Episode #588: Building Strive-Combining Science, Self-Improvement, and Authenticity in Men's Skincare

0:01 This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks NYC. I have the pleasure of having Angel Oliveria, a chemist from Forest Hills, Queens, where I grew up back in the day. Uh, we are going to talk about the halo effect, we're going to talk about skincare, and we are going to talk about becoming a chemist as your day job, an entrepreneur. So Angel, take it away. Yeah, yeah, sure thing. Um, so I, I'm Angel, I founded Striiive, and we are a men's skincare company. It was kind of born from— I started my career in sales, so a little bit over 10 years ago, I had noticed that the best salesmen were the ones who, not necessarily like the best looking guys, but they tended on average to be above most of the pack visually in terms of how they presented themselves, how they did their hair, how they dressed up, and all of that.. And they knew more of paying attention to how do they speak with people. And so that got me into really starting to think about doing that myself because I wasn't doing any of that previously. And I started, you know, working on that. And part of that ended up being skincare. And I noticed that, um, you, you mentioned that the halo effect at the start is the— people tend to attribute positive things to someone who they think is more attractive. So if you're a more attractive person, they are more likely to think that you're funny or you might have a better personality. Or even if you're, if you're tall, if you're like 6'3", you're more likely to be seen as someone who is, uh, a type of a leader. And

1:32 so the idea was to try to take advantage of this as much as I could. And when I first found skincare, it almost felt like a secret weapon because especially over a decade ago, um, almost no guys were really on top of it. And that kind of started my journey. Initially I had started like mom-and-pop stuff and making recipes off of Reddit the very first year. The next year is I wanted to start a business. I wasn't quite there mentally, uh, and I had never wanted to start a business before. And then eventually, about 2 to 3 years after that, I started taking it seriously and, uh, made hundreds and hundreds of different variations, formulas, worked on different things, and then went to a program out in Australia called the Institute of Personal Care Science, which took me to the chemistry portion of things. Nice. So let me ask you a question. So as you were kind of leveling up from, from a sales standpoint, did you see something in the ingredients or in the effect of what you were using and said, "Man, I could do this better," or did you just get so passionate about it, be like, "Hey, I want to be in this space"? Yeah, I'm trying to think of how to articulate this. So it's a few things. So Initially, uh, it was really, really confusing. So there's like, you know, there's eye creams and there's serums and toners and essences and mists, and there's all these terms, and I didn't know any of it. I didn't know anyone who knew any of it, um, right? And so it was really confusing.

2:59 And then I was just— the best thing that I knew to do at the time was I was like, okay, what is— you don't know what is like GQ or Esquire saying? And I just, you know, buy something that they had suggested. Sometimes they had something decent, but most of the time I, I wasn't a huge fan of what they had suggested. So I spent a lot of time figuring things out and trying to find what worked for me, and it was just a pain in the ass of a process. And that's kind of what I start thinking about is like, okay, there's— these days, uh, there's men's skincare companies, but I see the majority of them as marketers who are wearing the clothing of someone who does men's skincare. And so you just get a lot of products that do a lot of disservice to men. They probably try it and they're like, why would I use this? It's not doing anything. So, gotcha.

3:44 And then when did you technically become a chemist? Uh, so probably about 4 years ago. About 4 years ago is when I did that program, which is funny because I had done— I learned a lot about the, like, my microbiological controls through the program. It's probably what I learned the most about. It's funny though because before that I had done so much of the hard trial and error, doing things over and over, figuring out how things work, that I had a sense of, of how to, to make everything. And so I didn't know why things would work, I just knew how to make it work. And then taking the program out in Australia and getting involved with places like the Society of Cosmetic Chemists and really going all in on that helped me understand the, the depth of these things. But as far as, as really learning how to make great formulas, I that was mostly done through tons and tons of trial and error. Hmm. And, and, you know, some of these, uh, schools and, and, uh, societies and associations you're talking about, like, I've never even— I didn't even know they existed, you know. As you kind of dug deeper into this, how, um, excited were you about the, the, the efficacy and, and, you know, like, the, uh, the cycle of putting products together, or how we're— or, or were you like, I can't believe, like, people are just mixing all this stuff up and they have no idea what the, you know, actual impact is when you

