Nicole Parmar - CEO of Gunkii

Today's guest is a dynamic young woman who I'm proud to call my friend, Nicole Palmer, co founder and co CEO of Gunky, the world's sexiest tongue scraper. Not only do we talk about her journey building a consumer packaged goods company, but also building and leading a company with your spouse. We're going to talk about her journey as a growth marketing expert, being a published author, and as a teacher for children with disabilities.

3, 2, 1.

Today on Founder Journeys, we've got the amazing Nicole Parmar. Nicole Parmar is co founder and co CEO of Gunky. Nicole, welcome to founder Journeys. First off, tell us a little about yourself and then tell us about Gunky. What is Gunky?

Yeah, first of all, Ray, thank you for having me on here today. Gunky is a CPG product for those who don't know what that means, consumer packaged goods. And we are trying to save the world's relationships with one breath at a time, starting with my husband and mine. And we are also pretty big on giving back. Ray, you probably know this from working with us. So there's a component to Gunky, and it's called Project Smile. So a portion of every Gunky sold will go to support a child born with a cleft lip or cleft palate.

I love the fact that you guys are giving back and Gunky itself is you're saving relationships one breath at a time. But the product itself is a tongue scraper.

Right? The world's sexiest tongue scraper. Yep. So Jayesh and I have developed a one piece made out of aluminum. So it's one piece and tongue scrapers usually come in two pieces or three pieces for those of you who don't know. So we went with one piece aluminum. And our current product is only in a matte black finish, but we will be doing some several different colors. And then we have a few things in product pipeline.

And so what motivated you to look at, hey, I want to make a tongue scraper and I'm going to go all out and build a CPG company and we're going to do direct consumer. And I've seen the product. It's awesome. It's like the Tesla of tongue scrapers. Matte black finish. It's super cool. But why, why, why tongue scrapers?

Yeah. So great question. Well, first of all, you know, in 2020, the oral care industry was valued at 53 billion USD. Tongue scrapers are out there. They've been out there for a while. Jayesh and I have been tongue scraping since. Well, he's been. He's been tongue scraping forever because his background is East Indian. But I started tongue scraping when we met. This might be a little too much information, but I actually started borrowing his. I don't think he was too keen on me taking his tongue scraper. So when his par to India, they would get me my own. But what we noticed was that the tongue scrapers we would get, they would break. They're pretty flimsy, or they were two pieces silicone metal. They got pretty grimy, pretty gross, or they were just, you know, eroding. Not as durable, not as durable. So, you know, all of our lives kind of shifted with COVID And so at the time, Jayesh was working for Eventbrite and he was loving that. But then Eventbrite had to lay off a lot of stuff due to Covid. And so that's when Jayesh came to me and said, you know, I've been thinking about this tongue scraping company for years and I can't do it without you. You'll take on marketing. You'll help me with product. And what do you think? At first I thought he was crazy.

Another one of JS's crazy ideas.

Yeah. So I took a pause. I didn't say no right away. And then we had further discuss. And yeah, after a while, it just kind of made sense. It was something we both believed in. It was something that we both do every day. So, you know, we floss, brush, tongue scrape, gargle. And then we realized that a lot of people weren't doing it. So we thought there was a user behavior we could change and we could help people, you know, kind of up their oral healthcare game.

Yeah, no, it's definitely. It's an impressive product. The practice of tongue scraping has been around for centuries, and not so as prevalent here in the western world, but other parts of the world, it's common practice for the audience. Jayesh Parmar has been on founder journeys as well. His past episodes up on the podcast. Go check it out. He's got a really cool journey from building Pika tick to getting acquired by Eventbrite. But Nicole, you've got your own really cool journey. So let's dive into that. We want to know, how did Nicole get to where she is today as a co founder and co CEO of Gunky, what was her journey?

