Staying Calm Under Pressure ft. Povilas Sabaliauskas of Pulsetto | EYB

In this episode of Elevate Your Brand, host Laurel Mintz sits down with Povilas Sabilauskas, CEO and co-founder of Pulsetto—the world’s first non-invasive, bilateral vagus nerve stimulation device.

Laurel Mintz shares her own transformative experience using Pulsetto, while Povilas Sabilauskas dives deep into how the technology helps switch your body from fight-or-flight to rest-and-digest mode, reducing stress and enhancing overall well-being. You’ll learn about the science behind vagus nerve stimulation, the data-driven integrations with popular health wearables like Apple Watch and Oura Ring, and what it takes to bring a unique wellness product to market.

This conversation not only covers the entrepreneur’s journey, the power of influencer marketing, and tips for standing out in the wellness space, but also delivers practical insights for founders, wantrepreneurs, and anyone curious about optimizing their health.

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Transcript

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You're listening to the Elevate your brand podcast, the number one podcast for entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs looking to gain insider marketing and brand building tips from some of the smartest entrepreneurs and fastest growing brands on the market today. I'm your host, Laurel Mintz, a reformed corporate M and a attorney who founded award winning LA based marketing agency Elevate my brand. We've elevated some of the world's biggest brands from Squishmallows, Geico and Verizon to innovative startups to you haven't even heard of yet. Are you ready to elevate your brand? Keep listening. Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of Elevate your brand. I of course am your host Laurel Mintz and I am joined today by Pavilas Sabilauskas, who is the CEO and co founder of Pulsetto Populas. Thank you for joining us today. I happen to be. Well, I, I have to tell you, I came across this product because one of my dear friends was traveling with it and she said it was the only thing that helped her sleep. Because when you travel, as I'm sure you know, you get so disrupted in your life. And she had talked about this device and then I reached out to try it and I use this every morning. I wake up, I make my coffee, I sit in bed and I put this amazing device on my neck and it sets me up for such success. So thank you so much for creating such a fantastic product. But for those who don't know what it is, would you share with us a little bit about what Falsetto is all about? So pulsetto is non invasive vagus nerve stimulation device. You put it on your neck and we are the only device in the market which is stimulating from both sides of bilateral stimulation and what we're doing basically in let's say easier terms. So we are switching your body from fight to flight to rest and digest it. So in this day and age, a lot of people are just caught up in stress and they do not know how to differentiate it. And your body does not differentiate from artificial stressors, from real stressors. So basically your body reacts to similar things like you know, if someone is shouting on you or you are scrolling on social media, basically your body feels that it's both are quite stressful things. And your body tries to optimize your body to reduce your stress. And you know, a lot of people are getting stuck in this kind of state. And sometimes it's not like a behavioral, you need a biological, let's say intervention. This is where our device comes in and we are stimulating vagus nerve, which is controlling basically your function and switching between two states. So when you're stimulating with falsetto, we push our body into relaxation state and let's say, trick your body into relaxing. If I can say it like this. It'S really, truly amazing. I think what was so remarkable for me in particular, I happen to be having a really rough day. One of those days when your stress levels are just at their ultimate high and you just are like, I don't even know what to do right now. And it just so happened that that was the day the device was delivered. And I was like, all right, I get delivered a lot of products and services obviously for this podcast, most of which aren't that great. And I was like, well, let's try it, let's see what happens. I'm in this super high tense, straight state of mind. I put the device on, I was sitting, I remember so vividly, I was sitting outside my backyard and it changed my entire day. Like it works like nothing I've ever experienced. And to your point, what happens is we are in a modern society, but we as individuals, as humans cannot differentiate between the fight or flight mode that our systems have been trained to react to. So we feel in our day to day life like we're getting chased by a tiger when we get a bad email that comes in or a client quits or something like that. And it's such an unhealthy state of mind to be in. And Poetto changes the entire experience. So again, I just want to say thank you because it has truly changed my life. Thank you for kind words. You know, it's really the best, you know, advertisement when the customers are saying, okay, this changed my life, I can now fall asleep faster. I can be, let's say asleep for the whole night, night duration. So, you know, a lot of things. This is basically what drives us. You know, all the good feedback. You know, you can always, let's say, make a more perfect device. But you know, this is the thing which basically drives us. And you