Bee (Belinda) Murray: Hello and welcome to the Bee Formless Flow Driven CEO podcast where we are reshaping life leadership and business from the inside ⁓ And today I'm welcoming to the show from Australia, from Sydney, so close by Adam Good. Welcome to the show, Adam.
Adam Good: you Thanks, Bae. Great to be here.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Thank you. And a bit of a blast from the past as well, right? Like you and I were both back in our advertising era. We worked at the same organization, which is Dentsu. And I think we worked out it was between 2015 and 2018 where we first crossed paths. So close to 10 years ago and probably haven't caught up. Well, we haven't touched base since then. And then here we are now in completely different, like.
Adam Good: That's about right, yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I guess careers or, know, and it's quite interesting ⁓ of six degrees of separation. So ⁓ thank you for coming on. ⁓ I'm really excited to talk to you today because we're gonna do a bit of show and tell, which is the first time we've actually done a bit of show and tell on screen. So really playing around with the different ways this podcast is going better. ⁓ You're the founder and CEO of Oroch Essentials, which is a health tech company. And I'll let you share your story around. It started off as a side hustle, but it's now become a full-blown, you know, it was a passion and now it's your full-blown business. And you've got a number of co-founders and it's very exciting. you know, real new world, if you ask me in terms of your building mood as a service and it's powered by scent intelligence, where you use environmental and now
Adam Good: I
Bee (Belinda) Murray: olfactory cues, you can explain more about that, to basically help leaders and teams shift their state. from, you know, including calm, focus, creativity, and it's on demand. And you're working with a lot of B2B businesses and services. essentially, you explain this way better, but I'll just keep it really simple. It's a way to down regulate stress ⁓ focus on the moods that are required. ⁓ but also at times if you're feeling a bit, ⁓ it's that up, regulate the nervous system as well. worked in advertising previously. I'm to hand it over to you to share a bit about your journey and then I'll come back to your response to my question when booking in for the pod in a bit. ⁓
Adam Good: Yeah, yeah, no, thanks, Bea. I think us advertising executives are reinventing ourselves in this world of constant change. yeah, mean, ⁓ was definitely a side project. I very passionate about how Scent was, you know, really triggering sort of up regulation and down regulation with me, especially. ⁓ I when we met, I was actually living in Singapore, working with Dentsu. But my life in the last sort of 20 years, I've always
Bee (Belinda) Murray: You Mm. Subscribe.
Adam Good: um, had a journey of, of wellness and spending a lot of time on wellness retreats and meditation and yoga is a real passion of mine. And when you go on those experiences, know, sense is such a visceral part of that experience. And, uh, I think we tried to do this podcast when we were in Bali a couple of weeks ago, it sort of did quite work there, you know, environments like that, you just have these ancient kind of aromas that really work for you. And I suppose when I used to go back home and
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah. Totally.
Adam Good: kind of tinker around with aromatherapy and use my water diffuser and try some essential oils to sort of kind of create that. I really saw a lot of friction in that process and really wondered why scent wasn't kind of digitized like many of the other senses that we've been working on in humanity for some time. So in advertising sense, we do a lot of sound and video, but in some ways we're probably over-indexed a little bit in that. So there was just this real
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: passion point of seeing where we could go with scent. So as a side project, I was working as a chief digital officer, working with clients, of course, but behind the scenes, I was trying to looking at AromaTech and trying to work out how we could really at the end of the day, digitize scent. I can't actually demonstrate. aromas and smell on a podcast, but I might be able to show a couple of little things just to help people understand what we mean by digitizing scent. ⁓ So it's a real passion point, you know, and this problem is that scent is kind of, you know, very much stuck in the past. ⁓ When we think about it, don't know why my screen is not moving on there. There we go. Percent is... ⁓
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I'd love that.
Adam Good: quite primitive in many ways. And also there's a lot of problems with it. It's filled with carcinogenics and solvents and we sort of introduce it into our homes and it's actually kind of a bit of a problem. And so what we decided to do was build a product which we call the Aurica Aromasphear. And it's ⁓ our first product that we have where ⁓ the Aromasphear is kind of think about it as a diffuser. It has eight TGA. essential oils in the device and they can be mixed at various forms of aromas that are more uplifting or down-regulated and we talk about them as sort of calm, focus, energy and sleep and it's activated by a mobile phone, it connects to your smart home so you can kind of trigger these environments that use light, music and aromas and what's kind of neat about it so we actually use biometric data as well to help people ⁓ kind of find ⁓ when scent should be triggered and ⁓ whether that is to be an up-regulated experience or down-regulated, so. So we have some intelligence behind that and we have some health questionnaires and that allows the output to deliver, you know, scent at nighttime to be more sleep related or in the morning it might be something to create some energy or even focus to do some deep work. So that's our product and we've been... have a few VCs on our cap table and some sophisticated angels. And we've done some pretty interesting things. We were on the TV show, The Block last year that really drove a lot of sales. And we've had some corporate clients like Telstra that we've been working with to create a signature scent for their retail environments, which we're rolling out to stores and we're going to cross all the states in Australia at the moment. yeah, it's certainly been a challenging project and digitizing scent is... is a really heavy lifting experience, but it certainly fits in my passion point. And now we're out for places that the Aromasphe can be part of. So we've found a lot of ⁓ real footprint, quite interesting, trying to get people into work. So whether we're creating a brainstorming room or a calming environment or even a resting pod, ⁓ using as part of that experience. So yeah. ⁓
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah. It's so interesting environment and I was telling you when we caught up recently, you know, reconnected like, you know, from a flow. getting into flow state perspective and a flow science perspective. Environment is everything. If you think about in the past where we've just gone to work or spent the majority of our time and it's just been kind of really stark lighting or that bright clear light and by the end of the day you've got the full-blown migraine or headache, but also from an environment perspective, just kind of, there is no rumor whatsoever. ⁓
Adam Good: Yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: And yet our energy levels can change like, I don't know, there might be a stat behind that, and you know, multiple times in a day. And there's times when we need to be absolutely focused and, you know, to get that productivity of us, but also whether it's strategic or creativity. And so having those spaces where it does, ⁓ know, from a neuroscience perspective. ⁓ that that aroma connects to, you know, the brain in terms of, then automatically switches So it takes us from, you know, whether we're distracted or whatever into that focus. ⁓ us a little bit about that intelligence and how it's connected to how you've digitized that from a wearables perspective, because wearables have ⁓ around for quite some time. And there's obviously the HRV piece and understanding. ⁓
Adam Good: Yeah. Mmm. Mmm.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: energy levels etc etc. How does a wearable connect? how does that all interconnect? I mean that diagram you showed was great but like breaking it down even further I'm really fascinated by that and the the science behind it.
