Stop Suffering in Silence, The Science of Lasting Longer and Better Sex | Ep 285 with Jeff Abraham Founder of Promescent

0:04So Jeff, I listened to your story and I was like blown away by that this was even real. Could this even be real? And I'm sure everyone always asks you about the story behind the brand for you, because it's really an incredibly sad story that I think now has turned into something very positive by what you've been able to create. Are you be able to take it to where it is today? But the company was founded by a friend of yours who was murdered. Can you tell me about that? Yeah, he was a neighbor of mine. He was a very good friend of mine. He was my doctor all rolled into one Dr. Ronald Gilbert, Huntington Beach, California.

0:51And one day he asked me to, you know, for my advice, you know, I was actually in his office, I was there for my yearly PSA at Bisiple. And he said, Hey, I want your advice. You know, I developed this product and we're commercializing it. What do you think? And I go, what is it? He goes, I developed a treatment for PE. And at the time, you know, I was 55, now I'm 68. I was like, you developed a treatment for physical education? You know, because to me, growing up, PE was phys ed. He goes, no, no, no, it's premature day. So one thing led to another. I said, let me try the product. And, you know, it's OTC.

1:23It's not prescription. I tried it and I was like, oh my God, this stuff's dynamic. I said, you're on the right path. Do you need investors? And it turned out that he was looking. I think his whole spiel was to get me to invest and then help him out because I had just retired. I sold my last business and retired at 53, prepared to sail off into the sunset and relax, not get involved and run a company again. But, you know, the plans sometimes don't go as mapped out. So I did. I became involved, was helping him out. Things were going well. And right when the company really started to take off, he was murdered in a case of mistaken identity.

1:59There was some nut that had a prostate surgery 23 years before that decided he was unhappy. and he was going to kill the doctor, got the name wrong and murdered the wrong guy. And it was Ron. He was totally innocent. You know, I took over the company and decided that the only thing that I could do, I couldn't bring him back. I couldn't unring that bell. There was nothing I could do. But the only two things in my power would give him a legacy and honor him. That's why I mentioned his name by name, Dr. Ronald Gilbert, every interview, every podcast that I do and also provide for his family economically because they still own 20 % of the company.

2:36So if this company was to indeed become successful, that would at least take the financial component off the table and give them some comfort and not worry about bills because Ron was like me. He was self-made. He didn't come from a family of physicians that had a trust fund or whatever. He had student loans that worked his way through school. It was just coming into that prime earning years when this tragedy happened. And I am very proud of the fact that we give his family very significant dividend checks four times a year now. And so it's been a tremendous source of pride. So I've given him a legacy because everyone hears about that.

3:15I'm providing for his family. So I'm really, really happy right now. So that's how that came to be. Well, I mean, talk about purpose and mission, right? Many times there's a single purpose or mission to a company. But for you, on top of that, you also had your personal purpose and mission here to help out. So you go into this company that you don't have no idea of the space. Like you said, PE was physical education. You tried the product, though. You obviously believed in it because you invested in it. But how as a new business owner, having all the experience you had before, how did that play into this, even though it's a totally different industry?

3:53You know, I was asked that just recently. How did you make the switch? How did you go from the mindset of the CEO of a semiconductor engineering business to a CEO of a sexual wellness? There's nothing in common. And I tell people that there are a lot of commonalities, no matter if you're a CEO. Now, if you're working in marketing or if you're someone, you know, in the field treating people, it's a lot different. a good CEO has a couple traits that really transcend whatever business it is number one is passion if you're not passionate about something you'll ever be good at to be an effective CEO you got to work 60 hours a week anyone tells you any different is freaking lying to you okay it you everything falls at your feet okay no matter who is doing it if it fails as a responsibility CEO, you're responsible for it.

4:47The passion is there. The work ethic has to be there. And this is probably the most important is don't have preconceived notions. Don't go, I'm the smartest guy in the room. I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to force this down customers' throats. I know what's best for the customers. No, you don't. Listen to the customers. take feedback. In the case of our product, Promescent, and our first product was our hero product to this day, which is our delay product to allow men to last longer. I really got into the minutia and started talking to physicians, started talking to therapists to treat this, started talking to people who suffered from it.

