 at the end of the day, we want to improve your relationship with technology, right? We know that yes, it's great to take time off from your screens. I'm a big proponent of that. As I mentioned to you guys, I was living in a Yurt in Kyrgyzstan for a week off the grid. Like that stuff is really important. We definitely advocate for that. But we also recognize that you can't do that every day, right? You have a job that requires screen use. You know, might be in a long distance relationship and you want to FaceTime, you know, you're significant other. You want to watch a basketball game at night or, you know, a Netflix show or whatever that might mean. And so to say, hey, let's not be in front of screens is not really going to work. It's saying, okay, what are the ways that we can improve that relationship with our technology because we are going to use it? Hey, real quick, we're going to give away the power bundle right now to one of you lucky viewers. So the power bundle includes MAP Strong and MAP Power Lift. They're both three month programs, both for strength, both for power, both different though, right? So MAP Strong is a strong man inspired workout program. Power Lift is a power lifter workout program. You can get them both. They normally retail at 300 bucks, but right now we're doing them for $79.99, but one of you is going to get it for free. Okay, so you can either sign up for the discount or see if you win and get it for free. Here's how you can enter to win. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Subscribe to this channel, turn on notifications. If we pick your comment, we'll give it to you for free. Everybody else, the power bundle again is $79.99 lifetime access to both programs. If you just want to sign up, head over to mapsmarch.com. All right, here comes the rest of the show. Father, this is so nice. I haven't done an in-person interview since COVID. So much better, bro. Yeah, we appreciate it. It's been like seven virtual ones. When you guys said in person, I was like, fuck yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, we appreciate it because there's a lot of things you can't read and see and connect with. 100%. You also just like, it's better to get to know ever, you know, yeah, I'm with you. Yeah, totally. Did you guys see a spike in sales in fact during this like virtual? The very beginning was like bonkers. Really? Yeah, because like everyone just went immediately indoors. They're like, wait, but I'm on Zoom for like 10 hours a day plus all the time I'm supposed to do stuff. And then I'm watching Netflix at night. And so it just like kind of went crazy. What made you guys decide to do glasses for kids? Because that was a game changer for my kids. Yeah. Because they were at home doing school all day long. Yeah, on their iPads all day trying to get their work done. Yeah, I could see, I could notice a huge difference when I had them wear the glasses versus when they didn't. They were totally different. Yeah. I mean, basically we just kept hearing from customers like, can we have this for our kids? And we're like, we're going to listen to our customers. So I mean, it's the same technology, everything else. And it's like kids are in front of screens just as much as adults are half the time, especially with remote learning. Well, let's get into the origin story and how you got here. Because I know you have, you know, you come from parents of what, a doctor and a nurse. So I'm sure that you were supposed to go on that path, right? Was that the direction you were supposed to go? My dad did not want me to be a doctor. He wanted me to be a lawyer. He's like, classic like, don't do what I do, but do this other thing. You're really good at arguing. This is where you need to go. Have you seen my malpractice insurance? You're up in like a New York Jewish household. You get good at arguing real fast. So what brought you down down this path then? So I actually went to school. I thought I was going to be a lawyer and early on realized like I don't want to do that. I wanted to build things. And so got excited about that. When I graduated from school in 2013, went to work for this fellowship program launched by Andrew Yang called Venture for America. Basically it was like Teach for America but applied to startups, right? So it's a nice segue, ease into, hey, how do you get into the startup community? It's not the easiest thing right out of college generally because especially startups looking for people who know what they're doing. College kids generally don't know what they're doing. And so I got introduced to the old CEO of Zappos, Tony Shea, who unfortunately passed away in 2020 or 2021, but his project to revitalize downtown Las Vegas called Downtown Project. So basically he put in 350 million of his own money into that project and it's where Zappos is based. But if you've ever been to downtown Vegas, especially back then, it was really, really seedy. And it was just how do we build a ton of demand in that area? We were building restaurants and bars and all this cool stuff to get people excited about coming down there and ultimately wanting to live there, except it was treated like a startup. And so we had no idea if these projects were going to make money or lose money. And my team was like, figure this out, you figure this out. So I'm 22 years old out of school. No idea what you're doing. Okay, sure. You're leading the team yourself. You just have to be resourceful, right? So Google your way to victory and I ended building all these models in Excel, financial models in Excel, and my eyes just started to absolutely kill me. I'm like, what is going on? And I'm looking around and half the people I know are complaining about the same stuff. My eyes are exhausted at the end of the day. I'm getting this nagging headache in the afternoon. My vision might get a little bit blurry. So I start talking to optometrists and optomologists. I'm like, what is going on here? Why am I and so many people I know complain about similar issues? And many of them are saying, look, a lot of this has to do with what screens produce, blue light and glare. And if you could filter blue light, which is high energy light that comes off of any screen today, and glare, which is typical of any screen as well. If you could filter blue light, eliminate glare, you can create this more comfortable experience. And so I'm like, okay, cool. That sounds great. I want to buy a pair, except that at the time it was either, which is still true today, these clear lenses that don't really work very well, or these yellow lenses that in these hunting, gogly type frames that you put them on, you look like one of the X men. That's what I remember from the 80s. Yeah. They have those commercials of these big, ugly, orange glasses. Yeah. 100%. I'm like, all right, look, I wear a t-shirt or button down to work. I'm not wearing a suit, but I still care about the way that I look. And I think that it's important. And so when we were creating Felix Gray, it was this idea of how do you combine function with fashion, right? So how do you create something that your eyes are going to feel good, but you're going to feel good and confident what you're wearing at the same time. And so we ended up building this proprietary way of filtering blue light. It is 15 times more effective than other clear lenses. And then it's housed in just really beautiful frames. So, you know, that was kind of how it all got rolling. And we had no idea if this was going to work, right? No one even knew what blue light was at the time. Yeah. Yeah, what year is this right? What year are we in right now when we're talking about this? Yeah. So join this, you know, Tony's thing in 2013. By 2015, I had left to go start this. By 2016, we had the first product in our hands. And so instead of just launching, and this is one direct consumer, a lot of different brands were launching, they're raising tons of money, pre-revenue. And, you know, we thought, okay, we can do this ourselves in my co-founder and I, you know, Chris and myself are like, look, we're