749 Doss Cunningham: Chairman & CEO of Nutrabolt

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Golden Show.

0:44Kara Goldin:Today's guest is someone who knows how to build a powerhouse in one of the most competitive categories out there and isn't afraid to keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible. I'm talking with Das Cunningham, who is the chairman and CEO of an incredible, incredible brand and company called Nutribolt. You may know it for incredible consumer brands like C4 Energy, Cellucor, and Extend. Under his leadership, C4 has become one of the fastest growing energy drinks in the U.S. and the number one pre-workout brand globally, trusted by athletes and fitness enthusiasts everywhere. And in our talk today, I hope to dive into how NutriBolt's scaled from a single sports nutrition brand into a global portfolio and why Gen Z in particular is reshaping the wellness market and what it takes to go toe to toe with legacy giants and actually win as they are doing.

1:47Kara Goldin:So I cannot wait to dig more into everything that Doss is doing. So without further ado, Doss, welcome. So excited to finally meet you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, this is a great privilege to come on your show and look forward to telling our story. And yeah, happy to be here. Awesome. So, well, let's start with kind of your personal journey of building what you've built. What inspired you to take the leap into active health and wellness and actually go and create a product, I think about 20 years ago? Yeah. So, I mean, there's really two kind of origin stories. There's the story of me as a young kid playing sports, but always being undersized, trying to gain weight.

2:35Mom would let me play football because I didn't weigh enough and she's worried I'd get hurt. So, I was always the kid trying to figure out how to get more protein, how to take in enough calories where I could actually gain that weight. um fortunately i just ultimately didn't grow until i was you know in my late teens um so there's there's there's that story and then there's um you know really growing up uh in a working class family and um you know things were tight and i learned from a very early age that if i wanted something um i needed to find a way to go you know earn some extra income and so i became a entrepreneur, probably at the age of, you know, eight to 10 years old.

3:20You know, many small little, you know, kid ventures, you know, through my adolescence. And you're really learning how to go out there and make a buck, learning how to get in front of people. And that's something that, you know, those two things kind of intersected a little bit later in life when I was at Texas A &M. You know, I was studying accounting. I was at a five-year master's program. I was at a five-year master's program. And I had no plans of actually being in the health and wellness space. I was going to go work for Deloitte initially. And then my ultimate goal was to move to New York and be in the transactional space, private equity, hedge funds.

4:02But I ended up meeting a couple of people that were interested in starting a supplement company. They were some young founders that had been in the sports nutrition space as retailers. They're a little bit older than me at the time. And I met them. I love their vision. And I was asked to come in and help them with their accounting and finance. It was supposed to be a part-time gig. But one thing led to another. And as I'm finishing up school, I'm working 60, 80 hours a week trying to help these guys navigate the challenges of being a startup and being bootstrapped. was definitely something that required just an incredible level of discipline around managing cash.

4:52So I got to contribute early and that led to being pulled into the partnership and ultimately resulting in me becoming the CEO. And it's been an incredible journey. It started for me over 20 years ago. and it's amazing how time does fly.

5:14Kara Goldin:So this was Cellucor. That was back in 2002? This was Cellucor, yeah. So our first brand was Cellucor, launched in 2002. Sports Nutrition mainly sold in specialty supplement shops, including GNC. And so you initially started or I guess the partnership that you had, how different is that product today versus what it was like when you first started in 2002? Yeah, I think 23 years ago, I guess it's been 23 years, it was kind of the wild, wild west. So the supplement space, there were a lot of gray areas. There were supplement categories like ephedra that people were consuming a lot of. There were testosterone boosters that a lot of major league baseball players ended up having to deal with.

6:13But these were legal supplements at the time. And so the category was much more kind of hardcore, performance-enhancing type products. But we built our company a little bit differently. We wanted to focus on the fitness enthusiast, not just the athlete. So we wanted to expand the number of consumers we could speak to. So we had a really robust offering focusing on helping people put on muscle, help people recover from the workouts, help people lose weight, and generally just be healthier. And so we had a broad assortment. And today, we've only continued to expand that assortment. The biggest difference is today we're in the beverage space with our C4 brand.

7:06It's been really fun navigating this new category over the last six years now. It's a category that's really 20 times bigger than the sports nutrition category that we were starting out in. and the opportunity to really bring our mission to more people through a much larger category really got me excited. And so what still matters, it's similar from the origin of the business, is we still care about efficacy, delivering functional benefits to our consumers, helping them meet their goals. Today, though, we're doing it and we're convenient. form factor, and beverage. And with way more points of distribution, our products can be available for consumption.

