punches if it's not selling well, and you're having a bunch of inventory, it's not beneficial to order more for the future.

Dan Cassidy (11:49.955)
Gotcha. So what did you do in those cases? Do you like how do you unload that inventory? If you launch a new SKU and you see that it's not selling as well as expected? What what do you do with your playbook at that point?

Zac Curhan (12:02.264)
discount, donate. There's a lot of other, there's some companies out there that actually will buy them from you at your cogs. So we did that. I learned that the hard way. Don't do that because we've had to pay a pretty penny for shipping and some other underlying expenses that didn't occur. And then the sad thing is,

I'll take the example, we had a Protect Plus or Baselayer product, it's an immune supplement. It was right before COVID. We had 5,000 units. I said, it's not selling well. So I got rid of all of them. And we had maybe like a thousand left and that a thousand right as COVID hit just skyrocketed. And so we had to order more of it. And it was just bad timing, bad place. It sucked because that money could have used to help us with more initiatives.

Dan Cassidy (12:51.522)
Gotcha, gotcha. Well, live and learn, I guess. So talk to me now about what platforms are you on, where are you selling, and what is, I guess, the mix of best performing channels across all of those.

Zac Curhan (12:53.656)
Yep.

Zac Curhan (13:07.972)
Yeah, the last three years we've kind of pivoted and changed to different sales channels. like, if we go back three years, we were on eBay, we were on Walmart, we were on Amazon, website, Export Voices, a lot of other e-retail channels. We did wholesale. Now, if you fast forward to today, we're like...

70 % Amazon, 30 % or 25 % Shopify or website and like 5 % other e-channels as well. And that e-channels are, there's a lot of different sales channels out there that do sell pretty well, like Expert Voices and some of like the feed and some of these other online e-channels.

Dan Cassidy (13:48.876)
Gotcha. So why did you narrow to those few?

Zac Curhan (13:54.068)
Just focus, right? At the end of the day, you have to kind of like, if you're spread too thin, you, I mean, when you're on five different sales channels and managing inventory and managing product copy content, artwork, everything on that, managing all those skews across those, it's a lot of work. And so you lose...

We might miss the orders or, you your ads or you'll be spending ads in different places altogether. So we just said, Hey, you know what, let's figure out where are we most profitable? Where's the biggest growth opportunity and focus in those channels.

Dan Cassidy (14:27.906)
Gotcha. So you've been on Amazon for almost 10 years now. How has how has the platform changed? What worked in 2018 that does not work today? And what what what techniques are using or strategies are using now versus almost 10 years ago?

Zac Curhan (14:46.052)
There's some, yeah, mean, majority's reviews. I mean, I bet a lot of people can see how that's changed dramatically. There's some like...

How do I say this? Grey hat solutions that like really pump your reviews up. Now, games on can literally take you off. mean, like seeing what happened to But bloom, took off their product because of review manipulation. So there's ways that you could have you like QR cards on top of it and direct more traffic there. And now they're, they're very strict. So Amazon, would say of the last 10 years have made it very difficult to.

win with white or gray hat solutions. Now it's really about directing traffic to Amazon. Amazon is not a place that you search, find and buy anymore. I believe Amazon is a place that you just go buy. So people are doing the research off of Amazon through TikTok, know, Instagram, chat GPT, Reddit, all these places collecting all their information. And then once they have that information, like, okay, I'm going to go to Amazon buy because it's two day shipping and no one else does that.

Dan Cassidy (15:48.259)
Gotcha. Makes sense. So how are you influencing that purchase path? What are you doing on the other platforms that you mentioned, whether it's TikTok or Reddit or anywhere outside of Amazon to influence those sales on Amazon?

Zac Curhan (16:01.988)
I would say TikTok's our biggest kind of like traffic driver on that. I think TikTok is the world's best still. A lot of brands are killing it. lot of brands are spending a lot of to kill it as well. But it's really doing like a sampling program with TikTok, doing videos, just generating a lot of traffic. TikTok's the one place I still believe that you can go viral like instantly. And that one video might go to not only, know, it might not be shadowed, but it might go to like a million people in one day versus other way.

in Facebook and Instagram, it's a little more difficult. that, and then we do organic, right? So I do a lot of like in-person community events, farmers markets, collab with other brands locally here in San Diego. And we just try and get as many eyeballs as we can and then push the traffic to Amazon. Cause that helps with your rank. no, no, I didn't say anything. You're good.

