Every company will tell you it sells something that will make your life better, easier, or more efficient. But at the end of the day, how happy are consumers with all of the things they buy? Or, better yet, how happy are consumers in general? Hapbee is a company that is focused on both of those questions, and on this episode of Up Next in Commerce, I talked to the founder of Hapbee Technologies, Scott Donnell about how they find the best answers. Scott told me all about how he learned of the technology that powers Hapbee’s device, which sends out frequencies that give you the effect of certain drugs or chemicals without needing to ingest them. So if you’re looking for a kick of caffeine, or some melatonin to get to sleep, Hapbee creates what’s called blends to give you that effect just through low frequencies. It’s intense technology, and it takes a lot of consumer education and testimonials to get the word out. Scott told me how he went about doing that and building Hapbee into a company with a line of consumers just waiting to give it a try — and Scott explained how he’s meeting that demand in a time of supply chain issue galore. This was a really fun episode, I hope you enjoy!
Main Takeaways:
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- Tapping Into Einstein’s Ideas: Einstein had an idea that everything is connected, and he was right. Your cells interact in an interconnected way and in an effort to prove him right, Hapbee created a technology that could be produced and sold. By constantly asking “what if,” you give yourself an opportunity to do the same thing — find new ideas, potential business ventures or products, and build something the world didn’t know it was missing.
- Be What The People Need: Consumers are simply humans, and they struggle in all the normal ways. By providing some form of relief, you open your business to a wide pool of potential customers. It’s important, though, to make sure to not make claims you can’t back up, because you need to educate and build trust so that when the customers try the product, they can become advocates for you and your product.
- Your Network is Your Net Worth: Building relationships and having strong connections is the most important thing you can do as an entrepreneur. Not only can these people be a source of support and advice, they can also be recruited to help you lead, to solve a problem, or to bring in other people who can broaden your network even more.
For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
Key Quotes:
“Our parent company invented this almost 18 years ago and it’s been under wraps for a long time. As you can imagine, if you can get the digital imprint of a molecule and play it on somebody and they feel similar, that’s a worldwide win.”
“[The inventors of Hapbee technology] had this idea that what if Einstein was right? What if everything is connected through sound? What if our cells communicate through sound? You study the body, your brain actually throws off a magnetic field. Your heart does too, any electrocardiogram will show that right? Your body hums at 72 megahertz. If you’re healthy, your brain at 90, and sickness starts at the low, the high fifties. So this is actually how your cells interact. This is how your protein receptors switch on and off. This is how a lot of the world works. And that was the crazy idea. What if Einstein was right? And can we prove him, right?”
“We’re not anti-drug, there’s a lot of things out there that you don’t need. And if we can be a help to you without needing to use things, great. We have a lot of people that are cutting back on smoking, stopped drinking alcohol. They can get help with hunger. They can get help with all these different things with our technology. And they don’t have to spend crazy money on going to the store and buying a bunch of drugs to help them out.”
“All we’re doing is letting our customers speak for us. We’re trying to educate our customers on how it exactly works so that they can tell their friends and their networks and their family…And we’re trying to use experts now to be our mouthpieces. And then we’re letting the customers and their reviews speak for themselves.”
“The whole world works through globalization and interconnectedness and people have to trust that what they’re making can be sold and the higher the investment and the higher, the risk, the harder it is to press go.”
“Your network is your net worth at the end of the day… For me it really is about relationships… I like just to build good relationships with people and care for them and whatever they need to be there for them and help them out. And, entrepreneurship can be very lonely too. And so I’ve become very, very good friends with some incredible entrepreneurs around the world. And however we can support each other, we do it. I never charged anybody a penny for anything. I’m Just like, what do you need? Who can I connect you with? How can I solve your problem? And if you go about the world, that way you can, you can make a huge dent in the universe for good.”
“If you don’t have the why, the money will not work for you. There have been so many times in Hapbee where we’re like, what the heck are we doing? This is hard. This is painful. This is exhausting. We’re broke. But the why and the mission, right? We want to impact a a hundred million people’s lives and reduce their suffering with Hapbee. Just that mission brings the right people on board. There’s staying power to it. You can get through so much with the right mission and the right why.”
Bio
“Scott Donnell is the CEO at Hapbee Technologies, Inc, and a business leader who has dedicated his life to both physical and mental health. Scott’s personal passion for healthy living led him to create wearable device, Hapbee, utilizing 15 years of research in magnetic fields and frequencies, to help people feel better.
Previously, Scott founded a fitness and fundraising program for schools called, Apex Leadership Company, which has raised $75 million and now has 115 franchises and 3 million customers.
Scott has 10 years of experience building over 80 consumer products and has collaborated with many other world-class experts in the frequency and energy space. Scott strongly believes that the field of frequencies has the possibility to change the way we see the world, our body’s, and the future.