8:03Kara Goldin:Yeah, that's awesome. So when you think about those early years, I guess you've grown to be the number one pre-workout globally and really a brand known in the energy drink space. I feel like you kind of came out of nowhere, even though you're only over 20 years old, but there's probably people that have only found you maybe in the last couple of years. And I always tell people, that's good news. I remember meeting the founders of Vitamin Water. And I was like, oh, yeah, I just picked up your brand in the last year. And here I thought I was a disruptor. I had discovered the product. And it was 12 years old.

8:53I mean, it was like,

8:55Kara Goldin:I was like, where have I been? Right. So and but that's like you've got so much white space out there. Right. When you meet those people, I'm sure you've met people saying like, oh, God, I just found you. You know, it's it's it's more exciting than saying, oh, you know, you're you're some other drink that you've been around forever and doesn't really have the growth that you have. Where would you say was the moment when you really felt like you've broken through to people? I mean, there's a couple inflection points, right? And very different kind of points of scale. So, you know, we were a, once again, you know, a bootstrap company, organically grown through specialty mom and pop retailers, G &C franchisees.

9:46And so we were not well known. We were not mainstream. We weren't sold in mass. We weren't sold really online. This is kind of pre-Amazon.

9:57And it wasn't until we launched the C4 pre-workout, almost 10 years into our company's history, that we really started to have this new opportunity to expand into some of these other channels. So in 2011, we launched C4, and we launched it as a specialty product. and what had been true about our brand up until this point was we were regarded as super premium, a brand known for delivering results. And a lot of people felt that we were overpriced. They felt like we were not accessible. And so we had a nice business, but it was small. We're talking maybe$10-15 million before C4 launched. and our strategy was to launch a super premium pre-workout category, which was the first in our portfolio's history, and launch it at a price that actually undercut the category.

10:53So delivering super premium at a subcategory price point. And we thought this could be the gateway into some of our more expensive products. It'll bring people into the brand that we're not reaching. And oh my gosh, it worked. um you know we launched c4 category was selling it let's just say 35 we launched c4 at 25 and we had a really nice value size that you know it made it too hard to pass up so c4 uh just rocketed to the top of the pre-workout category became the number one seller at gnc then we had vitamin shop knocking on the door became the number one seller at vitamin shop and we really you know filled in to all the specialty channel almost overnight.

11:37But we realized that there were some opportunities to cross over into a bigger market, mass market, if we can figure out how to serve Walmart and meet their customers' expectations from a price standpoint. And so that's when we really started for the first time developing a brand architecture that provided a good, better, best model. You know, we were serving specialty with our best products, our most premium. But in mass, we could offer more introductory products, ones that maybe had a slightly reduced feature set, but could be picked up for, say, you know,$19.99. And we created our C4 Sport line, which was an NSF certified product line that still had great benefits, still produced performance benefits for the fitness enthusiast, for the athlete, had that badge of safety and compliance with NSF, but now is available at Walmart.

12:38And so it was a similar brand identity, but a different design. And that allowed us to continue to keep our specialty retailers happy, but then start to really spread the brand into the mainstream. So we launched at Walmart successfully. Then we moved into Target. Then we started moving into grocery, into Kroger and Albertsons, and then Costco. and once we kind of flipped that switch into Costco the brand's notoriety just skyrocketed and we were once again launched in 2011 we were that whole journey that I just described took about three years and so come 2014 C4 is not a gateway product to our brand it is the brand it dwarfed everything else in the portfolio and And within the sports nutrition community, within the supplement community, that was our first point of really being known.

13:41But once again, Nut World is very small relative to the energy drink category and really the cold beverage categories as a whole. um so you know five years after that we entered the energy drink category and um you know our total addressable market probably increased you know 20x at that time i think it's so fascinating

14:07Kara Goldin:to talk to founders who have uh kind of built their their company in a different way right Whether it's, I mean, you just described how you built it in the specialty, but also health, the health food stores first. And so you sort of hung there for a while, developed the brand. And most people, even at the time, I think when you were starting, wouldn't say that, you know, you would anchor into Walmart and grow the brand the way you have. In fact, many people would say, don't go to Walmart. No offense to any Walmart listeners who are listening, but don't go there until you go and do conventional grocery and Target and some of the others.

14:55Kara Goldin:How did you know that it would work? well you know i i don't know that we knew it would work but you know we had strong suspicion that you know the the challenge with the industry is that people weren't actually developing a kind of a multi-tier brand architecture everyone was taking what was in specialty and offering it to mass just maybe a smaller size and so there are so many brands that came before us that were massive in specialty and really have the credibility of that more advanced consumer that would really dilute their brand equity as they moved into mass because they'd offer just the same product.

