GARY: Next on Start Up, we head to McKinney, Texas to meet up with Unoma Okorafor, the founder of Herbal Goodness, a superfood company that promotes healthy living while supporting women and girls in need.

All of this and more is next on Start Up.

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♪ GARY: My name is Gary Bredow.

I'm a documentary filmmaker and an entrepreneur.

As the country faces uncertainty, small business owners continue to persevere, pushing the economy forward with their unrelenting drive and determination.

We've set out for our 12th consecutive season, talking with a wide range of diverse business owners to better understand how they've learned to adapt, innovate, and even completely reinvent themselves.

♪ This is Start Up.

♪ The US natural supplement industry is a thriving sector within the health and wellness market, offering a wide range of dietary supplements, vitamins, minerals, and herbal products aimed at supporting overall health and wellbeing.

With a growing emphasis on preventative healthcare and holistic approaches to wellness, natural supplements have gained popularity among consumers seeking alternative and complimentary healthcare solutions.

Today I'm heading to McKinney, Texas to meet up with Unoma Okorafor, the founder of Herbal Goodness, a superfood company that promotes healthy living while supporting women and girls in need.

Making a lifestyle change myself over the past couple years, this is a subject that I'm very interested in, and I cannot wait to learn more.

♪ ♪ What is Herbal Goodness?

UNOMA: We're a manufacturer of premium quality superfoods and super herbs, particularly focused on people who wanna use food as medicine rather than medicine as food.

But I feel it's deeper than that.

I really believe that wellness is multidimensional.

A lot of times I tell people that you can have all the nutrients, all the kale you want, but if you are not intrinsically happy, you haven't figured out that internal self, that is going to manifest in your physical health.

And so Herbal Goodness is this all-around complete company that wants to help people live happy, healthy, purposeful lives through the power of herbs.

GARY: Let's go back to the beginning.

Tell me about you growing up.

UNOMA: I grew up in a small town in Nigeria.

I grew up in a small university community.

Both my parents were in education.

My father was in academia.

He was a professor of nuclear physics, and so he really believed that education was the great equalizer.

And he said to me, "You can be anything you want to be in life."

I think that gave me the confidence to chase my dreams.

I also feel like I got my love for nature and herbs from my mom.

She just grew everything from vegetables to yams to flowers.

She had a good farm.

We had chickens, we had sheep.

And I spent hours and hours with our goats and our chickens.

I would name them.

The hen was Henrietta.

The goat was Goatee.

GARY: Wow, what a magical childhood.

UNOMA: It was.

GARY: Talk about going to college and what did you study?

UNOMA: So I went to college in Nigeria.

I went to a college called University of Lagos, one of the top colleges for engineering.

I came to the US in 1999.

GARY: Gotcha.

UNOMA: I came to get my PhD.

I graduated in 2008.

GARY: With your doctorate?

UNOMA: With my doctorate in computer engineering.

GARY: Amazing.

UNOMA: I went to work for Texas Instruments in the education technology industry.

But I quickly found out that I had an entrepreneurial itch that wasn't- I wasn't able to contribute the way I really wanted to contribute.

And so it was a little frustrating for me.

I was there for about two years, and then I decided to quit.

I quit TI in 2010 at the peak of the economic meltdown.

GARY: Yes.

UNOMA: And everyone thought I was crazy except my husband.

GARY: Okay.

UNOMA: I had a great support system.

GARY: Talk about the early stages of her having this concept for this business.

What did you originally think?

EKPE: She was really struggling.

She wasn't fulfilled.

Two things, she's very driven, she's very passionate.

So if those two are not there, she's not fulfilled.

It was really clear to me that she didn't like where she was.

GARY: Okay.

EKPE: And so we had a long conversation and I said, "Look, if you don't like where you are, quit."

That's what set this off, right?

She had the time to kind of think about what she wanted to do.

And that was very important.

♪ ♪ ♪ GARY: I gotta hear the a-ha moment for Herbal Goodness.

When did you decide, I'm gonna start this company, here's what it's gonna be?

UNOMA: When I quit my job, I hit crisis mode.

I also quit because I had just found out I was pregnant from my third child.

GARY: Awesome.

UNOMA: And I wanted to give this child a great start in life.

I had two children in school.

I pulled them out of school and went straight home back to Nigeria.

GARY: Wow, okay.

UNOMA: For me, I needed to get grounded.

I needed to remember who I was.

So I went home for a few weeks.

Really, I just wanted to stay home until I could find myself.

It was the most therapeutic season, right?

I went back to eating organic amazing food right from the trees.

And it was in that journey, I had a conversation with a friend.

And I really was trying to figure out, what do you do?

You have such beautiful, healthy children.

And she said, "Oh, load up on papayas.

Eat lots of papaya fruit."

