Adam Bedford – Founder of Sans on Building a Healthier Home

Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to share something I've noticed across so many of my interviews. When I spoke with a recent podcast guest of mine, we talked about the importance of being a lifelong learner. How mastery doesn't happen all at once, but through continuous growth over time. And that principle has stuck with me because it shows up in nearly every successful guest I've had on the show. That's why I'm excited to partner with the Adobe Digital Academy through Coursera. They're offering new learning opportunities to build critical AI, marketing and creative skills. Whether you're launching a business, leading a creative team, or just starting out in the creative world, this is the kind of education that meets you where you are and moves with you. The Adobe Digital Academy makes it possible to access high quality professional certificates and short form courses, all structured for real world application. You can get started with a seven day free trial. Just head to Coursera, search Adobe, or click the link in my bio or description to check it out today. Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today we are joined by Adam Bedford, the CEO and co founder of Sans. Adam, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thanks for having me.

It's great to be here.

Of course. So you know, Sans, if people aren't familiar, you guys have developed products that inspire wellness in the home, from air purifiers to water purifiers to so much more. And I believe you've been working on this company for about five years, is that right?

That's right, yeah. We just hit the five year mark.

Lovely. Well, first off, congrats to you and the team. And you know, when, when I first came across the company, i1, I love it. I've had a air purifier and I'm a big proponent of that in my home for the last, I feel like five to 10 years even. Growing up just thinking about air purifiers like quality air in the home for you, I want to ask what inspired you to get into this business specifically and what led to really pursuing this from a business endeavor?

Yeah, we started the business right at the beginning of COVID and it was a time when everyone was all of a sudden caring a ton about indoor air quality and myself, my co founder, were no different. I started looking for air purifiers as I'm sure everyone else at the time was and was a little bit uninspired with what we were seeing in the market. It came at a time where we really felt that there was an opportunity to build a meaningful business, not only in the air purifier space, but to look beyond that and to see this as kind of an entry point into what we felt was going to be the start of a growing home wellness trend. And my background prior to that point was in software. I came from the world of software as a software engineer and product manager and really had no business thinking about building consumer hardware. But I grew up in a household that cared a ton about health and wellness, thanks to my mum, who is very much ahead of her time and probably still is. And it felt like it was a very good segue for me into building something that I was incredibly passionate about at a time when the market really just opened itself up and felt like it was inviting in new entrants who were excited to challenge the incumbents in the air purifier space, which are relatively large and clunky and people are not getting excited about them. And we thought we could do it a little bit better.

Absolutely. I love that story. First of all, I mean, even hearing the, you know, the shout out to mom and the, the influence of the health and wellness aspect of how you live your life, and I mean, I gotta say too, when it comes to founding a company and timing, you know, 2020, everyone's working from home, everyone's staying home, everyone's thinking about, oh, like, how do we, you know, make the living room better? And you're buying new, you know, maybe furniture or, you know, in this case, air purifiers. Timing seems like it was super great for you guys. What, what were the early conversations when you were starting this endeavor? And you know, I gotta ask, even before kicking off in 2020, you come from a software background. I know you've founded and, you know, have had companies acquired what led to entrepreneurship for you even to take us one step further back, where did this entrepreneurial drive of first building software and then now building consumer hardware and on this path, where does this begin?

Yeah, you know, I look back and I don't think I ever thought that I would go down this path. You know, I thought particularly during college that, you know, I'd get a corporate job. And in fact, I did for a little while. I worked in management consulting and kind of got the job that I felt I was supposed to get and was really excited about it for about six months. And then I realized that the big company path wasn't for me. And I, I felt like I was perhaps a little more creative and, and ambitious. That's not A knock on that career by any means, but for me it just felt a little bit constrictive. Yeah, and I, I had a background in, in tech, my father's a software engineer. I actually taught myself to code when I was around 10 years old and just kind of fell in love with building things and, and building things through software. And it's kind of an interesting balance of creativity and structured problem solving that really resonated with me. And I ended up working at a tech company that gave me a lot of free rein in terms of kind of building into new areas of the business and it really kind of, I think accelerated my desire to build something for myself and that's what led me to go on to build my first software company and ultimately what paved the way to be able to build sans and to bootstrap SANS as well. So we've actually never raised any money for SANs, but from the acquisition of the first business and from my co founders, prior businesses in the consumer space and acquisitions there as well, we were able to roll a little bit of funding into sans.

