Mike Glick: Co-Founder & CEO of Goode Health

Episode 569

On this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, Mike Glick, Co-Founder and CEO of Goode Health, shares the story behind the brand and his journey in building it. From his experience at Abbott Nutrition to leading the Columbus studio for Palm Ventures Studios and creating Goode Health, Mike shares what it takes to build a mission-backed brand that creates personalized, science-based products bridging the gap between convenience and optimal health. Mike's dedication to innovation and accessibility is at the heart of Goode Health's mission. Tune in for an inspiring conversation about entrepreneurship, health, and making a positive impact. You are going to love this episode. Now on The Kara Goldin Show.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be I want to be, you just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked down knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control control control. Hi, everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Kara Goldin show super, super excited to have our next guest. Here we have Mike Glick, who is the co founder and CEO of a company called Goode Health. And if you have not heard of Goode Health, you absolutely have to check this company out. So coming from a background, from the health and wellness industry with over a decade of experience from Abbott nutrition and leading, also leading the Columbus studio for palm venture studios. Now we’ll talk a little bit about that and what that company and platform is doing incubator style opportunities. So Mike co founded Goode Health to create personalized science based products that bridge the gap between convenience and optimal health, aiming to improve overall consumer wellbeing and his dedication to innovation. And accessibility is a cornerstone of Goode Health mission. It’s very, very interesting what they’re doing around data, and really connecting the two aspects of not just creating a product, but actually helping consumers to get more information about themselves and what will work. So super excited to have you here. Mike, welcome.

Mike Glick 1:56
Thank you excited to be here. And I think you basically just explained it all. So I don’t know how much I can answer. But appreciate the intro.

Kara Goldin 2:06
I’m sure you can. So it’s really, really great to have you on here. And I was really fascinated. Not only is your product great, I just was really fascinated by what you’re doing and the different aspects of it. So tell us a bit about you first, and what were you tell us a little bit about your journey? I gave a brief summary of it. But I’d love to hear kind of what led you to Goode Health. Yeah,

Mike Glick 2:29
well, like you said, I spent over a decade at at Abbott nutrition, very large, well known nutrition company with brands like Similac, and ensure. And I had the opportunity to work across a lot of these different brands in the US and X us and just learn a ton about the nutrition industry, which I absolutely love. My favorite job was probably when I was running our NICU business in the US, which is for the smallest, smallest, most vulnerable of infants. And it was just so rewarding to see our nutritional products would help them to grow and ultimately graduate and go home from the NICU. And so I really just have a passion for medical nutrition, I really fell in love with nutrition that truly does something right. It’s not, you know, ideally, you’re eating whole foods. There’s a lot of people though, that for one reason or another, have difficulty with that it could be a medical condition, or it could be just convenience, in time. And so I I’ve really focused my career on that. Following Abbott, I worked for startups, beginning with one in the Food Allergy prevention space and in kind of kept, kept going in a few other areas. But the pivot to where I am now, as a co founder and CEO has been a part of palm ventures this this family office in Connecticut, and really along with a doctor named Dr. Bob Barnett, who is a best selling author of nutritional books and just just very, very smart guy and understands the space. We helped to create Goode Health and what it is today. You know, with my nutrition background, I did understand a bit about what kind of the body needed but we really kind of took a step back in dug deep and looked at a tremendous amount of data on PubMed, which is the National Institute of Health database of clinical studies literally looked at all the nutrients that Americans are deficient in. You know, unfortunately, Americans don’t eat the healthiest. I think we all know that. And so we first started to identify what nutrients were missing. And then what specific foods and ingredients can replace those nutrients in the body. And we took over 100 Different ingredients and then we worked with an amazing food scientist and Matt Wyant to put them all out altogether in different ways. You know mix and matching different things trying to figure out what not only has the most potency, but also tastes good, and it mixes well. And as we narrowed that down, we laid out exactly what Goode Health was to become. And the other thing too is we wanted to make sure that it didn’t contain the things that we didn’t want in there, like sugars and saturated fats, and all kinds of gums and fillers that you don’t want in product. And unfortunately, a lot of the brands I’ve worked for historically do have that. And yeah, and then we were able to actually make it taste good, which is also not easy for a product that is plant based proteins and no sugar. But you know, we really worked at it, once we had a product, the first thing was really so this launched in in basically February of 2023. So, still relatively new. But we immediately went to prove that it worked. And so we’ve done a variety of laboratory tests, showing what’s in it, and that it’s higher than other other things out there in terms of amino acids or antioxidants. We also did a blind taste test at a major university, where we were able to beat some other products, because if it doesn’t taste good, you’re just not going to use it. And then, you know, the last thing that I’ll say is just we then went to work with University of Texas at Arlington to do a human intervention, clinical study, independently run blinded, most nutrition companies do not do this. You do it if you want to try to get reimbursement for your products. So if you’re a large company like Nestle or Abbott, smaller brands just don’t do this. But we went ahead, and that was our focus. And so the results of the study we actually just presented in May, at the American College of Sports Medicine meeting. So exciting stuff. And really what it shows is that we have a dramatic increase in how nutrients move through your body through your blood vessels. So we actually increase how your blood vessels work to get more nutrients to every single cell, nourishing you for ultimately for longevity. So in a nutshell, that’s where it’s at. I know it’s a it’s a lot, but it’s been exciting. And we’re just at the point now, where are we trying to take this great tasting product and all the wonderful clinical data and just tell more and more people about it? That’s

