From Near Death to Business Success with Andy Hnilo
We’re back at it, Healthpreneurs! Welcome to the show, and have I got a treat for you! Our guest today, Andy Hnilo, is the CEO of Alitura Naturals. This skincare company offers the power of natural ingredients through pure and effective products.
Surprisingly, Andy’s inspiration to work in this industry came from a near-death experience which left him looking unrecognizable. He was inspired to accelerate the healing of his injuries, scars, and abrasions through natural means, and now shares his proven solutions with the world.
Andy is a great example of someone who didn’t let over-analysis paralyze him into inaction. He saw an opportunity in the market, saw a need, and filled it with his product. Tune in to hear how he got Dave Asprey’s attention, how he used himself for beta-testing, and why his product’s branding is so unique.
In this episode Andy and I discuss:
- The experience that inspired his vision.
- Why he declined chemical-laden topicals and searched for something natural.
- How he did his own research into effective, natural ingredients.
- How he synced up with Dave Asprey.
- Guerrilla marketing and production struggles.
- Passion, pursuing knowledge, and paralysis by over-analysis.
3:00 – 10:00 – Andy’s journey, experience, and inspiration
10:00 – 15:30 – His beta testing, recovery, and connection to Bulletproof
15:30 – 19:00 – Getting started and acting ASAP
19:00 – 22:30 – The passion and commitment required to excel and succeed
22:30 – 31:00 – Creating a product that is branded for men, too
31:00 – 37:00 – The Rapid Five
Transcription
What’s up, what’s up, what’s up. Welcome back to the Healthpreneur podcast. Yuri with you. I’ve got a treat for you today. I’m interviewing an amazing man. His name is Andy Hnilo. I’m not going to spoil the surprise, but he had a near death experience seven years ago that will shock you when he shares exactly what happened. But he was able to turn that experience into a super-successful skincare company.
Now, you might think, “Okay, what the heck? What’s the correlation?” Well, you got to listen to find out. It’s absolutely phenomenally inspiring, so I’ll give you a little bit of background and say who Andy is.
He is the CEO of Alitura Naturals, and they develop cutting edge natural skincare products. That is interesting because it’s one of the few male originated skincare lines that I’m aware of. Yeah, I’m not going to spoil the surprise for his life threatening accident, so I’ll let him share that with you in the episode.
As a result of that, they’ve created some really, really top notch natural skincare products that are truly filling a gap in the marketplace.
I think what you’ll get out of this episode is, number one, some really cool guerrilla marketing tactics that Andy was able to use to get this product off the ground more than seven years ago, some of the mistakes that he made that he would probably not want to repeat again, if he were to start from scratch, and some really important lessons about physical products.
So, if you’ve got a physical product based business, I think you’ll really enjoy this. Even if you don’t, I think there’s a really good number of lessons in this discussion. Without any further ado, let’s welcome Andy Hnilo to the show, and let’s get into it. Andy Hnilo, welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast. How’s it going?
Andy Hnilo: Oh, it’s going great, Yuri. Thank you so much for having me on.
Yuri Elkaim: Yeah, I’m excited to jump in. I know had a bit of an audio technical difficulty getting started, but we are connected. It’s all good. We’re going to bring the goods. I’m pumped to have you on the show because what I love about speaking with entrepreneurs in our space is that we’ve all had some type of journey, some type of crisis, health scare, discovery that led us to do what we’re doing now, and your story is frigging remarkable. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, so can you kind of give us the Cliff Notes or the version that you feel comfortable sharing with our audience and how it led you to doing what you’re doing now?
The experience that inspired his vision
Andy Hnilo: Sure, yeah. Let’s see March 20 of 2011, I was just crossing the street. I looked down to check my phone to see if my Lyft was arriving. I got hit by a westbound heading Land Rover that hit me into the eastbound lane, and I got run over by a Toyota Tundra. I completely lost consciousness. I was getting my clothes cut off me in the middle of Melrose, a very popular street out here in Los Angeles, California. I don’t remember any of that, but I definitely remember the feeling of waking up in that ICU bed with a couple of my friends around me and my jaw protruding through the bottom of my chin. I had a very bad compound fracture. I had seven broken ribs as well as and a collapsed lung. So I was really banged up.
I went home and I had a lot of perspective. I was excited, actually, that I survived the accident. It took about a day or two to kind of shake the sorrow away. Looking in the mirror after an accident like will stick with you for a little bit.
