How to Build a Brand that Sells Out Before It Launches ft. Greg Lavecchia

23:25That's all we thought about. We did not have like a large RFP or, you know, go, go.

23:31Greg Lavecchia:What does RFP mean for those? Leo, what does RFP stand for? A request for pricing to like, you know, mass manufacturers around the country and go basically go have like a quote war. Like, fuck that. Like you're going to go spend three months as a founder trying to work on getting the perfect margins for your product when it's like, dude, you're ordering 5 ,000 units. Like worry about that when you're ordering 5 million units. That is the least important thing for building a great business in the early stages. Oh, sorry. Let me actually add to that. As long as you know there's a path to get there.

24:03Greg Lavecchia:Right? Don't enter like a non-profitable business that can never be profitable. but it's okay early on if it's a shit show as long as you know like i can clean this up later something you mentioned to us on our pre-show call that i thought was really interesting is that it takes the same amount of time to build something massive as not as big yeah when you guys first came up with the idea of creating bloom was the idea i want to build like this massive fucking company and go for it because if we're going to spend a decade building a brand we might as well try to go big. Yeah. I can tell you firsthand when we work on low revenue opportunities versus working on, you know, multi-billion dollar opportunities, it takes us the same amount of hours in the day.

24:49When we try to go launch in a retailer that has 50 stores versus 14 ,000, like 7-Eleven, it's pretty much the same amount of resources used internally. So going after a small dream or a small goal or a, a small project to, I feel like takes the same amount of resources and stress and effort as a massive goal. So you, you might as well go after the massive one. I also think that a lot of people, they see the success that bloom has had and it almost doesn't register as possible for them. And so did that ever cross your mind of like, I don't know if this is something we can scale to nine and 10 figures?

25:33I don't even think about more than a year from today. I never have. I'm like really a month to month guy at best. You know, my wife hates how little I schedule in the future. And I would say me and Leo is the president of Bloom. We both try to think as short term as possible. The world seems to completely change every six months. The opportunities at hand, like what you think the playing field will look like is completely different every six months what the retailers want is completely different every six months so it's like you need to stay as nimble as possible and you know you can have a a a diamond in the distance that you're like constantly working towards and maybe that's a monetary thing maybe that's a a level of you know mental health that you want or i don't know how to speak on that and but like there's a uh i i would i i i never imagined that it would come to this but But I was incredibly excited when we had 30 grand, right?

26:30And when we first launched Bloom and those are the days where I felt like we were hitting our goals. And then now just as the opportunities have presented themselves, we've hopped on them and kind of allowed the universe to keep paving the road.

26:46Greg Lavecchia:Has there been something within the team that you two have both realized with hiring people, any mistakes that you can bestow onto our group? because I think how a company is organized as you guys have been growing like a rocket ship is super important. So I'm curious what you can tell our listeners. I have a lot of thoughts on talent acquisition. So, and I've made all of the mistakes kind of following like the prescription that is talent acquisition. So, all right, copy and paste the org chart that I see this company that I want to be like has. All right, they have completely different strengths as the founders that are operating or the CEOs that are operating that company.

27:22They have, you know, completely different issues and pain points in a totally different community to copy and paste an org chart from a parallel business that you're running next to, I think is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. I think you should not make predictions for what your issues may be in the future unless you're completely certain they will. Sorry, let me preface that with, I think you should hire for your pain points and you should hire for your weaknesses and under the category of weaknesses, also just what you as the operator or you as the founder do not want to be doing. So if there's something I don't enjoy and therefore I won't be doing a great job at it, I hire for that pain point as fast as possible.

28:00Greg Lavecchia:If I come in, what's my first 30 days look like? If I'm working for you, what does it look like? I'm a huge fan of the shadow process. Okay, so you plug them into someone who you want them to be like. Yeah. Hiring for your pain points, not copying the org chart from the business that you want to be at. And then I can speak for myself with an energy drink company. let's just say hypothetically we wanted to model our growth close to something like red bull or monster and i said okay let's go make hires from red bull and monster and they do great on their interview they tell you all the amazing things that red bull and monster did and then they come in and i'm like you didn't contribute shit to anything that red bull and monster did or you are one of 2 000 people and because the business is so big you like literally just did one lego piece of that entire castle.

28:45Right. So I would say be really careful hiring people from the businesses that you take a lot of inspiration from because they probably didn't contribute the magic that you're actually looking for. Yeah. Unless you can prove they did, then hire them.

29:01Greg Lavecchia:Have you found though, have you found that the resumes don't mean shit that you're like strictly going off a vibe or does resume still matter a little bit to you? I mean, dude, my favorite situations is when like someone is so hungry to work for us that they will just apply to a different role and like their role isn't open and they just want to get in front of you and be able to give their sales pitch. And, you know, hunger, passion is like always the number one thing that we're looking for. I think a lot of skills can be taught, but like those things cannot be taught. How many people are a part of the team now?

29:34You know, like it's a very complicated network at this point. because of Dr. Pepper and NutriBolt that we work with. But you can call it 100, give or take. But there's thousands too.

29:47Greg Lavecchia:Because of everyone who's in the trucks. And yeah, it's crazy. What made you have the idea that you wanted to bring on these strategic partners? Were you growing so fast that you were like, to get to this level that I know we can get to, we need the distribution of these trucks going all around the world eventually? Yeah, I'll be super honest about this story because it's been a couple years. So Bloom was skyrocketing. We were bootstrapped to$180 million, and that was after a year of 100 % growth. And we had a huge business mishap happen. Basically lost a massive sales channel overnight, or we thought we were going to.

30:27and it was the most stressed out I've ever been in my entire career and I was driving home from work in Venice up the street from here and I'm in a McLaren 720s like my dream car like it was fucking crazy shooting fire out the back and I'm sitting at this red light it's like 9 p.m. I'm leaving the office and pulling up next to me at the and I'm stressed pulling out my hair like worst three months of my life. And next to me is this like burnt Honda Civic from like 2005, Domino's delivery thing on the top, weed smoke billowing out of it with like EDM blasting and the guys having the time of his life just delivering these pizzas.

31:04And I was like, what the fuck am I doing wrong here? Like fuck entrepreneurship. Like I'm going to go sell coconuts in Costa Rica. I hate this. And I was incredibly stressed out of my mind. And then And just kind of like this opportunity of diversifying our part or this idea of diversifying our portfolio and being like, go back to the roots of asking the community what they want and like what else we can deliver value to them with. And the community was asking for energy drinks and better for you soda. And I knew nothing about making energy drinks and better for you soda, but it sounded like an incredible, you know, venture that I wanted to take on.

31:39Like what could be like the next project that you really work on here. so to to understanding that i didn't want to go spend five years learning how to do that i wanted to partner with somebody on how to do it so we kind of went to all the traditional venture capital funds private equity funds and they were all like we are not touching an energy drink company no one will buy an energy drink company this is you know before alani was just purchased before ghost was just purchased like there was no acquisitions of beverage company or energy drink companies at the time and that's what private equity companies need to do is sell you in three four five years right And on top of that, there was no interest in the markets or the M &A markets for a portfolio of nutrition and beverages, right?

32:19You could sell a greens company. You could sell a collagen company. Or you could sell maybe just an energy drink company. But Nestle doesn't want energy drinks. Coca-Cola doesn't want nutrition companies. So to have this diversified portfolio actually would put you in a really weak space, generally speaking, for M &A. And so they were all like, we're not doing that with you. And then I met this psycho in austin texas who's dos cunningham who owns new trabolt and he has led new trabolts He's the ceo of neutral for the last I don't know 24 years family man total savage I didn't really know his reputation in the industry because he just like kind of has a small circle and lays low In terms of being loud, but visited he flew to la he flew us to aspen We had a couple meetings and he had taken his c4 pre-workout and launched an energy drink with that and had the relationship with dr Pepper.

33:06So he was like, I think we can do the same thing with Bloom. And I've already gone through the five years of pulling my hair out to figure out how to make energy drinks. And now we know exactly how to get this in the market, which is why we were able to make this in just six months. So it was kind of like the stars aligned and we sold him 30 % of the business for a really great strategic partnership. And the rest is history. It's been a great partnership. So you had the idea for about five years wanting to figure out how to get into the energy drink space? No. So he had launched an energy drink five years prior.

33:41I see. And so he knew the trials and tribulations of getting that to market, which I knew nothing about. So I was able to kind of take in all of that wisdom of someone who's already played that chess game and expedite the – or use that wisdom to expedite our route to market. something else you brought up to us was that a lot of people would not try to get into like the energy energy drink space because of how difficult it is yeah but you think that it's actually a little bit easier because it weeds off some of the competition right i was i was getting like a little frustrated with the nutrition space i think i felt like it was a lot of uh low integrity performance marketing and these acquisition businesses that we were just speaking on where it's like, they'll just say fucking anything in their ads.

