"They Don't Want This!" The Irish Founder Using Chili Peppers to Solve The Fentanyl Epidemic

Today's guess may have found the key to ending the deadliest epidemic in American history. You say something hurts, prescribers kind of have to rely that you're telling the truth. You might be prescribing something like a fentanyl patch. It's as easy to abuse as just chewing tobacco. They will take a patch and seep it in alcohol. People will scrape the contents of the patch and smoke it. A college student from Ireland, he used the money he made painting houses to build a company now fighting the fentanyl crisis. How are you using chili peppers to fight the opioid crisis? And so we just took their existing patch and we add an additional layer on the back of the patch again. And it contains denitonium benzoate, which is the most bitter substance on the planet and capsaicin or red pepper spray. But after nearly losing everything in a pump and dump scheme, he rebuilt the company and is now developing a technology designed to stop fentanyl abuse. So the SEC paid you to fly down to meet up with them because you didn't have enough money? Yeah. What was the valuation of the company at that time? Probably about 20 million. And how much did you have in your bank account? $40. In this episode, we'll expose the dark machine keeping fentanyl and america streets. Reveal the technology that could save millions of lives. And question why it took a broke Irish immigrant to build the solution big farmer never wanted to exist. You're developing these drugs to save lives. Profits kind of come with that, but not in reverse. You're not thinking profits over people. Gareth Sheridan. Welcome to the Jagno podcast. Yeah, thanks. Great to be on check. Good place to start here. What is fentanyl? So fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that's 50 to 100 times stronger than heroin. It was primarily created for managing chronic pain. The problem is again, it's 50 to 100 times stronger than heroin. It's 50 to 100 times more easily abused and easy to get addicted to, essentially. So it's a very effective pain medication, but has a bit of a negative stigma around it, because it's so easy to abuse even accidentally or become exposed to even accidentally or misuse even accidentally. So you might have the best intentions in the world to use this for chronic pain, but unfortunately it has resulted, particularly over the last 10 years or so, and people becoming addicted to it because they didn't know how much to take or they lost prescriptions from their physicians and so on. So people get prescribed fentanyl? Correct. There is a difference. It's very important that we differentiate between a legal fentanyl coming over the border and prescription fentanyl that manages people suffering from chronic pain, cancer patients, end of life care. That has been around for two decades now. So if you had to paint me a picture of this, what is the most common way someone gets addicted to fentanyl? Like, what would they be doing? What would be the series of events in their life? Like, what does that look like? Let's say you were in a very bad car crash. You had a spinal injury. You had an neurological injury. You were suffering with pain 24/7 and 10 years ago your doctor prescribed you fentanyl to ease that pain and you had a patch that you could wear and it was a slow drip feed of fentanyl into your body to kind of reduce the pain levels that you were feeling on a daily basis. And then all of a sudden prescription rates for fentanyl dropped by 75% and your doctor said you could no longer get a prescription for fentanyl to manage that pain. But you're welcome to go by Tylenol and see if that works. No, obviously it's not going to have anywhere close to the same effect. And you're back feeling debilitating pain on a daily basis. So what do you do? A thought comes into your mind. I'm just going to go buy my fentanyl from somewhere on the street. I'm going to buy it illegally. I'm going to buy what I think is a correct amount to manage my pain. That falls in line with what I thought I was taking when I was prescribed by my doctor. And I miss judge it or you miss judge it. And you start taking too much and then you become reliant and you become addicted. And that's you in a fentanyl cycle now. When we've interviewed people across Los Angeles as part of a documentary, I don't recently that exact scenario happened to them. And that now fuels the illegal opioid epidemic that we feel we feel across the country on a daily basis and is in the news on a daily basis. So you're addicted fentanyl because you couldn't get it prescribed safely anymore. And you're also contributing to the illegal fentanyl that's seen across the country every day. And why is fentanyl so addictive? Fentanyl's 50 to 100 times stronger than heroin. Now again, when used correctly, this way is to manage it. It's not as addictive as it would be if you were to purchase it illegally and you don't know how much you're taking. But fentanyl basically interacts with the brain in a way that it hits your dopamine levels. You're on a high, you feel really euphoric on it. When you take it illegally and when you try to not take it or try to come off it then, your body's craving that dopamine rush and it's not getting it. So your brain kind of goes into this fight or flight kind of mentality that you feel like you need that opioid again to get that kind of relief at a neurological level. So it's very easy to get addicted to it because you feel like almost you need it on a daily basis just a function. You try it once and you do it incorrectly. It's very difficult to try and wind off that. Again, it's 50 times stronger than heroin. So you can imagine heroin addicts and the pressure they feel to get their fix of heroin. Multiply that by 50. It's not a small amount. You recently did a collaboration with Nick Shirley and you guys made a documentary in Los Angeles Get Row area. What was that documentary about? We talked and wanted to learn the backstory of people that had ended up in places like Skid Row for example and what led to that and was it through addiction, was it through drugs and an overwhelming response from people that we talked to was exactly what I just described to you that they were given opioids to manage pain. They were given opioids that didn't have a safety mechanism attached to it like what we're developing and they became reliant on the opioids. Back 10 years ago during the the oxy carton scandals and when opioids were really at the forefront of scandalous kind of news headlines this is what was happening all across the country. You had pill meals popping up. You had people being given oxy carton for a toothache. This is very problematic and the knock-on effects were feeling today because it gave opioids a very bad name. We're now trying to fix that and make it accessible to people that rely on it and inaccessible to people that are trying to abuse it. What was the most heartbreaking thing you saw on Skid Row? I think the real heartbreaking thing was just the amount of people in that situation eight miles from Beverly Hills. That's something I think that's quite eye-opening. How many people? I was talking hundreds if not thousands of people living rough in bad conditions in conditions that I think many of them never saw themselves in. A lot of the times we'd ask people did you ever see yourself living here? Do you ever think that this will be your situation? One lady in particular that we spoke to came from a medical background. Was prescribed oxy carton for a particular issue. Ended up beating it and beating her habit and through some bad friends was reintroduced to drugs and became addicted again. That was somebody who understood fully what we were trying to develop with a verse because she said if I had been prescribed an opioid that had a safety mechanism attached to it or it was very difficult to abuse, I would never be in this position. A lot of people that had just ended up down on their look in that situation that had big dreams and aspirations and are now in that position. There was also a overwhelming amount of younger people. There was one child for example was 12 years old. That was living with his mom and to Nick's credit put them up in a hotel for a couple of days and I think he posted about it to try and raise awareness and raise some funds for them to try and help them get back on their feet, but that's one story from thousands that are in that position and this is one section of one city in America. It's all over the country and I think there's solutions there. It's just been ignored for far too long particularly by the pharmaceutical industry. I know we're a pharmaceutical company but we are very patient focused in what we do. We're trying to have an impact. I'm a big believer that physicians and doctors take an oath to look after a patient. I don't think pharmaceutical executives should be any different. As far as fitting, I think something a lot of people are confused about is I mean maybe just me but when I walk around LA I see people like I don't know almost like in this dreamy state where they're not really conscious but they're slightly conscious or sometimes you'll see someone folded over. Just technically speaking, what is the fentanyl fold or why are people folded over dangling when they're on fentanyl? That's a really good question because it's got complexities in how it works basically. It hits your dopamine receptor. It makes you feel euphoric. It makes you feel high. It makes you feel really good basically. That's why you'll see people just walking around in the days. They're in La La Land if you want to use that expression. They're just in a very good conscious state of mind. What opioids and fentanyl doesn't do is actually affect your balance. That's controlled primarily in a different part of your brain at the back, lower back end of your brain and your inner ear. Fentanyl doesn't reach or target those areas at all. You'll see people walking around in a days and out of it but they're not falling over so they're losing control of in a way subconscious decision making and that would lead into actually fentanyl can cause a lot of respiratory issues. Particularly when we talk about children who are overdosing on fentanyl by accident, for example, it affects your respiratory system. We breathe subconsciously. We don't really think about it, right? Your brain gets a warning that there's X amount of CO2 in your blood, and it tells your lungs to breathe. But if your brain is in the state of euphoria, it's kind of forgetting the job it has to do. So you actually, basically, your brain stops sending signals to breathe. And that's how a lot of people die from a