E147 - He Sold His Protein Bar Company For $600M: Peter Rahal on RXBAR, David, & Going Viral

0:00In the natural food movement, you can get to 10 million in the U.S. You can do that online, but I think the typical barrier is actually probably... The man looked at protein bars and said, I can do better, proved it, cashed a$600 million check from Kellogg's, and then said, I can do it better again. David Barr's founder, Peter Rahal. We are at the biophysics limit of what you can make at a protein bar. You can't go more. It's super hard. The idea was just like launch on our own schedule, introduce the product, and then work with the retailers. First week, we did a million dollars in sales. I basically became a workaholic.

0:28And so I tried to like reestablish my relationship with fun. It just like wasn't fulfilling. If you want to achieve great things, you can't be balanced. There just will be sacrifices. Some people, it will be friends, socializing, maybe relationships. If you want to be a great leader and do great things, like the domains of life is like social, health, sleep, family, work. Choose three. Was there any big fuck-ups that you can remember where you thought, oh my God, like this could be the end? Yeah, when we went from...

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1:34No more of that. You can get access to over hundreds of programs to help you build strength, power and size along with meal plans to help you build muscle, lose fat and optimize your health and well-being whilst also allowing you to have some degree of flexibility in your life. So now's the time to get in shape, make it easier for yourself with a system that actually works with minimal input and the absolute maximum output. Let's get into the video. What's up guys and welcome back to First Things Thirst. Peter Harald, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me Mike. This will be an interesting one because first of all my audience is very much into fitness, wellness, supplements but also at the same time entrepreneurship and with what you've done you've combined both and you've done very well and you've dominated not once but twice in the protein bar market which is already very saturated yeah so congratulations yeah thank you your uh your first venture was the rx bar correct and how did that come about so it was like 2010 i was playing rugby excuse me um and a guy on the team was into crossfit he was a military guy so he was just fitter than everyone else so I got into CrossFit around then um and I just fell in love with it because it was super intense get good results Olympic weightlifting gymnastics and you just develop skills um and then and then I was like I think like a lot of entrepreneurs like I wanted to be successful and I was looking for an opportunity in a business and um my background's in food so um uh on the ingredients side so so i had that sort of knowledge of raw materials and um the supply chain and then crossfit is emerging i don't know if you remember 2012 it was like the hottest thing it was before all these boutique fitness places and so in the united states ever cross was blowing up um so i fell in love with that and then uh i had a shitty job and i was like i gotta i just like i just hate this and i needed to i need some butter and so um i saw an opportunity so like right across the gym was this is about the time it was like all right it was cross was all about paleo so it was both like a fitness ideology and a nutrition ideology so in a crossfit box they wouldn't sell any other protein bar um and the shelves were empty and at the time there was like kill cliff and all these other like crossfit specific brands there and i was like well shit like there's clearly an opportunity for like a bar designed for crossfitters um like a healthy yeah like a clean label paleo a paleo protein bar basically yeah and um so i just started making a protein bar for me for that audience and started super modestly like making them in my apartment or my parents basement um how how does how do you even begin doing that like what scale were you producing them oh you just do like a a batch that you would get maybe like 20 bars or 30 bar yeah so a five quart kitchen aid yeah yeah just take dates dried egg whites almond cashews and mix it in yeah um some flavor and yes started making it and then you know it's like i had no i didn't we have we have limited resources so just made like a hundred i went to my local box sold them and they were like sold right away yeah so you know you could just extrapolate like all right if it works in a crossfit gym in chicago you know it's going to work in other crossfit gyms they're very same culture um and i remember at the time i was like all right this would be amazing if i could just win the crossfit market and like kind of have a lifestyle business yeah um go to crossfit gym sell it and then uh totally underestimated like what it took to actually scale yeah i was like all right and then um so you know the first assignment was like all right let's just dominate crossfit be the bar for crossfit and then then it was like all right then we'll figure out how to cross cross the chasm go go to whole foods go to the natural channel in the u.s and um scale it from there so from the the early days of when you were creating the bar versus what you see now on the on the shelves has change much the ingredients the ingredients not so like fundamentally no but you know it might look like a simple product but the variety of dates changed the how we process the dates changed how we mix them how we pasteurize them um there's all these little details that really really matter um it's cashew butter how it's roasted like how it's milled so the size of the almonds um Are they roasted or not roasted?

6:47So it was a constant iteration over time. It's really, it's funny that I'm speaking to you now because every single time that I came to America, obviously I'm on the move. I need to try and get my calories in. But more importantly, you know, if I don't have access to eating something healthy, like a cafe or a restaurant, which is quite common in America, I would just want something quick off the shelves. and for a long time it was pretty much jerky or the rx bar so i would always go for the rx bar because the jerky even though it said it was jerky it was like what 70 actual jerky and the rest of it was some weird extra ingredients and it was kind of like all the sugar that was in it as well so i don't think there was anything else on the shelves that was kind of natural and uh just had so few ingredients yeah that the rx bar had so that was my go-to all the time and um it always used to fascinate me that you had such a variety of different flavors of the bars yeah yeah the ingredients were very similar so as you mentioned it's just the the different ratios and the preparation of those ingredients so they could have an effect on the the flavor of them yep yeah yeah it's yeah which made it really it was it actually made it hard to make it like we had we had limited tools like we had for blueberry we had to use blueberry and blueberry flavor chocolate you're limited so um yeah it was hard and for me i actually like i always this is like the entrepreneurial hack like i loved larabar at the time and it was like a simple question it's like why is why i wish this had protein yeah because larabar was dates and almonds um and and we just added egg whites yeah so how did you become or try to become the official like crossfit bar what's the strategy uh the strategy so the crossfit community did you do crossfit no okay so i mean i'd i did a few sessions yeah i have slight lifting weights yeah it's and so like crossfitters like wore reebok nanos they like they had a language you know doing it rx do it you know they doing wads that are this like own language and so you needed to authentically be in that culture for it to spread like if you're an outsider like coming and marketing to it they would they would tell and um so one being in the community and going to like local competitions uh actually working out of the gym with the with the trainers certainly helped but the main strategy was just sampling and participating in all the um like the competition um well so you would show up with like a big batch of bars and be like hey guys are you giving them out for free or are you selling them both okay yeah yeah and you know it's like going to a version of a farmer's market yeah um and then the we didn't do this well but if you look at the brands that did were really successful the best way to drive awareness across it was the crossfit athletes and partner with them yeah like if you got rich froning you would have been everywhere yeah like he was the michael jordan so we didn't really do that too much because we didn't have like the resources um yeah what year was this 2013 to 2016 yeah so they crossfit yeah and they would have wanted they went yeah he was expensive yeah yeah yeah okay and even without the ambassadors you were still able to to kind of get the name out there i would call it like organic word of mouth yeah it was the main driver because it was an uncompetitive market there was no other protein bar yeah you know so as i as an entrepreneur those are like ideal markets where there's like little competition um because it was too small of a market for someone like i don't know cliff bar to go into you know it's like yeah they're too big so yeah so so how did you go from making it in the kitchen to then making it on a larger scale yeah so first it was like validate that there's demand for our products locally and then we moved to a 5 000 square foot kitchen slash a commercial kitchen call it survived there for about 18 months got our volume up to like 10 000 bars a day and then that was the moment where we could go to a commercial um manufacturer and scale it yeah which was the hardest part yeah i can imagine yeah so to begin with you would i would imagine the majority of the money you were making you were just reinvesting yeah it's all working it all would go back into inventory and the reason why it's so hard is so we're basically making making product to order so we'd make it sell it so so we wouldn't make much inventory then we go from doing that to making 60 days of inventory so these like large inventory builds um and that was the hardest part yeah because going from bootstrap to that was um you couldn't fuck up yeah yeah was it was there any big fuck-ups that you can remember that way you thought oh my god like this this could be the end yeah when we went from making ourselves to the commercial um we had our you know 40 pound batches and then we went to a 2 000 pound batch and it doesn't scale linearly and it was a different type of mixture different packaging and so we underestimated sort of some of the details with scaling um you know so that that yeah and then shelf life yeah because what would a typical shelf life be is it so would it be for something like this would be less because it's more natural ingredients no not necessarily so why how do you determine shelf life so how the product dies the product would die because of yeast and mold that is controlled by something called water activity so you think of like difference between bread and crackers just one has water one doesn't yeah so um if you have water activity under around six five it will not mold um but if you go above six five to seven it will mold so um and then the other one would be rancidity of fats like almonds go bad they oxidize so that's how you determine shelf life and we just didn't know so and okay so even though you had some experience within like ingredients and combining ingredients you didn't know about this i did not know we were basically through fucking up yeah rules through blood and so for the first time we made so usually we make product and it would be consumed within three months yeah um and then all of a sudden we were making product and like we needed it consumed in six months so um yeah learned a lot about microbiology um but it's not doing natural not like you can't stop the way you stop mold is not through uh it's actually controlling water activity and the irony is actually agricultural products um are higher risk of that because they have more natural yeast and mold in them so whereas like a actually a more processed ingredient like whey protein isolate that's all cleaned yeah so so it's like super it's way more stable uh so yeah we learned that that was the riskiest thing is like going into commercial production and not knowing not and being completely ignorant and what was the like the biggest breakthrough in terms of getting on the shelves of a big chain store which was like the first one day one was Wegmans here it's a big it's a regional grocer uh well like Wegmans Wegmans there's one in Union Square uh and they're they're amazing they're like it's a cult brand in the northeast um and it's weird it's a beautiful combination of like trader joe's costco whole foods um and like walmart so it's like everyday low price they have tons of assortment they have their own private label and they have like club packs so it's like a really um it's a really great retailer so that was our first break what do you think there must be so many of these smaller brands who are at that stage before they kind of have the big breakthrough but they just struggle to get it on the shelves what is it that prevents people from getting there?

