How to start a multi-million dollar business in college - Jake Levy

All right, we're rolling finally got Jake on the pod dude and been trying to get you on for a while now and I'm I'm really lacking energy so If I can get this open we're gonna we're gonna try one out right now So for everyone watching and listening Jake and I've been friends for Probably like a year now a little more little over a year 2023 probably 2023 local Austin entrepreneur We started our businesses around the same time you might have been a little after me, but yours is killing it for everyone who doesn't know is Jake Levy founder of originally way better bar now Jacob bar will get into like why you rebranded and why you changed it and everything but The cleanest protein bars on earth Delicious and I've never really been at protein bar and energy bar fan But these are amazing and if you guys have ever tried one They're outstanding and the business is doing Pretty well recently right what you guys what you guys doing monthly revenue wise right now so Not to dodge the answer right away, but like March is our first month ever being fully in stock March 2025 is our first month that we're having full inventory and We did about 300,000 in revenue Dude, sorry, I'm fucking chewing in the middle of this not good It's insane. That's crazy. You started how long ago when was the official launch date of of the first part of the brand So yeah, you mentioned that you met in December 2024 2023 sorry, so a little more than a year ago, but year and a half ago and that was when I launched way better bar So it's I guess to give a little bit of backstory. I Started working on protein bars in general in August 2023. It's when I went full-time Launched the first iteration of the product November 2023. That was with the way better bar That was with very small amount of money. We were at a small bakery in Houston making these bars We'll walk us through that. How much like how much did you start the business with first of all? Why protein bars? Okay, so I'll check back up to like why yeah, yeah Walks us through like how for started because when I met you you booked a call with me, right? Yeah, that's how we first met pretty crazy Jax did like 50 bucks to talk to me back then and You were still very pro like paying for access to people when you oh you yeah And you know, I think you know this I pay my mentor. I used to pay my mentor 2000 bucks to talk to him 30 minutes And now he has equity in our company and I've seen you go from a college apartment garage band starting brand You know garage band business to you know 300k a month. That's awesome. That's great and two years less than two years I moved to Texas four years ago To study at the University of Texas. I was in the business school there. I was studying finance computer science and MIS I was double majoring had to start up in the crypto world in the web3 blockchains space I was deep in the blockchain world when I was at UT had to start up in the crypto space for about a year and a half two years Quickly realized that I did not like sitting behind a terminal and coding all day and the only other path that I was on was Kind of go to Wall Street after I graduated from McCombs at UT I also cannot see myself living that life. I had I've only ever had one salary job in my life and I quit after two weeks It was I was making pizzas in a lifetime kitchen in high school summer wait at a lifetime kitchen I was making the gym in a lifetime in in the gym. I didn't know that was a kid's old pizzas Surprising Wow Okay, that for two weeks quit and then ended up starting like a personal training business So it was always doing my own thing from when I was in middle school like in middle school. I was a born entrepreneur I Guess you can say that word out. I was selling like fidget spenders when I was a craze in in middle school Shut down the crypto startup in May 2023 Started this protein bar concept in August and dropped out within like a week of deciding to go full-time on that Still was living in Austin spend about three months Igeating the brand I dating the product the formula of finding the manufacturer The best piece of advice that I got was to take ten thousand dollars I had money saved up from all the time that I was working and the previous business that I had take ten thousand dollars And make as many bars you can with that and That's what I did so the first production run in November 2023 of our bars was about 800 bars went into the bakery made them sold them via social media and honestly a few days and sold out use that revenue to purchase the material for the next production run and Did a thousand bar production run sold out via social media did twelve hundred bar production run did that for about two months November December into early January with way better bar It was going really well. We launched that. I think that's when you launched Your clothing brand on tiktok shop as well and we did that I did that before all the big brands were on tiktok shop So the first month that we were selling we were like one of the top five brands in food and beverage on tiktok shop And we only did like 70 grand that first month Which is awesome though back then. Oh for sure six on shops No, I was also like zero dollars and that's been and have and note marketing and meta ad manager was yeah Well before we get into this because we're moving fast couple early on questions So you started the business with ten thousand dollars, right it ended up being a little more it took on some debt But yeah the first production run was like ten thousand dollars I think there's so many young people that think you need a lot of money to start I started my business with ten or nine thousand dollars between my co-founder nine same sort of thing It was like we bought five hundred pairs of shorts went and sold them to our friends everyone thinks that you need a Huge plan and when in reality like you could have a plan and I guess it's good to have a plan But so many things change and I guarantee you that You know nobody that blew up on tiktok shop whether it was your brand my brand any of these other brands knew that tiktok shop Is going to be a thing so you could have a plan but so many things change and it happens so fast I think you just need to start and go which is what you did and You know you get customers in your local network and then you grow from there I get a lot of outreach from aspiring food entrepreneurs not that I'm like top of the Of the industry by no means But like people that are my age or younger a couple of years around me are always reaching out asking for advice with Manufacturers and fulfillment people they're like I'm too small on having enough money to Need the moq's the minimum order quantities for some of the larger bar manufacturers because the larger bar manufacturers the moq is 200 300 thousand bars and if your bar costs a dollar per bar That's a lot of money that you probably don't have if you're 20 21 years old and For some reason so many people just think that that's the only way to make the bars to start out I didn't go to a full-scale bar manufacturer I spent three months from august in november asking every single person I knew I mean now there's platforms where you can find manufacturers online, but back then there wasn't And I went to a small bakery. They were making Brownies bites and cookies our original protein bars were circular if you remember with a better bar They didn't even have like hockey pucks like yeah, we were using a hamburger forming machine to make the original bars And then we were like hand feeding them into the flow wrapper. So I just think You have to think outside the box like if someone just tells you oh the moq is 180,000 bars We'll find another solution. That's not the only way Yeah, and prove the concept first before you go and throw a hundred dollars I always you know a lot of people on the internet have this Assumption that you need to have a lot of money to start a business once again And the truth is I actually think it's better to have less money when you start a business absolutely I can talk about that for a while because not only did I not know what paid ads were But like I all I didn't thought was I need to sell this product so I can make another production run and For sure, constraint breeds creativity even if you have a ton of money the best advertisement So the ones that are scrappy and creative that don't cost a lot of money go out into the street Like that was my original marketing plan. I went with my buddy to the UT I still lived on West Campus, which is where all the college students lived at UT And me my buddy just went to the main street at campus and gave out 50 bars got 50 clips post that social post that the tech talk and each of those videos Even if they only got 20 30,000 views which they didn't we we had like 5 million organic views in the first month Which obviously helped to sell us out But on the other side of that it also really caused me to dial in the financial and operational aspect of the business I was counting every single penny. I was doing the books I was watching that cash flow model every single day because