Why Founder Led Brands are Breaking Ecommerce w/ Devon Levesque

A new business model has been quietly exploding over the last three years, and I like to call it the personal brand holding company. It's when a large crater aligns their interests and their audience and launches a suite of businesses to serve the two. The reason this is exploding is because trust and mainstream institutions is at an all-time low. And so when you have a strong personal brand, people are naturally drawn to it because it feels more authentic. And in turn, they're going to choose the products and the experiences that that person is going to promote. One of the most prominent examples of this is Devon LeVag and Albert Mappenny, the founders of Prometheus and Monroe Earth. Prometheus and Multi-9 figures supplement brand, Wilman Roe Earth is a premium fitness experience. Now their partnership is the blueprint for the personal holding company, but you won't believe how it got started. First thing I want to get into is just like, how do you and Albert's partnership come together? Like from inception all the way to kind of where it is now? For sure, Albert and I were both personal trainers in New York City. He had a gym, I had a gym. He was working on supplements. He ran track at University of Florida. And then for Team USA, I played college football on baseball. And so we both had this sports background. I went more of the training route, hospitality route after college. He went more mixing these ingredients together. And so back in 2019, we got linked up from our friend Chris, our mutual friend. And Albert's amazing at putting products together and putting raw ingredients together and mixing formulas. Food scientists, register dietitian, he has all the background to do that. And then I really enjoy marketing and bringing awareness to good products, good, just good. I don't know, people feeling good. A product that delivers an outcome. Yeah, I used to work in hospitality, right? And I clubs and restaurants. And I just love when people come in and you put a smile on their face, and they eat a really good dish, or they have a great cocktail, and they're just having a good time. And I think that's always made me feel really good. I love hosting dinners at my house. I just like bringing people together. And our products make people feel good, you know what I mean? And like that, that's the ultimate selfishly feeling for me, is when people feel good off of something you're doing. What stage was the business at when you guys came together? Was it kind of starting to take off? Yeah, very, very, very early. Yes. Sub, sub, million revenue. Sub, maybe probably half a million revenue. It was not big. It was, yeah, very small. Definitely a hobby. Right, definitely not a real. Not what it's growing into today. No, because you guys recently sold a chunk of the business to a private equity group, correct. Scaling well into the mid. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you're at nine figures yet, but like you're getting very, very, very much past nine figures. Yeah, so I mean, the business is like exploded, particularly in the last few years. What do you feel like was the major inflection point? Yeah, we started off with grass-fed way protein. That was like the first main ingredient put it on Amazon. Right. And it was like the cleanest. Cleanest, so it was one ingredient. And so that took off decently well. We tried a couple other puffs. You know, the puff bars. We tried a chocolate bar out. We tried pre-workout, stuff like that. But really, four years ago, five years ago, I think it was 2021. I went to Africa to climb Kilimanjaro. Nice. And after Kilimanjaro, I went back to this village that my Kilimanjaro guide was a part of. And I actually got them a go as a thank you for, you know, helping me reach a summit. And so that was just, that's what they requested. That's great. And so I gave them a go. I got them a go. And so I go and do this cookout with them in their village. Full third world time. Were you cooking the go? Well, yeah. So we, you know, we, we, we, we, hard to go. Hard to go, eight to go. And as we're doing this cookout, these kids were running up to me and they were trying to sell me this fruit. And it was like this hard seed. And I, you know, bought the seed. And, you know, the guy I was with was like, "Oh, that's high-end vitamin C, high-end potassium." And so I opened the seed and I tried this powder, this white powder on the inside. And it didn't really taste like anything. I was so fascinated by it because everyone in the village was just talking about like, "Oh, that's the Bale Bob seed. That's so, it's so nutrient dense. We've been, you know, eating it for centuries and, you know, our whole lives." And it's good for gut health. And I've always wanted to do a gut health product. Gut gut health as a whole, I think is the most important health you need to focus on in the human body. Not just biceps, not just, you know, brain health, not just, you know, blood health, like gut health. Everything's formed from the gut. Diseases, mood, acne, everything it starts in the gut. And so if you can have a good microbiome, like that's a great base for someone to start off at if you're on a health journey. And so we took the Bale Bob seed, brought it to, a brought it to Albert. He tested it out. Yeah, that has high amounts of vitamin C, potassium, about 65% fiber. Vitamin B, 12, like all these different vitamins are in this seed. And I'm like, we should do a gut health product. Now with the gut, you need pre and probiotics. And so we have natural pre-biotics from the Bale Bob seed. We have three strains of probiotics. We have tumouric in it. And then we have organic oranges, organic peaches, hibiscus, etc. That flavor it. And that was our, our, our hero product. That's deep low. Yeah. That is a great, that was a great inflection point for the business because it's an easy product. Everyone, easy product for people to consume. You can take it every day. It tastes really good. It, you can feel it immediately. It literally flushes you out. You take it and you're probably going to have to go to the bathroom within the next 20 to 30 minutes. Over a 20 to 30 day period, you start to feel a little bit more clear. Your food digest better, your stools are better. And so that was a great product to introduce people to pro-mix. And that, that quickly became our hero, hero skill. It's really interesting. We talk about something like called the unique mechanism on this podcast a lot where it's like, you know, people have tried probiotics, people have tried deep loading products for years. Right? There's like a million of those. But your story about, you know, this gathering in Africa, you know, like that's like a very unique discovery. Like, super. You have a great story accompanying this ingredient. There's kind of this, you know, non-Western medicine angle to it as well. It's like, why is this not in our system, you know? Like, and so that builds entry for the product, builds trust. Right? It's like, oh, they've been using it for centuries. Yeah. Of course. It's the oldest superfood on the planet. I mean, these biobob trees are 1,000, 2,000 years old, literally. And what's even more cool about the whole thing is it's wild harvested. And so, the fruits sprout in January and they normally drop around April. Once they have to drop, right? Once they drop, that means the powders dried up at the perfect amount on the inside for you to take it. And so they drop and say April may. And then the locals, there's like 2,500 of them. Yeah. It's just like a straight village. There's many villages because it's all across South Africa. And so all these villages collect the seeds and then they sell it. And that's how we, it's all wild harvested. And so we just created 2,500 jobs with just these seeds. Were you guys first to market with this ingredient? Like for- No, I mean, there's definitely other companies that sell that sell biobob. Right. But no one else does the biobob. Yeah. Three probiotics, two more, like for the gut health specifically that I think tastes that good. And, you know, and we just put it through a three week triple-blind clinical trial. Yeah. Which went amazing. 83% of people found digestive comfort or release. Yeah. Which was, which is, you know, a great incredible. I mean, no placebo, you know, full triple-blind, which is the highest of the highest. What was some of, like, because so we can back it up a second. So you have a very large personal brand. And, you know, you've kind of accumulated that over time on Instagram, all these different channels. And was were you making a lot of the initial ads from your personal brand for D-Blow, for way pro- like, like how did that kind of structure work initially? Interplay of your personal brand and ProMix. Yeah. You know, we never really did ads for the first three or four years in the business. Like zero ads. We didn't, that's not how we launched it. We- It's all organic. Yeah. All organic, more natural approach, where I would do events at my farm or at the one hotel's or random cities around the world where we're doing runs or sauna sessions or whatever it is. Word of mouth is big. Like, just people talking about it, feeling it, etc. Little FOMO. I think we- FOMO, you know, when you look at a P&L sheet, word of mouth and FOMO are never listed. But I think they're the two strongest ways you can mark that. Absolutely. You know, FOMO meaning like we just had limited runs because it's wrong gradients. so you can't, we don't have unlimited, but it also builds that narrative about quality. Right. We're not gonna compromise and scale this thing too much because we just can't. We would lose the integrity of the product. Correct. And so FOMO and Word of mouth, we're our best friends from the beginning, and then it's hard though. It's hard. It's like delaying notification. It's hard to trust that, but you have it. But I think when you're building a brand, let me back up. I think there's too many people or founders that go in and say, okay, I'm gonna launch a business, and I think people are gonna jump in to this community. Versus starting a community first, and then building a brand off of your community. Meaning start a run club, start a dinner club, start a book club, start bringing people together in person, 10, 15, 20, 100 people, start building that up, and then see like, what would work with them, right? And I think with Albert and I, we both had clients that we were personal training. And everyone was asking, what do I take? What should I drink every morning? What protein should I have? What come, what should I use? What should I be eating? What's my nutrition? And so we had this base. I had hundreds of clients in New York City. He had hundreds of clients in New York City. And we're like, let's, we have our clientele here. Now let's give them a product. And that's I think why ProMix worked from the beginning. It wasn't because we did it opposite. We already had the clientele base, we were training, 10 hours a day, we had it. - I mean, you launched through the customer. - Right. - You had all of your customers right