15:13Is it the fact that there isn't enough demand for the product or is it like the sales pitch and the presentation to the buyer isn't good enough? I think it's obviously situational. In America, like in the natural food movement, you can get to 10 million in the US. You can do that online. But I think the typical barrier is actually probably price. so if you have some like homemade thing that's really premium um well sourced your costs compared to what you're competing with are probably a lot higher and so i i think it's probably a price thing most likely like in america you can get to a niche but like price really matters once you get to those markets and especially when you're on shelf when you're comparing it to other things yeah so in isolation you're like oh that's i'll take that but when you're comparing to something half the price you're kind of you're kind of screwed because that's what most a typical consumer when they're walking through the aisle of the protein bar section i mean i guess a lot of different things will go through people's minds but price will probably be one of the biggest things and as you said if if your bar is going to be the most expensive bar on shelf the likelihood of that person buying is going to be pretty slim unless it's going to be doing something or taste way better than the rest of competition.

16:32Yeah. And either like a nutrition claim would help, but if it's double the price, you know, you're just going to buy a Quest bar. Yeah. Yeah. I think the only places where that doesn't really matter is if you get it in like Air One or something. Yes. Absolutely. I bought a$20 strawberry from there. Yeah, yeah. Just because it was, I saw it, it said it was$20. I was like, why is it$20? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was like, let me, it was a good strawberry, but it was not worth$20. Yeah. I think I've seen a$39, yogurt in there yeah yeah so that's that market so like you want to be able to win in air one but then also win in like um bucky's in the texas or wisconsin like some you want to live in you want to win in the middle of the country in a mass place and in a bougie place yeah the advantages of being in a bougie place is just the fact that you're on the shelf gives it credibility i imagine yeah it gives you credibility and it's yeah i mean the reality is you just want to win in from the bigger market but yeah but if you have like a premium innovative product yeah and i i do it's like fundamentally driven by price yeah and price is a reflection of value okay so after you got that kind of first win did you keep trying to get in other chain stores after that did that give you that kind of um because you'd already had that signed off you could then go to other big chains and be like hey look we're in here do you want to stock up yeah yeah so so Wegmans was like the test right we were like if it works there similar how we were like CrossFit if works in one place it's probably going to repeat and so Wegmans was a big experiment uh once that once that one we had actually data to go to other retailers other grocers and then yeah you just keep going um and you want to match environments that are similar to Wegmans um so like Publix in the southeast in Florida would be a similar comp different regional grocers and then the next massive break for us was uh Trader Joe's okay yeah that's big which is like a huge huge special retailer yeah and they sell a lot of protein bars yeah yeah yeah i wonder if if it's already going to be on the shelves a place like that do you need to do much marketing outside of that um you know what i mean like yeah if it's already there people like oh what's this let me try it yeah this is i've heard about this brand and there it is so i'm going to get it because i've already heard about it beforehand yeah i think if you haven't we had enough digital awareness that we didn't need to like market directly for it and i do think protein bars in particular like people like do shop it so it's a bit of a treasure hunt so i think the product would work hard in store so so i don't think you need to market too hard like once you're there it will it should work yeah um because also trader joe's their their category is really small so they only carry five brands maybe maybe maybe six of the protein yeah yeah they're really selective so the fact that you're just selected is a is a huge like that's all you really need to do um versus like a Wegmans has maybe 30 or 40 brands where you kind of have to fight harder yeah um it's a different different different market or environment so why do you think they went with you um we're we're the only type of sort of paleo protein bar you remember whole 30 whole 30 yeah it was like a diet trend back elimination diet sort of a commercial paleo that was really really popular um and so i know the buyers were participating in that um that was a 2000 2015 um and we're a decent product yeah well yeah so it's good for sure um okay so from that the point where you started you're making it in kitchen to the exit what time frame was that march 2013 to october 6 2017 so four years four and a half years yeah and it sold for 600 million nice yeah what was the the equity split at that point was it primarily you yeah i mean like me no we didn't take any investors um so it was me and my co-founder and um our staff yeah nice how did that feel um you know there's a lot of money yeah it's a lot of four years yeah and like you know you go for either you go paying yourself 52 000 a year to then all of a sudden like you know a very acute change in your wealth um it's all in one go as well yeah yeah so I um it was I would say it was a relief I think to have financial freedoms of relief I don't think um because I think everyone stressed about money so didn't kind of that was it was a relief but then you know I liked my job so I didn't it wasn't like I didn't want to quit my job so I just you know went back to work the next day um but what would that work be defined behind us like yeah from from the the the exit was there any requirements from you to still do something for no run it because i don't know my friends he's he's based in uh houston uh max tuning i don't know if you know him he he's he built and scaled sour strips okay and hershey's bought it for quite a substantial amount of money but he still has a responsibility to do quite a lot of the marketing and marketing of the business because he was very good at that was he like did he have a social media following yeah it was i mean he was a couple hundred thousand on instagram loyal followers he had a youtube channel as well every video would probably get around 80 to 100 000 okay that's a lot yeah so i didn't i'm not i wasn't really the face i was a ceo but i didn't have like any social assets that were valuable um i didn't have a contract or like an earn out um but i i stayed for a year and a half um i did have a i just viewed as a responsibility and and a reputation to protect and um the right thing to do is just finish my job and help transition it um yeah not just like stick things up more yeah yeah like reputations is important and i i had a lot of respect for kellogg and are still due and all like fundamentally I like my job.