I couldn't afford to slip up with a thousand dollars because I would have Put me in the red Well, it's funny. You were kind of like the opposite of me because I wasn't looking at the bank or the books I didn't even know how to do that stuff at the beginning. I was just like let me sell as many pairs of shorts as I can I was the only thing I was worrying about and then we got to the end of year one And we did like 630k and then I look at our bank account. I'm like where is it? I was like I was like looking at this. I'm like oh my god We just turned 9k into 600 grand and and one year with no ad spend This is awesome and then I'm looking at the bank account. I'm like Where the fuck is it right? But you're you're You're very lean and you're still the only employee of your business right obviously got like Freelancers doing some stuff. I'm assuming right but well from the start you always have partners You're never really alone because you have a manufacturing vendor You have a manufacturing partner you've repackaging vendor and then for the first year of the business I was procuring all the ingredients myself. So I had relationships with 20 different ingredient vendors So yes, I'm the only full-time employee at the business I recently brought on an agency to help with our Amazon. I recently brought on someone to help with our meta ads and Google ads But that was in the last month like for all of 2024. I was doing everything myself Which I'm actually pretty grateful for because now I know How to use the Shopify admin I know my way around the TikTok seller center and the Amazon seller center And all these different software's and the spreadsheets that can maintain the current business Obviously now I'm at a point where I need people to come in and like maintain and make more efficient that systems in place but I think that with the software that's available now, so you can remain very lean for a long time. I'm still longer. I'm hiring now. Absolutely. And it's only going to get more and more of that because you can do almost anything by yourself these days. At least to start. You don't need a team to start any sort of business. It could be good to have a team, but you don't need it. To clarify what I've just said also, I don't think it's a flex to say that you're the only employee. I think if anything, it's a downfall with my capabilities of hiring people at the right time, but it has helped the business remain more profitable since starting. For sure. And for anyone watching for two different perspectives, he's very lean. He has no employees. I have seven or eight right now, and they're all part time though. They're not getting big salaries, maybe they get one thousand a month or two thousand a month, and they do specific things like the email guy and the ads guy and the creative director and the product designer like all these different employees. But because of that, I have so much free time, and I set mine up that way. That way I have time to go think about new things. And that's not to say that's the right way or the wrong way because it's obviously working really well for you. You're doing very similar numbers to what we are. I'm actually pretty good at because I was in like the technology crypto world before this. I followed like all those venture capitalists in that world. So I read a, what's his name? Like Andrews and Horowitz and Paul Graham, like that world of people, I always read their stuff, and they have this concept of maker and manager mode. And I try to separate my days with like maker or manager mode today. I woke up inside of my computer and was answering emails and slacks and customer service stuff for hours. I didn't want to do that in the early days, but I can't be doing that anymore. But then tomorrow, maybe I'll, well, not maybe I know I'll wake up and be in maker mode. I won't open email until noon. I will have an open notion page or an open Google doc and just work on growing the business because how many hours a day are you working right now? So all hours, I think is the right answer, but not all hours are the same. Not all hours are like super tedious for sure, spreadsheet work and email work. I consider working, you know, reading a book about management or this is advertising your company. This is sharing your story. Yeah. Well, I had a business before this and I didn't structure it the way that I wish I structured it. And it caused me to really think about my anti goals. Like what are the things that I don't want to be doing? Like I really hate inefficient meetings, I hate getting on a call and be like, hey, what are we talking about today? So like that's one anti goal. Another anti goal is setting one email all day, every day and not like being proactive but being reactive. I hate being reactive with the business. So right now, I am working all hours, but it's things on, it's on things that I really enjoy. Like if I don't enjoy doing it, I try to automate it or delegate it. Nice. Well, let's back up a little bit, right? Because we didn't talk about the why. Okay. Very first, the thesis. Where, where did the, obviously, a very healthy guy and that's always been really important to you. I think that's what we've talked about in the past. Where did the idea for a healthier, cleaner, you know, ultimate solution protein bar come from? And my follow-up question to that is, did you have a roadmap or a plan to make this financially successful or did you think I want to make a healthy protein bar? I'm going to figure out the other stuff along the way. Was it like an idea first because of the solution or was it the business and then turn it into a product, if that makes sense? Well, I'll touch on the thesis first that I saw, like the gap in the monitor, now I'll touch on that question. When you look at, well, actually, I'll take a step back, like my personal, go for another bite. My personal, that's why I asked the long questions that we have time to chew. My personal interest in helping nutrition. So for a very long time, I was in the camp that like, well, I didn't even see food as nutrients or anything more than numbers. And we're kind of taught that for our entire upbringing, like calories, protein, fat and sugar, the only things that you need to optimize. And I was eating the high protein, low sugar, low calorie foods for years. And so long as I was hitting my protein goal, it didn't matter to me. And I had all these like diseases and ailments and I never even crossed my mind that the food that I was eating was impacting these asthma, for example. I had asthma for a decade. I couldn't go more than six hours without breathing, I was doing injections in my stomach, I was going to the doctor every month. When I entered, I don't know, high school, I started getting really bad. Acne, my adorization, my face was really red all the time, it was burning hot. Again, I was prescribed all these pills, all these appointments, all these treatments. Nobody ever asked what I was eating or how I was living. And I started to ask myself that question. I started to research and listen to people online and things that the mainstream media and doctors warrant mentioning that the foods that you eat can impact the inflammation in your body. No way. And right now, right now, if you're in the space and you're in health and you're in nutrition, it's obvious. But in hindsight, when you're in it and people aren't talking about it, it's not obvious. Yeah. There was a standard American story where I was eating the pop tarts and the Cheerios and the processed junk and I was sick and inflamed within like three months of making simple changes, just cutting out the toxic food additives, my asthma went away and my digestive issues went away. My asthma went away. How does your asthma go away because of food? See, I would have never thought that that was correlated. So I'm not a doctor, I'm not a scientist, I'm a biologist, from a very basic level of how I understand it, asthma is a disease of inflammation. And if you can lower the inflammation in your body, that is directly correlated to your asthma. That's like the deepest that I'll get into it because you can do your own research and I think everyone will come around to that journey on their own. But you started eating healthy and it went away, that's how it matters. Yeah. I cut out just like a toxic food additives, like I didn't make any true drastic changes, I just stopped eating the junk that is fed to us when we're in school and when we're younger. And that opened my eyes to like the transformative power of food. So then I had to cut out, not to name drop, the top brands in the protein bar world. I started looking at the ingredient list of them and they were optimized for the totally wrong things. These were candy bars of 20 grams of protein. So the thesis originally was, when you look at the bar market, you have two categories of bars. You have the high protein bars that are good at helping hit your macros but are generally void of beneficial or nutrient dense ingredients. And on the other side you have healthier options that are the fruit and nut bars but are void of the protein count. Third, most bars are plant based. They use