How to Build a Brand that Sells Out Before It Launches ft. Greg Lavecchia

We quickly became the number one selling greens in soon, the number one selling health and household product on Amazon. It was a healthy nine-figure Amazon business. That's Greg Leveckier. Co-founder of Bloom, the bootstrap creator startup that's now doing over a million dollars a day in sales. But the real reason behind Bloom's growth isn't just distribution. It's how Greg thinks about building a brand. Restocked is the strongest word in all of marketing. And I don't think it's used enough. It's way stronger than any type of discount. While most founders obsess over branding and aesthetics, Greg believes the real priority is much simpler. The product is absolutely the number one priority. If we find ourselves getting too caught up with like design and the colors and the paint job, whatever it may be, we always pinch ourselves and say the liquid is what matters most. Greg is running the most ambitious founders you'll meet. And his philosophy is simple. If you're going to do something, you might as well do a bit. Going after a small dream or a small goal takes the same amount of resources and stress and effort as a massive goal. So you might as well go after the massive one. In this episode, Greg breaks down how Bloom went from a niche creator brand to retail giant. The marketing psychology behind selling out products and the strategies behind building a nine figure business. Let's get into it. I want to start us off because Bloom started as a creator-led brand. And it's turned into this behemoth. I mean, we're in Target, we're in Walmart, we're in 7/11. It's hard to not see the brand these days. What made you so confident going into energy in probably one of the toughest categories in CPG land? Yeah, I mean, shit, like this wasn't an overnight energy drink situation. This was 10 years of my wife and I. And then very quickly Leo, my best friend from high school came on to help run the business with me. 10 year overnight journey up and told the energy drink. So Bloom was founded in 2019, which I can go into that story in a second. But we were a bootstrapped supplement brand with just nutrition products like powders, greens powders, protein powders, recovery powders, even pre workouts. Up until 2024, we were bootstrapped at 180 million. And then we did our first round or our first strategic partnership with a company called NutriBalt, which is like C4 pre workout, based out of Austin, Texas. And the whole point of that partnership was to go after the beverage space with the Bloom trademark and with the Bloom community. And so six months into that partnership, we were able to have an energy drink on the shelves of Target, which is where we launched this product. Six months into our Target launch, it was going so well that we were able to expedite ourselves into a cure and gutter pepper relationship, which today we're in 70,000 doors because of their trucks. So it's kind of been a really cool synergy between the founder, lead, Nimble, fast entrepreneurship, mom and pop company, plugging into the corporate legacy company that is Dr. Pepper and just creating the OnePlus One equals three scenario of what you see today, which is 170 million cans of energy drink sold in two years. - That's insane. And I want to get into the weeds of how to scale properly and all that kind of stuff. But a lot of these CPG brands, they're so focused on performance marketing and they don't have a brand. What do you fundamentally understand about building an actual brand that most founders don't? - I think I started my, I'm a marketer at heart. Like that's my DNA, that's how I identify. And when we first started doing performance marketing, our KPI, right, so I'm talking in our college dorm room, my wife and I were using performance marketing to grow her personal brand, her name's Marla Wellen. That's her handle on Instagram. We grew that page to a million and a half on Instagram, plus you know some of the uncillary networks. And we grew that following through obviously her incredible content, but we supercharged the algorithm growth through meta-ads. So I became an expert at meta-ads, but never with the conversion point being our Shopify store, it was Go Follow Marla Wellen. So that was the consumers or the community members entrance to our community, Follow Marla Wellen. And then we knew her content was so, had such a gravitational pull that they would enter our, our funnel of businesses, which ended up becoming fitness guides. Then booty bands was our first physical product. It's all of our million booty bands. This is still when I'm like you know a 22, 23 year old. Then everyone was like, what supplements should I take as I'm using your fitness products? And so Bloom was born. And so that was 2019. So the Greens powder was the very first. No, no, that's what everyone thinks. So we definitely like became known as the Greens brand, which is probably three years into the Bloom journey, but we launched with a pre-workout, which was a pre-workout for women who wanted to lose body fat by lifting weights. So like an outrageously niche category of women weightlifters who were trying to lose body fat, right? And I think that's how so many brands need to launch today is you need to go after a such a small niche of a community that you can make sure you speak to directly. And it's also such a niche community that the larger businesses will not take the time of day to go speak to that woman, to go speak to that guy, whatever your niche is. So even with Bloom today, we're so large that it's like, we're not going to go after a, you know, runners who are, you know, insert fitness niche. And we won't take the time to go speak to that person because we're now going after anyone who shops at Target Walmart, Amazon Costco, right? But that would be the only way or the best way I think for an up and coming entrepreneur to kind of creep their way into a saturated space today. - Do you feel like scared money doesn't make money? I remember this story of you guys selling over $1.3 million in a single little 12 hour sprint. - Yeah. - You then invest it all. - Yeah. - I feel like many people look at that and be like, oh, maybe we take our foot off the gas here. Talk to me about that mindset. - I think I have not only a very high tolerance for risk, but I am completely bored if my back is enough against the wall. So even in my personal spending, I probably have a little bit of an atrocious burn, right? - The end mixed ability. (laughing) - Yeah, with the points, the points. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - That's what I get equal to. - The, it's, you know, I've just always tried to put myself in a position where like I needed to go figure it out. And so anytime I've had the opportunity to go all in, anytime I've had to come up with a substantial amount of money, it's always relative to where I'm out of my life, but I've been able to come up with it in a fast, in the amount of time that I had. I've always embraced that pressure. And anytime where we've noticed an opportunity to pour gasoline on the fire, we have jumped on that with everything we've had, for sure. - Did you have a social network moment early on when you're figuring out the Facebook ads and you're like in the dorm rooms, young with your wife and you're just like, we're cracking the code like. - We put 10 and we get 30 back. (laughing) - Yeah, yeah, I think, once I started to, it really unlocked when we started to partner with meme pages. So we would post a ton of that, her journey on every woman's favorite meme page. And so we built quite a substantial network of being able to collaborate essentially by ad space on these meme pages and just create a massive top of funnel of consumers who are visiting her page. And then through the meta ads, I was able to create local audiences through her following, which was rapidly growing. And basically almost like create a retargeting practice of anyone who had seen her picture on a meme page, which by the way, this is back when a meme page posted, it was on your feed chronologically. Like there was no algorithm of what your news feed looked like. I don't even think there was an explore page. So like this is, I'm talking like, I'm gonna know Jesus' friends. - It's just a girlfriend. - You followed meme pages like that. And so, and then there's so many realizations in that whole world where it's like, okay, we're posting about fitness content. Let me go, let me go buy ads on fitness pages. Those were always flopping. And then when I started to post on like food pages, like everyone's favorite cheeseburger restaurant, those fitness ads performed the best. So it's kind of like, how do I find the consumer when they're not ready to see the ad and kind of stop them in their tracks? Like they're trying to go find the new restaurant. They're gonna go to our unsaturday. But it's like, let's hit them with a six pack ad, you know? And so then they would join kind of the community by following Mari and getting super inspired by her content and then enter the funnel of all the businesses. - And as a brand who has seen so much success in the like influencer marketing space, social media has changed quite a bit, like you just mentioned. So how has that playbook changed for you guys? Starting off being like, we can partner with so and so influencers and they can really bring us a return. Are you still seeing that type of return as you were early on? - Yeah, so I, it was probably 2020-ish. And shit was really in the fan. We were in Brooklyn and it was COVID. And but we very much understood influencer marketing because Mari was obviously a content creator in herself. And Mari's, Mari's such a G, like she turned down every partnership opportunity even with all of the cloud. Like back then, like it wasn't even about making money as a content creator, it was like, did you get a gym chart deal? Right, like that's all that mattered. And Mari turned down all of his opportunities because we recognized, you know, what could be creating our own brand. And so we understood influencer marketing and how that whole world of commerce worked. And but we didn't really know how to scale in influencer marketing program for Bloom. And we also very intentionally didn't call Bloom like Mari supplements. Like we did not want Mari as this key man face that was going to like constantly need to make content every day. So it's Mari and I, it's just the two of us. And we just had like our one person that we fired. So we're like, holy shit, like what are we gonna do next? I need somebody that we could trust that could access our bank accounts on day one, you know, right? with us into the sunset of what we thought maybe would be an opportunity. So I called my best friend from high school who was on Wall Street at the time, who's Leo Walter, president of Bloom Today, and he was working sales on Wall Street. This is like my favorite fucking story. And he was working sales on Wall Street and was just doing the full boiler room of just like, you know, calling as many people as positive. He's laughing, but like this is exactly what he was doing. But we were just like, you know that that sales room that you're constantly, you know, just basically becoming an expert at relationship management, but also cold outreach and follow-up in the wholesale funnel. We need to create that as an in-house influencer marketing agency. And so Leon, I kind of partnered on creating what is with that. A doubt today, the largest in-house CPG influencer marketing network. And that was kind of the start of us realizing like, frankly, like, fuck agencies for 90% of what you want to do. And if you want to go beat the heavily funded or giant legacy corporations that you're going after who are using agencies, you need to build something proprietary in-house. So, you know, we might have 15, 20, depends on the time of year, full-time, influencer marketing, relationship managers working in the Bloom walls. And just they know everybody's birthday, they know when it's Mother's Day for them, they know, you know, whatever's going on to, they just have great relationships with them. It's incredible. Stan is having a baby. A little AI baby named Stanley. It's the cutest thing in the world. So cute. You guys are going to be able to use it. It's the top link down in the description. Let me explain to you guys though what you can actually use it for because it's so cool. I think a lot of the time creators can get stuck on coming up with ideas. And they actually surveyed their creative community. And a lot of people have amazing ideas, but they kind of fall through with the actual execution. So the goal is Stanley is to help you be more consistent. So you think if this is like a bounce board, you have an idea, you're like, I might be able to make this a little bit better. That's a great use case for Stanley. And it's not just a generic AI. It's trained off of your own Instagram. It goes and scrapes your brand voice because I think that's a big problem with AI content. Right. It's like, if it gives you an idea, it's like, this doesn't sound like me. Exactly. So having content ideas in your own voice and then removing the friction because if you can't execute on your ideas, you can't stay consistent. And then you won't be successful as a creator. So Stan just continues to help creators push the boundaries and stay consistent and make money online. Not only are they the best place to sell your products, but now they have Stanly. So go check it out. It's the top link down in the description and let us know what you guys think. Let's go. So how many creators do you have right now on TikTok shop that are creating for you guys? So this started before TikTok existed. Oh, so this was on Instagram. You were okay. And then it and then it really started to explode on TikTok. And then our TikTok shop program did not really start until the last six months. So we have been working with tens of thousands over the years, some of which four years as just total like long term partnerships of content creators that create organic content about Bloom. And then in the last few months, which is not something that I have much expertise on. We have started to scale TikTok shop and we're bullish on it. But that is not like we're not like some like TikTok shop success story by any means. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I feel like the there's almost like a certain connotation that comes with like TikTok and the brands that are on TikTok. But I feel like that slowly going away because more brands are starting to get integrated. So that connotation was like a similar low brow expression that you would be faced with as a as a creator brand as well. There was so many creators back in the call of 2019 to 2023 that we're kind of launching just like bullshit, put my name on some Alibaba products type of companies and they are never ended up emailing to anything. And so we launched Bloom. I would always see like, yeah, this is some influencers brand. And that would just like tear me up. Like that's when that's when I would just work twice as hard that night. They were saying, yeah, this is some random influencers brand, right? And so I said, okay, how do we bring validity to this brand? And so that's when I was like, all right, we're going to go on Amazon and try to find a way to become number one on Amazon. We're going to go to Target and become number one on Target. Like, oh, you want validity? Like now we're in every retail. So we've kind of used these sales channels as bringing ways to bring as as as bringing huge validity markers to bloom out of the gate. Can you go into some of those specific strategies you guys use to scale to go number one. Yeah, I'm a target for Amazon. Yeah. So launching first, we were 100% Shopify, right? As as pretty much. So some of your you guys are running ads or creators creating content. It's going right to your website. Yes. And then you're showing Target and Amazon these numbers or does Amazon not need to see anything you can just launch on a clock on Amazon any day anyone can. So we launched on Amazon and what we did is we kind of took the power of our entire community, which would be Maurice following Bloom's organic profile following our email list SMS list, whatever it may be and did the thing that every, you know, private equity person would destroy you for, which was tell them to go to Amazon instead of your Shopify. We realized we needed to go and to a larger sales channel and that that we felt like Shopify could ever become for us and go dominate that platform and understanding just like the algorithm and the snowball that is that because of social media, start to try to bring all of our external traffic to Amazon and therefore kind of get like a total SEO advantage and kind of climb the ranks there. We quickly became the number one selling greens and soon the number one selling health health and household product on the Amazon. We were beating double A batteries for probably over a year. It was it was a healthy nine figure Amazon business. Yeah. I also, I love the story of when Amazon launched their supplement product. You thought that was going to take you out. Yeah. So this is a late 2018 while we were formulating Bloom. We were living in Boulder, Colorado and I come from a society or community in New York where like I don't know they they were a little anti big corporation. Like Amazon's taking our jobs like Starbucks just shut down the local cafe like fuck Walmart. Yeah. And it's like, you know, the entrepreneurship is dead because of these companies. And so it was this really that was like in my mind for the early stages of my entrepreneurship career. So in late 2018 and bloom was launched January 1st 2019, we were probably two months out of actually launching bloom to our community. And I saw Amazon launched I forget what the name of the brand was right now, but they launched their supplement and you know, call it it was like the Amazon basics of supplements. And it was just so fucking cheap. And it was, you know, I imagine they had much better manufacturers than we did at that time. And I had no idea we were going up against and I was like, babe, like this whole thing we've been working on for eight months. Like it's over. Like Amazon just decided to take the entire supplement space. And so obviously, excuse me, obviously within like 18 months from that we were beating that supplement that that Amazon supplement company on Amazon on their own sales channel. And I don't think they even exist today. So it's it's I think brand is an incredibly powerful thing. But you you you keep your reputation in your lane. Right? Like bloom's not launching a car tomorrow. And Amazon's reputation is about it being an incredible marketplace, but not like making incredible products. So that was an incredible lesson in like how how to use the corporations as a tool on your chessboard and how to kind of represent or how to understand what what is brand, right? In terms of how it speaks to their consumer. Talk to me about potentially discounting a product and the effect that that could have on the brand. Because I know like right now I go into target. I believe it's two for five, which is great to get me in the door. Right? I'm excited about that. I see the big ass red thing. I'm like, okay, let's go. Let me give it a go. Right? But then I wonder like what are the impacts of that long term? Can you raise the price back up eventually? Yeah. Like what does that look like internally? You know, there's certain retailers that just run their own trade like that. Oh, okay. Like I didn't even know that was going on right now. Right. That's that wasn't a very intentional, you know, buy one get one scenario. Traditionally, or sorry, in the early days of the early years of bloom, I tried to avoid discounting price as much as possible, spending that on community growth and then just spending that on over delivering value elsewhere. So instead of over delivering value through like having a sliced, sliced price, you know, 340 days a year, I spent that extra $5 from that would have been a discount on creating incredible content. Hey, this comes with a free educational guy and how to incorporate into your workout routine or maybe even just like accessories that came with your order. So just trying to give what looked like an incredible value and was for $40 without trying to just make the entire thing a $30 conversion. You know, and so we always when we were a D to C had like awesome electric mixers, tote bags, blender bottles that were coming free with your order if you spent, you know, $40 or whatever. So you make it special for these first few people getting in the door. So they keep coming back for, I mean, it was anyone who came into the any one who came into the door. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. We loved accessory drops. And my favorite type of accessories were always like electric mixers that people would use for their coffee. And then you keep on their counter because you weren't keeping your greens on the count. That was going in the pantry. But if you could give them an accessory that they were going to use all the time and just see that bloom logo throughout their day, like, I don't know, I would like to think that that has paid dividends, you know, this call it a decade later. You know, that's funny. I think that your counter space is, it's valuable real estate. Yeah. And like, if I'm keeping an appliance out, it's got to look sexy. I know, man. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Branding is incredible. And I think it can take you extremely far. But at the end of the day, you still have to have an incredible product that actually gets results. Yeah. What was the process like of you guys formulating these different products that you guys were coming out with? And how did you guys like find your manufacturers? You guys are young just getting started into it. Like how does that process work of finding a manufacturer in dialing in the the formula in which the product actually is? Like we we constantly If we find ourselves getting too caught up with like design and the colors and the paint job Whatever it may be we always Pinch ourselves and say the liquid is what matters most like what's inside the cam matters most You know people are coming up to me yesterday at Expo West and they were asking for business advice and so much of the business Advice was around retention and what my tricks were for retention and it's like There's an issue with your product dog like you're you're a really good performance Mark and you're getting them to you know go through that acquisition or you're you're acquiring them for a one-time conversion But if they're not coming back, that's an issue with their product and so the you know the returning customer rate on this energy drink is a Huge reason for why we've sold 160 million cans today It's because like once we get somebody they just continue to buy more and they eventually level up to Costco and just buy the 18 pack like I'll tell you what This doesn't taste like battery acid and most fucking energy This tastes phenomenal and it's energy drinks tastes like shit and I would like to think it a you know feels great Yeah, so you know, it's a I mean is caffeine a dicting I don't know but but but I I crave the shit out of it and I think people really like the efficacy and of course the mouth the mouth pleasure Okay, when you when you sample it at the factory. Yeah, do you do it colder? Is it warm? Dude, this is like because I remember I would my you know leisure the company Yeah, so the very first run they did I was just wrote a check in them really I was there and I got to sample But I was like I was talking the guy who owns it. I was like, yeah, Stephen. This is this is fucking hot Yeah, like this isn't gonna be what it's like and he's like this is a whole thing some curious Do you guys bring dry ice or something? So when we go to the flavor house for the early stages of just flavor formulation It is normally the syrup mixed into a can of celtzer and it is room temperature and it fucking kills me man It kills me and it's like the same if we're trying to like really do a few iterations that day Like we don't have time to put it in the fridge and get cold like we're just kind of going right and we're like if let's say we Wanted to make a this Chris Bappell flavor and I wanted to taste like mott's apple juice or something like that We'll order a ton of mott's apple juice for all the flavor scientists and be like match the shit out of this and because if you tell them apple juice Like they I don't know they're scientists So so we're we're pretty obsessed with the flavor, but you kind of there's always a discrepancy between the final version at the lab And what ends up in the can which is just you know that's that's the game. Okay early on Speak to the founder right now who is making a beverage or making a CPG brand and they go to the manufacturer and they want better terms What is that what does that look like and did you feel like in those early days You really didn't have much leverage until you're like hey look at how much we're bringing in what is that relationship like I would I had this conversation several times yesterday I think people need to worry about that later. Okay. I think we did not worry about the efficiencies of our you know cost around supply chain For years right we were focused on creating the best product and delivering the best value and growing the strongest community for the first three years That's all we thought about we did not have like a large RFP or you know Go go what is our opinion for those Leo what is RFP stand for Of requests for pricing to like you know mass manufacturers around the country and go basically go have like a quote war Like fuck that like you're gonna go spend three months as a founder trying to work on getting the perfect margins for your product when it's like Dude you're ordering 5,000 units like worry about that when you're ordering 5 million units That is that is the least important thing for building a great business in the early stages. Yeah. I was oh sorry Let me let me actually add to that As long as you know there's a path to get there Right don't enter like a non-profitable business that can never be profitable But it's okay early on if it's a shit show as long as you know like I can clean this up later Something you mentioned to us on our pre show call that I thought was really interesting is that It takes the same amount of time to build something massive as not as big. Yeah When you guys first came up with the idea of creating bloom Was the idea I want to build like this massive fucking company and go for it because if we're gonna spend a decade building a brand We might as well try to go big. Yeah. I um I can tell you firsthand when we work on low revenue opportunities versus working on you know Multibillion dollar opportunities. It takes us the same amount of hours in the day When we try to go launch in a retailer that has 50 stores versus 14,000 like 7.11. It's pretty much the same amount of resources used internally So going after a small dream or a small goal or a a small project to I feel like takes the same amount of resources and stress and effort as a Massive goal. So you you might as well go after the massive one I also think that a lot of people They see the success that bloom has had and it almost doesn't register as possible for them And so did that ever cross your mind of like I don't know if this is something we can scale to nine and ten figures. I Don't even think about more than a year from today. I never have I'm like really a month to month guy at best You know my wife hates how little I schedule in the future Where we're we're and I would say me and and Leo is the president of bloom We both try to think as short term as possible the world seems to completely change every six months The opportunities at hand like what you think the playing field will look like is completely different every six months What the retailers want is completely different every six months So it's like you need to stay as nimble as possible and you know You can have a a a a a diamond in the distance that you're like constantly working towards and maybe that's A monetary thing maybe that's a level of you know mental health that you on or I don't know how to speak on that and then But like there's a I would I never imagined that it would come to this but I was incredibly