Adam Good: Yeah, think, well, the science on scent is ⁓ mean, the olfactory system is actually the first sense in development.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: in the womb that's formed first because it's the most comprehensive and science is still working through why does certain aromas actually trigger memory or help with cognitive ability or help with various forms of mood states. In ancient times, I mean that was just a way of of a... you know, part of history. And it depends on how far we want to go back in you know, humans, I think I still have that, which is big noses. Humans just used to ⁓ able to draw in botanics aromas to help them kind of... get through through the day. So you didn't even have to eat as much if you actually got your sort of breath work and you got your scent sort of working. You know, back in the day, we used to use scent to actually determine whether ⁓ was times when times that due to to be you know to be ⁓ high alert because there'd be danger around or when there's other times that it's all about you know celebration and ceremony and those sorts of things we've looked deep into that type of research ⁓ really in the last hundred years ⁓ got this industrial revolution that's filled the air with a lot of pollutants so we've actually reversed our need for ⁓ thinking that we need ⁓ sense of smell.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: But when we discovered in COVID, it was actually one of the most damaging parts that happened when you had a really bad case of COVID. You actually started to lose your sense of smell and that had all sorts of repercussions. And if you didn't get your sense of smell back, you could be really sick for quite a long time. So I think that's just where we're at at the moment. know, there's some... homes and environments that you go into and it's noticeable that they've really decided to put certain sort of aromas in that home and you know about it and you say that really smells quite nice or sometimes you go to a hospital and there's a smell in the hospital that makes you sort of retreat and you actually feel quite concerned about that. So that evolution of like what type of scent therapy can actually improve your cognitive and improve your mood is really the journey that we're on. we're constantly looking for the latest research where people are various different aromas ⁓ help ⁓ their states and we're taking that on. ⁓ And it, to get to your question on biometrics, it's just another ⁓ input actually helps us ⁓ determine scent should be turned on and scent should be sort of turned off ⁓ or changed to give you a ⁓ kind a... ⁓ and and it takes benefit so what the right is the cop does is is that when you get it's kind of a fun product product you're kinda playing around with oil pressing lots of buttons but it's like a coffee machine it's not that helpful to maybe have ten cups coffee in the morning it's more about some finding those around instead will actually help you through the day and this habitual behavior starts to happen within about three weeks people upset their routines and the biometrics are adjusting when certain aromas should sort of take place. And then you're more about what's my intent? You do I want to wake up tomorrow, have a podcast with Adam? I need to be, you know, alert for that type of thing. Or is my daily routine going to change where I'm off to a gym or I'm off to do a walk, or maybe it's, it's all about using scent to help at the end of the day where you've actually really busted your gut and you've done a lot of work. You've, you've, you're. anxiety levels are a little bit heightened, your heart variability is sort of changing because you're stressed. You know, the aromaspher might play a little calming ritual to sort of say, you know, take 20 minutes out, make yourself a cup of tea, just look after yourself. And so that's what we're using SENT ⁓ help people in that experience. And yeah, it's certainly a journey when you're doing biometric data, but we are blending that with our machine learning ⁓ taking scientific research in scent therapy, taking inputs around biometric and mashing those two together. call it the Auric Wellness Signature to allow a set up of when your aromas should be sort of playing throughout the day and throughout the week. So yeah, it's a pretty crazy project, but it's certainly got a lot of traction now.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I love it. It's so, it's Sony world, but it's so, so required. Like if you think about like all the stats around exhaustion and you know, like the inability to be able to focus because you know, you only have to think about the top, like you were constantly switched on, aren't we? Like, you you can, you've got your phone with you, generally 24 seven. And so then it's that ability to have these sense trigger. or invoke an emotion that is sometimes you don't even know when you're going 100 miles an hour and you need something like that to trigger you to go calm your farm or calm down. Like you need to get more into this calm state. And then once you hit that state, I know I do, it's like, you get those fresh perspectives, you get the ⁓ kicks in. there's so benefits to what you're doing. ⁓
Adam Good: Yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: And it just, yet it's so new. And so it's really, it's about proving it out, right? Because you've probably come up against sad as part of your own journey, you know, as a co-founder and you know, this going from a side hustle into a fully blown business. But are you seeing, like, and when you, like, for example, you're obviously, you know, co-created with the Telstra stores, are they noticeably seeing a difference in themselves? You've said there's a 21 day, you know, kind of like habit that comes on. ⁓ What, ⁓ like from a business perspective and, you know, in a business or with leaders, what are you seeing that they're noticing about themselves or as a collective?
Adam Good: Yeah, look, mean, Telstra is an organisation that I've spent as an executive, like four years of my life in Telstra Media building, you know, which similar to Aurek in one sense, so this hardware reoccurring business model, you know, in those days, we were building streaming television and getting people to choose download own movies or ⁓ video. went to Telstra to show them the product and there were some really interesting executives like we were constantly trying to look at ⁓ retail footprint. You know how does ⁓ know various forms of video music lighting experiences affect our customers when they're researching products or they maybe got some challenges in regards to their current ⁓ account. They really wanted to start to look at where scent could play a bit of a role. So we actually went through quite a rigorous ⁓ ⁓ lab testing to find what aromas were working for people as they entered the store, which ones them spend a little bit more time in some dwell times or made them feel sort of relaxed. And focus was a real big part of that. So it was quite a long project, but now we rolled out to, we're at five stores up and running ⁓ across Australia and we're moving. to roll out another five stores in the next 30 days. And so the early statistics cent is just part of those new store refurbs. they have the data in regards to transaction counts and net promoter scores and some of those really key metrics that they have. ⁓ so cent part of that. We certainly can't narrow down directly on ⁓ how their cent would impact maybe sales or impact ⁓ customers calmness or dwell time in the store. But I think over time we'll probably see some of that data start emerging. mean, they're a very sophisticated brand team and retail team in Telstra. They're always open to these type of things. But early days, the staff absolutely love it. And early days is the customers are coming in and making comments as they're spending time in these sort of set domes, which is quite interesting. know, scent is obviously a lot in hotels. I mean, you can walk into the Western or you can maybe walk ⁓ the Hyatt and they'll have these signature scents. There's some signature scents starting in retail footprints, but it's still reasonably new. We're trying to break into lots of different areas of space, especially corporate spaces and bringing people back to work or creating environments around ⁓ sessions or...
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: or focus pods. And so there's a lot of organizations that we're trialing Aurek with. And that's really where we are at the moment to see where our product market fit can work. No doubt in yoga studios and sound healing, ⁓ using aromas. ⁓ in the home environment, it's all about the living room, the bedroom, the ⁓ home office. They're to be the places that Aromasphere is doing quite well.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, you're gonna laugh at me. A couple of years ago, ⁓ I've studied flow science and neuroscience and you know, learn all around how to get ⁓ to get into flow from an environmental perspective. And, you I saw your one of your little oils was lavender. And I these lavender candles to this ⁓ workshop that was running this particular day and I had the brand new beats going. It was to get everyone you know, being ⁓ creative or I can't remember exactly. ⁓
Adam Good: I'm gonna...
Bee (Belinda) Murray: So there I was with this candle, trying to get the aromas going, like very old school, and someone's like, hey, you cannot have like candles in an office. You're gonna catch something on fire. But it's like, it is very new and it's... ⁓
Adam Good: Yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: It's very new science in terms of like you say from a brain health perspective and cognitive and there's so much like you talked around HRV earlier and there's so much we know about the heart but there's so much we're still learning about the brain. And so this is for me why it's so exciting what you're doing because in particular in corporate space and reshaping what it looks like from a workspace and what it means to go into work, but also like you called out the deep work, et cetera. that ability to leverage our ⁓ and our smells, ⁓ example, to be able to then ⁓ more productive, be more creative, have learning and memory, ⁓ acquire faster.
Adam Good: Yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: And when we're in that flow state, things become quite effortless versus efforting. And so what you're doing is you're almost creating the triggers to be able to then get into flow when required, but also like actively recover is what I call it in terms of that, know, downtime, sleeping. Like it's a whole cycle. Like if you know like about the flow cycle, there's a whole cycle around what you're creating here.
Adam Good: Yeah, absolutely. We're doing a test at the moment with teenage kids that need to go to study groups and so forth. you know, if you think about a 17 year old or an 18 year old, you know, wanting to prepare themselves for year 12 and studying, their whole life is actually kind of known about being connected to phones. And you're seeing this demographic that's like, if anything, I wish I could stop doing that a little bit. So when they go into these study groups, have to kind of handing their phones, but we're starting to go, let's putting aromas in the room while the study group is happening. And then you have the experiments where they'll turn up a couple of days later and we don't have the scent and we're waiting for them to ask for it. And so there this opportunity really where scent can be a, trying to get people off the screens. I mean, as a chief digital officer and a...
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: an ex ad guy, mean, we've been interrupting people and wanting them to consume content for some time. And here we are building a product that we actually want to get off the screen quite a bit. I mean, we love how, Auric, you just move into a room and you start to realize, well, that's my focus ritual that's playing right now. And there's an adjustment in your mind. Let's just take three deep breaths and I'll move towards this focus rather than a screen or an alert or a pop-up telling you. it's now time to do something different. So, yeah, there's plenty of organizations exploring this. Developers, programmers, they really like to be in an environment where there's scent being playing. We've seen athletes that are using scent to get them into the right focus before for competing musicians. So, yeah, I mean, it's... What's really quite interesting about it, we've gone to the trouble to get our oils registered with the TGA for their therapeutic benefits. So we're doing that for a couple of different reasons, you know, to make sure that that lavender bottle is a hundred percent botanical. So when you insert that bottle into the Aromaspher, it will say, is a TGA approved. The lavender bottle, it'll even have, you know, where the lavender was grown. the full carbon footprint of where that plant was.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: But you kind of know that you're getting something that is okay for your body to breathe in and which is really important. I love the scented candles, but there's some really dodgy ones out there that you're burning kind of basically burning castogenics into your room. So yeah, we do compete against the candle, but trying to get rid of that sort of friction of having aromas more often. ⁓ I think we could activate all of the
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah. Yes.