there. - Exactly, right. - And you're not necessarily saying they were immediately buying from you, but you knew like, okay. - We knew what they wanted. - This is what they wanted. - We had the market research sitting right in front of us. So like we weren't guessing. We're like, this is what they want. This is what we like. Let's mesh, let's mesh those. From my personal brand side, you know, I never knew I was gonna have, like in college, we didn't even know what social media was. I remember a girl came up to you in college, and she's like, hey, look at this new app, and she was Instagram. I was like, oh cool, what is it? She's like, you can just share photos. I'm like, cool. And I remember I was in art class at the time. And art class. - I was in art class. - And we like, what did you do? - I was just, it was like a, elective or whatever. - Yeah, yeah. - I was taking a college. And I remember I like, we were painting something, and I painted my hand green, and I like put it on a brick wall, and I like took a photo, and I post it, I'm like, oh, that's my first, like Instagram. - Is that your first gram? - Yeah, that was the first gram. I'm like, oh, you can share photos. Let me, I remember she was like, it's for artists. It's for like musicians, like Instagrams, for like, create, and like, all right, let me get artsy real quick. - Right, right. - And so I did that. - And then I didn't really, I didn't really think about Instagram. You know, when I was in, you know, when I was running nightclubs and restaurants. - So was it not a part of you building your initial businesses? Like, 'cause you were doing hospitality, personal training, Instagram wasn't a place for your source and clients. - Not really, no, I mean, I would post like our flyers, or like, things we were doing at the restaurant, or food photos, but I never really thought of it, like that, until my friend came up to me at a bar one day, and was like, hey, you do crazy workouts in the gym. Like, you should post these workouts, and I'm like, these are just my normal workouts. No one's gonna care about, like, what do you mean? He's like, Instagram just launched videos, and so you should post these videos. And I might have had like five, six, 7,000 followers, at that time, just from like, being in the hospitality world. People knew me, whatever. - Yeah. - And I remember I posted one, and it did okay, and then I posted another one, and Barstool reposted it, and an ESPN reposted, and sports center reposted. And like, overnight, it was like 20, 30, 40, 50,000 followers quick, and I was like, whoa, that's kind of crazy. - Yeah. - But then I, when I posted, I had a real business going on. I was training people, right? And I was doing meal preps. And so I saw the impact from when I posted, and all the DMs started to come in, I'm like, can you train me? Wait, what food should I eat? Wait, you're in really good shape. What should I do for workout? I'm like, oh my God, there's a direct correlation of social media to a business. That's the only reason I have social, like, 'cause it is an asset for the business. - It's insane leverage. I mean, you're basically getting all of this market signal inbound, right? Where people are telling you exactly what to build, exactly what their problems are. - Exactly. - Like, struggling with when they experience that problem. - Exactly, right. 'Cause I think that's where a lot of entrepreneurs don't take the next step, is they understand that people are having a problem. But like we talked about earlier, what's that unique mechanism? 'Cause they've tried to solve bloating, you know? Someone has tried to solve it before, but they never tried a Bal-Bub. - Right. - And a base product. And so now it's like, you have a new solution for them. - Yeah, it's really hard to get someone to change their habits. You wake up, you know, whatever your morning routine is, you go bathroom, you brush your teeth, you have your coffee, whatever, like switching someone's habits is one of the hardest things to do. And I think the way we were able to switch people's habits is showing, not telling, you know? And so Albert and I live this, you know? Both him and I put our health first. We eat real whole foods. We work out pretty much daily, sonnacle, plunge day, like we live this lifestyle. So we're showing it versus just telling you to do it. You know, we're trying to snake oil you in. It's like, look, we're doing this, it works for us. If you want to do it cool. (clapping) And I think we've led by example, and that's what's helped us totally, you know, quite a bit. - I mean, I think that's a really cool thing when you kind of examine what you guys are doing, is you basically turned your personal brand and a lot of these things that you stand for that you do in your real life into almost like a wellness empire, like holding company, if you will, right? Like we have so many different things. There's promix, there's Monroe Earth, which I mean, we haven't talked to the audience about, yeah, there's rhythm. Like these are things that kind of like you said, you had those 100 personal training, high-end clients. Every single one of them would want one of your several different businesses. - Right. - And your content has kind of built this world overall. Like would you say that was a super intentional thing with the way that you were creating content over time? Or was it just kind of you living out, you know, your passions and doing the things you would have already been doing? - Yeah, I know it was not planned. It, I always put me living in my adventures and my fun first. Like that's my top priority. My family, my friends, my adventures. Like that's first and foremost. And I'm able to, when I do that, and having real connections with people and physically being in the gym and like doing these meetings and traveling and I'm in the trenches. I'm not like, I'm not sitting in a boardroom. I'm not like, if you're like, I'm physically there seeing how humans are interacting. I think human psychology is super fascinating. Just people watching, but on, you know, 10X is what I do. I really just, I watch on how consumers work and how they look at things and what they're thinking about. And is this a trend or is this just something that's gonna be quick? Will this product work? Will it not? How are they buying the product? How are they even seeing it? Who are they seeing it from? Like all these things are constantly going through my brain of, you know, what's the human psychology when you're thinking about health? - Yeah. - And there's thousands of companies that pitch, I know Albert and I annually, I pick maybe one to invest in, Max, or him and I will start something. - Right. - It's a lot of, it's a lot of, - What's the cruncher? - It's a lot of sitting back and watching and not being, you don't always have to be the first to market. Let someone else be first to market. See if it even works. You know what I mean? See if it's just a trend of fat. Is it just, is there studies behind it? Is this something, is it too early? Is it too late, you know what I mean? I think how I vet, and I'll speak for me 'cause I was not here, but is this something that will last for a hundred years? Is what I think about when doing companies, when starting, investing in businesses. If it's not, then I probably won't get involved. I'm not looking for a quick win. I'm looking for a legacy. - Yeah. - Right. - And that's the truth. Could I launch a Tallah lotion right now? I'm probably make 10 million bucks, probably. Could I go, could I go, could I go on the podcast? - Cryotherapy trend, probably. Could I jump on this whole colostrum trend, probably. Do I think these things are gonna be around for another hundred years? Probably not. I think they're like these quick five-year wins that people are trying to do a quick money grab, which is, you know, whatever, you know, do what you need to do. But I think when I look at businesses, I want to be a long-lasting, you know, 50 to 100-year, you know, biz. - One thing I think across, I mean, dude, I'm personally a huge believer in rhythm. - Thank you. - When I saw that business, I was like, that just is going to explode. - Thank you. - Like, I mean, at home, diagnostic, painless blood work. - Yep. - And then obviously there's gonna be pride. I mean, you know, you get your blood work done and then you can go buy promics. - Right. - I mean, you could. - 100% or by whatever you need, right? And I think the thing at rhythm, I have one partner, Robbie. He started the biz. I came in after he started. - So did he come to you as like a hay and vest? - Yeah, he wanted me to be his co-founder. He had the whole back-end infrastructure set up. HIPAA compliant, you know, clear certified, you know, the whole logistics. We own the lab. Everything from A to Z. He just needed awareness, growth, a microphone. And so he came to be the co-founder. How's it going? How's that business going right now? I exploded. Rocketship? It's crazy. It's the fastest growing business I've ever been a part of. I've ever seen. I was an early investor in OliPop. This is growing faster. Like this is insanely, this is insane. How many people are using rhythm? And it's, and it's, why do you think that is? There's many reasons. I think when I was a kid and I thought of the future, I thought of flying cars. Now I think of the future of, when I think of future, I think knowing every little tiny thing that's happening inside your body and being able to live 250. I, like we're living in it right now. And I think this is bridging that gap. Woop is bridging that gap or rings bridging that gap. These personalized health devices are bridging that gap to people understanding what's going on inside their body, making adjustments and taking what they need to take. Rhythm, we don't have an opinion on health. We don't, if you're doing, you know, keto, if you're doing paleo, if you're taking peptides, if you're taking vitamin, we don't care. We just want to give you the data of what's happening inside your body in the most simple, easiest, possible way. And that's why, you know, you put it in your arm, you click a button to fill up a vial, you send it into our lab, you get the results in 24 hours. It's quick, it's easy, there's no needle in your arm. It's so simple. I think the reason it's exploded is because people are competitive with themselves. They want to know, okay, if my testosterone's at 500, how can I get it up to 900 by next month? Okay, I got it up to 800, how can I get it up a little bit more? Are you guys layering in the recommendations? There's AI. There is like kind of AI concierge. There is, nice. But we don't, we don't tell them what companies to buy. I thought that was really interesting. You said that we don't have an opinion. We're just the data layer. When you go into the facts. Yeah, when you go into Quest or LabCorp, they're not trying to upsell you peptides at when you walk in. Or they're just like, here's your button. This is the results. The problem is, you know, yeah, yeah. Correct. Quest peptide's coming soon. Yeah, definitely. I wouldn't be surprised. But you go in and you trust the data. The problem is the customer