I became extremely passionate about my recovery. I made it a very big goal of mine to get back better than I was before. I’ve been an athlete my whole life and I’ve had a lot things where I like taking care of myself and I was in the entertainment industry for a long time as well, so when you’re looking at an unrecognizable version of yourself in the mirror, it will definitely kickstart and inspire you to get back on your feet quick.
So I became really passionate about ingredients and long story short, seven years later, I have a skincare line with 20 products in 76 countries. It took a lot of time and a lot of attention to detail and I used myself as just my biggest science experiment. They say necessity is the mother of invention. I had no intention of starting a business. No intention to ever create a skincare line. I wanted to get back and accelerate the healing of my injuries, my scar and my abrasions so that’s how it all started.
Yuri Elkaim: That’s amazing. I mean it’s not amazing that it happened to you, but I’m a firm believer that everything happens for us, right? We do agree with that?
Andy Hnilo: Right. No, absolutely. Absolutely, yeah.
Yuri Elkaim: At the time, it’s obviously very challenging to understand that, but I’m sure what you’ve created is a direct result of that and is obviously helping a lot of people because of that. You’ve got a video on your website. Guys, if you want to check this out, go to Andy’s site which is at alituranaturals.com. There’s a video talking a little bit about his story and talked about how the plastic surgeon who came in to see you said to one of his colleagues, “I need some help with this one.” It was that bad.
Andy Hnilo: Yeah.
Yuri Elkaim: What is the thinking going from that experience to “I’m going to start a skincare line.” Because I think you mentioned that you wanted a better, more natural way of just cleaning up a lot of the scars and stuff. Was that the big impetus for starting everything?
Why he declined chemical-laden topicals and searched for something natural
Andy Hnilo: Yeah. One of my surgeons was recommending this cream that was loaded in corticosteroids, parabens, had some steroids in it, had fragrance, glycerine, alcohol, preservatives, nothing that served the skin. I knew that. I was into skincare, health and wellness and I knew my ingredients before the accident, but this obviously escalated that after the accident.
I became very interested in certain extracts, butters, essential oils, powders and clays. I politely declined the creams and serums that was offered that I use to accelerate the healing in my scar and in the cuts I had all over my body.
Instead, I became interested in seeking out and sourcing ingredients that would help me heal and ordered them.
My jaw was wired shut and my teeth were nubs so a lot of time I didn’t want to be outside, and social situations were difficult for me so I just began compounding and isolating certain ingredients and then blending them and then based on particle size, seeing how they work together, just hoping for some type of result.
Clays, cacao butter, beeswax, bee products in general are so healing and hydrating for the skin internally and externally.
So I just was experimenting with certain things like colostrum, deer placenta, egg yolks. I mean that was internally to get as much just nutrition in the system because my jaw was wired shut, I couldn’t chew obviously so I made this really nutrient dense smoothie, but on top of that, I’d make this mask with rich clays that are so high in mineral content and I would make just different pastes to follow up the clay mask that I would use to heal and hopefully find some type of just result from that in the reduction of swelling and just to accelerate a lot of blood flow to surface of the skin, pull out impurities.
I was going through x-rays every month to see how the bone is growing back and it was part of my routine. Every single day I was just doing that mask. Every hour of every day I had something to do. I just became obsessed with my recovery.
Yuri Elkaim: That’s awesome.
Andy Hnilo: Thank you.
Yuri Elkaim: So you said deer colostrum. Did I hear that properly?
Andy Hnilo: Several different kinds of colostrum, actually, but no, deer placenta is the one that-
Yuri Elkaim: Oh, sorry.
His beta testing, recovery, and connection to Bulletproof
Andy Hnilo: … yeah, that kind that gets people off guard but it’s so rich in minerals and micronutrients. Many animals eat their own placenta afterwards because it’s something that’s so nutrient dense. I would try anything, I would make these really rich smoothies to help nourish my system and heal myself from the inside out but as far as the skin products, that was just purely out of necessity and out of my research that I was doing all day long. Studying spa treatments, but also adding my own twist to it as well to kind of kick it up. Things like pearl powder and colostrum used topically, I’d never seen either of those used on the skin before. I know they were very beneficial internally but trying it out on my face and seeing the result I was getting was … I knew I had something but that took about a year, a year and a half, two years to finally go on board with it.
