Kyle Turner: Picture me in the corner at Hardee's offering a free gear for photos of your teeth. They don't give a shit about your tech. They won't check it till Monday if it breaks down on the Friday night. I've got a big appetite for taking risks. I always have. Because the only way I was going to get ahead, I didn't have any mentors that were successful. I didn't have any. I had to take huge risks.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to ADD to Cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Every week, Nathan Bush from E Suite and an e commerce industry expert will share the news, research and insights that you need to know to keep you at the top of your game and of course, keep your customers Adding to Cart.
Nathan Bush: Hello and welcome to Add to Cart. My name is Nathan Bush, host of Add to Cart and director at e commerce talent agency E Suite. This week we have our very first doctor on ADD to Cart. And potentially this might be a little bit controversial, but potentially our most humble founder to date, Kyle Turner, is doing some very impressive work to improve the health of Aussie mouths with his startup, Perley. But getting him to toot his own horn was, well, kind of like pulling teeth.
Nathan Bush: Couldn't resist.
Nathan Bush: What I'm trying to say is that like many social impact founders, Carl's doing great things, but sees his work as a simple matter of fixing something that's broken. In this case, the dental care system in Australia. Now, Perli has two sides. It's a free app that gives users a virtual dental checkup, but it also has an online range of oral care products which it sells through its site. Launching in 2020, Perley have raised almost $3 million in seed capital and are on a mission to improve oral health all around the world. In this, Cole shares how his own upbringing informed his mission. He talks about the huge tech mistake that he made with his first startup and why he's passionate about giving back to indigenous communities as a proud Wiradjuri man. Meanwhile, if you are looking to up your own oral care game, now is the time. Kyle is giving Add to cart listeners 40% off. 40% off Perli products details at the end of the chat.
Nathan Bush: All right, let's get into it.
Nathan Bush: Thanks to our partners Shopify plus and Paclio. Here's our conversation with Kyle Turner, founder and CEO of Perli.
Nathan Bush: Kyle, welcome to ADD to cart.
Kyle Turner: Thanks, Nathan. Very happy to be here.
Nathan Bush: You are our first doctor on ADD to Cart. And tell me I don't know if I can even say this word. Right. You're an epidemiologist. So I did. I screwed that up straight away.
Kyle Turner: No, it's col, mate. It's the. It's been the year of the epidemiologist and I haven't worked on Covid. I feel quite bad. All my mates have been like sleeping under their desks and burnt out and here I am doing a bloody startup.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, startup though in e commerce. So probably the other industry in Covid that went bananas.
Kyle Turner: Yeah, yeah, well we're pretty new so I think, look, I can speak to any listeners that are pretty early on in their e commerce journey but we started as a software company and we could talk about that. But how we pivoted into e commerce just because of COVID and all the dental practices closed, which kind of our business model. So we had to pivot.
Nathan Bush: What was that moment? Tell us about the moment where all the dentists closed. What was your realization then?
Kyle Turner: Right, there's a lot to unpack with that one. So epidemiologist. This is my second style. It's called curly. I built an app in 2019 that scans your mouth and using AI that's take photos of your teeth and your gums and I developed an algorithm that checks for tooth decay, gum disease and so forth. It's free dental checkup and it's got free iron off education because big public health problem. You know we're a purpose led business and one of the ways we're going to make money was referrals to dentists. So I'd onboarded over 3,000 dentists around the country. So at the end of your free dental checkup we're like okay, book a dentist appointment. We've spotted some problems and we launched in April 2020 and then two years pretty much all the dentists were closed. Those that were open had a huge backlog of patients. So we just. That was so. And I'd raise. We've raised nearly $3 million in seed capital. So I had a commitment to investors and my team that we had to make money obviously but so oral care products. So we developed our own line of eco friendly try to remove as much plastic as possible for our OR products because we can spot the end up flossing and okay, use that plus.
