The Power of Salt with Samantha Skyring: Health Benefits and Sustainability with Oryx Salt

Hello, everybody. We're live, raw, and real on Drink Up. My co-host, Adam Smith, bailed on us this morning. Adam, I got to say, I'm really disappointed that you didn't show up for this great conversation. He was at Expo West. Samantha, you and I were talking about that earlier this morning, but welcome. And I'm so excited to talk about you, first of all, and also your brand. And I'm going to butcher it again, so I want you to tell everybody how you pronounce this.

Okay. So, this is Oryx.

All right. So from the Kalahari Desert, correct?

That's correct.

I got that right.

Thanks to you, Samuel. Yeah.

Welcome.

Welcome.

Welcome. So thanks for slowing down to take time with me because I know you're a very busy businesswoman and happy International Women's Day.

Thank you. And to you and the rest of the listeners.

Yes. Yes. Well, so first of all, Go ahead.

So hello from the very southern tip of Africa.

Just to let all our listeners know. Cape Town, South Africa.

Wow. Correct. So it's now—

I always think of great white sharks in Cape Town. Is there great white sharks there?

Sadly, we've got 2 pods of orcas that have been hanging around for the last couple of years and they love the shark livers. So there's 2, well, there's a couple that are called Port and Starboard. And they've pretty much either eaten the great whites or they've chased them away. But they come in for the attack and they only eat the liver and then they leave the rest of the shark to just rot.

So you love your great white sharks and you want them around?

Well, they're part of the ecosystem, really. So it's going to be interesting to see in years to come what happens they're not around. Um, I think there was a beautiful— I don't know if you ever saw that, uh, video, um, when they reintroduced, um, wolves into, um, is it Yellowstone Park? And, and they, they got the animals to move and it, it recreated the ecosystem. So we need all of the— we need the balance.

I totally agree. I mean, I always ask myself, you see, like, from bumblebees to dogs to wolves to eagles, like, we have Like, I'm in Minnesota and we have this population of bald eagles. Like every day I go out, I see bald eagles flying around, which is absolutely wonderful. Well, listen, I would like you to just tell a little bit about yourself, your journey. I think it's 14 years as an entrepreneur, if I got that right. Maybe I'm wrong, but give me the right timing.

Probably 40 years of an entrepreneur. Yeah, about 14 and a half years in this particular, yeah, kind of lifetime. Uh, book of my, of my life.

I feel like this. I'm 2 years at this. My partner's been doing it for 2 decades. Shout out to Alicia Varga. But tell us a little bit about your journey. You know, where are you at, Samantha? What is it that you're currently doing? And then we'll talk about your brand or anything else you want to talk about this morning.

Awesome. Thank you. So yeah, I mean, just from my entrepreneurial journey, um, I really have a huge gratitude to my dad for having a complete financial crash and losing his business when I was 13, um, because that gave me the opportunity. I was like, okay, well, I'll go out and get myself 2 jobs. Thanks, Dad. Um, and started earning my own money. So that was kind of what kickstarted my journey. Um, and then I had a beautiful opportunity. I did a kayaking expedition company to an uninhabited island in Lake Malawi for a couple of years. Um, and then I started a project. It was an NGO, um, or an NPO. I had a vision of 20,000 children in a stadium drumming together, one beat, one heartbeat, as an upliftment empowerment project. And we ended up workshopping 30,000 children around the country. We didn't have the event. And then a friend introduced me to this beautiful salt that comes from the Kalahari Desert. And I had recently left the father of my child, and I had a little toddler on hip, and I needed to get my life back together. I was kind of starting off from scratch. Um, I lived in a tiny little wooden Wendy house in the corner of a friend's garden with a couch, a tiny desk, a bed in the corner, and a little fridge, a bar fridge. And I used to spend from, you know, when he went to bed at 7 till 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning writing hundreds of emails to all of the restaurants and the retailers around South Africa. And today we're a household brand in South Africa. We own about 3,500 restaurant tables and all of the major retailers and all of the delis and the tourist shops. When, I'm going to say when and not if, You and your listeners, if you haven't been to South Africa, I implore you to come to this very, very special corner of the world. Excuse me. Cape Town is particularly absolutely beautiful. The little peninsula that I'm on now, I can drive to, oh, let's say what, 2 miles left and I'm at the Indian Ocean and I can drive 2 miles to the right and I'm at the Atlantic Ocean. So I live in this little peninsula. I can choose to go watch sunrise or sunset.

Wow. Wow. Well, I guess since I know you, I have a place to stay. I'm assuming Alicia and I are booking our flights right now, Samantha. We're coming.

Excellent. And we are just absolutely surrounded by beauty here. Every day when I drive, I'm, I'm in awe. There are just beautiful mountains, beautiful beaches. So yeah, so this is where I got my brand started from. And now, so COVID was an incredible blessing. I really loved COVID personally. It kind of gave, well, it felt like it gave me the reset that I needed. You know, you've said pre our, you know, pre-conversation and again now, it's hard work being an entrepreneur, but it is phenomenally rewarding. I mean, I think the journey is so much more than just building a business or a brand. It's building yourself. Yeah. The personal journey, the personal development, the personal growth that comes with building a business is quite something. So in COVID, we lost 60-70% of sales. And in fact, I went to Expo West in 2019 for the first time, but I was very frustrated. I was stuck on the top corner of the 3rd floor in the last room, and I would pop downstairs. I'd get so frustrated there wasn't foot traffic. Uh, you know, upstairs obviously than there was down on the main floor. But I'm, I'm a LinkedIn queen, I call myself. I'm definitely not at the level of some incredible people out there, but I, I'd say 10 years ago now realized that LinkedIn was a powerful platform and I didn't know how to use it. But I, I had this mantra, one day I'm going to launch in the USA. Um, and I would sit and I would just— and I mean, the fact that you can search for somebody in an industry in a town, um, you know, by job descriptions. I would say—

I don't know how you found me, by the way, but you found me on LinkedIn. I think that's how we connected, Samantha, for some reason. Uh, because I was thinking, you know, this can actually go into beverages. I put this in my tea every morning. You told me that because I told you, I said, I don't put salt in anything, by the way, just to kind of change the subject a little bit, but I don't put salt in anything. You're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Your body needs salt. Your body needs salt, right? But you need the right salt, right? Because I was putting this salt and this is not salt. So explain to everybody what this is.

