This guy built a $1B+ brand in 3 years. The product? You'd never guess

0:00 Zero to over a billion dollars in 32 months is maniacal. We're quite literally just getting started. Where do you think is that gap to really jump from average or good to great? If you want to have the greatest odds of success, it's by creating a new format. New formats win. You obviously spotted one really great opportunity. I'm curious what other opportunity you spotted. I think there's an idea that no one else is gonna be able to run it. That is a$10 billion business idea. You should just say it now and we'll bleep it out. We'll talk about that. I think that's the biggest opportunity for founders. What are the inputs necessary to get to$100 million in revenue for an Ecom brand in three years? Here's what I'll say. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I'll put my all in it like my day's all on the road, let's travel to the city. Three things I'd love for you to deliver. One, I wanna know the origin story, like how the hell did you have the idea and why did you have the confidence in the idea we're gonna go there.

0:51 Two is You sent us a thing about your marketing funnel, which is like you know, what does world class marketing look like in this scenario? And then the last part I wanna riff with you brainstorm on like Where to from here. You obviously spotted one really great opportunity. I'm curious what other opportunities you spot. Yeah, let's do it.

1:09 Okay, sweet. Um Dude, I've been I've been taking groons for I don't know, six six to twelve months now because it's Like it's basically Like eating candy. Of gummy bears and then you eat them and then you're like, I just had vegetables. Totally. I hate gummy bears, but I I think I just had vegetables, maybe. Totally. And so I want to know, where were you sitting when you were like, you know what?

1:31 What if we did this? Yeah, so um I like to Describe myself as a Entrepreneur who had short stints in private equity.

1:41 And investment banking. So I've I've started three companies. This is my third company. And I actually didn't want to start a company, so I was on my way from Boston at a private equity firm called Summit Partners. And was leaving that investment firm to go get my MBA at Stanford. And had told myself look, I just want to have like a normal MBA experience for two years. I'm not gonna start anything. Maybe I'll do an internship in the summer. And then it was like two weeks before going out.

2:07 Uh to Stanford. I was at my parents' place in In Utah. And and just doing some work and I'm drinking a green's powder. Um in my dad's office. And I just remember looking up like super vividly in the in the corner of the room being like There's no way.

2:21 Keeping this habit. past thirty days. Like I'll I'll do it'cause I always finish what I started, but like I'm not gonna stick to this habit post thirty days. And it wasn't just the taste. It for me it was like You know, you got that weird like frothy sediment at the bottom of the drink. And the biggest thing for me that I think this is probably unique is I I remember staring at the bottle sitting on the countertop.

2:41 On like the drying rack? And I remember being I'm sort of an O C D person, I remember just being like, if I commit to this habit, I've gotta like stare at that bottle. on the countertop for the rest of my life. Right. Like there's there's just no way that's gonna happen. Um And so that got me thinking about, hey, how do I take a A comprehensive

2:58 supplement nutrition And put it in some format. I didn't know it'd be gummy at the time when I had the idea. How do I put it in some format? That gets people looking forward to it. Like they'll go to bed at night being like, I can't wait. To have that the next day, which which is a complete pivot, I think, to how people sort of think about supplementation. Can we like roll it into a blunt now? Yeah, exactly. Look hey we'll smoke your greens. We'll talk about that. I think I honestly think that's the biggest opportunity for founders. Like people just want to rip on

3:26 the formats that work, but I I think if you want to have the greatest odds of success It's by Creating a new format. Right. So if it's a blunt Awesome. If it's these little Zen pouches that people are doing now and

3:37 Making those like uh focus so it's n non nicotine. Great. Like the new formats win. Did you think that um I mean just it's it's maniacal. Thirty two months to uh uh uh multi or a billion dollar exit is maniacal. Did you call your shot and you're like, that's where we're gonna go? Or were you like Who knows? I mean, what where was your mindset when you started it?

3:59 It is a bit shocking to hear, but we've basically met the forecast uh that we put in place since the very beginning. You have to appreciate I was I talked with like Thousands of uh entrepreneurs when I was at Summit Partners.

4:14 I I looked at the proprietary data sets. I don't have them obviously anymore, but I have a very visual memory, so I know the L T V to CACs of Hundreds of brands. Um into like for me it it's weird. Like I I could tell you I won't, but I could tell you what like every big grand sell TV the CAC and margin looks like. All the brands that we know of today. No, I didn't really forecast beyond a hundred million of revenue'cause that would be pretty pointless.

4:38 Like I'm not a sociopath. Yeah. There's a fine line between ambition and being just absolutely batshit. So y you're you're saying that now I wanna ask you something about In between when you're like oh like I don't really enjoy this form factor. What if there was another? And you said you didn't have gummies, you know, right away as like a uh it's not like you immediately had the f fully baked idea. But I'm curious like

5:00 What were the either companies or products you had like admired?'Cause I sort of have this This thing which is like What you admire becomes a little bit of your destiny, right? Your your adm your admiration becomes your destination. And if you think about like a lot of a great great entrepreneur, Steve Jobs famously, who did he admire, what products he admire, and then you steal little elements of that, they sort of bleed out into your final products years later. Same thing with comedians and movie makers. What were the products and companies that you thought were kick ass?

5:29 That you feel like inspired some of the result of Grun's? Yeah, look, I I sat on the board or observed the boards uh Great brands like Ruggable, Doctor Squatch. Brooklyn and Chabby's

5:42 So list of Through my twelve different businesses. And so I learned a lot from the unique problems and Frankly, the recipes that worked for each of them. I would say that the brand that I think we most closely resemble in terms of execution is Doctor Squatch. Is that deodorant?

5:56 It's the bar uh the cold processed soaps, the the bar soaps that um for men. I've seen like the marketing, but I I think I have the deodorant, but I I don't know what's the what's so special about it. Like is there something cool about it? So what's cool about it is so they just sold the Unilever like last year for one point five billion. And and that business, what's cool about it is one, cold processed sub is more natural, I would say. So it's uh you're not getting all the chemicals and stuff and it's a very clean product. But because of the branding, the approach, the partnerships they do, I mean They've done partnerships with like Harry Potter, Star Wars.

6:29 Uh Spongebob, all sorts of really cool like Fine. Um partnerships. They've taken an approach where you as a consumer relate to the brand.

6:38 Right. And so prior to Doctor Squatch. I don't even know what I was using. I was probably using what I whatever my wife was buying and stocking in the the shower. But but they were the inspiration for us. I think that what they've done within the personal care space, making it a joy. For the consumer is what we aspired to do with in supplementation where I mean we all spend time on social media

6:58 You get one out and it's like, Oh my goodness. Sean San I don't know how old you guys are, but you're blank years old and you've never heard of creatine. What the hell are you doing with your life? Like you're gonna die tomorrow. And then you get a claustrum app. What are you doing with your life? Like you need to be taking colester right now. It does a blank percent increase in

7:15 Blake body metric. And I and I I just think that um the way that we have pro approached and took inspiration from Dr. Squatch is to take that and make our supplementation a lifestyle, something that people look forward to. They Uh, I feel like it resonates with who they are and and how they live their lives. All right, let's take a quick break. This podcast is called My First Million, and it's probably the question we get asked the most. How do I go from zero to making my first million? And so I did an episode a little while back where I broke down exactly the sort of philosophy and frameworks that I would use. So things like

7:46 Finding your white belt business. Or identifying your bear on a unicycle. advantage the core way that your two skills could overlap. Or why maybe starting a service business is better than starting a software business for your initial businesses to make that first million. And so the team at HubSpot has created a guide that took the stuff I said in that episode

8:04 They laid it all out for you. You can get it for free in the description below. Just click that link. And it's all yours. All right, back to this episode. How much money did you raise to get to your first million in revenue and how fast did it come? Yeah, month one, um

8:17 We did like thirty thousand of revenue and month two is already like two hundred thirty thousand. So I guess we like in month two months into the business we had um already crossed the The one million run rate? Probably two and a half, three million at that point. I I've never really looked at the business that way. You maybe you've heard me talk about L T V the CAC. Yeah. Uh I I would say we burned

8:38 We probably burned through like eight million dollars of capital. Until we reach profitability. That could have been less if we slowed down growth a little bit. But just the way it worked out is that we I think we've earned through about eight million dollars of uh primary capital before we hit profitability. You you mentioned like focusing on LTV to CAC. For you what's good and what's great.