ventilator overdose. It just hits your respiratory system, essentially. At the same time, in its complexities, it'll tell your body to stop breathing, but you won't fall over in the process. And that's why it's quite a dangerous drug, especially when I talked about people that are self-medicating on opioids that used to rely on it from their prescriber who can't access it anymore. It will be a rapid onset of a lack of ability to breathe. And before they know what's happening, because they're in this state of euphoria, essentially, that's how the overdose is happening. The ventilator takes your brain to a level where it stops doing its job. Do you know who created fentanyl? The first fentanyl patch was Johnson & Johnson, but they didn't create fentanyl the drug, like the actual compound itself. And that patch, DuraGesic, is what it was called, was widely successful, helps thousands of people. But then, quickly, when generic versions came out, people with addiction suddenly realized that these patches could be easily abused. I mean, to give you an example on how they're abused even, like it's as simple as just chewing the patch to take the residual fentanyl out of it and it'll get you high. How can someone abuse fentanyl patches and how severe is that crisis? I think the big issue is obviously still pills, opioid oral pills, basically, the oxycotons, the oxycodons, these types of things. Fentanyl patches, though, are problematic in a sense that a used fentanyl patch can be sold to somebody with addiction on the street for $100, for example, after use, which is about twice as much as the price would be for a brand new fentanyl patch for somebody using it to manage pain. So it's as simple as just taking that patch, there's up to 70% residual fentanyl left in the patch after use in many cases. And like chewing tobacco, put in your mouth, chew it, extract the fentanyl. People will take those patches and seep it in alcohol, for example, or try and make a type of tea out of it if you want to describe it that way. And then drink the concoction, people will actually scrape the contents of the patch, roll it up and smoke it. So there's multiple roots of abuse and they're all really easy. But they all have one thing in common for the most part, which is that they're kind of oral or nasal in how they're approached. So again, people will chew it, they'll drink it, they'll smoke it, and all to get the residual fentanyl out of the patch. Extremely easy. And that's been a big problem and it contributes to the opioid crisis that we're seeing at the abuse of these types of products, particularly patches. Is it fairly easy to get fentanyl patches or are they prescribing them less because of the abuse? Yeah, prescription rates are way down. So 2016 to now, the market size for fentanyl patches, if you want to use that as an indicator, is down about 75%. So prescription rates, essentially, you can make the argument or down about 75%. And that comes back on prescribers not wanting the liability associated with opioids among, you know, there was CDC guidelines that were very anti-opioid, which thankfully now is not the case. They've actually come out when I knew opioid prescribing guideline only two years ago. And just the negative stigma, the media attention, just it just created havoc in the genuine pain industry. So those prescription rates are way down. When patch technology was first invented, what were the main use cases? Was it for fentanyl with draw patients or were there other types? Traditionally, there were obviously we're all aware of nicotine patches to help people wind up smoking. We have issues or other indications like pain, which came around 20, 25 years ago when the introduction of these types of patches were introduced to help people manage pain. And they've been really widely successful. But then we ran into the issue where people realized that these patches were easily abused. And then we had the opioid crisis of 2016, era. And it just kind of made a real negative impact on that industry, which is, you know, seen a negative outfall from that. And then has resulted in people just trying to get access to these types of drugs, which were traditionally successful illegally. If on someone who has children, are they at danger with the current fentanyl patches? Yeah. Why? Primarily accidental exposure. In all good conscience, somebody wears a fentanyl patch. They're not really familiar, even with fentanyl or have strong, it may be. They throw in the garbage. Child when the age of five gets into the garbage one day, takes the patch out of the garbage. They chew on it. They get it on their fingers. They put their fingers in their mouth. It's a no fentanyl actually to cause reaction. And in many cases death, which is really problematic. So that's another thing that our technology would tackle. It's risky in a sense that often people don't know or aren't aware of how to properly discard these types of products. And unfortunately, that's, it's been a data point that we're looking at across the states where dozens of hospitalizations with children on the age of five have been associated with just an improperly discarded fentanyl patch. Your company, NutriBand, created a technology called a Versa to help fight the abuse of fentanyl patches. Yeah, so that's a good question. I think if you understand the accessibility to these types of patches and how they're abused, it helps answer that a bit. So pain is subjective, right? So you might be prescribed something like a fentanyl patch if you're saying the pain is unbearable. So there's a combination of genuine pain patients that are really in that situation. And then people who are just trying to access these medications or drugs to use them incorrectly. And once they get their hands on a fentanyl patch, it's as easy to abuse as just chewing it like chewing tobacco. They will take a patch and see it in alcohol, for example, to let the fentanyl drain out of the patch and then they'll drink the concoction or you will have people will scrape the contents of the patch and smoke it. So they're all kind of oral or nasal in their approach. So we looked at that and it was really important that we developed a technology that was easy to understand. It couldn't be overly scientific, it wasn't just for people and white coats, right? It was for people with with addiction to understand that this was not going to be a route for them to access these drugs as well. So when we look at these routes, they're primarily oral or nasal. So what's something that's easy to understand? Let's make it taste horrific, really bad. Let's make these patches so unbearable to chew anymore that they'll they won't be able to essentially. Let's make them unbearable to smoke. Let's make it really, really potent if they tried to see it in alcohol. So we coated the back of an existing patch that was already on the market. So we partnered with a company called Kundeva Drug Delivery. It's formerly 3M Drug Delivery and they had a generic fentanyl patch on the market already and they offered their fentanyl patch to us to add this technology and we've been developing it with them for a number of years and so we just took their existing patch and we added an additional layer on the back of the patch again and it contains Denatonium Benzoate which is the most bitter substance on the planet and capsaicin or rep rep pepper spray. So we put it in high dosage form. It's a slow immediate or it's an immediate release and a slow release so you can't wait it out essentially and now if you want to chew the patch you have to chew a combination of pepper spray and the most bitter substance on the planet. If you want to smoke it you have to smoke that. If you want to try and see it in alcohol you have to drink a combination of the most bitter substance on the planet and rep pepper spray. It is extremely potent. It is extremely, extremely unbearable. There's probably a simple way of putting it but it's not harmful, non-toxic, food grade ingredients but I will tell you for a fact that your body has like a reaction to it that you spit it back out. I've tried it myself personally now without fentanyl on the patch obviously and it's not something that is for the lighthearted and you can imagine that will make it very difficult for people with addiction to try and abuse those patches and those roots. It will also make the patches theoretically more accessible for people dealing with chronic pain because there won't be a reluctance on prescribers to give access to this type of drug because it's not going to be easily abused and then I think we'll 100% eradicate accidental exposure in children. If a child picks one of these patches up out of the garbage they put it in their mouth, they will spit it back out instinctively and you'll hear them crying probably about it but it will save lives from accidental exposure so it's a very simple fix to a very complex issue and nothing is 100% nothing to abuse proof but if we're going to be nearly the same price, the exact same effectiveness but 90% safer than what's there on the market today I would kind of thought as a way. So I think a lot of people might be thinking okay great you made a patch that tastes bad but why would the person take that if they can just get the normal patch you know what I mean that they can just put in their mouth and chew it kind of reminds me of like Like I saw something come out years ago called consent condoms where it had to be two people opening the condoms and it's like, well, why would someone who doesn't want to have consensual sexual relationship by those condoms? It's like kind of stupid in theory. But this, I'm guessing that there's more to the situation. Do you want to expand upon that? Yeah. No, it's a good question to clarify. Um, we're not launching this product targeting people with addiction directly. We're launching this product to make sure that people suffering from chronic pain can access this drug because if you have this safety mechanism on the patch, prescribers won't be as reluctant to prescribe to genuine pain patients. And then it also cuts out that secondary issue where these patches can be resold to people with addiction and abuse that way. So you cut out the accessibility to this drug for people with addiction. At the same time, you increase the accessibility for people with chronic pain. And then thirdly, again, and equally as important, you almost eradicate accidental exposure in children. So the goal is, you know, it's kind of a trifecta in a way. You make these products very difficult to abuse for people with addiction or people using it incorrectly. As a result, again, you make it accessible to pain patients and you wipe out accidental exposure. We