We were lucky to catch up with Mohammed Gandhi recently and have shared our conversation below.
Mohammed, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One deeply underappreciated facet of entrepreneurship is the kind of crazy stuff we have to deal with as business owners. Sometimes it’s crazy positive sometimes it’s crazy negative, but crazy experiences unite entrepreneurs regardless of industry. Can you share a crazy story with our readers?
December is usually when we are not that busy. We offer essentials that folks buy for themselves. We sell NEED items, not WANT stuff. So it makes sense that we are not the preferred place to come visit during the gifting season. December of 2021 was unusually quiet.
On Dec 13, 2021 at around 1 pm, I was curled up in a ball going through a panic attack worrying about how I would be able to pay the upcoming bills, salaries and my suppliers. My wife, Sophia, walked into my office and saw me in that state- hugged me and reassured me that miracles happen all the time and that there was one waiting around the corner for me.
In the evening, I saw a message from Caitlin (a team member at Lil Helper) on my TikTok DMs asking me to react to a video where a woman was aghast at the lack of menstrual products on store shelves.
At that point, we had about 400 followers on TikTok <https://www.tiktok.com/@lilhelpertiktok>. None of us understood TikTok and thought it was a place where young people danced on trending music. I am almost 40 and cannot dance.
I went into my warehouse, which is the basement of my home and started recording a video where I talked about how our reusable menstrual pads, HyPs, were a great alternative to disposable menstrual products. I posted it as soon as I recorded it and showed it to Sophia.
Sophia thought that the video was a bit off and that I sounded passive-aggressive. Fearing negative comments, we fiddled around looking to delete the video. We found the delete button and just as we were about to go for it, I decided to leave it on and delete it if the reactions were as bad as we expected.
We went to sleep.
I woke up to 5000 followers the next day and the notifications were almost endless. We had gone viral on TikTok.
Our reusable menstrual pads were selling like cold water on a hot day. We were sold out in a matter of hours of all our HyPs.
That video now stands at 3MM+ views <https://www.tiktok.com/@lilhelpertiktok/video/7041341490752179461> and our TikTok account has 250K followers.
Miracles do happen.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers?
I have a bachelors and a masters degree in Aerospace Engineering and worked at Bombardier Aerospace as an Aircraft Performance Engineering Analyst. In 2012, I quit my job to start Lil Helper, where myself and my co-founder Nader, developed a reusable cloth diaper that is as convenient to use as a disposable diaper.
In the last 10 years, through customer feedback, we have not only created a cloth diapering system but introduced a host of other world-class reusable products for the entire family that make it easy and fun to reduce waste.
All the products that we have developed were in response to our customers telling us their problems and we went about creating a solution for them.
When we introduce a product, we develop an entire system around it.
The iPhone wouldn’t be as appealing without the host of accessories or the App store or the iOS, it’s operating system.
So when we introduced our reusable menstrual pads, Hyps, we made a bag to carry it while you are out, a bag to store it while you are at home and a laundry bag to wash it.
Apart from the products, we also hire our own customers, folks who are currently using our products to work in Delight, the customer service part of our business.
We understand that not everyone can afford our products but we know that diapers are a necessity, so we have a program with which we provide subsidized cloth diapers to people whose current station in life might make it difficult to pay full price – The Baby Do Better program.
But something that I am most proud of is our God Forbid Guarantee, which is a simple promise that if god forbids, something were to happen during your pregnancy or birthing process and you cannot use our diapers or other baby stuff, we will refund your entire purchase amount no questions asked.
You can keep the products for the next child, donate it yourself or return it back so we can gift it to someone on your behalf. We want you to take this time to heal yourself rather than worry about what to do with your baby things.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
My co-founder Nader and I met at Ryerson (now TMU) in 2003, while studying for Aerospace Engineering. We finished our bachelors and masters at the same time in 2008 and found jobs in the aerospace industry earning about similar incomes. When we launched Lil Helper in 2011, we didn’t know how much effort it would take for us to run a business after finishing our full-time jobs. In order to realize the full potential of Lil Helper, we were toying with the idea of quitting our jobs. The business didn’t have enough revenue to support even one of us, forget both. So we decided that one of us will quit their job and the other will give the one who quits half his income till the business is able to support them. I quit because I was miserable at my job and Nader paid me half his salary from his job for a year and half till the business could pay me minimum wage. I took a massive pay cut for the next 8 years to build Lil Helper because I truly believed in our mission. But I couldn’t have even started the journey of working full-time on Lil Helper if Nader had not believed in me first.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
The baby industry, especially on SM, is made up of mostly women. There are very few men who are the face of a baby or family oriented business. Even before launching Lil Helper we thought of keeping our wives as the faces of the business while we ran the business in the background. We didn’t do it because we actually wanted to run an authentic business.But it took a few years before I could face the camera and show the product to my audience.I was scared that I would be judged on the basis of my ethnicity, my skin color, my name, my accent. These were my insecurities that I was projecting. I had a breaking point in 2014-ish where I mumbled my way in front of the camera, showing the utility of our products and answering customer queries. People to date love the passion and joy that these diapers and menstrual pads bring to me and those things that I worried about were nothing more than mere insecurities on my part.
Most people are good and kind, and seek the same from others. Our SM is built on that foundation of authenticity. We joke and laugh at our mistakes and openly admit fault when we screw up. So if you are a business owner that is afraid to face the camera and talk to your audience, know that you are doing yourself and your customers a disservice by not opening yourself to them. They want to know how much you love what you are doing so they can be as invested in your journey and products as you are. And the only way you can do that is by showing up as yourself, unapologetically.
If some people don’t want to do business with you because of your -whatever- then good!! It’s a self-selecting group of people who will show up and tell you that they want to do business with you- people just like you.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.lilhelper.ca
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lilhelpergram/
- Facebook: www.fb.com/lilhelper.ca
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohammed-gandhi-07078b58/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/LilHelperTweets
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/LilHelperDiapers/about
- Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lilhelpertiktok