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Coffeez with Joe Shalaby
From Uber Driver to Nutrition Founder | James Oliver Built Atlas Protein Bars
00:45:43
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- [00:00]
Weight Watchers Member Haley
Weight Watchers now offers access to affordable GLP1s. It works for members like I'm Haley and I've lost 100 pounds. Weight Watchers has everything I need from
- [00:10]
James Oliver
weight loss medications to nutrition support and
- [00:13]
Weight Watchers Member Haley
help with my side effects.
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James Oliver
It's all in one place.
- [00:15]
Weight Watchers Member Haley
Weight Watchers handles the insurance for you and offers affordable cash pay options. With our program, our members are losing more weight with expert nutrition and side effect support.
- [00:25]
James Oliver
I'm Mike and I've lost 135 pounds. Weight Watchers prescribing GLP1 medications it's been life changing. I'm Sheri and I lost 80 pounds on Weight Watchers.
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Weight Watchers Member Haley
I realized that it would take more
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James Oliver
than a prescription to lose weight and feel good on a GLP1.
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Weight Watchers Member Haley
Better results, expert support, lose more weight, make it last.
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James Oliver
I can't imagine doing a GLP1 without Weight Watchers.
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Weight Watchers Member Haley
Get started for as low as $25@weightwatchers.com GLP1 medications require eligibility and prescription. Patients on 15 milligrams of parazepatite had an average of 21% weight loss and a 72 week clinical trial and paradigm diet and exercise. First month as low as 25 dollars with a 12 month plus plan does not include the cost of GLP1 medications.
- [01:00]
James Oliver
Working across teams is tough, but Asana
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Podcast Host Sarah
helps you handle it. Asana AI can spot roadblocks and assign work to keep everything on track. That's how work gets handled. Visit us@asana.com I'm sitting down with James Oliver, the founder of Atlas Bars. James Oliver is a mission driven nutrition company built from grit research and a whole lot of Uber rides. After completing over 3,000 rides to fund his first production run hand packing bars with his mom in a commercial kitchen, James set out to create a different kind of protein bar. One rooted in science and focus and on metabolic health. Today Atlas is leading a new category of protective nutrition. That's right, protective nutrition with research backed ingredients that help the body fight stress and inflammation. We're what started as a side hustle has grown into a national brand driven by curiosity, perseverance and purpose. Welcome to another episode of Coffees. Before I dive into all my questions, what's your morning routine?
- [02:11]
James Oliver
My morning routine right now I've been burning the midnight oil so honestly I just roll out and just start getting to it immediately.
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Podcast Host Sarah
Just start grinding.
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James Oliver
I know it's probably not a sexy answer, but it's the right way. Right answer.
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Podcast Host Sarah
You're not. You don't have like a. I mean you're. You're an ultra marathon runner. I mean, you're a guy who literally created our company for, for health purposes. So, you know, you, you don't even know the kind of answers I get from, from all these mega entrepreneurs with their morning, morning routines. Right. So you just grind all day because, you know, you're, you're already gonna put in the work for, for your, for your health, I guess. Right? That's what you do for a living.
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James Oliver
Yeah, yeah. In the past I have done the meditation, cold showers, I've done all of depending on the season of life. I'll adopt what I need. I kind of view those things as like tools in a toolkit. So if I need to use a certain tool, I'll use it. But right now I just, I really just love what I'm doing so much. And I'll do it until like 1 2am and then I'll fall asleep and then I'll just wake up at like 7 or 8 and get back to it.
- [03:14]
Podcast Host Sarah
Gotcha. Gotcha. Now you are currently in the midst of building, you know, a very unique nutrition bar. You're in a hyper specialized space and it's the most competitive, I think, of all industries and well, it's specialized in the sense that you're real food, everybody else is, you know, processed, et cetera. Now really, what was the inspiration for you starting Atlas Bars?
- [03:50]
James Oliver
There were a couple of different inspirations. So the, the one that really led me to start making bars was solving my own issue. I think it's a place that a lot of people who start something, where they start is they have an issue that aggravates them, that creates frustration. They think something can be done better and so they figure out a way to solve it. And that was exactly what happened with me. In my case, I was, I studied languages in school. I majored in economics, but I also studied a couple of languages, including Mandarin Chinese. And as part of that, I went across to China for five months, lived there with a homestay. And at this point in my life I was doing a lot of ultra distance stuff. So I was very dialed in on the nutrition side of things. And when I was going over there, I knew that my diet was going to look very different. I didn't know entirely how it was going to look different, but I knew it was going to be different. So I wanted to bring something with me to kind of keep me on track when I was over there. And so I needed something that was shelf stable, hit my nutritional targets, something that I would feel good about Eating every day. And when you kind of apply those parameters, you really just get down to, like, a bar because it's convenient, it's small. And I just looked for something that I could bring and that would last me for five or six months, and I just couldn't find it. Something that had great nutrition and had clean ingredients that you would just feel comfortable having every day, if not multiple times a day. So I. I made them. I made them, and then I brought them over with me, and I had them the entire time I was there. And then when I got back, I realized I didn't make them with the intention of, oh, this. This is going to be a business. But when I got back, I was thinking about it more, and I realized that I think that there's probably an opportunity here and that others probably want the same thing that. That I want.