Dan Cassidy (16:52.718)
Nice. So let's talk about work yet. Sorry, go ahead.

Dan Cassidy (16:58.946)
Gotcha. Good, good, good. So let's talk about organic content. Lots of brands are looking at organic as a moat, especially as advertising costs have increased over the past few years. It can be more difficult to acquire customers for brands, especially with an AOV that is typical for lots of CPG products. So what are you doing with organic, both with the content you mentioned locally and activations, along with that seeding

program that you're doing with affiliates on TikTok.

Zac Curhan (17:32.965)
So, okay next.

It's a challenging thing, right? Because I think everyone's using paid media and looking at your LTV and your res and all these things, which is great. Organic really comes from like guerrilla style marketing. So it's really for me, it's like, how do I get in front of as many people as I can? And that's through like local events, community events, fitness events, doing pops up pop-ups and then doing a lot of like brand collapse. I said before with other like-minded brands that maybe not like they're a fitness brand or a clothing brand. And they would go to a gym.

and we collab of, I'll provide the electrolytes, you provide your clothes and then do like a workout at the gym and like promote that way as well. So that's one way. And then the seeding thing on TikTok is just really giving out free samples and like giving out products to influencers, athletes and having them help promote for you.

Dan Cassidy (18:26.37)
Nice. How are you finding those athletes and people to promote on TikTok?

Zac Curhan (18:31.46)
And it's not, mean, there's a lot of different platforms out there, but it's really, comb through and my team helps comb through Instagram looking at, it's not about to me, it's not about like how many followers you have, it's about the education that you bring. It's about the value. Can you tell us a great story? Are you someone that people can connect with? So it takes a lot of hard time to find these like...

organic, true, I would say affiliates or influencers, or what you want to call it, to help promote your brand. So there's a lot of homework involved with that.

Dan Cassidy (19:04.44)
Got you, got you. And so when you are sampling with influencers, can you talk to us about the process looks like? So you go through and you find a certain set of influencers affiliates. What does that next step look like from getting them to agree to whatever the program is all the way through providing assets and promoting your brand?

Zac Curhan (19:12.682)
legs up.

Zac Curhan (19:27.842)
Case by case basis really depends. I might find someone who I see on Instagram and they do a really good job storytelling. I might just DM them and say, Hey, I'm co-founder of this company. I'd to send you some free products. I'm not trying to sell you. I'd love for you to try it. Tell me what do you think? And then we start the dialogue, right? So it's building that relationship.

Once they love it, which most of the time they do, then I can say, Hey, what is it? What would it look like if you helped promote for us? What would it look like if we did a campaign or if we did all these things and like slowly getting into it versus just being like, Hey, here's free product, go post it. You get a 10 % affiliate code of some sort that doesn't work. Right. So it's like building that relationship and it takes time.

Right? With that's on like, that's why I've seen actually work on TikTok. It's about seeding and sampling and just like throwing as many products as you can at these TikTok influencers and have them making videos for you because those videos actually create some, what's the word?

It just makes you feel like legit, I guess. I'm trying to find the right word that just like puts the more people see it, the more eyeballs you get. And no matter who they're coming from, they're going to like edgy, like research it and look more into it. And then they might buy because I've, I realized that people don't buy off the first view. takes them three to four times to actually see something before they want to buy it.

Dan Cassidy (20:55.052)
Makes sense. Yeah, the know, the analogy I use is if people are checking out at the grocery store and

and their breath stinks and there's a pack of gum there, they just need to see it one time. But for most other products that requires any sort of consideration, they need to be exposed several times and having content where it's people they respect, or at least people in their community talking about a brand that they like and why they like it, that can go a long way towards influencing that conversion. So on TikTok, you driving traffic? Are you keeping people on TikTok and having them transact within that TikTok environment?

driving them outside of TikTok to transact on either Amazon or Shopify.

