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Habits and Hustle
Episode 457: Jeff Byers: The Former NFL Player Exposing the $200 Billion Supplement Scam
01:35:12
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- [00:01]
A
Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.
- [00:07]
B
Before we dive into today's episode, I first want to thank our sponsor, Therassage. Their tri light panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body. It's a portable red light panel that I simply cannot live without. I literally bring it with me everywhere I go. And I personally use their red light therapy to help reduce inflammations in places and in my body where honestly, I have pain. You can use it on a sore back, stomach, cramps, shoulder, ankle, Red light therapy is my go to. Plus it also has amazing anti aging benefits, including reducing signs of fine lines and wrinkles on your face, which I also use it for. I personally use Therassage Trilite everywhere and all the time. It's small, it's affordable, it's portable, and it's really effective.
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A
It's.
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B
Head over to therasage.com right now and use code be bold for 15% off. This code will work site wide. Again, head over to Therasodge T H E R A s a g e.com and use code be bold for 15% off any of their products. Guys, we have Jeff Box, who's on the podcast today. Jeff is the co founder and CEO of Momentous, which is my favorite supplement line. And I'm not just saying that because he's sitting across from me. I'm saying this because they are. They are one of the top dogs for good reason. They are super, super diligent. They're very stringent on their certifications for their products. I trust them. I trust you. And so we're going to have a whole conversation here on supplements, optimization, human performance, all the good stuff. So anyway, Jeff, thanks for being on the show.
- [02:05]
A
Yeah. Super excited.
- [02:06]
B
I mean, this is. This has been a long time coming. I think this has been like a year and a half or something that we're like, hey, why don't you come on the podcast?
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A
Yeah.
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B
And finally. Well, here you are.
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A
You need the stars to align with scheduling and the craziness that is life.
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B
I know.
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A
I'm glad I'm here.
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B
Well, you don't live here like you live here. You don't live here at all. But how often do you come to la?
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A
A lot.
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B
A lot.
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A
But it's just like I've had a couple bigger gaps than I normally have.
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B
It's just I wasn't a priority. It's okay. It's okay.
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A
Okay.
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B
I'm not, I'm not offended. I understand you have a company to run, a big one.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And it's grown. Like how big is it now?
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A
We're, we'll do 100 plus million this year in revenue.
- [02:43]
B
Wow. Okay. We're going to get into all of this stuff because you guys are, I think, just doing everything right. I want. Before we just kind of go into that, can you just kind of give like a backstory of who you are? How did you kind of get into the supplement space? Because your story is pretty phenomenal in my opinion. That's when we met. You told me your whole backstory.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So can you just give my audience a little bit of like who you are and why you kind of are doing this?
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A
Yeah. Well, first I never wanted to be a supplement company CEO. That was not my dream, was not on my bingo card, which is what all the cool kids are saying now. But like my background, I went to school at USC here in la. But really uniquely I was one of the top recruited high school athletes. I played football. I was a two time captain during USC's heyday. I was an offensive lineman many, many pounds ago. But I had a really unique journey in college. My true freshman year, I started as a freshman on a national championship team and the last game of the season I just destroyed my hip and I ended up having two hip surgeries post that and was told I was never going to really play football again or it was going to be a big struggle. And every athlete has some transition point in their career of like aha moment. And it's really hard, right? It's hard to transition out of athletics or elite military service or whatever that may be. I just had that thrust on me when I was 19 and like started mentally planning for it. So I missed my entire second year because of two hip surgeries. But I ended up getting on track to graduate undergrad in three years anyways. Fought to come back. My third year I had two back surgeries, right. So I missed my second and third year because of injury. And I just like it. The hardest part about transitioning out of sport or military is you let sport define you. Right. Because it's everything to you. And you have to realize when you transition out of sport is like the sport never defined me, it was a part of me. I defined me. I get to choose who I am and that's a hard process. I got to do it when I was super young and it actually came back, football came back to me. So I ended up playing my last three years at usc. I was a two time captain I got my master's in business.
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B
And then that's also very unique. Right. Like, usually if you're an athlete, not to be, like. Not to, like, paint everybody with the same brush, but the fact that you got, like, an MBA from a very hard school.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Plus, you were the athlete.
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A
But I would never have done it if I didn't get hurt. Right. I had this aha moment, this inflection point in my life that was like, football defines me. What am I going to do without it?
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B
Yeah.
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A
And then it was like, you know, I'm lucky. I'm very blessed to have a great family. My dad was like, nobody feels sorry for you. You're getting a free scholarship.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Right. To go to a top. Figure it out. Right.
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B
I love that your dad was also. He's also pretty. Very successful. I don't remember what he does, though.
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A
My. My dad's been in the meat industry most of his. The. The most of his career. He's worked for Hormel and a company called jbs, and he's retired. But, like, really successful leader, has managed big, big companies. Way big. Like, it's so funny. Like, everybody's. Oh, your dad must have great advice. I'm like, my dad managed, like, a hundred thousand people.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Right. And like an $18 billion P&L where I'm like, I'm rubbing pennies together. Right.
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B
But you still would think that's so funny you say that because one of my. I would always. My question was going to be like, you must have learned some type of leadership going into now being a CEO of a company that's, by the way, $100 million plus. Like, did you get any leadership?
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A
Oh, yes. My dad's. My dad and Pete Carroll have been the most influential people in my life.
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B
Okay.
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A
Right.
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B
From a.
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A
Leadership management, how you handle people. Right. Vision and all of that. It's just. It's not always that. Like, when I think about leadership and I think about what I saw from Pete Carroll as, like, one of the best NFL and college coaches of all time, it's not apples to. Apples to momentous.
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B
Right.
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A
But there's so many similarities. Like, you're in the same category, but it just. Not everything applies. Like, how you. How you manage athletes and hold them accountable is actually. Can't do that in a real workforce. Because a locker room culture, when you live. When you sleep together, eat together, play together, work together, you have different bonds and you can challenge people and have different conversations, for sure. More bluntly than you can with, you know, a director of sales or marketing or ops or whatever it is.
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B
Well, especially in today's time right now. Right. It's become much more difficult to do. You got to be much more mindful and PC.
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A
I think that's correct.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Which is hard for me at times.
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B
Yeah, I know. Me too.
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A
So, anyways, so I went to usc, graduated with my, got my MBA and had a really cool opportunity to play in the NFL. I played four years in NFL, I call it. I practiced for the Seahawks and, and the Broncos, and then I played for the Panthers. I also practiced a lot for the Panthers, but I really got to start a handful of games for the Panthers and was a backup offensive lineman and it was a ton of fun. Like, I, like many kids, right, dreamt of being a professional, right? Whether you wanted to be a musician, an actor or an athlete, I dreamt it. And I'm one of the very few. And I realized how lucky I am to like, have the ability because there is some genetics at play. Like, yes, you. Like, I had to be 6, 4 and 3, 10.
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B
Like, right?
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A
Like, if I wasn't 6, 4 or 3, 10, I could have never played in the NFL. But if I was 5 foot 5, 310, I would never played in NFL. So I, I. Lots of stars aligned.
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B
How much would you say is genetics versus work ethic and practice and all the other things?
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A
You have to be in the zone. From a genetic standpoint, there's no, no shape or form.
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B
You can't ever in any sport, right?
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A
Not in any sport. For every position, for example, every position, you have to be in a zone, right? You have to have some unique characteristics. There's a lot of people that fall into those unique characteristics. And then you have to be lucky enough to have grown up in a household or in an environment that allows you to play and succeed and that can fuel that passion. And then number two is you have to be lucky enough to not have major injuries or whatever, right? Like, I mean, if you back up, like, that household is about social economics and it's about opportunity and it's about gear, it's about the right location, high school, all those things, right? Number three is like, you just don't get hurt in the wrong times. And the number four is like, if you do not work your ass off and you are not mentally tough, you will never be great. You will never make it to the NFL. You will likely never make it to a collegiate level because you get punched in the face, air quote. Every single day you get challenged, you get like, it is really, really hard. And you have to like one of my favorite quotes from a coach is like you have to learn to love to be uncomfortable because you suffer and you suffer and you suffer. And sports unique is because you have this really grueling high pressural stakes that right. A lot of people depend on you. But also like the fatigue and the injury rate is like you just play hurt. You like, you just learn like you're like pain normal. Right. And you just learn to go through things that most people can't imagine. So there, there's a lot of mindset and effort at play and like if you don't work hard, you do not get there. There are some freaks, some massive freaks that you know might not have to work as hard as others, but they're very, very, very few, far in between. And when you have like genetics, opportunity and hard work all and everything kind of goes right.
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B
That's the hall of Famer, that's a hundred percent. You know, it's so. I'm so glad that you mentioned something because you don't hear that so often, which is such a big piece of it, which is the opportunity within your family because people are not taking sometimes into account the gear is expensive. Right. Having someone to like take you from practice to practice like getting there.
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A
Yes.
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B
Having like a supportive family, the socioeconomic piece to a lot of these athletes that I, that I know even they were able to even like self actualize to be who they are because they had a family that allowed them to do that 100%, you know, and people don't think about that. The other thing that you said was very interesting and I, when I found out when I met you and you were like someone was saying oh yeah, he was a professional athlete, blah blah blah. Now he's the founder. You know, like it didn't surprise me because like you know, part of what I do is I, I talk to some of the most successful, you know, CEOs, founders, people in the world and what one thing the through line that I always hear from people like on the show, off even much more even off the show is what they look for in an employee or someone to work with is somebody who played sports seriously, like played like D level sports or played like played something like you because you already are halfway there. Which is like the mental mindset of you know, a. Not just the team building and all that, but like grinding practice, long hours, hard work, like consistency, like having to go on and on and on. Like those things like when you are an athlete, like you Were it like you were. Those are fundamental life skills that will serve you so well in profession.
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A
And you have to be coachable and coachable and that coachability in business, like I think coachable curiosity. It's like you have to be willing to seek discomfort and seek advice to go further. Right?
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B
That's so true.
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A
And it's hard to get outside. I mean, I do like sports, music, like, like the arts have some of that in there too. Because like you can't be great at music if you aren't coachable. Right. If you're not curious on how do you push the limits. And there's a lot of times when it's like, I mean, some of my extended family are incredible musicians. Like there's a lot of times you get to make a choice, do I play an instrument, do I practice or do I go hang out with my friends?
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B
100%.
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A
Right. And to make hard decisions on to be great. Right. It's not fun. That's not fun. Right? Like not fun in that moment. But when you think about where you could derive joy and what matters anyways, it's no we.
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B
That's 100% like life's choices, right? Like if you want to be a great or this success, you have to be making those choices that like, it's not instant gratification, it's delayed gratification.
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A
Well, it's like that, like that's so powerful because that's one of the things that I learned in sport is to be great at anything. Like it's bone crushing consistency, right? It's like what we did in the NFL was not crazy. And how you got there was just like consistent approach time after time after time. And when you do, consistency builds and that's when greatness happens. Health is not a today thing, it's not a tomorrow thing. It's a everyday.
