533: How Hyperice Went From $0 to $700M Revolutionising Sports Recovery [VIDEO]

0:01Hey founder fam, I want to talk to you about something super exciting. We're officially partnered with OmniSend, the email marketing and SMS platform built specifically for e-commerce founders. We've been recommending OmniSend to founder students for a while now because it just works. Whether you're launching your first store or you're scaling to seven figures, it really helps you automate your marketing and get real results. Did you know on average, OmniSend customers make$68 for every$1 they spend, which is an insanely good return on investment. And because you're part of the founder community, you get 50 % off your first three months with the code founder50.

0:39Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. I was on a mission to make a product that was good enough for Kobe Bryant. I knew if it was good enough for him, it would be good enough for everybody. He kept saying, so you want to build a brand around recovery. He was the athlete trying to look for any advantage to prolong his career. You know, I had this brand that was trying to developed the next thing to help crack the code for athletes. He actually said, give me two weeks and I'll give you my honest feedback. I wish I could say that he loved him and raved about him, but that's not what happened.

1:09Job's not finished. Through behind the scenes access to the locker room and working closely with the best athletes in the world, HyperEye set out to revolutionize the way that athletes would recover competition. Maybe meeting Kobe was the precursor to it. This is just too good of a story that has to keep going. You have to have an attitude that failure

1:29Hear the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan. All right, so Anthony, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today. uh the first question that i wanted to ask you is what inspired you to create this incredible company hyper ice and you know what what what did it look like the early days what did the first 60 days look like well first part of the question is like what inspired me i think for me i um ever since i was a little kid um i was always moving and i just love sports from an early age So I grew up in Southern California and fortunately it's always sunny here year round.

2:17So you can play sports year round. I grew up in a neighborhood that had a park that had a basketball court, you know, an empty field that we'd play, whatever sport was in season, tennis courts. I lived close to the beach, so I was in the ocean, so I'd swim. And I really didn't like school too much when I was a little kid. And it was really just all about sports and I was always competitive. So I think first developing like a love for sport, like kind of shapes who you are in your adult life. And so it never really left me when I got to be an adult, like, you know, I always say I'm a failed professional athlete, right?

2:52Because if I was a professional athlete, then I would have never had to get a real job. and um i got into teaching high school and um and so and i coached basketball because that was like my favorite sport and um i played all the way through high school and continue to play after that but i but um you know just staying involved in like sport and understanding that you need a body that's healthy and that can move and you know what could i do to sort of like kind of you know battle father time to to stay young as possible as long as possible and um you know it's something i was always just interested in so i think that like before i ever had the company um it all started with like my love for sport and and being a competitor and looking for careers that would sort of tap into that and that i could stay connected to that and so So I totally accidentally fell into high price with just a product idea one day.

3:52Actually, I mentioned that I was living in Sydney, Australia at the time. I had taken a sabbatical from my teaching job. My wife played in WMBL down there. And I think I just had more time to think. And I was also, I just had crossed over the 30-year-old barrier. So you're starting to, your body's starting to kind of feel that kind of the wear and tear a little bit more. and this kind of idea that, you know, what can we do to the body to sort of preserve our youth? And what can we do as far as like, you know, the term recovery didn't really exist. So it was just like, what are pro athletes doing to sort of, so that they can do this, you know, all year round and year after year up until their late 30s and early 40s.

4:34And so it was just, you know, that was sort of the genesis of how I was in the mindset to start HyperX. Yeah. So you went back home and then you started what, like, how did you create the product? Yeah. So, so basically I, I looked, you know, basketball being the sport I was closest to. Um, I, I, I started researching like, you know, what do basketball players do? Or I think it was like, you know, for recovery. And like, if I typed in like athlete recovery, you know, because the term wasn't really being used in the context it is now, you'd get like every athlete that like went to like rehab recovery for like drugs or something.

