 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump, so we... Welcome to our new... Friend. Sponsor affiliate. I feel like if we should say friend. Humanitarian, almost. I like gunner a lot, man. So we, for a long time now, we turn down 99% of the sponsors that approach us. But we've talked about... We still do. We still do. We don't talk about all the ones we don't do. No. We just talk about the ones we do do. That'd be mean. If you're artificial, go fuck off. But one of the things that has always come up for us is whenever we talk about eating organic, non-GMO, products like that is that they're more expensive, they're harder to get, and although the market seems to be responding, now you can find organic products in a lot of different grocery stores, they are more expensive, which kind of sucks. And of course, you got to make your health a priority. So I've always been like, look, just buy organic when you can. Well, there's an online e-commerce company called Thrive Market who's figured it out. They've, it's membership-based, but the membership pays for itself. It's like Costco had a baby with Whole Foods and then had a baby with Tom's. Yes. And then they got Dreadlocks. There was a three-way... If you know those companies well, then you get... They're wearing like sandals. So you get the best food, you get the best food for the best prices, and then we hook up and help other people. So basically you go on the site and you can find organic non-GMO products for no joke, 25 to 50% off. So you're paying like what you would pay for conventional non-organic products, for organic products. Plus it gets anywhere in the United States, it's shipped within two days. For most places, I think it's like 80 or 90%, yeah. You get shipped real quick. So super good prices. It's lots of... There's lots of products you can get. And for every membership that somebody gets, they donate one to like a low-income family or a military veteran or a public school teacher. They're super conscious with when it comes to the environment. They thought of like everything. They thought of everything, but the prices are amazing. Anyway, it's a great place is where we're getting our products now. And the people I guess say, if you're somebody who doesn't give two shits about how we choose our sponsors isn't that, then you can go ahead and move on to the next episode. But if you actually care, this is why we do this. We interview the CEO of the company so you guys can understand what went into us choosing a sponsor like this. It's very important to us that our audience understands where we're coming from. It's not like we just... Yeah, you can make a better decision about your buying purchases. This way you understand like what's in the mind of the creator of this company. And you're gonna get a massive discount because of this partnership. So when you go in there, you can get $60 worth of free organic groceries plus free shipping and a free 30-day trial. So it's like basically nothing to lose, a bunch of free stuff. I suggest just go on there, check it out, get the 30-day trial, the free trial and buy some stuff. I think there's free shipping after you spend 39 bucks. So they need to go to thrivemarket.com forward slash mine pump to get that. That's where you gotta get it also. So go to thrivemarket.com forward slash mine pump. Thrive is T-H-R-I-V-E market.com forward slash mine pump. You gotta do the forward slash mine pump. So in this episode, we're interviewing one of the founders, Gunnar Lovelace and we had a nice conversation with him, so enjoy. So I'm excited to connect with you guys. Yeah, we are too, man. Are you the sole founder or was there? No, no, no, we've got, there's four co-founders. I'm the original founder, but we've got a big team at this point. Would you mind getting into how that all started, how you founded it and what, you've been around since what, 2014? Yeah, so we've been live publicly for about two and a half years. We launched end of 2014, soft beta in October, went live in November. You know, one employee in my house four years ago, you know, over 500 a day, it's been a total rocket ship. You know, obviously lots of fun, but also really, really challenging and very intense with all sorts of trials and tribulations along the way. And, you know, from a very personal level, you know, I grew up really poor with a single mom and I saw hard she worked to make healthy choices. And when my mother remarried, my stepfather was running a food co-op at a little hippie commune in Ojai, California. So I got to see firsthand the power of group buying as a way to make food more affordable and build community. And it just naturally drew me into wanting to make healthy food more affordable to everybody. So you saw as a kid growing up how, you know, if you want to eat healthy, it's actually many times more expensive, more difficult or sometimes just not accessible. I know up until relatively recently, if you wanted to get organic, you know, whole natural foods, you had to go to like better towns or better parts of the town. It wasn't in, you know, and I say, air quotes, it wasn't in some of the other, you know, other areas was more difficult if you were lowering certain like farmer's markets and things you had to really seek out to even get to that. Was this, this was your motivation then? Yeah, I mean, it comes from a very personal place. It's literally, you know, there were months as a child when, you know, my mother and I lived off of like rice or bread. And I was really fortunate that even in the midst of intense poverty, she knew that there was opportunities to make healthier choices. And so she always optimized in that direction. And so that really just from a very, very personal place, that's really the genesis for me. And then seeing a food co-op and, you know, the truth is that a lot of the alternative natural product movement comes from these kind of hippie roots. And what I think is so exciting about what's happening now is it really is this mainstream trend. It doesn't matter who you are, where you live, what you believe. People want to feel good in their bodies. They want the same thing for their children. And that's a really scalable organizing principle that really transcends ideology. Now, when you first started this, did you have the vision that it would be what it is today or have you made pivots along the way? I mean, we've made a lot of pivots. I mean, we had a different name. So before we launched, it was called Shop Tribe. And we went renamed ourselves as we thought about how