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B
Look at Tom Brady.
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A
Yeah.
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B
He was like, he wasn't even considered a great player. Yeah, right. Like, but he was so committed and such a hard worker and so consistent and stayed on. On path.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And now look.
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A
And he just did the same things, right? The boring mundane.
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B
The boring mundane.
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A
When I think about like tr. Like training as a professional athlete, like you could do everything, but you did the most important things over and over and over and over again. And that's how you got great. That's what health. That's with performance for life. That's with whatever you want to do. You want to be a great leader. Do the same things over and over and over again. Right. Show up for Your team, you can't do it one day, do it every day, 100%. Right? And over years and years, you become a great leader.
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B
Was that. How so. So did you take these types of, like, number one skills that you. That you did, you fostered these by. By just doing the consistent, mundane, boring things and very, like, over and over again. But you also said that your dad and Pete, like all Pete Carroll, like, you learned a couple of things even by watching what they did. What was the. What was a one takeaway from Pete Carroll that you take now into your business and from your dad?
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A
I would say from Pete, it's show up the same every day, right? Be. Be predictable about how your energy is and how you show up to your team. Right? And the thing that I saw from Pete is whether you win, loss, good, bad, Pete showed up the same really passionate, high energy. Right? You never questioned if Pete loved what he was doing today. I guarantee you, Pete had a lot of shit days where he had to change, right? And he had to be like, I get to choose how I show up. I'm going to show up differently. So Pete, to me, really showed me the power of if you show up consistently and you show up with ability to galvanize and bring passion and purpose to what you do, people rally. Yeah, right. But if you do it, sometimes people don't buy in, right? Like, I played for coaches that, like, sometimes they have high energy, sometimes they MFU and sometimes they do this and sometimes they do that, and you're like, what am I going to get? I don't know. It's really hard to perform for those people. But when you know this person truly cares, they're really passionate about what we're doing. They love it, they're in all the time. It's not like, are they in, are they out, are they pissed? Are they not pissed? Anyways, that was really powerful from Pete.
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B
Predictability.
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A
Predictability as a leader and as, like, as the head coach. From my dad, I mean, I've learned, like, my dad is really, really influential in me. Like, from my dad is like, people are your greatest asset, but also the hardest thing to do every day, right? Because we're all humans, right? You have to make hard decisions, but you have to do them with compassion as well. And I would say the other thing, like, my dad, like, so the people stuff, I work a lot with my dad on, like, because we're all really unique and crazy and weird in our own ways, difficult and difficult, but at the end of the day, like, every decision I Make potentially has an impact on that person. And if I have an impact on that person, it probably has an impact on somebody else. And somebody else, right? The ripple effect, the ripple and those things, you can't take them lightly. But you also have to make the right decisions. So the other thing with my dad is like, my dad's ability to just work, right? And like, effort, Effort makes sense. And it's like, it's not a choice, right? Never a choice. It's like, you always work hard. And that was like, I have a lot of stories about my dad, but, like, I remember I was in seventh or eighth grade and I was an offensive lineman in seventh or eighth grade too. And I was like, peewee football. And I was, you know, running down and I kept like, making my block and looking back, right? Because I was done. And he was like, you're never done. Like, you always go to the whistle blows regardless if you did your job or not, right? And I like that effort, that repeated effort of, like, doesn't matter where the guy, the running back is behind you. Doesn't matter. Like, just go. Always bust your butt. Always work. Whistle blows, take a break. Figure out what you did right? Figure out what you did wrong, do it again, right? And those, those types of lessons are really unique to me because how do you relate them, how do I relate them to business? Like, a lot of things relate to business. Like, to me, it's just there. You just have to like, okay, like, one of the examples I give of around, like, growth stage or entrepreneurship is like, the ball always gets snapped. In football, the ball always gets snapped, doesn't wait for you, doesn't care about you, right? And it doesn't remember if you got beat the last play or you had the best play in the world. The ball gets snapped. And so as a leader, you have to be ready to go at all times. You also have to have a really short memory, but you have to be able to learn from your past mistakes because that's what the ball is going to get snapped. Time is moving forward. You're going to have to make a decision, and you don't have time to think about it because the ball gets snapped.
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B
It's like a sense of urgency.
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A
See, it is a sense of urgency.
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B
It's a sense of urgency.
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A
But the short memory, like, you just like, you got to forget it. Like, how many. Like, as a business leader, good and bad happens every single day. And I, I leave a conversation where I'm like, man, that did not go good, right? Literally in like, Three seconds. I have another meeting that I have to show up differently to. And I can't worry about that being like having a board member that wasn't happy. Right.
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B
That's the worst part.
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A
Ball gets snapped.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Clear and go. Right. And like, that to me is like a really, like, it's such an easy one to one of like business to sport.
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B
And is that like compartmentalizing?
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A
I don't know if it's compartmentalizing. It's just knowing that there's always another play and the most important thing to do is win the next play.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Because you can't control what happened in the past. But you have to learn, like quickly anal, like, analyze what happened, move on. Because, like, if you got beat and that you let the same thing happen again and again and again, you lose your job as an athlete. Right. You get fired. Same in business if, like, my board doesn't care if I make mistakes. What they don't want to see is mistakes be made the same over and over and over again. Mistakes are expected. Right. Because we're trying to do it better than it's ever been done before in our business. And you get some right, you get some wrong. And I also have never done this before. And it's like I'm trying to break the mold and it's like, hey, we're okay. Make a mistake. But if you make a mistake and you do it again and do it again, or if you make a mistake and be like, oh my gosh, I made a mistake, what am I going to do? It's like, make another decision, move forward.
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B
And you have a partner as well, right?
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A
Yeah, I have a co founder. And like, this is. We're on year seven together, technically year ten. We worked at a biotech together for three years.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And she is like, there is no chance that I that momentous is what it is. And I am what I am without her. And we've had a really pretty tight relationship of like, we are equals. We'll always be equals. From representation on the board, from equity, from compensation. We have different roles in the business. Very different roles. She's the president, I'm the CEO. We call it the visionary integrator. And she comes from a very different background than I do. We're both pros. She came from McKinsey Company.
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B
Oh, wow. So she's like super academic.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Okay.
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A
Yeah.
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B
She must be great with operations.
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A
She's a. She is like integrator versus visionary. Like, I get to sell, I get to build. Right. The stoke lead, the People. She's awesome at managing people. Awesome at process. Right. Strategy. I've yet to sit down with somebody who's better at strategy than her. And I've sat down with some really smart people.
- [21:07]
B
Yeah, she must be so smart.
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A
And like, she's also awesome at hiring. Awesome at hiring because she's able to. I think McKinsey trains you to hire really well by, like, how she interviews and pull people out. Like, I am a cultural hire. Like, yeah, like, I can. I can take that. But it's like, how do you get to technical skills and all? Like, just like, masterful. How she can unpeel people.
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B
That's amazing.
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A
And so what we've always said, like, we started the business based upon our principles and, like, anyways, we were at this biotech together. We weren't. We didn't work super closely together early on. And then what we realized is we really had similar values and we cared about things the same of, like, we really were entrepreneurial. We wanted to, like, this was. The biotech was a jumping off point for both of us. We cared about performance, but we cared about integrity deeply. We cared about, like, being inclusively, doing it the right way no matter what. Like, money would come later. And we really, really believed in candor and conflict. Like, coming from the NFL, it's like you never questioned where you sat at the end of the day, you know, if you had a good day or bad day.
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B
Right, right.
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A
Because somebody told you and if you didn't know yourself and like, that amount of direct feedback and having conflict. And she came from McKinsey, which is a, like a pro. Like, it's like pro sports business.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Where there's a lot of conflict and you never were confused. And so we've been able to turn candor and conflict into our greatest, like, our. Our greatest strength together because we come at problems so differently. Like just the visionary integrator. Mindsets are different. How we operate. Our personalities are opposite, but we always have the same goal in mind. And we come at problems very differently. And we butt heads and we have some conflict and we speak candidly. And the next thing you know, my idea and her idea come together and it's a different idea. That's the best idea. It happens on people. It's really unique. But the one thing we've always, like, we are able to, like, check your ego. Like, right. Like, hey, like, you know, and like, go back, be like, man, I didn't like how I showed up there. Like, my ego got my way. And, like, that's really unique in founder relationships.
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B
You call each other out basically and keep. You keep each other honest, I think is that way to put it where.
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A
When people see it for the first time, their minds are blown. They're like, what's going on? And then like three seconds later, it's like we're back on the whiteboard figuring out to solve the problem. It's amazing, but it's because we've worked together for so long. And I would say it's also because like, Erica's like one of my great friends, but we don't hang out. Like, it's really weird.
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B
Yeah, no, I get it.
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A
It's like we work together like 60 hours a week and it's like. Anyways, we had an off site down in southern Utah and her and I drove back together and we were in the car for like five hours. It was like the first time in a really long time that we like talked about non business stuff for more than 10 minutes.
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B
Wow.
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A
Right, okay. Yeah, because like when we're together, we're solving problems, we're dealing with team stuff because there's always a problem, there's always a personnel, there's always a new hire, there's always some challenge.
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B
Totally.
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A
So it's like, you know, like her husband's a big mountain skier and travels the world and like I've got three boys and like, you know, like, what is Bethany up to? What is so and so's doing? It's like we just like talked and I was like, holy cow. Like, we haven't talked about our personal lives this much in a really long time. And it was like really kind of nice.
- [24:32]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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A
But unless we were trapped in a car with me driving. Right. And no soil service because we're in southern Utah. Like, she would have been working, I would have been working. You know, it's like we sit on airplanes together all the time and we just work.
- [24:44]
B
I just work. Yeah, well, yeah, but it works though, right? Because you guys like yin and yang, right? You guys have like different skill sets. So, okay, so then now. Now you're at the biotech and now you guys. How did you guys say, okay, now I'm going to start a supplement company that has like really like at the highest level in terms of quality. And what, like, how did that happen?
- [25:08]
A
So I never. Eric and I never dreamt of being supplement company.
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B
Right.
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A
Founders, CEOs, whatever we are. In 2018, we spun out of this biotech and we spun a technology out of it. So we spent three years together at Biotech. And what the biotech was developing was a transdermal drug delivery technology. So how do you get drugs through the skin? And one of the reasons why they brought me on as employee four was because they had an idea to use it in sport. Right. And deliver non drugs through the skin.
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B
Okay.
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A
And that was really interesting.
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B
Was it like patches and stuff?
- [25:39]
A
No, it's like a lotion cream.
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B
Oh, okay.