5:13Right. Cause that was what the term was used for. or alcohol recovery right so i was like you know trying to figure out what the term would be to like what do athletes do to not get sore to come back whatever and um i found that like athletes were going in ice tubs getting massages and then like icing their joints so i had this you know concept of like okay well you know what if i could make like like you know an icing device because all that like i would notice that like basketball players would ice football players would ice volleyball player it was sort of this one thing that like back then that was like kind of the one thing you did to kind of like you know kind of uh body maintenance right and um and people would do when they're injured and the science has kind of come a long way we know we probably were over icing back then but um so i just had this concept of like putting together um the the technique that is used in the training room which was like a real bag of ice and some sort of something to compress it with like a wrap or something.

6:12And, you know, I had this idea for like a neoprene kind of like compression sleeve and an ice bag. And so I just kind of made like an art, as an art project, I went to a wetsuit factory, got some scrap neoprene, made my first prototype and I was wearing them after I was playing basketball and a friend of mine who I used to play pick up at UC Irvine, which is a college. It's about 20 minutes from my house or, and, And that's where Kobe Bryant used to train in the off season. And my college friend and high school teammate happened to be on the coaching staff. And his job was to like let Kobe Bryant in the facility.

6:51And he had to fill his ice bags. And he said, hey, where'd you get those knee ice? I was like, I just made them. He goes, you know, I got to fill Kobe's ice bags. And like, I'm not good at it. And they're all messy. And could like you make me two of those? And I would, you know, I'm like, so I can give to them. And so I said, yeah, sure. I went back to the factory, made two more. and um you know when i when i gave him to me he goes hey don't give him to me like you know i told him about that you had this thing and he wants he wants to see it so i had the opportunity to meet him um back in the summer of 09 i gave him the prototypes that were not even planning wasn't even planning to be a business i was sort of just like this was like an art project i did and um and you know i wish i could say that he loved him and raved about him and said he was all in but that's not what happened he actually said give me two weeks and i'll give you my honest feedback and so two weeks later i went back and he told me all the things that were wrong with it and um and he was like you need to change this and this and this has to be different and i was like well i don't really have any resources to like make improvements as a product developer i was just you know sort of doing this as like the resources i had as an art project but when he said the last thing he said he goes look because i like this idea if you can get this to where I wear it better than what I'm doing now, like I will wear it.

8:08And so I took that as almost like, I was like, wow, if he'll wear it, like, you know, I probably have a business at the, you know, kind of one of the most recognized athlete in the world saying that, you know, as my first product tester, guinea pig, right? It's pretty amazing kind of opportunity. So I took it around to manufacturing companies because I had this idea for making an ice bag that had a valve on it that would suck the air out so that the ice would conform to the body. And that's, you know, at the time I called it hyper ice because he was wearing the hyper dunk basketball shoe. I was wearing the hyper dunk basketball shoe.

8:43That was like all the raves back then. And so I'm like, Hey, he wears hyper dunk. He wears hyper ice. I'm like, and it was kind of, I was on a mission to make a product that was good enough for Kobe Bryant. Cause I knew if it was good enough for him, it would be good enough for everybody. And so that's kind of, it was during the recession of 09. No one was really even entertaining phone calls from guys with no website, no business experience. It definitely was like, you know, it was not, it was by persistence and luck that I had one, you know, manufacturer that I showed the text messages that I was communicating with them.

9:18So they like, believed me enough to say, okay, maybe we'll put the time in and develop this with you. You know, we, I wrote the patent for the sort of the technology behind the concept. We formed a company. We did the R &D on it, not knowing if we would ever go to market. And then when we developed the product, you know, it wasn't perfect, but it was good enough to where like I could raise a little bit of money on it. And, you know, once I raised money on it, we kind of fine-tuned the product. And then, you know, from that, it took two years to like kind of bring it to market. And we launched kind of commercially launched the brand in 2012.

9:5212 but in the process of that i was my whole strategy was sort of borrowed from kind of beats by dray which had just been you know several years earlier beats by dray launched at the 08 olympics and they were just getting the headphones on like all these cultural influencers athletes musicians entertainers and i said well look all athletes ice so what if i get all my if i if i get this icer on all the best athletes from all the different sports it'll kind of be like the beats headphones of, of like taking care of your body. And so that was sort of my kind of idea. And, um, and I ended up, uh, just really hustling and just, I would, if I knew, if I had a pretty good network and if I knew that an athlete was going to be at a workout at Santa Monica high school from three to four, I would be there at three 59 when they're done.