23:22Yeah. You know what I mean? So, um, Is there ever a fear that when a company like that comes to purchase, they're going to start tampering with how the, like the ingredients and everything. Cause I know for, from what I remember that Cadbury's chocolate UK brand, like it was, it tasted very unique and then it was acquired by an American brand. And then they started changing all the ingredients and the Cadbury's chocolate doesn't taste the same anymore and a load of english people are annoyed really yeah yeah i'm sure it happens um but for for rx bar its whole position was around so you couldn't really do anything and also like we already were kind of we were at scale so we were you know we were the biggest buyer of dates in the united states uh what are you getting from the middle valley is where domestically they're produced and grown and then what type of what type of date so um majule and yeah and then deglet too and then those are from tunisia and algeria yeah are uh where you can buy some supply from so we were so like they're really yeah it wasn't in their interest and um um perhaps you know the they probably bought the packaging better like we you know stuff that didn't affect the product um so i don't think that happened um but i'm sure it does yeah because those generally large companies are really good at scaling and cost so um like yeah so but um yeah they i don't think they would be a prudent thing for them to do and during that the time the the aftermath or like the at least a year after the exit did you take any time off and go do a lot of things that you wanted to do and maybe buy a couple things you wanted to buy or just, you're not interested?

25:19So the ones I left, which was March of 2018,

25:27yeah, I have like freedom. And like, you know, your identity's in this company. So there's like this weird psychology, like you're the RX guy, so I'm not that. So there's a bit of like, you have to just grapple with your identity. and really break your identity from that because you don't control it. And then I would say, like, I like cars. My uncle was a race car driver, Bobby Rahal, and so I grew up, like, loving cars. So I bought some cars. But then quickly realized, like, collecting things doesn't make sense. Yeah. So sold all the cars. Were you in New York at the time? I was in Chicago, and then I went to Miami.

26:09I was going to say, collecting cars in New York probably isn't. can't do it here and in miami like you just don't have it's like it's actually not a good driving town other than like the causeway but like it's like that's it so but anyway i bought some cars and i realized like didn't really do it for me so sold them um and then i tried like this sound weird but i basically became a workaholic um because you get like a positive feedback group like when you're winning you're just getting this positive feedback loop and so i tried to like re-establish my relationship with fun some some hedonism uh call it partying um and i i just like wasn't fulfilling um and then uh yeah i mean i've been there before and i've done it and it's it's kind of one of those weird things that when you're younger you feel like oh it would be so good to make this amount of money so i can go and do all these things yeah and then when you're actually doing it you you're like oh it's actually not that great and particularly when you've you've you've built such a successful company you're like what you sort of like you feel like you're wasting your potential when you yeah it's totally i hedonism is a sin and you realize why like it so it's not fulfilling um but it's i think it's a good thing to perhaps experience so you can understand it yeah but i i i was so much more fulfilled going on a journey of building a company and doing with people and like that that was fulfilling to me and and and that's it's delayed gratification it's like so i wanted to get back to that asap um but i had to not compete um how many years was that five years yeah so my idea was like i'm gonna move to miami kind of get my life together get my health back because i stopped working out so i get my health back sort of re-establish my relationship with work in a way like because it was a it was just an addict um when you when you say work addict what what would a typical work day look like for you this is like building the company it was just all i did like you know i was single so i wake up get on the computer get a coffee go to the office work go home go to bed it's just all consuming so but i loved it you know the saturday and sunday as well yeah yeah and so like in theory you're like all right well a good life is a well-balanced life so that was like and then uh and i kind of don't agree actually i think like if you want to achieve great things you can't be balanced and i wasn't happy when i was balanced um so but i yeah you don't know what you don't know i don't think i really know anyone like from from my friends who are building companies or people i've spoken to on the podcast that are really in that phase of building that can simultaneously do that and also have everything else balanced out like there just will be sacrifices you have to make yeah some people it will be friends socializing maybe relationships health all of it yeah so like i think cheryl sandberg has this quote which is so true it's like if you want greatness so life the domains of life is like social health sleep family work uh choose three yeah um and even more extreme is like choose two um so sometimes i will get the itch to not necessarily do something like this but build something and i'm like i know what it's going to require yeah i don't know if i want to do this well that like starting david actually like because i got comfortable i wasn't like grinding i was working and investing but right before i was starting it i was like shit like am i ready to go back to that because i knew like once you start it's gonna suck you in and i'm just gonna go back to what i know which you know it's like if you want to be a great leader and do great things like you're gonna it's like you're gonna sacrifice yeah um some some things and i remember being like hesitant i was like a and uh but then ultimately i was like all right i you need to you need to go on adventure you need to go on a journey um just go for it yeah so during this there was this period of time non-compete um you said you obviously did a little bit of hedonism investing did you ever think about just being like full-time investor and doing that and watching money multiply even more yeah what did you realize was this a completely different ball game when you had to get yeah i invest i try to be a professional investor um i don't have the temperament for it and i yeah i think it's like the only good thing about investing is your lifestyle because you don't have to work yeah you know like other you basically putting capital just giving it to someone else for them to do the work um but i know it wasn't for me like i i um did you have any wins in investing yeah yeah spacex oh really yeah um olipop liquid death um literally all they were all huge yeah pretty pretty was it olipop is that's all for 800 mil they're still uh private i'm still private okay yeah um but like once you build a company or you're an entrepreneur like it's kind of like a drug like the feedback loops like i just wasn't fulfilled like investing and you don't really do anything so even if you get wins it's not the same of like being with a team going through battles like it's just a it's not like a i guess you're on the sidelines like i want to be in the game yeah like fighting so even the money it's not about money none of this is about money at this point you know what i mean it's about fulfillment and and a lot of it's out of your control is because you're just like here's the money you do your thing maybe like i can chip in and help but but like really that's not my i'm yeah i won't like i want to i want to drive the car yeah yeah yeah so that's why i'm saying it wasn't i don't have the temperament to be an investor that makes the feedback loop sucks too because you have to like make a decision and then you don't know if you're right for years yeah five years ten years but if you're building a company you you know you you make a product decision the market tells you right away you hire someone you'd learn so much more so so you you're the itch to build something again and you decided I'm going to do another protein bar.