- [25:42]
A
Anyways, in early 2018, they're starting phase 2 clinical trials on a couple medical products. And we had this really cool product that was starting to get a little traction. We had early data on, but we were working with tudor, France champions, marathon world record holders, the Department of Defense pro football teams. So we, the biotech, the technology was able to deliver sodium bicarbonate. Bicarbonate. Sodium bicarbonate is baking soda. But bicarbonate is a buffer. Means helps control acidity. And in our bodies, when we train really, really hard or really, really long, you produce acid hydrogen ions. So lactic acid is what we typically refer to it as. When those hydrogen ions build up, build up in your muscle, it's your limiting factor to go harder or to go longer. Right. Because our body's natural ability to buffer is not there. So anyways, by being able to change and regulate the PH of the muscle, you can actually push a little harder and push a little longer. Right. Which has really awesome support implications and really awesome special forces implications and all these other. Yeah, right. So it got really crazy traction in those spaces. But we were at this biotech that was starting FDA clinical trials, phase two to like not the same consumer. Like we were like a consumer biotech. We had this cool product. We were doing clinical research. We were like running and gunning, working with the craziest places I could ever imagine, you know, from my past life. And the biotech was like, we're going to clinical trial. It's like totally two different mentalities. And Eric. And the. And so the biotech started to slow down.
- [27:15]
B
Oh, right. Yeah.
- [27:16]
A
In the right ways, how it normally does. And I was doing this really cool passion project in here within the biotech. And Erica was like, I want to let, like, I want to help you with this. Like, this is fast and this is fun and. But we were at this crossroads. What do we do with this, this product, this like unique application of it. I was like, well, can't live within the biotech because we're starting like building inventory does not relate to a biotech company.
- [27:45]
B
Right, right.
- [27:46]
A
That's pre commercial. That's in phase two. Clinical Trials or a marketing team or any of that. Can't really sell it because we, we didn't have enough sales traction or enough data. And I was like, maybe we spin it out. And so Eric and I basically just negotiated with our employers, she was employee two, I was employee four, to spin out that. The rights to that technology and create a company around it. So in middle of 2018, we started the underlying entity behind Momentous, which is called amp Human. And what's super cool with that is we didn't. We weren't a supplement company. Right. Like, that's why we are in the unique place that we're in. And we wanted to create, you know, like the first pitch deck was like the next great high performance company was literally what was like.
- [28:29]
B
So that was kind of the. That was what you wanted to do. You wanted to create the next best high performance company. Like who? Like, give me an example of who you were looking at to, you know, emulate if you had to pick one.
- [28:38]
A
I don't know.
- [28:39]
B
Okay.
- [28:40]
A
Right. Sounded really cool.
- [28:41]
B
Yeah. It just sounded good, right? Yeah.
- [28:43]
A
But what we were doing with PR lotion had never been done before. Right. And we were doing clinical research and we were in all these unique places. And what, what I saw at the time was like, we have all this crazy access. We're doing something really unique. What if we brought other technologies and other products in because we have the access. Right. And then we can bring them to the consumer space and like think high performance in consumer, which was really interesting. Didn't know what the hell I was doing or I was talking about other than we had a really cool product and it thrust us into these unique places. And so we always. But from day one, we knew that amp Human amp HP was not just this one product. We thought the product was going to be really big. Turns out it's incredibly niche because how you work out and how I work out, maybe once or twice a month, maybe do we work out hard enough or long enough where PR lotion can actually have an impact. And it's not really pretty. It's kind of nasty. Like you got to be hardcore. And it's still product in our portfolio.
- [29:48]
B
Really?
- [29:48]
A
Yeah.
- [29:49]
B
And it's like Navy seals use it.
- [29:50]
A
Or we had some really cool traction in some of those unique places. And so our, our first funding was from venture capital and the Department of Defense. So we won $1.6 million innovation contract with the DoD through Special Forces for that.
- [30:05]
B
For that one product, for that product. And then what happened?
- [30:08]
A
We did a lot more Clinical research. And we. I could help get us going, right? And we. And the product built ultimately into about a $3 million SKU. $3 million product. But throughout that time, we tried to, like, acquire new technologies or like, where else do we go? But we had this scientific advisory board because PR Larshan was doing something really unique. We had, like, the best sports scientists and all these crazy people involved of like, oh, what if we could do X? What if we could do Y? What if we could do Z? But that really high performance space is so out of reach for most people of what we learned.
- [30:46]
B
So then what was like, so then you thought, okay, let me just be more for the people. Right?
- [30:50]
A
Well. Well, my board was like, you should go do sports nutrition. And I was like, hell, no.
- [30:57]
B
Really?
- [30:58]
A
Yo. I fought it. We fought it so hard. I remember sitting a board meeting. We had a board meeting in San Francisco, and they're like. It was like, on the roadmap of what's possible is like, 50th supplements, right? And they're like, well, what about this? This is awesome. Like, this is fast, big market. I was like, we are a consumer biotech company. We do clinical research. We're funded by the federal government. I am not launching a protein. Like, never. And part of it, like, I go back and ultimately, I had a mentor friend challenge me and, like, made me realize the board is right. But it was this. The industry is so messy, so dirty, unregulated. My ego said, you don't want to be a supplement company. You don't look up to anybody. I want to be that person. I wanted, like, I wanted to be a different. I wanted to be a disruptor, a different. Like, like, do it better than it's ever been done before. Like, I wanted a challenge and all that. And, like, what I saw in supplements was marketing, marketing, marketing. Not brands that I loved and not great products, Right?
- [32:01]
B
Like, that's a scary thing, actually, that people don't recognize. Like, a lot of the brands that do the best is because they have really good branding and really good marketing, but their actual products are really terrible.
- [32:13]
A
It's not built on the fundamental base.
- [32:15]
B
Yeah.
- [32:16]
A
Quality.
- [32:16]
B
No.
- [32:17]
A
Or doing what's right for the customer, the consumer. And so for me, I just. Like, I use a lot of supplements in sports nutrition. Like, I probably had a million dollars purchased for me or on my behalf over my sports career. Like, you just do. Like, since high school, I've been taking protein shakes and weight gainer and creatine and you name it, right?
- [32:36]
B
Like, what brands were you using back.
- [32:38]
A
Then, back in the day. Metrics.
- [32:40]
B
Metrics, right.
- [32:41]
A
I mean, like, there wasn't many. I'm trying to think of, like, what was the weight gainer I used to take. Oh, man, it was bad. But like, there's just so many things.
- [32:49]
B
Yeah.
- [32:50]
A
Out there. It's like, you know, Gatorade's a supplement. Like, it supports nutrition.
- [32:55]
B
Yeah, I guess so.
- [32:55]
A
Right. Like, it's not used like that anymore. It's now, like, which is part of its problem. And if like we can get into that whole.
- [33:02]
B
No, it's a healthiness. It is a whole thing.
- [33:04]
A
But I realized, right. That there are really, really high quality there. There are companies that make high quality products. Super high quality products. They aren't brands, they're companies. Like when I think of a brand, a brand inspires you. They motivate you. You put a hat on of that brand. Yeah, right. Because you feel something for them. The really great product companies felt like Amgen or Pfizer.
- [33:31]
B
Yeah. They felt clinical.
- [33:34]
A
So far removed totally. That they weren't here for my. To help me be better. But those are the companies I used to. Because those are the companies that got recommended to me when I was in the NFL.
- [33:45]
B
Right.
- [33:45]
A
Because of the quality. But I didn't. Like, it's not a brand. It's not like a brand evokes an emotional response.
- [33:53]
B
Yeah.
- [33:53]
A
Right. And like. Yeah, that like they might have a brand name, but they're not really a brand.
- [33:59]
B
So you wanted to like, do it better than anybody else.
- [34:01]
A
So I wanted to bring quality and brand together. Right. And I wanted to do it differently because ultimately I don't believe supplements are the fix. Like our company doesn't like. So when I look at the market, it's so noisy. Like, what do I take? Why do I take it? How do I take it? All that bs and then it's like, is it actually good? Right. Don't know. And are they helping me?
- [34:31]
B
That's right. Well, nobody really knows.
- [34:32]
A
And so it's like this. There's quality. So how do we build the best, highest quality products we can? How do we bring knowledge and help educate people and be their partner on their journey for performance for life. Not performance for just sport. Performance for life. And then how do we actually create a really, really highly curated product portfolio that gets people in the right products at the right time, but also not have the wrong products in there? And so like, that's super important to me. Like the. The curated portfolio, the knowledge and the quality all together create a really differentiated brand. That can create and drive impact.
- [35:13]
B
Well, how do you even know when? Because, because you just said it. It's such a noisy space. Like the supplement space is a trillion dollar industry now. And it's, and it's getting bigger by the day. I mean, and you know, if you're watching social media, every second video is about a product, you know, like a supplement of some kind. People don't know what to take or why and, or why. And the other major is if it's even a quality supplement. That's the problem.
- [35:45]
A
I think you're exactly right. We're bombarded with noise, right? Like everybody's got something. Why? Because there's no barriers to entering our category. You and I could start a supplement company tomorrow.
- [35:56]
B
Now, I know, like, and we could put like baking soda in it.
- [35:59]
A
Whatever you want. Yeah, you do whatever you want, right. Which is scary. So the, like, this is part of why I didn't want to be a supplement company anyway. So we started to think about building it ourselves. Once I realized, like, oh, there's opportunity here to do it better than it's been done before.
- [36:14]
B
And what was your first product?
- [36:15]
A
Well, we started building a protein powder. We started building a hydration product, a fuel product and a recovery product. We started building that.
- [36:23]
B
Right. And that was. What was it? The hydration one was. What was it called?
- [36:27]
A
It was called hydrate. We don't have it.
- [36:28]
B
You don't have it anymore.
- [36:29]
A
And so, so we'll get, we'll get. This will get fun. What I realized was it was really easy to build a supplement company. Really, really hard to do it. Right. Like, like actually like the, like from a money perspective, really expensive, takes a lot of time from a sourcing perspective. And it's like, like the industry is almost set up to not allow new brands to do quality and to do certifications because it's so cost prohibitive, right. To find those things out. Like, like example, like we use NSF certified for sport. It's the top, I believe it's the top certification that you can possibly get because it not only tests for all banned substances, AKA bad shit, it also does label claim accuracy. Right? So everything that's on the label. If it says 20 grams of protein, it has to test within spec. If it says 40 milligrams of sodium, it also have 40 milligrams of sodium. If it doesn't, you fail, can't go to market. So number one, failure of productions happen in my business. And when they fail, they never go to market. Right. That is one challenge. Like when you're a young company and you don't have product, it's real hard to make money and it's real hard to dumpster one. It's also really hard to tell a manufacturer, hey, if we fail, that's on you. You're going to eat it when you have no leg to stand on. Leverage number two is we pay per production run on, on nsf. And the cost doesn't matter if you're big, small. And when you're early on, you say, hey, we're doing a production run of 1000 units and a thousand units back in the day was a lot of money for us. Yeah, right. And the cost NSF on a thousand versus a hundred thousand is the same. Put in perspective today, how much would it cost today? We spend. Last year we spent about 1.6% of our top line revenue, of our revenue total revenue on post production certifications.
- [38:27]
B
Wow.
- [38:28]
A
And that number used to be double, triple, quadruple that. And that just takes straight out the bottom line because guess what, if you don't like we could, we could have had a certification that cost us $100.
