← The Neuro Experience
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- [00:00]
Kent Yoshimura
Every single supplement that was out at that time was not science backed. People were taking energy drinks like it was water. People were taking Adderall like it was miracle drug. All these supplements were to treat a cognitive deficit that already existed. I've also seen my friends abuse it and it affects their lifestyle. So I began mixing supplements in my own room. And then when Ryan, my co founder, who used to be an incredible athlete, also runner, got into a snowboarding accident his sophomore year of college, these supplements that I was mixing actually ended up helping him a significant amount. And that was the birth of the idea for Neurogum. And that was over 10 years ago.
- [00:31]
Louise Nicola
You struggle because you went through a lawsuit, but you called somebody from Shark Tank to help you out.
- [00:36]
Kent Yoshimura
Daniel Libetsky, he goes to that person and says, you're worth 300 million. Well, I'm worth 3 billion. You want to get in a fight with these guys, know that I am backing them up. So you're not going to win purely based on financial reasons.
- [00:47]
Louise Nicola
How many sleepless nights did you go through during that period? Where do you see Neurogum going? If you had $10,000 to start a brand today, what would you do with it? I'm Louise Nicola and this is, is the neural experience. When I study entrepreneurs, billionaires, business people, I feel like they all have this one thing in common. And we, you know, we can look across the board. Right. And I'm coming from a neuroscience brain perspective. Like, I want to look at your brain and look at the brains of brilliant people and figure out why are you different and what makes you you. So let's start out with why you think in your origin story, why you think that you were able to get to where you are today, and that's building a company that is now generating upwards of 150 million a year in revenue.
- [01:45]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah. So, you know, there's this great quote, I think Ralph Waldo Emerson said it, it's when you make a decision, the universe conspires to make that decision come true. And I do think with so many entrepreneurs, there's a level of assertiveness, there's a level of decisiveness that needs to drive whatever it is that they want to come through. You know, and in that regard, I even see when I interact with my, my team, right. There needs to be one thing, and it's the same with anyone in life, like setting a goal and driving towards that goal. And that's why they say, like having that vision and just being the purveyor of that vision, the one that's like repeating it over and over again with those values and everything else. Like, I feel like 99% of the time, those are the things that are going through all the pathways in my brain and getting passed on to everyone else. And it's a critical trait that I see in almost every successful entrepreneur.
- [02:45]
Louise Nicola
What is that?
- [02:46]
Kent Yoshimura
That decisiveness, that assertiveness and sticking with a vision and not swaying from it.
- [02:51]
Louise Nicola
How do you feel about urgency? Because when I look about. When I look at myself as well and all of the greats, and I'm going to be touching on Elon a lot today just because I've, you know, I'm a bit obsessed with. Not exactly what he does in everyday life or politically, but obsessed with his. His brain and. And the way that he builds businesses. And he has this maniacal sense of urgency. Urgency to get things done. And it doesn't mean that he thinks it's going to survive or he's going to build something huge in the interim. He just wants to get it done, make the mistakes, and then just keep pushing forward. Do you have that sense of urgency?
- [03:27]
Kent Yoshimura
Well, so, you know what's funny? I think urgency could go two ways, because I do appreciate that. Like, you know, what's characterized as drive for Elon. But then on the flip side, Jeff Bezos, like, one of the best things that someone told Jeff Bezos is, hey, stop shouting so many ideas out and making all ideas urgent. Focus is about saying no as much as it is about saying yes. Right. So with someone like Elon who's almost flooding sometimes, and you see it on X.com, but beyond that. Right. Like almost flooding sometimes, this level of urgency across the board with his team, unless it's done right or unless it's attached to a vision. Again, like going to Mars, like, that's a massive vision. Right. And people could get behind that. It becomes almost a distraction to the entire team. So I do think it's still, like, a balance. And like, for me, I take that into consideration whenever I'm. If something's urgent, like, if everything's urgent, nothing's urgent. So how are you pinpointing and choosing that urgency?
- [04:24]
Louise Nicola
Well, let's break it down for everybody because you are a martial artist turned entrepreneur. You did murals. You did. You're a runner. Let's break it down from the origin story.
- [04:33]
Kent Yoshimura
Sure.
- [04:34]
Louise Nicola
We'll briefly touch on that. And then I want to talk about Neurogum.
- [04:38]
Kent Yoshimura
So where should I start my martial arts career, which is back when I was five?
- [04:42]
Louise Nicola
Well, yeah, no, no, the Thing is, I was a triathlete, right? I raced for Australia. And I say to this day, that taught me what I know today when it comes to entrepreneurship. It taught me discipline, it taught me structure, it taught me competitiveness, it taught me urgency, it brought me confidence. All of these things that you don't realize in the moment that that's going to lead to who you will become. Everyone always asks me, how do you have this sense of directiveness, urgency, like, how do you know? It's because of my triathlon career. So I always look at, you know, you martial arts, it's the same thing, right?
- [05:18]
Kent Yoshimura
Absolutely. And a lot of it with martial arts, all those things you just said, right? And beyond that, it's challenge. The only challenger at the end of the day, when you become an elite athlete is yourself. So how are you continuing to push yourself to reach the goals that you want to achieve? And my sensei had a great quote which, you know, he would say over and over, which was, if you cheat on your martial arts, martial arts will cheat on you. But if you don't, then you can take it as far as you can. And I've been hearing that since I was 5 years old when I first stepped into the karate studio. Eventually going to fight in Thailand when I was in high school, eventually going to fight and train with Olympic judo team when I was in Japan, and stay at the number one university for judo in Japan. And throughout all those years, when you're younger, and I'm sure we'll get into this, but when you're younger, that first physical performance is so deeply ingrained in how you want to, in what, how you can push yourself. Because when you're younger, you have that ability to put your yourself physically. And in college I decided to dive into neuroscience because I realized that cognitive performance, especially doing martial arts, especially becoming a higher and higher level athlete, matched up so clearly with what I needed to do to perform better. Like, there's always going to be a cap with physical performance until you get that mindset right, and until you can understand how you could elevate to the next level.
- [06:37]
Louise Nicola
And so you went, you studied neuroscience, okay, at college, and that's where you learned, probably the same as me, that the brain comes first. The brain is everything. It is responsible for who you are, how you think, how you move about the world, how you make decisions. Every single thing, every, every your entire being, your entire life right now is a result of how your brain is functioning. And the sad thing is we don't look at brain performance. Well, I kind of feel like we are now. We're getting, you know, everyone's getting a bit more in love with the brain, which I love. Ten years ago, no one was talking about the brain. In 2014, I made my first post Instagram post talking about the brain, and people like, what's she talking about?
- [07:21]
Kent Yoshimura
I get a life because you can't see it. You know, like, you can see muscles, but you can't see the brain.
- [07:24]
Louise Nicola
Yeah, but did you learn in there? You obviously learned about cognitive functions.
- [07:29]
Kent Yoshimura
Absolutely. And, oh, my God, like, I'm even thinking of studies, right? Like, we could get down to, like, the most fundamental level. And I'm sure you know this study, they did a study with cats and their visual centers when they were young, and they showed them horizontal lines and vertical lines, and it was a test to see if their visual centers would be able to adapt and if. It's an innate ability to see certain things and understand pattern recognition. When you put a cat in an environment with no vertical lines, it can't see vertical lines for the rest of its life. And that's at the most fundamental level. Now imagine that applied to everything else in your life. If you can't recognize things and the patterns and approach it in that way, how do you expect to get better at martial arts? How do you expect to get better at business? So for me, I feel like I've taken that almost as a mantra. Not just that study, but the study of the brain as a whole to say, how do I become multifaceted in a way? How do I take all these experiences and stress test them enough so I could create an integrated system for who I want to be as a human being, as an entrepreneur, as. As me. Kent Yoshimura.
- [08:29]
Louise Nicola
It's funny you bring up patterns. Right before I studied science and medicine, I was a mathematician. So everything was. Yeah, yes, everything was patterns. Everything was algorithms. And the way I actually got into neurology was literally looking at my thesis, looked at the algorithms behind why a neuron fires the way it does. And that's when I first realized that a neuron either fires or it doesn't. There's an actual mathematical. Yeah, there's a mathematical equ behind that. And I see patterns everywhere, especially patterns in my own psychology, but also in business. Is that. Is that how you see business now with. Are you looking at patterns and looking at what's working well and what's not?
- [09:10]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah, and, you know, it. It's definitely seeing patterns and learning from greats, you know, which is why we Always study like the greats, always study history, they say. And then from history, the greats study like other entrepreneurs and other leaders that we respect because they have patterns of behaviors, patterns of thoughts that worked for them, and you should try to emulate because it'll realistically work for you in some way. So. But at the end of the day, it's also picking and choosing and adapting it to, again, another pattern recognition of how it applies to your environment and your actions.