Adam Good: water diffusers that are sitting in people's cupboards right now. It's probably around about a $5 billion business because people are familiar with it, but it's just too much friction. I've got to get it out, I've got to plug it in, I've to put my water, I've got to go find some oils. I'm not quite sure which ones to use and blend for various different occasions. We've just taken all of that friction out. And we think there's a real journey of the community to find what are some of the
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: the blends and oils that people are trialling and using for various different mood states. So, I mean, flow state, you know, I'm really passionate about working with leaders that have that sort of calming nature as working with you rather than somebody that feels a bit of anxious and anxiety. So, you know, that's always worked ⁓ for as someone in a team structure. And I think aromas are to help. with that sort of environment when you walk in, you kind of notice it feel a different experience.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: And you know what I wrote down, you're creating like a new flow trigger almost like in terms of it's a trigger to get into these. Like there's obviously the flow triggers for an individual, there's a flow triggers, know, group flow triggers. it's almost like there's business flow triggers. I've got an idea around that myself, but ⁓ fascinating, isn't it? What you're talking about here and.
Adam Good: Yeah, yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: this ability to use sense and what you're doing. I love it and I think we need more and more of it because the world isn't getting any slower. It's getting faster and faster by the second. And so the ability, but I want to just talk a little bit quickly and you've talked a lot about it, but you built in for the pod and I asked you what's one unique insider lived experience when it comes to life, leadership and or business.
Adam Good: ⁓ my God, yeah, it sure is, yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: You've talked a lot about it, but I do like, and I bolded it. You said people don't respond to strategy first, they respond to the emotional state of the leader. You just touched on it then. you said, learned in high pressure environments like film sets, live television, and later in advertising, when preparation matters, but things never be changed, in moments of pressure, I saw that when leaders were stressed, reactive, or overly rigid, ⁓ suffered and performance degraded.
Adam Good: Okay.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: When leaders were calm, clear, in intent and emotionally steady, teams adapted quickly and made better decisions in real time. What became clear to me is that regulation is practical. not abstract. can be as simple as taking a pause, slowing your pace slightly, being mindful of your tone and staying fully present. And when leaders do this, they create the conditions for trust and adaptability and flow. And he said, the takeaway is simple but powerful. Before trying to fix the plan, all the people regulate your own state. I mean, it's so fundamental, isn't it? And I'd love for you just to talk a little bit more about that because for me, it's almost like that
Adam Good: Yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: we go to the external to fix things like you're just talking about, but yet we need to come back to fixing the internal, if that makes sense, yeah.
Adam Good: Yeah, well, I leadership, I think leadership in the creative industries you know, I've been very, very, very lucky to work with some pretty interesting people ⁓ across ⁓ time in film and television, whether it was Baz Luhrmann or ⁓ it was ⁓ creative forces when it came to live television production ⁓ or, ⁓ in mean, ⁓ people that very passionate about creativity and ⁓ and engaging ⁓ with a group to kind of get an output. I've sort of been blessed to have all sorts of different styles ⁓ leaders and I've also spent a lot of time in other markets. you know, it's a different kind of creative process in Japan, over it is in China, over it is in Australia, over it is in the US. But one of the key things that just works for me is the individual being a little bit more calm in their nature. You're being able to have those ⁓ to give them some clarity that they just appear to have their nervous system in order rather than kind of lose it in a moment when they really should be probably bringing people towards them rather than sort of pushing them away. And I've seen some pretty high-pressure situations where really big ideas have just kind of been lost in the not born correctly or just lost because the temperament ⁓ of the leader just sort of the output before it was kind of created. So I'm really passionate about that. mean, all styles of leadership can work. He can be ⁓ an asshole and still be successful. ⁓ I've that model work. But generally, ⁓ when comes to creativity, you need to have a lot more of understanding about flow state. not more understanding about your own breath ⁓ and ability to sort of pause and recalibrate adjust accordingly. yeah, mean, yeah, it's when watched your flow podcasts and the guests that ⁓ you've got on that. And, know, I'm hoping we're going to have a renaissance of the importance of that ⁓ muscle strength, ⁓ also than being ⁓ important.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Mm-mm. Well think it's like you, it's people like myself, it's people that are really focused on this new if you like. ⁓
Adam Good: One.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: it is required, we need that presence and we need that purpose and don't get me wrong, we absolutely still need performance. But how do we tap into that so that we can more presence ⁓ have that, ⁓ more purposeful and conscious ⁓ ⁓ of everything around us, but also ⁓ as who we are. ⁓ us a little bit about, you've got quite a few, well, you've got a co-founder, but you've got quite a big team in terms ⁓
Adam Good: Mm. Yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: you know, obviously what you're doing. Do you guys use the essentials, the Orica, like do you use them as well, the aromas for how you guys work a collective? How does it, yeah, how do you use it into like within your own company? ⁓
Adam Good: Yeah, the company is really small as in my co-founder Alex Kutry and I are the co-founders. So we are the 100 % committed individuals on the company. Alex is a robotics engineer by trade. He's quite a bit younger than me. He's 30 and he's experienced in understanding. hardware and firmware and software and that sort of product layer is second to none and I was so blessed to meet him a couple of years ago to go on this journey. So Alex was formerly from Melbourne and is now in Brisbane. So we do work remotely, but of course the Aeronosphere is kind of ticking on as we work in this environment. actually spent, lived and worked together in the US last year for about four or five months. we have had the experience of having. sent in our kind of home environments and then taking it into Austin, Texas and building a kind of an interesting office space. But the team structure, they're all over the world. And I've sort of been lucky to, as a chief digital officer and project manager, you kind of know where to find the best people for the best project. So, know, Eric Aldrin is product strategy, X Meta, Meta Glasses, probably one of the best AI content makers at the moment.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: amazing. Yeah.
Adam Good: to San Francisco as product strategy. Maddie Beard is X Notion, Adobe does all our UX design. She lives in Colorado. We've got a program developer that's in Ireland, a data engineering and data science done out of the Ukraine. And those guys, oh my God, they're in war most of the time where their internet is coming and going. And the resilience that that data engineering team over.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I love it.
Adam Good: The times that we've been working with them in the last two or three years has been second to none. Some industrial design is done out of here, out of Sydney. And got our essential oils and chemist group out of ⁓ Melbourne. So all in this new world of fractional resources, which I'm really... passionate about. I there's no doubt, Auric has been built with a lot of agents and a lot of tech behind the scenes. It's fully personalized automation product. We track oils going in, we track the usage, we know when the oil is running out, we know what preferences, we send oils to the based on a full, pretty smart piece of tech that we've developed with the idea that we won't have as many people at the end of it. ⁓
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: the actual team that you see on that website, all fractional, amount of hours per week, all shareholders and investors in, in Oregon, all very passionate about wellbeing and ⁓ mental And they all do many more hours than ⁓ probably the contract shows, but, ⁓ but also in this efficient world where you just need really high powered intellectual firepower. And then ⁓ we basically a bunch of agents and
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: robots and workflows underneath the hood that sort of implement the process. So I don't know whether we'll have our own space where everyone all comes together. We've only done it one or two times where we have everybody in one room, is a really nice occasion, but just the way the company is built, it's a global company and they're in various different spaces all over the world, but they do have an aromosphere.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: If. I love what you're talking about because like again, it's New World. You know, we're talking around environment, but yet we're also talking around fractional resources. Do you see that as of the future of what businesses will look like? Adam, I mean, obviously, ⁓ know, there's a mix, right? There's fully remote, there's hybrid, and there's, you know, still Monday to Friday. ⁓
Adam Good: Yeah. I think it is and I think we're still trying to work through that at the moment. We still get renuminated on sort of a 40, 50 hour week and that's what sort of people consider a salary and a wage and that sort of adds up to a particular number per year based on a particular output. But I think that's all kind of gone away a little bit now that you probably don't need somebody for 40, 50 hours a week. What you probably need is somebody maybe for 10, 15, and then they have a whole heap of technology and support around them that amplifies that opportunity. So that person that works 10 hours, then they might have to have a couple of different clients or opportunities to work with. So yeah, I think that's just gonna be the new world. mean, ⁓ children and stepchildren and I wonder what the best employment that they should be looking to do. And entrepreneurship seems to be where a lot of people are sort of leaning into at the moment. It's going to be a really difficult task at the moment to try to see how people make money and what is their worth. It's for us as new business, fractional staff,
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: is just really the only model that really stacks up. We want people to have equity and ownership in the venture and in the project. They obviously need to be paid well for that based on their skills. But if I had to pay that caliber of team that you see on our website for 50 hours a week, 365 days a year, it wouldn't really stack up.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: That doesn't make sense, does
Adam Good: So all of them have various different projects. And even myself, I kind of work on a couple of other projects or advisory opportunities. So I just think that's where we're going to move to. ⁓ So yeah, ⁓ going to be a challenging time though as we adjust to that world. Yeah. ⁓
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, I agree. It's almost like mood state that you're talking about, right? Like, you know, the ability to be calm when there is, because we're in this nonlinear world, it's so uncertain these days. then that ability to be focused when we need to be focused on the project or whatever. Like, it is very ⁓ with ⁓ you're doing and having that ability to be able to. ⁓
Adam Good: Yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: times go with the flow. Do you know what mean? Like I think it's fascinating and I love having these discussions and I love you know what you're doing. me what is ⁓ for Auric Essentials? Like you've got some big plans in place obviously you were in the US last year. ⁓ you seeing more opportunity overseas? Like what's next?