Nathan Bush: And when you say that you developed an AI technology to diagnose any mouth problems, teeth problems, gum problems, how do you even start with that? Because I haven't seen it before. I've never seen anyone go out to do it. So is it you literally creating it. Have you got a team around you? How does it you even do that?
Kyle Turner: With great difficulty. Just because it's health, healthcare, all the data, privacy issues. So getting the, the algorithm was the easiest part. But there's three things you need. Shitload of data and health data is really hard to get. You have to collect it yourself. So picture me in the corner at parties offering a free beer for photos of your teeth. I did that in 2018 and then I ended up paying people online, thousands of people around the world for photos of their teeth and gums. The weird thing, I still get friends come up to me at the pub and they grab hook my cheek and go, hey, hey, show me your teeth. So it's just this weird thing and I've got this reputation now amongst my friends. But anyway, I was about to say you'd have to be careful how you
Nathan Bush: position on the Internet. People just think you've got a weird fetish.
Kyle Turner: Yeah, no, no, definitely not. We had good intentions, but anyway, we had to get lots of data, that took a long time. And then you need domain expertise to train an algorithm. In my case, I needed dentists and dentists are bloody expensive, they're very busy. So now I have a team of dentists in India, they're working full time that are labeling tens of thousands of dental images and now we've got this huge, beautifully annotated data set and then you do the algorithms, third and final piece. And with a big great data set, it's quite easy. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Okay. And when you took this solution to dentists at the start, were they threatened or were they embracing it straight away?
Kyle Turner: Some get a bit, you know, uppity. I was at Purpose conference last week in Sydney and it was bloody. I was on a panel and there's a dentist in the crowd and he asked this extremely technical, long, like four minute question. I didn't even know what the question was. In the end you're like, you can't detect tooth decay when it's inside the tooth. And he tried to throw me off with a really technical question and he did. He was worried that I was going to replace his six monthly checkups for his dental practice with our tech, which is not the case. Those people that go to the dentist all the time, they're not who I'm targeting. But 65% of Australians haven't been to the dentist in the last two years. I want to provide a support tool. It's free, so I'm not making any money off it for you to check Your oral health at home by itself. So those are the people I'm after. But there are amazing dentists out there. They get a pretty bad repair. We work with heaps here in Melbourne that want to volunteer their time. They want to help because they understand it's a big public health problem. So let's say, Nathan, you've got a toothache and you're here in Sydney or Melbourne and you rely on the public dental system, which is 35% of the country, how long do you expect to wait to book a general appointment for your toothache?
Nathan Bush: Oh, and I'm in pain at this point.
Kyle Turner: Yeah, you're in pain, you've got to go see a dentist, but you can't afford a dental checkup, which is $231 on average. Yeah. So and then you've got to pay for the filling. So you're looking close to $1,000. You don't have that money. You need to go to the public system. How long do you expect to wait for an appointment?
Nathan Bush: Well, if you're in pain, you'd want in the, in the next day or two, Right?
Kyle Turner: That's about three years, whatever. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: That's insane.
Kyle Turner: So I want to use my tech. Eventually we're going to run clinical trials next year. It is a registered class on medical device, but I want to get a higher classification. So it's a real diagnostic tool that GPS can use. We want to use our tech to triage those appointments so those who are in greatest pain, the greatest need get those appointments first. There's nothing like that at the moment, but that's what we're trying to build.
Nathan Bush: So obviously commercial model, they're around giving people this great tool to be able to self diagnose but then get the help that they need. And I'm assuming there's some sort of arrangement there with dentists for leads that you send them.
Kyle Turner: Yeah. So state government, private health insurers, aged care schools, there's lots of potential buyers. But we've been wanting to do these clinical trials to build up a greater body of evidence, but because of COVID we just haven't been able to. And this year they've been trying to clear the backlog. So next year that's in the works.
Nathan Bush: And then tell us about the E Commerce side of it.
Kyle Turner: It's a pretty easy decision. It was always in the works, but it was during COVID it was pushed along with faster than we expected. Yeah, we've got our own line of oral care products now we donate half our profits Just going back to public health briefly. I will talk about E commerce in a minute, I promise.
