241 - How Hard Work and Listening Can Lead to Success in the Nutrition Industry with NutriFusion's William Grand

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. Bill Grand, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the founder and CEO of a company called NutraFusion, which can be found at nutrafusion.com. Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Tell me a little bit about your backstory.

Um, how far back?

As far back as is— stories always begin somewhere. So wherever it's appropriate, I'm leaving it to you.

I've had quite a varied career and done lots of things. Focus on innovation, product development, which actually led me into NutraFusion. It was, there was a group of potential people who are looking to invest in a business out of South Carolina. And they, I somehow got involved in it, got really quite fascinated. As it ended up, the technology would not work. And just by fluke, I had a very brilliant scientist that kept telling me I can make this work. And we'd finally got to a point where everybody was off on their own and I say, went back to him and said, okay, let's see what you can do. And he was actually able to produce perfect samples in 6 weeks. Wow. So yeah, it was very unusual. And that gave us the ability to decide if we had a business model or not. And this all, we incorporated in 2008, just as the world was falling off a cliff with the car companies and the mortgage companies and so on. Yeah. We ended up with an interesting story, but nobody that would talk to us. Given the, especially people in banks and so on, given the problems. So we essentially, we self-funded the startup of the company, which got a little lean a few times, but after about maybe as much as 2 years, the company got traction and immediately became profitable.

So what exactly does Nutrifusion do?

We have a unique technology that allows us to take fresh fruits and vegetables and we can stabilize the nutrients. So we process fruits and vegetables separately. We ultimately, we dehydrate them and we have what, for lack of a better term, like McDonald's, we have a magic sauce that makes everything come together properly. And we, from that technology, We are able to produce multiple formulas and recipes for food processing companies, for pet food companies, for beverage companies, and then also nutraceutical companies. The technology is all essentially the same. Most of the formulation is similar. And we also, so we have a small group of stock items. That do it so extremely well. And then we also do custom blends. So Ultimate—

so sorry, I was gonna say, so your customers are in primarily in the food business, and is this like a nutrient additive that they will add to their products?

In a very simplified form, yes. The problem with nutrition now that's being offered is it's all based upon synthetic vitamins. Synthetic vitamins, without going into too much technical, technical reasoning, do not work. The chemical structure is different than the chemical structure of plant-based nutrition. Our product, which is unique to the world, is actually plant-based nutrition, and, uh, the, the chemical structure is one that your body knows how to absorb the nutrition despite all the talk that you'd hear, like from, especially in the nutraceutical side, and the claims they make, we can actually deliver what they say they're doing.

And so what kinds of products would be using the NutraFusion formulations?

You hit on it. One that's very interesting is food. We do a wide range of food products. It can be anything from snack foods to pasta to, um, chocolate, and the list is— it just keeps going on and on. As long as we have the ability to put it in a food product or put a coating on top of it, our product can be used.

I'm curious, if I were to pick up a consumer product that was using a NutraFusion formulation, would I see NutraFusion on the ingredients list?

No, you wouldn't. With our product, you, we, by law, you have to list out the nutrients that are in the product, but that doesn't identify us. And then in the, on the ingredient deck, you list out the ingredients. And we are, because we have the ability to concentrate and add a wide range of nutrients in our product, there's always, there's one key that gives it away. If you see in the, on the ingredient deck, a listing of fruits and vegetables and, and shiitake mushrooms or maitake mushrooms, that would be us. And we use those, one of those two typically to provide vitamin D. Wow. Wow. Yeah. So everything we do, all the fruits and vegetables that we use are designed to deliver a specific nutrient or group of nutrients, depending upon what the product is.

How do you source your products, your raw food stock?

Most of our fruits and vegetables come from the United States. We buy locally. There's the odd time that we will, especially on the seasonality, may go, for example, down to Peru or Chile and pull out blueberries that are seasonally grown there.

There.

And that, that is, as much as we can, we prefer to stay with American-grown produce. And then there's a few botanicals that aren't available easily. So we get one from Europe. And other than that, it's, it's all US-grown.

Are you procuring through brokers or do you have direct-to-farm relationships?