- [38:43]
B
So basically most companies might have those certification.
- [38:47]
A
There are great companies out there that certify nsf Certify for sport informed sports. A great one. Usp.
- [38:53]
B
Wait, wait. So the ones that people should be looking for is this NSF number one.
- [38:57]
A
To me, my belief is NSF certified for sport. Right. And I hate the name, but it's the. Because sport implies it's only for athletes. But it's the highest testing that, that NSF does because it's like every other test, you have to pass every other one of their qualifications to get certified for sport.
- [39:18]
B
Really? So that's the top.
- [39:20]
A
That is the top in my opinion. USP does a nice one where it does label claim accuracy on that. But it's not testing like NSF certified for sport is the only thing that professional teams can give their athletes. If it doesn't have that logo, they will not give it to their athletes because the risk of cross contamination is too high. Or what they say. What, what is on the label is not actually in it is also practical. Like nobody wants to have a label that says 20 grams, if not something to have 12. That happens in our industry quite often.
- [39:51]
B
A lot, probably.
- [39:52]
A
Yep.
- [39:53]
B
And then wait, so is there, so you're saying there's times when like you paid for this NSF certification like for a run of a thousand and it came back and it wasn't accurate or wasn't good and Then we call it.
- [40:04]
A
We call it failing nsf. I mean so there's lots of points that our standards are such that, that we can like you can fail inbound specs of ingredients where they don't meet potency or cleanliness or they have too high of a heavy metal that won't fall in all that don't fall into our specs. Like our specs and our standards are super high. So an example, we have a product called Brain Drive. It's a nootropic. We failed spec of it and we could have gone like no law against continuing to produce it. Nothing. Right. Because we failed spec, we are now going to go out of stock because the most recent production run doesn't meet our standards. Right. And because of that we like we just took it off the website. We have 14 days left to serve our subscribers of the, of the product that pass spec the the last production run and now we have to start production all over. We have to source all new ingredients. We have to make sure they pass back and we're going to be out of stock for two and a half, three months which will cost our business a couple hundred thousand dollars. Right. But we don't require, we do that because that's our standards and we don't require like we don't tell those stories. But that's my goal, right? That's my goal is how do we tell those stories better? Because I believe like again our industry is 200 million, $200 billion.
- [41:20]
B
So does that. Are you saying that like most companies like they, they would come back? Let's just say some people we don't know who, we're not mentioning names and you don't, nobody really knows. Right. It could be a brand that someone's using and like you know, a batch comes back and they failed whatever inspection and most companies will maybe just be like, okay, anyway we have like all these orders to fulfill. We're gonna sell it anyway.
- [41:41]
A
There are is no laws, no rules.
- [41:43]
B
Right. It's not like you're gonna die from. It is not poison. It's just not giving you what you, what you expect.
- [41:49]
A
Likely I would also say not very many. Like the amount of manufacturers that comply with NSF certification are pretty tight because their standards are so tight. Like NSF does audits of the facility. They require certain separation of ingredients and all these things. So cross contaminant, they require certain cleaning mechanisms.
- [42:07]
B
So some people won't even apply for it.
- [42:09]
A
Yeah, I mean most people don't even do it. Right. Because a. It's expensive A. And from manufacturing perspective, it's just another cost for them. And so I would say people wouldn't even know like our standards. A lot of people would never even know their products out of spec because they don't do the testing that we do both inbound and post. And so an example like an NSF, like last was it last year in 2023, we failed a production run of vitamin D, right, from nsf. It had, it was it somewhere got cross contaminated. Whether it was in the supply chain, whether it was in the warehouse, we don't know where it was. It failed nsf. Right. And so that product completed in its packaging waiting to clear quarantine. Forklifts go in, pick that packaging up, drop it in a dumpster. Because it failed nsf. It failed. It failed because it had banned substance cross contamination.
- [43:08]
B
What did it have? What could it have been?
- [43:11]
A
Any, Anything. Right. Again, when you think about, give me.
- [43:13]
B
An example, what could be.
- [43:14]
A
DHEA is a banned substance, right? It's right, like testosterone, growth hormone, et cetera.
- [43:20]
B
So what did it fail in?
- [43:22]
A
Like it failed in banned substances. I don't like one of the ingredients, it had enough amounts where we couldn't, like NSF wouldn't pass it. Nothing to say you can't have that in your product. But we can't like, we couldn't pass.
- [43:34]
B
It because it was like the, the ingredient was, was bad. It was not enough.
- [43:40]
A
It was vitamin D. Vitamin D is vitamin D. Yeah. Right. So somewhere along the supply chain, right.
- [43:46]
B
Something, something went awry.
- [43:48]
A
Something went awry. Right.
- [43:49]
B
And you don't know what it is.
- [43:50]
A
We don't know what it is. Doesn't. Honestly doesn't matter. Like, but what we did is like you put tighter parameters on your supply chain. Okay. You're not allowed to store our products next to anything on this list. You're not allowed to ship with anything on this list. You're not allowed to like, right. Like, so we just like, we caught that and now like, guess what? But that there.
- [44:10]
B
How many product, how much of that, like did it cost you to throw that away?
- [44:14]
A
The only good thing is vitamin D is not super expensive. I don't know, some, some dollars, some, some dollars with commas in them.
- [44:21]
B
And that happens often.
- [44:23]
A
We fail every once in a while.
- [44:24]
B
But it doesn't matter to the consumer because you're not going to be giving it to them anyway.
- [44:28]
A
Yeah, but that's the purpose. Like, yeah, wow, you should fail like in our industry, you should fail spec. And so then there's other Things where it's corrective action. So like for like a protein, if we fall out of spec of the sodium on the protein. Right. We technically fail nsf. What's required for us to do is to change the label to like if it says 40 grams, 40 milligrams of sodium and we had 60, we have to change the label to 60. Right. And so it requires transparency, which is really important. Again, if we didn't do NSF certification post, we would, you would never know.
- [45:04]
B
Is this, what is that? Because you know, you're, you're known as like you have third party, third certified. Third third party certification. That is, is that nsf?
- [45:13]
A
That is nsf. So NSF is one informed sports another, USPS another. All really good. All have their differences. I've backed the boat up to nsf. It's also the most expensive with. Which hurts my soul.
- [45:26]
B
But like how much more expensive?
- [45:28]
A
A lot.
- [45:28]
B
Like give me an example.
- [45:29]
A
X. Wow.
- [45:31]
B
That's a lot more for a company to spend. Wow.
- [45:34]
A
Which is. But it's the most comprehensive and it. If you have standards, price doesn't matter.
- [45:40]
B
Okay, but listen, let me ask you. Thank you for saying that. Chocolate whey protein.
- [45:44]
A
Yes.
- [45:44]
B
Because there's a lot of like, you know, controversy over chocolate having a lot more lead in it than vanilla. Is that true?
- [45:51]
A
Thousand percent.
- [45:52]
B
Why is that?
- [45:53]
A
Because cocoa naturally has lead in it. So it's just like plant protein has a lot more heavy metals than non plant protein. Because when you take a bunch of plants and you consolidate them down, plants have heavy metals in them. Right. And it just naturally it has more heavy metal. Right.
- [46:10]
B
So then you should be very, very, very stringent on. I mean people like a consumer like me who like chocolate, like to me, that's why I would use Momentous over another brand because automatically I know that chocolate probably has way more lead.
- [46:25]
A
Yeah.
- [46:25]
B
So you'd want to have a company that you know, would be stringent on their 100% on their 100% NSF standards.
- [46:34]
A
NSF, you have to fall below thresholds on all of, on all heavy metal tests, on all that. So it's like really important. But like essentially you think like any chocolate, anything with cocoa in it is gonna have heavy metals. It just is what it is more than non chocolate. And then plant proteins are always going to have more heavy metals just naturally, like unavoidable.
- [46:57]
B
So because I, I have your, I use your chocolate, your whey protein. Do you even have a plant protein?
- [47:02]
A
Yep. Oh, I didn't even know we have a rice pea. Really, really, really good. Like we just redid it all and honestly like it was a hard project to like make it better. It's really good.
- [47:13]
B
Really?
- [47:14]
A
Yeah.
- [47:14]
B
What is your hero product? Like what's the most popular product, you guys?
- [47:17]
A
That's a, that's a great question. Our hero, this is where our business is super unique. We have no product that makes up more than 10% of sales.
- [47:28]
B
Really?
- [47:28]
A
Yeah. And what you see from our consumers is carts. Right? We, we sell carts. And so like if I would say like it, this is one of the things that makes me most happy is we have, I have this philosophy called the Momentous three. It's like the three most important products that have the most clinical research that have the biggest impact on performance today and performance tomorrow forever. Right. They're called Momentous3. It's creatine omegas and protein top three SKUs. Right, right, right. And it's like they're not sexy. They really aren't. But over, like back to this bone crushing consistency. Like you consume enough protein, you're consistent with your omegas and you take creatine. What the science says is it's going to have long term implications for lean muscle mass, long term implications for brain health and connective tissue health and other functions like those things matter. Of all this products on the market, only other product that has as much research as those things in our category is caffeine.
- [48:30]
B
Right. Like magnesium doesn't even have that much.
- [48:33]
A
That much magnesium has great research, but.
- [48:35]
B
Not as much as creatine.
- [48:36]
A
No. But when you, but also when you back up, it's like, not everybody like it. A lot of people are deficient in magnesium. But you should get tested right. Before you just start randomly taking a magnesium.
- [48:47]
B
Really have like, even for that, it's.
- [48:48]
A
Easy, it's easy to get tested and may like I don't know. I also had to draw the line. Like how I got to the Momentous three was everybody asked me what should I take?
- [48:57]
B
And yes.
- [48:59]
A
And early days I was like, this is what I take.
- [49:03]
B
Yeah.
- [49:03]
A
And I was like, that's not right. That's not helping get people in the right products the right time. And how, how did I figure out what I should take? I talked to really smart people and asked them and they said, what are your challenges? What do you care about? What are you worried about? All of these things. That's how I got to my stack.
- [49:18]
B
What is your stack?
- [49:19]
A
Let's get in there. Not, not right now. Like let's, let's sit down this path because we're on the momentous three and it's important to me.
- [49:24]
B
Okay, but you'll tell me.
- [49:26]
A
I will, I will, thousand percent will tell you. So I went and I asked all these people, anybody came up and talked to you, that was performance driven, right? Meaning like they care about health, fitness, like they're training. They're not like, just like I need to get healthy.
- [49:42]
B
Right, right, right, right.
- [49:43]
A
What are the, what are the performance? I call it performance for life. Right. Like, like how do you do the things you love for longer? Right. Over really long periods of time. Right. Like me in 20 years I'm gonna have the same mindset performance. I want to be able to do things I love for longer. So I would say what are the, what are the top five things you give people? What are the top five supplements you recommend people supplements or sports nutrition or however you want to take it? Everybody always had three of the same in the top five. And really most of them had another two the same as well. Every single one of them said protein omegas and creatine. And I was like, why? They're like tens ten plus thousand papers, clinically published papers. They have really good short term and long term evidence, zero cross reactivity. And they're really actually hard to get from your daily diet. You can like if you eat salmon every day, you're pretty good on omega 3s, right? Protein you can also get from your diet and even like some of these people like, well, protein is not a supplement. Protein is just protein. Like that's a macro.
