We were lucky to catch up with Richard Pauwels recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Richard, thanks for joining us today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry? Any stories or anecdotes that illustrate why this matters?
My Industry is CPG- Consumer Packaged Goods (specifically foods). I think the biggest things Corporate America gets wrong in my industry is that they have a shortsighted view of profit profit profit. There has been very little emphasis placed on impact. For instance do these large corporations care about their impact on the environment, the people that work for them, or their customers? Too often, the answer is no. Let’s talk about the impact of the industrial agricultural and food complex. These massive companies, many of which are subsidized by US taxpayer money, create cheap plentiful food.: Think GMO corn, soy, wheat. But at what cost to the environment? At what cost to their customers health? At what cost to the animals that eat this feed? Are there any other benefits besides high profits? It feels clear to me that the rise of conventional/industrial agriculture has a correlation with the decreasing health of the American people. Every type of disease, cancer, autism, diabetes, and on & on are on a massive growth trajectory. To me it seems obvious that these two things are linked. Our food is now less nutritious because the dirt that it is grown in has been tilled, industrially fertilized and sprayed with pesticides for many decades. This causes utter destruction of the health of the soil. Without healthy soil more synthetic inputs are needed to try and keep yields high, but in the end, we get less and less nutrition form our food and this allows for disease to flourish and well being to decline. It’s the same with the industrially farmed animals. The conditions they live and die in are so bad that we are banned from seeing them, Why is there no transparency in these industries? Because the very sight of the way these “food” products are produced would hurt there bottom line- meaning people would not want to buy their “products” because of the way it is produced.
At Rich Nuts, we are all about transparency. I love taking people through our simple natural process of sprouting. Educating them on the benefits of sprouting and why we use all organic ingredients brings me joy. I am super excited for us to move into Regenerative Agriculture. To me, this is the change we need. in the world. Regenerative Agriculture can sequester 3 to 5 times the carbon per square acre as conventional farming. In addition it produces food that is up to 30% more nutritious. When I read about this in a white paper, I knew we would eventually head in this direction, In the conclusion, the white paper determined that we could avoid the climate crisis in 5 years once the entire world transitioned to Regenerative Agriculture. This is all without any cuts to Co2 emissions, which we have made almost no progress as a civilization. Anyhow, the opportunity and Idea to create a food business that creates more nutritious food, sequesters more carbon, and tastes amazing was just too good to pass up. BE THE CHANGE rings loudly in my ears. That’s what we are here to do. It’s a simple as focusing on creating healthy soil the foundation of life here on planet earth.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I grew up in the Suburbs of Los Angeles and lived a fairly normal middle class life except for the fact that I was born in prison (that’s a long story for another time). After high school I went to junior college, and joined the US Navy Reserves to help pay my way through college. I transferred to UCLA where totally out of know where I became a cheerleader for 2 years. After UCLA I contemplated law school but quickly realized that a desk job in an office would suffocate me. So I pivoted toward my childhood dream of becoming an LA County Firefighter/Paramedic just like on the hit show “Emergency”.
It was quite a task getting hired and standing out from the 22,000 applicants. In 1998 I started off my fire department career in the Fire Academy. I got to live out my childhood dream of becoming a firefighter and paramedic. During my 20 years, I spent the last 12 years in Malibu at Station 88. What I quickly learned was that there was no healthy food on a brushfire. Our options were prison sack lunches, MRE’s, and sometimes fast food. Since I was already eating organic, and paleo, those options did not work for me.
Doing my best to remain true to my healthy diet, I decided to eat raw organic cashews on the fire line. But instead of getting the energy, I expected from the fats and proteins. I got lots of digestive issues and brain fog. Not exactly what you want when you’re on a hillside trying not to die. I did some research on the Internet and I discovered that raw Nuts, seeds, grains and legumes for that matter all contain phytic acid and lectins commonly known as anti-nutrients.
What I discovered through my research is that sprouting would mitigate the negative effects of these anti-nutrients on my digestion, and help me digest the nuts without causing all of the digestive issues. I quickly learned that by sprouting I solved my digestive issues. This was my first Ahh-ha moment.
Think of it this way, nature’s divine design is to protect the nuts, seeds, grains and legumes, because they are the offspring of the plants. They are in encased in an invisible shield made up of the anti-nutrients I mentioned above. When an animal eats them, they can pass through our digestive track whole, and once it rains, they sprout into a new plant. These substances by design block, inhibit and disrupt digestion, allowing that nut seed to pass through us whole. Sprouting them brings them into a growth phase where they drop those defenses becoming more nutritious and more digestible.