know, the more devices we sell, the more customers we get. So it seems that, you know, word of mouth is one of the best advertisements for us. Definitely. I will tell you, I put it on anyone that is interested when they come over to my house, I put the conductive gel on them and they're like, what is happening? And then once they feel the device, they're like, oh, oh my God. Like, it really is just such a unique experience. And to your Point, you are also continuing to improve on the product. So I think most recently you had an integration where you can connect all of your other smart devices. So like my sleep apps and my health apps and any ring rings that you wear, you can, you're actually feeding that data into the platform now so that it can create a custom pulse for you, right? Yeah. So, you know, there are two sides. You know, one is, let's say clinical or medical where you can do some, I don't know, hair samples and take the cortisol and cortisone levels and we see, let's say meaningful reduction. But you know, this is not applicable for common users. So what we were thinking, you know, you have wearable devices like Apple Watch, Ordering Bootstrap, you know, the, these are three main ones and we, we can integrate their data in our application and you can see how your body, let's say some parameters are changing. Let's say we can decrease resting heart rate, which is usually measured during the nighttime, and we can increase heart rate variability, which is linked to your longevity, like longevity biomarker. So, you know, the more data you have and let's say the bigger baseline you have, you can see how it is improving your, your baseline. And you know, this is basically the best advertisement for us. We do not control that data, but we can impact it. And so, so, you know, it's no questions asked, is it working or not? So for us, it's a biggest, you know, value proposition for a customer. Yeah. And I didn't really know about heart rate variability until another friend of mine who's super into longevity was telling me, when you look at your sleep in the night, that's actually the most important thing, like the deepness of your sleep, the different levels of depth of sleep, the longevity of the sleep, and then the hr. HRV is the thing that you need to be looking at the most. And I've been completely obsessed with it ever since. How did you decide to come up with this product? It's such a unique experience. I've been sent other products that are like a tile or like a thing that you put on your chest and then it has like a thing you have to put in your ears and it's the complexity of the use case for other products just never really worked for me until this product. So tell us a little bit about your background and how you developed the product and why you felt you were the right founding team to bring this to market. So in previous lifetime, let's say like this, before pulsetta, I was Working with implantable devices. I'm biomechanical engineer by training and I was working with vagus nerve stimulators, implantable ones, deep brain stimulators, spinal cord stimulators, and you know, it was very interesting job, very good connections in this kind of field. Neurologist, neuroscientist, neurosurgeons. No, I had good connections. But you know, one day I understood that my power is, let's say, like degrading over time. And you know, I wanted to find a solution. Due to that, we did all the tests on the market and let's say check his heart, lungs and etc. And he was completely fine on a data level, but he was degrading and I thought, you know, maybe try something new. And I wanted to, to try on him legal stimulation, but I could not find the device on the market which is not implantable one. So, you know, being an engineer myself. Okay, let's try to build it. I have a good connections with universities and university clinics and etc. But you know, my father passed away so I put this project to aside and you know, during COVID I met my co founder Vitalis, whose wife was suffering from cluster headaches. And you know, we talked and vagus stimulation might also help with these kinds of issues. And we tried the MVP version on her and it worked. And we understood that we have something, you know, that was, you know, like a genie in a bottle moment, that you understand that you have something and, and you want to, and you want to, you know, build this kind of product. But we understood, okay, cluster headaches, migraines is not the route for us. We want to go into, let's say, longevity space to reduce stress, reduce anxiety due to that. This is the, let's say, bigger issue in my opinion, after even the COVID I think 4 out of 10 people are suffering with elevated stress levels on a, you know, on daily basis. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I know that that's been my experience. I am a founder of multiple companies and just doesn't stop. And so unless you have something like this device to take some time in the morning to set the pace and to set the tone and to kind of like jerk you back into reality of like I'm not being chased by a tiger and it's really, really hard to be grounded in your day. So again, it's just been a life changing experience. Experience for me. We're going to take a really quick break. We'll be right back. Hey guys, me again. I wanted to take a Quick break. To tell you more about our award winning agency, Elevate My Brand. We're a full service digital and experiential agency, meaning we do it all. From event management to content creation, branding, web design, social media, you name it, we got you. We're a small and scrappy team of both data nerds and quirky creatives and we're here to make you look good. After this episode, let's chat about how we can elevate your brand and take you to the next level. Email us today. Thanks for sticking with us and if you were just joining us, I am chatting with Pavilas who is the CEO and co founder of pulsetto. How did you learn about the vagus nerve? Was that something that you learned in school and your work as an engineer? Where did you learn about the impact that the vagus nerve in particular could have on your nervous system? So let's say like this. When I was studying biomechanical engineering, you know, I came to, let's say implantable device in general, one thing was looked like magic. It is deep brain stimulators, which is, you know, not it's a close cousin to Vegas nerve stimulators, implantable ones but you know, that is inserted directly into the brain and when you have Parkinson's, we place the leads into the brain and it can immediately stop the tremors. And it was like, wow. It looked like magic and understood, okay, this is the field which I would like to be a part of. Of course it took time due to that Lithuania's small country and we do not have a lot of companies in this field and basically we just distribute for the university hospital. So this is where I understood that I want to be somewhere near neuromodulation. So it took time for me to get into this field and you know, Megastar stimulation was basically one small portion of this field which I entered. And you know, this was the, the closest product to, to my heart due to that the negastar stimulation implantable ones are for drug resistant epilepsy and drug resistant depression. So this was quite a journey, understanding how it works, why you need it, you know, how you can classify disease, that it is drug resistant. And you know, journey was amazing. You know, we had a lot of travels, a lot of interesting people in the network. So this is how the journey began. But it began from deep brain stimulators. The first time I saw that, you know, some small current in the brain can reduce, let's say disease, let's say some patterns. So it was Amazing thing to see. And you know, just reading, digging deeper. Into this topic, it's amazing. And now that you are a couple years into this, what are some of the lessons you've learned along the path? Because I think, I mean, I'm getting targeted by you guys. We'll talk about the marketing in a minute. But in terms of product development and really understanding how to bring something like this to market, we have a lot of entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs were listening into the podcast. So what are some of the biggest lessons you've learned along this path? You know, a lot of lessons learned and but I think, you know, the resilience, even let's say stress resilience or even the pursuit of your project, this is a key thing because you know, when we started to speak to the VCs or to the investors, okay, we want to build vagus nerve stimulation to, to reduce stress, improve longevity biomarkers and you know, hundreds of them said this is stupid idea, but you understand that you have something in your pocket and you believe in it. And you know, after few years when we started to get some traction, you know, a lot of VCs, universities came back to us, okay, this, you proved us wrong. So if, you know, in my opinion, resilience, try to iterate fast. You know, if it is not working, maybe try other approach. But you know, I have this kind of motto that you always need to have a plan, but usually plan is not working. So you need to adapt and yeah, be flexible. You constantly, you do not understand from where you get the punch that it's not working, this is not feasible and etc. So you know, be, let's say, do not have a lot of ego on that side that if you bought something it should work or marketing angle should work, but it's not working. Maybe it was not the right time, not the right, you know, buyer Persona, etc. So be adaptable. I think that's a very astute observation and I think to your point. Well, I guess it's really a question. Do you feel like the reason or one of the reasons that this has been so successful? Obviously it really, really works. But the obsession with longevity now, like we are in this moment where I, I can't go to a cocktail party or a dinner and not have that conversation. So how much do you also attribute the success of the product to being in this moment where the conversation around longevity is everywhere. So me and my co founder were in longevity communities, I don't know, 10 or even more years. So for Us, it was already like a bubble a little bit. So, you know, but in general, yeah, this is of course helping us to scale due to that a lot of people are trying to understand, okay, how I can increase my level, longevity or muscle strength and etc. So this is all good for us. You know, it's a good timing, of course, you know, but I think even Aura helped us a lot due to that. You know, people are trying to gather information about themselves. I think Apple is doing a lot of good, good job. You know, Apple Health is a good hub for overall your health. So think right timing, good product. And also, you know, when you're creating product like this, in my opinion, first of all, it should be easy to set up. Second of all, is it working or not? Not the way around due to that. I know and know multiple products which are working perfectly, but they are so hard to set up or understand how it is working and people do not