That's amazing. I mean first off, that's so cool to hear. Even just the self education aspect and especially with hardware being bootstrapped and not being capital, it's obviously a capital intensive business and not being cash constrained or having to go down the fundraising cycle when you don't have to is such obviously a great spot to be in. Comes with its own pros and cons of course. But something you mentioned beforehand, which I think a lot of founders and even just to press like preface on the conversation today, something I found very unique, which you told me was you've had no full time employees the last five years and you guys are on a pure hiring spree right now. Talk to me about this mindset around again, like building a consumer hardware company. What led to this decision making between you and your co founder and how has that changed, you know, moving into 2025?

Yeah, we're both, I would say, quite scrappy and quite tenacious and you know, we felt like we were really building something meaningful and you know, to your point, around the time during COVID it was, it very much felt like the right time, right place, right people and we really believed in what we were doing to the extent that we were willing to roll our own funding into the business and bootstrap it and retain a little bit more control over the early trajectory. What it forced us to do was to get incredibly disciplined about economics and to get our acquisition economics the right way up. Pretty early on so that we could fund growth from the balance sheet. But what it also meant was that we weren't going to go and build a huge team right out the gate, but instead we kind of put the pressure on ourselves to get good at the things we needed to do early on and then to pull in people to help us accelerate that. So we'd never done media buying before, but we sort of forced ourselves to learn how to do it and then forced ourselves to find a good partner that could help accelerate there. And similarly across a handful of other functions, by no means was it a two man effort. It was very much a case of working with awesome fractional freelance folks and agencies, some good, some bad, but all part of the journey. And I think we're now kind of at this point where we've earned the right to exist. We've brought two products or two categories of products to market that we know people love. And we're now kind of on what I'm thinking of as phase two of the business where we've kind of learned to build the business online and now we're really building a company around it that can stand the test of time. And that's when people becomes the most important factor. And I spend a ton of my time thinking about what does the team need to look like to enable the growth that I know we can achieve.

Absolutely. I love that it's fascinating you speak to that because I think in this world where from 2020 to 2025 the markets of, you know, there's so much money coming into the market for so many different businesses 2020, 2021 and this idea of being capital efficient obviously and profitable when it comes to fundraising and growth as like the table has been more leveled more recently in the last couple of years. And it's great not only to hear that founding thesis but the ability to then have this new opportunity to go have really built a team after going through this with your co founder and you know, the people you've worked with and having real as you said and I love that saying of like the right to exist and, and I want to dive in there more so for people that I mentioned at the beginning. But the two core segments of Sans is air and water purification. Talk to me about those two specific products itself and what led to inevitably, you know, having both. Why not focus on one to start and what's sort of the thinking behind the product category right now?

Yeah, great question. You know, air made sense at the time and that was, that was really the impetus for for launching the business. And I feel like we, we did a really good job of bringing to market a product that people could get excited about. And ultimately, you know, we're sort of proud to have in their living room. And that was really the goal without compromising the tech. And you know, we're still very much a science backed company, but it has to look nice as well.

Yeah, they're beautiful by the way, for people that are listening or watching the website's down below in the description. But they're beautiful products, man.