experience at those places are brutal. Oh, it's terrible. And how's the most sterile thing of all time? Yeah, you know, you feel like you're in trouble. Like, you're just being in there. Yeah, is this a drug test or am I trying to like, you know? Right. And so, and they're taking the six miles of blood. And, you know, they might take an hour passing out. Yeah. You're taking time to go there. So we just, we've simplified that process for people. And so I think the simplified process, people are competitive with themselves. Is that business growing surely organic right now? Are you layering in paid and influencer and stuff like that? Yeah, we have paid. Yeah, quite a bit of paid. Full, full, entire marketing stack. Hundreds, if not thousands of creators on. Nice. That wanted to come up. I bet the end on interest was it. Yeah, talk about, I mean, I'd love to hear more about like, just, because ProMix has a great ambassador program. Yeah, it sounds like rhythm is building that. Like, how do you go about building, you know, a creator, army promoting your products? Yeah, you know, 10 years ago, the way that you brought on influencers was you'd send them product. And they just post, they didn't really know their worth. Five years ago, you give them a code, they get commission, they have to post their channel. Now, you can somewhat help assist creators in how their content's going out, whether you're helping with the editing, whether you're helping, you know, not so much scripts, but like giving them talking points and educating them on what the product is. And so they get more in depth, you know, with you at the company. And then giving sweat equity, no pun intended, like for real. Like, it's, it's, I think the evolution of creators has gone much deeper than just posting to their channel. It's now like, a lot of these creators want to be partners. They want to be a part of something. They want to grow something. They don't want their sharing, their trust. Yeah, they don't, yeah, correct. They don't want to just post and get a bunch of likes and views and whatever. They want to help build. And so we give everyone that opportunity, you know, the better that they do, the better we do with their content, the better they do. I think a lot of our listeners would actually be super curious in like some of those deal structures. Like everyone's different. Yeah. Everyone's different. Based on the tier of influencer and like, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, if you're signing a, you know, an A-lister or a B-lister, you might be tapping into your equity pool, you know, normally it's five to seven percent. You have, you know, on the side for, you know, C-suite execs or celebs you're bringing onto the brand or a high, you know, high converting influencers. And so there might be a little sweat equity deal there. Then right now, you can get 10% commission on whatever your ad spends. And so if a creator-- And you guys are using tribe for that, right? Tribe, yeah. And so if, yeah, so if you're submitting content and your user of our product and we approve that content and it goes out and it generates $100,000 of sales, you're making $10,000. It's an easy opportunity that's ever-- It's unbelievable. I mean, we have creators that have 500 followers. We just paid someone last month. She created $150,000 worth of orders with her one video, just 500 followers. Literally 500 followers in Whiskey were 15 grand. That's like changing for people, you know? And so like you don't have to be like an a-lister or like a macro influencer or whatever. Like these are just regular people that are using our product that are like, I want to talk about it. And for the creators, that video can keep going. Oh, yeah. For sure. It might run it up to 300,000 next month. Like it just, it's an ad. So I mean, it's like this unbelievable moment in time. Correct. And like, you know, we want to support the creators and the edits and making sure they have the product and educating them. I mean, we have calls with the creators all the time. Just the lab industry is confusing. Right. And so we have to educate. They're interested. It's ongoing education on, you know, what biomarkers do we have? How does the process work? What does this even do? What do you do if your B12s allow? What do you do if your testosterone's high and you're a female? Like, what do you do in these cases? And so it's constant educating. And I think that's probably one of the more fun parts of the business. Like, your brain is just expanding into understanding what personalized health really means. And so it's just educating the creators. But the creators that we bring on have unlimited upside. You know, the more the course, the better the content they create, the more content, the more that they're, I don't know, invested into the company. Yeah. I mean, it just, it in turn, it like, it gives them the proper incentive to try and produce that banger. Correct. Right. Because if they don't have that and you're like, hey, I'll give you $300 flat fee for your video. Right. OK, cool. I'll just submit it to you as soon as I can. We're done. Right. And you know what? That worked two years ago. Yeah, a great year ago. You're like, oh, I'll give you 1,000 bucks for a video. Right? You're a user. Cool. You want to make a video. Great. Here's 1,000 bucks. Now there's unlimited upside. And by the way, it's probably going to change in a couple of years. You have to, I think, the key to marketing within-- that's work for ProMix and Rhythm-- is staying relevant and staying ahead of what's happening on Meta, on Google, on within AI, Chatcha, PT Cloud. You know, ads. Marketing is-- are billboards working? Is email marketing working? Is SMS? Yeah. When I look at marketing as a whole, there's seven main marketing avenues. Email marketing, text, gorilla marketing, word of mouth, ads. That breaks out into multiple different avenues, events. There's multiple. It's understanding what levers to pull at what time, based on what's happening in culture, what's happening in. Meta updates, what's happening in. Is the world getting saturated with all these brands? Is there trends going on? And so you just have to stay relevant on what levers to go up and down. And I think we did that really well with ProMix. We literally did not do any ads at the beginning. Zero. It was all organic. The event lever was up. The word of mouth lever was up. The community lever was up. We just started emails. So that lever was up. It's interesting, you say, because I think a lot of people, especially in the last decade, rush to paid to be the first lever. Yeah. Because it's the quickest open-means hits, quickest row as that you can get out of anything. You just kind of made a good point. You're not advertising just because you're not spending on paid. There's all these other things that you can kind of do at the beginning. I agree. And you know what? Which build trust long-term and actually probably increase your LTV to those customers? Yep. Because retention is the name of the game in the supplement space, really anything. Yeah. And if you're going to build trust up front, those guerrilla marketing, those community building initiatives, that's a lot more trustworthy stuff to invest in. And then those customers are going to stick around with you a lot longer time. All right. So over the last two years of building nibbles, shipping nearly 8,000 UGC ads and getting performance data on every single one of them, it became super clear. There are two types of brands. Those that understand creative volume and those that don't. The core difference was what they focused on. Brands that focused on volume plus hit rate were never complaining that meta changed the algorithm. Their stuff just worked. And anytime we did work with one of those savvy brands, it was always on the same platform motion. Motion is by far the best tool to optimize your creative pipeline. Provide structure, visibility, and insights that your creative team needs to make better decisions. I like to think of it as like what matter would actually show you if they cared about your success. All the key metrics like three seconds. I can stop rate, winning angles, formats, competitor research. It's all built into their platform so you can make quicker and better decisions. They even just launched their new AI run-it, which functions as a 24/7 creative strategist providing recommendations to your ad account. Now make sure to go check them out at motionapp.com. All right, let's get back to the episode. - If I start a new company right now, like a random company, if you and I are like, all right, let's start a t-shirt company. I'm gonna post on social or send an email out and say, I need a hundred people who wanna be a part of my new business. I'd love feedback, you're gonna get free merch or you're gonna get free product and I just want you to test it out for 60 days. Before I even launch it, I'd have a hidden website, I'd help them go through the process, order the stuff, they get all free stuff, they try it out and then I'd get their feedback. And then I'd do another iteration and I'd do it again for another 30 days with the same hundred people and then I'd probably do it one more time. And at that point of now I understand what the product is, I understand what people are saying, why they were enticed by it. Now I have, it's like a marketing bible. - You know, media, you need it. - Now I know what type of marketing material we need, why people are coming into the product, what people are saying about it. If I'm doing a t-shirt company and they're like, man, I love the shirt, it's a cool looking shirt, but damn, it's so soft. It's such a soft shirt. Boom, there's the marketing, there's the ads, there's the emails, it's the world softest shirt, right? It is a, like now I'm leaning into soft because a hundred people, 80 of those people just said soft, soft, soft, soft, soft, you know? And so I think it doesn't have to be zero to a million. It needs to be zero to like, I don't know, like 1% and understanding who your audience is and what your product is. And then you can spend effectively and efficiently versus just going to spend a million bucks on ads and you don't even know if they're gonna work or not. - Yeah. - You know? - So one thing that you guys have done really well across all these brands, Ben Rowe, ProMex, Rhythm is like, you have a general, gender neutral positioning and I'm super curious, like is that intentional? Like did you want to be scientific trustworthy or how did you go about positioning these brands from the get go? - Yeah. - Always gender neutral, always. You know, never, I never wanted to launch just like a male focus brand or just a female focus brand, same with a gym. Like I enjoy having females and males in the sauna. - And the steam. - And they're so that, I think a lot of people will say, like you wanna go like hyper niche these days, everyone's kinda like, oh, you wanna lock in on a target customer, like I wanna sell to moms and the Midwest, right? Or I wanna sell to like young fathers or something like that. But y'all have purposefully kinda gone the other direction. - Yeah, I