- [09:43]
Louise Nicola
Where was this junction? Because you didn't think to yourself, one day, I'm going to build a business like this. You didn't think that, did you?
- [09:51]
Kent Yoshimura
I knew I wanted to do something. You know, I went to film school for a little bit, and I think I wanted to create something big, you know, and at that time, it came from like, can I create a movie? You know, that seems like a big thing, but very, you know, luck is a. A big part of entrepreneurship and business, obviously, in general. And I think I got very lucky being able to bridge the gap between what I loved about the brain in neuroscience and what I loved about physical performance and tying those two things together into a product that I could share with you the entire world.
- [10:22]
Louise Nicola
Last night, I had one of the best sleeps of my life. And it's not because I just lucked out. It is because I have been training my nervous system to calm down prior to sleep, and I do this in many ways. But one of the newest things that I have been using is the pulsetto vagus nerve stimulation device. I have it right here. And this has been the biggest game changer for me to reduce my stress and enable me to get into deep sleep, not faster, but for longer. And it's quite incredible. So pulsetto directly stimulates the vagus nerve, which is the same nerve clinicians use in hospital settings to treat mood disorders. And one of the best things about this device is it actually connects to the app so you can see your progress in real time. So one of the things that I love about this is that you can turn on any type of modality. So if you want to work on your sleep, if you want to work on your burnout, if you want to work on your stress, you can just click those and then it scans for. It looks for the device just like here. So obviously, when I have it on and I've primed it and I've ready, I've put the gel on, it's ready to go. It will connect and it will give me a specific protocol to lower my stress. But the one that I love most is the sleep one. So. So all I have to do is click it. It takes less than a minute to connect and there I go. So, guys, this is not a supplement. This is not a meditation app. It's a measurable physiological shift. And if you want to try this and you want pulsetto to be part of your routine just like mine, and you want to go through and use the app, just go to pulsetto Tech Neuro or you can just go to pulsetto Tech and put code neuro so you can get some money off and become an exclusive member of the Pulse setter team. So let's start with the origin story.
- [12:24]
Kent Yoshimura
So when I was training seriously and you were just hinting at this, no one cared about the brain. So think back in 2007, you know, college 2007, every single supplement that was out at that time was not science backed. People were taking energy drinks like it was water. People were taking Adderall like it was, you know, like this miracle drug. And even then, like I have a different perspective on nootropics as a whole now, but like I didn't see anything that I wanted to take that would allow me to perform at the level I wanted to perform both in school and outside of school. So I began taking my clinical trial education and applying it to things I was buying online and started mixing supplements in my own room. You know, I was also like experimenting with like vasopressin to, you know, for a short term memory boost.
- [13:16]
Louise Nicola
Boost?
- [13:17]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah, so I could perform better at school. I was testing things like modafinil and, and different racetams. But at the end of the day, like, what I learned was the things that are already tried and true are the ones that are most effective. And you know, it's like creatine, right? Like you talk about creatine all the time. I take creatine every single day. And then caffeine and ltine as a combination. People have been taking that for thousands of years in the form of matcha. Like why can't we ground ourselves in these things that work but place it into a more accessible format? So that's where I kind of rooted myself. And then when Ryan, my co founder, who used to be an incredible athlete, also runner catching his cross country and track team, got into a snowboarding accident his sophomore year of college, broke his back, paralyzed from the waist down. These supplements that I was mixing actually ended up helping him a significant amount because he didn't want to do coffee. It will hurt his stomach and you know, like he's affected there. Energy drinks? Obviously not. But these supplements that effectively get him to where he needs to be. Like, it was amazing.
- [14:20]
Louise Nicola
Cognitively.
- [14:21]
Kent Yoshimura
Cognitively, yeah. And especially with Ryan's injury, the theme of accessibility almost became everything in our lives whenever we were hanging out together. So, like, how do we create a world where things not. Not just for him, not physically, but like cognitive performance also can become accessible and for us, like, in, you know, like a naive way. When we were on a scuba diving trip with getting certified by Patti, we were like, okay, well, these pills are great, but it's not accessible. It's not something you want to take in public. So let's create something that is way more accessible. And what's more accessible than this thing that hasn't been innovated on in so many years? Governments. It's shareable, it's portable, it's buccal absorption. So it works better, and it could be cheaper than anything else that we create, like a energy drink or a supplement or whatever it happens to be. And that was the. The birth of the idea for Neurogum, and that was over 10 years ago.
- [15:18]
Louise Nicola
What were the very first ingredients that you used?
- [15:20]
Kent Yoshimura
So I was deep into all the racetam. So aniracetam, paracetam, oxyrastam. The load size is just way too much on all those. And I also. So I'll dive this into this a little bit, but, you know, I do love the world of nootropics. I still think it's a little nascent, and I still think people look at it as like this limitless magic pill that.
- [15:41]
Louise Nicola
Well, of course. But that. That movie was actually based on Modafinil.
- [15:45]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah. And it was based on Modafinil.
- [15:46]
Louise Nicola
Yeah. Which for everybody listening, is a drug used to treat narcolepsy.
- [15:51]
Kent Yoshimura
Exactly.
- [15:52]
Louise Nicola
100 milligrams they give it.
- [15:54]
Kent Yoshimura
But it's to treat a cognitive. And you probably know this better than I do, but in all the research and everything that I was doing, all these supplements were to treat a cognitive deficit that already existed.
- [16:05]
Louise Nicola
Well, this is not a supplement. That's a. It's a clinical prescription. Yeah.
- [16:09]
Kent Yoshimura
For narcolepsy.
- [16:09]
Louise Nicola
For narcolepsy, yes.
- [16:11]
Kent Yoshimura
But people are using it for productivity.
- [16:13]
Louise Nicola
Oh, and they're still doing that.
- [16:14]
Kent Yoshimura
They still do, by the way.
- [16:15]
Louise Nicola
I don't think that there's many side effects, too. It's also called provisional.
- [16:21]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah. Provisional.
- [16:22]
Louise Nicola
It's doesn't come with that many side effects. So that's depending on when you take it.
- [16:26]
Kent Yoshimura
And it's like. But I've also seen my friends abuse it. And it. It's very easy to abuse and it's easy to abuse. And it affects their lifestyle. And when it affects their lifestyle effects, it's a chain reaction down the line of everything else in your life. So taking that into consideration, you know, especially like being. For us being in the field in nootropics, but in a gum and mint format, we knew that we had to create a brand around the product. We couldn't just be a supplement brand. We had to be comprehensive in a way. We had to be showing ourselves in like a high level cognitive performance, high level of physical performance. To say lifestyle is as important and we are there to be your best friend. We are there to be in your pocket, always supporting you. And so that's how we decided to approach nootropics. And I'm glad that that term is getting more popularized.
- [17:14]
Louise Nicola
Yeah. Why don't you actually define the term?
- [17:17]
Kent Yoshimura
It is a supplement that provides cognitive benefit with limited side effects. So such like a modafinil.
- [17:23]
Louise Nicola
Correct. So when we talk about cognitive benefit, we're talking about increasing focus.
- [17:28]
Kent Yoshimura
Yes.
- [17:28]
Louise Nicola
Enhancing mood.
- [17:29]
Kent Yoshimura
Enhancing mood. Increasing focus. I would even say like something like a melatonin can effectively be a nootropic. You know, it's a pretty broad term, as you know, but even with people try to call Adderall, for example, a nootropic, you know, because it's like, so it's math. It's math. It's like. So how far are you willing to get cognitive benefits to outweigh the risks that. I feel like it's gotten pretty. You know, it teeters a lot.
- [18:00]
Louise Nicola
It's interesting. The very first nootropic that I heard of, and this was. Predates what. What year was this that you started?
- [18:06]
Kent Yoshimura
Like 2007.
- [18:07]
Louise Nicola
Okay. No, so it doesn't. I was thinking around 2011. Okay. Because this is where I was actually competing and I was going to world champs and I came across as a Bacopa minori.
- [18:18]
Kent Yoshimura
Oh, yeah, the flower. Yeah.
- [18:20]
Louise Nicola
And that's where I got into. I was looking. Yeah, yeah. I was looking at all of these different nootropics. I remember back then 2011, I thought, oh, my God, is this drugs? And. And so that really excited me that we can actually find a supplement that enhances our focus endurance. So I used to think if I can be on the bike, and I think it was around 180km that we had to ride. If I can be on and just focused and just paving the pavement. Pavement for, you know, hours and just keep that focus. And why wouldn't I take it?