Kara Goldin 7:16
awesome. So you have the at home blood test as well. And and how does that work? Like what when the consumer, you don’t just provide the product and have people weighing it right, even though? I mean, that’s what most people do, you are really actually going a little further than that, and helping people. So can you talk about that. Of

Mike Glick 7:40
course, as we were doing the research on deficiencies in the US, we realize that there were some specific ones that not everyone had, but a lot of people, right, there’s people that are seeking metabolic improvements, and which is why you see GLP ones going crazy. And and so we do have a metabolism boost as an example that has Berberine, cinnamon and ginger, right, three specific ingredients that are clinically shown to reduce your glucose and, and you know, help help manage your metabolism better. And so we did create a few different boosters. And what we do is, there’s a few ways to do it, you could self select, say, oh, I want the immune booster or the recovery booster to help me with inflammation, you could enter your blood results. So if you have a recent blood test, you just go to our website, go to the HIPAA compliance section where you can log in and enter your data. And, you know, we’ll give you a very specific recommendation. Or you could order our at home blood test. And so that will come to you. It’s a simple finger prick test, you send it to the lab, we have a lab, we work with an Oregon, and then they evaluate it and ultimately it helps us to give a recommendation to you that says Kara, you know, we recommend that you use this booster in this booster. In the end, it’s up to you to make the decision. Each booster is an extra charge of about $5 per month. But for somebody who’s looking for, you know, additional help in an area, whether it’s vascular, or some of the other ones I mentioned. You know, this is something that our customers really find a lot of value. And they really appreciate that we take the time to do the research ahead of time and make their lives a little easier, hopefully reducing the amount of supplements in your in your cabinet that you’re taking. Definitely.

Kara Goldin 9:28
So how did you figure out your go to market strategy? I mean, you’ve been working inside of large companies, I guess, you know, you also have worked at some startups too, but I think it’s always hard for people to get started and how did you think about like, you know, the go to market strategy. Should you be going into CVS with this should you be you know, just running a D to C tests. You know, what do you do first?