excited when we have 30 grand right and I can you know and when we first launched bloom and and that those are the days where like I felt like we were hitting our goals and then now just as the opportunities have presented themselves We've hopped on them and kind of allowed the universe to to to to to keep paving the road Something within the team that you two have both realized with hiring people Any mistakes that you can bestow on to our group because I think how our company is organized As you guys have been growing like a rocket ship is super important. So I'm curious what you can tell our listeners I have a lot of thoughts on talent acquisition so And I've made all of the mistakes kind of following like the prescription that is talent acquisition So all right copy and paste the org chart that I see this this this company that I want to be like has All right, they have completely different strengths as the founders that are operating or the CEOs that are operating that company They have you know completely different issues and and pain points and a totally different community to copy and paste an org chart from a you know Power a little business that you're running next to I think is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. I think you should Not make predictions for what your issues may be in the future unless you're completely certain they will sorry Let me let me preface that that with I think you should hire for your pain points and you should hire for your weaknesses And under the category of weaknesses is also just what you you as the operator or you as the founder do not want to be doing So there's something I don't enjoy and therefore I won't be doing a great job at it. I hire for that pain point as fast as possible If I come in what's my first 30 days look like if I'm working for you What is it? I'm a huge fan of the shadow process. Okay, so you plug them into someone who you want them to be like Yeah hiring for your your pain points not copying the org chart from You know the the the business that you want to be at and then I can speak for myself with that energy during company Let's just say hypothetically we wanted to model our growth close to something like red bull or monster and I said okay Let's go make hire us from red bull and monster and they do great on their interview They tell you all the amazing things that red bull and monster did and then they come in and I'm like you didn't contribute shit to anything that red bull and monster did or you are one of 2000 people and because the business is so big you like literally just did one Lego piece of that entire castle Right, so I would say be really careful hiring people from the businesses that you take a lot of inspiration from because They probably didn't contribute the magic that you're actually looking for Yeah, unless you can prove they did then hire them If you found though if you found that the resumes don't mean shit that you're like strictly going off of vibrate as resumes still matter a little bit to you I I mean do my favorite situations is when like someone is so hungry to work for us That they will just apply to a different role that and like their role is an open and they just want to get in front of you and be able to give their sales pitch and and You know hunger passion is like always the number one thing that we're looking for I think a lot of Skills can be taught but like those things cannot be taught How many people are a part of the team now You know like it's a very complicated network at this point Because of Dr. Pepper and and Nutri-Bolt that we work with but you can call it a hundred give or take But I just thousands too Because of like everyone who's on the in the trucks and yeah, it's crazy. What made you have the The idea that you wanted to bring on these strategic partners like yeah, were you growing so fast that you're like to get to this level that I know we can get to, we need the distribution of these trucks going all around the world eventually. Yeah, I'll be super honest about this story because it's been a couple years. So Bloom was skyrocketing. We were bootstrapped to 180 million and that was after a year of 100% growth and we had like a huge business mishap happen. Basically lost like a massive sales channel overnight or we thought we were going to. And it was the most stressed out I've ever been in my entire career and I was driving home from work in Venice up the street from here and I'm in a McLaren 720s like my dream car. Like it was fucking crazy shooting fire out the back. And I'm sitting at this red light. It's like 9 p.m. I'm leaving the office and pulling up next to me at the and I'm stressed pulling out my hair like worse three months of my life. And next to me is just like burn Honda Civic from like 2005 Domino's delivery thing on the top weed smoke bill and out of it with like EDM blasting and the guys having the time of his life just delivering these pizzas and I was like what the fuck am I doing wrong here? Like fuck entrepreneurship like I'm going to go sell coconuts and Costa Rica. I hate this and I was incredibly stressed out on my mind and then just kind of like this opportunity of diversifying our part or this idea of diversifying our portfolio and being like go back to the roots of asking the community what they want and like what else we can deliver value to them with and the community was asking for energy drinks and better for you soda. And I knew nothing about making energy drinks and better for you soda but it sounded like an incredible you know venture that I want to take on like what could be like the next project that you really work on here. So to understand that I didn't want to go spend five years learning how to do that I wanted to partner with somebody on how to do it. So we kind of went to all the traditional venture capital funds, private equity funds and they were all like we are not touching an energy drink company. No one will buy an energy drink company. This is before Alani was just purchased before ghost was just purchased like there was no acquisitions of beverage company or energy drink companies at the time and that's what private equity companies need to do is sell you in three four five years right. And on top of that there was no interest in the markets or the MN markets for a portfolio of nutrition and beverages right you could sell a greens company you could sell college and company or you could sell maybe just an energy drink company but Nestle doesn't want energy drinks Coca-Cola doesn't want nutrition companies so to have this diversified portfolio actually would put you in a really weak space generally speaking for MN and so they were all like we're not doing that with you. And then I met this psycho in Austin Texas who's DOS cunning him who owns neutral bolt and he has led neutral bolts is the CEO of neutral for the last I don't know 24 years family man total savage I didn't really know his reputation in the industry because he just like kind of has a small circle and lays low in terms of being loud but visited he flew to LA he flew us to ask when we had a couple meetings and he had taken his C4 pre workout and launched to energy drink with that and had the relationship with Dr. Pepper. So he was like I think we can do the same thing with Bloom and I've already gone through the five years of pulling my hair out to figure out how to make energy drinks and now we know exactly how to get to see the market which is why we're able to make this in just six months. So it was kind of like the stars aligned and we sold him 30% of the business for a really great strategic partnership and the the rest is history it's been a great partnership. So you had the idea for about five years wanting to figure out how to get into the energy drink space. No, so he had launched an energy drink five years prior. I see. So he knew the trials and tribulations of getting that to market which I knew nothing about. So I was able to kind of take in all of that wisdom of someone who's already you know played that chess game and expedite the wisdom or use that wisdom to expedite the R route to market. The thing else you brought up to us was that a lot of people would not try to get into like the energy drink space because of how difficult it is. But you think that it's actually a little bit easier because it weeds off some of the competition, right? I was I was getting like a little frustrated with the nutrition space. I think I felt like it was a lot of low integrity performance marketing and these acquisition businesses that we were just speaking on where it's like they'll just say fucking anything in their ads, you buy the product, you just cure it every element that you have. And you know that and then like any 21 year old in Brickle Miami could like come up with a real competitor to Bloom in a three month span, right? And so I was just getting sick of the nutrition space I think as a founder and an operator in it. And I was like what's a what's a high barrier to entry space where there's incredibly high standards of testing and you know FDA is very involved. There's a lot more marketing guidelines and like I just felt a lot more comfortable with my qualifications to go play in that hat yet that you needed qualifications to go play in. And so to me that was the beverage space. And I think we're seeing a lot of people who don't have those qualifications enter as of late and they're not even getting off the ground because like it does take a lot of relationships, a lot of years of understanding how this game works to properly play. If you want to get into making like your first beverage, how much money do you need to have saved aside to be able to deploy to get that first round and make your first purchase like 50,000? Is it a little bit more than that? You know, I think I think today the MLQ is at a lot of these third party manufacturers are getting lower and lower. I would like to think that you could get a first batch for under $50,000. I don't know. I'd never placed a batch that low. But I think we did like a full target load in for our first run. But I would say the way Bloom as an ecosystem worked so beautifully as we had a very profitable, high margin nutrition business that was funded by originally a very profitable instant download booty band business. That was the sugar daddy to bloom and the nutrition business was the sugar daddy to the energy drink. And so we were able to continue to evolve our business matrix to kind of fund the next ones as each stepping stone. Did you ever feel like you were moving too quickly to the next thing? Because you hear like, oh, you got a million, million things of the booty bands. Why not stick with the booty bands? Like were you always zooming out and thinking like, okay, if I want this to be a billion dollar money, I know that we're going to need to use this capital to leap frog to the next thing that we can do. Like talk through us a little bit about that. I think I've always been like the guy refreshing a Shopify every hour. So I know when something's slowing down, I know when the writing's on the wall before, or maybe maybe in 2026, I don't check the sales hourly. But most of my career I did. And so, so I knew when there was writing on the wall for Mari fitness as a business for our app business for our booty bands. And like when it was kind of time to level up, but like you also just like as a founder, I would like to think we want to take on a larger challenge after, you know, whether it's 12, 24 months. Like you're like, what's bigger I can go after? So I felt like we kind of once your number one on Amazon number one in Target number one of Walmart, like number one, it's like, what's the next challenge I can take on? I don't want to just stay at number one in this space. I want to go into a bigger arena. I don't want to be like number one in the minor leagues, right? Then I'm going to go to the major leagues. Yeah. That's so funny just checking. You know, you know, Greg had those notifications like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, like in the office, keep fucking. To change, you change, you change. That was okay. Was was the day that you guys did 1.3 million in like 12 hours? Was that like the highest you were on? Or was there another day where as maybe not as much from a actual revenue perspective, but you were earlier on and you're like, this feels like fucking crack. I can't believe we sold like $100,000 in a month or something like that. You know, it's funny. It's all relative because we do more than that every day now, right? Like it's a weird thing to wrap your head around. I think the, when Marry and I first started doing Marry Fitness, we were operating the business out of a TD bank student account. And I didn't understand the financial system in any way at that point. And so every day, all of the PayPal's that would go into our student TD bank account, I would go to TD bank once a day and withdraw all of the cash because I didn't want any of it at TD bank. And I would keep it in our car glove box. You're crazy. Yeah. And it would just stay in this, in this old outies glove box. Cash? Cash. And eventually the staff at the TD bank started to say like, you can't be using a student account like this. And I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, I'm getting my money out. And I like totally did not understand why that would be an issue. And they were like, it was like clear that I was a drug dealer. There was a 99% chance that I was a drug dealer. And eventually they were like, we're showing down your student account. Like this is not a student account. And you know, there's probably like, you know, tens of thousands of dollars going in every month. Like nothing. We weren't anywhere near millions at that point. And so I was like, all right, fuck you guys. We're going to Chase. And so Mar and I drive over to Chase in Westchester, New York. And we're like, we're here to open up a business account. They were like, okay, like we opened you up a business account. Like it's ready to go. Do you have like any money to put into this account? And Mar and just puts like 50 grand on the table. Like because that was, we were like, yeah, we have this cash. Like we didn't like know what was going on. We were like, yeah, we have this cash. And so Mar and just put all this cash onto the table and they were like, okay, okay. And so I remember the actual bank. was like two blocks away and they made me walk it over. 