two smart guys. We could kind of raise a bunch of money too. And people just laughed us out of the room. They're like, you're not going to change behavior, right? You're not going to sell glasses to people who, especially at the time, we were just selling non-prescription, right? So now we sell prescription, we sell readers, we have a kid's line, we have a lot of different stuff. But at the time, it was just people for who either had 2020 vision like myself or who, you know, were contacts and people just like, that's not going to happen. So we said, okay, well, we still think this can be real. There's enough people we know that are complaining about these issues. So we started going all around New York and working with companies like Uber and Barclays and LinkedIn. And we would go into their offices and we'd offer them a 50-pair trial period for their employees. So smart. Just a free thing to do, right? And their culture HR teams are super happy because we handled the whole thing. They didn't have to do anything and they got to offer a perk to employees. And at the end, those employees could either purchase out of their own pocket or they could return them. And we didn't even, the website, you know, fully launched and everything. So we'd actually be carrying duffel bags around the subway with eyewear just, you know, going in and out. And we saw that about one in three people were buying at the end of those two weeks. And they loved it. And what was funny is, then we would come back, you know, to the office on Monday and we have emails Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday from a bunch of people who had returned them saying, hey, can you actually come back to the office? I'm wearing, I'm now, you know, doing my work without these and I'm noticing, you know, how, how, how much worse my eyes are than they were when I was. So that was my experience was when I first used them, I couldn't really tell until I didn't use them. I think that's what happens to a lot of people is like, it's, it's subtle enough of a difference that you're like, oh, is this helping? Is this not helping? And then it's not until you stop using them consistently that all of a sudden that you, you notice, I don't know if you know our story, but we were super skeptical of any blue light blocking anything early days. In fact, we made fun of the orange and yellow glasses and, you know, we said it was like the cool. Yeah, because it was in the biohacking sort of space and they were into everything that looked ridiculous. They were cool about it. And then, and then when we met you guys and we wore them, then we were sold because we could tell a big difference. Well, I also read a book in 2017 or early 2018 by Adam Alter. And I talked about on the podcast much time called Irresistible. And the book is basically about just the addictive properties of tech and like what's happened in the last decade. So at that time, I had a different kid that was working for us that was helping me look for like partnerships and companies. And that set like I knew that where we are heading with the addiction to tech that probably wasn't going to change. I think it was just going to get more and more at a younger, younger age. And there has to be some unintended consequences of us being glued to screens all day long. So I was like, there's got to be something that is going to be in the future coming out to help combat that someone. And that was blue light blocking glasses. And it was you guys who were kind of, and that was still, I know pretty early for you guys, but you were some of the first, you know, websites and stuff that popped up and social media I saw you back then. And that's what made us head towards you guys was, well, you guys look like you were leading the way in the space. Yeah. And it's funny you mentioned that. So, you know, we really did pioneer the new wave of blue light glasses. But for us, you know, at our core, we never started coming to start an eyewear company, right? We started because we're dealing with these issues. And so when you're talking about the negative effects of digital devices, that is the larger mission I feel is great at this point, right? So we are in the midst of our transition from a direct to consumer blue light glasses brand where, you know, we basically sold all through our site our blue light glasses products to now being an omnichannel digital wellness brand. And what that means is one, we're starting to launch with different partners, right? So we're about to launch a diffused product line with Target at the end of March. We're launching in 500 Best Buy stores, you know, later in the summer. But digital wellness test is even more important. It's this idea of, at the end of the day, we want to improve your relationship with technology, right? We know that, yes, it's great to take time off from your screens. Yeah, I'm a big proponent of that. As I mentioned to you guys, I was living in a Yurt in Kyrgyzstan for a week off the grid, like that stuff is really important. We definitely advocate for that. But we also recognize that you can't do that every day, right? You have a job that requires screen use you, you know, might be in a long distance relationship and you want to FaceTime, you know, your significant other, you want to watch a basketball game at night or, you know, a Netflix show or whatever that might mean. And so to say, hey, let's not be in front of screens is not really going to work. It's saying, okay, what are the ways that we can improve that relationship with our technology because we are going to use it? Now, we kind of glossed over a bit about, you know, the trials and you know, the process of you actually trying to develop a better lens. And, you know, how do you even approach that? And like how, so I know too, like, isn't there like one company in Italy, Luxotica that sort of dominates a lot of the frame space as well? And just, can you like paint the picture of what that all looks like getting into the eyewear sort of business? Yeah, it's a great question. So I came, I had no experience and, you know, did not have any family background or anything in the area. So it really just became hustling and networking and just meeting one person that knew another person that knew another person and selling the mission, selling the vision and really just, you know, following up with people, being a good person, being a kind person, being appreciative of their time and showing those traits. And so that meant that with one good conversation, someone introduced me to another person and that ended up leading us to our lens supplier and we developed a proprietary lens with them. So we realized that, hey, these guys are the best in the business, but what they're doing isn't totally what we think the market should need. And we worked with them on a new formula. And essentially that is what allows us to be this clear lens, like what I'm wearing right now looks like a normal pair of glasses, but it's filtering, you know, 30% of blue light, you know, where most blue light is created. It's filtering 90% of the highest energy wavelengths, but it's also filtering a really high percentage of like where most screens are producing blue light. And if you look at other clear products, they're also going to filter that high range, but where most blue light is produced is a little bit further down in the spectrum. You usually need color in order to filter that level. And so those other products are only filtering like two to 3% of blue light. And so you'll see a lot of customers saying, hey, I found Felix Craig as I tried two other pairs. I didn't really love them, but my eyes were killing me. I was looking for a solution. I finally pulled the trigger on the more expensive product and really as you get what you pay for. Yeah, was that a tough process because I guess, I don't know, for lack of a better term, dumb tech would be we, you look at something through a different color. So red lenses, obviously you're going to block everything but red light, orange, everything, but, you know, the