Greg LaVecchia - How Bloom Built the Playbook Every Founder Will Copy in 2026

22:43They're asking for it. Yeah. Like if you actually grow a community before we even had Bloom, our community asked us to make supplements because we were selling workout guides and they said, I need supplements to take with these workout guides. So Bloom was born. And then eventually, once we had some more credibility, like once we got to the greens powder, people were like, we really love every supplement that you're making. I'm looking for a better for you energy drink. Can you guys please make one? And so we just did, right? And so that was, it's just us listening to our community. And also, of course, listening to like what Mario and I want as a consumer as well.

23:13And what are our pain points? Like we can't find a better for you energy drink that is like as palatable as what we would like it to be. So we made bloom energy, but yeah, I think like the community will tell you where to go, which is like why having that, that nucleus of a brand is so crucial to building something that's multi-decade proof. Yeah. I mean, obviously you can listen via email post-purchase survey in the comments, but I do think in-person events has been big for you guys. What's the thesis on events? Are you guys doing a bunch of small events? Are you guys going massive? Do you want to do a Super Bowl commercial?

23:45What is the actual like event strategy? I would rather fewer big events than many small events. Like I would, I don't want to go have a thousand lemonade sales, right? I want to have like once a quarter or something badass, take over a building in Soho. It's open to the whole public. I'm sick of this VIP shit for only the top influencers in LA. I want our actual consumers coming to this event, lining up down the street and to be able to experience everything for free. So like we just took over a retro diner in Austin, Texas for an entire weekend. You can literally book tables on like reservation.com.

24:18Like it was literally open to the public. Every meal was free and everything was just bloomed out and you were getting root beer floats. We were launching our Better For You root beer there and you could get bloom, you know, root beer floats, bloom cheeseburgers, bloom pancakes with root beer syrup. And it's like every meal is free for just a whole weekend. Our whole community could participate. And what I will say is that your in real life event could be so kick ass, but if it doesn't capture good digital content, it's probably useless. If you have a lame event that does make good digital content, that's a win in my book.

24:53So somehow you need to find the happy medium of the two, but it's like, if you're going to have a thousand, even 5 ,000 people, or maybe even just 500 people experience your event. If they have the best time, I'm happy to give that back to the community, but you need to make sure the event is reverse engineered for digital content because that's going to be creatives that you can use for literally years to come. Yeah. So we, we, we had a, we've had events three years ago in New York or even in London where like tons of our community were there, but we had so much content captured. We're still deploying some of that content today.

25:25So like that's, that's what some of our favorite photo shoots happen at these events. Yeah. I mean, it's wild that you have a thousand people online. You need to get video B-roll of that content. And then you go back to that same city, you use that, that actual B-roll. My favorite is, and I can go back to like comment sections and keyboard warriors and how they've almost ruined my business many times. But my favorite thing to do at events is sample unreleased products, especially for the energy drink. If we can have like 10 flavors that we're thinking about. And I even think like, you know, it's never the ones that I think are going to perform well.

25:56It will end up being like a blueberry lemonade that I never thought would perform well. That's pretty good. But yeah, it's coming out in a couple months. But if you can get like real life reactions, especially if it's not necessarily a Bloom community member and it's just someone on the streets of Soho, you get a raw reaction of which of these 10 flavors is your favorite. That is the best way to get consumer data. I fucking hate syndicated data about, you know, if I'm looking at Target and Walmart sales and they can tell me who it is and why they purchased it or like post-purchase surveys I've had a ton of bad luck with.

26:27The worst story with Bloom was we, when we were a protein business, because once COVID took off, we hopped on COVID and we went crazy with protein powders for baking at home. Right. And so, which goes back to just like, you need to stay ready. So you don't need to get ready, which I'll get into in a second, but having protein powders. And then we would get 50 comments a day, let's say about making a vegan protein powder. And so this was a no brainer. Our community is telling us to make vegan protein. and then we went all in. We ordered like, you know, a hundred thousand bags of this vegan protein.

26:58I think it was like lemonade, lemon shortcake flavor or something like that. And it was going to be a hit. The community told us exactly what to make. And then we launched the vegan protein and the 50 comments a day, we sold about 50 bags because it was the 50 vegans that were following Bloom that were leaving comments every day. And I just call that the loud minority is the keyboard warriors. I mean, as I'm sure you know, with your personal brand that you're building now, like that comment section, you don't even know if it's someone that even gives a fuck about it. You got to double click in and see if they have subs or where they're from.

27:27For real. You could kind of go back and forth with what you just said. This is why the in-person is so, so valuable. I mean, you can even run as ads content of people actually trying and getting that organic reaction, but like understanding and knowing, like you could have never known those 50 people that were commenting or vegan. But if you're talking to these people, you can actually get the context. And kind of going back to what you said on syndicated data for people out there listening, something that's very, very surprising to me is I think it was on the Rhone episode is I thought like from a conclusive evidence perspective, you need like thousands and thousands of people.

28:00Dude, if you get 150 people at your event trying the blueberry lemonade and 135 of them love it, like that is enough evidence. Obviously, if you know who these people are and they're not some random person that's outside your ICP, that is enough to press the button. People don't realize how small it has to be to really get the evidence. I would take an N equals 50 of people walking around the street over more value than anything I can buy from some fancy syndicated data thing that I spend 50 grand for. For sure. That's wild. And yeah, I think just to repin on what you said for people out there listening, I mean, it's the same, it's actually the same exact thing from podcasts.

28:41We've said it before is so many people focus on like doing these podcasts and then they like forget about like the content at the end and the distribution at the end. Yeah. If you have a really good product and nobody hears about it, then it's done. Same thing with an event. If you have a really good event and you don't have any event to capture and then use later, then it's just those however many people that had a good time there. You don't get all of that kind of long tail. So that's some great advice. Also, last bit there is that's why our team is the Bloom Girl. So essentially, I have 96 people who can sample energy drinks and can sample products and tell me what they're consuming, what they just found in their favorite grocery store and why we should make it.

29:15That's our consumer. And they work in our office. And I can just look into our community cafeteria fridge or our team cafeteria fridge and just be like, wait, what's this new product that four people just brought in today? Tell me about it. Let's order a whole bunch on Amazon and we're all going to try it. That has been the biggest incubation lab that exists for Bloom is just our team and what they're eating and consuming or drinking because that's our consumer. We hire the Bloom girl. Yeah, it's wild to think just to tie it on the event side. We're not saying that these are not good events, guys.

29:46They're great events. but it seems as though that's like last on the pecking order. It's really just about the content distribution and then finding out if your ICP likes the product. For people out there, I think that that's a great piece of advice to give people is bring product that's not out, find your ICP, ask 50, 100 people and then not order vegan protein. If you make an event that makes really good content, it's going to be a really good event. Like, you know, that's a direct correlation in my book. And from a cost structure on that, I mean, all the things that we talked about, and then you're just looking at just like top of the funnel awareness of what it is.

30:22Yeah, and then that's like, of course, going to be the content that not only everybody who visits posts on their page, and we'll make sure we bring some big influencers to the event as well. But it's also, we take a lot of pride in our owned profiles. So, you know, Bloom on Instagram, Bloom on TikTok, even like, you know, our founder's content, of course, like my wife or whoever it may be is posting like crazy about these events. And so like that content can get millions of views. And so we take, and that's like a very valuable million of like people we really want to make sure see it. So that goes a long way as well.

30:53Yeah. And as you build your own channels, then you can start featuring people and doing co-branded posts. Then you have value against, for sure, obviously the people that you're partnering with. I want to tie up on the marketing side. For anybody out there listening, what would you say is kind of the single most important shift that people need to understand and see that's happening in marketing? What are you seeing on your side? I would say, I mentioned earlier, moving at the speed of culture. There have been four monumental cultural interventions that have happened in just the last six years that I can think of, right?

31:25The first was COVID. And I mentioned that we hopped on that and started to sell a ton of protein for people baking at home. Then TikTok was launched, or TikTok started to really get some traction. Our team hopped on that so fast. Then, I mean, GLP One's was like fucking crazy. Seeing how much just like consumer trends and palettes have changed and what people are actually buying at Walmarts and Targets and on Amazon because of this like pharmaceutical intervention that is GLP ones is crazy. And then, of course, the most recent is TikTok shop. And so TikTok and TikTok shop are two very different things.

31:57And trying to balance the two algorithms and master both of them, any brand that can pull that off in 2026 going into 2027 will be the brand that can win Omnichannel. It's going to be the brand that can win not just TikTok shop sales, but their Shopify, Amazon, and whatever retail doors that are in. Like that is the omni-channel playbook right there is mastering TikTok and TikTok shop as two separate things. Because you just think that you're getting the most bang for your buck as far as top of the funnel goes because everyone knows that they can make money there on the affiliate side. The affiliate thing is like awesome.

32:28I was on a discord call yesterday with I think like 150 or 200 of our top affiliates. And like they're just, they're all quitting their nine to fives. And if they haven't, that's their goal with joining our affiliate program. They're quitting their nine to fives and they're doing this full time. And we have someone who just made like a normal person who just made, who quit their job and made$50 ,000 in like two weeks selling our clear protein powder on TikTok shop. Like it's crazy. I think, I think the coolest thing about it is it's the first time our community can really like monetarily experience these wins with us.

33:00So it's like now our Bloom consumers, also our Bloom salesperson, it's almost turned us into this like massive sales force and marketing force where like everyone can just like experience this growth with us. And because we're such an omni-channel operation and 50 ,000 doors outside of, you know, our digital channels, we can really lean in heavy to how much we're compensating these people and how much we're compensating our content creators and affiliates because that channel isn't necessarily like what's keeping the lights on, right? Like we're allowing that halo to bring lift elsewhere. So when we're crushing on TikTok shop, we see the TikTok shop sales, more than 30 % of those going over to Amazon, going over to Target, going over to Walmart.

33:41So we're at this huge advantage where even though we're not these like crazy e-com TikTok shop growth hackers, we can lean in so heavy on just how much we're incentivizing our creators because we know it's going to affect the whole omni-channel operation. Yeah, because you have EBITDA elsewhere. I mean, you guys are going to absolutely smash because when I think of like, you know, these new playbooks where people are just running it up so fast, like Hudson from Comfort. This guy's done like in three or four years, like a billion dollars. He doesn't have the hedge in retail. So I think I can't think, correct me if I'm wrong, I can't think of any like CPG brands that are probably in even 20 ,000 plus doors outside of Rahal with David Protein actually that are running it up on this TikTok.

34:24shop. So I feel like that you guys have an enormous opportunity here to win on both sides and get the bleed over. The best part is, is that most of my competitors who do have that amount of doors, they're the legacy corporations. Coca-Cola is not on TikTok shop. Pepsi is not on TikTok shop. You know, Mountain Dew is not on TikTok shop. So it's like, I am selling soda. Red Bull is definitely not on TikTok shop and on their competitor with an energy drink. And so it's like, that's where the young brands like us can really take some market share fast because they're probably still figuring out like when they want to launch it.

34:55And we're a year in, you know? All right, guys, if you guys are lifting your knot on TikTok shop, you have an advantage now before the big boys come in, sprint while you can. As an operator, I am always asking myself, what are the low lift ways to save or make money? Charge flow is an absolute no brainer. Here's the problem. A customer buys from you, they get their product, they call the bank and they get their money back. That's a chargeback. Most brands just eat it because it's actually built to exhaust you. In my first few years of Iconic, we lost well over six figures before we put this in place.

35:25Chargeflow is fully automated. It handles the evidence and the follow-through. You don't even have to touch it. Fanatics, Huel, and Hexglide, some of the biggest names in e-commerce, use it today. And the best part is they only get paid when you recover money. It's a 4x ROI guaranteed or you pay nothing. 60 days fully managed for free. Chargeflow.io with code OPENRESIDENCY to tap in. Stop giving back revenue you already earned. I want to change gears a bit and we're going to talk about kind of this reinvention playbook because as we mentioned, you guys are scaling stuff up and then just kind of going to the next battle.

36:00Let's start with just this$1.36 million day for people out there. That's what they may or may not be doing in a year. Tell us about that day. What happened? Damn. All right. So Maury and I were living in Brooklyn, New York. We had been there for about a year. We had just lost our one full-time employee and we had had our greens powder sold out. for quite a while. And, you know, maybe, maybe six weeks. Contextually, this is your hero product. This was our hero product at the time. And it sold out quick, you know, a couple of six weeks ago, but we didn't really think anything of it. It was going to be a big restock day.

36:32And we blasted our email list. We start the day. It's 9 a.m. We're in our first co-working space. We walk up the street from our, from our, you know, two bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, and we get to the co-working space. We send out the email blast. We send out the SMS blast. We post on Instagram. Mari posts all over her Instagram. And we just kind of waited and so much traffic came to our Shopify relative to what we were used to at the time. And within 12 hours, we did$1.36 million. And now obviously we do like over a million a day. But at the time, that was just like, what the fuck just happened?

37:04And the worst part is, is that we actually sold out that day. So I had to tell our consumers again, like, sorry guys, we sold out. But I learned three things that day. One, restock is the most powerful word in validity marketing, right? And everybody, especially with the digital brand, should be chasing validity with everything that they have. Because you are still just like the random Instagram brand. You are still like the random influencer that made a CPG product. And you need to find words of validity or statements of validity that you can attach to your brand as often as possible to be associated with the big brands that people don't question buying.