think sex sells. It's like the most common marketing term. - Of course. - Yeah. - Sex sells. Sex doesn't happen, you know, without a male and a female. You need to approach it from both sides and especially in health and wellness. Equinox, I think, does an amazing job with it. I think within promics, like we don't want people to just think, oh, this is a male focus brand or a female. Like, no, everyone can take this. Your whole family can take it. Your friends, your mom, your dad, everyone, you know, and so neutral colors. It also, I think, from a marketing, like copy, perspective, it gives you two different alley ways to go down, right? Deblo impacts women, maybe a little differently than men. They use it in different ways, right? Are you creating different funnels for different personas? - For sure. - For sure. Yeah, yeah. I would say there's probably five personas that we have with promics, probably five personas, we have with rhythm. And like, yeah, you target out each one. You know, the female that lives in Kansas City, that's 25, that goes to Yogi each morning. She makes, you know, 100,000 a year. You know, she's, you know, maybe dealing with a little acne and like, boom, that's a real persona, you know? But, you know, I think from a male and female perspective and why we've kept it neutral, I think that's just our vibe, you know what I mean? Like, I've never wanted just a male focus brand or just a female focus brand. There's eight billion people in the world. Why would you cut your audience in half? - Totally. - That doesn't make sense to me, right? And I get, getting niche, but it's the same thing with like, people are like, well, why haven't you launched promics, like running gels? Well, it's just a very small addressable market. Like, very small. Like, obviously, if you're a runner, yeah, you see gels everywhere, but like, that's a super, super, super small, right? I bet you people watching it, 3% of the people actually take gels, you know what I mean? How many people take protein? How many people have a gut and folks on gut health? Probably 97% of you. - Right. - You know, so like, you have to understand that addressable market, male and female, you just immediately open the address of the market and you make it approachable. Not too feminine, not too masculine. I'd say both brands, rhythms a little bit more, male, heavy right now, but promics is 50/50. - Do you think that's more indication of the broader, like blood testing? - No, market? - No, it's more of the pros. - No, it's because. - It's because of rhythms, for this thing. - No, it's, it's, when we first launched, I brought more males onto the biz, like from an ad's perspective and we did quite a bit of Iron Man's at the beginning. We sponsored Iron Man. And so that was just a more male, heavy audience. And so, naturally, it was more male, but women's is now skewing quite up. - Yeah, yeah, quite up. - And then, so with men row, like, that's hospitality. It's kind of your bread and butter. And we have the other guy. - The other guy, we just got here. - Behind men row earth, right here. - Baby. - Hey, baby. - Welcome, welcome. - A little bit of traffic today in New York City. - Yeah, it was nice to see you. - It's our travel. - Yeah, let's talk on men row. We were talking on why we're so gender, why we're so gender neutral. - I don't even see gender. - Yeah, I don't even, you're right. I said, like, sex cells. I don't know, and you can't have sex without male and female. - I just think of, like, you know, I mean, I'm sure you've seen like Mars men, right? They're like hyper-hyper-masculine. And then, you know, you contrast that with some other ones that'll be like hyper-feminine, like a happy man with cell. I was more so saying, I think what's cool about you guys is you went scientific, trust, gender neutral, positioning. And that's allowed you to, to your points, like everyone's got a gut problem. So now we're just positioned to win on, well, where does the cleanest and we have this unique mechanism, right? Now I was curious if that was like something you did intentionally or just kind of like materialized over time. - I'm sure Devin probably said some variation of this, but I mean, I guess like big picture framework, like when we think about the products we wanna make, the places we wanna create, and how it all feeds together, that there's not like a, we're pretty open to everybody. That's kind of been our point of view, like the stuff that we work on represents how him and I are, in general, so we're kind of just happy with everyone. (laughs) And we don't feel like it needs to be like really specific, it just needs to be to our standards of quality and benefit to the world and all that type of thing. So I think that inherently just has like, doesn't have like a specific niche in it and we think it can reach a lot of people, like whatever we're working on. That's like across anything that we do, I think. - And is that like kind of your product ideation framework, like how many total people, like size of the problem? - 100%, like the address of our markets. - Yeah, like yeah. - And that's not even from a business side, it's just what we like to work on. - 'Cause I think you've come up, I mean, y'all have a great products suite. And I think our audience can really benefit from just hearing like, what is your step-by-step process or like arriving at what's a good product or so? - Yeah. I'll touch on that one thing, like, you know, I'm friendly and I think Ben from Marsman is great. I know his co-founders are killer. - Yeah. - I think a lot of times, you know, there's not like a harder or easier, but like if you have a more defined product, it's easier to just say this is what we do and it's like very specific and you know who you're marketing into. Like I think they have a very clear customer focus and I think that can lead to extremely fast growth. A lot of times which they've had, I think a lot of times like with ProMix and the other projects, it's like a platform and we know that we can build upon that and so there's this big base. But because it appeals to a wide range of people, you can't just have like one message necessarily where it doesn't cut as deep with that message is, like, you know, with ProMix, it's no artificial anything. Like that represents a lot of aspects of the company but it doesn't, you know, it's not like, hey, this is Mark's men. You know, or something where it's like very targeted and you know exactly who you're talking to. When the products, when we think about products, it's, you know, a big part of it is ingredient quality and efficacy, those are like the two words that always pop into my head and, you know, Devon's told the story with the bail bob and him finding that really as an ingredient and then building a product around that. - The goat. - Which is cool. - The goat. - One goat donation. - We got a $100 billion business. (laughing) - Go find a goat. (laughing) - But that's like the base framework is how can we, we never want to make something that kind of already exists in the market that we don't think moves the market forward and helps people so that it's easy for us. We're not good at, I have an inability to like tell you you need something if you don't really need it or don't think it's actually the best. And so. For us, we don't feel good about the products, unless we know that it's the best version of what you can get from that product. - As far as sourcing the problems, 'cause I think one thing you said earlier was you guys both had this data set, almost real world clientele. - Yep, dope. - You know, my guts messed up. I need something to fix it. Okay, well we have the right product. Do you have any other ways of researching trending problems right now, 'cause you guys have a lot of hero skis right now, but I'm sure the next tranche of growth could come from getting into, I don't know, like, stretch or calm or something like that. Like, how are you kind of looking at that roadmap? - Yeah, I think, you know, Dev and I have a really good dynamic and we look at kind of different things and they often come to the same answer from different points of view. Dev and Scott has posted a lot of stuff. He's really aware of that. And I kind of look at science things. I see what other people are interested in. People ask me health questions all the time. So I think both of us get that. We're getting little early signals about, hey, people are asking about this more. We kind of like get general health questions all the time. - Is there anything you're like pretty excited about right now? About tackling? - I think one of them is, again, kind of like a new category for us, which is in liposomal, because, you know, we've seen that as an interest for people and that all is rooted in, not people, customers don't necessarily choose things based on like what's best for them. It's often just like form factor in ease. Like we live in America, like convenience is, I think number one, people like things is taste good. I think greens is a great example of a product that tastes too good. It's a snack first. You know, that's kind of how people position it. - Five are in a gummy bear. - Yeah. - 1.2 billion. - Yeah. - I was getting, no, I was just gonna say like, because you're asking the pulse of, you know, how we, I think I'm pretty saturated in culture and like I'm seeing kind of, I use the analogy really, like I'm in the trenches. I'm showing up to these events, I'm meeting new people, I'm showing up to the, you know, the private equity get together with, you know, 20 billionaires and they're all talking about what's next, what they wanna buy, what they, you know, what they're doing. And then I'm also at like, you know, dip blows event or, you know, I'm at, you know, some other, you know, influencer event or a lot of taste makers. - But then I'm just at a, you know, a coffee shop and I'm just over hearing some shit. Like, I'm just in it, I'm hearing it. And so I have that like real life in the trenches pulse. - Right. - And then he has a scientific pulse. And so when you combine those two things and then just our backgrounds, you know, we both play college sports, we both come from a very healthy background, we both believe in like, get sunshine, eat whole foods, first and foremost. - Yeah. - You know, move every day, take care of your bi, take care of your skin, like very holistic approach to health. We have the same approach to health, but then I'm seeing like the more culture side, what's, what people are talking about, he's seeing the more scientific. Like he's always reading real studies on what's, what works and what doesn't. So I could call him and I'm like, you know, what, like what do you think of this whole colostrum thing? Should we do a colostrum and he might be like, you know, I think it's just a fat reading stuff. Like, I don't know if that's scalable. I don't know if this is actually impacting XYZ. Like I say we put that on pause, but like what I am seeing, Dan, is like the like, basomal, like there's real studies behind this. There's, you know, this can actually impact people. Like, Dan, what do you, like go, go kind of do your thing for a