The $600M Protein Bar Founder is Back Again | Peter Rahal Interview

0:00:02 Today, we have the creator of RX Bar on the podcast.
0:00:05 This guy started in his mom’s basement with $5,000
0:00:08 and built a protein bar that he sold five years later
0:00:10 for $600 million.
0:00:13 And he tells us the story of RX Bar,
0:00:15 his new protein bar, and why he’s doing it again.
0:00:18 And we got to brainstorm with what are four other ideas
0:00:19 that he thinks somebody could start today?
0:00:22 Trends, opportunities, white spaces in the market,
0:00:23 and how he thinks about them,
0:00:27 how he even created RX Bar using the same process
0:00:28 that he’s gonna outline today.
0:00:30 So that’s this episode with Peter Rahall.
0:00:32 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:00:35 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:00:37 ♪ I put my all in it like the days of ♪
0:00:39 ♪ On the road, let’s travel ♪
0:00:40 – All right, so here’s how I wanna start this.
0:00:45 You created this, this little bar, the RX Bar that you made,
0:00:48 I think in your mom’s basement,
0:00:49 with you and your elementary school buddy,
0:00:53 you each kicked in $5,000 and five years later,
0:00:57 you sell it for $600 million, which is amazing.
0:01:01 And now you’re back and you’re doing this bar,
0:01:04 the David Bar, which I’ve been eating pretty religiously.
0:01:07 All right, let’s talk a little bit about RX Bar
0:01:09 and then David, I wanna hear kind of this story.
0:01:12 So I think generally the story is out there,
0:01:13 so I don’t wanna make you rehash too much of it.
0:01:16 Can you give us like the cliff notes of the story?
0:01:18 And then I wanna hear about a couple of things.
0:01:21 You said you read one article on Ink and forwarded it
0:01:23 to Jared, so I wanna get a latch onto that,
0:01:25 but give us first just the cliff notes of RX.
0:01:28 – Yeah, so the cliff notes, you know,
0:01:31 in Chicago, 2010, ’11, ’12 at the time,
0:01:32 like there’s an emerging tech scene.
0:01:35 Groupon was there, and it’s sort of like,
0:01:37 if you weren’t doing some sort of information technology,
0:01:38 you’re a loser.
0:01:41 There was no attention or love to like a food brand.
0:01:43 It was– – No status.
0:01:45 – Yeah, it was just like no status, like.
0:01:48 And so we just wanted to, yeah, we wanted a good job,
0:01:51 we wanted an opportunity to be successful.
0:01:52 I had a background in food,
0:01:56 which was really helpful on the supply chain side.
0:01:57 And then Jared’s like my total counterpart,
0:02:02 like very, very level-headed, reliable, organized,
0:02:07 like a more like creative type, I’d say.
0:02:09 And I always like to try to realize innovation,
0:02:10 ’cause you know, as an entrepreneur,
0:02:11 it’s like, you’ve all these ideas,
0:02:13 and it was basically like, I just read Ink,
0:02:15 and I was like, hey, Jared, I just sent it to him.
0:02:17 And I was like, $10,000, we can do a nutrition bar.
0:02:19 And it was like some bad article, you know,
0:02:20 like nothing, nothing to it.
0:02:22 – What was the premise of the article?
0:02:23 What did it say?
0:02:25 – It was sort of like an inspirational thing of like,
0:02:28 you can start a biz, like very low cost ways
0:02:29 to start a company basically.
0:02:31 – And it said like the protein bar?
0:02:32 – Yeah, nutrition bar.
0:02:34 – It’s like a wiki-how article.
0:02:37 – Which showed why it’s a low status thing to do, right?
0:02:39 Like, anyone can do it, you know?
0:02:42 And I always was in the nutrition bars,
0:02:44 and so we just started making, you know,
0:02:47 we just started taking actions towards making it.
0:02:49 And right, like, where you start,
0:02:53 where you end up, and I was in a CrossFit,
0:02:58 and so we saw like a distribution channel emerge.
0:02:59 It was very clear, I was like,
0:03:01 I looked at Whole Foods and of the traditional
0:03:04 food retail list and had no idea how to get there.
0:03:06 And it was hyper-competitive.
0:03:08 I was like, how are we gonna compete?
0:03:09 Whereas CrossFit emerged,
0:03:14 these gyms are popping up 2012 to ’13, no competition.
0:03:18 You were not allowed on the shelf if you weren’t pillio.
0:03:21 So that was like the perfect example
0:03:23 of an uncompetitive market, a small market,
0:03:24 that was growing like crazy,
0:03:26 that we could go build distribution in
0:03:29 and we can make the product at home.
0:03:30 So we just went for it.
0:03:33 And once you, you know, you burn the boats
0:03:35 and just jump off the bridge and figure out a fly.
0:03:41 – All right, let’s take a quick break
0:03:43 because I wanna talk to you about some new stuff
0:03:43 that HubSpot has.
0:03:45 Now, they let me freestyle this ad here,
0:03:48 so I’m gonna actually tell you what I think is interesting.
0:03:50 So they have this thing called the Fall Spotlight,
0:03:52 showing all the new features that they released
0:03:53 in the last few months.
0:03:56 And the ones that stood out to me were Breeze Intelligence.
0:03:57 I don’t know if you’ve seen this,
0:03:59 but if you’re in HubSpot and you have,
0:04:00 let’s say a customer there,
0:04:03 you can just basically add intelligence to that customer.
0:04:05 They estimate a revenue for that company,
0:04:06 how many employees it has,
0:04:08 maybe their email address or their location,
0:04:10 if they’ve ever visited your page or not.
0:04:13 And so you can enrich all of your data automatically
0:04:16 with one click using this thing called Breeze Intelligence.
0:04:17 They actually acquired a really cool company
0:04:19 called ClearBit and it’s become Breeze,
0:04:21 which is great because now it’s built in.
0:04:23 I always hated using two different tools
0:04:24 to try to do this.
0:04:25 Now it’s all in one place.
0:04:27 And so all the data you had about your customers
0:04:28 now just got smarter.
0:04:29 So check it out.
0:04:31 You can actually see all the stuff they released.
0:04:32 It’s a really cool website.
0:04:35 Go to hubspot.com/spotlight to see them all
0:04:36 and get the demos yourself.
0:04:37 Back to this episode.
0:04:42 And so you’re literally making bars
0:04:44 in like your mom’s basement type of thing.
0:04:47 – Yeah. We had a five court,
0:04:51 the venture got a 20 court sort of vertical mixer.
0:04:52 And like we didn’t know how to form the products.
0:04:55 We had to figure out how to like form and package.
0:04:57 – And you said there’s this really great article.
0:04:59 You’re like, you know, it sounds cool.
0:05:01 We’re in there just like in the lab
0:05:03 mixing these things together and making it.
0:05:05 And you’re like, it didn’t feel cool.
0:05:06 It felt horrible.
0:05:08 Like we, people were making fun of us.
0:05:09 – Oh yeah.
0:05:11 Like I remember another thing.
0:05:13 You just can’t care what people think.
0:05:18 And it’s also a great test of who actually cares about you
0:05:19 and who’s a good influence.
0:05:21 Like you’re the sum of who you stride yourself with.
0:05:24 Like you want your friends supporting you and saying,
0:05:25 no, you have to work on the weekends.
0:05:27 Like not saying drag, trying to drag you out,
0:05:28 pull you down.
0:05:31 But yeah, looking at, I mean, looking at from the outside
0:05:33 looking at what we were, Jared and I were doing,
0:05:34 there’s no way it was successful.
0:05:35 It was going to be successful.
0:05:38 It was just some local, local little thing.
0:05:40 – Were you doing CrossFit or you just literally saw it
0:05:41 as a distribution channel?
0:05:42 – I was doing CrossFit.
0:05:45 Yeah, I got, I got, I was in the part of the CrossFit
0:05:46 religion.
0:05:49 – So you take a box to your, to your gym and you’re like,
0:05:50 hey, I made these.
0:05:52 – Yeah, I just show up at Tupperware.
0:05:54 And so there was like, well, it’s summer insights.
0:05:56 Like, yeah, what do you think?
0:05:58 And then built a relationship with the owner.
0:06:00 I’m like, I’d love to sell some product here.
0:06:03 And of course they’re good people and, you know,
0:06:04 it starts there.
0:06:06 And then in the theory, so it’s like,
0:06:09 if it’s going to be successful at one CrossFit gym,
0:06:11 why wouldn’t it be successful across others?
0:06:11 And so.
0:06:13 – What, what, what, did it taste good?
0:06:16 So I eat RX bars all the time, by the way, I love them.
0:06:19 But like the first time you open it up,
0:06:22 you, it looks different than a granola bar.
0:06:24 You have to get used to like it being made out of dates
0:06:25 and it being dark.
0:06:28 What do they say at first to the dark bar
0:06:31 and were they, were they any good at first?
0:06:34 – Yeah, it’s, so they’re, they’re really good at first
0:06:35 because they’re made to order.
0:06:37 So we never carried any inventory.
0:06:39 So everything was super fresh.
0:06:40 So that certainly helped.
0:06:45 And the customer back then was all paleo people
0:06:48 who were very familiar with LaRabar.
0:06:51 So there was a familiarity to it that was helpful
0:06:53 for the adoption.
0:06:55 – And I think we had this guy from FitAid come on.
0:06:56 – Yeah.
0:06:57 – And he did the same thing at CrossFit.
0:06:59 He used CrossFit as the initial distribution for same reason.
0:07:01 He’s like, I don’t know how to get into retail,
0:07:03 but I know this community, I’m in this community.
0:07:06 And he, what he realized was he gave them mini fridges.
0:07:08 He’s like, they didn’t have a fridge already.
0:07:10 So he’s like, cool, I’ll give you the fridge,
0:07:12 but then you like stock my stuff in there at the beginning.
0:07:13 And if you want to switch it out later
0:07:15 and put other stuff in there, fine,
0:07:16 you get to keep the fridge,
0:07:18 but sure enough, they just like kept it going.