Nathan Bush: No, no, no.
Kyle Turner: So there are two sides of the coin in public health. There's prevention and treatment. The Perli app is great for prevention. It's free checkups, free education. But it doesn't treat. There's a lot of people out there, particularly in disadvantaged groups that need treatment. So we've adopted the model. We donate half our profits. I know you've had Simon from who gives a crap on your show and we worship that guy and his company. We love it. And we've basically just stolen their business model. And we want to buy our own dental trucks. So pearly dental trucks. The dream is to eventually have a fleet driving around the country. First nation communities, homeless, homeless people, refugee groups. And that's the treatment side of the public health coin. So we've got that model. We've got software solutions and oral care products. Half the profits will fund those trucks.
Nathan Bush: Ever scrolled through an E Commerce packaging website for fun? Nah, me neither. Until today. Paclio is putting the joy into the packaging game. So let's play a game. I'll tell you the name of the Paclio Pro product and you have to try and guess what kind of product they are. Fairy floss Compostable mailer. Queen bee Honeycomb padded mailer.
Nathan Bush: Here we go.
Nathan Bush: Gummy shark water activated tape. Now if my jaded self thinks that this packaging is fun, imagine what your customers will think. Paclio is also eco friendly. Australian owned and operated with same day dispatch and 14 day returns. Now that's pure joy for everyone. Check out the Paclio range of E Commerce packaging options@paclio.com that's Paclio P A C K L E O paclio.com
Nathan Bush: how far off the trucks are you do you reckon?
Kyle Turner: We are saving up for our first one. We're now talking to a few donors to help us get our first one because we only started paid advertising. This is great. We get into E commerce now. We're making money off some software we built for some dental companies which is great. We're not profitable yet but each month it's going up. But for the oral care products we only started paid ads in June this year. So we're very green. We've made all the mistakes that I'm sure some of your listeners have made but we're really happy with now with fully automated the payment process through the Delivery we outsourced our 3PL sort of 3PL provider but now it's starting this. This machine Just starting to warm up and it's quite exciting. I still love getting the notifications from Shopify every time I get a sale. I look forward to the day when I get. When I turn those off.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, when you go, it's too annoying now.
Kyle Turner: Yeah, no, I still, still really enjoy it.
Nathan Bush: And it's a competitive category, right. Because you're doing everything from toothbrushes to teeth whitening and everything in between. It is competitive out there. When you've got some people who have been in this space for a long time, what have you found that's allowed you to get those little wins and those little step ins to new customers to try for the first time?
Kyle Turner: There's two things. So sustainable products I think the world's moving towards. Our customers are moving towards sustainable products. That's what they expect. And even more, I think we might be a bit early is purpose led businesses. I think they really stand out. So we've ticked both those boxes by plastic free. Our teeth Whitey Kids has got plastic but we've removed as much as we can, as much as possible and then we donate half our profit. So we think we've got a pretty powerful brand story to help stand out. But otherwise they're just, they're bloody good products. We tried dozens and dozens of prototypes for our bamboo toothbrushes to a toothpaste. We've got something we're pretty excited about is this recyclable electric toothbrush that's coming out. It's going to come in about March, April next year. So the world's first fully recyclable electric toothbrush. We partnered with TerraCycle. They recycle those hard products that are hard to recycle. But there's this new type of plastic, it doesn't burn. You can melt it down and remold it into other products. So it's pretty cool. It's a bit tricky. So we're on the third round of prototypes now and this prototype's been pretty good but still a bit fidgety. But that's going to be our flagship product which is quite unique.
Nathan Bush: That's awesome. You strike me as the kind of person who doesn't do things the easy way. You have big visions and you want to kind of reinvent what's normal. Would that be fair?
Kyle Turner: They should be recyclable. A business should have a social purpose and give back to the community. So it's just the way I believe it should be done.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, yeah. But there are easier parts there. Whether it is the recyclable Toothbrushes, whether it's reinventing the way people look after their teeth, it's like you have a vision of how it should be and you're not going to let anyone get in the way of that.