Adam Good: Yeah, we just closed out our pre-seed round, was a million dollar round, which was great. And we're opening a ⁓ larger 2 million US round in April. where we are as a company now is that we're manufacturing the Aromasphear. So we built tooling products for smart caps and the diffuser itself. They're all out of China. But we're actually assembling the product here in Australia, which will be our short term goal. But we're moving to our
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I see.
Adam Good: kind of our next 3000 units to get out. So really we're looking for people that wanna have some free trials with the Auric Romasphere. We're looking at corporate gifting strategies. And of course we wanna go direct to consumer and get some more content out. So it's been a real stealth project. We've actually been building those Romasphere one at a time for some time. the first lot of... customers that are out there have got these real custom-made ones, but now we're moving to full-blown manufactured production line as they come off the conveyor belt. And so, yeah, we're building that kind of model where we've got a fulfillment house and we put the oils in and ship out the device. But yeah, we'll spend a bit more time in the US this year. My co-founder's off to South by Southwest in the next couple of weeks. We're doing some demonstrations there. We found Austin a real home. We've got one of our key US investors is there. We spent four months in Austin, which is a real hardware town. There's Waymo's, there's robots everywhere. We're a little strange here in Australia as a startup. Investors find us as an interesting kind of woo woo kind of business.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I love it. Yes. Yeah. just say it's flow science, flow state is still very, quite very new here. So like, yeah, that we would.
Adam Good: It's not it's not for every investor sometimes just having a hardware people go look I only invest in software only and you sort of like well actually majority of our business is software we just have this low cost kind of piece of hardware that is part of our protection of our moat. But yeah I mean it's all about just continuously you know staying alive as a startup is obviously really important as well but we've ⁓ we've hit a lot of different milestones and ⁓ like the product so really if you if you reach out
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: to auric.au, us a message, you can buy the product. ⁓ got a bit of a wait list on our going out now. If you order today, you're getting them in ⁓ May. we'll get that window right down as go through the year. So yeah, it's just all about finding spaces that Auric can ⁓ play around in really my big focus. So yeah. ⁓
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Which takes me, like what it says to me is I encourage anyone in the audience to like experiment, like experiment with this and see what you notice. Like it comes back to that self-awareness, that ability to be like, ⁓ know, I'm behaving, ⁓ know, I'm doing things differently because I've tapped into this, ⁓ know, sense. I think this is what we're, you know, we need to be more about as well is that ability to experiment, explore. ⁓ you know, like the novel experience, like, you know, be able to play with the different mood states. I've got one final question for you. Start-up you talked about self-worth, you talked about all of that before. How do you do it day in ⁓ and out? Because there's some days where you're just like hitting the sand going. ⁓ Like, yeah.
Adam Good: Thank you. All ⁓ absolutely. Yeah, look, yeah, it's, I've invested in a number of startups over many, many years, you know, some winners, some losers, I've in all sorts of different structures. This is the hardest thing I've ever personally done. And but I can see startup ⁓ founders have built things for five, 10 years and then never do it again, you know, maybe become an advisor to other people because it's really punishing. It's ⁓ You've got to have a very thick skin. You've got to do a hundred presentations knowing that 95 of them ⁓ is a thank you, but no thank you kind of situation. there's been days when I've woken up and gone, ⁓ am I so passionate about digitizing scent and building scent intelligence? Like surely I could have thought of something else to do. And there are other days that is just so ⁓ rewarding you just have these moments of a real win. So, How do I look after myself? I kind of have to be stay on, you you're building a health tech or a wellness play. You kind of have to be very big on that. So yeah, I do yoga three times a week. I try to at least get a 10 minute meditation in a day to try to get a bit longer. I mean, those sorts of things. If I wasn't doing that, I think I would be completely, ⁓ you know, imploded on myself. I've been very like, my co-founder is absolute. I don't think we've ever had a
Bee (Belinda) Murray: in Scrying Sight.
Adam Good: disagreement has been ⁓ but just a, you know, a challenging around the creative concept. I mean, he's, he's a really measured person and smart person that helps me through by partner. My wife obviously is, ⁓ doing a startup. So we're doing two lots of startups in ⁓ household, which is pretty nuts. But yeah, you have to get your, regulation ⁓ in order ⁓ and of just know when you're not
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I it. ⁓ my gosh. sorted.
Adam Good: quite right, you know, that's a really important thing. And also being really good and forgiving to yourself when you've really worked really hard. Like if you've gone really hard all day, you know, like just, just smell the roses, so to speak, you know, just take a little bit of time out. Yeah. Give yourself some grace. Absolutely. Yeah. We are, we're only on this planet once and you've got to kind of, you're the youngest you've ever been right at this moment. So you've just got to kind of
Bee (Belinda) Murray: say give yourself some grace lately. know, like just give yourself some grace. I say it to myself a ton. Give yourself some grace,
Adam Good: you know, put it all in perspective. So, but yeah, look, enjoying, ⁓ really feel that this is my life's work. So hopefully that will be the case. But it, I always it was going to be very challenging, but it probably is 10 times more challenging than you originally thought and took, and it's taken, you know, 10 times longer than you originally thought. ⁓
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I it says, I believe in you. I believe in it. I love it. Like from all the studying I've done in flow state and flow science, it's proven, it's just proven, it's backed by science, proven it works. It's just getting it out there and the awareness.
Adam Good: It is. Yeah, we're at that stage where a lot of these a lot of these boxes are now starting to to go out to people and enjoying their aromasphere. you know, it's. ⁓ yeah, you're more than sampling, you're getting one.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: to sampling. Yeah, no, I know I look forward to it though. I'll be telling you how I go and maybe we'll get you back on and I can give you a this is what happened in this environment and you know a bit more of a you know as
Adam Good: I'm sure we'll have a B ⁓ signature scent created or a particular blend that you want to the community about.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: You Adam, amazing conversation. can't, yeah, thank you so much. And it's so good to be reconnected. It's so funny how the universe just pulls us back into like, we are. The advertising industry would.
Adam Good: Thank you for having me.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: like they would go, they would thrive using this scenario in different environments. I know you're testing our seed, we also need go those agencies. Yeah, this is what we need in the womb. Yeah. But we find out, so you've already mentioned go to the website or .au. Is there anywhere else that we can, if we want to reach out to you directly, is it LinkedIn? Where do we go?
Adam Good: Yeah, we got a rustling, rustling right there. Yeah. Yeah, LinkedIn, Adam Good at LinkedIn. You'll find me there. I do, I've got my own little blog that's been going for God knows how many years at adamgood.net, which has usually just a bunch of consciousness of what's sort of happening. But yeah, reach out. We've got going for Auric spaces at the If you've got a really interesting space you want to try, that's, getting, getting contact. You get the Aromasphe for sort of three weeks. We trial it. And then of course you keep it if you want it or for a small $300 or you send it back. So we're really trialing lots of different product market fits for the product. ⁓ always somebody interesting going, have you thought of this space? And you go, wow, I hadn't really thought of putting in the Romasphere there. We'll give it a crack. So reach out and congrats to you, Bea. I think what you're doing is fantastic. I mean, you're one of the...
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Love it. All right, it's cool. Yeah.
Adam Good: the most incredible managing directors of an agency that I ever saw. You you build an incredible team and did incredible work. So whatever you're putting your mind to, you're going to be a genius at. So great to see the that you're making with ⁓ what doing next.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Thank you. Thanks, Adam. Thank you so much. Well, have a wonderful rest of the day and thank you. And I look forward to seeing even more success with Auric Essentials. So thank you so much. Bye.
