The failure rate for new companies in the beverage industry is 95% in the first year and 99% in the first five years. Now a global company with 100 employees, LIFEAID Beverage Co. is going strong and on the trajectory to earn a revenue of $100 million. Aaron spoke with Iron Sights’ host Scott Howell to discuss the upbringing of LIFEAID and how the company has achieved its success. 

 

 

 

 

How it all started...

Aaron Hinde and Orion Melehan met at CrossFit box in Santa Cruz, California in 2009 and soon became good family friends. Aaron, a sports chiropractor, and Orion, a Certified Financial Planner, first came up with the idea for LIFEAID from their time in the party and rave scene. 

At these events, they would hand out compounds that can help your body stay resilient and feeling good when partying. This gave them the idea to put the compounds together in a “party pill”, each one containing 5-HTP, milk thistle, B complex, and electrolytes. 

The party pill concept soon turned into a beverage, and Aaron explains that “if supplements in pill form were the way to go, NoDoze would be a billion dollar company and Redbull wouldn’t exist”, meaning that people are more likely to consume the compounds if they were in a drink. This was the start of RaverAid, which soon was renamed PartyAid. 

Aaron and Orion developed their concept of the functional beverage. Instead of flavor variations, they focused on having functional variations. PartyAid would be a hangover remedy, FITAID would be for pre and post workout, FOCUSAID would help busy professionals and students, and GolferAid would appeal to, of course, golfers. 

GolferAid was launched first because there was no drink for golf at the time, and they figured this market would have the most space for their new product. GolferAid was first picked up by Santa Cruz golf course De Laveaga, and slowly more and more courses were ordering the functional beverages. With GolferAid gaining traction, Aaron and Orion knew it was time to go all in and sell their own businesses to focus on LIFEAID. 

Scarcity versus Abundance Mindset

Aaron sold his chiropractic practice to an individual who made payments, but within months, the new owner went bankrupt and Aaron only earned a fraction of what the practice was worth. With two kids, living on an undeveloped property, and everything invested in a start up in a tricky industry, Aaron was feeling the pressure. 

Having dealt with financial difficulties in the past, Aaron knew he needed to consider where he went wrong before in order for this new endeavor to be successful. He says in the interview that “the decisions I was making were yielding a result that I wasn’t happy with”, and he realized through copious amounts of research that he was “in full scarcity mode”. 

The scarcity mindset means that you feel there is a finite amount of success to be had, and any success earned by someone else takes away from the success you could achieve. On the contrary, the abundance mindset believes that there is enough success for everyone, and that there is value in every step of the way to success. 

“It took me being completely broke but in abundance mode to actually start building real wealth, where before I was a high income earner in scarcity mode but always broke.” Aaron explains that he started going on hikes on his property, practiced being present, and started keeping a gratitude journal. 

He explains that any success in life comes from making the right decisions over and over again. Aaron says he asks himself, “if I keep making these decisions over time, where will I be, where will I end up?” And if the result is somewhere he doesn’t want to be then he will refrain from making that choice. “Everything is a choice and the more endurance we have to suffer in the short term the less pain we will have in the long term.”

So what is the key to starting a successful business? Hard work. Aaron says that “There's no guarantees, you got to keep innovating, you’ve got to keep grinding, and you’ve got to keep doing good work”.