couple weeks and see what you find as well. And then we come back to the other and we're like, okay, cool, let's do these three products in this space from what we, and it's literally just, it's like we're not Harvard grads. We're not like going back to the fucking board room and like, I don't think we've ever written on it. - But weirdly, I mean, I think the fact that you're not necessarily Harvard grads does actually work better in today's day and age. Like I think your credibility stack is more so lived experience, right? - For sure. - For sure, instead of, you know, oh, well I was in a lab for seven years. So now you trust me, it's like, no, like, we're two bros who are like in crazy health and like this is exactly what we do to get there. - Yeah. - And weirdly enough, I do think that's kind of the new age credibility, you know, I think that's really where it comes from, is lived experience. Like, did you guys ever, you know, I'm sure there's been a lot, like you just ran a clinical trial, for example. - Yep. - And, all right, I'm curious, like, if you're a brand starting out, would you recommend they go sort of more your credibility route? Or it's like, I'm this person, I've lived this experience or should they launch with maybe more scientific proof, maybe more doctors? - I think it depends on the product that they're launching, you know, and what category you're launching in. Say it's like, I mean, I think, you know, Lemmy has obviously done a very good job of like Lemmy Curb, right? It's a GLP1 memetic, right? There's a lot of these memetics are coming out right now 'cause the peptide space is so hot. Like, I don't know if Lemmy is really referencing a lot of clinical trials. I think they're just saying, this is gonna reduce your appetite. And I'm, you know, is it clowy or corny? I don't know, but, I'm in the Kardashian. She's like, look at me, like, I look hot. - Right. - Do you wanna look hot? - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, I think you can take a couple of approaches to it. One is a much more brand, like, Lemmy throw up the brand on your face and you'll see it everywhere. It's like cool colors, cool logos, cool people on brand. Like, they create a little fomo, they create a little like, this is the fucking coolest thing since sliced bread. Like, you gotta do it. And then there's the other side, which is like, no, this works. This is kind of like a clinical, you know? - It's almost like a thorn versus a Lemmy. Right. Like, thorn is just like, hey, we are, this is a physician's, yeah. By the way, both brands are doing great. - For sure. - So I genuinely think it just, it depends on what direction those founders wanna go. - Yeah. - I think we've taken their approach of like both. - Yeah. - You know, we kinda know what's culturally relevant, cool, like what we would take. - Yeah. - And then we also take the science approach. So like, that's us. But like, we're just, you know, uniquely, we were uniquely given those cards meeting, you know, obviously meeting each other and building promix and like, that's just the cards we currently have. But like, if him and I both came from, say, an agency background, and I was a graphic designer and he, you know, creates logos and, or a photographer, whatever, like, we'd probably have a much more brand centric. That by the way, could probably work extremely well. But I think with my background, his background, this is just the mixture that works for us. And I think, you know, as a founder, you just have to understand what your strengths and weaknesses are. Like, I'm not trying to be a graphic designer. I'm also not trying to be a scientist. I'm just, you know, I like to adventure. I like to climb mountains. I like to run marathons. I like to feel good and healthy and then, you know, use the products that we create for all that, you know. And that's my unique approach to it. He has his unique approach to it, you know, running track for T.M. USA, Florida, being a dietician, reading all these studies. Like, he fucking likes, he likes to read the studies. I'm not reading the studies. He gives me the spark notes on the studies. But like, he likes doing that. And so like, he's playing into that strength. I play into my strength and then we combine. I don't think there's a right or wrong way to go about it though, right? I mean, I think the-- Yeah, I think the-- Yeah, to your original question. Now, maybe think of like what worked with Chrome makes them want to do it work. And it's always a combination of that stuff. I think like the Lemme example is really great, just to note on their stuff. They use-- they can-- you can bypass doing clinicals if you're using branded ingredients. And that's kind of a replay. So they use-- Kind of hung around that. Yeah. But and then with Thorn, they built up their brand through a different channel because it was a different time. But they built their brand. And then they're trading off that brand equity that they have. And we always view ourselves as like the next generation of Thorn because-- Really? Yeah, that has been like in our heads for a while because-- I totally agree, too. You're like a sexier version. Right. Because it's more marketing. They built themselves through-- Sexels. Sexels. Dr. Chanels, retail. Especially retail or all that type of thing. And they kept this kind of like high bar of like, it's kind of almost through a doctor. And then they were able to build that into a brand that they're able to trade off now. But their consumer demographic is older. People so trusted. But the younger people want a brand that also relates to them and sells to them. But more Thorn doesn't really sell. They're-- Yeah. Not in touch with that. But they would just sell like a bowel-babb extract. Right? There's not like a story. Yeah, there's no story to it. So one thing that I think-- I mean, you guys have gone through in acquisition recently that information's public. We don't really want to get into the numbers. I'm actually much more curious about like how that sort of changed, how you operate the company and like the vision for it. Because once a company comes in, takes a big chunk. We're going to get you into retail. We're going to scale this thing across all these doors, like, et cetera, et cetera. The goal is kind of change. Like, what is kind of the next phase of growth look like for you guys? Like, is it retail? Is it new products? Like, what's kind of the-- Well, I'll also say like with that-- with the partners we brought in, paint shorts, Kevin Schwartz, the main partner at PSP. I used to train them. Oh, well, years ago. Yeah. And so he was kind of mine. That's full circle. And then James, who helped put the deal together, is also a friend. So like, there was them. And then there was a couple other people looking to come in and partner with us. But I think when Albert and I looked at it, we weren't necessarily looking just to sell a big chunk in the biz. We were just looking for guys that we could-- or guys or girls that we could just vibe with and grow this way. Then we have the same vision. And they're not going to try to make us fix what's not broken, change the formulations. And so they're just good partners. They're not-- you know, obviously if the business was doing bad they'd come in and you know, yeah, of course, try to adjust but like, it's business as usual, you know, and that I think was our goal with it is like, let's continue to run it together and grow this thing and continue to help people and come out with products that we want to come out with and that's the autonomy they really give. Right, so I think I just want to say that because, you know, a lot of the times you sell or, you know, a chucky or company and like, you do have to switch things up, there's different titles and new CEO comes in and new CMO, they try to switch up the whole, you know, profitability projections like everything switches up, they still give us full autonomy and that's why we chose them as partners and it's, you know, we've been partners with them for almost, you know, almost two years, year and a half and so I think, I don't know, I think I think that that was just like a really positive outcome. Yeah, no, it's amazing, but the next phase, well, then you guys, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's a line of incentives, right? Like, they, like, obviously took a part of the business, but there's a lot more once you guys continue to smash it. Of course, that's why it's so important to have that type of partner where, you know, because everyone thinks like, oh, like, you sell a business and that's just kind of it, right? It's like, no, most of these deals, like, particularly, obviously, what's going on with NutriBolt and Bloom, it's like, yeah, there's upfront cash, but like, if you smash it, there's a big, big, big upside. For sure, that's what happened with you guys. Yeah, same thing. Yeah, there's always upside, for sure. Yeah, big upside. Have to have that aligned. Right. And like, who's going to know the business more than us? We've been, we've been doing it for years and so, yeah, we're just trying to continue to grow it and reach as many people as possible and continue to come out with good products that we enjoy that are going to be around for decades to come, you know, not just quick, quick, you know, money grabs. Like real, real legit products are going to help people. So I think that's a big one. Continue to, yeah, grow the team, build a strong infrastructure behind the team, everything in house, everything, everything kind of just flowing. And then I think, continue to tell the story of where we're getting all of our ingredients from. I think that that's a big core of who we are, you know, whether it's going out to the Winimack Islands of Alaska to get our fish oil or to Africa to get the Beobob or New Zealand to get the, you know, our beef liver or protein or, you know, we enjoy telling the stories. I like to travel. I like to, you know, be out there in the field and just, you know, telling that story. And I know he likes formulaing products. Like, to be honest, if we sold the business or not, we'd probably still be doing this, you know, like it's just fun, you know. And so, I don't know, that's my perspective on kind of where it's all going. Yeah. I don't know your thoughts. No, yeah, pain sports has been great. But, you know, they, they are focused on, you know, like Dev said, like Kevin is someone who used our products and they like it because it's a good quality. So that was a big thing where it was like, you know, they're not going to change the quality. And then they saw what our vision was and just are there to support it, basically. So it's, as Dev said, like business as usual and that doesn't mean retail right now. Like we get to a certain scale. I think it makes sense. But we know the channels that we know now. And I think that focus is really important. And I think a lot of times you see brands like push the retail button if things are not going well on other channels and you need to kind of like keep keep the number number go up kind of vibe. So we know our channels and we there's a lot of green pasture left in