Zac Curhan (21:34.469)
Yeah, we do both. We have TikTok Shop, right? Which is, think is another great kind of sales vehicle. But a lot of people won't, I don't know, it's interesting. I don't think a lot of people trust TikTok just yet. So they're still like doing the research on TikTok and then they'll buy somewhere else because TikTok doesn't have two-day shipping like Amazon does. So yeah, we do both platforms. I would love to grow up or grow our TikTok Shop.

platform because I think you can get a lot of velocity that way, you people heavily discount their products.

Dan Cassidy (22:11.202)
Got it, got it. And what are you doing to grow your Shopify business and what marketing channels have you seen as successful for that?

Zac Curhan (22:21.57)
That's the thing. I mean, I haven't really seen a successful thing. I think with supplements, it's really hard. I mean, your return on assets, found your ROAS. We haven't seen anything above it too. I think in different categories, you see people in three or four. So like we're like break even, lose on the first sale. And then, I mean, the beautiful thing about supplements is once someone loves it, they'll buy it again. Right. And so you might lose on that first sale, but you might gain them for like six to nine months as a customer and they'll keep coming back.

So you'll make your money back, but I've actually slowed down our ad spend on our Facebook standpoint just because I don't you have to Have a lot of money to make a lot of money in that world and we'll bootstrap We don't have capital backed. We don't have thousands of dollars that throw out the wall and hope that they come back So I've looked at other ways of driving growth instead of facebook

Dan Cassidy (23:18.722)
Yes, sir.

Makes sense. Yeah, Zuckerberg is a rich man for a reason. And he's making a lot of money off the backs of lots of e commerce brands. And yeah, the days of dropping a dollar in the meta machine and getting $8 back. That is very rare these days, if possible at all, like it was years ago. I'm so looking at so we're talking in May 2026. So over the rest of the year ahead, what does your growth plan look like? Like, what are your what channels are you investing in?

and can you talk about like any sort of marketing mix like how you're investing in specific channels in order to continue to grow?

Zac Curhan (23:59.587)
Yeah, this year could be maybe a flat or slight growth year. We're looking at being more profitable is kind of our goal. And so we're looking at where is our cash cow, where is the sales channel that's actually doing the best at Amazon, even though...

they do take a pretty hefty fee from you, but we're spending and doing more ads because we're seeing a better return on our asset spend on Amazon than anywhere else. So I'd say Amazon's definitely number one, and then wholesale is also another opportunity for us because we have a pretty interesting wholesale program and we have a great team member, Richie, on our team who manages that. That does a pretty good job for us.

Dan Cassidy (24:42.776)
So talk to us about your wholesale program.

Zac Curhan (24:44.802)
Yeah, a lot of people don't realize this too, but like it's really easy that you can just, you you have to build the foundation of it, right? But like once you have that and you have the wholesale sheets, you have the sale sheets and you have the sales like strategy of.

It's really, to me, it's a simple formula of finding stores or like-minded stores or stores that your competitors are in. Give them a call. We looked at mostly independent health food stores. I don't look at chains. We are in VersaFarms, which is in Healthy Edge Foods, which is a major chain, but we do a lot of just cold calls of reaching out to them. And then once we get someone be like, the same way of influencers. Can we send you a sample kit? We send you a sample kit that has all of our information or price sheet. And we follow up when they get it. Once they get it, we say, Hey,

How did you like it? Do you think it's a great fit for your store? And we actually done that and we've gone to about a hundred stores by doing that. And that's not including the chains that we're in with Bristol Farms and Healthy Edge Group as well. So it's a unique strategy, but it's worked for us and it helps bring in cashflow for us as well.

Dan Cassidy (25:50.092)
Nice, how are you finding those stores to go after?

Zac Curhan (25:54.117)
Google is your best friend. Google, ChatGPT, there's a lot of scraping tools out there that you can do. You can hire some people to scrape for you. But I think like Claude and Chat has been a good way of saying, hey, these are the type of stores we're in. Can you give us a list of them? So that's, I think we've built some programs around that as well. But that.

you can go on Google and just type in the note, what are healthy stories in my five mile square radius, and we'll give you that. You just gotta pick up the phone and learn how to sell. So we have that and email as well.