- [18:50]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah. But, you know, it's also funny because, you know, in my running journey, I've, like, looked up a bunch of supplements. Obviously, sodium bicarbonate is one of the most effective things, and that's just baking soda. Now it's used as, like, a performance enhancing drug by a lot of athletes.
- [19:05]
Louise Nicola
What do you mean?
- [19:06]
Kent Yoshimura
So people take baking soda mixed in with water because it reduces their lactic acid threshold. And they're saying that it's like. And there's all these, like, trials and everything coming out that's more effective.
- [19:16]
Louise Nicola
But when you say lactic acid, I hope you're not referring to the burning sensation that occurs in your legs when you're going at a hard pace.
- [19:22]
Kent Yoshimura
It's that.
- [19:23]
Louise Nicola
Because that has been debunked.
- [19:25]
Kent Yoshimura
Has it?
- [19:25]
Louise Nicola
Yes.
- [19:26]
Kent Yoshimura
In what way? I'm curious.
- [19:27]
Louise Nicola
Well, you know when you. You're working out and you feel like your legs are burning? You feel like. Oh, it's the lactic acid buildup. It's not. It's just. It's just heat. Yeah, it's heat. You have muscle getting to a heating process. It's actually. That's such a myth. So I don't know where this stands with the baking soda, but I would
- [19:41]
Kent Yoshimura
have to look at it more. And I'll send it to you because it's. It's like a big amongst runners now where they take or. And bicyclists too, where they take a little bit of sodium bicarbonate. And it's like basic enough that it helps reduce, like, fatigue.
- [19:56]
Louise Nicola
I'm gonna try that out. Because baking soda is an all round. It can do absolutely everything.
- [20:00]
Kent Yoshimura
So.
- [20:01]
Louise Nicola
Okay, so let's get back. What was the first ingredients in Neurogum?
- [20:05]
Kent Yoshimura
So the first ingredients in Neurogum have always been the same natural caffeine. L. Natural caffeine from coffee bean extract. Because there's cognitive, like, there's research for cognitive improvement there. L. Theanine, which is the main amino acid compound found in green tea, but at a higher rate. It promotes alpha waves and then B6 and B12 in the form of pyridoxine, and then methylcobalamin, the methylated format of
- [20:26]
Louise Nicola
B12, all of which can be tied to dementia. I don't know if you saw the latest study. It came out, I would say two, maybe three months ago now, that explicitly showed that drinking coffee because of the caffeine content can reduce your risk of getting dementia.
- [20:45]
Kent Yoshimura
Oh, yeah, I have seen that. I thought you were Saying it causes dimension, I was like, no, no, no.
- [20:49]
Louise Nicola
Reduces your risk of definitely not.
- [20:52]
Kent Yoshimura
Yes, I have seen that study. Yeah, It's. Which is amazing.
- [20:55]
Louise Nicola
Yeah. And so why do we pair caffeine with L theanine?
- [21:00]
Kent Yoshimura
So L theanine is. It's not a relaxant, but it basically curbs the side effects of caffeine. And so a lot of people take it to maintain that the activity of the caffeine and be able to sustain that a lot more effectively without the sharp crash because it promotes the alpha waves to be able to manage really that just the effective boost of the caffeine as a whole. So. And you know, the easiest way I've explained it is when you drink coffee, there's a certain way you feel on a caffeine. From a caffeine perspective, when you take Matcha, it is a very different feeling as a whole. And those are those two ingredients working together.
- [21:35]
Louise Nicola
Okay. And then you've also got the basics
- [21:37]
Kent Yoshimura
and the B6 and the B12. Yeah, yeah.
- [21:39]
Louise Nicola
The highest performers I know all solve the same problem early. They remove friction from decisions that don't deserve attention. And food is one of them. Because if you're making high stakes decisions all day, you don't want cognitive bandwidth going, what am I eating next? Trust me, I used to be there. That's where Huel fits into my routine. It's a complete meal, ready to drink. You've got 35 grams of protein, which is extremely important. You've got fiber, something that I very much underestimated. And 27 vitamins and minerals. No prep, no variability, no drop off. And what that does more than anything is stabilize energy and focus. Because most people don't lose performance from one big mistake. They lose it from small inconsistencies, missed meals, poor choices, blood sugar swings. I'll use Huel when I'm between recordings or on days where I know I don't have time to sit down and properly eat. It just removes the variable. They also have their daily greens drink, which has got 24 nutrients, low calorie, no added sugar, which solves other common gaps. Micronutrients. And again, the point isn't perfection, it's consistency. So if you're trying to operate at a high level every day, you need systems that support that, not disrupt it. And you can get 15% off your first order@huel.com with code FREE NEURO. That is code NEURO. Minimum $75 purchase. One of the best ways to improve brain energy metabolism is to make sure that you have adequate Ketones circulating in your body. This is why I ingest ketone iq. I'm obsessed with ketones. They're one of the brain's most efficient energy sources, especially as we age and glucose handling changes. I use it for deep work or for long days when I want to focus without caffeine or crashes.
- [23:31]
Kent Yoshimura
But.
- [23:32]
Louise Nicola
But I also use it just in my day to day to make sure that I am neurologically adequately fueled. If you haven't tried ketones, you must. These ones taste great and you can get 30% off your subscription@ketone.com neuro+ get a free gift with your second shipment. So talk to me about like when you first put this out there, where did you start? How did you start? You're in your dorm room, you're mixing up, you've got your own little farmer shop in your dorm room. You start mixing this up and you put it in a gum. How did you actually start to manufacture that?
- [24:09]
Kent Yoshimura
So the idea of the gum, I mean there were energy gums prior, you know, like military energy gum is one. Everyone was trying to do the energy drink in a gum format. And for us we were trying to create something categorically different, something that's actually accessible. Cognitive performance. And you know this back in the day we didn't have AI or any of these things, we just had Google. So we began researching gum manufacturers around the United States, found out that they're all owned by conglomerates that we did not want to get bogged down with and decided to find and utilize a mom and pop manufacturer in, in Canada actually that didn't have too many clients. Actually they were just producing their own stuff and they became the best partners we could possibly ask for and they started producing our product. And now we've expanded obviously into manufacturing California and Denmark. But it's.
- [25:00]
Louise Nicola
Is bioavailability a problem?
- [25:03]
Kent Yoshimura
No, because we use actually a patented process that does cold compression on the product. And I think bioavailability, funny enough, is an issue with a lot of other products. Like gummies?
- [25:12]
Louise Nicola
Yeah, like gummies and heating them. Because I get asked often, should I take creatine gummies? And I say no, like come on,
- [25:19]
Kent Yoshimura
did you see that research that came out?
- [25:20]
Louise Nicola
Yes, exactly. Why? Because the research that went out for everybody listening is they went and studied all of the top performing creatine dummies, okay, on Amazon. And they deep tested them and the manufacturing and they found out that those, they contained zero creatine.
- [25:35]
Kent Yoshimura
It's crazy because it all got broken down.
- [25:38]
Louise Nicola
Is that because of the heating Process.
- [25:39]
Kent Yoshimura
It's the heating process. It's the heating and cooling process. And we see it the same way in like, you know, everyone has this really bad perception of melatonin, you know, but why? But because everyone overdoses on it and they feel like crap the next day. You actually only need like 0 point, like 6 grams milligrams or something or 0.3 milligrams of melatonin for it to effectively work, because it's a hormone at the end of the day. And so even for us, when we created our sleep and recharge product, it was about, hey, we have a patented process that uses cold compression. It just uses pressure to put the ingredients. So what you see is what you get. So we're not like these other gummy companies where the FDA has this interesting way of approaching supplementation. You could be over by a certain amount, but you can't be under. So a lot of people do overage of all these supplements, knowing that it's going to degrade. But what happens when it doesn't degrade? As much as you think you feel like crap, you're overtaking all this stuff.
- [26:34]
Louise Nicola
But FDA supplements aren't FDA approved products.
- [26:38]
Kent Yoshimura
No, they're. Well, there's GRAs, so there's generally regarded as safe.
- [26:41]
Louise Nicola
Okay.
- [26:42]
Kent Yoshimura
So even within the GRASS guidelines.
- [26:43]
Louise Nicola
Yeah.
- [26:44]
Kent Yoshimura
You know, you're allowed to have overage.
- [26:46]
Louise Nicola
So yours have been clinically tested to show that the bioavailability is there because of this cold compression.
- [26:51]
Kent Yoshimura
Cold compression. So there's the pattern and studies that we do on that front. We also have a study with Harvard innovation lab and Dr. Wasifa Jamal from MIT to be able to do, like, reaction tests, stroop tests, match the board tests. Like, we try to put clinical trials behind all of our ingredients and all of our products in a way that we know that it actually works.