9:01 Yeah, I I think table stakes for businesses that need to be acquired. Um you need to be at least three. The best I saw. I well obviously this goes where we're at, but during the Covid era I would see brands in the four to five range. Yeah, those brands are probably two and a half to three times

9:16 Right now. But when you say L T V. You are you referring to so L L T V Light time value is for a Ecom brand, does value mean um Your contribution margin? Yeah, let me describe that the way that I always look at it. I use a three year period. Um so thirty six months.

9:34 And LTV. is fully burdened gross profit, meaning Sam orders our product. What is the what are the total costs stripped out of that value to get it to Sam's door? So you've got product cogs, you've got discounts, returns, you've got Fulfillment.

9:49 Shipping. Uh Mint merchant processing fees. Like you've got all of that that gets it to the door. That's your lifetime value over a three year period, how much contribution gross proper you getting from the consumer over a three year period. And you use th three years not because that's how long someone subscribes to groons. You just said three years for everyone should use three years. You can't do a lifetime. Yeah, and I think it I think it's like just a productive way of looking at it to optimize against. I mean we obviously look at three months, six months, twelve months uh and try to make adjustments based on that. Uh

10:19 But Yeah, I mean we've got consumers who are You know, we're thirty two months old, so we'd we have hit that thirty six month mark. But like there's very clearly going to be consumers who are Around purchasing and I guess quote perpetuity. And you uh picked a name that if you had

10:37 told me I would have been like, Hey brother, do you want to win? Or are you going to put a Umla over one of the letters and nobody knows how to say it. And then you won. So I'm an idiot. What what what gives? So What I always say here is uh and Sam botched uh Gruins at the start, he said gruns, which is totally fine. What I tell people is what I tell people is I do not care how you pronounce our name.

11:01 As long as you're buying. So like you can call it Grins if you want. You can call it Gruins, which is crack. It's grins. But but did did you think it was a good name and you knew something none of us do? Or did you just not care about the name? And how the hell did you arrive at that name? Yeah, so the word groons with an S, I guess I can show you here, with an S at the end actually doesn't mean anything. Uh in the German language. The word green means green in German. But once you throw an S on it, there's actually no meaning to it. And so when I threw an S on it.

11:31 It it just seemed to be like kinda fun and playful. You've got this like natural smiley face. Uh they felt like something that uh We could brand over time really well and it's it's simple. But you're right, like it it at least in America That'd be like your uh argument to the T be like No, because it makes a ton of sense. Now it it may not make sense in America, but like uh Sean, we had uh

11:57 Uh we had this guy, David, on who runs a company called Lexicon, and his whole job is naming companies. He's named Swiffer, Fabriz, Sonos, Blackberry. Sean, what do you think David would say about that name? Well, it's hard to know, right?'Cause he's got this little AI computer brain where he's like Yes, no, and it's almost like a Somalier describing the taste of a wine and then you just have to nod along like an idiot, be like, Mm, yeah, I I I sense the notes that you're talking about there. I thought notes are for music, but I definitely sense it. Um and so, you know, I I think it's hard to know, but I I would have guessed low, right? You're talking about like

12:31 Doesn't make much sense in America. the market we're going after, but you did it anyways. What was runner up name or, you know, in the brainstorming process, sometimes you start with like Here's what we're definitely not going to call it. 'Cause it kinda guides you away from maybe some typical areas. Honestly, like I hit it pretty quick. So I guess I I didn't mention this. I I served uh I grew up Mormon.

12:51 Um so I served a two year mission in Germany, Switzerland, Austria. So like I'm I am fluent in German. Uh so when when I had the thought I pretty sick assignment. Yeah, totally. It's literally called the Alpine German speaking mission. Yeah, like you know, someone else could have been assigned to like, you know, Redding, California or Yeah, totally. That wouldn't be too bad. That wouldn't be too bad. There's worse.

13:14 You have the ideas. How long did it take you to go from idea into your head Two I know what the product is gonna be. And I have my first batch and then I go for sale. Like what was that timeline like? Yeah, so coming up with gummies took about a day.

13:29 I I grew up you're gonna think this is crazy. You know those like big um Like I guess they call'em like single day servings of sour patch watermelon. Yeah. Slices. Yeah, yeah. I would eat those Gummies. One of those every day in college, like a full four hundred fifty calories. Every day.

13:47 Um, I've always been a gummy fiend. And so now I get to obviously have like a productive health gummy every single day and there's a ton of'em that we sell. I have a ton of ideas always circulating in my head, and this notion doc I have. Uh, and typically I sit on those ideas for about a year. This one, I was like, it's so obvious. I gotta do this, I'm the right person to do it. And so I started working on it immediately.

14:09 Getting it to launched now to answer the question there. I immediately like within a week of having the gummy sort of connection said, Okay, why hasn't somebody done this in gummy form? Right, like you've got a ton of gummies. Why hasn't somebody put Comprehensive nutrition.

14:24 In a gummy. And the big aha moment for me was the entire gummy industry is built around These Sixty or thirty count bottles, transparent bottles with a cap on the top. That that is his gummy exists.

14:37 So I asked the question. What? What would need to change? What would it need to look like? To have gummy be comprehensive nutrition. And then that's when I went down the path of like, okay, if it's a you know, a pack, how big's the pack, how many gummies are in it.

14:52 What's the flavor of the gummy? Right. Sam Sam, you've never taken the product, right? No, I'm gonna buy it now, though. So the the way it works is the th this is a good point you just brought up, which is you don't like When we say it's a gummy, you think it's a g it's a gummy. No. A single serving, you eat eight of these things. So it's literally like having a pack of sour batch, kids. Which I think was m you know, m seems fine, whatever, but that's actually pretty non obvious. And I if I'm reading between the lines of or if I'm understanding what you're saying You're saying one of the reasons nobody had done the comprehensive gummy was because the gummy would need to be like

15:27 You know. four inches large to contain everything. But what if we made it What if we made it where it's not a gummy a day, it's a pack of eight. We s we exact package them as little pouches of eight. And that's how that's how we can do this when other people may not have tried to do this. Yeah, yeah, it's it's uh our pac are it's about eight we go off of gram weight, which is about twenty grams. And some grams are smaller or bigger than others, but yeah, it's a it's a full every gummy is identical in terms of nutrition. It's sort of the

15:54 Total of the eight in this case. Um that make up the full desk. I just think that it's insane that I asked you a question that I thought was going to be ridiculous about like you pointing like Babe Ruth and saying like You know, we're gonna get to this and you're like Yes, that was part of the plan. I mean, it's pretty audacious to say I'm gonna get to a hundred million in revenue in less than three years.