also have to assume that doctors would prescribe your technology over the previous technology. Would you want the previous technology to be banned? I think we've a strong case for a mandate on abuse deterrents. I mean, if we're doing exactly what the other patches do on the market, but we're 90% safer, why should they still be on the market? It's in the interests of the country that they're not available when there's a much safer version. There's a precedent there with abuse deterrents and that's something that we'll be making a push for. For successful, I don't know, but we'll be loud about it and we'll try and make sure that only the safe version is available. We do have another approach we're taking and it's not really typically seen in pharmaceuticals. We are going to launch this pretty much at the same price. It's going to be a very small premium to account for the cost of the additional technology, but what you typically see for a new product coming to market like this, there'll be a thousand percent markup or something and half the insurance companies will take it and have won't and it's just kind of messy. But that's been an accepted norm in the pharmaceutical industry, right? We're coming in virtually the same price with most likely a hundred percent insurance coverage. Going in with a safer version, that does the exact same thing, it's what's there now and we won't be doing it at the expense of patients. Everybody will have access through their insurers to this product and it's non transferable for a generic competitor as well. This would be a branded product, not a generic. I think we'll see significant market share with it at the gate because if you're a doctor, for example, and a patient can get one or a generic version of this patch or our patch, adversity the same price, insurance companies are going to take both, but we're 90 percent safer. You're going to prescribe ours all day. There's a safe lock added in there, whether you get a mandate or not, we're aggressively coming to the market. We don't think these unsafe versions should be easily accessible. The patches aren't for, it's not like a nicotine patch and that you're trying to beat the nicotine addiction. It's for chronic pain. It's just a use case. Primarily, but we do have a secondary indication for the buprenorphine patch that is something we'll be exploring is a nicotine patch type of product to replace methadone clinics. We think there's a wide array of targets that we can have here. It's primarily for treating chronic pain in a safe way, but we do have a pivot with our buprenorphine patch to try and create a technology that's a bit more modern and a bit more what we think will be a bit more successful than a traditional methadone clinic for winding people off opioids. Right. So one's for treatment and one's for recovery, essentially, like trying to get you unaddicted. Yeah, exactly. So the primary goal with these products is for treating chronic pain, but in a round a bit way, you wind people off accessibility to the drug that has them addicted. So there will be an impact on addiction, kind of subconsciously with the product. So because you're taking certain drugs that are typically abused and you're making them very, very difficult to abuse. So some people are just going to not have an alternative and they won't have another choice but to wind off their opioid addiction as hard as it may be. We're going to do our best to make it as easy as possible through our secondary products. But the goal is to just tackle that head on from from all angles because what was really lost on me over the last 10 years is how forgotten people with chronic pain became it became a soul focus on people with addiction. And what was overlooked was people that suffered from chronic pain who didn't have access to adequate care that literally were being told to take a Tylenol for extraordinary injuries or cancer pain and that flushed those people into the addiction space, but it also what we don't talk about is suicide rates for people suffering with chronic pain skyrocketed over the last 10 years because they couldn't get access to adequate care. So that was another kind of heavy fallout from the mentality around opioids when we talk about opioids, somebody says the word fentanyl or somebody says the word opioid, we instinctively just go negative. But if you have a substantial injury that only opioids can help, you won't think that way. And you're not thinking about it to get high, you're just thinking about it that you can walk around your apartment or you're thinking about it that you could get up in the morning. That's the sort of patient we're talking about here. So if I were someone who wanted to be treated for chronic pain 20 years ago, what would that process be? You could be given a gerogesic patch, it depends on the severity of the pain. You could have been given a buprenorphine patch, for example. You could have been given oxy carton. But what changed? Did it get worse? Did the introduction of fentanyl make it that much worse? Not necessarily the introduction of fentanyl, which is a weird kind of dynamic there. What made it worse was an industry that overprescribed opioids, pushed opioids on people. It's well documented. We've all seen the dope sick shows and everything else. The types of companies and the types of people that were involved in that industry at the time were pushing and pressuring doctors to prescribe opioids for things that didn't need opioids. You would have somebody going in for a routine crown in the dentist getting a 30 day supply of oxy carton. Because that years ago, you'd be sent home with a towel and some painkiller is over the counter. What really fuels the opioid crisis was I think it was a realization from the industry that they could get people addicted, unfortunately. That's why often the pharmaceutical industry has such a bad reputation because they put profits over people. They were pushing these types of drugs out and offering major bonuses to sales reps and doing what they could to sell more and more of these types of products to people that didn't need them. All of a sudden, we found ourselves in an opioid crisis, a pandemic almost if you want to call it that because people didn't realize that their doctor was giving them something so addictive. That was primarily pill form. Even though fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and is an extremely addictive drug when used incorrectly, it wasn't really fentanyl that drove that issue. It just being the strongest opioid that is prescribed, it fell into that negative stigma naturally. That was kind of 2010 to 2020, somewhere around 2016 I think is where the peak was in terms of that abuse level and that's when everybody realized there was an issue and I think there was lawsuits, there was jail time, there was a clamp down on these prescription rates because people realized that it was a scheme essentially to make money at patients' expenses and because of that, the negative fallout then was to become very anti opioid as a country, prescribers tried to not prescribe, the CDC revised prescribing guidelines and I get it. We had to look like we were taking a stern stance on these over prescribing of opioids but it wasn't fully thought out and there was genuine patients that were using everything correctly and on these types of products and relying on them that fell into the mess, that was the opioid scandal. We hit that peak and we're kind of turning a corner now particularly with technology like a Versa where we'll make these types of products accessible but we'll do it safely and these types of patches can't be over prescribed, these types of things aren't going to be pushed on people with a toothache, I think we'll be careful this time around and it's easy to be careful when you take out the ability to abuse the drug as easily. There's drugs on the market today that are wildly dangerous on their own right, it's not just opioids, opioids just have that stigma. Like, I'm not sure how many people are aware. of the effects on your liver if you take too much Tylenol. Tylenol and alcohol is a vastly dangerous concoction for your liver, but how many people go out on a Saturday night get your own, can take Tylenol Sunday morning, you know? It's normalized. It doesn't have that same negative stigma, that same bad rep, but opioids do because of the name. If opioids was named something else in the morning, I don't know if the bad rep would follow it if it was doing the right work. Do you think people most misunderstand about the way big pharma works? Big pharma is obviously another bad word. People don't necessarily trust big pharma, pharmaceutical companies, it's a hard stigma right? We're not big pharma. We're just a pharmaceutical biotech company trying to do good in an industry full of people with bad reputations, I guess. I think the darkest part of the machine and there's definitely a feeling in it that when you get to a point that people are priced out of care, that's problematic for me. Again, I talk about doctors taking an oath as a pharma company and as a pharma exec, you should be doing the exact same thing. People come first, you're developing these drugs to save lives, essentially in many cases. And profits kind of come with that, but not in reverse, you're not thinking profits over people. You shouldn't be thinking that way anyway. I'm reminded often, there's an old case study that I learned about in college and maybe I won't name the exact car manufacturer, I won't get into any sort of details like that, but I think it was in the 70s. This particular car manufacturer had an issue with the brakes in one of its cars and they worked out that the cost of a recall would have been more than the cost paid out to the families of people who died in crashes. And that's still quit me forever. When I built a pharma company, I said I was never going to price people out of care. I was never going to have a premium product charging 100% premiums or versus competitors at the expense of patients. We're going to come in and we're going to show how pharmaceuticals can be developed right with patients in mind and all of our shareholders are going to do great in the process, but it's not going to be at the expense of patients, and I think that's often forgotten on the industry. So big companies in the pharmaceutical industry care about their PNL, their profit and loss and they don't really care as long as they're profiting like who dies and what happens to them. I mean, I can't commit and say that directly, but that's certainly the mentality and feeling I think people have, especially if someone suffering from cancer, for example, I mean, the financial impact that has