Both. We have a series of approved farms. And they repair and grow based upon our needs. And when in the ground, it's based upon quality of the ground, of the dirt, it's based upon the amount of water, the amount of sunshine, whether you're in a valley or on a hill. There's so many variables that are involved. And what we at that point try to do is utilize those specifically for our products.

I'm assuming that's all organic. Everything's managed organically.

It is all organic. You're quite correct. With, with, and we have one, we have, we are not organic certified, mostly because of the rules and regulations that they keep playing with in the U.S. And that, that may actually be changing, but we're not holding our breath on that one quite yet. But we do use exclusively organic produce.

So you've been doing this since 2008?

Correct.

What is it that keeps you going these days? What gets you up in the morning and gets you excited to go to work?

It's fun. I'm having a good time. Hey, I'm 39 years old. And, uh, yes, every day is fun.

40th anniversary of your 39th birthday, right?

I didn't say it again and again, but So you're having a good time. Yeah, I'm, I'm enjoying it and, and I like working. I like what I do. I enjoy it. I see no reason to change. Uh, my health is good. My energy's good. I walk 4, 4.5 miles every day and things are, things are good.

Good for you. How many employees do you have?

You hit a whole interesting area here.

Oh, okay. Cuz you got a lot of remotes and you got virtuals and Yeah, you're, you've got the idea.

We are a very much a virtual company. The technology is ours. Uh, the, we use a contract packer to blend and produce the ingredients for us. We use a third, so that's third party. We use a third party distribution center and warehousing and shipping. We have a bookkeeper that's third party. So if you take everything, we have very few employees.

And how's that worked out for you?

I, I, if, if it wasn't by luck, I would've said brilliantly.

Well, it's great that you can do everything virtually. Your cost, you can really control your costs. And you're not having a huge overhead that you've gotta deal with every day. It just, it just, it strikes me that once you've got your formulation set up, your supply sources set up, and your distribution set up, you're good to go.

And you're quite correct. And that, we didn't start off with that. That evolved, especially with '08 and as time moved on, it took us probably after maybe about the first 4 years, we really were becoming more and more a virtual company. And we were way ahead of that even being in fashion or with COVID and a lot of people working remotely. So we, excuse me, we have salespeople and they, they're all excellent. They're all self-starters and they all work out of their home. We have one in Pennsylvania, one in Illinois, for example. And it works, it works extremely well. I, that's why I said, I like to say I was brilliant putting this together, but it actually was one of the things that evolved. The other thing that makes it really unique is in '08 with everything going rotten, nobody was going to lend us money and they were calling loans on perfectly good companies and we finally decided we would do it ourselves. And I decided I'm not going back to those days where, you know, you owe money and you've got all the issues there. For about the last 10, 12 years, we have no bank line. We have no operating line. And everything we do is on a cash basis. Wow.

So you're able to manage your cash flow. Through the ups and downs of the seasons. Correct.

Good for you. Yeah.

So what do you think is unique about you, Bill, that you bring to the table that's made all of this work? You said there's a lot of luck involved, and I, I can see that, but I also think there's a lot of skill involved, and I'm wondering what you brought to the table that, that made all this happen.

Um, what— a diversified background would obviously be one And also, I've been always fairly heavily involved in product development and looking for opportunities. And I've done opportunities successfully and abysmally depending upon what I want. But I will say failure is probably your best teacher.

I have yet to meet somebody who's really successful that hasn't failed at least 99 times before they became successful. I think the big distinction between successful people and people who aren't so successful is persistence and discipline and patience.

Yeah, I, or stubbornness. There's another word.

I'll put that in the bucket.

Sometimes, my wife and I, we work together in this business, but my wife and I, in '09, early, 2010, we'd go for long walks and it would be, okay, what's the bank position today? Where are we at? What's happening? And we never walked away from it, but there was days where things were getting thin and we were going, eh, let's go for another 3 months and see how we do. And then all of a sudden it literally overnight changed.

So where, where do you see the future? What, what do you see in the future for you? As you get younger, the company.

Just carrying on, the company does very well. And part of it is because of being a virtual company. Part of it is because we manage it and our cash very carefully. We're in a comfortable position right now. Never want to make too positive a statement because that's when you get your knees taken out.

Do you have succession planning in place or an exit strategy?

I'm 39 and still got quite a ways to go. Actually, it's something that we have, we are, we do work on.