those. And, you know, you can continue educate people digitally. And it's a lot easier to pivot change things like control the messaging and all that versus like going through, you know, and retailers, you're you're moving through their systems and things which are pretty complicated business. Yeah, it really is. Now, you already know we are super skeptical on this show about most AI tools promising the world. They have flashy demos, huge promises, and ultimately under deliver. But I do have to tell you about one that has blown me away and saved my team countless hours of time. And that's rich panel. Imagine a 24/7 customer support engine that handles all of your tickets seamlessly. Escobar it's anything requiring human intervention. And here's the best part. Upsells your customers in the process. Their onboarding process is frankly one of the craziest things I've ever seen. You input your brand in within 15 minutes. It has full context on the latest drops, product information, and plugs into all of your apps. That's not even to mention the cost savings. They're like three times more affordable than their competitors. I couldn't recommend this enough. So if you're a brand looking to turn support into an asset, go check out richpanel.com and tell them we sent you. And I mean, we had a Ryan from NeuroGamon and like they just went through a massive like packaging rebrand like change to you know packaging that they had done their first several hundred million revenue on just because people in retail were like, yeah, we want this like I catch a little more. Yeah totally. Yeah, it's like full or shit. Like we just completely change the nature of the product right. Right. And it's definitely a different beast for sure. And if you I mean that's that's cool. So what channels are you still super excited about like where do you see a white space for you guys like is it TikTok shops it like an Amazon business is it just continue to grow the D to C subscription side of things. Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say I'm bullish on TikTok. Yeah. Amazon D to C. I mean those are all three different channels. I mean TikTok overflows into Amazon but right Amazon and D to C are you know though there's still so much growth to be had there and people to reach and of course what not yeah. Boot take boot take shots like we like we like small gems we're in Barry's boot camp so hoe house one hotel's we're in I mean we're in I'd say hundreds of these like small gems around the nation which we love working with right I think that's just more like how do you guys scale that like how do you kind of like get her in those in bounds right in bounds you want to like carry the product yeah yeah yeah those are like real customers that own gyms or recommendations or I'll post yeah okay we're going into boutique you know spots and you know we'll put we'll put our retail our retail I guess manager on it right and she'll help kind of give you those deals up but yeah I don't know I think those those channels yeah um I think what Devon said about the boutique things or cool partnerships like we talked about New York and our backgrounds like having been in fitness and health and wellness for a very long time like we have a lot of random connections to people and different things that it's it's cool to see all that come together so a lot of it's like oh this my buddy's open a gym this guy knows a gym that's and that's you know like where we feel like anything and the stuff that we're working on is all aiding back to each other which is cool because it's just stuff that we like to do yeah um when you view a gym is it is it like a really good opportunity to drive trial and then ultimately it's after that customer yeah think about I mean like the retail side is kind of a rapper's a physical reputation of like you know we have a very digital brand and most people almost everyone sees promix from digital first and then they experience and Devon talks about different touch points you gotta see it you gotta have someone refer all that type of thing but yeah I think the gym type thing is like a really cool place to show how that brand is embodied in like a different way I guess you know and to get people it's immersive you know it's like oh like this is we try to keep that really high quality bargains anything that we're doing so it it all makes sense and it all tracks because it's like well this fits together with that because this is how that kind of the the promix customer would enjoy a gym yeah of course and it's also the lever the levers that was talking about like read you know going into a boutique gym is a or an event or an event pop up is a is a lever yeah you know gorilla marketing is a lever emails a lever ads is a lever you know the and I think at the beginning I was I was saying like we didn't do ads for the first yeah many years ago it was like zero ads it was more just like pop ups it was word of mouth it was seeding product it was bringing some influencers on that used the product already yeah it was it was through like ours no both being in gyms and like you meet so many people and that's part of like why we did Monroe is like it's not just a it's not like oh this is gonna be a great numbers business it's a great community builder and it's such a Austin's you know now one of those kind of hubs were at least for health and wellness I would put it very close to a new orc or LA or something like that and the number of people that come through there and they arrest you if you're not jacked yeah on ladybird trail no they don't it's crazy you don't have that proud unbelievable you haven't got arrested yet see this guy in the collective locker room every day it's motivation so let's talk a little bit more about Monroe I mean I think it's like so interesting like this whole new premium wellness experience space like we're in the k-shape economy right people either want way better stuff or they want you know kind of like the cheap stuff and I mean my personal theory on obviously we're friends with the guys at k like you know I think a gym like collective could have charged I don't know a thousand bucks and most of its members probably wouldn't have batted a night right and that would have unlocked a lot new revenue for them to continue to invest in that business I think like you see this with Soho House it's like charting 5k a year like they charged 12 and like deliver a way better experience to their customers like how are you guys kind of going about building Monroe as like a premium wellness. you know, experience physical space. - Yeah, I think Devon has a great background. We both were in hospitality as well. We like hosting people, he's a super host. I like running some of the ops and different things like that, but it starts with the people. That's like the main thing. Like I think that's probably, we're aligned that. The quality of a space is, it's about the community is defined by the people that are in it. That's probably the most thing. - Yeah. - How do you service those people? Or there's some specific kind of hospitality and insights? - I'll give my quick little rant 'cause I think it's really important. It's how I've always thought about businesses and like consumer psychology. If you go into a restaurant and you order a grilled cheese, you want the grilled cheese that your mom made you grown up. Like that's what you're thinking in your brain. You don't want a grilled cheese with like, like 10 random ingredients in it. You're gonna taste them like, fuck, like, all right, that's good, but like, that's not my mom's grilled cheese. You want simple, you want what you're used to. I think for hospitality and health, it gets really complicated. You're throwing all these things at you. You're like, peptides, collostrum, talo, this, that. What should I be drinking this in the morning? Should I be taking this at night? Like what, this jam, it has 50,000 pieces of equipment which should I be on this more. Like it's so confusing. The whole health industry is confusing. So there's confusion and then there's a price barrier. Then it's like, wait, should I be paying 20,000 a year to have access? Is this actually gonna help my lifespan? Is this gonna help me as a whole? I think both those. So there's the barrier to entry with money, right? Cost and then it's the confusion. I think when you strip those away and you're like, "Look, we're gonna make it really simple. It's equipment that you understand. It's, you know, for Monroe or it's ingredients that you understand for promix, right? It's just simple. You know it, you can read the turmeric, you can read the beobob, you can read the organic oranges. Like you know what those are, you ate those growing up. You're like, "Oh, cool. That's I think where promix is winning." You just understand it, it's not too confusing. Monroe is winning and the reason that we have 1,000 of the people on the wait list to come in is because it's simple. It's Asana, it's a steam room, it's a gym that's not like crazy equipment. It's just like equipment you expect. There's a nice open outdoor area, bone broth, steaks in the restaurant, and a place you can sit down. It's not like we're not upselling peptides, we're not upselling like, you know, this crazy concierge doctor that's gonna try to upsell you a $10,000 membership for like some blood transfusion bullshit. It's just simple. It's like, for him and I, I wanna wake up. I wanna have my debloat. I'm gonna have my cold brew. I'm gonna go in, do some weights like I did this morning. Maybe I had a little bench, had a little squats, maybe some lunges, hit the sauna. I've, you know, jumped in the cold plunge, take a shower, and I start my day. It's very simple. It's not like, I'm not injecting myself a shit. I'm not like over-complicating. Like, I need to take these 50,000 vibes. It's very simple. Get some sunshine. Make, maybe call my mom, feel good. Like, it's very simple. And I think this whole health industry is making shit so complicated. And we're just trying to pull it back, you know? With the ingredients that we sell through ProMix, it's very simple. You can read them all on the ingredient list. And with Monroe, it's like, you know what you're gonna get. And we're not making the, could we make the price of entry a couple thousand bucks a month and like really divvy out people? Yes, but we're not judging people based on their income. We're judging people based on the quality of human they are. What values they have. There shouldn't be a price barrier to the health industry. - So with Monroe, you're kind of, you're saying like, you're evaluating a lot of the members, like on a five-track almost. - Yeah, I mean, yeah. - Yeah, and like I think, you know, it's like the book, The Secret, it's what you put out in the world is what you attract back to. We didn't do a social post for the grand opening. We didn't, like we sent some messages out to our friends and all of a sudden we have 500 people there that we know personally. We didn't post about, we didn't even have post up on social right now. 