0:07:20 And he used CrossFit to get to like, I don’t know,
0:07:23 $20, $30 million a year in sales, you know,
0:07:25 CrossFit is the main engine that they think at the time.
0:07:26 – And same for us.
0:07:30 And we, we’d merchandised on top of his refrigerators.
0:07:32 (laughs)
0:07:37 So you go and you’re, so you like,
0:07:38 if this works at one, it’ll work at many, then what?
0:07:40 You’re just knocking on doors every day?
0:07:42 Like what was your schedule, what was your life like?
0:07:46 – We wanted to get data on convenience stores,
0:07:48 grocery stores, other places of distribution
0:07:50 that are to get an understanding.
0:07:54 And so we, we tested at all those other areas
0:07:57 where we’re more like normal markets
0:07:59 where there’s very regular competition
0:08:01 and the brand didn’t work.
0:08:03 So like velocities at a CrossFit gym
0:08:06 would be maybe 80, 80 bars a week.
0:08:09 Whereas the convenience store and the local grocery store
0:08:12 was like one or four a week.
0:08:15 So what, obviously we would just rather be
0:08:17 in every CrossFit gym or in the country
0:08:19 prior to any other distribution.
0:08:22 So we were just laser focused on putting the product
0:08:25 where it’s successful and meeting the customer or the shop.
0:08:27 And the whole plan was like,
0:08:30 let’s just get to scale through this,
0:08:33 this early adopter and this, this market.
0:08:36 And then let’s figure out how to cross the chasm
0:08:37 once we have some scale
0:08:39 and we’re commercially produced around the kitchen.
0:08:42 And so that was a plan to like beat a bar of CrossFit,
0:08:45 get some scale and then figure out across the chasm
0:08:47 once we’re close to that size.
0:08:49 – I kind of triangulated a bunch of articles
0:08:52 and like your revenue was like something like $2 million a year
0:08:56 and then like $7 million and then like $160 million
0:08:58 or something like ridiculous like that.
0:08:59 Is that accurate?
0:09:01 And if, and if that is accurate,
0:09:03 I think that coincides with like the rebrand
0:09:06 making your rebrand or your new labels
0:09:10 the greatest value creation like to ever exist.
0:09:11 – Best use of designers.
0:09:12 – Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
0:09:18 Yeah, basically it was like .com and Amazon’s for three years
0:09:21 and we’d like put our foot into some retailers
0:09:23 and the current branding or the old branding didn’t work.
0:09:26 So it was like didn’t have product market fit
0:09:29 where we, where we, with our core early adopters
0:09:31 wherever we started to go to just like the mass market
0:09:33 or not our core, it was like it doesn’t work.
0:09:38 So basically we timed the rebranding with retail.
0:09:42 And so there was a year before the 160 one that was 36
0:09:44 and that was basically like getting into
0:09:46 call it early adopters of food retail.
0:09:48 So the Wegmans and these like Publix,
0:09:51 these regional ones that are really high quality.
0:09:54 And then once that works, the larger ones adopted.
0:09:59 And so it was like 36 and then most of the market at 161.
0:10:02 – So seven, 36, 161, that’s insane.
0:10:04 – Well, the most insane thing is actually like just
0:10:08 where we were, we use profitable sales to finance the growth.
0:10:09 Like there wasn’t like a big equity check
0:10:12 that came in that finance inventory.
0:10:12 – So how does that work?
0:10:14 Cause that scaling is so crazy, right?
0:10:16 Even the, even if you’re super profitable at seven,
0:10:18 how do you buy inventory for 36?
0:10:21 Did you have a really fast turnover or a line of credit
0:10:25 – Line of credit personally guaranteed by your parents
0:10:28 for 400,000, but we actually didn’t dip into it,
0:10:29 which is funny.
0:10:31 So that’s nice to give you confidence.
0:10:33 – And you started the business with 10 Gs, 10 grand.
0:10:34 – Yeah.
0:10:35 – 5,000 each.
0:10:36 – Yeah, it’s brutal.
0:10:43 And then such as Profitables.com, they give you cash.
0:10:45 You ship product.
0:10:47 So it’s a cycle is much better.
0:10:51 And then it goes back to like sales cures all, right?
0:10:53 We talked a little bit about the rebrand before,
0:10:54 but who, who did that?
0:10:56 You did that, you hired an agency to do that.
0:10:58 Like what was the genius behind that rebrand?
0:11:00 Cause this was, this stood out to me, you know,
0:11:03 from moment one, and it sounds like I’m not alone
0:11:06 that this helped like explode sales in outside of CrossFit.
0:11:07 – Yeah.
0:11:09 So we, we hired an agency called Scott Victor,
0:11:12 very talented brand strategist.
0:11:14 But I think something I want to mention
0:11:17 that’s really, really important that,
0:11:19 because I get a lot of people coming to want to do rebrands
0:11:20 all the time.
0:11:23 And they’re so fixated on the agency
0:11:26 that they think the agency comes in and does it.
0:11:29 But really the responsibility and accountability
0:11:33 goes on the brand owner to articulate the problem to solve
0:11:37 and to communicate it in a brief for the assignment,
0:11:39 for the creative to figure out how to solve the problem.
0:11:40 – What did you write in that brief?
0:11:44 – So, so like the output of our design is very simple.
0:11:46 Like we had a name problem.
0:11:49 Rx meant prescription in the mass market,
0:11:52 but in CrossFit it meant doing something of a high standard.
0:11:55 So in the language, in the culture of CrossFit,
0:11:58 doing something Rx, it was language.
0:12:01 So if you did a workout for first question you get is like,
0:12:02 did you do it Rx?
0:12:05 And so it had a different meaning in this,
0:12:08 this culture than it did the normal American culture.
0:12:10 So, so that was a problem, name problem.
0:12:13 And then it was very clear Rx meant nothing
0:12:15 and it wasn’t a valuable name.
0:12:17 You remembered it, which was nice,
0:12:19 but it was a source of confusion.
0:12:22 Okay, so you pull that through to the design.
0:12:25 It’s the logo and name is very small.
0:12:27 So we minimized it.
0:12:30 Second, we have, when you formulate a product
0:12:33 that’s minimal ingredient and you could,
0:12:35 and like design the way ours is,
0:12:37 you can claim anything gluten-free, soy-free,
0:12:40 dairy-free, high protein.
0:12:41 Well, let’s go on.
0:12:45 None of that mattered when we sampled it to people
0:12:48 and the only thing matters is when I flip over the back,
0:12:49 it’s A to R expert, like what is it?
0:12:51 And be like, it’s like eating three egg whites,
0:12:53 two dates, six almonds, four caches.
0:12:56 So that backup label thing that I referenced earlier,
0:12:58 that was a value communication.
0:13:01 And second, we’re in, the third point,
0:13:03 we’re a protein no man’s land.
0:13:04 The market was at 20.
0:13:08 We’re at 12 grams of protein you’re talking about.
0:13:09 Yeah, so we’re kind of like,
0:13:11 for protein people they’re like, yeah, that’s not enough.
0:13:15 But if you just lead with egg whites,
0:13:17 so three egg whites is the first thing,
0:13:19 that’s like our hierarchies, actually three egg whites.
0:13:22 And so that creates a lot of consumer surplus
0:13:27 because when you go shopping at a cafe for breakfast
0:13:30 and you get egg whites, you get charged a premium.
0:13:32 So egg whites are associated with premium,
0:13:36 they’re associated with quality, and they’re more expensive.
0:13:38 And so that was a great way to communicate
0:13:40 sort of value and surplus.
0:13:42 So all these things are in the brief,
0:13:43 like name doesn’t matter,
0:13:45 here’s the only thing that matters.
0:13:47 We don’t wanna be paleo-positioned
0:13:50 because that is a death trap, it’s a laziness trap.
0:13:52 And so all those factors are laid out in a brief
0:13:55 and then the designer really extracts,
0:13:57 synthesizes and pulls that out.
0:13:58 And they’re not just a designer,
0:14:00 they’re like a brand strategist.
0:14:03 So it’s very important for like any entrepreneur,
0:14:05 like it’s not just, you gotta do the work
0:14:08 and actually define the problems.
0:14:12 And then you bring in an agency.
0:14:14 – You, now you have this thing,
0:14:18 which I feel like you did an amazing job on the brand.
0:14:19 I think we talked about this on the pod.
0:14:20 We’re like, dude, did you see the RX guy, he’s back,
0:14:22 he’s got this new bar, love the name,
0:14:25 love the branding, right off the bat.
0:14:26 – Can I read out some of these words
0:14:28 from the lines from his site, Sean?
0:14:29 – You copywriting on the site, yeah, do it.
0:14:30 – It’s beautiful.
0:14:31 Your new thing is a protein bar.
0:14:33 And the whole shtick is that like quest,
0:14:35 which is like a leading protein bar
0:14:38 is only 20 grams of protein, but 150 calories,
0:14:42 you’re roughly 150 calories in like 26 or 27 grams of protein.
0:14:44 And so the copywriting in the website is beautiful.
0:14:48 It says the genius of a product is it has the protein
0:14:50 of a meal, but the calories of a snack.
0:14:53 We thank our predecessors in the protein industry,
0:14:55 but we’ll take it from here.
0:14:58 Meet David, your protein bar, idealized.
0:15:00 I saw the angel at marble and carved it
0:15:01 until I said I’m free.
0:15:03 All these, these are all like Instagram quotes
0:15:05 or a copy on the website.
0:15:06 Be beautiful.
0:15:08 Protein is essential to maintaining your skin’s firmness
0:15:11 and electricity and hair and scalp and nail health.
0:15:12 It participates in practically every process
0:15:13 of a cell in your body.
0:15:16 So you’re explaining how important the protein is.
0:15:18 But then you have this one line where it’s,
0:15:20 you like have this graph on your website
0:15:23 where you say how many grams of protein per calorie.
