Make Yourself Irreplaceable: Interview with Dan Zavorotny, Co-Founder of Nutrisense
I recently went one on one with Dan Zavorotny. Dan is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Nutrisense.
Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
Dan: I was born in Ukraine and immigrated to the U.S. when I was 10 years old. This experience was instrumental to my growth: it taught me how to adapt and effectively navigate ambiguous situations.
In college, I had eclectic interests. Initially, I followed pre-medicine & pre-pharmacy concentration; however, I wanted to learn more about the business side of healthcare and eventually transitioned to majoring in economics.
While in college, I won the position of University Student Trustee on a budget of only $50 while my opponents spent upwards of $30,000. I accomplished this by first splitting voters into three groups: people that would vote for me, would never vote for me, and those that were unsure. I realized that it was ineffective to spend time with voters who would never vote for me, so my first question was always “who are you voting for”? If they already had a candidate in mind, then I moved on immediately and didn’t spend time pitching my platform. Instead, I focused my time on people that were unsure. To the voters that were unsure, I asked as a follow-up question “what issue are you most concerned about?” and only if my policies could solve that issue for them, did I try to persuade them to vote for me. Otherwise, I moved on to other voters. It was this segmentation process that taught me that creative execution is more impactful than having resources.
After I graduated from University, I entered the professional sphere working at a couple of different companies, but one of my most memorable experiences was working for Bosch in France without knowing the language. I developed a strong belief that with enough effort and exposure, I can learn anything, thus I hired a French tutor and spent all of my time watching French movies, listening to French music, and practicing my skills by chatting up the local Parisians. The first month, people barely understood what I was saying. By month two, I was able to order meals, ask for directions, and even ask a girl on a date. By month six, I was able to carry on full conversations. This experience changed my frame of mind from limitation to growth.
A couple of years later while at a healthcare conference in San Francisco, I met up for dinner with a friend, Alex Skryl, who was a successful entrepreneur. We discussed the broken healthcare system in the US and what the ideal state should look like.
I fell in love with the idea of building something meaningful and helpful to the world, so I quit my job to launch Nutrisense with Alex. As luck would have it 3 months later, COVID hit and we struggled to raise money for our venture. We paid our employees from our savings account. But my belief in the idea was so strong that I doubled down. My sole focus became marketing to drive revenue even though I had no encounter with the field prior to the launch of our enterprise. We built products people loved, obsessed about every customer, and were voracious in our execution. This finally caught the attention of investors and we were able to raise a small round to help accelerate growth.
Adam: How did you come up with your business idea? What advice do you have for others on how to come up with great ideas?
Dan: In my previous role in healthcare consulting, my job was to maximize profitability for hospitals and insurance companies.
During my career, I noticed two troubling trends: the U.S. spends more money on healthcare every year per capita, and as a country, we're getting sicker every year due to preventable diseases (type 2 diabetes, heart disease, etc.), which were caused by poor lifestyle decisions.
When Alex and I started talking about the concept for Nutrisense, everything began to fall into place. Alex wore a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) to improve his metabolic health by understanding his personalized glucose response to different types of foods. While glucose monitoring wasn’t new to me, our conversation allowed me to see the opportunity to create immense value for a large segment of the U.S. population.
A piece of advice I’d give others here is: don’t just look at the world around you as it exists with all its problems; proactively become a solutions-oriented thinker and bring that into your conversations with others. You’d be amazed at how many solutions are all around, waiting for you to find them.
Adam: How did you know your business idea was worth pursuing? What advice do you have on how to best test a business idea?
Dan: I have a philosophy that relates here: if the world needs something, someone should create it, regardless of its business potential. That's our moral obligation to the world before you get to the economics portion of it.
Having said that, if the goal is a profitable business, you must ensure customers want what you are planning to build. With Nutrisense, we knew we had a product that could succeed because we had people pre-pay for it before we built it.
My advice is to test this approach with your business ideas. Can you generate sales from just an idea? This does not mean that someone says they would theoretically pay for it, but will they actually open their wallet and pay you for it in the moment.
Adam: What are the key steps you have taken to grow your business? What advice do you have for others on how to take their businesses to the next level?
