Kent Yoshimura - The TikTok Strategy That’s Printing MILLIONS right now

24:19I completely agree, man. I think so many people, you know, they're working hard, they're not working smart. And it's just all about buying your way into just finding that first thing and then just keep leveraging it. Yeah, because that one thing is going to do so much more for you than like thousands of hours that you're putting in just optimizing a meta ad. Where do you think the future of TikTok and performance is going to go? What would you say in the next 12 months? Do you think it's going to stay kind of how it is? I hope so. We'll see. You know, I was just at Congress last week talking with a bunch of congressmen to tell them that like TikTok has democratized the way people can make money and how entrepreneurs can reach new audiences.

24:57Now it's not being gated by some massive company like Meta where you have to spend to get money back to be able to reach for consumers. With TikTok, you could reach as many consumers as you want by spending as little or as much as you want as long as you make good content. Like, I think that's beautiful. But, you know, obviously these bigger players who are a pay-to-play model, who have a monopoly on all of your data because of the data compliance laws that came into place, like they have a stronghold on how businesses can scale. TikTok, I think is breaking that mold, which is beautiful. Yeah.

25:32I mean, it's so crazy to see. I mean, you have 16 and 17 year old kids making 20,$30 ,000 a month. It's absolutely nuts. Between TikTok and Twitch, those are the two ones that I'm seeing that I don't know much about Twitch. I'm just learning about TikTok now to be completely frank with you. And I think we're sorely missing out and this might be... Dude, you guys were crushed on TikTok. You have the licensing, you have the product, you have these cool things. Just having a creator be like, dude, this could get me... Imagine it's a frat boy. I'm just thinking of a hook right now. It's like a frat boy being like, this painting behind me got me all the chicks in college.

26:10Boom. My frat house became the coolest frat house because of this thing. And then it points to your channel. Talking about misconceptions there, for me, I've always heard, and we have tried, but quite frankly, we probably didn't try hard enough. I mean, we probably should take your advice on post. We've posted months in a row, but I would say not a year. Do you think that it has to be a low price point product to win on TikTok or can you have a higher price point? I mean, I think it's like anything, you know, if your ROAS pays off in a certain way, it doesn't matter. If you have a$700 product and you're spending$400 to get it, but it makes sense from a capital on COGS perspective, just scale that.

26:50Might have to give it another try. Okay, so we talked about paid. Let's look outside of paid for a second. We'll get into Shark Tank. We'll get into Rogan. I know you have an official partnership with Ioki. So let's just talk about anything and everything outside of paid that you guys are doing in marketing. We'd love to hear. Yeah, so I'm gonna take a step back and this is how we approach all partnerships and top of funnel and any activation play that we do in general. We get consumer insights. we get an understanding of where we over-index on a consumer group and then we dive deep into that and then we basically try to saturate through like tv uh player partnerships whatever let's talk about that where do you get those insights from so uh so we use things like meltwater which like consumer insights like a platform um that we pay a lot for uh epsilon is like another one and these platforms they they do what they look into they basically have a database like cambridge Analytica-style database of basically behaviors across the United States, consumer basket-sized data, things like that.

27:57Are they combining outside consumer data with your customer base? Exactly. So they basically take your consumer data, plug it into their system, get an understanding of whatever the statistics are on where you over-index and certain behavior types or not, and then they send you that sheet back. Man, the last episode, we've never used outside credit card data to understand their personas. This is another crazy one. What is like a minimum investment that you need to make into something like this meltwater for it to make sense? You said that it's expensive, but this seems like it's everything that you need.

28:29Yeah. I mean, there's a reason why data is so expensive, you know, because like if you could leverage data correctly, you can make all your money back. I don't know what the exact costs are. I know it's five figures slash six figures. So like$50 ,000,$75 ,000, someone could probably get this. Yeah, yeah. I would say so. But you need to have a big enough sample size, you know, to feed into the system. Interesting. So let's have you keep diving into that. So they come to you, they look at consumer trends from the outside, your customer base, what you're over-indexing on, what you're under-indexing on, and then what?

29:01And then we look at those partners. So let's say it's like running. So we're looking at a partnership with Strava right now because that just makes sense because we've over-indexed like crazy on runners and people that do running for like their hobby. Chess.com, people who play chess, like we don't necessarily over index on it but it's such uh adjacency in our brand so like what is our brand messaging and positioning where's our consumer sitting and then does it make sense from an activation standpoint where we could amplify it on tiktok or any other marketing channel that we push it into um steve aoki like you know he invested in us but then as we started doing better he like started leaning in a lot more and he's also like the coolest guy in the world.

29:41Hardest worker doesn't sleep, you know, cause he works his ass off every day. Most traveled musician in the world. That is a representation of our like brand messaging and positioning that fits perfectly with him as. If you guys have not listened to that documentary, watch that documentary. It's amazing. It's an amazing. He's a hustler. It's crazy. So, you know, he was a perfect partner for us and like he comes on board all the time. It's a, all these like fun things that we do. Um, I think all roads lead back to what I've noticed with you and we're, you know, you're an athlete, you're an entrepreneur, you're an artist.

30:15I think the core thing that I think with you is just, is, is discipline. And it seems as though you're very disciplined in nature where all roads are leading to this meltwater. And then every single decision is just funneled through this. It's focus. Yeah. Right. It's, it's, you can't focus if you don't understand what consumer to target. So with the consumer insights that you start off and every big company does this, start with the consumer insights, identify the three markets, let's say for us, like we identify the three markets that we want to target, that we want to invest X amount of dollars into.

30:42These are the people that resonate with our brand. Let's go all in on that. And they'll over-index on how much they spend on that. We focus on these consumer groups that make sense and we target them and we raise the bar. That's some great, great advice. So these partnerships, 100thieves and chess.com, I want to dive a little bit deeper into those specific partnerships. From a marketing deliverables perspective, you mentioned some sort of redirect traffic backed into TikTok, which is your best funnel. What else are you asking these guys to do that you've seen value? A lot of it is content. Content-based.

31:18You know, we'll be considered like an official partner if they have like games or something going on. A lot of the time, like, you know, there's a really, really big YouTube partnership that we're about to do with like, you know, I can't say it yet depending on when this airs, but like the biggest YouTuber in the world. Wow. Basically. We'll make a custom tin for him and packaging and we'll do donations to a charity of his choice, things like that. It's pretty robust. In any, whatever it is, it has to just fit our brand mantras, our core values and our brand messaging and positioning. Content is a big one, like interaction with the players, sampling at the events, all those things.

31:57Co-branded product? Co-branded product. What you're wearing right now, is that co-branded or is that just theirs? It's not co-branded, but they sent it to me and I love this jacket. I love it. You mentioned content. Let's dive into content. in-house, external creators, or a hybrid? Where do you guys create your content? It's a big discussion that we have every single day at the company. I used to own a creative agency, you know, back in the day. We used to build toys, like, that's still around. Like, I used to build toy stores, you know. We built the Sixth Collection for Fear of God. Like, so we did some really big experiential activations.

32:34Working and wrangling creators is incredibly hard. Talking about myself also. You know, like it's incredibly hard. And the bandwidth and resources that a marketing person needs to be able to manage creative in-house is going to take up so much of their time that sometimes it's worth just depending on an agency that knows how to do this incredibly well to do that for you. With that being said, if I could hire four full-time high-level managers to be able to do something like that for the same price as I'm paying an agency, does that make as much sense? You know, and it's really hard to say, like, this is just a business question in general.

33:16Like sometimes it's worth just getting someone from the outside so that you can get their inputs. And have you guys seen more success with UGC credit content or more of that like rich content? It's a combination of both, you know, like people need the credibility. People need high level content to know that a brand is real, especially if it's a consumable brand like ours. um so it could come from it it just needs to translate in the right way to the right demographic also production is expensive it is production is crazy expensive and then especially if you start hiring a team and they're running around and they're doing all this stuff it's like speed is more important speed and quantity is way more important than quality in this day and age like people are flipping through their phones like through content like millions of pieces content on a daily basis, you know, like you just invested half a million dollars into really nice content that's not performing, just wasted, just wasted a shitload of time, you know, like, that's where it doesn't really make sense to like, we're thinking about it.