16:15 For the people listening. What are the inputs necessary to get to a hundred million in revenue for an econ brand in three years? So it it doesn't have to be consumables. I think everybody points at consumables these days and they're like ah supplements. It it's like it's a better business. It's not necessarily a better business because if you're selling a a hard good like bed sheets or Furniture. Your margins are gonna be worse. It's gonna be di more difficult to shave. Like there's a lot of things in there.

16:39 But You theoretically make money on day one. In supplements you don't. You gotta make that money on the retention. So that that's a new lever. You gotta pull to make the business work. So to answer it directly, Sam, I think First and foremost, you've got to have a good product. And good product doesn't mean like make a better ver version of Careens. Like that's not gonna work for people. What's gonna work is finding that product category, that white space.

17:01 Good product equals new white space. So you've seen um I I'm sure you guys have seen these like uh nicotine pouches, the whip And like ultras of the world. I would not encourage an a and energy. It's basically looks like a Zen, but it's not tobacco or nicotine. It's energy. Yeah, it's like uh like Caffeine and other things they uh like the nicotine pouches.

17:21 Um Amazing. Not because I'm a believer in the product, but amazing because now you're taking a new format, a form factor that doesn't have competitors. And so I think anybody looking at it and be like, Oh, I'm gonna do it too, like you might find a little bit of success, but you're not gonna sell your business. You're not gonna be the winner here. Go find a new product format. Symbiotica came out with these little liposomals.

17:42 Um Who else have I seen that that's created new Oh You've got like do you know the product dose? It's like the liver. Health product. It's like these little shot classes. Uh it's like

17:52 It's like a concentrated liquid. That's another one. I I wouldn't break it. A concentrated liquid of what? Uh like their supplement is a concentrated liquid for uh the liver. So look up, I think it's dailydose.co. Is the website that's another product that has like a unique format. Another one for you. You guys know Mary Ruth Organics.

18:12 Or Row Nutrition R H O Uh-huh. So Those are like uh Not sure if they're liposomal, but they're like liquid.

18:21 Vitamins. Right, like their approaches were the liquid vitamins. I'm shocked there's no if not more competition doing that. Like these are big businesses. Every single one of the ones I just mentioned is a big business doing really well. So the framework of this is taking a thing that everyone knows or or many people know and just slightly changing the form, the w the the way you consume. But everything that you've named so far has been a consumable. Correct. Because that's the space that I'm like most

18:45 Uh familiar with and people typically are uh looking at right now. But like it would be the same thing, like do you know how big cozy earth is? Their whole thing was bamboo sheets. Right. And and I don't I if you ask me, I'm sure other businesses sell bamboos, but like that's their thing. Uh and like they're a big business as well. And so I g I could give you examples across All sorts of categories.

19:07 Supplementation's the easiest for people to visualize. Well, so the step one you're saying is good product, but let's say that less generically, what you're saying is the right product. And the right product is a Category Super saturated.

19:22 And you either either you take an existing category, you change the form factor to make it new. Oh, you find a new pain point, new problem, new supplement, new whatever. And you're gonna do it. You need some point of key differentiation. Your vitamins, but your liquid. Your sheets, but your bamboo. Yeah. Your um, you know You're greens, but you're gummies. And you find that key point of differentiation, which gives you new category.

19:49 I've seen jelly beans. is a form factor. I've seen lollipops. Right. Like people are It it do I think that those businesses are gonna be huge? Probably not. Like it's a little bit niche, but like They're probably gonna be more successful than somebody making a gummy like us. Hey question. You started this by saying Sour Patch Kids.

20:06 Yeah. Um how come none of the gummies are sour? This is uh why doesn't anybody be like it's sour vitamins. P I would I would eat that. T V D. Uh we we might we might give you something like that, Sean. I'm a sour fiend as well. I'm I'm gonna hit that. Don't worry. Sometimes I want to start the business and then sometimes I realize oh I know I'm just hungry and I just wanna eat that thing and I don't need the spice. And that this might be the category where maybe I'm just hungry. Wait, you actually said something interesting. You said it's too niche. Is there a what's your to get you to a hundred million in revenue, is there um okay, so you said take the form factor.

20:37 Um and then the second or I don't know if it's the second thing, but there uh there is a TAM related thing here. Is there like um A threshold where you're like, This has legs. Look, like I'm I'm I'm a bit psycho, right? Like all I've seen around me is businesses getting to hundreds of millions of revenue quickly. So like my gauge for success is In the business I started, the first business I started I literally sunset six months in He was doing a hundred thousand of revenue.

21:02 And ninety percent even on margins. And I sunset it because I said, This isn't big enough. Like this isn't but that's how I'm wired, right? Like If somebody wanted to get to a five million dollar cash flow business And run that, like that's that's massive success. So I'm I'm not gonna like deter people from But I want to know your your threshold.

21:19 Yeah, my threshold. Well, I mean my my sites are even bigger now, right? Like I'm still Working on grooms and new trubs and Uh juice and these products you see behind me, we have more than just grooms now. Uh happy to talk about that.

21:32 But I I mean, at this point I'm looking only at stuff that can be one ten billion dollar outcomes somewhere around there. You know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written, and everyone is aligned. And you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create the content. That someone is you and it's due tomorrow.

21:52 Breeze assistant can help. It works right inside of HubSpot. drafting, campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice. all grounded in your actual customer data. So don't just create content, you create content that converts.

22:07 Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. So let's let's keep going in your formula. What's what's uh did we do step two or two, and this is the end of that. Is L TV the cack. So if your if your business has an L T V to cack. Of three times plus?

22:24 You are golden. Anytime people talk about profitability Anytime people talk about NER, I'm not sure if you're familiar with that. Uh it's like marketing efficiency rate ratio. Um I the way that you think about it is like if you're if you spend twenty percent of your marketing or of your revenue on marketing.

22:42 Then the inverse of that is a five X. N R Right, so One divided by two. All you're saying is I want a machine where I can buy a customer for a dollar and I know that in thirty six months that custom will pay me back three dollars. And I'm gonna dump as much dollars as I can into the front of that funnel. As long as that's possible. And I say the key here is most people I I don't know, maybe maybe I'm just wrong, but

23:03 I think a lot of people think lifetime revenue d lifetime value as just revenue. And what you're saying importantly here is It's the you know, totally fully loaded gross profit. So to get to three, you're probably actually doing six dollars of revenue on that customer. Uh close to a five five to six to get

23:19 three bucks of gross profit off that d of that cost. Correct, whatever your margin is. But yeah, that's correct. You've got to do But i if you hit that three times fully a burden with gross profit L TV. Uh divided by your CAC. And that equals three or more. You've got a business. How did you know that Groons was gonna be one to three?

23:38 Um I didn't. I've I'd seen enough to know how it might play out, but we we came out with a cack. Everybody in our company since day one knew what our tax ceiling was. That would result in a three times or greater L TV the CAC.

23:52 Can you say what that number is or no? Well when I first started, I mean I can't really tell you, but what I'll tell you is it's two X higher today. Than it was on Day one of launching my business. Why?