'Cause we don't want it. Like we're building the community from within of people that we've known for 15, 20 years. Like these are our homies. And so like when you built that reputation, then it's really easy to fill a space with good quality people. 'Cause what we put out in the world is who we attract back in. And so for, you know, you can take it how you want with, you know, that. But like I think we attract good people that we like into the space. And that creates the environment. I was saying at the opening speech that we just had, like it's not like, you know, we're launching with artists and you know, musicians or you know, real estate people, like it's, it's good. Yeah, we're good. We're not launching based on the industry. We're launching based on the values and the quality of the people in the space. You know, and try not to over-complicate it. Like you go into a gym, what are you gonna do? You just, you probably want to sauna, co-blend some weights, you go in, you put your music in, you leave, you know, maybe you want to shake at the end. It's very simple, you know? It doesn't have to be complicated. And there shouldn't be a price barrier to entry for your health. I totally agree. I think what I meant by the price thing was more so that, like, functionally that would allow them to invest more in the quality of the experience. Like have you guys gone to urban golf performance in Austin? UGP? Sick. You should have honestly like check it out. Because like it's probably the best hospitality experience I've ever gone. And they just, they cater exclusively to like, you know, I'm working out, doing like some plio, you know, some one athletic. And the guy next to me is like the founder of Salona. Right. Like this, you know, crypto, billionaire, whatever. And like they really market to that high-end clientele, which I'm not necessarily qualified, but I love golf. And so what was crazy about it though is like, dude, you roll up, they come get your clubs out of your car. They get your clubs out of their trunk. There's like four bros that meet you at the door, they tap you up. They're like, dude, you look good today, the flow's like nice. Like hell yeah, bro, you're the man. Like you walk in, there's like seven more dudes. Like at the front, they're like, welcome in, Brian. Like you're gonna have a great day today. Like super excited for you. And it's so high touch, you know, it's very, very, very like, you feel included, you feel very prioritized. And to the point where I'm like laughing at these guys. Like this is for me. You're just gassing right? No, you don't like me. That's what a fuck Mason does. Yes. A fuck Mason loves doing that. 100%. Like they're just gassing, you know, immediately. Yeah. And you know, I think they're able to do that because like you guys said, it's all about the people. They hire a very specific person. You know, they hire someone who's excited to do that. But they also charge to a level where they can pay those, but you know, you hire a specific person because they're getting paid a good amount to work that job. And I think a lot of gyms necessarily, let me skip that part. Like they try and, you know, hire people who for like 40K, 50K. And it's like, well, if this was an 80K hire, would it make your members like it that much more? And would this in turn become that much better of an experience? That was more so. Got it. Yeah. The pricing thing, not necessarily like, let's exclude people who can't afford it. More so, the business is healthier and can then invest in the experience. Yeah. We've brought in amazing hires that we just attract good people. And, you know, they're right. And that's a leverage of being great operators. Like building something people believe in. You know, there's a vision that you guys are kind of portraying, I would say, which was like a, you said it earlier, like, live to 150, like a total control of your health. Like, Monroe is absolutely like a stack right now, overall vision. That's a present, right? It's like, yeah, and I just think like, man, life's already complicated. Yeah. We're just trying to simplify it. Yeah. Like, I don't know, right? Like it's, yeah. We're, you know, we don't, it just, shit's already complicated. Right. It's just like simple. In front of you, there should be an easy checkout process. There should be an easy, you know, easy way to get in and out of the gym. There should be an easy way to just go about, when you want to introduce a new habit into someone's life, it needs to be easy, 'cause it's nearly impossible to switch someone's habits. And so how the hell are you gonna do, how the hell are you gonna switch someone's habit to? Okay, they normally wake up, they do their stuff, they go for a run, they go into another gym on the other side of the town. How are you gonna switch them to come over here? Well, you're gonna make it simple for them. That's it. You need to make it simple. Right. The only thing I gotta add on what, when he says simple, I think to me, that also means just like honest and straightforward. That's kind of how we are. So I think that's what it's about, where I think about materials a lot like that, like a real piece of wood or real piece of metal, and then things like-- Straight from Hogwarts right here. Yeah, this is insane. So I think there's a lot of that. And I think that's refreshing for people, and that's what makes people stick around. It's you think about, go to your art for something, and it's not necessarily the flashiness. It's like, oh, it actually tastes better, or it actually has some realness to it. So I think doing the things that are true to us, you end up attracting people that are excited about things, you work on something positive that brings more people in, but being honest and clear about things, I guess, is kind of it, 'cause there's a lot of brands and companies in all different worlds that can hype it up a ton. Right. I think I am a, or something right now, is like doing crazy numbers. They're fucking full-gast marketing that got messy. They've got the-- It's fucking unbelievable. The claims are out of this world. But it's like, I don't know. Like I'm just like, I think most people are not as deep in the space where I'm so kind of jaded to that stuff from my small commirates. But yeah, I think it's you can it's as long as you keep the gas on it kind of works, but like yeah, we're we like to run businesses that are profitable and you know self-sustaining. I mean a few years from now, I think that they'll probably experience some of that after effects you know, outrageous claims, right? Like if it doesn't change my life, I'm kind of disappointed. Yeah, if I literally don't accept that. Yeah, if I don't become honest, right? I'm going to play my mate. Yeah, exactly. You're right. Yeah, you said it. So you guys are running like multiple businesses. I mean several between the two of you like how are you blocking off your time? Like how are you actually showing up for your team members in the way that you want? Like how are you executing at such a high level? Yeah. For me personally, I don't take external calls before 11 or after three. And before 11, I'll do calls with Albert for my other partner at rhythm, but that's it. You know, I leave that time for internal stuff I need to do like things I personally need to and after three, I or things I need to do. And then it's just delegating and finding the best possible people for, you know, the roles that you're not necessarily the greatest at. You know, you want to build a team around you that's everyone should really be much smarter than you in certain categories. What are you doing between 11 and 3? 15 minute calls I use calendar and I send a link you know to, you know, whoever is trying to book. And I give them max 15 minutes unless I have a board meeting or unless like it's something, you know, where we actually need an hour or more. But I'm a big believer in like 90 plus percent of the time you can probably get what you need to get done in 15 minutes or less. Totally. Yeah. I mean, some of these dragged out calls to have a call, to have a call, to have an email. It's just fucking wasted time. And it's just not, it's not realistic when you're building businesses. Time you're not getting time back. And so you have to maximize, you know, why are you getting a call? What's the reason thing? Like, do we really need to be, you know, in person or on a call for this or can we get it done via email? I can someone else on the team handle it. Like, why do I actually have to be on this 15 minute call? Is I think about that quite often. I look at my calendar and I'm like, oh, this someone else can handle this or I do not need to be on this call or why is it booked in for 30 minutes? We can probably get this done in 10. Or if I see something on my calendar and I'm like, wait, I can literally call this person right now and just sort it out. I'll do that. And so I'm pretty efficient with that. I also don't use a laptop really. I'm a cell phone guy. I'm always moving and shaking. I'm traveling a ton. I mean, it's just this year alone. I've been on 53 flights. Okay. You know, like three months into the year. Approximately 10 a month. Yeah. You know, more, more. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. What do we do with 10 a month? Yeah. I'm with it. Yeah. And so I'm always moving and that's just that that's what works for me. Not everyone has high energy or has that opportunity to do that. But that's what works for me. That was different. Yeah. I prefer to be in the same spot. I just I'm extremely routine. I don't even think about it like that. It's just what I naturally gravitate to. Yeah. This is a team. Like I before I am have a coffee work until I don't want to I don't want to bore you with all the details. I mean, people need to learn. I mean, CEOs that are like executing on extremely high level. I think more people should learn from their routine. So they can at least judge what they're doing. Right. Yeah. I'll give like the the quick note. I caught up with again, Ben from Marsman the other day. And I go, yeah, you're having a good time. You know, he does a good job putting out what's fun on social. And then I know he's a complete like I'll say, like degenerate on work too or like literally anytime that that photo and that where he's that is not happening. He's sitting on his computer. Right. And that's kind of how I am with. So I wake up. Basically, you know, my schedule shifted to accommodate my family. And so I would naturally like to work later at night and maybe sleep in. They don't that doesn't work. So I have to wake up before. I basically just try to work until they get up at 630 or something and make them breakfast and that kind of stuff. Dog walk on the dog walker. I'm often doing emails or taking some calls. And then I try to get in a spot and try to be unbothered and just work. And there's always stuff to do. But I basically just sit on the computer the whole day. That's like 11 to yeah, it's like so it's 4 to 6. And then walk the dogs. I'm back on doing calls and things during the dog walks and stuff. And then I'm physically sitting at the computer 9 to 5 or 6. And then it's all like family time at night. And I go to bed at 9 30 or 10. But your ability