Summary
Chris talks to Mike about Bader Innovative wellbeing.
Key points are:
- Innovation Meets Efficacy: Bader prioritizes formulation strength and therapeutic dosages, going product-first to deliver tangible results in sleep and focus—helping people even transition off pharmaceuticals like sleeping pills.
- Startup Grit: The journey isn’t without challenges—manufacturing complexity, cash flow, and distribution all demand grit, resilience, and constant adaptation. Mike highlights that growth in business goes hand-in-hand with personal development.
- Rapid Expansion and Community: Bader is scaling fast, participating in 50 expos a year, breaking into retail chains and pharmacies, and building a team driven by shared purpose and expertise (including bringing on Suzanne Paul!).
Photos
Links
Bader Innovative Wellbeing Website
Bader on Facebook
Bader on Instagram
Bader YouTube Channel
Show Transcript
This transcript was generated by an AI and may not be 100% accurate. If you have questions about any of the information found here, please reach out to us.
Chris [00:00:21]:
I’m here in the rural living, I think it’s called Tent, and I’m with Mike from Bader B A D E R. Like Darth Bader? Well, not quite, but anyway. So what is Bader? Tell me all about it.
Mike [00:00:38]:
Bader. We’re an innovative wellbeing company. So we have an array of natural supplements, we run retreats, we run online workshops, we teach breath work, we do corporate wellness strategy sessions. But ultimately we’ve got a powerful range of nootropics and adaptogens and mushrooms that we offer out to the public and help them in their lives.
Chris [00:00:58]:
Cool. So we interviewed the guys from Arepa here when they were first coming out. I want to say four years ago, five years ago maybe, give or take. I was really taken with the nootropics thing. How’s the take? Because it’s not like you’re breaking new industry like it’s been. People know about it, is what I’m trying to say. So how are you finding it?
Mike [00:01:19]:
Finding amazing New Zealand’s, as always, is always a lot slower than the rest of the world. So the word nootropic in the mainstream isn’t really understood. So we don’t have the word nootropic anywhere. However, in our conversations we will use the word nootropic. It’s interesting you mentioned that you spoke to Arepa, you know, when they were kind of starting out here. We’re two years in, so we’re kind of just starting out here now and you know, where a reaper is and what they’ve got, you know, that would be like a 1989 Toyota Civic. And we’re like a brand new, you know, Ferrari with the amount of the ingredients and the therapeutic doses and what we put together, you know, not saying one’s better than the other, however, it’s much and muchness, really. So Ryan, our other founder, he’s a naturopath, so we built all the formulations ourselves from the ground up.
Mike [00:02:02]:
But how we stand out, we have New Zealand. We’ve created New Zealand’s most powerful formulation and we put the full therapeutic dose in there. So we went product first rather than going marketing first, which most companies do.
Chris [00:02:15]:
Fair. That’s a true thing. Now I’m just looking here, so you’ve got sleep all over there. I can’t see the others from here.
Mike [00:02:22]:
You’ve got focus. Yeah. So focus is our nootropic sleep’s our adaptogen. Then we’ve got a couple of our medicinal mushroom tinctures on there as well. So our mushrooms that get organically grown and made here in New Zealand, just north of Auckland actually. The nootropic focus is powerful, man. It’s caffeine free as well. So you don’t bomb out like coffee, but it just gives you a nice clean looking after your nervous system and just keeping those stress levels at bay.
Chris [00:02:44]:
And it’s. You do it the same as coffee. You mix it with whole powder.
Mike [00:02:48]:
You just put in 1 teaspoon, do it with hot water, it’s all good. And then our biggest seller is our sleep powder. It’s absolutely powerful. It’s taking people off zoplicone, it’s getting people off sleeping pills and it’s helping people have deep sleep.
Chris [00:02:59]:
That’s awesome. Now I am a world champion, world class sleeper. I can sleep anywhere, anytime, generally speaking.
Mike [00:03:06]:
So.
Chris [00:03:06]:
So I’ve never really had that trouble. Every now and again I’ve had something throughout life and when you cannot sleep, it destroys your life. Fortunately, it’s not something I. But the nootropics thing, Sam gives me a hard time because I’m the older of the two of us and losing my mind a little bit. So he’s always going on about me having to speed up mentally. So I might have to check out some of that. So where are you on your journey now and how is the field days feeding into that lake? Is this the first time here? And if so or if not, how are you finding it?
Mike [00:03:42]:
So we’re on a massive fast growth curve expansion. So I’m doing 50 expos this year. So that’s a lot, you know, building the team. This is our second year at field days. We came here last year and this is our biggest show of the year. You know, there’s 150,000 people coming through here, so when you’ve got that many people, you’ve got a whole city walking past. You know, there’s plenty of conversations that can be had. But where we’re at, so we’re really starting to get out.
Mike [00:04:06]:
So we get into pharmacies. We just had a supermarket chain pick us up now, you know, but it’s the grind. It’s every single day it’s doing something and it’s just learning through getting beaten up. It’s learning through, you know, I hate to say we’re failure because nothing’s ever a failure. It’s always just a lesson to either pivot or persevere on the same direction or if there are continual patterns happening of things happening, going, okay, well, we need to pivot from this because obviously that’s not happening or that’s not working out in a way we want. And so, yeah, we’re breaking down our products into different serving sizes. We’re bringing capsules out as well. And it’s just everything’s growing super quick, you know, even in this market where in New Zealand, it seems to be tightening up and, you know, there’s lots of.
Mike [00:04:41]:
Lots of. Lots of hardship around, I think is probably the word. The word to use where we’re growing. But putting the work in for it.