Adam Good: Thank you. Bye bye.
Adam Good: you Thanks, Bae. Great to be here.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Thank you. And a bit of a blast from the past as well, right? Like you and I were both back in our advertising era. We worked at the same organization, which is Dentsu. And I think we worked out it was between 2015 and 2018 where we first crossed paths. So close to 10 years ago and probably haven't caught up. Well, we haven't touched base since then. And then here we are now in completely different, like.
Adam Good: That's about right, yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I guess careers or, know, and it's quite interesting ⁓ of six degrees of separation. So ⁓ thank you for coming on. ⁓ I'm really excited to talk to you today because we're gonna do a bit of show and tell, which is the first time we've actually done a bit of show and tell on screen. So really playing around with the different ways this podcast is going better. ⁓ You're the founder and CEO of Oroch Essentials, which is a health tech company. And I'll let you share your story around. It started off as a side hustle, but it's now become a full-blown, you know, it was a passion and now it's your full-blown business. And you've got a number of co-founders and it's very exciting. you know, real new world, if you ask me in terms of your building mood as a service and it's powered by scent intelligence, where you use environmental and now
Adam Good: I
Bee (Belinda) Murray: olfactory cues, you can explain more about that, to basically help leaders and teams shift their state. from, you know, including calm, focus, creativity, and it's on demand. And you're working with a lot of B2B businesses and services. essentially, you explain this way better, but I'll just keep it really simple. It's a way to down regulate stress ⁓ focus on the moods that are required. ⁓ but also at times if you're feeling a bit, ⁓ it's that up, regulate the nervous system as well. worked in advertising previously. I'm to hand it over to you to share a bit about your journey and then I'll come back to your response to my question when booking in for the pod in a bit. ⁓
Adam Good: Yeah, yeah, no, thanks, Bea. I think us advertising executives are reinventing ourselves in this world of constant change. yeah, mean, ⁓ was definitely a side project. I very passionate about how Scent was, you know, really triggering sort of up regulation and down regulation with me, especially. ⁓ I when we met, I was actually living in Singapore, working with Dentsu. But my life in the last sort of 20 years, I've always
Bee (Belinda) Murray: You Mm. Subscribe.
Adam Good: um, had a journey of, of wellness and spending a lot of time on wellness retreats and meditation and yoga is a real passion of mine. And when you go on those experiences, know, sense is such a visceral part of that experience. And, uh, I think we tried to do this podcast when we were in Bali a couple of weeks ago, it sort of did quite work there, you know, environments like that, you just have these ancient kind of aromas that really work for you. And I suppose when I used to go back home and
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah. Totally.
Adam Good: kind of tinker around with aromatherapy and use my water diffuser and try some essential oils to sort of kind of create that. I really saw a lot of friction in that process and really wondered why scent wasn't kind of digitized like many of the other senses that we've been working on in humanity for some time. So in advertising sense, we do a lot of sound and video, but in some ways we're probably over-indexed a little bit in that. So there was just this real
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: passion point of seeing where we could go with scent. So as a side project, I was working as a chief digital officer, working with clients, of course, but behind the scenes, I was trying to looking at AromaTech and trying to work out how we could really at the end of the day, digitize scent. I can't actually demonstrate. aromas and smell on a podcast, but I might be able to show a couple of little things just to help people understand what we mean by digitizing scent. ⁓ So it's a real passion point, you know, and this problem is that scent is kind of, you know, very much stuck in the past. ⁓ When we think about it, don't know why my screen is not moving on there. There we go. Percent is... ⁓
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I'd love that.
Adam Good: quite primitive in many ways. And also there's a lot of problems with it. It's filled with carcinogenics and solvents and we sort of introduce it into our homes and it's actually kind of a bit of a problem. And so what we decided to do was build a product which we call the Aurica Aromasphear. And it's ⁓ our first product that we have where ⁓ the Aromasphear is kind of think about it as a diffuser. It has eight TGA. essential oils in the device and they can be mixed at various forms of aromas that are more uplifting or down-regulated and we talk about them as sort of calm, focus, energy and sleep and it's activated by a mobile phone, it connects to your smart home so you can kind of trigger these environments that use light, music and aromas and what's kind of neat about it so we actually use biometric data as well to help people ⁓ kind of find ⁓ when scent should be triggered and ⁓ whether that is to be an up-regulated experience or down-regulated, so. So we have some intelligence behind that and we have some health questionnaires and that allows the output to deliver, you know, scent at nighttime to be more sleep related or in the morning it might be something to create some energy or even focus to do some deep work. So that's our product and we've been... have a few VCs on our cap table and some sophisticated angels. And we've done some pretty interesting things. We were on the TV show, The Block last year that really drove a lot of sales. And we've had some corporate clients like Telstra that we've been working with to create a signature scent for their retail environments, which we're rolling out to stores and we're going to cross all the states in Australia at the moment. yeah, it's certainly been a challenging project and digitizing scent is... is a really heavy lifting experience, but it certainly fits in my passion point. And now we're out for places that the Aromasphe can be part of. So we've found a lot of ⁓ real footprint, quite interesting, trying to get people into work. So whether we're creating a brainstorming room or a calming environment or even a resting pod, ⁓ using as part of that experience. So yeah. ⁓
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah. It's so interesting environment and I was telling you when we caught up recently, you know, reconnected like, you know, from a flow. getting into flow state perspective and a flow science perspective. Environment is everything. If you think about in the past where we've just gone to work or spent the majority of our time and it's just been kind of really stark lighting or that bright clear light and by the end of the day you've got the full-blown migraine or headache, but also from an environment perspective, just kind of, there is no rumor whatsoever. ⁓
Adam Good: Yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: And yet our energy levels can change like, I don't know, there might be a stat behind that, and you know, multiple times in a day. And there's times when we need to be absolutely focused and, you know, to get that productivity of us, but also whether it's strategic or creativity. And so having those spaces where it does, ⁓ know, from a neuroscience perspective. ⁓ that that aroma connects to, you know, the brain in terms of, then automatically switches So it takes us from, you know, whether we're distracted or whatever into that focus. ⁓ us a little bit about that intelligence and how it's connected to how you've digitized that from a wearables perspective, because wearables have ⁓ around for quite some time. And there's obviously the HRV piece and understanding. ⁓
Adam Good: Yeah. Mmm. Mmm.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: energy levels etc etc. How does a wearable connect? how does that all interconnect? I mean that diagram you showed was great but like breaking it down even further I'm really fascinated by that and the the science behind it.
