0:00 Introduction

Welcome to Give It A Nudge. This week we have Amal from Equalution on the show. I’ve known her a little while, we’re both members at Columbia United Business, which is how we met. Amal, welcome. Thank you for having me. I’m the co-founder and CEO of Equalution. I’ve been doing that for about six and a half years now. It sparked from my own passion in health and wellness and through my own 30-kilo transformation.

4:00 What Equalution does

We’re a health tech company. We facilitate sustainable and balanced nutrition in a personalised manner. We are the most personalised solution in the market when it comes to our space. We do not demonise any food groups. We provide nutrition tailored to you that allows you to eat the food you love. You can have pizza, pasta, ice cream, and chocolate and still achieve your health goals. It’s all about lasting results and building sustainable habits you can maintain for the rest of your life.

6:00 Background at Google and the decision to start

Prior to Equalution I was working at Google in the marketing department for consumer retail. I was studying a Bachelor of Commerce, majoring in marketing and management, and I deferred my degree to take the business full-time. I was working at Google full-time, studying full-time, and doing Equalution as a passion project. Something had to give. I left Google and Equalution became everything.

9:00 The borderline diabetes diagnosis at 16

Growing up I struggled with my weight my entire life. Coming from a Lebanese-Australian background, food is at the core of everything. I didn’t know I was overweight until a GP visit at 16 when I was told I was borderline diabetic. That was the moment I had to make a choice: medication for the rest of my life or make a change. I became obsessed with health and wellness, tried every fad diet possible: keto, shake diets, cutting carbs. I was the queen of fad diets.

11:00 Fitness modelling and the ice cream insight

I got into fitness modelling, competing on stage. My first show I did clean eating: only seven staple foods, no cheat meals, didn’t dine out. I got on stage and looked average. Something wasn’t right. Then I found a coach who gave athletes cereal and ice cream. I hadn’t eaten birthday cake in four years. He put me on nearly 2,000 calories. I had a mini panic attack. He said just give me a week. I ate ice cream every night for 16 weeks. Stepped on stage at 9 percent body fat. It was at that moment I knew I had to share this with the world.

14:00 From manual service to automated platform

We weren’t always a tech company. We started as service-based, writing every meal plan from scratch, sending PDFs through WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Clients were on a Google Sheet. If you deleted one name that client was gone forever. Growth forced us to build the technology. We established product-market fit in the service phase without realising it, then invested in the platform once we’d validated the demand.

17:00 The $50 subscription and the CAC result

We went from $250 a month with an assigned nutritionist to a $50 monthly subscription launched mid-May 2023, replacing coaching with education, guides, and community tools. Since launching we’ve decreased our CAC by 60 percent in just two months, with very minimal marketing spend. MRR has grown significantly. This scalable model now allows us to pursue international expansion, which wasn’t possible with the service model.

21:00 Fundraising and international expansion

We are 100 percent bootstrapped and never taken on debt or external funding. We’re doing our first fundraising round now. It’s a whole new world. We need it to go international and to progress what we plan to do in two years in six months instead. We’re targeting Singapore and New Zealand first, then UK and Canada, then Middle East, Asia, and US. We’ve decreased our CAC by 60 percent, significantly increased our margins, and the technology is built. Now it’s all about distribution.