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Welcome to Make Your Passion Pay, hosted by LuAnn Buechler, a seasoned leader with a master’s degree in Hospitality Administration and a recipient of the TLC Award for Leadership. This podcast is designed for business owners who have left toxic environments to create their own thriving workplaces but find themselves struggling with team building and mindset. Join LuAnn as she shares insights and strategies to help you cultivate joy and a positive mindset in your business and personal life. Drawing from her experience working with renowned leaders like Dr. Ivan Misner, LuAnn guides you in building a supportive community and mastering the art of people management. Each episode offers practical advice and inspiring stories to empower you to transform your work environment into one that reflects your values and passions. Tune in to discover how to lead with joy, foster meaningful connections, and truly make your passion pay.
Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Make Your Passion Pay podcast, where we talk about the six C's in the playbook to make your passions pay, and that is clarity, connection, community, collaboration, creativity, and commitment. I'm super excited to share with you my guest today, Paul Lagerstedt. He is an inventor, systems thinker, and co-founder of Alkaa, and trust me, a very creative guy. The first patent in glass sachet. Is that how I
(00:03:46.927) Paul Lagerstedt: pronounce it? That's it. You got it.
(00:03:48.627) LuAnn Buechler: Designed to reduce trace compounds in alcohol beverages before you sit, and the benefit of that, Paul, right, is removing
(00:03:59.627) Paul Lagerstedt: toxins
(00:04:00.927) LuAnn Buechler: from not removing the alcohol but removing other toxins in the drink that adversely affect our health and the way we feel the next day, right?
(00:04:11.927) Paul Lagerstedt: You got it. Nailed it.
(00:04:14.027) LuAnn Buechler: Welcome, Paul. Welcome. I am so curious about your life's journey, your career that brought you from, what was it, a diesel engineer?
(00:04:27.027) Paul Lagerstedt: Diesel mechanic and sales guy turned, yeah, inventor in the alcohol realm. It's been a crazy journey, LuAnn.
(00:04:43.027) LuAnn Buechler: About crazy journeys. Tell us more.
(00:04:46.027) Paul Lagerstedt: Oh, so I, for years, it was just a personal project I started working on. I did not feel good after I drank, and everything that I did was in moderation, you know, maybe a couple beers or a couple glasses of wine, and I would just pay the price every single time. Sometimes I would try to, I guess, chase off those negative feelings of headaches, or flushing, or poor sleep with, you know, ibuprofen before I drank or charcoal pills. And then I tried a bunch of the things you can get online, right? The before-you-drink vitamins or potions, or the after-you-drink, you know, Fizzies. I tried a lot of stuff, and it just wasn't consistent. Nothing really worked.
(00:05:43.627) LuAnn Buechler: Wow. Well, right. That is it. Consistent. Nothing really worked. Yeah, look for something else.
(00:05:51.627) Paul Lagerstedt: Yeah, and that was where I just started looking around and seeing that everything I was buying treated the body. It was usually trying to be reactive to the alcohol, right? And that just wasn't working. So Alkaa was born after, really after just kind of thinking about why do people feel so—why do you get a red wine headache, right? Like, why? That's where the diesel mechanic part kind of came in, like there's a—and just being, you know, a guy who likes to fix things. Like, there's a known problem, and it's not just me. It's hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people really, that are like, I just don't feel good after I drink. Why is that? And I, you know, thought it was the alcohol that was the problem, the actual ethanol. Or dehydration. Those were the two main—if you, I think even today, if you type into Google, why do I get a red wine headache, it will be, it's the ethanol, you're dehydrated. And then, how do you solve this problem? They will be like, drink more water or stop drinking. All right. That was it, and stopping drinking does work because, well, you know, you eliminate the alcohol from your life, and I mean, really, you do feel better overall. But so many of us like to drink because it's enjoyable, and our connection with the alcohol itself on a personal level. But you've been to girls' night out or date night or a wedding or a football game—alcohol is a social thing, like we really do connect as humans over that. And now, not paying what I call that alcohol tax, right? Like if
(00:08:04.227) LuAnn Buechler: you
(00:08:04.327) Paul Lagerstedt: If you drink, you're paying the tax, and that tax is either a horrible night's sleep, or flushing, or congestion, or nausea, or that next day general malaise feeling, aka the hangover.