The next step in my discovery process was when I realized I could dehydrate the sprouted nuts, at a low temperature, which kept the nutrient values high, preserved them naturally and brought back that crunch I loved. Anyone can soak their nuts overnight, and that will help with digestion, but then you have to deal with moist nuts, which not only get moldy very quickly, but have a texture that’s quite mushy. If you refrigerate them to preserve them, now they’re cold and mushy, and I just didn’t like it, yuck! The dehydrator was my second ahh haa moment. so I started making these at my house with cashews, sage, rosemary and liquid aminos.
They tasted amazing. I brought them with me to events and shared them from a glass jar with friends, family and fellow firefighters. They loved them so much that every time I walked into the room, everyone would stick out their hands and say hey do you got any more of those nuts you make? .About six months in I realize that this was not going to be sustainable for me to keep making them and giving them away. I was spending about $1000 a month on raw organic cashes and giving them away to everyone in my orbit. So I told my friends, family and fellow firefighters bluntly “This is not sustainable. If you want me to keep making them you’re gonna have to pay me for them.” The overwhelming response was “how much do you want?” And that’s how I started Rich Nuts the gourmet sprouted nut Company.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
I would say the biggest pivot in my life came unexpectedly. As I mentioned earlier, I was a Los Angeles County firefighter for 20 years. I fully expected to do my 30 years and retire like most firefighters do. Unfortunately, or fortunately for me, it all depends on how you look at it, I was retired on injury in 2019. This is not what I was expecting, but luckily, I had already discovered the sprouted secret and was beginning to explore farmers markets and other small venues in retailing our gourmet sprouted nut products.
As one door closed for me, another opened. Now this is not to say that this all happened easily and without struggle. I literally cried when the medical examiner told me he was going to put in for my retirement. But then he put it into simple terms that made the decision clear for him and for me. He said “We can do a bunch of surgeries and try to cobble you together so you can reach the finish line in 10 years, but you’ll mostly likely be permanently handicap at that point. If I retire you now, there’s a chance you can regain some function and have a decent healthy life from this point forward”. So that’s what happened,
As I mentioned, the door of Rich Nuts was beginning to open, so I pivoted towards Rich Nuts with no experience in business, or as an entrepreneur. I began to find my way blindly in the Business world. I literally did not even know what a spreadsheet was or how to use one. I did my best to use the skills that I had learned and see how they would translate from the fire department into business. One of my fast track secrets was that I joined a men’s group that was entrepreneur focused, I call it, my cheat code to learning business in a hurry. It’s called METal international, and it’s been a great place for me to learn and meet an amazing group of heart centered, entrepreneurial businessman.
Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?
Yes, we do manufacture our own products. This was a long road to hoe. Since our product is an innovation, and Disruption, there were not a lot of people doing anything similar to what we were doing. We literally had to figure out how to do everything, and we still are learning how to do everything at larger and larger scale all the time. Remember, I started this in my home kitchen soaking in a metal mixing bowl and dehydrating in an old 80’s Ronco Dehydrator that my dad had in his garage.
With each level of increased production, we have to figure out how to make our products hold true to their original quality. Sometimes we even find ways to improve the quality & safety while scaling up. It’s been quite an adventure and required thousands of hours of tedious work, failure, extensive note taking, and tons and tons of research and experimentation. Especially since we are in food finding out how to make our products taste great, nutrient dense, and safe was quite a challenge. One thing you’ll know if you know me is that I love a challenge. Even though it took literally years of trial and error and thousands of failures to figure out how to make these products, the payoff has been rewarding in the joy of success alone.
I literally can’t stop creating products and my team has to pull me back from making more so that we can show some discipline in our SKUs. What I came to realize during this process is that I am extremely creative, and that I function well outside of the box. This is what allows me to create unexpected flavors. It also allowed me to focus my energy on my obsession which is creating the BEST nuts ever. I go through every part of the process with an open mind and I look for new and interesting ingredients that are full of nutrition, in order to serve my obsession. I’m often telling customers that they should let my obsession serve them. I also realized that my creativity made me vulnerable to what others thought of my creation. That was a whole journey in and of itself to discover who I am and what I’m about.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.richnuts.com
- Instagram: @rich.nuts
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/richnutsdotcom
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-pauwels-287988140/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@richnutslife
- Other: TIK TOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@richnutslife
Image Credits
Laurent Levy