Okay. Table salt was actually produced in around 1910, 1911. So it is industrial salt. PVC, C stands for chloride. So yeah, what have I got here that's made from PVC? Salt goes into textiles, into paint, into plastic. into paper. It's a binding agent. And so because they were using it in vast volumes, they needed it to pour freely. So they added the anti-caking and the free-flow chemicals into it. But your salt should only have one ingredient, salt, nothing else. And salt's intrinsic value to the body is that it is hygroscopic, which means it absorbs moisture. And so it allows the body to stay hydrated. So if you're eating a salt that's got chemicals that stop it from absorbing moisture, the poor salt can't do its job. And what is— what it—

Yeah, because I'm reading the ingredients on this is salt, calcium. I'm going to butcher these names. Silicate, dextrose, potassium iodine. Like it has a bunch of stuff in it.

Exactly that. So, and I think maltodextrose is actually sugar. So there's, yeah, iodated refined processed salts. have a— have sugar in them because there's— they need that for the, the anti-caking agents. Just— and the fact that you couldn't even pronounce some of those words, if you can't pronounce them, don't eat them. You know, that's like, that's probably like a baseline rule.

That's a great— so you— this is— this one of the reasons that you found— obviously you talked about your journey and how COVID happened and the whole bit, but did you— well, how did it— first of all, who— like, I'm gonna go to the Kalahari Desert and I'm gonna go— I'm I'm gonna make a salt brand. Are you the only salt brand from the Kalahari Desert?

So my supplier has a salt brand in South Africa. We have the exclusive rights to the salt from this particular salt pan for international, and it is the most exquisite, exceptional place. So the Kalahari Desert is 1.5 times the size of Texas, to give you a sense of scale. So from the closest town, which is non-industrial, We drive 2 and a half hours to get to the salt pan, 2 and a half hours, and it's 60 kilometers on a dirt road and 10 kilometers on another dirt road, literally in the middle of the desert. And for 2 and a half hours when you drive, there's absolutely nothing but sand and sky. And it's just beautiful. And so my supplier was, has been in the industry for 40 years and he was looking for a new source. Because his business was growing. He's predominantly bulk wholesale, and so he needed to test to see if this 5,000-hectare salt pan was a viable source. And so they got in the geoscientists and the environmentalists, and they did some testing, and they discovered underground a 55-million-ton salt lake or an aquifer. And they then discovered 3 subterranean streams that flow underground through the continent through ancient rock strata called Dwyka, which are tested at 280 to 300 million years old, that flow 100 and 300 feet underground and are constantly replenishing this underground aquifer. So that's miracle number 1. Miracle number 2 is when we draw it up—

There's a beverage out of this, by the way, the Kalahari. We're gonna do a Kalahari beverage here soon.

So the second miracle is when we draw it up onto the salt pan, it has not been touched by human hands, which in this day and age is a phenomenon in itself.

You explained a lot of human hands touch this, right? A lot of humans touch this.

Well, it's gone through processed refined table salt, is often heated. It's occasionally bleached because they want it white. And it's heated up to like, I think it's 1,200 degrees Celsius, which must be, you know, 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit or something. It's demineralized. So all that's left is the sodium chloride and the free-flow anti-caking agents. But salt is 97, 96, 98, 99% sodium chloride, and it has a percentage of minerals and trace elements. But those are absolutely what make it a whole food. The body recognizes salt that has not been processed as a whole food. Table salt, and it looks like salt, it tastes like salt, but it actually isn't salt. It would be like me getting—

Wait, actually, this is the blood pressure, right? They say, this is something that's causing the blood pressure. I mean, we're not doctors, full transparency here, but This is like, because I have blood pressure issues and they're like, take the salt out of your diet.

So I would love to refer you to my website. There's one particular blog which has been very well researched and backed up by science and doctors, and it's called Drink Less Water, Eat More Salt, and explains how your blood pressure goes up because if you're eating a table salt that doesn't have the minerals, so your body is a miracle in itself and it's always going to try and find balance. Now, if you're giving it a salt that it needs, okay, you need it for your blood volume. You know, salt is sacred. It's in our tears, it's in our blood, it's in our sweat, and we sweat every day. So we need to replace it with a mineral-rich salt, which is in a similar balance to our bodies. We are 70% saline solution. So taking a table salt means that the body's actually got to take minerals out of the body into sort of the water component and bring it back into the cells. So it takes the body out of balance and it constricts the veins and it can create— eating less salt can increase your blood pressure. And please go do your research because we have been indoctrinated and salt has been so demonized. And there's an incredible human in the industry, Dr. James Baker.

I think that's why my blood pressure went up, that sleep apnea, and then I stopped eating a lot of salt. I talked to you, so I've been putting a pinch of salt in my tea in the morning. I also make like eggs and stuff and I use this. And then I'm throwing this away. I just brought this up for demonstration purposes or just to show and tell a little bit. My partner called out Alicia. She said, happy National Women's Day, Samantha. Already a big fan.

Thank you.

She sent me, literally, she actually, actually, I tried and told her to join. Hey, Alicia, you can still come on, man, you know, to say hello just for a drop-in. But she actually took a picture. She ordered like a whole She had like a whole thing of, like, she's your ambassador now and she's going to some friends' houses to actually try some of your salt. So, we're your 2 ambassadors in the US. This is available at Whole Foods, correct? This is available at Whole Foods, correct?