37:38The marketing language we're talking about here. Marketing language. And what is more valid than we've had to restock this three times? Right? Then people know, oh, somebody bought this so many times that it's sold out three times and now it has restocked. I've seen this one hat brand. I always get an Instagram store. It's like the hat that's been restocked 11 times and they're doing like$2 million a year on just that messaging. That's fire. Restock is the most powerful word in marketing. And I would say second is like, that was the first day where we had to have some extreme discipline and say, we're not going to touch this fucking money.

38:09We're going to roll it back in. Right? And so that day we took that$1.36 million and we called our manufacturer and said, we will take$1.36 million of more greens, please. Right. So we just rolled it back in. And so we just kind of continue snowballing. We were bootstrapped. We bootstrapped to$180 million. And so that was the first day where it was like, discipline is on the line. We're not going to go buy a BMW. We're not going to go buy an apartment. We're not going to do anything. We're just going to double down and get more product. And that was kind of what we did with Bloom for, I mean, up until today, really.

38:39I mean, we were profitable, but cashflow wise, like just to grow at that scale, the money was always going back in. And so to have days like that and have the discipline to roll everything back in and put your back up against the wall, even when you have a place where you can take some comfort, is just what makes entrepreneurship and what makes a brand growing this fast. Yeah, it's always going to have money in the bank. Maybe even get a little 4 % on T-bills. Yeah, for real. You can get creative there. I'm not into inventory games. So with you guys, it's, I mean, it's just, it's a cash suck all the time.

39:07I want to double click back in that marketing copy because you said something there and it's something that I've seen you guys do a lot on the internet and you with your personal brand is not only like restock, I'm sure there's a lot of other words, but just like saying things that only you can say. I love that. Like there's so much stuff that like the more you grow, people like don't want to flex. Yeah. But at the same time, like you should flex and say the social proofing things that nobody else can actually say. Yeah. And social proof is the best way to say it. I would say building in public is the only reason Bloom exists today.

39:40How are you going to separate yourself from the corporations? It's building in public. And if you're, to me, building in public is one founder forward. Like if you have two, I've seen pride kill some of the best entrepreneurs. Put up that cringe content, put up you in the manufacturer, put up, maybe occasionally show you having the bad day. Don't cry on camera every fucking day, but once a month, maybe you can cry on camera. And building in public and sharing validity statements along the way, even if you have to use the word, this is how many we've sold. And I think coming from especially the female content creator point of view, which was my wife, obviously, talking about your business as if it was a business was like lowbrow in 2019, 2020.

40:22It was like lame for Mari to run Facebook ads saying, come follow my page. It was weird that she didn't want to just go sign the big Gymshark deal and wanted to actually make her own brand, right? And so not allowing your pride to stop you from doing the against society's suggestions way of life has been what has made bloom. So like examples of validity statements or announcements that we've made along the way is like, we're number one on Amazon. I don't need to know anything else about that product. If you say something is number one on Amazon, I want to try it. If you want, I used to post, if Target would send us an email about how much we crushed sales at the launch day, I would screenshot the email and post that on our Instagram and say, we just crushed Target.

41:06And if anyone is wondering about whether or not they want to try that product and they see that we're now the number one selling OTC item at Target. And we beat fucking Flonaze even, then it's like, I should probably go try that product. So like constantly posting validity statements will open so many doors for you and will just increase your chances of good luck. Right? And I'm not just talking about getting more consumers. It's going to have retailers calling you. Wait, this product is crushing it in Target. I should probably also have this on my shelves. So it's going to have investors come to you.

41:38It's going to have people that just want that are talent acquisition. The only reason we've been able to attract such an incredible team is because we have shown everything that we're doing on a on a on a quantity and quality level through LinkedIn, through Instagram, through TikTok. And because of that, people are like, I want to go join this movement and join this team over in Austin, Texas at Bloom. Right. So it's like if we weren't building in public this whole time, I think Bloom would be 10 percent the size. I love that. I feel like I don't see it much outside of CPG. I see like Dom, Ross, Shackelford with Breeze does it.

42:07Hudson has done a good job on the apparel side of flexing it, but not enough people. I mean, I'm just thinking in my head, like seeing these Instagram stories where it's like a Microsoft Excel sheet and it has like the week over week percentage. And you see like you against, you know, you against like a huge brand that everybody knows. Immediately it opens the curiosity gap. And it allows you to never run those annoying ads of like comparing my greens to another greens, right? Or comparing my energy drink to another energy drink. I never talk about the competition. I talk about what I'm doing and that's all that I want to talk about.

42:36I don't want to shine light on anybody else. And I do think this goes back to like, because we were so much in the female space, this was like very odd in the female space because like people were too, were too, were too posh to talk about the business that they were scaling. And this was difficult for my wife in the female space coming from England where like no one talks about how big their business is. Like it is not pro entrepreneurship over there. So for us to like break through this uncomfortable spot of talking about how much we have sold was tough for us. But it has paid dividends every single time we have made these announcements.

43:13Love that. So you guys are nine figures from a Greens perspective. And then kind of going back into that reinvention playbook, you then go on to energy and soda and all this other stuff. What are those moments for people out there? Like those reflection moments? Like how and why and when? Like why did you know? Obviously, you're saying you want to go after bigger Tams, but what are these like key inflection moments that say, hey, we need to go on to the next thing? The biggest key into going into the next thing is I never reinvent the wheel. So with any product that we're going after, first and foremost, we do not reinvent the wheel.

43:47We take a wheel that's already existing and we make it 10 times better. So we are not the first greens powder. We are not the first energy drink. We are not the first better for you soda. And I wouldn't have it any other way. And so when Bloom Greens was highly competing with AG1 at the time called Athletic Greens, if they signed Joe Rogan, if they signed, you know, a huge front page Wall Street Journal publication ad, whatever, I loved when they did that. Because all they were doing was rising the tide for all of these ships. They were advertising for greens overall. And if there's one thing you don't want to do as a bootstrapped brand, it's spend your money on education.

44:22I don't want to explain to anybody what an energy drink is. That is a waste of my marketing dollars that I need to spend on explaining why mine is better. Right. And if I don't need to teach and there's already cup holders in the car, right? Energy drinks go in this can. I'm not going to - Literally that exact shape. Of course. I'm not going to put an energy drink in a soda can. I'm not going to put a soda in an energy drink can. I don't even notice that, but obviously, yeah, you're right. Of course, right? It would make no sense. And I'm not going to put an energy drink in a fucking milk carton, even though that'd be hilarious.

44:50Like I'm going to put it in an energy drink can. I do think there's white space for that. A little innovation there. So if there's one thing that I think so many people get overwhelmed entering a saturated space, but you want a saturated space because that means so many brands have already spent the money educating people on what this product is. And then you can win on product, on brand, anything and everything else. Yeah. And then I would just say like, as you're going after challenge, you know, one of the ways that you can just know you're meeting a savage entrepreneur is if you see them every six months, they're like completely different.

45:22Yeah. Right. Then when you saw them and you're like, what the fuck happened to that guy? Did he get a haircut or something? Or is he just like acting completely different? And it's because if you're truly leveling up a business and constantly going after bigger and bigger challenges, like you're going to see that in your self-development as well. And you are not even going to be able to recognize yourself in old photos because of where you were at as an entrepreneur and where you were at as a brand. And as we were going after bigger and bigger categories, it just kind of was like, why Why would I continue to give my mind share to something that has such a low ceiling?

45:52At the time, maybe it was booty bands, then it was pre-workout, then it was recovery powders, when I can give all of it to something that is 10 times the size. And if I never did that, this energy drink is obviously doing more in a day than the booty bands could have done in an entire year. But the booty bands business was comfortable. Like I could have just stuck there forever. I was looking to get into the booty bands business. The booty bands business and the PDF gang, that was an interesting... in that in that in that era of my life i was talking to pakistan on whatsapp more than i was talking to anybody in america like whatsapp and the kick app i was i used to be on a lot with those shout for shouts on instagram and create occasionally you go on telegram if things are getting crazy if you're on telegram it's getting weird signal signal was out there for for a little bit it dude it's so crazy man i forgot who i talked about it was brian garofalo ceo of skull candy great episode just the more and more mature that people get as entrepreneurs like don't want to be first mover.

46:41Yeah. No. Don't want to be first mover. No. And this word like, why would you want to launch an energy drink? That's a saturated space. It's like, that's exactly why I want to launch an energy drink. There's already a place for this in Target. There's already a category on Amazon. If you're creating a product and there's not already a category for it on Amazon, get ready to need to raise some fucking money because you're going to need to go educate all of these people and 90 % of them won't even want to buy your product. Yeah. With that being said, I do think there's something to be said about if you do do that, you could have an asymmetric outcome and win huge.

47:10But the chances... That's not my journey. Speaking for myself. Yeah. You're layering on top of the pre-existing brand and you can just turn the lights on in a random category. What are those key things that you're looking at when you're looking at a new product? You mentioned TAM, you mentioned asking your communities or anything else big that you guys look at? I would just say that the category is stale. Right? So when we saw the energy drink space, we were like, this isn't cute. These products don't even taste that good. There hasn't been much change that has happened here in a while. And for some reason, a lot of these brands are still growing.

47:38Like the category overall was still growing rapidly. So you don't want to enter a declining category and then go try to like revive the whole category yourself, right? So energy and soda were to us stale. And these are like, these are like a hundred billion plus smart ticket. They're massive. Oh my God, it's insane. And it's global. Yeah. So it's like, and because we were, something that I have looked at now in my career in the last three years is what categories have a higher barrier to entry. So when we were launching just supplements, it felt like every month there was just another 19 year old at a penthouse in brickle miami who was somehow creating a legitimate competitor to us on amazon right so it's like okay if the the brickle penthouse asshole can create a competitor within 60 days we're gonna pop up a ton of brickle assholes with a bunch of lambas yeah with a bunch of with a bunch of rent and may or may not be rental yeah yeah if they if they can make a competitor to this business that I take so much pride in, then did I really create something that special?

48:34And how can I now play chess instead of checkers and create strategic barriers to raise my barrier to entry? So the first, of course, was just going into retail, right? So like, I know that you can't just get into retail in 60 days. And so that started, of course, with Target, then Walmart, then now we're at 50 ,000 doors. But the second was like signing massive strategic partnerships with some of the biggest companies in the world. So like, but the energy drink, a very difficult, high capital to start, you know, huge MOQs, a supplement, you might just need 20 grand to start the whole project, right?

49:04But with the energy drink, like huge MOQs, we're on Dr. Pepper trucks, we already had the retail relationships. It still worked with everything that we were doing in terms of influencer marketing and the relationships that we have with those retailers because of our nutrition business. So it's like, what synergies can we find that we can connect the dots to still creating something innovative, but, but allows us to use the strengths that we've built over the last decade. Right. So I wouldn't go start. You mentioned a car earlier. They don't, I don't think they sell cars at Target. Right. Like how can that, and that's one of my strategic partnerships.

49:37So it's like, how can I make sure that whatever my innovation is using the things that I have accumulated over the last 10 years? You should read this book, Porter's Five Forces is on a competitive analysis. And I feel like we're starting to see more about production and supply chain. And now what you're saying, distribution, like those are starting to become like the biggest, most possible. The fact that you own the mindshare of the Target buyer, whoever it is, you have the ability, you're at least going to get a crack to bring in X new product. Yeah. And then, I mean, you want to talk about the Target buyer, like this wasn't at Target, but one of the old school ways to get a buyer's attention at a retailer was just, let's just say we're talking about Target, they're in Minneapolis.

50:16You would buy the billboards in Minneapolis for your brand. And then they would be like, I'm seeing this brand everywhere. Like how I should probably call them up and try to get them in my store. Because you always want a scenario where the buyer's calling you and you're not calling the buyer because then you're going to have to leverage, right? And so how we did that in 2022 or 2023 was we would find the buyer and who they followed on Instagram. And then we would sign all of those influencers. And they'd be like, I'm seeing this product all over Instagram. Everyone I follow is talking about it.

50:44Can we have a meeting? Because I want to get this on my shelves. So that was always the best way to get somebody who is, you know, Illuminati to us get their attention. I love that you said that because people on the Gretman episode, he talks about he's like a maniacal hawk on looking on his phone and looking at the tables on his restaurants. Like the reality is, is like that happened and I'm going to take a wild guess here. You're not going to be like to that buyer, like, oh, I did that on purpose. Like you never, you don't say anything and you can create this massive strategic engine in and around them without talking to them.

51:15And obviously they're going to come to you. You're not going to go down. More people need to do that. Yes. And more people need to realize that there are humans behind those desks. Like you, you imagine these massive corporations and that you're just talking to some like, you know, binary computer making only objective decisions. But the reality is, is they're making emotional decisions and they want to make a bet on you. And if they're seeing a brand crush it digitally, they want to be the person in the walls of that retailer that took the chance and brought in that digital brand. And it was a huge success.