Dan Cassidy (26:28.3)
Nice, and are you doing the cold Calling? Do you have people on the team doing it?

Zac Curhan (26:31.822)
I have my one wholesale manager. manages that. you're before him, it was me. So it was me literally picking up the phone, calling. I still do it now because I actually enjoy it. It's actually, to me, it's fun of doing cold call and selling in that way and getting an account that way. But yeah, we have Richie who manages that. And then if I step in and help as well, I do that. And I also locally in San Diego, anywhere I go, so I go to the gym.

every morning, 3-4 years ago, said, hey, I would love to sell my product there. That's an easy sell, right? So it's like everywhere you go, you're constantly selling yourself and finding ways.

Dan Cassidy (27:12.642)
Love it. So what is a typical cold call look like? How does that go? you find a local health store through ChatGPT or through Google search, you get their number. What does that sales script look like?

Zac Curhan (27:27.332)
It's first you have to get to the gatekeeper, right? So the gatekeeper is not the rep on the phone. You have to talk to the general manager, the buyer of that store. And then I would just ask them, I'd be like, Hey, we're a local company. would love to send you some samples of our products. We're all natural. I mean, do you currently carry these products? I mean, I a little research to see what they do carry. And then be like, I'd love to send you a sample kit. Um, what's your address? And that's it. So don't sell them on the spot. Have them actually give them your address.

address, ship it in or send the sample in and then track it. So now once they receive the sample, you call them back again and be like, hey, just checking in. I want to make sure that you got the sample. It says delivered. Let me know if have any questions. Wait another week, call back and say, hey, how did you like the sample? We'd love to have our products in your store. And they say either yes or no.

Dan Cassidy (28:22.296)
Gotcha, I love it. You're basically doing product seeding for wholesale, similar to how lots of DTC brands are doing product seeding for influencers or content creators.

Zac Curhan (28:33.582)
Yeah. Yeah. But I tell people to don't do wholesale until you have established, I would say Amazon or website account because

people are gonna be like, who are you? We don't know you, right? We have a big enough following on our Instagram. We have really good reviews on our website and on Amazon. So that like, they always search. They always like, we'll do their research too and be like, who are you? So they can see on Amazon, we've got five star reviews. They can see all their views on our website and that helps create some credibility as well.

Dan Cassidy (29:07.212)
Nice. What percentage about of accounts if you send them samples, what percentage of those turn into wholesalers who are paying for product?

Zac Curhan (29:19.812)
I don't have that on my head, but would say like maybe.

30, 40 % maybe, I'd say we have a pretty good success rate. But the hardest part is doing the homework and the research upfront. So you can't just like Google health food store and like someone might pull up GNC like I'm gonna try and sell GNC. There's no way you can sell GNC because they have a, whole strategy is they have a centralized buyer and it's a massive, you know, chain. But if you find like a mom and pop store, was called Cassidy health food store. They only have one of them.

They don't sell that much. Let's say they sell some supplements, but don't have electrolytes or kombucha. You can easily, I would say that success rates like at a 40 or 50 % because once they try it, they love it. And they're like, actually we don't care that. So we love to try it. we try and a lot of people go through distributors, right? Or brokers, we go direct. So our case minimum is not, doesn't have to be like 12 cases. Like this is by 30. And then you just start that momentum that way as well.

Dan Cassidy (30:22.562)
That's great. I love it. I love that you've got a seating program for wholesale and 30 to 40 percent seems pretty high. So that seems like a pretty high success rate for lending an account that could purchase in volume consistently month after month. So I love that. You mentioned reviews as incredibly important both on Amazon and off. What do you do to influence that? I know you mentioned that there, you know, there were more black hat and gray hat ways to get reviews that are

not really allowed and can get brands into trouble, what are you doing to influence reviews in a way that is above board and gets the volume and quality of reviews that you're looking for?