He has been featured in: TechAZ, Mixergy, LaunchPad, Get Yourself Optimized, Orion’s Method, The Rusty Ryal Show just to name a few.”
Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce
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Transcript:
Stephanie:
Hey everyone, welcome back to Up Next in Commerce. I’m your host, Stephanie Postles, CEO at Mission.org. Today on the show, we have Scott Donnell, who’s a founder of Hapbee. Scott, welcome.
Scott:
Thank you, so good to be here. How are you?
Stephanie:
I’m very good. Feel like this is going to be a really fun conversation today, something very different than anything we’ve had on the show. And your story makes it epic, so I kind of want to start with that, your backstory, how you even got in the business. I mean, I heard something about third grade so start wherever you’d like.
Scott:
Yeah, kind of a wild story. I’m a serial entrepreneur I guess is the best way to put it. I’m unemployable, I have to keep doing businesses, I love it. But yeah, lots of businesses over the last 15 years, about 700 or 800 people now work for us across the companies. But, I love business. Third grade was my first one. I made bead geckos with my-
Stephanie:
I would’ve bought one.
Scott:
Like little key chains-
Stephanie:
Oh yeah.
Scott:
With beads on them, and I was making them for five cents and then selling them for $1.50 door to door. All my friends asked if they could make them with me, and I’d pay them 50 cents. Then, I’d go sell them. It worked great for about a month, and then I got suspended because none of the kids were going to recess or lunch,.Yeah, that was my first business venture in third grade. I love it.
Scott:
Just launched a school fundraising company called Apex, now it’s the largest school fundraising franchise in the country. We’ve got a banking app for kids we’re launching next month. We’re launching a Marvel superhero thingy. But, the one we’re talking about today, which is the wildest one for sure, is the future of mental health. It’s called Hapbee, yeah. That’s been a crazy, crazy ride in biotech. I’m an entrepreneur, I’m not a scientist, and I just got thrown into quantum physics.
Stephanie:
Okay, so tell me the behind the scenes of Hapbee, which for everyone, it’s H-A-P-B-E-E. But, tell me what is the technology and where did it come from.
Scott:
Yeah, yeah. I want to give your audience a gift, so we’ll give you guys 50 bucks off, Hapbee.com/mission.
Stephanie:
Yes, thank you.
Scott:
We always want to give a gift as a thank you. Yeah, so this technology is basically giving you the effect of certain drug molecules that you would want to take throughout your day without any drugs in your body. There’s no drugs, it’s just the effect causing a change in your body. Caffeine for instance or melatonin or CBD or things like that, we have theobromine which is the stimulant in chocolate, or my favorite, adenosine which literally knocks you out and puts you to sleep in 10 minutes.
Scott:
But yeah, it’s this incredible technology called ultra load drug signal therapeutic technology. Our parent company invented this almost 18 years ago, and it’s been under wraps for a long time as you can imagine. If you can get the digital imprint of a molecule and play it on somebody and they feel similar, that’s a worldwide win.
Stephanie:
[crosstalk] frequencies, right? It’s essentially mimic the frequency of what it would [crosstalk]-Scott:
Yeah, yeah.
Stephanie:
Okay.
Scott:
We’re using ultra low frequencies, so almost the sound floor. A lot of people wonder what are you doing, how are you doing this, and is it safe. Of course it’s safe, it’s one 30000th of the output of your phone, so if you’re worried, you should never be near your phone ever again. Our technology is equivalent to being 50 feet away from a vacuum cleaner when it’s going. But, it’s actually the sound level of the cells and how they interact.
Scott:
Here’s how the story goes. 2003, EMulate Therapeutics is our parent company in Seattle, so we’re the consumer side. Okay, so I started this thing three years ago because I invested in the parent company 10 years ago and they’re the ones who discovered this. 15 doctors and quantum physicists and the world’s smartest people in a basement in Seattle for the last couple decades have been building this.
Stephanie:
And you learned about it through your dad’s accountant? Wasn’t that like [crosstalk]-
Scott:
My uncle-
Stephanie:
Oh, your uncle, okay.
Scott:
My uncle, he literally did their taxes up in Washington.
Stephanie:
These are legit, run [crosstalk]-
Scott:
Yeah, up on Whidbey Island. He did their taxes, and it was a bunch of scientists like Dr Mike Butters and then Dr Kenneth Ferguson is the chief scientist, he invested Cialis, all these brilliant, brilliant people. And they did it for fun. They literally did it for kicks and giggles in aa basement to see if they could. That’s how I found out about it and I invested because they immediately went into brain cancer work and helping people in the medical space. I really wanted to be a part of that.