34:14And we're thinking through it because like streaming TV, you know, connected TV, like all those things are still pretty big. But like, there is an inflection point where you do switch over, I think. But right now, quantity, speed, hooks, all the things that are working and resonating and then optimizing on that and making that maybe a little bit prettier. What do you think has been the hardest part about scaling your marketing department? Content. Speaking of content, it's content. Yeah. Always. Makes sense. How are you guys looking at AI in relation to content? I'm curious. Yeah, I mean, we use it here and there in the business.

34:55But it's really obvious that AI still can't capture that really human interaction. And if you watch any of our creator videos, it feels so personal. A lot of it feels really raw in a way. And in this day and age of AI, people almost look for that knowing that AI content is everywhere. even if you look at the comment section you know because i know a few friends that um all uh like dead internet theory they have basically comment bots that help them boost up their rankings and their comments and like try to build sentiments around certain uh ads that they push out like that's people are cashing on to that you know and that level of dishonesty that maybe ai is presenting i think it's going to change really really rapidly don't get me wrong but But as of now, it still feels like that rawness, the mistakes that humans make, like all those things AI doesn't have.

35:55And people catch on to that in like a subconscious way. I completely agree. I think that, I think it's coming soon. I think we're like six to 18 months away from content really being able to harness AI. But all these tools that I've used so far, they're so, they'll sell us on six different things they can do and like one or two of them work. It's a little too manicured, you know? Yeah, and at best case, it'll get you, I think, 80 % down the field and you have to spend resources to optimize it. What's crazy is like 10 years ago when we started, this is obviously, it wasn't even like a talking point then, but when we launched, we blew up on Indiegogo and raised like, blew up, we raised like$15 ,000 in three days on Indiegogo when we launched, you know, as a Kickstarter.

36:37the post I made when I was reaching out to all these PR companies and publications I purposefully put in a typo so that they would recognize the typo and they would respond back to me knowing that I wasn't like just a mass email like people see that stuff you know what I mean? like people want to feel like there's this real human interaction and that you put in the effort to do something that's a nice hack I like that it was intentional yeah but if you're hiring someone for a marketing role. I think generalists in nature are so much, there's so much demand for that. What would you say is the most important kind of key attribute to be a good marketer in this now, day and age?

37:17That's such a tough question. And it's funny because my understanding of marketing has evolved so much in these last three years. Because there's the marketer that comes from the traditional background of big CPG. They know how to organize things very well. They have their roadmaps, they have their campaign planning and everything. But you could plan as much as you want and strategize as much as you want. But if your core messaging and positioning isn't resonating with the consumer, then all that is for naught. But then there's the growth side of things where this guy has zero organization maybe, but they're so good at testing hooks.

37:51They're so good at being rapid at like seeing what works and what doesn't that you need those two brains to come together. So I don't think marketing is any longer a one-person job. It is an amalgamation of like different qualities of approaches coming together and then building the strategy on it, being able to move quickly, campaign planning, roadmapping, doing all those things like synergistically. So it's an organization more than a person. For the person out there listening, I'd love to know, let's just say zero to a hundred million dollars in annual revenue. till what point do you only need that guy that can just go fast?

38:36When do you need to bring in that organized CPG high level? Zero to 20, I think you need the fast guy. Zero to 20, you need the guy that's just constantly testing and is like addicted to that dopamine hit of growing your business. So you're basically telling everybody out there, if you're just a young scrapper, generalist marker, you can edit videos on Capcom. Do you understand I know how to use TikTok? You can probably do$20 million in this day. Yeah, absolutely. Like, don't think, just do. like just go do it and then once you got it figured out now you have an understanding of your brand that big cpg person comes in which like you know we had that big cpg from talking rain person our vp of brand that's now coming in and also jim murray who's like a executive advisor who came he was the ceo of feastables he him coming in and then laying out the structure the framework everything together with this person so that now we're literally going viral every single day.

39:25We have these big activations happening on a quarterly basis. Now we have things to feed and everyone knows how to run tightly. I love it. We're going to hop out of business and then jump back into business the whole entire second half of the podcast. As I mentioned before, athlete, entrepreneur, artist, I think there's a lot to be said about discipline and kind of mental makeup there. I saw you did this Masogi, this 4x4x48 Masogi that David Goggins has popularized. I'd love to know why you did that and what did it teach you about mental toughness? Yeah, honestly, the 4x4x48 was actually not that hard.

40:04It was just funny enough. I did it with a group of friends because you're just running four miles every four hours for 48 hours. And yeah, it sounds hard and it's a lot of miles, but I did that on a Yosemite run with 7 ,000 feet elevation last year. in one go. And this year, I'm going to do the Grand Canyon run, 11 ,000 feet elevation, 48 miles down, up, down, up in October. I'm doing it on May 6th. You're doing the rim-to-rim-to-rim? Rim-to-rim May 6th, yeah. No. Are you running it? I swear to God. I have two different options right now. I can run it with a group of psychos the week before or on May 6th with Payman and Matt Happy and those guys.

40:41And they're doing two days. Have you been training? I've been training. I started training. I'm deciding in four weeks which route I want to go. I need to understand and know. I need to make an educated decision beforehand on which one is a safe route because I did hear it's fairly dangerous. Yeah, I mean, doing... Because you're going to be exhausted the entire way back. You know? But anyone can run an endurance race, in my opinion, but it's all mental fortitude. Like David Goggins, whatever you think about him, I think he's a little too intense and doesn't put a lot of thought into the things he does, but he's still incredibly inspiring because he did like a 100 mile race with zero training because he was like, I'm just going to do that thing.

41:24And you could do it and you could blow out your knees and your cartilages and everything, but you could still do it if you have the will to do it. And so for us with the Misogi, we're not telling our employees to hurt themselves, obviously, but we're paying for whatever it is that they feel is going to impact the other 364 days of their year. Because I think it's incredibly important for someone to push themselves at least once in a year like my buddy Ken Rideout. Do you know who that is? Yeah, he's the man. He breaks a PR every single year since he was 35 and he's like 50 something now, you know?

41:59And that's his mindset where he's like going in and he's like, I'm going to get better every single year and I'm going to do that one thing that's going to make me better every single year. Same mentality with Misogi. Is there something that someone on our team can do that is going to make them better so that it comes back and it makes our team even stronger than before. So I didn't even know that. Is this something that you encourage every single one of your team members to do? Every January 1st, I mentioned it to the entire team. It's like, what's everyone's Miss Hoagie? Go do it. And some people are like, I'm going to read 50 books this year.

42:28Like our social media manager read 48 books last year. I was like, holy crap, that's crazy. That's so much knowledge he just took in. Like one of them made a, like an album, you know, like a music album. And like, we fully supported it. You know, I went and ran, you know, like there's so many things that like people are doing that are elevating themselves and translates back into the culture of the company. Yeah. I think you as a leader, uh, doing these ultra marathons and these misogies is obviously a huge way to kind of motivate and inspire the team. Um, I'd love to understand and know more about the ultra marathons.

42:58I've ran tons of half marathons, 20 miles, a couple of times. Uh, I'm jumping right into this rim to rim to rim. Um, but I would love to know, uh, why did you choose to do these ultra marathons and what's specific on ultra marathons? what's the biggest thing you get out of them? So I used to hate running because I grew up as a martial artist, you know, so I was training with the Judo Olympic team out in Japan. I was fighting in Thailand, like growing up, you know, since I was like 16, like I'd be flying out of Thailand in Japan to train. And it was interesting because I hated running during that time because I felt runs where I don't listen to music and I'm just running for hours on end just consolidating all my thoughts together gives you a much deeper understanding of who you are and what you need to do that you could take back to everything else in your life there's one day that I just remember I got up and I was like my I think my car got broken into like multiple times I had like my insurance dropped me my art studio burned down completely um and then it was like COVID so I think during that time i was like damn i just went on a run to just consolidate my thoughts together i think i ran like eight miles i felt great and then since then like i use it as active meditation for myself and just keep extending it longer and longer and longer for some reason what's the longest run you've done um well hopefully this 48 mile is going to be the longest but um 36 miles early on I was uh trying to gun for speed more than distance because I felt like it was like for my ego you know when you go fast it's like a ego thing it's like look how fast I can run look how fast I could do this thing and when I stepped away from thinking like that and thinking about just running as this again this active meditation process it just resonated a lot better with who I am as an individual and as a, as a leader, as a person who could speak more clearly as a person that has more confidence and, you know, especially with like the endurance component and entrepreneurship is definitely not a race.