And I started scouring the stores looking for the papayas of my youth.

GARY: Good luck.

UNOMA: Everything I found tasted horrible.

I really started to question what is wrong with the food in the US?

And the researcher in me started to dig and read, why are the papayas in the US tasting different?

Is it the variety?

That's when I started to learn about... genetically modified foods, of which papaya was the very first genetically modified fruit.

And how we were slowly poisoning ourselves because nobody was really looking at all the chemicals that we were loading into our bodies.

And I thought, wow, someone has to do something, like I have to say something, I have to tell people that there's a different version.

I wanted to introduce my version of papaya, the amazing organics, nutrient dense, delicious papaya.

I wanted to introduce that to the world.

I wanted to introduce it to people in the US.

The idea hit me one night, and so I stayed up all night.

Because of my technical background, I put together a website.

I had a little bit of graphics knowledge.

So I went in, I drew what a potential product could look like.

I had learned about Google AdWords.

So I stayed up, I created a very basic Google ad for this product and went to bed.

I went to bed at 5:00 AM, got up at 10:00 AM, looked on my website, there were five orders.

I'm like, no way.

People freaking buy anything.

GARY: This is not even real.

UNOMA: And the picture looked so bad, but that was just a real validation.

I think it hit me like a ton of bricks.

GARY: This is needed.

UNOMA: The people are looking for this.

GARY: Yeah.

Awesome.

UNOMA: And so of course I panicked, and I did the first thing I thought was the right thing to do.

I contacted them and said, "I'm gonna refund you guys."

I don't have this product.

We're backordered.

We're out of stock.

GARY: There you go, out of stock.

Don't lose them as a customer.

That just makes them want it more out of stock.

UNOMA: It's gonna take a little while.

So everybody took their money back except for this guy in Ohio.

He's like, "No, I want the product."

I'm like, "It's gonna be a few months."

He said, "Yeah, I'll wait.

Just let me know."

I panicked some more.

And then it occurred to me, I have to go soft.

GARY: Your customers forced you to make a company?

UNOMA: My customers forced me to go out and look.

GARY: And what was the main product, just the papaya leaf?

UNOMA: Papaya leaf tea was our very first product.

GARY: You get your order, you end up actually making the product, right?

Your first tea.

UNOMA: Yes.

Yeah.

GARY: How did you actually build the company?

UNOMA: We dried our initial papayas ourselves, went home, dried the leaves, brought them in, packaged them.

That wasn't gonna be sustainable.

We couldn't get it in commercial quantity.

GARY: Got it.

So you needed the actual papaya leaves?

UNOMA: The papaya leaves, I wasn't finding the organic.

And so I started traveling, South America, Mexico, Colombia.

And then I ended up in Sri Lanka, jumped into this rickety, and drove seven hours deep in, and I was so happy to see a papaya.

It was like I was hugging the trees and hugging the farmers.

I'm like, finally.

GARY: Nice!

UNOMA: So once we found that, we also started looking for co-packers.

So we did find a co-packer out in California, and we did our very first import.

GARY: So Sri Lanka sends to California.

They do the packaging.

UNOMA: Exactly.

They do the packaging, yes.

We figured out packaging, we figured out all the labeling.

We started to do the certifications.

And so about nine months into the process, I finally had products that I could ship.

♪ ♪ ♪ GARY: Tell me about papaya.

AZUKAEGO: My grandparents, my parents have always told me that papaya, every part of papaya, the seed, the leaves, the fruit itself has importance.

It helps with digestion, it helps with weight loss, it helps with immunity.

So it's a multi- beneficial fruit.

GARY: It's a superfood.

AZUKAEGO: It's a superfood.

And that's what we push at Herbal Goodness, making sure that the superfoods are out there readily available for people to use.

And at the same time, empowering movement through that process.

GARY: And I know that papaya is sort of the flagship or started everything off, but what are some of the other products right now that are doing really well?

AZUKAEGO: Okay, so we have Graviola.

GARY: What is that?

AZUKAEGO: It's called soursop.

GARY: Soursop.

Okay.

AZUKAEGO: That fruit is heavenly.

GARY: Never had that either.

AZUKAEGO: It has a green outer, and then white inside with some black seeds.

It's juicy.

GARY: Is it sweet?

AZUKAEGO: It's sweet.

And it helps with cell regeneration.

GARY: Cell regeneration, okay.

AZUKAEGO: So you see, you can get all those in the fruits, and that's what we are doing at Herbal Goodness.

♪ GARY: In such a saturated, crowded space, so many loud voices everywhere screaming that they're the answer, how do you cut through?

UNOMA: So it's by being really transparent about who we are, where we source from, being really committed to quality assurance, being able to explain to our customers the science behind the herbs.

And now really digging into testing and really digging into clinical trials and digging into diagnostics.

