Hello, my name is Arian Soltani. Welcome to my crowdfunding campaign for LIL NUTS!
As far as I can remember, I've always had an entrepreneurial mind. This might sound a bit brazen-faced for a 9 year old, but my earliest venture was selling Pokemon cards, right in the playground by my house!
I always wanted to succeed. As I grew up, I settled on a career in medicine. I have been accepted at the University of Plymouth and am looking forward to starting my journey to study medicine this September.
Family is another thing that keeps me going. During our move to the UK in 2017, I ended up missing the majority of my academic year when I was 16.
I had to catch up but felt demotivated, almost hopeless. The hard work was seemingly never ending, with very little down time to enjoy or care for myself. The seemingly impossible task of improving my English and catching up with the curriculum wreaked havoc on my physical & mental health. I became overweight. Nothing over the top, but enough to make me feel self-conscious.
I decided to join a gym. It became a place where I could fix myself mentally and offset the pressure of all the homework, and transform myself physically.
The benefits of being active were innumerable. I regained my work ethic and my vitality while making new friends in the place that had become my new home: Glasgow.
I became passionate about health & fitness, specifically how it can change someone’s outlook on life & mood. I know I am not the only one who's commitment to self-care has helped them come out of a tough situation.
The more committed I was to a healthy regimen, the more interested I became in nutrition. Finding ways to recover quickly became a bit of an obsession.
I discovered nut butter as a pre-workout snack and found out some of them were pretty tasteless. This gave me an idea: I was going to start mixing my own!
I started experimenting with different recipes and after countless trials, settled on a mix of 2 nuts: hazelnuts & cashews. Being an absolute coconut fiend, I took on sprinkling tasty, white flakes on my homemade nut butter, spread on a thick piece of Granary toast.
I knew this was healthy but the blitzed nuts still tasted chalky.
For many years, my parents had used date syrup instead of jam or marmalade at breakfast. They would drizzle a generous amount on a piece of Sangak, also called Pebble Bread, a traditional Persian flatbread extremely popular back home.
One morning, I grabbed the jar of date syrup on the breakfast table and did the same thing I had seen my mother and my father do all these years.
I drizzled it on my peanut butter, on top of the coconut flakes.
It tasted amazing! The date syrup really added a depth of flavour to the nut butter. It was also a natural sweetener. This became a staple in my house for my pre-workout and recovery. I started offering this snack to my gym-mates until one day someone asked me where they could get the nut butter.
The penny dropped.
Sharing was great...but how about starting a business?
I took a gap year and applied the same work ethic to researching product manufacturing & e-commerce. Then I joined the incubation programme (TakeOff) at TERN where I spent 6 months solidifying my understanding of entrepreneurship.
I have created a unique, healthy product that is tasty and easy to use, whether you’re an athlete or just need a quick snack.
Today you can be part of this adventure by supporting the growth of my business, Healthier Nutrition, and it's MVP product LIL NUTS. In return, you will receive nut butter- check out my rewards tiers- and the assurance that I will apply the same work ethic I've applied so far to guarantee a quality product that is tasty, healthy and affordable.
Stay in touch :)
Please check out my new website at https://www.healthiernutrition.co.uk/
And follow me on Instagram @lilnutsnutbutter