45:12You know, I've been at this for 10 years. I've had multiple other failed ventures like prior to this, but through everything, I still maintain the enthusiasm to keep going forward until I reached that level of success that maybe I'm gunning for, which I don't think I ever will, frankly, because I just love building and doing stuff. But, you know, there's something enjoyable every single mile, like as you run. And then, you know, my goal is in two, three years to do Bentonville, the 100 mile. And ironically through that, I would imagine you probably got faster when you stopped thinking about going.

45:47Oh yeah, and just do it. Yeah, yeah. So do the 100 miler and then see what's next. So love it. Let's get into some culture and hiring. I had never heard about this book that you spoke about a couple of times on the internet. It's called Who? Oh yeah. The A-Method for Hiring. So Who, the A-Method of Hiring. How did that change your team building approach? So that book was recommended to me by the co-founder of RxBar, who built an incredible, incredible team, Jared Smith. He's also an investor in our business. But in the past, I think I was looking at hiring in a non-structured way. I was like, oh, does this guy or girl like fit the vibe check?

46:26You know, do they have the qualifications? And someone could have a good resume, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're a culture fit. Someone could be a culture fit, but that doesn't mean that they have the skill sets to be able to excel in your business. And what Who lays out is a scorecard method across the board to build a hiring process. So you have a deep understanding, not just from yourself, but other teammates that are going to work adjacent with that person to hire the best person possible to fit into your organization. And is this an operating system or is it just like a checklist of different things that you do?

47:02It's an operating system. We have an incredible recruiter named Kyle Kelly that I can't recommend enough. If you're a business owner, Kyle Kelly is the biggest hack that we have as a recruiter. So he'll go through the first stage process of finding someone that fits our criteria, our job description, our culture, everything that we feed to him. So it's usually like three or four people that he identifies. And then from there, we have an understanding of the gates that this person has to pass through before interviewing with me for the hire. Let's unpack that a bit more. What does that actually look like from a tangible perspective?

47:34So we usually give them a homework assignment. So for example, we just hired a retail trade marketing person. That person had this homework assignment for the, we're entering into 2 ,400 KC stores in the Midwest. How are you going to activate it? Tell us a little bit about yourself and your personality. How are you going inject that personality into marketing and retail and then give us a little bit of your background to give us an understanding of that approach as well so it's a comprehensive view and then they you know the person we're hiring gave us the best slide deck because it started off with this is who i am as an individual like you know i love dancing like i love traveling um i'm going to paris like whatever at this time and i like and this is what i learned at red bull she works at Red Bull right now.

48:17And then she's joining us next week. And then from there, these are my learnings from Red Bull that I will translate into C-stores. And this is what you guys have right now that I could merge to make it work. And this is like a second interview that this person's coming to us with because we fed them the homework, exactly what we wanted to look from them. And then they just exceeded everything that we asked from them. So this is isolated. who is the individual, what are their traits. On the other side, it's this is the exact job description. And then finding that hedge in the middle that says, hey, this is what I learned from my past job and how I'm going to bring it into this job specifically with the homework assignment that you gave them.

48:58That's exactly it. Wow. And you're saying first they have the homework assignment and the job description. He is then going to market and finding all these people that he thinks fits. Yep. Then they do the homework assignment. And then if you like what they say, they get to you. Yeah. I mean, some people come without doing the homework assignment and we're like, all right, well, we're not going to hire you. It's like, we want people that want to work with us. We want people that pass the vibe check across whoever their adjacent people they're going to be working with is before they reach me. And then finally, when they reach me, it's all about core values.

49:31What are your core values? How do you identify with each of these core values in your own life. And then like, how are you going to embody it when you join our company? That's amazing. And you're talking about who that person is going to work adjacent to them in the company. Are you saying other people outside of you and the recruiter are involved in this process? Yeah. So it's like for this retail trade marketing person that we just hired, Eliana. She interviewed originally with our senior financial analyst who we got from Celsius, one of the best people in our company. And then Jeff, our VP of retail sales.

50:04So they're coming at it from a sales perspective. So they understand that whether or not she understands retail data, how to talk the talk, the vocabulary of retail and so on and so forth. Then she talks to our brand team, VP of brand, because she needs to work with the marketing teams. So the adjacent sees, that's when she presents her homework assignment. And then finally she comes to me where I just talk about core values. Wow. So if you're hiring anybody, anybody that they would be reporting to, you want to get their POV on the specific homework assignment to understand and see if they know it from all different angles.

50:35And honestly, like our hiring process, I think could be faster, but it's so much better to take your time. It's like dating or getting married, right? Like it's better to like take your time finding the right person than like jumping in and finding someone that just fits the role. Yeah, we've also seen on here hire slow is definitely the advice that we've heard from most people. Dude, it's so worth it. at the end of the day. One of our strategies on a page, which is like a big thing we do at the very beginning of the year, are annual soaps. 98 % retention of employees every year is our goal. So we want to make sure people don't leave.

51:14We want to keep our employees as much as possible because we go through such a rigorous hiring process that we know they're a right fit when they come in, not find that out later. This is an amazing book and an amazing advice for any entrepreneur out there. what you're saying right now, I've never heard of this book. I definitely don't do the things that you're talking about right now. And I would have guessed that it had to be above 90 % your retention rate because they're going through the ringer. Dude, no one's left our company in the last three years. It's crazy. Like every single person works so well together and our culture is so good.

51:47And like we even do stuff where like our integrated brain manager, Monica's getting married in May, right? We did a surprise bachelorette party for her at Expo West and we all went to Disneyland together as a team. Like stuff like that too, right? Like that our VP of brand just planned on her own to like surprise her with. It's like... The fact that that's not in your programming and she or he did that on their own, that means you have someone good. It's incredible. So the number one complaint I hear from most entrepreneurs is just like, I hate our CMO or I hate that. Like you hear that all the time, right?

52:21It's just like, man, like this person is just not working. Like I don't get... It's like you either cultivate and let that person grow because you hired them for a reason or you hired wrong. There's only two options there. It's either you or it's usually not them unless you hired incorrectly, then it is them. Do you believe more in clearly defined structure and roles or more of like fluidity in the organization? So one of our soaps, going back to that, is organizational fluidity. So how are we all additive to each other? And I was actually going to do a talk at YPO next week about this, but the event got canceled.

52:55So I could do the talk now. So I'm a firm believer in organizational fluidity. So how are we additive to each other than being rigid in our roles so that all of us could be cross-departmental in a certain way? If you are a digital marketing person and don't know anything about retail, but retail makes up 20 % of our business, then you only understand 80 % of our business. That's a big gap. So how are digital marketing efforts translating now more effectively into retail marketing efforts and how is retail brand awareness translating into digital ROAS efficiencies? That's being additive to each other.

53:33And I think a lot of organizations become so rigid in their four pillar system of operations, marketing, people, and finance that it starts breaking apart at a certain point. And for us, it's scalability. Like every employee in our company generates over a million dollars in revenue a year, right? it's like you do that through being additive to each other. What type of programming do you do to make sure people understand and know what's going on in different departments? Is it just a cadence of, hey, make sure you're talking to the whole entire team? Is it a weekly standup? How does that look?

54:06Yeah, there's a combination of weekly standups. So we have key priorities. The way we do our leadership meetings, like it's usually really short, 15 minutes, stand up every Monday. We have key priorities. So our four key priorities or this, this, this, and this. What is every single department doing to funnel up to those key priorities? So it's not updates from each department, you know? I'm like, what are you guys doing? What's working and what's not? Every single department lead has to funnel up to those four key priorities that the entire company's focused on. And as far as those four key priorities, I mean, three of them could be in one department.

54:39And that's what you're saying right now is you're going to want all departments leading into just the priorities that are important. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't matter. I mean, TikTok success is one of them, But TikTok success is also TikTok success, depending on region, like driving people to retail. Like it could be something like that. Or C-store success could be driving brand awareness in a region where the TikTok demographics are more concentrated. Like it starts overlapping, right? In different ways. What do you think is the secret to retaining the top talent? I mean, it's a pretty general answer, but like culture, you know?