Yes. Yes. So, that was my COVID blessing. I'd gone to Expo West. I didn't have the footfall, but I had reached out to people on LinkedIn before I went and I ended up meeting a beautiful gentleman, Mike Bath. I don't think you're listening, but always sending you huge gratitude. We just, you know, our conversation sparked and I was like, obviously I want Whole Foods. So I had built my following, food editors, food bloggers, food media, food press for 5 years. And Mike was one of those people that I'd reached out to and he got me the email address for the buyer of Whole Foods. And so in COVID, and I had emailed him, but you know how things go in business, you're often working in your business and not on your business. And that was my COVID blessing. I left the warehouse, my team were kind of carrying on with a little bit that they were doing, and I was at home. I was fortunately on a beautiful farm, so I had space and an organic veggie garden and thoroughbred horses, and, and I, you know, it was beautiful. And I really— it gave me perspective. What is going to get us out of this hole that we're now in? Because we've taken all over— we've taken COVID loans, lost 60% of sales because we were more than 50% in hospitality and tourism, and now we had none of that.

Lost 60% of your sales.

And I thought, what is going to get us out and scale us and take us to the next level? And it's like, I want Whole Foods. And it was just that one point of focus where nothing— I wanted nothing else but Whole Foods. And I emailed the buyer, and you know how you're like, okay, is it the right moment or not the right moment? You've got to check your energy. How are you feeling in this moment? You don't want to be desperate. You want to be you know, in a good space. And I wrote to him 3 times over about 7 or 8 weeks, and then 3 weeks later he wrote back and he said, my apologies for my delay in getting back to you. And I was like, wow, okay, I think there's something here. Buyers don't usually apologize. Anyway, it took me 5 months to get in a presentation, and then 5 months later I got the listing, and 7 months, 8 months later we launched. So we've been on shelf for 3 and a half years with our beautiful grinder and our refillable—

Let's do this, Samantha. You want to do it? Can you hear me, Samantha? Because I've been dropping on the internet. Can you hear me?

I can hear you.

Okay, so, uh, this is how it happens when you go live raw and real. So I'm going to be called MediaCom again today because I keep on dropping. But I heard everything you said, and everybody else will hear everything you said as well. Can we do some show and tell? I mean, I know I did some show and tell But you have more than just salt, right? I dropped again, didn't I?

You did, yes. Okay.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to transition to my phone and bump off the internet. So let's just hang tight with me for a minute. While we're on a commercial break, why don't you tell the— why don't you do a little bit of show and tell about your product? I'm sure you have a pepper and a whole bit, and I'm going to come back in a second.

Okay, amazing. So the one exciting thing that I, that I've been spearheading with the Oryx Is that this white mechanism inside is ceramic. And so our motto is, you only need one. Refill, not landfill. So you only buy one and then you just buy the refill boxes and you just keep refilling. So there's a little logo on the side, refill, reuse, real value. And if you were to buy one grinder and 4 boxes and refill it 10 times versus buying 10 other grinders that have a plastic or a polycarb grinder head on, It would probably save you about 50%. And all other grinders that are polycarbonate plastic, and you grind them, you will listen and they are very cranky and scratchy. And what that's doing is the salt is abrasive and it's hard and it's grinding the plastic teeth into your food and you're eating them, but not with our ceramic grinder. So this will last. I've had, in fact, I keep giving my grinders away. With my 2 business partners.

Okay, that's me joining. I'll be back.

Okay, there you go. Hi, Samuel. Welcome back.

I'm here.

That's better. Awesome. Um, yeah.

So you're talking about, uh, go ahead and finish. You were talking about your, your product.

So it's a really smooth grind. It's saving you money. Last year we saved about $817,000. bottles and heads from landfill because our consumers and our restaurants are refilling and not rebuying and throwing into or having to be recycled and ending up in landfill. And then our beautiful pepper is from small-scale farmers in Madagascar. So very, very good quality pepper, making a difference in communities. And besides all of our sales, we give a percentage back to the First People of the Kalahari. the indigenous communities, as well as a beautiful project called Project Biome that was ignited by Rachel Curl and Dr. Zach Bush in South Africa, sort of constellating very beautiful on-the-ground regenerative projects, reconnecting people with nature and, uh, and food. And so we give a percentage of sales. So, wow. Yeah, everything that we do is about making a difference.

Wow. The, um, you— did you explain this? Maybe I missed it when you were talking, but the actual Quality of the lid, the grinder. Did you talk about that?

Yeah, yeah.

And it's funny when you sent this to me, I'm like, I can't find my grinder. I don't know where it is. You're like, I put it in the box. I thought my wife threw it away somehow. We're in the very back of the cabinet. I actually, uh, I found my, my grinder, which I was happy about. Can we go back to the pepper though? So you have a pepper you mentioned. So is there— is there— tell me about the pepper a little. I know salt's like your, your main thing, Austin, but the pepper— is there, is there something about the pepper that you do this versus a normal Like this is a black pepper grinder. It's just a pepper.

Yeah. So, so this is, it's from small-scale farmers in Madagascar. So sort of hand-harvested. So it says close to Africa. Madagascar is, you know, a little piece that fell off how many millions of years ago. There are some sort of corporate big suppliers from the East, Sri Lanka, Vietnam. So just so that you all know, pepper might have spiked in shelf. And that's because there has been pepper increased by 147% last year. Vietnam, the main supplier, something went wrong with their crops. I think they had a drought. And so there was less pepper to go into the market. And so the price spiked. So just in case you've noticed that, don't blame the brands. It is at source.

Can we transition on a couple of things?

Sure.

So You've been an entrepreneur for 40 years. I apologize earlier, you talked about, you know, your journey on—

Take away my age.

Your current brand is 14 years. With all the entrepreneurs watching out there, including myself, that's part of this, what's been— you talked about it a little bit, but what are the kind of 2 to 3 things that have been the biggest struggle for you in your life that maybe you want to share with folks? And what is it that you've had to do to overcome those struggles to get you where you're at today? And it seems like one thing I'm thinking about when we talked this morning is I believe an entrepreneur needs to figure out how to slow down because burnout is— burnout is real, right? And so maybe just share a little bit about that would be— I would love you to share that with folks.