33:33Yes. Did you think maybe trying something different, like maybe a protein powder or a drink, a beverage? Well, I did not compete. So I spent five years like, all right, what else to do? I played around with like from fashion to synthetic biology, like just let my curiosity run. but the consistent thing was like i don't understand it enough to really feel confident to do it whereas like food and bars like i know that intrinsically i know that deeply so when i whenever i started i was like getting close i always basically chickened out because i didn't have clothing is different ballgame yeah totally different sizes different colors that's nightmare people like with a bar you eat it and that's that with clothing people try it on like oh it doesn't fit me i'm gonna send it back there's that and there's like how are you different it's actually like cool and then cool super abstract like shaping cool or making cool is really really hard yeah you know what i mean like where the product is it's objective it's macronutrients calories yeah so it's much easier but the fundamental thing is like i need to to start something i need to deeply deeply understand it and so um by the time i had gone through this my non-compete was like a year away so i was like all right i'm gonna have to go back i'm the bar guy it's great you know my tombstone to say like the bar you know something about bars so this time around you you had a different approach was it was there a particular I mean, you would have, you've obviously, you know the market well, you see what's on the shelves.

35:20Did you think there's something missing here or something I can do a little bit different? Yeah, so, Rx2David was really a reflection of my sort of comprehension of nutrition.

35:42um and if you look at what people want in a nutrition bar protein bar it's like they want the most protein with the least amount of calories right you basically want a protein delivery system that tastes good um and so looking at the market i was like all right everything's sort of concentrating on like 20 grams of protein 200 calories and then i just knew if if I just got back in the game, I could totally beat those numbers and deliver something with a superior macronutrient profile and ultimately, fundamentally, a product I wanted. And so, and then like moving away from ideology because something of my experience at RxBar was like, we were paleo.

36:29Two years in, everyone that was like our early adopters, our loyal customers, went to keto. And I'm like, wait a second, guys. And then they were like anti-carb, anti, basically skipping breakfast. And then after that, they went to fasting and then they went to carnivore. There's always another trend around it. And that's a really volatile thing to build a brand around. So nutrition is really loaded with different ideologies. It's a kind of a religious thing. And so I wanted something that's truly more of an intellectual position and fact-based. um rather than yeah something ideological and so um do you remember when there was a specific point in time when protein started to become a big thing because you know at one point there was you wouldn't see protein anywhere on any of the products but now you see it on cereal you see it on yogurt you see it on literally everything it's like you have the big words protein in it and that's the thing that brings people's attention to it yeah so like when did protein go from for sport and bodybuilding to the mass market it i don't know the moment it's certainly i think 20 early 2020s became obvious and what's really accelerated it is glp1s yeah because everyone's taking them and everyone's gonna probably take them and then the when you take them the the first piece of advice you need to still eat your protein yeah eat protein because you you don't want to lose muscle yeah um and so that's you know you have basically a large part of the population that hasn't thought about nutrition this first thing they're thinking about with nutrition when they're taking a glp1 is protein.

38:23So I think that over the last two years has really, really accelerated protein as like this sort of hero macronutrient. Some stuff that bodybuilders have known since forever. And it's, you know, when you think about it as a macronutrient, it's like, all right, there's carbohydrates, fats, those are energy, really tastes good, easy to get. Protein's the one that's difficult to consume so anything that makes it easier to consume and at a good price is super valuable and taste and taste yeah it doesn't taste good taste i mean for me i don't really care like as long as it's got the protein and i'll just eat it if it's good for me i'll eat it but the the mass market general population they're not like that like they it needs to be a candy bar basically yeah but a healthy one or one that's got high protein so i guess like that's that's something which almost needs to be one of the most important things is that the the macros the taste and the ingredients yeah yeah yeah and then price oh yes and price yeah but you remember back like 2010 protein products sucked yes like rtd drinks powders weren't even a good but now today the powders are amazing there's so many good powders rtd drinks are great um even bars have come up super far away um food is definitely harder than beverage yeah i think in the uk a company that cracked it was grenade yeah like they were they seemed to dominate at one point i can't remember if they i think it was the i think they did a lot of different supplements but it was the bars that really stood out.

40:06They were the ones that had somehow managed to make a really delicious bar. I remember having them all the time and then obviously they exited and did very well. But that's the UK market. I don't think they really have a presence at all in the US. I don't see them often. Who bought them? Do you know? I don't know actually. Was it Ferrero? You can find out. I think it was Ferrero. Either Hershey or Ferrero. um but the the the european market is um difficult for protein bars why is that um i think in the uk you have demand for it mondel is international mondel is mondel is good pronunciation for me yeah no it's a it's a weird name it's a weird they made it up though that used to be like US foods or something or so like France yeah I guess every country has different rules and regulations they just have their own culture like I think if you go to France you're like here's a protein brother you're like what's it why would you eat that like they have fresh street food that's so good and they have a culture around food so and they don't have a fitness culture the same way no France and Italy no not very good like even when I go there the gyms are so terrible I know and they're like once I went there when I was like 16 i went for a run and they're like why are you running like where are you going and i was it was like there's like a philosophical question i was like that's actually a really good point like what am i doing like i should just have a coffee and a cigarette yeah um so like um but you can measure where the protein bars are by like gyms per capita So the Nordics, Iceland, the UK, the Germanic area, that's where protein bars do well.

42:01But I guess if you cracked America, like... It's all that matters. Yeah. Because I know like some of my friends who, they've started companies like that. They're just, even in the fashion world, you know, if they've done all right in the UK, they're like, well, let's go to America. Like we need to, like my friend, George Heaton got represent, like he's trying to capitalize on California now. yeah yeah yeah it's just so easy to do business here yeah yeah and there's none of this tall tall poppy syndrome if you've heard of that yeah yeah yeah like everyone wants you to win like it's beautiful yeah like yeah so it's just an easy place to do business and raising money as well is easy oh yeah there's risk capital there's no like class stuff it's just like everyone wants to win yeah yeah alright guys quick pause here I've got a question for you are you in shape are you not in shape Is there work to do?

42:51Most likely. If so, I have the tool for you, which is going to help you out massively. It's the Thirst app. This is something which I personally use myself when it comes to my training and my nutrition. I have all the programs in there, which I use on a regular basis. And for those who are just looking to lose a bit of body fat, the same thing goes for women as well. A lot of people don't realize that I used to coach for a large chunk of my life. So all of my coaching experience has been put inside of this app. I want you to learn as much as possible about how to get yourself in shape. There's exclusive videos in there telling you how to do it, how to execute exercises properly, the foods which I eat, and a newly added nutrition section where you can track your meals and your daily macros.

43:34It is pretty much this pocket-sized version of myself which I'm going to carry around with you all day, every day. So if there's something which might interest you, which it definitely will do, I highly suggest you check out the link in the description, head over to the Thirst app, get it downloaded. you will not regret it let's crack on with the episode so i'm gonna i want to eat your what's your favorite out of these chocolate chip peanut butter or the fudge brownie um for me uh anything chocolate chocolate's king chocolate chip is that it's very unique packaging I remember when this came out I was like who's David?