Kyle Turner: Yeah, I'll fail trying to do it. But we're really lucky. We've got some really good impact investors behind us and they love what we're trying to do. I keep referring to who gives the crap when I keep asking them for more money because they've just raised, I think, 40 something million dollars in their first round of funding. So it shows that this business model, even though you're giving away half your profits, can be very successful. The market is shifting. Customers are expecting these. These types of companies.
Nathan Bush: Tell me about some of the communities that you support. Who do you think are in most need of oral support?
Kyle Turner: Well, 35% of the country are on public systems, so there's a huge need there because the public dental system is not fit for purpose. Only 10% of dentists in Australia work in the public system because they make a lot of money in the private system. Why would you. And they're underfunded. The first nations community so I'm First Nation. I'm BradJury from Dubbo in central New South Wales. Shout out to anyone listening to Dubbo, which is my mother's graduate country, and that's where I want to work first. And with the trucks, we've got these ambitions to use them as training programs for First Nation dental practitioners. I want to make our tech free for Aboriginal medical services. So, look, there's a lot of need out there, but that's definitely where we'll start. And probably in regional remote communities.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And do you find when you reach out to communities or people leading programs in communities that they are very welcoming and open to the idea or definitely
Kyle Turner: ruin remote because they really struggle for medical services, specifically dental. Now it's free dental. Who doesn't want that? But not just us Government are really interested. Private health insurers are really interested. Dental's a lost leader for them. We need to do our job and build up the clinical evidence. Our preliminary evidence is really good. It's basically anything a dentist can detect by a visual examination by looking in your mouth. There's no reason why computer vision can't copy that, but you will still need X rays down the line that you don't want to get them every six months because it's just not healthy.
Nathan Bush: And are there any customers or users of the app for the first time that have stuck into, in your mind and like you've seen them use the product and their surprise or their fascination at the results that have given them loads.
Kyle Turner: We're getting about 1200 downloads a week at the moment. It's just going up and up and we're not doing any paid ads for the app. It's just people downloading it. They want to. No one looks in your mouth. When's the last time you actually got in front of a mirror and just like put your tongue out and check under. And so we're like, it's a really interesting moment when you've captured their attention. They're looking at their photos going, fuck. We've got heaps of great stories of people that have seen really serious gum disease. So their teeth looks great white and straight and but their gums were just in real disarray. And then they booked a dentist appointment, hadn't been in years and they actually had to have a lot of surgery but they just never thought to check them out. So we're building awareness and trying to help people with giving them advice and what they need to do. That's, that's the prevention side. I love it.
Nathan Bush: So good. Now you mentioned you're a proud. We're a juryman and do you feel that there is enough support or even community for indigenous entrepreneurs in Australia?
Kyle Turner: Look, there's a lot of goodwill out there and it's growing. Yeah. I do actually think they can always do more. But compared to what it was five years ago, 10 years ago or before, that was like non existent big corporates now starting to switch on that. You know, when you've got a choice between a caterer, you can use a First Nation business as part of your corporate social responsibility. Yeah. And I'll see. I found like you, Phillip let me on your podcast. I know it was because First Nation, but there's a lot of goodwill out there. People want to help. They want to help raise the profile of First Nation businesses. They want to connect you if they can, they want to use your service. They can. I'm pretty optimistic. I think it's been. It's pretty good nowadays. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And if we've got First Nation entrepreneurs founders listening who are going, oh, I know there's a lot of support out there. There's other great business leaders out there. I just don't know how to connect or, you know, tap into that community. What advice would you have for them?