5:15 actually mix these chemicals or these natural products or ingredients together. What was your— what was your takeaway when you went through it? It's like, this is way too complicated, way more complicated it should be, or like, aha, I get it, like, there is like a complex— you know, like, tree here that's being built? Yeah, uh, man, it's, uh— So, Pete, I love what I do. And so the reason I love what I do is because once I figured everything out, it felt like everything in life started clicking. You know, I was a young guy at the time, and so everything from the way I carried myself was— and, and the way I presented myself, I was seeing improvements in things like dating, in the making friends and networking and all of that. And so As far as the actual products, it's funny because it's difficult to make a really nice feeling product and to really know how to make it last, like have good shelf life and stability. That part is very difficult. But the main concept of making a good product, like if you know how to do that stuff, it's very easy in my opinion to make a good product as far as results, because there are studies for these things. And so what, what most companies will do is they'll pick like a random plant extract and they'll build up a marketing story. They'll say they're like, you know, like the Queen of Egypt used to use this for beauty and yada, yada, yada. And, but it doesn't work because a lot of these, these extracts don't have really good studies around them, like really strong studies. And even if you do have a good study, if I take a plant extract,

6:46 um, I don't know, uh, let's say, uh, licorice extract or something, or some, some cactus extract, the time of year that you harvested it, if it had more rain that season, the, the climate of the area, what region you took it in, the way that you did the extraction method from the, the source plant material, is all going to make a different chemical composition in the actual ingredient that you put in the product. So there's just such wide variety when you use things like a plant extract as your main, like, active ingredient in a product. But if you take a look at something like niacinamide or like retinol, These things have very strong studies, multiple studies that say, "Hey, if you use this at 4%, it's going to do X. If you use it at 5%, it's going to do this." And so, my philosophy has just been taking those and doing what they say. Like— [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Who's funding those studies? So, these are actually all a lot of— there's difference from manufacturer studies and then ones that are done in the industry. So, a lot of these main ingredients like your niacinamides, like your retinols, there's tons and tons of literature out there that are just like independent studies and people have worked on them over time. Whereas when you look at, say— well, peptides are really hot right now. So if I was to make a new peptide, there's not going to be a non-biased study on it because I made the peptide. It's not something that everyone can use. Whereas when you look at something like retinol, you have studies for decades on retinol that are fantastic, multitudes of them. And they all come to the same

8:17 conclusion. Whereas if you look at something like peptides, it's— and don't get me wrong, I like peptides, but they aren't as conclusive as something like a niacinamide or retinol and some of these big staples. This is Pete Moore. I want to let you in on a little secret. There's this company called Promotion Vault, and what they do is they give out rewards from retailers that allow you to incentivize your members without having to do zero down and one month free or giving away shakes or giving away t-shirts. What you wanna do is build a rewards program that lasts, that people value, and that doesn't discount your own products and services. So here's the deal. There's something called Rewards Vault.

9:00 The Rewards Vault is going to allow a member to set up their own profile. They are going to answer questions. You are gonna get those answers. You're gonna be able to target those members and you're gonna reward them inside your club, inside your spa, and outside of the club and outside of the spa to get them to become loyal, to get them to pay their monthly dues and to be rewarded properly for the actions. A lot of companies are cutting back on rewards. You shouldn't be. Promotion Vault's your answer. Trust me, this is real. So, so as you, you, you're an entrepreneur, you know, you built this company on your own. How do you kind of think through— all right, I could have 100, you know, SKUs. I, I could create all different, you know, shapes, sizes, ounces. How do you think through the evolution of a company, especially when you have a lot of, a lot of topicals that could go on a lot of areas of, of somebody's you know, face or body or, you know, how do you think through that? Because sometimes you see— I'm working with a company right now that started with a couple of products, and now I feel like we've become almost a distribution company because we've lost kind of like, here's our core set of what we sell, and we've kind of got a little too much of a, like, a product drip around the core. So how do you think about that? And what do you think moves the needle for you as an entrepreneur? Yeah, it's, it's difficult to plan exactly how to do

10:32 every step. I could say that I am almost stubbornly principled, and so I want to run the kind of business that I want to run. And it might not be the best business in the world because of some of the things that I want to do, but ultimately I want to love what I do. And I don't want to— you know, I'm, I'm willing to bend on a few things, you know, 10, 20%, something like that. But for the most part, I want to run things the way that I want to run things. And I want to build a company that's not shilling people crap. I want to build something that's not complicating men's daily lives. Like, I'm an enthusiast, right? I loved doing this stuff. I love taking care of myself, but like, I know how— I know how— I know how dudes are. And so I don't want them— I don't want them thinking about beauty every day. I don't want them thinking about how to optimize every step of their life. I want them to be confident in knowing that what they got is going to be working for them and they don't have to do much anything else after that.