do we really make this as accessible as possible to the broadest number of people as possible? So there's been a lot of strategy shifts, but the core model of cutting out all the middle men, having a membership layer as our profit center instead of making money on the product sales themself and then having every paid membership sponsor, free membership to a family in need, that's been there from day one. And as we've evolved, obviously we've learned a lot both with our successes and our mistakes. And so we've invariably, we've made a lot of tweaks and changes along the way. But I think the core impulse aside from, again, very personal experience growing up and suffering with a lot of poverty as a child is I as a professional interested in social enterprise, I've been looking for an organizing principle that really could bring people together around the common good at scale much of my adult professional life. And what I love about food is how accessible and mainstream and scalable it is. Everybody eats, it's a place that we come together. It really, there's something about eating food and the topic of food that causes people to put their differences aside and really find the common good. And when you look at the problems that we have as a society with lifestyle diseases and $300 billion a year on diabetes related illnesses is just one or several major illnesses. And then you look at all of the environmental issues that we face, which are really, conventional agriculture is the second largest contributor of greenhouse gases. The way that we produce, distribute, consume food is really at the core of our long-term viability as a species on the planet. I couldn't agree with you more. Now I wanted to take a few steps back. You talked about the power of, group buying power or having a lot of people have stronger purchasing power so you can lower prices and kind of, I wanna kind of talk about your model because- Yeah, were you inspired by it? I feel like you're like a whole foods meets Costco meets like a toms, like all built into one there. Yeah, how does that work? Because you guys sell organic groceries online but for a lot less. I mean, I found products on there that were half the best price that I could find in grocery stores but how do you work that out? How does that explain that to our audience so it makes sense to them? Yeah, so your traditional grocery retail, you've got your farmer, you've got your manufacturer which is like the brand, you've got brokers, you've got distributors and then you have your normal retail markup and then you've got all these pay to play games that happen in the retail environment and that causes this really massive aggregate markup to happen on these products and so when we buy directly from brands and with our own Thrive Market branded products we cut out all the middlemen on the supply chain so we go straight to the manufacturer and in many cases straight to the farmer and we cut out all of those intermediaries and that allows us to really have this revolutionary model where we can sell organic groceries at the same price as conventional equivalents for the first time in history shipped to your home and that's really at the core of our model is that instead of making money on the product sales the way that all these brokers and distributors and retailers do, we just cut all that out, we buy directly from the source, we ship from our warehouses to our members nationally and instead of making money on the actual product sales we make money on our membership model which really is why we're able to have such advantageous pricing. That's excellent and the other part that I really, really like is and you kind of glossed over it was how you donate a membership to low income family or a veteran or a public school teacher if I'm not mistaken. What was the motivation behind? I think that's amazing by the way, that's awesome. Thank you. Both because it's great for people but it's also great for the brand and it really exemplifies kind of what you're saying you stand for. What was the motivation behind that and how has the response been with that part of your model? You know, again, very personal like having grown up really poor with a single mom as Latino immigrants, I just got to see firsthand how hard my mother struggled to make healthy choices. And so when we thought about the architecture of the business, we knew that we were gonna be able to use this $60 a year membership to really drive the best prices that had ever happened in organic groceries. But we also knew that we wanted to make sure if someone couldn't afford that membership that they could get a free membership through our giving program. And you know, that's, it's just been such a gratifying part of the business. I mean, I remember when I read the first testimonial of a single mom who was dumpster diving out of the back of Whole Foods to help feed her son. And, you know, transparently like I literally wept when I saw that testimonial because, you know I had to dumpster dive for food when I was in college. And just to just in the midst of all of the intense hard work that it takes to do a startup and all the challenges and difficulties when you get that kind of positive feedback loop of, oh, okay, I can really see the positive impact that we're having on tens of thousands of families. Both are paying members, but also the members in our giving program. It really makes all of that hard work worthwhile. And it attracts a really high quality stakeholder-driven business. So, you know, we don't have normal employees. Our employees are incredibly passionate and they really care about what we do. And they're here because, yeah, they want, obviously they're making a good livelihood but they're also really motivated by the idea that food is this incredibly transformational force. And we get the same response from our brands and from PR and from folks like yourself who, you know, really authentically care about this and recognize the scale of the problem. And so it's, you know, having that kind of giving program, it's not easy. It adds a whole other level of complexity to our business but it really provides this really important glue to everybody involved in the business. How has the market been to you guys? Have you guys been growing pretty quickly? Yeah, I mean, we've gone from one employee in my house, you know, four years ago to over 500 today. You know, the exciting thing about, you know, the movement towards organic and natural is that there's such an awareness now of, you know, all of the pesticides