[00:00:01] Speaker A: Want to protect your business. The time is near. You've given it heart, now get it in gear. It's passage to profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: I'm Richard Gerhardt, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:20] Speaker C: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. Not an attorney, but I work at Gearhart Law doing the marketing. And I have my own startup.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Welcome to passage to profit, everyone. The road to entrepreneurship, where we talk with startups, small businesses, and discuss the intellectual property that helps them flourish.
[00:00:35] Speaker C: We have Jodi Scott with greengoo.com. It's skincare, wound care, everything. I'm going to let her explain it. Welcome to the show, Jody.
[00:00:44] Speaker D: Thank you for having me. My mom's sister and I started this company together. My sister's a certified herbalist and midwife. And then I was premed. And so our goal initially was to change first aid. What we found incredibly interesting in the first aid category, it had not been disrupted in 30, 40 years. The natural consumer was willing to abandon their natural ethos because they were told products like neosporin and hydrocortisone were the only products that could get the job done. So they'd have a very clean lifestyle. But you open up their first aid cabinet and it was full of chemicals, then the conventional consumer really didn't care about the ingredients. They were just generally dissatisfied on what the OTC category had to offer and the efficacy. They found it inconvenient to have to go to the doctor. The solutions on the market are very much for acute short term solution. So use this product for five days, discontinue if symptoms do not resolve. And not only were people frustrated having to go to the doctor and have to go get a prescription medication, most people seeking skincare needs have chronic skin condition. And so the OTC market really has not accommodated to finding solutions for long term skincare conditions. So my sister being the herbalist, and me with my organic chemistry background, we thought, can we make a plant based alternative that is superior in efficacy and also brings know when you look at the first aid that if you will, everything's in plastic tubes being thrown into the landfill. Can we bring sustainable packaging? Can we bring a lifestyle brand to first aid? Some personality, but really leading with efficacy first. And so Green goo was born. What makes this incredibly unique too, just from a product standpoint, is that we compound from plants much like you compound to make different kinds of pharmaceutical or OTC products. So we're not bringing pre made extracts to our manufacturing facility, we're actually doing that process ourselves. So we bring the plants to our manufacturing facility where we take it through this extraction process, yield high amounts of the medicinal properties, and then there's unique formulas or unique oils that go into these formulas. And as you talk about trademarking and patents and so forth, what we did with that process was when we explored a patent, the council was, hey, rather than disclosing your process and making it easier for competitors to come in, why don't you see if you could trade secret this and really put some bumpers around this now on a rewind for a little bit. When we were trying to find a manufacturer who was willing to do this, we had at least ten to 15 no's manufacturers are going, we're not going to make this process for you. Why can't you go get premade extracts that are on the market? That's what everybody else is doing. And we'd say, well, this is why it works. This is the efficacy, this is the secret sauce. And it actually took, we were at a trade show and this man came by and he was selling us on lanyards and different kinds of promotional products. And he expressed that his son had eczema. So we gave him our dry skin formula. And at the time, John Hopkins had just started using this product in their scleroderm skin condition department. So we were sharing that story with, you know, he said, thank you. He left about a week later. He called me and he said, you know what? I don't know how we're going to scale this product for you. And we're not even in this line of business, but the world needs this product. My son, for the first time, is not using his prescription medications for his eczema and is actually seeing results. So we're going to figure this out. And that manufacturer to this day, is the one that we ended up partnering with. We developed a dedicated line, a dedicated team, a dedicated section in their facility that's FDA approved because we wanted to register the products with the FDA so we could really take the position of efficacy first and have that sounding board for the consumers to depend on from a reliability standpoint. And then we really coveted that process. So our manufacturer not only can't replicate our formulas, they can't replicate the process with any other customer. And that's allowed us to protect that process. We took market share data information to help drive the different components that we were going to do in the product development. So we looked at things like what was converting the consumer in the first aid space. What symptom relief were they looking for? So when we looked at, for example, people who were using a topical antiseptic, they were also looking for pain relief. You see a lot of portable first aid kits. So we said, can we make one product that's not only a topical antiseptic, but can we also bring pain relief, speeding up the healing, slowing down the bleeding. So, like, our first aid product is more than just a topical antiseptic. It's your first aid on the go. So you can take this one little tin, this one little balm with you, and essentially you have your first aid kit with you everywhere you go. And then from there, we just started looking at other first aid products. We have a vapor rub, a topical analgesic cold sore solution, poison ivy. Now, since then, we've branched into other categories. We have personal care, sexual wellness, pet, all in the topical therapeutic space. But taking that same process at which we are putting those unique blends, those unique oils, and putting them into the products for the efficacy component, how are.
[00:06:03] Speaker C: You selling this now?
[00:06:04] Speaker D: So we're in a number of retailers, CVs, Walgreens, Rite Aid. So we're in national pharmacies, grocery store, natural channels, direct to consumer and Amazon. A lot of our business for the first ten years was word of mouth. Being a plant based first aid brand was incredibly disruptive, especially in the first five years of doing this, no one talked about plant based. And then fast forward, really, in the last two years, there's plant based water, right?
The term plant based has become a tagline, if you will. And thankfully, we're some of the originals who have started in the plant based. So there's that.