10:41And I would give the product out. I wasn't selling it. I was just kind of like getting as many out as I could and I was trying to create like this sort of groundswell of people that knew what it was and um you know we didn't even have a website there was people saying like hey there's this guy when you go out to LA if if you know you'll bring in these really cool and they're really premium nice devices and it was way better than what they were doing with just a plastic bag so um it was uh you know I look back on it now and I was just super green and um just not really you know had no making it all up as i go along but it was like sort of just like the hustle that was so key in those first couple years because i just didn't have anything to kind of i didn't have a website i didn't have like any history or anything like that and so throughout this time i was building my network and i always say the core of everything is if you deliver a product that people find um that that they like um and that helps them you know you it goes a long way it's the company that was sort of like the seeds of of before we went commercial is like you know really developing that reputation yeah wow a lot to unpack there man a lot to unpack um but this is this is fascinating so first of all what happened with kobe right like you said that he if you get the product to working working form we pending his feedback he would wear it did you get it to working form where he would wear it and what happened there yeah i you know so right when you know the first you know when we kind of had proof of concept that we had prototypes that we had like sort of pre-production models i waited till i got it to where like it worked and um and then yeah i went back to him it took like a year to develop uh a little over a year to kind of get it to where i knowing how critical that was i wanted to make sure that the next time i showed him something that you know i made the improvements that he asked for he started wearing it and you know I you started to see it pop up I have a ton of pictures on my phone from like his last couple years in the league where he's wearing it on the bench you would wear during you know athletes when they would you know NBA players in particular like if they come out of the game and they're not going back in so that's typically like when they're blowing a team out icing is sort of like the thing you do is like okay I'm not going back in I'm starting my recovery process so yeah you know i got to him and he started he started wearing it and a lot of times i would you know i would run into him here and there because you know we both lived in orish county um and i'd run into my uci's campus where he trained and he just kind of knew me as he used to call me ice man because that's kind of was like what i was to him and then in 2013 when he unfortunately ruptured his achilles um in a game in april of 2013 um i felt really bad watching because it's you know you know you're going to be out for a year when that happens um and then i work with my team we made a custom achilles icer for him and um he was impressed by it and i think more just as a way of saying thanks um reached out to me um via phone and i hadn't kind of talked to him in a while um eddie said you know i i remember when you came to me a couple years ago and you had no you had an ugly cardboard box with some cut up product in it and uh and he's like but now you know i go around the league i see people that are wearing your stuff like you you got to market you know he remembered he knew that he had a hand in like you know if he had he gave me different feedback if he just said hey thanks and never talk to me again i don't know if i would have you know definitely pushed he gave me like the target to shoot for right so uh we ended up you know meeting the next day in 2013 and i think it was june 2013 we started talking again just about and then it was he had you know he was an achilles boot so he wasn't playing so he actually had time to think about you know life after basketball and he was really interested in in brand building and storytelling and and you know like kind of things of in sports that could carry over into his life after basketball I think he was so focused on, he never even, he thought thinking about retirement was like a weakness when he was in his prime.

14:57But now like sort of when you rupture your Achilles, you're kind of faced with your own mortality, right? You're, you know, that the time's not going to be forever. So I think I just kind of overlap with him at a time. We were both the same age. You know, I think overlapping at a time when he was at that age where it was like, okay, you know, like I want to direct this passion I have. and this fire that I have that is all going to basketball now into whatever the next thing is. And he won an Oscar the year after he retired from playing because he won the Oscar for Deer Basketball, which is a story he wrote.