on them for the rest of their lives or for their families or whatever it may be, when in certain circumstances, I'm sure it doesn't have to be the case. I think these companies are so big now that they have shareholders to answer to. They have boards to answer to and it's run, it's run basically looking at numbers, but people aren't numbers. People are people and I think that's what a lot of patients maybe feel certain circumstances that if they're priced out of care or they can't afford their medications and I know it's the case for thousands of people that they can afford their prescriptions. Can you break that down for me? So priced out of care, what are the most common things that are overpriced? As someone who's building a pharmaceutical company, what are the margins on these things? How much does it cost to make a bottle of Xanax, perhaps? How much does it cost to make that and how much do they sell it for? I'll let you give you an example using our numbers. We're coming in at generic pricing almost, a small premium to cover the additional tech. But our margins at what many people would deem lower prices is still 60%, 70%. So when it's typical for a big pharma company to come in and charge a premium of a thousand percent, their margins have to be, I can't say for sure, but their margins have to be significantly higher than that again. So that's called an a premium of a thousand percent. Well you had the situation what was a number of years ago where pharma bro purchased a certain drug and I think he was around a thousand percent premium or he increased the price by a thousand percent held the patent on it. I don't know the exact story, but it was the only drug of its kind and you know he made the argument that I think that the increase in price was to fund additional research. But you know ultimately that price people out of care, so much as your product cost. We don't have final pricing on it just yet, but a typical patch like this would cost by $40 and if you were purchased right now by a big company, what would you guess they would sell it for? Hard to say. It's hard to say, but I don't think it will be unreasonable to estimate $200. Interesting. So, but you know we've had people that are aware of our company say, oh no you should sell this for like two or three hundred dollars. It's fine. I mean that's what you do in this case. They're almost taken back when we say, why would we do that? Because if we increase the price to two or three hundred dollars, we probably lose 30 percent insurance coverage. That's 30 percent of people that need access to this drug that won't have it and will be great, will get more money in the company maybe or why don't we approach it different for once and instead of just trying to get market share, why don't we come in at virtually the same price, 90 percent safer than what's already on the mark, let's take the whole thing. Let's take the whole market and let's make this the new safety standard and that will put matters on people and that will put matters on competitors and and it's a different approach. We're not coming in for market share, we're coming in for the market and we're not doing it at the expense of patients. Are you afraid that if you did capitalize the entire market, you would have pressure from any shareholders, any equity stake numbers to increase prices? No, I don't think so. No, I think we have a very loyal shareholder base, we're all on the same mission together we're all aware of our strategy. It actually, when you run the numbers, if we were to come in and try and take 20 percent market share, but charge a bigger premium on the product, we actually do better financially as a company. If we don't charge that huge premium and we just take a majority market share and it's nice to be able to go to bed at night knowing that you're not doing that at the expense of patients. We're in a very, it's a very unique situation and it's quite niche in a sense that we're going to do great for our shareholders. They'll all be really happy. We're going to do great and save thousands of lives in the process and that's twice the happiness. We're not doing it at the expense of people getting price set of care, I think that's the most important thing here and that's often what we see and kind of deemed to be forgotten. Now, I can't say, I think actually big pharma, if you want to describe it that way, have turned a corner and their mentalities are improving and the approach they take is better and I know a lot of them offer payment assistance to patients because I think it peaked a number of years ago where people were just bitterly frustrated with the setup and the system. So I think they're turning the right corner but we've got to keep heading that direction now and if we can be at the forefront of that and act like what our type of company should act like, then we'll all be better for it. What's the most important moment from your childhood to understand why you built your company? The one that stands out I guess, I think I must have been 12 or 13 and all my friends were getting the new Nokia 3310 or whatever it was like the new Nokia phone and I asked my parents if I could get the same one. I just said, can I get the new Nokia 3310 and my dad turned around and said, "Of course you can. Yeah, no problem. What days do you want to come to work?" I'd just take him back a little bit and I was thinking, "What?" and he said, "No, of course you can get it. When do you want to come around your money and then you can go buy it?" My dad had a painting company, he was a paint contractor and I said, "Okay, we'll go over the weekend, I guess." And he said, "No problem." And I know he brought me to the most miserable job that he had on his list that it was an outside, it was a cold, like, freezing day. We were painting window sales and I know he threw me in the deep end basically and whenever he's kind of reminded of the story or is talking about it, apparently I turn to Brandon and said, "Do you do this every day?" And he said, "Yeah, of course I do. And if you don't want to do this every day, then you don't want to answer to somebody and go and build your company, work on your terms, and remember how hard it was to raise this money for your phone." And we went to work for two or three days with him, got paid a 50 euro a day or 50 pounds a day at the time. I can't remember exactly and went and bought that phone and I held onto that phone like it was a piece of like a bar of gold, you know. And we all had the same phone. My friends had the same phone, but that my phone felt a bit more special because I knew how hard it was to get that phone. So I thought, at the time, I thought, you know, this is terrible, why would they do that? It was only when I got a bit older, I realized kind of the lesson in that that you don't just take the value of a dollar for granted, you know, it's hard to make money. And when you do kind of earn it, you hold onto it and you feel that bit better about it and you feel like you've achieved something. And I think that's a mentality that we've had with this company and it kind of fell into my entrepreneurial career, I guess, if you want to describe it that way. That's the lesson I always go back to that. I'll never take the value of a dollar for granted anyway. I know how hard it is to make it. Just don't have that phone. I think I do still have that phone. Yeah, it's in the drawer somewhere. I mean, that's, again, that was my first, that was my first big purchase myself. So, yeah, and it's probably still, probably still has battery. It was an Nokia back then. So it's probably additional. Yeah. Your father, he, he has a heart condition, right? He takes a nitro, uses a nitro glycerin patch. It's with a heart medication. Kind of widens the, the veins and the arteries. And it's a very successful patch technology. Actually, it's been around for decades now as well. So he's been on that for, let's say, 20 years. It was actually the original inspiration for the company, because I saw him wearing that one day and I was thinking, well, if you can take heart medication through a patch, it's obviously quite trusted. Why aren't we using that for other things? Like, I got very into, into the idea of diabetes medication through a patch, because how uncomfortable it must be for a diabetic to take an injection every day. Even though I know plenty get used to it, I'm sure plenty don't. I got really obsessive with that idea. And it was a bit ahead of its time. It really wasn't, there wasn't much of a technology that could do that at the time, but there is now, we're actually exploring that in a neutron band as particularly for pediatrics. So if you think of a child that has to, you know, take insulin every day, maybe they don't have to take an injection anymore. Maybe in a few years time, they can wear a pep pig sticker. And it's fun for them, but little do they know they're getting a dose of insulin or excited at the same time. These are the types of things that we're going to work on as a company as well. And there is theoretically, I think, ways to achieve that. So it's exciting, you know, the future is exciting for neutron band as well. If we make a big dent in the opioid crisis with our first line of products, wouldn't it be great to make a big dent in the diabetic market, particularly with children? That's interesting. Um, this is super off topic, but if you heard of it in Sam, in Sam, it's like a medication that really rich people take. It's like $10,000 a month, Sam Bankman Fried was taking it when he was running FTX. Okay. He ordered this, but is it a methaphenidate patch? Is it similar to that? It probably is similar to that, but it's like it's own thing. I don't know what in Sam stands for, but it was weird to me because my friend, he takes it, he's very into pharmaceuticals and once he made enough money, he's like, I'm taking this shit, but I was like, I wonder why it's in patch form. Like, I wonder if it's, uh, if it's easier to do patches or if it's easier to do like pills. I think if it's, if it's similar to methaphenidate, for example, um, it's the slow delivery, slow release rate over time. So if it's, it's for people with ADHD, which I know is rampant and that's, you know, rich people space. Um, if it's an ADHD issue, typically when you take something orally, you'll kind of hit a peak and then you get this kind of calm down on it. You take it in a patch, it's more gradual in its delivery. Do you sleep with a patch? You can take it off right before bed usually. I guess maybe with something like, uh, uh, methaphenidate patch, you might not sleep with it or would you? It's really, it's on a case-by-case basis. Yeah, but like put the nitroglycerin patch to my dad, whereas for example, that's a 24-hour patch. So really just depends on people's tolerance for things as well, but certain patches are definitely 24. Actually, fentanyl patches can be I think up to three days in a row without taking it off. So, um, that's interesting. I would assume that medication would be like, better to be taken in a patch if like, you're taking anything that wears off. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like a lot of people who take stimulants, it's like they have it for a few hours and they like get a crush from it or like even caffeine. I'm sure there are caffeine patches. There are, I mean, there are caffeine patches. They don't typically, I mean, they kind of go through phases of popularity. I feel like these caffeine patches, um, but patches in general offer a huge benefit, right? It's not just the kind of release rates that you see, but it doesn't have the same negative impact on your stomach. You don't have to digest it that way. It doesn't have, um, kind of those sort of reactions. A lot of drugs can be hard on your stomach, for example, or hard on your liver. So when you're taking it straight into the bloodstream, it's just a different way of delivery that in and often many cases can just be better for you. So I'm sure that's part of the reason as well with the, you know, the hyper wealthy people taking a $10,000 patch. I think it does something where I can't remember exactly. It just always keeps the dopamine levels high and it's just consistent, which makes sense that it would be in patch form. Yeah. But isn't that, isn't that problematic that we're talking about a $10,000 patch? That just falls right back into the previous conversation we had. No, I mean, that should not be, I can tell you for a fact that the cost of that patch is nowhere near $10,000. So if they just know their market, whoever's selling it knows their market, when people are willing to pay it. So I'll have to research that a bit more. So Gareth, your company is listed on the NASDAQ, valued at $10,000,000. How did you take a company public with zero investors? Not easily. It's a simple answer. It was kind of a theoretical approach that we had that we thought would work and hadn't really been done successfully before. So I started the company in Ireland originally and spent a couple of years trying to get it off the ground, and with varying levels of success and non-success. We had won some startup awards, we had developed a bit of a reputation and a small customer base. I was originally selling like vitamin patches. I started my final year in college, so 22. It was actually my thesis at university. It was a thesis around delivering medication inspired by the patch of my dad was wearing. And the more I was writing that thesis, the more I was thinking this looks like a business plan to me. I mean, I'm just going to go scrap that thesis idea. I think I did my thesis on like, I had to do, I had to pull it together in like three days. So I did it on like corruption and Italian football or something, just filed it submitted it, see you later. And I have now a business plan that I'm going to go and start right out of college. And so, graduated, all my friends went into industry, becoming a accountant, you know, lawyers, whatever. And I went painting houses for my dad's company and put money aside to try and build what I thought was going to be a game-changing company, basically. And it was a little bit of a learning curve. I just thought everybody was going to see the idea I had. Everyone was going to think it was great. I was going to be thrown money, and we were going to build this big, amazing company. And it would be simple. Did you want investors? At the time, probably, but luckily, never really got to the point where it was really investable early stage, I think. You know, I started struggling to really get it off the ground. And then I just said, I need to, you know, raise some capital some way. So I started entering startup competitions. That came with prize money. So I got 20,000 euro from Ireland's best young entrepreneur. I got a small injection of cash then from a local enterprise office, like one other national awards, which drew attention from some distributors who plays small orders. But the product was a little bit premature, I think. What vitamins? It was like a multivitamin in a patch form. Yeah. And it was maybe at the time a little bit naive from a scientific standpoint. I didn't have a scientific background, I had a business background. I formulated the products myself. I found a manufacturer in China. I got a chip over to Dublin and I went knock on and doors trying to sell it. These vitamin patches. It just didn't sell through like I thought it would. It sold a little bit here and there. I was, it wasn't enough to make a living really. But I cut the attention of a company in Utah who became very interested in it. And I thought, great. This is the ticket now. Let's start selling together and that relationship just kind of fell apart. I actually ended up selling my company to them after they listed to go public on the OTC market. What's the OTC market? So OTC market is the over the counter stock market. So it's basically the penny stocks. It's the ones that are a little bit less regulated than the major exchanges like Nasdaq or New York. A lot of companies use it because they haven't reached a big enough stature to list on a major exchange. So they'll list there and they'll trade in good faith and they'll do what they can to grow. But it's also where the pink sheets are. That could be five cents a share today and thirty dollars a share tomorrow. Just it's a little bit tricky in that sense. And so they listed on the OTC because they didn't qualify to list on a major exchange. And they were trying to get like in theory someone who puts their company on one of these exchanges is trying to get capital from retail investors. Yeah. Primarily trades retail. Most institutions won't touch it. Yeah. So it'll trade retail. Sometimes it's at the main mechanism like just so you can get capital. If I buy a thousand dollars of your company, do you, does that money go in your bank account? Does not if you buy it on an exchange. So if you directly invest in the company, you know, it'll give companies the ability to raise money privately and say, well, our share price is four dollars. We'll let you directly invest in the company at three fifty. And it gives them that ability. So if you buy ten thousand dollars of our company, which is on the NASDAQ now, you're buying it in most cases from another individual who's selling it. So you're just trading. It's just exchanging. But who bought it first? So you sold a percentage of equity to the exchange. So if we when we listed on the NASDAQ for example, we raised through an institution eight million dollars there about and that was directly into the company. But to raise that $8 million, we issue at the time, I don't know, 1.2 million shares to these private individuals who then can go on the exchange and sell those shares if they want. Right. And then the exchanges want the shares so they can make money off of transaction volume. Yeah, like fees. They'll make money that way. They'll make money by listing fees. And just generally, there's tons of different mechanisms. Like Robinhood, for example, is fearless trading to an extent. But they make money through settlements. So there's always a couple of cents here and there between buyers and sellers that kind of, they'll be able to pocket. And when there's millions of trading happening a day, that adds up very quickly. So before you were a public company, you had sold your company. Yeah, tell me the story there. Yeah, so this company that had listed on the OTC, and I was a bit naive back then, a young business graduate, thought I knew it all, thought I had all the answers, you know, business was easy. They said, we want to purchase your company. We'll give you 5% equity in the new public company. And we'll own your product and your IP and we'll launch it and try and market the product in Asia and, you know, sold a dream, basically. And I was like 25, 26 at the time. And I was thinking, wow, the shares, the 5% equity that I was going to get in this company, I think, was worth about a million and a half. And I was thinking, wow, 25, 1.5 million businesses is easy. I'll just start another company, sell it again, you know, follow that kind of cycle. So I did the transaction and then a couple of days. I don't even know if it was a couple of days later. That company had issued, I think, billions of shares. New shares that didn't exist when we did our deal. So that diluted me down to not point, not, not, not, not, how many zeros fit on a calculator type percentage when I was at 5%. And my shares were now worth like 50 and grad. So I had, in the space of a couple of days, become a millionaire. And in the space of a couple of days later, I had sold my company for $15,000. And I was thinking again, naively, oh, you know, it's all part of the master plan. Shirley, I mean, there's no way they were going to do that to me. Who did they issue the shares to themselves, consultants like you name? It was just, it was just, it was a clever way to devalue the money that you had in the company. And they also require yours. Yeah, I was an afterthought, really. They used me, I think, mostly for a press release that it looked good that they bought this company. But these guys were just issuing shares and selling into the market. And I think they were just making, they were pocketing money themselves. Anyway, it became a problem. Regulators got involved. They caught on to it. The management was kind of outstaged. A new CEO was brought in. And, you know, I was kind of collateral damage, really, with what happened. Did they try to make you CEO? There was a conversation about that. Yeah, I think that was, when I think back on that, I was thinking great. Yeah, I'm going to be CEO of a public company. But little did I know. And only later in life, I was like, oh, they were trying to make me the, the fall guy, you know? Which would have just been like, unfixable from a reputation standpoint. When everything kind of, when the roosters came to rooster, whatever the expression is, you know, luckily, I just never got mentally to this place where I accepted that. I thought it was great. I was trying to almost convince myself. But you just, you know, when you just have that feeling in the back of your head, it's like, too good to be true kind of stuff. And so I didn't do it. And I kind of just got into this state for a while of just feeling like I thought I was still going to work with them. I thought everything was going to work itself