0:15:26 And you include Quest and Luna, I think,
0:15:28 and a couple others or Laura Barr, something like that.
0:15:32 But then you even include cod, which I thought is ridiculous.
0:15:33 Because when I saw that graph, I was like, wait,
0:15:36 you’re telling me that David is even more protein dense
0:15:38 per calorie than cod.
0:15:39 And so it’s quite good.
0:15:40 Oh, here’s the part that I love.
0:15:42 You say, you know, we are a company
0:15:45 that is here to make your bodies better.
0:15:46 We’re going to give you protein.
0:15:49 And it just so happens, some of our products might be edible,
0:15:50 but some in the future may not be.
0:15:53 – We focus on making, we build tools to help you
0:15:55 increase muscle and decrease fat.
0:15:59 And so that can come in, I think, that’s our mission.
0:16:02 So whether that’s food, beverage, or apparel,
0:16:05 or that’s what gives us permission to go create and serve.
0:16:08 And that came from like my observation
0:16:10 in the nutrition bar space is like,
0:16:12 that’s the most fundamental thing people want.
0:16:17 So we want to deliver that in the best way possible.
0:16:19 – The thing that would be the most fun for us
0:16:21 is if we got to sit down with the founder of RxBar
0:16:24 and just shoot the shit brainstorm business ideas.
0:16:25 And we asked you beforehand, we said,
0:16:27 hey, this is what we like to do.
0:16:29 Are you the kind of founder your brain never turns off?
0:16:31 You’re always seeing opportunities
0:16:32 that somebody could go do.
0:16:33 But you sent us a little list.
0:16:35 So let’s start with that list.
0:16:37 And I think the fun way to do this is,
0:16:38 I’ll just read the name of the thing you wrote.
0:16:39 You didn’t give us any details.
0:16:41 And you kind of pitched the idea
0:16:43 of what you see as a potential opportunity here.
0:16:46 So idea one, vasodilator.
0:16:48 – Yes, okay.
0:16:51 So I’m a big, I think history is really important
0:16:52 to study in business.
0:16:54 Like I think it doesn’t get enough credit
0:16:56 to like look for the patterns in history.
0:17:01 And in two, so for this one in 2003, four, and five,
0:17:03 I was in high school.
0:17:06 This product called NO2 came to market
0:17:09 and it just blew up the supplement industry
0:17:10 in a good way.
0:17:12 – Pre-workout, right?
0:17:14 – Yeah, I was like saying you got these like big pump.
0:17:16 – Was that like NO Explode?
0:17:18 – That turned into NO Explode.
0:17:20 – Me and Ari were just talking about it.
0:17:22 She said she like strict a pre-workout.
0:17:24 And I remember the days of taking that
0:17:27 and it would like make me NO Explode on my butt.
0:17:29 Like it was like the worst.
0:17:32 It was like cocaine, except it would make you diarrhea.
0:17:34 – Yeah.
0:17:35 So what happened is people started adding
0:17:37 different features to it,
0:17:39 but it has like having healthy blood cells
0:17:40 like really important.
0:17:42 And if you look at the market today,
0:17:45 it’s like super, I call it like chains and gains,
0:17:48 like screaming to not a sophisticated audience.
0:17:50 Like it’s just for pure gains.
0:17:53 And so I would say there’s probably an opportunity
0:17:56 to sort of commercialize something
0:18:01 on just the broader benefits of healthy blood flow.
0:18:05 And it’s like, for example, for men,
0:18:06 like ED is a huge one.
0:18:07 Like I think the positioning of the market,
0:18:10 I think they’re all very, very, very bodybuilding oriented.
0:18:12 And I think there’s one for like pedestrians.
0:18:14 – Did you remember the one, Sean,
0:18:16 the deer one that the, let’s like, it’s like–
0:18:17 – Bucked up.
0:18:18 – Bucked up.
0:18:19 – Yeah.
0:18:20 – Well, yeah, exactly.
0:18:25 It’s sort of like analogous to dick pills in gas stations.
0:18:26 – Versus hens.
0:18:28 – Yeah, versus hens, yeah, exactly.
0:18:29 – There was a guy who came and spoke
0:18:31 at one of Sam’s conferences.
0:18:33 He created, Sam, what’s the guy’s name?
0:18:34 He created the Method Soap.
0:18:36 And then he’s created the Band-Aid brand.
0:18:38 And they created Oli gummies or whatever like vitamins.
0:18:39 – Yeah, air frying. – Air frying.
0:18:40 – That’s the guy.
0:18:41 He’s created three brands
0:18:44 that are all like big in target, different calories.
0:18:46 And he talked about, he goes, what I could do,
0:18:48 I could just walk through a department,
0:18:50 like a store, like a target or a grocery store.
0:18:51 It’s like, what are you looking for
0:18:53 when you’re walking through those aisles?
0:18:55 He goes, I’m looking for a sea of sameness.
0:18:56 – Yeah.
0:18:57 – And anytime I see a category on his shelf
0:18:58 where they’re all positioning,
0:19:00 they’re all chasing the same target
0:19:02 or they’re all positioned the same way.
0:19:03 So for example, he said, Band-Aids.
0:19:06 Band-Aids were all sort of boring, neutral,
0:19:07 try to be the color of your skin, blah, blah, blah.
0:19:09 So they made a Band-Aid brand that was the opposite.
0:19:10 It was like very loud.
0:19:13 It’s a badge of honor for a boo-boo, right?
0:19:14 Or vitamins looked a certain way.
0:19:16 They came in and tried to do it differently.
0:19:18 So do you have a similar sort of philosophy
0:19:21 where you see, let’s say, these vasodilators,
0:19:24 like they’re all broed out.
0:19:26 And you’re like, if I just repositioned the same product,
0:19:28 I would have a new audience.
0:19:31 – Yeah, I think Eric’s strategy is very much design-oriented,
0:19:33 like differentiation through design,
0:19:35 and that’s like looking for.
0:19:38 I don’t have a clear of strategy.
0:19:42 I just really focus on differentiation
0:19:47 and actually like determining how competitive a category is
0:19:51 and how easily you can differentiate
0:19:54 with what I call like valuable novelty.
0:19:56 – Sorry, does that mean that you actually
0:19:58 want it to be the most competitive
0:20:01 so then being very different?
0:20:04 – Yeah, yeah, so it’s like,
0:20:07 you want it to be perceived as very competitive,
0:20:09 but then when you actually apply some rigor,
0:20:11 look at it, it’s actually not that competitive.
0:20:14 Like the protein mark is perfect example of that.
0:20:17 Like barrier entry is pretty low, lots of noise.
0:20:19 On the surface, extremely competitive.
0:20:22 So if you look at it, there’s actually like three
0:20:24 and then a long tail.
0:20:25 And that’s, you know, it’s like,
0:20:27 you want it on competitive market.
0:20:30 And so like, where can you find an uncompetitive market
0:20:32 in a competitive, like in a perceived competitive market,
0:20:36 I’d say, ’cause like a food leverage is like,
0:20:38 it’s too easy to, it’s just the low,
0:20:40 easy to make food, like relatively.
0:20:43 So it’s an unavoidable, like of course, everything’s competitive.
0:20:50 – Hey, let’s take a quick break to talk about
0:20:51 another podcast that you should check out.
0:20:53 It is called The Next Wave.
0:20:55 It’s hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lanz
0:20:57 as part of the HubSpot Podcast Network,
0:20:58 which of course is your audio destination
0:21:00 for business professionals like you.
0:21:02 You can catch The Next Wave with Matt Wolf
0:21:04 and he’s talking about where the puck is going
0:21:06 with AI creators, AI technology
0:21:08 and how you can apply it to your growing business.
0:21:10 So check it out, listen to The Next Wave,
0:21:12 wherever you get your podcasts.
0:21:16 – Yeah, it’s like Peter Teal, Peter Teal talks about
0:21:19 the best investments are ones that seem like bad investments,
0:21:20 what are actually good investments
0:21:22 and the things that seem like good investments
0:21:23 but actually are good investments,
0:21:24 the returns aren’t even there.
0:21:26 So you need that sort of,
0:21:28 you need to be counter consensus,
0:21:30 meaning you need to find something that looks one way,
0:21:31 but is actually another.
0:21:33 So you’re saying, looks super competitive,
0:21:34 but when you sort of break it down,
0:21:36 you realize actually there’s a pretty big opportunity
0:21:39 that it’s not as competitive as it looks on the surface.
0:21:40 – Yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly.
0:21:43 And it’s just simple, like people will come to me,
0:21:45 oh, protein bars are so competitive.
0:21:47 And I was asked, tell me about that,
0:21:50 like how, you know, you just ask a couple of questions.
0:21:52 And it’ll be interesting, they one can’t either.
0:21:53 – What are those questions?
0:21:56 What are the questions? – Tell me, please explain more.
0:22:00 Like what do you, they just can’t explain the competitors.
0:22:04 They’re only referencing the volume of the category,
0:22:05 like the volume of brands,
0:22:09 but they’re not necessarily actually referencing
0:22:11 what they like, who’s good, who’s not.
0:22:13 And then second, a lot of times
0:22:16 they’re not even consumers of the category,
0:22:17 which to me is the opportunity.
0:22:18 It’s like, all right, well,
0:22:19 why aren’t you the consumer in the category?
0:22:24 It’s some dissatisfaction with taste or texture usually,
0:22:25 or price or something else.
0:22:27 And so that’s the opportunity actually.
0:22:29 It’s like, how do you bring new people to the category?
0:22:33 So, yeah, just stuff like that, it’s just funny.
0:22:34 – That’s cool.
0:22:35 So let’s take this visa dilator thing for a second.
0:22:38 In the first 90 days of that,
0:22:39 what would you be doing to figure this out?
0:22:42 Like, what do you actually go do to get these answers?
0:22:44 – Oh, so first I’d figure out,
0:22:49 I’d look at those literature and is it good or like just,
0:22:51 so it’s like two searches.
0:22:53 One, what does the internet say?
