74 - Fresh Innovations: Sustainable Solutions for the Sporty Market with Nonaste's Andy Voggenthaler

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.

Andy Bogenthaler, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the CEO and founder of Nonasty, which is a really interesting business, and it can be found at nonasty.com. That's it, with an E, not a Y. N-O-N-A-S-T-E. .com. Thanks for joining me.

Hey Doug, thanks, thanks for having me. I appreciate it so much. Yes, and you got it right.

So just in a nutshell, uh, well, I'll get your backstory first, but No Nasty is in the, is in the business of, of designing and manufacturing and selling athletic clothes that don't stink.

No, not at all. Actually, that is not it. No, we, we, we keep active people clean and stink-free with our products. Nice, nice twist there. But, but that's what we do. Yeah. I mean, as a longtime endurance athlete, you know, been around a lot and kids that stink, all that stuff. There was, there was definitely an aha moment that, that led us to creating No Nasty for sure.

Well, we'll, we'll come back to that in a moment, but tell us a little bit about your backstory.

Yes. I mean, my, my background is I'm longtime product development, corporate license, trademark licensing, professional. I mean, I loved it. I mean, I worked with amazing brands like General Motors and Nabisco and Mott's Kahlua. I was even Hang Ten, the old surf brands. I was vice president of worldwide licensing for Hang Ten, licensing the brand all over the world. It was, it was an amazing time. And then for me, like, the passion for, you know, leveraging a trademark and going to number 3 or number 4 in a category and leveraging a trademark to get them to number 1. We've had lots of number 1 selling products that just brought people up from, you know, number 3 or number 4 from a category. So I love that, right? That has been a thing since my very early days, loving to do. I had that kind of a creative mindset and a colleague of mine had started during this. She had left our company for trademark licensing and started a, of all things, a direct-to-consumer life insurance company. And she went and did that. I'm like, I don't know, but, you know, life insurance for me, that's just not— we're working all these cool brands. And she went off and started that. And I was, like I said, I went on to Hang Ten and we were licensing the product. I literally had 35 stores in Pakistan. I mean, we were just killing it. It was amazing. And And my family was very young, and ultimately, I had just gotten back from Pakistan, and I'm like, wow, this is great, but it's tough on the family for sure. But I was coerced to go help build the company on the life insurance side. And so, I mean, I really had no interest in life insurance, but after listening to her, you said, there is an opportunity to kind of think differently, and maybe there is a way to build this into something kind of cool. And different. And I reluctantly went there. And after kind of looking at the business model, I was even more reluctant and wanting to go back to it. But I did think that there was an opportunity to do something different in that category. And ultimately, I brought in AIG and they ultimately acquired us in 2007. And so that was kind of the ride, you know, right there. And I've, in that period of time, I've always been an endurance athlete. You know, marathons and triathlons and all that stuff. And we eventually sold to AIG. And at that point in time, Doug, that, you know, I really kind of did some soul searching, right? And it was a matter of, you know, what am I going to do? I mean, I'm getting pushed into more of a corporate role. It's not as entrepreneurial as it used to be. Of course, we sold in 2007 and 2008 when the whole world collapsed, blew up, right?

Good timing.

And it was centered around AIG, right? So I really had— I, yeah, I did some soul searching on that, you know, and I said, you know, what can I do, um, to give back? And so I started another— I started a company called RaceGuards, like lifeguards. And what we do is we bring, um, endurance athletes that are also medical professionals, and we run in pairs with uniforms and medical packs that keep an eye out for people that need things along the way. And from my own experience, you know, running marathons and triathlons, I mean, there's a lot of stuff that happens out on the course that they don't even know is going on. But, and certainly it's never at the aid stations. So this idea was an opportunity to do something to give back to sport. And, and I did that. And AIG actually was our first, uh, sponsor for that, and we grew that, and it's still going on today. Really?

So you can actually send people out onto a course that are medically trained to help people who are having, they're having problems?

Yes. In fact, it was interesting. I just saw there was a, there was an image that popped up from 8 years ago, and we were doing, serving the San Diego Rock and Roll Marathon, and we had a team, I don't know, 40 race guards, I think maybe, maybe a little over 40 race guards out on the course, but We, that day, that picture of our team, we helped over 600 people that day in that race because it was hot. It was, it was all that stuff. But you know, most of the time, the good news, Doug, it's like blisters and chafing and cramping, and we solve all that real easy. So everybody has a great race before it turns into a big deal. But we're also there, you know, when things go bad and we, you know, CPR and, and all of that. And, and we've saved lots of people. In fact, a year ago I even had to do CPR on somebody and they, Fortunately, they lived. But, but for the most part, it's about, you know, having people have, you know, a more enjoyable, you know, race time out, out there on the course and, and, and, and taking care of things before they turn into a, a big thing.