For us it's really important that people are excited to have it in their home because then it fuels the adoption and the engagement. And our broader mission really is to build products that help people live healthier lives at home. And I think you can only do that if people are excited about having those products in your home. So aesthetics is a huge part of that for us. But as we looked at the space and we thought about where do we go from here? And we launched a mini air purifier in response to consumer demand. And again, that made sense. But we really wanted to embark upon a bit of a broader mission and to really bring to life this idea that we're spending so much time in our home, we should embrace products that help us live healthier lives at home. So it became more than just building air purifiers that people love, but how do we go tackle other segments? Products that either have underperforming incumbents in the space is very much the case in the water purifier sector or sectors that people aren't thinking about yet. So water made sense as the next move. And for us the through line I think is really that we're not compromising on the purification technology and kind of going back to the household that I grew up in. When I was six years old, my mum installed a whole home reverse osmosis system, which nobody does. That's an insane thing to do. But it meant that when we were looking at the water space, it was a no brainer for us what tech we wanted to use. It was always going to be a reverse osmosis system because we know that's the best. So then the problem became how do we make that into a product that people are excited to have and make it accessible to as many people as possible. So you're not having to install it, but instead you can put it on your countertop and we're asking you to give us a square foot of countertop space. We have to make it look nice at the very Least. So that was really the overarching mission for water, and I'm super proud of it. I think it's very much kind of at the cutting edge of what people are expecting from this new era of water purification products.

Absolutely. No, it's, it's. I mean, as mentioned, they're beautiful products, and I want to take a step back on that as well. Hearing your mother install this reverse osmosis, I feel like nowadays you hear that more and more and more, and there's a lot of education around it, but that seems like a very innovative thing to do back then when you were growing up, when you were growing up, when it comes to even that word, the reverse osmosis, how did you think about water quality? You know, when you were going out? Like, did you. Were you thinking about it a lot? Or how did that, you know, gesture of your mother, like, really caring about that at home, translate to how you maybe. How maybe you live your life? Because I know, again, I have friends that they have these awesome home installations of purification, and they really care about what water they're drinking, where they're drinking it, and they won't drink certain waters. Right. And I'm curious to know how that's been for you growing up and especially as you've brought these products to market.

Yeah, I would say I sort of always existed with this. This notion that I wasn't. I wasn't using a good enough solution for water, and I always rented, so it wasn't the case that I could have something installed and you sort of forced to rely on a fridge filter or a picture filter of some kind. And, you know, it always felt like a compromise. So then for us, you know, getting to build the product that I kind of wished I had when I was a renter and in college was a really nice moment to sort of close the loop and feel like, okay, we've actually now taken this tech that I know to be the best in class for. For water purification and made it accessible to as many people as possible.

Yeah, no, that's. That's amazing, man. And talk to me about, you know, you're. You're from London, you live in Los Angeles now. 1. How long have you been in LA? And what inspired the move over here in the first place?

Yeah, good question. So I'm from England originally, but I also grew up in Spain, so I spent eight years in Spain. And the. The move to Spain when I was six is what prompted my mum to install that reverse osmosis system. Because the water in Spain is Pretty terrible. So I lived in Spain, back and forth between England and Spain for a little bit, and then moved out to the US for university. So I came out here in 2010, went to Chapman University in Orange County. On one hand, sort of told my parents that it would just be four years and then I'd come back to Europe. And on the other hand, I sort of knew and wanted to spend more time out here. So I've been here since then. It's been 15 years. This is very much home at this point. And, you know, I love to go back to the uk, but I also love the environment out here. I think LA in particular is a really special community when it comes to health and wellness, and it's nice to kind of be on the cutting edge of that. You're always reminded of that when you travel other places in the U.S. it's not quite as advanced as it is here. And I'm just really fortunate to get to live amongst what I think is kind of one of the best health and wellness communities in the us.

Yeah, it's so easy to forget that, even for me, coming from a small town on the east coast in Virginia. I was telling you before, I was traveling to London a couple weeks ago, then I was in Vancouver, then got back to la, and the day I got back was on Friday. And then my wife, she invited me. We had this event that we were going to, health and wellness event. I've gone to a handful of these events over the years, of course, and they're always fun, but haven't been in a while. And we end up going to this awesome event, like, beautiful location. And there's the sauna, the cold plunge, they're giving out massages, the juice bar, all these health and wellness activities that again, I have a sauna here at home and I used to have a cold lunch. So I've always been very focused on health and wellness myself. But you sometimes forget being in la. You're like, wow, this is so normalized here, this healthy lifestyle and community that there's an abundance of events and activities to be a part of. I go back home and like, wow, yeah, like, this is just such a special, unique place where, as you said, like, really is the forefront of all these, you know, whether that's modern technologies or communities. And it's. It's a special thing for sure. Which I'm glad that you pointed out, because I think, you know, as someone that used to just travel here, I always found that so interesting and obviously a huge part of what made Me stay overall.