15:38And then the small mom and pop retailers that were building these brands, they could compete with the larger mass merchants, whether that be Walmart or grocery or anywhere else. And so for us, it was really about kind of changing the business model. We will not take what we're taking in the specialty in Walmart. We're going to create clear delineation. So we believe in both product lines, but we're focusing on accessible price points in mass market while focusing on the latest and greatest breakthrough technologies in the specialty channel. And that boded really well for us. And when you think about just mass as a whole, for us going into Walmart, we gained some confidence because there really hadn't been

16:30a brand come into the pre-workout category at Walmart. But we were surveying consumers that were going in and buying protein and they were buying their pre-workout at other stores. so we knew that if we could get on the shelf there and be adjacent to a very large protein category that they were already selling and we were the first name brand to go in in the non-protein space that that could actually be a pretty nice mode for us and it turned out that that was true. We had first mover advantage. We built a great pre-workout business at Walmart in really the first year and then we were able to expand with them and continue to introduce new products.

17:12So I would say that at the time, it was definitely frowned upon. Our partners at GNC at the time, they didn't like the idea of us going to Walmart. But we said, hey, look, we're introducing our brand at Walmart. But if people will continue on their journey, they want to buy more advanced products, they're going to end up back in the specialty store. Yeah. So that's how we learn about it.

17:39Kara Goldin:Definitely. I think gone are the days where people are just shopping in one store as well or just online. I mean, people are going to Costco, going to Walmart, they're going to Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, going into Amazon, their own site. So it all kind of works together. Formulation is always so key. And I think gone are the days where you can have a product that doesn't taste good. You know, taste is definitely something that hooks consumers. But also, you said it a few times, things that are working for the consumer, right? Like it's also, you know, that they're getting healthier or whatever they're trying to do.

18:22Kara Goldin:How have you differentiated? And also, what do you do when you see all these, you know, there's constantly this new ingredient that's coming out that, you know, should you put it in the formulation? Should you not put it in the formulation? You know, how do you think about that? I guess it's innovation more than anything. How do you think about innovation as you continue to grow? Yeah, I mean, it's so critical for long-term success. And it's been something that I think we've done really, really well for the last two decades.

19:01Today, consumers are more fickle. They want to try new things. Flavor has been a huge deciding factor for the shopper. So we work really, really hard on flavor. But at the end of the day, it's functionality. That's what we really pride ourselves on. And we want to be able to deliver the benefits that the consumer is looking for. We want to use the ingredients that we believe have the best clinical substantiation of being able to deliver those outcomes. and so we have a great R &D team it starts with that team they are really the best in the biz in my opinion and so they're constantly looking at new opportunities they're very well networked with the vendor community that is also out there spending a lot of money on their own R &D and so it's not unusual for us to have vendors in our office every week talking about some of their more recent clinical studies and then our team's able to parse through that and think about some of the things that we have in our pipeline and what makes sense.

20:18We do a lot of renovation as well, so we'll revisit products that have been launched previously and try and figure out how to upgrade them as frequently as possible. So functionality is critical, but also we want to show up on shelf and be interesting. So we've long believed that packaging design and aesthetic is one of the most important things you can do from a marketing standpoint just to be picked up because the decisions the consumers and when they're sitting there in front of the shelf, when you have something that's really interesting and is well put together and catches someone's eye, a lot of time, it's all you need to get trial.

21:11So we kind of work with those three things to really differentiate our brands. And then we try and associate with people who are authentic to what we're trying to do. So on the sports side, we work with a lot of professional athletes and sports organizations, really driving credibility. I think within the fitness community, we work with some of the best fitness influencers in the industry. And they're able to help tell the story and how the products benefit them. So that's a really important differentiating factor in our success as well.

21:46Kara Goldin:How many years in, I guess, did you look at athletes and that world of partnerships, endorsements? Did you do it from day one or how many years in did you really think it's time? Yeah, no, we definitely did not. The Catalyst was really when we launched our NSF certified for sport, Proctaline. Because at that time, we had the ability now to sell Prox athletes. So it made sense for us to bring athletes in to help tell a story. So it's really been the last 10 years that we've started to really grow that part of our story. We've worked with some of the most incredible athletes across football, basketball.