So that's a pretty cool way to get back. Now tell us about No Nasty, how'd that get started?

So No Nasty, by our co-founder Jürgen Stark, he, he and I were, you know, as I got older and, and I don't know, Doug, do you practice, do you do yoga at all?

Tai Chi.

Yeah, Tai Chi. So that's great. So, so yoga for me was, um, and in fact, honestly, I have to be very candid about this because when I was doing all the traveling, the running, and all this stuff, I'd have people in our company say, hey Andy, did you work out today? I'm like, yeah, you went for a run or whatever. And I asked them about them, right, and what they did. And they, then some of these people would say, oh, I did yoga. And at the time I was like, yoga, that's not a workout. Come on, that's no workout.

It's pretty tough.

But I had that reality check when somebody had told me to, you know, try out CorePower Yoga and, you know, give it a shot and they get a free week. And it was a game changer for me. Honest to God, I had no idea. And, you know, as I'm older, I'm not as flexible. I need to mix things in. It truly was a game changer. But my co-founder, Jurgen, and I were in a class, 6:00 AM in the morning. And this guy comes rolling in a little late to class, which is not a good thing anyway, as you know. But he comes rolling in and he flops down his gross mat and the room starts heating up and you just— this funk and stench starts coming up right in between where Jurgen was and where I was. And it was just brutal. And I've been around, you know, kids that play lacrosse and I mean, this is just— it was awful. So we, um, so Jürgen actually talked to this guy, Kevin, Stinky Kevin, as we call him in our, and that's who it is. And so, um, Jürgen said, hey, you know, you might want to get something. And because of RaceGuards and one of our sponsors that actually does anti-chafing, and they also had a laundry detergent that actually lifts and removes, you know, gunk from, you know, we are uniforms and our medical packs were so gross. So I knew that there was an idea and there was a formula perhaps that that could take care of this stuff. And yoga was on its way up, and this is right before COVID And I thought, hey, what about this idea of No Nasty as a play on Namaste, the way it's spelled, N-O-N-A-S-T-E, right? So, like everything we do, we'd start with research, and then we created a little sample website to bring an audience together to see if they would like it, to see what they liked and what they didn't like. And we did that, Doug, and the funny thing about that exercise was certainly, you know, the true yogis were like, hey, we're all over a laundry detergent that can keep the stink out of our expensive Lululemons and— but what was the aha moment for us in that research was, hey, we do other stuff. We run, we We have kids that play soccer and lacrosse and they stink and we need, and their cleats are gross. And so we want odor spray, hand sanitizer. We even want something, you know, when you come back from a run to your car and you're all sweaty, what about like a seat protector or, you know, those kind of things. So it, the light bulb kind of went off and we knew we couldn't make it all yoga specific. And that's where, you know, our branding kind of came into play. And I don't even know if you can see it very well, but I will try here. If you know our brand, it's just awesome, right? It came out really, really neat. It's not yoga specific, but it's very high-end, very premium, soft-touch bottles. And the product itself works amazingly well.

So this is stuff you'll launder your clothes with.

So yeah, laundry detergents are kind of our halo products. There's a And it's not, I mean, there's science behind this because it's what Tide and some of those other big brand names, what main big brands do is they make you think your clothes are clean because they smell great, right? But that's because they put fragrance in there that actually gets trapped into your fabrics. And so with activewear, it's synthetic fabrics traditionally that traps all the oils and bacteria inside your, in, in your activewear there. And so you need something to lift and remove it. And we leverage enzymes and plant-based surfactants to actually do the magic behind the scenes on that. And it, and it's, you know, it's not super, super easy, but, or inexpensive, but it's very, very effective. And you put this stuff in, in your washing machine with your clothes? Washing machine. Yeah. It's just your, it's just laundry detergent that you can either soak, you know, one of the things that's so interesting, Doug, is that we, we, We have people like on Amazon that they, that you can put, you can like, if you're traveling and you're, and you go for a run, if that, and you come back to your hotel or camping or whatever, you can just hand soak it in 20 minutes. It's amazing the gunk that comes out. We even have people that put clean clothes in there to test it and all the gunk that comes out of their stuff is, is, is amazing. So, so that's kind of the, the deal on No Nasty. We, you know, we, We're scaling now, you know, Amazon and specialty retail and all that. But, you know, we're at that point now where it's like, it's the scary part where it's like, we've got to, we got to get it over the hump because we need to, we need to make this thing big.