So, yeah, it's certainly a good, fun place to live as well. So it has its merits for sure.

Yeah. I'm curious, when you think about Sans as a business and now hiring and stepping into this new frontier of team, how do you think about leadership team and maybe pull from some inspirations or mentors in your life? Um, let me actually backtrack. Like, do you have any leadership mentors in your life that you plan to integrate into this next chapter of growth and hiring?

Yeah, I. I feel like I've actually always kind of overlooked that, and I kind of would like to fix that. You often hear about folks that. That feel like they're their mentors, really help them move forward in their career and in their business. And for me, it's always been my co founder and I figuring it out together. And we're fortunate to be really good friends. Before we were business partners and I would say better friends as a result of being business partners. And we kind of rely on each other for that a little bit. I think as we look at kind of the next phase of Sans, I'll be honest, to me, this feels like the biggest challenge yet. We brought the products to market and we learned how to acquire customers, but now it's. It's really a case of building a company and a culture that's rallied around the vision, and that's new to me and I'm really excited to be doing it. And we are already doing it, but it feels for sure like a challenge. And maybe this is the time maybe I should start to look at peers and pull folks in to help us guide.

Absolutely. I think it's such a. The transition of thinking of I versus us and just how, you know, you, your co founder, are stepping into this next chapter of leadership and team. It's super exciting to hear and even on that front as well, you know, when it comes to companies that you're inspired by, I'd be curious to know, in this world of business entrepreneurship, are there any cultures or brands that have inspired you over the years? Specifically, when it comes to whether that's sans as a product or, you know, your previous software companies, what are the brands that inspire you most or the cultures?

Yeah, it's shifted over the years. You know, my mindset pre Sans was really all software. And, you know, you're sort of trained to admire the companies that raise a ton of money and hire really quickly and move super fast. And I was fortunate to. To work at a company when I left consulting that had raised money and was Venture backed, but I thought was doing it in a really sensible fashion. And the CTO at that company, I thought built an incredible engineering culture and I really looked up to what he'd achieved and what he had managed to construct in such a way that it felt really scalable and everyone was really excited to be building sort of product all in the same direction. Now I think it's, you know, it's a little bit different on the DTC side. You think about, you know, it's less about getting a huge amount of engineers to sort of move in one direction and more about getting really multi talented folks to all get behind a singular vision. And you know, the sans feels like a. More a company that has more of a broad base in the sense that we're not building software, but we're, we're making products, we're shipping products, we're building a go to market engine, we're building a back office function that there are so many more parts to it that I think the folks that we look up to are really the brands that are one step ahead of us or two steps ahead of us that I feel like have just nailed the execution. I've got an eight Sleep recently and I love the product, but I also loved the setup and the unboxing experience, which sounds kind of strange but like I know that's an area that we fall short. We have our user manuals from 2022 when we first sort of did our brand revamp and I know we need to improve there. So it actually brought me joy like seeing what eight Sleep had figured out. And it's this very guided setup and the box as part of the instruction process. And this sounds like a huge plug for eight Sleep, but what it did to me was really think, okay, like we, we can and should learn as much as possible from the brands that are like one and two steps ahead of us. And we start looking up and looking ahead a little bit, it feels like everything becomes a little bit smoother and everything runs a little bit faster and ultimately, you know, we can achieve greater success.