- [05:32]
Podcast Host Sarah
You know, you said something really thought provoking to me. It's like, joe, you can make my bars in the kitchen, which is really cool. I mean, I. I would never think to make a bar in the kitchen. You literally made your bars in the kitchen before going to China.
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James Oliver
Yeah, yeah, they were made in the kitchen. And that. I like saying that because it immediately communicates to somebody. Like, you could say, like, real food and all of that, but when you tell somebody that you could go to the store right now, get the ingredients and make these yourself, it just communicates it in a different way. And somebody's like, oh, it's made with, like, actual food, not some chemical, ultra processed output that we call food.
- [06:13]
Podcast Host Sarah
Yeah. I mean, all the bars I have, they say they're healthy, and I'm getting them from health food stores. You know, I'm going to Whole Foods to get them, but God only knows how processed they are. So the process of making a health food bar in the kitchen is like, what? You get your peanut butter, you get your chocolate pieces, I mean, and you just chop it up and you put them in a Ziploc, and then you head to China.
- [06:36]
James Oliver
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's really no different than if you're, like, making a. Making cookies. You need something that's, like, the base, and then you need to add in certain things to get to the texture that you want to get to get to the flavor that you want to get to. So it's. It's pretty much the same thing. The challenge. And I think a lot of people who try to start a food or beverage business, they run into this is the way that you make it in your own kitchen and the way that you make it on a small scale is extremely different than how you make it. When you're trying to scale it, you cannot use the same ingredients. You can't use the same methods. And a lot of times, the way that you make it is not going to translate to making it in an actual facility.
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Podcast Host Sarah
Now, do you have a commercial kitchen that you're leveraging now?
- [07:19]
James Oliver
We have a manufacturer that we work with who makes our product for us.
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Podcast Host Sarah
Perfect. Now, walk me through the story of starting this company. Now, you were driving Ubers, grinding all night long just to accomplish this vision. What was the lowest moment? Where it was like, first off, you're driving Ubers, which is kind of like a tough job to deal with, and then from there, you want to get into the most competitive industry that exists. Walk me through that. Like, what was the lowest moment that you hit?
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James Oliver
Yeah, looking back, it's. I honestly, I'm kind of impressed that I kept going. I don't know what it was, but I. When I was in school, I wrote up a paper. It was a term project. And my professor, he was a visiting professor from Harvard Business School, so he was a smart guy. And he gave this. The project was basically me writing out the thesis that I think that there could be a bar company. And he gave me a good grade on it. But he said exactly what you just said, which is like, this is an insanely competitive category. Like, you. You shouldn't do this. And I. I listened to him, but I still followed my own intuition, and I still thought as a consumer that there was a space for this product. So I. I tested at small scale. So when I was still in my. My last year of school, I used. I actually just sent out a survey monkey cold to a bunch of gym owners. And I said, like, hey, I'm a student. I'm doing this project. And I described the product. I hadn't made anything yet, but I just described it theoretically to them, and they. I got, like, 50 responses, and 100% of the people said that they would consider buying it. And so that was my first indication that, okay, I think this is not just my feeling. There's some external validation that there's actually something here. So then I had to make the money to afford the initial production run, and that's where Ubering came in. So I. I would Uber during school, would get up at 4, would drive Uber, and you got to drive a lot of hours to save up the initial capital, but I did that. And then the day that I. The week that I graduated, I had the product come in and I had to begin selling it, and that's what I did. And the reason that I decided to start this was because I always knew that I wanted to do something challenging. And I also knew that the best time to take a risk was when you're young and when you have very little to like. The best time to take a risk is when you have. Have not a lot to lose. And when you're 22, you don't have a lot of obligations. You don't have. Most people won't have a family or a mortgage. And so I figured, yeah, this is scary. All of my friends are going to more traditional paths. They're getting jobs that look good on a resume, and I'm driving Uber and selling bars door to door. And that's a very challenging thing psychologically to deal with, especially when you're doing it all on your own. Like, how do you. When you get up every day? And yeah, there are a lot of days when I got up and I was like, what am I doing? But I think one thing that kept me going was perspective. Like, I slept above my bed. I had a famous picture of, of the U boats on D Day. And it's a picture taken from the vantage point of one of the U boats looking up at the cliffs of Normandy. And the reason I have that picture was because it would remind me that if you were born 80 years earlier, you wouldn't have this opportunity, and you probably would have been on one of those boats and you would have lived a very different life. So, yeah, this is difficult. It's challenging to do, but you should just be grateful for the fact that you have the ability to do this at all.
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Podcast Host Sarah
That's right. I mean, it's all perspective. You started this company how many years ago?
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James Oliver
Seven years ago.