Scott:
The way they do it is they had this idea that what if Einstein was right, what if everything is connected through sound, what if out cells communicate through sound? You study the body, your brain actually throws off a magnetic field, your heart does. Any electrocardiogram will show that. Your body hums at 72 megahertz if you’re healthy, your brain at 90, and sickness starts at the high 50s, okay? This is actually how your cells interact, this is how your protein receptors switch on and off, this is how a lot of the world works.
Scott:
That was the crazy idea. What if Einstein was right and can we prove him right? That was the crazy science, so-
Stephanie:
How everything cool starts, “What if?”
Scott:
What if?
Stephanie:
Yeah.
Scott:
What if? We’re the smartest people on the planet, what if this would work? So, they found this military technology called magnetometer technology. You can look it up, magnetometers are these propane tank looking things that the military uses them to find out where the submarines are in the pacific. They have a 2000 mile radius. They’re the world’s most powerful recording device for magnetic frequencies. They can tell when there’s a thunderstorm coming 100 miles away, they can tell if there’s a tectonic plate shifting. It’s unbelievable how sensitive this technology is. These magnetometers basically are like a little recording meter inside that can sense things from thousands of miles away. They thought, what if, instead of listening outward like the military does, what if we listened inward to a drug molecule? That was the crazy idea.
Scott:
So, they bought a couple of these. They pooled their cash, bought a couple of these, and they put faraday cages around it that blocks out any outside noise or interference, they pumped it full of liquid helium, which is three kelvin, 413 degrees celsius below zero. It’s the atmosphere of outer space, which is extremely quiet, extremely slow moving. It gave them this environment where they could actually get the magnetic wake of these molecules.
Scott:
The way it works is it comes down to covalent and noncovalent bonds in your body, okay? Covalent bonds, we’re going back to 10th grade science just for a minute-
Stephanie:
I like it. Yes.
Scott:
Covalent bonds, we can’t replicate. Those are a physical chemical binding to the receptor sites on your cells. We cannot do that. I can’t fill your body full of food or vitamins, but I can suppress your hunger because there’s noncovalent bonds, which all those are are free ranging electrons in your body. You take Ibuprofen, it doesn’t actually bind chemically. It sends basically a remote control signal to your cells to switch the protein receptors in a certain way, to cause a cascading effect, to stop a pain response.
Stephanie:
Yep.
Scott:
Or inflammation response or things of the like.
Stephanie:
It’s not actually binding to anything then?
Scott:
Yeah. We think of it like a remote control for your garage. That’s kind of what these non covalent bonds do. Any stimulant, caffeine, theobromine, any suppressant, melatonin, CBD, alcohol, any hormone, think about that. These are noncovalent. Their thought was, what if we could get the noncovalent bonds and make an attempt at giving a similar effect to the body. Could you actually feel differently by playing these signals back on the body? They spent five years working on this.
Stephanie:
Wow.
Scott:
Eventually, they started to get readings. I was there the day they dropped liquid nicotine in there, and-
Stephanie:
What did it look like? What happened?
Scott:
It went from the sound floor to seven to 22 kilohertz. You literally saw it start pulsing, you saw all these readings. I was literally in shock watching this happen. What they do is they extract this into a file and they can play it back through our device, this product, it’s a simple necklace that you put on. It’s a couple hundred bucks, and you click play in the app. It’s as simple as that. It’s a Spotify playlist for feelings. We call them feelings because it’s not a drug and we’re not making medical claims. The parent company is doing all the medical stuff.
Scott:
But, my crazy thought was, hey, wait a second, if I can get an alert energy at the click of a button through caffeine, or if I can help myself sleep better at the click of a button when I go to bed, or if I can relax my brain a little bit after two o’clock when I’m like a bunch of meetings and I’m tired and I need to relax for 30 minutes, could I get an endo cannabinoid trigger in my body. That to me, at the click of a button on a playlist, I’m talking like that’s a hundred years in the future. We can make that happen today.
Stephanie:
Epic.
Scott:
So these guys basically have been doing this for 15 years in the labs and doing a bunch of FDA work with brain cancer, they’re going into pain now. I raised my hand as an investor and said, “You guys ever thought about other ways of making money and helping a lot more people?” Because FDA trials take forever. I mean, if you want to make a medical claim, they’re going to have to charge you $75000 for a therapy, and one brain cancer study takes four years.
Scott:
It was a long term, long haul, they’re finally getting through it which has been an amazing run, but they’re like, “Well, we’re a little older, we don’t know anything about the apps and the consumer tech.” I said, “Well, that’s my whole world,” and they said, “You do it.” So, I said, “Okay.” Hired an executive team for my other business and we were off to the races. We licensed their tech and we launched Hapbee, H-A-P-B-E-E.