34:28You buy the product, you think you just cured every element that you have. And you know that, and then like any 21 year old in Brickle, Miami could like come up with a real competitor to bloom in, in, in a three month span. Right. And so I was just getting sick of the nutrition space, I think as, as a founder and an operator in it. And I was like, what's a, what's a high barrier to entry space where there's incredibly high standards of testing and, you know, FDA is very involved. There's a lot more marketing guidelines. And like, I just felt a lot more comfortable with my qualifications to go play in that hat yet that you needed qualifications to go play in.

35:10And so to me, that was the beverage space. And I think we're seeing a lot of people who don't have those qualifications enter as of late and they're not even getting off the ground because like it does take a lot of relationships, a lot of years of understanding how this game works to properly play.

35:28Greg Lavecchia:If you want to get into making your first beverage, how much money do you need to have saved aside to be able to deploy to get that first round and make your first purchase like$50 ,000? Is it a little bit more than that? I think today the MOQs at a lot of these third-party manufacturers are getting lower and lower. I would like to think that you could get a first batch for under$50 ,000. I don't know. I never placed a batch that low, but, but, but I think, you know, we did like a full target load in for our first run. But I would say the, the, the, the way Bloom as an, as an ecosystem worked so beautifully as we had a very, a very profitable high margin nutrition business that was funded by originally a very profitable instant download booty band business.

36:16That was the sugar daddy to bloom. And then the nutrition business was the sugar daddy to the energy drink. And so we were able to continue to evolve our business matrix to kind of fund the next ones as each stepping stone.

36:30Greg Lavecchia:Did you ever feel like you were moving too quickly to the next thing? Because you hear like, oh, you got a million things of the booty bands. Why not stick with the booty bands? Like, were you always zooming out and thinking like, okay, if I want this to be a billion dollar company, I know that we're going to need to use this capital to leapfrog to the next thing that we can do. Like talk through us a little bit about that. I think I've always been like the guy refreshing his Shopify every hour. So I know when something's slowing down, I know when the writing's on the wall before. All right. Maybe, maybe in 2026, I don't check the sales hourly, but most of my career I did.

37:06And so I knew when there was writing on the wall for Mari Fitness as a business, for our app business, for our booty bands, and when it was kind of time to level up. But you also just as a founder, I would like to think want to take on a larger challenge after whether it's 12, 24 months. You're like, what's bigger that I can go after? so I felt like we kind of once you're number one on Amazon number one in Target number one in Walmart it's like what's the next challenge I can take on I don't want to just stay at number one in this space I want to go into a bigger arena I don't want to be like number one in the minor leagues then I'm going to go to the major leagues that's so funny just checking Shopify you know Greg had those notifications ding ding ding they're in the office cha-ching was the day that you guys did 1.3 million in like 12 hours was that like the highest you were on bloom or was there another day where it was maybe not as much from a actual revenue like uh perspective but you were earlier on and you're like this feels like fucking crack i can't believe we sold like a hundred thousand dollars in a month or something like that um you know it's funny it's all relative because we do more than that every day now right like it's it's it's a it's a weird thing to wrap your head around I think when Mari and I first started doing Mari Fitness, we were operating the business out of a TD Bank student account.

38:34And I didn't understand the financial system in any way at that point. And so every day, all of the PayPals that would go into our student TD Bank account, I would go to TD Bank once a day and withdraw all of the cash because I didn't want any of it at TD Bank. And I would keep it in our car glove box.

38:55Greg Lavecchia:You're crazy. Yeah, and it would just stay in this old Audi's glove box. Cash? Cash. You're insane. And eventually the staff at the TD Bank started to say, you can't be using a student account like this. And I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? I'm getting my money out. And I totally did not understand why that would be an issue. And they were like, it was clear that I was a drug dealer. There was a 99 % chance that I was a drug dealer. And eventually they were like, we're shutting down your student account. This is not a student account. and you know there's probably like you know tens of thousands of dollars going in every month like nothing we weren't anywhere near millions at that point and so i was like all right fuck you guys we're going to chase and so marie and i drive over to chase in westchester new york and we're like we're here to open up a business account they were like okay like we opened you up a business account like it's ready to go do you have like any money to put into this account and marie just puts like 50 grand on the table like because that was we were like yeah we have this cash like we didn't know what was going on.

39:53We're just like, yeah, we have this cash. And so Marty just puts all this cash onto the table and they were just like, okay. Okay. And so I remember the actual bank was like two blocks away and they made me walk it over. Cause they were like, we're not going to like walk this over for you. Like, this isn't the bank. It's like where you open up the account. And so like, that was like a day where I was like, we might be onto something here. And, uh, I would say the, the next time I felt like we were really onto something was probably damn

40:24we had some really strong black fridays that 1.3 million dollar day i think i just like entered a complete disassociation to reality and i was like really confused on what was happening because i was so prepared to finally restock greens and be able to like have normal work for two months straight of inventory and it was just all gone again so i was like okay like the business is back to shut down because everything sold out that day so like our website shut down like we didn't have anything to sell and so it was like this really weird day of like now we need to go figure out how to get more product like as fast as possible um what do you tell the group when that's happening like do

41:02Greg Lavecchia:you send there was no group the email but i'm saying the email like do you do you email the community and you're like yo fucking sorry well dude sold out is the strongest or restocked is the strongest word in all of marketing okay and i don't think it's used enough i think it's way stronger than any type of discount. Like the, the, the, the, the psychology associated with the word restock would be like, Oh, so many people bought this, that it ran out of inventory. And maybe you only had 10 products. I don't know, but maybe you had 10 ,000. And so it's like, what is the, how can you create that FOMO of like, I'm the only fucking person that hasn't tried it because it's already sold out three times.

41:37So it got to the point where we were like sold out 30 times. And, uh, but yeah, I think, I think sold out or restock is like the most powerful word in digital marketing. Okay. I want to get more into marketing and the actual like content creation process and launching like marketing campaigns. But I do want to go back to something. You said you became a little bit numb the day that you guys did as many sales as you did. As someone who has seen major financial success, you're driving the McLaren, got a very nice watch on, like clearly like nice things you have this sick ass mercedes van yeah how has your relationship with money changed um and have you had to learn anything along the way as you've seen more financial success i don't um i don't like i don't necessarily like respect money as this thing that i feel like i need to hold tightly to me um i use it as a tool for these games that we're playing my my greg as a person before money was very much just someone who loved hanging out with my wife my dog and leo and like that hasn't really changed at all um we still just kind of only hang out with ourselves and like and like and like kind of do the same things we did when we had no money um so i i wouldn't actually, it just has made life a lot cooler, but I haven't really recognized money as this like ultra powerful thing that we need to make sure we die with a ton of it under our grave.

43:12And do you think disassociation is like extremely powerful? And do you think that could be used as a tool? Because I feel like sometimes people put material goods or even an amount of money on a pedestal to where it's it controls them in a way where yeah it's almost above them but i i saw a tiktok of a guy talking who he's like this watch is not like it's not better than me yeah it's just like a thing that i have like how who are you to put uh material goods like above you and it's so interesting to hear you talk about that where you're like i've come into money it's great but it's just like kind of still like doing the same stuff yeah i don't i don't i think i think happiness is is is internal and i don't think that uh i think you just use it as a tool to have a lot of fun and to go after your goals uh you know it's been like it's been a super blessing when like new things such as my son have come into our life and i can see like some of the conveniences that we can bring in to to to help with raising him congratulations thank you yeah he's doing good and how heavy was he when he was born bro he was he was nine pounds but he's already like 18 pounds

44:21Greg Lavecchia:and he's only three months baby you were probably a three pound baby huh he's huge i think i was i think i was nine one no i was nine six i think i was probably a little heavier than you they thought i was gonna be a football star that's big it was like five foot in high school it's all good well dude he has these crazy welsh jeans for my wife so i'm like he's gonna kick my ass when he's 14 he's going to the league he might he might he might but uh dude i just took his stem cells last week and i saw this yeah that was crazy i'll tell that story in a second but uh oh legit yeah yeah greg is objecting the stem cells and so i brian johnson yeah did he call brian up yeah he was my neighbor in venice yeah he would walk around like just a fucking glowing elf in the neighborhood and then i learned who he was and i was like you could just see the fucking aura around this guy who's like you know eternally young um so i uh i just like have this really disgruntled relationship with the idea of delayed gratification and that's coming from someone who's like working out in the gym every day at 5 a.m like i'm all about discipline i'm all about working hard i'm all about focused and you know i don't really drink or do any of that bullshit you were always like that was that something you developed later on or were you like i need to advance to the like i know this version of greg is in here i need to get to this version or what was that like i devoted all of it towards the gym when i was younger and then i've now been able to figure out how to point that energy in other directions um and you have a clubbing phase not really man not really like i lived in a frat house for three and a half years same and so i got a lot of that out of my system then but like even then like i think the idea of like delayed gratification like you finally turn 70 and you can go buy like your dream Corvette and then like, you don't even have like the cognitive ability to go enjoy it is like something that I really don't want to happen to me.