51:43So if you can find like the entrepreneur within these large corporations and figure out how to partner with that individual, that's the person when you're in a meeting room with 10 people at a large corporation. you're looking at them the whole time. Hyper-focused on that one human. That one entrepreneur that wants to make a name for themselves within the company and they will take the bet on you. Yeah. So for someone like you, someone that goes to the gym six times a week, sub 10 % body fat, we can talk about stuff like that. Perhaps. Throughout this whole entire journey, you're bootstrapped.

52:10So you bootstrapped 180 million, no outside capital. I'd love to give people context on why you chose that route and now what has been the payoff. So I want to get into the partnership after, but why did you guys not raise outside capital? I mean, you know, you mentioned reading a book a second ago. I graduated college with a 2.4. I was 2.1. 2.11, five years, University of Delaware. I only got a certain score on the last test. That's the lowest I've ever heard. Aren't you curious? I'm so curious to like, I would imagine that I can go back and get a 4.0 now. Because when I focus on things, obviously, when I focus, I'm good.

52:47I'm curious. You think you could do good? Do you think you can get high grades? I think I could now. I think I would like to think so. Yeah. Yeah, and I would probably be not taking Adderall. And I was taking a ton of Adderall for that 2.6. You want to fuck around and go take a Harvard digital class with me? We should do that. I'm down to do that. We should do that. Let's see. That's like two weeks, like 2 ,500 bucks. I'm down. And then we could get on our LinkedIn. And then we could get a consulting gig. Amazing. And then we could take a picture outside of Harvard after. Yes, yes, yes. And then we can flex that as well.

53:11That's hilarious. I like that. So I'm not an academic. My wife's not an academic. When we launched Bloom, she had dropped out of college at that point. She was working the front desk. the opening shift in an orange theory fitness, like cleaning the fucking bathrooms. It was the worst. And I grew up in a society where it was just like lawyer, doctor, finance, and you're going to an Ivy league school. Otherwise you and your family are never going to be talked about again. Right. Like that's all anyone cared about. And I was like this kid who could not even finish a sentence in a book because my ADHD was so outrageously miserable.

53:41And I finally was able to figure out a space where I could use that ADHD and harness it towards hyper-focus on one thing, which started as the gym, right? So I just got obsessed with the gym and I seemed to get some like positive society status around being the person that was in shape. And then I realized, oh, if I just teach people how to get in shape with my wife, we'll make a whole following out of giving this free value away, right? So that was the seed for everything that had started, was taking this thing that like most of society said was like kind of dumb and we were not academics and I can't even read a book.

54:15And it's like, how do we choose that one thing that we are good at and start our community by giving that away as free value? Right. But your question was, why do you bootstrap? Was it just, did you just not know any better going back? Yeah. So going back to not being an academic, we didn't even fucking know what enterprise value was. I didn't realize like anyone would want to like buy a brand like Bloom or buy a piece of a brand like Bloom and become a large-scale investor. Like, I had no idea what any of this was. Like, even when we had the$1.36 million day, like, I thought that was crazy, but I didn't know what anyone else was doing.

54:49Like, we were locked in a room forever just working together. So we had kind of no idea what we were creating the whole time. And it's funny, like, even when we ended up moving to Boulder, Colorado, which is, we moved there because we were starting our entrepreneurship journey. We had Mari Fitness. Then we had the Slay app. And we moved to Boulder, Colorado because we just needed to get away from the society and this culture that we were in of lawyer, doctor, finance. And we lived there for a year and a half. We don't have one friend. We didn't make one friend in Boulder, Colorado. It was just my wife and I working every day, seven days a week for a year and a half.

55:19And that's where we launched Bloom. But yeah, we had no idea what we were building. And then one day we were at a trade show and someone came up to us and we're like, are you aware of what this business could be worth? And we want to buy a piece of it and we could help you scale it up. And we had all of the fun private equity conversations and none of them really floated our boat and we were profitable at the time. And I don't know, that just like, wasn't really our thing. Shout to anyone who does private equity deals, like do your thing. That just like, wasn't Bloom's path. And so, yeah, we had no idea what that was.

55:52We had no idea. So why Nutribolt? Let's talk about that deal. That was a, that was a big deal you guys did a couple of years ago. So we had a nutrition portfolio and we had a little bit of a reputation for ourselves of like, you know, we were continuing to take swings. And not only were we able to sell an amazing greens business, but the greens business was Bloom as an overall platform brand. And we really understood social media. And we were kind of like the new hot thing on the block. And I wanted to go after beverage. Once we were told from private equity that if you add a beverage to the portfolio, two things will happen.

56:26One, no one was acquiring beverage businesses at the time, right? So like, you know, Celsius buying Alani or Keurig Dr. Pepper buying Ghost or whatever these recent transactions are that have been happening. Context, what year was this? 2022, 2023? 2022. Yeah. And 2023. And so there wasn't a market for energy drinks and even worse, generally a large scale strategic doesn't want to buy like a platform brand. They want to buy an amazing collagen powder brand. They want to buy an amazing, just alone energy drink. For meat on the bone. They don't want it fully. Right, because like Nestle might just want the supplement powders, but they don't do energy drinks.

57:01And then Curie Dr. Pepper probably only wants energy drinks, right? So I'm not speaking for Dr. Pepper there. But we knew we wanted to go after energy drinks. And I also knew that I was just like a 28-year-old. I'm trying to figure out like how was I going to level up my career? And so after talking to a thousand different potential partners and private equity and banks and whatever it may be, we had a choice of either just selling this whole business or trying to go after the next big challenge with what we had built, which we knew would be beverage. And the only person who was down to partner with us on beverage was Das Cunningham, who's the CEO of Nutribolt, which is C4.

57:37We all, most of us men in America probably tried C4 pre-workout sometime in their life. You probably snorted at some point. And so - No start. Talk a lot about no explode on this. You remember no explode? Dude, BSN, hell of a product. Hell of a product. That's a banger. Mine would, I would just keep it in the trunk of my car and it would like crystallize in the bottle. And like, if you could get a crystal before an arm pump, it was over. But anyway. This was the steroids before the steroids. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I thank God for those two. And then, and so we sat with Das and there was two huge things that we noticed.

58:08One, he had taken a C4 pre-workout brand and had also launched it into C4 Energy Drink and scaled that to over half a billion. So it was someone who had done it before. The exact playbook that you guys want to. The exact playbook, but for men. So in theory, we could plug into the same manufacturers, the same sales team, the same distribution partners, which at the time he had an inked contract and still does with Dr. Pepper. So out of the gate, we could get a beverage onto Dr. Pepper trucks. On top of that, he was one of the only, I don't wanna speak for him here, but he was one of the only billionaires I'd ever met that still had his whole family intact.

58:43Every time I called him, he was at a baseball game for his kids. And - Good dude. Good dude, Texas values. use. And it was like, I need to figure out my mentor because I have no idea like what type of person I'm going to turn into, especially with like the size of the business that I'm running, the amount of wealth that I'm coming into, whatever it may be. I was like, I don't want to lose my wife and all these other rich people are losing their wives. So it's like, how do I figure this out? I should probably go find a mentor to work with. And so I came through in the PJ guys, just, just quick context.

59:09We'll talk about that later. You came through in the PJ. That's crazy. Yeah. But I, uh, I actually tried to get a helicopter. So, so I, I had two things. I had like a personal and business mentor that I could go work under in my 20s. And also somebody who had the playbook of how to launch this beverage. And when I think about partnerships, if the word strategic doesn't come before that, I think you might as well just sell your whole business, right? And we didn't want to sell our whole business. And I knew that if we signed a contract with Nutribolt with the intention of this being a joint venture of making a beverage together and getting Keurig Dr.

59:46Pepper involved, I could sell 30 % of the business and the business would be worth three times the amount the next day. So if you're going to sell a chunk of your business, which will be the most expensive or valuable contract that you ever sign in your life, it better be something that increases the enterprise value of your business because you are now associated with that brand, right? So on day one of signing that business, we sprinted to the R &D lab, came up with Blue Energy. We were already in talks with Dr. Pepper. We got an exclusive launch with Target just six months after that. So it just took six months from signing the partnership contracts to having a product on Target shelves.

1:00:25And it blew out of the water. Then three months later, gone Dr. Pepper trucks. And then now two years later, we're in 50 ,000 doors. Let's stop for a second there. You said pretty big inflection point there. You had offers in your company. So you had a nine-figure offer for someone to buy your company. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the business was profitable, omni-channel. It was a hero screw brand. It checked all the boxes for like what a business, what type of businesses people wanted to acquire at that time. No risk, no reward here, guys. But what the hell was I going to do? Be like a 28-year-old and lay on a beach?

1:00:57And then even now today, it's like I have the son and it's like, or I have my son at home and it's like, if I sold Bloom, he's just going to like not see me go to work every day or he's just going to like see these cans in stores and not even believe me that I made it. So it's like, you know, what actually matters at this point? Yeah. And ironically, so many people, it's like the Mark Zuckerberg thing. It's like, why didn't you sell for a billion dollars? He's like, oh, I would start the same company. And you actually start seeing that. Exactly. The Rahal episode is a perfect example of that. He literally sells an RX bar for 600 and then he waits for his non-compete and does another protein bar.

1:01:28And catching lightning in a bottle twice is a whole other level of risk. I already had lightning in a bottle. So why would I give it up? And so I knew that I could take what we had and just make it, I mean, this could be generational. We've all seen the monsters and Red Bulls of the world just go decades. And now they're handing down the crown to the, I don't know, what do you call it? Like they're next person. Yeah, I mean, the fact that you guys have all the retail doors and TikTok shop affiliate and like, you guys are gonna absolutely hammer the fuck out of that. We're excited, man. That's gonna be absolutely crazy.

1:02:01How did your job change kind of overnight? You signed the deal. What is Greg before that? And what is Greg after that deal? It's funny, it was like one of my rules with talent acquisition has always been, one, higher for your pain points. And sometimes your pain points are just the things that you don't enjoy doing. And I love building brands. I love marketing. And I love, you know, disrupting and embracing culture. I don't really love the supply chain side of things. I don't really, I definitely don't love the P &L side of things. Like I don't have Microsoft Office on my computer. I hate spreadsheets.

1:02:34And Leo said that six months ago, you downloaded it. Yeah, well, I haven't opened it. And yeah, I use, I use Mac numbers. Yeah. That's some, that's some, that's some ghetto shit. He texted me yesterday. I told him no Microsoft Excel today. I'm more of like a Google Sheets. I know like, like three or four different, like little Ninja lookups, but I'm happy with AI. So we can really walk away from that shit. And so with that deal, like they handle all of the commercialization of the product. They handle all of the supply chain for the product. I don't really need to like worry about these 18 wheeler trucks going all around the country because Dr.

1:03:10Pepper handles that. And so I was able to kind of get rid of everything that I don't enjoy doing and was able to embrace what I'm good at and what I do enjoy doing. And Doss is a P &L guy. Doss like gets fired up with a spreadsheet in front of him, right? And like Dr. Pepper loves logistics and sending this product all around the country. So I basically have this team where it's like, if you can make a strategic partnership where it's one plus one equals three and you're both doing what you love, then that's going to be a magical ride off into the sunset. Yeah. It sounds like a win-win there. If you had to kind of boil down, obviously this guy is an OG and he took the same exact playbook.

1:03:47If you can kind of boil down some of the key learnings from him, what are some key things that he's taught you over the last couple of years? Because obviously you guys have had explosive growth with him coming out as a partner. It's funny. Like we have a pretty, a pretty impressive board for Bloom now that we, we do have a cap table and a couple of them are self-made billionaires. And we'll have a problem with this energy drink, which you would think like for these incredibly high IQ people that are on our board, this is like, this is simpleton stuff. Right. And we'll have a huge problem that we bring to the board and they'll just be like, man, this is a really tough one.

1:04:21Like, I don't know and i think it was like the the biggest thing that i take away from that is just like we're all humans and therefore there's this free game for everybody right and it's like no everyone has something that they're incredibly good at very few people are 10 out of 10 at everything i'm definitely not a 10 at 10 at everything i'm a 10 at 10 at one or two things and i feel like you're a pretty gangster generalist you're like a like a little bit of a swiss army yeah maybe but you know, just understanding that like. We're all humans participating in this game and no one actually has that much of a greater advantage than anybody else.

1:04:55And so I'm a huge fan of, again, like going into the four minute mile. Like once the four minute mile has been ran, other brands are able to do it. That's why I went after energy drinks. There was already a playbook to follow. And so just like understanding that there's a playbook to getting to this much success and trying to take as much notes as I can from his day to day life, which is, I mean, the guy's in the office every day. he doesn't need to be. You know, he answers my texts quickly, no matter what, and does not need to do this anymore. And just like continuing to stay cognitively stimulated on a regular basis and embrace everything that comes with that has been like the coolest thing that I've learned from all of the successful people around me.

1:05:35How old is this guy? In his mid forties. Yeah. Damn. Let's go. Yeah. Let's shift a little bit to product and retail. Before we get into specific retailers, Yeah. Like, what's your framework of deciding which product goes into kind of which door? How does that work? You know, I've played the exclusivity game a few times, and it has created a lot of drama. You know, if the product does well, the other retailers will be annoyed that they didn't get it first. And I love FOMO. Sometimes FOMO is like the greatest game that you can play, and I love a little bit of drama because they'll act upset, but then place it twice as large order, right?