Scott:
So anyway, we just started. I called my four closest, smartest PhD nerds, friends, and I said, “Beat this technology up for the next three months for me,” right? And I put all the money in. I said, “I’m paying whatever we need to do to get the animal studies. I want to make sure that these signals work on mice, that it’s safe.” We did all the workups, pathology, everything, and we watched the mice pass out on melatonin, we watched them jumping and grooming and eating nonstop on caffeine signal, signal of it not the actual drug, the signal. I watched them splayed out, all four limbs on the ground on CBD. There’s eight signals now in the app and there’s 20 blends because we can actually post more together and give you amazing blends for morning commute, afternoon nap, email mastery, focus, creative work, deep zen mediation, out on the town. We have a party signal actually now.
Stephanie:
[crosstalk] they keep it on the whole time or can you only do a certain amount of time or would you say, “I’m ready to party, I’m going to keep it on for the next two hours so I don’t have that many drinks”?Scott:
Some people, they just wear it for a few minutes to get them primed and then they’re good.
Scott:
I mean, look, if you need to get a prescription, go get a prescription because we’re not making medical claims here, but a lot of people want to reach these altered states to help them be more productive, to help them relax more, to help them enjoy their family more, to help them with stress, to help them with aches and soreness and lack of sleep.
Scott:
That’s the kind of stuff that these people want. Now, I thought it was just going to be fun. I was like, literally, it was, “How cool would it be if you could put 1000 feelings on a playlist and we get the world off drugs?” What we didn’t realize is that military vets are flocking to this, mental health and psychiatrists are flocking to this, the wellness space is going nuts. We were at Modern Nirvana, we were at the bio hacking conference, we’re at all these wellness conferences now and people are starting to find out about us. We’re literally up in Seattle today and heading to Chicago later. There’s a bunch of pro sports teams that are wanting to use this now because there’s no drug test needed. You take it off and you’re back to normal within 20 minutes.
Scott:
So, everybody loves it on a flight after the game or before they’re pitching or if they’ve got a really long race and they need to prime themselves and get ready, pregame they call it. Yeah, so that’s the kind of stuff I didn’t really think about at the beginning because you put this out there to the world. We sold our first six or 7000 units, ran out real quick, and now we’re making a bunch more. Now, we finally have stock.
Scott:
But, all these awesome people are like, “All right, this is the coolest technology I’ve ever seen, let me help you get it out to the audience.” For instance Jim Kwik, we had an amazing time last month. We recorded a couple podcasts. He’s going to be launching them soon. He loves it for sleep. He struggled with sleep for decades and it really, really helps him get ready for bed. We have a bedtime signal that basically makes you really tired. Then, you can-
Stephanie:
I need that.
Scott:
You can put this under your pillow for eight hours. You can play the signals up to eight hours. Most people play them for on average an hour at a time, put it by their work desk, take it with them in their bags when they’re going on trips, and then by their night stand at night. Those are the main uses of it, but we’re also in the works of making a bed right now, a mattress topper that-
Stephanie:
[crosstalk] awesome.Scott:
It’s pressure sensored and it gives you signals all night long. Imagine getting melatonin every 90 minutes, and adenosine, and CBD for your lower back, and then wake up with caffeine based on when you want the alarm to go off. [crosstalk] 10 minutes before [crosstalk]-
Stephanie:
Tracking all the signals from your body to then know what kind of stage of sleep you need to enter? Okay, now it’s this time, it’s time to start waking up.
Scott:
Yep.
Stephanie:
[crosstalk].Scott:
I’ve been talking with my friend, Todd, who owns Chili Sleep. They’ve got half a million people sleeping on the heat and cooling water mattress toppers, and his team has been phenomenal in helping us create these next products because our technology now, we found a way to put it in material like clothing.
Stephanie:
Oh, cool.
Scott:
So, we want to eventually put it in car seats and work chairs and yoga mats and massage beds and clothes, right?
Stephanie:
Yeah.
Scott:
It’s going to be wild. I mean, it already is wild, but we’re on the tip of the iceberg here. It’s fun.
Stephanie:
That’s great. I mean, when thinking about this new technology, I can definitely see the bio hacker community being really excited about this and wanting to test it out. I’m one of those where I’m like, “Yes please, I’ll test out whatever you’re doing, send it my way.”
Scott:
Yep.
Stephanie:
But, how would you get it in front of like… how are you guys exploring new customers right now who might… They see a lot of things that promise a lot of things right now. There’s so many D2C companies popping up with the best thing ever. How are you guys educating people? This is what it is, this is what it’s not, here’s why not to be worried, getting in front of this new consumer who probably would be interested but just has a lot of questions?