Kyle Turner: There's a great program run by Minderoo, the Minderoo Foundation. They run this program called Dream Ventures where it's a First Nation Entrepreneurs. And I was teaching on it in September. It was run through the University of Melbourne. It's online, but we had about 30 participants in the younger group and then 30 in the older. Just incredible guest lecturers from Blackbird, Facebook that would come and talk and just give you advice. And Minder Roof funded the entire program, so it was free. First Nation Entrepreneurs, that's a great program, you know, great teachers. I'm on it, so sign us up. And it's. Yeah, so that's a great place to start. Start. But yeah, it's just like any other entrepreneur. You have to hustle, you have to go to the events. In 2018, I. I moved to Melbourne. I had five years in the UK. I failed my first startup there, but I knew I know anyone down here. I'm not from this community. So I just kept going every night through the AI talk, or startup talk, e commerce talk, because there's so many events, particularly in the big cities, and you just get to know people. And now I've got this group of friends from the startup community in Melbourne where we go for beers on Friday after work and we just. If there's a grant going or if you've got an issue with an employee or an investor or introductions, you just go build that network.
Nathan Bush: It's nice to have that network. I call them, like real talk networks, where it's like, yeah, yeah, you can just lay it out in the line.
Kyle Turner: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can ask the prickly questions.
Nathan Bush: That's it.
Nathan Bush: What was the first startup and what
Nathan Bush: lessons did you take from that?
Kyle Turner: My PhD was at Oxford University. It was around childhood obesity prevention and Deliveroo had just started in 2016 in London and I was pissed because they partied with McDonald's, Domino's, and it just made it even easier to get junk food. And I thought, all right, we need a healthier alternative delivery. So I started. I raised 100k with 30k of my own savings into it and we built an app and I had a six delivery riders at eight restaurants and we had, on the weekends, Refugee kitchen. They made traditional meals and we sold those. It was going pretty well, but I just made all the mistakes, ran out of capital, Tech kept breaking because I outsourced it to an agency. Just terrible idea. Yeah, just all the problems. One of my bikes had an accident. It's just a shit show. So I moved to Melbourne in 2018, just completely burnt out. But I knew I wanted to do another one. So I lost 30k. But I think MBA has cost about 50 grand, so. And I learned a lot more than those guys.
Nathan Bush: When you talk about the tech, the lesson from the tech being outsourced, how did you structure it differently when you built the new tech for Perley?
Kyle Turner: I learned a lot myself and I hired people that can build it and I needed pre seed capital. Basically I raised 200k on the idea to hire this pick. I didn't pay myself because the agencies don't give a shit about your tech. They won't check it till Monday if it breaks down on the Friday night, which is what happened to our delivery app. So we lost the whole weekend of revenue because I didn't know how to fix it and I didn't have a technical co founder. So that was the biggest mistake I made. And it was also extremely burns. Were all your capital outsourcing to an
Nathan Bush: agency, especially when it is your business asset? Right.
Kyle Turner: Yeah. No, it's dumb. I don't know. A couple of. I did that.
Nathan Bush: Good lesson and thank you for sharing it with everyone else. So hopefully no one, you know, people listening to this don't make similar mistakes.
Nathan Bush: We know that customers are going to be more price conscious in 2023, but it doesn't mean that they've lost their soul. Shopify conducted a global survey to understand customer trends and found that Australian customers are actually the most passionate about buying locally to reduce their carbon footprint. And while price pressure won't go away, the research showed that the majority of Australian customers will wait longer for delivery and recommend a product that is sustainable at its core. We're such a good bunch here, aren't we? To view more resources to help with your 2023 planning and see how Shopify can take your E commerce business to the next level, visit shopify.com au today.
Kyle Turner: Have you had many technical businesses or AI businesses come in?