Adam Good: Yeah, think, well, the science on scent is ⁓ mean, the olfactory system is actually the first sense in development.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: in the womb that's formed first because it's the most comprehensive and science is still working through why does certain aromas actually trigger memory or help with cognitive ability or help with various forms of mood states. In ancient times, I mean that was just a way of of a... you know, part of history. And it depends on how far we want to go back in you know, humans, I think I still have that, which is big noses. Humans just used to ⁓ able to draw in botanics aromas to help them kind of... get through through the day. So you didn't even have to eat as much if you actually got your sort of breath work and you got your scent sort of working. You know, back in the day, we used to use scent to actually determine whether ⁓ was times when times that due to to be you know to be ⁓ high alert because there'd be danger around or when there's other times that it's all about you know celebration and ceremony and those sorts of things we've looked deep into that type of research ⁓ really in the last hundred years ⁓ got this industrial revolution that's filled the air with a lot of pollutants so we've actually reversed our need for ⁓ thinking that we need ⁓ sense of smell.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: But when we discovered in COVID, it was actually one of the most damaging parts that happened when you had a really bad case of COVID. You actually started to lose your sense of smell and that had all sorts of repercussions. And if you didn't get your sense of smell back, you could be really sick for quite a long time. So I think that's just where we're at at the moment. know, there's some... homes and environments that you go into and it's noticeable that they've really decided to put certain sort of aromas in that home and you know about it and you say that really smells quite nice or sometimes you go to a hospital and there's a smell in the hospital that makes you sort of retreat and you actually feel quite concerned about that. So that evolution of like what type of scent therapy can actually improve your cognitive and improve your mood is really the journey that we're on. we're constantly looking for the latest research where people are various different aromas ⁓ help ⁓ their states and we're taking that on. ⁓ And it, to get to your question on biometrics, it's just another ⁓ input actually helps us ⁓ determine scent should be turned on and scent should be sort of turned off ⁓ or changed to give you a ⁓ kind a... ⁓ and and it takes benefit so what the right is the cop does is is that when you get it's kind of a fun product product you're kinda playing around with oil pressing lots of buttons but it's like a coffee machine it's not that helpful to maybe have ten cups coffee in the morning it's more about some finding those around instead will actually help you through the day and this habitual behavior starts to happen within about three weeks people upset their routines and the biometrics are adjusting when certain aromas should sort of take place. And then you're more about what's my intent? You do I want to wake up tomorrow, have a podcast with Adam? I need to be, you know, alert for that type of thing. Or is my daily routine going to change where I'm off to a gym or I'm off to do a walk, or maybe it's, it's all about using scent to help at the end of the day where you've actually really busted your gut and you've done a lot of work. You've, you've, you're. anxiety levels are a little bit heightened, your heart variability is sort of changing because you're stressed. You know, the aromaspher might play a little calming ritual to sort of say, you know, take 20 minutes out, make yourself a cup of tea, just look after yourself. And so that's what we're using SENT ⁓ help people in that experience. And yeah, it's certainly a journey when you're doing biometric data, but we are blending that with our machine learning ⁓ taking scientific research in scent therapy, taking inputs around biometric and mashing those two together. call it the Auric Wellness Signature to allow a set up of when your aromas should be sort of playing throughout the day and throughout the week. So yeah, it's a pretty crazy project, but it's certainly got a lot of traction now.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I love it. It's so, it's Sony world, but it's so, so required. Like if you think about like all the stats around exhaustion and you know, like the inability to be able to focus because you know, you only have to think about the top, like you were constantly switched on, aren't we? Like, you you can, you've got your phone with you, generally 24 seven. And so then it's that ability to have these sense trigger. or invoke an emotion that is sometimes you don't even know when you're going 100 miles an hour and you need something like that to trigger you to go calm your farm or calm down. Like you need to get more into this calm state. And then once you hit that state, I know I do, it's like, you get those fresh perspectives, you get the ⁓ kicks in. there's so benefits to what you're doing. ⁓
Adam Good: Yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: And it just, yet it's so new. And so it's really, it's about proving it out, right? Because you've probably come up against sad as part of your own journey, you know, as a co-founder and you know, this going from a side hustle into a fully blown business. But are you seeing, like, and when you, like, for example, you're obviously, you know, co-created with the Telstra stores, are they noticeably seeing a difference in themselves? You've said there's a 21 day, you know, kind of like habit that comes on. ⁓ What, ⁓ like from a business perspective and, you know, in a business or with leaders, what are you seeing that they're noticing about themselves or as a collective?
Adam Good: Yeah, look, mean, Telstra is an organisation that I've spent as an executive, like four years of my life in Telstra Media building, you know, which similar to Aurek in one sense, so this hardware reoccurring business model, you know, in those days, we were building streaming television and getting people to choose download own movies or ⁓ video. went to Telstra to show them the product and there were some really interesting executives like we were constantly trying to look at ⁓ retail footprint. You know how does ⁓ know various forms of video music lighting experiences affect our customers when they're researching products or they maybe got some challenges in regards to their current ⁓ account. They really wanted to start to look at where scent could play a bit of a role. So we actually went through quite a rigorous ⁓ ⁓ lab testing to find what aromas were working for people as they entered the store, which ones them spend a little bit more time in some dwell times or made them feel sort of relaxed. And focus was a real big part of that. So it was quite a long project, but now we rolled out to, we're at five stores up and running ⁓ across Australia and we're moving. to roll out another five stores in the next 30 days. And so the early statistics cent is just part of those new store refurbs. they have the data in regards to transaction counts and net promoter scores and some of those really key metrics that they have. ⁓ so cent part of that. We certainly can't narrow down directly on ⁓ how their cent would impact maybe sales or impact ⁓ customers calmness or dwell time in the store. But I think over time we'll probably see some of that data start emerging. mean, they're a very sophisticated brand team and retail team in Telstra. They're always open to these type of things. But early days, the staff absolutely love it. And early days is the customers are coming in and making comments as they're spending time in these sort of set domes, which is quite interesting. know, scent is obviously a lot in hotels. I mean, you can walk into the Western or you can maybe walk ⁓ the Hyatt and they'll have these signature scents. There's some signature scents starting in retail footprints, but it's still reasonably new. We're trying to break into lots of different areas of space, especially corporate spaces and bringing people back to work or creating environments around ⁓ sessions or...
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: or focus pods. And so there's a lot of organizations that we're trialing Aurek with. And that's really where we are at the moment to see where our product market fit can work. No doubt in yoga studios and sound healing, ⁓ using aromas. ⁓ in the home environment, it's all about the living room, the bedroom, the ⁓ home office. They're to be the places that Aromasphere is doing quite well.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, you're gonna laugh at me. A couple of years ago, ⁓ I've studied flow science and neuroscience and you know, learn all around how to get ⁓ to get into flow from an environmental perspective. And, you I saw your one of your little oils was lavender. And I these lavender candles to this ⁓ workshop that was running this particular day and I had the brand new beats going. It was to get everyone you know, being ⁓ creative or I can't remember exactly. ⁓
Adam Good: I'm gonna...
Bee (Belinda) Murray: So there I was with this candle, trying to get the aromas going, like very old school, and someone's like, hey, you cannot have like candles in an office. You're gonna catch something on fire. But it's like, it is very new and it's... ⁓
Adam Good: Yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: It's very new science in terms of like you say from a brain health perspective and cognitive and there's so much like you talked around HRV earlier and there's so much we know about the heart but there's so much we're still learning about the brain. And so this is for me why it's so exciting what you're doing because in particular in corporate space and reshaping what it looks like from a workspace and what it means to go into work, but also like you called out the deep work, et cetera. that ability to leverage our ⁓ and our smells, ⁓ example, to be able to then ⁓ more productive, be more creative, have learning and memory, ⁓ acquire faster.
Adam Good: Yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: And when we're in that flow state, things become quite effortless versus efforting. And so what you're doing is you're almost creating the triggers to be able to then get into flow when required, but also like actively recover is what I call it in terms of that, know, downtime, sleeping. Like it's a whole cycle. Like if you know like about the flow cycle, there's a whole cycle around what you're creating here.
Adam Good: Yeah, absolutely. We're doing a test at the moment with teenage kids that need to go to study groups and so forth. you know, if you think about a 17 year old or an 18 year old, you know, wanting to prepare themselves for year 12 and studying, their whole life is actually kind of known about being connected to phones. And you're seeing this demographic that's like, if anything, I wish I could stop doing that a little bit. So when they go into these study groups, have to kind of handing their phones, but we're starting to go, let's putting aromas in the room while the study group is happening. And then you have the experiments where they'll turn up a couple of days later and we don't have the scent and we're waiting for them to ask for it. And so there this opportunity really where scent can be a, trying to get people off the screens. I mean, as a chief digital officer and a...
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: an ex ad guy, mean, we've been interrupting people and wanting them to consume content for some time. And here we are building a product that we actually want to get off the screen quite a bit. I mean, we love how, Auric, you just move into a room and you start to realize, well, that's my focus ritual that's playing right now. And there's an adjustment in your mind. Let's just take three deep breaths and I'll move towards this focus rather than a screen or an alert or a pop-up telling you. it's now time to do something different. So, yeah, there's plenty of organizations exploring this. Developers, programmers, they really like to be in an environment where there's scent being playing. We've seen athletes that are using scent to get them into the right focus before for competing musicians. So, yeah, I mean, it's... What's really quite interesting about it, we've gone to the trouble to get our oils registered with the TGA for their therapeutic benefits. So we're doing that for a couple of different reasons, you know, to make sure that that lavender bottle is a hundred percent botanical. So when you insert that bottle into the Aromaspher, it will say, is a TGA approved. The lavender bottle, it'll even have, you know, where the lavender was grown. the full carbon footprint of where that plant was.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: But you kind of know that you're getting something that is okay for your body to breathe in and which is really important. I love the scented candles, but there's some really dodgy ones out there that you're burning kind of basically burning castogenics into your room. So yeah, we do compete against the candle, but trying to get rid of that sort of friction of having aromas more often. ⁓ I think we could activate all of the
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah. Yes.