Mike Glick 9:55
Yeah, that’s, that’s such a key question because it It’s one of those things that as a small business, you have a certain amount of money. And every month you’re using some of that money, and it’s called Burn. And so in, I know, your, your listeners know this. And so it’s just a point where, you know, how much do you actually have? And how long can you make it, the issue with jumping into retail is it’s very expensive. Getting awareness for your brand is very expensive. So the biggest thing for us is, as you look at it, you know, the industry is a tough one where there’s a tremendous amount of competitors and products out there. And, and we can go into that in a minute here about the trust in that aspect. But we really wanted to focus on having a product that truly worked and tasted good, and it was get the right product first. And that was the focus. And I would say we started advertising in January, you know, kind of wellness season 24. So it’s only been, you know, eight months or whatever. And you know, so before that it was all just very organic in terms of how people found out and told others, and we built an email database. But it wasn’t until January when we said okay, I think we’re ready to start really messaging this. And the focus has been mainly on, on meta, also PR, like, you know, and doing things like this with with you. But you know, it’s been, I would say very, very little, in general. So this is something where we, we want a little bit more data, and we’re going to be getting some here soon. Our hope is as we are getting data, we will then invest more, right? So once we continue to get more data showing, hey, this works. And now it’s doing something even better, right? It’s changing our microbiome for the better, it’s. So as we start to get more and more of this, we will put more and more fuel on the fire and tell more people about it. And that’s really the way that we focused. I mean, we’re very transparent brand. We’re transparent with our ingredients and what we do. And we really want to try to change the tenor of the industry to be more focused on, you know, bringing consumers back who may be just completely against anything that’s processed, and it’s like, hey, not everything processed is

Kara Goldin 12:14
bad. Yeah, no, that’s so so true. So yeah, I mean, when I started hint, it’s it’s interesting. I, you know, wanted to know why drinks had preservatives in them. And I mean, I was in technology prior to deciding to start a beverage company had no experience. And I was really curious. I mean, I wasn’t questioning and it from a kind of flip, you know, I just was like, why, and then I would see juicers that had no preservatives in them, but nobody ended up having nobody was doing that in the flavored water space. And so, yeah, I mean, it took a lot of, you know, doors shutting on us saying, I don’t have time for this, in order to create it. But, you know, I’m very, very proud, we created a product that didn’t have preservatives in it still doesn’t have preservatives in it. And it ended up, you know, we use heat, and nobody had really thought about that. So, you know, we just and ultimately I share the story for anybody’s listening to because sometimes it takes people outside of the industry to actually start asking a lot of questions, and then start looking at other categories, even within an industry may be a totally different industry to start to see like, will they do it this way? Maybe we can do it this way. And you just need one person to go and be able to test that with and that’s, you know, what we did? And then we ended up changing industry?

Mike Glick 13:52
No, you really did and it’s amazing the things that have come, you know, since that and all the other new products and and it’s kind of a an expectation now in the healthy beverage category is Yeah, you don’t you don’t have preservatives. And I think it’s interesting because you had to immediately go the retail route, right, you have a heavy product, it’s a little harder to do DTC with beverage, you know, with us, because it is a little easier. That’s how we started, right? It’s like, okay, we can start by communicating the value prop. get the product out there. We are getting interest from retailers. The issue with us is because we’re customized, it does make it a bit more difficult. And so for us, we did just launch on Amazon recently with a kind of a base product that includes our immune boost. And so that’s kind of our retail product, if you will, and you know, but I think it it would be difficult to truly do customization at retail, you know, potentially someone can do it if you partner with the CVS and you’re in 10,000 stores and you’re literally mixing it there in the store. I think no matter what, though, it’s going to be difficult. You know, there’s been products that have that have tried, and they haven’t done well or aren’t doing well. And they’re on shelves currently. So it’s kind of a difficult thing to do the personalization kind of in store.

Kara Goldin 15:16
Yeah, it’d be interesting. I’m sure you’ve thought about this, but what’s your perspective on doctors offices?

