Inside Balance of Nature’s Path to Growth

I want my dad in my office. I need the influence of the founder on me. Otherwise, I start thinking that I’m the guy who started this place. Welcome to the Know Your Ship podcast presented by Ehub. I’m your host, Frank Dolce. We’re sitting here talking with Lex Howard, Cedric Abish. I hope I got that correct. Got it. Oh man. Uh Cedric is executive the executive vice president at Balance of Nature and sits on the board of a company called Shipit, the shipping and logistics uh company, transportation company. Lex is the CEO and owner of Balance of Nature. And it’s a fantastic story. It’s a great product. But I think the thing that we want to

talk about is taking an amazing product that was developed by your father, Dr. Howard and then building a business out of that and and that’s the point where you step in is starting to build a business out of balance of nature. So maybe you can take us just a quick this is how the product developed and and then to the point where you stepped in to to really drive a business. Yeah, sure. So my dad uh is a chiropractor and and medical doctor. Uh he had a practice up in Sugar House in Salt Lake City. Mh. And um he just found that there was a problem with people getting enough fruits and vegetables every day.

And and remember this is in the ‘9s. So granola wasn’t cool in the 90s. If if you drank carrot juice, you were a weirdo back then, you know. Now it’s cool if you show up. I mean, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So he was having a really hard time getting people eat enough fruits, fruits and vegetables. He went to St. Petersburg, Russia, and studied at Pavlov University in the in the middle of this stuff. And they it just continued to confirm his belief that most of our diseases that we deal with on this planet are lifestyle diseases. Meaning if you can eat right Mhm. and you can exercise, you’re probably not going to get many of the

diseases of today. Right? So there were multiple reasons why he came to that conclusion in St. Petersburg. It just became very obvious because they didn’t have enough money to be able to buy the things they needed to to eat. Well, I think I read somewhere in this founding story is that Dr. Howard recognized that individuals who had access to fruits and vegetables were healthy. That’s right. Or healthier and people who didn’t have access to it were not. Yeah. It’s super logical. Yeah. But but it’s funny because science can get in the way of that. What we get the science world gets super focused in on on one particular vitamin or one particular chemical that we

find in something and we and we’re constantly looking for the cure all. But it it if if we would just eat what mother nature created for us, that’s where it’s found. Yeah. Right. So if we just eat it in its whole form. So that’s what he got really excited about in the ‘9s is just teaching his patients more about eating better. Well, we have the exact same problem for an opposite reason in America as they have in Russia, and that is Russia does can’t afford to eat well. You and I make good enough money that we can eat steak and potatoes every day, right? So, so fruits and vegetables just live in this funny place

where they don’t taste good or we can’t afford them or we can afford them but we want to eat something different. So, yeah. or or it doesn’t it’s it’s not like it’s like you said it’s not doesn’t become a habit for you. We’re we’re we’re used to all the conveniences of you know fast food and running here and running there and picking something up and and not as thoughtful about getting stuff that we have access to. The natural man is like we we’re creatures of habit. Mhm. And those habits usually come from instant gratification. Sure. So fast food is, you know, it’s the easiest thing. And then there’s certain things in that food, you know,

fats and sugars in that food that just cause us to keep on going back. It’s it’s the cocaine of taste of the food world, right? Yeah. Yeah. And not just that, but then we teach our kids because we have those habits. They then learn those habits, too. And they never really understood what it takes to eat real fruits and vegetables or healthy foods in in the first place. And then they carry on those habits and absolutely it’s ease and it’s habit and it’s you have four kids, you have to get them to soccer games and are you what are you going to do to feed all of them? That’s right. Just in the drive-thru. Yeah.

So, so he was going through this and he he tried to get his patients to eat more fruits and vegetables. He couldn’t really. And in the later part of the ’90s, um freeze-dried foods was becoming more accessible. um you know it was invented a long time before that but it was becoming more accessible. Mhm. So he got involved in the freeze-dried movement um in helping like Kelloggs, that’s when he started seeing Kelloggs like strawberries go into cereal and some things like that, right? Um and simply he found 31 of the most important fruits and vegetables that you eat on a daily basis. It’s not these weird things that you find, you know, these that really

all fruits and vegetables should be called superfoods. Mhm. Whatever’s being studied at that point in time is what ends up being called a superfood. Anyways, so he took the fruits and vegetables that we should be eating every day and put them into a particular ratio and um found that there’s just this phenomenal thing that mother nature did for us that makes it so that we decrease our risk of different diseases and things. Now, we can’t talk about that as a company because we don’t cure diseases that turns us into a drug, right? But the fact is if you go and sit down with Dr. Howard as a scientist, he talks about the different fruits and