Adam Good: water diffusers that are sitting in people's cupboards right now. It's probably around about a $5 billion business because people are familiar with it, but it's just too much friction. I've got to get it out, I've got to plug it in, I've to put my water, I've got to go find some oils. I'm not quite sure which ones to use and blend for various different occasions. We've just taken all of that friction out. And we think there's a real journey of the community to find what are some of the
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: the blends and oils that people are trialling and using for various different mood states. So, I mean, flow state, you know, I'm really passionate about working with leaders that have that sort of calming nature as working with you rather than somebody that feels a bit of anxious and anxiety. So, you know, that's always worked ⁓ for as someone in a team structure. And I think aromas are to help. with that sort of environment when you walk in, you kind of notice it feel a different experience.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: And you know what I wrote down, you're creating like a new flow trigger almost like in terms of it's a trigger to get into these. Like there's obviously the flow triggers for an individual, there's a flow triggers, know, group flow triggers. it's almost like there's business flow triggers. I've got an idea around that myself, but ⁓ fascinating, isn't it? What you're talking about here and.
Adam Good: Yeah, yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: this ability to use sense and what you're doing. I love it and I think we need more and more of it because the world isn't getting any slower. It's getting faster and faster by the second. And so the ability, but I want to just talk a little bit quickly and you've talked a lot about it, but you built in for the pod and I asked you what's one unique insider lived experience when it comes to life, leadership and or business.
Adam Good: ⁓ my God, yeah, it sure is, yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: You've talked a lot about it, but I do like, and I bolded it. You said people don't respond to strategy first, they respond to the emotional state of the leader. You just touched on it then. you said, learned in high pressure environments like film sets, live television, and later in advertising, when preparation matters, but things never be changed, in moments of pressure, I saw that when leaders were stressed, reactive, or overly rigid, ⁓ suffered and performance degraded.
Adam Good: Okay.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: When leaders were calm, clear, in intent and emotionally steady, teams adapted quickly and made better decisions in real time. What became clear to me is that regulation is practical. not abstract. can be as simple as taking a pause, slowing your pace slightly, being mindful of your tone and staying fully present. And when leaders do this, they create the conditions for trust and adaptability and flow. And he said, the takeaway is simple but powerful. Before trying to fix the plan, all the people regulate your own state. I mean, it's so fundamental, isn't it? And I'd love for you just to talk a little bit more about that because for me, it's almost like that
Adam Good: Yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: we go to the external to fix things like you're just talking about, but yet we need to come back to fixing the internal, if that makes sense, yeah.
Adam Good: Yeah, well, I leadership, I think leadership in the creative industries you know, I've been very, very, very lucky to work with some pretty interesting people ⁓ across ⁓ time in film and television, whether it was Baz Luhrmann or ⁓ it was ⁓ creative forces when it came to live television production ⁓ or, ⁓ in mean, ⁓ people that very passionate about creativity and ⁓ and engaging ⁓ with a group to kind of get an output. I've sort of been blessed to have all sorts of different styles ⁓ leaders and I've also spent a lot of time in other markets. you know, it's a different kind of creative process in Japan, over it is in China, over it is in Australia, over it is in the US. But one of the key things that just works for me is the individual being a little bit more calm in their nature. You're being able to have those ⁓ to give them some clarity that they just appear to have their nervous system in order rather than kind of lose it in a moment when they really should be probably bringing people towards them rather than sort of pushing them away. And I've seen some pretty high-pressure situations where really big ideas have just kind of been lost in the not born correctly or just lost because the temperament ⁓ of the leader just sort of the output before it was kind of created. So I'm really passionate about that. mean, all styles of leadership can work. He can be ⁓ an asshole and still be successful. ⁓ I've that model work. But generally, ⁓ when comes to creativity, you need to have a lot more of understanding about flow state. not more understanding about your own breath ⁓ and ability to sort of pause and recalibrate adjust accordingly. yeah, mean, yeah, it's when watched your flow podcasts and the guests that ⁓ you've got on that. And, know, I'm hoping we're going to have a renaissance of the importance of that ⁓ muscle strength, ⁓ also than being ⁓ important.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Mm-mm. Well think it's like you, it's people like myself, it's people that are really focused on this new if you like. ⁓
Adam Good: One.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: it is required, we need that presence and we need that purpose and don't get me wrong, we absolutely still need performance. But how do we tap into that so that we can more presence ⁓ have that, ⁓ more purposeful and conscious ⁓ ⁓ of everything around us, but also ⁓ as who we are. ⁓ us a little bit about, you've got quite a few, well, you've got a co-founder, but you've got quite a big team in terms ⁓
Adam Good: Mm. Yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: you know, obviously what you're doing. Do you guys use the essentials, the Orica, like do you use them as well, the aromas for how you guys work a collective? How does it, yeah, how do you use it into like within your own company? ⁓
Adam Good: Yeah, the company is really small as in my co-founder Alex Kutry and I are the co-founders. So we are the 100 % committed individuals on the company. Alex is a robotics engineer by trade. He's quite a bit younger than me. He's 30 and he's experienced in understanding. hardware and firmware and software and that sort of product layer is second to none and I was so blessed to meet him a couple of years ago to go on this journey. So Alex was formerly from Melbourne and is now in Brisbane. So we do work remotely, but of course the Aeronosphere is kind of ticking on as we work in this environment. actually spent, lived and worked together in the US last year for about four or five months. we have had the experience of having. sent in our kind of home environments and then taking it into Austin, Texas and building a kind of an interesting office space. But the team structure, they're all over the world. And I've sort of been lucky to, as a chief digital officer and project manager, you kind of know where to find the best people for the best project. So, know, Eric Aldrin is product strategy, X Meta, Meta Glasses, probably one of the best AI content makers at the moment.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: amazing. Yeah.
Adam Good: to San Francisco as product strategy. Maddie Beard is X Notion, Adobe does all our UX design. She lives in Colorado. We've got a program developer that's in Ireland, a data engineering and data science done out of the Ukraine. And those guys, oh my God, they're in war most of the time where their internet is coming and going. And the resilience that that data engineering team over.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I love it.
Adam Good: The times that we've been working with them in the last two or three years has been second to none. Some industrial design is done out of here, out of Sydney. And got our essential oils and chemist group out of ⁓ Melbourne. So all in this new world of fractional resources, which I'm really... passionate about. I there's no doubt, Auric has been built with a lot of agents and a lot of tech behind the scenes. It's fully personalized automation product. We track oils going in, we track the usage, we know when the oil is running out, we know what preferences, we send oils to the based on a full, pretty smart piece of tech that we've developed with the idea that we won't have as many people at the end of it. ⁓
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: the actual team that you see on that website, all fractional, amount of hours per week, all shareholders and investors in, in Oregon, all very passionate about wellbeing and ⁓ mental And they all do many more hours than ⁓ probably the contract shows, but, ⁓ but also in this efficient world where you just need really high powered intellectual firepower. And then ⁓ we basically a bunch of agents and
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: robots and workflows underneath the hood that sort of implement the process. So I don't know whether we'll have our own space where everyone all comes together. We've only done it one or two times where we have everybody in one room, is a really nice occasion, but just the way the company is built, it's a global company and they're in various different spaces all over the world, but they do have an aromosphere.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: If. I love what you're talking about because like again, it's New World. You know, we're talking around environment, but yet we're also talking around fractional resources. Do you see that as of the future of what businesses will look like? Adam, I mean, obviously, ⁓ know, there's a mix, right? There's fully remote, there's hybrid, and there's, you know, still Monday to Friday. ⁓
Adam Good: Yeah. I think it is and I think we're still trying to work through that at the moment. We still get renuminated on sort of a 40, 50 hour week and that's what sort of people consider a salary and a wage and that sort of adds up to a particular number per year based on a particular output. But I think that's all kind of gone away a little bit now that you probably don't need somebody for 40, 50 hours a week. What you probably need is somebody maybe for 10, 15, and then they have a whole heap of technology and support around them that amplifies that opportunity. So that person that works 10 hours, then they might have to have a couple of different clients or opportunities to work with. So yeah, I think that's just gonna be the new world. mean, ⁓ children and stepchildren and I wonder what the best employment that they should be looking to do. And entrepreneurship seems to be where a lot of people are sort of leaning into at the moment. It's going to be a really difficult task at the moment to try to see how people make money and what is their worth. It's for us as new business, fractional staff,
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: is just really the only model that really stacks up. We want people to have equity and ownership in the venture and in the project. They obviously need to be paid well for that based on their skills. But if I had to pay that caliber of team that you see on our website for 50 hours a week, 365 days a year, it wouldn't really stack up.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: That doesn't make sense, does
Adam Good: So all of them have various different projects. And even myself, I kind of work on a couple of other projects or advisory opportunities. So I just think that's where we're going to move to. ⁓ So yeah, ⁓ going to be a challenging time though as we adjust to that world. Yeah. ⁓
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, I agree. It's almost like mood state that you're talking about, right? Like, you know, the ability to be calm when there is, because we're in this nonlinear world, it's so uncertain these days. then that ability to be focused when we need to be focused on the project or whatever. Like, it is very ⁓ with ⁓ you're doing and having that ability to be able to. ⁓
Adam Good: Yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: times go with the flow. Do you know what mean? Like I think it's fascinating and I love having these discussions and I love you know what you're doing. me what is ⁓ for Auric Essentials? Like you've got some big plans in place obviously you were in the US last year. ⁓ you seeing more opportunity overseas? Like what's next?