Mike Glick 15:25
I’ll tell you what, I didn’t think this product would be huge for doctors offices, once again, I’m maybe I’m biased coming from Abbott nutrition, where we have, you know, products like insurer, which was literally created for cancer patients who couldn’t, you know, they weren’t getting enough to eat they needed, they need something, they needed nutrition. I didn’t necessarily look at this product this way, I wanted to prove that it worked for me for our consumers. But it wasn’t until we went to the American College of Sports Medicine meeting, where we met all kinds of doctors and nurses and dietitians. And they all started saying, I want to give this to my patients, how do I get this in the office. And so I would say over the last two months, we’ve really started to dive in and explore that. You know, there, there is a way to do it. Because there are a lot of clinicians and healthcare professionals out there that are recommending products. Unfortunately, doctors are not trained on nutrition, right. And medical school, they get about four hours of training. So they rely on learning from others, even dietitians that they work with or brands that they see. And so I think that’s an opportunity. I really do. I think there’s something here, once again, because we have the data, we say this works, where I think we can get doctors and nurses and dietitians more interested in a product like this, as opposed to just some, you know, random products that you could find on Amazon.

Kara Goldin 16:51
Yeah, I think also in the last, you know, even 10 years, it’s it’s changed significantly. I mean, it used to be, for example, that doctors felt like, you know, they couldn’t sell products, they couldn’t sell vitamins, they couldn’t sell sunscreen, right, or whatever it is. And today, many doctors are doing it. We’ve had many doctors on the show that have, you know, incredible practices. We’ve had dentists who have had incredible practices that are, you know, never in a million years, but they basically started looking at the products that they were, you know, trying to be helpful with their patients. And, and I think there’s, there’s something definitely there. And I also think, just as a total side note, but I was happened to be speaking to a friend of mine, who’s a doctor, and about all the cases of colon cancer that are out there. And and you know, it’s interesting, there’s like a, there’s a study being done at the NIH about how the microbiome has just been so messed up, particularly for millennials, and how it’s still like in the works right now. But how there’s so many different sweeteners that this block of consumers has been given. And it keeps trading and it keeps getting sweeter. And so how that’s really messed up. And so the most important thing that I think many smart doctors are saying is the microbiome microbiome is, you know, huge. So anyway, total sidenote,

Mike Glick 18:32
well, it’s not totally because one of the so one of the key nutrients that we isolated that is the most important is one that has 1500 clinical studies. And when you look at several of these major studies that they’ve done with 1000s, and 1000s of people, it is the one nutrient that actually reduces all cause mortality, due to, you know, cancer or heart disease, a variety of things. And that’s poly phenols. You know, these these super high antioxidant, you know, plant nutrients. And so we have a tremendous amount of polyphenols in our product from 11 different fruits and vegetables out there and plants. And these Polyphenols are pretty powerful as you start to dig in and learn when you’re ingesting them over a two week period. The first thing it does is completely change your microbiome. And so a lot of things just kind of stop at the stomach, the polyphenols get all the way in and then they break down there and what’s called phenolic skin into your blood that then changes your vascular system and really helps basically increase the bounciness of all your blood vessels and get more blood and blood flow and blood diameter through the rest of your body. So the data is really interesting. I could definitely geek out on the science but but these Polyphenols are really powerful and, and so that’s that’s a big piece of of what we have in our product.

Kara Goldin 19:56
That’s awesome. So I always say A that, especially for founders, and you know, people in the early stages of companies, the consumer feedback is just so critical, right? Like, it just helps people, it helps people to keep going, right? Because I’m sure you hear from a number of consumers that, you know, you’re, you’re really helping me to change something that I didn’t think was possible, can you share any of those notes that just anything that comes to mind, that’s been really memorable for you. I

