Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside personal growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of the inside personal growth and Arshad Bahl is joining us from New York and he was referred to me by David Knoll. And David noble owns a company called Pacific resource International, which is actually in Cambria, California, and they sell manuka honey of which now I am a huge purchaser of I think David's got me on a regular shipping order, because I believe in the healing properties of that and let's talk about that. I go to the natural products West Expo every year, and David actually referred a shot to me and said, Hey, here's the deal, man, you may want to profile. I did not meet him at the natural products West Expo. Just to be clear, but were you there.

I walked the show a few times this year. I didn't but I've been there a few times. Okay.

Greg Voisen
So he has a personal story about his son that was diagnosed with autism and severe severe gastrointestinal issues and many people and parents when they're on a quest to solve a problem. They don't go as far as their shot did to develop a whole company with super food bars, but they do go to try and find a solution. What is a good nutritional program? In this particular show? Is going to focus on nutrition and wellness and the right to story, his story and how he got there. And the other thing is, is kind of the journey also. Arshad is an avid cyclist like myself, and some of you may have seen my recent show about cycling corporate putting in corporate cycling programs to help people stay healthy and be healthy. And a shot has a huge background in cycling and has done lots of it like myself, and like many things, what you eat, how active you stay. And I'll say even more importantly, the community you've built around yourself is so so very important. And he's built a huge community of faithful people that buy his products. And if you want to learn more about those products, it's at an M Rita and that's spelled a m r i t a health foods.com. We'll put a link to that on our website so that you can learn more about it. So we kind of know what inspired you to start it but how is the personal health journey kind of influenced the mission of this company of your company? Ash rod?

Yeah. Greg, thanks for having me on the show. I'm a huge fan of what you do and been listening to a lot of people you interview so it's a it's an honor a pleasure to be on. So, you know, as you mentioned, not always do we connect the dots between something that we have done personally and then build a business around it and I you know, my background is consulting, marketing, working for Fortune 5050 companies, you know, all that kind of stuff business school that and when my my son's 20 Now, and when he was two and a half, he was diagnosed with autism. And I honestly didn't even know what that word was when he was diagnosed. We really had to do a lot of searching and we were a wife and myself. We were amazed at the amount of young kids especially boys who are getting diagnosed and that rate has been going steadily up through the years and it's I think it's one out of 10 or it was one and a half out of 10 then I think is now it's maybe even closer to two out of 10 young boys being diagnosed with autism and

Greg Voisen
shot what was your son's level of autism. I work raising money for an organization called Terry T on it. our.com here in Southern California that strictly focuses on group homes for autistic kids, and they have 625 kids that come to the facility every day and I used to go in and see them and go to the classes and dial nine yard but the severity levels of autism go from a one to a 10 Where where's your son on that spectrum?

Yeah, nonverbal till six very little eye contact, obviously, because no speech, a lot of stimming a lot of you know occupational sense, sensitivity around like light, sound, all these kinds of things. So I would say very severe to start with. But one of the things that we were lucky with was early on, we found early intervention, right around the age of two and a half. And in New York. There's a really good program just like in California with early intervention. And so we we got very involved in the early intervention piece. And one of the components of early intervention and early intervention typically is very structured speech, occupational therapy, which is around sensory stuff, and then a little bit of social behavior. Nutrition is not part of the equation. But I had always studied nutrition for years and years and years. And I knew that there was a connection between disease and and what you put in your gut. The problem was that in autism, that research was very mild. Little bits of stuff here and there. And I was lucky that the doctor who was seeing my son was doing a big piece of research at Columbia University in New York, around the connection between gut issues, and young boys. And he was just and he was just collecting all this data like was what was the inflammation in the gut? What was the type of foods that would help with recovery? And he was talking to us about it and he said, Would you know your son has severe gi problems need steroids, and they did this pill camp study, they put it through the entire body and they and it showed, yeah, really, really bad lesions and all that. So the choices were, we've given steroids will will cure it, but we'll have some after effects like stunt growth and things like that. We could give him a or we could put him on a low inflammation diet. And he said, I'm doing this research, that it's not conclusive that it will work, but it's worth trying. And the third one was give him an option of the two. And we said let's, let's start with the low inflammation diet because there's no side effect you know, what's the worst it will do it for a year or two and and one work and then we can go to steroids. And so that's you actually,