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Podcast Host Sarah
Seven years ago. And do you know how much market share you have now? I mean, it's multibillion dollar industry.
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James Oliver
No, it's. It's single digits. It's single digits, but it's a large market.
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Podcast Host Sarah
Yeah, it's a massive market. You know, I, I. Because I have some sort of familiarity with the space. And like, you know, the, the friend I mentioned to you, he said he, he was in like, 22% of American households or something like that, which is like, crazy number, right? But that's, that's what happens when you hit Costco and you're in all the Whole Foods and all that.
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James Oliver
I believe that.
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Podcast Host Sarah
Do you have a Costco partnership yet?
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James Oliver
Not yet, no. No, it's on the Roadmap, but not yet.
- [11:48]
Podcast Host Sarah
Oh yeah, that would be a crazy partnership for sure. I don't even know how you're gonna be able to afford that if you're making bars with real ingredients and you're gonna be selling at a dollar at that point, you know.
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James Oliver
Yeah.
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Podcast Host Sarah
Now I gotta, I gotta ask. Just because I'm a marketer, I'm also, you know, a founder and CEO and I'm intrigued by someone's go to market strategy. And especially in a hyper competitive space, I'm in a hyper competitive space in the financial sector where we're all selling the same money. So when we market, we have to really hit the ground running. We have to have an aggressive strategy. What is your current like go to market strategy? How are you intending to grab market share and what's kind of the vision long term with your market share goals?
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James Oliver
It's a great question and it's one that I didn't have a great answer for for the first couple of years, but really it's dialing in our messaging so that we are meeting people where they're at. And that's why when we were talking before the show, if you look up Atlas, we describe ourselves as real food protein, because that's what a lot of people are looking for right now. People are looking to take the processed food out of their diet. They're looking to concentrate on eating more real clean foods. They're looking to take the sugar out of their diet, improve their protein, their daily protein intake. And so Atlas was, was built with all of these things already. So we already have all of these aspects that people are looking for. And really it just becomes what we've seen is most successful is just communicating these things. So that when people are looking for I want whatever clean, high protein, I want something that's made with real food, we appear as the kind of obvious solution because if you're the obvious solution to somebody's problem, the sale becomes very easy at that point.
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Podcast Host Sarah
Yeah. Okay, so you have competitors like Lara Barr and all these other guys that are kind of claiming something similar. Are there any true competitors with real, real food right now or is everybody still using processed ingredients?
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James Oliver
I mean, there are a couple of companies that use like Rxbar is company that, they're a big company. They, the egg whites company, Good company. They did a great job of marketing themselves. And to the point about being obvious, they made it. You couldn't make it more obvious than just listing the ingredients in the numbers on the front of the packaging. The, the intersection that we sit at. I don't think anybody else can really claim. And that's why we do. Well, because despite the fact that it's a large competitive category, we essentially do have a monopoly on the claim of high protein, low sugar and real ingredients. There's nobody else, nothing else that you can consume that has 20 grams of protein, 1 gram of sugar or less, and also clean ingredients. Um, so the answer is both yes and no. There are others that do things that are adjacent, but nobody that does the exact same thing that we can do.
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Podcast Host Sarah
Yeah, I have the ones. The. There's the. I forget the name. I had them this morning, actually. You gotta refrigerate. Them are yours. You gotta refrigerate yours too.
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James Oliver
The Perfect Bars.
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Podcast Host Sarah
Perfect Bars. That's it.
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James Oliver
Yeah. You don't have to refrigerate them.
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Podcast Host Sarah
Their whole claim was, you gotta refrigerate ours. That was their strategy, you know, like. But you really don't have to.
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James Oliver
Something that was. It was smart because they took something that was really a disadvantage. Like you have to kind of go out of your way and go to the refrigerated section to get them. And they flipped that. And we're like, no, it's so fresh that it's in the refrigerator. Like, it's so. It's so clean and made with such real food, perishable foods that you have to go to the fridge to get it. So they did a really good job of, like, flipping that around.
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Podcast Host Sarah
Yeah, but it's really not true. Like, you can actually leave themselves shelf stable.
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James Oliver
Yeah, yeah. For. For a number of days. Yeah, yeah, they're good. They're good. The only knockout I have on them is that they're just. They're pretty high and because they use honey as a sweetener. So they're pretty high in sugar.
- [15:51]
Podcast Host Sarah
Yeah, yeah, they are high in. So yours are less than 1 gram. I love them and I love. I love the goal to go to market kind of concept, but, you know, are you running ads? Are you. You know, you're not door knocking anymore. Obviously, you're doing. Obviously you're on a podcast. You're on a big podcast here. So I don't know how you got in touch as a PR network, but, you know, what are some of the ways you're getting the word out?