(00:08:17.227) LuAnn Buechler: right?
(00:08:17.827) Paul Lagerstedt: And not for overdrinking, just from a couple, maybe a glass of wine, and you just pay that price. Why, and do we need to?
(00:08:29.727) LuAnn Buechler: All right. Apparently not. Apparently you found an answer.
(00:08:33.127) Paul Lagerstedt: Without it, and it was kind of a funny one. It was it. When you make alcohol, whether it's fermented like a beer or a wine, or whether it's distilled like a whiskey or a vodka, there are natural trace compounds that happen. So sugar and yeast get together, they have their party, they make alcohol. But along with that, you have sulfites, histamines, tannins, tyramine, phenethylamine. There are basically seven that are responsible for how you feel afterwards. Now, here's the caveat. If you overdrink, like I think we've probably all been there where you just drink too much, alcohol isn't going to help. But for those that enjoy in moderation and you just want to have a wine on a date night and not wake up with a headache, if we reduce considerably those compounds—and these compounds are known to cause 40 plus alcohol intolerance symptoms, again from a simple flushing of the face to rashes, nausea, congestion, headaches, cocktail headaches, which is like some people get a wine headache really quick, within minutes. That's called a cocktail headache. So there are just all of these different symptoms that are caused by these seven compounds. When we reduce or eliminate them, LuAnn, it's a total game changer. It is so enjoyable to just not stress about how you're going to feel after a beer. It's unbelievable.
(00:10:22.527) LuAnn Buechler: Yeah, yeah. So I just had an aha
(00:10:26.027) Paul Lagerstedt: in that,
(00:10:26.527) LuAnn Buechler: The women in my family have a tendency to really get that red flush look. Right. Noticeable to others in the room, you know, and of course, no woman wants that,
(00:10:39.727) Paul Lagerstedt: right?
(00:10:40.227) LuAnn Buechler: No,
(00:10:40.927) Paul Lagerstedt: That's Sarah. You know, yeah, Sarah, my wife. That was her number one issue, not the hot flash but that redness, that flushing especially if you're at a wedding.
(00:10:57.127) LuAnn Buechler: right?
(00:10:57.727) Paul Lagerstedt: Yeah, you have a glass of wine and then you're beet red. And then
(00:11:03.327) LuAnn Buechler: are you okay
(00:11:04.827) Paul Lagerstedt: Exactly. So solving those, I'll call them, you know, a fair, you know, those issues, and it's been a really interesting journey because it does allow you to de-stress that process. Yeah, I really do want to enjoy a glass of wine with my girlfriends. Yeah, or beer with my guy
(00:11:26.427) LuAnn Buechler: friends,
(00:11:26.827) Paul Lagerstedt: And the other thing that was kind of interesting is that different alcohols would affect me differently. So a wine would give me an almost instant headache. A beer would make me sweat really badly, like almost instantly, and then I would get super, super tired and fatigued. Like, I feel like, man, I'm out with the guys, we're watching a game, and I feel like I need to go take a nap. And a whiskey or a beer would give me heartburn, a little bit of nausea, and then just really awful sleep that night, which I thought was interesting. Which led me to believe that, is it the alcohol doing that? Come to find out, not the alcohol, it's all those trace compounds.