orange or whatever goes through orange, but clear. That's really tough. Like how do you block blue light without changing the color of what you see? It almost sounds impossible. Like what did that process look like? So the secret at the end of the day is we took a basically around age 40, we start developing in a very trace quantity, a pigment in our eye that can filter blue light, but it exists so small that it's not really going to do anything for us without extra support. And so we synthesized that pigment, put it into the lens, and then added a few other properties that turn, that property is still a little bit yellow, but it's not as yellow as like in yellow or orange is what you would normally see from a really good blue light lens. And so what we did is we then add a couple other properties that turn that yellow back into clear. So you still have that pigment in there that's filtering blue light, but then have a couple other things to make it so the lens appears clear. Oh, really interesting. Now, how does this differ than the, you know, the how I can change the screen on my phone that'll reduce or stop blue light or on my computer screen? Yeah. So that's totally a misnomer. So like night shift, I think is what you're referring to. Yeah. So that's really good about changing the contrast of your screen, right? So if you're, you know, everyone knows you're up at night and then you look at your phone and it's that white light, you know, hitting and it's, the contrast is a lot with the dark room and it's annoying to your eyes. That's going to be annoying. And so basically what night shift is doing is changing the temperature of your screen. But if you think about blue light, I mean, anything that is going to have white light in it essentially has to have RGB. It has to have red, green, and blue. So unless your screen is completely red and black, you have to have blue light. So you're not going to affect that at all. And then just as importantly, you know, people know it as blue light glasses, but a really effective pair of blue light glasses also needs to be able to eliminate glare, right? That's another important aspect, right? When you get that distracting glow, you're able, basically it's the light coming in from a variety of different areas into your eye. And so an anti-glare and anti-reflective coating is going to take all that light and it's going to put it into one part of your, it's going to enter the lens and then it's going to essentially the angles that all converge. And so the light enters your eye at one focal point. And so that's going to be a lot more comfortable for your eye too. Now something that was interesting to me was, as we dived in deep or as I did in the science of this, is that there's actually some benefit to blue light as well, right? It's wakefulness properties. So maybe you can explain the difference between day blue, you know, blue light blocking glasses and night blue light blocking glasses. Cause I noticed a difference. If I wear the night ones during the day, I get sleepy. So maybe explain that a little bit. Yeah. So blue light, if it essentially it is one of the things that helps with our circadian rhythm. So when we're like cave men, cave women, you know, you think about it, okay, you get out of your cave, now the sun's come up. Okay. You go about your day, try not to get killed by, you know, some animal and then, you know, maybe you hunt something or gather something and then you go back to your cave. It's dark. Melton starts to be secreted because there's an absence of, you know, blue light, you go to sleep, sun rises, same thing happens again. What's important with what we do is that we filter blue light. We don't block blue light. So our clear lens is something that's still going to allow blue light into your eye. It's important. It's monitoring, it's helping manage your circadian rhythm. It's not going to block it fully. We actually have a sleep product that's specially designed to filter even more blue light and that's what improves melton secretion by two times. So like our clear lens, some people wear it at night and they really see an improvement, but we really recommend is, hey, wear your clear lenses during the day and then wear our amber lenses for sleep at night because that's going to be more helpful. Yeah. I do that like two hours before bed. Is that how you guys recommend it? I do it like four hours, but I also have like, I go to bed at one in the morning usually. So that's like my time to like get stuff done, you know, or, you know. Now I know, I know we have studies that show the difference in melatonin production from doing this and it's pretty significant. Do we see any other hormones being affected? I would assume growth hormone because melatonin and growth hormone are somewhat related. I think that anything that, I can't speak to that so directly, but I will say that anything that is going to be affected by melatonin and any other hormones are surely then going to be affected, right? Because if your melatonin isn't being secreted because you've essentially brought the sunlight indoors with your digital devices, and then you won't have melatonin flowing through your body and that's going to affect other hormones at the same time. So here's something interesting. This is not, and I do, I want to disclaimer here. I haven't seen any studies on this, but this is just my own experience. So we've been working with a company that has these continual glucose monitors and we haven't yet talked about them because we were testing out the product, but nonetheless what allows you to do is see what your glucose levels look like throughout the day and then you can adjust your nutrition, you know, white rice affects me more than, you know, oatmeal or vice versa or whatever. And I noticed a difference in my glucose from wearing blue light blocking glasses versus not. And I asked the nutritionist that's associated with the glucometer and she said melatonin production actually has an effect on glucose. So very, very interesting. So I'm interested to see further science in some of this stuff and seeing how it affects chronic disease, for example, because we know that poor sleep is connected to higher rates of diabetes, dementia, low testosterone in men, you know, fertility issues. I mean, you name it. So I'm sure we're going to see in the future connections to more things. How much research is being done right now on blue light blocking? I mean, what has been like the evolution of that? So blue light essentially at this point, a Harvard study came out in 2009 that really opened the doors to, hey, blue light expresses melatonin secretion. At this time, that's become really common fact. The most research that's being done right now and is in are there long-term negative effects associated with blue light? And so that is you're seeing an increase in age-related macular degeneration. So the maculose part of the retina effect degenerates essentially leads to blindness. And so there is an increase in that and some models show within stem cells and animal cell models that an overexposure of blue light can harm the retina and essentially deteriorate it, deteriorate the macula. Others say that, hey, that overexposure is more than you're going to get from screens. And so we're still in the early days, but I kind of liken it to the fact that for hundreds of years we had no idea if smoking was bad for us or not. And then there was about 50 years where the cigarette companies were just kind of saying, no, it's not bad for you, but we all kind of knew it was bad for us. We're in the really, really early days of this, right? We're the first generation that's in front of devices all day every day dealing with this stuff. And so I think it's going to take a while to really figure that out. But what I will say is, and we have customers that reach out about this all the time, it's not bad to wear a pair of blue light glasses. There's no harm associated. So if you're treating this as an insurance policy, that's totally okay. There's no going to be harm coming from