'Cause they were like, "We're not gonna walk this over for you." This isn't the bank. It's like where you open up the account. And so that was like a day where I was like, "We might be on to something here." (laughs) And I would say the next time I felt like we were really on to something was probably damn. We had some really strong black Fridays. That $1.3 million a day. I think I just like entered a complete disassociation to reality and I was like really confused on what was happening because I was so prepared to finally restock Reigns and be able to like have normal work for two months straight of inventory and it was just all gone again. So I was like, "Okay, like the business is back to shut down 'cause everything sold out that day." So our website shut down like we didn't have anything to sell. And so it was like this really weird day of like, now we need to go figure out how to get more product as fast as possible. - What do you tell the group when that's happening? Do you send them to the-- - There was no group. I'm saying the email, do you email the community and you're like, "Yo, fucking sorry." - Well dude, sold out is the strongest or restocked is the strongest word in all of marketing. I think it's way stronger than any type of discount. The psychology associated with the word restock would be like, "Oh, so many people bought this "that it ran out of inventory." And maybe only a 10 products, I don't know. But maybe you had 10,000. And so it's like, how can you create that fomo of like, I'm the only fulking person that hasn't tried it because it's already sold out three times. So it got to the point where we were like, "Sold out 30 times." And but yeah, I think sold out or restock is like the most powerful word in digital marketing. - Okay, I wanna get more into marketing and the actual like content creation process and launching like marketing campaigns. But I do wanna go back to something. You said you became a little bit numb that you guys did as many sales as you did. As someone who has seen major financial success, you're driving the McLaren, got a very nice watch on. It's clearly like nice things. You have the sick Asmer Sadie's van. How has your relationship with money changed and have you had to learn anything along the way as you've seen more financial success? - I don't, I don't like, I don't necessarily like respect money as this thing that I feel like I need to hold tightly to me. I use it as a tool for these games that we're playing. My Greg as a person before money was very much just someone who loved hanging out with my wife, my dog and Leo. And like that hasn't really changed at all. We still just kinda only hang out with ourselves. And like kinda do the same things we did when we had no money. So I wouldn't actually, it just has made life a lot cooler, but I haven't really recognized money as this like ultra powerful thing that we need to make sure we die with a ton of it under our grave. - And do you think disassociation is like extremely powerful and do you think that could be used as a tool because I feel like sometimes people put material goods or even an amount of money on a pedestal to where it's, it controls them in a way where it's almost above them. But I saw a TikTok of a guy talking who he's like, this watch is not, like it's not better than me. It's just like a thing that I have like, who are you to put material goods like above you? And it's so interesting to hear you talk about that where you're like, I've come into money, it's great, but it's just like kinda still like doing the same stuff. - Yeah, I don't, I think happiness is internal and I don't think that I think you just use it as a tool to have a lot of fun and to go after your goals. You know, it's been like, it's been a super blessing when like new things such as my son have come into our life and I can see like some of the conveniences that we can bring in to help with raising him. - Congratulations, by the way. - Thanks, thanks. - Thank you, yeah, he's doing good. - How happy was he when he was born? - Bro, he was nine pounds, but he's already like 18 pounds and he's like, you were probably a three pound baby, huh? - He's huge, dude, I think I was nine one. - No, I was nine six. - I think it was probably a little bit bigger than you. - That was gonna be a football star. - That's big. - It was like five foot in high school, it's all good. - Well, dude, he has these crazy well-street jeans for my wife, so I'm like, he's gonna kick my ass when he's 14. - He's gonna lead. - He might, he might, he might. But dude, I just took his stem cell last week. - I saw this. - I saw this. - I'll tell that story in a second. But, legit. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Greg is an injective stem cell. - And so I, John, - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Did he call Brian up? - Yeah, he was my neighbor in Venice. - No, he was. - Yeah, he would walk around like just a fucking glowing elf in the neighborhood. And then I learned who he was. And I was like, you can just see the fucking aura around this guy who's like, you know, he's eternally young. So, I just like have this really disgruntled the relationship of the idea of delayed gratification. And that's coming from someone who's like working on the gym every day at 5 a.m. Like I'm all about discipline, I'm all about working hard, I'm all about focused. And you know, I don't really drink or do any of that bullshit. - You were always like that. Was that something you developed later on? Or were you like, I need to advance to, like I know this version of Greg is in here. I need to get to this version. Or what was that like? - I devoted all of it towards the gym when I was younger. And then I've now been able to figure out how to point that energy in other directions. - Do you have a clubbing phase? - Not really man, not really. Like I lived in a flat house for three and a half years. And so I got a lot of that out of my system then, but like even then, like, I think the idea of like delayed gratification, like you finally turn 70 and you can go by like your dream Corvette. And then like you don't even have like the cognitive ability to go enjoy it is like something that I really don't want to happen to me. So making sure I try to enjoy the fruits of our labors through our 20s, I'm now 30, but you know continue to have fun with it. Yeah. - How has becoming a father changed the way that you operate on a daily day and like how, you just had a son, like a few months ago, right, a month ago? - Three months ago. - That must change your schedule. Like now you have something else to like care for. So how has that affected your life both personally and how you operate as a founder? - I mean, even on a trip like this where I'm traveling to LA, what would have been a four day trip? It's like we're gonna squeeze that into three days and just not fucking stop, right? So if I'm leaving, it's for a short amount of time, you know, I'm trying to use some travel enhancements to get around faster and like the jets waiting for when we're doing it. And then the, I would say, you know, I'd have some fast cars, I'm not speeding. Like I'm wearing a helmet in the backpack. I'm trying to take better care of a, like I'm a big fan that a lot of these people obsessed with longevity. You know, the first step is just making sure like you don't put yourself in a reckless driving situation, right? Like just like avoiding those stupid scenarios. Don't, if it's a thunderstorm, like just get the next flight. You know, like I don't know, just weird shit like that. Just making sure I increase my changes of being around for him is the number one thing. And his mother, my wife, is like incredible at if I'm rushing out to work in the morning and you know, I have something, it's like, Greg, wait a minute, like, say good morning to Kai. Like go give him five minutes. I'm like, thank you for reminding me to do that. Like, let's go give him a five minute, five minute of total presence before, and then obviously more in the evening. But yeah, it's like there is not enough time in the day once you have a kid. It's incredible. Not enough. So I'm kind of just trying to take it away from sleep. Which is pretty easy. - How many hours of sleep are you? - Dude, I'm like, I'm like a big eight hour, not eight and a half. - What's going on in the sun? - 9/30. - 9/30. And then, but I'm pretty much at seven now and I feel like I can pull off seven most of the time. - With a gram of caffeine, I mean. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, a whole gram. - A lot of nicotine, a big nicotine. - Really, the gum? - I like the mints and I smoke a lot of cigars. - Really? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - That's funny. - You were smoking one right before this. - Yeah, so I fell out of the nerves. - Yeah, yeah. - I'm just checking out. - Yeah, yeah. - But I thought, right, like, maybe it's kind of night. - It's just like, really, I have incredible ADHD. Like it is fucking diabolical. So, and I don't like to touch Adderall and stuff. So I find nicotine to just be like nicotine and caffeine, just be like a lifesaver. - Have you tried neurogram? - Yeah, yeah, I love all that shit. - I love all that shit. - I love all that type of stuff, yeah. - I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier when you were talking, what the guy who was with C4, how there are brutal mistakes that companies can make going into energy as someone who wants to go in energy. - Oh, yeah, that's totally, yeah. - What advice do you have for me as I think about this like new endeavor? - I would say there are, there are things that you can place, let's just say you felt like, if you go to Amazon right now. - Okay. - The, one of the top five selling energy drinks is actually Celsius energy sticks. And so, which is probably an outrageously high margin product that gets the halo marketing from Celsius energy drinks. - Ross was talking to us about the salt for them, like being something that they can. - So, yeah, if you can create a business, yeah. So for Ross from Cadence is probably like, his stick packets are very much kind of the, I was making that sugar daddy joke, like the sugar daddy tube that they've reached, which is like a far larger, far more expensive business. So if you can somehow create a, and you know, you obviously, you have other businesses that you work on, something to kind of help the cash flow pain of what the energy business may come, that would be helpful. I also think that is not a D to C play. - Energy drinks are not a D to C play. - No, no one's shipping an energy drink case out of Shopify if they are like, that's a horrible business. It is an Amazon play and you guys get digital, but if it's not a Shopify play, then you're not gonna really touch Facebook ads. So it's a very not traditional CPG business to start with. Really, I don't run any meta ads for our energy drinks. There's no pixel that sells the energy drinks. You go what I mean? So have you guys ran Facebook ads before? - Yeah, we've spent quite a bit on Facebook ads. - So there needs to be a pixel for it to optimize too for it to actually be a proper ad. So if a or a proper funnel, so if you have an energy drink that isn't available on a Shopify website, but you should not sell an energy drink on a Shopify website. - So you're saying to start with like an Amazon or start with a TikTok show? - You have to. That'd be like the only way to launch it digitally. - Yeah. - And try to get people as repeat customers to get that subscription going? - I mean, subscription would be beautiful, but hopefully they'll be part of your all's community and they'll be like, he's talked about products that I've loved before. Your personal brand represents good products and now I'm gonna try his energy drink and hopefully they buy the 12 pack on Amazon and they'll try it. They'll launch with a variety pack so they don't need to commit to 12 of one flavor. And you know, our variety packs are way bigger sellers than our single flavor packs. - And is that something that only is it Costco, the variety pack? - Amazon Rips. - Oh, Amazon. - We probably sell like 60,000 cases of variety packs a month on Amazon. - Wow. - Yeah. - Wow, so interesting. - Okay. You brought up digital and like, I looked at you guys as Instagram. I believe you guys have like 670,000. - 660,000, anything. - And like good engage too. - Yeah. - What are these brands fucking up when it comes to content and marketing? You also brought up like using restock as a great market tool. Like what can you tell us about marketing, how to crush it on organic and ads? Because I think a lot of brands are struggling. - You know, a huge lever in the beginning was obviously founder content. So Mari. Mari's, you know, I'm a turn in to leave it. I make a joke that I'm now I'm stepping in. But I just had content. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - So I'm a huge believer in founder content. I'm a huge believer in, you know, not just having your own profiles be like product pushers strictly and trying to deliver some value from those pages as well. Outside of just trying to convert with the content. We have had years where our Instagram had horrible engagement. We've had years where we've had incredible engagement. I think that page is crushing it as of the last six to 12 months. We have a new team shout out to Jillian, Cara and Emma. They're crushing it. - And like what do you feel like change in the last six to 12 months? - Yeah, what was the down period and then what was that up period? - Like why? - You know, it's funny. I am not a social media content expert. And I don't need to go, I am a good leader. And so I can go put that team together and let them do their thing and trust them to do it. And then like kind of look at the progress that's happening. But I think that as a founder of a brand you don't need to go become like an expert in every space. We didn't have a head of supply chain and therefore we didn't try to optimize the pricing on our supply chain until we were ready to make that higher and they fixed all of the mistakes that we had made. So at first it was just like, you know, the founders making some content. Oh my God, if you look at like the first posts that were on our Instagram page, it was just like pictures of ginger. And we were like, "Ginger's in our pre-workout. It's really healthy." And it was horrible. And so, and then of course it's like following the data, right? Like if something does well, like make three more things like that. But if you put a post up that's just like, go buy this product now, like it's gonna flop in the algorithm, it's gonna hit your page. - How has your experience been with getting in front of the camera, starting to build your personal brand? I'm sure your wife has given you a few tips in the day. - Yeah, I love your wife's comment the other day on the vlog that JJ made. She's like, "How'd to show the boxershot?" (laughs) She was roasting me for that. Dude, my girl always roasting me for my shit. - She was roasting me. - If I say, if I some stay some stupid shit, I'm gonna get a DM back and she'd be like, "Bring what was that?" - Oh, like your girl will respond to a post. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, she'll be like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, what are you doing here?" And I'm like, "That's on me." - Right, yeah, right. - I posted them. - You're right. - That's, wait, that's so funny because yesterday, yesterday, or two days ago, I posted a carousel from when I went skydiving in '19. And then I hadn't posted about me skydiving at '19. And then I kind of ripped three or four posts over the past two weeks. She's like, "Man, you're really leaning into the skydiving thing, "but you know what I'm saying?" (laughs) - She's fucking blaming me so badly. - No, Mari will humble me a little bit for sure. But she's the goat. She's the goat of all that content stuff. I think she doesn't even optimize in any way for views or intentionally optimize for anything, such as making the content that she wants to make at this point. But she can look at a product and know if it's gonna do well, she can look at a post and know if it's gonna do well, like nobody I've ever met. I have, I felt like I needed to wait to make founder, business, entrepreneurial content until I had some serious check marks of validity. Check marks of validity. Until I felt like I had the right to go inspire people to do it. So I've intentionally waited up until I felt like I hit those milestones. And then I also think like just being an obsessed entrepreneur, like the truest form of entrepreneurship is building a personal brand where like the product is you. So it's like the accountability like all falls on me for it. And you know, shout out to the team. We built a ton of people on the Bloom team help me with it. And JJ's just been the shit. But I like, excuse me, I like, I find it's like, it's just the purest form of entrepreneurship that I could possibly come up with as building a personal brand. And I think it will just lead to so many opportunities whether it's helping Bloom or Deal Flow or, you know, what I care about the most at this point is just inspiring, you know, everyone to know that this is possible. - This stuff's been so helpful. - Yeah. - Yeah, very helpful is like, I just feel like we're in the grind days of building, I'm building like two businesses at the same time, it's so fun. - Are you public with it? - No, no. - Yeah, like, I mean, we have this and then I think we're actually nobody. - Yeah, we're an IPO and we're on this. We're fortunate for 100,000 guys. - That's sick, I know, but it's fun. And it's been like a fucking journey and a half since, you know, left our job like, I think it left like a year and six months. - Oh, that's kind of fresh. - Yeah, yeah. Those are the Lakers for five years. - Sick man. - We're balanced. - Okay, that's dude. - Yeah. - This is interesting. Me and Brain have this conversation probably two days ago or maybe yesterday. We feel like we're kind of in this like value of despair currently. - With the pod. - With the pod. - With the spare man. - Meaning the, meaning we've been at this thing. - Yeah. - Over four years. - Yeah. - We were really riding the high of like, oh, we started this new podcast. - Mm-hmm. - We ride that high for probably like two or three years. - Yeah. - And because it's like, you're, there's so many moving parts like you're booking guests. We're producing the show. We're editing it. Like there's so much that falls on us. - Yeah. - And it's like, we've been seeing success with sponsors, but nothing like too astronomical. Because that doesn't really hit with podcasts until you're fucking booming. - Yeah, you're just like, - You're just like, - Of course we'll have some success. - Yeah, 'cause it's like, you're either a baby pod. You're where we're at, which is like in the middle. - Yeah, you're in the middle or you're a superstar. There's no like, it just once it rolls it rolls. Like we tune half-ex last year. - Yeah. - And you know that this year it'll tune half-ex again, but I feel like, - I mean, that sounds pretty good, but okay. - No, but it's an interesting place because you feel like you put in so many fucking hours into the show and it's like, it just feels like you're crawling up a mountain so slowly with like a hundred pounds of rocks behind you. You know what I mean? - And it's just like, I feel like every week we're trying to like, - Should we get better? - Yeah, try to get better, seeing how we can optimize. But I'm curious to ask you like, after a few years of doing Bloom, was there a point where you kind of like, the newness of it wore off and you're like, now we're really in the business. Was there ever a part where you kind of went through this valley of despair being like, is this gonna work out? Is it all worth it? - Yeah, dude, there's months where like, I was super low energy, where like low enthusiasm about what I was working on. For sure, I haven't just been like, go, go, go for 10 years straight. And I can't really like explain why of doing a lot of those valleys of despair. Like it's just like, there's just seasons for this shit. You know, get your testosterone levels checked for sure. Like, I think, like what kept you going in those moments? - I guess I have found that every venture that I have taken on does lead me to the next bigger thing. So I even remember if we go back to like the Leo story on Wall Street, once he did join Bloom, he would say like, fuck, I guess I just wasted three years on Wall Street. And I was like, bro, you just learned everything about how to build a sales channel. Like you proved yourself in the workforce to the point where like I knew that you had the capability to come join Bloom. And none of this would be happening right now. If you didn't just go waste three years on Wall Street. So I think you could say the same thing about, you know, Mari fitness, which is like no longer really a business. You could say the thing about, Mari doesn't have her podcasts anymore because she's, you know, now full-time mom with that. And it's like, things just lead to the next thing as the universe. is ready to present them to you. I'm whether it was even the greens leading to what is now like this large beverage portfolio. And I'm sure I'll have a completely different thing that I'm really prioritizing in three or four years from now. I think the world is a lot faster than it used to be. I think like the era of our parents having the same job for 30 years and that's what's respected is a thing of the past. And I'm very pro taking on the new bigger challenge, which may just be that's what I did as the nutrition portfolio expanded right? It was pre-workouts, then protein powders, and then greens. Like you going after maybe larger topics or larger audiences or different topics that you're now more fired up about or maybe even ones if your goal is to monetize like to an audience that you know is of a high value for sponsors, right? I think it's just like how I would think about it. Like the show can change, but the show can remain. It can still stay. - That's so true. Like I mean our show has changed a lot. Like when we started it was, we were photo video people. I was working for the Lakers, he was a touring with DJs. Like that was who we were talking to. And as we kept going, I'm like, dude we need to broaden this out. Like we thought that photo video land was massive. - But they got you off the ground. - No it did, I really did. And it got us our first 100 episodes and it would never be where it's at today if it wasn't for those episodes. - You know what's fucking crazy dude? - Is our best selling pre-workout six years ago was a glacier crush in a crisp apple. - No shit. - Yeah, so like you know it's kind of goes back to like I'm fucking obsessed with a slum dog millionaire. Like there's like these moments where like that was that was like 100,000 dollar product back then let's say. But it's like that planted the seed for what could become a hundred million dollars skew today. And so it might even end up being like, oh should we even do the show anymore? Let's do 10 more shows. And then on the ninth show before you guys retire you meet somebody who just like changes your whole fucking world. So I think something like this puts you in a place where opportunities can really present themselves. Even just on like a networking level. Like and like I just say like you wanted to go like one day talk to Dr. Pepper and then you're like, wait remember Greg we spoke to him a year ago and like he works with Dr. Pepper. And so putting yourself in a day to day environment where you are increasing your chances of luck is the best thing that you can do at any stage of your career. And this is a very high luck environment. Like having a new guest in this room every week is fucking crazy, you know? Here we talk about that often of how yeah. It's like you're obviously an incredibly busy person. And so like what are the chances if we didn't have the show for you to give us an even 30 minute who connected us? JJ I had emailed that's what happened. Yeah, I emailed and Brooke was like Greg's not going on your show. Yeah. Yeah. And then JJ was like, no dude, dude it's a stick show we're gonna be in LA and I was like, fuck it. Let's do it. And then yeah. Yeah, it was it's special. And you're so I was like, no. Yeah, Brooke, shine this dude. I was like, fuck, that boss is around. Yeah. It's that's been so wild, so crazy to think about these last like four years of doing it every week. As someone who you're clearly just a true bread entrepreneur was that something that like were your parents entrepreneurs or like was there something from your childhood or how you were raised or something that went through that like allowed you to just be your bread entrepreneur. I graduated college with a 2-4. I was like the lowest academic performer in my high school probably. I was in a town that was like obsessed with academia. And so therefore like everyone just constantly made me feel like a total loser. But I was more so like I heated when someone would bring that up to like my parents and compare their kid to their to my parents kid. And like the shame that I brought to them potentially because of like me not going to a good college or like I haven't got it into one yet or whatever it was. And so I think kind of like that was the initial anger that has now turned into like a passion that I truly love but like that initial fuel. But I was like selling candy out of my locker in like seventh grade. Like I'd go to Costco by the fucking 40 pack of Reese's cups and like sell those and like then I was doing soda and I was like, fuck, these are room temperature. And so I had it but it was the winter time. So I'd keep them outside and like the in the yard at the school and like then I could deliver cold drinks and I'd drop them off in your locker in the morning like I had a delivery system. Yeah, yeah, but then the school is like, guys, I'm doing that. This whole stop me from selling. I got to post it on my table. Yeah, yeah. But dude, like yeah, my first job was like 14 out of bike store I was paying bike parts. Like I've just and like I think my parents were like focus on school. We will give you money. Like it's okay. But I just always want to just kind of work. As you've grown the business, I'm sure it's attracted attention from other founders, other CEOs. Is there anything that you've learned from people that are at a level that you aspire to be at eventually? Yeah, you know, trying to make sure your outside of work life doesn't fall apart in the process more than not that does happen to these people. So like they get so consumed. The odds are against you. So like my marriage needs to say incredibly important to us or me, my family as a whole does and my friendships. So those are incredibly important to me. I would say I was in a room, I was in our board room. I was having a board meeting three months ago. And I would say there's probably like three billionaires on my board, like five people on the board in total. And we're trying to figure out this issue on just getting these energy drinks to as many doors as we can. Something so simple sounding. And the billionaires are like, God, this is a really tough one. And I was like, well, if they can't figure it out, how the fuck am I supposed to figure it out? And so just kind of realizing that all of these people are human and they have no significant advantage to any of us. And those are what your competitors are too. Like you're not competing against someone who's some like super fucking alpha beast. Like they're just another guy or another gal. And like everyone that is competing as a human and everyone has the right to play has been the, no one kind of intimidates me anymore with that mindset. - You also told us that you don't feel like you're special. Which is really, we're all humans, yeah. - What do you feel like is your superpower though as a founder? Like is it just great? Like I'm gonna fucking figure this out or is it something else? - I think I can show up every day pretty ready to go for 10 years straight. Like pretty happily. Like I can run a pretty tight routine for 10 years straight. Not much about my routine