I was driving around town, there were people in the ICU, that saw me a couple of weeks later and were absolutely blown away with how I looked because the abrasions were gone, the cuts were completely gone, my skin looked great. There was a lot of swelling, obviously and the scarring is not going to go down in two weeks but it had been reduced a little bit, but the clarity in my skin was very apparent and so people asked what I was doing.
I was hesitant because, I don’t know, for whatever reason … you know, a guy with skincare, I was just kind of hesitant to admit that I became extremely obsessed with what I was putting on my skin. These creams and these masks and these little serums that I was creating out of the kitchen all day long as part of my recovery, going on walks, getting circulation going, getting my tonics going to reduce inflammation inside of my system. Every part of every day had a purpose but I began testing on those people that were questioning what I was doing … well, curious of what I was doing, and they fell in love with it too.
I was just driving around town with a backpack and a little bowl and some essential oils and a little thing that I’d mix it with, apple cider vinegar, and technically that was my beta testing, right?
Yuri Elkaim: Yeah.
Andy Hnilo: Everybody loved it, as far as the kelp powder, I was using a little too much kelp powder so I started reducing that a little bit because it was a little earthy and isolating and dialing down the vitamin C content, but I never charged anyone, never had any intention to start anything, didn’t have a website but that quickly ended when I reached out to Dave Asprey from Bulletproof, if you’re familiar with Bulletproof?
Yuri Elkaim: Yeah, he’s a good buddy, yeah.
Andy Hnilo: Yeah, and a great guy and so I wanted to work with Bulletproof because I loved his attention to detail and to ingredients. I was a little down and out, things were going well but I wanted to find my purpose, I wanted a good job, I was very into health and wellness. I trouble-shooted his email address, and obviously I knew his name, Dave Asprey and I found the contact form info at Bulletproof Exec I can’t be that far off, so I went d.asprey, asprey.a, David, every different combination you could think of.
Yuri Elkaim: That’s awesome.
Andy Hnilo: I copy and pasted the same email, sent a before picture of me in the ICU bed just really banged up, then an after picture of me doing a job, I think for Men’s Health magazine just going, “Hey man, thanks so much for you your products, I love them, they really kick started me on my road to my recovery.” One of them went through, he got back to me, we have a 45 minute conversation. I was up in Palo Alto, my mom was there, it was great. So they brought me onboard as an ambassador for Bulletproof and then months down the road, he had me on his top ranked Bulletproof Radio podcast. So yeah, I was on the podcast and we just were talking about my recovery and just want I went through, resilience, products and how I bounced back through a lot of Bullet Proof products.
Because this was not planned, weren’t even going to talk about skin care or anything like that and I was hesitant to admit to millions that I was doing this mask, but I’m so glad I did because he got a big response from it.
I told them that my website was under construction, it definitely wasn’t under construction. I called a high school buddy and we got a Shopify store set up a couple weeks after the podcast aired. I was having people PayPal me at $35, free shipping, it just sounded good. Coming up with a price without even knowing your raw … goods costs. Everything I learned on the run how to start a physical product, how to run a physical product business happened within weeks.
And then Dave flew down, we came to terms on an agreement. He took the Alitura Clay Mask on his Bullet Proof site as his first bullet proof approved skin care product. Getting that validation from him, but also his customers really trust what he does and he hadn’t done anything with skin care before, that’s how we acquired a lot of our customers in our customer data base.
And so we’ve just been really staying consistent with that and introducing new products with just a next level purity of ingredients, taking pride in our ingredients and how we source our ingredients from all over the world.
Yuri Elkaim: That’s awesome.
Andy Hnilo: That’s pretty much, yeah, how it all started.
Guerrilla marketing and production struggles
Yuri Elkaim: I want to touch on few things just for our listeners to kind of pick up on if they haven’t already. Number one is you’re in Gorilla Marketing. You figured out, “I’m going to come up with a number of combinations for this possible email address.” And you cracked the code. That is so awesome because there’s so many people that might use the excuse, “Well I don’t have the person’s email address, I can’t get in touch with them.” No, nobody is untouchable, nobody is unreachable. You found a way to crack the code, which is awesome. Second …
Andy Hnilo: Thank you.