So, you know, now it's not as challenging from a word of mouth standpoint, marketing, digital marketing and so forth. And we do have some pretty great ambassadors. Shaq Thompson, who is a linebacker for the Panthers, partnered with us recently and very much with the intent of having natural solutions for pain relief. What we're seeing, very much like Dr. Gladden talked about in terms of performance and recovery and looking at inflammation, and you're seeing a lot of professional athletes, for example, really look at a more integrative approach to their performance and their health.
[00:07:15] Speaker C: Yes, I'd like to get Dr. Gladden's comments on this.
[00:07:18] Speaker E: I love it, quite honestly. I love the fact that it's plant based. I love the fact that you went outside the traditional guidelines and figured out a way to get it manufactured, and then, I think to be able to crack the code on retail, that's a big jump, right? To get on the shelves at CVS and Walgreens. And places like, you know, it's great if you can just walk into a drugstore and buy something, right. And put it on. So I love that kind of thing. I think one question I would have. Is it green and is it gooey?
[00:07:43] Speaker D: Hence the. You know, we were thinking about what to name at the product. We're in the first aid section. And, of course, the advice was to look very medical. And look like we belonged in the first aid set. And being a disruptor with the plant based alternative. Just didn't feel right to have a generic name and packaging that looks very OTC. Because we needed to be loud. We needed to scream, hey, we are superior. And also, by the way, we also have really clean ingredients. And so we even have fun little jokes and taglines and all the products. And so the fact that it's green, they come from plants. It's sustainable. And when you open up the original balm, it was green. And so then we were like, do we call it green ointment? And then again, we were going down that road of trying to fit in so much in the set. And someone just stuck there. And they're like, it's just kind of gooey. And we went, green goo.
[00:08:33] Speaker C: That's great. Kenya, do you have a comment or question?
[00:08:36] Speaker F: Yeah. I see you have a mama and.
[00:08:38] Speaker D: Baby line, which is awesome.
[00:08:39] Speaker F: And I see it sold out on your website. So, in terms of the evolution of your brand. And where you're expanding product. Into different sectors. Beyond the mama and the baby sector. Are there any other demographics that you're looking to target with your products?
[00:08:53] Speaker D: We have a sexual wellness brand called Southern Butter. And that will be the first cruelty free, FDA approved lubricant. All lubricants have to have tests on animals. To get their certification. Their medical device certification. So we've been working with the FDA. To get that approved. Without having to test on animals. Which was very important to us. Because, of course, born in first aid. Most of the OTC products have been tested on animals. We are getting ready to do something really interesting with our baby line. With some partnerships and extensions and rebrand. So you'll see our baby line really develop over the next handful of months. And then as well as our pet and our personal care. So we've got a plant based toothpaste. That's actually made with sugarcane packaging in the tube. And plant based deodorant. Which is really fun. Because when you look at your armpit. And this might be a fun one for you, Dr. Gladden, is that your armpit's a really unique tissue, and it absorbs. We're always looking at the transdermal absorption at various places in your body. And your armpit is a place where you have a higher absorption rate. And that's alarming for a number of reasons. One, obviously, the traditional deodorant has a number of chemicals that have been identified as harmful to have under your armpits. You're getting a really high absorption rate near your lymph nodes, your lymphatic system. It can be working over time and obviously stress the body out. And so now our deodorants have holy basil, ashawanda, reishi, mushroom, vitamin C, and all kinds of different vitamins. Because why not? If it's absorbing more, let's give it more of something that the body may really appreciate and not only just try to avoid the things that aren't good for you.
[00:10:24] Speaker C: Well, that's a new one, taking vitamins through your armpit.
[00:10:27] Speaker D: But I like it. It's a special spot. I think, Dr. Gladden, it might be a place to really do some more research. I feel like our armpit has been not appreciated or ignored.
[00:10:37] Speaker E: Armpit.
[00:10:38] Speaker C: So where do people find your products? Where do you most want them to go?
[00:10:42] Speaker D: The best place to go would be greengoo.com.
[00:10:44] Speaker C: Okay, green go. Well, thank you very much, Jody Scott. Really a revolutionary product, and I'm looking forward to getting some and giving it to my daughter to use when she.
[00:10:54] Speaker D: Hikes appalachian trail because I heard that.
[00:10:56] Speaker C: Is like killer on your feet. So she's going to need it.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Before we go, I'd like to thank the passage to profit team, Noah Fleischmann, our producer Alicia Morrissey, our program director. Our podcast can be found tomorrow anywhere you find your podcast. Just look for the passage to profit.
[00:11:11] Speaker G: Show and you can find us on Instagram and threads at passage to profit show and Twitter. Or if you're even more up to date, x at passage to profit and on our YouTube channel, please also join us on our new Facebook group, search for passage to profit show. Listener community a new community space for our listeners and guests where you can post questions that you would like answered on the show and interact with the passage to profit team.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: And remember, while the information on this program is believed to be correct, never take a legal step without checking with your legal professional first. Gearhart Law is here for your patent, trademark and copyright needs. You can find
[email protected] and contact us for a free consultation take care, everybody. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back next week.