has changed throughout this entire journey. Like morning workout, open my laptop at this time, close it at this time and like embed by 9.30. Like it's pretty much been that for 10 years. We've stayed incredibly consistent and locked in. Which I think the foundation of all that was the whole fitness career that we had. Like you couldn't go fuck off. You had to go, those were like the meal prep days when it was like chicken and rice and like you know everything was like crazy regimen did. So like that foundation of regimen was brought into my work life. And I've just kind of followed that the best that I could. If someone's struggling with discipline, do you have any advice or do you think you're like, I've just been doing this for so long, it's kind of ingrained in me. - Yeah. Do I have advice for discipline? I think trying to, it's funny. I did like one or two therapy sessions in my life. Which I should probably do way more. But I feel like each time like I've had it when I was like, all right, you go like work on this for a couple of years and I'll come back. Like it was, they'll just say something that really catches me. So I was trying to design my life as I thought the rest of society designed their life. Kind of like how I tried to make an org chart that every other company I thought had the same org chart. And I thought everything was copy and paste. And I have this incredible ADHD. And she was like, you're designing your life as you know what someone without ADHD would design it for. And you need to like create these little steps throughout the day that give you these dope of mean hits, that give you these like quick stimulus advantages. And like if you can't stay focused that long then I try to just embrace doing three things at once and staying unfocused. And so trying to, just cause David Goggins goes runs, 10 goes and runs 10 miles in the morning. And that's when he considers discipline. Like just figure out what that looks like for you and what you enjoy and what other people think looks like discipline. Right. So I like waking up at 530 in the morning and working out and then sawing and doing the shit that for some reason social media thinks is discipline. But like there's a lot of shit that I hate that. Dude, I only, I only met fucking vegetables. I don't fucking, you know, there's a lot of like just like things that I don't do that you would consider discipline too. But so of course a lot of that is just like choosing your career that you enjoy every day and running it with your friends and your wife. And you know, that's how you can, what you consider fun you will always be when that doesn't consider it fun, right? Totally. Yeah. That reminds me of remember when he had Jeremiah Davis on the podcast. This was a couple years ago He's an extremely successful videographer photographer Context creator He's told us that He was trying to wake up early because he thought that's what he needed to do Right, and he's like I was my brain wasn't firing like I work better at night Yeah, so then the producer that he works with says dude just like sleep until 12 like go fuck off And then lock in at work at 6 p.m. If that's what works for you. Yeah, that reminded me of that It's like yeah, fine with final works because some people Can wake up early and some people that isn't for them and it's like they thrive more at night And that's okay, too dude. I'm a CEO. I don't have Microsoft Office on my computer I don't have I have never I don't open spreadsheets I don't really know how to operate a P&L like I don't know any of those things But like Leo does you know and so like the people that I surround myself with can handle the things that I don't That are my weaknesses and I figure out what my strengths are and a lot of the time Those are the things that I also enjoy doing and that's what I embrace and I surround myself with people who embrace the things that I don't embrace So that's generally my team is comprised of is someone who also has like severe ADD Yeah, what advice do you have for the group of listeners out there that also feel that same way that have that I think it's again Like it's something that you need to embrace and try to figure out how do you turn that into a superpower for your world? You know we we have the ability to be like pretty high energy and go go go generally through that you know diagnosis and Yeah, I think I think I wouldn't have it any other way like I can't read. It's also superprower I mean you can obsess over shit if I'm excited about something. Yeah, you couldn't yank me out of there Yeah, like I up and so it's funny I just started to try to buy some books because I really want to be able to you know She sees my son sees me read but up until like three months ago. I would tell people I can't read because like I can't really get through like more than three sentences without completely losing focus and like going off into the clouds. So it's it's pretty severe ADHD and I'm now trying to to to read but but it's been tough It was really a few pages and I'm like using my fucking finger I lit down the lines and so I Think again like Someone who who hasn't or is just launching their business probably looks at us and it's like that guy doesn't you know fucking weakness Like how can I ever compete with that guy and it's like Brian can you fucking read like Like so there's nothing worse than You're reading and you're really trying to lock it dude. You're like Literally I read for two pages and I can't tell you what the fuck I just read I'm glad you said that because I don't tell people that that happens to me But that happens to me every time I read yeah, sorry to an audiobooks man You like it's not the same vibe, but definitely like we just had the CMO of Nike on yeah two days ago But he has a book and I was like dude. I'm not gonna finish I know for a fact like my reading level will not finish this book by the time We have yeah, so I just to expedit wow listen to it take notes as I go I listen to him at the gym I fuck with him at the gym driving and then when I walk my dog at night Just pop it in it's actually really nice. I I've been told to listen to the audiobook while I read Oh, it follows and supposedly then I'll like double my absorption. Yeah I like it though I think that I have to be taking notes so because otherwise you forget for you just if you're just listening like a lot of it's in one ear out the other So I I'm like pausing yeah, let me type this yeah good for you. That's great Have there been Products or new flavors that you've launched and you're like this is gonna be the big hitter This is our new hero. This is gonna take us to the next level. Yeah, and those are the ones that flop Yeah, dude I'm never like I mean surely temple I knew it rip but like I thought juicy orange was like a no brainer because all of the data Suggest that everyone else has a great orange flavor and so what happens because you have a lot of confidence in it is you don't try as hard So like the juicy orange we didn't put that much effort into the launch We didn't really we probably didn't even put them as you know subconsciously Didn't put as much effort into like the flavor itself and what the can looks like and Yeah, that's like I think that's got kicked out of Walmart that fucking flavor like it's like not yeah It's our bottom performer and so how like what percentage of your decisions now are you basing off of data like a new Orange flavor versus just like yeah, it's a gut feeling like I have a good feeling about this Yeah, in terms of like using data For for finding out product innovation. I have ran I have had large portions of blooms business in Categories that didn't really exist and we had to create the category which was greens and superfoods versus Soda and energy where there's a multi-billion dollar category that already exists and This is a long-winded answer, but I would much rather do the go after a category that already exists Then be the one who has to spend all of the marketing money to create a category for greens, right and And this was at a time when green it what like green yeah, it wasn't really it was actually in its like final demise stage So when we first pitched target they were like bro We just kicked every superfoods off of our shells like superfoods do not sell a target I was like, and this is not a superfoods like this is a good health product like please just trust me It's really hot on on on Amazon like I'm trying it Right, and so we finally did get it into target But it was at like the total demise of like the superfood era of over the counter products and so Now when I'm thinking about like what's another category that bloom could go into I'm not really that interested in like the new hot trend areas Until they're already established. I don't think you need to be the first mover I actually hate being the first mover because then I'm the one who needs to spend all the fucking money educating the consumer on you know how they why they should try this product so in energy drinks I loved being one of the last people to the party with better for you So does I loved being one of the third or fourth people to the party with What's I mean even with our creatine business which is doing great like we didn't we're not like really doing much of the Education around creatine because all these doctors are publicly talking about it But people know that they can go get the ingredient from a trusted brand that they know with the bloom trademark on the front of it Right, so I hate Using data to predict future trends Let let five brands go create that category and spend all of them I had to create it and then bloom will come in and do it right and make it 10 times better So the way I kind of just like explain that to my team all the time is like we don't recreate the wheel We just take the current wheel that's on the market and make it 10 times better. It's like nobody wants to show up to a party Yeah, first you know, dude, but the fact that is the Like let the vibes you know drinks are flowing dude That's what most people think you have to do like now. There's already too many energy drinks like no Someone already invented that product who gives a fuck if someone invented that product like go after that space I didn't invent booty bands either like you know on the topic of that. I saw a tick-tock of a girl. She's at air one Yeah, and she's selfie videoing she's like you know what? I think we need more of guys. I think we need better more better for you so does and it's like The whole thing is air one is like 70 different brands. Yeah, Ali pop smooth. That's mad funny That's mad funny. Dude, I mean ear ones a funny one because our team used to we used to have the headquarters right next to the Irwan and Venice and our team would like and myself we would go there and like try and and unintentionally get inspired for some new Proxy want to come out with them. We're like oh shit like this is an ear one product We sell in in Walmart's and targets and across the entire nation. I think Making sure you're getting your product innovation from the right areas is as crucial as anything else like what's performing well in Irwan is probably not necessarily a legitimately Large opportunity. What if you learn from being in target and wall in these big big big distributors. Yeah, what has come with that? I think that you know like they're not this scary beast of a of a corporation that Some of their reputation may may come the you're generally working with a real human and sometimes it's just one human who's making all of the decisions for that entire category and like That's a relationship where you can work with them and kind of come up with product product launches or new product formulations with that buyer Do you have stuff that's specific to target and specific to sometimes? Okay, so today as I sit here now But a lot of the time we do and which is a whole other ball game because that creates a lot of drama amongst the retailers and stuff because they hate that like the word exclusive Can be really dangerous in this game and you know unless you're okay with her in feelings which sometimes you have to and I think But like you have these retailers like dude they they need the up-and-coming digital brands just as much as you need a place to sell them So you need to create a synergy where we're like hey how can we work together to make this happen and not this Like really transactional relationship where there's not actually collaboration was there like a Inexpensive lesson you had to learn early on where Maybe you put a lot of money into a certain market campaign or or something else or Dealing with a manufacturer you spent a lot of money on a new run and it came back and either the cans weren't right or the flavor was off Has something like that happen? Yeah, so early on early I'll give two examples one like with millions and one when it was like 10,000 was lower money So early on we spent it was probably like $10,000 for and everything we had on what I thought would be like the ultimate meme campaign on Instagram and And it was all new pages that I've never worked with before, but I felt really confident about it, 'cause the pages were getting great engagement, and there was huge following pages, and it was a super relevant, I thought it was a super relevant demographic for who we were trying to market to. And sent the PayPal, the posts are going up two hours later, the posts go up, Marys following is getting, there's so many notifications coming in for all the followers, and I'm like, oh no, these people are all in India. Like, they tend not by any of our products. I just fucked up everything, like can't even buy more ads to try to sell more products, like the entire ecosystems fucked. Like that was our entire nest egg of money, and these are just Indian people sending us non-English DMs, like this is horrible. So that was a disaster early on, which you know, you just dig yourself out of the hole at that point, or down in a claim bankruptcy. And then, you know, later on, I mean, dude, I've had Christmas days where I get a phone call and 418 wheelers full of greens are stolen by the fucking Mexican cartel, and that's just like my Christmas that year. And I have to go deal with that. And I thought you were