Greg Voisen
did you actually shot ever get involved? I know because I went to natural products West Expo and one of the speakers there who come on the show was Dr. Perlmutter. Yep. And I'm sure you're familiar. He wrote the whole about the, the gut health. Yep. Right. But one of the things I found quite interesting and I know you went to this allergen free plant based products, and that's what you develop this company on and for any of my listeners that are queasy, what they found, at least Pearl minor did was that and I'm sure you're aware of this, but many listeners out there may not be the the I'm just trying to think of the enzymes that are actually in a healthy gut. When somebody actually dedicates they take those enzymes and they re transplant them back into the patient who's got enzymes are in the your son's case. Very, very off whack. And the reality is, it's had huge effects. Yep. With with those have you tried that with him or No, no, we

didn't try that. So what we did is we wanted to take one slice of something, right, because there's so much there was chelation, there's all these Yeah. And the problem is when you do all of them together, it's hard to tell which one's working. So and food tends to be really difficult with autistic kids because they tend to be creatures of habit. And there's a there's a saying among young autistic kids that they eat the Brown died, which is French fries nuggets, and they really really liked that brown fried diet. And so my son was on it too. And we it was a very, very difficult transition out of that to what I call low inflammation, food and low inflammation. Food was essentially a lot of greens a lot of vegetables, a lot of fruits, a lot of good like non grain stuff Rice was was a big part of the diet. And this is where the bar sort of started coming in because we were actually trying to get something that was nutritionally dense for him because he was he was really struggling with eating food. And I wanted to make something that was delicious. So we said let's make these these balls or bars that were made with dates, dried fruit seeds, and pump as much nutrition into a small piece. And then you know initially he was a little reluctant because he wasn't really didn't didn't know what the hell those things were. So what we did is we actually made worked with him to make the product we you know, got him involved in the in the process and that process. Got him excited to try it. Once he tried it. They say like the kid has to try it seven times, eight times before they fully give up on the product. So we kept trying kept trying, you know, he liked it somewhat. But then he also had this problem with eye contact and social skills because he was nonverbal. So what we did is we set up a farmers market stand at the local train station, because we wanted him to talk to people about what he had created, which were these little bars. And that was really designed to build his social skills. And it worked really well because it got him to talk. And then when people said oh, this is delicious, he wanted to eat a bit more. So it was like a really nice circle around him getting excited about trying the product he made. And then him having more verbal skills as a result of it. And we were just super lucky that the whole foods buyer came off the train saw, you know, got it to talk to him, really fell in love with him. And then kind of turned to me and said, Why is this product not on our shelves? Right? And I said I had no idea about what CPG was absolutely no idea and this was when he was I think five

Greg Voisen
five no 15 So 15 years ago.

Yeah, yeah. 1516 Yeah. 16 Maybe

Greg Voisen
he's 20 now or is he 20? Yep, yeah,

he's 20 in college and all that and so, so she invited us to just put it on the shelves. Right? She said I know you're not you haven't you know nothing about CPG you make it in your home go making a commercial kitchen. Get on our shelves tell the story. This was pre Amazon Whole Foods love local, local, you know entrepreneurs. So, put it on the shelves started selling really well. People love the story. Hope was promoted, you know, the local radio stations did a big deal about it. And that that's that was the birth of what we do. And then you know, moved on and started. I was in the process of finishing up my career with IBM and I wanted to do something different and I had no idea what entrepreneurship was or food or anything. So I just you know, basically just jumped straight into it and dove

Greg Voisen
in, dove in. Just just you have really grown this thing over time. Quite a bit. So the offering for my listeners, you can go to the website like we'll put a link but you have low sugar protein bars, you've got protein bars for weight loss, dialysis friendly, not free protein bars, gluten free protein bars, so a free vegan and allergy free protein bars. So if you look at the lineup of the products, there's something there for everybody. You've got protein, oats, you've got dried fruits, you've got seeds. So the reality is is that when you go there to shop when you guys want to pick some of this up or go to Whole Foods, or any of the other places where these Amrita health foods are sold, definitely go in that way. Now, I want to ask you because you know, this is a very, very crowded market, and I ate the gentleman that I met at the natural products West F Expo, who created that nut bar with chocolate from New York and then gave a bunch of his money away. I'm trying to think of the name of it, I don't know it's it's in Costco, it's everywhere. So so the key is you know, staying true to your standards to your core values to the reason why you brought it up. How have you been able to do that when everybody's kind of moving so fast in this market? And they're they're all developing new bars and there's, you know, every time you go back to natural products, West Expo, there's a you know, 100 new bars, right. Yeah. And how do you keep yourself from getting lost in that totally maze?