24:02 It's not because we magically got better L L T V, it's because I set the cack so low. To ensure that we'd be able to hit it. So what does that mean then your ads need to be extra catchy? In order to make extra catchy ads, you need like a super good offer or super good story or super like you know what I mean? It kind of all of it. And that that's where like I think this gets so difficult is people are like Yeah, sometimes I see the shadow figures that are running these drop shipping companies and they're like

24:29 Grand's ads are bad. Like they're not even good. They're so like non creative. And that's because we're like a reputable company that doesn't say we can cure cancer or do these things that some of these shadow figures do. I like that's not creative. That's just actually like bad to do as a human. Um But like To answer your question, like it's not just like creating good ads. You gotta have the good offer, you've gotta have the good retention, you gotta have a good product, right? Like you have to have a product that people actually wanna take.

24:53 On Like our Amazon L TV Tac. Is phenomenal. Like and and that's on a platform where We're not advertising the way that you do on meta. We're not

25:03 Like w you don't have your subscription portal in a certain way. It's like a one click cancel button. And that's like leagues beyond what I've seen with other brands in terms of Amazon economics. DC is one of these funny spaces. Like I I think I DM'd you I I read our DM, Sean, uh from like Oh man, it would it would have been like in twenty twenty three, like three months into the business, you're asking about the landing page.

25:25 Yeah. So three months into the business I was I think I just sent you a compliment. I was like, Hey, I think your landing page is really great. Yeah, I guess the interesting thing is you were really you were quiet, right?'Cause There's this weird um paradox. And I would call it the drop shippers paradox, which is the sort of the louder somebody tends to be. About their e commerce success. I sort of in I sort of um proportionally increase my skepticism.

25:47 And I feel like you were very quiet. And you built a killer business. And then now once you've kind of like you know, reached a a big exit and a mountaintop, sure, you could talk a little bit more about it. You're doing a little bit spending a little more time. What do you think about that? What do you see when you look out at the landscape of like people who are Or quite vocal, quite loud on on D to C Twitter and other places.

26:07 You know I I want to have Uh Sympathy for how others run their businesses. And so I will say is like I've had chats with some of these people who are louder. Pere running you know, these businesses that

26:19 They They're little shadow businesses. Like you don't know what their business is, but if doing a hundred million of revenue or whatever. And I what I've come to realize is some of these people just don't know yet. That what they're doing is inappropriate. Right, the the ads they're running is inappropri are inappropriate.

26:32 They don't really understand the consequences. They're you know, they're fist bumping their friends about the Lamborghini they just bought. And so what I would say there is like I think it's less about how loud people are. I think it's about The natural evolution that we all go through is we learn. Uh what it means to be like a

26:49 A reputable business person? um running like a a clean business. And and that comes with time. I I happen to learn most of it through amazing brands that with the great executive teams that I learned from who are mentors and friends. And and I think for some of these people they're learning and it's gonna take a little bit of time. So from the outside I look at you and I think, Well, you seem really I I've only known you for thirty minutes. You seem very calm. You seem very well balanced. You seem uh like a lovely person.

27:14 The success has been off the charts. And I think well, everything's perfect. Um, this guy's just had it all. Of course I that's not the reality. So what has what has sucked about this journey? You know, it's funny, the team we have this joke internally. Um that I'm the chillest guy we know.

27:30 And it it's like sort of kinda true. Like I am actually a pretty calm person and I think mistakes are all part of the learning. Like no business is perfect. A perfect business is one that learns quickly from the mistakes that it makes. And people aren't to blame for that. What I'll say is I You know, I I could give you an example of actually like a really rough day we had uh January twenty ninth of twenty twenty four, and I'll I I can tell you a little bit about that. But I would say the hardest thing about building a business like this.

27:55 That folks just don't appreciate Is Just How Difficult it is.

28:02 To build a team. Of all stars? And More difficult than that, unleash them. Given the space to play and run and execute.

28:12 According to the U.S. And that's really been our unlock is one getting amazing individuals. I think if you look at our executive team, if you look at our entire team. Right, the hundred thirty people plus at this company. Think people would be like that is a stacked team. They're not going anywhere.

28:27 We're having a good time, like we've got a lot ahead of us that we want to do. And the culture here allows for them to to excel in a way that they wouldn't be able to do also. Can you dive deeper on that? Because people always say hire the best people and and all that and I say that too. And but it's that's I hate when I give that advice or when I receive it because I'm not trying to hire the worst people. Like I am I am trying. So what does the best people actually mean? What is what what do you look for? What attributes? Yeah, you know what's so funny about this, Sam, I've heard people be like, Oh, well, like somebody could be the best for your role. And I'm like, No no no, there's like legit people who are the best. Like uh like you're probably just not able to hire'em if you're saying like well, we got the best for

29:03 This like narrowly carved out rule. So what I say like the best is what we're looking for is people Who have confidence to make decisions. Right. So Everyone has the ability to be essentially a CEO. And frankly I would

29:15 Not be surprised if we're talking five years from now. And A lot of the folks here at Gruins have started companies. That are really successful because they've had that skill set that uh repetition of making decisions as if they're the CEO.

29:29 Uh in so I I would say that it comes down to just being like reps, experience, training in in whatever function, if you're a marketing person, a retention person, if you're a product person. And then the hardest part again, and this is where I think the people listening to this who might be founders

29:46 Or CEOs have to Check themselves as How do you Unblock. These people. How do you get out of the way?

29:53 to ensure that everybody together is building something massive. I wanna ask you about your marketing.'Cause I think you Did world class marketing, like we said. Years ago I compliment first thing I ever said to you was, Yo, nice landing page. That's the highest form of of respect I give. Um

30:11 You I wanna actually open up here. Let me screen share. I wanna show you your Facebook ad library. And I just want you to talk us through A sort of uh ten minute Master class on marketing. Yeah. I want you to tell me what you see. Cause I you know, uh the average person will look at this, they don't really know what to take. I want you to point out what's interesting here. Let me see if I can zoom this a little bit.

30:31 Uh, what's interesting here, what to notice, what to learn from um that would apply to other people in their businesses how to think about marketing the way you guys thought about marketing. Yeah, I mean the first thing I see when you go back up is like what does it say, poop more? Like what other supplement brand do you know that's like being a little bit sassy with commentary like that. Now you see it a little bit more from these brands that are like Just talking about their clinicals all the time.

30:53 Which nothing against clinicals. Like we do clinicals too, and we d we test our product collectively. Well beyond what's sort of required. But like We we just don't talk about it'cause that's not fun. And so like what I would say here is like these are fun ads, right? This is like If somebody l sees that they're probably laughing a little bit. Like if you scroll down

31:10 Yeah, we spent some time on GLP one as an angle. And I'm really proud the day that we decided to do this because Everyone around us and I I don't spend enough time on Instagram to know. Everyone around us is like Nature is a Zenbacker. Um Like they they'll say something like that, which is like objectively wrong. Like you're not supposed to say that.

31:28 We've never taken that approach. We are Well we would say the best friend. So you were able to kind of surf that wave. You were able to hijack some of the momentum. Uh

31:43 that product and position yourself not as a replacement, but as a Wait, why did you have why do you have an Ollipop? Okay. Well it was the GL the GLP one's new crush ad was that Ollipop uh image on it. And so we're running a limited time offer right now. with Olipop. Oh it's like the flavor. It's an Ollipop flavor, kinda. This is Gruins, which I guess you can see right here, I'm pointing to it in the video.