5:29And then it became very apparent to me that there's really two distinct markets. There are people that have clinical PE, that they can never have satisfactory sex, but there's a tremendous recreational component as well. There are people who have satisfactory sex but want to take it to the next level. And one of the things that I learned early on, and we were the first ones to mention it and really truly address it, there's something called the arousal gap, the orgasm gap. It's actually a medical term that people use because step out of PE into normal relations between men and women. The average man lasts five minutes and 42 seconds of penetration and thrusting during intercourse.

6:09The average female takes 18 minutes to climax of penetration and thrusting. Therefore, it's the arousal gap. It's the orgasm gap. So even people that are not have PE, that are normal situations, sometimes that's why people go, I'm the master of cundlingus. I have 72 ,000, you know, vibrators, all these different things. That's exactly why. It's all a coping mechanism to have better intimacy. So we had a dual tap. On one hand, our pharmaceutical reps ingratiated us and really and truly introduced us into the medical community. But then we had a whole separate program focused on people just wanting better intimacy.

6:52So we took those dual tracks. And I knew that the medical credibility would give us even more traction for recreational. because, you know, traditionally people in our space, they would see a website and have a Getty stock photo of a guy in a lab coat. Doctors love this product. We took it to the next level. Dr. Mohit Kira, Baylor University. I recommend Promecid to my patients. Dr. Larry Lipschulz, Dr. Wayne Hellstrom. These are the leaders in sexual medicine. We reached out to them. We did clinical trials, spent a half a million dollars doing clinical trials, which was unheard of. We're the only product in the space with clinical trials.

7:30And because we believed in our product, we knew it would be statistically significant. We did an IRB certified trial. So we did all that. And then we very heavily sampled a lot of physicians because there was this feeling, all these things don't work. They numb up the man, they transfer to the partner, whether you're a male or female partner, they numb them. And so we had to show them that we We had a revolutionary product that gave you more control without that extreme numbing, and it also didn't transfer. So we embarked on this journey to make it a two-pronged attack to both talk to people who wanted just better intimacy, along with addressing medical PE.

8:10Wow. I mean, thank you for sharing me those facts you just said. I didn't even know that, but I could see this gap. I mean, from like five minutes to 18 minutes, that's a long time. It's a long time. So was there something in this that you learned that you were like, wow, I like I never knew that. You know, this was like an eye opening moment for me and my life like this. This is like, wow, everyone needs to know this. Yes, there was a couple eye opening moments. One of the biggest for me was you always hear comedians, you know, that making light of ED and PE, you know, and I don't know, I just, I had heard it so many times, joked about, and I didn't realize how serious it was.

8:55And then in talking to people who suffer from clinical PE and, you know, there was this old wives tale. If you PE, you don't just care enough about your partner. Like, I'm just going to get mine and move on. You know, that you were uncaring and unfeeling. And then in speaking with doctors and speaking with people who actually had the issue, it broke my heart. There was nothing further from the truth. They wanted nothing more than to please their partner. They were ashamed, embarrassed. You know what I mean? They were literally like traumatized to the point where we got emails and we got testimonies where people go, you changed my life.

9:32I was asexual. I literally go, I'm so tired of being disappointed and having these bad relations. I just went, I'm never going to be intimate again. And I've been disappointed. I tried a few things that just seemed like you guys have medical credibility. I want to try your products. And I tell people there's nothing more invigorating than when we get those testimonies where someone says, you saved my marriage. You changed my life. You gave me a higher quality of life, you know, those types of things. So I was totally unaware of that. And I always thought that, again, because what you hear a lot is it's mental.

10:04You don't have the mind control to keep yourself from ejaculating. You know, you're just not, you know, focused on your partner. I didn't realize there are a lot of physical issues that cause PE. There's 20 % of it might have a psychological component. it. But 80 % of people suffering from PE have prostatitis, hypersensitivity to penile nerves, low testosterone. And what I tell people is, if you're a diabetic, no one would ever be ashamed of taking insulin. If you have cancer, no one would ever be ashamed of taking insulin. So if you have a hypersensitivity of the penile gland, and you use a product, why are people so ashamed?

10:47Why is there this stigma about everyone has to be the sexual monster and sexual being? If you have low testosterone, if you have prostatitis and it's causing you to trigger early and prematurely ejaculate, you're not alone. There's a lot of people who suffer from it. Don't be embarrassed. Don't be ashamed. Seek help and don't suffer in silence. And so that's been part of our message. You're not alone. Don't suffer. There are very viable treatments out there that can help elevate your sex life. Well, you bring up a great point is, it's almost like people have attached how manly somebody is, right, to how well that they can perform, which also creates, you know, an unrealistic expectations, I think, of most people.