the soy protein or the pea protein and you can go down the rabbit hole like why that is sub optimal compared to dairy protein. Yeah, I'm curious why they even have that in the first place, is it cheaper? For sure, it's cheaper but I think that became a trend in like the late, like 2018, 2019 into like 2020, 2021 when like beyond the, it was a thing when plant based was on its price. And so the original goal was to create a bar that was high in protein, using clean ingredients and also animal based. And that's why we use beef tallow as our fat base, we sweetened the bar with honey and dates, we use grass fed, whey and milk protein and collagen in our bar. So that was like the original thesis in late 2023 when I was starting. Nice. And then your other question was, did you can you repeat it? So for me at least when I started Haas, I just wanted to make a cool pair of workout shorts. I didn't know anything about clothing, I didn't know the industry, I didn't know how difficult it was to scale out of clothing brand, I didn't know the, I didn't know you needed 75% gross margins or higher, I didn't know that manufacturers will lie to your face, I didn't know anything, I didn't get into my industry because I thought it was a good industry, I got into my industry because I wanted to make cool clothes, honestly. I just wanted to make a cool pair of shorts. And my question is kind of like the, the backtrack to that, did you get in? Because you thought wow, there's actually a great financial opportunity, a great business opportunity in this space or was it more so like I just want to create a product that I would like to use or was it both originally it was I want to create a product that I like to use. I still eat the bars every single day. How many do you have a day? I've dialed back a little bit, they do get a, like when you're having three or four a day, it gets a little much. It's quite eight four or five of these a day on my skin term. You get a little bit flavor fatigue, originally, over the summer when I was packing, I packed the first 5,000 orders myself, so when I was in the facility doing that, I would have two bars for breakfast, two bars for lunch and two bars for dinner, it was crazy. So originally the intent was to create a bar that I wanted that I could eat and that I would eat because the ingredients were clean and the macros were good. And then the business, I would say the business came afterwards once you drop out of school to start your own business, you kind of need to make financial progress or else you're not going to be in business anymore. Yeah. And what did everyone in your life think about that? So when I first launched a protein bar with beef talo, this is before the maha movement and before the RFK stuff, everyone thought I was crazy. People were like, who's going to eat a protein bar with beef talo and why are you dropping out of school to this? I can't you finish out your two years. I heard all the arguments, can't you do it on the side, can't you wait until you graduate, all these things. And I just knew that I was never going to use my degree, I knew I was going to do my own thing after school anyways, I was just delaying the inevitable if I would have stayed in school. I spent any money and potentially taking away time from what really, yeah, time was the most valuable thing. There's like, I was in school learning, like, different rabbit hole, but in my opinion, rather useless information, especially for an entrepreneur. But what do you say to, sorry to cut you off there, but what do you say to all the people who said like, "Well, it is. " Isn't it good to have a degree to fall back on like that's what my parents were saying like just finish it You're already almost halfway there, right? I was just so confident that I would make it work Yeah, I just I feel like you have the same delusional belief in yourself that no matter what you will make it work and I always thought that and To meet for me I was I knew I was never gonna use my degree So whether this business failed I knew I was gonna do something else that would have worked this one just picked up steam pretty Well, we clearly had some early product market fit people were liking the product and the way we were selling it and This was the opportunity to capitalize on it I think the timing in the market right now, especially is pretty impeccable and like for a late 2024 early 2025 And obviously the TikTok shop was a big unlock for you guys But now you barely do any revenue on TikTok shop. Yeah, so TikTok shop definitely like give us the initial start of our business Because we were so early on it that we were the main food and beverage we were the main food and beverage products in the first two months late 2023 in 2024 It was like we did about Andrew thousand in 2024 despite all the out of stocks and Tiktok was like less than a percent of that revenue So it was essentially not existing part of our business So where does it break down for us how the actual business works? Who are you selling to are you in retail? Is it all D to C? What kind of what's your target demographic? So I'll get that We shut down way better bar in oh, yeah, so in January 2024. Yeah That was like the most brutal part of the business because we had taken on About $80,000 worth of pre-orders because the cash flow from like the revenue like wasn't enough to keep I'm purchasing more ingredients. So I had done all these pre-orders the hardest part of e-commerce purchase more ingredients We ended up doing our biggest production on like I mentioned we were doing 800 bars and a thousand bars We had made over 10,000 bars in late December early January and They were all defective. This was like just my naivete or on food science and manufacturing The first like thousand bars come out of the production facility come out of the production beer musters in the room over and This was like the day before Christmas Eve or something So like the team was like doing me a favor coming into the facility and I started to pack the orders that we had done the pre-orders for and they were softer than usual I could tell that something was wrong So I took one out and I ate it and it was the most gummy Non-enjoyable product that I've ever had sticky and then I go and yeah And then I walk into the production room and there was like 10,000 of them made and I just like You know that feeling in your heart where you're like you get that pit in your stomach I was like oh my god, so like they stopped production. We tried throughout what was going on one of the the way protein vendor essentially switched the type of way protein on us without us knowing and We had 10,000 defective bars and that was all of my cash just sitting in these defective bars Ended up having to refund $80,000 worth of orders Shopify suspended our account shut down our payment processing and I wasn't that like that that was $80,000 pre-orders. I had to refund all that with I had already purchased the ingredients with that money Purchased the packaging paid the manufacturer why refund instead of just telling your customers Hey a small business. I don't have the money to refund you But your bar's welcome eventually. I just want to make sure they're right. I did that for about three weeks I sent the email to all the customers. I said hey, we had a manufacturing issue or working on it I'll give you an update when we think we will have them on the way to Talked to a lot of different way protein manufacturers. Of course. There's like Christmas New Year's Like I couldn't get in touch with anyone. Yeah, it was a brown the last week of January that I decided like I had Dozens hundreds of customers emailing me like hey, where's the order? Hey, where's the order? I'm like, you know, they just don't read the emails that I send them but yeah, it got to the point where I didn't like holding on to these people's money Had to refund them so late January. I went into debt shop if I got suspended. How do you refund money? You don't have how does that work So I had to open up a few different credit card accounts and connect those to the shop if I swap Refunding off of money off of a credit card. Yeah, and I had to go You know shop if I give like shop like capital. Oh, he's mca's which is literally fucking it's that's it's angered shop if I capital Is an anchor to the fucking floor of the ocean. It seems. Oh, they offered me $300,000. Yeah, that's great Oh, and I don't have to pay them back unless I'm doing well it Please just trust me on this. It is never the option like it is the last option when you actually annualize the rates of these mca's They are offered. It's like a hundred plus percent per year. It's crazy. Oh my god But the worst part is when you take on debt like that you cannot grow your business because you know If you think about it not to get sidetracked here But just a quick piece of advice for everyone the problem with these loans that pull on your daily sales where if you do a Thousand dollars in sales as an example they take 30% which is sometimes a Shopify capital does sometimes it's like as low as 15 17 Let's say right in the middle 20 percent the problem with that is if you're doing a