Yeah, I think I think you have to be authentic to who you are. Right. And I and I say this because the word authentic is really used vary quite a bit without it, the true meaning. And what we mean by that is why did we start it? What was the what was the use case for the bar, the use case was low inflammation, and we believe that the the concept around food as medicine will never go away. Right? And so if you make a bar that is designed to help somebody with gut problems, and we know that gut health has been a growing problem, so the place for a product like this will always be there. And will there be copycats of course because the protein bar industry has a lot of companies that will make a bar for somebody else, right? So you can go to a co packer and say make me a bar just like I'm burritos. The difference is that because we run our own facility, we are not free. So and most co packers are not so that's what makes us different with the reason we did not free again there's nothing not a not don't cause inflammation peanuts do, but tree nuts don't. And the reason we did it was because kids can take it to school, right? So if you're designing this for young kids with gut gut inflammation problems, we wanted to make a bar that that the kid didn't have to ask for permission like you know, it's tasty enough. Let me take it to school. And so that was the reason we did it not pre and then we basically built a brand around just being authentic like you know, our customer service. is amazing. We sell direct to consumers most that's most of our business. We just build a really loyal audience of families. Most of the people who buy from us are either people with kids, or athletes or people who just care about a comp we're buying from a company that socially responsible makes good products has been around for a while. That's truly a core audience of who we sell to.

Greg Voisen
So in your factory, Arshad, how do you how are you taking it a step further with the autistic kids? I know we talked a little bit about this on the on the program. But you know, look, we could all hire anybody but now you've chosen to put part of this workforce together, which is autistic that is now helping you package and ship the bars and you do whatever I think our listeners want to know that story. So a little bit about the factory itself and how this came about and how many people you have working for you right now. Yeah, artistic.

So one of the one of the statistics that was very alarming to me and I wasn't aware of it till maybe three or four years ago, was the fact that unemployment rate among autistic kids who have graduated from school, so when they're in school till 18 years old, they have all the support services, whatever they need to but the that support service really falls off after 18. And then they're typically just staying at home, you know, if they're nonverbal if they've got, you know, social issues and all that. And so the unemployment rate is absolutely horrible. Among autistic kids 18 Plus, and there are lots of nonprofits that do a little bit to help them and it's mostly around vocational training. They'll take them to companies, and they'll give them vocational training. So when I found out about this, and I just started my company, I said, I want to hire as many of these kids as possible, because I have a very strong feeling that they're going to be amazing workers. Right? So I was on this mission to not just do it for doing good, but to really do it from a business perspective. Like I knew the results were super positive. And so and I've proven this over and over again, I have a full time employee who is, you know, was from the Autism Program. And then now I work with two different nonprofits that bring in groups of five, you know, two times a week, each of them so monday, wednesday, Tuesday, Thursday, and they come and work at our first facility and they get vocational training and the beautiful part about this is that I can see if some of them could become full time employees or recommend them to other places. But without a doubt, the ability of them to focus and get work done is absolutely incredible. There's something amazing about especially in manufacturing, there's a tremendous amount of repetitive work, and autistic kids do some of my they do well. Yeah. And my request to anybody who's listening here who has manufacturing, like go out of your way to hire young kids with autism. Because I can guarantee you for the dollar you pay them the money you pay them the the output is just insane. Then the kids who are not on their phones, they when you know they're like hungry to prove that they can get the work done because the metrics really matter to them. Way more than they matter to their peers. 2530 year old peers, you know, so, so,

Greg Voisen
what, what has actually happened now with your son, he's 20 years old. You've been taking very good care of him. I don't know. Is he still at home with you guys? Does he still live with you?

So he made extremely good progress, like around the seven year eight, seven, till about age 12. And, you know, the, the brain of young kids is very pliable, right. So this is where early intervention is so important. So we started at two and a half till five, six, very little change, right? But we stayed at it like 40 hours a week or the internet. And then all of a sudden, the brain the neurons started firing. All this work we did started converting to results. We started coming out once speech came out a lot of stuff started happening. Right. He could, you could have conversations. He still had a really tough time catching up because literally it was catching up from a couple years. But yeah, he's in college. He's in a physics major honor student, you know, so. But he's fantastic. Yeah. You know, it's still quirky. Well,

Greg Voisen
they're artistic kids and they're they're usually always quirky. So it's yeah, it's but it's but look, the fact that he's in college, the fact that he's a physics major. The fact that he went from nonverbal to being a physics major and doing well and like you said, they really have when they have exceptionally intelligent brains and they can really complicated stuff together, right. So the way I look at it is and it depends on the degree of the spectrum of where they are in autism. But in your case, you said he went from nonverbal to verbal at age eight, or whatever it was, and then it all started to come out. And here it is. Now you started this company. You now have and I'm looking here at your array of products from chocolate chip coconut, to apple cinnamon to Dark Chocolate Crunch to chocolate protein bars. Our listeners can get these on your website direct or what are the major chains now that are carrying you besides maybe Whole Foods or other places that people are listening today that could say okay, I want to try some of these Annamarie to help fill bars.