Nathan Bush: Not so much AI, a lot of technical businesses. We find that people either see tech as an asset, which is exactly what you've built here. You've built Perley as an asset, whether you go on to sell it or invest or raise. It's like there's so much I and uniqueness in what you've built, or people look at tech and go, I'll buy as much off the shelf as I can so I can stay as flexible. Because really tech is in our differentiator, our product is, or our customer service is, or you know what I mean? So I think it's really good for people to go, yeah, we're a tech business. Or actually, no, we're Not a tech business. Where I see people getting in trouble is when they try and do both, it's like, yeah, we'll build a bit of this, but then we'll outsource a bit of this and then just turns
Kyle Turner: into this big mess. Yes, well, we definitely had a bit of a mess in the early days developing our oral care products. We've been working on this for 18 months and now we feel like we've got our act together. But yeah, while also trying to build tech, we probably actually took a step back from tech for about 12 months because Covid was happening. We're in Melbourne lockdowns and we weren't making any money off the referrals and you know, we had a basic algorithm so we're actually able to focus mostly on the oral care products. But doing both now would be nuts.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, and when you mentioned that you took some time to upskill yourself, especially in AI and the tech.
Kyle Turner: Pretty high level.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, but that sounds daunting, Robbie. You'd have to be at a point where you can speak confidently towards what's behind it and what's powering it. Right. How long and how much effort do you think you needed to spend to get to a level where you wouldn't be found out by those four minute questions?
Kyle Turner: No, no, I'm going to very high level. I've learned more than I realized. But no, I've got amazing software developers and data scientists that bless to work with. But no, these days I haven't read up on what they're using at the moment for a long time. So I just let them get out of their way. Cool.
Nathan Bush: And what do you focus on mainly? What do your days look like right now?
Kyle Turner: Laser focused on getting that first truck because it'll do wonders for branding marketing. But you know, it's. I feel early to improve oral health. I've got really shitty teeth. It's fully preventable. So yeah, I just, I feel like to get to the first truck pearl is going to be good. There'll be no stopping us from after that point. So laser focus on that at the moment and then just the day to day running the business, trying to keep the lights on. Luckily we've been able to raise capital and that gives us the flexibility time to build what we dream, you know what our dream is and when you
Nathan Bush: raise that capital, what was the main. Do you remember? Is it like a lot of people go there's one killer slide in my deck or one sentence that I say all the time that when people. The penny just Drops for investors. Is there anything like that that has worked for you, that really tells them your intentions behind Perley and why it's so exciting?
Kyle Turner: The social impact definitely breaks through. But the AI component, the free dental checkups, that's pretty sexy. Everyone knows how expensive dental is. They see its potential with private health insurers, government in schools, rural and remote communities particularly. Yeah, it's definitely our text, our secret sauce. But now we love our healthcare products as well. We think they're pretty special. But it was the AI component that's really broke through.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, amazing. And can you tell us about the Dream Venture Masterclass? I did a little bit of reading on this and this looks pretty interesting.
Kyle Turner: Yeah, so that's Mindaroo Foundation. That's Twiggy Forest Baby. You know, have your own opinion on Twiggy. He's a big character, but he didn't have to. He's given away, I think, nearly 2 billion now to the foundation and they support many causes and one of those is First Nation Economic Development. We're seeing a lot more philanthropic organizations, family offices looking to do something in this area, like Yajalara Trust in Melbourne. They're doing some pretty cool things. But, yeah, Minderu, they, you know, Twiggy is an entrepreneur and he. I believe business has a huge role to play. And so they started in 2018 or 19 Dream Ventures, and now it's grown into the course they ran online in September and 60 businesses from around the country participate. So I think next year it'll be even bigger and all the big corporates like Facebook and stuff and venture capitalists were really keen to support it. So I think it'll just get better every year.
Nathan Bush: And has Twiggy come on board from a funding perspective?
Kyle Turner: No, he hasn't. I did try.
Nathan Bush: Come on, Twiggy, get behind it. Get that van on the road.
Kyle Turner: To be fair, it was pretty early on and we'll. It was just like an idea. So that's three years ago, I think.
Nathan Bush: Luckily some others came in and so the last. Last celebrity question I've got for you, I read that might have been the last venture. I'm assuming that you met one of my man crushers, Jamie Oliver.
Kyle Turner: Yeah, he's a legend.