Yeah.

And we're somewhere muddling along the way now. And that's quite a trip on its own, right? When you start to plan and you start bringing in all the experts and you really do need the experts, the ones. Takeaway, what I would say is if you're getting into that route, you need diversified, strong help to get you through all that.

Absolutely. And it's important to do it. I can't tell you how many conflicts, family business conflicts, I've mediated, or I've been called in to help make peace because of poor succession planning. So it's, it's great that you're doing it and you're getting the right professionals to help you out to avoid any potential problems down the road. We got a few minutes left. I'm curious about how important listening has been in your career, learning how to listen. And how to— and I'll ask that first and then I got another question.

I would say I'm a fair listener. I wouldn't say anywhere near as strong as your background and skills in it. That may be why I've made a few mistakes along the way, because I didn't listen as well as I should have. But the other thing, as you get more seasoned, older, you get better at it.

You mean by the time you get 39 years old, you, you, you learn a little bit?

I'm a very mature 39.

Yeah, it is. It's a skill that, that nobody teaches you except for me. I, that's because that's what I do. I teach people how to listen, but it, it, it, it is foundational and yet it's completely ignored. In our educational system. They just assume that because we can hear noise coming in, somehow we know how to make sense of it and know how to sort out what's important from what's not important.

You're absolutely right too.

And it's not. And unfortunately, that is a skill that is in short supply these days. So I'm sure you've run across people who are not such great listeners. How do you manage bad listeners?

Boy, I have been known to tell them to quiet down. I had just a few weeks ago, a woman that I was actually interviewing and she never stopped talking. Wow. So didn't go well.

No, I do a lot of, I do, I help a lot of sales organizations learn how to listen in sales. And what I tell all of my students is Never use I, never use me, never talk about yourself.

Completely agree.

The sales process is all about this. It's a, it's not a sales conversation either. It's a buyer's conversation.

And when I talk to people, I never say I did this or I did that. It's we, and we're part of a team and to exclude them is not right. Right. Politicians are famous for that. They always say I did this and I did that. And it's, they did it all by themselves and they got a huge organization behind them that we did it.

And they always take credit for the bills they voted against.

There you go. I like it.

You gotta just shake your head sometimes.

So we could get into a whole new topic that you could do another blog on, just on that.

What's interesting is I have a, actually I have a talk I give on how to have a calm conversation with the politically polarized. I think I've even got a YouTube video on it. On how you, how do you have a conversation with somebody whose political views are just against every value you hold? And how do you do it without getting, having it turn into a World War III? And it's actually quite easy, but the secret is being able to listen.

We've, I've gone through that a few times and, and you're right, it's very polarizing. And if they don't like what I say, I get the cold shoulder for a while.

The secret is to ask some very open-ended questions and be, have a learning mindset. And what I've discovered is that when you approach it in the way that I teach it, you find out that there are far fewer differences between you and this other person than you ever thought. And actually you have a lot more in common than you can possibly imagine. And you, but you can't discover those shared values unless you're willing to listen. And that's the secret. One more question. I'll let you go, Bill. What's one thing about yourself that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

My wife would tell you I'm stubborn and I'd agree with that. I don't give up.

You don't give up even in the face of, even when you're wrong, you don't give up.

No, if I'm wrong, I can actually admit that.

Okay, that's good.

But maybe not. As quick as I could, but I will come back and—

there you go—

make sure that I— in fact, I had to do that earlier this week and tell them that was completely my issue, not anybody else's. Right. But stubbornness can be good and bad.

Yes, stubbornness in moderation is a good thing. Yes, like moderation. Moderation in moderation is a good thing.

Yeah. The other phrase that I like is the harder I work, the luckier I am.

That, that's true because the hard work opens up opportunities that just seem to appear out of nowhere. And you, and if you have the insight to take advantage of those opportunities, then people will say that's luck, but it's really preparation meeting opportunity.

Yeah. Yes. And it's actually quite true and that was well stated. So thank you.

You're welcome. It's been a great conversation, Bill. I've really enjoyed talking with you, and I know my audience will love you too. Thank you.

My pleasure. Nice talking to you too.

Absolutely. Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag Listening with Leaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up, ratings, and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DougNoll. Douglass E. Noll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.