0:22:55 Like, what is the reputation of it?
0:22:57 What does culture say about it?
0:22:59 And then two, what does the actual literature say?
0:23:00 So like, what is the,
0:23:01 what are the ideas of the world?
0:23:03 What is human being?
0:23:05 Wayne Norton, what do they believe
0:23:08 through through syndicating the actual literature?
0:23:10 – So does that basically just mean like,
0:23:11 like is the perfect blend of that?
0:23:14 Like a vasodilator is good.
0:23:17 And then you also see like EnoExplode looks way too bro-y
0:23:19 and is lame or–
0:23:21 – Do you want yes, yes on the culture?
0:23:23 Or do you, why, why the two,
0:23:24 what are you looking for is the perfect answer
0:23:25 for those two?
0:23:27 – So on the cultural thing,
0:23:30 is it, second would be like a landscape,
0:23:32 like what does the market look like?
0:23:34 But before that, it was to say,
0:23:37 is this a reputation that I can overcome?
0:23:40 Is there some sort of stigma that is,
0:23:42 it’s good if it’s okay if it’s contrarian,
0:23:43 but is it actually something so bad
0:23:45 that I can’t overcome it?
0:23:47 Or like, what is your reputation just general?
0:23:49 And then second would be like,
0:23:50 or what’s like this market map?
0:23:53 Like, how do I define this market?
0:23:57 And I, what I know, I probably just defined it as
0:24:00 simply like bodybuilding oriented.
0:24:02 There isn’t actually a continuum of like,
0:24:05 you know, natural people, bodybuilders.
0:24:07 Like that’s like a natural opposing continuum.
0:24:12 But, yeah, so just to study the market,
0:24:14 reputation of the market.
0:24:16 And then most importantly,
0:24:19 ’cause if the market says this is bad,
0:24:23 then that it’s, and but the literature says
0:24:25 it’s really has all these benefits,
0:24:26 then that’s a contrarian thing of like,
0:24:28 all right, people disagree with you, but then there’s.
0:24:32 So it’s sort of triangulating those things.
0:24:34 – Sam, you invested in Lucy, right?
0:24:35 – Yeah.
0:24:38 So Lucy, the nicotine gum,
0:24:40 our buddy John Coogan’s involved with it.
0:24:42 – And now it’s a pouch.
0:24:44 – Pouch, yeah, they, at the time,
0:24:47 I think the sort of cultural stigma,
0:24:49 there’s a pre-Zen being really popular was,
0:24:50 – Yeah.
0:24:51 – Nicotine equals bad, right?
0:24:53 Aren’t we supposed to be not having the cigarettes bad?
0:24:55 Nicotine bad, blah, blah, blah.
0:24:57 Science actually showed that there were some,
0:24:58 I guess some benefits.
0:25:00 And then what they did was they were like,
0:25:01 cool, can we overcome this?
0:25:02 And it took actually many years,
0:25:05 but the business is now exploding.
0:25:07 But for years, it was kind of,
0:25:09 just trying to get enough momentum culturally
0:25:10 to get over the hump.
0:25:13 – Yeah, and that’s sort of like the Peter Teal’s approach
0:25:17 to consumer is actually how you make money in this business.
0:25:19 And there’s plenty of examples like kombucha,
0:25:22 protein bars are constantly this,
0:25:25 ’cause no one thinks there’s too many of them.
0:25:30 Collagen was one, nicotine’s one.
0:25:32 – You know another one that’s happening right now?
0:25:33 Creatine.
0:25:37 – So creatine, the science is one
0:25:38 of the most studied supplements of all time.
0:25:40 It’s like, there’s so many benefits.
0:25:41 But for years, it was like,
0:25:44 this is only for football high school bros.
0:25:47 Like, you know, and now we’ve made it cool.
0:25:48 Or now like women are like,
0:25:49 no, there’s actually a lot of benefit here
0:25:50 or normal average joes.
0:25:52 Like there’s a lot of benefit here.
0:25:53 The whole creatine movement, Sean,
0:25:54 have you seen that right now?
0:25:55 – Yeah, definitely.
0:25:56 – Yeah, I would say like the way you figured out
0:25:58 is just ask your friends like,
0:25:59 hey, what do you think of this?
0:26:01 And it’s like, oh, it’s sort of that’s,
0:26:03 and that’s like cultural reputation.
0:26:03 – Right.
0:26:05 – And that’s people who kind of disagree with you.
0:26:06 So I had that say generally,
0:26:08 like if you were to ask what my pattern is
0:26:11 for sort of consumer investing, it’s really that.
0:26:13 Like, what is something on the fringes
0:26:14 or what is something people disagree with
0:26:17 or is it in culture that actually,
0:26:19 if you look at it from a first principle perspective,
0:26:20 there’s actually something there.
0:26:22 – So let me ask one more question
0:26:23 before we move to the next idea,
0:26:24 which is I’m a smart guy.
0:26:26 I can almost talk myself into anything
0:26:28 or talk myself out of anything.
0:26:30 I have a very good debater in my own head.
0:26:33 And so what you’re giving examples of is maybe things
0:26:34 that are misunderstood or it looks competitive,
0:26:35 but actually it’s not.
0:26:37 I can almost see myself justifying anything
0:26:39 under that umbrella.
0:26:40 Yeah, hey, Peter kind of said this
0:26:42 and I just don’t have the actual judgment
0:26:43 to be able to do it correctly.
0:26:46 – What’s an example of an idea, Sean, of our product?
0:26:47 – Well, I actually want to ask you about the opposite,
0:26:49 which is like, what are categories
0:26:51 that you think you would like run away from?
0:26:53 You’re like, no, no, this is the type of thing
0:26:55 I wouldn’t go into for these reasons.
0:26:57 – Fast, anything fast-following.
0:27:02 Like following liquid death, following Alipop.
0:27:04 You gotta be the first one
0:27:07 in the controversial disagreeable thing, you know?
0:27:09 – Yeah, ’cause you’re trying to win big.
0:27:10 And I think I’ve read something the other day,
0:27:14 like in the AI category that Sequoia was talking about,
0:27:16 they’re like, if you just study all markets,
0:27:18 the market leader, so whoever becomes number one
0:27:21 of a new category will take something like 75%
0:27:24 of all the profits, 50% of all the revenues and whatever.
0:27:27 It’s just like, the spoils really do go to the winner
0:27:28 if you’re trying to win the biggest.
0:27:30 – And I think you could be looking at history.
0:27:32 And this is why I think history is something
0:27:35 I just think is so important in studying consumer.
0:27:38 Like that would be true with,
0:27:43 that would be true with Kombucha College and Market,
0:27:46 these sort of big breakthrough new markets that emerge,
0:27:50 like the first one to do it well takes all the profits.
0:27:51 – Are you, when you say you’re studying history,
0:27:52 what does that mean?
0:27:55 Like you’re reading biographies,
0:27:57 you’re looking at old financial statements,
0:27:58 what are you doing?
0:28:01 – It might be like one would be looking
0:28:03 through your phone at the old category.
0:28:07 So like what did photos of the category look like in 2012?
0:28:09 But for me, it’s my own just experience going through it
0:28:13 and remembering, the different trends,
0:28:15 the different new products that,
0:28:18 and just keeping that recollection of that.
0:28:19 And I think it just isn’t talked about
0:28:21 when I see people starting consumer brands,
0:28:24 they’re kind of like, oh, here’s today, here’s the future.
0:28:28 It’s just such an important piece of like in the equation
0:28:30 of whether this is gonna work or not.
0:28:31 But yeah, I don’t,
0:28:33 there’s no writing books on this stuff and no one cares.
0:28:35 So it’s really, you have to just-
0:28:36 – You have to piece together your own history.
0:28:38 – Yeah, piece together and yeah.
0:28:39 – All right, let’s go to idea number two.
0:28:40 I don’t even know what this means.
0:28:42 Night occasion in general.
0:28:45 Is that an idea? What is that?
0:28:48 – Okay, so again, I feel I feel myself
0:28:49 as like an anthropologist.
0:28:53 So if you look at the morning occasion,
0:28:56 it is very fixed, right?
0:28:59 It’s all around coffee, waking you up, sunlight,
0:29:01 sunlight observation is a new one.
0:29:04 Thanks to, I think it’s a big change culture in that way.
0:29:07 So circadian rhythm, taking supplements,
0:29:10 maybe your morning pills, whatever rituals they are.
0:29:13 The morning occasion is kind of like clear in terms of like,
0:29:15 what products or services are there?
0:29:18 And so sleep hygiene and the sleep occasion
0:29:20 is something that’s become very clear.
0:29:22 That’s super important.
0:29:25 And if you look at that, to me, it’s a wide open,
0:29:28 like there isn’t a coffee of the sleep occasion.
0:29:30 At night, you have what, like magnesium maybe
0:29:31 or something like that, right?
0:29:33 It’s like one maybe cat product.
0:29:34 – Yeah, no one’s owning it, right?
0:29:35 Now you brush your teeth, right?
0:29:37 So there’s like cold gates, got it.
0:29:40 But like, there is a huge opportunity
0:29:43 to sort of be the brand for that occasion.
0:29:45 There’s some obstacles, obviously.
0:29:49 But to me, that’s like, if I’m an entrepreneur,
0:29:50 I’m really studying that.
0:29:52 – That’s a strange insight to have.
0:29:55 What made you get to that conclusion?
0:29:56 – You just gotta think about everything’s occasion based,
0:29:57 right?
0:30:00 The best example is like champagne dominates
0:30:01 a celebration occasion.
0:30:04 Outside of that, it’s a terrible problem, right?
0:30:08 – Or for RX bar, it’s like, I’m driving somewhere.
0:30:09 I’m going to a gas station
0:30:11 and I wanna get something healthy.
0:30:12 – Yeah, like RX bar was obviously on the go,
0:30:13 it was a big occasion.
0:30:17 But to be honest, it was because of the egg whites,
0:30:19 there was some signals, it was breakfast.