44:18What's that about? That me. Did you not mean a Peter bar? Yeah. Sound the same though Peter. No that's it's too narcissistic. So the origin name is Michelangelo's masterpiece the sculpture David. Oh okay. Yeah. So

44:37and it embodies the values of the company and how we approach products so so we've got i mean we're talking more ingredients than the rx bar very different yeah philosophy so because there's way more ingredients how how on earth first of all how do you decide we're going to use these ingredients and then the ratios and combinations and i'm pretty sure haven't you got an ingredient here which is like patented or something yeah yeah we have a proprietary ingredient um epg which is um a modified triglyceride that um it's a high it's a hard fat so it's a high melt point but it's uh you can't digest it so so how how the hell did you figure that one out or come up with it so if you look at our what what are the components of a protein bar you need a protein system like and then you want to optimize that for pita casts so amino acids texture taste um that's why our blend is a certain way is to make sure it's a one pita cast and still soft um and then you get to fat so right you need fat for taste and and mouthfeel and that fat has like try peanut butter without fat it's terrible yeah like that's what makes peanut butter great so right people want the most protein least amount of calories so you get to fat as the component we're like what are you going to do almond butter goes rancid doesn't always taste good uh high in calorie palm oil it's like no one really wants that no one wants to eat that then you go to like what beef tallow it's like i don't want heart disease and so then you get to fat you're like well i actually want i don't want any fat really but i need it so what is a fat that um can deliver all the benefits without the calories and that's when we discovered epg um which um was just sitting there as a technology but um wasn't utilized is this something that you came up with from your knowledge of ingredients or have you got like scientists involved at this point well it was sitting there so we it was in the market um it was um an entrepreneur named david rowe uh pulled it out of a university and was like this is like the holy grail in nutrition because he's an american diet like energy toxicity the over consumption of calories is like the main driver of most most negative health outcomes and so he commercialized it and was just trying to sell it as an ingredient but when you're selling an ingredient as like an ingredient business it's really hard because you have this chicken or the egg problem where okay i'm going to try to sell this to mondelez for example mondelez will look at it and be like well you don't have enough supply to support any of our business i can't buy enough from you and then as the ingredient seller you don't have enough demand to generate the supply so so it's a really hard predicament to sell an ingredient like this so um when we started it was like very clear that like these two entities are way better vertically integrated yeah um so we can grow sales and and supply um at a sustainable rate i'm surprised they didn't get on board with something like that well to make their own product they tried making chocolate but you know you got to be a good marketer you have to good you have to be a good product developer um it's hard to work with it's not like because these companies i guess they're not really starting around from scratch no they're just they're just technology other people do the hard work and when it does well okay we'll buy you now yeah exactly yeah okay um right so you've got the ingredients you probably did a load how many original uh flavors of the bar that you start off with four just four uh cookie dough cake batter blueberry and fudge brownie um and it's pretty different like we just keep it's a constant process to like improve our new um this time around you're getting other people involved investors yeah we had uh like rx bar is relatively bootstrapped or minimally minimal amount of capital driven but i had no credibility right like if i could if i had credibility i would have raised money probably um which is a good constraint um but this time to acquire the company and i have a balance sheet um it's a different strategy yeah so we've raised about 95 million dollars in three rounds nice yeah so seed two seed rounds and then the series a to acquire epigee was there specific people that you wanted on board this time around yeah yeah so what type of people were they so valor equity partners um I just got close with them as soon as I started investing, saw how they operated, and then Green Oaks as well, which is, they're both like tech investors.

50:04So yeah, believe in me and the business. So they're not like private equity, more venture. I guess one of the strongest things for you is the fact that you've been there, you've done it. and you come into these guys and look i'm going to do this again yeah that's super helpful do you want to get involved with this yeah basically yeah and they're like okay yeah yeah and i guess the goal is you just want it to get up and running as fast as possible because from the the scaling of rx you know but although you did that pretty quickly in a short period of time this time around you're like okay let's just try and speed that up as much as possible yeah i think like my general approach is like you want to find product market fit that means when the demand's coming to you like the market's pulling you pulling your product um once you do that you build the company and organization around that product and then once you get that product to scale the next thing is like all right let's go platform it and build find more product market fit and and like bring great products to market that you know bring the future forward make it easier to live life the way you want to just keep disrupting and so um yeah it's like a ceo i think the job is like all right once you get product market fit your job is to fulfill that demand as fast as possible yeah um and you don't want to like there's some limit of like breaking things because if you do grow too fast i think things can break yeah um i remember when i i don't know when what was the day you officially launched was there a day yeah september 14th 20 24 yeah because i remember it was there was nothing there and then it was everywhere yeah yeah no we like not necessarily said i mean obviously i'm based in dubai so it's not like i was seeing it on shelves but i've seen it online but i think it was more so you got people talking about it yeah primarily because of the fact that it 150 calories in a bar so first of all that's like what the hell like how have you managed to do that and then second of all i think there is something unique about the branding like just david kind of it's it's weird but it works well it's like yeah so i think we had like product the product was really different like with the protein of a meal calories of a snack you know pretty hard you don't really i've never seen that and the branding was just different like we're not yelling we're not yelling protein um david's a mass super masculine name quite gender coded it's gold five letters as well seems to yeah it's easy to say easy to remember it's a strong name and you didn't have any did you have any ambassadors or anything pushing it yes you did yeah peter tia oh yeah and uh dr andrew huberman and lane and lane norton yeah yeah yeah so i've had lane lanes be on the podcast um i'm yet to meet andrew who's stronger you or lane he's gonna be stronger he does the strength training stuff so he he's he'll be he's there doing his his squats and his deadlift i think he's still doing the sumo deadlift i don't do just cheating yeah let's do a normal deadlift my other friend matthus fitness he always used to do that type of deadlift i'm like you just do so much more sumo i need to do an old it looks way cooler doing an old deadlift you definitely look cooler doing a yeah but i think it's uh risk of injury on the spine is a little bit less yeah it's an it's an anatomy thing too if you have longer legs yeah i think it's easier yeah um yeah i don't i'm not really bothered about strength i just want to you don't care at all i i train purely for aesthetic yeah although recently i have uh i've tweaked my programming so it's more low volume now i've reduced the rep so i've i'm definitely stronger than i've ever been and it just looks cooler when you're shifting more weight yeah so i mean it feels good moving heavy weight yeah like i'm i'm 35 now and i didn't think like i would be getting stronger with this age you're getting old man strength it's starting to come in yeah so um yeah i have a battle between aesthetic and strength i mean i don't work out like i used to but but i mean this time around though you got a healthier relationship with you're going back to the i'm going back yeah no i well i have a i have a two-year-old and a wife okay so then it's even it's nice because it sets a boundary like i want to be home for dinner but then it's like i spend time with my son and my wife or like work out they always win so my current i i do i try to do weekends and then at our office we have a squat rack and a pull-up and dip bar so i'll just do bench press pull-ups in the morning for like 20 minutes and that actually helps yeah because my genit like my phenotype like i just get skinny if i don't resist i don't i don't hold my muscle yeah so i i hope you made a low calorie protein bar as well i know you should be having a 500 calorie protein bar he's struggling to gain yeah yeah like sitting like sitting in a desk is like the worst thing for you so and eating all these diet foods um did you when you when you launched it as well were these already on the shelves a lot of um stores no we started just dot com so it was all online yeah oh damn okay yeah i was and and the reason is like if you try to align it with a retailer it gives you some inflexibility on timing so the idea was just like launch on our own schedule introduce the product and then work with the retailers um in the next six months so on the law what were the numbers on launch um the first week we did a million dollars in sales nice so was that more than you yeah we thought we forecasted 500 000 i thought we were going to do a million so we did but yeah yeah you were able to meet that demand yeah yeah yeah i mean what if there was more if in a hypothetical situation the demand was even more would you have been able to meet the supply at that point yeah because we would have been out of stock probably if yeah i mean we could have been we would have been able to replenish yeah um inventory but there i mean arguably there's more demand in the market it was just people didn't want to pay online you know like but if we were in stores it probably would have worked yeah because there's a lot of friction with online and you're like yeah were people just buying one was it just the official website that was it wasn't on amazon or anything like that yeah no amazon just davidprotein.com okay nice and then from that point it's just a matter of you were bringing out different flavors you released the cod bar as well which i'm yet to try i should have brought you some i can't where where stocks the cod bar just on the internet oh okay i was wondering why it's our most innovative product