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James Oliver
Yeah, I didn't go into the tactics. So those points that I was saying, we run a number of ads and we found that, I mean, no surprise, but the closer you can get your product or service, whatever, to the point of purchase, the better it's going to convert. So we run a lot of ads, some of which are me just talking and me just educating people like, hey, this is what we do. And it's, there's no real. I don't look at it really as sales. I just look at it as education. In my, my view, I think some of the best sales is just educating somebody that like, hey, this is your problem. This is what we do. And I think that from my perspective as a consumer, that's usually most effective because I don't feel like I'm being sold to. I just feel like the person's actually trying to, tried to help me. So we do a number of ads, a lot of paid media, and it really just communicates those same points that, that we find convert really well.
- [17:14]
Podcast Host Sarah
Now I gotta go back to the beginning of starting this company when it was just you and your mom in a kitchen. Like, did you ever think that you'd actually make this a business after college, just like cooking these bars? You're like, mom, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this for a living.
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James Oliver
When I was 21 and I was in college and I was deciding what to do with my life, I did a, I basically wrote a formula and it was the expected value of me starting this company. And I was like, okay, I think there's a 90% chance that I fail, but there's a 10% chance that I succeed. And I think if I succeed, that this could be like a $5 million company, which means that the expected value of me starting this is basically half a million dollars. So 10% times a, or 5 million times a 10% expected outcome gets you to $500,000. And this is when I was 21 and I was like, yeah, I think that that's, like, that's a chance I'm willing to take. And even though I think the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against me, this is, I would rather try and fail at this because I think the amount that I'll learn in the process will serve me better than any of my alternative options right now as a 21 year old. Like, yeah, I could have gotten an entry level job at a number of places, but I think the experience and the lessons that I'll learn from starting something, trying to start something, will serve me better in the long run.
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Podcast Host Sarah
Much, much better. And you probably have more than that as evaluation now.
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James Oliver
Yeah, yeah, it took, it took a lot of, a lot less time than I thought to, to hit that. So, yeah, valuation, I've exceeded what I thought that I what I thought was
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Podcast Host Sarah
possible and you got the lessons, so. Yes, so you got the lessons and then so from here you can have an exit and then start another company, you know, because now you know the strategy because now you're a bonafide entrepreneur.
- [19:13]
James Oliver
Yeah, I think as you know, like if you, if you had to do the same thing that you, when you started your company, if you took everything, you know now and you went back to then like how much faster do you think you could get to where you're at today?
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Podcast Host Sarah
Yeah, it'd be a fraction of the time. Just because I know I have all the resources, I have all the contacts. I have more contacts now than ever. And you know, I know the playbook to winning, you know, so it's all just a playbook. Right? And then you can just keep writing that playbook to any vertical.
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James Oliver
Yeah, I think that's exactly it. I think you just eliminate with experience, you just eliminate the wrong moves so you don't have to like bounce around and figure out what works, what doesn't work, you know exactly what works and so you can just do those things.
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Podcast Host Sarah
And for me, and this would apply to anyone like who listens to podcasts or kind of learning from mentors. Like I just get so much mentorship now that I can, you know, points of constraint are non existent and what,
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James Oliver
yeah, what were those points of constraint for you when you started?
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Podcast Host Sarah
Oh for me, I'm. I'm in a hyper regulated industry. Okay. So I'm a bank in 48 states. So every state regulates you. So that's right off the bat, 48 states. And then we have overarching regulators, CFPB and Secretary, Secretary of State and the National Mortgage Licensing Registry. And then you, then you have additional overlays by each of the states payrolls. You know, you got this irs, then you got, you know here in California you got different wage, the Department of Labor and various departments and every, so every state has their, has regulates us and then has their associated regulators. So for us the biggest points of constraint as a macro company, a company like ours is the hyper regulation from all the different states. So that's why it's easier for us to roll other mortgage companies underneath us because they can't deal with those points of constraint. Now I'm on a different level. My whole goal is to basically acquire other mortgage companies and I do it at $0. So it's like partnering with mortgage companies that are a fraction of our size and they'll come to us because they can't Attain our level of market share and resources and technology and infrastructure and overarching support, and they just, you know, get to piggyback on our existing ecosystem, and they spend no money to do it. So I'm in a great position because we can acquire companies that have significant valuations already for $0 and just keep doing that, you know, over and over and over. But it took us a point, you know, we're in a position where nobody's in. In our world, you know, like, we have five competitors. That's it. And it's, It's. It's a real unique world for us. It's because the mega companies, they call us mega brokers, are just getting bigger, and then the other companies are just fizzling away. It's kind of like everyone going to RX and rx, just rolling out every single product. And that might be the playbook for you at some point, just because you're so young and you don't want to deal with trying to compete with the mega companies in your space, and then they just acquire you, and then you start another vertical and you're 29.
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James Oliver
So you basically have a bit of a network effect, then that, like, in the same way that, like, Meta or Amazon builds a network effect, that the, the larger you get, the harder it is for others to compete with you because you have more resources, more of an ecosystem.