Scott:
Yeah, so I mean the first thing is we’ve done all the blinded placebo controlled studies with third parties as well. We do our animal studies with third parties, CRO, clinical research organizations. So, we’ve done all the background. We have hapbee.com/science. People can read our white paper, they can see everything we’ve done. They can go see our parent company, EMulate’s work. So, we’re educating people on that front.
Scott:
But, the main things that people need to know, like consumers, is there’s a 30 day money back guarantee period. If you don’t want it, there’s someone else in line who wants it. So, try it out and if you don’t like it, we’re happy to give all your money back. Luckily, that doesn’t happen very much because people they get it and they love it right away.
Scott:
The problem with this is it’s so new and futuristic, it’s woo-woo. It’s foo foo science, people are like, “What the heck? Signals making me feel a certain way, am I going to get cancer from this? What are you doing?”
Stephanie:
[crosstalk] questions they ask around something like this compared to look what’s in your pocket, look what you’re surrounded by all the time, all the speakers around you. Everything is blasting you all day. What are you living under these towers? It’s crazy that people are worried about frequency.Scott:
Well said. I have an EMF blocker on my phone.
Stephanie:
Yep, yep.
Scott:
This signal actually repels other EMF, so this is a copper coil around your neck and your shoulders so that you can actually block out other things and just drive a very, very tiny signal to your cells, where literally the volume level of your cells interacting. So, it’s the safest type of therapy we can think of or way to give you an altered state. But, a lot of people, we had skeptics through the nose, okay?
Stephanie:
I’m sure.
Scott:
When we launched our initial Kickstarter, the goal was 20 grand on Indiegogo. This was a couple years ago. In one day, we sold half a million dollars worth. It was-
Stephanie:
Were you worried, like, “Uh-oh, can I fulfill all these?”
Scott:
Oh yeah. Yeah, I was like, “Oh crap, what are we going to do? We’re still six months away from delivery.” But, everybody got excited because we had prototypes that all these big names were testing and loving, and so people really got excited. But then, some competitors in the space, they got real shocked and nervous right away because this isn’t PEMF, this isn’t direct stim, there’s a hundred companies that will sell you a product that just stimulates your body and we don’t knock those guys, we’re just completely different. They’re never going to be able to curb your hunger appetite, they’re never going to be able to help you with brain triggering and memory, and they’re never going to help you with sexual health. These are all the things that we’re working on.
Scott:
So, a competitor paid this guy out of the UK, this troll, his name is Thunderf00t-
Stephanie:
Such a good name, I would trust him fully.
Scott:
Yeah, really. And he has like a million subscribers and they paid him to make this video against us.
Stephanie:
What was [crosstalk]?
Scott:
It was just a 30 minute hit video, and he loves doing this because as we drive advertising to Google, people search us and they find his YouTube video. He’s got like half a million views already saying that we’re a complete scam and that we’re evil and that how dare we steal people’s money, and it’s all fake. We’re like, “Wait a minute here, man. We didn’t even publish our science yet. Nobody’s even tried this in the public and you’re coming after us like this.” Luckily, he’s kind of fallen down but I mean that’s-
Stephanie:
Do you know who actually paid him to do it?
Scott:
Yeah, we have our ideas.
Stephanie:
Suspicions?
Scott:
A lot of people posted to try to get him to… because he makes money off of us driving traffic, so everyone watches it and then they get spooked. He knows he makes more money as we try to grow. It’s actually a terrible way to live if you think about it.
Stephanie:
Yeah, always relying on other people and their platforms and their ad budgets, which means it could go away. I mean, have you worried about other people kind of coming at… I think about like big pharma companies. When you told me, what was it a month or two ago, what you guys were up to, I was a little scared for you. I was like, you might have some big companies coming after you because of this because you could be essentially eliminating a very big profiting industry right now in some areas.
Scott:
Yeah.
Stephanie:
Of course, like you said, there are certain things that you cannot do with it, but there are a lot right now that could go away potentially. Have you guys thought about that?
Scott:
Yeah, no, it’s definitely a fear. But at the same time, a lot of them tried to buy us early, the parent company. And it was like, “Well, you guys are just going to shelf this. We don’t really want you to do that because we kind of want to change the world.”
Stephanie:
Who knew?
Scott:
Pharma, they help people in a lot of ways, but they actually kind of have the world in chains in ways too. The good part about our company is that we’re not making any medical claims, so we don’t actually have the target you think we’d have because the pharma companies basically go through FDA and they lobby and they get in and then they hold their position. We want to be a grassroots movement, so we’re not making any medical claims. We also say, “If you have an illness or an issue or a medical problem, seek professional help, get the help you need.” We’re not anti-drug, we’re just… There’s a lot of things out there that you don’t need. If we can be a help to you without needing to use things, great.