57:47it's so that's what i love to have though just give me some protein and have you ever been to japan no i haven't okay so if you go to the 7-elevens in japan they've got things like they've got like bars of like uh chicken right yeah or like crab or like just a chicken breast like the fish things like that and it's like super clean yeah it's but I don't know it's just literally just like protein yeah but I for example the cod bar does that need to be refrigerated or not well we did two versions of cod our first one was frozen cod it's a boiled cod and then we realized it was really inconvenient because it's frozen yeah if you try cook frozen cod yeah you need to know what you're doing and the best thing about cod is it's pretty neutral other than it's nutrition it's a superior nutrition so then we were like all right well how do we continue to innovate and we um we're like let's can it um so you can cook it in a can and then so we just did salt and lemon and and retorted it and now we it's canned cod so it comes in a can yeah okay and you're able to keep that like clean and everything so i think who's i speaking to i speak to someone and um when they're putting the car the sardines or mackerel in a can they do it it's really hot and then it like releases some of the h a yeah yeah from the lining you can do ph uh bh because that's a big thing lining the microplastics and what the actual product is being contained in yeah so if you have it's basically heat to plasticize yourself whenever there's heat interfacing like the food item touching plastic or something and then heat applying to it yeah so like a coffee maker if it's like you have boiling water dripping on a that sort of hard plastic that can go in um to your product um If you're pasteurizing dates in a plastic tray, that will happen.

59:58It's actually an argument for why certain processed foods are good is because they are actually clean. They're not, they're refined and filtered. So they don't have it. Whereas some agricultural products have it more. What's an unsuspecting one? Dates. Fuck, I'm going to have to re-evaluate where I'm getting my dates from. So if they're like, basically if they're steam pasteurized, yeah so if they're steam pasteurized in a plastic thing because you want to pasteurize them because they're dirty like you want to clean you want food safety food safety is totally under appreciated you know um so but if it's done in metal no problem but if it's done in a plastic tray then you have a problem yeah you can all test for all this stuff so we test for everything so what do you find a lot of people try and come after you for or get you for if you face a bit of controversy yeah yeah um I think, one, they don't believe the macros because they're so good, but we have plenty of research on that.

1:01:06But who's making these claims? There's just plaintiff lawyers that do this for a living. They're trying to fuck people's businesses up. Yeah. It's a healthy thing to have that. i guess so yeah it's just you know you know what's been pretty controversial recently is these uh creatine gummies so a load of creatine gummies on the market that are claiming to have a certain amount of creatine in they don't have the creatine yeah so you're basically just having a gummy with like a tiny fraction of creatine and so that's i mean that's fair and that should be done because that's you shouldn't be advertising a product a creatine product with no creatine in yeah so there needs to be accountability mechanisms in the market i think it's healthy um so that um but our we are 150 calories um we just have a cool technology that's unknown um and then um i think just a general like there's like the natural food crowd which because i came from that crowd world um and so they sort of there's no room for nuance where they'll think like our product's a tool to like it's not a well-balanced we're not saying like eat this for breakfast lunch and dinner yeah it's if you want to hit protein goals or hit whatever nutrition goals you have like we're the best product out there to supplement protein for your diet because it's it's hard like um by no means do we advocate like only eating protein bars for breakfast lunch and dinner like yeah yeah so there's some people that don't, there's like no room for nuance in nutrition or, um, um, like we make a really good processed food that is, is, has the highest protein and calorie ratio, the most important, most important macronutrient.

1:03:00Um, we have the highest amount of it. So. Well, I mean, especially if you're, if you, if you are trying to lose weight, you aren't, you're on a diet. I mean, if I was doing a competition again and, you know, I was trying my calories like 2000 this would be a lifesaver yeah yeah just like something to satisfy the sweet tooth that's only 150 calories it's pretty ridiculous and nearly 30 grams of protein as well yeah i mean it's we are at like the biophysics limit of what you can make a protein bar yeah you can't go more it's super hard yeah so um but like whenever you um anything new anything disruptive innovative it's part of the territory um but you know we're just focused on making the best product and keep moving forward and you recently launched ice cream yes i saw that and i saw it was just sold out yeah we totally underestimated demand i mean it's a it's a probably our best product and i'm the most critical yeah it's because what you're comparing it to is ben and jerry's 1200 calories ours is 260 ours is 30 30 gram of weight 30 gram of whey protein like the nutritional profile completely changes how you can eat the product and how frequently you can eat it yeah um so what was the what was the there was another one that came out a couple years ago did quite well and i think you kind of halo top yeah that was the one yeah they were getting they were getting a bit of heat because it was there's a lot of air in it yes called overrun what's that so when you make ice cream you can whip air into it yeah um and so if you want to reduce calories there's sort of two things you do take cream down which is all the flavor the fat which makes it icy if you do that so add water or reduce or add air and so that's how they reduced calories was through air and water so you're in reality getting like yeah so if you look at the actual like grams of product yeah net net water or air it's not that much yeah so ours is like a full full fat um very indulgent product um which is taste is everything so and if you're eating ice cream it's got to be indulgent you're not gonna be like yeah but it's good nutrition like you're not eating ice cream for nutrition no yeah it's got it's got to taste good yeah so what's the what's the move with that now with the ice cream um i don't mean like okay so you sold out how quickly can you get it back and start we're literally making it as you speak um and then we're rolling out with um target so nice yeah so that's a great retailer um um so just focus on supporting them and then um yeah we have a we have a scoop shop here in in manhattan um but you know we just want to hi rob did you see a van yeah is that what there was a huge david van did it have ice cream on it or a bar okay you saw the yeah it's all right we have uh different trucks with ads on it okay but ice cream truck is something we want to do um but we're currently it's just getting product to market and getting it um with the right retailers there's a cool spot i saw it's opened in dubai more recently it was a greek yogurt place greek yogurt seems to be trending but you you go up to the the machine and you pour it yourself there was like six different flavors and then you can pour you know exactly the amount you want of each flavor and then you go to the counter you wait and then you've awesome what's it called oh it's like is it mythos no no it's it was really good like i had a huge tub of it and i didn't feel i didn't feel terrible after no it's a lot of i think there's a lot of protein in it let me see if i can find it uh