Chris [00:04:48]:
Yeah, yeah, I think. I think there’s a global slowdown happening and that’s fair. And it’s funny because you did say you haven’t been putting as much into the marketing or I think that’s what you said. But I think this branding looks great. The Bader branding there looks fantastic. These products, and we’ll get some photos of those in the show notes. You can see those. So what has been the biggest hurdle or challenge that you’ve had to overcome so far?
Mike [00:05:16]:
It’s definitely manufacturing challenges. Yeah. So there’s just constant manufacturing challenges you have to work out. You know, obviously as a startup, we don’t have our own manufacturing facilities, so we have to use contract manufacturers. And there’s just. And because of the amount of ingredients that we put in each pack, you know, there’s a lot of moving parts to bring in different products from elsewhere, trying to find the quality that we need. All of that trial, there’s slightly taste variances. And because we work so hard on our products tasting amazing as well.
Mike [00:05:45]:
So that’s one of our standout points in the natural supplement market. There’s lots of. Yeah. Manufacturing is our biggest headache. And that and cash flow. You ask any business owner, cash flows always going to be the biggest headache.
Chris [00:05:55]:
Yeah, yeah. And then the next big one becomes distribution, and then they feed each other. Because once you scale to a certain point, all that manufacturing got in place, you got to switch because it’s going to be a bigger scale and you got a whole new problem. So the bad news for you, my friend, is the problems will keep coming as long as you’re in business.
Mike [00:06:14]:
You add a few extra zeros, a few extra problems, 100%. But the problems that used to be problems aren’t problems anymore because you’ve learned to traverse through them. So you’re always going to have challenges. I hate the word problem because nothing’s a problem. It’s Just a challenge. But this is why being an entrepreneur, being a business owner in this type of realm, it’s just personal development in disguise because you constantly are sharpening as a human. You’re constantly having to look at your emotional responses to things and you’re constantly having to go, how do I want to respond to that? And if you can really start getting a grasp of that just leaks out into the rest of the world 100%.
Chris [00:06:47]:
So it is growth. And when I say growth, I mean not just growing a business, but it’s personal growth. You learn all this stuff and when you learn from one thing, you get to the next thing. So we’re going to have a, we’ve got a thing we’re doing at field days this year, but different. I’m going to get you to pull two. These are light hearted questions. They are a bit of a change of topic. We’re not necessarily going to talk about the Bader.
Chris [00:07:12]:
Pick two of those out and then have a read of them quietly and pick the one you want and then when you’ve chosen one, you can read it out and then answer the question.
Mike [00:07:22]:
Well, I’m going to read both of them and I’ll tell you which one I pick. So there’s name a food that’s overrated or what’s your hidden talent? I think probably going a bit more personal. What’s my hidden talent? What’s my hidden talent? Oh, that’s actually a difficult question. I don’t hide anything, so that’s very true. A hidden talent. What’s the hidden talent? It’s very interesting. Look, I’m gonna go fairly generic here because it’s something that your listeners and you probably don’t know, but I’d love to talk about it. So I’m a rebirthing breathwork facilitator.
Mike [00:07:52]:
So I studied for almost two years in a breath work style called rebirthing. And it’s a hidden talent because we don’t market it, we don’t put it out there. It’s a very powerful healing modality that both Ryan, my business partner and I trained and that’s actually where we met, that’s actually where the name Bader came from. But it’s a very powerful modality to help people regulate their nervous system, to really help them move through stuck past traumas, experiences and to help them have more space within themselves to be able to make their own choices in their life and to see that where they are in their life, the choices that have been given to them through their upbringing, they can start to dissolve Those and make their own. So, yeah, it’s a powerful process and yeah, I love to talk about it wherever I go. So that’s a nice little leader.
Chris [00:08:32]:
Yeah.
Mike [00:08:32]:
Okay.
Chris [00:08:33]:
That’s okay. That’s a whole other conversation because that makes me very curious. All right, so before we wrap up, what’s the next 12 months look like for Baydev, do you think?
Mike [00:08:42]:
12 months. We’re on a really fast trajectory into the retail space. So we’re getting picked up by pharmacies nationally. We just got picked up by a supermarket chain, like I mentioned earlier, health food stores, all that sort of stuff. So we’re really pushing our retail space. As I said, we’re doing about 50 expos a year, but we’re growing the team. We’ve got Suzanne Paul on our team now, so bringing the sales queen on board. So she’s really loving our products and asked to come on board.
Mike [00:09:04]:
So that’s amazing. And from there then just look at looking and going overseas at some point. Yeah, but it’s going to be a.
Chris [00:09:10]:
Fast 12 months and then the world is your oyster. Okay, so for everyone listening, how can they find out more about Bader? Where can they go? Where can they buy some of the products or taste them or test them? And you said you’re going to be in a lot of exhibitions, so tell us where they can find out more about you.
Mike [00:09:25]:
The easiest way is just to pop onto our website, Baderbrand.com that has all of our upcoming expos of what cities and towns we’re going to be in, has all our stockists there as well. You can order on there and then jump onto our Instagram Bader brand. TikTok Bader brand, Facebook Bader brand. So very simple.
Chris [00:09:42]:
Awesome. Well, best of luck for the rest of field days. Actually, how has it been for the last two days?
Mike [00:09:47]:
We’ve had a really nice, great two days. Yep, yep. It’s always nice when you do something an expo the year before because you can see how you’re tracking. So we’re tracking just a bit above what we did last year and we had our best expo last year at field days, so all is good.
Chris [00:10:02]:
Fantastic. All right, may it continue. Cheers.
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