Zac Curhan (31:05.476)
Yeah, I we use a lot of, I would say it's a tech stack tools on our website. So I think Smile is one of them. We would use like a rewards program. So if you like leave a review, you get rewards points. Those points can use the buy future purchases. We use like Stamps as well, which sends emails to customers who buy.

And yeah, I mean, can't really share much of the white black hat solutions, right? I mean, those would get me in trouble, but we don't do those anymore. It's mostly just having a great product and messaging customers and asking them politely the right to review.

Dan Cassidy (31:43.951)
Nice, love it, love it. What are, when you talk about future product iterations, I know you said you had over a dozen SKUs and you recently pulled back to kind of just get rid of SKUs that weren't selling as much. What's next for the product lineup? Are you looking to roll out new SKUs or are you looking to stay with what you have right now?

Zac Curhan (32:03.396)
Stay with what we have and then change the packaging formats. So going to more single serve items like this versus like the bulk buy, we get new flavors of existing SKUs. And they realize some interesting.

products that I would love to launch. just, I'm just waiting because we don't want to be at the end of the day. We don't want to be like everyone else. We don't need to create a team. We don't need the vitamin D, right? We don't need another protein powder. I want to create something that like people actually need to have some benefit for. So it's like either a combination of two different ingredients and helping from a benefit standpoint. Fiber is really hot right now. So like a functional mushroom fiber coffee blend could be cool, right? It helps you. So those are the things I'm looking at is

really having my pulse on, I would say, product development of seeing like, are everyone doing? Because when everyone goes left, I kinda wanna go right, in a way. Because I think sometimes it's good to have something that no one else has.

Dan Cassidy (33:04.0)
So I love that mindset where you want to carve a niche that is a little bit open. So when everybody's zigging, you zag, right? So you can have more of that open space. The challenge with that is if you move into a space where there is not as much demand as you'd expect. So how do you assess the market to understand which type of product would be worth rolling out knowing you're not kind of following a trend, but you're kind of leading with your own trend. How do you assess the market?

and have as much assurance as possible going into that market that there's going to be demand for that new product you're looking to build out.

Zac Curhan (33:34.98)
Have a nice week.

Zac Curhan (33:41.957)
Yeah, I mean, there's tools out there like Amazon jungle and some of these other things, scout jungle that like will show you kind of like where is the traffic demand. TikTok is another great place to, mean, if you just go on TikTok and you do install, I you'll lose yourself in some things that you've never thought of before. And there's a lot of analytics and tools that you can pull from that. And then customer feedback is another thing as well. Getting surveys, understanding what people actually want, because you don't want, you might want to make a product for yourself, but no one's going to buy it. So at end of the day, you need to get.

customer feedback to help support your decision as well. And at the end of the day, you might make something that flops. So that's just the nature of the beast. So again, pivot and find the way.

Dan Cassidy (34:24.6)
How? Yep, that's great. How are you collecting that those surveys?

Zac Curhan (34:30.71)
emails, not calling because that would take way too long, but doing like maybe quarterly surveys to customers and saying, having five questions, multiple choice of having them make it, have it make it easy for them. And then from there, collecting that data, analyzing it and moving forward. It'd be great if Amazon had a way that you can like reach out to your customers and give them feedback. But again, it's Amazon's customers.

Dan Cassidy (34:56.398)
Gotcha, gotcha. And have by doing that, has that influenced previous products that you've rolled out?

Zac Curhan (35:02.339)
100%. Yeah. Mostly on like flavor stuff and ingredients, but most, would say mostly flavor because we asked them, Hey, we love this idea. And a lot of people like, Hey, this is a great flavor. Is this something you'd buy versus just like, you know, running with it.

Dan Cassidy (35:20.439)
Nice.

Zac Curhan (35:20.564)
So that's how we got actually into Stix is enough people face-off or serve. said, we need single serve, need single serve. And I said, I don't think you need it. And finally I caved and I was like, actually the customer's right. So I kind of let my ego down and we had to do it. Even though it's not the easiest and most cost-effective way, the offer solution, sometimes you have to listen to your customers. Always have to listen to your customers.

Dan Cassidy (35:46.22)
Nice REC in demand for that packaging size.