have a mental capacity to use it constantly. And you know, you drop off before you get results. Totally. Well, that's what I was saying earlier is that I have a bunch of these that are sitting in a drawer collecting dust because they were not easy to set up or they required headphones and the product and the app and all these other things. The simplicity of this product was really surprising to me and I think, you know, more than most. It is so challenging to change consumer behavior. We always say we never want to invest in anything that requires a change behavior because it's nearly impossible to change someone's behavior as a consumer specifically to use a new product or service, but because yours is so easy to use and it's instantaneous in terms of the impact, I believe this is one of the only products that I've used to date that has changed my behavior. Yeah. And the one thing that it's quite hard to change, the retention rate, usage rate, the healthcare longevity applications, it's one of the biggest issues. And in general nobody has good, you know, combination due to that. You know, you need to somehow bring the customer back to the application or to usage of a device. But usually you have two, two ways to over them. Okay, you use the device, you will get this kind of results or you try to shame them to get back into application. And shaming in health care or longevity space is not an option due to that. People are usually tired due to that. They understand that these easy steps can, you know, get a lot of benefits, but they do not have mental capacity. For us, it's a huge issue. Not an issue but like a challenge how to get the user use the device for at least three weeks until they see the meaningful results and later the behavior change happens, you know, on their own and you do not need to play a lot of, let's say engagement tricks and things. I think that that's exactly right. I think the messaging that you built around the product was so simple and I knew immediately like, okay, I'm going to try this for three weeks and see what happens. And they say, I think psychologically it takes 21 days to create or change behavior. Right. And the messaging around it was so clear. It's like if you're going to do it, do it for three weeks and you'll see impact and change. But I will tell you and anyone else listening and you know this because you built the product and I'm sure you use it consistently as well. It was instantaneous that the response, response, the calm feeling that I had during that really stressful day when it happened to be the day that I got the product initially was so like, it was so instantaneous of a change and I think that is what compels a user to come back and use a product again. As I said, like we don't like to invest in hardware software. I think it's a really, you know, heavy capex and tends to be really challenging. But this is a product, I mean you're just crushing it right now. It's unbelievable. We're gonna take one more really quick break. We'll be right back. Who says you've gotta be big to get things done? We know that size matters in some things, but in other things like marketing, a small and scrappy team like elevate my brand can really take your brand to the next level. Our job is to create visibility so you can create profitability. Give us a call today and let's schmooze. Thanks for sticking with us chatting with Povilas who is the CEO and co founder of pulsetto. Let's talk about the, the naming of the product. Did that come to you immediately? Did you have to brainstorm on it? It's, it's like kind of a no brainer it feels like. But I'd love to understand a bit more about the marketing journey. The name of a brand. It was basically we wanted to, to do something with Pulse due to that we're sending pulses to the body. So you know, we had. I don' names we rated and, and that's it, you know, pulsetto became like a household name for us. So it was quite easy Decision. So, you know, we try to know, not overthink things with my co founder. So if we do not know something, we try to just get three to four, you know, possible variants and try to select one and move from that. So the name and the logo in my opinion was very successful from basically the first time. So this is quite good, you know. And now the idea is basically how to become like Poetta equals Vegas and stimulation. So, you know, making like a household name like Jeep became synonymous to SUVs in us. Yeah, that was my first car I ever had. I get that. But it's very unusual that something takes off like this so quickly. How much of that do you believe is the product and how much of that was. I mean, you guys did an insane amount of marketing around it. I know most recently you've done a lot of influencer marketing. That's how you and I found each other. Well, actually I reached out to you guys on this one because I was like, I need this product. I've heard nothing but great things. Tell us a little bit about the marketing journey and how you launched. So I would say it's a myth that good product can be successful without marketing. Correct. So this is a myth. I. I do not know successful brands. Okay. There are some successful brands which done without any marketing budget, but usually they have very strong or very notable founder who does the marketing on his own. But in general, you know, finding the right person who buy a person. We also launched on Kickstarter because we do not have any, let's say, funding for building the manufacturing lines and etc. So when we launched on Indigo Go campaign, we gathered 200,000 in