Mike Glick 20:31
mean, I’ll, you know, I’ll give two, I’ll give a good and kind of bad or an opportunities, I think one thing that I am excited about was, so look for the first, you know, year at least, you know, I was the one answering every Facebook message, every insert, you know, whatever it was, it was me. And so, it really helped me to stay extremely close to what consumers are doing and saying, and one woman in particular, is diabetic and wears a continuous glucose monitor. And she was concerned that this product was going to raise her glucose. So I sent her some samples. She’s been then she tried it. And then she takes a picture of her monitor and sends it to me and says, I can’t believe this, this is amazing, your product tasted great. And I can’t believe it didn’t raise my glucose at all in that. And I have like the little chart showing this, that there’s no spike. And then the next morning, she tried the other flavor, and sent the same thing and said, What is this magic shake, and sends a screenshot of her glucose, and she’s like, I, every shake, I try spikes my glucose, this is the only one that doesn’t. And so that felt really good, it felt like we were doing something right. You know, even helping just one person out. So love to see that. You know, in the same vein, we don’t have sugar, but we do have some stevia and monk fruit. And not everyone is a fan of that. You know, there’s 17 types of stevia which I didn’t know, you know, a year ago, and we isolated the one that we think is the best and tastes the best. But yet, there are still people that that you know, don’t don’t like it. And we got that feedback multiple times and decided to go ahead and launch an unsweetened version of our product. And so it does not have the stevia or the monkfruit. But it’s got everything else. And it’s a great smoothie base. Currently, it’s still very small, it’s only 8% of our business. But we did it because of consumer, consumer requests for it. And we want to make sure that we’re doing what we can to honor them and allow people who want to sweeten it their own way or mix it into a smoothie to get the same benefits as others who just buy the base products.

Kara Goldin 22:44
Yeah, it’s amazing. I think that could be a huge selling point. Because that’s one of the challenges I think that many of the products have. And I know other people have talked about that too. And especially when people are dealing with diabetes, or type two diabetes, they’re nervous to even try some of those things, and change things up. So as the co founder and CEO of Goode Health, how do you navigate the ever evolving landscape of the wellness industry? It’s constantly changing and what people are focusing on? I mean, it’s certainly very, it’s confusing for consumers. But what do you focus on? I mean, how do you focus on you know, the doing the right thing for the consumers, but also the success of the company?

Mike Glick 23:36
Yeah, this is, to your point, it’s ever present, right? There’s, there’s a lot of nutrients and fads and things that come out where, you know, this is the next biggest ingredient that everyone needs. And, you know, the industry is not regulated by the FDA, right? This is this is nutrition. This is it’s not drugs, the only time anyone comes in is if there’s a problem, right, like a recall. So it’s, it can sometimes be seen as snake oil salesmen saying whatever they can to get you to buy their product. And I’ll give you an example. In the protein space, years ago, there are products that will say 30 grams of protein, 50 grams of protein, whatever the number is, and unfortunately, what a lot of them are doing is they’re doing a nitrogen test to measure the protein level. And there’s a lot of ways to fake protein level by adding in different ingredients and be able to show Oh my My nitrogens this Hi, I have 30 grams protein, well, when you actually measure the protein, it’s 20 grams. And you know, what they’re doing is they’re basically just making extra margin or discharging less. The only way to confirm is to measure the protein itself. And in fact, to the largest brands that Walmart got got busted for this and one went out of business one had to reformulate and up their price. So these things are happening all the time in the industry. That was just one example. And our goal here at Goode Health is always be transparent with who we are, what we are and what we’re not. Okay, we have 15 grams of protein per serving, we are not there to get your gains after a workout, right? It’s 15 grams of protein, not 50. We are a, you know, complete all in one supplement to help just with longevity, we get you all the vitamins, minerals, polyphenols, we get you a lot of fiber, all in a nutrient dense 80 Calorie scoop. Right. So it’s, it’s more nutrient density, quick little snap, that’s going to be healthier than other options. We know who we are. And I think it’s really, really important. And I think just in terms of, you know, the way that we try to maintain that credibility is just, we focus on educating consumers as much as possible. We do it face to face in a lot of events, we picked key cities around the countries where we have a bunch of events, we partner with local, you know gyms and go to farmers markets and things like that. We leverage our socials and database earn media. And you don’t we’re really we’re really focused on on kind of maintaining this, this message, this truth and all that we do.

Kara Goldin 26:13
That’s awesome. So what’s next for Goode Health? I know you guys just got going and and but you’re getting lots of traction, what are you most excited about from the development of the company? You’d spoke a little bit about this, you just went on Amazon with a new skew? And but what are you most excited about? That’s coming up?