1:07:24go greek go greek yeah there's one here that's got lines like crazy yeah yeah yeah so um yeah i think that's would you be surprised if that ends up doing better than the bar that's our internal debate because it's like a better pro it's it's our best product so i think it could i mean yeah but then does that mean you have to kind of decide what you're going to do with the resources you have like you're like okay we got these are resources we got that we can scale a bar versus scaling the ice cream can you do both simultaneously or do you have to kind of prioritize one over the other uh we should be able to do both yeah yeah and uh the limiting factor would be whey protein isolate that market's tight yeah so yeah so like what does your day-to-day look like now are you just back to full-on grind mode and then weekends off um yeah wake up um usually to a crying baby um sort of have a coffee with him and my wife and then yeah just go to the office might do some bench press there for 10 minutes some pull-ups if i'm not too tired and then yeah just work till six or seven have dinner uh go back to get caught up on emails at night and then just do that again.

1:08:58And then Saturdays, um, try to, yeah, if you need an hour session at the gym would be nice. And I just do like Bulgarians. I just do Bulgarians pressing and pulling nice to cover like the fundamental, like deficit, the hardest. You wouldn't say, you know, when you're in the gym training, are you just thinking, man, I can't wait for this to be over so I can just get back to work. because for me when i'm in the gym i'm like there is nothing else i would rather be doing right now no i'm i love the gym when you take a break it's painful to get back but then once you just i find if you just get a good yeah you have to keep going yeah yeah if i if i just gotta break a sweat and get moving then i like get in the gear and can train for a while uh but the beginning is just annoying you're just like fuck yeah but then once i get over like what basically once i crack a sweat it's usually the first like particularly i find it sometimes with leg days like the first 10-15 minutes you you need to get into this zone it's like a flow state yeah and then when you've got into that flow state where you're quite happy with tolerating discomfort and you can push it a little bit further yeah then you're like okay this is this is fine now and then you do your session you feel great afterwards but it's just that the lead up to it thinking about the fact that you are going to need to do it and then the first 10-15 minutes particularly if you hadn't slept good or you're in a rush I find for me one of the hardest things if I have a really busy schedule there's a lot of things to do mentally I'm thinking about all things that I should be doing yeah you're not when I really need to just be I need to completely forget about all of that and just be fully present in the moment of that gym session that that's why i can't work out during the during the week i have a problem because the morning i'm just like i need i have shit to do yeah so then i'm like this fuck this at the p.m it's absolutely no because i'm like just you can't jam in the middle day yeah weekends are great because i can just fully get into that zone and then i found as i got i'm like 40 i'm 40 now and i'm like i just have to like properly warm up and get like the movement pattern down and then like i'll do like a couple warm-ups and then i get into the get into the zone but if i try to rush it i'm just like yeah no i i will refuse there's certain sessions i will refuse to do if i am on a tight training window if it's less than an hour there's no point in me i'm not going to train legs less than an hour if it's less than an hour yeah no you can't rush it my sessions especially now because i do like a bit of a rest in between and um you know i just like to take my time i don't like thinking fuck i like i have to get this done unless i can get it done but i'd prefer not to be rushed you know it's much your goal like yeah because the time the rest is important if you're really trying to get a stimulus i try to this is a bit of my crossfit baggage is like i try to shorten rest so i can get some cardiovascular response uh but my goals are just not to lose my muscle i could just maintenance yeah um so just different and how how does you're the ceo yeah okay and how big is the team how many people uh about 105 all in office and they they're all well behaved we have an awesome team why I chose New York to do it is New York's this magnet for young ambitious people and so we have a super super strong productive it's quite a young team average age is probably 28 that's good yeah um no it's the best it's like the best part of building the company is like doing it with you who you do it with like it's my social life you know what I mean so um is there anything that you do in particular to try and first of all hire the best talent I mean obviously being in New York is going to be one thing that helps and then on top of that how to get the most out of them how to ensure that they're all productive?