11:20 And so, I want to think very consciously of any new products that we make that I'm not confusing them on what to do and that I'm adding the good education in there and I'm not adding unnecessary steps. If I don't believe that it's going to be in the, like, 80-20%, I probably don't want to make it. Mm-hmm. And then, from a standpoint of pricing skincare products, you know, I've— you know, I've walked through a shopping mall before and I've got, you know, pulled into— you know, try this and, you know, put it on your eye. And next thing you know, like, your eye looks, you know, like, amazing. Like, you're like 18 again. And then it's, you know, $300 for like a little, like, 1-ounce, you know, serum. So how do you— how do you, you know, kind of attach yourself to people like you that are— that you're obviously, like, providing products to your peers is the way I kind of think about it without saying, hey, I know my margin on these ingredients are X, and I'm going to charge you a fair price for that because it sounds like you want to be, you know, an authority, but you also want to be trusted. So how do you think about margins and how do you think about what's the right price point? And there's obviously a lot of noise out there. Yeah, it's— I wasn't originally an entrepreneur type. Looking back, there were some hints of it there, but I was never like, I want to start a company. It was just I was really into improving myself and this just happened to be an avenue that, that latched and I was like, I want to do a skincare company. I wouldn't do anything

12:54 else. And the, the, um, the reason I say that is because I didn't know how to do any of these things when I started. I didn't know how to do, of course, like a profit margin. Thankfully, I got a little bit lucky and I did it correctly because the way that I looked at it is I looked at a brand that I, that I knew that guys bought. Which was Kiehl's. And I, and I looked at the formulas that I was making and I said, okay, I know that what I have is better than what they have, and I know it's a little bit more expensive, so let me take what they have because it's a price point that's— to men, it's a little premium, um, and let me just add on a little bit. So like a dollar or $2. And that's how I came up with my pricing. So it wasn't anything, you know, market, market research, but it ended up working out. And our— we have, uh very good margins from, from doing it that way.

13:39 And then how do you have the company set up? You know, it's obviously you out of, out of Brooklyn. You've got a— out of Queens. Do you have a lot of suppliers that you have set up? Is kind of a virtual business? What, you know, how many people do you need to bring on full-time to, to run what you're doing at your current point? Yeah. So I don't see us having to hire very many full-time employees until we're deep into the millions, to be honest. Mm-hmm. Especially now with the, the state of AI, there's a lot of things that you could do and, and the things that you would need help on, you could contract out. So you, you're more likely to have contractors than anyone who's an employee. As of right now, I do most everything. Occasionally if, if the workload is too much, I'll, I'll contract out some pieces.

14:23 Um, but, uh, suppliers-wise, almost all of our suppliers are in the US. It's pretty easy to get ahold of things. And I'm the one who like, I'll get a— like, I'll rent out a space in like a facility or like, like one was at a college campus at like a science facility there. And I'll use that to make a lot of production for, say, 5 to 6 months, something like that. Gotcha. And then how do you think about what your go-to-market strategy is? You know, every time I've used a skincare product where someone's handed it to me, and I put it on and see the results. Or if I go to a— I'm a big, like, live sporting event guy, so the people be giving out samples. And that's typically usually how I, I try new protein bars or, you know, certain things. Like, once I try it, I like it. And it's like sampling is very successful with me as a consumer versus me going on a website and saying, ah, maybe I'll like that, maybe I won't. So yeah, you know, Obviously, you got all the SEO and you got digital at the same time.

15:27 You know that, hey, if I get— if I get you to try this, you know, I think I'll probably— you're probably a consumer. How do you think about the digital versus, you know, in-person and, you know, maybe more old-school, um, you know, marketing, uh, you know, try, try, try, then buy? Yeah, marketing is a funny thing because it's so broad. There's, there's parts of it that I'm very good at and there's parts of it that I'm very awful at. And so one of our strong points, like you said, is SEO. And, and a lot of that comes from not only knowing how to do it, but I'm a chemist. So like nobody's gonna be able to talk about things the way that I could talk about them. They're gonna have to hire someone to do it. And it's very hard to hire good people. Uh, it's so, it's— people love to phone things in. They don't know how to talk. They don't know how to think and put themselves in the perspective of who the consumer is and how they want to be talked to and how they want to think. And I know how to do that. And so whenever I tend to write articles, not only am I optimizing them for SEO, but they have good readability and people they identify with it. It's not— I'm not a random brand. I'm a guy. You see my face on the article. But other parts of it, uh, I would love to be able to do sampling. That's one of the things that's tough about being a, like, a bootstrapped entrepreneur is that it is— there's more MOQs that you'd have to meet because then one, I do, I do the filling. So it, it— to do samples, which are such a good, such a good strategy, it requires a lot more packaging, a lot more physical labor for me, a lot more storage, and a lot more upfront financial costs for the— to meet the MOQs. And so one of the things I always, uh, tell people if they want to start a company and