that. Yeah, the way I say it is try it and see if you feel better. And the answer is typically yes. I do feel a lot better. And I think the last thing, which is the most subjective aspect, which is more difficult to do in a scientific study is around pain. Because how do you judge someone's eye strain versus someone else's eye strain? And so those things, a lot of times we collect our own data. So we know, for instance, that 90 days after customers buy a pair of Felix Grace, whether they've returned them or not, we ask them, hey, did you experience symptoms related to digital eye strain? So eye strain, eye fatigue, dry eyes, blurry vision, headaches, did you experience these symptoms before wearing Felix Gray? And nine out of 10 people say yes. That matches up with the fact that when people first purchase, nine out of 10 people say, yeah, I'm buying this because I'm dealing with these issues. And then as a follow-up to that, we say, okay, if you're dealing with these issues, have you experienced a significant improvement from wearing Felix Gray? Nine of 10 of which people say, yes, I've experienced significant improvement. So we're kind of the same way, so we're like, hey, look, try it. If you don't like it, it's not for you. That's fine. That's why we have a 30-day return policy for a reason. We want you to sit with the product. We want you to enjoy it. And if you don't, there's not going to be any questions. We're going to take it right back because we're so confident in the product that it works. What's the projected growth of the space in general of this kind of market? It's supposed to be 10% of the Iowa market in the next five years. What is it right now? About 3% of the Iowa market. Oh, wow. That's huge. So triple its size in the next how many years? In the next five. Now, do you agree with that, or do you think that's going to grow even faster? Because I feel like the awareness of, okay, one thing you said that was really important is you would have people try them, and then they would notice a difference. And I found that to be true with lots of different things that people just don't know because they don't know. So do you think that that's accurate, or do you think it's going to be a faster growth in that? I think growing three times in five years over the whole market is still really fast. I think that it could definitely grow faster. The area where it's going to grow the fastest, though, is then going to be, and what we're trying to work on right now is we have a prescription line, right? And so it's the same lens it's just offered in your prescription product. Yeah, and you're already wearing glasses, so convincing that. Why would you not, if you're a glasses wearer, then do that? And so now we're figuring out ways of saying, hey, you might like your Prada frame, but you want that Felix Gray lens in it, how do we do that? So that we're not tied to our frame constraints and saying, oh, I love the Nash frame, even though the Nash frame is great frame, or like the Harrow frame is great frame, but you might like this or that or this brand or that brand, but you know that, hey, I do require, like I am in front of a screen, like between my phone, my laptop, my monitor, my TV, like 10 hours a day, I would love to use the best product in class. So I think that that's where we're going to see even further growth. So are you, is that in the near future where you're going to be able to have a pair of Pradas and have the Felix Gray lenses in them? Where we're working through. Oh, wow. That could be huge. Now, what about the gamer market? Have you guys looked at that? Cause we had a friend of ours, Mark Mastroff on the show, he's a founder of 24 fitness, like a godfather in the fitness space, but he's investing heavily in these, these like e-gaming, you know, sports spaces, which I had no idea they were as big and as, as generated as much revenue as they do. And they're projected to just explode. And we, I think they're going to, they're going to pay conventional sports. Yeah, they're going to bigger than conventional sports. It's crazy. Are you guys looking in that space as well? So we already work in that space a little bit less so than, you know, our primary bread and butter is definitely more on the professional side, but we definitely are getting further and further into the gaming side, especially because, you know, if you think about what a gamer, a typical gamer stereotype looked like 30 years ago versus today, it's totally different, right? Like everyone games now, you know, back then it was very different. And so everyone games and most of these people are live streaming this stuff, right? And so they want to look good in the process too. So they want something that works, but they're also going to look good. Felix Gray makes a lot of sense. Have you got into that more? Are you guys like any influencers that are pushing Felix Gray right now in the streaming side? We've done some influencers that, that are gamers that push Felix Gray. I can't remember the ones off the top of my head because the marketing team tends to handle that stuff. But we've done that at times. You sponsor different like actual eSports like teams. So we've definitely gone into that space. It's still again, like I'd say, it's definitely not like the bread and butter right now, but it's kind of the same value prop for someone who might be like a bank or a lawyer, you know, a startup guy, a tech person, you know, being in front of their screen all day for work and then going home and playing video games. It's the same value prop. Dave, because in my opinion, much of this is driven by the science that's coming out to show the benefits. It gets people open to even try them. Are you guys funding studies yourselves to get more awareness around the benefits? So we're really adamant about if we fund studies, it comes with a little bit of, hey, what was the real result going to actually look like? So what we care about is one, we collect and do our studies on our own customer data. So that's really important, right? So for instance, like I mentioned, the 9 out of 10 people see significant improvement. And that's tens of thousands of data points from survey data at this point. And then there's a lot of other studies being done that kind of support that. We know what the science is. And then when you see independent studies come out talking through these things, it becomes a lot more impactful than if it's the Felix Gray sponsored study. And at the same time, then we do a lot of our own research and data into our own lenses to making sure that that is really helpful. So we do a lot of filtration curve analysis. We do a lot of side-by-side comparisons. A lot of these lenses are coatings that are deflecting blue light or they're putting in a dye into the lens that's only filtering a certain percentage of blue light. So we do a lot of those studies and we walk customers through a lot of that stuff in order to better educate them. Because frankly, when we started, there's a lot of, let's be honest, there's definitely like a snake oil aspect to this product. And so for us, it's been really important as we've grown. And I think one of the reasons we have grown is because one of our credo's is to build thoughtfully designed research-backed products. We're not going to launch something if we don't think that it's going to be effective. We're not going to launch something if the research doesn't show, hey, this is accurate and this is why it's effective. Who are your biggest critics with what you guys do? I think that there are some optometrists and ophthalmologists that are still on the sidelines on this one, but so many people have come over. It's very different than it was. Probably just because it's so young. We're so early. It was so early. And it's five years ago is very different than it was today. You know, blue light is very well accepted in the mainstream. It is a term that many people know about. That's very different than it was when we were doing those trial. When we're doing those trials in those companies, no