55:15People, culture, not being afraid of conflict. If something's not working, someone brings it up. And I think one of the biggest issues, and you see this in a lot of organizations, someone will see that something's wrong, but because they're afraid of getting reprimanded, they don't say anything. Every person listens to each other. And even if it's incorrect, it's a learning or growing experience. It's funny you say that because my core values and then D with ghost core values, his was a radical candor. Ours is radical transparency. It's the same exact thing. That's exactly it. Yeah, I mean. Yeah, we call it servant mindset.

55:50Yeah, you should be taking advice from anybody and just have no ego attached to it. What is one question you ask in an interview that reveals the most about a candidate? If you had to pick one question. Dang, that's good.

56:07You know, one question I always ask is just, I don't think this reveals a lot, but like, what do you do for fun? And, you know, I ask that every single time. And the answer they give, if it's boring, I'll be like, no, no, no. Like, give me a good answer. I'll try to like push them to give me a better answer than them being like, oh, you know, I like playing video games or whatever it is. And then usually they'll start diving into like something a lot more interesting about themselves. And then you unpack it. It's pretty simple, but getting an understanding of their personal life, what they truly enjoy is something that's usually not the case with work, right?

56:44Like you're not doing your enjoyable thing that you're passionate about, like for most people. So getting an understanding of that allows us to, I think, translate it into a little bit of the company, like another additive piece into the company. Love it. All right. So we're going to do this podcast a little differently now. I just have tons and tons of business questions that I'm just going to fire away at you. We usually start in the beginning with this, but we're going to do it now. So I guess let's just start with a question that usually I ask first, but we're going to ask it now and get into it.

57:14So what was the original inspiration behind NeuroGum? And was there a specific moment that sparked the idea? When I was training incredibly hard during college, you know, I was training like six to eight hours a day. It was training then school. I was studying neuroscience and I was looking for an option that would give me the mental energy to do both. And I got really deep into the world of nootropics. So I started buying paracetam from websites like Hard Rhino, which I don't think even exists now, on the black market. You know, I remember I had, oh my gosh, I remember buying things on Silk Road through my friends who knew how to use Bitcoin for like half a Bitcoin back then.

57:56like, or whatever it was. I don't even remember, but I just remember talking to my friend David and being like, dude, that was like the most expensive like oxyracetam that I've ever bought in my life. That was like probably worth a million dollars now. I was mixing those things in my room, taking them, realizing that they were working incredibly well because I didn't want to take Monster or Red Bull and you could talk to any athlete. No one's drinking energy drinks if you're training at a professional level to go out and train or like exercise. And it was either that or no explode. You know, that was out like - God, no explode.

58:27Yeah. Guys, for people listening, that was, that is steroids. I remember in college, people were taking, these guys were huge. Yeah. Every single person, it was no explode. It was no explode. I'm like, dude, you're not taking that though. You need to last for six to eight hours of training. You're doing that for a one hour gym pump session, but for a professional athlete, first of all, half those ingredients are banned now. So nootropics were something that legitimately I felt changed my life. I was like, wow, now I have the mental capacity to be able to do and the mental fortitude to be able to push through training and to push through school.

59:01And then when my co-founder, Ryan, who, you know, was one of my closest friends in college, I met him his freshman year. He was a cross country and track athlete. Captain his cross country and track team at Arcadia who went to nationals. He was running like a 420 mile or something. Insane. His sophomore year, he got in a really bad snowboarding accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. So he's in a wheelchair now. I was giving him these nootropics to get him back into the groove of school, get him back into the groove of, you know, like just life in general from this catastrophic injury that he just experienced.

59:36And he was like, you know what? I want to go scuba diving. I want to like, cause I don't need my legs for that. On a scuba diving trip, we were taking these pills and looking around, I realized that the accessibility of scuba diving and creating the accessibility for these things that really impact our life in a positive way can be done better. And so what's more accessible and shareable than gum and mints? And no one else is doing that. So we decided to put these ingredients in the gum and mints and like the rest is history. Context, when was this, when you guys started? 10 years ago. So 2015.

1:00:13And this was when nootropics, people didn't even know what nootropics were. Yeah, I feel like it would be like in a subreddit where like random people would be talking about it and building like an underground. So the post we made when we launched our gum, the reason we raised so much money so quickly on Indiegogo is I was one of the biggest contributors on our nootropics like 12 years ago, 10 to 12 years ago. And that's where I was testing and asking all the questions and it was a small group of us. And I remember I made a post that said, hey guys, we just launched the first nootropic gum ever.

1:00:47It became the number one post on our nootropics. It's probably like in the top 10 now, but it's like, it's the number one post on our nootropics at that time. And just that traffic flooded into our Indiegogo. People were willing to buy a bunch of like these$20 packs. And that was our first amount of capital to build our business. For initial context too, I know, but I don't know. what exactly is a nootropic? It's anything that gives you cognitive benefit without side effects, ideally without side effects. You know, so people talk about like... Like mud water. Yeah, like mud water or like reishi, which is a combination of different cordyceps and mushrooms, right?

1:01:23But, and Shane's a great guy, but a lot of people will look at like, oh, it's Adderall, you know, for example, a nootropic. And it gives you those focus benefits, but the side effects are so detrimental to your health that it's something that you can't take every single day versus something like a coffee is naturally a nootropic, but you get the crash afterwards. When you add caffeine to L-theanine, which promotes alpha waves and reduces anxieties, it eliminates a lot of the jitters and the side effects of caffeine, which is why it's a staple nootropic that a lot of people use, which is the main ingredient in our energy and focus product.

1:02:00Yeah. You guys timed this perfectly. I feel like the CAGR on nootropics in general, it's so early. You think this is so early, correct? It's crazy. You could even see on the Google Trends where nootropics start picking up. What has been the biggest challenge when developing a functional gum or a mint compared to a typical supplement? The greatest thing about our company, we have a patented way we make our product. Most gum is made in a heat-extruded way. They basically get the gum base, they put the ingredients in, and they run it through heat so that it melts together, and then they cut these little chiclets up.

1:02:31That's almost all gum in the world. we have a patented way we make it because we have a mom and pop manufacturer that produces our product for us that we found because most gum manufacturers in the u.s is owned by one the biggest gum camaraderie in the world um and we didn't want to deal with them so as a benefit we use cold compression so we use a lot of pressure to pump ingredients into the products so that there's no degradation via heat with that being said while we have that moat we have a capacity constraint issue that we sometimes run into because this is the only person in the world that can make our products.

1:03:11And this manufacturer that's vertically integrated with us now is the only manufacturing system that can make our product as effectively as we do. We can only build capacity as much as our business scales. Is that the biggest problem you're dealing with right now? Is that? Absolutely. It's a good problem to have, you know, but it's, you know, it's. Sounds like a good problem. When creating a new product, what do you think matters more? Flavor, function, or branding? We always say flavor is king. Flavor is king. And then from there, fine-tune your ingredients. Obviously, we're sold in Whole Foods, Erewhon, so all of our ingredients are incredibly clean.

1:03:44But that was an iterative process. Our first product tasted like absolute garbage. And I remember the function people loved and people will chew through it. But there's a great book called Crossing the Chasm. And you could get this first initial group of biohackers. But if you really want to cross the chasm into mainstream, there needs to be a much more approachable way that you attract these customers. And for a consumable product, that's flavor. You have to have a good tasting product that people are willing to chew all the time because that's their first impression. Yeah, that's Peter Rahal, the other guy from our experience.

1:04:19That's Flavor 101. I found very, very interesting. You once had a product that was making money but decided to shut it down, a move that most entrepreneurs would not make. What led to that decision and what did you learn from it? So it's a combination of a few things. So there's something called skew rationalization in the CPG world. If you have a CPG business, there's only so much capacity that you have on your line. And with cogs and holding inventory, that's just assets on hand. And if you're not selling through as quickly as you think you can, or if it's not selling through as quickly as other products, then you're just sitting on cash as a liability that you can't pump into any other part of your business.

1:04:58So that's one component. Having this product that's health and vitality that was actually doing pretty well, we had a pretty good subscriber base with it because it was a daily multivitamin product, but it just wasn't selling through as fast as our energy and focus. So it was taking a blind. Making that decision where we free up cash, increase capacity on this so we could pump more marketing and going back to that theme of focus, focusing on what works, I think did wonders to our business. And we continue to do this idea of skew rationalization is something our ops team does constantly. It's so funny you say that because even if you're doing a single unit dropship, which we're doing, I admire you so much for that because it's so hard to just shut something off versus just leave it there.