- [50:45]
B
That's what I was gonna say.
- [50:46]
A
It doesn't classify in that category anyways. I've gone down that rabbit hole with.
- [50:49]
B
People of like I was gonna say.
- [50:50]
A
You gotta give me three, you gotta give me three. I have to get three things that we, we do. And so those are the three. Magnesium was in there and the D was in there.
- [50:58]
B
But what was the last one? Vitamin D. A vitamin D. It's like.
- [51:02]
A
I believe three is a powerful number. Tell somebody three, master that and then add on. Right? Figure out what your use case is. You have connective tissue health. Are you worried about brain health? Are you worried about focus and, or stress or cortisol hormone? Then you start winding down, right down the list of like, what's important. But like if you haven't built your foundation and you don't continue to care for your foundation, which I consider is the momentous three, you can't build a strong house or strong anything on top of it.
- [51:34]
B
Right?
- [51:35]
A
Right. It all starts with the building Blocks. Right. Like, if you're taking. Right. If you're really worried about connective tissue health and you want to take collagen for connective tissue health, but you're not hitting your protein goals, it actually doesn't really matter. Hit your protein goals and then add on top. Right. Because protein is a fundamental building block of every. Of everything in our body. Collagen has really cool implications for connective tissue health. But again, if you're not, like, if you're hitting your protein goals, protein turns into collagen peptides.
- [52:07]
B
Well, I was going to ask you about collagen peptides because there's a lot of. Again, there's a lot of back and forth about this supplement. Right. Because some people say that you can't really get collagen from a supplement. You have to. You know, it's. It's really hard to. What is your. Because you do so much research.
- [52:24]
A
Yeah.
- [52:24]
B
What is the research that you guys found on taking like a collagen supplement?
- [52:30]
A
Collagen has incredible implications around connective tissue health. Joints, ligaments, tendons. Not if you take it for three weeks. Not if you take it for a month. It's like three months minimum.
- [52:43]
B
Really.
- [52:44]
A
Right. On it. Consistently. Right. So collagen peptides is essentially like a peptide is just a string of amino acids. Right. Protein is a massive string of amino acids. Right. I mean, collagen is protein, but. Right. It like our skin, hair, nails, joints, ligaments, tendons, collagen, all the things y major collagen. Right. And as we age, our ability. Right. To naturally produce collagen actually declines in our body. So it makes sense that you would supplement it if you have connective tissue health injuries or questions, or if you're doing something that has massive connect. Like if you're a triathlete and you're doing Ironman triathletes, you probably should be taking collagen because you're putting a ton, a ton of wear and tear on your body. So I'll go back. Collagen has good research on it. Is it like protein research? Is it like. Is it like creatine research? No, but it has. If you're thinking about connective tissue health, and that is a challenge for you as a human, collagen is a pretty good option.
- [53:43]
B
Right?
- [53:44]
A
Right on there. But you got to take it consistently. And then there's some really unique things out there. Has to have vitamin C in it. Doesn't have vitamin C in it. Not really effective.
- [53:55]
B
Really? Why?
- [53:57]
A
Vitamin C is a co factor. My science guy's gonna crush me. It basically helps. It helps get it to the right places.
- [54:06]
B
Vitamin C does.
- [54:07]
A
Vitamin C does. So you have to have it with vitamin C. You have to take for your joint, for your connective tissue off. You have to take it before you load your body. So pre workout is the, like, optimal time. Because our joints tend, tendons and ligaments don't have a ton of blood flow. Except for when we're training. Right. So even if you're going for a walk, like you need to take, you need to have collagen on before that so it can get delivered because you need increased blood flow to deliver the nutrients. And number three is there's some data that says collagen and caffeine don't go too well together.
- [54:36]
B
Really? Because I drink coffee in the morning with your collagen. Is that not a good thing?
- [54:41]
A
Opt so optimal would be always have it with vitamin c. Take it 60 minutes before you load, work out, train whatever it is, whatever we want to call it. And never take it with caffeine. Worst thing to do is not take it at all. So if you want to take it with caffeine, if you want to take it post workout, if you want, like, it's better than not taking it, but to maximize it, there are some tricks. Right, right. Like that. That. Right. The literature points to.
- [55:09]
B
Do you make a vitamin C like a liposomal vitamin C?
- [55:12]
A
No, but we have vitamin C in both our collagen products.
- [55:14]
B
Yeah. I was going to say, because you actually, you put the vitamin C in the collagen peptides.
- [55:19]
A
Yeah.
- [55:19]
B
Which is unique, I think, which is.
- [55:21]
A
Most people don't.
- [55:22]
B
Yeah.
- [55:23]
A
There are a lot of people that do, but, like, a lot of people that don't.
- [55:26]
B
A lot of people. Right. That's the whole point. Right. Like, this is the reason why I wanted to even have you on this podcast is to kind of give people the awareness, like, make them cognizant of the fact that they should be checking their supplements, but, like, what supplements they're using if they're. Because not just for the efficacy, but for the, like, over, like, all these things we're talking about, like the certifications. Like that could be people could be buying air and they have no idea.
- [55:48]
A
No idea.
- [55:49]
B
Right.
- [55:49]
A
No idea.
- [55:50]
B
Which is really scary.
- [55:52]
A
Yeah. So we actually never finished the story about momentous. How we got to momentous. So we started.
- [55:57]
B
Oh, yeah, right.
- [55:58]
A
Building it ourselves. This is. I love flowing like this. We started building it ourselves. And I realized it's really easy, but really hard. And then I was like, we're going to be so disingenuous to our ecosystem, like, of military, of pro and college sports, like, if we just launch another. Me too protein, Right, Right. And everything that I've done in my philosophy was be at the forefront of high performance. Be at the forefront of high performance, which means do it better than it's ever been done before. Work with the best, only have the best products, right? Be a challenger and know what you know and know what you don't know. Anyways, so we're, like, starting to produce these products, like, getting down that. And I'm just like, we're this. We're doing this wrong. We're doing this wrong. And there's this brand, Momentous, and they were built in NFL and MLB locker rooms by the top dietitians, and they're of like, let's build the best sports nutrition brand that we all wish we had. All these dietitians. And they built it with this guy, Matt Wan, who's awesome entrepreneur, right? And like, built. Built a really cool business. But, like, like, my business amp Human Momentous was kind of stuck in this elite performance space, and both brands were struggling to get out. Like, they were trying to build a really good sports nutrition brand. I was trying to build a high performance company, right? And we had these. Both. These really unique ecosystems. And I knew one of the board members at Momentous, and I was like, hey, we're gonna go into space. Got any recommendations? He's like, dude, you should buy us. And I was like, okay, right? And it was like. Then I started thinking, it's like they've. They've figured out sourcing, they figured out manufacturing, they figured out certifications, and they already sell and are trusted by all of our customers for PR lotion. This is a pretty authentic fit. They have a huge tam, right? We are disruptors, and we have this, like, crazy network. Like, people want to work, work with us because we're doing it so differently. Like, that was part of the draw, right? And so what if we smash the two together? Could we create a human performance company which is a shift from high performance? So the goal became, how do you democratize high performance and turn it into human performance? Because high performance is what happens in the NFL. Human performance is what you and I do every day. We're forming a shoe anyway. So.
- [58:21]
B
No, it's. I didn't even think about that. You're right. Like, high performance to human performance. Because we're doing something very different than, like, the NFL.
- [58:30]
A
And when you seek high performance, it's really interesting. High performers sacrifice health as a football player to be great at football.
- [58:40]
B
So true. Yeah.
- [58:41]
A
Right. To be. Honestly, to be really great at anything, like, to be a great executive, you have to sacrifice things that are really good for you long term. You just do. Like, that's. To be great. You have to. There's a cost. There's a session cost. Right. To be great. Anyway. So.
- [59:00]
B
You know what, though? That is so true. Like, I. I wanted to like, like think about that. Because people automatically assume, like, if you think high performance, that they're like hitting every stride perfectly because they're a high performer. But the truth is, if you really think about it, to be a high performer, you are sacrificing a lot of things like sleep, eat, eating, like, because you don't have, like.
- [59:24]
A
Yeah, I hit my head for a living. Guess what? I know that's terrible.
- [59:27]
B
Exactly. To be the best football player, you're going to have to do some really bad things.
- [59:32]
A
Yes.
- [59:32]
B
To yourself.
- [59:33]
A
Yeah.
- [59:33]
B
So that's interesting how you went from the high performance, the human performance. So different, but so accurate.
- [59:39]
A
But it's. How do you democratize the best things that are happening here and bringing them to consumer. So anyways, we smashed these two companies together. It was the hardest thing I've ever done still in my life. Most challenging. I went through crazy investor dynamics and board dynamics of like, we did an all equity deal. Right. Two different companies, two different cultures. And it was really hard.
- [59:58]
B
How much did you raise?
- [59:59]
A
You know, raise. We did all equity deal.
- [60:01]
B
We all equity.
- [60:03]
A
So we just like all their shareholders got shares in my business.
- [60:07]
B
Wow.
- [60:07]
A
And it was pretty close to a merger of equals. Like, and that was, that was part of the challenge too, is like, everybody like, oh, our way was the best. No, our way was the best. And I'm like, both ways are. We're doing something different. Right. Like, it took me about nine months to like, actually meet for me and Erica to be like, hey, we're. We're trying to blend two companies.
- [60:28]
B
Yeah.
- [60:29]
A
Together into cultures and all this. And it's like, put a stake in the ground. We get to make the decision. And that was part of our challenge is like, because we let it like young leaders in a business. Like, we, like, had really great boards on both sides and powerful people involved, and we let the tail wag us a little.
- [60:48]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [60:48]
A
And therefore they're like, no, this is how it should be done. No, this is how it should be done. And ultimately at like nine months, Eric and I were like, we're Doing it our way now. This is the way. Like, if you try to blend two cultures, you have no culture. If you try to be two things, you have nothing. Right. It's like, this is the way forward. And it's like, it was hard as a leader to realize, like, how I'd done it before. Didn't matter. How they want to do it. Doesn't matter. Right. Be definitive in what you do, because that's ultimately what matters. People crave direction. I don't need to please everybody. What I'm doing is not for everybody. My team and my culture, Erica and Maya's team and my culture is not for everybody. And that's okay. Right? That's. It's hard to realize that. Right. And it's also really hard when you take two companies and merge them together and you're really small still to be like, how can we live without a person? Do we. Like, we really need that person? That person's good. Right, right, right. It's like, we only have 11 spots on the team, and if you lose one, that's almost 10%. Like, do we have. Now we're in a different place where it's like, you can make decisions like that because you're. We have 55, 60 people now.
- [61:57]
B
Yeah.
