“We want people to know the truth about salt.”
I was in a cramped Manhattan office with the CEO of a tiny electrolyte startup. He was sketching a plan on the whiteboard and getting pretty excited.
I’d been working with the brand for about six months, building their science library. They liked the work, so they asked me to New York for a face-to-face.
There were six or seven people jammed into the HQ when I arrived. They all knew who I was. I liked that.
Now I was in the meeting, and the CEO was animated. He wanted to change the conversation about salt. Salt was the enemy, said conventional wisdom. We were going to change that, and the science had our backs.
The research suggests that most health-conscious people (especially sweaty active folks) don’t get enough salt. We’re told to eat less, but we actually need more. There are exceptions, but the salt-is-bad story is a relic of decades past.
That’s why the CEO had asked me down: to sync on the shared mission. This wasn’t a meeting on an eight-pronged marketing approach. Science was the marketing, and I was the science marketing guy.
That meeting was in January of 2020, right before COVID hit. I worked with them for six more years as they scaled to nine figures. Their name is now synonymous with salt.
And yes, product and community were just as critical to their rise (and they nailed the timing too). But my job wasn’t to formulate or find influencers. It was to build the case for salt and keep it defensible. It was to turn science into trust.
Their science library remains an asset today. It fuels their marketing across channels and shows up in AI search. It works while the team sleeps.
There’s a lesson here for wellness founders and marketers. Start with the science beneath your product. Tell a credible story nobody else is telling. Create a library around that story. Give smart people a reason to trust your brand. They need to see good science before buying. That’s McKinsey data talking, not me.
Plus, AI engines cite brands with a real science library. The brands publishing generic content would be better served not publishing at all. It just vanishes into the ether.
One last point is to be patient. My client didn’t hit nine figures overnight. They invested in the long game of science marketing. It paid off.
I help science-backed wellness brands turn science into growth.
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