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“Anyone in business who says, ‘How do you make money?’ is asking the wrong question,” says longtime entrepreneur Alex Tarnava. “What need do you have that you wish society had? Ask yourself that, and then ask yourself: Is it helpful to other people?”
Tarnava is the inventor, manufacturer and patent holder of hydrogen water tablets, which he describes as a leading method of hydrogen therapy. His product is private-labeled by roughly 100 brands, including Gary Brecka, Dr. Gundry, Cymbiotika, Sports Research and The Wellness Company, and he currently sells around 40 million doses per month.
He’s also the owner and co-inventor of Inhale H2, a patent-pending system for delivering medical gases and aerosolized drugs. Launched in December, the device has already sold out twice, with 1,000 units sold at a $6,499 MSRP.
Clearly, Tarnava is making money. But he insists that was never the point. That claim is strengthened by the fact that he has refused to take ANY venture capital, instead bootstrapping his businesses from the ground up despite growing up below the poverty line.
“A lot of people think if I pull in capital, it helps me achieve my mission, but that’s a trap,” Tarnava tells Entrepreneur. “You have to give up on your mission. Because now the mission becomes money and it’s empty.”
Making dollars but not making sense
From a young age, Tarnava was fascinated by philosophy and theoretical science. What he couldn’t understand was why pursuing those fields seemed to require working under someone else. “How are you going to be a philosopher or a scientist when you have to beg someone else for money?” he wondered.
At 17, around 2002, Tarnava took a more practical route, landing a commission-based door-to-door sales job. He earned upwards of $35,000 working part-time — more than his mother was making at the time. The job sparked an early interest in how money worked.
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