(00:12:08.927) LuAnn Buechler: those other toxins
(00:12:11.027) Paul Lagerstedt: and now
(00:12:11.727) LuAnn Buechler: Yeah, so interesting. So explain a
(00:12:17.827) Paul Lagerstedt: Sachet, sure. A sachet is a fancy word for a tea bag. So, I'm just, I'm just gonna hold this up here really quick. It's just this little, this little guy
(00:12:27.327) LuAnn Buechler: Right here. It's just like a tea bag,
(00:12:29.227) Paul Lagerstedt: I know. Yeah. And it's got five ingredients in it that are designed to capture those seven trace compounds that we talked about, and it captures it like this. This was new to me when I first started diving into the science part. There's absorption and adsorption. So absorption is like a sponge. Think of a sponge: you put a sponge in water, it absorbs the water, the water goes into the sponge and you
(00:12:58.527) LuAnn Buechler: can
(00:12:58.627) Paul Lagerstedt: See, now Alkaa uses adsorption. So adsorption, think of like a magnet. And you put a magnet down by some nails and the nails will stick to the magnet. They won't really be absorbed by the magnet; the magnet won't absorb them, right? And you can take and you can just kind of scrape the nails off. So, the ingredients in here, some of which are really, you know, like activated charcoal, right? That's it, that's adsorption or an adsorber. So it has a really interesting surface area, right, and I think most of us have activated charcoal at home. In case one of the grandkids or one of the kids or somebody swallows poison, right? You're like, give them activated charcoal because it absorbs the toxins. So, these ingredients are on their own, LuAnn, they do okay. But together, when they're in this sachet, they work really well together. And when you put this in the glass, the fluid has to flow over these ingredients and then they will capture those tannins, histamines, acetaldehyde, congeners, quercetin. And when it captures those, and here's the thing, it takes two things: it takes five minutes. So you're, you know, you're slowing down your drinking ritual. It takes five minutes. So you set our timers or like seriously set a timer for five minutes. Put the sachet in and then it takes movement. So the alcohol needs to flow through the sachet.
(00:14:59.627) LuAnn Buechler: okay?
(00:15:00.327) Paul Lagerstedt: And there needs to be some gentle swirling. So you're forcing yourself to kind of slow down and be very well.
(00:15:10.727) LuAnn Buechler: You let red wine breathe,
(00:15:12.927) Paul Lagerstedt: Exactly. Yeah. You're gently swirling, and you're giving it five minutes and then after that five minutes is done, you can take your sachet out and you've got a glass of wine or a dram of whiskey or a glass of beer that is not going to cause you any pain.
(00:15:31.027) LuAnn Buechler: Love
(00:15:31.627) Paul Lagerstedt: that.
(00:15:32.927) LuAnn Buechler: So, as was my first question when we talked before. I know plenty of my audience might ask the same question. Does it change the flavor? And I'm here to tell you, I've tried it and it does not change the flavor of your beverage.
(00:15:51.327) Paul Lagerstedt: Yeah, it's pretty cool. So we have noticed that in our discussion, I mentioned that we do extract tannins from wine and tannins are responsible for flavor. So if you keep that sachet in for longer than 10 minutes, the wine will really start to smooth out. And some could see that as a taste change, right? I don't mind. I keep my sachet in for usually 10 minutes in wine, just because I'm super sensitive and I don't want to take any
(00:16:25.827) LuAnn Buechler: chances,
(00:16:26.327) Paul Lagerstedt: But if you don't remove it after five minutes, it will extract quite a bit of the tan, and some of the testing that we've done on a 10 minute set time, you're up to over 70% in reduction. Again, for me, I don't really mind, but if you're a connoisseur of really nice
(00:16:43.727) LuAnn Buechler: wine.
(00:16:44.127) Paul Lagerstedt: Yeah, that's really important to know. Take it out, take it out after that five minutes.