46:09So making sure I try to enjoy the fruits of our labors through our twenties, I'm now 30, but you know, continue to have fun with it. Yeah. How has becoming a father changed the way that you operate on a day to day and like how, how you just had a son like a few months ago, right? Or a month ago, three months ago. That must change your schedule. Like now you have something else to like care for. And so how has that affected your life both personally and how you operate as a founder? I mean, even on a trip like this, where I'm traveling to LA, traveling to LA, what would have been a four day trip.

46:50It's like, we're going to squeeze that into three days and just not fucking stop. Right. So if I'm leaving, it's for a shorter amount of time, you know, I'm trying to use some travel enhancements to get around faster. And, uh, like the jets waiting for when we're done with it. And then, and then the, uh, I would say, you know, I'd have some fast cars. I'm not speeding. Like I'm wearing a helmet on the dirt bike. I'm, uh, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to take better care of, uh, like, you know, I'm a big fan that a lot of these people obsessed with longevity. You know, the first step is, just making sure like you you don't put yourself in a reckless driving situation right like just like avoiding those stupid scenarios don't if it's if it's a thunderstorm like just get the next flight you know like i don't know just weird shit like that just making sure i i increase my chances of being around for him is the number one thing and uh his mother my wife is like incredible at if i'm rushing out to work in the morning and you know i have something it's like greg wait a minute like say good morning to kai like go give him five minutes i'm like thank you for reminding me to do that like let's go give him a five minute five minute of total presence before and then obviously more in the evening but uh yeah it's it's like there is not enough time in the day once you have a kid it's incredible not enough so i'm kind of just trying to take it away from sleep yeah which is how many hours of sleep are you dude i'm like i'm like a big eight hour not eight and a half before i'm in the sun like 9 30 yeah and then uh but i'm pretty much at seven now and i feel like I can pull off seven most of the time.

48:19Greg Lavecchia:With a gram of caffeine, I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, whole grams. A lot of nicotine. I'm a big nicotine guy. Really? The gum? I like the mints and I smoke a lot of cigars. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's funny. Yeah, you were smoking one right before this, huh? Yeah, I saw. You fill out the nerves, checking out. Planned out, right? Maybe that's kind of nice. Dude, it just like really, I have incredible ADHD. Like it is fucking diabolical. So, and I don't like to touch Adderall and stuff. so I find uh I find nicotine to just be like nicotine and caffeine just be like a lifesaver have you tried neuro gum yeah yeah I love all that shit I love all that type of stuff yeah I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier when you were talking with the guy who was with c4 how there are brutal mistakes that companies can make going into energy as someone who wants to go into energy yeah oh yeah let's talk yeah what advice do you have for me as I think about this new endeavor.

49:11I would say there are things that you can place. Let's just say you felt like, if you go to Amazon right now, one of the top five selling energy drinks is actually Celsius Energy Sticks. And so, which is probably an outrageously high margin product that gets the halo marketing from Celsius Energy Drinks.

49:38Greg Lavecchia:Ross was talking to us about the salt for them, like being something that they can. So yeah, if you, if you can create a business. Yeah. So, so for Ross from Cadence, it's probably like his stick packets are very much kind of the, I was making that sugar daddy joke, like the sugar daddy to the beverage, which is like a far larger, far more, far more expensive business. So if you can somehow create a, and you know, you obviously have other businesses that you work on, like something to kind of help the, the cashflow pain of what the energy dream business may come, that would be helpful. I also think that is not a D to C play, right?

50:14Greg Lavecchia:So energy drinks are not a D to C play. No, like no one's shipping an energy drink case out of Shopify. If they are like, that's a horrible business. Like it is an Amazon play and you guys get digital, but like you, but if it's not a Shopify page or Shopify play, then you're not going to really touch Facebook ads. So it's, it's a very not traditional, uh cpg business to start with right like i don't run any meta ads for our energy drinks there's no pixel that sells the energy drinks you know what i mean so have you guys ran facebook ads before yeah we've spent quite a bit on facebook so there needs to be a pixel for it to optimize to for it to actually be a you know a proper ad so if uh or a proper funnel so if you have an energy drink that isn't available on a shopify shopify website which you should not sell an energy drink on a Shopify website.

50:59Greg Lavecchia:So you're saying to start with like an Amazon or start with a TikTok shop. You'd have to, that'd be like the only way to launch it digitally. Yeah. And try to get people as repeat customers to get that subscription going. I mean, subscription would be beautiful, but you know, hopefully like they'll be part of y 'all's community and they'll be like, I've, he's talked about products that I've loved before. Your personal brand represents good products. And now I'm going to try his energy drink and hopefully they buy the 12 pack on Amazon and they'll try it, you know, launch with a variety pack. So they don't need to commit to 12 of one flavor.

51:29And, uh, you know, our variety packs are way bigger sellers than our single flavor packs.

51:33Greg Lavecchia:And is that something that only is at Costco, the variety pack? Amazon, Amazon rips. Oh, Amazon. We probably sell like 60 ,000 cases of variety packs a month on Amazon. Yeah. That's so interesting. Okay. You brought up digital and like, I looked at your guys's Instagram. I believe you guys have like 670 ,000 and like good engagement too. Yeah. What are these brands fucking up when it comes to content and marketing you also brought up like using restock as a great marketing tool like what can you tell us about marketing how to crush it on organic and ads because i think a lot of brands are struggling you know a huge lever in the beginning was obviously founder content so mari um mari's you know i'm maternity leave and i make a joke that I'm now I'm stepping in, but, uh, but, but I just have, yeah, yeah, yeah.

52:24Greg Lavecchia:So I'm a, but I, I'm a huge believer in founder content. I'm a huge believer in, uh, you know, not just having your, or get your owned profiles, be like product pushers strictly and trying to deliver some value from those pages as well, outside of just trying to convert with the content. We have had years where our Instagram had horrible engagement. We've had years where we've had incredible engagement i think that page is crushing it as of the last six to 12 months we have a a new team shout out to uh jillian caro and emma they're crushing it and like what do you feel like changed over the last six to 12 months yeah what was the down period and then what was that up period like why you know it's funny like i am not a social media content expert and i don't need to go i am a good leader and so i can go put that team together and like let them do their thing and trust them to do it and kind of look at the progress that's happening.

53:18But I think that as a founder of a brand, you don't need to go become an expert in every space. We didn't have a head of supply chain, and therefore we didn't try to optimize the pricing on our supply chain until we were ready to make that hire, and then they fixed all of the mistakes that we had made. So at first it was just like the founder is making some content. Oh, my God, if you look at the first posts that were on our Instagram page, it was just like pictures of Ginger. And we were like, Ginger's in our pre-workout. it's really healthy and it was horrible and um so and then of course it's like following the data right like if something does well like make three more things like that um but if you if you put a post up that's just like go buy this product now like it's gonna flop and the algorithm's gonna hate your page how has your experience been with getting in front of the camera starting to build to your personal brand um i'm sure your wife has given you a few tips yeah i love your wife's

54:14Greg Lavecchia:comment the other day on the vlog that jj made she's like had to show the uh the boxer shot she was roasting me for that dude my girl always roasts me for my shit if i say if i stay some stupid shit i'm gonna get a dm back and she'll be like brayden what was this oh like your your girl will respond to a post yeah oh yeah yeah she'll be like yo yo what what are you doing here and i'm like that's on me you're right yeah i've posted um you're right that's wait that's so funny because yesterday yesterday or two days ago i posted a carousel from when i went skydiving at 19 and i like hadn't posted about me skydiving at 19 and then i kind of ripped like three or four posts and over the past like two weeks she's like man you're really leaning into the skydiving thing lately huh i'm like yeah it's sick she's fucking flaming me so that's bad buddy no mar mar will uh will humble me for sure but she's the goat she's the goat of all that content stuff i think uh she doesn't even optimize in any way for views or intentionally optimize for for anything except just making the content that she wants to make at this point but she uh she can look at a product and know if it's going to do well she can look at a post and know if it's going to do well like nobody i've ever met um i have i felt like i needed to wait to make founder business entrepreneurial content until I had like some serious check marks of validity, check marks of validity, uh, until like, I felt like I had like the right to go inspire people to do it.