1:05:44Don't put resources in. And you almost think it's just free money. It's just free LTV. But ultimately it is owning mindshare in the potential consumer's brain, no matter what you think. It's still a distraction unless you're using it psychologically where it's just like, oh, for 10 more dollars, I could get this product and maybe there's like a pricing psychology there. If it's not that, then it's a distraction to what you're actually trying to sell. Yeah. Deep and narrow, not wide and shallow. I'm with you on that one. What would you say is the secret to standing out in a crowded supplement and wellness market?

1:06:17Unique form factor is one thing that we were able to crack. price point is another thing. Going back to consumer insights, one thing with our packaging, on the top of this, if you see the packaging on the desk, it goes from energy and focus, which is our old packaging, to this new one that says, caffeine gum for sustained energy and elevated focus. Being bold about exactly what the consumer wants on your packaging is so important. And so many companies will go in and they have this beautiful branding, but you have no idea what it does. A retail buyer is going to walk around. They're going to see a million products and your product will look good.

1:06:59But if it's not resonating with the thing that they want, they're going to walk past it immediately. For us, they're going to see this. They're going to see caffeine gum bolted. Boom. They need energy. They're going to buy it as an impulse purchase. I like this. It's direct response. I mean, it's saying - It's direct response. Yeah. Take from digital. It's the same thing. I love that. What would you say is one branding decision that significantly changed Neurostrajectory? bold colors. So working with Herman Shearer, do you know Chapin and those boys? I don't. Great guys. So they did our branding for us.

1:07:28We actually ended up winning a Adobe award for the packaging. And we went from this like really shiny white, like it looked really clean packaging to these bold colors so that those colors can stand out on retail. And that changed everything. Formally, what color were you guys? It was just white. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was white and it had our text and everything, but like it just got lost. You know, there's a reason McDonald's is yellow and red. There's a reason these big company like Coca-Cola is red, Pepsi is blue and red. There's a reason there's color psychology that people study in retail branding.

1:08:02That changed, translated to, you know, better sales and retail, better exposure, better visibility, better brand awareness, all of the above. For those guys listening, not watching, it's a red and a green, no more white. What would you say is one underrated thing about brand building that entrepreneurs need to prioritize more? Messaging and positioning. I think a lot of people are like, we're going to try to sell to everyone because this is a product that translates to everyone. That's how we were the first three years of our business. We're like, energy gum, man, everyone could take this. But once we fine tune it to, hey, our name is Neuro, so it has to be about the mind.

1:08:38Let's go back to our roots in nootropics and talk about us as like a cognitively beneficial product, more than just like a pure energy product, which is why we have energy and focus on there. We realized that our consumers were resonating more with the focus component, which is why on our new packaging also sustained energy and elevated focus, diving in and focusing, staying narrow and deep, you know, is so important than trying to capture the masses. Find your cohort and expand from there versus the other way around. I think that's so interesting. I don't know if you know who Zach Pogreb is. He's a good friend to my Long Island guy.

1:09:15He's owning the word obsession. He's very big on Twitter. He's building out an app that's like a bolt-on to like a Strava. But it's so interesting you say that because the word focus, I actually think energy is a very saturated market. Focus, I can't think of one. I think about it. We have a couple of iconic pieces that have the word focus and then they do well. It's ironic, but I think that that's brilliant because you just don't see that. I've never seen the word focus on a package in a store before. Yeah. Yeah. But you killed it with that one, bro. You killed it with that. That's a good one.

1:09:49How late in the game did you figure that one out? That's a good one. Yeah, like three years in. That was three years in. But you know, we're talking about like things that changed the brand. That was an inflection point for sure. That's huge. All right, let's go a little bit into retail strategy and sales. I think it would be incredibly valuable for the listeners to hear a full arc of how NeuroGum has approached retail. can you walk us through like a high level journey of year over year growth number of doors key retail accounts and i know we're going on year 10 with iconic 10 it's a lot has happened so it might be a little a little uh a little all over the place but i would love to know okay year one you're in zero stores you can take it from there let's hear let's hear year one purely d to c i think we did like 700 something k that first year you know year two double growth double growth like We were constantly on this double growth trajectory until these last two years.

1:10:39It was like 3x, 3x. We just elevated 3x. I think we were last year like 3.5x or something. So there's crazy growth over the last three years. And to give people context real quick, from year one through year six, your two inflection points would probably be the Shark Tank, which is that piece of leverage. And then Rogan just ran. Rogan did way more than Shark Tank. It was crazy. Way more than Shark Tank. His first time he mentioned us, like he's like male oprah you know people listen to him and they're like oh my god i'm gonna buy that product that this guy's taking and so and it's crazy because like again i mentioned earlier rogan mentioned this yesterday on like episode like 2290 now you know and there's like his 20th time mentioning us if not more but we don't even see the blips anymore right like it sounds like first world problems first world problems don't even see it is crazy that like every time like he's so impactful and people listen to him still as the biggest podcaster in the world.

1:11:39But not until we learned how to capitalize on these blips with PR, creators, marketing, everything, did our business start seeing this more exponential growth. Because before we almost like depended on this PR to come in. We almost depended on like us to get Shark Tank. That's like betting on luck versus making your own luck, right? And so I know I'm not answering your question at all. No, we're going to get to that. Don't worry. at all. But like, and after that second Joe Rogan mention, we were just like, why are we not trying to build more PR opportunities? So do you know Jack Taylor? John Beer and those guys?

1:12:14John Beer, shout out, shout out. Legend, dude. I love that guy. I've known John Beer for probably 15 years now. I didn't know that. Most interesting man in the world. The most, uh, for people listening. I think it's a point we're bringing him on the podcast, bro. You have to. He's been a finalist for guys listening. He, uh, he owned and sold a ghost town. He's fully tatted. He's got gold teeth. Beautiful wife and kid. I don't even know how he's - You can't explain it. You have to bring him on the podcast, man. He's a mixed martial artist in some sense. I think he does jujitsu or something. He has been so early on health and wellness and fitness.

1:12:47And he's a great pure human. It's official. We're now talking about it on the podcast. It's official, guys. He's coming on. Bring him on. He represents us. He represents Athletic Greens. He represents Plunge. Every single big health and wellness brand you could think of, he represents. He's doing something new with Ken Rideout. So something. Yes. I think it's called Rideout. Ben Eld, Ken Rideout, and him and a few others, but sports oriented. So let's just say year one through year six, 700 ,000, then it's 1.436. It keeps going and going and going. What is the inflection point that you're now going apeshit?

1:13:20The inflection point now. So, you know, again, building your own opportunities? What are these things that are going to be pops? And focusing on those things that you feel are going to be pops so you could... For us, obviously, it's feeding into the TikTok trader ecosystem. But for any other brand, you have a consumer base. If you've been selling product, you have a consumer base that's going to love your product and talk about it. How do you utilize that group of people, your community, to amplify whatever it is that you're doing? So find those moments. And for us now entering even deeper into retail, when we first started off, you know, I think we were in the first market we got into, like outside, like the smaller regional stores and stuff, you know, was Whole Foods and then Sprouts, Fresh Thyme.

1:14:04So we saturated natural. So we're 98 % of all natural stores in the United States. And in the downtown LA store, we sell like 200 units per week at Whole Foods, you know, like, so Jeff, who is our VP of retail sales does an incredible job. And then our other, uh, VP of sales, Rob, who does mass and drug got us into CVS. So we have a full end cap at CVS now, um, starting in May, I think, uh, got us into CVS, um, Giants, Meyers, like a little Walgreens, maybe, uh, not Walgreens, but we did get into Walmart. So Walgreens is terrible actually as a partner. So we like decided not to go with them, although they wanted us.

1:14:48And Rite Aid too. And I think Rite Aid's like bankrupt now, right? I actually think Rite Aid and Walgreens are about the same for me when I see those logos. Yeah, exactly. There's just like that level, right? But we got into Walmart and we got into like 4 ,800 Walmarts. So right off the bat, we went like national, I think it was like a$5 million PO, something like pretty sizable. What we realized though, at that moment, because we ended up pulling back completely from Walmart because of their chargebacks and everything. we realized that it's not a matter of store count because we're going so fast, just trying to get as many stores as possible, sales, sales, sales.