to concentrate evolves over time. The more things that happen, I think the stuff that's helped me has been one. If you have a lot to do, you start to get better at prioritizing. I used to think me spending 10 more minutes trying to figure out the copy on the email mattered, doesn't typically. I think depending on how your brain's built, some people are like throw everything at the wall and they very quick iteration. A lot of people who like to build things maybe get too specific on stuff that doesn't matter. You don't have enough real world feedback from customers. But you get older, you get better at kind of like walking in. And we both Devon loves. We both are excited by pressure too. If we don't have a full schedule, it's not good. Devon especially. Devon can't be alone. He'll make problems to then solve this. That's a real thing. You got to find that flow for me. We both like things to do. I know I need that. There's some, I would say, legitimate fear around not having things to do. We both have where it's bad. Doing things feels like momentum. Yeah, it's just good. We like to keep positive momentum. But you just start, I think, delegation is extremely important. We know what's important. We do that. Yeah, with the businesses, for me, we put Promix first and just make sure that works. We get really great people. Then we get to niche down farther and farther and what we're really good at. Devon's connecting people, he's doing all this stuff. He's going on trips. A story. It's like lining up your prioritization with your capabilities. You write eight out of 10 email copy and your email marketer writes 7.5. You can get away from that. The more that I just stepped out of that, because it's not what I can do it, it's just not what I'm best at. That's where the companies really take it off. If you get people who are the best at doing that, and they just start doing it, and everyone's also happy. So always, before working with people, I always want to know what you hate doing. What do you like to do? What are you good at? Hopefully, the good at. I like to do it the same. Then you end up working those roles. I'd say our common theme with both of us is we do make ourselves busy. Productive. We make ourselves, like we have to. I'll give just other anecdotes with people trying to think about. I don't enjoy a lot of stuff. I don't watch sports anymore. I don't watch movies. I didn't have a vanilla sky in a movie theater. I saw a couple of them that came out. Was that like 20 years ago? Yeah. I also don't watch sports. By the way, I also don't watch sports. I watch the Super Bowl for like 20 minutes, but you're like talking with people. Yeah. You're there because of the people. I don't watch any games. I don't play video games. I don't know. There's so much time that when I was younger in college, I would play Halo. I'm like, bro, how many hours has been playing Halo? You actually have the time. It's not a fun to mow online though. Halo with the fellas. Yeah, that's super fun. Yeah. If you're focused on something, just look at how many different things you do that don't matter. I know for me, having a wife, you spend a lot of time, a lot of headspace thinking about how do I get girls and all that. How do I get massive headspace? You go to a dad, be a husband, all that stuff. You just genuinely don't have time for things to go outside distractions. Yeah. Other interests. Yeah. Yeah. So you got to, well, then there's the other piece you got to make sure that you're happy, right? I mean, you got to take care of yourself and like work out and like, you know, a lot of the consistency is super important. Dev and I both do that. I think a lot of people don't have that and we both need fitness and health for mental health, you know? Like not and like, I'm not that kind of guy that talks about that stuff, but like legitimately, that's the best thing you can do. Of course. I got 100%. It's like, it's really simple. Yeah. It's just chemicals. Yeah. Like it's narrow chemistry. Having that consistency every day keeps your energy up, keeps everything going. So just kind of like, yeah, keep it in motion. You're meant to be in motion. So we keep that as like a big pillar of it. I think it's hard if people go really spiky. Just like your sleep, just like anything. Like, your body gets used to rhythm and so if you're just kind of in like fourth and fifth gear, the whole time and sometimes we go, you know, into sixth gear and it's like a little too much and then we got to back it off a little bit. But like, you got to say like, move in for sure. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. So just fill it up. You got to fit like, there's, they're literally as always something to do. I always find myself if I'm like critiquing a like social media story or like something that's just like I probably should like the team is handling that but it's not that it's minuscule. Everyone has everyone has their job and it's important but like I find myself if I'm critiquing like a social like a something on our story or feed I'm like I'm too bored I need to find time with some border grumpy. Yeah. I gotta focus and I gotta go find something else to do. Yeah if I start to learn around with you now it's like not doing the right stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Okay before we jump like one thing we have a lot of young entrepreneurs that watch this podcast a lot of people are super established operators as well like I always like to ask our guests like what are some mistakes that you would say like you made along the way that people should look to avoid. You can take some time to think about it. I got I mean let me pull out my notes. I mean that like one that immediately comes up is just make sure you're doing something you really like to do because it's going to take a lot of your time and like effort and it's hard to I'm not good at doing things that I don't like my brain just kind of shuts off and that's why I do a pretty narrow set of things because it's what I like to do. I think just like a real world reference if you're ever in class and you would get sleepy like I just get tired when I'm bored. Right. I don't like to do that. I think the other one is just knowing what you're good at and just finding people that are complimentary. I found that work in relationships, Devon and I are complimentary where it's like a Venn diagram where you overlap in some core areas but we're very different. And that means that you all have clear running lanes that you're working in and they're good at and that you also are you know you can you can do more because you've got a wider brush where like the marketing is going great great we can do that but yeah but that's got to have a product that anchors it and like so I think that's hard to be as most entrepreneurs are good at like one thing and sometimes it's the right time in the market and everything where it kind of hits but like often if you find someone else like a lot of guys that I think we know can really get the eyeballs but then they're dog shit at operations. It's like you can't get the product in stock or you have all these issues it's like well you need someone who's like doesn't know anything about marketing and just like it's good at like excel tables and stuff like yeah yeah like so that's what I've learned from as things grow and but at every stage and obviously when you're younger and you have one person or two people they have to wear a lot of hats but as soon as you can get to that point bringing more people and yeah yeah I think those are I was going to say those as well but on top of that man don't take it that serious like it's we're all dying at some point and I think I see some of these founders put all their eggs in one basket for 10 years like all of them or they don't travel they miss time with their family maybe they become a little unhealthy they really go all in on this biz and then maybe they do sell it and you know maybe they do make a hundred million or whatever it is but then they're out of shape they you know they their their airlines receiving they feel unhealthy they ruin relationships that they've had they just miss 10 years of their life their mother their father like they like don't lose your values and who you are when building a company you know I love Jesse it's there's big-ass calendar because it does give you a good way to visualize what your year is and I always suggest putting adventures and travel and family time and birthdays on it first and don't fucking miss them because it really does go by quick and you're going to look back and be like shoot man like yeah I have this business and I have a hundred million but like damn like yeah I I ruined this relationship right I just want this yeah like life yeah you're you know and and also the second thing I'll say is like make sure your intentions are right you know everyone wants a business not everyone but founders whoever's listening like I want a big business well big business means bigger problems more money more problems more employees more problems like well build a business that makes a million bucks a year cash profit like what else do you need you know I mean I feel that you don't you don't need to make a business that's making a hundred million a year you know prop like it's it's okay if you know what do you need what's your intention why do you want to make money like you know like what's what's a real intention I know I genuinely I want I want financial freedom to host my friends and like host my family like that genuinely know the reason why I'm not like a big I don't know that's just my real is yeah I love that stuff I love hosting people so like that all and I just love building stuff with him I love health my dad was a pro weightlifter my mom was a pro weightlifter like I've been doing this shit my whole life and so I just I would be doing this whether I was making money or not you know I mean it's just fun I host a weekly call with founders and like we talk and I make no money from it I just think it's super fun yeah you know and so I think it's it's understanding your your intention and like don't forget to have a little fun along the way because does go by I mean I know a buddy that just sold this company made 300 million I'm like how you doing he's like I'm good but my fucking back hurts and I'm like yeah damn I'm like that's like I like I slip something and I'm like damn like that's that's real that's real as fuck yeah like not no money's gonna fix the fact that like you kind of woke up and couldn't get out of that right yeah and lip none you know that that's gonna be your first you know first thing on your mind so I don't know fun intention yeah you know amazing well guys that was awesome that was really great where I mean I guess Devon Levasca on Instagram yeah yeah Devon Levasque whatever you want follow Albert too yeah do a lot of reposting of yeah yeah yeah that was me from ex a wife and dog promix rhythm and row sweet honey farm sweet farm yeah yeah check this out we'll link everything in the description but I mean yeah absolutely appreciate you my brother yeah I'm gonna see you later that was great