Yeah, it's been anything but direct. It's definitely been kind of all over the map. But I don't know if you and Jayesh covered this when he was on, but Jayesh and I both used to teach that's how we met. Okay, so Jayesh taught kindergarten through grade four. He was a phys ed teacher, and I taught kindergarten through grade 12. I taught deaf and hard of hearing children. And so we met and at the time, I was trying to convince him to move with me to the United States so I could do a PhD. Lo and behold, life works out the way it's supposed to. And instead we moved to San Francisco so he could, you know, start, pick a tick and be immersed in the world of startups down there. But when we moved to startups or, sorry, when we moved to San Francisco to get pik a dick started, I had no idea what I was doing. So I was really fortunate. I had a lot of friends take me under their wing, and I learned about growth marketing. I learned about hacking, I learned about, you know, all the things you kind of need to do to start a tech company.

So when you went to San Francisco, did you go there thinking, okay, I'm going to go to San Francisco and start teaching in San Francisco or I'm going to get my PhD in San Francisco?

No. So we went to San Francisco and Jayesh went down there to. To start Pikitech. And I just assumed that I would get a teaching job or, you know, like, tutoring and helping children. But the US still hadn't recovered from, you know, the housing Crisis and the 2008 financial crisis. So when I got down there, there was no jobs to be had and they were not hiring a Canadian. So, yeah, there was really nothing for me to do. So it was really funny because j said, well, why don't you just start learning about this? And I kind of laughed at first and said, why? Like, no, this isn't for me. But yeah, lo and behold, it was for me. And I loved marketing. I learned. I loved everything that was happening. So I have a couple degrees. I have a degree in deaf education education, BA in psychology, but I also have a master's in statistics. So when I started marketing and when I started doing content marketing, everything kind of rolled in together for me. So you need stats, you need to understand data, you need to be able to, you know, run some scripts. So everything came together for me and it was just like a serendipitous moment. And I think I found my true calling in San Francisco.

And especially at that time, like the holy grail of companies was the growth marketer, right? You were the hacker, you were the one that was finding product market fit, getting traction, getting the customers in the door, finding complimentary services, upselling, like that all came through growth marketing. And so that was like the perfect time to get into.

Was the perfect storm. And so with Pikitech, a lot of people don't know this, but I got to wear almost every hat in the company. So when it started it was Jayesh and his co founder at the time. And I was immersed in the growth marketing, content marketing, and then we did a pivot, we went to Toronto and then I was fully responsible for digital marketing. I was also fully responsible at the time for customer success and their happiness, you know. And then as Pick a Tick grew, they had more and more team members. And then I was able to come in out and just help more with high level strategy and focus on growth, which was great.

And so maybe we can dive into the dynamics of a spousal relationship within a company. You are now both co founders of Gunky, co CEOs of Gunky, but let's dive back to Pik a Tick. How was that relationship where Jayesh was the CEO, but let's face it, you're the brains of the operation. So what was that dynamics like in that first startup?

I feel like we should be having a couple cocktails to cover this. The dynamics at Pikkitek were great. There was a full on team, so Brett Eade, Robbie Simpson, I mean there was just amazing people that you could always riff off of. Jayesh always had the final say, you know, him and Brett and the team. But they were really easy to work with. So if you have an idea, if you come to them with metrics and you can back up what you want to do, they were really good at letting you test. And even if you failed, if you explained why it was good. Dynamics of a husband and wife, co founder, co CEO, co parenting under the same household. It's, you know, some days it's a lot. I'm, I'm really lucky that Jayesh is, he communicates very well. He, he's very fast to admit if he's made a mistake or something happens. But I find that a lot of our time is consumed by Gunky. And if we're not talking about Gunky, we're talking about dry, our son. And so we are really having to carve out time for ourselves and also each other. And so Jayesh and I have been running on a Trello board since 2015. And the running joke in our household is if it's not in the Trello board, it never happened. And so we do the same with Gunky and we have our stand ups every day and then we Have a daily meeting in terms of strategy, high level, but then also what needs to be done. And it's fun working with him. That's not to say there aren't problems. Right. When we battle, we battle hard because there's a lot of love and a lot of passion. But you know, we also forgive very quickly.

Well, like we've had multiple founders on here and co founder challenges and infighting are a true thing. Like founder journeys, we talk about the taboo topics and, and what is it that like what are the best practices to try to mitigate some of those things? Because they happen, let's be honest, like they happen in work, they happen in personal like especially when you're, you're co parenting and people have different opinions of what to do in certain scenarios. What is, what are some of the best practices to iron out those issues? Because they will happen. They will happen.