vegetables and literally what they do for your body. So he got super excited about that. He he got this following of his old patients. Um was shipping out to a couple thousand of them every month. But Dr. Howard is he’s a founder. Founders are face-toface people. They love humans. they want they want to embrace them and and tell them every story and you know so because of that he had created this base of mega fans that were never going to leave them I mean they’re still on the product today 25 years later and when I got involved it was like okay Dad we we we need to not do the face to face anymore and

it it was like well that’s fake right would be fake that was his viewpoint point, but every time we put him on the radio, we would grow by like, you know, 5% in one show. Mhm. So, that’s where I started to play the game with him. Yeah. That’s that’s interesting. In fact, it it’s funny that you mentioned the face to face. I tell this story all the time about my mom who takes Balance of Nature. Yeah. And and and I told her one day she was she was talking about it and I said, “Oh, yeah. I I work with those guys. I work with Balance of Nature.” And she said, “You work with Balanced Nature?”

I was like, “Yeah, we work with Balanced Nature.” And she said, “The guy on TV?” And Dr. Howard had come out with these commercials and they’re very they’re very well done. And she said, “You know that guy?” I was like, “Yeah, I know that guy.” So, I was kind of a I was kind of a star in my own in my own home. Dr. Howard, I know Dr. Howard. And he and he’s a handsome guy, right? That the fact he has a face for television. He does. He does pretty well. and his persona, like the way he comes across and presents himself, it’s real. It’s It is. It’s very engaging. But we do have like

these we have this small group of older women that are his big big fans. Yeah. They’ll call and be like, “That is that the real Dr. Howard? That can’t be. He is too handsome.” Oh, that’s funny. And just as handsome in person. Yeah. Well, and he’s a good He’s a good man. He’s He’s a good dude. He’s a very good dude. Well, so that’s an interesting thing. The founder, he’s creative. He’s built this product. He’s passionate about it, but now he needs some people engaged if they if he want to turn it into a real business. And that’s where you come in. And that’s where where Cedric comes in as well. So, as you jumped

into this, what are the things that you’re thinking about in terms of foundational business principles to get this product into the hands of people? Frank, I’m I’m pretty simple. The administrators are really boring. So, sorry if this if this show just goes down. Yeah, that’s it. Well, all the administrators who are watching right now are offended. Don’t worry. I I believe that administration isn’t about inventing the wheel. We need to not reinvent the wheel all the time. There’s there’s successful actions that have already been done multiple times. Consistency builds the character of anyone or anything. And when when I got involved at Balance of Nature, one thing that my dad is very talented at is

change. But that’s not a thing to bring to administration. M. So the two things that put our statistics into an affluent, you know, position was staff meeting every week and recording statistics. That’s it. Data. Yeah. Just having it. Yeah. As soon as you record it, all of a sudden people feel, you know, that they they have something that they have to look at and they have to realize that they are somewhere. And and it’s not that we even avoid, you know, that it it’s just you stick that in front of somebody and you make them report on it. Not even make them, you you just put it in front of them. They start reporting in

their own minds and starting to to compute what was the wins, what were the losses, what do I need to repeat, and what do I need to get rid of. If you just do that one thing and have people report on it every single week, it will bring success to your business. Did you get much push back on in terms of the reporting side? I mean, it’s a funny thing inside of a business that that sometimes people are like, why are they why does he have his thumb on me? I mean, the man is on top of me over this micromanagement. Do you have any sense of that? May Yeah, maybe I can speak a

little bit to that. I I started showing up um kind of at just after a couple years of him running the show and um it it was it was kind of necessary. It was it was a natural step for us to do that, right? Maybe it was schooling, maybe some other things that that we were doing, but it became very natural. And I think the biggest um point that we put across to everyone and and at this point I was just somebody that worked there. I wasn’t I wasn’t actually management or anything like that, but it it just felt like no, this is mine. This is me saying this is what I did and this

is how I’m going to continue. It wasn’t um Lex looking down and saying look what you did. It’s more me saying hey this is what I produced. This is mine my own staff. I think that’s really interesting and I think if you walk around the halls of the of the corporate office where we are today um there’s a there’s a real sense of family it started family still runs it started by your dad um there are people who are in the building who are related and have worked together for a long time. How are you able to build that sense of ownership? I think that can be really difficult in building a culture within a