55:37So I've intentionally waited up until I felt like I hit those milestones. And then I also think like just being an obsessed entrepreneur, like the truest form of entrepreneurship is building a personal brand where like the product is you. So it's like the, the accountability, like all falls on me for it. and you know shout out to the team we built a ton of people on the bloom team helped me with it and jj's just been the shit but uh i like excuse me i like i find it's like it's just it's just the purest form of entrepreneurship that i could possibly come up with is building a personal brand and i think it will just lead to so many opportunities whether it's helping bloom or deal flow or you know what i care about the most at this point is just inspiring you know everyone to know that this is possible this stuff's been so helpful yeah yeah very helpful it's like i just

56:25Greg Lavecchia:feel like we're in the grind days of building i'm building like two businesses at the same time it's so fun are you public with it no no yeah oh yeah like i mean we have this and then i have a production company yeah we're an ipo dude we're on this we're fortune 500 guys no but it's uh it's fun and it's been like a fucking journey and a half since i left our job like i think i left like a year and six months oh that's kind of fresh yeah yeah i was at the lakers for five years sick man I'm going to bounce. This is interesting. Me and Brayden were having this conversation probably two days ago or maybe yesterday.

56:58We feel like we're kind of in this like valley of despair currently.

57:03Greg Lavecchia:With the pod. With the podcast. What's despair mean? Meaning we've been at this thing for over four years. We were really riding the high of like, oh, we started this new podcast. we ride in that high for probably like two or three years and because it's like you're there's so many moving parts like you're booking guests we're producing the show we're editing it like there's so much that falls on us and it's like we've been seeing success with sponsors but nothing like too astronomical because that doesn't really hit with podcasts until you're fucking booming yeah you're just like course williams yeah because it's like you're either you're either a baby pod you're where we're at which is like in the middle you're yeah you're in the middle or you're a superstar there's no like it just once it rolls it rolls like we we two and a half x last year yeah and you know that this year it'll two and a half x again but i feel like i mean that sounds pretty good but okay no but but it's it's it's an interesting place because you feel like you put in so many fucking hours into the show and it's like it just feels like you're crawling up a mountain so slowly with like 100 pounds of rocks behind you you know what i mean and it's just like i feel like every week we're trying to like trying to get better yeah trying to get better yeah seeing how we can optimize but i'm curious to ask you like after a few years of doing bloom yeah was there a point where you kind of like the newness of it wore off and you're like now we're really in the business yeah was there ever a part where you kind of went through this valley of despair being like is this going to work out is it all worth it yeah dude there's there's months where like i was super low energy or like low low enthusiasm about what i was working on for sure i haven't just been like go go go for 10 years straight uh and i can't really like explain why i'm doing a lot of those valleys of despair like it's just like there's just seasons for this shit um you know get your testosterone levels checked for sure but like i i um like i think like what kept you going during those moments i guess i have found that every venture that i have taken on does lead me to the next bigger thing so i even remember if we go back to like the leo the leo story on wall street once he did join bloom he would say like fuck i guess i just wasted three years on wall street And I was like, bro, you just learned everything about how to build a sales channel.

59:32Like you, you, you proved yourself in the workforce to the point where like, I knew that you had the capability to come join Bloom and none of, none of this would be happening right now if you didn't just go waste three years on wall street. So I, I, I think you could say the same thing about, uh, you know, Mari fitness, which is like no longer really a business. You can say the thing about, uh, Mari doesn't have her podcast anymore because she's, you know, now full-time mom with that. And it's like things just lead to the next thing as the universe is ready to present them to you. I'm – whether it was even the greens leading to what is now like this large beverage portfolio.

1:00:08And I'm sure I'll have like a completely different thing that I'm really prioritizing in three or four years from now. I think like the world is a lot faster than it used to be. I think like the era of like our parents having the same job for 30 years and like that's what's respected is a thing of the past. And I'm very pro taking on the new bigger challenge, which may just be. And that's what I did as the nutrition portfolio expanded, right? It was pre-workouts, then protein powders, and then greens. You going after maybe larger topics or larger audiences or different topics that you're now more fired up about, or maybe even ones if your goal is to monetize to an audience that you know is of a high value for sponsors, right?

1:01:00I think it's just like how I would think about it like the show can change but the show can remain can still stay

1:01:06Greg Lavecchia:that's so true like I mean our show has changed a lot like when we started it was we were photo video people I was working for the Lakers he was touring with DJs like that was who we were talking to and as we kept going I'm like dude we need to broaden this out like we thought that photo video land was massive but that got you off the ground no it did and it got us our first 100 episodes and it would never be where it's at today if it wasn't for those episodes you know what's fucking crazy dude is our best-selling pre-workout six years ago was a glacier crush and a crisp apple no shit yeah so like you know it's kind of goes back to like i like i'm fucking obsessed with uh slumdog millionaire like there's like these moments where like that was that was like that was you know a hundred thousand dollar product back then let's say but it's like that planted the seed for what could become a hundred million dollars skew today and so it might even end up being like oh should we even do the show anymore let's do 10 more shows and then on the ninth show before you guys retire you meet somebody who just like changes your whole fucking world so i think something like this puts you in a place where opportunities can really present themselves even just on like a networking level like and like let's just say like you wanted to go like one day talk to dr pepper and then you're like wait remember greg we spoke to him a year ago and like he works with dr pepper and so putting yourself in a in a day-to-day environment where you are increasing your chances of luck is the best thing that you can do at any stage of your career and this is a very high luck environment like having a new guest in this room every week is fucking crazy you know yeah we talk about that often of how yeah it's like you're you're obviously an incredibly busy person and so like what are the chances if we didn't have the show for you to give us an even 30 minutes.

1:02:57Greg Lavecchia:Who connected us? Uh JJ. I had emailed. That's what happened. Yeah I emailed. And Brooke was like Greg's not going on your show. Yeah. And then JJ was like nah dude do it it's a sick show we're gonna be in LA and I was like fuck yeah let's do it. And then yeah. Yeah it was uh it's special and you're so. Brooke was like no. Yeah Brooke shunned us dude i was like all right bro buzzes around damn it's that's been so wild so crazy to think about these last like four years of doing it every week as someone who uh you're clearly just a true bread entrepreneur yeah was that something that um like were your parents entrepreneurs or like was there something from your childhood or how you were raised or something you went through that like allowed you to just be purebred entrepreneur?

1:03:47I graduated college with a 2-4. I was like the lowest academic performer in my high school probably. I was in a town that was like obsessed with academia. And so therefore like everyone just constantly made me feel like a total loser. But I was more so like I hated when someone would bring that up to like my parents and compare their kid to my parents' kid. and like the shame that i like brought to them potentially because of like me not going to a good college or like i haven't gotten into one yet or whatever it was and uh so i think kind of like that was the initial anger that has now turned into like a passion that i truly love but like that initial fuel um but i was like selling candy out of my locker in like seventh grade like i would go to costco buy the fucking 40 pack of reese's you know cups and and like sell those and like then I was doing soda and I was like fuck these are room temperature and so I had but it was the winter time so I'd keep them outside and like the in the yard at the school and like then I could deliver cold drinks and I'd drop them off in your locker in the morning like I had a little delivery system yeah yeah but then the school was like you gotta stop doing the school stopped me from selling duck tape wallets dude I gotta put food on my table but dude like yeah my first job was like 14 at a bike store I was paying in bike parts like I've And my parents were like, focus on school.

1:05:07We'll give you money. It's okay. But I just always wanted to just kind of work.

1:05:13Greg Lavecchia:As you've grown the business, I'm sure it's attracted attention from other founders, other CEOs. Is there anything that you've learned from people that are at a level that you aspire to be at eventually? Yeah. You know, trying to make sure you're outside of work life doesn't fall apart in the process. more than not that does happen to these people. So like they get so consumed. The odds are against you. The odds are against you. Like, so like my marriage needs to stay incredibly important to us or me. You know, my, my family as a whole does men, my friendships. So that those are incredibly important to me.

1:05:52I would say I was in a room, I was in our boardroom. I was in, I was having a board meeting three months ago and I would say there's probably like three billionaires on my board, like five people on the board in total. And we're trying to figure out this issue on like just getting these energy drinks to as many doors as we can, like something so simple sounding. And the billionaires are like, God, this is like a really tough one. And I was like, well, if they can't figure it out, like how the fuck am I supposed to figure it out? And so just kind of like realizing that all of these people are human and they have like no significant advantage to any of us.

1:06:33And those are what your competitors are too. Like you're not competing against someone who's some like super fucking alpha beast. Like they're just another guy or another gal. And like everyone that is competing as a human and everyone has the right to play has been the, no one kind of intimidates me anymore with that mindset. that you also told us that you don't feel like you're special which is really we're all humans yeah what do you feel like is your superpower though as a founder like is it just great like i'm gonna fucking figure this out or is it something else i think i can uh i i can like show up every day pretty on pretty pretty ready to go for 10 years straight like pretty happily Like I, uh, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll, I can run a pretty tight routine for 10 years straight.