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Podcast Host Sarah
That's it. The network effect is a real thing. And I actually haven't heard of it in that context, but this is why I love podcasting, because this is my own. I learned from you. Just like, you know, so. But. But that's true for any, any sector, right? Once you become a Goliath, it's, you know, the only people that can really hurt you are, you know, regulators. That's it. That, that, you know, that that's the only people that can hurt you. It's the states. And all they want is one thing. They just want to grind you for more money. They just want money. Oh, and then obviously you got targets on your back from people, which is also annoying. But that just comes with the territory. How many lawsuits does Meta have? How many lawsuits does Disney have? It's like thousands. We have significant, you know, legal expenses and compliance expenses. That's just kind of comes with the territory. You're too small to experience that now, but as you get bigger, it just happens organically. Now, what did it feel like for you to go from the kitchen?
- [24:07]
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- [24:38]
Podcast Host Sarah
To finally seeing actual bars on the shelves. Like, what was that? What's that feel like to see your product on a commercial shelf? Commercial shelf?
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James Oliver
I think it's a very. And you can probably relate to this, but I think it's a really. It's a really unique feeling that when you have something that literally just exists in your head, it just exists firing between the neurons in your minds, and then because you've put work into it, it gets translated from your mind into the real world. And then other people are interacting with it. And not only that, but they're consuming it, they're enjoying it. It's something that's part of their daily life. It's a very fulfilling thing to know that you can create something that helps and actually provides value to other people. For me in particular, I really enjoy doing it tangible goods. I don'. I could ever do software, because I don't think that you get that same. That same feeling. Like, I'm sure it's great to build a extremely successful software company, but there's something just like about the physical world and making something like a French press that somebody can interact with that I think is really fulfilling and cool.
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Podcast Host Sarah
Yeah. I mean, that sounds like a surreal experience just to see it materialize, you know, with your own bare hands. Now, I want to talk about. Because you refer to this concept of metabolic dysfunction, like, it's like, it's a personal thing for you. Was there a moment that made this mission real for you? Because the metabolic dysfunction, I mean, that's a. I mean, that's a. It's a pretty serious.
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James Oliver
Pretty serious statement around metabolic dysfunction.
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Podcast Host Sarah
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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James Oliver
I think I. I think that what got me motivated to start talking about that and building around that idea is that our country is not in a great place when it comes to what I would refer to as metabolic health. We have record rates of obesity. We have record rates of diabetes. Metabolic dysfunction is effectively your metabolic health not working well. It's. If you have some of these issues, there's a reason that GLP1s have taken off so much because a lot of people need that support. They need something that can help them address the metabolic issues that mostly, in my view, mostly have come from the food system. We have basically run an experiment over the last 50 to 70 years of giving the Western world, America in particular, huge amounts of processed foods. And after a couple of generations of doing that, we're now seeing the effects, which is all of these really negative effects on people's health. Part of that, a large part of that I think is controlling blood sugar and making sure that your blood sugar can stay steady. So that's you mentioned early in the show, that's one of the reasons why we, we did a clinical study. So we actually did a clinical study on our products at a lab a couple months ago and we demonstrated that basically we had two groups of people, one group consume white bread and compared to them, we had another group consume atlas. And the response to people's blood sugar, usually if you consume something that's like, like if you have a soda, your blood sugar is going to go right up and right down. And for Atlas, we had a 78% lower response than having a slice of bread, which is really low, is very negligible. And the reason that's important is over the long term, if you can keep your blood sugar more like this and less like this, you're going to have a much better health outcomes from a metabolic standpoint, like our bodies can do this. If you, if you ingest a lot of sugar or it hits your bloodstream quickly, your body can, can react to that and can bring you back, but it's not designed to do that every single day, multiple times a day, for decades at a time.
- [28:32]
Podcast Host Sarah
I mean, you're right in line with the current movement. Eat real foods. Right. With RFK's objective, with Mike Tyson. He's got Mike Tyson and him campaigning.
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James Oliver
Yeah, yeah. I think, I mean, I think politics aside, I think it's hard to argue with the idea that humans should eat real. Like the fact that we even have to call it real food tells you that there's a problem, something that we've done, something weird. Yeah, it should just be food. We shouldn't have to say real food. It should just be. It is food. But yeah, I mean, it's clearly like if you look at countries or cultures that have adopted our way of eating, the Western diet, virtually within 10 years, 10, 20 years, they see immediate upticks in these disorders that, that we're talking about diabetes, obesity. So our way of life for the past in America, for the past 50, 100 years, it's just not, it's not sustainable. And we do need to change it. And the easiest way to change, not the easiest, but the most logical place to change it, is with the food that we're consuming. And we have the, like, we have the ability, we have the ingredients to make better versions of what we consume. Like you can have Diet Coke or Coke Zero as opposed to a bottle of regular Coke that has whatever 60 grams of sugar in it. And the shift, I'm impatient for the shift to happen because we can, we can change it, we have the ability to, but it should just happen a bit faster than it is.