11:35And we don't realize like how damaging this can be. That's what I find interesting about different places. I was just in Europe, and how in like say france how they view sex and then in the u.s unbelievably different it is very interesting and then the u.s like you're saying it's it's it fascinates me but it also i i wonder you know how how damaging is this especially as like you know when younger people become adults and then every like you're saying all this stuff on social media and movies and tv all these things that you're saying that is totally unrealistic. How damaging do you think this is probably going to be for men specifically?

12:16I have actually given a few talks and because of who I am and what I do for a living, somehow people turn me into a sex expert, you know what I mean? Because I do this all day, every day. And I tell people, I think one of the most destructive things for our young generation of people coming up to starting intimacy is porn and the access to the internet at the age of 12, 13, 14. The average teen now has watched porn before they're actually intimate before because most kids have a cell phone to 10, 11, 12, all so I can text you when I need picked up from school or soccer practice or whatever. Invariably, when it's in your hands, you're going to be curious.

12:55You're going to start to look at what's out on the web. And I laugh, you go to a porn site, the only filter is click this if you're 18. So in other words, someone 13 ago, I guess I can't go there. I'm not going to click it. Of course, they're going to click it. I tell people that my first sexual experience when I was 15 years old was with an older woman. I think I laughed at 28 seconds. I felt like I was the greatest lover in the history of the world. If I was in this day and age right now, and I had been watching some of these porn movies and some of the stuff that's on there, I would have thought, oh my God, my penis is at nine and a half inches long.

13:30It's not the circumference of a beer can. I can't last 45 minutes right before I jackalake. I don't run across the room and shoot my partner right in the head. You know, dead eye from, I would have been a ball of anxiety. You know what I mean? I would rather have the naivety and the ignorance that I had thinking I was good at 15, which was, you know, 53 years ago, rather than have to live up to some absolutely insane expectations. If you're a woman, they think that the average normal orgasm is like Elizabeth Berkley from Showgirls. I don't know if you ever saw that movie. Remember when she's with Kyle, she's flopping around like a freak.

14:07I mean, we are not allowing our young people to experience intimacy and pleasure without these insane expectations. And I think that's really damaging. And, you know, we've had people that email us and, you know, we have an interactive feature on our site. They'll call in and go, I'm only lasting 35 minutes. I want to last an hour and 20 minutes. And my advice is always the same. If you're lasting 35 minutes and there's an issue, work on your technique, okay? Because there's a difference between pain and pleasure, okay? If you really feel that you need to hammer your partner for two hours, it's not the duration of the intercourse.

14:45It's your technique or something is going drastically wrong. But it's because it's everyone so hyper vigilant about watching who's the best at it. You know, it's funny because kids in middle school don't go, I want to do reverse 360 windmill dunk when I'm playing basketball. They don't anticipate I want to hit a 500 yard home run, OK, or 500 foot home run. But everyone now, in terms of sexual performance, has these unrealistic expectations from watching porn. I realize if I watch porn, which I happen to, you know, occasionally, sometimes porn occasionally, I realize those are not norm. Those are not the standard average, you know, website, you know, or average performer.

15:36You know, there's a gal named Cindy. I forget her last name. She started a video site, Make Love Not Porn. It was normal people, you know, just regular people. and so we had a couple collaborations with her and so she goes here i'll give you a pass and you know you can log on and i watched a couple times ago that's interesting but to me at least i'm well formed enough to know i can watch porn and realize i'm not going to try to live up to that expectation okay but when i went to that site like make love not porn i was like that's boring it was just regular people that's not why it's you know it's regular it's just not it's not that impressive you know what i mean like i would rather see something but at least make sure you understand that you don't raise your level of expectation to that yeah i i know that side i know it's when you're talking about it would be funny like you're saying like honest porn like it's like this is how it really is like ego is five minutes and then she's upset because she wants 18 and this is like it would set better expectations for people right it actually would be you know you could do some skits i think that there's some really funny marketing skits that you could make around like honest set like honest yeah that would be i think that would actually be pretty funny um you could make a whole comedy i'm gonna send you some ideas because i i'm gonna give that we're always It's great for new ways to differentiate.