32:08 We've got Gruin's sort of gr original. And then you know, every month or two months we do these limited time offer drops with in this case is Ollipop strawberry vanilla flavor. You know, the first one we did was like a Groony Smith apple, like Granny Smith apple flavored. We did a Grinch. sour gridge punch last year in November. So we do these this again, back to the whole like

32:29 How do we make this fun? Like you tell me one other supplement period. That's doing like drops. In in making it actually fun to to take the product each day. So it looks like you've got different angles. So you've got uh hey, we're we're You know, Ozempik's best friend. You've got poopmore, you've got uh nurse

32:46 You know, the nurse here who's uh probably talking about nutrient gas. Nurse Jackie talking about nutrients. So you have these different angles and I'm guessing that the these each lead to a landing page that aligns with that message, correct? So it's like Yeah five, six different angles, each to a tailored landing page that continues that message. And then you are you doing that just to experiment to find one winner? Or you're like, no, we're gonna keep running five or six of these'cause there's just different markets of different customers who have different mindsets and we're gonna try to Get all of them. Yeah, to to make this super applicable for people. You should test ads in high volume.

33:18 So find new angles, test all over the place, find what sticks. With an eye towards being a human. Right. Don't don't say that you like are gonna make somebody's sex better if you're product doesn't actually do that. Like actually do the science validation if your product could help with certain things. Once you've identified an angle that seems to be running.

33:37 Then you built the entire funnel around it. So you've got You've got static ads that talk to that angle. You've got UGC sort of Place the camera. Angle um ads that run at that. You've got

33:49 Um like more like cinematic type shoots that run at that angle. Everything you're just plowing all sorts of Add concepts to war or sorry, add structures to that angle. From there. Where people land is really important.

34:02 what people receive as a pop up is really important. What people receive as email at SMS is really important. Everything is tailored to that message. So if you came in on a gut health. Add we want everything tailored to hey, you know, Sam just expressed interest. And the gut health had. Great. Then Sam's probably interested in gut health.

34:20 Let's give a pop up that helps them understand what about God is he interested in. That pop up informs what messages we send on email and SMS. Um towards Sam's expressed. Concern. That page is dialed for Sam's intent. And then on the back end of that, once people have purchased

34:36 This is something that we're trying to put into process now is How do we talk to Sam long term? Yeah, he may have started on gut health. But how would how do we get Sam to understand that there's so much more to this product? The Jessica Health?

34:48 And do that over time, building on sort of the foundation of why this product was that important. Most of the Um, it's sort of like when I win the right read the book How to Win Friends and Influence People. I'm like, Oh yeah, this is obvious. Make sense, makes sense, but the hard part is execution. Oh and it's it seems like you're ruthlessly uh It's

35:07 Kind way executing. What's so I'm gonna ask a bunch of questions I think you can answer in one in one go. Uh how many ads and landing pages per month are you putting out? And I think you only said you had a thirty person team. That seems like a lot of output for a relatively small team. Can you talk about like who's doing the work? Yeah. Uh, we're probably putting out hundreds of ads a month, cycling in and out. Uh just trying to find that next.

35:31 You know, unlock. Um we try to create new concepts. Pretty consistently, so I It's not just about ad volume. It's actually structured around like how much of that is like business as usual ads that we already know or structure or sorry, concepts, themes that we know already work. And how much of that is like

35:50 We're trying to find new frontier. Um of applicability. In terms of the team. You know. When Sean reached out to me in December of twenty twenty three.

36:00 Saying hey, nice. Landing page, that was me. Right, like I was the guy that who built that landing page. We didn't use an agency. I think I even said that in the the message'cause you asked. That was me from the beginning and you know, you you see our Buy box that place where you do the added cart.

36:14 We've seen people rip that. Over the last three years. Copying that buy box and if they only knew that. Random dude named Chad who's not like an econ expert. you know, broadly across D to C, I I know quite a bit, but like I'm not an econ guy who builds these things.

36:28 The whole industry's mimicking this this format. Yeah, it's really interesting to see. They I think people need to test their own and since then we've found new formats that work. But talking about the team, we've got People across we've got like three folks on the retention team who do the emails. uh SMS who set up all the flow that allow for our consumers to have a good experience.

36:47 Um so they're focused on After order one. What does that journey look like through order hundreds, right? We've got A large team doing paid so creating ads. The actual creatives we have probably

37:00 Four plus maybe five or six creative strategists who actually create the ads and then We have people who design and Do the video edits. And then we have

37:09 The people who actually manage the ad accounts, right? There's probably four or five of those who actually like are looking at the analytics, evaluating, passing back to the creative strategist, saying. Here's what's working, iterate on that. We've got an econ team that's absolutely dialed. The the velocity coming out of econ now, so landing page designs. Iterations on the car. Check out.

37:28 post purchase, like all of that good stuff. We're we're constantly iterating on it. I mean, it's so fun to see, right? Like Used to be me throwing up a quick website. Um against to that angle and now we've got like a full um infrastructure around it. Still that's crazy. That does not seem like a lot of

37:44 That doesn't seem like a big operation for creating hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue and hundreds of ads. It it doesn't require a lot. And I would tell people that they can do it themselves, right? You create a template in You know, shout out to Replo. He's the platform that I used and I think you can do hundreds of millions of uh uh revenue on Replo. Um, I think it's Replo dot app is the website and it's a Shopify plugin. I mean it's such a good platform. You could just create a template.

38:09 The only thing you need to swap out is like the headline. Whether it says gut health or it talks about pick your other ad theme. Sw substitute the like uh little blocks on the page with the new ad copy. It's like it's not that hard. Like in a day you can create a completely new ad funnel. That is gonna have incremental performance against a sort of general Landing page.

38:27 That guy's gotta clip that clip and make that now. Get ready to see your face at a repli ad. Look, and and I have no problem, they don't charge I mean, I've told them before, they don't charge enough. It it it it's stupid how much value you can get out of that. And and I would say this about a lot of our platforms. They're just getting a shout out because it's relevant here. This is for the folks out there who have a business that does at least three million dollars a year in revenue. Because around this point, that's when you're able to look up after being heads down for years building your company. And you realize two things.

38:58 One, you've done something great. But you're still a long way from your final destination. And two, you look around and you realize I am all alone. I've outrun my peers. Which means you're now making ten million dollar decisions alone by yourself. And that is when mediocrity can creep in.

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40:18 What do you see when you look at average marketing versus world class marketing? What do you think if I'm somebody who's Got a brand or a company and I have a landing page. I got ads. I'm doing all the things. He said test creative. I'm testing creative. He said test landing. I'm I think I'm doing that. What are the most typically missing? When you either advise a founder or you go look at somebody else's brand and you're like, Oh man, they're just not doing this one thing, this th these two things well enough to really jump from average or good to great. Have a better product. Is typically what it comes down to, which is like so unhelpful because it's like you gotta cut your losses.

40:51 But like a lot of the people who are trying to like Find these hacks. They're doing it with like a A mailed in product. Like some they like didn't we took a year.

41:01 to develop our product. It's custom blends. Well, how did you know that it worked? Because a lot of times when I take vitamins, I don't necessarily know if it's working. Did you like get your blood testing a bunch? This is the beauty of this industry is if you go to PubMed. And are you familiar with PubMed? It's a public it's a where studies are, right? Yeah, all the studies are published there. I mean

41:20 If you put Vitamin C in your product and there's thousands of studies about what vitamin C does. Sure, maybe I don't know. The precise outcomes of a hundred twenty person Blind sample survey. placebo controlled trial.