No, that's wonderful. And such a great example as well. You know, I've had one of the co founders of eight Sleep here on the show and I've also been a customer and a user for I think four years now. And it's a product I always come back to of just one of those products that has deeply integrated not only into my life where I'm spending eight hours on the mattress every day, but the natural. Here we are talking about it Right. Like the natural referral engine and the like. Hey, what's a product that's impacted your life the last five years? Like eight Sleep for me is like top of the list of just one that I cannot talk about enough. And I've learned I really do love it. And I was going to ask about that in terms of coming from a software background and companies like eight Sleep or Whoop, who I've had Will Ahmed on the show before. This idea of hardware and software and the convergence of it in the modern era, every hardware company at the end of the day is you're also most likely going to be building software or you have your user experience on an app to engage with the hardware. How do you think about this hardware software dynamic and how is it of course different in your opinion from just building software and some of the challenges, the things you've learned, but most importantly like how you're focused on it now, as you mentioned before, when you think about the user experience.

Yeah, I'll say. First of all, I think moving pixels is a lot easier than moving atoms. I learned that pretty early on. We have taken a really intentional perspective thus far on software as it relates to the hardware. You know, our goal with the early versions of the Air Purifier was to build something that didn't require you to install another app or to really kind of give it too much thought. You know, the idea was that this should be a self contained unit that can take care of itself. And I know that that is a little bit sort of counter to the general thinking around everything should be app enabled and everything should plug into my, you know, Nest, etc. But for us it was really this case of, you know, we, we don't want to increase any more, you know, put any more burden on the user. We don't want to take up any more of your. Your mind share. This isn't something that you should be adjusting multiple times a day like your thermostat. It's something that if we've done our job right, you can turn it on and let it run 24,7 until a new filter shows up in three months. Yeah, so that, that was kind of the, the overarching goal and it had the benefit as well of meaning we didn't have to go build software, which was a really favorable thing at the time. And it is typically quite capital intensive. I think our perspective is shifting a little bit as we broaden the product scope. I think we'll always hold that key. And if you don't want Software, we're not going to force it upon you. But there comes a point if we do our job right, where you have our water purifier in the kitchen, you have several of our air purifiers throughout the home, in your bedrooms, and we've got an ambitious product roadmap that will fit quite nicely into potentially some sort of software platform that underpins it. So it's a tbd, but it is exciting because it feels like it's kind of getting back to my roots a little bit more. I was get excited about building products and putting them in people's hands, whether it's hardware or software. So we'll see. But it's something that is very much top of mind at the moment.

Yeah, no, I mean, I love that too. I mean it's. I was talking about this in Vancouver. I was on this panel last week about innovative brands like Gen Z Marketing. And you know, a brand that was being discussed was Liquid Death. And obviously when you take something as simple as water, it's like, how do you create something that's so, I guess you could say counterculture and so, you know, unique in its own marketing channels. And again, I say counterculture, where with everything being so digitized and app enabled, like sometimes it's the refreshing, oh, I can just turn it on and leave it alone. I don't have to check on it, or my app isn't working, my Bluetooth isn't working. Like there's a refreshing feeling that comes with that that I've felt across different products that I've had over the years. And again, like, is it one? Is one way better than the other? No, but I think it's something that is, I appreciate that thinking of, especially for something that's air purify oriented. Right. So very cool to hear that.

Yeah. When. When do you not want your air to be purified? Is sort of where we work from. It's like going to be on 247 if.

Yeah, exactly, man. I think, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this when here in la, and I know you're based in LA as well, when all the fires were happening, obviously, you know, I'm based here in the west side and you know, by no means were we in the thick of it, but so much of the air quality everywhere in Los Angeles was terrible. And for us it was so important, of course to shut all the doors, windows and have the purifier rocking and rolling. Curious to know from a business standpoint, have natural disasters or fires in like, for example, LA from a business standpoint, but also user education. People, you know, coming to really say, like, hey, like, I need this. What have you learned from. Maybe that's, you know, the LA fires that happen. And I feel like a company like yours must get lots of input or questions when it's like, oh my gosh, I need this now because, you know, my air is bad. You know, it's. It's easy to not think about it when it's like, oh, yeah, like, everything's great. Who knows if my air is good or bad? And you may not be, like, itching for that, but then you see there's tons of bad air quality around and you want to ensure. So curious to hear your thoughts on everything related to that.