company. Well, I I one thing that selfishly is really important to me is who I work with. Um I have a couple of very successful uh relatives that have seen the same level or more success in their lives than than I have. and they no longer have families. M their families have fallen apart. And I may be wrong, but my evaluation of that is a lot of that had to do with who they were around and the situations that they were putting themselves into. Um, and they’re still phenomenal men. I I love to be around them. Um, but they just weren’t really careful with who what what their environment was. And for us, at Balance

of Nature, especially my immediate group, which is going to cause the same culture all the way down the lines. I want to be in the same office as Cedric all the time. I want my dad in my office. I need the influence of the founder on me. Otherwise, I start thinking that I’m the guy who started this place. I need Tommy Cummings, who runs marketing. He’s such a phenomenal storyteller. But they’re also the type of guys that our wives can hang out together. You know, it it that I have to live with this. I don’t plan on retiring. This is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life. I’m not serial entrepreneurial.

We also don’t recruit serial entrepreneurial people into our office. So, that really has helped create that family environment. We really are people that can go and do an Easter egg hunt with our families together. Mhm. It’s just sincere. We don’t have to force it. You know what I mean? Well, you can feel it. You can sense it when you’re when you’re in the building. And I don’t know, Cedric, how that aligns with your stiff German back roots. Yeah. I mean, I mean, okay, we had four some people. Well, it’s it’s a stereotype. No, it’s actually it’s it’s really interesting the the mentality and the way that this office functions. It’s it’s not what I used

to what I’m used what I was used to in Germany really. Now I’ve moved over quite early what 11 years ago. Um, and so I don’t really have that much experience in the working world, but from what I see from my from my dad and and different organizations and businesses, they don’t function the same way. And what I from what I can tell even here in the US, there’s a lot of business that don’t function this way. It is quite unique. It is I think it is unique. On on the other side of that though, you’ve been involved with driving efficiencies and building processes for the company and working with partners to help drive efficiencies

throughout the organization. How do you approach that on a daily basis? Yeah, I think the the first thing is what we already discussed data, right? like having a statistic, having your baseline, that’s the first thing because you can make as many changes as you want, but if you don’t know where you were, you don’t know where you’re going. Like there’s no you can’t really tell the difference. But um shippet specifically was was very interesting. we had um we haven’t even talked about that but that was a that was quite the time of of affluence quite the steep um incline of orders and and then you’ve been around that time too um we’ve we kind of

started our journey together at that point um and I think the yeah like I said the biggest thing was implementing uh your baseline knowing where you are and measuring that at a consistent basis and then finding the right people, finding the right partners to to help you come up with new ideas, look at processes, and anything’s on the table. Always look at look at any option. And and in all seriousness, on the German side of things, they do bring a level of efficiency that’s just cultural, right? Yes. They they need certain information to be able to make certain decisions and to bring Cedric on the line for those things. So we have the familial, right?

That that brings that culture and then Cedric does bring in like, hey, we need dashboards and we need to actually instead of a bunch of people trying to act on their gut, Cedric brings reality to the table. Yeah, absolutely. I think I’ve seen that, you know, um with with partners that you work with, including a company, I mean, there’s Balance of Nature and and then there’s a partner company that you work with that does the fulfillment, the warehousing for Balance of Nature. That’s the shipet company. You sit on that board. It’s a separate separate entity. But I think you’ve aligned the same types of processes, efficiencies, and even with this partner that’s separated kind of

this cultural familial situation that you’ve built. It’s cuz we just write a contract and tell them they have to. And well, I it’s there’s a lot more to that. Yeah. It’s so interesting because I mean you you could work with Balance of Nature could work with lots of different people, lots of different companies and there and I’m sure people are knocking down your door every day to work with you, but that’s something that you’re thoughtful about is this cultural perspective. Yep. Yeah. We don’t we don’t make the most economical decisions as a company sometimes really. And that and that’s where our founder comes in. I I I think that there’s a special relationship. It’s important

that a father and son are working together because he he I I grant him the power to come in and go, “No, we’re going to order and use this type of pineapple. I don’t care if it’s twice the cost. I don’t care if the public even understands whether they’re really getting high quality.” So, that goes into even our shipping and manufacturing cuz we used to control all of it. Used to be under one roof. Yeah. and and we built that that culture and then things like our shipping and our our warehousing and whatever and manufacturing, the people that were managing that, we went to them and said, “Why don’t you just open your own company