Nathan Bush: He's one of good on like outside of tv, as he is. As he seems like a nice guy,
Kyle Turner: just a normal guy. So my PhD was in trying to make schools healthier, improve healthy eating and physical activity, and he's done loads in that space. So he was mates with my supervisor at Oxford and he Would pop up and they collaborated a lot. I didn't work with him directly, but he's a lovely guy. He does so much community work for his foot. This is how much people love him. You can always tell if his staff love their boss. Probably a pretty special person. For his 40th birthday they've got this office south of London, he's got 100 staff. They surprised him with a parade and all his staff were dressed up in different outfits, costumes that reflected a memory of them working together with him. And it went down around the block, down to his own restaurant, which is like around the corner, which is where his whole family were waiting and they're cooking him meals, his favorite meals. The guy is a fucking legend. I don't think he gets enough credit because he's on social media all the time. But people get complacent and sick of people. But he is a bloody legend. He got four kids, been the same partner since he was like 16. Big campaigner for people with dyslexia. Self made. Yeah. So I'll try and give him a bit of a rev up so other people jump on board.
Nathan Bush: I can definitely like, is he someone who inspires you? Because I can definitely see his impact on what you're doing or whether you're just cut from the same mold around. Yes, you're great at business. Yes, you can do the innovation but at the heart of it is a bigger purpose.
Kyle Turner: I grew up in poverty, so you have a bit of a chip on your shoulder with first nation businesses. Every bloody first nation business I've come across, and there are thousands around the country are purpose led just cause there's a core value. You're taught when you're growing up that you give back and you share and you look after your local community. So that core value just feeds into your business model. And I think, yeah, Jamie's definitely got that. But I think people who come from a difficult upbringing have that. Yeah. Because maybe they've experienced it. Probably something I can unpack a bit more there.
Nathan Bush: Do you think that chip on the shoulder helps you or hinders you?
Kyle Turner: No. Yeah, it's great. Interesting one is appetite for risk.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Kyle Turner: So I've got a big appetite for taking risks. I always have. Because the only way I was going to get ahead, I didn't have any mentors that were successful. I didn't have any. I had to take huge risks. And you just dumped. You just jumped straight in. And with business, that's what I did with my first startup and I made a shit show of it. But I learned so much really, really fast and now the second one's benefiting for that. But a lot of people don't have the nerve to really take huge risks. And, like, I was flat broke, I lost all my savings, completely burnt out. A lot of people don't feel comfortable doing that, which is fine. But, yeah, I've always had an appetite for it.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I suppose too. You frame it like that. It's like if you come from a safe, secure place, you'll earn for more safety, more security. But if you've got that life experience and you've been through a bit, you can kind of go, well, whatever happens isn't gonna, you know, I'll bounce back up from it.
Kyle Turner: Yeah, maybe you don't commit as much, you don't do fit for long hours because you've got that safety net. But if it's like do or die, you really do commit. So I think that's a big difference.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely. This has been awesome, Kyle, really appreciate it. I've got probably the most pressing question as the last one, the big question. Do you brush or do you floss first?
Kyle Turner: You floss first, mate.
Nathan Bush: Always.
Kyle Turner: Yeah, you should. We've got a blog on this. It's amazing how often we get asked that question and dentists get asked that question. But you should floss first. The dentists really don't care. As long as you're flossing, we don't care if you do it first or second.
Nathan Bush: Lovely. If you take nothing from this conversation except for that, then you're on your way.
Kyle Turner: But no, what you should take is buy a toothbrush. Exactly.
Nathan Bush: Pearly with2eyes.com. Check it out. I was hugely excited, like you mentioned, some of the things that are coming up, obviously the recyclable electric toothbrush and the big goal of getting that first van on the road. What else are you excited about for yourself and the Perley team?