Dan: Early on, we focused on two things: build and sell. My advice to anyone starting out is to utilize a strategy where you have two people who have opposite skill sets. My co-founder, Alex, built the product, and I sold it as these were the only two things that mattered. The next hire would be someone maintaining the revenue. This can be achieved in various ways, and it will depend on the business you're in. For us, it was adding a nutrition expert, Kara Collier, whose skills we leveraged to keep the customer engaged once they onboarded to our platform.
At a certain stage, what you need from your employees will also change. You will need to upskill your current workforce, look externally to bring in experts or find a combination of both that works for your team. The hard decision here is, at times, you will need to part ways with some folks who were excellent at an earlier stage.
For example, job requirements can change dramatically from the early days of running a business. First, you need a generalist who knows a little about all the different aspects of marketing. However, in six to twelve months, you will need a Technical SEO Analyst, a Content Editor, a Photo Editor, etc.
Adam: What are your best sales and marketing tips?
Dan: You can’t sell dogs to a cat person. I’ve found that the most important thing is to know your audience. As much as you may want to target everyone in the world as a customer, you only have a limited amount of time in a day. It’s just as important to “fire” the wrong customers as it is to “hire” the right ones.
Once you have the right focus, obsess with your customer’s needs and their pain points. Know what you can offer them and provide value continuously. The customer’s worldview can change at any time and as such you need to constantly adapt to their needs and wants.
Get the right message to the right people.
Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?
Dan: You’ll see this is a common theme in my answers. In my eyes, one of the defining qualities of an effective leader is putting the right people in the right seats.
One of the most important ways to do this is by building a strong network of mentors and becoming a magnet for talent. Effective leaders continuously seek out mentors who are experts in various fields, such as recruiting, fundraising, supply chain, and everything else in between. This way, they have someone to turn to for guidance when facing challenges.
To take leadership skills to the next level, aspiring leaders should embrace feedback and view criticism as an opportunity for growth. Instead of viewing criticism about your weaknesses as a negative, be excited that someone cares about your development.
I highly encourage everyone to develop the skill of self-reflection. For example, I listen to podcasts I was on to understand what I did well and what was missing. It is an easy way to discover dozens of improvements you can make for the next one to increase the value for your listeners.
Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams?
Dan: Even if you are the world expert at hiring you will hire at best with a 50% accuracy. It can be a hard fact to accept at first, but you have to be comfortable with departing with the wrong folks.
If you keep people in a position where they can’t perform up to their talents, you’re hurting the company and the employee because you’re preventing them from finding the place where they can excel.
When leading and managing teams, understand that A players are critically important. If you have B- or C players, they can drag down A players to be worse than they should be. As a leader, it's your job to set employees up to succeed, which includes assembling an A+ team.
It is critical to remember that just because someone is struggling in their current role doesn’t automatically mean they are a C player. They could be in the wrong job for their skill set. If you see they have skills that could be better utilized elsewhere in the company, put them in the best position to succeed.
Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?
Dan: Institute a culture of continuous learning and teaching. Do this for yourself in your daily life and for your employees. Lead by example to foster a culture of learning around you. If you expect your employees to improve their knowledge and skills, then you should continuously expand your own too.
It's essential to learn how to hire effectively as early as possible. It's the most crucial part of building a strong team, so prioritize this from the outset.
Lastly, provide ample opportunity for people to take on more responsibility. It will quickly show you who your top performers are because ambitious people love more responsibility to expand up their knowledge.
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?
Make yourself irreplaceable, no matter how big or small the role is. Become indispensable by committing yourself fully to your role.
Although reaching the 99th percentile may require a decade, especially for more complex topics. It is however possible to get to the 90th percentile within six months with a genuine commitment to learning. This will make you a valuable asset to any team.
Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?
Dan: I think it's important for everyone across all walks of life to be able to take control of their health.
Lowering the barrier so everyone can access health information about their bodies is a positive step towards health ownership. I want to live in a world where people aren't just addressing problems when they come up but are able to proactively adjust lifestyle habits to be their best, healthiest selves.
Glucose is an integral part of this picture. Studies have shown that elevated blood glucose levels, even in healthy individuals, play a significant role in a person’s overall well-being Even among healthy people, elevated blood glucose levels can impact physiological pathways related to aging, cardiovascular health, kidney function, and, of course, the risk of developing a metabolic disorder like diabetes.
My goal has always been to help people discover and reach their health potential which is why I built the platform that leverages CGM technology and machine learning along with 1:1 coaching.
Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally-recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.
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