out. The new CEO was going to fix things. Everything was going to be fine. And I just kind of got a little bit complacent and waiting for things to just, you know, hopefully turn a corner and I was wrong. And then I remember it was like a cold Tuesday, rainy afternoon and Dublin and a mutual contact that I had made in Utah had reached out. And he said, I know this lady, Deena, who is flying to Ukraine, has like an 18 hour layover in Dublin, nothing might come from it, but I think you should meet her and just tell her your story and tell her what you're doing and see what happens. And I remember just saying, yeah, okay, thanks for the introduction. And then hanging up and saying, I'm not going to that like that sounds awful, where this random lady would layover in Dublin, it's miserable outside and cold and, you know, riddled with self pity and something in my brain just said, get over yourself, go take the meeting at the very least, you know, it's another connection, you don't know what might come from it. And so I went sat down with Deena and told her the story, told her the company I was trying to build. And she said, that's really interesting. I need to introduce you to a guy called Sergey, who's now the chairman of the company, business partner for 10 years and tell him about what you're doing and what company you have and I'll set up a call. And so we left the meeting, Deena set up the call, I think next day, day after and I got on Zoom or Skype at the time and was telling Sergey about the company and, you know, he was like, I was very interesting. I think I might have an idea for this and I just said, great. And then at the end of the call, I said, oh, by the way, I sold it, I don't really have it right now. But I think maybe I don't know, maybe we can get it back. Or maybe we just, I think I said to him, I didn't have a whole lot. So we can just do the exact same thing again and call it something different. And he just goes, no, go get your company back and then we'll talk. And I think it was like a test like I've got the, the stones basically to fight for what was really mine and get it back. And that's what I did. I just reached out to the new CEO that was there, explained to him what happened. And I just said, you know, the decent thing here to do would be just to sign my company back over. And thankfully that he just said, yeah, I agree. So it was just lucky he was a nice guy. Yeah. Pretty much. I just, look at that. I don't think he wanted to deal with it in, like in a way, I mean, it wasn't like it was a huge thing for them. It wasn't, it wasn't like IP associated with it. It was just a brand that they had gone about and they were going to sell in Korea. Right. So a few out to Salt Lake and sat down with him and he just said, yeah, and you know, I'll sign a pack over and let's see, maybe we can work together down the line and I said, yeah, no problem. And no way working with you guys again, but you know, whatever I need to do to get it back. And I did. And so that led to organizing a meeting with Sergey to sit down and talk about it more and make a plan. And I was Thanksgiving of 2015, I had started seeing a girl actually who is my now wife, you know, on visits to Utah with this company, Heidi is her name. And we, Sergey said, I can meet you in Las Vegas in, you know, a rent Thanksgiving. And I said, Thanksgiving, you're not going to spend it with your family. And he goes, no, usually I go on a scuba diving trip or something around this time, but I got canceled and my in-laws make a really bad turkey. So I'm looking to get out of Orlando and do something else. And so myself, Heidi, we drove to Vegas from Salt Lake and met with Dean and Sergey and we sat down and we formulated a plan in theory that we would take all of the ideas and to avoid raising expensive money at the time, which would have been kind of an angel round, which would have been huge amounts given that we didn't have a huge amount to offer. We decided that we were going to, you know, pull together some money and list the company on the OTC, essentially what that other company had done in Utah and what we were going to do it right. And we were going to use it as a means to build the company using stock in place of cash. So we would start buying up smaller patch companies using the trading stock to do so instead of raising expensive money. And so we started a multi-year plan of acquisitions using shares as an OTC company. The biggest, kind of most important one was an acquisition of 4P therapeutics in Atlanta and they had developed the initial concept and patent filing for what is now the diverse technology that we were developing to tackle the opioid crisis. So you did a massive roll up with a company as the parent company and essentially issued them shares. Would they sell immediately or would they just be a part of the, they just came under as a wholly owned subsidiary. So the individuals would get shares in the company. For the most part, they wouldn't sell. I don't know where their sales records are today. But at the time, we all basically said we were going to take this journey together as shareholders in a bigger company and let's aim to get listed on the NASDAQ. Because it's in your, it's in your best interest as a smaller company to be acquired by someone doing a roll up because you'll get a higher multiple if in an Exit scenario or it'll just be worth more if it's on the NASDAQ. Yeah, exactly. If 4P had developed what is going to be a really great technology, but it needed additional funding. Like we couldn't really finance heavily the diverse technology to be listed on the NASDAQ because that gave us the ability to raise millions of dollars. When we were on the OTC, that was much tougher to bring in any sort of financial raises. We did a couple of small raises that helped us with purchases like that, but nothing to the level that we were able to do on the NASDAQ. How many companies have been listed on the NASDAQ in the last like few years that didn't take outside funding? Because your store unique in that way. Yeah, I mean, we talk outside funding, but not anywhere close to the levels. When we listed on the NASDAQ, we raised money that day. But most companies will go back three, four, five times a year sometimes. I guess how many of your boots strapped until that point? I would say we're a bottom 1% in terms of bootstrapping. I'd say we're a bottom 1% in terms of compensation for executives. So how'd you make money? during this time. We have a subsidiary and we've just been very careful with how we spend money. So we've raised money with existing shareholders as recently as last year, but we haven't raised it with institutions on Wall Street since a number of years now. I guess if you were reinvesting everything, how did you stay afloat? You had said something along the lines of you were driving Uber all running the company. Back to building the company, we came up with that idea that we'd start buying smaller companies, but we were very reluctant to take money. We actually got offered at $1.1 million as like a bridge financing and it was going to be a convertible note that when we listed, it would convert to stock and blah, blah, blah. It was just a bit messy and I thought, wow, a million dollars. I mean, that's going to help us so much with what we need to do and what we need where we need to go. And it was surrogate and fairness to him just said, we can't touch that money. And I was like, you know, living, if we were taking a paycheck from anywhere we could get it, we were living paycheck to paycheck and he just said that's going to come back to bite us in two years time. We can't touch it and they just said, okay, we won't do it then and we didn't take it and he was right. It would have converted at a stupid rate and, you know, that person would have been a major shareholder and a massive headache and that was another kind of learning curve. But we actually got to a point where we acquired one company in Ohio in Columbus that went south. Relationship fell apart. They actually, from under our nose, kind of stole back the IP that we purchased from them and ended up in a lawsuit for that lasted a number of years and it was just another learning curve basically. But it was while I was in Ohio, I was driving for Uber and we actually had filed a list on the NASDAQ. We then ended up in a position where, you know, in good faith, we got into an SEC problem and I, you know, when we listed on the OTC, we said, we're going to act like a NASDAQ company. We're going to do everything right and everything by the book. We're going to grow this idea through acquisitions and then we'll grow big enough that we list on a major exchange like NASDAQ. And then while we're in Ohio, the SEC contacted and Basie said, we're doing an informal investigation on the company. Can you provide this information? And I just thought like, what's that about? You know, like we've done everything, you know, right in our minds. And unfortunately, despite the fact that we had taken an opinion from two lawyers and also a dermatologist on the regulation of one of the products we planned to create, it was an expansion on that vitamin patch, I think. So we filed in one of our SEC filings that it would not need FDA approval because that's what we were told from, you know, expert opinions. And it just happened to be wrong. And the SEC have this, you know, mentality that it doesn't matter if you did it on purpose or not if you're wrong, you're wrong. And you pay the price. So I remember I was sitting in a car park. We had no money. We were actually at the point like where I was calling home, embarrassingly asking for help at rent. And like that was became quite a frequent thing. And I got a call on my phone and it said something on it like US government or something. And I was thinking, oh, what's this? Like this is weird. And I answered. And the lady said, hi, my name is whatever Lisa, I'm with the Securities Exchange Commission on Miami. Just wondering if you can come in and answer a couple of questions. And I just thought, yeah, no problem. Where is your office again? Did you say? And she said, where in the Miami office? And I just kind of said to her, yeah, that's no problem, Lisa. The only problem is I don't think I have the money to fly down there. And you know, there was kind of this pause for a second. And then she says, is this garage yard and CEO of Nutramand? You're publicly listed company. And I said, yeah. And she was like, he can't fly down to Miami. I said, no, and to be honest, I'm sitting in a car park right now ready to go to do my other job. And I don't have the means to get down there. And she just said, hold on a second. And then came back on the phone a couple of minutes later and said, we'll fly you down and put you up. And that's kind of when I knew we were in trouble. And so I was like, oh, the SEC paid you to fly down to meet up with them because you didn't have enough money. Yeah, they flew me to Miami from Columbus, Ohio. On paper, probably about 20 million. 