Yeah. So the best thing that J and I do, as I mentioned, we put it in a trello board and then there's pros and cons and everything has to have a strategy document. So if we are arguing over boxes, which we were the other day, you know, it goes back to strategy and what does our brand guideline say and what does the designer say? And then it kind of makes you remove yourself and your emotions and your wants and needs and look at the bigger picture. So we're both really great about that, but we're both two very strong people. So as I mentioned, you know, there's a lot of passion in the arguments.

And so staying on this passion and arguments and challenges in pika tick. Jayesh was a CEO. You were the growth marketer, strategist, whatnot. Now you're co CEOs. Now co CEOs on its own are sometimes questioned. So what was the strategy around? Okay, this time around we're going to be co CEOs. And how has that worked out for you? So it's been about eight, nine months now since launch or eight, nine months since I've known about gunky. You guys launched in April. And so how has co CEO worked within the company and then how has it been an advantage or disadvantage outside of the company to third parties that you're working with?

Yeah. So for us the co CEO is non negotiable for both of us. Jayesh brings to the table a very strong. He is great at big picture. He is great at building and doing, you know, the architecture for where he wants us to go and how we're going to hit all of our milestones. And then I'M really great about numbers, metrics and the smaller details. And so we both bring a very different dynamic but also very different mindset to this. And so it's great. We haven't found any challenges yet, but when we were fundraising, what we did notice was that Jaish was able to get a lot more meetings with ease. And he's also exited a company, so that, you know, kind of puts him at a, at a different level set than I am. But the questions that came to us were obviously different as well. And Jayesh was very confident in telling people when he didn't know. So if somebody would ask him a question, he felt very confident saying, well, I don't know, we'll figure this out, or, I don't know, we'll work it out. And I don't think I was as confident in myself or in giving somebody that answer. It kind of felt like maybe I was failing or maybe I didn't have as many answers to this company as I should have.

And is that just a factor of experience and having to be in those situations where you have to answer those type of questions? Or is it like that JS has gone through that exit and feels like, okay, I've got the confidence to say, I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Right. And I mean, I don't think we've ever asked anybody about that. So I hope it would be that he, you know, it's the latter of the two. But I do find the questions, you know, different for sure. And I also find just even working day to day, I'm sure people mean this lovely. But I'm asked frequently, you know, when we're having our next child or when is our family going to grow? And it's not for anybody listening out there, we're done. But yeah, it's just, it's always an interesting dynamic, for sure.

And I guess that that would also be a question that I wouldn't say it's unwelcome, but it's, it's. The reality is those questions will be asked, especially because you are a husband and wife team. And so it's not just one co founder has gone off with their spouse and had a child, so the other co founder can be there to pick things up. Like, no, you two together are having this child and we know the answer is no, you no plans down that path. But is it frustrating to get that type of question or is it just. You accept that that's just the reality and that's what's going to happen.

I assume, I assume people are asking because they're excited about family growth and about where it's going, going. I assume also sometimes people worry, you know, if one person steps back. Yeah, it would. You know, I think those are pretty personal questions for anybody. And I mean, if you look out there, you know, look at Joanne Nixon, what she was able to do. You know, I don't think women of childbearing years, I don't think that should be a concern.

Yeah, definitely shouldn't be. But like I said, the reality is it is out there. And, and so new child aside, did you face any questions, whether from investors or other people, about the husband and wife dynamics within the company?

You know, I had an investor ask, you know, how the relationship was going. I think that's pretty commonplace again, but I think for most part people, people figure that even, even if you are a husband and wife team, no matter what the dynamic is, co founders can fight, co founders can have disagreements. And I think, you know, breaking up a co founder situation, whether it be a husband and wife or just straight friends who got into business, is going to be messy should it happen for anybody. Right.