(00:16:49.627) LuAnn Buechler: Well, therein lies another great point, right? If you're a connoisseur of wine, wine taster, right, those can get out of hand
(00:16:58.327) Paul Lagerstedt: easy, right? You're
(00:17:01.227) LuAnn Buechler: Right. A bunch of different wines. If you can use that sachet in each glass before you taste it, and you can reuse it. How many times
(00:17:11.227) Paul Lagerstedt: Just one time and I need it, and you up that sit time to 10
(00:17:16.427) LuAnn Buechler: Minutes, got you? Yep, it's time. Five minutes. Second time, 10 minutes and that's the life of the
(00:17:22.427) Paul Lagerstedt: Sachet. That's it. It's pretty much full after that and it's interesting because it does absorb quite a bit, and that's the process. It's kind of a new era, and I refer to it as drinking wellness and intentional drinking instead of just ordering and drinking. You're ordering and now you're pausing. You're being intentional, right? In your five minutes and then a lot of our, one of our customers, they've kind of really appreciated that. They're like, it makes me think about what I'm doing, how many glasses have I had. And the fact afterward that you don't feel awful is just, it's so lovely to be able to enjoy something that I think was created for us to feel good and happy and not pay the price afterwards.
(00:18:19.427) LuAnn Buechler: I have two other questions
(00:18:21.527) Paul Lagerstedt: that
(00:18:21.827) LuAnn Buechler: Came to. So also to be clear, it is not removing any alcohol content. Correctly, it doesn't mean you can drink more and feel less effects of the alcohol.
(00:18:38.227) Paul Lagerstedt: You nailed it.
(00:18:39.527) LuAnn Buechler: Not to save you from, you know, drinking too much at all. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with those specific people who really can hardly tolerate that without feeling some pain right away and giving them a way to have that opportunity to have social connection and share a glass of wine with friends and me or business, right? You go to a business dinner, they offer you some wine and you know how it's gonna make you feel, but you don't want to refuse your host. Yeah, very prime. Makes for great, interesting dinner conversation.
(00:19:16.327) Paul Lagerstedt: It really does.
(00:19:18.227) LuAnn Buechler: Yeah, if you
(00:19:22.427) Paul Lagerstedt: Definitely a conversation starter.
(00:19:29.027) LuAnn Buechler: What if they're drinking mixed
(00:19:31.427) Paul Lagerstedt: drinks
(00:19:32.127) LuAnn Buechler: From something as simple as a rum and Coke or vodka tonic, right? Or something more extreme, you know, like fruity things or what
(00:19:50.327) Paul Lagerstedt: Yeah,
(00:19:50.727) LuAnn Buechler: if I do a cooling cream, right? Was that cream changed the result?
(00:19:58.227) Paul Lagerstedt: Good question. So Alkaa works in wine and we talked about wine a lot because wine just seems to be the number one problem, caused her
(00:20:09.527) LuAnn Buechler: out there
(00:20:10.027) Paul Lagerstedt: Wine, beer, spirits, and cocktails, okay? And then on top of that, we've also done testing in coffee, tea, soy sauce, and Worcestershire sauce because coffee, tea, soy, and Worcestershire have tannins, coffee acid, tyramine as well. So, to answer your question, Alkaa works in not just all the alcohols but especially those that are mixed with sugary type ingredients. So a margarita. I love a good margarita, but they would just get between the tequila and the sugar and it's mixed together. And the install, man, my head would just keep pounding. Not anymore. It just needs five minutes. It needs gentle swirling and you will be amazed that there's zero taste change, but no after effects of sweating pain. Headaches gone.
(00:21:26.327) LuAnn Buechler: Fantastic, that's amazing. All right, let's go back to the business side of this, right? In the sense of this must have taken a lot of testing, a lot of trial and error. How does one get the investment and the tools to do that?