40 dollars. So, where were you living? We had a studio apartment in Columbus that was, I think like $800 a month that was basically I was scrounging money together. And my wife was nannying for another family. And we were just pulling money in piece by piece to try and make it work. We had a studio apartment with a mattress on the floor and a $100 couch off Amazon. And that was it. He just in the corner. And we kind of just lives like two broke college students built in the company, basically. So, yeah, basically Sergei got the same call. Sergei was very, Sergei's, you know, a bit more, we have this good, good cup, bad cup kind of situation where he's a bit more fiery and a bit more, you know, going home. And I think I'm a bit more relaxed. So he went in first, went down to Miami, he said that they ended up getting in like a shouting match with each other and basically came out and said, you know, I don't know what they're after. And, you know, good luck when you go in, but maybe you should women a lawyer. So we actually found a lawyer that took shares in the company to come represent me and thankfully did because I went in for like a four hour interrogation then as well. And I came out saying, well, I don't know what they're looking for either. You know, like we'll see what happens here. Maybe it's just, I kind of naively convinced myself that it was just housekeeping. They were just making sure we were doing everything right. You forget about the fact that they actually flew you dead to Miami and put you up in a hotel. That's usually not how people are treated if they're doing something right. A couple weeks past and then we got a letter that basically said we've turned the investigation formal and, you know, we believe you've broken whatever law or whatever guidance. We just thought, you know, that they were wrong and we kind of went back and forth a bit and eventually we spoke to an FDA attorney who is like a specialist in the area and he said, no, look, this product will be considered a drug because the method that it's delivered, it doesn't matter if the ingredient itself is a supplement. And we had basically filed that we thought it would be supplemented and wouldn't need FDA approval. So we ended up getting to a position where we had to hire an SEC Enforcement Attorney Joe. He spoke their language, we went back and forth for a while. You know, at one stage they were threatening to, I think Joe called up at one point and says, you know, they want $75,000 each and a fine. You can never try to share under $5 again and you can't be an executive or director in your company. And I just thought, well, that's like, that's like Bernie made off type stuff. I mean, I don't think that deserves that sort of treatment, but okay. And so we surely we can't accept that. Like that would have been a career ending kind of stuff. So he kept at it and eventually got to the point where it was a cease and desist, no admit, no deny settlement. They were aware of the fact that we relied on information and good faith, but it was still wrong. So we acknowledged that it was wrong. And I think maybe they acknowledged, I can't say for sure, maybe they acknowledged that we really didn't mean to be wrong. But the, the real kind of settling point was that the shares never really traded on the information. There was nobody harmed, essentially, because I think it happened before the stock started trading on the OTC. So we ended up paying a fine of $15,000 or $25,000 each, which was a huge amount of money at the time. Didn't have that obviously. We had a shareholder in the company who said he would help with the fine and we pay him back down the line. But you know, I always laugh at the fact that Sergei went in kind of aggressive. They were yelling at each other across the table back and forth. They offered me to pay it in an installments, but they didn't offer him to pay an installments. And I think that was kind of the last, like, the last win on the other side. Right. And we've never had an issue with the SEC since. It was a learning experience. It was really in the grand scheme of things. It's not like it was anything huge, but I can't be on the record saying that it was right or wrong. It's a no admit, no deny cease and desist. Can't say we were right. Can't say we were wrong. But you can get reads between the lines if you want or make your own judgment on how serious it really was. But yeah, I mean, so we're extra careful now. Now we get four opinions on things like that instead of three. You know, just kind of you take it as a learning curve. Yeah. So to touch on the period of your life where you were driving Uber. So you're driving around the country with your wife, broken brakes, staying at different Airbnb, you're driving for Uber sometimes and you have millions of dollars on paper in your company. Do you think picking the right wife is the most important business decision a man ever makes? Oh, it's huge. Like, I don't know. Like, when I think of what Heidi went through during their startup years, I don't know how she stuck by basically. I mean, first of all, she's way better looking to me. She could have any guy she wants. But second of all, like, that that was real tough times. That was a different level kind of supporting one another. And I mean, she got a job, you know, as a nanny for a pretty wealthy family. So she'd be among that lifestyle of wealth every single day and then coming home to me in our, you know, studio apartment with a mattress and a hundred dollar couch off Amazon and nothing else. So yeah, I think partners in general are huge. So obviously your first partner, it's your wife or your girlfriend or whoever it may be, your husband, whatever the case is. And the partners extend to business as well. Like I think Sergei is, there is no neutral band without his partnership and what we tackle together. You know, Heidi deserves a huge amount of credit, almost as like a founder for sticking by through all of that because it couldn't have been easy. What do you think she's doing? I like to, you know what, to all the tough parts and all the setbacks and everything else, she never once said to me, maybe she'd do something else and get another job. She always just kind of subtly believed it would work out without ever being too emotionally expressive about it. It was just in her mannerisms. She just said, okay, you know, I come back with terrible news again. As she just say, okay, that's regroup will figure it out. You know, that's what a person by your side is huge. And I'm looking now that I have a huge amount of people like that surrounded in my life. Like my parents again, for years and years would help it rent and would send over, you know, a couple hundred euro if we were short or dollars and never once said, maybe it's time to come back and get a job. They always had just this subtle way of letting you figure it out. I think that's really important. And I think it's often overlooked. I'm glad you brought it up because it's often overlooked in these kind of entrepreneurship stories that entrepreneurs are always viewed as just like one person that has done something big, but very few, if Annie have done it alone, they've done it with the right people by their side. And I think that's, that needs to be talked about a little bit more. You know, things only change for me as an entrepreneur when I started talking to people about the idea and started asking for advice and started realizing that the smartest version of you is to surround yourself with people smarter than you. That's still something I stick by today, I think. And yeah, just, yeah, Heidi deserves a huge amount of credit for what we're new to about this today. I think a big reason people supported you on this journey. And this is just my assumption, is that because it wasn't like, I'm just trying to get rich, you know, it wasn't like, I hate my life that I'm just a guy on Wall Street. I'm just making a bunch of money. Like, there's a movement attached to it. Entrepreneurs thinking about starting a company. Why should you build a movement instead of a company? - Yeah, that's an interesting question. I think you want to have, and it's, you know, Warren Buffett, I'm not comparing myself by Annie Mainz to Warren, but Warren Buffett isn't motivated by money, he's motivated by the competition, you know, having an impact, wanting to be the best at something. I think that's what a lot of entrepreneurs feel as well. Our big motivation and what I'm really excited about the most is the fact that we'll be able to confidently claim that we're saving lives through a company we built. I mean, that's really nice and it's really great. And the impact that we'll have building a company is, it's, you know, it's complex in a way because I think most successful entrepreneurs build a company around something they're passionate about. Anybody can start a industry firm and build it up that way. And like you said, have their nine to five and maybe they're not passionate or excited about it. But if you're going to have an impact, that's lasting. That's something that really drives me is, we like to think big, have an impact. How are we going to leave an impression? And that's something I think that we'll do at Nutri-bound now and numerous other things over the last number of years that I worked on have been surrounded, kind of revolving, leaving an impression and doing something big. And I love when people say you can't do something or it will never work out because that happened with Nutri-bound numerous times in the early years. But, you know, advisors that you would typically rely on, I mean, I had, you know, state bodies in Ireland that said the company would never work. Here's all the reasons why. And, you know, there's two mindsets. You can have as an entrepreneur and you can have a growth mindset or you can have a fixed mindset. And a fixed mindset thinks you're born an entrepreneur, a growth mindset thinks you can learn to become one. And a fixed mindset will hear negative feedback and take it as a decision. And a growth mindset will hear negative feedback and ponder how to fix it. So I think having that sort of mindset, I just love that. I love hearing that something will never work or that's a crazy idea and then saying, okay, perfect. Let's get to work. Can you break that down from me, the movement portion? Because, like, I'm curious of the benefits