Awesome. I mean, so my philosophy was from the very beginning was go slow to go fast. Don't, you know, be, be the tortoise and not the hare. So, you know, we've only had Whole Foods for 3 and a half years. Um, I guess I could have, you know, gone and got a whole load of other wholesalers, or rather, you know, retailers. But it's been such a big thing working out the UNFI and the supply and the chargebacks and all of those things. And then of course, when you scale, you know, then you need a whole lot more people. And I would say people have been the greatest challenge in the business. Finding the right team is so absolutely paramount to building, you know, building your business. We've got to— can only do it in a team and you need the right people. And it feels like we've really come together this last year, and we are ready to take it to the next level. So obviously cash flow is always, for every entrepreneur, it's such an interesting one. Already 7 years ago, I was having conversations with my business partners that needed to put more money in, and I suddenly realized how many successful businesses and brands must have collapsed and folded and gone under because of their success, because they weren't in a position to bring in, bring in cash flow or bring in capital. But we're in such a different stage with evolution really with these incredible and dreadful devices. The fact that, yeah, we are live, you know, we're 10 hours behind one another. It blows my mind.

Well, thank God I had this phone because my internet keeps on bouncing off and it's just happened the last couple of weeks. So I apologize for that, but I kind of enjoy it because your expression is like, oh, where did he go? He froze. Right. But yeah, the reality is this, uh, it's an incredible thing that's happening. My dog, my dogs are going to lose their mind in a second too, when you go live, when FedEx shows up here, they start to bark. So we're going to, we're going to hear that in a second. Um, I apologize.

No, no worries. So, I mean, we've got this, you know, LinkedIn is really powerful if you're, you know, your listeners have got brands and are building their own personal brand. LinkedIn is the platform to be on. And it's scary. I mean, I'm, I would actually say I'm an introvert more than an extrovert. I never used to post on Facebook or Instagram. But I've got quite active on LinkedIn and the community of people I have met and grown and the friends and the connections and the network, it's just off the charts phenomenal. And I wouldn't— Auric would not be where it is today in America without LinkedIn, without, you know, sharing with this community of people. So, okay. Hello, Felix.

Can you hear me?

Gotcha.

And just trying to let the— trying to get in front of the dog. LinkedIn has been a wonderful tool for me to make wonderful friends and connections as well. I couldn't agree more. So what do you do to slow down? What are you doing to slow down? Like, what do you— things you do just to find peace in your life? Yeah.

So last year was incredible and probably one of the hardest years. I just never took a break. If that break is not in your diary, it doesn't happen. So already I've booked my 10 days in Mozambique on a beachside with my son. And in September, I'm going for 2 weeks walking. I'm doing the Portuguese Portugal Camino, 2 weeks of the Portuguese Camino. And actually, at the beginning of last week, I canceled all of my meetings except for this live for 2 weeks. And I just want— I just needed some breathing space. And I also realized, you know, I've planted so many thousands of seeds on LinkedIn, meetings, meetings, podcasts. And sometimes that field needs to lie fallow. And if you keep walking over the field, you're going to trample on those seeds and those little seedlings and they can't grow. And sometimes you need to just— so I'm talking to myself as well. I've realized in this week, I mean, there are 2 incredible things that happened this week that came to me, that I planted seeds. It was a seed that I planted, you know, 2 years ago. And it sprouted this week while I'd taken time out. And I've had an experience before, many years ago. I went away with my son for 5 days on his school camp, and I got a massive order from Saudi Arabia. And I remember saying to myself, oh, you should go away more often, Sam. And this week I've done that. And then the other thing is I've taken off that silly little notification on all of my LinkedIn, my emails. and my WhatsApp because I just found myself looping. I've had to get really stern with myself. And LinkedIn now is half an hour or an hour from 2:30 to 3:30 in the afternoon. I'm not going to be trawling. I'm not going to do it last thing at night. I'm not going to do it first thing in the morning. Um, and now that— and it's so interesting. I know my phone, right?

I'm going to share with you, I do it first thing in the morning, before I go to bed, I do it at night. I need to— the universe is speaking to me through you. As I told you this morning, the universe is saying, Sam, Go live your life. Go have some fun. Go out there. Go, you know.

Also, you know, I think the world is just, it feels like it's spinning out of control. So how do I mitigate that speed? And I chatted to my team on Wednesday, at least on Monday, I popped into the office and this coming week we're going to sit down and we're going to go, how do we slow our world down without compromising our service? And, and for me, it's, you know, maybe just replying to an email 24 hours later and not within an hour, which is what I like because I'm impatient and I want an answer now. So, so just, you know, and it's like, I love driving fast. I've got a Q3. I love driving very fast. And instead of, you know, I, I, I do kilometers, not miles, but just taking my foot off the gas just that little bit to— and in fact, this year, this week I have driven. I don't think I've ever driven this slowly. I was actually actually like, Sam, what's going on? I literally had cars piled up behind me because I was driving slowly. Um, it did something for my nervous system. It just allowed me to— I've walked slowly and I've driven slowly, and now I'm not talking so slowly, but I've been speaking slowly and doing everything slowly. And, you know, I feel like I've just—

I was— I did this interview with, uh, it was Miller at the time brewing for like a director of Category management or something, I can't remember, but you had to take this psychological test. And so I got the feedback on the psychological test actually with the psychologist or the person that was doing the test. He said the number one thing you need to do is to slow down to speed up. And that's, you know, people use that term all the time. And my partner will appreciate this because we're both running a million miles an hour, especially me. I'm working on this program, that program, this collaboration, this network, this company, this brand. If you can just like seed those things to your point and not trample over them, I love that. Seed it, don't trample over it. And then that seed, you know, nurture it, follow back up with it, let it grow. And my partner does this just to call her out. I love calling Alicia out. But what she does is we'll have a lot of brands come to us as an example and we'll say, here's our services, this is what we do.