Scott:
We have a lot of people that are cutting back on smoking, stopped drinking alcohol. They can help with hunger, they can help with all these different things with our technology. They don’t have to spend crazy money on going to the store and buying a bunch of drugs to help them out. But at the same time, if we’re not making the medical claims, we don’t have that target. I don’t even think we’re on their radar right now, we’re in the consumer side of things. The parent company, that’s why they go through the FDA for all this stuff because they are going to be working through physicians and hospitals and doctors. But again, that’s going to be 50, 70 thousand dollars to do a medical side of this technology.
Scott:
Our job is all the non medical side that can help people feel alert, relaxed, calm, sleepier, feel better. Nootropic signals are huge. A lot of people love the focus that they can get from our technology. So yeah, definitely there was security around some of our board members and-
Stephanie:
Good.
Scott:
Yeah, there’s a lot of that. And we’re very careful about the things we say and don’t say, but yeah at the end of the day, if you could get the effects of certain things and get the altered state you want, it’s a lot cheaper and it’s a lot more helpful for you. And there’s been zero adverse events so far. Millions of hours, or at least a million, I didn’t check the tab lately. But, there’s thousands of people using each of these signals every day. And so, we’ve never had an issue, there’s no metabolic or toxicological side effects. That’s the brilliance of this technology. Anyway, we had this dream, we brought the dream to life, and now it’s just starting to get out there and educate people.
Scott:
We actually love podcasts like this, because it’s a long form way to educate people. It’s hard to do in a 30 second soundbite. In fact, if we go on a YouTube ad or an Instagram ad, like eCom, it’s very difficult because everyone goes, “Yeah, right.” So really, all we’re doing is letting our customers speak for us. We’re trying to educate our customers on how it exactly works so that they can tell their friends and their networks and their families. That’s why the Dave Aspreys and the Jim Kwiks and the Ben Greenfields and the Shaun Wells, those people, and all the doctors, they can articulate this so much more powerfully.
Scott:
I just had a podcast with Dr Porter with Brain Tap.
Stephanie:
Yep.
Scott:
And he literally explained my technology in five minutes better than I’ve ever been able to explain it, okay? I was literally like, “Can I take that? Can I take that and just use it?” He was like, “Sure.” But, he’s like the godfather of understanding how the body and the brain work. So, we’re trying to use experts now to be our mouthpieces, and then we’re letting the customers and their reviews, and let everything kind of speak for itself. But yeah-
Stephanie:
That feels like the best strategy for this kind of product is finding the experts in the field. They’ve already got the audiences, your essentially leveraging very big influencers like the Dave Aspreys of the world. I mean, is that how you guys are going to move forward when it comes to spreading this product around and really leaning into the influencers?
Scott:
Yeah. To this point, that’s been our best strategy to grow. We’ve had a lot of people come to us and… I mean, the thing is 399, that’s it. And we’ve had a lot of people say you could be charging thousands for this and make 80% margins and blah, blah, blah. But, we have a different mission, right? I eventually want to get this in the hands of third world countries. Imagine how we could help villages in India and Africa. There’s no drugs being stopped at the border and there’s no shelf life. I solved Elon Musk’s problem of signals in space. If you’re ever going to go to Mars, how are you going to ship all the stuff you need to get there just in case something goes wrong with your body? Can’t wait for that conversation. We have a lot of mutual friends-
Stephanie:
Yeah, come on, Elon. He listens to this show, so you’ll definitely get a warm introduction right after this.
Scott:
All right, let’s do it. He’s writing a book with Peter Diamandis, one of my mentors now.
Stephanie:
Yep. Oh, I love Peter.
Scott:
Yeah, and so Peter and Dan Sullivan and a lot of those mouthpieces have been amazing for us to get the word out. And we’re in the baby stages. This takes decades to really get out there to the world so we have a very long term vision for the company.
Stephanie:
So cool. When you were building up the company, what were some of maybe the most surprising things that happened that you weren’t really expecting? Maybe less around the tech because I feel like everything around that is surprising. I can imagine every day is a, “Whoa, I didn’t even think that would happen.” But, when it came to actually building up the company, I know you’ve done this before, I know you have tons of employees, but what was different this time?
Scott:
Well, COVID hit.
Stephanie:
Yeah.
Scott:
That was painful. We sold that half a million dollars in Kickstarter three weeks before the pandemic hit.
Stephanie:
Wow.
Scott:
It was wild. We had chips and supply chains. Right now, for our bed and more of these products, you can’t even get [crosstalk] boards and chips. They’re six months, eight months, 10 months out, so we’re having to take big risks and order ahead of time to try to get ahead of the big car companies that are buying out the whole world.