Yuri Elkaim: … is you just built the bridge like one step at a time, like, “All right I need this.” “Okay let’s kind of put it together here you go, here’s the price.” And I love that. I love the bootstrapping nature of business. The types of businesses that most of us run because you kind of just figure it out on the go. You don’t have to have all of your ducks lined up, because it probably … do you think that you would’ve been as quick to market … if you spent the time creating a business plan, in boardroom meetings doing all that stuff ahead of time vs what you did?
Andy Hnilo: Oh absolutely not. I never wrote a plan it was on the go. After that podcast aired we had so many emails coming back to me I was like, “Well I could probably do about 70 orders or whatever.” But that’s not the best way to go about it, so just, like you said, “On the run”, we start figuring out cost, how much certain things like the green clay, the ascorbic acid how much stuff would cost to make 6.8 oz container. Just every certain ingredient that we’re using you start calculating cost and you come up with the price just on the go that’s truly how it happened.
Yuri Elkaim: That’s awesome.
Getting started and acting ASAP
Andy Hnilo: Even some people work better that way with having a plan and taking steps to reach goals in that plan. I just … the adrenaline took over, the excitement took over with someone wanting to buy something that I just truly just made out of an apartment. It just depends on the individual I think. If I had a plan of … if there were something on the whiteboard that I referred to every single day. I don’t know, I’m on the go constantly just working on what’s next and just from what’s in my head. As far as just following certain … a planned atmosphere … that I could probably adjust to that as well, but that’s truly how Alitura began. I don’t know really if there’s a right or wrong way, but I do think the most important thing is taking that step and just taking action every single day.
The people that try and … paralysis by over analysis … you see that happen so often … and then you end up finding a way to make it seem like it’s so hard and “realistic” is not one of my favorite words. I just … the how are you going to get in touch with … just think you said, “Everybody who’se out there finds a way”. I’ve had meetings with really … just people by finding them through Facebook. That’s not the best way, that’s actually happened to me a couple times and it’s a little annoying, obviously. But hey that’s how I got in there with a couple people so whose to say you can’t do that?
Yuri Elkaim: Yeah totally. Well it’s interesting because a lot of our listeners are coaches, or health coaches, trainers, nutritionists, functional medicine doctors and so forth. We also have a lot of listeners who are product owners, right. So they’ve got supplements or physical products and you know regardless of the type of business there’s always that, “All right I have to get everything perfect before I get it out. I’m not quite ready yet. My T’s haven’t been crossed”, and all that kind of stuff and I think you’re a great example of the fact that you don’t have to get it perfect. It never really is perfect, you just have to get it going and get feedback from the market.
I think for you guys listening, please take this example as a great example of how to do that. So in this journey of business what have you learned to be one of the most effective traits for having a successful business or being a successful entrepreneur?
The passion and commitment required to excel and succeed
Andy Hnilo: Oh man, I would say … I eat, breathe, and sleep this particular industry. It’s so interesting to me. It’s want I do mindlessly throughout the day. It’s constantly part of my life style. So I’m so passionate about it and I’m constantly learning and I’m a sponge as far as seeking knowledge from other experts and … yeah I think you really do have to love.
I would say a relentless pursuit and entrepreneurs for the most part have that. Just staying resilient and firing through and powering through every single day with … the hours are as you know there … you’re working 40 hour weeks, but that’s why you obviously have to love it.
I would say delegating, getting people that are aligned with you in your vision. I did it all by myself up until April 2016 and that’s just not the smartest use of my time. I was waiting in line self fulfilling. I didn’t find out about shipping easy or stamps.com and just getting the scale out, handwriting to and from slips and we were busy so that’s just … I was spending all day doing that myself, but it was just a fulfilling feeling to go to the post office with orders and just know that every single part of that was done by me. So that was just something that felt good, but imagine delegating that. Paying someone an hourly wage and then being able to advance the business by partnering with people on podcasts or looking for affiliates or influences or just working on my next product. That’s the best use of my time in business.
So that would be my biggest piece of advice right there is getting an assistant to work under you to handle the smaller things that you don’t like doing and then content, content, content. That is huge as well, providing benefit to your audience, and following as well, customer data base, that’s huge.
Yuri Elkaim: Yeah totally.
Andy Hnilo: Educating on things that separate your brand and your ingredients from others.