thousand dollars in sales a day and 200 of that immediately goes back to Shopify to repay your debt You cannot make money or grow your business because most of the time your profit margin is a little bit below 20 percent Especially in e-commerce like maybe your net margin is like 35 40 but then you know or maybe you're if you're lucky It's at like 50 which is like your cost of good your sale minus your cost of goods Then you have the ad spend then you have the cost of acquisition Usually your net profit margin if your lucky is in 15 to 20 percent range and if you're there That means you're still like every dollar that's coming in is literally getting taken out by your your cost of goods your ad spend and your repayment And so, you know, it looks awesome. Oh, they just offered me a hundred fifty thousand dollars the reality is you're trying to climb out of that hole for six months I will touch on that I took on a not a good amount of debt in late 2024. We'll talk about that when we get to it. So January I was you know in debt. I didn't have any money I ended up hiring a true food scientist spent some time with them. I was traveling to meet them Ended up finding a new manufacturing facility, which was in Georgetown, Texas. I live we live in Austin. So it was about 45 minutes north and Purchased the maximum amount of ingredients that I could with the amount of credit card Credit that I had so like If you open up all these new business credit cards, they give you 12 months zero API So I had about $60,000 credit with these credit cards and I'd 12 months essentially before I had to pay them back And I spent all 60,000 of that to purchase just enough material to purchase the maximum amount of material that I could for our first production run Of what is now Jacob in May 2024. So Long story short, IP couldn't be secured with way better bar had to rebrand while we were reformulating So the main reason you rebranded was because of IP issues Yeah, I mean I got rejected from the USPTO. Wow, okay patent trademark office. So there was no option I got I technically got like there was a trademark holding company that owns I wouldn't get into it but I couldn't I always thought your rebrand was because of branding Branding opportunities. Oh, no, I thought wait way better bars a great name. Yeah, I thought oh, okay I know I agree. I was I always the way better bar. No, it sounds awesome But so okay, it's an IP issue. It's funny story. I actually there was I was getting to deadline of when I needed to order the packaging for the next production run I think and I sat down one night and pulled an all-nighter and I read through every word in the dictionary until I wanted to find a name. I knew name. Yeah, it was like 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. I got to pulled an all-nighter and then there was just nothing because class five is Protein bars and I just couldn't find one that I liked in class five. That was available and then ended up just Talking with the friendings. I won't just name it after yourself I'm like Jake doesn't really work and I'm only to bend that there's only bend bar. It doesn't really sound good Jacob is my formal name. Yeah, that's what I went with nice. So May Our first production run. I forgot the actual quantity of bars, but it was like 25,000 of revenue And we pretty much sold that out overnight So we launched like May 11th sent the email out to my email list Did a post on TikTok and Instagram and did like 25 grand in a day or so was shipping the product from my dorm room in college and Use that revenue to purchase the next amount of the next batch of materials and we were back in stock in June And then pretty much all of 2024 we were out of stock one to two weeks each month Which was brutal and you have to turn off Subscriptions you have to turn off your wholesale accounts you have to turn off the advertising flywheel that you get spinning and you lose that Momentum being sold out is not good for anyone young who doesn't understand that you probably though sold out means you're Your demand is high being sold out. It's the last thing you want to be ever you can say That you sold out like once or twice before just gets annoying people are like okay like just figure out the supply chain Yeah, so I wanted to figure out the supply chain. So I started I paid off the credit card debt and then started to take on MCA debt because when you're such a small business you're not getting the line of credit from a bank and It's a shop like capital the way fire the paypal's the other MCA style loans of the world They're all you know you're saying hey take our 20 grand take our 30 grand. So I had accumulated Just over $200,000 in debt in 2024 and that's still like wasn't enough to fulfill this demands like we got We were growing but like not crazy that we did Like I said about 800,000 in 2024 and it got to the point where I needed to finance the business in a different way or also I was not gonna grow because you're paying Because when you go out of stock you still have to pay back these debt premiums So end up taking on some some equity investment in Early January 2025 which helped fund the transition to a full-scale bar manufacturer You know they can produce a hundred thousand bars per shift in eight hours So we can scale with them for for many years to come and that's where it's where I know Well walk us through what it's like raising You're raising for a very unique product. I you know, I'm raising right now as well So I understand but for everyone who's listening or watching who everyone who has an idea and they don't know where to start, and maybe they've had the business for a while, and they're looking to give away a piece. Walk us through what that process is like. Are you cold calling people on LinkedIn? Are you applying for accelerators? Are you doing all the above? What was like the first decision you made in order to raise? - So for a very long time, I was very anti-fund raising. I was like, I want 100% control of the business. I want full optionality in five years, 10 years, 20 years. I don't want anyone having a piece of my business. 'Cause I view it as my business, and I have the best decision making power, I have what it takes. And I would say the first impetus for me wanting to fund raise money was I saw the timing in the market for the product that we're selling right now, and I didn't want to look back on 2024, 2025, 2026, and think I didn't do everything I could to capitalize on this opportunity. I mean, I think one of the biggest pieces, one of the biggest points of potential success is the timing in the market. And with everything going on, that's been proven by RFK, with Maha, with the increase in awareness towards the ingredients that are in these food products, and in the food supply chain, that's everything we stand for as a brand. That is our core value, like we want to create a world in which people that care about their health don't have to compromise on it because we use clean, real ingredients. And so that was the main impetus. I saw the timing, I wanted to capitalize on it. Luckily, me kind of being the face of the brand, I'm on Twitter and Instagram and TikTok, doing talking head videos with me in my dorm room for filling the orders and talking about the business, I did have a good amount of inbound interest from investors. So once I decided that I was going to start fundraising, it was, I mean, easy is the wrong word, but I had people in mind that I wanted to start speaking to already. And I would say the way I look at fundraising is when I started the business, 100% of the equity of the shares of the business are in my name. But I don't necessarily view the equity as mine. I view it as the businesses and it's my job to protect it and use it efficiently or effectively, I guess both. That's like a way to look at it. Because if I start looking at it as mine, I just don't think you're going to make the best decisions. And if you're taking a 20-year view on this, when you're raising your Series A and Series B, it's my job to ensure that we have sufficient capitalization opportunity at that point in two, three years from now. And I think if you go in with that mindset and that approach, you're having much more level headed conversations with potential investors. Does that answer your question? - For sure, no, and I fully agree. I think a lot of people will tell you, be careful with them. I mean, dude, I gave away 10% of my company like that to for those of you that are watching or listening and don't know that I gave away 10% of my company to very, very successful founder. And I asked maybe 50 people about it. What are your thoughts? And 49 of them said you're an idiot, you're cooked. This is the worst deal I think you'll ever make in your life. And who are you asking? Mentors, advisors, family, friend, anyone who had some level of success. I wasn't asking nobody to see who had no credibility to answer the question. I was asking actual really successful people, like eyes that had built multi-eight figure, some nine figure, I even asked a billionaire, like what do you think of this? 