1:15:23But our velocity, our placement at Walmart, all that stuff sucked. And our brand awareness could be good, but it doesn't even matter. We decided to pull back, rethink how we look at packaging, rethink how we look at the consumer placement. And unless we're placed in the right areas that align with what the consumer is looking for, we don't go into the store, even if it's a massive opportunity like a target because we want to be ready for it. And now this year, looking at our ACV, which is average commodity value. So where you are relative to store size across whatever the store type is, we have a$95 million opportunity in this next year in our top 15 regional markets in convenience store.

1:16:03So we're going to go in super hard. That's why I was just in Virginia to talk about some deals with a partner of ours. and we're going to start off with Casey's, 2 ,400 stores, small footprint, but right on the cash register, doing all their promos, trying to see if we can hit velocity and then we're going to expand from there. How do you understand and know that exact opportunity? It feels like that you guys are very, very good on the backend from an analytics perspective. How do you know that? Is that, are you getting outside reports? Is your salesperson tapping into the buyers? Like, what does that look like?

1:16:34So Joe was part of a three-person team at Celsius. until their acquisition. You know, and he's a killer. Oh, wow. Yeah, he's like an absolute killer and knows so much about retail and velocity and all that stuff. He looks at IRI data, spins data. I'm not allowed to do a, I was told by my editors that I'm not allowed to. We need to say what that is. What is IRI? Oh, sorry. So we leverage, basically all these big retailers do not share their data with you. You have to pay for their data. It's not like going onto your Shopify platform and seeing who's buying from what areas and whatnot. So you basically pay for this data that gets aggregated from all these big retailers.

1:17:16Look at how it's performing in the energy supplement space, which is the category that we play into. And then we set a goal to be like, all right, we're going to make up 20 % of all energy supplement sales across these markets. And that's the size of the prize if we take up 20%. In short, you need to buy it. You need to buy this data and or hire someone that probably knows from last year's 12-month run rate of what it looked like. And what it looked like, vice versa. And then we overlay that onto our D2C, Amazon, Shopify, TikTok data, see where people are buying, where we're shipping. And then mashing up the regional data alongside the sales data, we combine those two and go into the right markets.

1:17:58Contextually, I love giving context on where you're at with the company and when you started investing in these things. As you mentioned before, zero to 20, you want the scrappy generalist marketer. At what point in the journey, or is it never too early, is it to start really buying this data? Well, you could get a lot of data. I mean, not so much anymore on Facebook ads and stuff like that, but you could get a lot of data from Shopify. You get a lot of data from surveying. You don't need to be spending$50 ,000,$60 ,000,$70 ,000 every quarter to get data if you're smart enough with how you leverage your consumer base and ask them the right questions.

1:18:36So from zero to 20, that's what we did. We had like a checkout survey. We would do quarterly surveys where we give people$500 gift cards for like our top, you know, customers to basically - Understand and know. Yeah, understand and know. And there's scrappy ways to do it, you know? And people are willing, if they love your product, they're willing to give you feedback. So leverage that first. But then after a certain point, when you're going into big box, when you're going into convenience store, when you're expanding and trying to become a nationally recognized brand where you do have to invest, get an understanding of how to be tight.

1:19:08Because the big thing with retail is if we fail at Casey's, knock on wood, if we fail at Casey's, Casey's is never going to take us back. In the same way with Walmart, we're trying to get back into Walmart now, but we didn't do well at Walmart the first time. Our velocities were crap and they put us in the worst position also. So we're doomed to fail. Now it's an uphill battle to get back into Walmart, right? So you have to be tight with how you're approaching it so you can take advantage of that opportunity. About to sell through and not to sell in. I've said that on multiple podcasts. For brands looking to break into retail outside of just waiting for retailers to reach out, what are the best strategies to proactively get in front of buyers and secure a chance?

1:19:52That's a loaded question because it depends. We use personal relationships for some. We use connections through friends for some. and partners for some. Or there's opportunities like UNFI shows or KEHI shows, which are big distributors that you could go to and you place your product, you have all your spec sheets and everything and you could pitch to buyers. There's also platforms like RangeMe that people could use. I don't know how effective RangeMe is personally, but I know people use it. So there's opportunities to get in front of buyers, but you need to be at the places where the buyers are because you're not going to just cold email them.

1:20:30and like same thing with creators on TikTok, you know, they're getting emails all day. You're not going to be able to cold email them and get them. I also am more of a direct like engagement with a buyer, which is what our sales team does more than using a broker. Although brokers could build opportunities, but they're brokering like 15, 20 different brands alongside you. They're not going to be able to talk in the same way that you can. I always recommend, and I mean, potentially to get your initial foot in the door, use a third-party agency. But yeah, they're juggling multiple brands or whatever they're making the best margin on.

1:21:04Also, you get to learn. If you're doing it yourself, you get to learn how to pitch and then refine the pitch. A broker is not going to ever give you that feedback. What about something like the Expo West, like all those trade shows? Do those still work? I think Expo West used to be really good. For us, we don't do it because we're already in 98 % natural stores. So it doesn't make sense to... It's like$100 ,000 to build a booth, you know, or like$60 ,000 minimum to build a booth. That's a lot of money. Like think about just pumping that into ads, you know, or being creators. To give context to the listener, how many doors are you guys on?

1:21:40It's hard to say because we're in a bunch of like bodegas and like random C stores, but over 20 ,000. Yeah. 20 ,000, 30 ,000. Like something. Last question on retail. If you were launching Neuro in retail today, knowing everything you know now, what would you do differently? I would not launch immediately. I would probably wait like three years, build a digital footprint, understand the consumer, and then find three retailers that you know you could be incredible partners with, and then start from there. Makes sense. That's very similar advice from Manny from Slate Milk. Okay, let's get into some entrepreneurial insights.

1:22:17We're on the last page here. Looking back, what is the best entrepreneurial decision you have ever made related to Neuro? Man, that's a loaded question because I could think of a million different things. Give me one big one. I think starting a business with a co-founder was one of the best decisions I've ever made. There's the quote, go far alone, go farther together. Even in the hardest times, knowing that I have someone that has my back is so helpful. And there's no one that understands the hardships you're going through in a business more so than the person that's building the business alongside you.

1:22:53I could not imagine ever starting a business and making it to an advanced stage just by yourself. No way. I just, I don't understand it at all. And from a backend kind of accountability chart perspective, you and your business partner, what do you handle and what does he handle? What does that look like? So I primarily handle investor relations, management. So like managing the teams, building organization. And he focuses more on partnerships. So he's going out, like if you ever meet Ryan, he's one of the most likable guys you'll ever meet, you know. And he'll go out and he could basically talk to anyone.

1:23:31So he's getting dinner with the VP of food sales at Insomniac on Tuesday that he met through another connection of ours. And he's able to connect the dots so well and build these relationships with people that we're just leveraging that superpower as much as possible. I love it. One piece of advice about entrepreneurship you strongly disagree with.

1:23:57hustle culture just in general i bet other entrepreneurs that you brought on the podcast have said that as well it's like dude if your mind is so caught up in the minutiae of work then you're not thinking big picture and there's that what we were talking about earlier find that one thing that's going to make so much more impact than doing a million things and like spending all your time hustling and waking up or whatever the hell it is that you're doing that these hustle culture guys talk about because that's going to impact you so much more. And then from there, you can start depending on people that have better expertise than you instead of you trying to hustle and do everything yourself to amplify your business and to grow your business.

1:24:41I think the issue with hustle culture is it's so ego driven. It's like, it's all about you. Look how much I hustle. Look how much I'm the guy waking up at 5.30 and making my coffee and working out this is like, dude, like going back to this conversation about like my co-founder being the best decision I've ever made in the business. It's bringing the right people together and building a group of people all aligned on a vision to push something forward is going to go so much further than by yourself. I love it. That's great advice. Very, uh, mature advice. I mean, I've, I've been on both sides of the coin there.

1:25:15Same here. Yeah. And like, I'm curious for you, Like when did you have that epiphany? Man, probably like, I'll say like four or five years ago, like, which is still pretty much like, I've already been in business for five years at that point. Yeah. And I think it's just like a natural journey for a lot of people. But you could work maybe three times harder at most and build your business 3x. You can't work 20x harder though. You need 20x more people to be able to do that. You can't work 100x harder to 100x your business. You need those people. There's only so much you can do by yourself and there's only so much that fits in here, you know?