Wow. So what is it that gets you really excited in the morning?

Oh my gosh. I just, you know, certainly people get me excited. I love people. That's one thing. I love sports. I love the fact that what sports do for people. And the biggest thing for me with sports, it's like, what are you going to do when things go wrong? Right? That's the best thing about sports. I love that. And then just, you know, appreciating the fact that I live in a really nice area. I enjoy the terrain, the nature. I just love all that stuff and being with friends and family and enjoying all that stuff. So, I get pretty jazzed up about all that stuff. So it's not hard for me to get jazzed up about waking up in the morning.

What do you think it is that's unique that you bring to the business?

You know, I, I think for me it's, it's like I've always liked to challenge. Like when I was very, very young, um, I traded a bike for a motorcycle, fixed the motorcycle. There's a whole bunch of backstory stuff with my family, but traded a, traded a bike for a motorcycle, fixed the motorcycle, bought this old 1959 Edsel. Yeah. Yeah. And then I have, you know, I still have that to this day and also a whole bunch of cars since that time. But when people told me no about, oh, you're never going to fix it. Oh, it just got me so motivated to do something. And then by the time I turned 16, I drove that Edsel to the National Edsel Show and won Best of Show. So, you know, determination, you know, I think is something that I bring to the table. And then being pretty open-minded about just trying to, you know, if there's something that's done a certain way, it doesn't have to always be that way. We can, why not make it better?

Right. How did you get into endurance sports?

You know, it's interesting. When I was very, very young, I was always very athletic. I mean, you know, I mean, as a kid, you know, you're playing baseball, you're playing soccer, you're doing all those things. And I'll never forget, on, I think it was ABC, you know, Wide World of Sports in 1982, I think is when it was, when I saw Julie Moss crawling across the finish line of the Ironman, right? And I remember I get goosebumps right now just thinking about it. It's crazy because I looked at that image on ABC Sports and I see her crawling to the finish line like, holy cow, she's just, she swam 2.4 miles. She ran or rode 112 miles and she's doing a full-on marathon and she's totally zapped herself beyond nothing left. Yeah, nothing left. And so she's crawling and, you know, I'm thinking, wow. And she, she ended up losing, even though she, in my opinion, she won that day, right? She ended up losing by the last, you know, 20 yards to the finish line. Um, and Well, I looked at that and I said, one day I want to do that. I want to, I want to do that. And, and I was fortunate. I mean, it took forever. I mean, I didn't do it until I was, you know, Ironman Hawaii until I was 37. But, but it was motivation to me that the human spirit was just so amazing. Like, how do you, how can you do that? Like now it's with technology and, and, and the way bikes are made now and the way shoes are made now, it's so different. But I looked at that and it really kind of formed me into not giving up until— and it's just such a good life lesson, you know, with— because things are going to be thrown at you always.

I mean, I was unfortunately born with many disabilities. I couldn't walk until I was 3 years old. And today I'm a Level 3 certified ski instructor. Yeah, I love it. Used to be a lot of rock climbing, whitewater kayaker.

Yep.

I mean, all kinds of stuff that people said I'd never be able to do.

That's right. You know that feeling, man. You know exactly what it's like, and you never gave up. So you just, you know, you kept doing it, and look how you are now. It's impressive.

Yeah, I'm 72 years old. I don't look it.

Nope.

I mean, I don't feel it, but I feel it.

I feel it. I think I got too many miles on the chassis.

Well, um, how big, how big is No Nasty Now? How many employees do you have?

Well, we've got a core group of about 5 or 6, but we leverage 3PL, a strategic partner there. We leverage a bottle company that's part of, you know, part of it, all that stuff. So, you know, there's a lot of outsourcing, a lot of stuff to me. Yes, yes, yeah. So there's really only like 5 or 6 of us that are daily like grinding on the business to get it to the next level. We need to hire some people. That's our next thing for our distribute. We need to hire a distribution person, which we're working on. We've got somebody that we think is going to be great. So it can't be Andy knocking on every single door every time, but, but, you know, hey, you do what you got to do.