Zac Curhan (35:50.308)
Yeah, it's becoming our number one top three SKU

Dan Cassidy (35:54.212)
well, there we go. There we go. Proof is in the pudding. Nice, good stuff. Well, let's move into the speed round. So each answer in, you know, a minute or so or less. What is one book that you highly recommend?

Zac Curhan (36:10.468)
I mean, I'm going to sci-fi, are we doing business or just regular? I'm going to say sci-fi, dark matter is a great book that everyone should read.

Dan Cassidy (36:17.75)
Nice, I haven't heard of that. I'll add that to the list. What is an under the radar product or brand that you love?

Zac Curhan (36:29.22)
I would say, my buddy's company is called Rollflex. It's like an arm tool that's like a massage tool that helps for post-workout and massaging.

Dan Cassidy (36:39.544)
Right? What is one thing you do better than most people and how do you do it?

Zac Curhan (36:47.14)
connect at a deeper level. feel like I'm an energetic human being spiritual that I can heal people and I'm an empath. So I feel people's energy and be able to connect real quickly and build rapport.

Dan Cassidy (37:00.782)
Love it. have you always been, has that always been an innate thing or have you had to work at that?

Zac Curhan (37:06.5)
I've always had it, but I had a spiritual life coach that really helped me tap into it. And I thought growing up that I was weird, but I realized that this weirdness that I have is actually a huge benefit that's helped me.

Dan Cassidy (37:19.456)
Nice. So how do you do? So how do do it? We're gonna break we're gonna break out of the speed rough for a minute.

Zac Curhan (37:19.588)
Thanks.

Yeah, okay, sure. Yeah, no. So I meditate every day. I'm really connected to myself. I'm really grounded. And for some reason, when I enter a room, I can feel other people's energy and I can...

I don't want say I'm psychic, but there's some qualities where I can read people easily. And then just by, by calming my ego down and kind of just absorbing theirs and just building report. I don't know how it's really difficult to explain it, but with you, can, I can somehow maybe pull something out, but another time, but it's like, can connect with people at a very deep, deeper meaning. and I think it's because I let my ego go and I'm trying to like focus on someone else, and really seek to understand where they come from.

Dan Cassidy (38:07.478)
Nice. So at what age, about how old were you when you discovered that you kind of had, had, you had a stronger ability with this than others.

Zac Curhan (38:16.196)
I would say I was 16. So as a kid, I think what my superpower was as a kid, I didn't speak a lot. I was very quiet. So I just took in all this information. I sat there, people watched other people speak for me. And I think what that happened is I I just watched people and I kind of understood who they were without understanding who they are.

And so it really clicked though, would say three or four years ago when I got a spiritual life coach and she really taught me a lot of these, not courses, but just kind of routines that allowed me to connect to my higher self. And when that happened, I think it allowed for like this whole world to open up in a very spiritual way. I saw the world, not 2D, but 4D. It's really changed for me.

I know it's very, it's very woo woo and a lot of people don't understand, but I people who live in the 4D world, who are very spiritually connected, they get it. So it's really difficult to explain to someone who's maybe not on the same wavelength, but it's been pretty amazing. Thanks.

Dan Cassidy (39:08.119)
Nice.

Dan Cassidy (39:25.774)
That's all I'm all about the woo. Let's dive in. So talk to me about the meditation process. Is that a daily thing? Is it once a day? And if so, what does that look like?

Zac Curhan (39:34.297)
Yeah, so it's once a day, I have a red light panel, so I sit in front of it. I used to have like a prompt that I go through, but it's mostly closing your eyes, drowning out everything that's going on, not thinking about anything, and then really just trying to think about.