1:07:27Um, not much about my routine has changed throughout this entire journey. Like morning workout show, you know, open my laptop at this time, close it at this time and like in bed by nine 30, like it's pretty much been that for 10 years. Uh, we've, we've, we've stayed incredibly consistent and locked in, which I think the foundation of all of that was the whole fitness career that we had. like you couldn't go fuck off you had to go that those were like the meal prep days when it was like chicken and rice and like you know everything was like crazy regimented so like that foundation of regimen was brought into my work life and i've just kind of followed that the best that i could yeah if someone's struggling with discipline do you have any advice or do you think you're just like i've just been doing this for so long it's kind of ingrained in me yeah do i have advice for discipline.

1:08:15I think trying to, it's funny, I did, I've done like one or two therapy sessions in my life, which I should probably do way more. But I, I feel like each time, like I've had one, I was like, all right, I need to go like work on this for a couple of years and I'll come back. Like it was, they'll just say something that really catches me. So I was trying to, to design my life as I thought the rest of society designed their life. Kind of like how I tried to make an org chart that every other company I thought had the same org chart. And I thought everything was copy and paste. And I have this incredible ADHD.

1:08:51And she was like, you're designing your life as what someone without ADHD would design it for. And you need to create these little steps throughout the day that give you these dopamine hits, that give you these quick stimulus advantages. And if you can't stay focused that long, then try to just embrace doing three things at once and staying unfocused. And so trying to, just cause David Goggins goes, runs 10, 10 goes and runs 10 miles in the morning. And that's what he considers discipline. Like just figure out what that looks like for you and what you enjoy and what other people think looks like discipline.

1:09:26Right. So I like waking up at five 30 in the morning and working out and, and saunaing and doing the shit that for some reason, social media thinks is discipline. But like, there's a lot of shit that I hate that dude, I don't eat, I don't eat my fucking vegetables. I don't fucking, you know, There's a lot of like, just like things that I don't do that you would consider discipline too. But, uh, so of course, a lot of that is just like choosing your career that you enjoy every day and running it with your friends and your wife. And, uh, you know, that's, that's how you can, what you consider fun.

1:09:58You will always beat someone that doesn't consider it fun. Right. Totally. Yeah. That reminds me of, remember when we had Jeremiah Davis on the podcast, this was a couple years ago he's an extremely successful videographer cool photographer uh content creator he told us that he was trying to wake up early because he thought that's right he needed to do right and he's like i was my brain wasn't firing like i work better at night yeah so then the producer that he works with says dude just like sleep until 12 like go fuck off and then lock in at work at 6 p.m if that's what works for you yeah that reminded me of that it's like yeah Yeah, find what works.

1:10:34Because some people can wake up early and some people that isn't for them. And it's like, they thrive more at night and that's okay too. Dude, I'm a CEO. I don't have Microsoft Office on my computer. I don't have, I have never, I don't open spreadsheets. I don't really know how to operate a P &L. Like I don't know any of those things, but like Leo does, you know? And so like the people that I surround myself with can handle the things that I don't, that are my weaknesses. And I figure out what my strengths are. And a lot of the time, those are the things that I also enjoy doing. and that's what I embrace.

1:11:04And I surround myself with people who embrace the things that I don't embrace. So that's generally what my team is comprised of.

1:11:10Greg Lavecchia:As someone who also has severe ADD, what advice do you have for the group of listeners out there that also feel that same way, that have that? I think it's, again, like it's something that you need to embrace and try to figure out how do you turn that into a superpower for your world. You know, we have the ability to be like pretty high energy and go, go, go generally through that, you know, diagnosis. And yeah, I think I wouldn't have it any other way. Like I can't read. It's also a superpower. I mean, you can, you can obsess over shit. If I'm excited about something, you couldn't yank me out of that.

1:11:46Like I up in, so it's funny. I just started to try to buy some books cause I really want to be able to, you know, my son sees me read. But up until like three months ago, I would tell people I can't read cause like I can't really get through like more than three sentences, um, without completely losing focus and like going off into the clouds. So it's, it's pretty severe ADHD and I'm now trying to, to, to read, but, but, but it's been tough. It would just be like a few pages and I'm like using my fucking finger, let down the lines. And so, uh, I think, uh, again, like someone who, who hasn't, or is just launching their business probably looks at us and it's like, that guy doesn't even have a fucking weakness.

1:12:28it's like how could I ever compete with that guy and it's like bro I can't even fucking read like so there's nothing worse than you're reading and you're really trying to lock it dude and you're like literally I read for two pages and I can't tell you what the fuck I just read I'm glad you said that because I don't tell people that that happens to me but that happens to me every time

1:12:48Greg Lavecchia:I read yeah I'm sorry doing audiobooks man I love you like it it's not the same vibe but definitely like we just had the uh cmo of nike on yeah two days ago but he has a book and i was like dude i'm not gonna finish i know for a fact like my reading level will not finish this book by the time we have yeah so i just 2x speed it wow listen to it take notes as i go i listen to him at the gym i fuck with him at the gym driving uh and then when i walk my dog at night just pop it in it's actually really nice i uh i've been told to listen to the audiobook while i read oh it follows and supposedly then I'll like double my absorption.

1:13:23Yeah.

1:13:24Greg Lavecchia:I like it though. I think that I have to be taking notes. cause otherwise you forget. For sure. If you're just listening, like a lot of it's in one ear out the other. So I, I'm like pausing it. Yeah. Let me type this. Yeah. Keep it going. Good for you. That's great. Good for you, dude. I'm going to read, dude. I love that. Have there been products or new flavors that you've launched and you're like, this is going to be the big hitter. This is our new hero. this is going to take us to the next level. Yeah, and those are the ones that flop. Dude, I'm never like, I mean, Shirley Temple, I knew it ripped, but like I thought Juicy Orange was like a no-brainer because all of the data suggests that everyone else has a great orange flavor.

1:14:04And so what happens because you have a lot of confidence in it is you don't try as hard. So like the Juicy Orange, we didn't put that much effort into the launch. We didn't really, we probably didn't even put that as, you know, subconsciously didn't put as much effort into like the flavor itself and what the can looks like. and uh yeah that's like i think that just got kicked out of walmart that fucking flavor like it's like not yeah it's our bottom performer and so how like what percentage of your decisions now are you basing off of data like a new orange flavor versus just like yeah it's a gut feeling like i have a good feeling about this yeah in terms of like using data for for finding out product innovation.

1:14:40I have ran, I have had large portions of Bloom's business in categories that didn't really exist. And we had to create the category, which was greens and superfoods versus soda and energy where there's a multi-billion dollar category that already exists. And there's a long-winded answer, but I would much rather do the go after a category that already exists, then be the one who has to spend all of the marketing money to create a category for greens. Right. And, and this was at a time when green, it was like greens powder wasn't really, it was actually in its like final demise stage. So when we first pitched target, they were like, bro, we just kicked every superfoods off of our shelves.

1:15:27Like superfoods do not sell a target. And I was like, fan, this is not a superfoods. Like this is a gut health product. Like, please He's just, trust me, it's really hot on Amazon. Like, come try it out, right? And so we finally did get it into Target, but it was at like the total demise of like the superfood era of over-the-counter products. And so now when I'm thinking about like, what's another category that Bloom could go into? I'm not really that interested in like the new hot trend areas until they're already established. I don't think you need to be the first mover. I actually hate being the first mover Cause then I'm the one who needs to spend all of the fucking money educating the consumer on, you know, how they, why they should try this product.