That's right. So CEO does everything in the beginning. Oh, chief cook and bottle washer.

Absolutely.

Yep. Tell me about the importance of listening. In your whole career, you've done so many different things. How important has been listening to you?

Well, I think, you know, listening is something that that I think is overlooked all the time. And you want to tell your story. I feel like I'm telling the story too much now, and you're doing all the listening here in this case.

But that's what I do.

Yeah, that's what you do. And but for me, I think that, that if you can listen to, in my case, with, with developing a product, not necessarily No Nasty, but, and well, we can just use No Nasty as an example, but you've got to listen to your friends and your family and your colleagues and your circle, right? If you're not going to listen to them, then what are you doing? Because you're inevitably, you're going to go down a hole that's not going to be a great path. But if you listen to your friends and family and your colleagues, you will ultimately, they will ultimately lead you to the answer, I believe, you know, and you've got to trust in that because, you know, I've seen CEOs, I've seen colleagues and other employees that, you know, they're just not listening to what the reality is and they just fail miserably. So I try to be, you know, we can always do better at listening, but I try to be very, very objective. I try to get as much advice as I can and feedback from people so I can hear different angles and perspectives of things.

You said something really interesting earlier. You built your little website and then you brought people in to look at the website. Obviously we're listening to them.

Yes, big time. Now we'll see if they're right.

How do you manage that process? Do you like get them on a Zoom call or do you—

Yeah, I mean, depending on— I mean, you can do a lot of things through surveys too, right? So I mean, between my audience that I, that I kind of go to for various things, whether it's a creative thing or advertising or a, um, or just trying to, trying to get product development, you certainly can do surveys and getting groups to participate, focus groups to participate. And some of those, you know, you take with a grain of salt because some of them are just doing it because they want to get paid or whatever. But, you know, you can always get tidbits out of those things. And then ultimately, the other thing is, Doug, you know, I'm a firm believer in, you know, getting, you know, getting the product in the hands of the people that are going to use it. And so, and then listen to their feedback. That's, you know, and be objective, you know, 'cause you know, there's no hard feelings. It's just a matter of tell us what you really think about it. Is it, does it smell good? Do you not like it? Do you not, you know, one of the things with our products, Doug, that is different about traditional laundry detergents is, it's like ours, ZenFresh, has a very light fragrance to it, but it's an enzyme-resistant fragrance that it's very hard to, when you're trying to remove all all the odors and stuff with enzymes, it's hard to have a fragrance tied to it. So we have an enzyme-resistant fragrance, but it doesn't last. It's not like, you know, you're washing it in with a traditional laundry detergent and it comes out and you're like, oh, this smells awesome. Ours just makes it smell clean. It's not— it just takes the stuff out. So it's— so, so that's— so if you're not expecting that, if you're not expecting to smell flowers and, you know, whatever, people might go Well, it doesn't really smell like anything. Well, that's the point, right? But, you know, we've been trained to, to kind of like the, the sense of detergents.

All those Tide commercials over 50 years.

Yes, exactly.

So it sounds like you went— did you go through product iterations as you were developing this?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think, you know, for— we had a really good, like, the competition that we have, we tried to pull in every competitor that we knew of that was in this kind of niche brand, and we wanted to be better than all of them, right? And better, what I mean is more effective, quicker, right? So, um, so you could use less No Nasty and get a result, um, because you do need to use it a few times to get all the gunk from the other detergents out of your, out of your clothes. So definitely did some iterations of it and that's not easy, you know, when you're just starting out and you're trying to figure out, you know, you've got the base. I've been so fortunate, Doug, that I've had partners and formulators that they want to help, right? That they want to help and they want to give you that chance to come up with something great. And I think that they get jazzed up, you know, knowing that they're building something that's better than what's out there.

Yeah, it strikes me that you— is that what you call them? Are they chemists, basically?

Yeah, yep, yep. I mean, I'm not a chemist. It's like, heck, I don't know, hey, this works great, can you make it like this?

Well, good for you. It sounds, it sounds like a great company and a great product.

Yeah, we, we've got a long way to go. I mean, it's, it's exciting, but it's also scary, you know the deal. It's just like, it, it's like within— and I'm like at the serial entrepreneur Nouriel Spirit. It's like my, you know, I just feel like, you know, it's always this big, you know, roller coaster as you get through it, but I wouldn't have it another way.

