Ether Botanicals leans on paid ads and AI for analysis
Sebastian Arango Baloyra founded Ether Botanicals LLC after first being introduced to the idea behind it at 16, then spent years learning the business from logistics and coding to customer relations. The company sells ethnobotanically related products, and its story is worth reading because it shows a founder using AI for the back office while still drawing a hard line around human judgment.
AI has taken over statistical analysis, coding and troubleshooting at Ether Botanicals, but not the interpersonal work. The founder’s view is simple: use AI to support the business, not to replace the human decisions that keep it believable and useful.
What’s the quick origin story of your brand, and what makes your product or positioning genuinely different from other options in your niche?
I was introduced to the idea that founded Ether Botanicals LLC three years prior, when I was sixteen years old. I always had a keen interest in ethnobotanicals and the line between plants and the soul. From that point forward, I spent several hours, days, weeks, and months formulating an understanding of how the business works. From logistics to coding to customer relations. I formed the framework behind what a successful "Ether Botanicals" looks like in practice.
Since launch, what have been the 1-2 real turning points for your brand: decisions, pivots, or experiments that noticeably changed your growth or profitability, and what did you learn from them?
Most of our business comes from paid advertisements. To put it plainly, this is not ideal; ad costs revenue, and who wouldn’t want to save the cash? Plus, at any moment, ad providers can shut us down for unintended policy violations, given that our company’s stance, being ethnobotanically related, isn’t aligned with ad longevity. Ads keep operations moving and cash flowing, which is at the core of any business, so until we develop another more substantive option, this is what we’ve got.
Which 2-3 channels drive most of your revenue right now, and what have you learned about making those channels work in your category?
We’ve handed over a large portion of statistical analysis, coding, and troubleshooting operations to AI. AI performs very well at these tasks due to its ability to compute and align related given information to known solutions. Its formulaic approach to problem-solving is just that: a formula. When it comes to reenacting human approaches and applying them to interpersonal problems, AI at this current time (2026) usually falls short of satisfactory. Whether that be linguistic, humorous, or even interpretive, we, as a collective, need to remember: AI is not alive. Case in point.
How are you thinking about search in 2026, across Google, AI assistants like ChatGPT, and other discovery platforms? What have you changed to stay visible?
Not yet, but that’s certainly a real possibility as time goes on and the company grows.
What do you do to turn first-time buyers into repeat customers and advocates? Are there specific experiences, content, or community touches that work especially well?
Use AI, but not at the expense of your own humanity — use it as an aid to your work, not a replacement for your judgment. Keeping the human part intact is exactly what keeps you from becoming dependent on it.
Thank you to Sebastian Arango Baloyra and the team at ETHER BOTANICALS LLC for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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