1:16:08So in energy drinks, I loved being one of the last people to the party with better for you. So does, I loved being one of the third or fourth people to the party with, um, was, I mean, even with our creatine business, which is doing great. Like we didn't, we're not like really doing much of the education around creatine because all these doctors are publicly talking about it, but people know that they can go get the ingredient from a trusted brand. that they know with the bloom trademark on the front of it right so i hate using data to predict future trends let let five brands go create that category and spend all the money to create it and then bloom will come in and do it right and make it 10 times better so the way i kind of just like explain that to my team all the time is like we don't recreate the wheel we just take the current wheel that's on the market and make it 10 times better it's like nobody wants to show up to a party first you know dude but most people think that is the you're like let the vibes you know drinks are flowing dude that's what most people think you have to do like now there's already too many energy drinks like no someone already invented that product who gives a fuck if someone invented that product like go after that space i didn't invent booty bands either like you know on the topic of that i saw a tiktok of a girl she's at air one yeah and she's selfie videoing she's like you know what i think we need more of guys i think we need better more better for you sodas and it's like the whole thing in air one is like 70 different brands yeah olipop swoon that's mad funny that's mad funny dude i mean your one's a funny one because our team used to we used to have the headquarters right next to the air one in venice and our team would like and myself we would go there and like try and and unintentionally get inspired for some new products you want to come out with and we're like oh shit like this is an air one product we sell in in walmarts and targets and across the entire nation i think uh making sure you're getting your product innovation from the right areas is as crucial as anything else like what's performing well on is probably not necessarily a legitimately large opportunity what have you learned from being in

1:18:11Greg Lavecchia:target and walmart and these big big big distributors yeah what has come with that I think that they're not this scary beast of a corporation that some of their reputation may come. You're generally working with a real human. And sometimes it's just one human who's making all of the decisions for that entire category. And that's a relationship where you can work with them and kind of come up with product launches or new product formulations with that buyer. Do you have stuff that's specific to Target and specific to work? Sometimes. Okay. So today, as I sit here now, but a lot of the time we do.

1:18:49And, uh, which is a whole other ball game. Cause that creates a lot of drama amongst the retailers and stuff. Cause they hate that. Like the word exclusive can be really dangerous in this game. And, uh, you know, unless you're okay with hurting feelings, which sometimes you have to. And I think, uh, but like, yeah, these retailers, like dude, they, they need the up and coming digital brands just as much as you need a place to sell them. so you need to create a synergy where we're like hey how can we work together to make this happen and not this like really transactional relationship where there's not actually collaboration was there like a uh an expensive lesson you had to learn early on where maybe you put a lot of money into a certain marketing campaign or or something else or or dealing with a manufacturer you spent a lot of money on a new run and it came back and either the cans weren't right or the flavor was off has something like that happened yeah so like early on and early i'll give two examples one like with millions and one when it was like 10 000 was all our money uh so early on we spent it was probably like ten thousand dollars for and that was like everything we had on what i thought would be like the ultimate meme campaign on instagram and it was all new pages that i've never worked with before and but i felt really confident about it because like the pages were getting great engagement and there was huge following pages and like it was a super relevant i thought it was a super relevant demographic for who we were trying to market to and you know sent the paypal the posts are going up two hours later the posts go up marie's following is getting there's so many notifications coming in for all the followers and i'm like oh no these people are all in India.

1:20:26Like they cannot buy any of our products. Like I just fucked up everything. Like can't even buy more ads to try to sell more products. Like the entire ecosystem's fucked. Like that was our entire, you know, nest egg of money. And these are just Indian people sending us non-English DMs. Like this is horrible. So that was a disaster early on, which, you know, you just dig yourself out of the hole at that point or I don't know, claim bankruptcy. And and then uh you know later on i mean dude i've had christmas days where i get a phone call and four 18 wheelers full of greens are stolen by the fucking mexican cartel and like and that's just like my christmas that year um and i have to go deal with that and uh i thought you were going to say they flipped no no stolen by the cartel yeah oh up the street from here yeah it ended up up the street from here and they, they were trying to sell it as a third party sell.

1:21:22Dude, there's so many headlines of this coming out now, but, uh, it's, it's happened for years in consumer packaged goods where they'll show up to the, the shipping ports with, uh, with fake, you know, they'll pretend they're Sam's club or they'll, they'll pretend they're Walmart with a very real, uh, you know, permission slips and they'll just take the truck and, you know, drive it off to, uh, some guy's, you know, secret warehouse and they'll go try to sell it on Amazon. Yeah. And they'll undercut your price. And if your business is big enough, you might not even know what's happening. And it's a shit show.

1:21:54But how does that work? Can a non-Bloom store sell a Bloom product? Yes. And I'm very surprised that that's allowed for digestible products, but that is technically allowed. Really? Yeah.

1:22:07Greg Lavecchia:What can you do to combat it? Not sell to people who will sell on Amazon. Jeez. You know? So we don't just have like an open wholesale account for random people. Yeah. Like a, like a random little small shop, small vitamin shop couldn't come in. No. Okay. No, no, no, no. Wow. Generally speaking. Yeah. Yeah. But for this they can, but that's fine. Uh huh. Yeah. Wow. That's insane. That is nuts. Take me through last question that I have. Take me through a full marketing campaign today. What does that look like? I want to know from like front to end what is happening. Yeah. That would be a two hour call.

1:22:41but i would say a big change that i've made this year this is some sauce is i used to do one massive blast and then kind of stop talking about it and i would see that in the sales right like and i and i'm no longer trying to run this business of like do you guys follow any fashion brands that just like you know a seasonal drop and it sells out in three days you know what i'm to say like limited time drop like this is our fall collection and then it all sells out and then like literally the website might even shut down for a month yes that that's a hell of a business model and it's so exciting to run and it's probably you know great for money but i think uh that's how we were running our new product launches as well for a while and we would have like a three day massive drop of a campaign and it would be huge but then it would like pretty quickly dwindle so what we have done for some of the last few energy drink launches with massive success is actually have like three or four big launch moments that are very different very different demographics talking to a different avatar across maybe even like a three four month span so if you look at our glacier crush can we uh we launched that with a campaign with brett chody with uh you know, some billboards around LA.

1:24:00I went to, I went to college with, uh, her sister L we were in the same grade and like same friend group. Very cool. Very cool. Hell yeah.

1:24:09Greg Lavecchia:And then, uh, and then had a second campaign where we did like a huge frozen event in New York city, had a third campaign where we sponsor sponsored Amber Glenn for the figure skating in the Olympics in, uh, in Milan and Milan. And so three, like totally different types of campaigns, talking to different people, but it maintained the hype very much. And this is a, that's our, our number two selling skew for the last like four months. Nothing beats crisp apple. Crisp apple is just like on steroids. I don't know. I'm going to have to try that one. Yeah. How do you, how do you decide which, you know, uh, creators or influencers to partner with like, and make not, not just doing like influencer marketing or whatever, talking about like putting a whole campaign behind.

1:24:51It's so funny, bro. Cause like i first of all i very quickly removed myself from that because i do i don't know what who girls follow i don't know why they follow them but like i'll have so many uh you know guys in the energy drink space who are like you gotta sign this girl and i'll check her instagram page i'm just like bro like you follow this girl you know why girls don't follow this girl and or this page and like i'm not fucking signing this girl and then uh another example would be like uh oh you need j-lo like that's you'll be fucking huge if you just get like a mega celeb and they think like that and this is all coming from like private equity dudes who are wearing a court you know a vest and like the gray quarters yeah yeah yeah gray quarters have been a patagonia vest and uh so dude i don't know that's just like our team's fucking nuts like they just it's funny because if you think about performance marketing it's really a volume game of like i'm gonna make 1500 100 ads every single day and see which one performs the best.

1:25:52We can't do that for a Glacier Crush campaign. We get one shot. We get one person, maybe two that we sign and we need to like pretty much be certain it's going to work. And why is that?

1:26:03Greg Lavecchia:Why, why not do like a bunch of different. Because to get them. I'm saying for like the big, you know, the big launch campaign, like it might just be Amber Glenn. I see. But you know, we're not going to be able to make like 1500 Facebook ads like you would if you were just like a normal D to C performance company. You might not with fucking AI. yeah uh maybe so so and like you know thousands of influencers will post about it and we'll play that whole book but like the actual campaign itself and like who's going to be like on the fridge at 7-eleven like we need to choose that months before so that that won't be ai opportunities right like there's still like a you walk into a ralph's or you walk into a uh a walmart like we print that currugit months out and we have 10 thousands of them to put around the point of sale so our team has just become like mega weapons at choosing these people especially influencers who are like on the come up and catching them early they're uh they're really great i have two more questions do you have any more no you go okay first one is creator-led businesses i feel like have gained a lot of popularity over the last really like five years i feel like since like COVID.