'Cause I had this opportunity for everyone listening. I had an opportunity, the founder of the fastest current e-commerce spread of all time and clothing brand, same company was like, I wanna help you go your business, but you gotta give me 10% right now. And there's no vesting, which means he gets it all up front. And it really was like just me signing it over and then hoping that he actually does something. That was the deal. And of course, it sounds like a terrible deal, but I had a really good gut feeling about it. And yeah, 40, 49 out of 50 people, whatever the exact number was, said you're an idiot. And then one guy was like, who you know as well? He was very successful, was like, dude, I would do this in a second. But I used to be super stingy with my equity as well, just like you said you were in the beginning, and then I realized like nobody really successful has the entire business for themselves. Go look up Fortune 100 company. Look, just pause the video. Go look up Fortune 100 companies and how much equity their founder still has. Majority of the founders of those companies don't even have equity anymore. Like these legacy businesses that were started in the early 1900s, Zimmer Biomet, right? In the late 1800s, the founder, whenever it was, the founders of these businesses that have been around for decades, sometimes the century plus, usually don't even have any equity anymore. And the reason for that is, in order to get your business, this idea, this project that you're working on now, in order to get it to a multi-billion dollar level, in order to get it in everybody's hands, in front of everybody's eyes, you need the best talent in the world. It's all about people, ideas don't mean anything, it's all about people. And in order to get the best people, you have to be willing to let them, you have to be willing to share, essentially, because if I, think about it this, if I say, "Yo, Jake, I have this awesome idea." Do you wanna help me with it? Do you wanna leave your company and help me with this? You'd say, "Fuck no, dude, why would you?" right? So, in order to get the best people, in my opinion, you have to be, you know, obviously don't hand it out, like it's candy, but you have to be willing to share and make these people feel like it's their baby too. 'Cause why would you take away time from your kid? If you were a parent, why would you take away time from your kid to help this person raise their kid if you didn't feel like you were a parent as well? If you didn't feel like you were part of the family. And so, you know, after my raise, I'll have like 32% of the company left. But the way I look at it is like, this isn't my first business, it's not my last. I don't think this, this isn't your first, I don't think it'll be your last either. And you gotta do whatever you gotta do to make sure that you cross the finish line. Who cares how fast your first lap is as long as you finish the race? So I started the business by myself. I was a solo printer, I didn't have a co-founder. You were starting the business with half of the amount of equity that I had. So I viewed the first, I have one main investor in the business and, you know, I went to where they live and I spent about two weeks with them and had a really great experience. - You only have one investor? - Well, I have a couple smaller ones, like one main one that's like leading the rounds. Are you allowed to say it, you don't have to say who it is, but how big is that check, pretty decent size? So far, we've raised, technically only closed, only like 400,000, it's like small check. So far, we're raising another roughly 600,000 right now from pretty much the same investor. And so I viewed these people that I'm taking on board who are very experienced in the CPG of what I would say, like, kind of achieved the success that most CPG entrepreneurs dream of. And you, the equity, like I'm raising at a pretty low valuation for where I'm at right now, but I'm totally okay with that because they will be as hands-on as I need them to be and having their, them as a resource. I also, having them as a resource and a trusted resource is almost invaluable to me because, as I'm sure you get to, you're getting so many perspectives, you've got 50 perspectives on raising and it can become a little overwhelming because you're looking to a lot of different successful people that are telling you all different things. And for me, at least having one party that has an extreme vested interest in my success and the business's success really helps clarify the decisions that need to be made. That's one. So I started the business with 100% like, I viewed the early investors that I took on. I'm also like co-founder equity 'cause they'll be pretty hands-on. - Yeah. But there's one other point that I wanted to mention with that too. - I have a question while you think about it. - Go for it. - What do you think has been the most powerful lever that you've pulled over the past 12 months, 18 months in terms of, we've talked about this earlier, you might work 12, 14 hour days, but sometimes it's one hour out of those 12 that has the most output, right? That one decision that changes everything, what do you think was that one decision for you that you pulled that changed everything for your business? Was it content, was it your personal brand, was it? - When I think of the business that I have today and like the business that I want to build, some so far away from like the success that I know I can achieve with this business, I think there's two ways that I look at it. You need to make those like incremental improvements that are like the 5% improvements, you kind of need to do that. Like you need to optimize the email flows and you need to optimize the website. Like that's not gonna change your business drastically. You're not gonna build, in my opinion, what did I have success with it? Not that I have experience with it. A billion dollar business by making all these 5% improvements. I think a big mindset switch that I had was, I need to be spending most of my time finding these X factors in the business, like finding the two X factors, the three X factors. What can I do that will 100% my business will grow at 100%. And there's a lot that you can do, 'cause I'm a solo entrepreneur too, like I didn't have it, I still don't have any full time employees and any team members. And you need to prioritize where you spend your time. And if I'm spending my time doing all these one to five percent improvements, I'm never gonna go anywhere. I need to do what 100% my business and what have I done that has done that for me? I mean our number one acquisition channel for customers right now is influencer and affiliate. So like finding the people that can generate rate us 100 or 500 customers in a specific niche that we're targeting is extremely powerful because those 500 customers know the exact other customers that will love our product, love our business. Let me rephrase the question a little bit. If you're looking at a sales chart and you're seeing your sales and it's kind of like a steady climb up, I imagine. Was there a moment where all of a sudden that steady climb turned into a big jump? Yeah, and when we launched on Amazon, but okay, so there you go. And I was going to say so in what created that big jump. Amazon and no, a new sales chance. It's simple. I think I think people like to over complicate what like business is like I try and simplify everything. That's like one of my core values both personally and I'm with a business like simplification. Keep it simple stupid. I think it's like the kiss acronym. We sell three flavors. We sell vanilla, chocolate and berry. We sell it in a nine pack, 27 pack and 45 pack and we make things and we sell things. So if I can dial in the operations and supply chain side of the business and then dial in like the sales channels and we were moving the products at this point, we're just doing more of what we've been doing and doing trying to do it better. So I don't think there was like a crazy. It's so fascinating. You have such a different business than me in terms of I mean, even though we're both in e-commerce and we're both D to C, very different. You have three skews. Three screws. You have three skews and people can buy it over and over if they like it and I have hundreds of skews and I can only sell one to one person right now or maybe someone buys a couple different pairs of stores. But even with the three skews that we have, there was just so much room to optimize. And part of it is because this is my first time in the food world and the first time making bars. So I mean we just reduced the size of our packaging to actually fit the bar. We reduced it just enough to fit the bar precisely and we saved 20% on our packaging costs. So there's all these optimizations that you have with a simple product and also with food manufacturing, food is very sensitive to the way you manufacture. The SOP for production has to be pretty dialed in. You can't overheat the liquids, you can't over mix the dough, there's all these things that if I were to go launch a new product line, if I were to go launch a new product line or new flavors, not only am I adding complexity to the