- [61:57]
A
Right. Anyways, so we.
- [61:59]
B
I love that. That's actually a good story.
- [62:01]
A
I acquired this brand, right. And that's how we became Momentous. Well, we originally wanted to keep our original name, AMP Human.
- [62:08]
B
AMP Human.
- [62:09]
A
Turns out we had some. Some trademark challenges. Mountain Dew owns the trademark for AMP of really, like, all energy drinks, sports drinks, all of that category. And then GNC had a product line called amped, like, commodity.
- [62:25]
B
Oh, really?
- [62:25]
A
And it was like, well, we don't get to be amp human anymore. We are now momentous. And it was 100% the right move. I'm glad. Trademark attorney forced our hand because we probably would have made the wrong decision. Momentous is aspirational. Means something. Right? Like, it's. It can be built upon. I was like, amp Human is just a stupid name that I picked that I. Right, whatever. So we smashed those two companies together. You know, basically post that. We're about a $5 million combined business. Before that, it was like 3 million and 2 million, and we were that same size for about 12 months afterwards. And then we just. What we did was important.
- [63:13]
B
Let me share my details. Daily routine game changer with you. It's the Momentous3. I've been using their protein, their creatine and omega 3 combo for months now. And the Results are undeniable. These nutrients are key for long term health and performance. But hard to get enough of through diet alone. The crea pure creatine boosts both physical and your mental performance. The grass fed whey tastes great with no weird aftertaste. And their Omega 3 is a must for recovery. Since adding these, my energy, my recovery and my overall well being has really improved. So if you want better performance, this is the way to go. Visit livemomentous.com and use my code Jen for 35% off your first subscription. That's livemomentous.com code Jen for 35% off your 1st subscription. Trust me, you'll be happy you did. What was the first product though? Oh, the first hydra.
- [64:24]
A
You said the first product that that Amp Human was building. So Momentous had protein, they had plant and, and whey, they had collagen, they had creatine, they had just launched an omega A brain drive and a product called the Elite Sleep.
- [64:40]
B
But you also had so the hydrate product.
- [64:42]
A
So Amp Human was working on three products before we bought. Before we bought them.
- [64:48]
B
Okay.
- [64:49]
A
And all three of those products were too far in production when we made the acquisition. So we had a recovery product.
- [64:57]
B
Right.
- [64:57]
A
That we never launched.
- [64:59]
B
Yeah. You didn't like that one?
- [65:00]
A
Well, it like they just had a better product.
- [65:03]
B
Okay.
- [65:03]
A
The Momentous brand had a better product.
- [65:05]
B
Yeah. Good. Okay. You're very honest, like very like self aware. It's like you have no shame about saying these things which is so great for transparency. Right. Because people.
- [65:13]
A
Yeah, it's hard. I learned as an athlete if you can't be open with yourself on like how you did, it's really hard to grow.
- [65:22]
B
Yeah, I agree.
- [65:23]
A
Anyways, thank you for saying that. So we, we had this recovery where there is one human being that uses recovery in this world. Amp Human recovery. I've got three things left of the entire production run. I've over the last four years have been using the entire production run because I'm just like, there's nothing wrong with it. We spend a lot of money on it. Write it off the books, all consume it.
- [65:47]
B
Okay, so what is it you said the recovery.
- [65:49]
A
So it's recovery that I'm almost done with. I never have to use again on there. And it's just like protein and carbs. It's a good product but it's not a great product.
- [65:57]
B
So you're just going to keep on using it. I'm almost done is.
- [66:00]
A
I'm almost done. I'm like three months away from never having to never having to do consume it again. And it's on like this just disgusting looking packaging. It's like that's hilarious on it. So. And people on the team are like, I was like, I paid for it. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's not our consumer product.
- [66:17]
B
Okay, Right.
- [66:18]
A
So then we had a hydrate product which was just electrolytes.
- [66:21]
B
Like so kind of like. What's that thing?
- [66:25]
A
Liquid ID V element. So a non sugar. A non sugar. And then we had a fuel which is an intro workout, carbohydrate and electrolytes. We still have fuel. Fuel is the only one.
- [66:37]
B
But why not the electrolyte that's like super popular right now.
- [66:41]
A
It's coming, we're relaunching.
- [66:42]
B
Oh, okay.
- [66:43]
A
So we had hydrate and we had fuel. And part of the challenge that we had when we put the two businesses together is we had working capital challenges. We had like SKU management team and all of that. And we just had to like make some decisions. And it was like hydrate sales were whatever, they weren't great, they weren't bad. It was like easy kill.
- [67:05]
B
Yeah, right.
- [67:06]
A
Like so we just did one production run and just moved on on that. And now we're in product development again to build a similar product but better. But fuel, the fuel product is the same product we launched with and that.
- [67:18]
B
One was what it had.
- [67:19]
A
Fuel is carbohydrates and electrolytes.
- [67:21]
B
Electrolytes.
- [67:22]
A
So think of it. So we designed hydrate to be everyday hydration.
- [67:27]
B
Yeah.
- [67:27]
A
Or 60 minutes or less of exercise. So if you're training for 60 minutes or less, likelihood is you're not burning through your glycogen stores. And when you, when but when you train for 60 minutes or more, your glycogen stores get depleted and you have to replenish those with glucose sugar. Right. And so for 60 minute plus long bouts of exercise, hiking, you name it, you need to onboard carbohydrates, just normal endurance athletes, et cetera. If you don't, you end up bonking or you have to be keto adapted which means you can convert. Right. Fat and protein into glycogen pretty effectively.
- [68:09]
B
Right. Those are all come. Those are like still there. And you're now doing this hydrating.
- [68:13]
A
Yeah. So fuel, fuel is there. Fuel is one of our best kept secrets in the portfolio. One of our top sellers in pro and college sports. Like it's really cool. Really, it's really well designed. Think of it as like Gatorade. That's designed with today's Science.
- [68:29]
B
Yeah. Really? Okay, but wait, but let's go back to your stack. I want to know what.
- [68:34]
A
Okay.
- [68:34]
B
Because you don't take a lot of stuff.
- [68:36]
A
I don't take a ton of stuff. I am religious. Religious about the momentous three. And there's a big reason why Two things in the momentous three, Omegas and creatine are very tied to brain health. So if I take a step back and say, okay, what I've done and where am I going? I'm really concerned about brain health.
- [68:55]
B
Because of your background.
- [68:56]
A
Because of my background. Right. And family history. Right in there. So like I played a contact sport. I had thousands upon thousands upon thousands of micro concussive hits, subconcussive events and. Right. I have a family history of dementia and Alzheimer's. Like so I need to stack the deck as much as I can. Creatine omegas have awesome data around long term brain health. Awesome.
- [69:20]
B
Does it matter where you're getting your Omega 3 source from? Because to me that's very important too. That's why to me there's certain things that you have to be diligent on the brand that you use. So that's one of them.
- [69:32]
A
So protein's super interesting. It's like protein is kind of protein. There are different levels of protein, et cetera. But it's a fundamental macro. And like if you're buying 20 grams of whey protein, you're getting 20, roughly 20 grams of protein omega 3s. Right. The difference in the category is as wide as the Grand Canyon and as deep as the Grand Canyon. It is insane.
- [69:50]
B
Yeah.
- [69:51]
A
Right. So number one is about one and a half grams of EPA DHA, which are the two omega 3s that matter is about the clinically efficacious dose a day, which is a lot of Omega 3, which is a lot of that Right. Now fish. I'm not saying fish oil because fish oil is not the same as omega 3. Fish oil does have omega 3 in it, but you can buy a fish oil that has very little Omega 3 in it, that has a lot of grams of fish oil, which is just oil from fish. And then where you source omega threes from what types of fish? You get it from matter. Fish carry heavy metals. So what do you want? Super low on the, on the food chain. Also how you process it. Right. Like high heat kills a lot of stuff. Not so good. Right. Like our capsules are kind of amberish. Why? Because if they're clear and opaque, it allows for oxidation. Right. Which means they can go rancid Right. Like so there's all these things in fish oil. There are some really great Omega 3 companies out there. Really great. I'll put our Omega 3 up with against any Omega 3 that's on the market. We've designed it to be great. We know what port in Norway it comes from.
- [70:57]
B
Really?
- [70:59]
A
We know exactly what port it comes from.
- [71:02]
B
Do you have high EPA and DHA in them?
- [71:05]
A
Yep. We have 800 milligrams of both in one serving. So in two capsules we have 1.6 grams of Omega 3s, you know, 1.6 gram capsule.
- [71:16]
B
So listen, that's interesting. So people who are listening to this. So if you're buying a fish oil, you have to make sure you have the right. You, you have a high D and an epa.
- [71:25]
A
Epa, yeah.
- [71:27]
B
And because otherwise it could just be oil from a fish which, which does nothing for you. Right. So that's interesting.
- [71:33]
A
And so a lot of things you'll say, oh, you'll see fish oil 1.5 grams. You'll see omega 3s, right. 500 milligrams, you'll say C, DHA or no, you say omegas because there's omega sixes and omega 3s and like, because like you could have the third omega 3.
- [71:51]
B
Yeah, right, yeah.
- [71:52]
A
Which you don't. We don't need. You don't need right on there. So like it's super important. It's a wild west and always sourced from small fish. Always sourced from small sardines, mackerels. Right. Like the bigger fish, the problem. And if they don't say where it's.
- [72:08]
B
Sourced from, you should ask, how about algae? I heard that's also a very good source.
- [72:12]
A
Algae is super interesting. So we are launching a vegan omega 3 based is really expensive for the record. And it's hard to get. So we're launching the most DHA, EPA, potent omega, vegan omega 3 that's on the market.
- [72:27]
B
When does that come out?
- [72:28]
A
Oh yeah, end of June.
- [72:31]
B
Really?
- [72:31]
A
Yep.
- [72:32]
B
Okay. Because why is that more expensive than doing it the fish way, like the non vegan way.
- [72:39]
A
Omega 3s from fish, like it's a.
- [72:41]
B
Byproduct, it's easy to get.
- [72:43]
A
Right.
- [72:43]
B
It's not that algae you gotta like, you gotta extract it.
- [72:46]
A
And there's not a big market for like, like when you think about like collagen. Collagen is a byproduct of meat processing.
- [72:52]
B
Right.
- [72:53]
A
Tons of it. Right. And when you can get a byproduct that like in a huge market, like readily accessible demand, whereas like algae Got to grow the algae. It's got to be a special type of algae. Got it. Like how you process it, just different. Right on there. So like manufacturing and demand is low. Like if demand is. If supply is really high and demand is really high, like. Right. Or if supply is really ready. Like you can get things for cheap, like Omega 3s. Right. Quality matters. But you can get them fair. But like a vegan omega to like meet the standards we had of like EPA and DHA and the combo of one to one, like was hard. Yeah, we had like, we had to work pretty hard with manufacturing on that.
- [73:30]
B
What about beef tallow?
- [73:31]
A
That's another big beef tallow is like another interesting one. Yeah, it just.