15:34I don't think that'll ever happen again. I don't think any professional athlete is going to win an Oscar, period, but let alone won the year after you retire. And I just think it spoke to his curiosity for learning new things. and I just happened to live 10 minutes down the street and he was interested and he kept saying, so you want to build a brand around recovery? And he's like, my whole part, he was at the point in his career where he was looking for any competitive edge to extend his career. And so I think he was just interested in the subject and that's what kind of bound us together, which was like, he was the athlete trying to look for any advantage to prolong his career and I had this brand that was trying to develop the next thing to help kind of crack the code for athletes so that's kind of was like our you know sort of the core of our relationship and then you know beyond that we you know we both kind of came up at the same time we had similar tastes in art we both loved tarantino movies we were you know sort of uh we just didn't you know enjoy each other's kind of you know challenging each other on on on what could be the next thing in in in the field of performance so you know that's sort of you know, his, that was like our, you know, our relationship and, and, and it definitely helped inspire and influence, um, you know, kind of everything we did after that.

16:58Are you hesitating to take the next step in your e-commerce journey? Founder Plus has you covered with proven frameworks tailored to your business needs for fast results, a supportive community of over 30 ,000 like-minded entrepreneurs and weekly live mentorship sessions. Founder Plus is your key to success. Try Founder Plus today for just$1 for seven days and start building your dream business with confidence. You can visit founder.com forward slash start dollar trial or click the link in the description to claim your trial. Yeah, wow. That's pretty special. Thanks for sharing, man. But did he contribute to when you raised money?

17:35Did he get involved? uh we had a moment where i think that was definitely discussed um he can't be half in on anything so i think that like for him um you know he he started an investment fund later on i think that the time that i was interacting with him on the subject it was before he had done really any private investments. He was mostly focused on basketball. About a year or two after that, he started Kobe Inc. And that was sort of his investment fund. And then he did something, he started Bryant Stiebel with another sort of entrepreneur investor. And that kind of came later. But we had already closed round of funding.

18:28I think we had sort of talked about it, but I kind of liked how that never was really the reason why it was more as curiosity for like actually what the company was doing and it the the the financial part never really kind of got in the way of of of any of our discussions yeah well what a great story um so I always wanted to interview Kobe especially after he retired um and he at the time before he unfortunately passed he was only following like 50 or 60 Instagram accounts and founder was one of them and I wrote to him multiple times through the founder account but I was never able to connect with him I saw that he seen he saw the messages and if you look now he follows a couple hundred accounts founder is still one of them but yeah it was a real shame we never got to do that interview um because yeah he's an impressive human yeah yeah okay so I just want to get a little bit deeper unpacking the development stuff because I think that's a key breaking point or a key stumbling point for people.

19:33Like you created a product that went through an R &D process. You had to obviously break mold. You can't go out and white label and go to China and make some small tweaks. Like this is a very sophisticated product. like can you give us an indication of kind of moq what was the initial initial startup capital get this thing up and going what kept you going like how'd you get your first sale like all that stuff man yeah i mean so we the first my first product line the company's called hyper ice because we made a line of ice compression devices so they were um you know it was all really centered around one idea about removing air from the process to like basically get ice to kind of mold around the body and be like a wearable.

20:22And, um, so I had to identify the materials that we were going to use. I had a engineer that, um, the manufacturing company I went to sort of allowed me to collaborate with an engineer that was really helpful because obviously I wasn't an engineer and I had to get a crash course in engineering and product development. So everything from like materials and, and what we were going to make everything out of, like, there's a lot of decisions that have to be made. There's a lot of trial and error. you try different things you try different materials you try different shapes and yeah and then there became the money yeah now we got to put up money for tooling and molding and you know we weren't doing volumes that supported you know i never even thought about going to china at the time i everything i knew my whole life was in southern california so there's a good manufacturing infrastructure here um it's not really meant to be scalable but it's more high skill and so um there was a medical formulator that was out about an hour away and we worked with them on formulating this material that we needed for our, what we call the ice cell, which is the receptacle that the ice went in that was really cold.

21:25That was sort of like the optimal material for our application. And then figuring out how to mold that, we, you know, we, we did this process called dip molding, which is, it's an art and science together. And so learning that process, and then we had plastic injection molding. And then the easiest part, the part that was probably most close to was like with the compression element we were using neoprene and growing up here you wear wetsuits in the winter for sure and then spring and fall and so knowing that it was a wetsuit manufacturer that was within 30 minutes of my house being having access to that type of material i got like a crash course in neoprene and how how it's cut and sewed and um so yeah like it was just you know a lot of testing different materials trial and error you know i had to raise a little bit money to pay for like tooling and stuff, but, um, you're kind of making it up as you go.

