Making Something From Nothing: Rich Pauwels Of Rich Nuts On How To Go From Idea To Launch

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Don’t try to do it all yourself! I was very much a “I can do it all myself” kind of guy. I have learned that this mindset leads to burnout. Find partners, business associates, or hire experts that can do things better than you so that you can spend more time operating in your zone of genius. There are plenty of production tasks that I can do, but it’s not always the best use of my time to do a simple job that anyone can do. It’s a better use of my time to be the biggest ambassador for our products, creating educational and engaging content, doing podcasts, fielding interviews. Not everyone can do that part and this is where I’m learning to spend more of my time and energy.

As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Richard Pauwels.

A Native Angeleno, Rich Pauwels has spent his life being of service. While studying at UCLA he enrolled in the US Navy Reserves. When he was not attending sporting events as part of the championship cheerleading squad, he would spend time on the USS Wadsworth running drills on shipboard fires and general damage control. He was so inspired by the work that he joined the LA County Fire department and served 20 years as a firefighter and paramedic. Fighting the brush fires that have raged California, is no easy task. And getting food while on those fire lines can prove difficult to say the least. It was during this time that Rich developed his gourmet sprouted nuts to fuel himself and his crew on these grueling fires. Working as a first responder takes quite the toll on both the body and spirit of those who put themselves in harm’s way to save others. So, as someone who puts his all into his work, Rich sustained a series of injuries that resulted in his early retirement in 2019. He immediately went on a long journey of alternative healing and biohacking to regain his health, mobility and strength. He now devotes his time to his brand Rich Nuts and educating others on the value of sprouting as well as other biohacking modalities.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?

My childhood started out in the Chino Institute for Women, a California State prison. I was born there because my parents unfortunately had a heroin problem which landed them behind bars. My father often said the only reason I exist is because they got busted. During the time of their trial, my parents “kicked” their habit and that likely led to the conditions of my conception. Luckily, my father was able to stay clean and provide me with a working class upbringing in the suburbs of Los Angeles. My father was a plumber for the County of Los Angeles and many weekends in my pre-teen and early teen years were spent on “side-jobs” under houses, digging ditches, and unclogging toilets.

I was always fascinated by nature and my father encouraged me in that realm with fishing trips, odd pets (like snakes, turtles, and iguanas), and even a home vegetable garden. My grandmother had chickens & many fruit trees. I would enjoy summers in her backyard battling bees, wasps, beetles, and birds for delicious ripe figs, plums, and apricots. This is why I deeply understand that our food comes from nature and not from the store. My uncles would take me hunting and I learned that taking a life for food was a part of nature. Doing so with intention always seemed to make sense to me. To this day, I still hunt (for food not trophies), fish, and love to make food from wild foraged ingredients like mushrooms, elderflowers, and even cactus fruit.

In High School I focused my energy on sports and became an excellent wrestler, a decent distance runner, and a mediocre football player. I carried that athletic ability with me into college where I wrestled for a year and then transferred to UCLA where I became a cheerleader. Cheerleading was a complete surprise to everyone including me. It was a valuable lesson in learning how to work with a co-ed team. During this time, I also joined the US Navy Reserve program to help pay my way through college.

College was very busy for me with cheerleading, the Navy Reserves, and a part time job waiting tables. Little did I know that this busy pattern would continue my entire life. As a lifelong learner, I have always allowed my curiosity to guide me.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My best friend Johann Urb, is fond of saying “pay attention or pay with pain”. I have found this quote to be relevant in many situations. I also found that “pain” comes in many forms: sometimes physical, sometimes financial, and sometimes emotional to name a few.

One example of this lesson came when I was at deep creek hot springs in Southern California. I was so enamored with a beautiful woman that I set my phone down on a slippery, not so flat rock, and it of course fell into the river never to be seen again.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

That’s a tough one to narrow down because there are so many wonderful books and podcasts. I will say that the “Surrender Experiment” by Michael Singer came into my life at just the right moment. Which is really the point of the book: To stop controlling things and trying to “make” life happen, to start becoming aware of the opportunities that life is giving you and to open to what you never thought possible. This shift in mindset carried me through a difficult divorce and into a much broader & completely unimaginable future. When we let go or surrender to what is showing up, we might be surprised about where we end up.

In my experience, I surrender my career & my ex- wife, in a very short timeframe. Found new love, discovered a ton about self-love and self care and started Rich Nuts. It was a pivotal moment in my life and the repercussions are still unfolding to this day.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?

This is a very good point. I was naïve when I started Rich Nuts. In all honesty, I was not trying to start a business, I wasn’t looking at trends, or market opportunities, and analyzing what would be a hit based on those metrics. I was simply trying to solve my own digestive problems. I worked in Malibu as a Firefighter and Paramedic for the last 12 years of my 20 year career with the LA County Fire Department. During my time in Malibu, we would go on plenty of brush fires. One thing I quickly discovered was that there was no healthy food on a brush fire. Our options were generally limited to: prison sack lunches, fast food, or MRE’s. None of that really worked for me, so I would eat raw cashews that I carried in my pack. I could eat a pound of raw cashews on a brush fire. Instead of getting the energy that I needed to sustain me on those 6, 8, or even 10 hr. grueling shifts, I got gassy, bloated, and experienced brain fog. Not exactly what I was looking for when I was trying to stay alive on the side of a mountain with smoke and fire all around.