one knew what blue light was. They didn't not only know what Felix Gray was, they didn't know what blue light was. They just knew that this was helping. I imagine that there has to be some percentage of people that are just stoked that they have a reason to wear glasses now. They can accessorize and have an excuse for it. That's the 10 percent. So when we first ask customers, we say, why did you buy Felix Gray? And we give a bunch of different reasons and nine to 10 of them are buying for some or multiple reasons related to digital eye strain, right? That again, that eye strain, that eye fatigue, dry eyes, blurry vision, headaches. But fashion is like 10 percent of people are like, I'm buying for fashion reasons. That's okay. That's totally cool. But the overwhelming majority of people are buying it for the lens first and then the frame second, right? I think if we had a terrible looking frame selection, they're never going to check out from Felix Gray. But they're coming for the lens first and then they're leaving with the whole package and that's why they're really happy. Now, did you predict that? Did you see that happening? I mean, I know you're an NBA fan and I know that just in the last decade, that became like a popular thing where NBA players would be wearing these like... You're thinking style first. Clear glasses, you know? We were definitely thinking no one is... I mean, it's kind of the same thing. I wouldn't have started Felix Gray if there was a really effective and nice looking pair of blue-eyed glasses, right? They were hunting goggly looking stuff and there were these lenses that didn't work. It was like, all right, something's kind of got to be in between. But yeah, you're right. Russell Westbrook classic example wearing those glasses that are fake. It definitely was something that I think was a tailwind for us. But I think the larger tailwind was the fact that everyone's just in front of screen so much time and they're kind of blowing their brains out a little bit saying, hey, this is killing me. Has there been any sort of influential player, for instance, or just like celebrity or somebody who's really sort of brought Felix Gray's even more in the forefront? So we've had some, like Brie Larson is aware of Felix Gray, the actress. When we work with... When we're trying to figure out celebrity type things though, it's really important for us to be authentic about it, right? So we still haven't done that celebrity endorsement because, all right, you're an actor, you're acting, you know? That's sitting in front of a screen all day long. You're not like me, you're not like... And so we want it to be authentic. So I think maybe down the line, maybe really cool to work with a well-known director who does finish with their film and then they're in post-production for the next year in front of a screen all day every day. Where it has function with it, not just, hey, look at me. Exactly. But if it's not going to be authentic, then it's not going to feel right. And consumers aren't stupid. They're going to look at this and say, why does Timothy Chalamet need to wear a pair of Felix Gray's? He's just acting on a big screen all day. We'll get Spielberg. What's been the biggest challenge with the company? I think that one of the biggest things for us has been, we've created a really good product. And so a lot of people will buy a pair of Felix Gray's. They love their pair of Felix Gray's. But the reason to come back and buy a second pair is not the most important. Because now they have that pair. Maybe they buy another one for their office. They buy one for work. We have a lot of reader customers. Readers, customers wear them all over the house. Or they might be a dad or a mom that buys for their kids. But you have plenty of them, 25, 28-year-olds living by themselves or with roommates in a house. They buy that one pair and they're done. And so I think that we then said, okay, how do we address that in an authentic way to the brand? And that is a really important aspect to being a digital wellness brand. Because it means that our product line gets to go beyond just eyewear. And so we launched a supplement back in August, specifically designed really for potential long-term effects of eye health. So it has lutein and zeaxanthin and zinc and vitamin C and E, all things that are found in like A-reads and other really well-known studies that are supposed to support your macular health. We're launching eye drops later this year, specifically designed with the fact that a lot of dry eye is related to reduced blink rate. So we can't fully solve that with a pair of glasses. And so we can continue to solve that with a pair of eye drops at the same time. So I think that's really exciting for us because we look at digital wellness and improving that relationship between us and our technology. We kind of look at four key buckets. We look at our eyes, which we clearly do a lot of already. That's either short-term comfort or long-term health. We look at sleep, which we've talked a lot about. We also look about your ergonomics and the fact that you're sitting generally at a desk all day. That's affecting your wrist, your neck, your back, things like that. And then we think of, again, you're just your general energy and productivity. A lot of people are using this as a workplace productivity tool. And so how do we look at those four buckets and where are the white spaces within those categories that we can add value to customers? And so I think the longer-term vision becomes really exciting because then you can start telling a larger, more important story to customers beyond just blue-eyed glasses. But it's this idea of, hey, just like 20 years ago, where, and you look at 20 years ago versus now the amount of care we have for the food we put into our bodies, the type of exercise we get, the type of sleep we get. Well, then we sit in front of our desks for 10 hours a day, go sit on the couch, watch some TV. We know that's not good for us. And so how do we apply that same level of health and wellness to that part of our day, which is such an overwhelming amount of time? And we think of those four key buckets around your eyes, your sleep, your ergonomics, your energy, as areas that we can really help customers with. Now, David, statistically speaking, most startups fail and founders. What gives you confidence in yourself? So I mean, we've been doing this for a while. So I would say that most startups fail. They definitely fail generally early on rather than later on, though they certainly do fail later on as well. I think humility is really important. I recognize that this is still something that is newer. It's a newer market. It's still a younger company. And you need approach that with, hey, it's not an I can't fail attitude. It's a, hey, I can fail. And here's all the things I'm going to do to avoid failing. And I think that that is something that if you have, you're more likely to be successful. And it just provides a lot of fight in you. When something, startups go up and down 100%. And it's really easy when you're down to be like, this sucks. Like, I don't want to do this anymore. Oh, there's no way out. If I've ever thought like that, immediately I'm like, that is a bad attitude to have. Of course, those thoughts can enter into your mind, but you can't let them stay there and seep there. You have to say, okay, what are the ways that we got to approach this challenge with excitement and saying, okay, how do you solve for this? And that has allowed us to continue to grow and continue to become the brand that we are today. Was there a turning point or a very pivotal moment in the business where you kind of was like, okay, we definitely have something here, or you knew that it was going to be successful? Frankly, early on, it happened. I think we found product market fit earlier than a lot of companies necessarily do. So when we, so after these Triam programs, one of the groups actually that tried the product was a business insider team that writes about new products. And they loved it. And they