Creating a product that is branded for men, too
Yuri Elkaim: Yeah totally. Well let’s talk about that because you’re one of the only male that I’m aware of, male driven skin care lines, I’m sure there’s many others. But we’ve spoken to a few people actually on this podcast who had their own skin care lines or a skin care business, but they’re female. So it’s interesting coming at it from a male perspective, but how have you consciously differentiated your brand from others out there?
Andy Hnilo: I was talking to Katie, a wellness model last night about that and there’s such a big expanding, growing industry on the male side of skin care and cosmetic industry. Alitura’s 55% women, 45% males are the customer data base and it’s pretty much right down the middle, unisex.
When I first started this people were like a little hesitant with … “All right, well the dark packaging that’s obviously masculine, this is a men’s skin care line.” I’m like, “No, absolutely not. It’s a unisex skin care line.” I just had this vision of brands like Lexus, Hugo Boss, Kenneth Cole, – a Montage if you will. Something really slick, ultra premium, high performance just like a really good top shelf skin care line. And so that was my vision for it and in doing that it was just about ingredients and letting the customer decide.
If you create something a little bit more with white and turquoise. I got that so much at the beginning, I’m so glad I stayed true to what I wanted.
When you go to a store shelf, the health and beauty isle, there’s so much white may be earthy tone packaging. Very rarely do you see black, black matte with silver foil to make it pop a little bit, it just exactly what I envisioned for it.
If you look in our shelf and you go there now you’re starting to see a couple more all black with gold tones pop up because it’s just to me it’s sexy, it’s something I want to learn more about, find out more about. Look and hold the bottle and then find out it’s nice glass from the miron glass or use it from the Netherlands that blocks out the ultraviolet light or well the bad light. It’s something that I just take a lot of pride in. Not only for the aesthetic part of it, the packaging part of it, but just what it does for my products in general, my liquid products.
We did the Beauty Con Conference over the weekend. I’d have to say it was 98% women, coming by and just interested in the line and wanting to buy something for their husband, but we’re like, “No, no it’s actually a unisex skin care line.” So it’s one of those things where even to this day I’m still hearing certain things about it looking too masculine, but there’s also … sure I’m only four years into this, there’s a possibility that it’s like you said, “I can’t even name” … John Masters is a good, more hair focused male founded beauty brand.
If you find a way to find a hole in the market and really start marketing that towards men. That could be something maybe even bigger than the unisex duo appeal. I use to play baseball, a lot of my buddies are still playing and so when I test, demo the products in spring training out in Arizona, they’re interested.
I think men just need … you know, we want to take care of ourselves. We want to look and feel good and we want to be as marketable as possible on the business stand front, but also look and feel good just on the personal side of things and so I get it. Just staying young, feeling young and doing it with good quality ingredients and things that make you look polished and presentable. I think really appeal … not only on a sex appeal side of things, but just as far as just success as just on a business, whether you’re making a presentation you want to look and feel your best and just kind of be as presentable as possible. I think they go hand in hand and so if I were to focus on a male one down … I don’t know, I just don’t
I like the way things are going right now and I want everybody to be able to choose, to make it their decision on what they want to use rather than the company’s side of things. Whether a men’s focus line, women’s… I don’t believe in that right now.
Yuri Elkaim: Yeah, when you buy, if you’re in a couple, and let’s say the man buys the skin care. The wife or the spouse might be like, “Hey, let me try that as well.” That there’s this kind of…I’ve noticed that in my household with my…’cause I’ve tried a couple different skin care products, now my wife uses them because they’re just like, “Hey, yeah, these are good for both of us.” And kind of by osmosis now, is diffused to become more of a unisex product.
So, I guess you never know how things diffuse as people use them and obviously as the word spreads. And I think also, for men too, it’s nice to have a product that, as a brand, you can kind of associate with where’s it’s not as feminine and airy-fairy. It’s a little bit more, as you mentioned, a little bit more robust, a bit more refined. And I think a lot of men, as well as women, can definitely relate to that, so that’s pretty cool.
Andy Hnilo: No, that’s a good point. We hear that a lot, too, especially with our fragrance that we just released because it’s just, I mean, it’s right down the middle. Women love it, men love it, but yet you’ll hear of a man buying it and then the woman coming by sneaking a couple shots, or sprays, before she goes out to work. That’s the goal, I mean that’s the goal. I just want to create great products and let the customer decide who it’s for.