1:27:12But a lot, see a spike, see a boom, and then kind of crash. If you were to restart and you had a creator who has some success and they have a following or an audience, what would you make sure they do to make sure that they have longevity over many years as opposed to just seeing a spike and then kind of a decline? I can speak on a large creator, like even just Mari. she went from just making fitness content to you know a full lifestyle influencer with like you know segments of fashion and travel and obviously being an entrepreneur and then uh ended up launching the podcast which totally revived like her following in her community youtube was a whole other type of uh type of avatar that she was operating under so continuing to recreate yourself over the years seems to be like a non-negotiable uh just because like you got famous off of or you got your initial surge from one thing does not mean you can't like start to transition that into other and trying to that's exactly what we've done i think personal brand and product brand are like very similar topics um we launched as a pre-workout company we now sell shirley temple soda at walmart like it's uh it there's there's you you have to continuously recreate what you are and then to leave you with as your son becomes older and starts to really like understand what mom and dad built yeah what do you hope that your son and potentially other kids yeah in the future as well what do you hope they they can take away from you or learn from you um as they start to understand like truly what you guys built with bloom yeah i think uh

1:29:04hopefully bloom's still like ripping at that point but i think i think uh you know i would i would love to think it would be like a household brand at that point they'll just like see it in their homies fridges but um i think to just know that like that we that that

1:29:25that the opportunity to create that there's no excuse to not be able to create the opportunity to not go after the opportunity that you you know feel pulled to go after um it doesn't make any sense like there's this 30 year old ceo of this large energy drink company And like age is just a number. Your place in society's random list of hierarchy is truly a made up list. And you can do whatever you want in 2026. I mean, dude, JJ gave me a fucking Insta360 two days ago. And we just like we're snowboarding with it. And a movie came out of this thing. And it was like 400 bucks on Amazon. We received it the same day.

1:30:11It's like whether it's content creation or launching a Shopify website or, you know, starting to just publish content on TikTok, like the opportunities are just are just red hot right now. It's it's it's insane.

1:30:23Greg Lavecchia:I love it. I love it, Greg. This has been so fun. There's been episode 198 of the 505 pod. If you're still here, please hit the subscribe button. Drop us a comment. Leave us like and we'll see you guys all next week. Peace. So Greg pretty much said, you think I'm just an influencer brand. Hold my beer. Let me go. Number one on Amazon. We're gonna do a million a day. Yeah. It's light work. Watch me. Watch me. Okay, listen. I really like this portion of the pod when Greg was talking about how you might as well go big, man. You might as well just go for the damn thing. So if you're a rock and you're listening to the show, you're a builder, you're a dreamer, just know that whatever the heck the thing is that you're going for, don't let the small minded people in your area, in your hometown, family members talk you out of going for something crazy.

1:31:04Greg Lavecchia:Same with the pod, dude. Totally. We're going for big. We're going for big. That's not the word I was trying to say. We're going for broke. That's what we're doing. We're going for it. Is that the saying? We're going for broke? You know, now that I say it. Like, we're going for rich. Don't think it's we're going for broke. We're going for number one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're coming for Rogan. Man, it's so funny, though, because I think. Seriously, though, man. The reason I love the podcast is because you get around somebody like Greg, and you can feel like the aura of success, and you're just like fuck yeah like he was saying he goes i'm i'm no one special it's like if i can do it so can you he's like and i believe steve jobs has a famous quote where he said i'm gonna butcher it but something along the lines of like anyone who's ever made anything special or successful is no more smarter than you and i think that's like so true it's like you should put that on a shirt yeah dude i'm thinking about it it's gonna be the merch uh just dm me dm me rock if you want that uh cut off tank and uh no but seriously i think being around certain individuals and also even just like consuming this type of content makes you feel like it's possible and that you can dream bigger because depending on your environment who you spend your time with what your friends or family talk about what they say can really deter a lot of people sometimes because it's hard not to let other people in your close circle.

1:32:48It's hard to not let them get in your ear. And it's always better if you can be around people, whether it's in person or listen to content that is gonna try to make you better.

1:33:02Greg Lavecchia:Dude, that's something that we've learned too from paid to be you. Like you get people in a group or you're in some sort of coaching program. Like you learn from the other people and you see what's possible. You're like, it shatters your belief of what you thought was possible for yourself. Like we've talked about this before, which is making money with creating content for these brands and what these brands are charging. Like you have no idea when you're on the outside and you're first starting, especially when we were young. Like think about when I was in school, I remember charging$200 for a video and I'm like, this is it, man.

1:33:30Greg Lavecchia:I'm rich. You guys have no idea. I'm wealthy. This is what success looks like. You want to taste the success? Drinks are on me tonight. I'm going to get our$6 drinks at the bar, you know? And then we graduated. We come out here and you realize like what these big brands are willing to pay for videos and what it costs and how much it costs to make a great video. And your ideology that you had in your head is completely just broken. And every time that we have someone sit in that chair, I feel like the things that a things that a lot of people think get shattered i hope when they listen to our pod sure like what's possible for them because you guys can go do whatever you want to do you can you can make the biggest drink brand in the world and not not have any prior knowledge to drinks you can go crush a category and dominate in it and do super well you can feel the passion though in his voice that's the coolest part about i think the show is the these people that we get to talk to and that you guys listen to obviously they're so passionate about what they do like they fucking love it they chose something that like gets them super fired up in the morning you know and it's it's it's inspiring what's also interesting is they've been at it for i want to say a decade they started out as just pre-workout yeah and we thought it was originally greens totally it was pre-workout i didn't even i didn't even know that that was the thing we were just in cvs literally right before this and I saw so much bloom.

1:34:52Yeah. A hundred percent. Another thing I absolutely love that he said was how important the liquid is, how product is good. Everything.

1:35:02Greg Lavecchia:Well, you, and you think about it, we we've talked about other drink brands that have came and went on the show before you have a huge spike because of their name and then the liquid's terrible or it's got garbage in it. And then it doesn't keep, doesn't keep people buying it. These drink brands and like you're a coffee guy, right? Yes. Same, I'm not a coffee guy. Or a white stallion. Or a white stallion every now and then. Think about it though. Drinks are ritualistic. What drink brand do you end up going with? I'm assuming the rocks are the same way. You stick with it. You're like, go to the gas station.

1:35:34Greg Lavecchia:You're like, if they don't have your drink, you're pissed. You're like, dude, I got to go to another gas station. I'm not going to drink my drink today, you know? Yeah, and he was saying how he just went to the Expo West and how everyone's asking him for like the tips and tricks. and it's like what's the they were asking for like almost what's the get rich yes dude what's the secret and it's like dude your product is ass yes your attention sucks yeah and i think uh you can relate it to you can take the concept of the liquid is the most important as okay if the product is the most important you think about the podcast right i can't tell you how many times i've come to brayden and said we're changing the colors of the podcast this is what's going to take us to the next level.

1:36:16Our branding's off.

1:36:21Is the Spotify icon, is the podcast cover photo the best it could be? Maybe it could be better, okay? But that's like the packaging. That's what's like on the outside of the can. How good is the conversation? How good is the liquid? How good is the product that you're putting out? That is the number one thing. Marketing and branding can get you one purchase, but the liquid is going to bring them back. And so if you can think about that, whatever product you're putting out, whether it's a physical good or a digital product or content on the internet, like how good is the liquid? How good is the product?

1:37:05When you guys comment that we're the best kept secret on the internet,

1:37:09Greg Lavecchia:does it make me want to drink bleach? Yeah, a little bit because I wish we weren't a secret, man. But it's powers in the product. People like the product. It's good. You guys comment that. It's really kind of you, but also hurts my heart at the same time. Share this to a damn friend. We're coming though. Dude, we're coming in hot. You have no idea. Some might say we're about to be restocked. Some might say that the restock is the most powerful word in marketing. Okay? Because it signals that the damn thing was sold out, that it was gone, not discounting because discounting can like cheapen up your brand.

1:37:40And I love that he said, he said sold out is the most powerful. And he's like, no, no, no, just kidding. Restocked. Boom. Because anyone can kind of say they sold out and they had, you know, 10 cans. 12 cans. Restocked, it was popular enough and in demand enough to where they sold out and now they're back in stock. And I love that he's just like, yeah, it's not utilized enough. Yes.

1:38:08Greg Lavecchia:Start with a specific community. I really like that as well. Like his wife Mari, I mean, they were going after her community to start. It was like, okay, what are the gals drinking that are following me? What can we make that's going to be awesome that they're going to really enjoy? And then you can start to broaden it out. You get really good with the group and then you can start to go outwards to more people. it's it's uh it's almost impossible to start off if you are bootstrapping yeah like they did you can't just go to the masses no at the start i also relate it back to our podcast like we talked to a very specific person when we were first starting out we couldn't do the show from day one how we're doing it now because we've had to put in the years of work to you know build up the credibility of our show and build up the network and so now if we reach out you know there's a handful of people who still might think of our show as like too small to come on which is totally fine but the caliber of guests that we'll be able to get on for example greg would not have said yes to our show year one.

1:39:19Greg Lavecchia:No, it wasn't legitimate. It wasn't legitimate. And so with the Bloom, it's like they started with, you know, the greens powder and they were serving a very specific community. And now they're playing ball with the masses. But I like his thought process of go really hyper specific because you also have less competition from the big brands because they're not trying to play small. So it's really interesting. He talked earlier on about how people were dismissing of them calling them just like oh they're just a creator brand or this is just another influencer brand and that kind of put a chip on his shoulder of i'm going to show you what's possible like look hold my beer let me go number one on amazon and crazy it's super cool to hear that though of he they want to be great you can just tell team that was here all of them like there's this urge to win and it's it's awesome what's interesting about the amazon stuff in going number one on Amazon is he explained to us that typically people would like run ads to their main website.