- [29:56]
Podcast Host Sarah
Yeah, I mean, the shift is coming, obviously with political campaigning, lots of dollars, and celebrities kind of backing it. It's crazy to see what teenagers looked like when John F. Kennedy was president and what teenagers look like now. Right. Because, you know, I saw that the, the health exams that they would give to high school students, you know, went viral on Instagram a few times. And you saw what these guys were doing. They were doing insane workouts to pass their, you know, high school physicals. And now nobody, like the elite athletes only look like that in high school. But that was the standard back then. But, you know, it's, it's, it's a great thing and it's, it's good for me to see as a father, the, the shift that's happening at a political level with health. Because when I grew up, you know, you had to figure out what's healthy, what, you know, how to navigate these things. And now my 5 year olds can be like, that has too much sugar. I'm not eating that. And literally they said that to my nanny this morning, you know, like, don't put sugar on my waffle. That's already, you know, not a real waffle.
- [31:02]
James Oliver
It's like, huh, you got a smart five year old.
- [31:06]
Podcast Host Sarah
Yeah. You know, the kid, they're cognizant of this stuff now just because they're so, you know, it's really an important part of their lives, you know, and the people that are around them and the people that they're exposed to, their social influences. And it's a great thing to see that shift happening because it's just going to be longer lives for them, more prosperous lives for them, because health is,
- [31:34]
James Oliver
health is wealth, 100%. Yeah. I think the idea of a health span and expanding, that's a really good idea. It's not how many years are you alive? But how many years can you do the things that you want to do?
- [31:49]
Podcast Host Sarah
Health span is much more important than lifespan. I mean, and we're Seeing that materialize at a, you know, public level now, nobody. Your lifespan, what are you gonna. You're live till 90, but 40 of your years, you're sick. It's worthless. I'm gonna live till 90. I'm gonna be able to lift weights the whole time, you know, and I still want to play sports. I probably digress to just pickleball, but when I'm 70. But, you know, like, that's the goal, right? Just to stay active, stay. And vitality is, is super important. I'm, I'm big on the, these biohacking protocols that, that are popular now. I don't think they're fads. I mean, I try to follow as many as I can, but it's, it's good to see that. Also the shift in gen zers, you know, you see a big swing in Vegas right now, like, plummeting because people. Gen Z doesn't drink and they don't smoke and they just don't, they don't gamble. They don't do all the crazy stuff that millennials did. Right. So the shift is coming, the tide is coming towards health being, you know, the reason, a big reason for a lot of companies to change the way that they operate in general.
- [33:04]
James Oliver
Yeah, yeah. For me, I. A lot of companies, they respond to demand, so they won't make a change until consumers demand it. Like, if sales start to decline, they're like, oh, we should fix something, because consumer demand is waning and we need to do something else to get demand going again. I, I'm maybe a little idealistic, but I wish that companies would just do the right thing initially so that you don't have to go through that process. Like, if you know that what you're doing is probably not the best for the people that you're selling it to. Just don't do that thing or modify whatever you're doing so that it helps people, as opposed to waiting until people figure out like, oh, this. Consuming this thing probably isn't the best for me. And then they stop consuming it, and then the company is reactive and it's like, oh, now we should, we should do something else. Because they, they realize that this isn't the best for them. Which I think is what your point, what you're saying about Gen Z, is that a lot of them have kind of seen that these things probably aren't the best to do, so let's, let's not do those.
- [34:03]
Podcast Host Sarah
Yeah. And that's why you're seeing Vegas completely shift their business model, which is going to be Fascinating to see over the next years how they turn Vegas into a healthy place.
- [34:13]
James Oliver
Yeah. What are they shifting it to?
- [34:15]
Podcast Host Sarah
You know, they're just shifting into more influencers and, and making it more of like a new kind of Hollywood thing, you know, and making it more of like an area for, for people to longevity to be, you know, like a hub, you know, like a.
- [34:34]
James Oliver
That's a shift, huh?
- [34:36]
Podcast Host Sarah
Yeah. Trying to make it like come here and get like the days of what was their mantra, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. That, that's like dying, you know, that's dying. That, that I, that idea is dying. And I love to see it, you know, I love to see that fall to the wayside. You know, the, the things, the, the blood that was laid for sin to sort of diminish has been great. You know, you saw that all the things that, and I hope all the things that Charlie Kirk was advocating for slowly start to penetrate this society. Yeah, I think it will happen.
- [35:16]
James Oliver
Yeah. Yeah. It just takes time. It takes time, it takes generations. Things have to cycle. It just takes. People don't change the habits overnight. Society doesn't change overnight. So I think we're both right. The shift is coming, but it's gradual.
- [35:33]
Podcast Host Sarah
Yeah, exactly. Now let me ask you, is there, when you were creating the Atlas Bar products, was there any like major decisions that you regret?