And so we're getting a lot of feedback.

For us, part of our key objective in Herbal Goodness is to educate people, to take them back to nature, to let them know that we're one with the Earth.

The Earth feeds us.

And if the Earth is not healthy, then we are not healthy.

And the importance of that is part of what we're doing here at Herbal Goodness.

♪ ♪ GARY: What are some of your favorite products that you like to buy here when you come?

CRYSTAL: Oh, when I come to Herbal Goodness, I like to buy the papaya leaf extract, the soursop extract, and the bamboo leaf extract.

I have a whole lot of favorites.

GARY: For someone who's never tried any Herbal Goodness products, what would you say to them?

CRYSTAL: Well I tell them to really come into the store or go online to shop at Herbal Goodness.

I was searching for a company that had natural products and high quality herbs.

And I found Herbal Goodness.

And I was also really happy about the transparency about how they produce their products.

So definitely, and it gave me the confidence to use their product, and I saw good results.

GARY: I drink so much coffee.

Like every time I get a coffee drink, it's usually four shots of espresso.

And I do maybe three to four times a day.

But I wanna switch to tea.

So what can I do?

UNOMA: So I'll give you a few things that will help you with energy levels.

So are you taking caffeine for your energy?

GARY: Yeah, because like halfway through the day, I start to feel a little bit sluggish, and I'm like, "I need a boost."

UNOMA: Fantastic.

Typically I would blend up a few things for you.

And have you try for a few days and then you'll come back and tell me how it's working for you.

GARY: Gotcha.

UNOMA: All right, so one of the ones I really like to go with as a base is the stinging nettle.

GARY: What is stinging nettle?

UNOMA: Oh my goodness.

This is a powerhouse herb.

Great for your gut, great for inflammation.

Look at that.

GARY: Oh, it smells good.

UNOMA: Yeah, yeah, it's very earthy.

But it's a great base.

It's one of those herbs that just really can serve all round.

GARY: Excellent.

UNOMA: And then I will do dandelion.

Dandelion is energy-giving.

A lot of people who want to replace coffee, there's something called herbal coffee.

It kind of tastes like coffee.

So it'll give you that same taste of coffee.

GARY: Trick myself into still drinking it.

UNOMA: It will trick you.

Exactly.

GARY: Do you kind of just wing it with your recipes?

UNOMA: No, no, we have recipes.

We have recipes for most things.

GARY: Got it.

UNOMA: But sometimes people will come in with something- GARY: Get creative.

UNOMA: Sometimes you need to, yeah.

♪ Let's see what you think.

GARY: Flavor-wise, it tastes amazing.

UNOMA: Really?

GARY: Yeah.

I think it tastes great.

UNOMA: So for somebody who is a coffee drinker, this is sometimes close enough.

Sometimes we'll put yerba mate.

Sometimes we'll put guayusa.

Those are very high in caffeine.

GARY: I have been drinking a lot of yerba mate lately, the can.

UNOMA: Oh okay.

GARY: Probably not so good.

UNOMA: You should make it fresh.

GARY: Okay, not the cans out from the party store or the gas station?

UNOMA: Well, I'm not gonna say much.

GARY: When you were launching the company, was this completely self-financed or did you have to take any loans or anything like that to build the company up?

UNOMA: Herbal Goodness has been completely bootstrapped till date.

We've been lucky because we've been profitable from the first year.

Initial funding came from personal savings and support from friends and families.

GARY: Where are you selling this?

Where can people get this?

And kind of how big have you been able to grow this company?

UNOMA: It's been amazing the growth that has happened to us in the last few years.

And we not only sell here, we also sell across the country with small mom and pop stores.

GARY: On your website?

UNOMA: On our website.

GARY: And then e- commerce platforms?

UNOMA: E-commerce, and tons of social media channels where we sell as well.

GARY: Tell us about the impact, the purpose impact that Herbal Goodness has had globally at this point.

UNOMA: I'm very proud of what we've done.

I was saying that we're not just a herbal brand, we're not just a wellness brand.

For me, it's a mission- driven company.

We're all about making impact.

And I'm all about empowering more women to speak up, to understand that their voices are important.

And so part of what we do is to give back 10% of our profits to support the education of girls in Africa, but also the empowerment of women across the world.

This is really, truly what I think that Herbal Goodness is all about.

It's what I think that our legacy is gonna be.

It's what gets me up every day.

GARY: Purpose before product.

UNOMA: Really for me it's purpose before product.

Last year, we were able to touch over 10,000 girls in Africa.

GARY: 10,000?

Wow.

UNOMA: Yes.

Our goal is to be able to reach over a million girls across Africa through our giving is we're impacting girls across 24 African countries.

Over 60 chapters, 60 university chapters.

A lot of it is funded by this.. GARY: Amazing.

UNOMA: Funded by this.