So and so getting away from the husband wife dynamic for you yourself as you're now diving into this consumer packaged goods world, which is an exciting world, but it's challenging. There's a lot of other companies out there that have tried and failed and others that are doing really well. Where do you see the opportunity for yourself? Why did you want to jump into cpg?

Because it's such a different playing field than we're used to. Right. So we are used to tech. There is really nothing tangible there, code and a team. But the consumer packaged goods is really interesting right now. There's so much to learn and there's so much to disrupt and a lot of people are doing that. Right. I mean, we're looking at working with some amazing companies like Deliver to help us do two day delivery so that we don't necessarily have to start on Amazon because as much as we love Amazon, they just take some pretty big, a big portion of your proceeds. So we're learning about some great companies, Shopify, obviously a lot of companies are on there for CPG because they just, they integrate with everything the apps they have for delivery for supply chain management, you name it, is incredible. And so when we jumped into this, we knew it would be a really big learning curve. But like I said, we wanted to change user behavior around oral care and we really did want to learn this world. Now that I'M immersed in it. I mean, maybe bit off more than I could chew initially, but we're getting there.

Well, what has been probably the biggest surprise, good or bad, that you didn't see coming as you are now, you're live. You had a successful Kickstarter campaign. What are some of the lessons learned?

Oh, Ray, there's so many. I think packaging. I had no idea how daunting and how tedious the work was be around packaging. You know, we started trying to build our product over a year ago and we just solidified the design and we just okayed a manufacturer. We, it took a year in order to make sure that we could do it the way we wanted to. So the learning curve has been huge. And you know, looking back, if, if I would have known that this would have taken a year to make, you know, you know, something so small, I'm not sure I would have dove in. So I'm glad I didn't know what I didn't know.

And so what does the next 12 months hold? Like, where do you see this going now?

Yeah, so now we're going to close down our Kickstarter in five days and we will get first fulfillment orders done. We'll have our first shipment shipped to Canada and then we will go to our third party logistics and we're really going to start looking at that D2C. So how do we get supply from China globally rather than, you know, coming to Canada? So we're working on that. Once we have that nailed and scaled, we're focused on our product pipeline and then we have a few exciting other gun like Gunky related things coming out. So, so our joke is we are removing all the toe jam off your body. And so we have, we have a couple other things rolling out.

That's hilarious. Removing other toe jams off your body. Going back to Gunky itself though, we talked about the different color schemes. You also have like a children's version child size.

So the child size version is done, patent pending on that as well. And we can start shipping that just as soon as, as soon as we, we wanted to do a rollout with just one product. We wanted to see if Gunky alone had legs to go on its own. And we see it does now. And then we'll roll out the child's product. Then we have different colors, carrying cases, stands, and then we'll get into some different products that aren't related to oral healthcare.

And could you maybe quickly just dive into, maybe give our audience a glimpse into the mind of Nicole? How did you walk your path through the product lines. So you go, okay, we're gonna build this tongue scraper, and it's gonna look like this. And then we should do this with the tongue scrapers and then different SKUs, different color sizes, different child sizes. What did that ideation process look like?

Have you had a chance to look at our Kickstarter?

Yeah.

Okay. There's a video on there. I don't know if you saw, but it starts off with how we started designing Gunky. And when we initially started, we worked with so many manufacturers that told us it was impossible to do one piece. They would not be able to do the one metal piece for us, the bend wouldn't work, it would break, etc. Etc. So when we started, we had two pieces like most of them. And what they initially started to do was have a metal cast, but then it was full of silicone or the edges were silicone, and it just wasn't sleek. It was not the world's sexiest tongue scraper. So we had to go back to the drawing board. Thus, you know, a year later, here we are. We weren't so concerned about colors initially, but we did user feedback. So we had over 100 people come, go through our website, give us user feedback, tell us what they wanted, and the one thing that kept coming up was a rose gold tongue scraper or if the family pack. Every single person in the family wanted their own tongue scraper color. So you didn't mix them up. I guess they're not as close as Jayesh and I. I guess they're not cool. Stealing their husband.

Nicole. That's been very, very insightful. And I think everybody's looking forward to the other Gunky products, the. The toe jam removers, to come down the pipeline. I want to close this out with our standard three questions. The first one is tell us about an app, tool, service, way of life, or something that has been instrumental into shaping you into the entrepreneur that you are today.