1:06:10But generally speaking, I try to... Shoot wide, give it to anyone who wants it and not play that exclusivity game. And the sales will kind of dictate on its own, like which retailers should really pay the most attention and give the most attention to that product. I'm not a huge fan of like, this is our Whole Foods product. This is our Costco product. This is our Amazon product. Because of our digital marketing and it's being shown to everybody, I kind of need to make sure that the same exact product in all of its forms are available everywhere. Interesting. We touched on Amazon a bit and you mentioned like you don't win on Amazon on Amazon.

1:06:50I completely agree. How do you guys look at just that whole entire flywheel from a dot com to Amazon and then into retail? Like what's the holistic approach? Is it just all top of the funnel and just let it let it like fall as it may? Well, our business is less than 5 % Shopify. So the day. Wow. Yeah. Well, but keep in mind, we're beverage too. So this is our largest business in the portfolio now is our beverages. and no one has a D2C beverage business, right? Like if you want a beverage on e-commerce, you go to Amazon. So it doesn't really work even like shipping a case. So when you say 5 % D2C, that means just the Bloom website, not Amazon.

1:07:27Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Like true direct-to-consumer or Shopify. That said, when we, so we were a D2C only brand for the first 18 to 24 months. The day that we extended out of Shopify, we went over to Amazon. And the day we went over to Amazon, I did what, every other entrepreneur at the time would have hated me for doing. I used our email list, our SMS list, all of our Instagram portfolios or profiles and said, go buy on Amazon now. I knew that we had hit the glass ceiling on Shopify. And I knew that instead of just making a new product, there was a larger TAM to go after just on Amazon and kind of just like realizing that Amazon itself was a social media with an algorithm.

1:08:07If we could bring so much exogenous or external traffic over to Amazon and kind of arbitrage that whole SEO that exists over there, we could double the business that was happening on our Shopify by just playing the Amazon game correctly. And you play that game correctly by sending people from outside of Amazon to Amazon. Yeah, so is that the best way to win on Amazon is you have to sacrifice elsewhere? It depends what you consider win. Like I'm a guy where when I'm moving on to the next challenge, I am literally willing to sacrifice the last thing that I just won, right? So I've done that even with launching new products.

1:08:40I've done it with launching new channels. And so when we sacrificed Shopify to win on Amazon, there was a net gain. And then when we went into brick and mortar retail doors, do we sacrificed all of digital resources to go towards winning Target? And then winning Target opened the doors to 50 ,000 other doors because that was the proof of concept that this product from working brick and mortar. And when I say sacrifice and you take your foot off of the gas of those other things, because I'm a very big fan of not having a diversified portfolio, even with your mindshare and what you're prioritizing.

1:09:14It's not like our Amazon just fell off a cliff the next day. This is the top three energy drink on Amazon. But like, if you're moving on to greater challenges, whether it's in products or within the retail doors that you're going after or the consumers that you're going after, the larger challenge will halo back to what you just sacrificed or what you are no longer giving resources to. So I'm a huge fan of like, if you go after bigger goals, the things that you leave behind won't just die overnight. If anything, they'll just become like cash printers, right? Yeah, you'll still get some drip. I feel like I don't want to typecast all different CPG products, but from a drink perspective, it's just retail is obviously the most important, there's most amount of doors.

1:09:52Amazon is second because it has intent and the Shopify should be last. Dude, Shopify beverage doesn't work. It's too heavy, just shipping costs, unless you were going to charge your consumers$25 for shipping, which no one's going to do that. You know what I mean? Yeah, I got to go subscription. I feel like I got to go heavy on that to make it worth it. But I guess you still get hit with the shipping. And Amazon's won that. Interesting. So I know we talked about just wanting to go into saturated, you know, markets, but obviously there was probably some sort of iteration on like white space. What is like the white space that you guys have seen like on the retail side?

1:10:20What specifically did you see that made you want to obviously go where you're going now? So I mentioned we were kind of head to head following the coattails of AG1 at the time. And they were the top selling greens powder at the moment. And they were D2C only. And they were super expensive. And they tasted like shit. So the white space wasn't making a greens powder. The white space was distribution. If they were only D to C, then I'll go into brick and mortar. The white space was accessibility. Be a third of the price and be everywhere. Be easy to buy. The white space was palatability. So how can you look at a category that is saturated, but find the white space within it?

1:11:04For us, it was the energy drink space that the white space was the femalism being spoken to correctly. The products aren't cute, right? So to me, white space is how do you zoom in on the category and find the white space within the larger category? Go saturate and find the white space. So AG1, you just completely piggybacked and just went different distribution. And on the energy drink, you just did branding, positioning, a little bit of different ICP on the female side. Yeah, and I would say, of course, center of excellence of distribution as well. Yeah. I was surprised too when I Googled you guys.

1:11:34I didn't know how forward-facing you are on the female side. Like it's like on like you type it into Google and it talks about like women's drinks. Yeah. I mean, I, we were, we were, we are made by women for women. I think the energy drink has allowed us to tap into more men. It's funny going back to syndicated data. Generally speaking, the mother of the household does the shopping, right? Majority of the time. And that's just how society is set up right now. And the mom is swiping her credit card. She might be 35. She's a female, but she's buying the Doritos and Red Bull for her husband, the syndicated data will show that as the mom is buying it.

1:12:10So you need to be really careful with who's swiping the credit card. But what's also amazing about selling to the woman if she is doing the household shopping is when I make a soda that's healthy for the whole family, the mom is buying that for her kids. She sets the trend because she's stuffing the pantry, right? So she will get the husband or the boyfriend to start trying this product that she's trying every day. And I feel like that influence doesn't happen nearly as much with the male consumer. Very rarely does my wife want to start consuming a product that I take. I want to try the products that she's trying, right?

1:12:43Like she'll like help me with my clothes. She'll help me with the food that I'm trying. I can eat ground beef and fucking rice every meal, right? And she'll like take me to the new restaurant to go try. I'm never taking her out of her comfort zone. I should probably do that more. But like the women kind of influence the entire household way more than a man ever would. And so I've never sold to men directly, but I don't think I would have it any other way. Yeah. And we talked a little bit off camera. We're going to get into it, just personal brand. I feel like that guy, it might've come from the woman.

1:13:11Then he's on Instagram and then he starts getting your content and the guy content behind Bloom and starts resonating it with more. And I would imagine it's the same thing for hospitality just because I obviously just finished your episode. Like I would be so curious. Obviously there's like a male-female ratio that you want in any type of nightclub. But like even at restaurants, like you want to make sure that the woman is comfortable there. The guy's going to be comfortable anywhere, right? But like, or a gym, you're opening up a large, we were just talking about a sick new gym that you're going to and getting in the best shape of your life.

1:13:35Like you need to design that place for women to be comfortable. The guy will be comfortable there, right? Like if you make a place that's like toxically masculine, a woman won't step foot inside of it. 100%. They're getting the continuity because my wife is comfortable and I like going to the gym with her. Yes, yes. So that makes a lot of sense. All these big retailers, what are some of those key things we talk about all the time? Obviously the sell through, not the sell in. What are some of kind of those key things? Obviously I know you're talking to these retailers a lot. How do people get the sell through?

1:14:02Anything big you want to touch on there? All right. So first of all, tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink or a sweet vanilla, smooth caramel maybe, or white chocolate mocha? Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries. I go to these meetings in person. I don't just send a salesperson. We have the best sales team out of anybody. Love our sales team. But like I try to go in person and be on a first name basis relationship with anyone as a decision maker at these retailers.

1:14:35That is huge. And I've found that as a consistent variable. Even when I talk to the biggest multi-billion dollar energy drink companies, they can name you who is currently in the seat of decision making at these retailers and they have their number and they're texting them. Right. That is crucial. Guys, you've heard that from some of the best CPG guys on this. So you're never to be a non-starter. You're never too big to think that you can't go have that relationship in person. And as my life has gotten more complicated and I've had to take my foot off the gas of being on an airplane as often, I can see it hurting things.

1:15:07And I would say on top of that, going back to like controlling your luck, what are things that you could do to have better luck and more doors open throughout your career? Your reputation is fucking everything. If a retailer places a PO and you aren't able to fill it, or if you do fill the first one and it sells really well and you can't sell more inventory, that's very different than running out of stock on Amazon or Shopify where you're only accountable to yourself. If you do that to a Target or Walmart, that's their business. And that'll be an empty shelf. Like these are huge cruise ships. They can't just put something else there.

1:15:41But a similar thought there would be now when Walmart has an energy drink company that can't fill a PO and they have an open spot in the center of their doors and, you know, action alley, they call it, in the center of the Walmarts, they know they can call Bloom and we will have enough inventory. We do have the supply chain. Greg will pick up the phone and say, of course, I have a product that I'll make just for that situation. That is 100 % relationship-based. Yes. And then that person, it's a net new spot that you can take. And if you do well with GoodSell through and they like you, then that other person lost it.

1:16:11Relationship and reputation. And I think it's funny because I would say if you're in the first five years of your entrepreneurship journey, and that's a blanket statement or a broad statement, I'm not pro-networking. I think that if you're in the, I say, I think stay locked in and build something special. And if you build something special, the network will come to you. When I was in the first five years of my career, no one gave a fuck what I was doing. Anyone that I wanted to go have dinner with or wanted to go network with, why would they give me the time of day? Like, that's just the reality of society.

1:16:41Once I built something special, once Bloom was doing over$150 million a year, they were in my DMs, they were texting me, hey, we should, you know, cross paths and figure out how we can trade notes. And so I think networking in the beginning of your career is a super overrated, fun thing that sounds productive. But the reality is you're not going to really be able to network with anybody that can move your needle until you're also building something special and can provide value back to them. These are transact, networking is transactional. Yeah. I think for people out there listening, I don't think the number necessarily needs to be a hundred million.

1:17:16No, no. But I think like, I would say three million, five million. Yeah. Get to a point where like you actually understand and know how to operate a business. Yes. Yeah, before then, I mean, dude, I remember the beginning days of Iconic. I didn't leave the fucking beanbag. I just, I didn't leave that whole apartment. It was literally like COVID was nothing to me because COVID was what it already fucking was. Dude, my life did not change at all when COVID hit. It was an opportunity. I went 60, I think it was 68 days in a row where I went past the refrigerator three times. I did, I did a hundred pull-ups every single morning when I woke up and I did not leave my, my nook.

1:17:51I love that. It was legendary. Dude, I would also say my biggest growth hack to any entrepreneur entering their 30s. I just turned 31 a couple weeks ago. And of course, as you get older, surround yourself with young people. That is the biggest growth hack. These young people, I mean, it's almost like how I was like the Instagram guy because I was the generation that grew up with Instagram and Instagram to me was the same thing as like going on a walk. That's them with AI. That's them with TikTok shop. Like my favorite people to network with is not the billionaires that have already made it and they're 45 and like whatever they did worked 20 years ago.

1:18:26I want to talk to the 22-year-olds that are rocket shipping these businesses overnight using the new tactics. So my biggest growth hack to any entrepreneur today is just surround yourself or regularly cross paths with young people. They know the true hacks. Yeah, I completely agree. For us in the AI side, we just met with this guy, Remy, he's 21 years old. Crazy. In Miami, it was insane. Because he's just cracked 18 hours a day on this stuff. To tie a bow on the Target stuff, What about from a communication perspective? Like, are you asking them what is doing good? What's not doing good? Are you showing them product before it comes out?

1:19:00Like, what is those other kind of little nuances that people need to know to make sure they're asking the right questions? I think this goes back to like, what would a human want to see, right? And they want to feel involved. They want to feel like they are taking a chance with your brand as well. And they want to feel entrepreneurial, right? They're entrepreneurs within the walls of their corporation. And they have a crazy job. They have like a limited amount of real estate where they need to choose a product that's going to live there for six to 12 months. And that's a huge risk. And if you can take them along the journey of R &Ding a product with them, then that's huge.

1:19:33I would also say they're not entrepreneurs for a reason. So if you go there and ask them for advice on what to make, be very careful. That goes back to the keyboard warriors. Like they don't necessarily know what will work. And if you want to make sure they feel involved, you know, there are obviously some tricks to that. You can show them three products and you know two of them suck and you want them to choose the middle one. Just, you know, show them two products that suck so that they choose the third one that you actually want them to choose. And then they feel like they're part of the process.

1:20:01But, you know, that's just part of like semantics and dealing with humans. Controlling the options. That's good. Controlling the options. Yeah. And but I would say like, yeah, love having relationships with them. They will they will generally change seats very often. So you'll have a new person every two years. I hate that. I get why it happens. Right. Because when you're competing with 20, 30, 40-year-old businesses and they are at people's weddings at these retailers at this point because they've done business together for 20 years and I'm trying to get my foot in the door, it is advantageous for getting new brands in, which I'm always pro that.