41:35 But like I can pretty much guess what the outcomes are gonna be based on the thousands of other published studies against vitamin C. So To answer your question, Sam, no, I didn't prior to launching, I hadn't done those tests. But like

41:47 I look through thousands. The right. Formulation would be for our product. And that's also what I tested with consumers pre launch is

41:57 What's your perception? Of of this label. What's your perception of this many gummies, this size of gummy, this flavor of gummy, all of that stuff. What's on your um ideas list, but you're not gonna actually go do it. So you can you can riff with us here of brainstorming Other brands, other ideas that you think are interesting. May not may or may not work, but uh interesting. Yeah, and also you mentioned that you have a notion, Doc, if you if you're comfortable. If you want to pull up your bank balance, we can also just do that. Tell you wiring instruction too. Here's what I'll say.

42:30 One thing that I that I disagree with is people say ideas aren't worth anything. Oh man, do I disagree. I I think ideas are worth so much in the right hands. And in my hands they're in the right hands, I believe, and every founder should believe that.

42:45 About themselves. Um and so there's certain ideas I can't share because I'm like Guys. Like I I legit have an idea.

42:53 N Years from now. Like I've still got a lot I want to do with Grues. Like Like actually, there's a lot I want to do with this business. I'm not done here. But like years from now, I think there's an idea that no one else is gonna be able to run it, that is a ten billion dollar business idea. And I'm just say it now and we'll bleep it out and we can totally. Give us like a code work or something so we can we can at least give you credit for it uh years later. We're the wrong heads.

43:17 When when you see it, you'll know. You'll see it and you'll go, Oh yeah, this is a billion this is a big business idea. Um So and I don't think anybody's gonna do that in the meantime, uh while I'm finishing my chapter here uh at Grooms and doing what I set out to do. Okay, well why what what what are some other ideas that if in the right hands are great that w that aren't your hands? I had this idea one time, it has nothing to do with consumer. Um and I actually almost

43:42 ran with it around the time I was starting Grins, and I still think it's a good idea. But I'm not gonna be the one to do it, so I'm happy to share it. Right now. There is no way to Direct the money that you have coming in from like direct deposit.

43:55 So that direct deposit hits your checking account. And then we've all got have the willpower to decide, oh, put ten percent in savings and Put this against your bills and do this over here, blah blah blah. What if you become the essentially the distribution layer? of ACH transfer. So it hits this distribution layer. And before that person has to have the willpower to decide what they're going to do with it.

44:17 And and this is helpful for so many people in their lives, right? It it gets wired out to the the rent that they have. It gets wired out to their car payment. It gets wired out to blank over here, over here into their investment. And so what actually hits their account that they're spending against. Is five hundred bucks.

44:32 For groceries or whatever it is. And I The technology exists to do this. Right. It hasn't been structured. I I can't remember what platform it lasts for, but there's a platform that Can facilitate what I just described to you. So like this idea could be done tomorrow.

44:46 That's a great idea. Um, even whether it's for consumer or for businesses, I have you ever read the book Profit First? No. Somebody recommended on the podcast and they go It was like the time when my girlfriend bought me the book The Game before I went to college and we were gonna break up and it's like you need to learn. How to talk to girls. And I was like, Oh, thank you. It was like a it was a gift, but it was also a message. And uh my friend told me about this book, Profit First. I think it was a gift and a message. And the message was, Hey, you're running this business. I mean you've been doing it for years, but you're not

45:16 Pulling out any profits and you don't know where all the money's going. It's profitable on paper, but like you're not getting money out of this. And that's a very common business owner problem. And there's this book called Prophet First, which has this philosophy, which is basically you preset the budget. So what most people do is they say, I have this much revenue. Then they have all their expenses and then they it's kinda like surprise, whatever's left over, that's your profit. And you're usually quite disappointed with that surprise.

45:42 The better way what this guy advocates for is like you just set a budget for your PL. You say, Oh, I'm gonna spend Twenty five percent on OpEx. I'm gonna I need to reserve twenty percent for taxes so I'm not stressed out every tax season. So I just wanna put that and you ba literally just create four separate accounts. You create a tax account, a checking account. So automatically twenty percent gets go goes in there and that's waiting for it's in a like a money market account until tax season. You have your OpEx account, and so now your team has to run on a budget. It's like this is how much you have to spend. You don't get to just spend whatever and keep eating out of profits. And you set a profit threshold where you say, I want to have fifty percent profit. So it basically pre-allocates to your as every dollar comes in, fifteen cents will go to the profit bucket.

46:22 Twenty five percent twenty five cents will go to the OpEx bucket. And it's it's actually kind of a life changing idea because It forces discipline. You think you're running pretty lean. Until you actually have a hard cap on expenses and then you realize like oh actually there was Way more fat I could trim.

46:37 I actually could have been this profitable yesterday. I just I let it be an output rather than an input. But but unfortunately there's not an easy way to do this a very you have to like Set up seven accounts with your bank and then you have to tell your accountant, hey, keep doing these sweeps every two weeks. Have you guys of Simp do you guys remember Simple? Uh I loved Simple. It was really cool. I I don't I think it's gone. It got it it was one of the very first Silicon Valley um

47:01 Uh banking. Yeah, Neo Banks. And it was I don't even think Neo Bank was a uh Like the envelope system, where you like put digitally money into different office. Yeah, and like I didn't I didn't make a lot of money at the time and I was like, but I wanna like fly home to St. Louis to see my family. And so like it's gonna take me four months. And so I automatically when it would come into my bank account, the way it would visualize it, it was still one bank account. It was like well this is this is how much is Left you know that you have Three hundred fifty bucks in your

47:28 uh spending account, but you have uh another four hundred in your vacation account. So like don't touch that money. It was pretty cool. So Sam the H here's what I love about this idea, and Sean, you're bringing up actually why I think This is even potentially more compelling for businesses because if you're changing the way that that P and L works, I mean venture capital firms want that.

47:47 Because now there's more discipline around the money that they're giving. Totally. The i the small founders who are making five million a year who want to pull five hundred thousand out. They want it because now it's like, Oh, well, I'm forcing myself into that discipline to pull five hundred thousand out every year. Like that's a huge use case that I wasn't thinking of in cur in terms of personal The problem with budgeting today is it's done I I grew up in a family where at the age of six I was in Quicken.

48:09 And like I had to take every receipt, scan it, type it in. Back in the you know, Your mom and dad made you do that? My d my dad taught me budgeting, yeah. That's awesome. Like We were still against Dad and everything else, but I like So it was awesome until there was an imbalance at the end of the month.

48:26 And I had to go search for the twenty cents that was off. Is that like a Mormon thing? Because I've I've I think I've met a bunch of Mormon buddies who are very disciplined with their monthly budgeting. Yeah, it might be, honestly. It might be um something that's I mean, there's a lot of like financial discipline in general. But but to put the headline on it. To me, what I love about this idea is it solves

48:46 What I think sucked about The granularity of like wasting hours a a month, a week. On like typing in all my stuff. Right. And it also solves the other end. Right, like people Do they get to the end of the month and it's like that was actually a hassle to do, did I change any of my behaviors based on it? I don't know.

49:01 And then the other end of it's like mint. Back before that got acquired or whatever and I think the other one today is Monarch. Which I like monarch now have more money. It's like it's helpful to see, but like Monarch's not really like a proactive

49:14 platform, right? Oh just like getting information about is like I'll tell you how bad you're doing at it versus hey, let me just fix it for you. But you want it to fix it for me uh solution. I really wonder. Whether a you know, with agents or You know, you take the popularity of like Mercury or the kind of all the popular neo banks that are pretty product first. Yeah.