17:04Entertaining content. You watch that and they're normal people. The guy's not 6 '3", 218 pounds, 4 % body fat and shredded. There's some dude with a hairy back, you know what I mean? A mole on his head, you know what I mean? Like grinding on some woman that's got stretch marks and stuff. So I guess I learned I like my horn a little more of a fantasy rather than reality. Okay, I can see reality in my own room. You know, I used to, when I was younger, I was a four-year, I swear to God. I mean, when I say younger, up until five years ago, you know, I admittedly love the idea of just seeing people that I'm curious about naked.

17:44You know what I mean? That kind of stuff. And I'd always be the person turning the light on. They would be the person. No, no, no. I want the light off. You know, that kind of thing. As I've aged now and my partners are closer to my own age, I'm like, turn the freaking light off. You know what I mean? Like, you said this was going to be entertaining. And I'm very entertained, by the way. And I think it's good because, like you're saying, it could be a very serious topic where people could be like highly impacted to the point they don't even want to be in a relationship. But at the same time, I think you need to make light and have entertainment in order for people to pay attention because of how serious it could be.

18:22So when you when you look at the marketing, I'm curious on the marketing of the products that you have, just because I think there's a lot of when you when you dive into, you know, sexual products, there's a lot of restrictions around how the product can even be marketed or how it can be talked about. what did you find in terms of getting into this business when you had to look at you know what is even allowed when it comes to you know intimate or sex sexual products i'm glad you brought that up it's insane it's absolutely insane sometimes you have to use the word s-e-t-g-s sex rather than sex because if there's if there's the word sex in it you're immediately banned youtube Instagram you know I'm like are we that puritanical in 2025 that you can't have a talk with a urologist and you have to do that nonsense but it's true you do so you have to use more innuendo than straight talk you know and you have to literally make sure that even if you're educating people that you can't use the word ejaculation.

19:32You can't, it's insane. It's so frustrating. You know, we have a medical advisory board, you know, we have clinical trials. We're an upfront, totally legitimate company. And we have our videos taken down and we have, you know, our posts screened and, you know, this isn't going to fly. And like, what? You use the word sex. I'm like, what? I'm like, oh my God, you use the word ejaculation. That's a bodily function. Okay. There's nothing, period. There's nothing, you know, like obscene about the word ejaculation, you know? And so it's frustrating. It creates a whole different set of hurdles that you have to, you have to be so careful.

20:17You spend a lot of money creating a really good video. Then you find out you have to strip it down and you take a lot of the meat out of the video because trying to get it approved so you can run ads and stuff. And we've done television commercials in the past and that's just insane. Oh, that could only run between midnight and 7am. Why? Because you're talking about intimacy. I go, it's a medical product. We have a urologist discussing this. still it's the same thing you also find out that the playing field isn't level for everybody because i see viagra sales levitra commercials because they're billion dollar companies back multi multi-billion dollar companies the bigger your ad spend the less restrictive your budget they get away with things that no one else can get away with and that's fundamentally unfair because that you start getting into the too big to fail situation where if you're that big and you get those advantages, how is any smaller company ever going to be able to really grow to be a bigger company if the shackles and hurdles are placed on them that the bigger guys don't have?

21:27So what I'm hearing is size does matter in ad spend. Absolutely. Not only does it matter, it sometimes is the determining factor on exactly what you can or cannot put into a commercial or an ad. Yeah, I know. I've been into these spaces we used to sell a lot of skincare and i remember the same thing it was controlled by a couple giants who have all the power to do everything so how did you find the how did you get the ability to compete with them because i know you guys are doing well but obviously you're not doing a billion dollars yet and we could talk about that in a little bit but how how did you find the strength like what did you do to differentiate yourself or make yourself so unique that you could even compete with those companies.

22:18And make no mistake about it. There's one thing. It was the medical credibility. It was getting into the medical community and having the doctors actually say, this is the best product, hands down. The president of the International Society of Sexual Medicine, Wayne Helstrom, is on our board. Dr. Mohit Kira, the president of Sexual Medicine Society in North America, is on our board. So we now have 2 ,400 urologists by name that if someone goes to see them and says, hey, I'd like to last longer, they recommend you to Promessit by name. And if you go to our website, you'll see testimonials from them all over the place.