That Trello board we talked about. So Trello holds all of my, you know, my life secrets, my calendar, anything Jay, should I need to cover. Also for me, for running, you know, I have three companies on the go right now. Gunky, the books, and my growth marketing company. It just. It keeps everything and everybody running very smoothly.

We didn't dive into the books. Just quickly, let's tell the audience about your books because you're a published author, a successful published author.

So we have a seven year old, and when he was born, I was just documenting his life. And then I Went to grab a baby book. And the baby books that were out there weren't really geared towards what I wanted, the memories that I would want to keep with Jai. And I also noticed there wasn't a lot of books. When I went to get books about birthdays or just kind of anything of life, there wasn't a lot of blended families. And ours is so. Jayesh is East Indian, I'm Ukrainian. We have a little Ukrindian baby. And there wasn't a lot of books that kind of had that blend for our family. So I wrote 50 children's books. They talk about birthdays, they talk about divorce. We had a friend who had a transition, so went from being a male to a female. So there's a book about that. Yeah. So decided to write books that hopefully other people could engage with and could feel that, you know, this was part of their life. And so we kicked off with Indiegogo. We were invited to do Word on the Street. It's a book fair. But then Covid hit and we're just kind of in pause with that right now.

So it's a collection of 50 books. Five, zero.

Right now, there's only seven that are published, and they're in English and in French every time. Because our son is bilingual. He. He does French and English as well. There's seven.

And is he. Is he bilingual or quad ling. Lingual? Like, does he speak Ukrainian? Does he speak Hindu or Punjabi?

No, he's. He. Yeah. Isn't that ironic? He's a half East Indian, half Ukrainian, and he speaks French. There you go. So, yeah, so the books are all English and French. There's only seven completed right now. It takes our illustrator a little bit of time to. To do what she has to do. And so as soon as she can get caught up, we'll get the rest of the melter.

And where can our audience find those books? Because I'm pretty sure, like, that those are books that people want and they're going to be in demand.

Yeah, thanks. Those are at Indigo or you can get them on Amazon. They're published on Amazon or our website.

Jaijibinks.Com and is that the name for all the books?

Yeah. So if you type in Jai. Jai Binks, and it's the Adventures of Jai Jai Binks. And then all the books that are out there will be like my first birthday. My first year, Grandma and grandpa.

That's awesome. I knew you're. You're writing books. I didn't know you had 50 of them. And. Yeah. Okay, so we'll go back to our question. So the second question would be a bit of advice for somebody starting a business today. Obviously you started during COVID and a lot of lessons learned. Fast forward to 2021. If somebody was starting a business today, what's the piece of advice that you would give them?

Go as hard and as fast as you can. It's, you know, it's scarier in your head than it will be once you initially get started and then ask for a lot of help. Every day I think with Jayesh and I still make a phone call and we call a lot of people for support and we've yet to hear no. And so if you are thinking of doing something, jump on it. Talk to everybody you can because the entrepreneurs going through the same thing as you are going to be so helpful and beneficial for you moving forward.

Yeah, something we always preach at Launch Academy is surround yourself with fellow entrepreneurs because the best advice you can probably get is not going to come from a blog. It's not going to come from an online book. It's going to come from an entrepreneur that just went through the same shit that you're going through or went through it six months ago and knows all the answers.

It's 100% true. But find that person who's actually done it right and find that person who's gone through the mud or is in the mud with you. Because yeah, that's your lifeline and they will help you get there faster.

And talking about getting there faster, our last question is your call to action. What can our audience do for you? How can they help you get there faster?

Help? Well, I guess come to Gunky. Check out Gunky. Tell everybody you can about Gunky and if you can support us by buying our product. Great, great.

And that's you can find online@gunky.com Nicole this has been an awesome conversation. Learned a lot about you and I'm pretty sure our audience enjoyed the conversation and hopefully they're going to go out and buy those books for their kids as well. Thank you for sharing your insights and your Founder Journey with us.

Thanks for having me. RA.

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