0:30:21 It was sort of like a great, fast breakfast.
0:30:24 But I think about like everyone’s talking about sleep.
0:30:26 You have eight sleep, you have all these brands
0:30:28 kind of getting there, but on the consumers,
0:30:31 like the food or beverage or supplement side,
0:30:33 there’s all these like sleep packs, things.
0:30:35 But the real opportunity is like,
0:30:38 how do you be the coffee of fucking sleep?
0:30:41 And that’s where I would spend time.
0:30:44 You know, coffee is the best drug, it’s the biggest drug.
0:30:46 So is there something like that?
0:30:47 Now, there’s some brands working on it,
0:30:50 but I think there’s–
0:30:52 – Which promising ones?
0:30:56 – There’s one called Moon Brew,
0:30:58 there’s one called Beam.
0:31:00 I use both of them.
0:31:02 One is melatonin, one doesn’t.
0:31:03 That’s the big controversial one.
0:31:05 Melatonin is actually sort of,
0:31:06 you could have melatonin is actually
0:31:08 something that could be contrarian.
0:31:10 People say it’s bad for you,
0:31:12 it’s habitat formates, exogenous hormone,
0:31:13 but then there’s also literature
0:31:16 that’s tying antioxidants to.
0:31:18 Those are good, but me and my fiance,
0:31:22 we find ourselves having this beverage
0:31:23 at a small dose before bed,
0:31:26 and it’s like a nice ritual.
0:31:28 – Yeah, I think that’s brilliant actually.
0:31:31 The, basically like looking at moments
0:31:33 and looking for openings.
0:31:34 There’s a Chinese company,
0:31:35 I think it was, maybe it was ByteDance,
0:31:36 the company that owns TikTok,
0:31:38 maybe it was the one that owns WeChat, not sure,
0:31:41 but they, at their annual meeting,
0:31:42 I remember going and watching their annual meeting,
0:31:44 which was weird ’cause it’s all in Mandarin,
0:31:45 I don’t speak Mandarin,
0:31:47 but I’m sitting there trying to translate these slides,
0:31:49 ’cause I was like, I wanna learn from,
0:31:50 where other people are not learning from,
0:31:52 to try to see if there’s any alpha there.
0:31:54 And one of the interesting things was they,
0:31:57 their opening slide was all of the moments of the day,
0:32:02 like so a 24-hour cycle, broken into 15-minute intervals.
0:32:03 And what they did was they were like,
0:32:05 “We wanna have a product or an app
0:32:07 “for every moment of your day.”
0:32:08 – Okay.
0:32:09 – This was like totally dominating philosophy.
0:32:10 – That’s insane.
0:32:12 – American companies, you couldn’t come out and say it,
0:32:14 but like obviously, Zuck probably feels the same way.
0:32:15 – Yeah, yeah.
0:32:17 – But they were like, “You’re in line for coffee,
0:32:18 “what’s the inline coffee app?”
0:32:21 Like we need an app that is designed to be awesome
0:32:22 for that moment.
0:32:25 Okay, now you have an hour in bed scrolling at night.
0:32:26 What do we have for that?
0:32:27 That’s like the TikTok app
0:32:29 where you’re just gonna infinitely swipe and be amused.
0:32:32 And so seeing them think that way,
0:32:33 I was like, “Oh, wow.”
0:32:34 And then that creates white spaces.
0:32:36 So you say, “Oh, you might think photos
0:32:39 “is a crowded category.”
0:32:41 Like it seemed like photos was dominated
0:32:42 by Facebook and Instagram and the Snapchat came out
0:32:45 was like, “Oh, we’ll use photos for messaging.”
0:32:47 And instead of photos for memories
0:32:49 and the way they just looked at it with a different lens,
0:32:51 suddenly photos was totally a wide open
0:32:53 multi-billion dollar opportunity
0:32:56 that you had to look at it in some other angle
0:32:57 in order to see it.
0:32:58 – Yeah, and I would just emphasize like
0:33:00 the consumers all in matters.
0:33:03 And so putting yourself in empathizing and going through that
0:33:05 is where it all starts, in my view.
0:33:07 – Yeah, like that.
0:33:11 Do you also look for like product inspiration
0:33:11 from other places?
0:33:13 Like I know some people that do CPG
0:33:14 that they travel a bunch or they’ll be like,
0:33:16 “Oh yeah, in Thailand they drink this.
0:33:17 “What is this?
0:33:20 “If we just take this and now we wrap it in a new label
0:33:21 “that’s like American friendly,
0:33:23 “we might be able to have a product here.”
0:33:25 – So basically you want to consume as much information,
0:33:29 collect as many dots so you can connect the dots
0:33:30 at some point.
0:33:33 And the best example is that is like I had an internship
0:33:38 in Belgium and we supplied Innocent Beverage,
0:33:40 which is a smoothie company.
0:33:43 And in their label, the innovative thing they did
0:33:46 is they would, and their greening statement would be
0:33:49 like one apple, one banana, and half a lemon
0:33:50 or a pinch of lemon.
0:33:54 And obviously I took that dot and connected it to our X bar,
0:33:58 which on the back of our label was two dates,
0:34:01 three eggs, six almonds, four cashews, et cetera.
0:34:04 But that insight was from just purely observing
0:34:06 different markets and different brands and different forms.
0:34:08 – You’re just like journaling or to keep track of these
0:34:09 or it’s all just in your head?
0:34:10 – It’s in the way.
0:34:11 – Yeah, it’s just in the way.
0:34:12 – All right, let’s finish up these ideas
0:34:13 that I want to ask you about the bar businesses.
0:34:15 All right, so idea number three,
0:34:17 continuous testosterone monitor.
0:34:18 This is very fascinating.
0:34:19 – Oh yeah, yeah.
0:34:25 I think the American male cares so much about testosterone.
0:34:31 And I think, I don’t know if this is feasible.
0:34:32 Maybe we do blood tests.
0:34:36 So, and I actually like looked into this for like 10 minutes.
0:34:41 But if you were to have some way to measure testosterone
0:34:48 or some broader hormones in a continuous way.
0:34:49 So like when you wake up in moderate,
0:34:52 like I think there’s a lot of demand for that.
0:34:55 And I think the American male was loved that.
0:34:56 – Sam, you’re the American male.
0:34:58 What are your T levels right now?
0:35:00 – Dude, I want to know my T 24/7.
0:35:03 – Are you 400, where are you at?
0:35:05 Is it higher than your math SAT score was?
0:35:06 – Or?
0:35:07 – That’s the test.
0:35:11 – I don’t even, what’s the SAT out of?
0:35:12 I don’t even know.
0:35:15 – Well, do not get, you don’t get yours checked, Sean.
0:35:16 – I’ve never got, I don’t think,
0:35:17 maybe I got to check once.
0:35:19 I don’t think I’ve ever really,
0:35:21 I definitely am not the typical American male.
0:35:24 – Wait, Peter, do you have, you get yours checked?
0:35:26 – Yeah, I do quarterly.
0:35:29 – Do you have, by the way, I’m,
0:35:31 what’s an investor or AM an investor
0:35:32 and that thing called levels,
0:35:34 which you can continue as glucose monitor.
0:35:37 And like, yeah, everyone has to figure this out.
0:35:39 And if you do figure it out, it’s pretty awesome.
0:35:40 But do you have some like,
0:35:41 because you’re friends with like,
0:35:42 I think Peter Tia is one of your investors,
0:35:45 because you’re, you’re a young rich guy in the health space.
0:35:47 Do you have some crazy Brian Johnson setup
0:35:49 where you have someone measuring your night time erections
0:35:51 and all this crazy stuff?
0:35:53 – No, I’ve, so I’ve gone from like,
0:35:57 getting close to be obsessive about measuring everything
0:36:01 to just now I’m like, totally, it’s like so easier to do it.
0:36:05 My routine is, I’m currently off supplements right now.
0:36:08 I just want to get a baseline of my blood markers.
0:36:10 I test it quarterly.
0:36:15 And then normally I take supplements in the AM and PM.
0:36:16 – I think, I think culture is going that way.
0:36:18 This is my, this is my prediction for 2025,
0:36:22 which is that I think everybody got a really inspired
0:36:24 and sort of over-analyzed everything
0:36:26 through Huberman and Brian Johnson.
0:36:29 I love those guys, but I think the average person,
0:36:32 it’s way too much work for way too little payoff.
0:36:35 And we all kind of know the sort of core four or five things
0:36:37 you should do, and most people don’t even do those.
0:36:39 And so without doing the basic fundamentals,
0:36:41 like none of the rest really matters.
0:36:43 The sort of fine tune optimizing.
0:36:46 And so I think there’s going to be a giant retreat
0:36:50 back to simplicity and basics for like health craze.
0:36:52 – So for the listener, Brian Johnson is like a tech
0:36:54 billionaire who likes the headline is he spends $2 million
0:36:56 a year on his health to live forever, whatever.
0:36:58 He’s got this thing called the rejuvenation Olympics
0:37:00 where you can get your bloodwork done.
0:37:03 And it ranks you like on amongst tens of other thousands
0:37:06 of people to let you know like how good your bloodwork is
0:37:07 and how long you’re going to live, whatever.
0:37:10 There was this woman in the Wall Street Journal.
0:37:12 She was like a substitute teacher.
0:37:14 And she’s like, she’s like says her income.
0:37:16 She’s like, I make like $50,000 a year.
0:37:19 And I just go for walks and I eat healthy.
0:37:21 And she was number one on the list.
0:37:23 And like Brian Johnson was like number six.
0:37:25 And it was pretty funny that all these guys are dedicating
0:37:27 their lives and all the resources.
0:37:28 – Yeah, actually it’s just bingo night
0:37:30 that you need for the community.
0:37:32 – Yeah, and I think it actually causes
0:37:36 like you emotional regulation and not being stressed
0:37:39 or anxious is probably more important
0:37:42 than like obsessing about some other stuff.
0:37:43 So.
0:37:44 – Exactly.