- [27:11]
Louise Nicola
I love that. Because data is king. So you did that. You launched on Indiegogo after first posting to Reddit's Nootropics section. That's where you'd already built some real credibility at a contributor.
- [27:23]
Kent Yoshimura
As a contributor.
- [27:24]
Louise Nicola
Yeah, you definitely were. You hit the funding pool goal within the first hour.
- [27:29]
Kent Yoshimura
Yes.
- [27:30]
Louise Nicola
And then Time magazine picked it up days later. Dr. Oz's producer called shortly after. Yeah, what the hell?
- [27:36]
Kent Yoshimura
It was crazy.
- [27:37]
Louise Nicola
Yeah.
- [27:37]
Kent Yoshimura
It was just a kind of bootstrapped bootstrap for the first five years of business. Actually. No. And it was all about building credibility. And, you know, how do you build credibility for a product when no one knows about your product? Because there's A lot of people that are just, you know, supplement brands are just putting creatine in a bucket and then selling it to you, you know, and everyone knows what creatine is. But a functional gum or a mint, like, what the hell is that? Right? The credibility. There's this great book called Crossing the Chasm. The initial group of people that we were able to attract was the biohackers, the Nootropics users and the people that I was already communicating with. And they loved the product. V1 of our product tasted terrible. It tastes, we're on V26. It tastes amazing now. But V1 of our product tastes terrible. And they were still willing to take it because it was efficacious in nature. And then at the point that we crossed the chasm with like Dr. Oz talking about it going on T Pain going on Shark Tank, Joe Rogan talking about it, that's when we realized we need to shift, like even deeper into the lifestyle component that I was talking about and build a brand that was not only credible and backed by data, you know, the educate component, but engaging in a way that people could trust it from, you know, these very high profile people.
- [28:54]
Louise Nicola
Yeah, Credibility, I think, is a funny term in 2026.
- [28:58]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah.
- [28:58]
Louise Nicola
Right. So you're talking about credibility and trust in the product. Yeah, I think about it as credibility and trust in the founder. You know, you just said anyone can put, can slap a label on a bucket, put some creatine in there. Am I going to trust you that you've done the, the, you've looked at the standards and, and you've got it NSF certified And do I trust you as the founder or do I trust you as the manufacturer?
- [29:25]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah. And it's like I will always stand behind my product, obviously. You know, like I'm chewing my product every single day, day in and day out and beyond that. Also, who are these people that are very similar, I want to believe, like, similar to me in terms of like trying to elevate their performance. People like you, people like Joe Rogan, you know, people I saw Katy Perry just posted about, it's like two weeks ago also, like just out of the blue, like. And then all of our partners too. Mitchell Hooper, World's Strongest Man, Andrew Schultz, Yuki to know the F1 race car driver, you know, Steve Aoki, like, these are all people that represent what we want the product to represent. So from not only a partnership level, we want people that align with our brand values, but also, you know, again, at the end of the day, believing in the Product and creating trust in the product is more important than as. As important, I guess, as. As that, as well.
- [30:20]
Louise Nicola
So you. You've launched it. You've. You've been through that, and you've got the mvp. Everything's good to go. When do you start making money?
- [30:29]
Kent Yoshimura
So we start. I mean, we started making money day one because we've always been bootstrapped. But 2020 was really an inflection point.
- [30:38]
Louise Nicola
That's when you and I met.
- [30:40]
Kent Yoshimura
And that was when we met.
- [30:41]
Louise Nicola
We met at the end of 2020, 2019. And then it was Covid. And I remember distinctly which apartment I was in in New York. I always make fun. I've been in a. Probably about eight to 12 different apartments in this city. You and I were talking and you sent me some gum, and they looked completely different to what they do today, the packaging. But I believe you had. You were telling me we're about to be in Whole Food Foods.
- [31:02]
Kent Yoshimura
Yes. I think Whole Foods launched 2020. We were in CVS already, and I have a whole story there. But we were in CVS already. But then Shark Tank aired.
- [31:13]
Louise Nicola
Yes.
- [31:13]
Kent Yoshimura
So that was our first big national exposure. And then Joe Rogan talked about our product for the first time.
- [31:18]
Louise Nicola
Yeah.
- [31:18]
Kent Yoshimura
And so there's another multiple on that exposure. And then Rogan talked about us again and again and again. And then since then, it's just kind of been increasing our retail footprint, making sure we're accessible to people and, you know, working with influencers that would realistically represent our product in the best way possible.
- [31:39]
Louise Nicola
Yeah, you've. You've definitely made some waves, especially on TikTok. Starting January 1, 2024, you and your head of growth committed to posting every single day on TikTok as a new Year's resolution. Just the two of you, learning the platform from the inside out. No agencies, no shortcuts. You just wanted to go in raw and produce every single day. By June, July, you understood how hooks work.
- [32:03]
Kent Yoshimura
Yep.
- [32:03]
Louise Nicola
And arguably, TikTok is very different right now in 2026 than what it was in 2024, especially as a. As a business owner and TikTok shop.
- [32:12]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah, right.
- [32:15]
Louise Nicola
But you've done something. You were. What was it?
- [32:16]
Kent Yoshimura
What.
- [32:17]
Louise Nicola
What were you named in 2024?
- [32:18]
Kent Yoshimura
Fastest growing brand in 2024. But we're consistently a top three brand, you know, on that platform. TikTok is interesting, you know, because, yes, there is the hook and conversion mechanism that's in place, and that was something we figured out. But something we've also figured out is how do we amplify this as much as possible. So starting with like a creator community where some people were already doing the creator community thing, but we systematized it, we created incentives around it and then we elevated it into what eventually became, do you know that something that was distinctly ours, that became the playbook for a lot of other people, which was, which was creating the right incentivization structure and a creator community that would build its own flywheel on what hooks worked and what hooks didn't. So it could just be me at the end of the day and our VP of growth talking all the time about what you know, let's test out these hooks. But when you could a B test and have a community of people that's AB testing 24 7, 25,000 people to AB testing 24 7, then you are going to get virality over and over and over again. And that's something we've been able to figure out. And I don't think there's been a day where we haven't gone viral to some degree on TikTok since then.
- [33:30]
Louise Nicola
There is something I see over and over again with the women I work with. They're doing everything right. Training, eating well, optimizing sleep. And they still feel off. Low energy, brain fog, mood fluctuations. And a lot of the time it comes back to something really simple. They're evidently deficient in key nutrients such as iron, folate, zinc, vitamin D, B vitamins, especially if they're menstruating. And most supplements just don't account for that. They're built on male default models or they chase symptoms instead of fixing the foundation. That's why I started using daily basis. It's a cycle aligned multivitamin powder. Two formulas, one for each phase of your cycle. Replenish in the first half, especially around your period, to restore what you're losing and balance in the second half to support mood, inflammation and gut health. It's one stick a day. You mix it with water. That's it. For me, the biggest shift has been consistency in how I feel. More stable energy in the first half of my cycle and in the second half, better focus, better mood and I'm sleeping better. It's foundational, not a stack, not a quick fix, just one thing a day that covers what most people are missing. They're doing a really special offer for the Neuro Experience audience. You can use coding euro for 50% off your first month. That is coding euro for 50% off. The link is below in the show notes I before we do move into a complete TikTok masterclass. I actually want to talk about your first 10 million. Okay, I don't want to talk about your first million. I want to talk about your first 10 million. And I want to start with this. And it's a quote from Elon. When you want to do something new, you have to apply the physics approach. Physicists discover counterintuitive new things like quantum mechanics. They do that by thinking from the first principles, building their reasoning from the ground up. I would encourage people to use the mental tools of physics and apply them broadly to life. They are the best tools. How did you apply certain principles in the earliest stages of your business when you were first thinking, okay, we're onto something? What were the principles that you. That guided you to your first $10 million?
- [35:49]
Kent Yoshimura
Everyone talks about this in marketing. There's the idea of a funnel. What is at the top of the funnel is the awareness. It's the people, the, you know, it's the engage component of the four years of marketing. And then from there, how are you educating them a little bit more so they dive into your product? And then from there, how do you embed it into their lifestyle in a way, so they see someone that's similar to them and realize, you know, they're educated on the product, but they realize that this is something that they could associate themselves with. And then from there, they end up buying. And so I think those principles just in general, like, people typically take a few touch points, especially digitally. It takes a few touch points for them to believe that the product is something that they need in their life. But what are those touch points, you know, are more important. And for us, following those principles, TikTok, I mean, we hit 10 million prior to TikTok. But like with someone like a Joe Rogan, let's say, or Shark Tank, there was an engagement and education that already happened because he's a credible figure talking about our product.