Adam Good: Yeah, we just closed out our pre-seed round, was a million dollar round, which was great. And we're opening a ⁓ larger 2 million US round in April. where we are as a company now is that we're manufacturing the Aromasphear. So we built tooling products for smart caps and the diffuser itself. They're all out of China. But we're actually assembling the product here in Australia, which will be our short term goal. But we're moving to our
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I see.
Adam Good: kind of our next 3000 units to get out. So really we're looking for people that wanna have some free trials with the Auric Romasphere. We're looking at corporate gifting strategies. And of course we wanna go direct to consumer and get some more content out. So it's been a real stealth project. We've actually been building those Romasphere one at a time for some time. the first lot of... customers that are out there have got these real custom-made ones, but now we're moving to full-blown manufactured production line as they come off the conveyor belt. And so, yeah, we're building that kind of model where we've got a fulfillment house and we put the oils in and ship out the device. But yeah, we'll spend a bit more time in the US this year. My co-founder's off to South by Southwest in the next couple of weeks. We're doing some demonstrations there. We found Austin a real home. We've got one of our key US investors is there. We spent four months in Austin, which is a real hardware town. There's Waymo's, there's robots everywhere. We're a little strange here in Australia as a startup. Investors find us as an interesting kind of woo woo kind of business.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I love it. Yes. Yeah. just say it's flow science, flow state is still very, quite very new here. So like, yeah, that we would.
Adam Good: It's not it's not for every investor sometimes just having a hardware people go look I only invest in software only and you sort of like well actually majority of our business is software we just have this low cost kind of piece of hardware that is part of our protection of our moat. But yeah I mean it's all about just continuously you know staying alive as a startup is obviously really important as well but we've ⁓ we've hit a lot of different milestones and ⁓ like the product so really if you if you reach out
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Good: to auric.au, us a message, you can buy the product. ⁓ got a bit of a wait list on our going out now. If you order today, you're getting them in ⁓ May. we'll get that window right down as go through the year. So yeah, it's just all about finding spaces that Auric can ⁓ play around in really my big focus. So yeah. ⁓
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Which takes me, like what it says to me is I encourage anyone in the audience to like experiment, like experiment with this and see what you notice. Like it comes back to that self-awareness, that ability to be like, ⁓ know, I'm behaving, ⁓ know, I'm doing things differently because I've tapped into this, ⁓ know, sense. I think this is what we're, you know, we need to be more about as well is that ability to experiment, explore. ⁓ you know, like the novel experience, like, you know, be able to play with the different mood states. I've got one final question for you. Start-up you talked about self-worth, you talked about all of that before. How do you do it day in ⁓ and out? Because there's some days where you're just like hitting the sand going. ⁓ Like, yeah.
Adam Good: Thank you. All ⁓ absolutely. Yeah, look, yeah, it's, I've invested in a number of startups over many, many years, you know, some winners, some losers, I've in all sorts of different structures. This is the hardest thing I've ever personally done. And but I can see startup ⁓ founders have built things for five, 10 years and then never do it again, you know, maybe become an advisor to other people because it's really punishing. It's ⁓ You've got to have a very thick skin. You've got to do a hundred presentations knowing that 95 of them ⁓ is a thank you, but no thank you kind of situation. there's been days when I've woken up and gone, ⁓ am I so passionate about digitizing scent and building scent intelligence? Like surely I could have thought of something else to do. And there are other days that is just so ⁓ rewarding you just have these moments of a real win. So, How do I look after myself? I kind of have to be stay on, you you're building a health tech or a wellness play. You kind of have to be very big on that. So yeah, I do yoga three times a week. I try to at least get a 10 minute meditation in a day to try to get a bit longer. I mean, those sorts of things. If I wasn't doing that, I think I would be completely, ⁓ you know, imploded on myself. I've been very like, my co-founder is absolute. I don't think we've ever had a
Bee (Belinda) Murray: in Scrying Sight.
Adam Good: disagreement has been ⁓ but just a, you know, a challenging around the creative concept. I mean, he's, he's a really measured person and smart person that helps me through by partner. My wife obviously is, ⁓ doing a startup. So we're doing two lots of startups in ⁓ household, which is pretty nuts. But yeah, you have to get your, regulation ⁓ in order ⁓ and of just know when you're not
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I it. ⁓ my gosh. sorted.
Adam Good: quite right, you know, that's a really important thing. And also being really good and forgiving to yourself when you've really worked really hard. Like if you've gone really hard all day, you know, like just, just smell the roses, so to speak, you know, just take a little bit of time out. Yeah. Give yourself some grace. Absolutely. Yeah. We are, we're only on this planet once and you've got to kind of, you're the youngest you've ever been right at this moment. So you've just got to kind of
Bee (Belinda) Murray: say give yourself some grace lately. know, like just give yourself some grace. I say it to myself a ton. Give yourself some grace,
Adam Good: you know, put it all in perspective. So, but yeah, look, enjoying, ⁓ really feel that this is my life's work. So hopefully that will be the case. But it, I always it was going to be very challenging, but it probably is 10 times more challenging than you originally thought and took, and it's taken, you know, 10 times longer than you originally thought. ⁓
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I it says, I believe in you. I believe in it. I love it. Like from all the studying I've done in flow state and flow science, it's proven, it's just proven, it's backed by science, proven it works. It's just getting it out there and the awareness.
Adam Good: It is. Yeah, we're at that stage where a lot of these a lot of these boxes are now starting to to go out to people and enjoying their aromasphere. you know, it's. ⁓ yeah, you're more than sampling, you're getting one.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: to sampling. Yeah, no, I know I look forward to it though. I'll be telling you how I go and maybe we'll get you back on and I can give you a this is what happened in this environment and you know a bit more of a you know as
Adam Good: I'm sure we'll have a B ⁓ signature scent created or a particular blend that you want to the community about.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: You Adam, amazing conversation. can't, yeah, thank you so much. And it's so good to be reconnected. It's so funny how the universe just pulls us back into like, we are. The advertising industry would.
Adam Good: Thank you for having me.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: like they would go, they would thrive using this scenario in different environments. I know you're testing our seed, we also need go those agencies. Yeah, this is what we need in the womb. Yeah. But we find out, so you've already mentioned go to the website or .au. Is there anywhere else that we can, if we want to reach out to you directly, is it LinkedIn? Where do we go?
Adam Good: Yeah, we got a rustling, rustling right there. Yeah. Yeah, LinkedIn, Adam Good at LinkedIn. You'll find me there. I do, I've got my own little blog that's been going for God knows how many years at adamgood.net, which has usually just a bunch of consciousness of what's sort of happening. But yeah, reach out. We've got going for Auric spaces at the If you've got a really interesting space you want to try, that's, getting, getting contact. You get the Aromasphe for sort of three weeks. We trial it. And then of course you keep it if you want it or for a small $300 or you send it back. So we're really trialing lots of different product market fits for the product. ⁓ always somebody interesting going, have you thought of this space? And you go, wow, I hadn't really thought of putting in the Romasphere there. We'll give it a crack. So reach out and congrats to you, Bea. I think what you're doing is fantastic. I mean, you're one of the...
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Love it. All right, it's cool. Yeah.
Adam Good: the most incredible managing directors of an agency that I ever saw. You you build an incredible team and did incredible work. So whatever you're putting your mind to, you're going to be a genius at. So great to see the that you're making with ⁓ what doing next.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Thank you. Thanks, Adam. Thank you so much. Well, have a wonderful rest of the day and thank you. And I look forward to seeing even more success with Auric Essentials. So thank you so much. Bye.
Adam Good: Thank you. Bye bye.