- [73:34]
B
Yeah, it's very popular right now. I'm hearing a lot about beef tallow. People are sending me a lot of stuff with beef tallow should be fat. It's just be fat. Right.
- [73:42]
A
I mean, at the end of the day, like you fat, natural fat sources from animals, from whatever are better than synthetic fat sources.
- [73:51]
B
Yes, always.
- [73:52]
A
And the more you have to process a fat, probably not better. Not for you. Maybe slightly worse. Right. Like, there's a lot of talk about seed oils and I don't have a stance on that. I just like, hey, you should be eating more whole foods, less processed foods, which means less seed oils. Like all of it builds up. But also, you know what? Sugar is not great if you're sedentary. But like having carbohydrates is not the devil if you train hard.
- [74:17]
B
Right. I think it's a lot about common sense and not extreme. Right?
- [74:21]
A
Yeah.
- [74:21]
B
Like even the fact that here you are, you're a founder of a major supplement company and you're like, listen, take your creatine and take your omega 3 and your protein, which I think is still a macro and nutrient, but nevertheless. And you'll be good. Like it's a nutrient. But I'm saying, like you're not like all these other products are as a great supplement. Like, it's a great add on.
- [74:43]
A
Yeah.
- [74:43]
B
But if you don't have the foundation, who cares?
- [74:45]
A
So then go back my stack. So I have that. I'm pretty consistent on collagen because I played pro football. I'm a big man and I like to push myself on that.
- [74:55]
B
And then how do you do it in your shake? Like the.
- [74:58]
A
We have a collagen shot that's really easy that I just take before I work out. I train mostly in the morning. Right. You just like, it's like a little gel shot and you Just hit it. Which is super cool. We actually won a government innovation contract, an $800,000 contract to help develop that product. And we have another cool product that we're working on that was part of that grant, which is cool. Anyways, in that realm of, like, connective tissue health.
- [75:19]
B
Right.
- [75:20]
A
I am very religious about turmeric, and some people will be like, oh, no, turmeric. But inflammation is real in my life again.
- [75:30]
B
Right. So you're taking turmeric for your inflammation?
- [75:33]
A
For my inflammation, yeah. And it's super interesting. You talk to some of, like, the pro sports dietitians.
- [75:38]
B
Yeah.
- [75:38]
A
And they're like, oh, we. We won't use turmeric. Do you know why?
- [75:41]
B
Why?
- [75:41]
A
Because it's too good. Because inflammation, the inflammation response is really important when you think about adaptation. Right. And so when you train really hard, if you don't, like, you create inflammation response in your muscles.
- [75:54]
B
Yeah.
- [75:54]
A
And that inflammation response is what ultimately is creating the adaptation for. For your muscles to build back stronger and faster.
- [75:59]
B
Interesting.
- [76:00]
A
And so they don't give their athletes turmeric unless they're injured or have some challenge. Right. For me, I don't give two shits about adaptation. Right. Like, I'm not trying to run faster. I'm not trying to get stronger. I actually would like to get less strong. Right. Like, it's like, you want to be less strong. I. If I lift weights, I just get like, yeah. Part of me being a genetic mutant, part of being NFL star, I just lift a little bit of weights, and I'm just like, it's true. Right? Like, it's what made me able to be a great NFL player. It's like, hey, let's start squatting a little bit. And it's like, jeff, you don't fit in your pants anymore. You've been squatting for three weeks. I'm like, I just. It's my problem. It's like, it's my curse.
- [76:38]
B
Right. Like, anyways, I love that. So funny.
- [76:41]
A
So I, like, that's why I take turmeric inflammation and management. Inflammation is super important to me.
- [76:47]
B
Okay.
- [76:48]
A
I take our multivitamin, and I do that because I'm on the road a ton. And it's a very comprehensive multivitamin that is. Is powerful to me.
- [76:56]
B
I take the multivitamin, too. And I. I wasn't sure why, because there's so much. Again, controversy over, like, do you need a multivitamin? Blah, blah, blah.
- [77:05]
A
I think you need to be careful on multivitamins because at the end of the day, the right amount of things matter in. Right, Right.
- [77:15]
B
Get your blood tested.
- [77:16]
A
Blood tested. But also like if it's a compressed capsule, really hard to digest. Right. Like we have our. It's our multi. Is a 4 caps or like it's not small, it's 4 big caps. And why to get the right doses of the things that we cared about, it had to be four capsules. And we didn't want to do a compressed tablet because the efficacy on compressed tablets are lower. Et cetera or gummy. That does. Has nothing in it. So it's like we just made the Rolls Royce of a multivitamin. Right.
- [77:44]
B
Wow.
- [77:44]
A
Right. And a multivitamin to me. Right. I travel a ton. Like, it just is my. It's my cover, my basis. Like I would not recommend it. Like a lot of people take multivitamin, but like it's not where I would start. I'm pretty, pretty. I'm very religious about Vidi because I always test low.
- [78:04]
B
Really talk about that. I wanted to talk to you about like hormones and testosterone and all these things.
- [78:10]
A
Yeah.
- [78:10]
B
Is that product. Isn't that the product that you guys. Isn't that that product? Vitamin D. Oh, vitamin D. Yeah. Oh, okay. Cuz you have another pro. Vitamin D. Of course, everybody always takes vitamin D is like, like kind of like become like the. Like it's very.
- [78:26]
A
A lot of people are deficient.
- [78:28]
B
Everyone's deficient. And they kind of feel like everyone now just takes vitamin D. But now to access like if. Now when I got my blood tested.
- [78:35]
A
Yeah.
- [78:35]
B
I'm now too high in vitamin D. But you call it. What do you call it?
- [78:39]
A
I just call it 50.
- [78:40]
B
Okay. That's why I'm like, what are you talking about? You're good. But, but now. But, but the problem is a lot of people are taking it too much now.
- [78:47]
A
Yeah. 100%. Right. Because you can take a lot. Like it's easy to take 20,000 micrograms.
- [78:53]
B
Even if you're taking 5,000 a day.
- [78:54]
A
Yeah.
- [78:55]
B
Which I think the, like the.
- [78:56]
A
Is like the norm. Yeah.
- [78:59]
B
If you're taking that every single day for a very long period of time, you could test.
- [79:04]
A
Right. That's again, like you can just test for it. It's not that hard.
- [79:07]
B
Test every six. That's why it's important because people are now taking like even. People said I was. I was low in vitamin B, so I started taking vitamin B and now I'm too low and now I'm too high in vitamin B. It's very important to be very.
- [79:19]
A
Yeah.
- [79:19]
B
On top of getting your Blood tested. Because then you could be taking too much of something which is also hazardous.
- [79:25]
A
100%. So always like that's the thing with a lot of these other things you should just test. Yeah, right. Like VIT d magnesium. Like most people are deficient in magnesium, but it's easy to test for it.
- [79:37]
B
Again, like it's not that like you take magnesium too.
- [79:40]
A
I don't, I don't take magnesium very often.
- [79:42]
B
So.
- [79:42]
A
And then it's then, then I go into like what do I take occasionally? Our sleep pack. I take when I travel.
- [79:49]
B
Why?
- [79:50]
A
Because I sleep really good at home. I don't have any challenges sleeping.
- [79:53]
B
But when you travel, you sleep badly.
- [79:55]
A
Different, different environments. I also, I also, when I travel I don't have the same environment that sets me up to be successful.
- [80:04]
B
Yeah, I know, I get it right.
- [80:05]
A
Like, I know like, I think a.
- [80:06]
B
Lot of people are like that when I travel.
- [80:07]
A
Like, like last night slept in a hotel I worked to the second I went to that I started to go to sleep like which was like 9:30, which is not optimal when I'm at home. Like I get to talk to my wife and we get to relax, we get to sauna, we get to do whatever we want. Like.
- [80:22]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [80:22]
A
It's like much more of a process and a routine. And like you have like the same place I worked for the last three hours is three feet from my bed.
- [80:30]
B
I know.
- [80:31]
A
It's so, so it's like, okay, I need to help down regulate which is what sleep pack does and I need to increase the quality.
- [80:36]
B
What's in it?
- [80:37]
A
L theanine, apigenin and mag 3 8. And so l Theanine and apigenin. Apigenin is just like, it's what's found in chamomile tea or grapefruit. And it helps you downregulate. Right. Same with L theanine downregulate found in tea as well. To like how do you like, right. Everything we do upregulates us work, TV screens up everything. How do we downregulate so that we can get, get to sleep and have higher quality? The magnesium threonate is one of the only, is the only form of magnesium that can cross the blood brain barrier. And magnesium can help. Right. Increase your quality of sleep, but also just at night a lot of really cool things happen to your brain. Right. And having magnesium on board appears to be very beneficial to that. So I take that when I travel.
- [81:24]
B
And it works, it works.
- [81:26]
A
And I take, when I, when I jump time zones. So not When I come to la, when I'm going to like, New York or something, or I take our product called the Elite Sleep. And Elite Sleep was designed in correlation with an MLB team that helped them jump time zones. And so Elite Sleep has melatonin in it and Tart Cherry. And I'm not like, I, I do not believe melatonin should be taken regularly. I think it should be taken very infrequently.
- [81:52]
B
Yeah.
- [81:52]
A
Melatonin helps you reset your circadian rhythm. Right. And so when you jump a time zone or multiple time zones, it's good for that. Like that's what, that's what it's built for. That's what our body naturally does. And so it helps switch that time zone so that you can get on that.
- [82:09]
B
How long do you take it for?
- [82:10]
A
Oh, I, I, if I'm like going to New York and I'm in New York, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I take it Tuesday night and Wednesday night.
- [82:18]
B
Oh, you do, you take. Okay.
- [82:20]
A
And then I like. But if.
- [82:21]
B
Did you want to get adapted to these things like sleep, the sleep one or sleep pack?
- [82:25]
A
No, that's what's really cool about Sleep pack and, and why it is, what it is is it's all natural, non habit forming. Like it, like people have an impact on it. Melatonin, 1000% is habit forming.
- [82:38]
B
Yeah.
- [82:38]
A
Yeah.
- [82:39]
B
I'm not a big melatonin person.
- [82:40]
A
The more you take it, the more you need. Right. And then it becomes really hard because melatonin is just a hormone in our body essentially. And then you need it and your body stops producing it. Right. It's like so, like, so I take that spotty. I also take our adaptogens, Rhodiola and Ashwagandha.
- [83:00]
B
I love Rhodiola. It's like kind of like a, it's kind of like the Adderall. That's natural, isn't it? That. It's kind of like a natural Adderall.
- [83:07]
A
Helps you regulate cortisol and stress, essentially.
- [83:11]
B
Oh, I also think it gets you focused.
- [83:12]
A
Yeah, that's like, that's part of it.
- [83:14]
B
Yeah.
- [83:15]
A
Right. But I use it as when I'm in crazy heavy training blocks.
- [83:20]
B
Yeah.
- [83:21]
A
Or when I'm in really, really stressful times. Because it helps, it helps you in those moments.