But yeah, it’s a lot of fun, I love what I do.
Yuri Elkaim: So we’re gonna jump into the Rapid Five in just a second, but I do have one more question I want to ask you. Do you have a favorite failure in the business that has later set you up for success?
Andy Hnilo: Oh man. Let’s see, I’ve had a couple. I just had one recently that, with the manufacturer that we’re using for our body oil blend, it’s the first time we’ve used them. We’ve been working for 14 months on this particular oil blend, right, and we nailed it as peppery, sandalwood…we used two different kinds of sandalwood; Indian and Australian, a little vanilla in there too. It’s perfect, right? An all purpose hair, body, massage, personal lubricant, you name it. And we’re so excited about marketing this and then you approve the production batch and then again, you do that twice, and then you go through its production. So, with the full on purchase order.
Well, they sent a box to me and it was completely different from the production batch that we signed off on. That’s the first time that’s happened to me. Where it’s all based on, I guess, their sense, what they think it smells like to mine, but I’m telling you it’s not like the production batch. So I’m dealing with that right now. And we may just have to eat that which is very frustrating. Not only is that a lot of waste and a lot of capital down the drain, but it’s one of those things, unless we can find an option and go back and refill and they’re able to work with us, we may just have to eat that.
And I don’t know how you prevent that in the future. Just to people out there that are out there working with formulators, and manufacturers and chemists, I think there’s something you can write into the contract to make sure everybody is on the same page with that, with production and just making sure before you get billed for an entire purchase order and it’s a complete waste. So that’s something right now.
I know I’ve had a couple other ones in the past that have led to more posi…you know I really feel like this is gonna to be positive. It’s just that this just happened two days ago so that’s a big one.
Yuri Elkaim: Top of mind.
Andy Hnilo: Yeah.
Yuri Elkaim: Yeah. Well, it’s true though, ’cause there’s a lot of people that have formulations. I don’t know if any of them got it 100% off the bat, right? It’s like, there’s always issues in manufacturers. Like, even for us we had to change manufacturers due to some transparency issues with the wrong ingredients. So there’s all of these things that you learn along the way. And it’s part and parcel of having that kind of business, which is pretty cool.
Andy Hnilo: That definitely happened to me, too. I actually had to go down to the lab. I tasted the pearl powder in front of them and it was bitter as opposed to the Jing pearl that I use, which is really nice and kind of creamy. I’m like, “What is this, show me the source?” It was not negotiable from the beginning. And they thought I was crazy, they probably didn’t expect me to taste it, but I’m like, “No, that’s supposed to be Jing pearl powder.” Anyway, yeah, I get it, I get it. It’s a battle.
The Rapid Five
Yuri Elkaim: That’s cool. Awesome man. So this has been really, really interesting, Andy. Thanks so much for sharing what you’ve shared so far. Are you ready for the Rapid Five?
Andy Hnilo: Absolutely. Go!
Yuri Elkaim: Alright, man. So five questions. Whatever comes top of mind is probably the right answer. Number one: What is your biggest weakness?
Andy Hnilo: Perfectionist.
Yuri Elkaim: Number two: What is your biggest strength?
Andy Hnilo: I’m relentless.
Yuri Elkaim: Nice. Number three: What’s one skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business?
Andy Hnilo: Numbers. Crunching numbers right off the top of my head.
Yuri Elkaim: That’s important, especially in a physical product business, right?
Andy Hnilo: Oh yeah.
Yuri Elkaim: Number four: What do you do first thing in the morning?
Andy Hnilo: I say, “Today’s going to be a great day. Thank you Lord for another day.” And I’m not that religious, I just have been doing that my entire life. I just want to thank my Higher Power. I’m very grateful, you know?
Yuri Elkaim: That’s awesome. And finally, complete this sentence: I know I’m being successful when…
Andy Hnilo: I have the ability to do whatever I want, with whoever I want whenever I want. And I hope that doesn’t sound cocky or arrogant, but I work very hard and it’s kinda fun to be able to do that. I just, yeah.
Yuri Elkaim: That’s awesome. Awesome, guys.
So everyone listening, check out alituranaturals.com. I’ll be trying out your products as well. I’m almost fascinated with this kind of stuff, so I’ll definitely be using some of this stuff. So if you guys are listening to this, check it out, alituranaturals.com. We’ll link up to this in the show notes as well.