22:46basketball, we got a partnership with WWE that has been super successful over the last several years. We work with professional basketball organizations like the Boston Celtics, the Miami Heat, the New York Knicks, Austin FC, which is an MLS club that we've had a great partnership with for the last five years. So, you know, we just continue to build on our stable of athletes. And, you know, that's been a tremendous asset for us, you know, as we've tried to like really differentiate further from the category. Because everyone today is a performance brand, right? Yeah, definitely. We believe that we are the authentic performance brand and those athletes really help tell our story.

23:39Kara Goldin:So Nutribold stayed private for a very long time, scaling without the pressures of public markets. But what have you learned about sustainable growth as you've continued to grow? Yeah, I mean, I think it starts with having a long-range vision, right? You can't show up January 1st without a plan and try and figure it out. Especially as the business moves into some of these bigger markets, the innovation pipeline takes longer to bring something to market. The commercial process is more involved. And so we really have to be planned. We got to be thinking about what we want to do three years from now, now.

24:26And thinking about how the category is changing, where the white space is, where we think certain trends or certain signals they might be receiving back from shoppers, what that's ultimately pointing to. and so by having a vision of where things are going and you've been starting to put you know real strategies against that you know it's it's allowed us to to really just sustain the growth and then you know for for for us every several years you know we're looking for a step change whether that's an investment moving into a new big category um you know because when we do that and that further kind of compounds the organic growth we have on mature parts of our portfolio.

25:14Kara Goldin:Definitely. So Nutribolt isn't just about product. It's also about lifestyle. And in your headquarters in Austin, I understand you have quite the lifestyle environment that you've created there. Can you share a little bit more about what you're doing? Yes, happy to. So we moved into our new campus July 2024. So a little over a year now. And we wanted to build a place that really reflected our values and really put on display our mission as a business. And we've been focused on being a human performance company and helping maximize human potential. And so we thought it would be great if on the first floor, when you first walk into the building, it's a great fitness facility.

26:15We've got all different types of modalities for training and different sport opportunities. We have a football field, we have a basketball court, we have a Pilates studio, we have a physiology lab where you can get some of the most state-of-the-art testing done. We have a really nice cafeteria where we bring in fresh, healthy food. We have a recovery lab where you can go get an IV or do compression or hyperbaric or red light therapy. We have physical therapists that can help work on your aches and pains and get you ready for your next workout. And so we wanted the world that we're out there ultimately supporting, the life that our consumers are living.

27:04We wanted to bring that into the building. And we wanted it to be just overwhelming, really. Right. You know, and people know what we do within minutes of walking into the first floor. But then, you know, we also work here. And so when you get to work out in the morning and be in that environment, and then it's time to go up to the office, it's fresh in your mind. You don't forget what we're all about. You don't forget about the mission that we're all trying to serve. and that has really i think been a a huge uh enhancement you know to um a company i feel like our culture has always been you know this way but now that we have this it like further manifest like what we believe in into a more physical um uh domain and we want to share that so the other piece of it is, as we continue to grow and we're scaling north of a billion dollars this year in sales, we want to still act like a starter.

28:10Think big, act small. And so we've invited a lot of entrepreneurs, some in the consumer package good space, some in the tech space, to come use our facilities, come work out, come do recovery, come sit the cold core um and it's created just these network effects you know we're sitting there you know having conversations with other founders other creators um you know people doing really great things and i think that just created an incredible brain trust um and our vision is to continue to invite those people you know onto campus and you know try and find ways for them to spend more time with us.

28:58And I think that's a very unique thing. It's almost a WeWork meets a corporate headquarters all wrapped up in this entrepreneurial bow.

29:11Kara Goldin:That's incredible. Do you plan on opening them in other locations? Not as of now. I do think that the gem we built and the 360 amenities that we have, I think could be incredible in New York, LA, Miami, Chicago, you know, especially if we can bring in, you know, the athletes and the influencers and entrepreneurs, you know, and our brands can kind of have, you know, a strong presence in those spaces. I think, you know, content's everything. I think they're great. They're great opportunities for, you know, content creation as well. Yeah, definitely. So you've seen both sides of fundraising, building with lean budgets, and you've also had serious capital along the way.

30:01Kara Goldin:What's your advice to entrepreneurs who are navigating the investment climate, which has significantly changed? But what would you say is really key to whether it's you giving yourself advice or maybe somebody who is dealing with this now that is just frustrated with what's going on out there? This could be its own podcast episode. Yeah, I think. I mean, I'll just start with the most obvious. I mean, picking good partners is everything, right? There are great investors that really want to help and provide capital. And then there's investors that are purely focused on allocating their capital and getting the best return as fast as possible on basically their timeline.