Yeah, so, we have we sell in about three 400 stores, but most of our business is E commerce. Okay, so heavily on Amazon walmart.com thrive.com All the dot coms We're big on on our website. And you know they can if they want to try it a simple code starter, special starter special one word, they can get a box of bars for free. Like we're really big on like, low barrier to entry, try the product. And if they like it great, then then they can purchase more. So that's we're mostly a direct to consumer company because we really believe in not having a lot of middle entities between us. And serving the customer. So we don't do a lot of work with the big retail establishments. And that's how we build our business model is is you know, directly so I see I

Greg Voisen
see the high protein bar starter pack. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, and they can get that one for free. That's all they just have to put in the code. Start a special starters special one word fun and encourage the listeners go to this. It's Emery to hell food for class collections, high protein bars, we'll put a link you'll see high protein bars, and then just put in starter special. And that way you will be able to when you go to checkout, you'll get some sample bars as a matter of fact, it looks like it's a sample of all of them. They look like the small ones, little tiny, tiny ones, but the reality is it gets allows you to sample these bars, see if you like them and then come back and get more bars. So all of these bars are well many of them vegan 100% clean so a free not free, low sugar keto friendly, allergy free and like he said he doesn't have any nuts in his in his factory where he produces these and he's employing autistic kids to do it. Which is even greater because there's a whole artistic community out there that will support your bars meaning I know people that I can recommend this to let will actually buy because of the autism community. You know, you have an amazing story and a wonderful story because you did something good for the world. And I want to thank you for sharing the story about the bars. And not only the bars, there's all kinds of other products that people can look at as well at the website, but start with his free Starter Pack. They'll get the starter pack. We'll actually put that link in our blog for for the listeners so that they can actually, you know, type it in and get themselves free bar and I hope they'll come back and buy from you again and again and again after they test. And like he said they you can find it and retailers but more likely just go to Amazon if you want to pick it up or go directly to his website, a box of these bars and I don't know how many is in it is 2999 So it's not super expensive. It's $30 How many are in a box?

There's a dozen in there. Dozens. Okay all bars. Yeah, so

Greg Voisen
But are there about $3 in a piece? Yeah. Yeah, something like that. So your your story is fantastic. The Story of Your Son, I'm glad your son is doing really well. I'm glad that company is thriving still even with the plethora of bars that are out there in the marketplace. And most importantly, you're employing autistic kids to work in your factory to actually get these bars manufactured in and sent out. So that's, that's really a big deal. And is there any final words that you'd have for our listeners before we part?

Well, I mean, I just want to say that I think, you know, does CPG business is under a lot of pressure. I know you talked to a lot of founders, right because supply chain is is tough. labor rates are up and we've been we bootstrapped this this company, and we do a very heavy social mission part to it, but by paying people really well to be part of our company and I really believe in the whole small business mission part of what we do. And I and so I implore the people on the call to support small businesses right whether it is us or other small, but there's a restaurant or something because that's the heart, you know, the heartbeat of this country and so I think everybody is under a tremendous financial pressure. Put aside all the other pressures to just to stay afloat. But I see innovation happening in small businesses that I don't see innovation happening, you know, at say Clif Bar or something like that. And so if you want the latest, allergen friendly product, the latest keto product, whatever it is cutting edge of of help, but typically the small businesses are doing that. And so, you know, the support of people towards those small businesses is so vital. And that's I just wanted to say that because I see, I understand that people are trying to be careful with their their dollars and that's what we do direct to consumers because we can keep the price really low and and not have a whole bunch of people in the middle that, you know, we have to give the percentage to him but there are lots of companies like us who are direct to consumer, or they're just small and they're doing really wonderful products out there. And I just love for people to support companies like that. Yeah,

Greg Voisen
it's like you know, look, we we see many of these companies that do similar products, but there's one right here in San Diego that father would got sick and they they created a bar that had to be refrigerated. I forget the perfect, perfect bar. It's in Yeah, it's in Costco, right? Yeah. Do you still see it in the refrigerator section because it has to be refrigerated. And it's really quite a nice tasting bar. By the way. It's a wonderful bar and the daughter who is now running the company has been on and featured in so many local media outlets and so on. But when you look at it, it's really a great story. It's a family where the dad was dying of cancer. You know, they got the bars going as a way to do it, something very similar to what you're doing. And I always commend that because family businesses, they then got a huge seed round of funding, funding, then grew this company into a multinational, huge company, which they never thought was possible, but it's possible for you to so i want to put that out there. Keep it in your mindset that it's there. Let's support and read a health foods and let's support a shrug ball and what his mission is here for autistic kids to work in in factory and I appreciate you being on the show. And I appreciate you taking your time to really just explore how this all came about and what you put into the bars and why these bars are so much healthier. Appreciate it. Namaste.

Thank You Greg. Take care