(00:21:48.327) Paul Lagerstedt: Man, that's a good question. It takes time, and it does take money, and it takes resilience for sure. So my life as a diesel mechanic transitioned into my life working for a manufacturing company. I did that for about 25 years in the safety industry, where I learned a lot about testing, a lot about—we sold life safety equipment, so it was very important to do things the right way. Right. And so with Alkaa, I just built it for me. When I started the journey, it was just for me, like, man, I just don't want to feel awful after I drink. So let's try to solve this problem. Then it fairly quickly turned into, hey, this could be a business because the more I talk about it, the more friends and family or people at the bar, when they see us putting a tea bag into our beer, they would come up and be like, what are you doing? Why are you putting a tea bag in your beer? So it was sort of a conversation about, well, we were working on a product that we invented that strips this and this and allows you to drink without feeling, you know, the after effects. So there was a lot of genuine interest from people. They're like, take my number and let me know when it's done because I just feel awful after I drink. So there's a market. We saw that there was a pretty big market for people to just feel better after they drink. So then you start looking at how do you start a business like this, LuAnn? What is, you know, what's the product? What category are you in? How do you test it? So we just—and this is
(00:23:33.327) LuAnn Buechler: Great, Paul. Patent it. I must
(00:23:36.427) Paul Lagerstedt: Yeah, so we got the patent, and that took almost three years from when we started to when we actually got the patent—just over three years, or just under; it was right around there. And that whole time, you're shelling out money for the patent, you know, to the patent attorney. And during that time, too, we were also doing a ton of testing. So we found a laboratory that could confirm how I felt, because after about 18 months, I came up with not the final recipe, but pretty close—like, 95%. I was like, okay, we've got something that is working. It was working for me, it was working for Sarah, my wife, it was working for my brother who was helping me test it, so some close friends and family, and like, okay, now what? How do we—if it's working on—like, if I asked you, is it working, LuAnn, and you're like, yeah, I feel great, but you just can't sell it on 'my friend says it works.' We need some numbers, so found a laboratory that could do the before and after levels.
(00:24:49.927) LuAnn Buechler: I need to find a laboratory like that.
(00:24:52.927) Paul Lagerstedt: This was good old-fashioned Google back in the day. No AI. It was just, I think I Googled the alcohol testing or laboratory that will help me test histamine levels in alcohol and actually sent it to a company, and then that company sends it out to laboratories all over the world with your protocol to see if there's something, you know, somebody pings back that says, yeah, I can do that. So we actually found a lab in Seattle who specialized in food and drink testing. So we got on the phone with them and they're like, yeah, we can do this, we can take the before, let's just say, histamine, we can do histamine levels in wine. And I'm like, so if we take the before level, then we put the sachet in, we do the five minutes, the stir, and then we can take the after. They're like, absolutely. So we started doing testing and that was very nerve-racking because you just don't know until you see the numbers, and then the numbers came back and it was, it was
(00:25:59.327) LuAnn Buechler: okay. I got. This is so
(00:26:02.527) Paul Lagerstedt: To exactly. So the patent is working on its end. Sarah and I are bootstrapping it the whole time. Alright, we've got our day job, we're bootstrapping, we've got the patent, and so you know, we set up going after VC money or investment money. It's going to take a little bit longer, venture capitalists going after investors, right? So,
(00:26:27.727) LuAnn Buechler: instead
(00:26:28.127) Paul Lagerstedt: Of doing that route, because we wanted to. This is a whole new category. You know, you get investors and then maybe they're like, how many have you sold and how come you haven't sold more? That's kind of the way it goes, right? How can we get more sales? We're like, we need to really build this the right way, this foundation to be able to scale. And so it's been four years, and we're just starting to really have that foundation built to where we can manufacture. We have our logos, our brand guidelines, the hat, and the category, you know, our FDA attorneys. You just kind of have to have the whole ecosystem ready before you can really take off.
(00:27:19.827) LuAnn Buechler: Okay, that again, you have to have the whole ecosystem ready before you can take off, you know, to protect what you've created from anyone else.
(00:27:34.427) Paul Lagerstedt: taking
(00:27:35.327) LuAnn Buechler: you?
(00:27:35.627) Paul Lagerstedt: Yeah.
(00:27:36.727) LuAnn Buechler: Was
(00:27:37.727) Paul Lagerstedt: that actually flatten will do that
(00:27:39.927) LuAnn Buechler: Was the patent attorney a first stop when you saw that you had a product you were going to take to market? Yeah, start there.