Yeah, it's, you know, I think it raises a really interesting point around education and, and helping people understand that, you know, you should be thinking about air quality, not just in acute times like when there's extreme wildfires. And as I think about, you know, kind of everyday life in L. A or in New York or even in parts of the country that feel rural but are still impacted by air quality, which is a pretty significant chunk of the country, it is something that you should be thinking or it's something that you should be solving for on a daily basis, ideally, not necessarily thinking about it because your sans is just running 24, 7 for you. But our job, I think, is to help educate people on that. And you hear crazy stats that shine a light on it. Like, you know, I heard one recently. There's a study published by the BBC saying that we breathe in a credit card's worth of microplastics a week on average, which is kind of a scary amount of plastic to be in your lungs. So, you know, not many people are thinking about it in those terms. And I view our job as helping to kind of dilute those sorts of stats and findings from studies down into. In a way that people feel like, okay, now is an interesting time for me to kind of consider adding this to my home. And then, you know, you're in a position like it sounds like you were during the fires, where you already have your air purifier and you're not scrambling to get one. But it's inevitable that you'll either want to add more to your home or if you didn't previously have one, you'll want one for us during the fires. It was kind of a shame. We've been on backorder. We were at the time on backorder. I should Say for a couple of months. So we weren't unfortunately able to cater to the market too much, but we were able to donate a handful of units to folks that were desperately in need. And it's nice to be able to engage with the community in that sense. But my overarching goal, I think, is to try to get ahead of it and not rely on spikes in demand, but instead try to smooth that out through smart education throughout the year of Absolutely.

No, it's very interesting to think about and even to the, you know, how water and the air quality, like these two important aspects of like the air you're breathing, the water you're drinking, or, you know, the water you're. I've read studies on like shower heads and all this stuff and the importance of quality water. Going back to the water filtration and water purification. What are some things. And I know you guys have tons of context on this. Why should people care about these things if they don't already? I think it's so easy for you and I maybe to say, oh my God, I care about the quality of water. I care about the, you know, the, the air quality of my house. And I'm not just saying why should people care? Because it's very, you know, simple and easy to say, oh, because you want quality water. But maybe what are people miss if they don't have a, you know, water purification system or air purification system? Like, what should they be thinking about? What are some of the informative aspects that you try to educate to customers through marketing, through everything that you do that maybe people can walk away from this conversation with today?

Yeah, I have a few more stats. Personally, I think they're interesting, but I think the stats can sort of serve to illustrate that this is something that people are dealing with over a protracted period of time. You have the acute instances. The wildfire equivalent is maybe a news, breaking news article that tells us that a certain municipality has got a spike in heavy metals or something along those lines like we've seen over the years. But the sort of the evergreen situation is nearly half of our households have forever chemicals coming out of the tap. And it's not the sort of thing that after a couple of glasses of water is going to kill you. But it's the sort of thing that over a protracted period of time, you are doing serious damage to your health if you continue to get exposed to those. I may get the numbers wrong on this, but hopefully it serves to illustrate the point as well. And get a liter of bottled water if It's a plastic bottle of water, has something like 200,000 pieces of microplastics in it. So even if you're turning to bottled water away from the tap, it's still not necessarily a foolproof solution. So I think it's, it really does just come down to us help, trying to help the broader customer base or prospective customer base understand that, you know, there are solutions out there for sure. But unfortunately the default solution that people typically turn to, you know, your faucet, your fridge, bottled water, if you have it delivered, isn't as good as we perhaps think.

Yeah, no, I'm love all those stats and the information there and something too. I know you guys, outside of the water purification system itself, you have specific water bottles, the Sans water bottle. Talk to me about that, about that product because I think it's, you know, if I'm you as a founder, it's something you can obviously take from the home. Right. You're very much so at home product, the purification system, the water filtration system. And obviously this gets someone to bring your product into the world. So curious to know where that fell into the ecosystem and why that's important.