49:34 And they're more programmable. I wonder if either somebody could build it on top of one of those banks or If they'll end up releasing something like this themselves. I think you get acquired. I I think if you run this business, you're gonna be acquired for five hundred million to a billion in like two years. If you execute this right, like somebody out there listening right now, feel free to send me a DM when you do it. Like this this idea, the infrastructure exists to be able to do this. If you execute it correctly.

50:00 You you are one making a massive impact and Millions of people's lives. Until you will have a financial outcome. What would be cool is in if in twelve months We have to say, Hey everyone, we did this podcast with Chad here here's what he said, and then we air this clip that you just said, and then we're like here's the update. Uh because this is this is fantastic. This is really cool. We we we do this segment all the time. This is um this is a top tier idea.

50:23 You uh you have a couple of quotes that you sent us are like kind of philosophies. We always ask people what are your what are the philosophies you live by that you think are not. And not something everybody does, or ev not everybody believes in. You said one one of them that I like to go. Access is everything. And you explained how You didn't have a ton of access early on, but

50:41 You know h through Summit and Stanford like how Can you explain your accesses everything philosophy? Yeah, um I think access and the privilege of having access in the world. Is something that When you don't have it, surround yourself with people who do and do good work for them and you will get access every time.

50:57 And then when you do have it. Like the privilege I now have. I see it as your obligation, my obligation. To give that back to others. So explain what you what you mean by access. What's the personal story where where where this kinda r resonates. Yeah, you know, like

51:11 I'm a dude named Chad. I I worked in private equity. What you see today would not have existed without people leaning in. And giving me access every time incrementally. And me doing good work for them.

51:23 So like if you go back, I mean I was always curious on this'cause I think you get asked in those questionnaires like are you Are you middle income, high income, low income? And like I was aware of.

51:34 Sort of well. But if I looked at sort of the income that my parents had and I have seven there's seven of us kids, so six siblings. In in our income, I think I was like bottom middle class is like how it was defined. And I'm I'm not saying that from a standpoint of like ashamed, like I'm grateful

51:49 to have lived in this area and seen these people'cause I think you can solve a lot by just giving awareness. To kids about what's possible. It's like the grasshopper moment. Once they know it's like oh now you can go get it. So I get

52:02 Um I was recruiting for uh The big three consulting, McKinsey, B C Bain. Through a contact who who put me in touch. I didn't get it, but I landed through another mentor this this gig at Lazard. I did really good work. Lazard's an investment bank.

52:17 So in New York City, one of the top premier investment banks working on mergers and acquisitions. That mentor, I'm still close to him. I went and visited him, right? So he gave me access and that access then landed me at Summit Partners. At Summit Pergus, I did phenomenal work for them. I deployed I I literally invested like thirty percent of that fund. A five billion dollar fine. Like I invested that. I sourced the deals that made them the money behind that. I did really good work. And there's this moment when I got into Stanford.

52:44 that I was like, oh man, like should I feel bad? Because I I know how this works. Like I only got in. I yeah, I've had a ton of accomplishments. Yeah, three point nine five GPA. I've worked at great places, but this white dude named Chad, like Should I feel bad about this that I got into Stanford? And and what I came to appreciate is like No, I shouldn't feel bad. Knowing that the reason why I got in is because

53:05 You know, two people who are very close to the Stanford folks sent a text and a nice letter of recommendation for me. I shouldn't feel bad about that'cause they're not just doing that. Right. They're doing that because I did good work for them. I made their lives easier. I earned their trust. And so Maybe I wasn't born into that access where my dad can send a text to Stanford and say, Let my let my son in.

53:26 But you can earn that. By doing good work for the people who do have that access and they're they're so eager to help you. Um have that sort of accomplishment. So that's how I think about access. And it's part of when, you know, I got asked recently like What's your legacy that you want to leave on the world? And I'm like A you know like thirty three years old. But the way I think about it is like

53:45 I wanna give that that access that I've sort of like Either been granted or earned over the last many years. And I and I want to ensure that more people have access to that. who who spend their their lives working with me and putting good work. Dude, you're you're awesome. You are so cool. I think that um

54:02 When I was younger, I met this really successful guy named Scott Belski. who was uh the the chief product officer of Adobe and uh an a an amazing entrepreneur maybe a billion billionaire. And he used this word with me that I never heard before, this idea he used um he said, I'm gonna invest in you and you need to be a steward of my capital. And I was like, I don't know what is that word steward. I'd never heard of that. It's just like this idea that you need to be the vehicle that pa that protects and passes on like a little bit of greatness. That that's kinda how I interpreted it. And you are that person. So

54:34 Um my friend Austin Reef. Do you know Austin Reef? He's the uh One of the morning brew started and sold the company for hundreds of millions of dollars when he was thirty years old. Uh he was texting me about this new idea that he was working on or brainstorming. And I was like, Do you think it's gonna be successful? He goes It can be successful if I want it to be. And I love that because what you and him both said something very similar. You have this similar mindset.

54:59 But I find myself being around him and people like you. And it's contagious. Yeah, you know what, I've thought about whether I should be I've I've tried to figure out whether my impact on the world is more narrowly focused on the people who spend hours, thousands of hours with me. Working inside of grids or if I should have more of an impact.

55:18 publicly trying to relay some of this message. It's hard though, you know, like to relay All this um These experiences that I've had. In in a public forum that allows for millions to Um to learn. But you're totally right, Sam. Like

55:32 At the end of the day. Why why was I able to build what I built? It's because I knew it was possible. Right. Like I saw it done. Many, many times by others. And if I ever had a question I could I could go ping those people and so Network experiences.

55:45 Awareness of what's possible. I think there's a Maybe a different way to say what you just said. You know, the way you just said it was kind of like, Hey, I got I was pretty fortunate that these things happened and I did my part, but they did their part. This happens a lot with entrepreneurs is we sort of stumble and fumble. Our way to success.

56:02 Then afterwards you can actually look back and realize like oh There it wasn't complete random. It wasn't complete chance. And in fact You could recreate the conditions of success. More reliably, knowing what I know now. And so I would just point to three words that you just said. The first one is exposure.

56:18 You really can't imagine what you've never seen. Your brain won't go anywhere, uh, if you don't have any exposure. I I was Talking about this with Ben, my business partner, about my kids. I said my kids have never been exposed To so much in the world, right? Like we literally keep going to the same resorts and I was like

56:35 They've never seen a third world country. They've never seen this I I started bringing them to just do adult stuff with me because I used to do kids stuff with my kids. And now what I realize is let me just bring him along for life. And kids actually love it. They like doing laundry. They like cooking. They work out with me now in the gym every day. They like going with me to to meetings. They like go you know, they actually kind of enjoy that because they're getting exposed to new stimulus that they've never really seen before. And even if they're five years old and they can't fully grok it, there's some part of it that just breaks Some

57:06 And it starts to poke holes and it lets new things in. Growing up, I didn't know any entrepreneurs. No I didn't know anyone. І мотира фмам газ на сиб<unk>с, майдан. out of all of them, there were zero entrepreneurs. Every single one of them was an engineer, like typical Indian family. And so ever the the highest calling was you get a good job. What's a good job? A six figure job that ha has health insurance. So that was all I knew. I was all I was exposed to if what was possible.