1:40:24Yeah, the Shopify. Or the Shopify. Because Amazon takes such a heavy percentage. It's like - They take the data. Yes. And it's like it doesn't make as much sense maybe financially. But he's like, if we win on Amazon and online, we have that data to go then to big retailers and say we're fucking number one on amazon now we can go play ball and target or walmart or whatever you know retailer and that's just what it takes

1:40:54Greg Lavecchia:it's what it takes to be a you know nationwide nationwide brand and i i really liked what he said about how the hard categories can be easier in his opinion because you don't have as many people that are coming into it like some random kid can't just make make a go make a beverage brand these days it requires capital like some form of capital you're still going to spend tens of thousands of dollars like get it up and running get the product ready to rock and roll it's not like oh yeah i just have no money like i can start this like anyone can start like a little e-com store or drop shipping company or things like that or a digital product business zero barrier to entry yeah but something like that it's like if you're going to play you're going to play you're play with the big boys you're going up against monster and red bull and brands like that his view on hiring is also really interesting how he's like you can have red bull on your resume but like you didn't do jack shit to contribute to like you know said growth from the company that reminded me of the christian guzman pod where he was saying how he was so obsessed with chasing Gymshark.

1:41:57Greg Lavecchia:Sure. And Greg was, sounds like he was obsessed with like the Pepsis or the Cokes of like, okay, this is what it takes for the monsters. This is what their org chart looks like. We need to copy that. And then those people would come in and be like, why is this person not contributing? Because in a huge engine like that, they're just another peg in the machine. Like, at a smaller startup with however many employees they have, you all have to be directly impacting like your thing, your little thing that you're doing to make this thing continue to grow. That's just, Just your random thought. I just wonder what the cumulative net worth of guests on the 505 podcast is at.

1:42:35Greg Lavecchia:Oh, it's pretty crazy. Is that? Oh, it's ridiculous. I love that he's like, because I asked him about kids. And he's like, yeah, you know, trips are now having to be a little bit quicker. This probably would have been a four or five day trip. Now it's a three day trip. And we have some travel help, a.k.a. Jets waiting. Such a flex. Right from here. sell 30 % of the company had to get back to Austin quick had to there's no other option it's so funny because now I'm getting hit with his stories so often he's at top of feed because I've been consuming so much of his content motherfucker lives a sick life you know what I really appreciate about Greg is he knows how to rich right you ever see people got money and you're just not You're not doing this right, man.

1:43:26Greg Lavecchia:You're not riching correctly. You're not doing this right. You got all this fucking money. Yeah, you're hoarding it. Shitty drip. What's going on? Okay. Yeah. He's riching right. Yeah, I like that. That's a great saying. I'd like to think that I would also rich right. You think you'd be good? Yeah. I think you'd be good at it too. Yeah, I think you'd be good. I appreciate that. It would take you a little bit of time. Oh, really? You strike me as someone who would spend money on some stupid shit at the beginning. Give me the stupid shit. And I'm like, Brayden, why you got all those logos on you?

1:43:54Greg Lavecchia:Dude. Dude. I also loved, loved the story about him driving the fucking McLaren and then pulling up to the dude selling pizzas. And he's like, I'm fucking miserable, stressed out of my life. And this dude who's probably making minimum wage is fucking having the time of his life. Happy as a clam. Yeah, man. This was, this is one of my favorite pods. I know that you guys enjoyed it a ton because when he left, I was like, it's one of my favorite ones that we've ever done. I hope he enjoyed it. I have inside intel that says that he really enjoyed it. Let's go. Oh, I do have a story to share. Tell me a story.

1:44:30So shout out Chris Motions because he connected me with Zach from Scene Select. So I was just out in Sedona, Arizona. First time in Sedona. Not much to do besides hiking. Red Rocks are cool. I'm not like the biggest hiker. And Sarah Catherine is definitely not a hiker. And so, and the hotel was really nice, but it's funny because it felt like we were kind of living in Groundhog's Day because we're like literally eating, all the meals were comp. So it's like eating every single meal at the restaurant. I'm shooting in the morning. Then we're like going to the pool. Hopefully it's nice enough weather to lay out and then shooting some more.

1:45:08And we're like, there's really nothing to do here. We're just staying at the hotel. But I went to go fly my drone because if you shoot hotels, drone's important. Oh, this is great. I hadn't flown my drone in a minute, and the cord was for the old iPhone.

1:45:27Greg Lavecchia:We got to talk to GGI about that. That's ridiculous. So is it on me? Should I have checked my gear beforehand that it works? Yes, but couldn't fly the drone. And then they didn't have a cord within a 60-mile radius? There's no Best Buy around there? Dude, I went to – there was a Best Buy, but an hour away. But I went to a Walmart, a superstore Walmart. You would think that a Walmart – You would think a Walmart – Wait, they didn't have a USB to USB-C cord? No, you needed a micro USB to a USB-C, or I needed a converter from the old iPhone to the new iPhone. Damn, so you see, you have the broke drone.

1:46:06Greg Lavecchia:My drone has USB, and I just plugged it in. Damn, dude. See, I had a newer one, though. I got the Mini, the Mini 3 or something. I got the new guy. I do want to get the Mavic 4. The Mavic 4 is pretty tough. We're just going to have to smuggle it into the country. Yeah, can't get it in the US. We need to hit up our Canada rocks or our Mexican rocks. And we need to go down under. The guy I met at Sam's Film Festival, maybe he could help us out. That was great. He was from Mexico. I do want to get a... That's what we need to do. I need a drone. I need a drone that can film vertically. Yes. My little guy can do that.

1:46:42Greg Lavecchia:It's pretty sick. Okay, so I might have to just borrow yours. You might have to just cop that one. Yeah, I'll charge you 50 bucks. It's a good drone. And you know what else? You guys have no idea, one, how much money we've invested in this pod. But you do because I've told you. Let me tell you guys something that's really pissed us off. You guys know about the frequency problems we've had with the show, right? And if they don't, they do now. If you don't, we do. The breaker for the house is on the opposite side of this wall. It's right behind me, right? We've got this breaker. So when we record, the reason why we haven't been wearing headphones lately is because there's like a tiny little buzz that happens.

1:47:16Greg Lavecchia:But it really is only apparent in the headphones. It's not apparent in the actual. Which blows my mind. It doesn't make much sense, but there is frequency that's going on. It's very light, but I get rid of it in post with some denoise. So what we have to do now is take these wood panels off, which is awesome. Take this off, take the neon sign off, which I put up because I'm super handy. Take this off, paint it with this EMF paint, and then we have to have an electrician come out, which is awesome. To ground it. To ground it. So to take all that electrical magnificent energy and shoot it back. Yeah.

1:47:45Greg Lavecchia:So that's what we're dealing with over here. And we bought a new camera for you guys, which is great. because our Coastal Z's A1 overheats and we can't have that. And it doesn't have a flip out screen. And I like having the flip out screen to be able to, you know, keep tabs while we're recording. Yeah, because see, I used to have a ZV one and I sold it. We got you the FX3. Now we can use that for the show. And we got AC unit put in here. So now it's like nice and chilly because you guys have no idea. These lights are so hot. We had a light break. We had a light break, which is awesome. So my light is now at Aputure and their customer service was bothering me, which is great.

1:48:19Greg Lavecchia:It's all good. I'll let you guys know. I will tell you if I hate their customer service, which is going to be, it'll be interesting. But we do. We're getting it going for you guys. You have no idea. I thought I was going to need, or I thought we were going to need to get an extra lens, but the 70 to 200 works well. Works great. So we're still good on lenses. So we're good on, we're honestly fully good on lenses and good on cameras and lights. Cameras. We got a new light and we got a new 600 because our other one broke, which is great. That just arrived today so we'll have to go pick that up. Anyways, that's the after party.

1:48:51I still don't know how they're letting Brayden into this thing.

1:48:53Greg Lavecchia:Just keep sneaking through the back door. One of these days they're going to catch me. They're going to catch on to my tricks but hope you guys enjoyed this episode with Greg. We're literally approaching 200. Is that next week? Is 200 next week or is it in two weeks? I think it's in two weeks. Do you want me to check? What is going... Who's after Greg? Omar or Dean? Oh no, Omar. It's Omar. Isn't it? yeah we just put out 197 bro he's put out 197 so Greg will be 98 Omar will be 99 damn guys that's crazy we got a banger for you guys on 200 is going to go nuts we love you guys a ton we'll see you guys all next week with Omar El Ticrori and as always DM us on IG with any questions peace