1:20:36But yeah, having a real – then again, if I'm being totally honest with you, I don't do dinners. I don't think that you need to really get to know who Greg is. Like this is a business relationship and I want to talk about building something really special with you, but I don't see any advantage to us breaking bread together in a fully transactional relationship like that. If anything, I almost feel like you want to have an illusion of yourself as like this large decision maker running your business. And I don't want to expose to you that we are all humans or that we are all that I am like, you know, stressed about the same things that you're stressed about.

1:21:13I need to come in there briefly with a ton of confidence, involve you in the process, and then get back to my dungeon and work. Predictability. They want me to believe. Yeah. I don't think that you should necessarily have like, you shouldn't talk to them about your personal life. That's not what they're there for. That's not what we're there for. We're there to do business. That's what this is for, guys. We're about to get into that next personal life. Tying up on the retail side, what's one thing you know today that you didn't know in the beginning? retail similar to every business relationship i've ever had is generally what have you done for me lately and nobody you do not deserve to be treated differently because of what you did three years ago you deserve to be treated differently because of what you've done in the last three months and that is how i would like to be judged and that's how i would like everybody else to be judged.

1:22:02That is how capitalism works. And I agree with capitalism. So I think in the past, I thought that once we had an incredible summer of 2023, then I could lean on that to have a strong 2025. That's not really the case. It's like, if you want to have a strong summer 2025, you better have a good Q1. Rent due every day. Rent due. Yeah. Fuck yeah. I use Whisperflow for hours every single day. I think way faster than I type. I speak about 220 words a minute and type only 45. Whisperflow closes that gap. It's a voice-to-text tool that works anywhere on your computer or phone. You talk and clean formatted text shows up wherever your cursor is.

1:22:49All right, let me show you. I'm going to answer a real email right now without typing. You can see here Tyga is asking for feedback on our intro video for the next episode. watch how I respond. If you could just make a few changes, make the red a little bit brighter, the typography a little bit smaller. For the music, if you can just give me some other options and that first photo, some more options as well. Please give me three options for each and make sure you send it to me by end of the day Friday. Thanks. So as you can tell, the text is way cleaner. I kind of speak in half sentences and sometimes mumble on.

1:23:21This makes it very clean, formatted perfectly and avoids all the small mistakes. This is a product that I cannot live without. I promise you that you will love it. If you guys want to get one month free of Whisper Flow Pro, click the link below and use code OPENRESIDENCY. All right, we talked a little bit about the machine. I want to get into the people. As I mentioned in the beginning, this truly is the American dream. Started the company with Wifey, brought in Uncle Leo. I don't know, your son's middle name, hey? Yeah. And then your mom was the CFO or accountant until 100 million. Why don't you just walk us through kind of like the original cast of how this all started.

1:23:57And then I just want to get into kind of the sequencing. You've moved from like a ton of places. And let's just kind of go through each of those checkpoints. So Mari and I moved five or six times in five or six years. And I think one of the best ways to control your luck is just be in the geographic area that like best suits your goals. And so Mari and I finished school in Philadelphia, which is where we kind of launched Mari Fitness together. Then we moved to New York and lived in our dad's attic. And that's where we started to have our first physical product, which was the booty bands, sold like a million booty bands, which was a crazy business in itself.

1:24:29And then we moved to Boulder, Colorado, because we just felt like New York was not the place that like really embraced entrepreneurs. So I Googled top cities for entrepreneurs and the Boulder, Colorado popped up and we kind of fucked with hiking, I guess, not as much as people in Boulder. And so we moved to Boulder, Colorado, packed our bags and just immediately rented, you know, a two bedroom townhouse in Boulder, Colorado. And we stayed there for 18 months and that's where Bloom was born. And we just stayed locked up and Mari and I and just tried to study social media and what the female consumer was looking for.

1:24:59And then we were done with Boulder, Colorado. We moved back to Brooklyn. We thought again that that would be a place where now our careers would thrive. It definitely didn't feel that way. And we were really starting to embrace influencer culture, wanted to build out the influencer program I was talking about. Mari was becoming like a larger scale content creator. COVID hit. And we were like, fuck it, let's go try this LA thing. And for context now, like there's many hubs around America where you could go do the whole influencer thing. But at the time, like content houses and, you know, every big agency and every big brand activation, it was all happening in LA.

1:25:34That's like Hollywood was where dreams were made, right? So we packed our bags, moved to LA quickly when COVID hit and we got a month to month Airbnb in Santa Monica. It was one bedroom, one bathroom. And that quickly became the Bloom headquarters in Santa Monica. We had probably seven to eight people reporting to that Airbnb at full scale once we got to full scale there. And that means that those seven or eight people were using Mario and I's like personal bathroom, right? It was a one bedroom, one bathroom. And so that was, you know, these are like the true grind days of Bloom where we had a team.

1:26:05And so that was me, myself, Leo, and a couple of our initial employees. And then my mom was back in New York doing finance. And so Leo is my best friend from high school. that whole hire happened because it was we just had the million dollar day things were really starting to scale i need to find somebody that we could trust i just lost the one employee that we had who lived in boston we had a falling out and i said the only person that i could trust that could literally get our bank account passwords right now i didn't know what linkedin was i didn't know what any i was going to start like just putting up fucking stapled job listings on telephone poles i called leo and we had the conversation about launching the influencer program and him coming on.

1:26:42And Leo is my best friend and neighbor from high school. And he was like, yeah, I'm all in, man. Let's fucking do this. So Leo joined. We're working out of this Airbnb. This is like, I mean, this is just like discipline and entrepreneurship summed up because Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, means that we couldn't go to Thanksgiving with our family for like four or five years because Black Friday was too big of a day. And Christmas, four days later is January 1st, which is like the Super Bowl for any wellness product. So we couldn't go to Christmas for four or five years. We didn't fly home for the holidays at all.

1:27:14We had Thanksgiving with the team in that Airbnb. We had Christmas dinners with the teams in those Airbnbs. What you said there too, it's for me, for people out there in the beginning, I actually recommend not going home for Thanksgiving, Christmas. And obviously like I care about my family deeply, but I remember like the first year or two that I did go back, I was like not present at all. And it was almost even worse. Well, you were a huge Black Friday company. I bet. Huge really fun. Dude, I feel like the first iconic I ever bought was on a Black Friday sale. In college. There you go. Yeah. But it was fun.

1:27:44You do want to make sure transitionally you get those Shopify cha-chings. Yeah. Like it was fun in the middle years. I would do it. I would sit in the kitchen with my mom and I would keep the Shopify cha-chings on. That was a fun bonding moment. That's when they realized like, oh, you might actually be up to something. Yeah. Right? Because otherwise they think that you're just like, I mean, it's funny. We launched Mari Fitness and we were using a TD Bank student account. And I didn't even like trust banks at the time. Like I had no idea what the fuck was going on. So every day I would move our PayPal balance because we didn't have a Shopify at the time.

1:28:12I was having people DM us if they wanted the product. I would say PayPal me 999. And then I would email them the instant download PDF. And then if they committed to that fitness guide and showed that they actually gave a fuck, Mario and I would personally train them through a 50 to a hundred pound weight loss transformation. And eventually we had like a hundred people who had a hundred pound weight loss transformation that was validity for this massive instant download workout guide business that we were creating. So the genesis of Bloom was these instant download, these PDFs and the booty bands.

1:28:42For people out there listening, what was the size of this business? Oh, like multi-million dollar a year business and like there was no cog, right? Like it was just instant download PDFs. And the reason there was no cog is because we were finishing college, right? Like we had no money. We had university laptops and we would go to a local Barnes and Nobles and just crank out on Canva, the, I think it was Canva, on Canva, these instant download PDFs on just exactly the types of weightlifting workouts we wanted to do. And if you bought the guide, you would get a Facebook community, you would get private Instagram pages with videos of each exercise.

1:29:11You'd get tons of just like free content. And that's what like really started building a community for us, right? It's even like Mari launching a podcast for our community where she would bring on like the top doctors around the nation, neurosurgeons, mental health, whatever it may be for free for our community. That's what building a brand and building a community is. And we learned all of that from the Mari Fitness days. And so we scaled that business as a PayPal business. But going back to the TD Bank story, I remember had no idea what was going on. Every day, I would take the PayPal balance and move it over to our TD Bank.

1:29:42And then I would go to TD Bank in my car and withdraw all of the cash and just put it into the car's glove box. And then eventually TD Bank was like, dude, what drugs are you selling? What is this like weird daily withdrawal that you're doing? You can no longer have a bank account here. So I was like, fuck this. Like, what do you mean? Like, I just want all of my money, da-da-da. So we drive to Chase in Westchester, New York, and we're going to open up our first business account. I don't think we had an LLC at the time. And we were like, yeah, we have an Instagram business. We would like to open up a business account.

1:30:13And then, you know, we got through the paper. We're like, do you guys even like have any money? Like, what's the, what are we doing here? And Mari just took out 50 grand from her bag and just put it on the table and was like, we have this. And so it was like, we like still just like had no idea what was going on. We were two like 21 year olds with like all of this cash. And we're just like, I think we need a bank account now. Like we truly had no, all we knew was action. We didn't know education. So we were just moving forward and kind of figuring it out as we go. But anyway, we're back to LA now.

1:30:40Fast forward to 2021, 2022. We're working out of the Airbnb and eventually some WeWorks there. But from LA, we bootstrapped the business. We had our first headquarters. We bootstrapped the business to 180 million. And that's when we started the partnership with Nutribolt. And upon signing the partnership with Nutribolt, me and our main team and family moved to Austin, Texas. Just to show them how serious, they didn't ask us to, just to show them how seriously we were taking the partnership and we needed to put all of the odds in our favor for this partnership to work. So Dr. Pepper's based out of Texas, Nutriple's based out of Austin, Texas.

1:31:14We bought a building in East Austin and that became Bloom's new flagship headquarters. So zooming out, I mean, five places, five years, it seems like. What's the advice you'd give to any young founder out there? Just go wherever the fuck you need to go. Go wherever you need to go because one of the best ways for you to increase your chances of luck is to be in the right place at the right time. So, you know, I don't think LA is necessarily the right place today for that to happen, but it was at the time. So whatever that is for you today. Makes sense. And you think just if you're in the beginning, they should just be able to sacrifice anything at that stage.

1:31:45I feel like. If you're not all in, you're going to be beat by the person who's all in. Yeah. If you're not working Thanksgiving, then you're going to be beat by the person who's working Thanksgiving. Random opinion. Where do you think is the best place to start a company right now? dude, I'm pretty bullish on this Austin place. Yeah. I'm pretty bullish on it. Like why outside of Texas? It seems to be like the entrepreneurship CPG hub that I've looked for in my whole career. And I don't think it was that five years ago based off of what people tell me. But in the last two years, I am like blown away by the amount of CPG or just overall founders that reside in Austin, Texas.

1:32:21And the culture there is like Texas values of just like come over for dinner. Let's talk about how to make each other better. They all have family values. And like, it's not a lot of this. There's no gatekeeping. There's no gatekeeping. Everybody's open book, which is how I've been my whole career. There's no fucking secrets to anything that I'm doing. I think that it's all in the execution. And I can tell you my exact playbook. And, you know, there's no prescription to go recreating Bloom, right? And so I love trading notes. I love meeting with other founders. I find that I can almost only relate to other founders on a social level at this point.

1:32:53And on top of that, it's the perfect time zone. the PST time zone like really fucked up my business or like how I would operate in business, like trying to get onto calls at appropriate times with people in New York or internationally in the UK. And talking to my family in New York was tough living in LA. So like Austin is like the perfect time zone and it's a perfect travel hub because you're sitting in the center of the country. So I don't have any more like four hour flights or four and a half hour flights to New York. Everything's just like two and a half hours away now. Strong co-sign. Let's talk a little bit about personal brand.

1:33:24We talked a bunch off camera. Obviously, you know, Bloom was built on your wife's platform. She goes on maternity leave. You've kind of stepped into personal content. What's the hardest part of that? Dude, I cannot believe how hard it is. It's a lot. I cannot believe how hard it is and how much work it is. I'm blessed to be in a place where I was immediately able to get like a head of my media who's JJ is here today and he runs the whole show with me. Shout out to JJ. And everyone on the Bloom team is like, I don't know. I don't know. they support me more than I feel like I even deserve. But everyone on the Bloom team who are all like huge social media heads and like on top of culture, they've supported the hell out of me and just want to help me as much as I can with my content.

1:34:04And they're hyping me up on a regular basis. But I would say building a personal brand to me is like the rawest form of entrepreneurship. You are the product. So if I'm the CEO of Bloom and it's a hundred person company and I have a bad day, there's 99 people that can make sure Bloom still moves forward. If I have a bad day, as, you know, Greg Lav is my handle now, I'm Greg Lebecchia, then my product is having a bad day. So it's like the level of accountability and like, it just, it just fires me up. Like how much the table sticks. I just love it. I find it like very fun and scary. It's literally every day, all day, if you're putting out content on volume.

1:34:45Like I can't be fucking hungover. I could like, you know, be hung over a couple. Because I know I'm like locked in and I fucking work out. I'm in the gym every day at 5 a.m. But like, I like tequila. I like cigars. I'll feel like shit some days. I got to have a lot less feeling like shit days now with this personal brand. We were just talking off camera. I mean, I think you need to embrace the airplane mode. Because nothing's worse than like coming on a podcast like this and someone just blowing a bomb on a text message right before you come on. Dude, that will fuck me off. That will fuck me up, man.