(00:27:50.327) Paul Lagerstedt: and want to
(00:27:51.027) LuAnn Buechler: Be this for my people to start, and I have a client who started there on something she's developing, and I've always wondered, is that the very first step?
(00:28:02.027) Paul Lagerstedt: Pat, that was one of the first steps. We looked at Alpha from the aspect of, is this patentable and would it help sell if it did have a patent number behind it?
(00:28:22.027) LuAnn Buechler: because
(00:28:22.427) Paul Lagerstedt: In this, I'm asking you to buy this product at a premium, right? It's like, you know, let's just say four dollars a sachet and trust me enough that A, it's going to work, and then B, I'm asking you to put this in your drink and start it and then drink your drink. So there's a lot of trust behind it and
(00:28:45.827) LuAnn Buechler: Sarah. Yeah.
(00:28:47.327) Paul Lagerstedt: Sarah, and I thought that, or we believed, I should say, that the patent would really help that. So we've got the
(00:28:55.427) LuAnn Buechler: lab credibility,
(00:28:56.927) Paul Lagerstedt: another credibility.
(00:28:58.527) LuAnn Buechler: Yeah, credibility and authority.
(00:29:03.027) Paul Lagerstedt: Yeah yeah it doesn't mean that we waited for the patent in order to start
(00:29:06.927) LuAnn Buechler: selling
(00:29:07.327) Paul Lagerstedt: And we started manufacturing and selling pretty quickly after we had Calendly, right? Go ahead.
(00:29:15.227) LuAnn Buechler: There's value in having a patent attorney on your team before you start selling those, even though it's not officially patent yet, it says to the world, I was here first.
(00:29:29.527) Paul Lagerstedt: It says patent pending. Yeah, you're doing your due diligence, and that's right. Yeah. And that added credibility too, but during that time, the patent attorney is like, you cannot tell people what's in it. So we're like, okay, let's build even more trust because some people would be like, well, what's in it? And we're like, we can't tell you yet, but you just need to trust me.
(00:29:54.927) LuAnn Buechler: Yeah,
(00:29:55.727) Paul Lagerstedt: right. It was, it was a little
(00:29:58.427) LuAnn Buechler: Tricky. Something that you've put this packet in. Yeah. Oh, that would be,
(00:30:04.527) Paul Lagerstedt: oh, you learn resilience, you learn that. Some people will just not buy your product because they don't trust you and that can kind of Sting, but that's just life.
(00:30:17.727) LuAnn Buechler: Right. I am apparently just as trustworthy. When I connected with Paul, right? Did we connect originally on Podmatch?
(00:30:27.627) Paul Lagerstedt: Yep,
(00:30:28.327) LuAnn Buechler: His team sent me samples. I didn't hesitate. I'm like, try this thing, super cool. Only to find out my best friend from high school, who lives in another state, and I'm telling her about it recently, she's going, oh yeah, I've tried that. My friend bought me some as a gift, and I'm
(00:30:52.227) Paul Lagerstedt: like, no
(00:30:52.627) LuAnn Buechler: way,
(00:30:53.427) Paul Lagerstedt: it's happening.
(00:30:55.127) LuAnn Buechler: It's
(00:30:55.927) Paul Lagerstedt: Thank you for telling me.
(00:30:56.727) LuAnn Buechler: me
(00:30:56.927) Paul Lagerstedt: That is awesome. So it takes time, LuAnn, and we've had a couple really fun, good mentors that have helped us through just being patient. You go through good times and bad times. Some days, Sarah and I are like, oh man, I'm just exhausted. Well,
(00:31:13.627) LuAnn Buechler: Day, another dollar into this. Like, you probably spent a lot of your own money getting up to a point where it was a sellable product.