Like, okay.

But, you know, we can't afford you. And I'm like, that's okay. We'll help you in this way or connected to this opportunity, but that seed is sitting there now because now they know who we are. And inevitably what happens, just like you talked about, like the one from Saudi Arabia, I think, and the big order coming in is they're going to come back eventually because at some point they're going to grow to a certain level. They're going to be able to afford us or they're going to have failed launches or whatever. So I just wanted to call that out. I love the Don't trample over your seeds. Have I understood you correctly?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, um, the next sort of strategy that I'm going to do is I'm going to take my, you know, a month calendar and I'm going to leave a week where I do not— I don't put meetings in because that's just constant. Like, it feels like we— there's always something that's going to happen. There's no space where you can just land and kind of catch your breath. I mean, I had the idea last year already and then I didn't implement it, but as of This next period, I'm absolutely going to. So you know those three weeks, fit in, squeeze those. I mean, life feels like a Tetris puzzle these days. Okay, I can squeeze into the gap, and if I move you down, I can. You know, it's it's wild. But if there's one week where you know that meeting, that week is clear, you can catch up on things that are you know that you haven't got to, that end up leaking because they they spinning around, got you know sitting on your shoulder and get me, get me. Yeah, do me, do me. Are you okay? So though.

Back to your business, Samantha. Are you the only one? So you have partners, I'm assuming, but are you the only one running this business or do you have like a CEO, CFO? Are you, I mean, what is your, is it all you? Are you doing all this?

No. So now I've got a beautiful team now. So I've got a warehouse manager. I'm going to pause and just mute for a second. I need to scream for my, for my child. It says back mode. 2 moments.

Okay. You didn't, you didn't mute. There's no mute, but that's okay. This is the native bird call of South Cape Town, Africa.

Battery, your power. So guys, I'm on my son's computer.

Yeah.

So I had a pet hate with my mother standing at the end of the corridor and screaming my name as a child. Um, so my dear son, his name is Kieran, which means ray of light. And I hate going, you know, so I developed this call, which is all those things.

Hey Samantha, that's why we do it live. We're all real because we're authentic here. There's no like there's no AI talking in your place. I mean, it's just you and I having a conversation this morning. So I mean, I learned the native bird call of South Cape Town, Africa this morning, which is which absolutely brilliant. We have fun here.

So yeah, you know, if you do make up a call for your children, it's really easy. Like in a supermarket when they go. And you go, is that me, mum, or another mum? Or, you know, and if you've got a little call, make it up. Um, it travels far and, and you can find each other in big crowds. It's actually, it's quite phenomenal.

Thank you.

Oh yeah. Yeah. No, it was very, it has been funny listening to my teenager who ended up sounding like a, like a penguin.

So you're talking about you had a beautiful team while you're getting plugged in and doing your thing. Uh, I'll let you do that, but on your team, you have a warehouse manager. If you've built this thing over 14 years and you're doing all this thing. So you're at the helm of this team that you're leading. Like, you know, I actually agree with you. It's funny I asked that because I've talked to a lot of founders, my friend Danielle Goss, I'll call her out this morning, or Jackie Berkland and many, many others. But Danielle founded a company called Coolmock. And Coolmock, really interesting is we had a call like this and she goes, how many people do you think are on my team? I said, 20. She goes, no, I'm a one-man show. And she built this business, you know, and she's in— Coolmox is doing really well now. She has Jenny on her team now. Maybe she has some other people, but that's why I was curious, like, who's on your team? Because it was probably just you running this thing for many years, but now you've got a place where you've scaled this business where you can afford a team.

Yes, exactly. So, I mean, we actually, when we got the listing for Whole Foods, had to move warehouses. The team that worked with the sort of business next door to us who were packing our products, Sorry, it's not working, my love. I need your help. So they didn't have international food safety, so we needed to get international food safety.

Gotcha.

And so I've got a, I've got a GM who runs the, the team, somebody who takes the orders. I've now got a logistics person who does all of our imports and our exports. So the team is— so I've actually got about 35 people, but I think 20, like 30, yeah, about 6 salespeople in South Africa and 25 people who are packing products.

Wow. Wow. And then you do all the international stuff, Samantha?

You do all the— I drive, I'm growing the business. So I open markets, I do NPD, and we've got these 2 beautiful products. This is a, then in fact, yeah, this used to be on Whole Foods shelves, but in a different product. If I do die, then I'll get onto my phone. Just, I'm not quite sure why it's not working. working, but I have been disturbed by the amount of plastic. And so that's the other thing is the Oryx at source has, has no micro, microplastic in it. And so this is our fines. It's crushed. It doesn't have any free-flow chemicals, but even so this isn't in the US yet, but I'm going to get it there. Even this is cardboard. So when this is done, you can stick it in your bag.

Can I get some of that? Can you, can you, can I get some of that?

Yeah, sure. Absolutely.

And that's so much better. Is this an upgrade from this or is it an upgrade from that?

No, it's just the fine. So you can stick it into your pasta water and you can bake with it. You know, you need salt for baking. You don't want to sit there and grind it. So it's the fine version. Okay.

So it's the better version of this.

Yes. Quite right. Yeah. Um, so, uh, this is a free from barbecue. Most barbecue spices blends, a portion of it is fillers. So it's wheat or it's maize so that they don't have to spend the cost on salt and spices and herbs. So ours is all salt, spices, and herbs. Do you bring recipes with it?

Do you do recipes? Like I do, I'm a Traeger guy, so I cook things. Well, my, okay. My wife is a Traeger woman. So, but I bought the Traeger so I can call myself the Traeger guy, but we'll do like ribs and stuff and we'll put like a dry rub on it. I'm assuming that would be an excellent dry rub to add to it.