business, but I'm not optimizing what we currently sell enough. We're at a three and a half million dollar run rate right now. Like before I would even think about touching retail or launching new product lines, we can get to 30 million. We can 10X what we're doing right now before trying to add complexity to the business. It's crazy, dude. I used to, so this will kind of lead into my next question in terms of bottlenecks, but I used to be kind of at, I reached my bottleneck and I was only, I forget exactly what the number was, I was selling shorts and I couldn't get above, I think it was like a hundred thousand a month and we were trying everything and I really did think I was like, maybe this is the wrong product. Maybe I'm selling the wrong thing. Maybe the markets too saturated. Maybe there's too many clothing brands out there. I was coming up with all these excuses and then I talked to my mentor who does, he's going to do half a billion this year selling hoodies and sweats. Just hoodies and sweats, bro. And that's it. And I realized like, no, there are a million different ways to look at it. There are a million different ways to change things, to optimize, to make it better. And I'm curious what your biggest bottleneck you would say was and what did you do to solve it, bottleneck across the business? Yeah. Was there a time where you just could not get above some number, you could not get above some amount of orders of mud and what changed that? I actually spend a lot of time thinking about where I want to be in like five, 10 years. The classic like, set your 10-year goal, read the book traction. It's like the entrepreneurial operating system and set your 10-year vision and then bring it down to like your five-year plan and then your one-year goals and then break it down into the quarters. And I think if you do that, you can try and stay ahead of a lot of the bottlenecks that you'll find. I would say the biggest bottleneck was transitioning manufacturers because for a long time, I was just like, let me keep making it work with my current manufacturing solution. Let me try and increase the output and we kept reformulating and getting new packaging to try and make it work on this equipment. But the biggest change is like just change the manufacturer like that. That's a great lesson. Actually, I went through the real quick. I already cut you off. I went to the exact same thing. You know, I remember at the beginning, I said I was doing, I did 600K a year one, but it strapped and I was like, oh, where the money go? It was because our cost of goods was so high. And even though all these sales, I didn't really, I didn't have a good margin. And we had to finally switch to a new manufacturer and it changed everything for our business. Like with made-up numbers, let's say are tolling fee, which is what we're paying the manufacturer to make the bars. Let's say at a previous place, it was a dollar. And I was trying to do all these things to like scrape one or two cents off of all these different parts of the supply chain. When I could switch manufacturers and cut the tolling fee in half, go to 50 cents a bar. And like that is what I consider like an X-actor. I'm cutting in half our tolling fee, which is a crazy improvement for our cocks. And it does suck. It's sucks. You got to shut down production. You got to maybe even halt your sales. I mean, you could try in the best way possible to set it up that way. Like you're just finishing with them and starting with the new guys, but it is a hard process. But it's something you have to go through. I think it's so rare for any type of business, whether you're making computer parts or clothing or, you know, CPG and food products, alcohol, whatever. It's very, very rare that the manufacturer you start with is the one that you finish with. Let's say five, 10 years down the line, right? And so the quicker you can swallow that pill, I think the better off you'll be as a young founder with a young business. And it sucks because you have the relationship, you know, you're a partner and I was there during all the production runs. But at the end of the day, you have to do what's best for the business. On that note, you know, I could tell a story in a little bit too as well, but what are some of the hardest decisions that you think you've had to make in the past year and a half? Oh, for sure, who am I going to take on as investors? That's been like, I had, before it took on the investors that I have now, I had dozens, dozens of conversations. And you know, when you're, when someone's investing in your business, especially a lot of money like this investor will end up putting in millions of dollars or more than a million dollars into the business, like that's a marriage. That's someone that no matter the outcome of the business, there's, I mean, obviously, there's a there's only a handful of outcomes. There's, you know, we don't succeed and we go out of business, which won't happen. But it's an option. The other options are we exit to a private equity company or strategic or strategic or we grow to be a profitable business that is able to take distributions and kind of we can hold on to it for however long. And with the latter two options, you're with your investors for the rest of the duration that you're at the business. And I had to, when I was looking at the investors that we took, it's like, who do I most wants to be like? And that was kind of the biggest decision that spent the longest amount of time thinking about. And you can kind of feel it when you're with people that you want to be like and that you respect what they've done. And they have your best intent, your best interests in mind. I like that. So it's not just about people. It's the people. And that's why I haven't so hesitance to bring on the first employees to it. The first team member that I bring on board will massively impact the trajectory of the business. It'll massively impact the trajectory of the business or it won't. And then you'll have to fire that person. And that's really tough too. It'll be months and, you know, tens of thousands of maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars not wasted, but not utilized effectively. Yeah, I mean, dude, you're you're you're killing it for sure. You're doing a very good job, but you're about to venture into a world that you haven't been in yet when it comes to building the teams. And that's it's it's it's really fun and it's exciting. And you know, I've probably hired over a dozen people now and I fired quite a bit of them as well. My best advice for you is is honestly give this is probably not traditional advice, but I think it's best to give everyone the benefit benefit of the doubt and and fully try to empower people and nine out of 10 of them will let you down, but you only need to get it right once. I love to live by that right. You only like if you give nine out of 10 girls a shot and they all screw you over and they break your heart or whatever. But that one ends up becoming the love of your life. That's a win. I also think you have to go into all new relationships. I think trusting that person because if you if you don't trust that person like that will come off and going in with the mindset that you trust that person will like subconsciously dictate the way you speak to him and the way you treat them. And if you show that you trust that person, you'll breed trust in that relationship in my opinion in my experience. And I think you should do that with employees too. I think you should give your employees the opportunity to really prove themselves in the business and and not micro man. Like obviously they have tasks and they have shit they have to get done, but empower them to become the leader that your business needs to get to the next step. Because once again you do need leaders to grow to a hundred million dollar plus business. So that's just you telling people what to do. It's you need you need many versions of you. You need entrepreneurs who are going to make big decisions, take risk, have authority and lead the business just like you are. That brought up a better answer to your question about bottlenecks. Yeah. I'll say like the biggest bottleneck in growing the business is like my personal mind. set around business and life. It's like, you need to, the state of your mind is the state of the business. And if you're waking up every day, being reactive, all they're doing is answering emails and slack, like, you're never going to grow. I think I'm a big reader. I like to read. And then you need to have a clear mindset or a clear headspace to grow the business. And if you don't, it's going to come off with your numbers and your supply chain in your marketing and the way you talk to people and someone's going to want to work for you or work with you. So like, the biggest thing for me has been trying to level up my mindset. Not that dude. I completely agree. And I think that's one of the most untalked about thing. People talk about the actual strategy and they talk about the actual decisions. But I learned this from a good friend of my Jared Gets, who's also on the pod. And he taught me that when you're in a negative