(00:31:24.127) Paul Lagerstedt: Yeah. And it doesn't stop. You still need to order all the stuff and the tins and the packing and pay the website people and the attorneys. But it's when you believe in it and you are passionate about it. I think we're very passionate about it. I know how good I feel now. I just want others to feel, just to feel that feeling once of waking up on a Sunday morning after inviting on Saturday night, and you are just ready to go and ready to take on the day with your family or friends or just have an enjoyable morning without
(00:32:03.027) LuAnn Buechler: Trying
(00:32:03.727) Paul Lagerstedt: To cure your headache.
(00:32:06.027) LuAnn Buechler: Well, absolutely. Okay, hold that box up again. So I'm bringing it right. That name shows up. Well, it's spelled A-L-K-A-A. Gotta, how many sashes are in a
(00:32:22.527) Paul Lagerstedt: container? Oh, we have got 12 in a container.
(00:32:28.327) LuAnn Buechler: It, and where can people buy it? Do they need to come straight to your website for
(00:32:32.527) Paul Lagerstedt: Now? Alkaa.com is the best place. Alkaa.com. And if anybody has any questions, they can email us. Sarah and I monitor the email. I don't want to say 24/7, but pretty much 24/7. This is our livelihood, so we are there. We've got our phone number there if anybody has questions, or if they're just concerned about, you know, again, we're asking people to really put their trust in the product and we're here to help them with that. And if, for some reason, Alkaa does not work, Sarah and I do a 100% money-back guarantee. No issues, no questions asked, unless you want to tell us what happened. But it's a new category, a new product, takes some education. And those two things, five minutes and a little bit of swirling, it's gonna solve a lot of problems.
(00:33:31.127) LuAnn Buechler: So there's a question that came up, right? How did you establish pricing?
(00:33:37.027) Paul Lagerstedt: Oh, okay. Yeah, that's all that. How do you establish pricing? Let me ask you this, and this is a very common question on podcasts. Let's just say you go out with your girls on Saturday night and you have a couple glasses of wine, no alcohol, right? And you wake up Sunday morning with that feeling of like, oh man, alright, my day is pretty much shot,
(00:34:10.427) LuAnn Buechler: right?
(00:34:11.027) Paul Lagerstedt: If I asked you to open up your wallet and give me your debit card, how much would you pay for that feeling to go away and then to have the whole rest of the day ready to go? Just curious. What would you pay to basically get rid of a nasty hangover?
(00:34:34.827) LuAnn Buechler: I don't know. That's a really great question. Um,
(00:34:39.227) Paul Lagerstedt: Would you pay more than a cup of coffee from Starbucks?
(00:34:44.127) LuAnn Buechler: Oh yeah.
(00:34:45.827) Paul Lagerstedt: How much is a cup of coffee at Starbucks?
(00:34:47.327) LuAnn Buechler: I don't drink coffee but I'm gonna guess like eight bucks.
(00:34:51.527) Paul Lagerstedt: Yeah. Yeah, so we're about half that. So we're about four bucks a sachet, and you can use it twice.
(00:34:57.827) LuAnn Buechler: so it's
(00:34:58.427) Paul Lagerstedt: basically two dollars a drink.
(00:35:01.127) LuAnn Buechler: I got you, I got you where you're going.
(00:35:03.527) Paul Lagerstedt: Yeah, so we put the value out. We want to make it accessible, but also put value on it too. Course, right? And a lot of times you can't put value on something until you get people in that brain, in that mindset. For me, it was how much would I pay to have my Sunday with my kids and watch the football game instead of nursing a hangover and being irritated with everything? For me, it was 100
(00:35:33.427) LuAnn Buechler: dollars.
(00:35:34.927) Paul Lagerstedt: Exactly, for me, it was 100 bucks. I'd be like, I would pay
(00:35:37.427) LuAnn Buechler: 100.00, that's the most.
(00:35:41.427) Paul Lagerstedt: That's the most common.
(00:35:43.427) LuAnn Buechler: Answer.
(00:35:43.827) Paul Lagerstedt: Is 100.
(00:35:44.327) LuAnn Buechler: Bucks, is it?
(00:35:45.327) Paul Lagerstedt: worth it for?