Exactly. Yeah. So this is available on our webshop. So rxdesertsalt.com. And it's not in this packaging, but it's in a little glass one. But it's exceptionally good on everything— vegetables, lamb, chicken, you name it.

You can, you can share. You want to, you know, with the last few minutes we have, do you have the ability to share your screen? You can share here if you want to bring up on the screen to talk about some of these products. Do you have anything? You're not prepared to do that, that's fine too. But do you want to— and too, I'd be remiss not to say this— is if you could put in the chat, or I'll— when I publish this, I'll give your contact information. Now, full transparency, Samantha's not answering for the next week, so you might not hear from her. But if you want to put your contact information out there, happy to do that. And then your website, maybe a little bit about your brand, or maybe I can include like a couple pages about, you know, which you think you sent me a couple things. I'd love to include that as well.

I'd love to. I can put a one page of all the, you know, the About the salt pan and the sauce and various things. We're on Amazon, of course. You know, unfortunately, we, you know, we feed that beast and hopefully it serves people and it serves us in the future. It's been hard work. Still not there, but still not paying for itself, but hopefully in the future it will.

Do you run like, do you know who Eric Martindale is?

No.

I'll have to connect you. So he's, you know, Eric, I'm probably going to butcher this man, but He, uh, he has brands within his company, helps drive the Amazon marketplace for those brands.

Oh, okay.

I'm happy to connect you. He, uh, we were just on a podcast with, uh, Firebelly Social, um, a couple weeks ago. I've known Eric for a while, actually. Interesting, I met him on LinkedIn as well, and we had pancakes one Sunday, well, virtual pancakes. He was with his kids.

That's super.

And the whole bit. It'd be interesting if LinkedIn's— if Amazon's not driving you money, it might be an opportunity for you to talk to him because he's definitely familiar with the marketplace and What happens there, but maybe you're using something like that.

We've just taken on a new agent. So we just, we literally had 2 weeks ago, we had our sort of intro call. But just one thing, I'm gonna invite your audience and challenge you same time is get yourself a grinder from Whole Foods or Amazon or from our webshop, which is wholesale. So you have to buy in bulk, but grind some Oryx onto your hand and have a taste and then grind whatever other grinder you have in your kitchen onto your hand. And have a taste and taste the difference. You can actually taste the difference. You can feel the difference of the grinder, you know, and and please the smallest biohack. I'm sure many of you have heard of that terminology biohack, but how the little things you can do to really upgrade your physiology and your your performance is put a couple of grinders of Orex into your drinking water, into your coffee, into your. I've never heard about it in tea, but. Yeah, that's another one. But even, you know, you can take, you can open the grinder, you can grab a couple of crystals, put them underneath your tongue, especially if you performance endurance, you need a lot of salt. We are not eating enough salt. So I call this a guilt-free salt. Eat as much as your body is telling you. Your body is innately miraculous and it will, it will talk to you. If you are craving salty, the first thing that I say, and I realize with me, it's like, drink water, make sure you're always hydrated. I think we, a lot of us, are dehydrated. Stick some salt in, you know, drink yourself a liter or an ounce. That's very salty while I'm chatting. And then—

I did a whole thing of it. I got my salt for the next 2 weeks just now.

So in fact, there's— you should be having 13 grams of— 5 grams of sodium, which is equivalent to 13 grams of salt. So if you love your salt in your food, please don't feel bad. Your body needs it and it's asking for it.

Wow, that is absolutely amazing. I mean, I'm heading up to Whole Foods. I gotta get the pepper. Now, in the US, what's available right now? It's— you can get it, you're global, but within Whole Foods, what can you get? You can get the pepper and the salt?

Yeah, salt, pepper, and the refills. And on our website and on Amazon, you can get a very beautiful smoked salt, cold smoked over French oak shavings, and our free-from barbecue salt.

All right, so I'm going to be going on today to do that, and I'll certainly put I'll send you some. People at the end of the podcast, how you can get and kind of connect to your company and actually order these amazing products. Well, kind of, you know, I would like to, you know, maybe in summation, have you just tell us, you shared your journey, 40 years, 14 years with this. You know, it's interesting you said something. I've always caught this with a lot of entrepreneurs. You think, can you guess what I'm going to say? You probably can't. But I can tell you, there's 2 things I'm gonna say. One is every successful entrepreneur I've met, they came from a family of entrepreneurs. It's really interesting to me. Yep, my dad had his own business and I have a few high school friends that I grew up with. Interesting enough, they both ended up becoming entrepreneurs because their fathers were entrepreneurs.

Oh, wow.

And it seems like it's almost like being in a matrix. You don't get plugged in. You don't have this false pretense that having a job and, you know, I'm not poo-pooing having a job by no means. I was a person for 38 years having a job very proudly, but it's not a guarantee of your livelihood. And you're, as you're working, you're building someone else's dream and you too can go build your dream. So, I think it's just great that you built your dream. But 2 is, you know, credit to your parents to actually open your eyes to it because it took me a long time to understand. That you don't need to have, uh, be an employee. You can actually have your own business if you're willing to put the time and work in, uh, to do it. That's one. 2 is, do you know the difference between success and failure?

Success, you just keep on going because your success could be around the corner. If you, if you, if you drop out today, it could be your failure, but tomorrow could have been your success.

Right. Number one thing founders say is it's not giving up. Keep going because, you know, it's like You get to that, you're getting to that point where you're getting ready to like have success, right? Because it's like, no, no, no, no, no. Like you talked about, or you're planting all those seeds as you see along the way. You're like, nothing's coming my way. Nothing's happening. But over 40 years, how many failures did you have? Like, I mean, you had to have lost more than you've won.

The kayaking, Kayak Africa and on Lake Malawi, I had partners who were bullish. And I lost my island and I lost everything I put in. But in a way, that was my university fees. I still miss my island and still, still, yeah, kind of feels like—

Wait a minute, you own an island?