Stephanie:
I was just talking to someone actually on an interview, where she used to do a lot with different car companies, and she was like, “If you have a car right now, and your lease is coming up, you better extend it because there’s nothing out there. And you better order ahead because there’s no chips.” I told her, I was like, “I feel like this is something Elon could solve.” He needs chips probably, he needs lots of them, and he can probably scale up the factory way quicker than five years.
Scott:
Well, so here’s the issue that people don’t realize. There’s like five major chip factories in the world, most in Asia. Those companies cost $1 billion just to get the supply chain going again. People think it’s these dirty factories and it’s sweat shop. No, no, no, it’s cleaner than any hospital room you could imagine. There’s not a speck of dust because if there is a speck of dust it can ruin $100 million worth of chips. So, they’re extremely clean, extremely expensive. People are in full on bodysuits and masks before COVID. That’s how you have to build these.
Scott:
So, they’re nervous starting up their lines again for a billion dollars. Yes, they have the demand, but who knows if there’s every going to be another shutdown or another virus or another problem. You put so many companies dang near bankruptcy going through this, and so there’s that issues that’s a long tailed issue that people don’t really understand. “Why can’t you just air freight them over and get them quicker and get them going and hire more people?”
Stephanie:
Yeah, that’s not the problem.
Scott:
Well, there’s a lot more to the issue. The whole world works through globalization and interconnectedness, and people have to trust that what they’re making can be sold. The higher the investment and the higher the risk, the harder it is to press go. So, that’s been a tough issue for us just to get the supplies. We’ve had to almost gate the audience. We’re getting the word out now more and more, but it took us a long time to get our products in hand and get it right.
Scott:
And you know, the last year and a half since we launched, actually it’s only been a year since we’re to market, we’re fixing our app, there’s all these bugs we had to fix, there’s all these different things people were telling us to do differently. So, the first year has just been fixing everything and then learning what the customers want. That’s why we just launched all the blends that I mentioned earlier. People are loving blends. And then, we’re launching our major partnerships right now. But, that was probably the biggest lesson, was the supply chain lesson.
Scott:
In terms of I feel like I’m getting a PhD in eCom, understanding tax and marketing spend and audience build. I think we’ve gotten pretty smart, pretty quick on how to get the word out. The biggest lesson of all though is this thinking of, for me, it’s been who not how. There’s a book by Dan Sullivan called Who, Not How. It’s a bestseller. Dr Ben Hardy, he’s a dear friend, brilliant author, brilliant guy, humble as they come. That book has really changed my thinking. I got to read it first and kind of give a review for the audience. It helped me think through how to find the who’s across all my companies really but especially for Hapbee, find all of the right people that are 10 times smarter than me in specific areas and let them take the company forward.
Scott:
For starters, I step down as the CEO half way through this year and I brought in the entrepreneur of the year in Canada. His name’s Yona Shtern, amazing guy. He built Beyond the Rack and Arrive, the parking app. He’s got all these incredible companies that he’s built and scaled and exited under his belt. He went into retirement for 13 days and then our recruiting firm found him. He spent two days with me in Phoenix and was like, “I got to do this.”
Stephanie:
So, do you recommend using a recruiting firm? Because I know we talked about this before and I was very impressed with how you find people and just telling me the caliber of people who you’re kind of attracting into your companies? So, is that the way that you go about finding these talented folks? How do you think about that?
Scott:
We have a lot of strategies that we deploy, but recruiting firms are great if you’re looking for high level execs and C-suite, or if you’re in one specific niche like software or HR or customer service. Getting help, I would do anything you can to find the right people. We do a lot of LinkedIn resume searches. For couple of our other companies, we had 300 amazing applicants for our CTO and our CMO positions and head of products. And my network is incredible now, just incredible people that we can send a job description to and say, “Who fits the bill that you know?” And we immediately get a dozen amazing people. Your network is your net worth at the end of the day. That sounds Machiavellian because for me, it really is about relationships. All these people I’ve mentioned are actually very good, close friends of mine now, and that’s the beauty. If you’re just trying to do business with someone, it’s very high level and I don’t think… It’s not impacting and it’s not meaningful. It doesn’t help your heart.
Scott:
My thing is I like just to build good relationships with people, and care for them, and whatever they need to be there for them and help them out. Entrepreneurship can be very lonely too, and so I’ve become very, very good friends with some incredible entrepreneurs around the world. However we can support each other, we do it. I never charge anybody a penny for anything. I’m just like, “What do you need? Who can I connect you with? How can I solve your problem?” If you go about the world that way, you can make a huge dent in the universe for good.