17:00 they're going to do it bootstrapped, and especially like in the CPG, um, e-commerce space, things like that, is start with less SKUs. And like, you, you read that place— as I'm going off on a tangent, it's just like— no, no, no, keep going. You read that places and I thought I was starting with not very many SKUs because I had, you know, 4 SKUs and then 2 bundles. Start with 1, maybe 2 SKUs because the beauty is once you get 1, if you get a following for it, it's like one, you get the messaging tight for that one item, you have more money to put into the marketing, you get— you build up an audience and then when you launch that second product, it's more likely to have some heat behind it when you start going. Whereas when like I'm I'm producing 4 different products, I'm packaging them, I'm shipping them out, all this stuff, labeling them. It's just a lot of time. And, uh, that's a, um, a big recommendation that I would have. But yeah, other than going back to the main subject, um, marketing, the other thing that I want to start really working on is building more of a lifestyle. And so the brand's name is Strive, and so the idea is that I actually got it from the, the man in the arena. It's from Theodore Roosevelt. It's a a big thing that he wrote. It's a— I love it. But I basically think that men should always be— anyone really, but I say men because that's, you know, it really speaks to me— should be always striving for something. It doesn't matter what it is, just always be working towards something. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and just be, uh, you know, conscious of the way that you move through the world. And that is like the, the, um, that's the whole idea behind the brand.

18:33 So I want to start bringing that into— the way that we position the brand. I don't want it to just be, "Hey, I'm a chemist and we have awesome formulas." And we do, but, um, I want to be able to reach more men so that they could find the— how awesome it is to use good products. And you do that by people being more, uh, interested. Hey, they see cool-looking dudes that they feel like they identify with, they're going to be more likely to purchase your brand. So that's the one avenue that I'm, I'm really working on right now. This is Pete Moore. Here's the last tip for you of the podcast. We are partnered up with a company called Higher Dose, higherdose.com. They are the leader in workout recovery products, infrared technology, LED light masks, neck enhancers, and other products such as PEMF mats and sauna blankets. If you have not gotten on the workout recovery train yet, Your time and your stop is now. You gotta get these products in there before these workout recovery and spas end up saturating your market, having your members walk out of the club and going into one of their locations for $200 per month where they're paying $39 to you. Let's become an expert in workout recovery if we are already an authority in workouts. Higher Dose, check it out. There's a wholesale code.

19:56 And we look forward to helping you augment your products and services to meet the demands of your members. And hey, let's get people happy, healthy, and sweating. And the recovery should be just as good as the workout. And have you looked at doing any kind of, you know, ambassador programs or if there's like certain people that you say like, hey, this is kind of like the epitome of a strive, you know, guy besides yourself? Yeah. You know, whether that's, you know, like a professional golfer or whether that's— I don't know, let's say it's like an investment banker as a joke. Yeah. You know, or something like that. Everyone strives in a different way. Yeah, I know, right?

20:44 I don't know if I'd be a brand ambassador for anything, but if I was, you know,— but are there certain, like, new channels or people? You know, obviously there's a lot of celebrity products. Some of those are awesome and some of those, like— I just keep reading more and more stories about, you know, celebrities starting up drinks or skincare products or alcohol. And then, you know, they kind of go to the sky and then they, like, crash and burn, like, as quickly as they went up, almost like a regression analysis. Like, the fucking thing just drops off a cliff. So do you view that as risky? Do you view that as, you know, potentially something to explore? You know, what's your, what's your take on ambassadors or like, you know, branding, uh, people and then maybe taking the risk of whether that's a good idea or not? I love the idea of having a really good brand ambassador. I think it could do amazing things for the brand.

21:41 The difficulty is I mentioned that I'm very principled and I could be a little bit stubborn about some things. And one of the things is I want to do things the way that I want to do them. I— maybe I'll bend on this. I'm not going to commit this forever, but I, I just don't want to have people talking about my brand who don't actually give a shit about my brand. Um, I want people who actually like the brand, and it's, um, like, it might make things harder to build. They might— things might go slower, but I want to build something on an extreme quality foundation. I don't want to torch money trying to pretend that some celebrity likes using us. And it's, it will make the climb very difficult. But man, if we, if we reach that summit, like, we're going to be there for the long haul and it's going to be very hard for us to go away at that point. I just want to build everything out of, like, authenticity. Yeah, well, look, you're kind of an atypical entrepreneur. It's kind of refreshing to talk to you because typically you have people that come on and they say, I got this product, I'm raising money from friends and family, I'm going to go get a venture capital, I got a deck out, I'm trying to get capital to do XYZ. And you're saying like, look, I'm going to build something, I'm going to be the authority on it, it's going to be awesome, it's going to work, and then it's going to take time, and I'm not going to bend or do things or take any shortcuts on, on this path to get to where I want to be.