1:25:53So you gotta just like, let that go. That for me is the biggest thing is what you just said right there is just the mind share. It's just like, it's so funny, man, because my girlfriend drove me to this podcast and I help her on her business. She helps on what I'm doing. And she was talking about like in the minutiae of like a deal that she's doing on Monday. And I was like, babe, I can't, Nothing can go in my head until after this podcast. And I think that's something that the switching costs of doing different things in different businesses. That's a real thing. That is something that I have focused on so hard the last three, four, five months and really clearing things off my plate and just guarding my time.

1:26:32I think that's the most underrated thing. Like for me, it's hysterical how somebody could bash Elon Musk. It's like the fact that that guy's doing what he's doing. Yeah. I mean, you want to talk about resource allocation. That guy's definitely an expert in hiring people and putting smart people in place. What's one underrated skill every founder should have? I'm going to give a technical answer and then I'm going to give a vapid philosophical answer. But I think humility is incredibly important. I think a lot of people go in with so much confidence. And you can't do this when you're in your late 30s, early 40s, 50s, I don't think as much.

1:27:12But if you're a young entrepreneur in your 20s and 30s, everyone is going to be willing to help you. You should take advantage of that. Not in a way where it's malicious in any way. But if people, if I see like a young 20-something-year-old entrepreneur that's driven, that wants to like build this idea, I'm going to give him that time of day. You know, and a lot of people on our end too, like Brian Lee, who founded LegalZoom, you know, who was our very first investor, gave me the time of day when I was in an elevator with him. and he had no idea who I was. Jared Smith, the other co-founder of Peter Rahal for RxBar, who invested in us also, gave us the time of day to give me the advice on how to hire properly.

1:27:54These people have gone through this journey and they're willing to help you. So one, philosophically, humility. Go to the right people. Find these people that have done it before. Soak that all in and try to apply it to whatever you're doing. And don't be afraid to keep asking people for help. you know, within like, don't annoy them, but yeah. I literally just posted about this and it got the biggest reaction I've gotten on an Instagram story ever. Really? Ever. Yeah, man, I've been paying for consultants and asking people for help. I've been in this give, give, give, give, give. And I feel like I'm just depositing so much to other people and I've never even asked.

1:28:34And now I'm just reaching out to people and asking them for favors, advice, introductions. and I've been blown away. Dude, most people want to help other people. It's just human nature. And what you said, I really do resonate with that. Age is just a number, but when I see a younger entrepreneur that I feel like was like, I see myself in them. Yes. I shouldn't be saying this because I posted this too about a 15 minute thing. I'm going to give you 15 minutes. You could put 15 minutes on my calendar because I'm always going to have a special place in my heart for that. Because I know for me, I'll always remember the people that gave me their time.

1:29:08on the come up, you know? Always. Yeah. My more technical answer? Yeah, let's hear the more technical answer. Is get really good at searching. I remember when we first started, it's not Google anymore. You know, there's so many different platforms and chat GPT and stuff, but like we were really good at being scrappy and searching for answers effectively and Googling the right way, Redditing the right way, chat GPTing the right way. And that is like prompting properly, especially now with all these AI systems, is so freaking powerful. And you have no idea how much you could leverage that. Speaking on the last thing, we are paying a team of consultants to help us with a lot of things with what we're doing now.

1:29:53And one of them is building like a backend infrastructure and like a brain for the company. That's 50, 60, 70 pages that we keep building on. That's the first input into ChatGBT. And I completely agree. I think the propped engineer is a future job that is going to be a very, very valuable job. We build that into Notion. Our Notion is like hundreds and hundreds of pages in the same way as our brain. But you could ask it anything. So the best thing is like, we have people in the company like, oh, what is a, I mean, think of a random question, but it's like, what's the cogs on our cinnamon gum product?

1:30:25They don't need to go ask someone else anymore. They just ask the AI system in Notion and it'll pull it up for you. You know? This might be the biggest cheat code that we put on all day right here. It's a massive cheat code, man. Just put everything down and have everything. And you have to keep building on it and building on it and building on it. You have no idea how much time it saves you. I know. And like the brain space. Because every time someone asks someone else and they have to get distracted from this and that, it's like, dude, that is time and energy. It's the cognitive swishing, right?

1:30:53Guys, you guys just put on some crazy game there. What's one thing you wish you understood about raising money before you started Neuro? Yeah. So I remember our second year in our business, we went to this investment group. I don't even know what they're called anymore. And I thought I had an understanding of the numbers in my head. And I studied it, I went in, but one thing I was missing was the vision of the company. And a lot of these investors at an early stage, if you're raising your first round, they don't really care about like the cogs and the margins and it has to be reasonable obviously you know people are looking for that vision so get that vision so crystal clear in your head when you go to raise that first amount of capital because that's going to say so much more than any of the numbers and the mumbo jumbo that you're dealing with like that matters that's in a series a series b obviously but for that first round of capital the jockey and the vision i completely agree on that all right two more little mini sections before we get into the lightning round Let's talk a little bit about failures and lessons.

1:31:58What is a recent investment you made at Neuro that massively exceeded or was underwhelming as far as your expectations went in ROI? So underwhelming. I'm going to go back to the Walmart thing. You know, Walmart, huge investment, big PO, getting into, you know, 4 ,300 or 4 ,800. I forgot what it was, but like over 4 ,000 stores nationwide, huge launch, failed miserably, no matter how much money we put into Ibotta, which is like a couponing, like, you know, different marketing, like retail marketing things, no matter how much we were pushing, we couldn't just, like, we just couldn't sell through effectively.

1:32:37We couldn't get our velocities up and ended up failing miserably. So again, I would say underwhelming, but a major learning experience for us that allows us to translate into all of our, like a convenience store and sales opportunities in the future. Walmart customer doesn't want to focus, guys. Yeah. Whatever. So consumers, man, like at the end of the day, it's like understanding where your consumer is. We're a middle upper class income brand when you look at our consumer. No offense to Walmart consumers, but like that's not really the consumer base at Walmart. Yeah, I feel like the cohort I'm in is, like my low-end affordable stuff is Costco.

1:33:16I feel like you're talking about high-end and Costco and then Walmart is a different customer. Exactly, right? So that was a big learning lesson. underwhelming. Exceed, obviously, TikTok. Looking back at NeuroGum's journey, when was the closest the company came to shutting down? Oh, man. Tell us everything here. I could go crazy on this so many times. I've come so close so many times. Just tell me what it is. Man. The biggest one is this lawsuit after Shark Tank where this lady that's worth mucho dinero came after us and it was going to be a war of attrition that she was just going to fricking take us down over a trademark thing.

1:33:55And we're in a totally different category, but she just like, I don't know. She just kind of took it a certain way, you know? And thankfully one of the guest judges on Shark Tank, and this is again, Ryan's superpower. We were trying to reach out to this guy. Ryan just DMs this guy on Instagram and this guy responds, Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of Kind Bar, worth$3 billion. He seems like a nice guy. He's the nicest dude. He literally saved our business because he came in and, you know, we're like trying to figure out how to pay for these lawyers. We're like, we're break even during that time. So it's not like we have a bunch of cash.

1:34:31I think we're doing like four or five million a year, like not that big of a business. This lady's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Daniel Lubecki comes in, gets in a call with her and is like, hey, look, I'm worth 10 times more than you. and I'm going to back this entire lawsuit unless you back off. And the lawsuit ended there. Wow. It was crazy. He just stepped in and he was like, these guys are my friends and if you mess with my friends, I'm going to mess with you. Damn, that's some... I like that. That's a gangster move. Dude, he's a G. Shout out to Ryan too for shooting his shot in the DM right away.

1:35:09Oh my gosh. That was a crazy moment. I like that. That's a good intro to the last segment before the night around is Shark Tank. So... what's something about the Shark Tank experience that most people at home would never realize? So they love drama. So we were in there for an hour and a half, but they cut it down to seven minutes. So, and another thing for anyone going on Shark Tank, this advice I give to everyone going on Shark Tank, all the sharks love talking over each other and they, because they all have egos, they love hearing their own voice. If there's a question you don't want to answer, just wait for five seconds.