22:56And our competition has a Getty photo of a guy in a lab coat saying, doctors love such and such. There's a big difference between a Getty stock photo of a guy going, doctors love this product, and someone hearing from Mohit Kira holding up a bottle of Promessit and saying, This is the best product in the space. You know, all these prominent physicians. So we literally grew in that arena in the medical area, which all the other year olders go, if that guy is on board with this, I guarantee you it's legit. So we developed this cult-like following in the medical community. And then we used that on our website.

23:37So most people coming on there, oh, my God, I looked up that guy. It's the president saying this is the best product. So the thing that we differentiated us, believe it or not, as a small company, this is a big issue. PE, you're going to be blown away by this. More people suffer from PE than ED. In fact, 10 to 15 % of ED is misdiagnosed PE because if a guy has chronic PE, medical grade chronic PE long-term, he will eventually not be able to get an erection because his body is programmed to ejaculate early. And then mentally, he starts realizing he's going to be disappointed. It's going to lead to an unsatisfactory conclusion.

24:20Call it stage fright, call it whatever you want. But eventually, your mind shuts your body down so you can't get an erection, even though you have erectile capabilities, because you know it's going to lead to a disappointing conclusion. It was amazing to me because everyone knows how big the ED market is. But PE is a larger market than ED. That's how big it is. Wow. You know, I took away a lot of things there that I think can be applied to any business. And I think, like you said, the credibility is getting in with the people that are the most credible if they recommend your product. It could be any product.

24:59Any product. Not just focusing on the customer. obviously that's most important but getting the people on board that the customer goes to see for the information could be you know make or break it's like having uh it's like having like affiliates or partnerships or collaborators like you can go in any industry and find these people and those people spending the time with them might be the make or break and the only way to compete with these giants so talk about legacy here so you may you've helped build this successful company up, you fulfilling your purpose and mission beyond just the company, but with the family of your friend and the original founder.

25:40One day you're going to exit this company. And then what happens to you? What do you look back and say throughout the process? And then what are you going to do? Are you going to go to the island and have pina colada? Or are you going to join another company? I will never work again from the day that we exit. We're in the process right now of seeking a strategic partner. And we're in talks with some very, very large, like billion dollar companies that will partner with us and then eventually acquire us. That's the goal. Because to take this to the next level, to be a hundred million dollar company, we're going to need a billion dollar a year company to open up the avenues necessary to get there.

26:25But I will tell you this, and it's funny because I've been waiting for someone to ask me this question. Like, okay, so what is it like for you once that happens and you're done? I will tell you that my first thing is I want to be as involved with my granddaughter as I possibly can. She's only eight months old. She's the apple of my eye. I adore her. I love my son. I love my daughter-in-law, but I adore my granddaughter. I just adore her. She's in Newport Beach. That's why I have my second home there, which will soon be my primary home. I can tell you it's working that way already. But I will never, ever stop being an advocate for this company.

27:03I will never, ever stop promoting this company, prioritizing it, going into Target. You know how proud I was the first time I went to Target and I saw us on the shelf there. Ron, my partner who was murdered, it was just coincidental. We went to lunch and we were driving past a Target. It's just in Huntington Beach on Brookhurst and Adams. And he just said, he looked over, he goes, you think we'll ever be in Target? I go, I promise you we'll be in Target. He goes, really? And I go, yeah, I promise you. And then unfortunately, a month later, he was murdered. And I said to myself, it's the last thing I do, I'm getting us into Target.

27:41And we got full distribution in Target in 2016. I went into that store the next time I was in the area. And I saw it there and I just looked at it and I had this sense of pride. And out loud, don't ask me why. I said, I told you, I promised you I would get you in here. And I literally felt like someone went home that night and go, there was some crazy dude in the sexual wellness aisle talking to a box of promessa, you know what I mean? And not realizing what it meant to me. You know what I mean? That this was the fulfillment of a promise I had made to a dear friend, that I had said to him, I will get us in there.

28:16Now we've since been in CVS and Walmart and Meijer and Wegmans and H-E-B, we're all over the place. And next year we're launching in Walgreens. But that first one is always the hardest. You know what I mean? The first one, someone's gotta be the first one to take a chance to go, I think this will work at retail. But the thing is when people say to me, okay, what do you do? What's your next chapter? Number one, it's gonna be to enjoy the remaining years of my life. Okay. I've worked since I was 14. I grew up on the lower socioeconomic side and I went to work at 14, worked after school, you know, worked 80 hours a week in the summer, every hour no one else wanted.