Yeah, it's our first foray into a product that doesn't live in your home. And for us it was a really interesting kind of expansion opportunity from the water purifier where if you're, if you're using a water purifier at home, I feel good about the quality of water you're drinking, but that doesn't necessarily translate to on the go. So we first of all just wanted to have a vessel that felt like it was sort of part of the Sans brand family that you could take with you and then think about kind of on the go you're filling up. I think about this all the time at airports when I'm using the. I'm sort of ashamed to say that I do at times when I run out of water, use the water filter in an airport. It always just feels a little bit dodgy. So the idea behind the Sun's self cleaning water bottle is that it has a built in UV light into the top and it will sterilize the bottle and anything in the bottle as well. So not only does it keep the bottle clean, you know, I don't know about you, but I'm terrible at washing my water bottles as regularly as I should. So this helps with that and then it helps with, you know, if you're filling up on the go, you can just kind of have a bit of Peace of mind that you don't at least have any pathogens in the water.

Got it. No, that's awesome. And I think it's again, it's such a great product skew of taking it out of the home and having that customer experience. So very, very cool to hear. And I know, I'm sure you can't speak to too many things, but I'm curious to know how you think about the future of how you guys say in terms of developing products that inspire wellness in the home and in this case sort of out of the home. When you think about the future of signs like what, what excites you around products or the market itself, the opportunities that you see, whether you want to speak to like you know, the products or you know, future ones that you're building or just to the industry at large around wellness and you know, the user education around that. How do you and your co founder think about the future of the company, the industry and you know, that really that customer experience Overall, I think wellness.

At home is unfortunately an area that gets relatively overlooked in the broader wellness conversation. And I would like to change that. I would like for us to be thinking about the products that we buy for our home in the same breath as we think about the products that we're buying for on the go. Whether it's hydration, supplements or whatever it might be. If not sans, this category belongs in that conversation. And I really do believe that sans is the right kind of brand to be in the space. As we look at the product roadmap, it's exciting. There's a ton that we're really looking forward to bringing to market. I will say we're anchoring ourselves in the home so we're sort of reverting our focus back to helping people discover products that help them live healthy lives at home. Both purification products and some non purification products. It'll be beyond just air and water. And the goal really is to have a solution for every room of your home.

I love that. That's amazing. Anything you can speak to or. I'm sure you want to keep it all in the queue, but I'm curious to know again you think about the future of it and again, by no means speak to specific products but it makes me so fascinated to think about the opportunities in that space.

I wish I could. Very soon we'll reveal.

We'll do a follow up sometime. Yes.

Yeah, I'd love.

That's amazing. Such a cool. You're totally right.

Right.

Like when you think about the supplement space and the how much people care of course about what they put in their body and you know, the, the narrative around that. And of course I think that's obviously a massive market for people and you know, the water, the, the air, of course. But when you think about like at home wellness and just the continued growth of the space in the sector, it's. That's exciting. So very cool to hear.

I think we're at a really interesting point in this category where people are really starting to care about the products that they put in their home. And I think we see it in cookware where people are ditching non stick in favor of non toxic options. We're personally seeing it with the growth of sans and people really starting to care about air and water quality. And I think it's just really an exciting time for, you know, as a, as a builder on that side of it for us to kind of be in the space and to be thinking about how do we further contribute to that overarching goal. But then as a consumer it's exciting to see new products show up on the market as well because it feels like we're kind of rallying around the right mission here.

Yeah, of course. Very cool to, very cool to hear. When it comes to, of life outside of work, Adam, where do you spend your time? Interests, personal things that keep you centered? And how has that changed over the last decade as it comes to building different companies and just staying at your core, focused and centered over time?

I think I'm sort of always on a journey to do better with this. I've definitely gone through phases where I've worked a ton and sort of given myself less time to rest than I perhaps should. And now as we think about kind of the next phase of sans and the new demands on me and John and the team in general, it's really top of mind. So the sort of cliche answers of I love to work out, I love to play tennis, I love to cook, those all really do ring true for me right now. In particular, I'm finding a lot of sort of joy in stepping away from work and just cooking or playing tennis with my girlfriend. But then longer term I am trying to figure out what new habits I should be working into my routine so that it's ultimately kind of setting me up for success for the long term. I'd say a work in process.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think even on that front, something that I spoke about earlier and we talked about eight sleep. Are there any products or you know. Yeah, more so products that you've integrated into your life the last couple of years that has has made a bold difference when it comes to health, wellness. Whether that's cookware or again eight sleep or something along those lines that has stuck out to you from a consumer perspective?