1:35:38They can't handle the silence. So someone else will ask a different question and then just answer that question. That is very, very good practical advice. I like that one a lot. Beyond the cameras and the deal-making, what was the biggest lasting effect Shark Tank has had on Neuro, good or bad? So the lawsuit, right, that came out of Shark Tank because that person saw us pitching on Shark Tank and then saw that our names were similar, although we're in a totally different category. So from a lasting negative effect, there is that, but obviously it solved itself, thankfully. Positive effect, obviously with TikTok and everything, the credibility, seeing where we were six years ago versus seeing where we are now, There's this beautiful underdog story like we talked about that gets translated into TikTok creator hooks.

1:36:21Yeah. I feel like I know too many people that didn't get a deal and they kind of push it under the rug and they're not realizing that they can use that logo and that social credibility, whether good or bad or good. Every failure could be turned into a success. Yeah. All right. We go on the lightning round here. Hardest stage of a company. We're talking in millions here. Zero to one, one to five, five to 10, 10 to 50, 50 to 100? I think 10 to 50. Absolutely. The hardest staging company. 50 to 100 kind of starts... If you're getting from 10 to 50, 50 to 100 starts rolling, like the momentum starts rolling on its own.

1:36:57But you could bulk your way up to 10 with Facebook ads and whatever and just spending your way. But to go from 10 to 50, you need to become a legitimate brand. What other big keys are there from 10 to 50 from an organizational structure? sharing the experience systems? What are the other big key initiatives? Brand awareness, better retention strategies, and not retention just from retargeting, but retention from tapping into your community and making them love your brand. Brand expansion, if that's the route you want to go. So product innovation, and then think through marketing, again, in a campaign planning, roadmapping, that kind of way.

1:37:35It becomes a much bigger organizational

1:37:41lift to get from 10 to 50. And you're going to have to start thinking about a company, not as individuals, but as a unit. Yeah, I think not including kind of the AI hedge that people are using. I feel like you can get zero to 20, like good companies with just like consumer products with like six people, eight people. That company, Jolie, I think has sub 10 and they're doing over 50. They're all really smart, but former affiliate guys to my understanding. So they understand that ecosystem. Good LTV though. Great LTV, yeah. Number one reason why entrepreneurs fail. They give up too early. A personal habit or ritual you most credit for your success as a founder.

1:38:19Exercise every day. Like find time to exercise every single day. Simple and profound. Customer service, overseas, domestic, or hybrid? Hybrid. Customer success is domestic. Customer service is overseas. Last two answers, I would give the same answers. This is an interesting one because this was on my bucket list and kind of finalist, but it didn't happen for me. Best part about starting a business in Vegas? Tax breaks, tax abatements. Everything is cheaper in terms of property. Like you could get a warehouse for a third of the price that you can in LA. And a growing entrepreneur community. If listeners can take away just one thing about becoming their best selves, what would it be?

1:39:07Do not go all in on just your business. Look at yourself to become a comprehensive and complete human being through how you treat your body, how you treat your mind, and how you treat your financial stability. That's an amazing answer, man. All right, you're offline for a month. Let's just say you're running a thousand miles in the jungles of the Amazon. What are the two core KPIs that you need to see to evaluate the health of your business? You can only pick two. organizational fluidity. It's like the big one. So making sure that retention for employees stays in place. So everyone's working incredibly well together without the need for my leadership is one.

1:39:48And then the second one is probably maintaining OPEX. I know that's a kind of a boring answer, but if OPEX is being maintained at the levels that we set it as a KPI, that means everything else is functioning properly from a financial and like a cogs and margins and whatever perspective. That is mind-blowing that you did not say EBITDA. Or a growth company. Yeah, that's EBITDA or ROAS. I thought that you would say one of those two. I think that's so interesting that you said the retention because that just, that basically tells me that you picked a good team and if the team is still there and happy, then you'll bet on that all day almost blindly.

1:40:25Yeah, a hundred percent. I also think ROAS is a high, like once you get into 50 to a hundred million, ROAS and beyond. ROAS is hygiene more than anything else. I know you've trained Muay Thai and Judo at the highest level we spoke about earlier. If you could take one principle from martial arts and apply it to entrepreneurship, what would it be? Martial arts is a journey of getting better yourself. So it's interesting because I remember my sensei was telling me that if you cheat on martial arts, martial arts will cheat on you. It was a quote that he would always say to me. So if you are going and training for a competition, if you don't cheat on your training, then you will always bring the best version of yourself to that competition and you'll most likely win.

1:41:10It's deep. Last couple of questions, my man. Favorite book or podcast and why?

1:41:19Favorite. And you can't say the who with the heart. Yeah. Even though that was, I liked it. That would have been one of my favorite parts of this podcast. I love that. Yeah, no, it's a very simple book. It's like the way they lay it out. That, Crucial Conversations, and I think it's called High Output Management by the former CEO of IBM are three books that I recommend to almost everyone. But they're not my favorites, you know? Like I'm a big, I love reading, I love spearfishing. Like that's like one of my big, big hobbies whenever I come back to LA. uh breath and deep by james nester are two books i read recently that just i feel like it profoundly changed the way i look at myself look at like the history of humans and how we approach nature so what is it it's like a sapiens for nature for for deep for example he went to a free diving competition like 10 or 15 years ago and got really deep into the understanding of like Like, you know, 100 years ago, people, maybe like 150 years ago now, people thought that if you dove deeper than 100 feet, like a human would literally explode.

1:42:30Now people are diving 300 plus feet on a single breath. And there's something called the mammalian reflex where us as human beings coming from the ocean, there's a weird capacity that our spleen has that provides us with more oxygen the deeper we dive to be able to stay underwater for longer. it's incredible and it's him just diving into this journey like the history of uh submersion and like the the history of free diving and just human history as a whole and innovation it's a great book yeah um entrepreneur or brand that you want to give flowers to and why oh there's so many oh man uh i think will knits at iq bar is an absolute killer uh we started our business around the same time.

1:43:18And he's been able to just find his niche in the saturated bar market and do an incredible, incredible job. Obviously, Jared Smith has been a great mentor of ours from RxBar. Brian Lee, you know, it's like one of the greatest entrepreneurs from the greater Los Angeles area. Oh my God. I feel like I'm, it's like a disservice just like not naming everyone. Kevin Lin, the co-founder of Twitch, who's been a longtime supporter of ours. He's absolutely incredible as a human being, as an operator and helps us out a lot. Actually, a lot of the Twitch team. The chief strategy officer, Colin, is also an incredible friend of ours, Colin Carrier.

1:44:00He's helped us out a lot. Man, I could go on and on. I'm going to give a random one. I have not given one on any of the episodes yet, but he actually introduced us, which is Ben Scharf from Platter. We were literally just talking about Ben. That guy is the biggest hustler. He's, dude, he's such a G. Forget that. He's one of the greatest humans. Greatest humans. Guys, check it out. It's platter.com. He just recently raised a round and it helps just kind of organize and optimize your whole entire app stack on Shopify for commerce. And Ben is a great guy. Love him. Talking about focus, he took that mantra of focus and applied it to an e-commerce store, an e-commerce platform.

1:44:35There's so many apps that are promising you this upsell, this whatever. They took the most efficient things, put it onto a store so you have a high-functioning store immediately. I think you guys are the best use case too. When I went on your website, it was beautiful and simple. Did you see that ROAS? It was like 48X ROAS or some crazy number. All right, man. So the crazy big last question. How big can NeuroGum be? I think we could be the next Red Bull. I really think that it went from like coffee to energy drinks that Red Bull was able to do. and then from energy drinks that Red Bull was able to do into this little more functional shot product that 5-Hour Energy did.

1:45:16And then now we're taking an even step, like even a further step forward where we're a pack of gum that you can share and keep in your pocket. I think we could be as big as the other energy supplement players in the world. Love it, man. Where can they find you on social and NeuroGum on social? Pretty straightforward. At NeuroGum, N-E-U-R-O-G-U-M on all social media platforms. if you want to find our company. And if you want to find me, it's at Kentaro, K-E-N-T-A-R-O. Nice. Love it, man. Appreciate you coming. Thank you, man. If you guys got this far, I assume you guys enjoyed this interview. If that's the case, I think you guys would enjoy the other episodes.

1:45:55Make sure you guys go check them out. I want to keep growing this thing bigger and better. All I ask from you guys, give it a like, give it a subscribe, and share with a friend. Appreciate it. See you guys soon.