The $15k Lesson in Trusting the Wrong Supplement Formulating “Experts”

The behind-the-scenes story of creating a real electrolyte drink and learning how the industry actually works. Part One.

We almost gave up on our electrolyte drink. Not because we wanted to, but because the company we hired failed us multiple times. And that’s after a $15k investment for just the recipe, not even the actual product.

Here’s our story of a small business going through the wringer with product development, learning the ropes by hiring the wrong people.

This whole thing started back in 2012, a few months after my three-year-old son had a liver transplant. His body was depleted from the surgeries, the meds, and the stress. One of the side effects he experienced was chronically dry lips—so dry he couldn’t smile or laugh without them cracking open and bleeding.

When I brought it up to the doctors, they told me to increase his water intake and use Vaseline. I made him a tallow salve instead, which has a Vaseline-like texture since we don’t use petroleum products in our home, and gave him more water, but his lips were still dry and cracking.

Like any mom who isn’t happy with their doctor’s advice, I turned to the internet to solve my problem. I asked the folks in the Ray Peat Facebook group how to help him, and that’s when I learned about real hydration.

Water alone isn’t enough for true hydration. The body needs electrolytes, like sodium, potassium, and magnesium, to help move water into your cells and keep fluid levels balanced. Without them, the water you drink doesn’t hydrate as effectively.

The kind people in the group came up with a natural homemade drink made of orange juice, coconut water, salt, and cream of tartar. It was a Ray Peat classic that became an iconic drink in the wellness space. Within 24 hours, my son’s lips were 50% better. Within 72 hours, his lips were completely healed—soft, pink, and moist.

This drink is now known as an adrenal cocktail because the ingredients, including sugar, salt, potassium, and other minerals, nourish the adrenals and help lower stress hormones. It’s also an electrolyte drink that gives your body real hydration.

Fast forward a few years, and electrolyte drinks are everywhere. You’ve got all the big players like Liquid I.V., LMNT, Instant Hydration and the wellness brands, Santa Cruz Paleo, Ballerina Farm and Just Ingredients.

Except there are two major problems with both industries. This is something I’ve talked about for years on Instagram, and very few, if any, companies are getting it right.

Mainstream electrolyte brands are full of junk ingredients. They use artificial flavors, artificial sweeteners, and excipients like silicon dioxide and other synthetics.

Wellness electrolyte brands do a better job of creating cleaner formulas, but now we’re forced to consume stevia and monk fruit. They’re marketed as “natural,” but they’re still processed and technically artificial sweeteners. I’ve polled my audience over the years, and more than 90% say stevia upsets their digestion, mine included. There’s even some data starting to back this up.

Monk fruit is still a bit of a mystery. I haven’t found any data suggesting it’s harmful, which is great, but it’s usually paired with stevia, so it’s hard to tell how it affects us on its own. The bigger issue is that monk fruit is almost always blended with erythritol, one of the worst artificial sweeteners health-wise. And when I say paired, I mean companies only have to list monk fruit on the label, even if erythritol is part of the formula. That means people think they’re avoiding artificial sweeteners when they’re really not.

The thing is, a little natural cane sugar is honestly the best option, in my opinion. I’m not someone who fears sugar when it’s consumed in its natural form. Cane sugar actually supports the adrenal glands and helps the body absorb electrolytes more effectively. It’s an important part of the balance. And it tastes the best!

And number three, this goes for almost all brands, both mainstream and wellness. The minerals are completely off. Most of them have way more salt than potassium, which is backward. The body actually needs more potassium than sodium for proper balance. Most people already get plenty of salt from their diet, but potassium is much harder to get since most foods don’t contain much of it naturally. The body needs a higher ratio of potassium to sodium to keep electrolytes balanced.

So when brands like LMNT overload on sodium and underdeliver on potassium, it creates problems. And 1,000 mg of sodium in one drink serving is honestly unnecessary unless someone has a medical reason for that much. Otherwise, 1,000 mg in a single serving just doesn’t seem smart, in my opinion.

I knew there had to be a better way, so I set out to develop my own electrolyte drink mix.

I originally hired a more mainstream supplement manufacturing company, kind of a jack-of-all-trades. They make every type of supplement imaginable, from liver capsules to vitamins to nootropics. The problem was that this jack-of-all-trades manufacturer wasn’t a specialist in any of these areas. So when it came time to formulate my electrolyte drink, they failed. They couldn’t create any of the natural fruit powder flavors I asked for, and they couldn’t work with fine powdered sugar, only coarse sugar with large grains that didn’t dissolve in water. And the list goes on.

I ended up firing them and hiring a powdered drink flavor chemistry company. These guys are true specialists. They live and breathe powdered drink formulation. It’s all they do. They’ve created products for major brands like Starbucks, Coca-Cola, and some of the biggest wellness companies in the world. This team understands flavor, solubility, texture, and the science behind how ingredients interact in a drink mix. For the first time, I felt confident that I was finally working with people who knew exactly what they were doing.

Until it didn’t. But there’s a happy ending.

Something most people don’t know is that when you formulate supplements, makeup, skincare, or anything similar, you don’t actually own your recipe. The chemist owns it. They never share the full formula with you, only the list of ingredients, and they also handle the manufacturing. This keeps you dependent on them because without the actual recipe, it’s hard to take your product elsewhere. I learned this the hard way while working with a chemist on a few of my other products, like the makeup we eventually put on hold.

But there’s a way around it. You can hire a formulator who only creates the recipe, which means you own it. Then you find a co-packer to make and package the product.

That’s exactly what I did when I hired the second company, the experts. That was a $15k investment. You’d think that for $15k things would go smoothly, right?

Part two up next.

Kossma is the world’s first skincare company to avoid high-PUFA seed oils, formulating instead with regeneratively farmed herbs, tallow, and other ancestral ingredients that work in harmony with the body. We believe in skincare that’s safe for every stage of life, from pregnancy to babyhood and rooted in nature, not toxic synthetics.

If you value clean ingredients, transparency, and real results, explore our full line of skincare and wellness products at kossmabeauty.com.