going to say they flipped. - No, no, yes. - Stolen by the cartel. - Stolen by the street. - Oh, up the street from here. - No. - Yeah, I ended up up the street from here, and they were trying to sell it as a third party sell. Dude, there's so many headlines of this coming out now, but it's happened for years in consumer packaged goods where they'll show up to the shipping ports with fake, you know, they'll pretend they're Sam's Club, but they'll pretend they're Walmart with very real, you know, permission slips. And they'll just take the truck and, you know, drive it off to some guy's, you know, secret warehouse, and they'll go try to sell it on Amazon. Yeah, and they'll undercut your price, and if your business is big enough, you might not even know what's happening, and it's a shit show. - How does that work, can a non-bloom, - Yes. - or sell a bloom product? - Yes, and it's, it's, I'm very surprised that that's allowed for digestible products, but that is technically allowed. - Really? - Yeah. - What can you do to combat it? - Not sell to people who will sell on Amazon, you know? So we don't just have like an open wholesale account for random people. - Yeah, like a random little small shop, small vitamin shop, couldn't come in. - No, okay. - No, no, no, no, no. - You generally speaking. - Yeah, yeah. - But for this they can, but that's fun. - Uh huh. - Yeah. - Wow, that's insane. That is nuts. Take me through last question that I have. Take me through a full marketing campaign today. What does that look like? I want to know from like, front to end, what is happening? - Yeah, that would be a two hour call. - Okay, but, - Let me just, let me just go. - I would say a big change that I've made this year. This is some sauce. Is I used to, to one massive blast, and then kind of stop talking about it. And I would see that in the sales, right? And I'm no longer trying to run this business of like, do you guys follow any fashion brands? It's just like, you know, a seasonal drop and it sells out in three days. You know what I'm trying to say? - Yeah, yeah, totally. - Like limited time drop. Like this is our fall collection. And then it all sells out. And then like literally the website might even shut down for a month. - Yes. - That's a hell of a business model and it's so exciting to run. And it's probably, you know, great for money. But I think that's how we were running our new product launches as well for a while. And we would have like a three day massive drop of a campaign. And it would be huge, but then it would like pretty quickly dwindle. So what we have done for some of the last few energy drink launches with massive success is actually have like three or four big launch moments that are very different, very different demographics talking to a different avatar across maybe even like a three or four month span. So if you look at our glacier crush can, we launched that with a campaign with Brett Chaudy with you know some billboards around LA. - I went to college with her sister L. We were the same grade and like same friend group. - Very cool. - Very cool. Hell yeah. - She said school, but good friend. (laughing) - And then had a second campaign where we did like a huge frozen event in New York City. Had a third campaign where we sponsored Amber Glenn for the figure skating in the Olympics in Milan and Milan. And so three like totally different types of campaigns talking to different people, but it maintained the hype very much. And this is our number two selling skew for the last like four months. Nothing beats Chris Bappell. Chris Bappell is just like on steroids. I don't know how to try that one. - Yeah. How do you decide which you know creators or influencers to partner with like and make not just doing like influencer marketing or whatever, talking about like putting a whole campaign behind it. - It's so funny bro, 'cause like I, first of all I very quickly removed myself from that because I don't know what girls follow. I don't know why they follow them, but like I'll have so many guys in the energy drink space who are like you gotta sign this girl. And I'll check her Instagram page and she's like, bro like you follow this girl. You know why? (laughing) Girls don't follow this girl. - And on this page. (laughing) And like I'm not fucking telling this girl. And then another example would be like, oh you need JLo. Like that's, you'll be fucking huge if you just get like a mega-solab. And they think like that, and this is all coming from like private equity dudes who are wearing a, you know, a vest. And like, it's like the great quarters there. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, great quarters have been a Patagonia vest. And so, dude, I don't know if that's just like, our team's fucking nuts. Like they just, it's funny because if you think about performance marketing, it's really a volume game. I'm gonna make 1500 ads every single day and see which one performs the best. We can't do that for a Glacier Crush campaign. We get one shot, we get one person maybe two that we sign. And we need to like pretty much be certain it's going to work. - And why is that? Why not do like a bunch of, to get that into the best sentence? - I'm saying for like the big, you know, the big launch campaign, like it might just be Amber Glenn. - I see. - But, you know, we're not going to be able to make like 1500 Facebook ads like you would if you were just like a normal D to C performance company. - You might not with fucking AI. (laughing) - Yeah, maybe. (laughing) So, and like, you know, thousands of influencers will post about it and will play that whole book. But like the actual campaign itself and like who's going to be like on the fridge at 7.11? Like we need to choose that month before. So that won't be AI opportunities, right? Like there's still like a, you walk into a Ralph's or you walk into a Walmart. Like we print that currogate months out and we have 10,000 of them to put around the point of sale. So our team has just become like mega weapons at choosing these people, especially influencers who are like on the come up and catching them early. They're really great. - I have two more questions. Do you have anyone? - No, you go. - Okay. - First one is creator led businesses. I feel like I've gained a lot of popularity over the last, I feel like five years, I feel like it's like COVID. But a lot see a spike, see a boom, and then kind of crash. If you were to restart and you had a creator who has some success and they have a following or an audience, what would you make sure they do to make sure that they have longevity over many years as opposed to just seeing a spike and then kind of a decline? - You know, I can speak on a large creator, like even just Mari. She went from just making fitness content to a full lifestyle influencer with segments of fashion and travel and obviously being an entrepreneur and then ended up launching the podcast which totally revived her following in her community. YouTube was a whole other type of avatar that she was operating under. So continuing to recreate yourself over the years seems to be like a non-negotiable. Just 'cause like you got famous off of, or you got your initial surge from one thing does not mean you can't start to transition that into other. And trying to, that's exactly what we've done. I think personal brand and product brand are like very similar topics. We launched as a pre-workout company. We now sell Shirley Temple soda at Walmart. Like it's, you have to continuously recreate what you are. And then to leave you with, as your son becomes older and starts to really understand what mom and dad built. What do you hope that your son and potentially other kids in the future as well? What do you hope they can take away from you or learn from you as they start to understand like truly what you guys built with Bloom? - Yeah, I think, (blows raspberry) hopefully Bloom still like ripping at that point. But I think, I think, you know, I would love to think it would be like a household brand at that point. They'll just like see it in their homies fridges. But I think to just know that like that, that the opportunity to create, that there's no excuse to not be able to create the opportunity, to not go after the opportunity that you feel pulled to go after. It doesn't make any sense that there's this 30 year old CEO of this large energy drink company. And like age is just a number, your place in societies, random list of hierarchy is truly a made up list. And you can, do whatever you want in 2026. I mean, did JJ gave me a fucking Insta 360 two days ago, and it'll be just like we're snowboarding with it. And it was like a movie came out of this thing. And it was like 400 bucks on the Amazon. We received it the same day. It's like whether it's content creation or launching a Shopify website or, you know, starting to just publish content on TikTok, like the opportunities are just, are just red hot right now. It's, it's insane. I love it. I love it. Greg, this has been so fun. This has been episode 198 of the 505 pod. If you're still here, please hit the subscribe button. Drop us a comment. Leave us a like. We'll see you guys all next week. Peace. So Greg pretty much said you think I'm just an influencer brand. Hold my beer. Let me go number one on Amazon. We're gonna do a million a day. Yeah. It's like work. Watch me. Watch me. Okay, listen, I really like this portion of the pod when Greg was talking about how you might as well go big man. You might as well just go for the damn thing. So if you're a rock and you're listening to the show, you're a builder, you're a dreamer. Just know that whatever the heck the thing is that you're going for don't let the small-minded people in your area in your hometown, family members talk you out of going for something crazy. Same with the pod, dude. Totally. We're going, we're going for big. We're going for big. That's not the word I was trying to say. We're going for broke. That's what we're doing. We're going for it. Is that the saying we're going for broke? You know, now that I say it, but if you're going for rent, don't think it's we're going for broke. We're going for number one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're coming for Logan. Man, it's so funny though because I think seriously though, man, the reason I love the podcast is because you get around somebody like Greg and you can feel like the aura of success and you're just like, fuck yeah, like he was saying he goes, I'm no one special. It's like if I can do it, so can you. He's like, and I believe Steve Jobs has a famous quote where he said, I'm going to butcher it, but something along the lines of like anyone who's ever made anything special or successful is no more smarter than you. And I think that's like so true. It's like you should put that on a shirt. Yeah, I did. I'm thinking about it. It's going to be the merch. Just DM me. DM me rock if you want that cut off tank. And no, but seriously, I think being around certain individuals and also even just like consuming this type of content makes you feel like it's possible and that you can dream bigger because depending on your environment who you spend your time with, you know, what your friends or family talk about what they say can really deter a lot of people sometimes because it's hard not to let other people in your you know, close circle. Like it's it's hard to not let them get in your ear. And it's always better if you can be around people, whether it's in person or listen to content that is, you know, going to try to make you better. Dude, that's something that we've learned too from paid to be you. Like you get people in a group or you're in some sort of coaching program, like you learn from the other people and you see what's possible. You're like it shatters your belief of what you thought was possible for yourself. Like we've talked about this before, which is making money with creating content for these brands and what these brands are charging. Like you have no idea when you're on the outside and you're first starting, especially when we're young. Like think about when like I was in school, I remember charging $200 for a video and I'm like, this is it, man, I'm rich. You guys have no idea. I'm wealthy. This is what this is what success looks like. You want to taste this drink? It's just for me tonight. I'm going to get our six dollar drinks at the bar, you know? And then we graduated, we come out here and you realize like what these big brands are willing to pay for videos and what it costs and how much it costs to make a great video. And you're like ideology that you had in your head is completely just broken. And every time that we have someone sit in that chair, I feel like the things that the things that a lot of people think it shattered, I hope when they listen to our pod. Sure. Like what's possible for them? Because you guys can go do whatever you want to do. You can you can make the biggest drink brand in the world and not not have any prior knowledge to drinks. You can go crush a category and dominate in it and do super well. You can feel the passion though in his voice. That's the coolest part about I think the show is the these people that we get to talk to and that you guys listen to obviously are so passionate about what they do. Like they fucking love it. They chose something that like gets them super fired up in the morning, you know? And it's it's it's inspiring. What's also interesting is they've been at it for I want to say a decade. They started out as just pre-workout. Yeah. And we thought it was originally greens. Totally. It was pre-workout. I didn't even I didn't even know that that was the thing. We were just in CVS literally right before this. And I saw so much blue. Really? Yeah. 100%. Another thing I absolutely love that he said was how important the liquid is. How product is good. Everything. Well you and you think about it. We we've talked about other drink brands that have came and went on the show before. Yeah. You have a huge spike because of their name. Yeah. And then the liquid's terrible. Yeah. Or it's got garbage in it. And then it doesn't keep doesn't keep people buying it. These drink brands like you're a coffee guy, right? Yes. Same. I'm not a coffee guy or or