0:37:45 All right, let’s do the most exciting idea
0:37:46 you have on this list.
0:37:47 New religion.
0:37:48 Talk to me, I’m ready.
0:37:49 Preach.
0:37:52 – Sort of like religions, I think it’s a bad word.
0:37:54 It’s like something to belong to
0:37:59 that helps you guide morality and ethics
0:38:03 that can be a ritual or tradition
0:38:08 that we all can like bond over and feel aligned on.
0:38:13 My hypothesis is that there’s no money to make in religion.
0:38:18 So no one joins, no talent, no good leader joins the church.
0:38:21 And therefore it hasn’t been innovating at all.
0:38:24 And therefore, so the economics aren’t there for a priest.
0:38:27 And so therefore there’s no innovation
0:38:29 and there’s a desperate need for innovation.
0:38:32 And then second, like no one wants to be Jesus
0:38:35 and someone has to be Jesus.
0:38:38 That’s why I think why we are where we are at right now.
0:38:39 So if someone wants to be Jesus,
0:38:41 I think there’s a real opportunity.
0:38:43 (laughing)
0:38:48 – Have you guys ever gone to a Shabbat?
0:38:50 – No, something like that.
0:38:52 – Dude, Shabbat is great. – It’s the shit.
0:38:53 It’s the best.
0:38:55 – Shabbat is the shit.
0:38:55 I love it.
0:38:58 It’s like basically a Friday meal
0:39:00 where you don’t use cell phones and you tell everyone
0:39:01 how much you love each other.
0:39:04 – Yeah, and like Saturday I’m not working, like forced.
0:39:08 And I just think that’s the obvious, we bought that.
0:39:10 – Why are you saying there’s no money at all?
0:39:13 These mega churches have a million dollar run rates.
0:39:15 The priests are driving private, flying private jets.
0:39:18 Like, have you seen Joel Osteen?
0:39:21 That’s a billion dollar smile right there.
0:39:23 – So I think maybe it’s like actually the best business
0:39:23 of all businesses.
0:39:26 (laughing)
0:39:28 – I’m pretty sure that the Catholic Church
0:39:30 is the largest landowner in the whole world.
0:39:32 – Not to reference Peter Teal again,
0:39:33 but he talks about for monopolies.
0:39:35 He’s like all the companies that talk about how,
0:39:38 how much of a monopoly they have, how dominant they are,
0:39:39 they’re usually the most vulnerable.
0:39:40 And the ones that are super dominant,
0:39:42 always trying to downplay how dominant they are
0:39:45 ’cause they don’t want anyone to take aim at them,
0:39:46 you know, for antitrust.
0:39:47 It’s the same thing I think for money.
0:39:50 It’s like the folks that are bragging about
0:39:51 how much money they make are the drop shippers.
0:39:53 And then the people who are silent pretend
0:39:55 it’s not about the money, have all the money,
0:39:56 and that’s the churches.
0:39:58 – I think it’s probably totally right.
0:40:01 So I misread this, but maybe I should be a priest.
0:40:03 – Well, I’ve thought about this a bunch of ways.
0:40:06 I think you can either unbundle it.
0:40:08 So, you know, one strategy for business is unbundle things.
0:40:10 So take things that come in a bundle.
0:40:12 So you get God and a higher power.
0:40:16 You’re gonna get community and a Sunday ritual.
0:40:18 And then you’re gonna get an operating philosophy for life.
0:40:20 And so that’s the current religion bundle.
0:40:23 And then then you see things like, you know,
0:40:26 look at the NFL every Sunday, look at SoulCycle,
0:40:27 look at these things where it’s like,
0:40:30 oh, they’re giving, they have two of the components,
0:40:32 but not the other three, right?
0:40:33 And then there’s Tony Robbins.
0:40:35 He’ll maybe give you the operating philosophy without God.
0:40:37 And for me, for example, that resonated.
0:40:39 I was like, cool, I want this without the,
0:40:41 but I, you know, I’d like to be in charge of it
0:40:43 and not sort of say it’s somebody else
0:40:44 that’s deciding my fate.
0:40:46 And so I think some people have unbundled this,
0:40:48 but it would be very interesting to see somebody
0:40:49 actually try to provide a new bundle.
0:40:51 And I think, I think you could really just like,
0:40:54 it’s a first principle approach to be like,
0:40:56 across the different domains of life,
0:40:57 like who’s got it right?
0:40:58 Like the Buddhists have got stuff right.
0:41:00 The Jews have got stuff right.
0:41:03 Sure as long as you’ve got stuff right, Christianity too.
0:41:06 And just sort of built like,
0:41:07 sort of look at it from that perspective.
0:41:09 I bet you’d come up with something great.
0:41:11 – You actually have a,
0:41:14 it appears to be a fairly academic point of view
0:41:16 when it comes to operating a business.
0:41:17 And I think that that’s actually pretty cool
0:41:20 because I think it’s considered like cool to not care.
0:41:22 Or like, I’m just going to file my gut,
0:41:24 which I tend to fall in that category.
0:41:26 But to hear your kind of academic point of view,
0:41:28 I actually think it’s pretty neat.
0:41:29 – Thank you.
0:41:31 (laughing)
0:41:34 – I wouldn’t call it that, but I guess for your,
0:41:36 yeah, I mean, I just, it’s like,
0:41:38 I’m a terrible student, but I study a lot.
0:41:40 – What does that mean?
0:41:41 – I was like literally a terrible student,
0:41:44 but I do, like all I do is my free time is study.
0:41:46 – Yeah, it’s actually nice for me
0:41:49 because I kind of, I do the same.
0:41:50 And then sometimes I meet people
0:41:51 who are 10 times more successful than me.
0:41:52 And they’re like, yeah,
0:41:54 I don’t even think about all that stuff.
0:41:56 I’m like, oh wait, am I wasting my time?
0:41:57 But you’re like, oh yeah, we looked at this.
0:41:58 It seemed like really good distribution.
0:42:00 Or I really thought that, you know,
0:42:01 for the, for the design agency,
0:42:03 the inputs matter as much as the inputs
0:42:04 will dictate the outputs.
0:42:06 And so I was super clear on this.
0:42:09 Whereas like, I think a lot of successful entrepreneurs
0:42:10 just sort of hand wave.
0:42:12 And I get the sense that it’s not really as hand wavy
0:42:13 as they think.
0:42:16 And it, either they’re downplaying it
0:42:17 or they’re kind of like Michael Jordan.
0:42:18 You’re like, how do you shoot a jump shot?
0:42:20 He’s like, I don’t know, I just do it.
0:42:21 I don’t really think too much.
0:42:23 But I like that you’re able to articulate
0:42:24 some of these things because,
0:42:26 at least for someone like me, that resonates
0:42:27 ’cause that’s how I think.
0:42:28 So, you know, it’s-
0:42:29 – I would, I would perhaps say like,
0:42:31 they’re not as introspective.
0:42:35 They’re probably not analyzing why they came up
0:42:37 with what they came up and they’re probably not,
0:42:38 they’re just like, I think a lot of entrepreneurs
0:42:41 are all about like charging forward and moving forward.
0:42:42 I’m always sort of like looking back
0:42:45 and studying the past of like, why did this work?
0:42:46 Was it a framework?
0:42:47 Can I come up with a framework?
0:42:48 Was it a pattern?
0:42:51 – Well, let’s do a little introspection on why do David?
0:42:54 Because you’ve, on one hand, one way of looking at this
0:42:57 is you’ve already beat this level of the video game.
0:43:01 You created a protein bar, you won $600 million.
0:43:05 You get the nice house in Miami and it’s all done, right?
0:43:06 And of course you could go back and do it again,
0:43:08 but maybe like, you should do a new thing.
0:43:09 That would be one argument.
0:43:11 We, me and Sam have talked about this before.
0:43:13 There’s two, you know, type one, type two entrepreneurs,
0:43:14 type ones are always looking for the variety.
0:43:17 The next new thing, even though they’re most equipped
0:43:19 to actually go do the thing that they know really well,
0:43:21 they don’t want to do it.
0:43:22 And then there’s other people we call speed runners,
0:43:24 this type two, which is, now that they feel like
0:43:27 they have a new point of view, a new mastery of the game,
0:43:28 they’re really excited to go do it.
0:43:30 This is just in their blood, it’s in their DNA.
0:43:32 They just want to go back to the same space.
0:43:33 I don’t know if it’s as simple as that,
0:43:36 but why did you decide to do it again?
0:43:37 – Yeah, so it was in process.
0:43:40 So I had an odd repeat, so that was a constraint.
0:43:43 But then I wanted to actually prove to myself
0:43:45 that I wasn’t just a CPG entrepreneur,
0:43:50 that I could go do this in other sort of industries.
0:43:53 So I actually, I went to go explore different industries
0:43:57 and try to like, and I kind of like started and stopped
0:43:58 and a lot of times.
0:43:59 – What sorts of stuff?
0:44:00 Give us a sense.
0:44:02 – Like synthetic biology, I think is like fascinating.
0:44:03 That’s a perfect example.
0:44:06 I was like, this is sounds like science fiction,
0:44:08 biotech is incredible.
0:44:10 Like if we can actually control biology,
0:44:11 like this would be an amazing thing.
0:44:13 So I started studying it, and you know,
0:44:15 this is where I think like Elon’s like a,
0:44:16 not a good influence.
0:44:19 Like I was like, oh, he like, I can like learn anything.
0:44:21 And then very quickly it was like,
0:44:22 I can’t fucking learn this stuff.
0:44:26 Like biology, these people like spend their whole careers
0:44:29 learning this, and I was like, I’m not that smart.
0:44:31 I can’t learn new things.
0:44:33 And I’m never going to start a business
0:44:37 where I have to pick up the phone to fix the problem.
0:44:38 Like if I can’t don’t have the competency
0:44:40 to fix the problem or understand it,
0:44:42 it’s like a position I’ll never want to be in.
0:44:46 That was a bit of like self-awareness,
0:44:48 call it a humbling moment.