kept them in like, we want to write about this, we want to write about this. And we're like, we're not ready yet. You guys write about this, who knows what happens? And finally, I actually was at lunch with, if you guys know, do you guys know the pasta company, Bonza? You guys would love them. They're like chickpea pasta, so much more healthy. I like how everybody looked at me when you said pasta. There's definitely a pasta guy. So I was having lunch with the founder there, who's a friend through this venture for American Network. And Chris, my co-founder, texted me, he was like, you got to come back. Because the article had just dropped and sales were just spiking. And all of a sudden, within like two weeks, we were sold out of stock. And we then said, okay, we have something. How do we continue to scale this? And then as we started to scale it, we continued to see success as we got stocked back in the door. And so those were some of the things that were, we found that product market fit really early, which was pretty promising. Scariest moment? Scariest moment. There's been a few, I remember one time earlier on, we didn't do our inventory modeling the right way. And so we weren't expecting that the packages couldn't be reused at the same rate as other things. So we're really keen about, okay, we don't want to just throw away stuff. We don't want to waste stuff. And so when people return something like a pair of glasses, we actually now have a facility in Ohio that will do full QC on it. And if it's not up to standard, we'll actually donate it. But if it is up to standard, we can reuse it, right? Because we don't want to, we don't have to go to waste from both a green aspect and also from a financial aspect. And so, and the customer's still going to be really happy with the product because it's fully QC, it's 100%. But earlier on, for packaging, you can't do that. You're going to have to unfortunately throw away most of that packaging. And so we had like no boxes for like three weeks and we couldn't ship out product. We had all these frames and we had all these glasses sitting there, sales rolling through. And we had to explain to a lot of customers, hey, your order is going to be delayed because of a packaging issue. That was definitely one that sucked. I actually was headed to a basketball game that night. I was going to play basketball. And my VP ops colleague was like, we have a problem. I was like, I'm going to come back to the office. This might be a tough question to ask, but do you have like a long-term strategy for yourself with the company, like when you would want to sell or exit or company goes public? Or do you, is that anything? Or even step down or allow someone else to run? Like, what's your vision? So right now, I mean, my, for my position, I still think I'm learning a lot. I'm having a lot of fun. I think what's awesome of being a CEO is you get to constantly be improving yourself every day and focusing on how to become a better leader, how to become a better listener. And so I, I'm really confident in staying in that role and continuing this really exciting time again to becoming this digital wellness brand and growing beyond the really strong reputation we've built in the blue light glasses space. I think that in terms of M&A and all those things, we're first and foremost focused on building an awesome company. All that stuff will come when it comes. If we build a great company that customers love, that a P&L looks good at the same time, you know, that all will work itself out. But right now, we're just really focused on, on telling this, this story around digital wellness that we don't think any brand is telling. And we think it's a really important one to be told. Yeah, that's a big risk because you're going from blue light blocking glasses to now, sounds like you want to be one of the, at the forefront of educating people on just wellness in the digital space. What about your style of leadership? But do you, do you try and model your, your leadership around somebody else that's inspired you or? So I'll answer both, both questions. So the first thing, Sal, can you repeat? Yeah, no problem. No, a big risk because you're, you're selling blue light blocking glasses, they're fashionable, they're worked are good. And now you're like, we want to be the leaders in this, in this kind of digital wellness space, which there really aren't that many leaders or none that I can think of. So I think maybe it's just like Hutzpah, but we have the confidence because we also pioneered the blue light glasses space when no one knew what that was. And we were educating on that as well. And I think actually when you phrase it as, Hey, let's improve the relationship we have with our technology, kind of clicks for a lot of people, people start nodding along, the same way that it used to be when we would say, hey, are your eyes killing you from being in front of a screen all day? And people would click as well. But this is a more aspirational mission, I think, than just being at the blue light glass level, even though, look, what we do with blue light glasses is incredibly important. And we're not giving that up by any means. We just think we're telling a larger story. And then in terms of leadership, you know, I look to a lot of different people that I know personally and their leadership styles. I looked to our own, you know, the people at the company and, you know, their leadership styles, because I love about what someone does with their team or someone does with their team. And then in terms of great CEOs, I think the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella is incredibly underrated, particularly his idea of, I mean, when he took over, Microsoft for 20 years was really, really political. They were, and because they were really political, and there's a lot of infighting and a lot of me, me, me, there was a lot of stagnation in their growth. They had all this opportunity, a huge platform, and they weren't able to capitalize on all of it. And he came in and really preached this idea of growth mindset. And it's this idea of what we, what I kind of mentioned earlier, which is you have a challenge, be excited about that challenge, right? And it's this idea of, okay, there's a, there's a, there's a problem. Let's not treat it as, it's a problem we're going to fail, but oh, this is a challenge that we get to solve. And let me not just solve it by myself, but let me solve it with other people. And, you know, at a big company like theirs, that then changes their incentive structures in terms of, hey, you're now evaluating in terms of not what you're specifically necessarily your output is providing, but also how your team's output is, and how you're helping other teams. And so that type of thinking kind of transformed Microsoft. And I have friends inside Microsoft that have talked about it. And now you look at, you know, their stock price, you know, since he's taken over, it's gone through the roof, right? Because they had all this opportunity and they just weren't capitalizing on it. And I think he is just a really thoughtful, seems like a great listener first type of person, which is naturally what I'm not like, but what I strive to be. And he's just like a really good inspiration. I have kind of a random question. Before the podcast started, we were kind of talking about like, how all these commercials and how jingles and cartoons, all these things that, you know, I paid attention to for some reason now is relevant in my job. Like I can talk about these things, had no idea this would have any kind of relevance with what I do now. And if you kind of look back, you know, in terms of like high school, college, you know, just like your own like childhood experience, is there like any unique traits, personality traits, any kind of skills and things you never would have thought you're using now in your job? Oh, that's a good one. I think that, you know, I was on, so I played sports, but I also was a little bit of a nerd. So like I was on the debate team and things like that. And