- [83:27]
B
Yeah.
- [83:28]
A
And so like that's how I use adaptogens. I probably use five times a month, I use that stack.
- [83:35]
B
Right. So you're not, oh, really? So you're not using it every single day.
- [83:38]
A
I personally don't like, because I don't, I don't find I need it every day.
- [83:41]
B
Right. The ones you take every day is the creatine, the omegas.
- [83:44]
A
Right.
- [83:45]
B
Protein.
- [83:45]
A
I mean, I take like, and college. Five scoops of protein. Collagen, multivitamin.
- [83:50]
B
D. Yeah. Vitamin D. You call bit D. Yeah. Okay, can we talk about this, the whole testosterone thing for a second? And hormones.
- [83:58]
A
Yep.
- [83:58]
B
Because I. You had a product. I thought that was like, like a natural.
- [84:03]
A
We have Tonga Ali.
- [84:04]
B
That's where I can never pronounce it.
- [84:05]
A
Yeah, yeah. Nobody can.
- [84:07]
B
What's it called?
- [84:07]
A
Tongat. Ollie. It's T O N G K A T. And it has like six words posted that like, it's a root of a. Of an herb, plant, shrub.
- [84:19]
B
And does it work?
- [84:21]
A
The data suggests it does. From a testosterone perspective. Like, it has really cool implications around testosterone. And for us, we built that product with Dr. Huberman. But hormones and testosterone is play such an important role, and testosterone levels are a real challenge. And when we think about our product philosophy is like the 8020 rule. Let's have the 20% that drives 80% of the value. And if people are thinking about, oh, I need to help my hormones, my testosterone levels, how do you give them something that's not testosterone replacement therapy, TRT or whatever.
- [84:57]
B
Right.
- [84:57]
A
Okay. There's a herb that's been around for a long time, tested. There's not a crap ton of research on it, but there's enough to say, hey, this has some cool testosterone implications and people will use it, see cool testosterone results. But again, it's still progressing. We had another product on the market called Fadoja. Right. That had early data around testosterone, but the data stopped progressing, and we pulled it from the market last year because it wasn't up to our snuff in terms of efficacy, really.
- [85:31]
B
So the testosterone. The reason why I'm asking about hormones is because we talk about that a lot on this podcast and off the podcast with my friends. And there's been such an incline in people who have been. Who are now taking testosterone very young, like in their, like, 30s. And once you're on that train, you're on that train. You're on that train, you know. And so what's other old? I mean, yes, we all know, like, oh, you lift heavy weights and you do this. It helps, you know, boost your testosterone, but not that much. Let's be honest. Yeah, it's not going to, like, get you from a. Like, as a man. It's not going to get you from 200 to 800. Not happening. But so, like, would you say if they started taking, like, this natural testosterone, it would be helpful. Or what are other things that you've seen in the market that there's a.
- [86:15]
A
Lot of hormone crap out there.
- [86:18]
B
That's exactly. And it's the biggest market right now.
- [86:21]
A
Really big. And it's really. It's, you know, hormones. Was a tough one for me to go in because it's not something I naturally see. I'm naturally super low in tea. Partially has to do with brain injury.
- [86:32]
B
Really?
- [86:33]
A
Yeah. So there's a.
- [86:34]
B
There's a correlation between.
- [86:35]
A
Yeah. So the. Right. A lot of guys in the NFL are low in T because of brain injury. The brain controls everything.
- [86:42]
B
Everything.
- [86:43]
A
Right. Like, not. It's not shock, like, when you kind of. Anyways.
- [86:46]
B
Yeah, I guess that's true. So I guess the. The. The. Your brain is in control of everything.
- [86:51]
A
So testosterone is like the main hormone in males. Right.
- [86:54]
B
It's really interesting because as a football player, you would never think that these guys would be low in testosterone, but they are.
- [87:00]
A
Yeah, they are. A lot of guys get prescribed tea.
- [87:03]
B
Yeah.
- [87:03]
A
Right on there. Anyway, so to me, nothing like fadoja. A lot of people believe do a lot of great things for testosterone. The clinical data that we've seen.
- [87:16]
B
Yeah.
- [87:17]
A
To me. Does not warrant it to be in our product portfolio, which means it does not have a big enough impact. Right. To do it. Currently, Tonga Ali does. Right. There are 20 other things that you could do. Zinc is really good for hormone health. Oh, right on there. But anyway, so there's, like, a lot zinc. Yep. Zinc has a lot of implications around testosterone, men and women.
- [87:38]
B
Oh, interesting. Okay.
- [87:39]
A
On there. So I believe a lot of hormone health has to do with lifestyle behaviors, diet. Right. Like, you gotta stack them in the. Right. But, like, 100% should be thinking about natural things before you go to TRT. TRT should be, like, the very, very last resort.
- [87:58]
B
100.
- [87:59]
A
Right. And that's, to me, is like. So I have low T. Like, I'm like, I'm not ready to get in that train.
- [88:05]
B
Don't get on that.
- [88:06]
A
I used to take it.
- [88:06]
B
How old are you?
- [88:08]
A
I turned 40 this year.
- [88:09]
B
Yeah, you're still young.
- [88:10]
A
Yeah. I'm still just a babe.
- [88:11]
B
Yeah. Don't be taking it at 40, please.
- [88:14]
A
If I. If I. My stack normally includes pongat. I'm. So I get to test on myself.
- [88:21]
B
Yeah.
- [88:21]
A
Right. I do blood work almost every three months.
- [88:24]
B
Good for you.
- [88:25]
A
It can. Right. Like, because we know the companies that do. Right. And everybody. Like, I'm just like, constantly. Let's add Something. Let's remove something. Like, what's happening.
- [88:34]
B
Right. So you're on top of it, which is so good.
- [88:37]
A
Which is. It's cool. It's fun. Like, it's part of the perk of running a high performance company.
- [88:41]
B
Yeah, exactly. So where did you see your numbers go from?
- [88:45]
A
So I was on it. I saw my numbers go up, but I changed a lot. So what I'm testing is keeping a lot of things similar. All I did was remove doncat, and my next test should be next month, and I wanna see what my T numbers look like.
- [89:01]
B
Wow.
- [89:01]
A
Right? And then. Right. Cause I, like, during that time when I started taking it, I saw my numbers increase, but a lot changed. Like, I was in a crazy, stressful time in my life. I wasn't training as much as I wanted to and all that when I started taking it. So, like, I started from, like, being, like, not doing anything right. To, like, I just, like, made a big shift, and a lot of things changed in my life at the right time to allow me to focus on the things that I know drive testosterone. And so I'm like, okay, what? Like, I made a significant jump. Like a big jump.
- [89:34]
B
Yeah.
- [89:34]
A
Right. So I'm like, okay, let's take a step back. Let's pull it out and see what happens, and then let's add it back in. Because not also a lot of the things. Not everything works for everybody. Right. Our bodies process things different. We have different, like, and we're all little ends of ones for the most part. And there's also like, you could have started taking tongat and everything else went south.
- [89:57]
B
Yeah.
- [89:57]
A
And it's like, well, you maintained. And it's like, well, you should have fallen or you, like, could have taken tongat and it went up and you did everything right. And it was. Nothing had to do with Tongat. Right.
- [90:08]
B
Like, yeah, I totally agree. I think it's not like a. It's not one. Like, not everything's fits. Like, one size fits all right. By the way, you're, like, moving around. But I am too, because we've been sitting here for, like, over two hours. It's so uncomfortable. Like, I mean, because it's like, you sit so long, you're like, oh, my God, my legs falling asleep and. Okay, so we're gonna wrap this. So, Jeff, thank you for being on the show, by the way. Like, I love your story about momentous. And I'm not just saying this because you're here, but I do. I really love your products. I think that they are so, so High quality. You do everything right. Your company, you guys do. And like I said, I just wanted to people to be mindful of like what they're getting because supplements are so massively, yeah. Popular and so if they don't want to buy momentous and they think it's not great, that's, you know, they're crazy. No, but, but there's other great brands. There's other great brands. But I'm just saying. Of course, I'm just saying, like, you know what, just make sure that these, these like what you're using is actually getting what you're, what you're buying.
- [91:04]
A
Yeah.
- [91:05]
B
And that they're doing safe things. I think that's the biggest thing, right?
- [91:08]
A
Yep, 100%. And so for me, like, if you don't know why you take something, you shouldn't take it.
- [91:14]
B
Yeah, totally.
- [91:15]
A
Right. And the process that like when people come in, I'm like, write down the most important things for you. Long term health. If you can't point to what you're taking and doing to those things, then you should probably stop doing those things.
- [91:30]
B
Totally.
- [91:30]
A
And you should reassess like, like, hey, if I like go back to the basics, go back to the foundation and master those. That's so important. So anyways, like in most of us, like I get the luxury to take creatine omegas, protein, as much protein as I want, collagen, all these things. It's because I have like, if I had a hundred bucks to spend a month or 200 bucks to spend a month on this category, I wouldn't, I would rethink what I do. Right. I also could take everything.
- [92:01]
B
And you don't though?
- [92:02]
A
I don't. Because a, it's not sustainable. Like if I try to take everything, I'll take nothing. Like I'd be like whatever. Right.
- [92:10]
B
I think there's, people are taking like handfuls. I look at Brian Johnson, he's taking like 75 pills every hour. And it's just like, you know, he wants to live to 175 or to whatever. I mean, watch him drop dead at 60. I mean, I'm just saying that as you know. But I think you can only do so much. Like these are all supplemental to your daily habits.
- [92:31]
A
You have to be happy, you like your life. Like you can't change your life around supplements or whatever. Like the whole, like the whole goal of living a long, healthy life is to be happy. Right. And have more joy and have a bigger impact in the world. If all you do is like meticulously counting pills on the minute. Right. Like crazy. I can't go out and have fun with my friends every once in a while because it's. I need to be in bed by 9 o' clock. It's like, well guess what, like a third of the equation. It's like, you know, fitness. Fitness and sleep, diet and supplements. And then there's this community piece.
- [93:10]
B
Huge. That's the biggest piece. And like all the research has shown that community piece, having friends will stay, will keep you alive way longer than any supplement on the planet.
- [93:21]
A
Yeah.
- [93:21]
B
And so if you're not taking care of the most, that to me is the most basic fun.
- [93:25]
A
But that's why we exist as humans.
- [93:27]
B
Yeah, but people, community, beings.
- [93:28]
A
Right. We overlook it. So it's like if you're doing, you have to do fitness. Like for me what I love about fitness is I can make it community.
- [93:36]
B
Yeah, you could, you can work out with your friends, you can do activities. Yeah, that's how the way. And that's how the world is changing now. Like it used to be like, right. Like they're doing all these like things like run clubs. It's like an easy one but like. Yeah, they're doing these things where like you're doing active like fitness activities or becoming like the running mans of the world and all the things. But anyways, no but thank you and I.
- [93:57]
A
You're very welcome.
- [93:58]
B
And well, everyone go buy. Momentous. Bye.