1:35:11Yeah, of course. It's not just like physical being in the gutter. It's way more mental. It's way more mental. Like I just like need to stay in a good mood and I've surrounded myself with people who hype me up. Like, you know, whether it's just, of course, my wife saying good luck on the podcast right now or I have Leo with me right now is still my best friend and lives, is still my neighbor in Texas. But like just making sure he holds back bad news until it's an appropriate time to say it because there's always fires. There's a fire at bloom every fucking day, right? And like figuring out how to keep everyone in the company in the greatest optimistic creative state at all times really just comes down to like cadence of communication, let alone embracing communication.

1:35:49I feel like there is people on both sides of the coin and they are very, very passionate about their stance where it's like, you seem to be someone that you should build in public and you should be creating content as a founder and other people, ironically, the people that are not creating content as founders. What have you seen like the personal and brand benefit that has come with you putting your name out there, your face out there and talking about everything you're doing? You know, it's funny because like, I don't even have 100 ,000 followers. Yeah. But the quality of the followers in the sense of like people, the inbound of people who can truly help me move the needle to get closer to my goals has blown me away.

1:36:24And I think it's because there's not a ton of us doing this. So it's been just like, I'm so motivated to continue building these platforms and to continue posting because of the amount of inbound of just like like-minded people from around the world that I've gotten to meet because of it. And it's made me a better dad, a better entrepreneur, a better husband, a better friend, just through interactions digitally. Yeah, it's so crazy. It's actually ironic. I'm actually going to use the line that you said and I kind of unpacked. Content is a very saturated market. But from my white space perspective, the amount of operators that have like a minute, all you have to do is have like a minimal amount of juice, a minimal amount of brain, a minimal amount of social proofing, have a business that's like real.

1:37:05Like, yeah, there's so few and there's such a demand for that type of content. And like, I can think in my head, we don't need to go through the names of like sub 10 people in the whole entire world that are putting out consistent content that are males running a real company showing you behind the scenes of what they're doing. I, and of course we've all been tricked by every core seller with the rented Lambo. Right. And it's like, I think we're all just fucking, we've been sick of them from day one. And it's like so cool to now see real operators making content and setting the stage or setting the example for the next generation.

1:37:40It's fucking awesome. Yeah, I think too. We should do a little test. I'm going to ask a bunch of you guys that have been on the pod to do it. It's like, I also think that it's a CAC arbitrage. Like the reality is, is like when I was in Santa Barbara, like I never was someone that would have bought a bloom. And then I'm like, oh, Greg bought a bloom. Yeah. And now you're going to, I'm going to win on LTV. You're going to win on LTV on that. Imagine if you were a male influential person at a large retailer who would have never seen my wife's content or would have never seen any of the female influencers who post about Bloom.

1:38:10A guy might find my shit and who can actually change the trajectory of Bloom. So again, just like what are things you could do to increase your chances of luck? I think building a personal brand is one of the biggest. Yeah. Sahil, who was on the episode, has a great book. His new book coming out eventually is about increasing the surface area for luck. And I feel like what you just said too, it goes back to like the no attribute, you're doing CPMs, but the no attribution on the influencer. It's just like, I know people that have come on the podcast and they've literally found investors because people are like, oh, I watch the podcast.

1:38:41So investors, biz dev, content. I mean, there's a million different ways that people can come into the funnel. I'm not, I'm not, I don't really have an active portfolio, but like my deal flow is ridiculous now. Right? Because it's like people want me to get involved in their business. And so I have to decline 99 % of them, But like, it's, I was like, oh, this is how you get deal flow. Cause I was always surprised like why like brands didn't want me to invest. Like, don't you know what I'm building over here? Right. And I was almost like insecure about my status in society because I was like, no one has recognized what I've built.

1:39:10And it's like, no, you just started making some content about it. And it's like, oh, no one was recognizing it because they didn't fucking know the tree falls in the forest and no one's around to hear it. Like you need to shout from the, from the rooftops, like when you are doing something special, because there's so much going on, on Instagram and the news outlets that it's like, If you don't try to make sure you're heard, no one's going to notice. And some people don't want to be noticed and shout out to them, but I have too much insecurity. So I want people to notice. And so it's been huge for that.

1:39:36I think regardless of insecurity, ego, whatever anybody has, I just think that dollar for dollar, yes, it makes sense. We'll see how it shakes out. Guys, this episode is sponsored by Ketone IQ. I often sit down in this chair for over three hours and stay super dialed with ketones. It's a completely different category of fuel for your brain, clean, sustained, and no crash. I take a shot before recording, before deep work, and any session that I need to be sharp. Head to ketone.com slash openresidency for 30 % off your first subscription and a free gift with your second shipment. That's K-E-T-O-N-E.com slash openresidency.

1:40:16Guys, this is something that I use every single day, non-negotiable. Give it a try. I want to shift a little bit into leadership. I guess let's just start like super macro. What would you say like is your leadership style? First and foremost, lead by example, right? Like that is the best thing that you can do every single day is just, you know, create an environment where people, and this goes back to just having a headquarters in Austin, right? We are not a remote company. I do not operate well on Zoom calls. I unfortunately to my team have had to tailor the entire organization about the environment that I thrive in.

1:40:52And I have found people who also thrive in that environment, which is like a very, as few Zoom calls as possible, as often as we can get into a room together with as little technology as possible. That's where the creativity has happens. I think everyone in the company, it's not just the marketing and the brand team. Creativity is how people thrive. So how can I create as a leader, an environment where people as creative as possible, right? Whether that just means there's incredibly healthy snacks and tons of caffeine and, you know, lunch every day, you know, provided to the team. but it's also like just an awesome building that we own and we have been able to turn into the Bloom house, the Bloom world.

1:41:30And so people are just constantly coming into our headquarters and being in a state where they can be incredibly creative. It's also a headquarters where I run a podcast studio out of this headquarters. It's called the Pursuit Network. And so we have like really influential people coming in and out of the doors on a daily basis. And it's like, it's an open door policy at our headquarters. There's other entrepreneurs in Texas that just pick up a desk someday. and it's like you want that activity. You want those new ideas, those souls coming into the building and you don't want to stale under the bright white lights type of environment, you know, in your building.

1:42:05I don't want a fucking dentist office. So I would say leading through example, creating an environment where creativity thrives, but also positive and negative feedback loops. You can't just constantly say the things that you don't like or constantly say the things that you do like. then there's just infinite options for the latter. You need to give positive and negative feedback loops. And I am very pro anger management. You need to control your emotions. In any business scenario, emotions will make you lose the scenario. So I used to, earlier in my career, I thought like writing an email in caps lock was fucking badass.

1:42:42And everyone was going to see like how much, how passionate I was about this thing. And then it's like, oh, I wrote a caps lock email to the wrong person. and I realized like how much that can fuck up your trajectory. So I don't know if there's been more than two or three times that I've gotten like angry at a team member. I don't think there's a place for that, at least at the Bloom office. It is a very lead through positivity and do not lead through fear environment. Yeah, I asked Uncle Leo what he thought about your leadership. He said he tenaciously follows up and questions everything, always leads with that.

1:43:15great motivator of people always positive, always optimistic. And that... You guys know each other. What is that, chat GBT answer, Leo? No, that was yesterday when I called him. You fucking called him? I called him, bro. Wow. Yeah, bro. Damn. Your assistant hooked it up. I got a speech at his wedding soon. I'll make sure I double down on that. But I... Rip him up. Yeah, really. They'll be mostly Brazilian and not speaking English, so I can really say whatever I want. But, yeah, I think... Dude, these people are my family. Like we have people who have been with us for the better half of a decade at Bloom who have moved states multiple times with us, which is still blows my mind.

1:43:56There's a few people, a bunch of people that are going to be multimillionaires that a traditional trajectory for their role would not have made them multimillionaires because they are at Bloom. And so seeing cool cars in my parking lot that are not mine, nothing fires me up more than that. Love that. You run basically a 95 % female company. Yeah. Tell me more. I wish I had intention behind that. I don't, right? It's like I try to hire the Bloom consumer, which happens to be a female. And I think generally speaking, a female thrives with a brand or a person thrives working on a brand that they are passionate about and that they want to consume.

1:44:36So it's just shaken out that way. Bloom is a meritocracy. Like the hardest worker wins in the room. The one with the greatest output wins in the room. And it has just always fallen towards female team, almost always fallen towards female team members. It's all I know. Yeah, I mean, that's just great, simple advice is just hire team members, especially on the creative and brand side that are ICP. What about hiring from like traditional big companies? Have you done that? The biggest mistakes in my talent acquisition journey have been trying to hire people from the corporations that I wanted Bloom to be like, or like that had already achieved the goals that I wanted Bloom to achieve.

1:45:14So if somebody were to apply, let's just use Red Bull as an example. We're here in California where they're based or LA. Let's just say I wanted to launch an energy drink and I start to get some inbound resumes that say Red Bull on them. And I just go, oh, wow, they probably know all about the magic that's happening over there. I'm going to expedite their whole interview funnel and just get them in these walls. And then we're going to be able to figure out everything that Red Bull's doing. First of all, if a corporation is thousands of people, chances are that one person applied fucking nothing to making that brand special.

1:45:45And what made that brand special probably started 50 years ago, right? So it's like, anytime I've expedited the hiring process to try to get the sexy corporation on the resume within the bloom walls, I have made a massive mistake. I think the first question that I ask in every interview is, name me three brands that you love following on digital and why you think they're crushing it. Like, I just need to make sure that that person gets what the fuck is going on and what we're doing here. And then we just have a conversation about those three brands. And it might be a brand that I've never heard of, but I'll quickly pull it up on social media and see kind of what they're up to.

1:46:20And if they can explain to me why they think they are winning, we can move on to the next question. And that's for anything from an executive assistant to on the brand team. I love that. That's great advice that I've never heard. Just what are you consuming? Let's just chat about the industry. Let's just chat CPG for 15 minutes. Let's see if you can hold this conversation. Do you get what's going on here? Beginning days and now, hunger or talent? What are you looking for? Beginning days, it was absolutely hunger. I definitely did not. My motto in the beginning days was I don't want anyone brainwashed by brands that are moving at a sloth's pace, right?

1:46:58I wanted people who were right out of college that had no idea what a normal pace was and had no idea about what corporate America was. And I wanted intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs who just wanted to join a fucking startup culture. And so I was very anti-corporate America brainwashed at the time. Now I have an appreciation for people who have seen what perfection looks like right now that what has gotten us to 100 million is going to be different than what gets us to a 500 and what is going to be different than what gets us to a billion. And so having people in the team who have been there before seems to be incredibly valuable at this point because they just know what that looks like.

1:47:42And if I can find somebody who I can take from corporate America, who is sick of it and wants to be part of this entrepreneurship journey before it's too late, that now for especially on a leadership level is like my favorite hires at Bloom. Yeah, I do feel like you guys are in this explosive mode where there's still kind of meat left on the bone where if somebody came on now from a corporate side, like you can still three, five, eight, 10X. Yeah, because like, it's not like shipping to retailers. I don't really need like a young entrepreneurship mind. I need someone who's done it before, right?

1:48:17Ordering millions of cans every single day. I need someone who's done it before. But in terms of like the branding and marketing team, I think, and this goes back to like ageism and how I feel about experience overall in digital and building a brand. It's like what worked five years ago is not going to work today. And so it's almost like your experience is irrelevant to me. And I think that a 22-year-old who just loves digital is just as worthy as borderline leading a brand department, depending on how many direct reports they have, leading a brand department as a 35-year-old is a seasoned vet.

1:48:52Yeah, that's the thesis of this podcast is getting people that are currently in the arena. I am a student of history and I read tons of biographies and I love to learn about past entrepreneurs, but I feel like outside of the fundamental, whether it be systems or finance or how to sell a company, those are going to be tried and true forever. But just like TikTok shop and AI, like Steve Jobs has nothing to tell me about TikTok. No, I want a 25 year old for that department. And I would say the finance and supply chain roles, I'm open to remote hires. I'm open to that being around the country. But if it's something that's like directly pointing towards our impact on culture, that needs to be in the Austin headquarters or our LA office.

1:49:34Obviously this influencer machine and army is all in-house. It seems like you're very much so in-house versus agency. Why? I would say in the early days of Bloom, we were bootstrapped and we were competing in an era of like CPG brands raising a ton of money. And so they would raise a ton of money, have the pressure to deploy that money, and they would just go sign the hottest agency at the time with the biggest check because, you know, It was a check that I couldn't even fathom writing out of a bootstrap brand. So I realized early on, like, the only way we can compete with these brands raising all of this money and deploying the greatest agencies in the world is to build something bootstrapped in-house that's proprietary to us.

1:50:11And that has just worked for us since day one. And we have continued to rinse and repeat that. I'm very anti-agency. If I hire an agency for a temporary period of time to learn what they are doing and then build it better in-house. I mean, we were huge fans of hiring agencies for a short stint or hiring consultants for a short stint. And either, you know, in a consultant scenario, potentially hiring them full time if we think they're a killer. But I love test driving things and learning with different systems. But it has to have a path to building it out in-house. How is it having multi-city offices?