We do teacher trainings, we do train the trainer, we provide scholarships, we provide mentorships, we train people to do volunteer work.

We support them after they've graduated to help place them in internships and programs.

We support them to go do advanced degrees.

And we fund a couple of people who have started businesses.

We give seed money for them to incubate their businesses.

♪ GARY: Where do you see this going?

UNOMA: Oh my goodness.

My vision is that there will be Herbal Goodness stores and communities across the country.

GARY: Got it.

UNOMA: So our store is not just a place where people come and get products.

More importantly, people come to find community, and we are starting to have classes, monthly classes... GARY: Great.

UNOMA: That bring people together.

So we're building a tribe of people so that they can understand what's happening.

And my vision is that we will see this pop up across several cities in the US.

GARY: What advice would you have for people searching for meaning, searching for purpose, that wanna make a living, but also want to do something that gives their life some sort of substantial meaning and purpose?

UNOMA: Look deep within yourself, and trust your instinct.

A lot of people have a sense of what makes them tick.

They're just too scared to chase after it because somebody's invalidating their vision and their passion.

GARY: Yes.

UNOMA: The world is telling them that makes no sense.

How can you make a business out of selling papaya?

If anybody had told me that papaya would be a multimillion dollar business, I would say, "No way."

GARY: Yeah.

UNOMA: You have to believe in yourself and trust yourself more than anybody else.

You know what's best for you, and lean into it.

I think we all have magic in us.

I really think so.

GARY: It's just covered up with so many layers you gotta chip away.

UNOMA: It's covered up in so many layers, and the world is telling us that we've gotta fit into a mold.

GARY: We don't.

UNOMA: I think that that's just so far from the truth.

How can we be the best version of ourselves trying to be somebody else?

Like we've gotta all have this idea that unique is great.

Like I'm gonna be the first person.

It's gonna be hard because the first is usually the one, you know?

GARY: Trailblazing.

UNOMA: Yeah, trailblazing.

And it's difficult, but we've gotta believe that we have something to offer the world.

♪ GARY: I learned something from every business owner that I've had the privilege of meeting through Start Up.

From learning ways to work more efficiently, to tips on products and services, paths to funding, or simply ways to disconnect at the end of a rough day, there's always a takeaway for me.

And I really hope that there is for all of you watching at home, because there's depth to these stories that go far beyond business.

And Unoma's story is yet another example of the remarkable impact that you can have on the world by simply following your dreams.

Unoma is living a life filled with purpose, and she's literally changing people's lives.

I could feel energy completely light up the room when she was talking about the 10,000 girls that she's supported so far with Herbal Goodness, and the certainty in her voice that she will go on to help a million more.

And I have no doubt that she will.

And to think if that one customer didn't refuse a refund for a product and a company that was yet to exist, would she have continued down this path?

I guess we'll never know.

But I do know that much of our success and failure in life really does come down to one moment, one decision.

And the question is, what will you do in that moment?

Will you be fearless like Unoma, quitting her job to start a company during the worst economic setback since the Great Depression?

Or will you just let the moment pass?

Words cannot express how much I appreciate meeting Unoma and having the opportunity to share her story.

And I can't wait to see how far she takes this incredible company.

For more information, visit our website and search episodes for Herbal Goodness.

♪ Would you like to learn more about the show?

or maybe nominate a business?

Visit our website at startup-usa.com, and connect with us on social media.

♪ ♪ We've got a long road ahead of us ♪ ♪ A long road ahead of us ♪ Got a long road ahead of us ♪ ♪ Before we pay our dues ♪ We've got a long road ahead of us ♪ ♪ A long road MAN: That's good, there you go.

GARY: Oh!

That was not easy!

♪ Before we pay our dues I'm sitting in a cave and we're shooting b-roll.

♪ ANNOUNCER: The future is not just going to happen, you have to make it and GoDaddy Airo can help you get your business online with an AI-generated name, logo and website.

GoDaddy Airo, learn more at godaddy.com/airo.

ANNOUNCER: Running a business isn't easy.

BambooHR supports your HR strategies by automating operational tasks, leaving you with more time to concentrate on what's most important to you and your business.

Learn more at BambooHR.com.

BambooHR, a proud supporter of Start Up.

JAKE: Fellow is just a mash up of two of the things I really love: coffee and I really love product design.

We're trying to create something that didn't exist and we're just getting started.

ANNOUNCER: More than 60% of sales in Amazon's store come from independent sellers like Jake at Fellow.

Amazon, a proud supporter of Start Up.

ANNOUNCER: Colonial Penn offers guaranteed acceptance, a type of whole-life insurance that does not require answering health questions or taking a medical exam.

Learn more at colonialpenn.com or by calling 1-800-372-8383.

Colonial Penn is a proud supporter of Start Up.