Yeah, absolutely. Cookware is an easy one. We ditched all of our nonstick years ago in favor of stainless steel. And I had a chuckle at the time because I grew up in a kitchen where there was only stainless steel cookware. And I used to get really frustrated with my mother nightmare to make scrambled eggs because there was no non stick. And she's like, look, this is terrible for you. So the first thing I did when I moved out, of course was buy a non stick pan and now I can't stop throwing them all away. So there's a couple of full circle moments in that I started sleeping with my phone out of the bedroom. I'm trying to like detach from the digital world a little bit more intentionally. And this actually came about this again sounds like another plug for a sleep. But the alarm is incredible. So now my phone's downstairs and I'm still vibration. Yeah, it's insane.

Yeah. No, that's my favorite part, the vibration. Rise to wake. Yeah, it's great to. Great to hear. So I completely agree with that. No, and I think too I like all these different modalities of phone outside the room, like which I've done before. And I find it fascinating, at least for me, where I've gone through so many waves of even things like cold plunge eye mask. I have this new one of my friends gifted me one of these pillows that it's a. It's a. I forget the name, but you literally just like sleep with a pillow. It's like a weighted pillow that you put on your head. And it is incredible. I don't even know the brand name, but it's something so small that I'm like, wow, that's something that I integrated into my life recently that just really made a difference in terms of again like that restfulness or weighted blanket, whatever it may be right in that category. So cool to hear that. I think we all right when you're always testing different things and figuring out what's best for me. At least we got a sauna recently and kind of swapped out a cold plunge. And I've found that the use case of asana for me is I love it way more in terms of the, you know, how much time I'm spending in it versus a couple minutes in the cold plunge. But it's cool to hear, you know, the different personal use cases and shifts you made as someone that cares about their health and that is obviously building a company in this space.

Yeah, I sort of. I try to think of it as a pragmatic shift, so I want to work things into my routine that can last. But I'm also realistic that I do care about work and I do still socialize. I do still love a few glasses of wine after a long work week. Those are things that bring me joy. But it's the smaller things that I can do that cost nothing to integrate but deliver a little bit of value. And you'll have to send me the link to that weighted pillow. That sounds incredible.

Totally. I wish I could shout out their company member. I don't even know the name. I love it. Well, Adam, before we start wrapping up here, I know I mentioned it briefly earlier, but, you know, when it comes to sans and the team, like, what are you most excited about? When you think about the future of this product category company team, what excites you the most? Every day.

I am honestly really getting so excited about now having the opportunity to build sans with more and more people. For so long, it was just myself, my co founder, that was incredible. Like, we really work so well together and, you know, it. Sans is what it is and we bootstrapped the business because I think we were just so laser focused. But now I get to like pull other people in and sort of share the excitement that I have for, for Sans with them and starting to see that, you know, we're now, you know, we're up to a team of six or so people at the moment and, you know, which feels like a huge jump from. From two.

Right.

But we are just sort of starting to see that other people are really excited about building this too. And that's just super rewarding.

That's amazing. And I gotta say, I'm so excited for you guys as well and can't wait to hear about all the upcoming different products and the continued growth of the team. And before we wrap this up here for everyone that's still listening and watching, where's the best place for everyone to not only buy the products, but learn more about the company and of course, stay in touch with yourself team.

Yeah, head to liv sounds.com. you can obviously check out the products there, but if you're looking to, to connect with me personally, Find me on LinkedIn. We'd love to chat.

Love it. Well, Adam, I will be sure to Link down below LinkedIn website all that good stuff. So everyone in that's Listening can go check that out. And once again, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciate it.

Really appreciate you having me. It's great to be here.