- [36:48]
Louise Nicola
And at that time, it was only. You could only buy it online, online,
- [36:52]
Kent Yoshimura
cvs, Whole Foods, like select retailers. But then when we embed it into their life in different ways and how you could use the product, other people using the product, maybe it's more accessible because we're sampling near you those. Or we serve you an ad on Facebook. Now there's a conversion metric that ties into everything else that you've been seeing that takes them over the finish line. And that psychology, just in general, we've compounded across the board. And you know, even now, like, because TikTok's changed so much, we're Still a dominant player there, but we're shifting that mentality into, okay, how do we continue elevating our brain media and our brand and then drive them into the funnel? And retail is such a big push for us this year because the more one in six people I think in America know about Neurogum now, so how do we drive that accessibility to that one in six people to make sure that they convert and Neurogum becomes a part of their life.
- [37:45]
Louise Nicola
Yeah. In fact, you're Now a top 50 health and household product on Amazon. Number one in your category outselling five hour energy on Amazon without spending on Amazon ads.
- [37:57]
Kent Yoshimura
I mean we do spend just minimally.
- [37:59]
Louise Nicola
Minimally, yeah. You're in CVS, GNC, Vitamin Shop, Casey's, which is around two and a half thousand convenience stores and heading towards 35, 000 retail touch points by the end of year. Nielsen data shows 13 brand awareness across the U.S. one in seven Americans now knows Neurogrum attributed almost entirely to TikTok.
- [38:21]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah, it's probably that data needs to be updated.
- [38:25]
Louise Nicola
Yeah, okay, a little bit.
- [38:26]
Kent Yoshimura
But you know, like 1 and 6,
- [38:27]
Louise Nicola
you're growing really fast.
- [38:28]
Kent Yoshimura
Combination of Joe Rogan, combination of Tik tok combination.
- [38:31]
Louise Nicola
So Joe sees something because he's such a credible person and he says, have you, I watched that clip. Have you guys tasted Neurogum? Okay. He's entire, you know, his followers see, okay, what's Neurogum? They go and search for and then you are using retargeting ads.
- [38:49]
Kent Yoshimura
Combination of retargeting, but a combination of like when you understand, when you use data to understand who your consumer is. So here's an example. Like we're not in Starbucks yet, but we are about to be. And there's a data source called Numerator that shows that 40% of our customers go to Starbucks like frequently, very frequently.
- [39:11]
Louise Nicola
How do you find that out?
- [39:13]
Kent Yoshimura
It's a combination of like the Nielsen's data, demographic data. They have their entire data source that they could pull from and then they match up our data, demographic and 1P data that they could pull from us into their database. So data like that is really compelling all of a sudden, right to a Starbucks to be like, oh, your audience already shops here now of course they're going to buy. But that's also very useful for us in the sense where it's like if you know that Joe Rogan was such a big top of the funnel push for us when he mentioned us, like, you know, a lot of people found out about us. Is there a Demographic of people that align with him, like a Tim Dillon. He just did a create podcast to read for us and, you know, that did really well. Do we align there? And then how do we keep building on that consumer base that already recognizes our products so we can again embed it into their lifestyle?
- [40:05]
Louise Nicola
And then you get your. I mean, you know, I think about gum. How much can you make on gum?
- [40:10]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah. You sell a lot of gum.
- [40:12]
Louise Nicola
Yeah. I mean, of course, by the way, I. Gum and hair bands, I combine like packets and packets of. And some. For some reason I can't find them in my apartment. So you just keep buying more. Right. It's probably like that. But I mean, the markup of it, like, in terms of, like, profit, like, percentage wise, like, is that like a. Like, how do you determine that just from gum?
- [40:32]
Kent Yoshimura
You know, like, I mean, we operate on, like, pretty standard gross margin principles, but, you know, our gum is actually not. We need to sell a lot of it at the end of the day, you know, and it is not because we're in an interesting space where we have to price it similar to gum, but we can't price it like a supplement. And it's crazy to me when you see caffeine and l theanine pills sold by, like, you know, I don't know, some companies, like sports research or whatever, like caffeine pills, and they're pricing it like a supplement, like a brain performance supplement. I'm like, those ingredients do not cost that much. The gum base is what costs as much as it does. And you know our format. But again, it's. The consumer perception is so powerful that you have to make sure you align with it. And, you know, our goal at the end of the day is to sell as much as possible. So we keep our cogs down. Cost of goods. Yeah, down.
- [41:24]
Louise Nicola
I think I heard you say that one of the biggest things that you need to focus on is the taste.
- [41:29]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah.
- [41:30]
Louise Nicola
And the flavor.
- [41:31]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah. Flavor is king.
- [41:32]
Louise Nicola
Yeah. What's the number one flavor?
- [41:33]
Kent Yoshimura
Spearmint's doing pretty well. I mean, peppermint is our flagship. Fantastic. But, you know, I think, you know, watermelon is coming out soon.
- [41:41]
Louise Nicola
I know.
- [41:42]
Kent Yoshimura
And we have sours coming out, too. It's going to be cool.
- [41:44]
Louise Nicola
Yeah. I'm actually having a sour watermelon ketone, actually.
- [41:48]
Kent Yoshimura
Oh, really?
- [41:49]
Louise Nicola
Yeah. I have to give it. I have to give you some. But let's. Let's go full into the TikTok creator ecosystem.
- [41:56]
Kent Yoshimura
Sure.
- [41:57]
Louise Nicola
Because that's where you really have excelled. You really have down to the Orientation video that you give every creator to watch. By the way, can you give us a rough estimate of what you're currently doing? TikTok Shop Wise Monthly?
- [42:13]
Kent Yoshimura
It's always hard to say we do like a few million dollars on that platform, but then we look at the attribution across the board because of the awareness that it brings and what it drives to the rest of the business.
- [42:23]
Louise Nicola
So you thought it's going to be in our best interest to get a whole bunch of influencers, creators to just talk about our product and then they get a percentage of the sale.
- [42:34]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah, exactly.
- [42:35]
Louise Nicola
How much does one thing cost?
- [42:38]
Kent Yoshimura
So our average price is about $20. Like, you know, it ranges from about $20 to $24.
- [42:44]
Louise Nicola
So what I'm holding right now, it's a six package, $24. This is $24. They get a percentage of this and
- [42:49]
Kent Yoshimura
they get a percentage of that when they sell it. Exactly. But we also know there's the attribution model. So even if they do, you know, our top sellers, like we pay out like a quarter million dollars a month. Yeah. And these guys are like 20 something year old kids in Florida, you know,
- [43:02]
Louise Nicola
and they're probably doing this with five other brands. There are 20 year olds making around a million dollars.
- [43:08]
Kent Yoshimura
I don't know how sustainable it is,
- [43:10]
Louise Nicola
you know, I mean like by the way, I went to school for 15 years.
- [43:13]
Kent Yoshimura
I know. I wish I was like, we had TikTok shop back in the day.
- [43:16]
Louise Nicola
Okay, so what's the, what's the complete playbook for that?
- [43:19]
Kent Yoshimura
So I think we operate like a system and we operate like a business. Like I was saying earlier, there's a model between a hook and a conversion pipeline that works incredibly well. But hooks can be anything. Right. There could be hooks around anxiety. So like, I don't know, you're. I'm not going to talk about Neurogum right now, but like, let's say you're balding. That's an insecurity that you could probably dive into. And what are the hooks that you could develop through that insecurity? So that's.
- [43:51]
Louise Nicola
And a hook is the first three seconds.
- [43:53]
Kent Yoshimura
It's like the first three seconds and. Or if you're talking about having someone wait for something, you've seen those clips where there's like a car about to hit a person and they roll and then they start talking about their product. Whatever that engaging introduction is to make sure someone stays until they get to the education phase of your product is the flywheel that we had to develop. So now all these creators are saying, hey, this hook with this clipping, or this hook touching on this insecurity, or this hook with talk about, like how energy drinks are bad, whatever it happens to be, works incredibly well. They all communicate with each other in our discord channel.
- [44:33]
Louise Nicola
Yes.
- [44:33]
Kent Yoshimura
And they say, hey, how many iterations and how many variants of this can we create to see what works and what doesn't? And when they find winning hooks, imagine all those creators now diving through and creating videos based on that hook.
- [44:48]
Louise Nicola
How many do you have right now? Creators?
- [44:51]
Kent Yoshimura
About 25,000.
- [44:52]
Louise Nicola
25,000?
- [44:53]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah.