23:03 Which really sounds to me like it's not— you don't— don't take this the wrong way, but your, like, financial goal might not actually be what the goal is. Like, the goal might be to strive to create a product that a lot of people use. And, you know, you know that the downstream benefits of, like, people having confidence and looking better and closing more deals and being successful. And you're kind of like the— I'm like the strive skin behind, like, that, that success story. And I might not know where those are, and I might not care exactly who those people are, but I just know that I've impacted a lot of people. So Coming back to like a question related to that is how do— how does an entrepreneur like you say, you know, in a cocktail party or at a dinner? So it's like, hey, how's your company going? How's it growing? Like, look, I'm not really trying to give you like a revenue target that I hit or profitability target or like X amount of, of whatever you want to like ascribe to me being successful. Like, I'm successful on the journey. And I'm going to keep the journey going. And I know it's— I'm going— I'm making progress every day. So I don't know if there's a question there, but, you know, have you kind of— have you kind of been like, like someone's like, hey, man, how's it going? Be like, hey, man, it's going the way I want it to and it's going at the time and speed that I want it to go at because I'm not going to bring in outside money and burn somebody else's money or, or answer to somebody. Yeah. Yeah. Pete, don't get me wrong. I want to make a lot of money. Like I would love to make lots and lots of money. It's just, I wanna, I wanna do

24:34 things as much as I can the way that I wanna do them in the right way and build the right way. And I think if I— it honestly, like I'm, I'm not saying that I know, I know the ways to do things. I might be a little bit naive here. Maybe I, I'm on, I'm on the, like the, you know, the, the blue pill with this. But, um, I, I, I think that by constantly looking at that, that I'll find really healthy ways to build things. And I come from a sales background. I was in software sales. I was really, really good at software sales. And so, I think of KPIs, I think of numbers, I'm very numbers-oriented. I'm not— everything's not a feeling to me. I look at the numbers and say, "Okay, we want to double this, we want to look at this, we want to get our click rate up, we want to get our conversion rate, we want our lifetime value up." I look at all those things. I have goals for them that I set and numbers. And so, for example, we want to do the triple, triple, double type of thing.

25:24 Yeah. So, that's— so, I am still very much looking at financial goals, just trying to figure out a way to get there. Without compromising on, uh, my principles. But again, I am— I'm open to things like capital. I just don't want to do it until we are in a place where I feel like we're putting fuel on the fire, where it's okay, we have something amazing and this will really help get it to more people. I don't want to do it before I feel like we're in that, like, that really good spot where we're already starting to take off. Yeah, awesome. Good for you. Uh, so in closing here, do you have a, uh, a quote or a, you know, like an angelism that you either say to yourself or that you say to people besides the, the strive, you know, comment before? Yeah. One that I can't quote because too long is I just in general, I love the man in the arena. But for anyone who is working on a business, I just say is take a step and then the next steps will become more clear. And it took me a while to really learn that. And you spent like— it doesn't mean that you shouldn't plan, But it means that at some point you got to get going and you have to know that you're not going to know things. And taking that first step, you'll start seeing where the next step needs to be. And it makes things so much easier. Yeah. Awesome. All right. Well, we'll strive to keep those steps going. Love to have you on here. Appreciate that. We'll check in with you, you know, in 12 months. You'll give us some more words of wisdom and hopefully you're impacting more and more people.

26:49 But congrats on, on doing this and becoming a chemist and actually— you know, doing this the right way and taking the time to learn. Uh, I think it's awesome. So thanks for being on Halo Talks and keep living the Halo effect. Absolutely. All right, cool. Pleasure. Awesome. This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks, your captain speaking. I am the founder and managing partner at Integrity Square. We've been around now for 15 and one half years. We have been helping people like yourselves get capital, do mergers and acquisitions, consulting, strategic advice in the health, active lifestyle, and outdoor halo sector, trying to help as many entrepreneurs as possible get to the next level, take that inflection point, and be the force behind your growth. We are helping companies that are— have at least $3 million of EBITDA. Around $10 million in revenue, and we are positioned to help you get institutional growth capital or to negotiate deals with strategic partners.

27:59 If you go to IntegritySQ.com/ISQ, you can see our capabilities deck. Happy to set up a consultation at any time. That is free of charge, and we look forward to helping solve obesity, loneliness, and diabetes. Go hin— [MUSIC]