headspace, it's impossible to come up with solutions. It is a, he's a big energy guy, right? You cannot create a solution to a problem if you're not imagining yourself as the person who has the solution, right? It sounds a little like manifestation. I believe in it. But I'm curious what you do. What methods do you apply? What routine do you have to enable yourself to be the best founder, entrepreneur, whatever? Both from like a physical standpoint in terms of your health and wellness, but more importantly, mental, because everyone talks about the wake up early in the ice bath and the fucking meditate and all that. But what do you do to put yourself in the best mental framework to make good decisions, especially that they're all on you because you don't have employees? So when I, I think everyone has like a personal journey with their own mindset and efficiency. When I first started the business, I was definitely down the trap of like this, like this crazy efficiency trap. I don't know what to call it, but like I would plan my entire day to a teach like the 15 minute slot on the calendar the day before. And I would abide by it no matter what. I think that is helpful when you're at a certain stage of the business, when you have a lot of the tedious work to do. For me, tedious work is sitting in Excel and running the numbers and doing the cash flow modeling and stuff like that. I don't particularly love to do that. I've had to do it. Right now where I'm at, I think for me, one of my anti goals is having things on my calendar and like meetings like I hide the spot. I don't despise them, but I don't think it's a very good use of your time, most of the time. So like I have one day a week where I have all my sinks with like the people that I work with and other than that, I try and keep my calendar very white. And I think you need space. You need space to zoom out and see what the longer term goal is and is what you're working on right now, getting you closer to those goals. Like what can you do in the next five days or five hours that will make your 10 year plan closer to coming to fruition. And that's been probably one of the biggest mental unlocks alongside like simplification that I've had where, okay, I can probably, I can work on like the website optimization and like these email flows and these small tweaks here and there, but that's just like me distracting myself from the actual work that needs to be done. I do. I agree. It is kind of like distracting. You're saying it's busy work. But one, I have a question for you. One thing that I have, I would say a problem, one problem I have that I struggle with is when I do have a big block of free time. I almost feel maybe like a little guilty or I almost kind of feel like a loser. Like why do I have so much free time right now? I should be doing something. I should have a meeting. I should be working on something and what I do to get away from feeling that way, which is a bad feeling is I fill it with busy work, which actually, you know, I look back on and I'm like, oh, that didn't do anything, right? What do you do to avoid that? Sounds like you have a completely different mental framework and what are you? I actually think that's incredibly beneficial really to have like white space. I'm not like, if I have white space in my calendar, I'm like, what are you doing in that white space? Like what do you talk about thinking big, thinking long term? Are you, is it research? Are you watching podcasts? Are you reading? Are you calling people and talking to them? What are you working on? Or what are you actually doing in that? I use notion. My life is kind of organized in notion. I use it for everything. It's a great tool. I have it like a notebook and like a Hudson swears by notion. Yeah, I use it for literally everything. And probably one of my favorite things to do is just brain dump into notion. And I think people underestimate the impact that you can have if you just open up, say you want to focus today on just marketing, general, general marketing. What can I do that will generate another 50 million impressions on these ads or like increase the efficiency on the ads that I'm running? And if you can just kind of brain dump sit there with a white screen, turn your notifications off and just brain dump for an hour or two hours, even if you pick out one nugget that will increase or 50% make a 100% improvement in something that gets a very worthwhile two hours. So if I have an empty spot, empty space in my calendar, which I'm trying to keep most of the time, try to just brain dump and think about the business and zoom out. I think one of the most beneficial things I've done is trying to zoom out. What are we doing here? No, that's great. And I also think there's, there's definitely a lot of power and writing or typing and something out because in your mind, there's literally a million thoughts going through you throughout the day, right? In and out, in and out, in and out. And it can be great to think, oh, that's a great idea. But if you're not writing it down, the chances that you remember it are actually act on it most importantly, very, very low. So that's one thing that I'm going to take away from this honestly. And I need to do a better job at that. And like I said, my mentors, my mentors, swears by notion. So I need to work on that more. But you know, kind of like internal memos to yourself. Yeah. You know how you, I love if you're interested in like the asynchronous work culture and how to avoid meetings. I love like Stripes philosophy around this. They kind of went viral. It's not like anything new. But I haven't heard of this yet. Don't go into a meeting without an agenda. Instead of like just getting on a meeting with someone and like write a memo. Because you're most of the time, at least in my experience, if there's a problem, it needs to be solved. Is that like jumping on a call and wasting time and putting something on a calendar for three days from now? Like write a memo to yourself and you'll probably end up with the solution. And then regarding meetings too, just in terms of efficiency, I don't know why people like, hey, let's jump on a call next Thursday. Just calling me now. I never really understood that. If you need to speak with me, why are we going to delay this decision and like delay this outcome? For sure. I completely agree. I think most of the time people say next Thursday, because they might not have time where they want to be conscious of your time. But I agree, I mean, there's nothing worse than just waiting around for something, especially if the problem just came up now, right? You want the solution now and the solution they have might not even apply at that later. Maybe this problem's already solved by then. So I think most of the time, it's a scheduling issue. That brings up just like speed. So this has pros and cons. So I launched, we're on our fourth external iteration of our product since I've launched internally. We've done hundreds of iterations. I do get the comments and I do get the people saying you launched too early. You should have launched when you were more perfected. You should have launched when you were this and the other thing like you should have waited to get more feedback, do more testing, do more iterations internally before launching. At the end of the day, I think if I would have waited six months to launch the first iteration of way better bar, I would have then started the iteration cycle. And then I would have launched iteration two, six months after that. And then in the iteration three, six months after that, you'd probably be getting the product out, right? Yeah, it's like I launched Jacob less than a year ago, about 10 or 11 months ago at this point. And we've done several iterations. And I think speed at this stage, even if we've only reached 20,000 customers, 30,000 customers, that's just a drop in the bucket. And I think you can kind of bring these people into your story and into your iteration cycle, ask them for feedback and get on a call with them and get their feedback and actually implement it. Yeah. Okay, two final questions for you. One of them is concerned with personal life, right? Balance. What do you think of balance? Do you believe it's good to be balanced or you would like to fuck that? I just want to get this done as fast as possible. I want to make work something that I don't have to turn off from. I want to make work exactly, like I'm in a fortunate position where I can make it exactly what I want it to be. I can choose who I spend my time with. I can, for the most part, choose what I work on. Like this is a, I like having these kind of conversations. When I go to dinner, most of the conversations are also somewhat around work. When I'm getting a coffee with someone, it's mostly around work. If I'm doing something on the weekend and going on a hike with someone, it's mostly around like, you're getting a beer. It's usually with someone who's talking about work. It's mostly like I'm speaking with other founders because there is a part of the job of like starting your own business that it's hard to relate with some people who haven't. Not that it's an