0:44:51 And then I spent some time that I came back
0:44:53 and then when my non-compete came up,
0:44:57 I was like, oh my God, I see it.
0:45:02 Like I couldn’t help but see like a vision of something to do.
0:45:04 And so I was like, you know what?
0:45:08 I’m okay, I’m okay with just being called a type two.
0:45:10 And I’m okay.
0:45:13 Once I die, it just says like, nose protein bar.
0:45:16 You know, like, watch what I’m going for.
0:45:17 My gravestone, that’s okay.
0:45:21 Like, and it goes back to like self-awareness.
0:45:22 Like you got to do what you’re good at.
0:45:24 And like, one thing I’ve learned is like,
0:45:26 as I got older, I’m 38 now.
0:45:28 Like I do find it harder to learn new things.
0:45:30 Like I’m a later adopter.
0:45:31 Why do it again is like,
0:45:33 I see a huge opportunity to bring,
0:45:36 to grow the market, to delight customers.
0:45:37 And it’s far.
0:45:39 – Are you calling the shots?
0:45:43 Are you the CEO and are you like a very hands-on CEO?
0:45:44 Or are you doing it?
0:45:45 – Are you chairman?
0:45:50 – No, I’m the CEO and I’m in the office every day.
0:45:52 I’m at manufacturing right now.
0:45:54 I only have one way.
0:46:01 – So here’s the deal.
0:46:04 I made most of my money from a newsletter business.
0:46:06 It was called The Hustle.
0:46:07 And it was a daily newsletter at scale
0:46:09 to millions of subscribers.
0:46:11 And it was the greatest business on earth.
0:46:14 The problem with it was that I had close to 40 employees
0:46:17 and only three of them were actually doing any writing.
0:46:20 The other employees were growing the newsletter,
0:46:22 building out the tech for the platform and selling ads.
0:46:25 And honestly, it was a huge pain in the butt.
0:46:28 Today’s episode is brought to you by Beehive.
0:46:31 They are a platform that is built exactly for this.
0:46:32 If you want to grow your newsletter,
0:46:34 if you want to monetize a newsletter,
0:46:35 they do all of the stuff
0:46:38 that I had to hire dozens of employees to do.
0:46:40 So check it out, behive.com.
0:46:44 That’s B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com.
0:46:50 – When you have a four month old kid,
0:46:53 it sounds like you’re gonna get married soon.
0:46:54 You know, a lot of people in your position
0:46:57 who imagine you have roughly in the ballpark
0:46:59 of nine figures, liquid,
0:47:00 that’s enough money for many generations.
0:47:03 You have a new kid where you could be at home with them.
0:47:07 Why do you even give a shit about starting this new thing?
0:47:09 – I think the idle mind’s a devil’s playground.
0:47:11 – But you’ve had an idle mind, no,
0:47:12 for the past few years?
0:47:15 – Yeah, but I still made myself busy.
0:47:19 But it was idle relative to it now, yes.
0:47:20 I just think it’s dangerous.
0:47:23 I need to produce, I need to make stuff.
0:47:25 I need stress, I need to be challenged.
0:47:26 I need risk.
0:47:29 I’m a way better man with responsibility.
0:47:33 And then second, I want to make sure my son sees daddy.
0:47:35 Working, working hard.
0:47:36 I need to be a role model for him.
0:47:38 I need to be in an office.
0:47:39 I need to be sacrificing.
0:47:42 And then at a fundamental level,
0:47:44 as a human, I’m not happy if I don’t,
0:47:47 I’m at risk on, I don’t have responsibilities.
0:47:49 – Does that mean you were kind of bummed out
0:47:52 or for the past few years?
0:47:53 – Yeah, I just was unfulfilled.
0:47:57 I was just like, being an investor sucks.
0:48:00 – Yeah, it’s pretty boring, isn’t it?
0:48:02 – Well, the only good thing about it
0:48:06 is you can like, you have more freedom of time
0:48:07 and responsibility.
0:48:09 Like that’s the great thing about it.
0:48:11 And I just don’t actually like that.
0:48:12 – Have you ever seen this Reddit post
0:48:16 by this guy Jake who started Movement Watches?
0:48:17 – No.
0:48:18 – They were one of the early DTC brands.
0:48:20 They made a watch brand that got really big
0:48:21 off of Instagram.
0:48:24 And he wrote this thing on Reddit,
0:48:26 which I think you would never expect this guy to be here.
0:48:28 They sold it for I think a hundred million dollars.
0:48:30 You would never expect him to just be lurking
0:48:32 random like beginner threads about entrepreneurship.
0:48:34 And he wrote a thread that he says,
0:48:35 “I sold my company for millions
0:48:38 and I’m lost more than ever, 31 years old.”
0:48:39 He says it pretty openly.
0:48:40 “I sold my company movement for a lot of money.
0:48:42 I thought all my problems would be solved.
0:48:44 It made my life really cushy and comfortable.
0:48:46 I optimized for being as stress-free as possible.
0:48:47 I play video games when I want.
0:48:48 I wake up when I want.
0:48:51 I have really no reason to go to bed if I don’t want to.
0:48:52 I always thought this was the dream
0:48:54 and I’d be happy forever until I wasn’t.
0:48:55 I realized I’m in this incredibly unique situation.
0:48:56 I wanted to share some things.
0:48:58 And then I have to, I’ll just fast forward.
0:49:00 There’s a bunch of stuff he talks about.
0:49:01 I’ve been separated from the company for two years.
0:49:02 I’m 31 single.
0:49:03 I never have to work again.
0:49:06 I’m also lonelier than ever and deeply depressed.
0:49:08 I really believe that we need purpose in our lives
0:49:09 to be happy.
0:49:10 For some, that’s raising a family.
0:49:12 Others, it’s their career, blah, blah, blah.
0:49:14 And then he goes to the bottom and he just says,
0:49:17 “We can plan and analyze forever, but here’s the lessons.
0:49:18 But there are lessons that are unknown
0:49:19 until you start moving forward.
0:49:21 You cannot live without struggle and pain.
0:49:22 We either choose our struggle and pain
0:49:26 or it will find us through depression and loneliness.”
0:49:28 I thought that was really powerful what he wrote.
0:49:31 And you, at my point, my, you said you have to work.
0:49:33 You said you don’t have to work.
0:49:34 Like you have to.
0:49:35 – Just not for money.
0:49:37 It wasn’t for money that you had to work.
0:49:37 It was for yourself.
0:49:40 – Yeah, yeah, just like, you need to produce.
0:49:41 – I want to bring up this article
0:49:44 that got written about you.
0:49:45 It was on medium.
0:49:47 You know what I’m talking about?
0:49:49 – Yeah, it was like a super sensationalized,
0:49:53 terribly upgrade and she was just projecting.
0:49:55 – I thought that was going to be the case.
0:49:56 I told Sean I was going to bring it up.
0:49:58 And he goes, he’s, this is what he’s probably going to say.
0:50:00 It, Sean nailed the prediction.
0:50:01 But for anyone who’s talking about,
0:50:04 who’s thinking about, or the article that I’m describing,
0:50:06 it’s basically the head, it’s beautiful photos,
0:50:10 but it’s kind of like they kind of paint this article
0:50:13 as the lost young rich guy who doesn’t know
0:50:15 what the hell he’s doing in life and is unhappy.
0:50:17 And like the photos are like you like looking off
0:50:20 to the distance, but there was one pretty amazing stuff.
0:50:21 – Dude, just pro tip for founders.
0:50:22 Anytime somebody wants your article at you
0:50:25 and they want you to take photos looking longingly
0:50:27 at the window, they’re about to fuck you.
0:50:28 That’s what they’re trying to do.
0:50:31 They just don’t take the photo and don’t do the article.
0:50:34 – The paragraph goes, so Peter Bonafoli furnished house
0:50:35 for $19 million in May.
0:50:38 He spent his time between here and Chicago.
0:50:41 He chose Miami because there’s no income taxes.
0:50:43 He has a Ferrari and a Vespa parked in the driveway.
0:50:45 A housekeeper who comes daily,
0:50:47 keeps the seven bedroom spotless.
0:50:49 The most are usually empty.
0:50:52 Like just little jabs right there.
0:50:55 And then she basically says,
0:50:57 this looks like a place that tick the box
0:51:00 requesting the newly rich bachelor package.
0:51:02 And this setup fell straight from the sky.
0:51:04 Just like constant jabs.
0:51:05 – Why?
0:51:06 – Dude, and first of all, I did it crazy
0:51:08 that you probably spent the whole day with this woman
0:51:10 and you probably became friendly with her
0:51:11 and that she just kind of like.
0:51:12 – Yeah.
0:51:14 – And in which she couldn’t like,
0:51:17 I’m very introverted and I love being alone.
0:51:19 And I never once said I was unhappy.
0:51:21 It’s more than like she was projecting what she would be.
0:51:23 Like she’s like, couldn’t imagine living here alone.
0:51:25 And I’m like, this is fucking great.
0:51:29 Like it was just like, it just shows you can’t trust media.
0:51:31 Like the story it was supposed to be about,
0:51:34 my process for finding my next business.
0:51:36 – But it was still a good article.
0:51:38 Like there was some cool insights of it.
0:51:40 It’s like a little bit about your background story
0:51:43 and the photos are dope.
0:51:45 – One of the things Sam and I like to talk about
0:51:46 when we both sold our companies,
0:51:49 we were like the days, you know,
0:51:51 there’s like this whole process of like the journey
0:51:53 of this thing and then you’re not gonna sell.
0:51:54 That’s kind of a stressful time.
0:51:56 And it’s just kind of like relief when you sell,
0:51:58 at least that was how it was for me and him.
0:51:59 It’s like more than what you think should be
0:52:01 just exuberance was actually just relief
0:52:02 that the process actually like finished
0:52:04 and it was successful.
0:52:05 And like your employees are all at a good spot
0:52:07 and like everything worked out.