Where do you think the end game for No Nasty is going to be? Is there an exit strategy or—

Yeah, there definitely is. I think with No Nasty, it'll probably be an earlier exit than a long-term build, build, build, build, scale. We've already had some interest in our brand, like right out of the gate. People love the the look of it. They love the fact that it works. And, you know, a lot of these big brands are buying smaller niche brands. You know, a lot of the big brands are falling out of favor with the, you know, a lot of the masses these days. And so they're looking for some of these more niche brands. We need to get it to a certain scale, there's no doubt. I mean, we're not going to give it away for sure, but there's been companies that are former, you know, executives of some of these large brands that are coming together when they're like, hey, if we could get this and then we can do our magic to it because we know what scale's like, and then get the next big sale or make it into a huge brand for, you know, one of the big brands, then let them do it. I'm not, you know, life is short. I want to build it, do some great things, and continue.

Go on to the next one.

Right, exactly.

Good for you. I got one more question for you.

Yep.

What's the one thing that we would never know about you unless you revealed it to us?

Wow. The one thing. Well, I could, I could go a couple directions. I could go two directions, right? One is health-related and another one is, and another one is related to my childhood. Which one do you want?

I don't care which one is most unusual.

Oh God, I, well, I think I've already alluded to the car thing, right? So I was 12 and a half years old, did that whole thing, right? But I'll tell you, like, with a health issue that I cry, I have a crushed artery in my hip and it's from doing, I mean, all the triathlons and marathons and all that stuff, right? Where you're leaning forward, you're, yeah, my hips are super tight. I had actually had these issues where I kept cramping up in races and my friends who I used to train with, and we used to beat each other up every time, you know, whether it's a marathon or triathlon. And I'd end up, you know, okay through training, 'cause you train at a slower rate than you do when you race. And then race day comes and And inevitably over the years, it started getting worse where I just cramp up in my left leg. And it's like, then you're doing the Igor shuffle all the way to the finish line. So, you know, everybody's like, dude, like, what's up with you? It's, oh, it's in your head or whatever. And I would fight it and fight it, Doug. And ultimately I couldn't even walk across the street because like this, my leg would like struggle. And as an athlete, it's just like the worst thing. So I ultimately went in. They thought it was my back. So, I went in for back surgery. I'm laying on the gurney. And I said to the doctor, I said, you know, I don't, you know, this just doesn't seem like it's my back. I mean, I'm laying here. I feel fine. It doesn't seem like that has anything to do with it. And he's like, oh no, it could. And I said, well, one of the nurses said my left foot's a different color than my right foot. Before I came in. He's like, what? So he pulls off the hospital socks and so he tries to find my pulse in my foot. Pedal pulse. The first time anybody's ever done it. I've had these problems for years. They try to find a pedal pulse. They could not find the pedal pulse initially. And then ultimately they're like, oh, we hear it. They did the Doppler. They go, oh, I hear your pulse. So they put me in, they, I take, do back surgery, come back out, nothing's changed. I still have this issue because it wasn't my back. It was this artery that had occluded and over the years, and ultimately they had to put a big giant graft into my hip and here I am.

Voilà, fixed it.

Yeah. Well, yeah, it's not 100%, but you know, hey, we're back at it. So, all right. So that's a little weird one.

Wow. That's impressive.

Yeah. You'd never think, you know, when you're trying to do your training, you think you're healthy, you eat well, you do things to try to keep yourself in shape, but you never know, right? There could be some under underlying thing that, yeah.

Wow.

That, wow. And that's listening. See, we come back to listening, right? Had the doctors been really listening? And I've got a, a buddy of mine, but you might wanna interview him too. He's, his name is Dr. Steve Beeson. He's amazing. He, he has a company called Practicing Excellence, which teaches doctors to be better Doctors, and what they do is like, listen to the patient.

Absolutely.

The patient's telling you exactly what's wrong. And in my case, I'd been telling them for years that what was going on, and no one ever took a pedal pulse. No one ever like thought that it could be something vascular because I was younger and I was healthy and I ran all these things, and no one ever thought of it. So listening in that case what could have saved me.

Absolutely. Well, Andy, thank you so much. It's been a great half hour talking with you. What a wonderful conversation. What a wonderful life you lead, and you're very inspiring. Thanks for joining.

Thanks so much, Doug. Appreciate it.

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 #ListeningWithLeaders. 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 @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.