1:13:30I think having a clear vision where everyone knows where they're going and why we're going where we're going really is helpful. So a clarity of a vision. And then smart people want to be with smart people. So being in office, having leaders present there and sort of like you want to like you want to be really demanding but not your reason not not your reasonable um yeah and we have like a our leadership approach just generally leaders that are like a servant leader like no there's no like there's no heavy people managers everyone everyone works um and the best thing is like you just like look around you can tell like everyone's doing their like career's best work like we're on this rocket ship and you just look to the left you're like all right that person's like doing their career and career's best work and um it just raises the bar um i think it must be it must be exciting to be working for a company that is growing at such a fast rate and it's kind of like you're releasing these new products and they're selling out and it's cool it's trendy yeah yeah you're involved on everyone's fingerprints is all over the company um did you give did you actually actually wait to some of the stuff yeah everyone yeah every single yeah well that's a huge motivation driver then yeah you want everyone to feel feel involved um have a little skin in the game um but the funny thing is like the company's two and a half years old three coming on three but it feels like a decade yeah so it's this weird relationship with time like it's quite dog years like one year is actually like seven years it's really weird because we're just achieving so much so fast so it's just like it's a huge stimulus for like learning and growth like um and so it's yeah it's a privilege to be part of are you part of the the hiring process yeah yeah so you will kind of check everyone that's coming coming in yeah it's like i it's always this is the hardest i think the hard part of being co is like yeah i want it it's hiring is like probably one of the most important processes of the company and i will do it for as long as i can yeah but there's some point where it just breaks um that's probably around 200 people um you can't just be sat there all day just no yeah your calendar will be just just interviews and um but with ai now you know we're getting a lot of uh operating technology leverage so people are just way more productive yeah so we don't know what the uh like you know five years ago i'd be like oh we're probably going to need a team of 300 400 500 but now it's you you can get real you can use these tools and it makes you so much more productive so you're getting the staff all trained up on ai or you just hiring specific people to manage the ai no we're using it yeah we have a team dedicated to building tools but um yeah everyone's using it sort of as a as um a sort of a like a an analyst in a way and then um trying to build like an intelligence layer um to aggregate everything but yeah that's uh that's all it's pretty it's a whole new frontier it's like the internet it's like it's like going from the fax to email it's like a huge inflection point um and i don't want to be like a boomer you know yeah yeah what so what is the goal again to exit at some point because is it's just going to be a repeat where okay you put you exit you're gonna make a load of money again and you'll know that that's not going to really satisfy you and then you just you won't have anything to do you don't want to invest so yeah it seems like you just kind of want to keep growing this business for as long as possible and yeah and i think let's not sell it yeah i don't yeah i like i think that one thing's true is like great companies don't sell um and we want to build a really great company so um you know i i don't i don't we have too much growth ahead to sell like like the reason to financially sell is like when you're you think the growth you can't really see like you've hit your ceiling of growth um so but i yeah i don't know if i were to sell i just do it again and the hardest part is building the org like building the team and that that's the asset um so no we want to build just the best the best company possible yeah um and if people need liquidity there's ways to do that so so where would you see the company in five years like what would you five years so our um we have this technology platform with epg so um we're actually migrating two weeks to rename the parent company so the company's called medici named after um the patrons of the renaissance so um and the reason for the name is um northern italy in the 15th century 16th century was this like bastion of art and science and a lot of what we do is is encompassing that um and so under medici will be multiple brands so our first brand is david um michelangelo's masterpiece and that will be all about protein like protein to calorie ratio so we'll have a bar portfolio ice cream rtd protein chips um and that's the focus there and then we'll have a new brand called hall pass the double entendre uh everyone wants a hall pass um and so that would be confection so chocolate so low calorie um uh confection products so i think cadbury but like has anyone done that yet no no it's really really great products um that's launching this fall and then we have um a couple other brands um we're working on and so there'll be four brands um in five years nice yeah so it'll be a platform of different like a house of brands um and so that's the thing is that we have so much fun exciting disruptive really innovative products coming and then there's a whole like international question which we haven't figured out would you is one of those products going to be similar to RX where it's just minimal ingredients no because I think like the whole health, wellness, biohacking longevity industry is booming so i don't know if there's something there yeah i think sleep's an area i'm personally interested in i think there's some innovation there if you can create something that will knock me out that's not a yeah not a benzo yeah like that's because my biggest thing is i have a quite an active brain before i go to bed someone's lying there for an hour just thinking about shit but i'm like well i should be sleeping right now if i would love to just yeah i'm sure there's some things out there but but i haven't found a product that's like non-pharmaceutical that is really effective so that's that's a personal thing for me too i'm the same way like and think about like health it's like it's actually like sleep's the most important then i'd argue exercise then nutrition then nutrition yeah and even nutrition nutrition is more about not fucking up than it is like dialing perfect yeah like not fucking up is like not overeating getting your macros right yeah and avoiding toxins like pretty simple um but if you don't have your sleep right nothing else it's very it's very very hard to lose fat or continue to lose fat if you're sleep deprived and the training is horrible yeah building muscles pain and all these sort of knock-on consequences of bad behavior and then and then on exercise exercise like the best pill um so so sleep is to me is i think the most interesting um i haven't spent time on it but i think that's i think there's a lot of demand i think a lot of people suffer with it so um exciting times ahead where do you generally think the um the protein market or the protein bar market will be in like five ten years you should think it'd be fairly similar i can't really imagine any newcomers getting on the scene unless they're doing something very different or they have a strong mark yeah so i think because even i i've thought about if i was going to do it how would i do it i thought the like the the only thing that would potentially interest me i like these jerky bars like meat yeah yeah but then you run into the problem of price there's there's the price that you the sourcing the fact that 90 % of the people are going to say this tastes like crap there was there's I think there's um one company Maui Nui Edison their product's so good so they do the organ uh organ meat pills which are great and then they have the protein sticks this is like 10 grams of protein or something so it's a good little hit of protein but you just know it's like it's great quality oh yeah that's that's a great company great product yeah but they can't mask yeah they can't mask y 'all and like people it's pretty expensive i can't get it in dubai unless i had to like speak to the team and i was like can you yeah i think they sell out like every yeah yeah they have a subscription thing where you you sign up and then there's the monthly subscription and you get your supply yeah but i think the protein bar market will continue to grow but if you ask people like why don't you eat protein bars there's like protein bar eaters and they're not like it's interesting and the main reason is taste so i think the way to innovate and this is why you see like bear balls and built puff bar doing so well is like they have a great is a great sensory experience so i think in the next five years the way to break into the category would be some really novel um taste or texture um with good nutrition which is the hard part but now we've got ai to help with the cooking up of it yeah yeah that would be interesting if they can formulate nice man um one piece of advice for entrepreneurs who are thinking about starting up something maybe in the supplement or food industry

1:25:05um there's a lot i'll give two um

1:25:16i think i think the most important thing for an entrepreneur is to free yourself of your pride um i think a lot of people are really excitable and it's easy to get passionate and if you just get really excited and you you can kind of blind you in the realities and so you really want to be objective about your product and also be the biggest critic like hope hope and wishful thinking don't help um so be really anchored in the realities of your offering um and hyper critical with your product um so that'd be one then two in food and beverage like

1:26:06um i think all the risk is in the manufacturing part of it and supply so just make sure you have really great manufacturing partners and suppliers like those relationships are really critical don't underestimate that like and do the work yeah it's quite it's cool that you've done this without needing to have such a big social media presence or be the face of it. I'd argue that's probably even better. Well, I don't know how... I don't think building a media company, that's a full-time job. Yes. And then running a food company is a full-time job. So I don't know how you can do both. I think it's really, really hard.

1:26:50Because if you're going to do the media thing, and that's really important for demand and awareness, you're just not going to spend the time on the product so i think the idea would be like i think what um prime did where it's like just partner with an operator to do that part and then let logan and ksi do their thing yeah and just do a partnership like that i think that's the only way because like they're two separate businesses and like i think one of the things like when you're in the media business you underestimate how hard it is to build the product and operate and when you're in the product business you totally underestimate the media business like it's always the way yeah um like i underestimated media i'm like oh it's all day you have to like look at the edits you have to like and you have to be good at it you have to it's not easy yes it's a talent you should see the first few videos i put out like 10 years ago yeah it's probably terrible and the same thing with product like my first product sucked like it but you just gotta it's so anything takes excellence and so you have to like the world's so competitive so don't underestimate what you don't know yeah yeah who's your favorite entrepreneur i mean obviously it's just like elon it's like yeah he's like he's like edison einstein and like rockefeller and won yeah so i know i was i i grew up in chicago during michael jordan's time and i took it for granted like oh we're just winning another championship and i didn't realize i was among great like and i think it's the same thing with evan it's like we're like among a living legend like in a thousand years i think history like in the they're like oh he will be in history like no one else will um so so he's just like it's just a crazy outlier um but uh i admire a lot of different entrepreneurs um i think elon gets he gets way too much stick and hate for like what he's actually doing i mean i think he seems to be the only person who's actually trying to help humanity and i mean for me like i'm really interested in space and like exploring the solar system.

1:29:02Yeah, it's like it's unimagined. Nobody else is really good. His achievements are there's nothing like SpaceX. I mean, there's it's the end of one. I mean, you landed like it's crazy. It's yeah, so he's number one but then I don't know. That's really it actually. I mean to be honest. Awesome. It's an obvious answer but he's the GOAT. Good stuff. we'll wrap it up there. Where can people find you on socials? Peter Ray Hall at Twitter or X and Instagram. Make sure you check out daily YouTube videos that you're making. Yeah, yeah. I'll be, yeah. I'm getting the media. So bad at it probably. No, good stuff, man.

1:29:46I appreciate that. It's fascinating. Thanks. I enjoyed that. A lot of stuff I didn't realize that goes into building a supplement company in a protein bar. And I think, I mean, it's exciting to see where this is going to go. And I need to try the ice cream. So I will... I'll arrange it. We'll ship it. We'll get you some. Yeah. It's good. Nice. Thanks, man. Thank you.