Andy, thank you so much for taking the time for joining us today. And I wanted to express some gratitude to you in appreciate for turning, seemingly a really catastrophic event into something amazing that is serving so many people now and, obviously, seeing your transition and your growth from that is, as a bystander, pretty amazing. So I just wanted to commend you on that.
Andy Hnilo: Hey, Yuri, thank you so much for having me on. I do want to offer a 20% discount code. We’ll just call it Yuri, y-u-r-i, to you and your following.
Just go to https://alituranaturals.com/ Get a 20% discount when you type in Yuri in the code.
But, no, I really appreciate you saying that. I was searching for my purpose up until 30 years old when I got into that accident. And for some reason, as I said in the beginning, I was excited. There was certainly meaning and there was something else out there for me. I wanted a job, and at 30, anxiety starts to happen, starts to set in when you don’t really have something set in stone. But, I just believed there was something else out there for me. And that having the ability to help others and to make a living out of it at the same time. I feel like I won the lotto, I really do. And we’re just gonna maintain that exact feeling of being of service and doing our best to stand out with our products from here on out. I really appreciate you having me on.
Yuri Elkaim: Absolutely, man. Thank you so much and thank you for all the great work you’re doing and guys hope you enjoyed this episode. Andy, once again, have an awesome day and thanks so much for being with us.
Andy Hnilo: Thank you, yeah, you too.
Yuri’s Take
So I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty inspired. It’s amazing to see how such a tragic, on the surface, accident can be turned into such a positive movement for what he’s been able to do with his skincare company.
One of the things that we didn’t really talk about is the fact that they have well over, they have thousands of reviews for their products and they have an average rating of 4.9 out of 5. I mean, that says a lot, for the quality of stuff that they’re putting out.
So, once again, hopefully this interview has inspired you to recognize, as I mentioned in the interview, that everything happens FOR us, nothing’s happening TO us. And if you live life with that believe, I think you’ll be very empowered at each step of the way because it doesn’t matter if you miss the bus or you’re stuck in traffic or something didn’t happen well with your business or whatever, but if we come from the perspective that every single moment in our life is happening FOR us, that it’s there to serve us, to teach us a lesson, to help us move forward. It’s just a really positive way of going through this journey. So that’s one of the lessons I want you to really leave from this episode with is, go through life, go through your day, just think about this today, be conscious of this today. In any moment where you think it’s not working out for you, understand that it is. If you have a product launch or you’re launching something that doesn’t work out for you, hey, there’s a reason for that and it’s working FOR you, there’s lessons to be learned there. There’s no sense in being a victim and thinking, “Poor me, why hasn’t this worked out.” Think about, “Hey, alright, whatever, it’s all good. There’s got to be a reason. There’s got to be something happening FOR me here. How can I extract the benefit out of this situation?”
So that’s the lesson I want to leave with you from today’s episode. And if you haven’t yet subscribed to the show, be sure to do so on iTunes. Healthpreneur Podcast. Just subscribe.
We’ve got amazing episodes coming your way, as we always have. If you’ve missed any of the previous, I mean, we’ve got so many amazing conversations, terrific solo rounds, it’s just been an amazing journey over the past year. And I guess we’re almost coming up to the year anniversary, which is pretty exciting as well, in a couple months. Yeah, it seems like a long time, but we’re not even at one year old yet. Pretty cool.
Anyways, that is all for today. IF you’ve enjoyed this bad boy, head on over to iTunes, leave a rating or review. That would help me sleep really nicely at night. And for now, hope you have an amazing day. Continue to get out there. Be great, do great and I’ll see you in our next episode.
Follow Andy Hnilo At:
https://alituranaturals.com/ Get a 20% discount when you type in Yuri in the code.
If you enjoyed this episode, head on over to iTunes and subscribe to Healthpreneur™ Podcast if you haven’t done so already.
While you’re there, leave a rating and review. It really helps us out to reach more people because that is what we’re here to do.
What You Missed
Our last episode was a solo round where I talked about a topic most people hate– marketing.
Many of us think of marketing as slimy, salesy, and just not our thing. Well, guess what? Everything you put out there is marketing. Everything. Whether it’s a podcast, Instagram post, or conversation, it’s marketing.
Added bonus? With proper marketing, selling becomes almost unnecessary. Now there’s something we’d rather take off our plate, right?
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