22:17Um, and my whole thing was like, if you build a day will come, like if we can build a great product, like that was really the whole focus. It wasn't about what the cost was going to be or how it's like, can I just get something that's, that's really good and I'll figure out the rest later. So, um, you know, and that's always my advice is like, make the best product you absolutely can and then you can work backwards from there if you need a if you need to go if you're up need the margins to be better or if you need you know that that's sort of the um you know that that's sort of the one of the biggest pieces of advice i could give to someone when they're when they're when they are starting out as a product company is make the product the best you can and don't compromise all right so can you talk us through like um how much did it how like what was the moq was it in the hundreds of thousands of dollars millions of dollars to get this product uh to a place where you could start selling it no i mean my whole thing was i wanted just to to raise enough money to get like i i wasn't thinking about like mass production i was i was thinking about how do i be able to just make this product and then as we go along figuring out more efficient ways to make higher quantity so you know i think i i think initially raised you know, an issue was like, you know, 50 to a hundred grand.

23:36And then it was like, you know, shortly after that, it was like, okay, we're like, we're, you know, now we need a little bit more money. So we would like kind of raise it as we need it. And, you know, I think some people like kind of, you know, overraise and, you know, my advice to founders is like, you know, your company's worth the, your valuation's the lowest, you know, in the beginning. So raise what you need. don't like overraise because you know it's highly dilutive to you so um you know that was one thing i think that maybe i just did by accident because it's not like i knew it it was just sort of i was raising as i needed it right and um so yeah like you know 50 to 100 grand to kind of get all the molds built like you know sort of you know red trademarks and and and um you're sort of like the nuts and bolts of like registering the patents and all that kind of stuff so i think it was like let's not try to do too much and and overraise and move into a big office it was like i was like doing it out of my car um you know so it was sort of you know bootstrapping it and kind of running gun and that was sort of how that's sort of how it was in the beginning um and then we raised enough to just yeah to just to like you're on these like stepping stones you get to the next one you get to the next one and so that that was sort of the sort of the accidental strategy i I don't know if it was by design or out of necessity.

24:55Yeah. So look, there's definitely a common through line that I see when interviewing founders, and it's that naivety, right? Like because you don't know what you're doing that much, you just kind of wig it along the way, and it does eventually work out if you keep pushing forward. Would you agree with that? Well, it doesn't always work out. I think there's some people that give it the best effort they can. They work hard, they're passionate, and sometimes the chips don't fall in your favor. I think there's no founder that could ever sit with any sort of modicum of success and say that, oh yeah, I just did it all because I was smart enough and good enough and everything.

25:39You have to have luck along the way. And sometimes luck's not even in the way you're thinking of. It's just you happen to run into someone at the right moment, at the right time that helped you. I think that we tend to think of our life as like, oh yeah, well, you know, this is all meant to be or it's all going to work out. I mean, everyone has this intelligence of however they want to believe it. But for me, I was an opportunist, but I always believed that I operated every day as like, I need to make this happen because I can't just rely on luck to happen. But if you put yourself in a position to be lucky, you can capitalize on it.

26:16so i just don't you know i i think that no matter you can do everything right and sometimes it just doesn't happen and there's people that are that put an honest you know effort into it and and kind of do everything that they maybe should and sometimes just maybe the mark you know i think successful founders have to recognize that you know i use a surfing an analogy like you have to you know sometimes you go out and the waves are really good but the the best wave just doesn't come to you at the right if you're not you got to paddle hard at the right time and sometimes the waves come to you and sometimes they don't and when that wave comes you got to paddle hard you got to get on it and that wave is like the wave of opportunity and you know but you but if you're not in the water you're never going to catch it right You can't catch it from the sand.