- [44:53]
Louise Nicola
And you said you conducted quarterly zoom calls.
- [44:57]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah, quarterly. You know, make sure that. I mean, it's the same with. With business. Make sure that the believer of the brand myself, you know, it's is there. And make sure that they all feel like they're a part of the team and incentivize as well. We also even do, like, creator meetups. So we'll like, rent a house somewhere and then have all the creators meet so they can hang out with each other.
- [45:15]
Louise Nicola
Oh, that's so fun. Can I come to the next one?
- [45:17]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah, you should go.
- [45:18]
Louise Nicola
One of the hooks here, Joe Rogan clip where he's pitching it to Bobby Lee, male, who's like the male Oprah, apparently.
- [45:25]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah.
- [45:26]
Louise Nicola
And then you've got co founder Ryan Story as a paraplegic athlete. So credibility through storytelling.
- [45:32]
Kent Yoshimura
Credibility.
- [45:34]
Louise Nicola
Product specs.
- [45:35]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah. I mean, product specs is a phase to the credibility through the storytelling, the emotional tug of a product. Right. Like you could buy any shoe, but you buy Nike for a reason because it's built for every athlete, and you want to believe that you're an athlete. That emotional pull and that emotional tug is, I think, what allows us to be a brand and not just a product. Because if you're just talking about product specs. Anyone could talk about product specs.
- [45:59]
Louise Nicola
What's your mission?
- [46:01]
Kent Yoshimura
To create the most accessible cognitive performance product in the market to meet your daily demands of life. And that could be anything, you know, so we're not going to create a drink because I don't think drinks are fully accessible. Right. They have to be cold. They have to be, you know, you. Once you crack it open, you can't share it like you're drinking yourself. Taste that, it goes flat. You know, there's all these variables. I don't think it's a pill because you're not going to be carrying a bottle of pills, you know, around with you in your pocket. But something like a gum or mints, maybe a pouch in the future, are there a variety of formats that allow us to be as accessible as possible to provide cognitive performance? So that's a combination of format and innovation.
- [46:40]
Louise Nicola
You struggled because you went through a lawsuit.
- [46:43]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah.
- [46:43]
Louise Nicola
What was that?
- [46:44]
Kent Yoshimura
It's funny. So when we got into the lawsuit, we called our investors and we were like, hey, we're in a lawsuit. And all of our investors who have come from. From experience and building big businesses are like, hey, congratulations, you made it. It's a matter of time, right? Like when you reach a certain stage, like some person sued us. Because I don't. It was like some.
- [47:04]
Louise Nicola
The word neuro.
- [47:05]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah. So. So for this lawsuit specifically, it was for the word neuro.
- [47:09]
Louise Nicola
Yeah.
- [47:10]
Kent Yoshimura
And it was a trademark lawsuit. But we're not even in the same category. But the legal system in America is pretty like you could be litigious as you want, and if you have a lot of money, you usually win. And this was a person that had $300 million to her name from a divorce, that had a company that had the same name as us and wanted to get in a war of attrition with us. And as a small company only doing probably $5 million a year at that point, there's no way we could stand up to it.
- [47:36]
Louise Nicola
But you called somebody from Shark Tank to help you out.
- [47:39]
Kent Yoshimura
And what's crazy is Daniel Lubecky, the founder of Kindbar on the show said, hey, if you need help, I love you guys. You guys are great people. I'm not gonna invest in you guys right now, but I'm always here to help you. So, Ryan, and this is just such a lesson, and when you ask, Steve Jobs said this too, you know, when he was 12, he called the founder of Hewlett Packard for something and the guy picked up for a 12 year old. Right. If you ask for help, most people will help you. Like, that's just human nature. And so Ryan DMs Daniel Lubecky on Instagram and he replies back, and he helps us with the lawsuit. He goes to that person and says, hey, you know, you're worth 300 million. Well, I'm worth 3 billion. You want to get in a fight with these guys, know that I am backing them up. So you're not going to win purely based on financial reasons. And she backed away, dropped the lawsuit because she didn't have a merit. She didn't have merit to even sue us in the first place.
- [48:34]
Louise Nicola
How many sleepless nights did you go through during that period?
- [48:36]
Kent Yoshimura
I've probably gone through way too many sleepless nights in general in my entire life. But, yeah, that was a stressful moment. That was definitely a moment when I thought the business was really gonna crumble apart.
- [48:49]
Louise Nicola
But these are the moments that I think, as entrepreneurs, that really make you. Because you learn things that you've never learned before. It's kind of like, you know, when you're so severely under pressure, or like when a woman can't lift a car, but if she sees her kid underneath it, she can lift the car. Because in that moment when you become so laser sharp and focused, you find different avenues, you find different ways out. And I guess if you didn't go through that, you probably wouldn't have learned some of the lessons that you learned today, because you just didn't struggle, you
- [49:23]
Kent Yoshimura
know, you wouldn't have pattern recognition.
- [49:24]
Louise Nicola
Pattern recognition, yes. So. So you make your first 10 million. Are you, at this point, when. When do you start bringing on employees?
- [49:33]
Kent Yoshimura
So we had about six employees at that time, and we have a lot of overseas employees, but we raised a significant in Capital, about $10 million in 2022. Who led that? Yeah, a Fortune 50 company.
- [49:49]
Louise Nicola
Yeah, yeah.
- [49:50]
Kent Yoshimura
Like a pretty big conglomerate. And that company, basically. I mean, it was a. An inflection point in our business to be like, hey, we are getting this awareness, but we need the capital to build a team. We need to create experts in the company that are able to elevate us. And so with that $10 million, we effectively went to hire a team of people within, you know, the general pillars of business, which is ops, finance, marketing, sales. Right.
- [50:17]
Louise Nicola
And with $10 million, you can hire some pretty good ops teams.
- [50:21]
Kent Yoshimura
Absolutely.
- [50:22]
Louise Nicola
And you probably went for the best of the best.
- [50:25]
Kent Yoshimura
We went for great people. And it's like absolute killers. These people are still with her in our company today. And then as it was crazy, there was a step change in the business, and you could tell, like, with good people and good minds and good culture, anything can be possible. And it was just amazing to have a team together that all thought in the same way to drive the business collaboratively.
- [50:49]
Louise Nicola
Yeah. Elon said that your product is nothing and your business is nothing if your team isn't exceptional. You have to learn how to work with your team.
- [50:58]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah. Culture eats strategy for breakfast any day. That's another thing they say, too.
- [51:01]
Louise Nicola
Yeah, I love that. But in that moment, you obviously had to dilute a lot of your shares, Right?
- [51:06]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah.
- [51:06]
Louise Nicola
Is that hard? No, it doesn't matter.
- [51:08]
Kent Yoshimura
I mean, to me personally, like, my mission is to create the most accessible cognitive performance product that's available for everyone. Right. It's like, if that is your mission, then your shares should be devoted to that mission. And so I think a lot of founders get really caught and it's totally fair. Investors come in, they get preferential rights and you know, they start saying things and they become really annoying. For me, if there is a level of control that I could still have with my vision and my business and we could drive it forward, then that is well worth the equity that I will spend to get us there. The product wins at the end of the day, right?
- [51:43]
Louise Nicola
Always. Always there is like, if you've got an amazing marketing process.
- [51:48]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah, yeah.
- [51:49]
Louise Nicola
And a ship product, then it's not going to go anywhere.
- [51:51]
Kent Yoshimura
Exactly.
- [51:52]
Louise Nicola
I can't help but think during this process, who were you talking to? Did you have an advisor? Did you have a somebody that you could, you know, what were you doing, personal development wise?
- [52:06]
Kent Yoshimura
So many advisors. And again, when you ask people for help, they will always help you. So Brian Lee, for example, is an incredible advisor. He's the founder of LegalZoom, ShoeDazzle, serial entrepreneur, billionaire, and funny enough, our first investor as well, because I met him in an elevator and literally gave him an elevator pitch and then he put money in.
- [52:24]
Louise Nicola
What was the pitch?
- [52:26]
Kent Yoshimura
So, funny enough, we were at a incubator that we decided not to go with and like, as I was picking up my stuff to leave, he saw me in the elevator and said, hey, you're the Neurogum guy. Like, call me, don't go with these guys. I'll invest in your product. So it wasn't actually even a pitch. He already knew about the product. And you know, ultimately, like, when we ended up meeting, it was, hey, we're reinventing the entire energy drink and gum market. We are taking supplementation that sits in your medicine cabinet and putting it in your pocket. Love the vision and keep putting money.
- [53:01]
Louise Nicola
Right away, we were talking offline about books. I read one book a week.