and we we’ll be your we’ll be your first guy.” Mhm. And we happen to be growing so fast and doing so well that, you know, we’re the majority of their business. Yeah. Yeah. And Cedric Cedric took control of one of those. Yes. Yeah. I will say being under the same roof and having strong core values in balance of nature, right? Like the very well-defined core values. Then in the split, right? And and okay, even before the split, people are drawn to that. They they come here because of that and they stay here because of that, right? They they feel the family. They feel that we’re real, that we do this for the right reasons, and

and they just align themselves. And then when the split happens, the companies retain the same core values because they’re still because they just that’s how they grew up basically, right? Yeah. As a company. And so they they have the same core values. That that’s what makes them mesh so well. Like think about it this way. Shippet’s staff meeting, right? when they have their stamin they end it by listening to a success story from balance of nature when a customer says it’s helped me so much I can now do this again or that again and they cheer and love that it’s a full alignment they they are just so involved in knowing that what they do

brings so much joy and love to the the the people of the customers of balance nature and so it’s it’s just that’s that’s what makes this so aligned yeah it’s so it’s so unique when you were telling telling that story about doing, you know, sometimes you make decisions and they’re not necessarily the most coste effective decisions. I was talking to someone who’s very, very successful. He was actually on our podcast and he said his grandfather taught him when he was starting a business, always do the right thing. Tell me how much it cost me later. Like make doing the right thing the principle. And when you talk about your core values, it feels like that’s

what you’re doing. I I believe that that’s what keeps you from being a flash in the pan. If you if you just stick if if the reason why what brought you success was quality in the first place, you got to stick with it. Otherwise, you’ll end up leaving. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I wish we had another hour. We We’re going to have to do a part two of this. But before I before I let you go, in in your experiences, what would you say has been the most I mean I I walked in I was talking to a young lady who works up at the front and she said this is her the the her favorite

job she’s ever had. I I want to know from your perspective this experience with Balance of Nature. What has been the most meaningful thing for each of you? Oh my gosh, that is so general. That’s a most it’s a it’s a big it’s a big open question. I think it’s when you when you have to make tough decisions um letting somebody go those types of things right because you are running a business. I mean, that’s the the bottom line. And and and their family and and you have and this is honestly something that I’m have and still learn from this guy right there, Lex to There is a way to do this. It that shows

love that still lets you embrace the other person. Say, “Let’s hang out. that’s that’s still, you know, interact and and come to my house, come visit the office, give me a hug. Um, right. A lot of these turn into, well, I go to the other side of the street if I see that person again, right? Like, yeah, but that’s that’s not that way or at least the the the sentiment is is to not let that happen. You’re still family. Mhm. You just it’s, you know, maybe the circumstance didn’t work out as well for everybody, but that that’s honestly probably the the biggest thing that’s that I don’t know I learned here or that um Yeah,

super interesting. I mean, you would a lot of people would answer that question like, you know, well, I learned how analyzing data was so meaningful for a business. I think that points to the you how unique this place is. That’s is that is that type of lesson? I think for me, um I never really wanted to do this job. Um I didn’t grow up watching my dad thinking that’s what I’m going to do. Mhm. I learned in my late teens just to love human beings and I wanted to be with people. My dad was saving people’s lives. And I think that I’ve learned through this process that it’s mine that’s being saved. Um I I

have had the opportunity of having some of the hardest experiences that man can have. For example, um we had a consent decree a couple of years ago and that was a hard pill to swallow and one that I disagreed with and still disagree with to this day. But that coming January, my wife asked me, “What is the thing you’re most grateful for for last year?” And overwhelmingly, I was grateful for that experience. I’m just grateful that in the end in trying to help people, we end up saving ourselves. And that happens right here in this office. You know, I I didn’t know what to expect when we set this up. I mean, I I guess

I had some thoughts about what you might talk about, but this has it’s um it points to all that I’ve felt working with you guys and being around your your teams because there’s the business side and you know, we want to you want to make a good product, you want to manufacture, you want to ship, you want to get it to the hands of the of the people, you want to do all of the right things on the business side, but you guys. I mean, you rarely talk about that you’re running a business from such a human perspective. And a lot of people talk about it. A lot of people talk about, oh, we’re a

family, you know, come and work for us and, you know, it’s going to be the best thing ever. It it but at the end of the day, there’s a balance sheet and people are always running off of a balance sheet. you and and this team walks the walk. I mean, running from a human perspective. So, congratulations. I love this company. I love you guys. And uh and we love Balance of Nature. Continued success. And I hope we can talk to you again soon. Thank you, Frank. Well, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for asking us. Super fun. This is No, this was fun. Thank you for listening to the Know Your Ship podcast presented by EHUB.

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