27:10So I just try to get in the water every day. I was putting myself – I would go and meet an athlete if I knew that, hey, so-and-so was going to be in town. I would drive an hour just to like – because you never know who the athlete was going to be with. If that person was going to be to someone, if that was going to be an investor. So again, I say get in the water every day and you're in the lineup. and when the wave comes you got to paddle hard and catch it and if you miss the wave you might not get another get another one for a while or you might not ever get one so um yeah i feel like the the luck is lucky to get the wave but if you're not in the water you're not paddling hard then you're not in the position to get it if you're sitting on the sand yeah no look i agree um i guess when i said that statement it was more around kind of like if that business doesn't work you start another one and then you take those lessons and then you start another one but you never give up you just keep going right i just never thought i just didn't even allow that thought to enter my mind that it wouldn't work i don't know so i just from the second i started high price just when i think and maybe part of it was that you know meeting kobe was the sort of the precursor to it i was like well this is just too good of a story that has to keep going right so um yeah it's like you have to have the attitude that failure is not an option yeah i agree and you said something interesting you said you had a pretty good network um but at the same time you were a high school teacher right yeah but i just i don't know i i where i live is you know in the as the song goes it's the edge of the world and all of western civilization um you know california is especially southern california there's a lot of action here a lot of people come through here sports entertainment um you know my wife is a professional athlete she played ucla i had friends that a lot of friends that played in sports so i just was in the sports culture even though it was down here um and then there's a certain amount of you know if you're a relationship-centered person um you can find way i i was born raised middle class more or less um you know we're upper middle class not not very fortunate to grow up where I grew up.

29:30It's a beautiful place, but it wasn't like I was the son of a professional athlete or, you know, some famous CEO or anything. It was just, you know, I was the, you know, my, I always felt that I had to go make it happen. And so my network was just people that I had from sports. So like, I go back to like coaching basketball and, you know, you're always one connection or degree of separation from someone who knows someone who know someone and like weaving those relationships and um was just a skill that like i guess i had but never was really transactional about it i always tell my other piece of advice is look there's on the spectrum of your relationship spectrum there is the transactional relationship and then there's like the relationship centered person right and um i just never was transactional about anything.

30:23I was more, I generally, if I met someone and I would, you know, not do what it was, I never focused it from a transaction perspective. I focused it as I was doing something that I believe was going to change the industry and help people. And, and if people saw that authenticity in, in, um, my motive that we could, and to this day, I have really good relationships because of that approach. It's always served me well. So, um, yeah, I, I, I think that, you know, if you really believe in what you're doing and you believe it's providing a value to, to the people and the greater good, then, uh, it's really easy to be a relationship center person because, um, you know, people see the goodness in your work.

31:07Yeah. I'm, I'm a big fan of serving first and asking later um i'm not a fan of transactional type relationships so um i'm curious anthony you went to market 2012 how'd you get your first sale our first sale was from the new york jets um nfl team um there's a player that was the quarterback of the jets at the time that lived in orange county and he had gotten the product he had brought it back with him to training camp in New York and the Jets called and said, Hey, you know, our quarterback brought this back. We like this, you know, can we order some? And, uh, so that was our first day. I was, uh, over the phone.

31:51Our, I think it was our office manager took the order because we had, we had not launched the website yet and, uh, took the order. We sent him in a box. I don't think there's any packaging and that was that. And so, uh, I think that check is framed somewhere. I don't know where it is, but I just remember it was from the New York Jets. There you go. That's a big one. so yeah when it comes to i guess uh partnering with athletes this is something you guys have done at a pretty incredible level um what advice would you give to founders that are looking to i guess work with thought leaders in whatever space that they're in um well for me you know if you're making products for the human body and you're trying to optimize the human body to warm up more, to optimize the warm-up process, to accelerate the recovery process, to be a body maintenance tool, to be a treatment tool.

32:50Well, athletes are the ones that put the highest premium on their body because their body is their craft, it's their livelihood. So for me, that was always the audience that I was trying to create and design products for because, well, if it was good enough for them, it would be good enough for everybody else because they're the most in tune with their bodies, right? And they put the highest demand on their body. Like, I don't care what, if there's these office buildings around here, there's finance companies, software companies. They might have hobbies that they love to do, but it's not the same as a fresh loutier where their whole livelihood depends on it.