- [53:06]
Kent Yoshimura
Wow.
- [53:07]
Louise Nicola
Yeah, I love books. Everything from, you know, founders and literature. I love literature. Like, I read one book. It's my commitment to myself.
- [53:16]
Kent Yoshimura
Much more diligent than I am. That is very impressive.
- [53:19]
Louise Nicola
I mean, if I was making 100 million, I'd be. I'm not sure if I have time, but I hope I always do. But you tell me about your favorite book, man.
- [53:27]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah, I mean, I do try to read as much as possible as well, but I've recently, you know, I love spearfishing. Like, that's one of my, like, like, I love spearfishing. It's like one of my passions in life and Deep by James Nestor. And he also written Breathe. Yeah. Which is a fantastic book.
- [53:46]
Louise Nicola
Phenomenal.
- [53:47]
Kent Yoshimura
But the reason I like Deep so much more is it talks about how you could always break the upper limits of what people believe you can do, because the entire book is written out in a way where he's experiencing freediving. And while talking about the history of people diving deeper and deeper. And in the United states before the 1930s, people literally thought you would explode if you dove below 100ft. You know, like, they just thought you would just explode.
- [54:18]
Louise Nicola
Yeah.
- [54:18]
Kent Yoshimura
But then you go to places like Japan, you go to places like Indonesia, and there's pearl divers that are diving every single day, a hundred feet a day, and they're able to do it. We are the mammalian reflex. Right. Like, the ability for us to be able to. To hold our breath longer when we have cold water splash in our face. Like, there's something so incredible about the human body. And the book explores that. And you could. You could see that it's just like a metaphor for life in general.
- [54:45]
Louise Nicola
And then you also mentioned the founder of Red Bull.
- [54:49]
Kent Yoshimura
Yes, Dietrich. He's my hero. Yeah.
- [54:53]
Louise Nicola
Why?
- [54:54]
Kent Yoshimura
This is a guy that lived his brain through and through, and also a guy that got a product, believed in the product, and created an entirely new category, no holds barred. So one of the things that he would talk about is, like, people are like, hey, this is more expensive by X amount than any other carbonated drink in the market, because it's an energy drink. It's a functional drink. You know, it's not like a Coca Cola. And he's like, well, I don't care. It's efficient, and I am selling efficiency. Or he talks about the flavor, and people are like, ah, this doesn't taste like a. Like a sugar water, you know, that people are drinking. He's like, I don't care. This is for if. Like, he is so driven. And, like, he pinpoints exactly what his product was able to do and surrounded the entire product with media and a lifestyle that backed it up, which is very similar to what we're trying to do. Right. And I mean, even beyond that, like, I think about TikTok and these hooks and everything and how similar it is to him, you know, and we let a lot of our podcasters, for example, talk about the product in whatever way they want, for better or worse. There's a story about taurine that's in Red Bull, and there was a rumor that was going around that spread like wildfire, that taurine was made from bull testicles. And everyone in Red Bull was like, Dietrich, like, we have to stop that. You know, like, that's so terrible. That's a terrible rumor. And the way he responded to everyone on the team was, I would rather have opposition than indifference. Indifference is what kills your product. And it is such a good lesson in and making sure that your product, if you truly believe in it, is always at top of mind. No matter what it is, it's always at top of mind to say, we are an efficient product. I don't even care if we use bull testicles. They don't, by the way.
- [56:42]
Louise Nicola
Thank you.
- [56:43]
Kent Yoshimura
And that, yeah, if you've drank Red Bull before to ease your mind, to say, look, you're building something great. You're going to always get opposition. Yeah, but I'd rather have that than indifference. And it's like just one of those mantras of marketing that I love.
- [56:57]
Louise Nicola
I think that whole brand is so phenomenal because they built the very first from what I know, high performance studio for athletes in 2016. Not a lot of people know this. The way that I got to the us I was living in Sydney, and the head of high performance for Red Bull was a man named Dr. Andy Walsh. And Andy was one of my professors. Right.
- [57:20]
Kent Yoshimura
Wow.
- [57:21]
Louise Nicola
In Australia. And we were on the phone. I remember exactly because I was working, I was in a hospital. And we were just catching up and hey, we're doing our annual. Because I told him, he's like, you know, what are you doing, you know, with the brain? Like, why are you talking about this? It was 2016. I started talking about the brain in 2014. And I said, like, there's a huge, like, disconnect. Like, you've got all these athletes that are not focusing on brain performance. And he said, we every single year, we do an inaugural event with all of our high performance athletes in Malibu. He goes, would you like to fly here? And I said, where to? Malibu? He said, yes. I was like, I don't even know what Malibu. I don't even know where I'm going. So I flew there. It was so remarkable. Every single Red Bull athlete, I'm talking F1 athletes, every NBA athletes were there. And it was an immersive experience. We saw for the first time, we got to try out. Oh, well, we didn't get to try, but we got to saw Martin Jetpack. It was like these jet packs that out of nowhere, they brought in a pack of wolves. I've got photos of me with these wolves because they were trying. He was trying to show what leadership is. And it was such a remarkable weekend. It was the first time that I ever saw people like me, people investing in human performance. It's where I got my very first client actually. And that's why I stayed in the U.S. wow. I ended up staying in the U.S. for three months because all of these athletes kept wanting to come to me. And I stayed in this hotel in the lower east side of New York. And these athletes just kept coming and paying me in cash. And like the hotel spoke to me. They're like, hey, listen, all of these men are coming and just giving you cash. Like what type of business are you running?
- [58:57]
Kent Yoshimura
Right.
- [58:57]
Louise Nicola
So at day 90, I got kicked out of the country because we can't stay for longer than that. So that's when I went home, packed my bags, came back.
- [59:05]
Kent Yoshimura
Oh my gosh.
- [59:06]
Louise Nicola
And it was because of that. I know. And I think to myself, like, Red Bull is phenomenal. What he has built, it's an energy drink, right?
- [59:13]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah.
- [59:13]
Louise Nicola
But he's built like this entire team.
- [59:16]
Kent Yoshimura
And that's so Dietrich to be like the marketing person being like, hey, we need actual wolves. Because we need to show this and be like, yeah, bring actual wolves. Literally.
- [59:24]
Louise Nicola
Yeah. And they were beautiful. Okay. I just wanted to ask that because I'm very, I, I'm, I'm so interested in the brain of people who are doing incredible things.
- [59:35]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah. And that's how you build account. And another story just to close it all out is within the company. They call him the top Bull because he is someone that lives. And I try to do the same thing where I like live by the neuro mantra and the brands. This is a man, he passed away a few years ago, but was always running, was always motorcycling, was always doing all these things that Red Bull stood for until the very, very end. And that's why everyone so adamantly believed in his vision and followed him.
- [60:02]
Louise Nicola
Yeah, you've got to live with your vision.
- [60:04]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah. He like did it until the very, very end. Like, it's awesome.
- [60:08]
Louise Nicola
That's why I think that's why I asked you about your mission. And now this is going to lead me to another fundamental shift that I'm seeing right now, which is the rise of AI and the rise of these one person billionaires. You know it right now with Open Claw, for example. I don't know if you've.
- [60:26]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah, we've gotten in there.
- [60:27]
Louise Nicola
Yeah. So whatever it is that people are building these businesses, making 2, 3, 4, $500,000 a month. Right. Some of your creators are making a million dollars a year. Where do you. You know, I feel like now we're moving away from this mission oriented approach. Right. Where we're doing something for the greater good, where we're doing something to push civilization forward and we're just doing it for money. Because now it's like people like, whoa, with AI, it's just so easy.
- [60:54]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah. So I'm just going to use how we use AI in our company, for example, and where we had to reset everyone's standards on how to use AI because it's a shiny new object. It's exciting. It's pulling data sources together, it's doing analysis that you would typically hire a data analyst to do. But one thing we realized, and one thing a lot of people are realizing, is that human thought process, from prompt to output to connecting outputs together, is very, very important still. And I think as we dive deeper and deeper into AI, I think its capabilities are absolutely amazing. But without that human thought that's able to still connect things and which is what we do best. Pattern recognition, again, it is only a tool that's it can only get so far, you know, and I don't doubt that like AI is going to be. There's a changing world order like that's happening no matter what. But the, the people that are truly going to excel and the companies that truly are going to excel while using AI are the ones that still maintain their humanity in a way that they could control it and effectively manage it to their output that they want.
- [62:02]
Louise Nicola
Yeah, because humanization now will become a commodity because you, if you've got. I look, I don't think that AI is ever going to fully replace a human because they don'. Have an origin story. AI doesn't have the actual or it can't tell exactly what Kent went through, the feelings. It can only tell like today what it's doing. It can't really get into how you feel. So that human element stands for something. Still.
