When Arjun Sofat and his mother started cold-calling nutritionists from their kitchen table, they had no idea they were laying the groundwork for what would become an eight-figure women’s health supplement business.
The spark for Free Soul came from a deeply personal place. While working in banking, Arjun watched his mother struggle through his father’s health crisis, turning to intense exercise as a coping mechanism. “She was doing two or three HIIT classes a day, weightlifting, going for long walks, but she wasn’t really nourishing her body,” Arjun says. As her hair became brittle and her energy plummeted, they searched for supplements designed specifically for women’s health needs—and found a gap in the market.
At 21, with no business experience and limited savings, Arjun faced the classic startup dilemma: How do you find customers when you can barely afford to make your product? Free Soul’s solution became a blueprint for early-stage customer acquisition that any founder can adapt.
How Free Soul built a global brand using creative customer acquisition strategies
1. Start with your network (but know its limits)
Arjun initially turned to his immediate circle. “There [were] a lot of LinkedIn posts in the early days, organically sharing stuff through WhatsApp groups, a lot of friends sending friends things,” he explains. But this approach quickly hit its ceiling.
The breakthrough came when Arjun realized a fundamental truth about customer acquisition: “You quickly realize that the network of people that can buy into your products and can benefit from your brand—that pool probably sits outside of your immediate circle.”
This realization forced him to think beyond comfort zones and develop strategies that would work with strangers, not just supportive friends and family.
2. Make the calls
Before they could even think about customer acquisition, Arjun and his mother had to solve their supply chain puzzle. They contacted hundreds of manufacturers, keeping makeshift Excel sheets tracking every conversation. “My mom had this stack of papers. There were reams and reams of these sheets,” Arjun says.
Eventually, they found a husband-and-wife manufacturing team willing to work with their limited budget—though it wasn’t without challenges. When the manufacturer raised prices after sensing their enthusiasm, Arjun and his mother started a construction side business—fixing washing machines and installing cupboards—just to afford their first batch of inventory.
This hustle mentality extended directly into their customer acquisition strategy.
3. Go boots on the ground to find customers
After a failed email launch campaign to their network that led to zero website visits, Arjun and his mother pivoted to a more personal approach. They went straight to where their customers were.
“We ended up waking up at four in the morning every day, driving to gyms in East London and just handing out samples and leaflets,” Arjun says. For months, they spent hours each day at gym after gym, directly engaging with women who might benefit from their products.
This put them in front of their exact target demographic—health-conscious women actively working on their fitness. It allowed for immediate feedback and education about their products, and built genuine relationships rather than anonymous transactions.
The persistence paid off. "Two to three weeks later, we got one sale, and I just remember that signature sound of the Shopify app pinging off and I was brushing my teeth and just toothpaste everywhere, screaming,” Arjun says.
4. Focus on impact-driven motivation
What kept Arjun and his mother going through months of 4 a.m. gym visits and initial rejections wasn’t the prospect of profit—it was the impact they were having. “I get emails personally every single day at this point where customers are saying they really had a hard time managing their cycle and managing their energy throughout the month, but now thanks to your products, they’re feeling so much better,” Arjun says.
The customer stories became their fuel. Women struggling with fertility who credited Free Soul with helping them conceive. Customers who discovered how proper nutrition could transform their daily energy levels. “There are so many Free Soul babies out there now, which is just the most incredible feeling,” Arjun says.
This mission-driven approach to customer acquisition created something more valuable than transactions—it built a community. When your early customer acquisition efforts are rooted in genuine desire to solve problems, customers become advocates who drive organic growth.
5. Learn through YouTube university
Arjun and his mother became voracious self-learners. “YouTube was very much my gospel. I have a self-proclaimed degree in YouTube or in Shopify thanks to YouTube,” he jokes.
They spent late nights watching tutorials about website optimization, Facebook ads, and Google marketing. Channels like The Nomad Millionaire became their business school, teaching them everything from editing Add to Cart buttons to managing Meta accounts.
This approach had an unexpected benefit for customer acquisition. By learning these skills themselves rather than outsourcing them, they gained an intimate understanding of how their marketing performed. “Because of that, the two of us can run the entirety of our paid media outlets. And that’s so important when you’re trying to understand later on in your journey how to structure your accounts,” Arjun shares.
When you understand your customer acquisition channels at a granular level, you can optimize and scale more effectively.
6. Maintain a strong unit economics foundation
As they transitioned from purely organic growth to paid advertising, Arjun and his mother maintained strict financial discipline. Their rule was simple: “In the early days, your cost of acquisition must be less than your gross margin. You have to be profitable off that first order if you don’t have money from VCs,” Arjun says.
This constraint forced creative customer acquisition strategies. Rather than pursuing expensive acquisition channels, they focused on tactics that delivered immediate return on investment. Every dollar spent on customer acquisition had to generate profit, not just future potential.
Free Soul’s customer acquisition journey stresses the power of thinking long term. Rather than pursuing growth at all costs, Arjun and his mother built systems and relationships designed to last. “We’re not here for the short run. We’re here to build, God willing, a business that lasts longer than we do,” Arjun says.
This long-term perspective influenced every customer acquisition decision, from the quality of their gym floor conversations to their choice of investors who shared their mission. It meant prioritizing customer lifetime value over quick wins, sustainable growth over explosive scaling, and authentic relationships over transactional exchanges.
The supplement industry may be heading toward $120 billion by 2033, but Free Soul’s success came from mastering the fundamentals of customer acquisition that work in any industry. Sometimes the most sophisticated strategy is simply showing up consistently where your customers are, with solutions they actually need. Catch Arjun’s full Shopify Masters interview for more scrappy marketing tactics.