I started doing a ton of research and it became apparent to me that the nuts were somehow causing my digestive woes. That’s how I discovered sprouting. I started experimenting with eating sprouted nuts and I quickly discovered that my digestive symptoms faded away.

I had a second “Ahh-ha” moment that led me to the discovery of what my friends and family began to call “The Best Nuts EVER”. Dehydration came to me when I realized that I couldn’t leave moist nuts in a bag until the next brush fire. It could be months and the moist nuts would get moldy. Dehydration solved that problem bringing back the crunch, locking in the flavor, and preserving them naturally. I also seasoned them lightly with sage and rosemary from my garden. I started sharing them with friends, family, and fellow firefighters. Within say 6 months, every time I walked into a room, everyone would stick out their hands and ask “have you got any nuts with you?”

Eventually I did an audit on my finances and realized I was spending $700 a month on organic cashews and giving them away. That’s when I told everyone they were gonna have to start paying me for the nuts. They responded with “Ok, how much do you want?” That’s how Rich Nuts started.

My next step was simple, low cost, and very prudent. I got a cottage food operators license which allowed me to sell in farmers markets. I knew that my friends, family, and fellow firefighters would pay me for delicious sprouted nuts, but what about strangers? The answers I discovered in the thousands of farmers market interactions with strangers helped me to shape my product line, tailor my flavor philosophy, and communicate our value proposition to customers. It also answered the most important question: will people pay a premium for sprouted nuts? It was a resounding YES!

From my experience, follow your curiosity, experiment, fail forward, and ask a lot of questions from your early adopters on what they LOVE about your product or service. Of equal importance, learn what they don’t like and do your best to solve those issues. Finally, learn to communicate why your product is unique. That’s where having a good authentic story is extremely valuable. Customers really love that our product was developed for the fireline. If it can get me through a brush fire, it can get you through whatever life throws at you.

Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?

Well, the obvious thing to do is a bunch of Internet research to see if you can buy it or find information related to this particular good or service. If there’s nothing on the market yet, that could be good, but remember, you might be starting a whole new category and that is exciting, but also challenging. You can also ask people you trust that may have some experience or knowledge in this area to see if they have any thoughts about your idea and whether or not it is already on the market.

For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.

For this question I can only speak to my particular process (after all, I was a firefighter/paramedic prior to this endeavor). In some ways it was simpler because I could not patent a naturally occurring process: “germination”. I would say make a prototype and use it a bunch, try to find out what works and what does not? What could make it better? How can it be improved? Take extensive notes on your process and the results you get. Try, fail, experiment, repeat. I still have my secret recipe book which is filled with experiments dating back to 2015. This was crucial to the development of our product line. I’m actually an “idea machine” and eventually my team had to put the kibosh on me creating any more flavors.

Once you get a decent prototype, take it out to your immediate and trusted circle of friends and family. Have them try it and get their honest feedback. Sometimes you may have to pry it out of them, but remind them that honesty will only make the product better. Then take all this new info and iterate, iterate, iterate. You will want to develop thick skin for this part because some people may not like it and they may be brutally honest. Instead of shrinking and taking it personal, do your absolute best to stay objective and remind yourself that this will only make my good or service better.

To be very vulnerable here, I was nervous and afraid to put this creative idea into the world. A part of me was worried that people would not like it. What would that say about me? Do they not like me? It’s a mind trick and I urge your readers to remember it’s not about you, even if your name and signature are on every bag!

Since our process was not a common one, we were not able to find a manufacturer to make it for us. We have continued to develop that process as we scale, taking equipment and ideas from similar production lines. It’s been a long and sometimes overwhelming process and this is why I believe Grit is such an important quality for a founder.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why?

1. Failing forward will only improve your product or service- learn something from every small mistake, keep getting better day by day minute by minute. As I mentioned above, my R & D Process was literally years in the making, trying, failing, getting feedback, iterating.
2. This is not a sprint and it will likely be the hardest experience of your life. If you’re blazing a new trail, you will have to fall down and make all the mistakes because YOU are the first one doing it. Get back up and keep going. For some reason I had this Idea in my head that since the product was great, everything else would magically fall into place and we’d be a huge success in no time. Although that is a possibility, it is not likely. This was especially true for me as I was completely new to business and firefighting had not prepared me for the challenges that entrepreneurial life would throw at me.
3. Pick your partners like you are picking a mate. You wouldn’t marry someone that you don’t trust completely. Don’t look past flaws or red flags. Trust your gut here as you will be deeply and intimately wed to this person as long as you’re in business together. Set boundaries in a legal context that makes sense for both of you. Early on, I had a partner that used emotional blackmail to try and get more and more equity. It was difficult to split, but in the end, it was the right decision. Just like a bad divorce, this creates years of stress in your life. In the end, nobody benefits from opaque or blurry boundaries.
4. Don’t try to do it all yourself! I was very much a “I can do it all myself” kind of guy. I have learned that this mindset leads to burnout. Find partners, business associates, or hire experts that can do things better than you so that you can spend more time operating in your zone of genius. There are plenty of production tasks that I can do, but it’s not always the best use of my time to do a simple job that anyone can do. It’s a better use of my time to be the biggest ambassador for our products, creating educational and engaging content, doing podcasts, fielding interviews. Not everyone can do that part and this is where I’m learning to spend more of my time and energy.
5. Don’t give up! This seems simple, and it is, but it’s NOT easy. Pivot if you need to, but don’t throw in the towel. This is why GRIT or TENACITY are known as one of the most important characteristics of a founder. Grinding it out and obsessing about how to solve the challenges of bringing your product to market is something you must do. Of course, you will build a team to help, but the ball is in your hands and if you want to win the game, you must be the driving force. You may want to give up at some point, so have someone that sees YOU and supports you unconditionally. Rely on this person when you feel like throwing in the towel. For me, this is my wife Samantha Coker.

Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?

As I mentioned above, I’d say get a working prototype and get trusted feedback. Keep iterating until you can’t make it any better. Then and only then open it to larger feedback from non- friends and repeat the iteration process indefinitely.

There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?

I have no experience with those consultants. What I would say is that it really depends on what you’re making. If you are an expert in that field, then you may only need advice on getting the product to market. If you are not an expert, then an expert in the field may be invaluable. Make sure you sign the appropriate contracts and do not give away too much of your business.

What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?

This is a very complex question. It really depends again on what you are creating and your personal assets. If this project is going to be capital intensive, you may want to tap into VC. They will of course want a significant piece of the business to compensate them for the risk they are taking. This is especially true if you are pre-revenue. It may also be necessary to utilize a capital influx to get you to market ahead of competitors. It could be a huge benefit to be the first mover in a given sector or it may be irrelevant. Just look at myspace vs facebook.

Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

Wonderful question. Impact is a big motivation for me and we are still in the process of implementing my vision. In late 2016 or early 2017 I read a white paper about regenerative agriculture and its potential to sequester enough carbon to avert the climate crisis without any cuts to emissions. YES, you read that right. This was the most positive news I had heard in decades. My confidence in governments or legacy businesses making enough headway through emission cuts is basically zero. They’ve been talking about it for more than twenty years with very little progress. Meanwhile, it is very obvious that we are plunging headlong toward environmental disaster. In this white paper, they discuss the fact that Regenerative Agriculture not only sequesters 3–5 times the carbon per square acre in comparison to conventional agriculture, but it also produces up to 30% more nutritious food! That’s when it hit me, I could turn Rich Nuts into the world’s first carbon neutral and potentially carbon capturing nut company by utilizing regeneratively sourced ingredients in our supply chain. We are still in the process of navigating and implementing these highly disruptive changes, but we are on the path and I am personally committed to this goal. I believe that the children of this generation and future generations deserve a cleaner earth, a greener earth, and a more just earth. Business mindset of the previous generations looked at these problems as externalities, meaning that the costs and consequences were outside their business model. They made fortunes that have lasted lifetimes, to the detriment of mother nature. Well, I’m here to say that those costs and consequences are now coming due and we are paying the price of this narrow minded thinking. At Rich Nuts we like to support the triple bottom line, PEOPLE, PLANET, PROFIT.

You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

This all relates to my personal mission on the planet which is to connect people to nature, the source of all life on this planet. We have this misguided perception of dominion over nature. If I can help people reconnect to nature and get them to realize that we are as much a part of nature as nature is a part of us, it is my firm belief that we will stop mistreating nature. Then we will learn how to work in collaboration with this natural phenomena to regenerate the damage we have done to the ecosphere and potentially avert the climate crisis.

Think of it from this perspective, most of us live in a box, we move around in a machine, and we think food comes from the store. We think that we are somehow superior or separate from the very thing that sustains us. If we can shift that mindset to a collaborative or regenerative one then we have a slim chance of surviving. I think that is a good point to drive home, our survival is not guaranteed.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

I really love the questions you ask, because they make me pause and contemplate for a moment. This last one is no exception. As a Los Angeles native, I quickly filed through all of my favorite Lakers: Magic, Shaq, Kareem (fellow UCLA Alum), etc. Then I moved on quickly to those that have used their fame for the Benefit of the Planet: ​​Ian Somerhalder, Adrian Grenier, Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Brand, etc.

In the end, I finally decided on the Resnicks. This power couple has accomplished so many of the goals I have set for myself. First off, they have been married as long as I have been alive. That’s almost 50 years and is quite an accomplishment especially because this dynamic duo has been in business together the entire time, building an empire. They are also huge philanthropists and famously gave $750 million to Caltech in 2019 for research into solutions for climate change.

I would love to sit with them and find out what their relationship magic is based upon? I’d also like to talk to them about how they can reshape their massive agricultural empire to embrace Regenerative Agriculture and create a carbon sink that moves the needle in a massive and quantifiable way. I would love to hear Lynda’s take on our brand story and how to simplify and refine our approach to clearly communicate our value proposition.

Hopefully you can make this happen :-)

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.