Salim Najjar
Salim is Co-Founder at SOUND, a sparkling beverage made with organic tea, herbs and extracts. An idea conceived in the cubicles of a nuclear power plant, Salim and his Co-Founder have harnessed their passion for wellness to scale their business from coast to coast.
You can buy at grocery stores in the Northeast like Whole Foods, DeCicco’s, and West Side Markets. They plan to expand their distribution to the West Coast in 2021. You can also order SOUND on Amazon and SOUND’s site. I highly recommend the Green Tea and Yerba Mate.
His morning routine
The first thing I do is meditate for 20 to 30 minutes, then I get out of bed and I practice my Tibetan rituals, which are five yoga-like stretches that monks have been doing for centuries. They call it the Five Tibetan Rites.
Life as a co-founder of an emerging brand
There's no set day to day. Each day is different because it’s shaped around whatever is needed to be done. Recently, I’ve been on many calls focused on launching our rebrand, which requires a lot of behind the scenes work one wouldn’t think of. Such as, conversations with suppliers about changing our can sizes from a 12 oz. sleek to 12 standard, and all the logistics that are needed in order to produce and launch the rebrand. The beauty of what I do is I'm technically always working and never working as I LOVE what I do and don't consider it work. I will be on the computer late at night attending to things I didn’t have time to over the weekend.
On staying organized
I use Superhuman, which is an email app that really just helps me stay organized and on top of things. Keeping my inbox at zero is very important to me, and I only keep urgent emails that require immediate action items.
On what he geeks out about
Reading is my favorite thing, and I geek out over anything that I feel like can optimize energy and health. To learn, experiment, and be curious are some of the main pillars in my daily routine and habits. I have been very focused on mental health and peeling back my own layers which I’ve come to learn and appreciate is an everyday journey. I am very passionate about sharing knowledge on mental health and exploiting the stigma around it with ways you improve your mindset. I do believe that reality is created by our minds and how we choose to perceive it. If you subscribe to this then mental health is the key to life and happiness (or success as some call it). We all have the power to create a beautiful world and it always will start from within.
On his wellness habits
I’m a health nut when it comes to being conscious about consumption of food. Food is energy, and your body turns what you eat into energy. I subscribe to the diet of eating whole/real foods that our ancestors used to eat. If I’m in the zone, I typically eat one meal a day, so I fast for 24 hours daily and shock my body with 48 hours once a week. It’s not for everyone, but it works for me.
Harmonizing his environment
I have a device called Somavedic, which harmonizes the energy in an 800 square foot radius and protects us from the negative effects of EMF radiation (3G, 4G, 5G, and Bluetooth). Since I’ve started using it, I’ve noticed improved sleep.
His way-finding journey
Upon graduating college, I started working at a nuclear power plant. I became unhappy with the lifestyle and working in the corporate world as it didn’t fit the future I wanted. This led me down a path to find what my passion is, and that very much started in health and wellness. Losing my father to cancer at a young age was the impetus behind me diving into the health and wellness space as the onset of my way-finding journey. It’s been almost 10 years since I’ve embarked on the journey to align my workview and my lifeview closer together, and continues to get exponentially deeper and faster as I learn more and more.
How it all started
My co-founder, Tommy, and I worked at a power plant together. He was my closest friend there and we bonded on being outliers in the sense that we were both so much more health conscious compared to our other colleagues. We would always go for unsweetened tea during coffee breaks together. One day when we were sipping on a cup of hot tea, Tommy said “why can't this be cold with bubbles?” He bought a SodaStream, brewed tea, cooled it and put it in the SodaStream. Tommy really enjoyed the taste, and brought it into work for me to try.
I still vividly remember the day in my cubicle, taking a sip and getting hiccups instantly because I hadn’t had a carbonated drink in so long. Long story short, three months later, we found ourselves perfecting the recipe and creating a product. After getting feedback from friends and family, we started developing the business and distributing it to Whole Foods. It’s been over six years since I quit my corporate job to set out on this fun adventure.
On scaling SOUND
My co-founder and I had no background in finance or business development. We taught ourselves how to scale a business by trial and error. I think that’s what truly defines an entrepreneur. Failure isn’t a failure if looked at from the proper lens, it’s actually a lesson. As long as you don’t do it again and you’re able to pivot by making informed decisions, then the failure actually serves a valuable purpose. Our growth comes from failures over the years and of course also the capital invested. In terms of funding, at first we were bootstrapped and have since raised ~$2.5MM to run the business over the last 6 years.
Challenges faced fundraising
Everything about fundraising is a challenge, it's a full time job. You are asking people to give money that potentially may not have a return. You’re banking on hitting a grand slam, meaning an acquisition of some sort. It’s important to know exactly how you want to spend the money you raise, and be able to articulate that to potential investors. This requires you to understand the drivers of the industry you’re in.
The beverage industry is really about distribution. In order to maximize your margins, you need to own your distribution. It's one thing to get on a Whole Foods shelf. It’s a whole other thing to actually sell your product on a Whole Foods shelf, especially when you're competing with brands that have higher economies of scale and an unlimited budget on marketing and man-power, like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper etc. They have a dominant market share in the beverage space because they own the distribution, they own the trucks, they own the routes. When they see an emerging brand like CORE Water, for instance, acquiring them strategically makes sense because they have the distribution platform to help scale that brand.
The vision for Sound
Our mission at Sound is not just to serve the premium shopper, but also get our product in the hands of everyone while educating consumers on the importance of health and proper nutrition. We want to make healthy and unsweetened sparkling beverages affordable and accessible. In order to meet this goal, we need to make sure our distribution footprint is scaled to achieve this; without compromising our mission and values.
Key decisions that brought his vision to life
A key decision we made was our current rebranding project, which is launching in March 2021. Our go-to-market strategy was to launch in premium/high-end retailers and our branding very much reflected that (clean/minimal). We now plan to expand to convenience stores, like Target, and need our product to really pop out on a shelf and grab our consumers attention. This rebrand decision serves our bigger vision, which is to make healthy sparkling drinks accessible to everybody and not just premium shoppers.
Advice to other beverage founders
Coming full circle to my passion for fostering a healthy mind, any advice I would give to an entrepreneur is to love yourself and not be so hard on yourself when things don’t unfold the way you expect. Adopting a macro view of the way things unfold is crucial. My partner and I woke up one morning to 70% of our business gone due to COVID-19. Normally that would bankrupt a business and destroy the mindset of the founders, but after a few seconds of feeling sorry for ourselves, we refused to get angry or upset. We were just like, “okay, what do we have to do next?” It’s much easier said than done, and I owe it to the routines and rituals I have that help me foster a positive, productive, and grateful mindset.