(00:35:47.127) LuAnn Buechler: And you answered this completely differently than I expected. And historically, right in business, I would say they would tell you, you got to assess how much it's costing you to produce it, then do a markup.
(00:36:04.927) Paul Lagerstedt: Exactly, that's what I did. My whole life,
(00:36:07.127) LuAnn Buechler: What revenue you want to make and put it out there that way. But that's not what you did. You said, what are my customers going to be willing to invest to have a better day?
(00:36:19.827) Paul Lagerstedt: Yeah, we did a
(00:36:22.127) LuAnn Buechler: Studying to invest there for extrapolating to my customers, and you keep saying this is a new category, but I feel like there are other things out there, like the morning after kind of a pill—not for pregnancy, but for this very problem—and other things like that out there. Is that true or
(00:36:48.227) Paul Lagerstedt: It's true, but those treat the body.
(00:36:51.427) LuAnn Buechler: Got you. That's what you said in the
(00:36:52.727) Paul Lagerstedt: beginning. Yeah, we treat the drink,
(00:36:54.427) LuAnn Buechler: We treat the
(00:36:55.727) Paul Lagerstedt: train and not just wine. Because there are products that are just very wine specific. There are drops and there are little stir sticks, but they just treat, like sulfites and histamines. I tried them. They don't work that well, Alkaa treats the drink, but all alcohols. And that's that, that's
(00:37:14.327) LuAnn Buechler: in the drink.
(00:37:15.527) Paul Lagerstedt: Yeah,
(00:37:16.227) LuAnn Buechler: not just one or two.
(00:37:17.827) Paul Lagerstedt: Oh, the big, what I call the big seven that are responsible for most of the awful feelings that we have. So we just did a recent study, LuAnn, which is interesting. And these are people that have never used Alkaa, never seen Alkaa, but we asked them all these questions about what would you pay, kind of like that question I asked you, like what would you pay to get rid of a hangover, and they came back with the average. People are willing to pay seven dollars a sachet. I've never even heard seen, right? And we're less than that. And then if you use it twice, or even less than that, so we again try to make it accessible and reasonable. But with that, it's also
(00:38:02.127) LuAnn Buechler: It's 40, you sell the seven dollar ones at the bar on Wednesday at a time, maybe two, and they're gonna buy them.
(00:38:15.827) Paul Lagerstedt: And
(00:38:16.227) LuAnn Buechler: oh my gosh, what
(00:38:18.127) Paul Lagerstedt: A future Sarah and I were just literally, before this podcast, working on our single pack pricing. Yep.
(00:38:26.027) LuAnn Buechler: Super exciting. Yeah, well, you are.
(00:38:29.127) Paul Lagerstedt: Delight. Oh
(00:38:30.527) LuAnn Buechler: Thank you, inspiration. You all heard him say that you can reach out to him through his website, that they're very acutely watching their emails. I'm sure I could say that not only to ask questions about Alkaa but about developing a product from the ground up like he has done. And is it a fit for you? I just met a woman earlier that I'm going to have on in the future who talks about really identifying if owning a business, if building a business, is the right fit for you and your goals and your personality. So look forward to that one coming out. So again, we're talking about connection through intentionality, connection to self and others. Paul says, and Paul created our guide to help people invest in their wellness without giving up the social connections they love, and I just love that quote from Paul. Paul, gosh, I hope we can do this again sometime. Such delight to check in with you, see how things are going, because if you're excited, then my friend in another state will be too, and that's great news for
(00:39:49.927) Paul Lagerstedt: you. That's awesome.
(00:39:50.927) LuAnn Buechler: Thank you. Ready? Yeah. We love to spread the word more for you by sharing our podcast. You share the podcast with your audience and we'll support each other. That's called collaboration.
(00:40:06.727) Paul Lagerstedt: Thanks,
(00:40:07.027) LuAnn Buechler: LuAnn, how much? All right, and tell your passions in above all things have fun.