I mean, I'm gonna close my eyes and do it, like putting your hands on the ground and like feeling yourself connected to the core of the earth. And then thinking about going all the way up to the center of your head, all the way up to the universe, past the universe, and think of like a white light and just thinking about being connected to a higher source. And once you're there, kind of asking your, you know, your guides to be able to talk to you. And...

asking them for questions or throwing something out there of like saying, what should I be, you know, like higher source, what should I be doing today? That's going to like benefit me and serve others. And if you sit quietly, your subconscious mind will come up with something. And if you, and that's how I've realized that more you're connected to yourself, the more you let your ego down, you have this like higher.

spiritual journey that's inside that a lot of people have that people don't know about it. And if you're quiet enough, you'll hear it. And once you hear it, you can't go back because it's makes you realize that we're a soul with a body, not a body of a soul, not your soul and energy and everything's everything's interweaved and connected. And that energy is throughout your whole life. And so if you listen to it and you see it, you can kind of understand the frequencies of it.

Dan Cassidy (41:09.154)
What are some things that you have asked this higher source that has given you insight you would not have gotten from, let's say our normal 2D reality? What are a few examples?

Zac Curhan (41:23.958)
I've kind of asked like, why am I here? What's the, what's the meaning of my life? And I've gone that I'm here to heal. And I got this like warm, fuzzy feeling of love and seeing that meditation sometimes like I, not hallucinate, but I just like see different colors and things. I saw myself really put my hand over everyone in this world and realized that everyone is, their heart is wounded and they're not, they don't love each other. And my love is overpowering of my cup.

is over full, you know, and thanks to my parents for giving me that. But so I'm here to heal. And is it healing through my products? Is it healing for me talking with you? Is it me healing? You're just like being, you know, a being of light and joy.

and being like a light wearer for others and like helping them heal from the inside out. So that really just was a big epiphany of, know, there's a lot of people out there who are not healed and they fake it. I mean, they show that they are, but their ego is in front of it. And sometimes if you get rid of the ego and you look at the just themselves and their heart, you know, they need a lot of help. And a lot of people are wounded.

So I'm here to help in some shape or form and I can't really describe it in words, but I can feel it.

Dan Cassidy (42:47.394)
Well, I don't think it's a coincidence that if you're here to heal that you've launched a brand that is creating products for people to improve their body and with the neural pathways, improving their mind and their recognition and also getting closer to nature too. So that's likely not a coincidence. How do you tap into that for, because we're on a business podcast, how do you tap into that for business growth?

I guess if you have any tips for people who are looking to leverage higher power or higher source and connect to Spirit to guide them on their business path, what tips would you have for them?

Zac Curhan (43:32.578)
I mean, get out of own way, that's one. Get in nature. Get grounded.

and ask the question, I would say do this, leave your phone at home or in the car, go on the walk, go in the nature, go surf, jump in the ocean, go do yoga, do something that doesn't have your phone and just see where your thoughts take you. A very important and like a important and impactful, I'd say meditation is go on the walk without your phone and start asking questions.

And really ask any questions about your business, your life, your spirit, whatever it may be. And you'll see that answers will come. They come in very mysterious ways. a car drives by and you see a license plate or something, the music goes, the song goes on with you of some sort. You run into someone, they smile at you. There's a lot of miracle things that are happening around you if you just open your eyes and shut your brain down and just see.

Dan Cassidy (44:34.69)
Love it. I think that's great advice for people regardless of if they're looking to get extra insight or just be a healthier, better version of themselves. Putting the phone down and connecting to nature is certainly good. And then especially connecting to higher power as well. So thanks for sharing that and for pulling out of the speed run for that. I thought that was a super cool thing to dive into.

while we're talking about that. So that's great for discussing one thing that you just naturally do better than most. Going back into the e-commerce and shopping world, what's a favorite experience that you've had online or offline related to shopping? So it could be favorite store, favorite website. What's a favorite experience you've had related to commerce?

Zac Curhan (45:25.22)
Interesting, there's so many. I try and do a lot of research with a lot of different companies, but what I've realized too is what I think are the cool experiences that I've seen is like this AI chat model you see on these websites. So not only having a human chat is, I mean, that's great, but like they know your behavior already because you've been on that site already and they give you ideas and they're like, instead of like a two-way street, they're like.

throwing information at you versus like you asking them, which kind of scary. That's, that's where this, that's one. Another thing is I was just on a shoe site, I think it was Hoka. And now I was like, here's how do these shoes look at me? And they have this new feature where you can actually like take that. They'll have like, you scan your feet and the shoes are on your feet. So you can kind of see what they look like. So that's something else.