- [62:28]
Kent Yoshimura
We talked about the emotional pool and how valuable that emotional pool is within marketing. And yes, you can manufacture that to a certain way, but that we're realizing that the in person moments that we're developing with our audience goes so much further. I mean, even this, right. Like podcasting in front of each other, like how much further does this go than even going on a zoom meeting or even. It's also interesting because like I, you know, I started off as an artist, right. And like painting murals and things like that. And I remember doing an interview about like, are you Afraid that AI is going to kill art. And that's such a silly question to me because at the point that you feel like the final output from art is the most important thing about art, then you've already given up on creativity. You already given up on art. Like art is made because it comes from a deeply human place. It comes from a place that's not about just aesthetics, but something that you could express yourself through this integrative thing that you call a human being. And that at the end of the day is the most valuable thing that we all need to stay and hold on to.
- [63:29]
Louise Nicola
Yeah. Didn't you also say that when it comes to TikTok, that some of the hyper edited videos are not doing as well as someone who's just speaking truth on a selfie?
- [63:38]
Kent Yoshimura
And it's hilarious. It's like people can see through it and after a certain point, all those hyper edited videos, at the end of the day, we just shot a brand commercial actually using I'll just spill it. But it's about a sloth that takes Neurogum and starts performing in some way. We decided to use real sloths though. We had an ability to get AI sloths and everything. And that's what the agency pitched us. And we're like, like, you know what? No, we're using real slots. And we're going to make an entire story around this commercial and the fact that we use real slots and you know, we believe that that's just going to go so much further.
- [64:11]
Louise Nicola
How does one start? Okay, let's just say somebody is excited, they're hungry, they're aggressive and they want to. Let's, let's just. Whether it's a product or service based business or they're doing something, what are the first principles that they need to be working with?
- [64:27]
Kent Yoshimura
Everything starts with a vision. Right? We, we talked about this there you could be another supplement company that puts creatine in a bucket and sells it. But the way you differentiate yourself is again, that identity as a founder, the identity as a person building the business to be able to drive it forward in a way that emotionally tugs with the consumer's heartstrings. And so I sincerely believe if you are starting a brand, like, I mean you could start a business and it could be a service business and stuff like that. But even at that level, like why would someone choose your service versus another one? So what is your vision? How does it differentiate and where does it like deeply, deeply, you know, connect with the consumer? 2. What are your values? The values that define how your employees talk, how you talk, how you connect with the customer, because that is another layer that differentiates you from any other company. And then finally, I would say, is the product offering. How are you presenting the product and is it staying true to those values and the vision that you've set in place? And then from there, you know, the rest of it's like tactical. Right.
- [65:35]
Louise Nicola
How do you. How did you first go into cvs, though?
- [65:39]
Kent Yoshimura
So CVS came because one of our friends, he started a company called IQ Bar. It's like these brands.
- [65:46]
Louise Nicola
Oh, I know them.
- [65:46]
Kent Yoshimura
Oh, yeah, Will.
- [65:47]
Louise Nicola
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [65:48]
Kent Yoshimura
Awesome guy, Great friend.
- [65:49]
Louise Nicola
No, no, like, IQ Bar is amazing. And they're IQ electrolytes.
- [65:54]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah, yeah, they're really good. You should get Will on the podcast. Yeah, he's a great guy. Harvard grad, like, super smart. But he connected us to a CVS broker because CVS was looking for new innovative products within the cognition set that they were building. And Neurogum was like, immediately came to top of mind. And so that's how he got in. Funny enough, that was the same year when our shipment was going to cvs. That was the same year the polar vortex hit Chicago. So we were freaking out because that's like our first retailer. We just got this massive order and we're like, oh, my God, what are we going to do? We found literally one. We were calling like, you know, our office guy was calling like 50 people a day. We found one truck driver that was willing to drive in the snowstorm all the way to the CVS distribution center. And we've got our product in time to distribute in cps.
- [66:44]
Louise Nicola
You do whatever it takes, right?
- [66:45]
Kent Yoshimura
Whatever it takes. It was crazy.
- [66:48]
Louise Nicola
When it comes to consumer insights and the tools that you use at scale, you've got Meltwater and Epsilon.
- [66:56]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah, we have. We have a lot.
- [66:57]
Louise Nicola
And you've.
- [66:57]
Kent Yoshimura
Well, you've got out of numerator outer signal we use for our emails. We use Epsilon data. Yeah, Numerator spins. Nielsen.
- [67:08]
Louise Nicola
How important are these consumer insights? You seem to be pulling on a lot of this in terms of data. How important is this to grow?
- [67:16]
Kent Yoshimura
If you don't know who you're selling to, then who. Like, who are you selling to? Right. So always having an understanding of. I guess it's three tiered in many ways. One, understanding who your consumer is, knowing who you're selling to, being able to communicate with them, message them in the right way, position yourself in the right way. Two, are you using the data to effectively get into places where these consumers shop? Now so the Starbucks example I gave, 40% of our customers already go to Starbucks on a nearly daily basis. That is a place where we know that they could purchase our product. And then finally, how is that data dictating how we drive forward for innovation and new things in the business? So using that data to make. Minimize risk in a way, when we're developing new things.
- [68:01]
Louise Nicola
Yeah, I think. I think that's a bit scary now. You know, we just found out that oura ring is selling people. Yeah.
- [68:08]
Kent Yoshimura
Yeah, I don't wear it anymore, actually.
- [68:10]
Louise Nicola
Yeah, I don't either. I took off every wearable. I haven't been wearing it, which is crazy. I feel naked. No, but that's good. I think knowing your data and knowing where you're, you know, doctors, professionals, credentialed people who aren't trying to be influencers, but have enormous network credibility. I think you want to find who they are and be able to partner with them. Them. So to grow your brand and the credibility of your own brand, definitely. Where do you see Neurogum going? Are you going to ipo? Do you want to exit?
- [68:37]
Kent Yoshimura
You know, I'm going to do this as long as it's fun. At the end of the day, we are creating a new category, just like, you know, Dietrich Mattish just did with Red Bull. Right. And it's like to create a new category, you got to have the tenacity to be able to enter into and enter into whether it's gum or whether it's in the energy drink space and have the tenacity to drive forward.
- [68:58]
Louise Nicola
So one more thing, you've mentioned that nano influencers are better.
- [69:04]
Kent Yoshimura
So going back to the AI thing, so there's these big influencers, like the Kardashian stuff, who have talked about our product as well. Like Kim Kardashian posted about us, like,
- [69:12]
Louise Nicola
was that just natural?
- [69:13]
Kent Yoshimura
So we're friends with Dave Grutman. Yeah. And then Dave is super good friends with Kim. So he was seeding product and then Kim ended up posting about us, but she also posts about a million other brands. And you can kind of see that there was an era of influencer marketing at that Kim Kardashian level. That worked effectively to a certain degree, but now all these influencers are launching products all the time, and that's become saturated. Then you got these influencers at this level. That AI could create someone that looks like a legitimate, attractive human being, that. That feels credible in a way, but there's a layer of trust that's missing there. Who do you trust more than the person standing in front of you, who do you trust more than the person that has a small community, but they speak so deeply to you that you could trust them at like almost a friend level? I think that's where the world is going.
- [70:05]
Louise Nicola
If you had $10,000 to start a brand today, what would you do with it?
- [70:09]
Kent Yoshimura
So I know I was on AI a little bit, but I think, I mean I'm not necessarily. I think it's one of the greatest inventions of all time for business owners. But I think there is a lot of market research that you could do, there is a lot of innovation development that you could do. You could use AI to do so much stuff to build the groundwork of your business. But again, it's up to you to develop the vision, the values and all those other things that stack onto the tactical level of what AI is allowed to develop and is able to develop.
- [70:40]
Louise Nicola
Would you spend any of that money on ads?
- [70:42]
Kent Yoshimura
I would probably not. Or you know, there's probably like a level of testing I would do with ads. But there's this phrase in the CPG world which is you make your backyard look pretty first before you make the world look pretty. So like with anything, depending on whether it's a short term business that you're trying to do to make a lot of money or a long term business making sure that whatever it is, you have a minimum viable product that works, make your backyard look beautiful first and then take on the world.
- [71:10]
Louise Nicola
Well, I wish you all the luck in the world. I know you're going to get to a billion.
- [71:15]
Kent Yoshimura
Let's see. I'm gunning for it. Let's go.
- [71:17]
Louise Nicola
Thank you for coming on the Neuro Experience podcast.
- [71:19]
Kent Yoshimura
Thanks so much.