incredibly stressful job, but it's a different type of stress than working underneath somebody else. And it's easier to relate to and speak with people who have more in a similar situation, building their own business, kind of the ways on their shoulders. That's why I created outliers. I think, yeah. I'm in the boat of, I do take days where I don't do anything. I, I am very pro like work every day, all hours of the day until you wake up one day and just like can't do anything. And then when I experience that, then I like, I don't want my computer. I don't go on slack. I don't open messages. I don't do meetings. So like sometimes it'll be 10 days straight, where I wake up at six and work until 9 or 10. And I can go, sometimes I'm just super motivated. I have always drive to do that. And then on the 11th day, wake up and I'm like, I cannot do this another day. So I take a full day, I go on a hike, I go on the gym, I go, I don't do anything kind of work related. And that full day like decompressor, I wake up on the 12th day and I can get back another 14 days, another 20 days. So I don't know, I've, I think if you're working like, nothing's wrong with it, if you're working like nine to five, I personally have never been able to shut off after five. Like I'm still thinking about work, there's still things I need to be done. And I'd rather work every hour of the day until I totally feel burned out and then start up again, once I feel refreshed, maybe it's a day break or two day break, sometimes a three day break. Well, maybe not three days, but. That sounds like an Alex from Osie thing. I feel like I've heard him say something similar. I think I've heard Mr. B say that. Oh, maybe it was Mr. B, so okay, yeah. Dude, I don't think I've ever, I don't think there's been a day where I haven't checked Slack email and worked and like, probably two and a half years. Well, the unfortunate reality is like, I don't have a business at this point, I have a job. And because if I were to take a total break, vacation where I didn't check Slack at all and didn't check email at all, the business would go under, like it wouldn't be easy. I don't have a business. It might just me that you need to implement some systems that you can step away from. Right, but when people say, oh, you're an entrepreneur, you have a business, they think like, sitting on the beach in Bali, you're able to like do whatever it's about. No, I mean, the great analogy of this or a story of this is a clip of Bill Gates saying that he took the radio. There's a reporter interviewing him on his way to the office and he took the fucking radio out of his car. And I said, why did you take the radio out of your car? Did he get stolen? He goes, no, I just, I don't want to be thinking about anything but Microsoft. And if you want to build something great, like I think you have to go overboard. And working 14 hours a day doesn't mean that you're not efficient or that you're not optimized. It means that even once you've finished the things that are required, your task list, instead of saying, okay, I'm done for the rest of the day, it means how do I go find some new things to focus on, right? And I think that's what makes the difference between people who go far and people who don't. But maybe I'm wrong, I'm not there yet. So that's just what I think though. Then again, my part of the reason that I dropped out of school to pursue it full time, like I didn't want to do it on the side. I think there's a lot of merit to the idea that when I wake up, I want one problem to solve. Yeah, I don't want to be thinking about 20 different things. And I think your subconscious works in your favor when all you're thinking about is one thing. That does get draining at a certain point where you need to take a step back and not be super in the weeds. But I love waking up and solving one problem. How do I make more bars and how do I sell more bars? Yeah. (laughs) Well, on that note, to finish off right here, 'cause I think this is a great place to end it. What are you currently most excited for? I wake up every day like super excited for the business that I'm building. Like there hasn't been a day where I'm just not super pumped for what the future will be. Does it get us there one thing? Like for me, it's like we're about to get an office in May. I'm really excited about that. I'm excited to bring the team together. I'm excited to be able to leave my apartment and work from an office and draw on a board and beat together with the guys and be there till fucking 12 out of night and maybe even sleep with the office. Like that sounds awesome to me. Is there one in particular thing? Maybe it's like a new launch or a new location or completing the raise. Is there something that you're like, "Oh, I'm just really. " Obviously, you wake up every day and you're stoked. I can tell, just by talking to you, everyone can see that and hear that and you're talking, but is there one thing that you're like, "I'm very excited to get to this point?" You know, the goalposts keep moving because when I was doing, (laughs) I'm very curious to see how this plays out. But when I was doing 3,000 a day and then I did 3,500 a day, I was like, hell yeah, that's a win. And then, you know, a week of doing 3,500 a day, it's like, okay, this kind of sucks. And now I need to be doing 4,000 a day. And now we're doing 15,000 a day. And when I do 10,000, I'm like, damn, we failed yesterday. - Yeah, I'm sure we get caught in that trap too. - It's like 100%. - The first thing I do when I wake up is like, check our financial dashboard. What do you do after your yesterday? - I call that the Shopify curse, right? You can't do it. - Well, we're on Amazon too. They Amazon curse, whatever. It's this habit that you're in of, you know, 30 times a day whenever you go to the, I would go to the bathroom at restaurants and if I can pull my Shopify out of this. - Oh yeah. - Refresh it, right? - I checked before I came in here. - Yeah, I know, it's horrible. That's not good for you, 'cause it actually doesn't do anything to further the business. - Yeah, 'cause that's the whole Amazon thing with Jeff Bezos' letters. Like the outcome that we're achieving this quarter are the result of the work from three quarters ago. - Yeah. - I think, as I don't have like one thing that's-- - That's fun. - Yeah, I is like the ultimate goal. I just love, when I get emails or DMs or photos from people like, I got a text from somebody yesterday, he's like in some random smoothie shop in Hawaii. - Hey, I see the bars here, that's awesome. And then like these random coffee shops in Texas or-- - They bought them on the site or something and then just listed in the store. - Yeah, we have a wholesale. - Oh, cool, cool. What do you use fair? - Yeah, we use fair. - Nice. - Which, it's a different capital. They're okay. But I just love the concept of like, eventually we're gonna be the number one of selling bar in Amazon. And then eventually we will be on the shelves of Whole Foods and Sprouts and Costco. And I love, that's what I got out of like the intangible world of computer science and software. And so like, I can have my creative output into something tangible that I can hold and give to somebody and get their feedback right away by seeing their facial expressions. And if we can just do that at a mass scale, like I look forward to the day where like I walk into a random gas station in Vermont and the bars are stock there and it's all over and it's actually helping people's lives. Because look, at the end of the day, we sell a packaged food and steak and fruit and eggs and it's probably gonna be better than anything you can open a package for. But we are, I think, making a tangible positive impact in health and nutrition for people around the country where they don't have to compromise with these crappy, nutrient void ingredients and most other products. And those like small improvements, just get me excited. - Let's go, dude, I love that. - Well, thank you for coming on, bro. I'm glad we made this happen. Obviously, we're gonna link all of Jake's socials. Jake's also on social media just like me. And we'll need a better at that, though. The personal brand haven't ventured there yet. - Yeah, I'm happy to, I'm always open for a call, dude, if you wanna talk. But yeah, I'm gonna link all of Jake's stuff and thank you guys for watching. Make sure to leave a like, subscribe, comment. And then once again, I do this at the end of every podcast, sometimes at the beginning. If you're a younger entrepreneur or if you wanna be an entrepreneur or maybe you're at the beginning of your journey and you don't really know what to do yet, we have a free discord. It's got like 5,000 people in it. Just young people getting after it. And if you are a more successful founder, most of the guys in our group are probably in the mid-7 figure range. Some guys are well above eight figures. We even have two or three guys that are at nine figures and you're looking to get connected with a lot of other young successful killers. I'll leave the link to apply to that as well. But thank you guys for watching and. - Appreciate you for coming on, bro. - Thank you.