or a white stallion. White stallion every now and then. Think about it though. Drinks are ritualistic. What drink brand do you end up going with? I'm assuming the rocks are the same way. You stick with it. You're like go to the gas station. You're like if they don't have your drink, your piss, you're like do. I got to go to another gas station. I'm not going to drink my drink today. You know? Yeah. And he was saying how he just went to the the expo west and how everyone's asking him for like the tips and tricks. And it's like what's they were asking for like almost what's the get rich. Yes, dude. What's the secret? And it's like dude, your product is ass. Yes. And attention sucks. Yeah. And I think you can relate it to you can take the concept of the liquid is the most important as okay. If the product is the most important, you think about the podcast, right? I can't tell you how many times I've come to Brandon said we're changing the colors of the podcast. This is what's going to take us to the next level. Our branding's off. Is the is the is the Spotify icon is the podcast cover photo the best it could be? Maybe it could be better. Okay. But that's like the packaging. That's what's like on the outside of the can. How good is the conversation? How good is the liquid? How good is the product that you're putting out? That is the number one thing. Marketing and branding can get you one purchase. But the liquid is going to bring them back. And so if you can think about that whatever product you're putting out, whether it's a physical good or a digital product or content on the internet, like how good is the liquid? How good is the product? When you guys comment that we're the best kept secret on the internet. Does it make me want to drink bleach? Yeah, a little bit because I wish we weren't to see. But it's powers in the product. People like the product. It's good. You guys comment that. It's really kind of you, but also hurts my heart at the same time. Share this to a damn friend. We're coming. We're coming. We're coming in hot. You have no idea. Some might say we're about to be restocked. Some might say that the restock is the most powerful word in marketing. Okay. Because it signals that the damn thing was sold out. Yeah. It was gone. Not discounting. His discounting can like cheapen up your brand. And I love that he said he said sold out is the most powerful. He's saying, no, no, no, just getting restocked. Boom. Because anyone can kind of say they sold out and they had, you know, 12 10 cans, 12 cans, restocked. It was popular enough and in demand enough to wear. They sold out and now they're back and stock. And I love that he's just like, yes, not utilized enough. Yes. Start with a specific community. I really like that as well. Yes. Like his wife, Mari, I mean, they were going after her community to start. It was like, okay, what are the gals drinking that are following me? What can we make that's going to be awesome that they're going to really enjoy? And then you can start to brown it out. You get really good with the group and then you can start to go outwards to more people. It's it's it's almost impossible to start off. If you are bootstrapping like they did, you can't just go to the masses at the start. I also relate it back to our podcasts like we talked to a very specific person when we were first starting out. We couldn't do the show from day one how we're doing it now because we've had to put in the years of work to build up the credibility of our show and build up the network. And so now if we reach out, there's a handful of people who still might think of our show as like too small to come on, which is totally fine. But the caliber of guests that we'll be able to get on. For example, Greg would not have said yes to our show year one. No, it wasn't legitimate. It wasn't legitimate. And so with the bloom, it's like they started with the greens powder and they were serving a very specific community. And now they're playing ball with the masses. But I like his his thought process of go really hyper specific because you also have less competition from the big brands because they're not trying to play small. So it's really interesting. He talked earlier on about how people were dismissing of them calling them just like, oh, they're just a creator brand or this is just another influencer brand that kind of put a chip on his shoulder of I'm going to show you what's possible. Like, hold my beer. And pretty. It's super cool to hear that though of They want to be great you can just tell team that was here all of them like There's this urge to win and it's it's awesome. What's interesting about the Amazon stuff and going number one on Amazon is He he explained to us that typically people would like run ads to Their main website Amazon or the Shopify because Amazon takes such a heavy percentage. It's like it they take the data Yes, and it's like it doesn't make as much sense maybe financially, but he's like if we win on Amazon and online We have that data to go then to big retailers and say we're fucking number one on Amazon now we can go play ball and Target or Walmart or whatever you know retailer and that's just what it takes So it takes to be a you know nationwide nationwide brand and I really liked what he said about how the hard categories can be Easier in his opinion because you don't have as many people that are coming into it like Some random kid can't just make make a go make a beverage grand these days. It requires capital Like some form of capital You're still gonna spend tens of thousands of dollars like get it up and running get the product rate rock and roll It's not like oh yeah, I just have no money like I can start this like anyone can start like a little e-com store A drop sheet being company or things like that or a digital product business zero-barried entry. Yeah, but something like that It's like if you're gonna play you're gonna play you're gonna play the big boys. You're going up against monster and red bull and brands like that His view on hiring is also really interesting. Oh, he's like you can have red bull on Your resume put like you didn't do jack shit to contribute to like you know said growth from the company That reminded me of the Christian goose mon pod where he was saying how he was so obsessed with chasing Jim shark sure and Greg was sounds like he was obsessed with like the Pepsi's or the Coke's of like Hey, this is what it takes or the monsters This is what their org chart looks like we need to copy that and then those people would come in and be like Why is this person not contributing because in a huge engine like that? They're just another peg in the machine like it a smaller startup with however many employees they have You all have to be directly impacting like your thing your little thing that you're doing to make this thing continue to grow Just your random thought I just wonder what the what the cumulative net worth of guests On the five of five podcasts. Oh, it's pretty crazy. Is that oh, it's ridiculous. I love that he's like Because I asked him about kids And he's like yeah, you know trips are now having to be a little bit quicker This would probably would have been a four or five day trip now It's a three day trip and we have some travel help aka Jets away in Such a flex right from right from here. So you know sell 30% of the company had to get had to get back to Austin quit had to had to There's no other option man. It's so funny because now I'm getting hit with his stories so often like he's he's at top of Feed because I've been consuming so much of his content Other fucker lives a sick life. He knows how to you know You know what I really appreciate about Greg. Tell me tell me is he knows how to rich right? You ever see people got money and you're like you're just not you're not doing this right? I'm rich and correctly. You're not doing this. You got all this fucking money. Yeah, he's hoarding it shitty drip. What's going on? Okay? Yeah? He's he's he's riching right. Yeah, I like that. That's a great saying. Yeah, I'd like to think that I would also rich right you think you'd be good Yeah, I think you'd be good at it. Yeah, I think I think you'd be good. I appreciate that it would take you a little bit of time Oh really you strike me someone who would Spend money on some stupid shit I think brain why you got all those logos on you dude I also loved loved the story About him driving the fucking McLaren and then pulling up to the dude sound pizzas And he's like I'm fucking miserable stressed out of my life and this dude who's probably making minimum wage Is fucking having the time happy happy as a clam. Yeah, man. This was this was one of my favorite pods I know that you guys Enjoyed it a ton because when he left I was like It's one of my favorite ones I've ever done. I hope he I hope he enjoyed it I have insight in tell that says that he really enjoyed it. Oh, I will I do have a story to share tell me a story so Shout out Chris motions because he connected me with Zach from scene selects So I was just out in Sedona, Arizona First time in Sedona Not much to do besides hiking Red rocks are cool. I'm not like the biggest hiker in Sarah Catherine is definitely not a hiker So and the hotel is really nice, but it's funny because it felt like we were kind of living in Groundhogs day because we're like literally eating Every all the meals were comp so it's like eating every single meal at the restaurant I'm shooting in the morning then we're like going to the pool. Hopefully it's nice enough weather to lay out And then shooting some more and we're like, I guess really not gonna do here. We're just staying at the hotel But I went to go fly my drone because if you shoot hotels drone's important. Oh, this is great. I Had it flown my drone in a minute And the cord was for the old iPhone. We got to talk to GGI about that. That's ridiculous So is it on me? Should I have checked my gear beforehand that it works? Yes, but Couldn't fly the drone and then they didn't have a cord within a 60 mile radius. There's a best by around there Dude, I went to there was a best by but in hour away But I went to a Walmart a super store Walmart. You would think that a Walmart you would think a Walmart Wait, they didn't have a USB to USB C cord No, you needed a micro USB to a USB C Or I needed a converter Old iPhone to the new iPhone. So you see you have the broke drone my drone has USB and I just plugged it in Damn dude, so that's the other newer one though. I got the mini the mini like three or something I got the new guy. I do want to get the Mavic 4 new the Mavic 4 is pretty tough We're just gonna have to smuggle it into the country yet can't get it in the US But we need to hit up our Canada rocks or our Mexican rocks and we go down under you know the guy I met at Sam's film festival Maybe you get help us out. Sure. That was great. He's from Mexico. I do want to get a That's what we need to drone. I need a drone that can film vertically Yes My little guy can do that. It's pretty sick. Okay, so I might have to just you might have just caught that one Yeah, I'll charge you 50 bucks. It's it's a good to good drone. You know what else? You guys have no idea one how much money we've invested in this pod but you do because I've told you Let me tell you guys something's really pissed us off you guys know about the frequency problems we've had with the show right and if they don't they do now If you don't we do the breaker for the house is on the opposite side of this wall drive behind me right we got this breaker So when we record the reason why we haven't been wearing headphones lately is because there's like a tiny little buzz that happens But it really is only apparent in the headphones. It's not apparent in the actual my mind It doesn't make much sense, but there is frequency that's going on It's it's very light, but I get rid of it pretty quick host with some denoise So what we have to do now is take these wood panels off which is awesome take this off take the unsigned off Which I put up because I'm super handy take this off pain it with this emf paint and then we have to have an electrician come out Which is awesome to ground it to ground it so to take all that electrical magnificent energy and shoot it back Yeah, so that's what we're dealing with over here and we bought a new camera for you guys Which is great because our coast is a one over heats and we can't have that and it doesn't have a Flip out screen and I like having the flip out screen to be able to you know keep tabs over recording. Yeah, because see We I used to have a ZV one and I sold it we got you the FX3 now we can use that for the show And we got AC unit put in here So now it's like nice and chilly because you guys have no idea these lights are so hot for you to like break We got a light break which is awesome So my light is now to aperture and their customer service was bothering me, which is great. It's all good I'll let you guys know I will tell you if I hate their customer service, which is gonna be it'll be interesting But we do we're getting it we're gonna go on for you guys you have no idea I thought I was gonna need or I thought we were gonna need to get an extra lens, but The 70 to 200 works well works great. So we're still good on lenses So we're good on we're honestly fully good on lenses and good on cameras and lights now cameras We got a new light and we got a new 600 because our other one broke which is great. Yeah, that just arrived today So we'll have to go pick that up anyways. That's the after party. I still don't know how they're letting break into this thing Just keep sneaking through the back door one of these days. They're gonna catch me They're gonna catch onto my tricks, but I hope you guys enjoyed this episode with Greg We're literally approaching 200 is that next week is 200 next week or is in two weeks? I think it's in two weeks Give me a check what is going who's after Greg? Omar or Dean oh no Omar it's Omar Isn't it? Yeah, we just put out 190 pro. He's put out 197 so Greggle b 98 Omar will be 99 oh wow damn guys That's crazy. We got a banger for you guys on 200's gonna go nuts. We love you guys a ton We'll see you guys all next week with Omar El-Takuri and as always DMS on it you with any questions peace