0:52:10 But then there’s like, you know, that post exit, right?
0:52:12 Figuring out what you want to do, see, you know,
0:52:14 go to the ATM, you print out the balance the first time.
0:52:16 You’re like, holy shit, this is cool.
0:52:18 Do you have any of those moments that you remember
0:52:19 that were just memorable for you?
0:52:21 Just like unique human life experiences
0:52:23 that you had going through it.
0:52:24 That’s the first question.
0:52:26 The second would be like, you know,
0:52:28 if your cousin or your brother was going through this
0:52:30 or was about to do it, what would you kind of tell them?
0:52:32 What would you advise them now that you’ve been through it?
0:52:35 – Yeah, I would say that by going through the process
0:52:40 that took me a while to like actually comprehend the money.
0:52:42 – Had you taken money out of the business before that?
0:52:45 – No, no, so I went from basically like, you know,
0:52:51 75K a year to it’s like really crazy money.
0:52:54 So that process took me a while.
0:52:57 And in general, like that’s just like financial literacy.
0:53:00 It’s just not, I don’t have a good instincts on it
0:53:00 for some reason.
0:53:05 So it took me about a year to like realize what it was.
0:53:08 And then going through it, like,
0:53:12 I just, maybe it’s like I have kind of like low self esteem
0:53:14 for being dyslexic, I think.
0:53:16 So I didn’t think I was great.
0:53:17 You know what I mean?
0:53:18 I just don’t think I’m that special.
0:53:20 And then I didn’t realize like,
0:53:22 you just can treat it differently.
0:53:27 – You also were living in maybe not the most friendly
0:53:31 or not the most, Miami is not the best place to be, I think.
0:53:33 Well, you could say it’s the best place to be
0:53:34 for the newly rich.
0:53:35 Or you could also say it’s probably,
0:53:36 it could be a pretty bad place to live
0:53:39 if you’re newly rich and a young man who’s single.
0:53:41 Like it could be, you could go,
0:53:42 you become a D gen pretty easily.
0:53:43 – Yeah, if you don’t have discipline,
0:53:45 it’s a really dangerous place.
0:53:46 But it’s actually a great place
0:53:48 ’cause there’s a lot of high network people there
0:53:50 that you actually can learn from.
0:53:54 The issue with Miami is that there is no residue
0:53:57 of the actual building, it’s just the outcome.
0:53:59 So you don’t see the office,
0:54:00 you don’t see, you don’t hear the stories,
0:54:02 you just see the outcome.
0:54:03 And so it was a bunch of like,
0:54:06 it’s, yeah, it’s a byproduct of all that.
0:54:08 You don’t see any remnants of the process.
0:54:11 And so that’s what’s dangerous about Miami
0:54:13 on wealth management.
0:54:16 And I would just define the different sort of options.
0:54:20 Like you can go with Goldman, they’re gonna feed you,
0:54:22 they’re gonna make you feel good.
0:54:24 Just go through sort of like how to manage this money.
0:54:26 ‘Cause that’s what you need to get.
0:54:28 You immediately need to figure out what to do
0:54:29 and how to do it.
0:54:30 And there’s sort of like different categories
0:54:32 and approaches based on your risk appetite
0:54:34 or what you want to do.
0:54:35 So that’s what I wanted to help with.
0:54:38 And I would help someone is like,
0:54:39 here’s how you should think about it.
0:54:41 And here’s how like help them not waste their time.
0:54:43 – All right, I want to ask you two questions.
0:54:43 First one is real simple.
0:54:45 How big can this be, David?
0:54:48 As I’m 75% of way through this ball right now.
0:54:50 – I would say how big, so the market,
0:54:53 I think it’s like a say $8 billion TAM,
0:54:55 the protein subcategory.
0:54:57 To me, the big exciting opportunity
0:55:00 is to convert non-protein bar people
0:55:02 and bring them into the category.
0:55:05 So like just interviewing people,
0:55:07 they’ll often say, I’m not a protein bar consumer.
0:55:12 So I want, if we can achieve the mission of bringing,
0:55:13 converting as many non-protein bar people
0:55:16 into protein bar people, that would be a huge.
0:55:20 – I see a clear path to a billion in sales, top line.
0:55:22 – Is that your threshold for success?
0:55:23 – That’s a good question.
0:55:28 Enterprise value, yeah, I would say, yeah,
0:55:31 I would want a billion in top line.
0:55:33 – What’s that worth?
0:55:36 – Depending on growth and EBITDA,
0:55:37 you put a three or a five on it.
0:55:41 – I love how you don’t shy away.
0:55:42 We have a lot of people that come on this podcast
0:55:46 that they want to win and they want to win big
0:55:48 and they want money and they want, they want things, right?
0:55:49 We all want things.
0:55:53 And whenever Sam will ask a question like that of like,
0:55:56 does that, would that be, would anything less than that
0:55:58 be like not a success for you or something like that?
0:56:00 They’ll like always go back to like,
0:56:02 what they think they’re supposed to say.
0:56:04 No, no, no, this doesn’t define me.
0:56:05 You know, as long as I wake up every day
0:56:08 and my wife kisses me on the cheek, I’m good.
0:56:11 And I love that you don’t give a fuck.
0:56:14 – And I see that in a bunch of your quotes.
0:56:15 We have this quote section.
0:56:18 I just want you to react to some of these.
0:56:19 My favorite, by the way.
0:56:21 Don’t trust a guy who celebrates his birthday.
0:56:23 – Yeah, I know, he’s completely through,
0:56:26 but I’m not against it, but it’s kind of true.
0:56:28 (laughing)
0:56:29 – You talked about how most people
0:56:30 don’t really experience any adversity.
0:56:34 And you said a quote, most people are soft as baby shit.
0:56:35 Expand on that.
0:56:40 – Yeah, I just think it’s character shit.
0:56:43 I think it’s like, and you were a really high character,
0:56:46 usually some trauma at it, a trauma’s relative.
0:56:49 And if you haven’t gone through trauma, that’s fine.
0:56:50 But just if you’re just self-aware of it,
0:56:52 like that’s the first step.
0:56:54 – You do things now, even though your life
0:56:56 could be very comfortable, we got a bunch of money.
0:56:58 You could make your life as comfortable as you want it.
0:57:02 Do you do things now that kind of voluntarily
0:57:04 make your life less comfortable than you otherwise could?
0:57:09 – Without sounding like a rich asshole, like.
0:57:11 – No, I mean, I’m truly.
0:57:14 – I like the rich asshole version of you.
0:57:15 You’ll be just all like that.
0:57:17 (laughing)
0:57:19 – He’s like, I have one butler, not three now.
0:57:20 – Yeah, I don’t.
0:57:21 – It’s tough out there.
0:57:22 – It’s like, don’t do it in the right words.
0:57:26 Like, that’s such a, you know, it sounds so terrible.
0:57:31 No, I mean, so I think like physical exertion
0:57:35 and doing physically things hard is the easiest way
0:57:35 to do adversity.
0:57:37 And that’s why you see a lot of people doing that.
0:57:39 And so that’s easy.
0:57:40 But my company’s a priority,
0:57:42 and the first thing to go is my health.
0:57:44 Like, it’s my company, my family.
0:57:46 My family’s probably more important now.
0:57:49 But like, I’m not as, I’m not.
0:57:53 My family’s more important than my company and then me.
0:57:57 And so my health is the first thing to fucking go.
0:58:02 – Is your new company in person or remote?
0:58:03 – What do you think?
0:58:06 – Yeah, I made the biggest mistake.
0:58:07 – He’s like, have you been listening?
0:58:08 – Yeah.
0:58:09 I was hoping there was like,
0:58:11 I was hoping there was like a 3% chance.
0:58:15 My company, we started it like kind of like right after COVID.
0:58:17 I’ve made such a mistake, dude.
0:58:20 We did remote and it’s like an irreversible thing.
0:58:22 – Yeah. If you want a high performing company,
0:58:24 if you want to win, you obviously have to do it.
0:58:27 And the thing is like, my work’s fun.
0:58:28 So being the office-
0:58:29 – Yeah. Well, that’s why I’m doing it.
0:58:31 I don’t care about the winning, it just is fun.
0:58:33 It’s fun to be around your, like to become your friends.
0:58:36 – Oh, and that’s the thing is like my social bucket
0:58:38 is fulfilled through my work colleagues.
0:58:42 Like, so I don’t really socialize outside of my work.
0:58:45 – Yeah. I mean, it’s, I was in the same boat.
0:58:47 You just, you give someone a job.
0:58:49 You’re hired, want to be friends?
0:58:52 – Yeah, my paid friends are the best friends I’ve found.
0:58:54 My W2 friends are awesome.
0:58:55 – Yeah.
0:58:58 (laughing)
0:59:01 – Well, dude, Peter, I know we’re a little over time.
0:59:02 So we’ll, we’ll, we’ll let you go.
0:59:04 But you’re awesome.
0:59:05 I really appreciate you coming on.
0:59:07 I think your story is dope.
0:59:09 I think you’re very truthful and self-aware.
0:59:11 And that’s a pretty deadly combo.
0:59:13 It’s something, you know, I think two virtues to strive for.
0:59:16 And I think you have a hardcore approach to this
0:59:20 at a time where it is unpopular to be hardcore.
0:59:23 You almost have to apologize for like caring and trying
0:59:25 and working and prioritizing stuff.
0:59:28 I think there’s a bunch of people who will listen to this
0:59:31 that want that also and will feel more empowered to do it
0:59:33 in the same way that you were saying like,
0:59:35 Elon lets you think, wait, shit, can I do anything?
0:59:37 Right? Like it gives you permission to like, you know,
0:59:39 to be a certain, to be the way you want to be.
0:59:41 And I think you’ve done that today on the spot.
0:59:42 So I appreciate you coming on.
0:59:43 – Thank you guys.
0:59:45 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:59:48 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:59:50 ♪ Put my all in it like no days on ♪
0:59:54 ♪ On the road let’s travel never looking back ♪
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