I actually think that stuff has been incredibly important because as a leader, one of the most important things is to communicate. And so I didn't realize how effect, look, I'm not arguing necessarily, I'm not debating everyone all day. That would be exhausting. But it's important to communicate really concisely, coherently, and aspirationally. And I think I learned some of those things from things like debate camp. And my father, who's like not a sports guy at all, like kind of hates sports, and he would force me to go to like debate camp during the summer. I'd be like, I want to play like baseball. I want to play basketball. Like, no, no, you have to go to like debate camp. And like that sucked at the time. Thanks, Dad. Yeah. Oh, it was awful, awful. But I do think it helped in terms of me and my ability to communicate, which I think is one of those things that I didn't think was going to be important. And here I am being like, all right, I guess like thanks, Dad, just a little bit. But it would be nice to play basketball too. In my opinion, one of the most underrated skills is actually learning how to debate effectively and properly versus what a lot of people do. And you said you went to school to be a lawyer. So I'm sure they talk about this as well, which is I'm just trying to argue rather than I'm trying to change people's minds. Yeah. And I think that one of the things I'm really happy that I was in a lawyer is because you don't have to change the other side's minds in a law room, right? You have to change the jury's mind. Yes. Here, you have to change someone in business. You have to change someone else's mind, which means you have to approach it first from an empathetic point of view. You're trying to understand where they're coming from and then try to explain where you're coming from. And I think that is really effective. And that means becoming a good listener and things like that. Whereas if you're a lawyer, you don't really have to worry about those things. My wife actually talks about it all the time. She's like, I'm so happy you weren't a lawyer. She's like, you'd be such an ass. Yeah. How do the parents feel, I mean, that you started to go that direction and then you take a ride? How do they feel at first? And how do they feel now? Yeah. Well, you know, moms are always going to be supportive and moms are the best. My mom was always supportive the whole way. My dad was definitely a little bit more skeptical. Is he still now? I mean, where's he at now? You know, my dad is, I think he's really proud. I think he kind of looks at it and he's like, I wouldn't have been able to do that and my son's doing that. And that's really cool. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah, that's really cool. So in debate camp, did you have to learn how to argue both sides of an argument? Not only both sides, but there's different styles of debate that you have to learn these different formats. So you must get so annoyed. Metals for winning or what? I definitely want to. I never got any medal. Oh, I got trophies though. Yeah, there's trophies. You must get so annoyed with the current state of social media and how people just don't, like there's no debate skills whatsoever. It's so, I mean, but that's when you're like, you know, posting from, you know, a basement, you know, anonymous six nine, six nine. It's arguing, you know, versus the other guy. It's like, it's so frustrating. Did you come up with the name Felix Gray, by the way? And what is that? Like, what does that mean? Yeah, yeah. So we name all the frames after scientists and mathematicians. So yeah, which is really cool. Like I'm learning the Harrow that's named after Guillermo Harrow, who is a Mexican astronomer. And so Felix comes from a Kurt Vonnegut book, Cats Cradle. And in it, there's a character named Felix Honaker. It's basically in that book, like the litter equivalent to Einstein. And so that's where Felix comes from. Couldn't do anything with Honaker obviously, because that's like an impossible name to pronounce. Be like, how's that spelled? And then we, in our branding, you'll see a lot of times Al's will pop up. And the reason that we chose Al's is, okay, a lot of people are going to be using this at work. So Al's are intelligent, wise, sagacious. And so we chose Al's. Of course, when we first launched and we had Al's, people were like, oh, you chose Al's because Al's have good vision. And we're like, oh yeah, definitely, definitely. Just totally fortuitous. You just gained 10 points in my book. Any other favorite books that you'd like to read? So I think one of my favorite books is this book called Barbarian Days, which is this guy who wrote for The New Yorker for quite some time. And it's his memoir on his life and surfing. And he kind of traveled the world in like the 90s, backpacking in these surf spots before anyone knew what they were, living in these random islands near the Philippines and things like that. And Portugal is like this big surfing area now. He was surfing that area before anyone knew what it was. And it's this really cool balance of society and societal pressures and wanting to be successful and wanting to kind of do something in that world. And more than money or anything, really just have an impact. And then kind of living this visceral existence in nature. And I definitely am one of those people who am always kind of trying to find that balance. And I thought that book was really good. Okay, so now going to coasting a year for a week makes perfect sense. Tell me about that. First of all, again, talk about where you went. Why did you do that? And that must have been rough. So that was actually nicer than some of the other things I've done. So really, okay, so talk about this one first. I'm hearing the other crazy stuff. So I think it's really important. I try once, one week out of the year to be completely off the grid. Not like go on vacation and I'm not looking my phone. It's like, no, I have no access to anything. You must be married. I am married. And I've been with my wife for, well, we got married in September, but we've been together for 11 years. So I guess that's probably... It sounds appealing. It sounds appealing to me right now. I'm just kidding at it. I hope she does not listen to that. She does and she knows I'm joking. So yeah, so I think that's really important. So I try and go... And I try and... I'm a big skier. And so I try and use skiing as a way of adventurous travel and to experience like a culture that I never would experience before either, right? And so this year had kind of a motley crew. I have about 20 people I know that would do these crazy trips. So I'll send out a mass text as I'm planning the next one. Saying who's down. So I have this motley crew, a few different people from a few different places. And we went out to Kyrgyzstan, which is kind of near like Mongolia. It's like, it's west of... A little bit west and south of Mongolia. It's just a country of just like 90% mountains. And the mountains are... The snow is really incredible. Also where you can get kidnapped from. Also where you can get kidnapped from. And yeah, like Tommy called well. And so we got there and we stayed in a yurt for a week. And basically we had two guides, which was nice because, you know, when you don't know snowpack conditions and things like that, avalanches are a big concern. Actually like a ton of avalanches you could see as we were like climbing up different stuff. Oh, wow. So you could see them. Yeah. I mean, like I've done like Abbey courses and things. And you have, you know, all your gear and you're ready for that stuff. But yeah, I mean, it's like it's pretty cool. So you're, you kind of use these skis and then you're, you can unclick from your heels. So you can actually, then you put this thing on the bottom of your skis called skins. That allows them to be sticky. And so you can walk up instead of, and then you take them off and you can ski down. And so, you know, you're going on these things where you might go on a mission to this peak that's a seven hour, you know, hike up. You know, between you do that and then finally it gets to be rocky on the, you know, the summit. And you have to do a scramble for, you know, call, you know, a thousand feet or something. So that's really cool. I've done stuff in like winter camping in Yellowstone, lived on a boat in Norway for a week like sailing into like the fjords and skiing up, you know, it's going up and skiing down them. So is this what you're doing with all our investment money? Yeah, no, no, no. Once a week. Once a year. Once a year. Once a year. Once a year. Is this what all the funding is for? No, no, no. Once a year. The nice thing is he hangs up a mine pump, booked a trip. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the nice thing is, one is like the team is so awesome and so accommodating to that and I'm a really big proponent of everyone being able to take off some time to, you know, you work in a startup where you're working 12 hours a day. Yeah. You're going to burn out if you never have an opportunity to just kind of turn off the plug. And so it's really important. We have an unlimited vacation policy at FG. And a lot of times that works against the company because the founders are, you know, they're never taking a vacation off and so everyone kind of looks and goes, well, how can I take a vacation off? What we found is like, if you at the top are like, hey, this is okay. It's okay to take off that week. You're going to come back so much more fresh, so much more productive. And also you're going to, you're going to want to stay here for longer, right? The most expensive thing is retaining talent. Yep, totally. If you're going to stay longer, like that is all good business for us anyway. It not only does it build a better culture, but it's good business in the long run. It's going to show up on your P&L just to stay away. It's going to show up in the conversations you have day to day with people. And it's really cool for the team to support me when I get to go off the grid for a week, just like it's really cool when you get to support other people when they get to go off. And so it's just a, I think it's a really nice aspect to the Felix culture. What's the personal value you get out of doing these trips? Like why do you, why do you end? I mean, it sounds fun. I could see how people who are into adventure could enjoy it, but you must do it for other reasons besides that. I think I'm a really big proponent of getting into flow states. And so I think that when I'm skiing, I'm in a flow state. Definitely when I'm skiing down or I'm skiing down something sketchy, I'm in a flow state. But I also find I get into flow state on the way up. Like everything kind of turns off. I'm not thinking about a lot of stuff. My body's working really hard. So your mind's not going to be running a mile a minute on a ton of different stuff. You can't. So, you know, a lot of people, you call it skinning, a lot of people talk a lot on the skin track. I'm really quiet. I'm just kind of in my own zone. And I think that when you're in your own zone like that for several days in a row or a week in a row, you just come out with a lot of, you're just a lot of energy, a lot of clarity. Even if you don't realize all the stuff that's going on in the background, like it's kind of going on, but it's not in the forefront. So that's really important. And then I think I'm a big believer in type A fun. That's right. There's type A and type B. Type B is going on a vacation. You've got a Mai Tai, a cocktail. You sit by the B, treat a book. That's awesome. But I'm a big front and sometimes also not going on a vacation but going on that adventure, going on that trip and doing that type A fun where, okay, I did, I am exhausted and I am, you know, breathing heavily and I am malnourished at this point because it's seven hours and I'm trying to continue to feed myself and you get to the top and you ski down and you look at the pictures two weeks later. That's really rewarding. Yeah. Were there any big surprises or even like mistakes looking back at the journey and the business that you think you made? Like for example, I get asked a question like this whole time and it blew all of our minds how impactful our email list was and we thought that when we first started, you know, seven, eight years ago that, oh, it's moving away from email, everything is now moving to, you know, Instagram and Facebook and as long as we focus there, we're not too worried about that and that was probably one of the biggest mistakes we ever made and it is a big portion of our revenue stream now. Were there things like that that when you first started, you thought, oh, this wouldn't be a big deal or that's totally surprised you? That's a good question. I think from a leadership standpoint, I definitely think, you know, I started this I was 25, right? I definitely don't think I was the best listener and so I think I've had to learn a lot about how to listen and understand from where other people are coming from and I don't think you can, I can't point like a direct line to how that negatively affected but it definitely did, right? We, I think things took longer to happen because instead of that debate where you're kind of listening to the other side and it's in a respectful discourse which we now talk a lot about how can you disagree with someone but do so in a respectful way look out at the end day for Felix Gray? I think a lot of people were if you don't do that the right way people get, you know, trenched in into their own opinions and things take longer than they should. Who is it in your business that's challenging your vision? Like do you have somebody who is? I think everyone's challenging the vision at all times not in terms of like the general direction but then how do you execute on that? What, how does that manifest itself? And that is good, right? Like I want, I don't have all the answers and I don't ever want to be the one that's looked to you for all the answers because I'm just one person, right? So when we think about, you know, a new product line, for instance, and we were thinking about something related to like a topical for relief around like neck pain, back pain, stuff like that related to, you know, sitting in posture and the product we were looking at I'm like, this is, you know, pretty interesting and I got a lot of pushback from my, you know, Chief Brand Officer and she thought that it was a little bit too derivative. She thought that there was other things out of the market she was right and now we're working on potentially something different instead that I think is going to be a lot more exciting. And so it's really important, I think, to get pushback on, on everything that I say because as long as you're doing it from a respectful standpoint, as long as you're doing it from, hey, I feel it's great, it's best interest in mind. I'm going to be open to that. Yeah, I feel like as a leader, if you don't get any of that, you don't know what to trust because then either people are afraid to tell you what their opinion is and they're just agreeing with you because you're the boss. So you're kind of sitting around compared to it. So then you become like, so then you become like Putin. You literally read my mind. You literally read my mind. Oh, this has been excellent, David. We appreciate your company. We appreciate what you guys do. One of the reasons why we actually put our money where our mouth is invest in the company. We don't just work as a sponsor. So thanks for it. It's been awesome to be on this journey with you guys and it's even cooler to see this next step as we like become closer together and it's just been great to be. And thanks for taking the leap into fitness. A lot of people in that space don't realize that the fitness and health space is the perfect place to start, you know, digital wellness. So I appreciate that. For sure. I mean, you guys are focused on improving yourselves all day, every day, right? Just like we are. And I think so. It just makes a lot of sense. Perfect. Thank you. Thanks for that. Thank you.