of uniting around a goal, like this podcast for instance, I can hire an editor and tell him I need my videos done and you'll get paid this amount of money or I can say, hey, do you want to edit for the biggest podcast or the fastest growing podcast in the world? Like, there's that version of the story. But, like, what does that really do? Because people don't think that's tangible. I do notice you attract better talent. I think that you definitely do attract similar mindsets if you act that way and that's your mentality. There's certain, like, people, different entrepreneurs kind of speak different languages, right? So you have entrepreneurs that will, you know, start a little retail store and they'll be happy living that entrepreneur's ship kind of style. Or you'll have entrepreneurs that want to have an impact and want to go big and want to make a change. And typically, when they're loud about it and they get stuck in and they're confident about it, despite maybe people saying it won't work, they'll usually attract people if they push through that initial negative kind of feedback. So, yeah, that's certainly something I would say from my perspective, I'm surrounded with very like-minded people. Like, I have a network of people that I'll approach and say, I have this idea, what do you think? And they'll say, it's, everybody's gonna think it's mad. Let's do it. And I love that. - Yeah, on that point, it seems to me that if you wanna attract top level talent and you are someone who's addicted to making money. Like, the only way to get top level talent working for you is basically a pyramid scheme or you have a situation like Wall Street where they're just vicious with each other and there's different levels to it basically organized like a pyramid stream structure or you have a company that it's like, hey, we want to create tremendous impact and people aren't as motivated by the money and they're motivated by the mission of it. That's what I would guess. - Yeah, usually if you have a major impact or you create a major impact, it comes with financial reward. So we're gonna have a huge impact with a versa. And our shareholders are gonna do really well. But the stock price goes to $100 because we own this particular side of the market. Everybody's feeling happy and everybody's feeling great. But the last thing I'm gonna think about tonight is how many lives do we save today? From a company that was a college project. The money stuff comes secondary almost. Now I know those shareholders that are gonna be primarily focused on returns and that's great. But if you have a big impact and you become the kind of number one in your space, then the reward comes financially anyway. But it's hard to do it the other way around. It's hard to try and become financially the most rewarded company. But your impact isn't as big because that financial reward how long is that gonna last? If a young up-and-coming company is more aggressive than you wants to have a bigger impact than pretty soon they'll have the best financial reward. So just have to put one front to the other sometimes. - So you left your company briefly to run for president of Ireland. They don't really like outside candidates entering that space. So it ultimately didn't work out. But now that you're back as CEO of NutraBend, just what did that political defeat teach you? - I suppose firstly of no regrets with how things went. I think we definitely started a positive conversation about the nomination process for example. We definitely I would hope encouraged some younger people maybe to look at politics in Ireland which is primarily dominated by an older age group. - 'Cause you're the youngest person to run. - Ever, right. - Correct, youngest ever in nominee. - Yeah, I got it. - So that's a nice kind of record to have. But I think the impact, I think firstly people were surprised by it wasn't typically done. It's usually a position for outgoing politician who's kind of, they've done their work in the dollar or parliament for example, and are looking for a role to go into that's kind of almost like a retirement position. And I said, look, the president of Ireland should be an active, engaging energetic role. And with so many of the issues facing younger generations today like the cost of housing and emigration. People leaving the country because they can't afford to rent even in big cities like Dublin. Wouldn't a younger president be a great candidate that is of that generation and can keep those issues top of the narrative? And yeah, I think it went pretty well I think in the grand scheme of things considering there was a very aggressive block in terms of outside independent candidates. I think for the first time in decades our council route was more or less blocked off. We only had three nominated councils. I got two of the nominations from that three. You need four to officially run in the end. So we're the youngest ever nominee. We didn't pull it off in the end. It was always gonna be a long shot. But hopefully there's positives to be taken and encouraged maybe politicians that would be far better than me open down the country that would get into politics now and not be restrained by age. So, but it was another thing that fell back into that kind of entrepreneurial mentality that you want to be impactful, you want to make a change, you want to take on things that people think is mad. And that's exactly where that one fell. Has it changed the way you think about companies in general? Not really. I think probably it hasn't really changed the way I think about companies. No, I think the mentality stayed the same through the election versus how we wrote a new trend. We think big, we dream big, we take things on that people think are going to be very difficult to do. Like we basically created a whole company around developing opioid medication in a time when even the word opioid is a negative word. But we're trying to have people think about things differently. Opiodes are dangerous when you use them incorrectly. But, you know, so are lots of things. If you use, I don't know, what's like a silly example? Like if you use opioid incorrectly, it's dangerous. But if you use, you know, bleach incorrectly, it's dangerous, but you can get bleach at the store. You know, if you use Tylenol incorrectly, it's dangerous. Gareth, we've been filming this podcast for 120 minutes. How many people have died from fentanyl since we've been filming this podcast? We're talking in one person every five minutes. So 24 people have died from an overdose since we started this, 24 people in many circumstances that probably didn't need to die if circumstances were different. So it's not a small number and this is just the United States. And do you think fentanyl is the problem? I think it's a major part of the problem. But people overdose from lots of different drugs, opioids and fentanyl are the largest component of that number. So fentanyl, if you use correctly, is it a miracle drug? I would imagine if you asked anybody suffering from around the clock chronic pain, that question, they would say yes. If your technology, the abuse deterrent patch, works the way you hope it will, what could the fentanyl crisis look like in 10 years? I don't think it'll be solved. I would hope that it would encourage other solutions to come to market at the same time. But we will definitely see a positive impact on numbers. We will definitely have an impact on overdose rates. We will have an impact on deaths and we will have an impact on adequate care for pain patients. And it doesn't stop at fentanyl. We have an entire family of opioids that this tech is applicable to. Bupinorphine next, for example, and other addictive medications like methylphenidate. So we're proving the model with fentanyl. But the goal is to revolutionize the safety standard of easily abused medications period, starting with fentanyl. And I think we've a proper candidate there to set the tone. Gareth, after building your company, losing it, taking it public and running for president, what do you think is the best piece of advice you've ever received or given? Death. With the right mindset, there's no such thing as failure. It's only feedback. So you can take any outcome, even negative, and use it to create a positive or try and achieve what you're trying to do. I think that's something that's been really powerful for me. Lord knows we had a lot of negative setbacks along the way and a lot of people would have taken that as a indication to call it a day. But, you know, I think everything improves and can improve with negative feedback. It's hard to get things to improve if everything is going smoothly. So if your trial is trying to better yourself, negative feedback needs to be welcomed as well. What's the worst piece of advice you've ever received? The worst piece of advice I've ever received was don't develop new Japan to come up with another idea. I would say that was a terrible piece of advice because it was from somebody who I should have maybe listened to, you know, and how I listened probably wouldn't be sitting here chatting to you. Don't know if we would have a potential solution to the opioid crisis in the works. You know, that piece of advice had I listened to it wouldn't just impact me today. It would impact thousands of people that we're hoping to impact as a company. So it had a knock-on effect. So I don't know if that is necessarily the piece of advice you were looking for in terms of how it kind of structured you as a person. But for me, it was terrible advice. And it was probably not wrong advice in a way when they looked at things black and white. Maybe I shouldn't have tried to develop the company. It was uphill battle and it proved to be. But that comes back to that kind of same mindset again. Do you like challenges or do you like, you know, an easy and easy ride? I love a challenge. I love when people say something's mad because the right-brother is when they were trying to fly. I'm sure we're told they were mad a million times. And, you know, I flew here yesterday on a big old metal plane in the air because they didn't take that advice. You know, if you want to change things and you want to have an impact, most ideas say I'm mad before they become reality. I think Elon Musk I'm sure I was told he was mad a million times. Self-driving cars was a mad idea 20 years ago. You know, iPhones, touch screen was mad idea 30 years ago. Things that we just consider normal now. Where mad idea is at some point, maybe safe opioid treatment won't be a mad idea in another year or so. Well, everyone now, this has been your guest. Gareth Sherden. This is the Jack Neil podcast. Thanks, Jack. I appreciate you coming on up. Absolutely. Thanks.