Um, I, we had the concession to live on the island and take travelers out to this uninhabited, um, freshwater lake island. And my partners, they— anyways, another story, another lifetime. So yeah, this is, this is my now. My Oryx is my, my story now. And I know that I'm going to be in it for many years to come, loving. I love switching people onto the salt. It's got a very— so I actually went up to the salt pan 2 years ago to go do a mini documentary, and we were only there 48 hours, and we were gifted a Kalahari thunderstorm of epic proportions. Photonic lightning was just— and which we managed to capture from the drones. Actually, actually, if you go onto our website, there's a— or on YouTube, you just Google RX Desert Salt, the source.

Yeah.

And like the, the rain just absolutely plummeted down for 20 minutes, and then it passed, and Colors in the sky was absolutely sublime. And there were double rainbows over the salt pan.

Holy cow. And you can see this on the website. There's a video. I can go watch that.

Yes. And I realized how elemental the salt is. Suddenly I was there on the salt pan experiencing the elements, the wind and the rain and the hot sun after the clouds passed. And, and, and also, no, not all salt has got moisture actually. So table salt. is heated to high degrees, so there's no moisture in it. But our salt is sun-dried and not oven-dried. So all moisture actually, all water has memory. It imprints with what's around it. So our salt is literally imprinted with the sun, the moon. In fact, because it's— the other miracle, I didn't share that with you. When we pour up the brine onto the pan, it is oversaturated. It's 120% saturation, which means that it crystallizes in only 4 weeks.

Wow.

Which is in one lunar cycle. So literally under a full moon, a dark moon, under the stars and the desert wind.

Samantha, I'm gonna give you another business opportunity, by the way.

Okay.

All right. So after you take your week off and you reset and the whole bit and block your calendar, you need to become an ingredient in beverages. Your salt needs to become an ingredient hands down, because you talked about when you put like all these functional beverages, everybody has like mushrooms, vitamin B12 to All these adaptogens, right? This is probably the most important one that needs to go in there. And, people are placing, even beer companies like Sam Adams is placing some salt in their products kind of like a hydration beer. Yeah. So, think about all the Na products and Na beers that are out there. It'd be really interesting. I'm happy to make some connections for you within that business from an ingredient business or actually have this like your name on the can. You know, you too can get Heineken 0.0. And maybe the Heineken folks are listening right now and has that as an ingredient in their, like an ingredient in their beer. Because what's going to happen is the NA space for beer.

Sorry. Yeah. I'm just, I'm checking. I can hear you. I want to just show you something.

Yeah. Yeah. So the NA space for beer, I actually think the next evolution of that is adding more ingredients as an offering. So it's just not another NA beer because their whole marketing right now is like, 0.5 proof, 0.0 proof. But there you go. You have something right now.

Okay.

Here we go. What is it?

Yeah. So this is a beautiful, the most delicious tomato juice you'll ever taste. It's not in America yet, but yes. So it's got the Oryx Desert Salt logo on it. And they use apple cider. They use only good quality apple cider vinegar. And then this is, so this logo here is actually taken from the ancient alchemical symbol for salt, which is a circle with a line in the middle. So 2 semicircles, which is perfect balance. Which is what salt is to the body. It creates that organ—

So you're already doing it. You're already an ingredient in— how many products are you an ingredient in right now? Just one, or are you looking to get in more?

No, about 130 in South Africa.

Okay. And that one's a South African product?

Yeah. Yeah. So nothing yet in the US. All right. All right.

So this is a seed right now, right? So I won't trample over the seed, but I think there might be a business opportunity here to actually take these brands with your product and bring them across the globe. Maybe you're already doing it. So we represent like a little brand, it's called Sangrita, and it's all natural. So it's like a tomato juice, but Sangrita out of Mexico. And, uh, so we're taking that one, you know, across the country. It'd be really interesting to actually introduce you to the Sangrita folks and actually put your salt as an ingredient there. And I can actually do that with the founder, Adrian. I can't promise, obviously you and Adrian need to talk, but exactly what I'm saying is you're an ingredient in it and you tell the salt story. And I'm thinking, you know, beverages. People are like, why does Beverage Man Sam have Samantha on Drink Up? Exactly that, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's so fascinating about salt is that it is the smallest ingredient in any meal, and yet it is the most important. You don't put salt in your meal, it's going to be very bland. And that same power of salt in your— as an ingredient in your recipe is, is as important to your body. So it's still the smallest ingredient you're putting into your body, but it has the same massive impact on your health. So really choosing the right salt for your body is absolutely intrinsic to your well-being. And you know, we're electromagnetic beings, you know.

Yeah.

You know, when you get that shock, if you've been in the supermarket using the trolley and then you touch one another and you get that electric shock. So electricity, our sort salts and cellular cells and intercellular fluid act as a, as a medium for, for the, the neurons and the electro—

Wow.

Electric charges in our body. And so you need a good quality salt. Like, your brain needs salt to fire and sharpen it. At the end of that day, that 2, 3 o'clock slump that you have and you're feeling like, I need a nap, grab yourself a glass of water, dunk some salt in that, and, and take that and see how you feel after that. It's gonna It's going to give you a lift. It's going to get your, your, your synapses firing again. And you know, when, when women are pregnant, you require 50% more blood. So when women are pregnant, their taste buds disappear. Their salt taste buds disappear because the body is needing more salt.

Wow.

So they don't taste— they keep wanting more salt because you need it for the amniotic fluid and your, the blood volume. So especially you ladies out there breastfeeding. Go mad on your salt. You need it.

Wow.