1:50:46You're the first person on that has that. I've been traveling a little bit too much, especially now with our son. There have been points where I just wanted the best person no matter where they were in the country. And I have regretted it only if there wasn't a path to them moving to Austin or at least moving to LA. Obviously, we had an established LA headquarters and then I moved with a lot of our leadership team to Austin. So in this scenario, it just makes sense to have this LA office. Obviously, there's still like a lot of talent agencies and people that we do in-person business with in Los Angeles.

1:51:19So we have probably like 25 people here in LA and I'll get out here at least once a quarter. But I also make sure my main players in LA are in Austin for a couple of days, almost every single month. So - You said something key out there. We actually are just dealing with it. If somebody is remote, making sure you have 100 % clarity and there's a path for that person to eventually be in person. Cause then you're just wasting everybody's time. Yeah, like I, and again, that's me being selfish because I won't thrive as the CEO, as the leader to that person if it's just through Zoom calls. So like we have some killers in New York that have made sense to be in New York.

1:51:53And I also just want an excuse to go to New York once a month. But like we all go back and forth to New York and Austin together to at least have in-person time twice a month. Makes sense. Yeah, I could tell you're an in-person type guy. To close up hiring and firing, what are some of the big lessons you've learned over the years? You get some great advice. The interview question, I think, is so simplistic in nature. And it's amazing. Just like, what are the brands you're consuming? And why? Who do you think is winning? I love that. What have you learned over the last, I don't know, seven, eight years on just hiring and firing?

1:52:20Anything big that you can pass on to the younger generation? You need to hire entrepreneurs. And to me, an entrepreneur is somebody who truly just wants to better themselves at all costs. And they treat themselves as their own company. So that person, first and foremost, wants responsibility and wants ownership. They would rather a harder job that they can own and put their name on than an easy clock in, clock out responsibility. I don't want anyone who's a nine to five or clocking in, clocking out and just wants the easier task. But it's also somebody who, because they are obsessed with self-development and improving their skills, when the business grows, and we've had to do this many times, when the business grows, if somebody's a leader in a department and they are no longer the right person to be a leader in that department, but they are talented, they are excited about the idea of me bringing in somebody on top of them.

1:53:13and that has been I've been shocked at the feedback that I've been able to get from 99 % of our team members when I say hey I need to put somebody on top of you who's been here before or I think is higher qualified for where we're going and every time they go please I would love that like I can learn from them those are killers that say that they have the growth mindset they have the growth 100 % and they just want they treat themselves as a company and they know that's what's best for themselves and they want what's the best for Bloom I love that yeah curious and growth mindset people that are on their own time Which is crazy because like you would think like the average human ego would say like, I just want to show on LinkedIn that I lead this department.

1:53:50Right? Yeah, I don't think we live in that world anymore. No. Skills economy. Yeah. LinkedIn's done. Looking back, what's the one thing you've kind of learned about yourself as a leader in the last year, let's just say? Everybody who directly reports to me at this point at Bloom and in the last couple of years is better than me at that vertical, which in turn means that I am the worst person on the leadership team at any person's specific vertical, right? So generally, I am not the right person to make a decision on a specific topic. I have somebody who's better than me at that specific topic.

1:54:30My job as the leader is to make sure they are in an environment where they can thrive. So I'm more than happy to make sure we have a beautiful catered lunch. It can get as simple as that I'm more than happy to make sure like I have a personal therapy session with that person to make sure they feel heard and that Communication is healthy and there's no drama within the team, which is very rare at bloom So just making sure that I am letting the top-tier talent that we've been able to acquire Thrive is my job now as the CEO. It is not necessarily Impacting small decisions of the day-to-day That's a good answer.

1:55:06Yeah, okay. It's no ego. You weren't thinking that like two years ago. No, no. I used to, well, I probably was one of the best people on the entire team, right? Because I was only able to hire people in the beginning who were worse than me. Yeah. And so I was just able to delegate most of my tasks to that person to free up some of my mind share. But at this point, it's like everyone on the leadership team is truly better than me at their vertical. Like way better. Yeah. I feel like hiring the right people, setting the vision, making sure the lights are on. That's your job. All right. Last little thing before we get into Quick Strike.

1:55:37You told me this yesterday. This shit was mind-blowing. What happened with the cartel? What happened on Christmas Day in 2022? Give us the whole entire story. All right. So I mentioned not going to Christmas for like four or five years. Yeah. And then the first year that we could go back for Christmas, it's a beautiful moment, right? Like Mari and I are with our family. It's Christmas Day. This might have been like one of the first real Levecchia Christmases that my wife could enjoy. And like my Italian Christmas is fucking hysterical. Like there's more ricotta than there is water on the table.

1:56:08And so, you know, I get a call. We're halfway through Christmas. That four 18-wheelers full of Green's product. This is still when we were a bootstrap brand. We had no strategic partners. Like this was all going to fall on me. Four 18-wheelers of Green's product were headed to our number one retailer or what was going to be our number one retailer for a January 1st launch. And so that means that we now had four days to figure that out because it was supposed to be at the stores in four days. And we had no idea where three and a half million dollars worth of product were sitting. And that was our cost, which was an astronomical amount of money for me at the time.

1:56:43I think we were able to locate one of the trucks, which was great. We recovered that product, but there were still three trucks out into the wilderness, out into the dark abyss. And we see a random third-party seller pop up on Amazon two days later. And my head of Amazon, who's a fucking savage, orders the product and realizes, yeah, this was the product that was specifically made for that retailer. We know that this is not supposed to be sold on Amazon or anywhere else. This is the stolen goods. We get them kicked off of Amazon. Shout out to Amazon for handling this with us. It pops up the next day.

1:57:15It's under a person's name. It was like Raul something. And... Damn, Raul's a gangster. Real name? Because his company got kicked off, he probably didn't think anything of it. So he just started selling it under his real name with an address. The address is 10 miles from our headquarters in Los Angeles. My head of Amazon, Alex, in his bright red C63 AMG Mercedes, drives over to this warehouse, which is just an opened chain link fence around the perimeter, no ceiling on top, just tarp on top of product. And he's looking through the fence and he sees Clorox bottles, you know, Ninja blenders, protein powders from Orgain, Bloom Green, all this clearly stolen CPG products that he's selling on Amazon.

1:58:05And this fucking psycho climbs the fence with his iPhone and starts filming all of these products. And he's going, and he's like, you know, reporting back to my guy. And I didn't even ask him to go, by the way. I didn't ask him to go. I actually like probably realized this once he had already, once I'll tell you, once I realized. So... Doesn't sound safe. So he's leaving the warehouse and he's sitting in his car and this badass pickup truck, as he explains it, pulls up to behind him with the license plate, Raul, and comes up to the window and goes, who the fuck are you? And my head of Amazon goes, I'm the guy you just stole our shit from.

1:58:40And like skirts off in his AMG. This is like so funny if you know who I'm talking about. Raul, did he go strapped to this? Is he putting on like a bulletproof vest? This is risky. This is insanely risky. Yeah. And by the way, we ended up looking at this guy's address on Google Maps. And it was like a$4 million house in Orange County. There's like a Porsche in the driveway. Hey, Raul. And this guy had been running this operation for a minute. We look up his fucking fugitive record. And he had been to jail many times for like, you know, violent assault, like the whole deal. And he gets into a car chase with this guy, ends up escaping, shout out to the AMGs, and gets back to the headquarters.

1:59:12And we had just uncovered like, you know, this$3 million of product. Like a massive ring. A massive ring. A massive ring. to be completely transparent, the California law enforcement was incredibly unhelpful with this situation. In fact, like... Not surprising. Did not even respond to our calls. Ended up needing to get, you know, national FBI involved. So what do you do? You call 911 and then you... Yeah, you just keep on calling until you like meet a guy who knows someone at the FBI and that's who ends up helping you. And of course, this ended up taking months. So he was able to like clean up half of the operation by the time we were able to have a sting.

1:59:43But anyway, dude, this was like, this just like sums up like the one chance we could finally go back to the holidays with the family. Like there's a massive cartel operation, you know, abusing our Amazon. It's all on you, bro. All the responsibility is on you. Yeah. Drop of a hat. What happened with the retailer? They should understand that. Come on, baby. Dude, they should, but they shouldn't, right? Like we should have made - Valid, they should have. Yeah, like I'm really objected with that stuff. And so, yeah, now we always overproduce. And they were super fucking pissed. Damn. I don't even know what to say to that.

2:00:17This is a very real thing. This is why third-party sellers, especially on consumables, on e-commerce channels, is like a super high-risk thing. It's like you don't know where it necessarily came, which is why like we're very proud now to own the seller relationships with these businesses. Like our energy drink, we sell directly to Amazon and they sell it on Amazon. And so we own that relationship. No middleman. Love it. I'm going to fire away tons and tons of questions here with QuickStrike. Brace yourself. Your son, three months old, Kai. What's the thing about fatherhood that caught you off guard?

2:00:51I've never felt like there's not enough time in the day more than there is right now. I'm trying to chip away at just my sleep hours and hopefully give those hours to Kai. But it's been incredible, man. And it has completely changed how I think about everything that I'm building and working on. I realized quickly that what I am going to pass down to him, any type of like monetary pass down will almost serve him no justice and potentially be a disservice to him. And the greatest thing that I can try to do is just one, lead by example and be the man that he has memories seeing on how to be a man.

2:01:29But the wisdom and lessons that I can make sure he experiences in his life are like the greatest inheritance that I can ever build. So prior to having a son, like I was obsessed with the idea of like leaving this massive trust to my offspring. And like, that's how I'll make sure we're generation proof. And it's like, fuck that. All these rich kids are fucked. So it's like, I gotta make sure all I pass down is wisdom and lessons and an example. Love it. Most expensive thing you own that you actually use every day. That you use every day. Yeah, every day. I mean, my house is, fuck. I think my, I have a Mercedes that's like a little, it's probably 750 ,000 that I drive at least every week.

2:02:09yeah it's a life flex yeah it's a 750 yeah but dude i bought it for less and it's been going it's been going crazy on the market but i'm an asshole and i modified the hell out of it so i don't know if that ruined the value but but what's crazy is like the value was like a million before it hit 5 000 miles on the odometer and the other day on my way to work i passed 5 000 miles and i was like wow that was a hundred thousand dollar drive to work yeah i just had a lot of fun negotiating for for my car lease right now do you know about like the lease swapping do you know about that game? Are you in that game?

2:02:39Like if you're a year in and you can just like upgrade your car. My buddy told me about this. I'm done with the traditional leases. Like you could just go on. Someone could have 15 months left and just hit them with like a 50 % off low ball. They're going to come back in a month later and you just. Because they get the commission for those transactions. No, no, no. I'm talking about you're going to the end user. Like you have a car and there's 18 months left on your lease and I just go to you and it's$1 ,000 a month. You say, hey,$500. Let me take over the rest. $500 a month. Wow. Yeah, I thought I was flexing because I had this whole like massive negotiation with Mercedes and I absolutely love that.

2:03:09My friend's like, yeah, you're sleeping because he's had like 15 cars the last five years. Yeah. I'm like, what is this racket that you're running? Yeah. He just keeps getting like new BMWs and stuff. Dude, fuck yeah. I think, you know, going back to like the monetary shit. First of all, entrepreneurship is worth it. Like money is freedom. There's no doubt about it. Like you are going to be able to do all the things that everyone said that you can't do, which is kind of like sums up my whole life. It's like I fucking hated when someone would tell me no. If I'm at a restaurant and I'm ordering, I mean, Leo can vouch for this.

2:03:36If I'm at a restaurant and I'm ordering all of the dishes that I want, which is generally several dishes, and the waiter is like, you've ordered enough and I'll, I'll, I'll want to leave the restaurant. I won't, but like that will, that will like properly trigger me. I hate when someone tells me no, or that I've done enough or that like that's excessive. You've done enough to be able to be, be excessive. And so I think money being freedom has been the, you know, the greatest unlock that it is. but like, you know, the, the best memories that I have with my wife with travel are not any five-star hotel.

2:04:08It's like literally us in a camper van. And so the reality is, is the funnest things in life are like borderline national parks, like are fucking free and money's fun and awesome. But the biggest unlock is the freedom that it gives you. And entrepreneurship is very much worth that goal, the freedom. I agree. What's your bench max? 380 on a good day, based off of a test I did a couple weeks ago on a good day. We're going to, I tore this. We're going to pop up some shreddy on that. This guy does crazy, crazy pull-ups. Dude, I try. I'm pretty nice on pull-ups, but I see you're doing like 40 pound weights.

2:04:46Dude, I love the weighted pull-up. I have, I don't have any. What's your max without no weights? On a good day, I can get 25 real pull-ups, like good pull-ups. I'm high teens. Yeah, you got me. Dude, breaking 20 was hard. Breaking 20 was hard. I would say, dude, fitness has been like everything for me. Like it is just like, just because of the routine and discipline that you need to have like in your, it's 24 seven. Yeah. Right. So it's like, you need, it's not just the workout. It's the meals you get in. It's the recovery you get after. So it's like me bringing those lessons over to entrepreneurship, I think has been huge for my entrepreneurship.