Scott:
Who not how is probably the biggest business building lesson of my life. So now, I don’t even have a list of tasks, I have a list of who’s. The moment something comes on my list to do, the first world on the line is the person’s name who’s the perfect who to do that. That’s what a really high level entrepreneur or leader has to be able to do is mobilize people and give people a purpose for their genius. There’s a lot of people out there that are brilliant in some specific area, and they just need an outlet for it. They need a purpose for their unique ability. My job is to find those people and put them in the right positions across all companies.
Stephanie:
Yeah. That’s great. Okay, so I know we only have a couple minutes left, maybe three or so. And for anyone who’s like, “I want more Scott,” he’s coming on more of our shows, don’t you worry. I feel like you’re going to fill out our entire network of shows after maybe a month or so.
Scott:
Let’s do it.
Stephanie:
But, to kind of end off this episode, I want to hear from you, when you think about starting a business, what are the goals for you? I’ve read a couple of them that you’ve maybe quoted in other areas of what you think about when you’re even starting a new business and why it needs to make a lot of money and what your thought is behind that. But, how would you kind of summarize your thoughts every time you think about starting something new.
Scott:
Start with why. My friend, Simon Sinek said it better than anybody else. If you don’t have the why, the money will not work for you. There have been so many times in Hapbee where we’re like, “What the heck are we doing? This is hard, this is painful, this is exhausting. We’re broke.” But, the why and the mission, we want to impact 100 million people’s lives and reduce their suffering for Hapbee, just that company. That mission brings the right people on board, there’s staying power to it. You can get through so much with the right mission and the right why.
Scott:
Every single person at the company, we just did this roundtable, like why are you here thing, at our last huge executive retreat. I didn’t even know, there was a dozen people there, and the stories they were telling about how Hapbee’s changed their life and their kid’s life, and their parent’s life, and their spouse that hadn’t slept in a decade, and their kids with… one of them has autism, and they’re like, “This is was the first thing that helped him relax.” Things like that, that keeps our business going.
Scott:
Any business you have, you’ve got to start with the impact and the mission, and it’s got to be something that’s visceral, like a deep need in the world that you need to solve and that you want to see solved. I mean, quick story, my grandma is the reason I’m doing Hapbee. Late 80s, she just passed a few months back, rest her soul. But, three years ago when we got the first signals, I was like, “All right, if this is going to work, I’m going to try it on Grandma Joyce.” She has had arthritis for decades. She had arthritis for decades, never slept well at all, no more than a couple hours at a time, lot of aches. I put it on her, and it was the CBD relax signal, and I didn’t tell her anything. I didn’t say what it was, I didn’t say what it would do for her, I just wanted to see.
Stephanie:
I love that she was just like, “Okay, go ahead.”
Scott:
Yeah, she’s awesome.
Stephanie:
I trust you, Scott.
Scott:
She’s like the happiest, sweetest lady, unbelievable. And she put it on, and in 10 minutes, she was just like totally relaxed and jovial and hugging people. She was like, “I feel incredible right now.” That night, she put it on right before bed for like a half hour, and she slept 11 hours. She hadn’t done that in decades. Then, the next morning, my grandpa, Papa Barney gave me $100,000 for the business.
Stephanie:
Holy cow.
Scott:
We don’t do that. That’s not a thing in our family. You don’t pass on the money like it’s… He’s like, “Scotty, we’re going to die some day. Soon, probably in the next few years, who knows? But, whatever you did to grandma, you need to do this with as many people around the world as you possibly can.” That was my why.
Stephanie:
I have goosebumps right now.
Scott:
I was like, “I’m in. I’m dropping everything else and I’m doing this.” If you don’t have that moment, you’re not going to last. It’s just hard.
Stephanie:
Because it’s hard. Yeah.
Scott:
And when you have that mission, you make the right decisions too, because every leader is always faced with decisions that are difficult, people decisions and profit decisions and business decisions. But, if you have that right mindset and the longterm mindset, you will make the right decisions to grow the best and help the most people.
Stephanie:
Yeah. I love that. That was the perfect place to end this interview on. Scott, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your magic. Where can people find a Hapbee, try one out, and learn more about you?
Scott:
Yeah, so hapbee.com/mission. We’ll give you guys a discount on there. H-A-P-B-E-E.com/mission. Go there and grab one before they’re out. Then, Instagram is our main social right now. It’s gethapbee, pretty simple. You can follow us there. But yeah, we’re doing this thing now where people can just try it out. 30 day money back guarantee, you can even finance it if you want, a few bucks a month. You get a couple signals for life if you want to use it or you can upgrade. There’s a small membership if you want to do every single one forever. Not everybody wants to pay subscription, so we’re going to give people a few for life, whatever they want. But yeah, that’s our mission and the model so go grab one.
Stephanie:
Love that. Thanks so much, Scott.
Scott:
Thank you.