Mike Glick 26:36
Well, I mentioned the clinical data. To me, it’s that linked with this idea of longevity, you know, more and more people, you know, you mentioned, you know, millennials and others who are pretty young, who are getting colon cancer really early in his true I mean, I personally know people that are in their 30s, they add it and it is it’s scary. And so what you end up having is you have a lot of younger people that are already very focused on living younger, longer, right there, they’re getting Botox in their 20s as prevention they’re doing I mean, they’re doing all kinds of stuff. And so this idea of longevity is just exploding, there’s longevity clinics everywhere. And, and so as I think about the product, and as I think about what we have a product that actually has shown reductions in cholesterol, CRP, which is a marker of inflammation in your body, a one C, and of course, the it’s called the endothelial cell function, or ECF, but that’s the blood vessel stuff. And so you know, as as a product that can help with those things. Those are critical markers for reducing disease risk, and ultimately living a longer, healthier life. And so, to me, the more that we could focus in on that area, in terms of product innovation, and messaging and data, I think we could add the most value to our consumers. In in the end, you know, we are very focused on improving the health of all Americans. That’s one reason why our product is more accessible than some others in terms of price point, we will maintain that we we will never be the highest price nor anywhere near it are about half the price of most of the competitors. And, you know, we do want to focus in on that. And when I say we want to focus on the health of Americans, it does go beyond just the product. You mentioned the atom and blood test, we see an opportunity there to potentially continue going down that road, whether it’s by ourselves or with a partner, to be able to better help people measure their their data, their own information. So many more people are doing this and not going to the doctor as much. And so how can we help them understand their information and turn it into recommendations, whether that be specific types of diets or exercises or sleep? Or, you know, obviously, products? And so those are some of the things that we’re focused on. And yeah, it’s exciting. It’s definitely an exciting time to be in the business in the industry. And, you know, we although I’m, I’ve been in the industry for some time, I really do try to be as curious as possible and listen and learn from other industries. You know, which I know you mentioned earlier, and yeah, so just I think one just just to say, I think it’s funny, but it’s true is the pet industry. I feel like anyone who’s you know, a dog mom or dog dad or you know, whatever, it’s, you really do care about them like children and the pet industry knows this and the way that they innovate and market is really interesting. And Human Nutrition companies can learn a lot from them. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 29:51
absolutely. So last question, best advice you can offer anyone’s thinking about starting a company. It was Don’t Don’t do it.

Mike Glick 30:05
That’s the thing, right? It’s yeah, you know, I would say, one, you need to make sure that your product is truly, truly differentiated and unique. Consumer consumers are so smart. Now, they see through everything. And so if you have a product, you know, where you’re, you’re, you’re not really that different, it’s not really unique. That’s a problem. And so before you even launch it, test it with everyone, you know, test it with different, you know, you’ve really got to make sure that you know, what you’re doing is truly different and needed. Or else, it’s not going to get the traction. And frankly, it’s not going to get the interest of investors. And then I think the second thing is just from an investor standpoint, if if you need to rely on on, you know, outside funds, make sure you’re working with people who truly have a similar passion, and are willing to support you because when you’re starting a business, it should not be you know, cutthroat PE cut costs and try to flip it in 18 months. It is all about building and it takes time to do it organically and to do it right. And so you need a patient partner who’s going to work with you on that. Those are the two biggest things. No,

Kara Goldin 31:23
that’s such great advice. So Mike, let co founder and CEO of Goode Health. We’ll have all the info in the show notes, but such a great company products and really excited to see all the success going forward. So thanks, Mike.

Mike Glick 31:38
Thank you so much, Kara. Appreciate it.

Kara Goldin 31:40
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would, please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit and of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin. I would love to hear from you too, so feel free to DM me. And if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book undaunted, where I share more about my journey including founding and building hint. We are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening and good bye for now.

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