- [35:44]
James Oliver
Yeah, there are a bunch of. A bunch of decisions that just mistakes that I've made. I, I can't even tell you how many mistakes that I've made, whether it comes to certain product choices or branding choices. Branding choices. Yeah, exactly. It goes back to what you were saying a few minutes ago. If, if I took everything I know now and I went back and like put it in my, downloaded it into my 21 year old head, I would be able to get to where I am today in probably a quarter of the time. Because you just know all of the pitfalls that you don't have to like. The things that I've learned, I've learned because I've made the mistakes and now I know not to do that. But you save so much time if you just don't even have to go through that process of like, I tried that didn't work. You can just do the things that you know are the right moves. So yeah, there's, there's mistakes that have been made in terms of product, branding, distribution. Pretty much every area of the business I've, I've made a mistake in and
- [36:41]
Podcast Host Sarah
I mean that's inevitable with any industry or vertical. You're in what, What'd you study in college?
- [36:48]
James Oliver
I graduated with a degree in economics.
- [36:51]
Podcast Host Sarah
Okay. Ecom major. I mean, a lot of that applies, you know, to what you're doing.
- [36:56]
James Oliver
Yeah, Yeah. I wish it applied. Honestly, I wish it applied a little bit more because a lot of it is. It's more like theoretical, like academic.
- [37:04]
Podcast Host Sarah
Yeah.
- [37:05]
James Oliver
Economics about like a supply and demand graphs which when you're figuring out how to get cash to pay a vendor is not.
- [37:14]
Podcast Host Sarah
Doesn't apply at all.
- [37:15]
James Oliver
No, it does not apply at all. But the most useful classes I think I took were entrepreneurship classes that really just teach you about like this, how you read your financial statement, cash flows, balance sheet, all those things which I wish I had taken more of. But here we are.
- [37:36]
Podcast Host Sarah
Now. What's something in the nutrition space that really nobody addresses?
- [37:43]
James Oliver
That's a good question. I think that in general there's a lot of. Not like greenwashing, but there's a lot of terms that are thrown around that aren't really well defined. Like people say like these are functional foods, but it's not really clear what it does to. Does for consumers.
- [38:07]
Podcast Host Sarah
Sales jargon.
- [38:10]
James Oliver
What's that?
- [38:10]
Podcast Host Sarah
They're just sales jargon terms that just sound good.
- [38:12]
James Oliver
Yeah, there's a lot of jargon and I made the mistake of like, of using some of those and then I, because I saw like others use those and then I was like, oh, that actually like my intuition that, that doesn't really make sense is right. And so I think that there's still, and this is probably true in every, every industry, but a lot of those jargon terms, I think that there's just, it creates kind of noise and confusion for consumers. And you also, I found that you really don't have to use them if you know what people want. You just say those things and you really don't have to use them. Like in our case, we like the product is gluten free, but we never say like these are gluten free bars because the majority of our customers just don't care about that. And so every, every piece of copy or every second that you spend talking about an attribute or something that people don't care about is one that you could have spent talking about something that they do care about. And so I think that there's just a lot of like waste when it comes to trying to communicate with consumers. Because people, a lot of brands, I don't think fully understand what their consumers actually want.
- [39:15]
Podcast Host Sarah
Now piggybacking on that, like, what do you think consumers care about in the health food space right now, more than
- [39:20]
James Oliver
anything, I think getting seed oils is a big thing. Getting seed oils out of their foods, getting sugar out of their food, obviously protein is a big one. This is. I'm glad that they're. I think that they're in the process of revising the guidelines because for the past maybe 70 years, the guideline has been 50 grams of protein a day. Um, a lot of people don't realize, though, that when you look at that nutrition label and you look at like the percentages that, like, this is whatever, 50% of your daily value. Those daily values were based on the idea of, of preventing disease and preventing dysfunction, but they're not values that are agreed upon. Like, this is an optimal amount of this. This amount you should have. So for protein, we now know it's probably closer to whatever like a gram per pound of body weight. But 50 is like the baseline. That's like what you should. The bare minimum of. Of what you should consume. So I think there's this, there's this give and take between, like, as policy changes and as our labels get updated. And I know that the government right now is trying to enforce stricter guidelines when it comes to what food manufacturers are able to use in foods. I think that also helps shift what people prioritize in their, in their foods. But I think the big ones right now are more protein, less sugar, less processed. Pretty much all the things that I'm trying to. Or that Atlas advocate for in the middle of. Yeah.
- [40:52]
Podcast Host Sarah
So you're. You're using what Monk fruit in yours for as a sweetener.
- [40:55]
James Oliver
That's the sweetener? Yeah. Monk fruit's a sweetener? Yeah. You can use. If you're looking to use a natural sweetener that it doesn't have any calories, you can use stevia, which it just comes from a plant. It's like a leaf. Monk fruit. It's also just comes from a plants. They're both super, super sweet. Like, if you ever have it by itself, it's like 300 times sweeter than sugar. So you only need a tiny amount of it. And then you can also use. There are more. There are like, honestly new sweeteners and ingredients inventions that are coming out every single year. Like, there are now proteins that are sweet and you can use sweet proteins that. The technology is beyond me, but it's really cool to see everything that's happening because it just expands the scope of what companies like us are able to do now.