Experiment. Listen to your body. Like, play around. Put some more in and see how it makes you feel. So I was saying, this beautiful gentleman, James DiNicolantonio, he's a cardiac researcher, and he said the wrong white crystal got the bad rap. So they pointed— the sugar industry pointed their fingers at salt because it's a white crystal. But which is the white crystal that actually really causing damage in your health. And I've been off— my son, my beautiful 17-year-old son, has been off all sugar for about 14, 15 months now. Like, nothing has passed his lips. I'm not quite as good as he is, but for this year I haven't been having much sugar. And I went into my warehouse last week, and I was gonna fast on the Wednesday, which was my day in the warehouse, but we had a lovely, uh, like a baby shower for one of my team. And so there was cake and there was I ended up starting my day on sugar, and Thursday morning I woke up and I got out of bed and I was like, oh, and I felt all stiff and inflamed and cranky. And that was because the day before I hadn't had much protein. All I'd been on was sugar. And I was like, wow, that was, that was powerful to experience. So sugars, you know, go point sugars, uh, your point your fingers at sugar.

I'm down 15 pounds because I was putting honey on everything, by the way. And a woman told me that, uh, it's like a health coach. She said, take the honey out, just have the yogurt with some blueberries, and then watch your refined carbs as well.

Absolutely.

And my wife loves refined carbs. So, I mean, pizza last night arrived on my, my plate and out of respect, pizza was good, but I'm like, you know, I really don't, I'd rather have like the salad with some like, you know, and by the way, what you're describing is really hard. So hats off to your son. Because it's really hard to go on a no-sugar diet.

It is. It is. And yet, once you make the switch, the difference in the aliveness and the stiffness and the inflammation and all of that really drops. So one of my favorite meals, my son and my favorite meals, is full cream double thick yogurt and a big teaspoon of good quality cinnamon and macadamia and almond nut butter with blueberries. And so you're just really getting your oils and your nuts and your yogurt.

And then you send it— Can you send that recipe to me? Text it to me or email it to me?

Yeah, sure.

I'm always looking for things. So I'm gonna give you a chance to close it out with us and then stay on the line with me after we go live. I got a couple other things for you.

Cool.

Because I usually hit stop here. So what do you want people to go away with? I mean, obviously, thanks for these health tips because you're absolutely talking to me. I'm like, okay, Susan, nothing but this salt. I'm dumping out this salt. And this goes into all our foods, but yes.

So, um, I'd say 2 things. The power of intention. You know, if you're going to climb Mount Everest, you need to know you want to get to the top of Everest. And so you will align with the skills, the tools, and the equipment you need to get to the top of Everest. If you don't know that that's where you want to go, you're not going to get to the top. So really, I knew that I always wanted to be in whole foods. I also know that I want to be, I want Oryx, not me, to be the next global household brand of salt. So, um, that's my mission. And then the power of gratitude, always just like, wow, you know, such an incredible opportunity. Thank you, Samuel, for being on this, on your lovely live podcast. Um, really, really appreciate chatting and sharing my story with your, with your audience. And just, yeah, all of those tiny little— I just found that you can do hearts on this thing. Oh my God. Yeah. Oh, I haven't seen that. What's happening? Mine's not doing it. It's changing. It's changing.

Have you ever kind of watched? Do you see the hearts coming?

Wow. That's cute. That's brilliant. Is that the first time you discovered that?

Having a destination, you know, being clear where you're going and the power of gratitude.

And appreciating every step along the way, every moment. So like each of us, we are souls having, having a human experience. Like, just trust your soul. Trust that this is a journey. Where you're at right now is part of what your soul needs you to, where you need to be. And so sometimes, like, if you look at it from a, like, a bigger perspective, my son is institutionally adverse. 4 years of nightmare with school. He doesn't do school now. And it was the hardest part was me shifting from needing him to go to school. He didn't wanna hang out with kids smoking and drinking and vaping and what have you. He's. Not really. He's not a crowds person. He likes his own space and he likes one-on-one friendships. So the hardest thing was me switching, but my mantra has been trust the soul of my boy. He knows where he's going, and I'm so curious and excited to see how life informs his journey. I didn't study, you know, the way life, you know, even, you know, my business partners today. I met the wife of one of the business partners. on a 10-day silent retreat. I'd been looking for a business partner, I'd had lots of meetings, but then I met them on a, on a meditation retreat in silence. I mean, hello, like, I could not have planned that. Just so it can take that little bit of that, you know, take your foot off the gas, that little bit, just take that stress just a little bit more into trust, surrender, and gratitude, um, that you are where you're meant to be.

That's my partner. I hope my partner's geeking out on this because first of all, she has a candle that she burns and she has these rocks she has behind us. And we always talk about energy, right? And you talked about energy and trust that your son's soul is doing the right thing. Because, you know, and one thing I've discovered on all this is that positive energy finds positive energy, and the devil is a negative energy that we have to push out. And the power of meditation— and my partner and I always talk about this, by the way— is you have to, you have to, like, like you got to be able to see the universe. And Alicia, maybe give me some talking points. I wish you were here, but the power of the universe is now. You got to manifest what you want. And, and that's what we do every day. And amazing things happen. You came into my life. You have something you're going to share, a book.

Yeah, no. So this is an oryx and it comes from the beautiful Kalahari Desert. So I, I did a 120-kilometer walk, and they actually, for real, they have a heart on their head. Just, I wanted to show you the kind of, you know, what the animal looks like. And I was sitting on a sand dune, and I watched 2 bulls chasing each other. And the desert is like 360,000 square kilometers, and these 2 bulls ran up the hill, like, in my path.

Wow.

And, and I've only just really— it's only just really— and that You know, that was 20 years ago, like realized, you know, that yes, you know, they came into my path. So this is, this is part of my journey. This is part of my soul journey. And, you know, Samuel, you giving this platform to me, you know, this is, as long as we're giving back, as long as we're giving, we're giving more than what we're taking, we are, you know, we create, we're in creation. So yeah.

Um, man, so, so, so, so thank you so much. Thank you everyone for joining Drink Up and my friend Samantha. I'll put in the credits information on this when we actually publish this as a podcast, which will be here probably by the end of the day or week. But thank you so much. And everybody have a happy Saturday that joined us. And that is a wrap.

Thank you. Have a beautiful day. Beautiful week.