first two months, I think, and we understood that, okay, now we can deliver our product, we can order components and et cetera. So, you know, marketing is. It's quite difficult for these kind of, you know, products due to that. You can go two ways. Try to go via vagus nerve stimulation, which is known by, I don't know, 3% of population. Or you can go via, let's say situational. Okay, you have anger issues while driving. Okay, you need to reduce the stress and this is a tool. Or you can do breath work and reduce the same thing. So it's a. I think the biggest thing is what you can do is to do a lot of tests, a lot of ads and see which one is most successful ones. And, you know, doing fast and fast iterations, multiple campaigns, and trying to understand what kind of population, what kind of ads is working. Yeah, absolutely. And then when did you start to implement the influencer program because I started seeing you everywhere. I mean, all of the health and wellness influencers that I follow were just blowing this up in the last year. So when did you swap from kind of the brand awareness to influencer? This was. We tried to do this in our first year that we launched, but, you know, we did not know how to do this. And we are in from Lithuania, so we do not have a lot of people who are know how to do this kind of marketing. But we understood that we need to do this more. When Brian Johnson acquired our device and we did not know it, and one day in YouTube, he basically commented about it and we understood, okay, this is a. It needs to be. We need to hire separate people for these kind of, you know, influencer and affiliate marketing campaigns. And after that, we started to, you know, to focus on the side due to that, you know, you can get brand awareness, notoriety, and, you know, multiple ways how to tackle the same customer from different angles. Well, I mean, you got the ultimate influencer in the category with Brian, so that's kind of incredible. At the time, he was not so famous, so it was very interesting. He had, I think 300,000 YouTube. So now he has, I think, a million something like this. So he. He was on his way to up and, you know, he tried our device. So, you know, amazing. Of course, it. It was a right time, right place. Totally. Well, in the last few minutes that we have left, I always like to pivot to a more human conversation because our audience really likes to get to know you as a founder. So this is what we call our quote, Quick fire. Are you ready? Yes. All right, first question. What was your favorite subject in school? Oh, I think mathematics, but I was not very good on that because I'm visual thing, visual learner, not like a functional learner. And how do you think that's impacted the work that you do today? I think I like to build some systems in my head on which I can follow. So I think like. Or maybe not the mathematics, but like a logic subject which is a part of mathematics. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Next question. What was the last concert or show you went to? It was, I think, Bloodhound Gang. They traveled to Lithuania. So it was. No, it was offspring. Offspring, sorry. And it was quite interesting. You know, it was my favorite band when I was 15, so I was blessed from the past moment. Yes, I love it. This one's an easy one for you. But the next question is, how do you deal with stress? Yeah, so I, of course, I use Porcell device. But I also do interval training, high intensity interval training. I do sauna, cold plunge. So you know, I do everything but you know I have to travel a lot. So basically the only tool on which I can rely is Proseto. Due to that when you are switching a lot of time zones, it's a problem. Yeah, you cannot find gym in a hotel or something like this. So yeah. Next question is what is your biggest pet peeve? I don't know. When my computer is not working properly, when the mouse is not connected, when something is what should be working, it's not working. And those small things sometimes irritate me quite well. But I'm very calm at bigger issues. So it's a strange thing. Yeah, I love that. Well, this has been an absolutely fantastic conversation. If you could share with our audience where they can find your products so they can try this amazing life changing device. So yeah, you can visit our website which is pulseto.de and you know if you have wearable devices you can connect it and check it and if you do not see any meaningful results, you can no questions asked. This is our promise to a customer. It really is a life changer. I'm so honored to have had you on the podcast today. As we wrap up the conversation, any final words of wisdom for our audience either about the entrepreneurial journey, about stress, about the product, anything you want to share with us to wrap us up today? You know my Pulsetta is basically the first company, third company which launched. Two of first two were not successful. My co founder had the same algorithm basically and you know, you need to go over the mistakes to learn what is important to building a business. And this is there are no shortcuts in my opinion in this case. So try to fail and you know after a failure, multiple times of failure, you get used to it and it gets, gets easier, easier. So try, try again. Get up after you fall down and when you're stressed, use falsetto Povilas. This has been such a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us today. Yeah, thank you for having me and it was a blast. And thanks to everyone who tuned in. Stay tuned for more from Elevate youe Brand coming up next.