33:28So if you can go satisfy the audience that has the most, demands on their body and you make products that like meet those needs, the trickle down effect of that I thought would cover everybody. So, you know, you see all the athletes who are using our products and, you know, and people are like, well, I'm not a professional athlete, but I love my venom because it makes my back feel better. It's like, well, yeah, someone, you saw it on an NBA player trying to keep their back warm while they come out of the game, but you're using it on your couch because you just like have back pain. Same product, dual, uh, you know, use, use cases equally as effective.

34:12Um, so I would say that like partnering with athletes, you know, look, you get a certain amount of credibility. I think when you're, when, when the best in the world are using your products, um, it helps with exposure as well because athletes are pretty high profile. but for me it was really more like I just needed an audience that would hold me to a high standard and they have the choice of what products to use they can use the best products in the world I'm sure you'll ask me about the Nike stuff later but the same thing, we were in Paris and 120 athletes or I think it was 100 of the top Nike athletes in the world had access to the products and it's like I love being in the market for or in a profession where that's the audience that I have to please, right?

35:04You know, the 100-meter dash was won by Noah Lyles by five one thousandths of a second, I think it was, or some crazy, you know, unmeasurable to the human eye. And that just was a symbol for the Olympics as a time where athletes are living in this world of millimeters fractions of a second is like whether you're on the podium or not greatness or failure you and and so if we can deliver like just like this much of an advantage in the recovery or the warm-up uh you know we contributed to that and um it's exciting to to actually know that you know the athletes every day are touching your your products to basically keep their body and you know there's a lot on the line and it's just the it allows us to basically participate in competition without directly participating yeah i uh i love that story that you shared right because it is it's such an incredible thing that you're doing and i can hear the passion that you have right like how we you know you've got you've got one of the products on now while we're doing this interview right offline and it's like you said you practice what you preach So I'm curious as well.

36:20Look, we have to, here we go. We have to work towards wrapping up because I'm conscious of your time. But look, when it comes to, I guess, for a brand like yours to stand out, even in the early days in the recovery space and the performance space, storytelling has been massive for you guys. um what advice would you have around crafting stories that stick really using stories to stand out in your marketing and branding yeah for me i always was a product developer and especially from the early on like that was like i i was figuring out what the athletes needed coming back formulating the product ideas working with my team to develop them but i always felt i would never hand that over to a storyteller because I always felt that that was the part that I think you know I always saw myself as a lover of like the arts and humanities and loving film and storytelling was always just something that I'm like I think I could do that and that's always been sort of you know my like you know there's there's two of me here one is in product and the other is brand and storytelling and um the storytelling part I always felt is great when it's connected to the product.

37:38Because a lot of times at big companies, you'll have a product team develop a product. And then the marketing team goes and hires an ad agency and the ad agency gets it and puts it on a conference table and says, okay, this is really cool. How would we tell this story? But if it's coming from the person or the people that were like actually in the trenches in the product development there's just a there's there's just that direct connection between product and storytelling that i think that's why i think you know what separated us from a lot of other people that kind of maybe try to do similar things um and we were the first real true recovery brand us and normatech and then we're now we're the same company because we acquired them in 2020 but i always felt storytelling was like our our competitive advantage not just the products because um when you're developing new products that are sort of new inventions it's not like you know when we you know the massage gun has become so ubiquitous but when we first came out with it people like what's this a thumper they would you know they wouldn't really know what to call it right it's not a toothbrush it's not a hair dryer it was this thing that percussed and you know i call the percussion device they lamently referred them as massage guns but i can remember like when we developed that product it was we had a really we wanted to own the storytelling and be the experts on what it is why you need it how it worked and that storytelling part of it is something i always love doing because if you're if you're part of the ideation of the product and you're part of the development of the product you know being able to kind of share that with the audience uh that was always a real thrill for me and putting together really good teams around me to tell the story, meaning our really good production team, good cinematography, good sound design.