Dan Cassidy (46:16.278)
Nice, super cool. On the topic of AI, what is a favorite way that you're using AI right now?

Zac Curhan (46:23.012)
I'm

deep into the rabbit hole of OpenClaw. So Amy is my Cloud bot and she is doing amazing things. And I spend several hours just deep diving and using her. Mostly right now it's very mundane work, but I really think that AI is the future and like Claude and ChatGPT and OpenAI and all these companies are great. And they're just building like the infrastructure of the brain of AI. I think the

sure it could be these robot personal systems that we're going to have very soon. So my biggest thing is I tell people, help the machine run even though it's scary because the future is coming and that information that you feed I think is going to be 10x return for what you need later down the road.

Dan Cassidy (47:14.25)
So what what's a use case that you have Amy working on? What is she what is she helping you with?

Zac Curhan (47:19.172)
Uh, so right now she's actually doing cron jobs, which she's pulling in inventory reports. So every Wednesday she pulls an inventory from Amazon or three PL. And then she gives me a pretty detailed list of like, here's how much inventory you have. This is some inventory you need to look at buying. Here's what your sales velocity is. And I mean, I had to train her and give her an SOP for doing it, but now it used to take me an hour. She does in five minutes.

Dan Cassidy (47:47.833)
So what would your advice be to somebody who is not as savvy with AI, but they are working in e-commerce and looking to get started with it? What would be the starter steps to get going?

Zac Curhan (48:01.445)
Start playing with it. I mean, there's all these different models. I think they're all pretty similar, if you ask me. I mean, my biggest thing is just start playing around with ChatGBT or Claude and just using it because that or just watching YouTube videos and learning about it. But my biggest thing is watching is one thing, doing is another, like you learn by doing. So just throw some information in there and see what it can do and it'll blow your mind.

Dan Cassidy (48:31.982)
What's nice about AI is it's the first technology that will teach you how to use it. So if you're looking to accomplish something, you can literally build out playbooks and educational systems with AI on how to use AI better to accomplish the goal that you're looking to accomplish, which is pretty neat.

Zac Curhan (48:48.268)
I mean, it's insane if I get broken links or I'm making that code of some sort on my website or something with Amy in my call. I literally throw that into Claude in the chat and in code section. I screenshot and say, fix it and it fix it instantly and tells me what to do. So like the two bots are talking to each other offline, online, fixing solutions that I had no idea how to fix.

Dan Cassidy (49:14.444)
Love it. Love it. Who is somebody we should have on a future episode of the podcast?

Zac Curhan (49:20.74)
I have a lot of friends in EECOM. Maybe we throw on my friend Ryan on here too. He does the Rolflex. So if you give it one second, I'll show you what it is. I you're gonna love that I did this, but this is what it is. It helps with, think of like a human nutcracker, use it for legs or arms or wrists.

People tend to sell that it helps, but it's a really awesome thing. And I think he's growing too. I he's been doing this same time as I'm doing it. And I think it'd be great to have him on the pod and talk about his product.

Dan Cassidy (50:01.121)
Nice, I've used that before. I didn't know what the name of it was, but that is fantastic, especially if you're doing any type of forum, forum workouts, or if you're doing dead hangs or farmers carries or anything where your, your forearm is getting like jacked and tweaked, even if you are typing a lot, if you're, know, on the, in front of the laptop and keyboard, that thing can help a lot because it just loosens up your forum in a really nice way.

Zac Curhan (50:03.734)
you have.

Zac Curhan (50:24.866)
Yeah. Or any of the suses out there or chiropractors, since they're always working on their hands, this helps relieve that tension as well.

Dan Cassidy (50:34.518)
Nice, good stuff. Awesome, awesome. Well, Zac, thank you so much for building Truwild and staying true to your mission of creating clean natural supplements for people who push beyond the gym. Also, thank you for sharing your story and insights with us today on the Shopify Happy Hour, especially related to connecting to higher power and self and sharing all of that with us. Really appreciate it and best of luck with continued growth through the year ahead.

Zac Curhan (51:03.46)
Thank you.