57:35 And then my senior year of college, I took a class called Getting Rich. And in the very first class, you brought in a speaker and there was a girl who started a T shirt company. And then the next class, you brought in a guy who started his own hedge fund. And I just thought I looked at them and I said, Why are these guys having all the fun? This sounds awesome. Maybe I could do that. Instead, I was finally exposed to the thing, you know, when I was twenty one years old, and it changed the trajectory of my life. Had I not had the exposure, it literally would have just not happened. And so the first is exposure. How do you get yourself in a position to see new things? Um or help other people see new things. The second is access. And then you the way I would put it for you is earned access. Cause you said something very casual. You're like, I did good work for them.

58:12 You know what? I bet if we peeled back, there probably is a lot there. I bet you overdelivered. I bet you didn't get paid proportional to what you did and you didn't whine about it. These are my guesses. You tell me if that's true or not. But The access is earned. Through showing that you're somebody who deserves. greater opportunities and greater access. And you sort of delay The payoff.

58:32 And you just have faith that I'm gonna just I'm gonna kill it right now. And I'm I trust that, you know, the ball will bounce my way over time and I don't need to immediately tit for tat measure what I'm getting versus what I'm putting in. Yeah, I think I I I think it's true and Frankly I think

58:48 Yeah, I'm young. I'm thirty three years old. To think about The impact I want to have on this world. I think it's that first one. Exposure. How can I facilitate Exposure.

58:58 To everyone. Right, young young kids, how do they get exposure? That honestly I think that's where my wife and I want to make an impact is Making it possible through Some some effort in the next chapter of my life to ensure that The random kid who's six years old or ten years old in a place that would never get exposure to this.

59:16 At least knows what's possible because if they know it's possible Maybe they'll go after it themselves every time. Hey, can I let me ask you a question that um You might not feel comfortable answering when you're wired hundreds of millions of dollars What do you what do you decide to do with it? Where'd you invest the money and that includes like did you decide to give any away?

59:34 Yeah, TBD audit, but I One of the hardest things I have is I've thought about my My impact, like it's the same as um I don't even know if I'll invest in other companies. And and it's not because I don't believe it's like

59:47 What's the next best use of a dollar? It's gonna it's gonna take a lot to convince me that it's something other than one I can go after and do. And that doesn't mean it's always business profit centered. Like I don't always have to make money. Like Can I stand? Go out and

1:00:04 make make an impact on the world by taking my own funds. And building like something special out of it. Right, that has an impact on whether it's mentorship, exposure, or whatever it is. So T B D, I mean, as you know, when you when you receive money you spend a lot of time

1:00:19 thinking about deploying it, you don't want to rush into anything. But but I would expect that The More meaningful. Um

1:00:27 deployment of my capital is gonna come through some personal effort in my life that I do to To make an impact. So well, first of all, can we let me ask a boring question. Where'd you invest it? The the current money, where did you invest? Is it just boring index funds? Is it Well you you know uh there's a difference between signing and closing. So you have to go through anti regulatory Uh so we've signed, but the closing happens as soon as it's been approved by government. The money's not been wired yet. I don't know what that I I've not had a deal to threshold. Yeah. My first acquisition, they just Venmoed me. I've not dealt with the with the uh Department of Justice yet. So that's pretty cool.

1:01:09 So there's a crazy there's a crazy story. You know the company Appleven? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, my my co founder was the co founder of AppLovin at the time. So he's sitting next to me at the office and they signed this deal, and I'm like, Oh my God, you just sold they sold the company, but I think. One point two or two billion dollars. I forgot which of the num what the number was, but one or two billion dollars. And I was like, wow, dude, you did it. You sold a company for a billion dollars, two billion dollars. That's amazing. And I was like, Should we go dinner's on you? What's up? He's like, dude, we haven't got the money. It's gonna be like months. He's like, If it's over, I forgot what the number is, seven hundred fifty million a billion dollars, whatever it is.

1:01:40 Like literally like the government You know, the way he put it was like it's gonna sit on Trump's desk until he stamps it. The crazy thing was they sold to a Chinese company. So there was actually a lot of risk. And so he didn't know this at the time. He thought he you know, it's over. Well

1:01:54 Nine months go by, a year almost goes by, and the deal is still not approved. But they've been running the company. They've doubled revenue in that year. Yeah. And so instead of waiting for the approval, what they did was they went and renegotiated. They were like, hey. Here's what the two billion gets you instead. And now it gets you twenty five percent. Of the company instead of whatever, eighty five, hundred percent. So they renegotiate the deal.

1:02:15 Because the business had grown. So it was the best thing that ever happened. Uh and so they took a minority investment. Got some liquidity. It kept growing the thing. It's now it was like it was a hundred billion dollar company in the last year. So it went a hundred X since then. A quick Google. So I haven't had time to read all this. I believe it's a hundred and Uh thirty million dollars is the threshold where the DOJ has to one thirty? You have to notify the DOJ and the FTC anything north of a hundred and thirty three point nine million dollars. Dear DOJ.

1:02:44 I'm rich. There's like an official form and then they they're just reviewing it as they should to make sure that it's not bad for the consumer. That's cool. Well, dude, uh thanks for coming on, man, and uh congrats again on on building something pretty epic. I remember when I saw the product, it just seemed like oh, that's it. Um and the best products actually are simple like that, where the proposition is easy for the customer to understand. Um, it m it makes sense in the world. It was almost like hidden in plain sight, I feel, uh in in a way. And um You know, to your credit, you you ran with that, you acted on it and you you built something pretty incredible.

1:03:21 Um thank you for having me on. My hope is that three years from now we're talking and you guys are like Cheese, dude. We didn't realise there was that much ahead of you. Uh we've got so much this team wants to do and so

1:03:33 Uh eager to to show the consumers what we've got for'em. New products, new innovations, new fun, limited time offers. What's the best thing on that shelf I should buy? Um, so have you tried the Holy Pop? We've got some products here that are launching soon, but have you tried our Holy Pop? That's actually. I've only ever had the original. I don't I didn't even try anything else. I just got the original like subscription. So yeah, you may you may know this, but we've got Groons, which is the copper inside nutrition, greens, multivitamin fiber. We've got Nutrups, which is a NuTropics product. We've got it.

1:04:01 A mute which is like a Almost like an immunity shot, like the two ounce bottles, but in gummy form. And then we've got juiced, which is this one right here, which is like a pre anything energy. Product. So I mean we've got like twelve innovations in the pipeline. That's what I'm saying. Like It's so exciting. We've we've like done something so big, but like

1:04:20 Or like maybe five miles into a marathon. Good man. Thank you so much for coming on. You have an open invite whenever you want. You're you're you're a wonderful guy. We're we're so happy for your success and we it feels makes us feel good to promote you. So thank you for coming on. That's it. That's a pod. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be But I want to I put my law in it like a day

1:04:40 So on the road less travel, never looking back Hey, let's take a quick break to tell you about our sponsor. It is a podcast that we want you to check out. It's called D2C Pod. It's hosted by Ramon Berrios and Blaine Bolas. And this is a podcast about all things direct to consumer, D2C. It's e-commerce stores, it's how you optimize your brand. And they're talking with founders, marketers, and the platform creators. About all kinds of things that you need to know for D to C, you know, website conversion, paid ads, Facebook ads, consumer trends, email marketing. If you want to know the stories behind your favorite brands, this podcast is for you. So check it out. Listen to D2C Pod, wherever you get your podcast.

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