- [41:43]
Podcast Host Sarah
Let me ask you a couple last questions before we wrap up but this one, you know, you could answer or don't answer. What's something that you've never said publicly, but you feel like right now might be the time.
- [41:59]
James Oliver
Hmm. I think that if you are. If you're thinking of starting somebody, if you're thinking of starting something, like starting a company, whatever, and. And you, like, say something, say one of your friends is thinking of starting something, they're like, should I, Joe, should I, like, start this? And you tell them no, then you shouldn't start that thing. And that's enough to convince them to not do it. You shouldn't start that thing. So basically, if somebody were to ask me if they should start something, I would tell them no, because without even knowing what it is. Because if my no is enough to dissuade you from starting it, then you weren't going to have enough grit to go through with it. If just one person's opinion is enough to stop you from starting it, then you weren't going to have enough. Yeah. Grit to follow through with it. So that's something that I've thought of. And it's kind of counterintuitive because people think that you should be encouraging, but it really is. It's very difficult. It's very difficult to start something, especially in this day and age. And I think that most people, they might think that they want to, but the amount of sacrifice and just grit and work it takes to start something, to make it successful, I think is a price that a lot of people are probably not willing to pay. And they're probably better off for it. They're probably smarter for not.
- [43:20]
Podcast Host Sarah
You know, I feel like that concept actually applies to anything in life. Like, if anything derails your goals, then it's not, you know, what are you doing? You know, like, you should be relentless at whatever your goal is. Like, nothing should stop you. Be able to run through a wall that goes.
- [43:36]
James Oliver
Yeah, nothing should stop you. Especially like one person's opinion. If that's enough to. If that's enough to stop you. Yeah.
- [43:42]
Podcast Host Sarah
Then what are you doing? I got to ask a couple last questions. What's a personal goal that you have for yourself, a business goal that you have for your business and a goal that you have for your family? You're in your 20s. I don't know if you have a family yet, but, you know,
- [43:57]
James Oliver
a personal goal that I have for myself, I would like to travel the world for at least just a year. At. At one point, I got a. I
- [44:05]
Podcast Host Sarah
got working that whole time on that. Yeah, I know you'll be working remotely that whole time. Right, right. Won't be that.
- [44:12]
James Oliver
My ultimate goal would be, I love to, to drive around the world on two wheels. So on a motorcycle. I got a moped last year, a Vespa and I drove it from North Carolina to New York in a weekend. And that was. I loved it. It's so fun.
- [44:26]
Podcast Host Sarah
That's cool.
- [44:27]
James Oliver
So I'd love to do an extended version of that. On the business side of things, it would be great to be able to build something to a point where it's, it's viable enough to sell it. I think that would just be a great experience to go through. It would be just super educational and I think it would be, yeah, an awesome, awesome kind of milestone to reach and way to end a chapter. And then on the family side of things, I did get married a year and a half ago, but it was 13 years I've been with my, my wife now, so I don't know if we have any near term goals. Maybe getting a golden retriever.
- [45:11]
Podcast Host Sarah
No kids on the horizon?
- [45:14]
James Oliver
Not, not yet, no. Not for the next, next, next year or two. But at some point I think, yeah,
- [45:22]
Podcast Host Sarah
you know, once you have some kids, it'll make it all worth it. The whole grind will make sense.
- [45:27]
James Oliver
Yeah.
- [45:29]
Podcast Host Sarah
Last question. You know, you've dedicated your life to basically making, you know, a better future for society, and I think that's very noble and honorable what you're doing. So with that said, when you're in front of the pearly gates, what do you think God's going to tell you?
- [45:45]
James Oliver
You cut your audio cut out like the last sentence.
- [45:49]
Podcast Host Sarah
When you're in front of the pearly gates, what do you think God's going to tell you.
- [46:00]
James Oliver
If, If I've done my job? Well, I hope it's just. You did good. That's it.
- [46:09]
Podcast Host Sarah
That's it.
- [46:10]
James Oliver
Yeah. You died on empty.
- [46:14]
Podcast Host Sarah
Love it. If people want to connect with you, how do they find you?
- [46:20]
James Oliver
If you search James Oliver, you'll find my socials, LinkedIn, Instagram, et cetera, etc, or through Atlas, Atlas bars, you'll find me.
- [46:32]
Podcast Host Sarah
Hey, listen, I got Atlas Bars in my Amazon cart right now. I'm gonna buy them there. There's a coupon I saw. I'm like, that's cool. They're not expensive either. For real food bars, I'm always looking for the next thing to give to my kids and myself actually, because I kind of live on this stuff on the go. So I appreciate all the effort. The science behind making a perfect bar that's actually healthy and nutritious for people. Thank you for that James. You've been a pleasure to have on the show. God bless you. God bless your mission. I hope you every single one of your goals, keep dominating, grow big and keep helping people, man. That's what it's all about. God bless you man.
- [47:05]
James Oliver
Thank you Sarah. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.
- [47:08]
Podcast Host Sarah
Absolutely.
- [47:29]
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