Kyle Turner: Definitely those two. That's a big focus. But also the clinical trials. So I'm an epidemiologist. Before Pearli, I would run vaccine trials, drug trials and, yeah, I want Pearli to become a diagnostic tool that GPS can use. The North Star. Sorry, I said North Star and it listed on the mds. So there's not enough dentists out there, but all the GPs, nurses, midwives, pharmacists can use our tech to actually screen for oral health and give advice, which are hundreds of thousands of practitioners right now that should be able to use our tech. Once we've got there, the more people are Getting their oral health tech.
Nathan Bush: I love it. Such a big mission and important mission. Kyle, thank you so much for sharing. I can't wait to see those vans on the road. How can people get in touch? Whether it's communities looking for partnering with pearly people that might be able to help. Obviously you've got the website there, there's the plug moment. How can people get in touch?
Kyle Turner: We're looking for wholesale partners. So all the big ones like Adore beauty Mecca. We're now on Kohl's Amazon looking for online digital partners. We're not looking to sell retail at this stage. That's just gotta make the barcodes bigger. You gotta get the hook on the bloody packaging. That stuff that I just, you know, it gives a plug on social media. If you believe in what we're trying to do, obviously buy some of our old care products which we're giving away a lot of products at the moment and giveaways, we're giving big discounts because we just got to get into bathrooms and we're only a few months into the journey. So any support at this stage would be huge.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. And you very generously given our listeners a coupon code to use which we'll publish in the show notes. So check that out for 40% off storewide. But if you want to support even more, buy it full price. But there is a, there is a coupon code there if you want to
Kyle Turner: go check it out. I would use the coupon code. I, I understand.
Nathan Bush: Very smart, Kyle. Thank you so much. Love the mission and thank you so much for sharing with us. We're going to keep a very keen eye on it over the coming years.
Kyle Turner: Thanks, Nathan. I really enjoy your show, mate. Thanks very much,
Nathan Bush: Nico. It's a bit hard to go back to your day job after looking listening to someone as inspirational as Kyle, isn't it? But Kyle is also sharing the love with Add to cart listeners. He has 40 off oral care products for you@perli.com. that's P E A R L I I dot com. That's double I dot com. You can get toothpaste, toothbrushes, even teeth whitening kits. Just use the code add to cart 40 or one word add to cart 40 when you check out@perli.com. all right, here are the three lessons that I took away from my chat with Kyle, apart from just being a better person in general. Number one, take control of your tech if you want it as a business asset. With his first startup, Kyle outsourced the tech to an agency and now says that this was his biggest mistake. So if you're building a business where tech is your differentiator, you need to build and own the tech because it's a business asset. But if you are building a retail business where you can use off the shelf tech, use it, don't build it. It's a very important crossroads decision and one which will have a lasting impact on your business and your profitability. Number two Messy Customer Journeys now this wouldn't normally be a lesson, but can you imagine trying to map the pearly customer journey between the app, the physical product and the community partnerships? It would be an absolute nightmare. It would be fluid and an ever evolving customer journey. It definitely wouldn't be that clear funnel. But while it's a messy journey, it creates a really strong ecosystem mixing up products and services. It's a great hack to continually engage and interact with your customers. So if you're a product product based business, think about how you can add services in to keep in touch with your customers more regularly. Number three purpose as part of the business model Perlee give 50% of profit away Even though they're not profitable yet, they've built it into the model of the business right from the very get go and I think this is crucial. Kyle cites who gives a crap as the model that he wants to emphasize accumulate and when they do get to profitability it will just be part of what they do. Trying to reverse engineer community giving once you are profitable to the tune of thousands or even millions of dollars becomes really really hard because all of a sudden you've got investors and operational costs and everything that makes it hard to reverse it. But by doing it at the start means that you will be there all the way through. So think about that if you're starting a new business today. To get the highlights of today's episode, head on over to add to cart.com and sign up for our free newsletter each Tuesday. We will send Monday's episode summary links and discount codes for you to go next level on. And if you're looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, come and visit us at East Suite where dedicated E Commerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands in Australia. Head on over to esweettalent.com where you can download the free e Commerce Salary guide and sign up to our weekly e Commerce job emails. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep those customers adding to cart.