2:05:15And it's like, dude, I was so young starting this journey that I couldn't walk in as some like ungroomed fat 25 year old, why would anyone take me seriously? I didn't even have like a product that was really scaling it. So it's like, if I wanted to enter a room and demand respect, I had to at least beat that more successful person in fitness and in health and have something over them. Right. So I think it got me a long way in terms of like the, the initial reaction that people would give me when I would enter a room. And it's, it's, you know, I don't have as much time for it anymore or as, as much as I did, but it's still a huge passion of mine.

2:05:51You're doing okay here. Yeah, I'm not a huge I like some of this stuff for Mosey His advice always younger people is just get jacked first And I wish I would have started earlier to have better muscle memory because I had to put in like a long A long time. Yeah, in like my early 30s to just get a base. So starting early is definitely worth it Dude getting jacked as your first goal. It doesn't take that long and I think that's great advice I'm also going back to like pride has ruined the greatest men. I know science is fucking awesome these days and there's a lot of guys that are afraid to hop on TRT or afraid to hop on the peptides or afraid to use the best supplements.

2:06:25And it's like, these things are fucking awesome now. Like I want to feel so fucking good every day. And science is allowing that. It's been, it's been incredible. What's some secret sauce? Give us a secret peptide. Dude, I run my TRT as you know, anyone else can. I had to come off to have the baby, which was miserable, but I love, love my TRT. And then dude, I'll take BPC, BPC 157, MOTC. I'll take TA1 for my immune system sometimes kind of overreacts to some foods. I don't know. I'll dabble with whatever is kind of like, you know, my goals at the time, but I'm always changing them up. I don't like run the same thing forever.

2:06:59Personal question for me. I was thinking about potentially going like a little microdose on test, but then I'm going to have to around the corner. I'm going to have babies freeze that shit freeze first and then just rock with test dude freeze sperm or my wife and I ended up needing to do IVF, which is really cool. Cause now we have like more embryos frozen that are already fertilized. But what we did when our baby was born was we took her placenta and I ran it out of the hospital to my executive assistant in the parking lot at 2am in the morning. And she gave it to a courier who drove it to Houston and brought it to like this stem cell exosome lab.

2:07:34And now we have a Creo freezer, which also has my sperm just in case, but a creole freezer full of like top tier DNA one-to-one match stem cells and exosomes that we've been able to get like IV drips. I'll like put it in my hair to make sure my hair is not falling out. Like I'll vape that shit. Like it's, it's pretty crazy, bro. Yeah. The stem cells are cool. How bad was the come down on having to get off test to do that? And what was that window? And could you like fully not function? Like, what was it like? This is for the guys out there. This is some, this is some free game. It was eight to 12 months.

2:08:07and the general protocols you come off for me, for us to have a baby, right? I was able to get the sperm back probably in four to six months at a quality level. And by the way, like when you don't have sperm, like you're still like, you're still ejaculating. You know what I mean? Like, so you don't know if you don't have sperm. It's not like you're just like dry busting. I just took a sperm test. It's a company called Fellow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've done fucking six months. Shout out Fellow, baby. That's a good one. Yeah. Which, you know, hilarious, you know, transactional jerk off that you get to go experience.

2:08:37But it took probably four to six months to get the quality sperm back. Because I had zero, right, when I was running tests. And then the protocol that's generally given to people is cheap. And it's easy and it works. It's HCG and Clomid. That's what every doctor gives you. I was able to get kind of this new, more expensive trial thing called RFSH. And then I paired that with the HCG. I didn't do Clomid. And, dude, my test was still like... 750. Like, my test was fine. It felt like more volatile. Yeah, it felt like more, I mean, now I'm like, you know, over 1500. Are you serious? Yeah, I'll keep it high, bro.

2:09:17Damn. I'll keep it high. But the, the, the volatility was definitely there. Like, it didn't feel like I was taking testosterone, but like, I didn't feel like total dog shit. You know? Yeah, so check out RFSH. I think that's what it's called.

2:09:35Yeah. I think there are more than enough women in the world for Bloom to continue growing indefinitely. I think, again, like the women of the household are the real trendsetters for like, you know, their male spouses, let's say. I always feel like the best brands can speak to somebody specifically. And so we had always launched with very niche community products and then slowly gotten wider and wider and wider. But I don't want to have a brand that's, if you speak to everybody, you don't speak to anybody. You don't speak to everybody. You don't speak to everybody. And so I want a product that is always authentically speaking to a specific person in society.

2:10:13And at this point, Bloom is to the size where I, that's almost all women. But I think it would be a disservice to the brand and hurt our growth if I started to speak to men and women. Our growth if I started. Yeah, I'm an open book with all this shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Our growth if I start.

2:10:38oh, oh, I have two things that I check on a regular basis. One is Amazon BSR lists, right? Like Amazon is a barometer for US demand. And if you can check the different categories or the larger, the subcategories or the mass categories, like all of health and household on Amazon and see every day, what is the top 100 products? And you're curious about opportunities that exist, like the top 100 products on Amazon BSR is free and a wealth of knowledge. Like you can see live time. What is trending on Amazon? Huge, huge, huge G code. Second G code would be Google Trends. Most underrated free tool that exists is you can see live time across the last decade or across the last 24 hours.

2:11:22Somebody's somebody's or some things search volume. So I can either go look at what, you know, how much is gut health still trending. I can see how much is collagen trending. I can also see how much is a celebrity trending or an influencer trending. Are they trending upward? If I were to look up, are they open residency and like, you know, see the hockey stick that exists? Are they right? So if I wanted to buy ad space on your show and I could just see it's been consistently up into the right, are they bet on this show and sign a six-month contract or a 12-month contract or whatever that are they let's do it

2:12:00but yeah google trends and amazon bsr are two free and amazing tools that i tap into every day

2:12:14first of all my wife's like my my biggest support system she's the goat but if she just thinks that my post style is waxed, she'll be like, Greg, this is a horrible post underneath the post. Like, are you really posting a screenshot of an email on your Instagram right now? Right? So I feel like sometimes I'm operating as like a, you know, like a 56 year old using Instagram, but based off of the feedback that she gives me, but yeah, she'll rust the hell out of me in the comment section. But I'm not, I'm not, until this personal brand, I wasn't a user of these platforms. Like I don't, I don't even really open TikTok.

2:12:49Now I do because of TikTok shop and I'm like kind of getting active with the affiliates, but like I'm not really that big of a consumer. I'm like, I'm kind of obsessed with not being a shark in a pond. And to me, that means almost like when I was in Boulder and I felt like I was really about to build something big and I didn't feel like a lot of the people that lived there had built something big. I was on track to become a shark in a pond. And you never want to find yourself a shark in the pond in the geography or region that you live in, in the social circle that you find yourself in, but even within like the media that you consume.

2:13:19Like if you're consuming content from shitheads and, you know, getting drunk in Miami at 2 a.m., that's going, you're going to be a shark in that pond of the media that you consume. And so I have been very careful about tailoring the media that I consume.

2:13:39All right, so he had lost one of our largest sales channels that existed within Bloom. It was a majority of our sales. And it was our biggest projected growth channel as well. We were let go from those doors. And it was the first time in the five-year run at that point of Bloom, four or five-year run of Bloom, where I felt like this was all about to implode. And we were preparing to do layoffs. We were two months into trying to figuring out all this shit. And we were probably one week within giving 50 % layoffs of the company and like probably needing to leave the headquarters that we were obsessed with.

2:14:18It was a shit show. I was working late nights in the Venice Beach headquarters every single night. I'm driving home at call at 8.30, 9 p.m. I'm in my dream car, which I had obviously bought prior to this shit show. McLaren 720S, fire shooting out of the back. It was my only car. And I pull up to this red light and I'm pulling hair out of my head. I'm the most stressed I've ever been in my entire life. And I look to my right and there's this like piece of shit, Toyota Corolla Domino's pizza delivery on the top of the roof windows I'm hearing music bumping from the car and like weed smoke is just billowing out and he's having the time of his life just like delivering these fucking pizzas and I'm like what the fuck am I doing wrong here like why what have I what life have I built that I'm this unhappy in this McLaren and I should just be delivering pizzas and smoking weed and having a blast on a Thursday night so I mean the next day was basically just like it's time to lock the fuck in and figure all of this out.

2:15:13And obviously that's one of the reasons why I became obsessed with diversifying to 50 ,000 doors and not relying on a key man risk anywhere. I'm obsessed with removing key man risks of anything. There's a reason this isn't called the Mari's supplements or Mari's energy drink. We didn't want something that was associated to her name. We don't ever want to just have one main influencer that we're relying on. We don't ever want to have one main sales channel that we're relying on. And so that was the day that really made me realize how sensitive this beast can be and how you need to hedge your bet.

2:15:54I'm trying to. So I've started reading books because I want my son to know that I can read. The Navalmanac is fucking life-changing. I'll try to pick that up every couple months. Shout out to Everything Naval Touches. is dude third grade reader right here third grade reader the second would be Rockefeller's letters to his son fucking awesome those are the two books that I find myself picking up regularly or at least the second would be and then my favorite podcast media guy right now that I've been trying to like listen to some more podcasts while I run is anything Ryan Holiday touches he's like that stoic guy he's based out of Austin Texas and just like an expert in all things stoicism and Marcus Aurelius and it sounds like you're into these historic leaders perhaps learning going back also to like just controlling my emotions and not letting them dictate my trajectory and keeping things as objective as possible without being a fucking psychopath with no feelings he has been a great inspiration for that leaders perhaps

2:17:01dang yeah for real that's fucking awesome i think one of the people that i think aren't getting enough flowers right now and it's incredibly talented out there i know he's been on your show and the episode was incredible is caleb caleb you know has built some of the biggest personal brands behind the scenes yeah he is just now starting his own personal brand and has left working with some of the big names he worked with prior to that so caleb ralston is just like the fucking man and posting insane value on a regular basis. He's an entrepreneur and a personal man. I would say another entrepreneur that I fuck with heavy is, I mean, shit, like Dom Icavone.

2:17:39I know he was just on the show. He's been a... Prior to that. He's one of those people where he's like, what's Dom like? And I'll just say he's one of us. You know what I mean? I don't need to say anything else. He's just another entrepreneur really out here fucking doing it. Again, someone who is a family man, but also killing it in business is somebody that I love surrounding myself with. And shit, the third would be, I got to name some of the youth would be the base to guys the base body works or base body

2:18:07that's funny

2:18:11yeah dude so their headquarters is the penthouse of the addition hotel and it is i think like 70 000 a month and that's just their office and and they just fly in content creators from around the world, not even the country to just help arbitrage. Dude, it's premium priced. Could you imagine being a fucking 19 year old and spending like$55 on shampoo? I don't know what their price is, but like, dude, I was using three in one. I was using whatever my roommate just had in the shower and I didn't tell him I was using it. I'll use a bar of soap on my hair when I was a kid. So it will get it done. Dude, for sure.

2:18:50So like that, that for just a, an up and coming brand, even though they're doing, you know, nine figures at this point. Yeah. Based is those, those kids just fire me up. Anytime I can also meet somebody who's doing better than me and clearly going harder than me. Holy shit. Like we were just in Miami with Dom and we had some cigars the night before. It probably ends at 11 PM. I go back to the room. I get to bed at midnight and I'm like, I'm going to beat everyone into this fucking hotel gym in the morning. I'm going to be down there at 630. I got down there at 630. Him and all his guys were 30 minutes into their workout.

2:19:20And I'm like, dude, fuck, you guys are richer than me. Like, why are you here before me? Like, am I getting soft right now? And so people that will just like question how hard you are pushing it in business, how many hours you are putting towards fatherhood and your relationship is like, those are the people that fire me up.

2:19:39Yeah, yeah.

2:19:44Dude, Caleb, Caleb shot me a text this morning. It was like, good luck on the pod because he's been advising me quite a bit on my personal brand and he's been, huge for us, just pointing us in the right direction. Nice. Dude, he's the first person that I ever paid, and this is before I knew him as a friend, who I paid to just come into Austin for a day and I said, just like, let me buy a day from you and just rip. And now I plan on doing that more because it was, it was an over-delivery on value.

2:20:18Yeah. Yeah. People will make sure you get your money's worth. Yeah.

2:20:28Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

2:20:39Dude, I think there's no reason why this couldn't be a billion dollar brand in the next three years. Like a billion dollar a year revenue brand in the next three years. I don't, I don't, I don't plan ahead. like I don't I have to now because some of our strategic partners like I'm already telling KDP what I'm thinking about for 2028 which is crazy for me but like I have goals in the future but I don't even like to think too much past like three months from now and earlier in my career it was like literally week to week so I'm not a I just I just continue to try to beat my previous day and we'll see where we end up but you know if I had to say something in the next two or three years Bloom will definitely be doing a million a billion a year

2:21:21on instagram i'm greg lav we're going extra crazy on the youtube right now which is also greg lav and yeah excited guys cool what's up guys if you guys got this far in the episode i would assume that you enjoyed it if you got any value it would mean the world if you hit the subscribe button give it a like post a comment tell a friend we could keep going bigger bigger guests bigger locations more value. See you in the next episode.