and the processed carbs and the sugars and the pesticides and the toxins and cleaning supplies. And it's really penetrating the mainstream. And so that's super exciting. And, you know, we just see that there's such a massive market for this that even as larger institutional forces start to come in like Amazon and other traditional retailers, you know, we're so focused on a hypercurated catalog that speaks really authentically to the values. You know, if you go to a traditional retail store, a health food store, there's 100,000 products there. There's a half a billion products on Amazon. You know, when you go to Thrive Market, there's only 5,000 products, it's hypercurated, it's the absolute highest quality. But not only do we focus on providing this incredible value proposition of being able to save time and money on these previously premium products, but we also really invest in community and that's expressed through educational content and our videos and our advocacy work and our giving work. So it's really, our members are part of this broader movement and there's a really, there's a really beautiful, generous, virtuous cycle that comes about from that. What's the, you mentioned the hypercurated, I'm very interested in your guys' vetting process with that, like what does that even look like? You know, it just depends on the category that we're in. So, you know, we, for example, in personal care and skin care and like baby products, we cross-reference everything across a really robust database from environmental media working group, the EWG database, you know, so like we don't have anything on there with a negative score and that, that's like specific to, you know, chemical perfumes and chemical stabilizers that you would find in a lot of conventional cleaning products. And, you know, that's important because there's a lot of data coming out about how hormone and endocrine disruption from, you know, conventional cleaning products and personal care products are affecting development of children and people don't realize, they're starting to, people are starting to realize that, you know, the skin is the largest organ in the body and so just, again, it just depends on each category that we're in on food, you know, we have over 150 qualities and certifications that we, you know, we sort our entire catalog by and, you know, we, for example, we're, you know, we're the largest retailer of food in the country now that sells exclusively non-GMO and it's not that like I'm not against genetic engineering inherently, but the idea that we're gonna, you know, engineer food crops to withstand, you know, massive systemic poisoning of glyphosate and roundup, which then shows up in more than 50% of Americans in their urine and destroys topsoil and like just the idea that we're gonna engineer food crops to withstand massive poisoning is completely insane and so, you know, that for us was one of our red lines were like on all food, we're gonna be non-GMO and so it just depends on the category. Have you, because, you know, when you talk about GMO you're dealing with companies that are among the, I'm talking about the GMO companies, the producers of these products and the glyphosates, you're talking about some of the largest corporations in the world. Do you guys get any pushback or anything like that? I mean, I know it's organic is much, much more mainstream now than it was even just five or 10 years ago, but to have an exclusively non-GMO site, do you get any pushback from people or has it been all like open? I think, I mean, we get, you know, there's like the classic criticism of that dialogue where, oh, these guys are like fanatical, maniacal non-GMO people and, you know, like, again, where we don't, like, there are instances where genetically engineering a food that takes less water and has better nutrient density, like, that's gonna make sense. And we've been engineering food for thousands of years through, you know, breeding and selection practices. So it's not a new thing, but, you know, the idea that we're gonna engineer our biggest, most important food crops from wheat, corn, soy, cotton, down to, you know, withstand ever-increasing amounts of poison is just absolutely crazy to us. And so, you know, we're getting more and more vocal on those issues, and I think our profile is getting more and more exposed as we've grown very quickly. So I expect that we'll get more controversy around that. But I think, you know, anybody who listens to us talk about this realizes that we're not inherently against genetic engineering, but we just wanna make sure that it's safe for people and there's real transparency. And there's a market for it. That's, I mean, the market is growing quite a bit, you know, more and more people demand non-GMO foods or organic foods. So there's nothing wrong with that, with serving a market, you know, desire or need anyway. But I mean, I think it's hilarious when people say, cause, you know, I've gotten that comment as well. We're all in fitness. And so I've gotten the same comment, like, oh, you're, you don't have to be so fanatical about food or what's the big deal. And it's like, these are the same people that won't go to, they'll have one hairstylist cut their hair. They will not go anywhere else. That's how picky they are about the person cutting their hair. But nobody thinks twice about the stuff you put inside your mouth every single day that literally becomes a part of your body. And so it's extremely important. If anything, it's probably one of the most important things you should pay attention to. So I appreciate, you know, companies like yours. Connor, I'm curious to like, what are some things that obviously have you been doing this for over four years now? There's probably been multiple pivots, different ideas that you guys have either done and then thrown out. What is something you guys are, you guys have currently like implemented or that's going on within the company that you're really proud of that you guys are going through right now. You know, I think, I think for us, we've always really invested in being more than just an e-commerce utility. So yes, we're going to save our members time and money and they get great convenience and price, but we're just much more than that. And that's expressed through the content we do, the videos, the recipes, through the giving program. I mean, we have a really cool program where our members can donate a portion of their savings at checkout to be given a way to low income families. And, you know, we just did a really cool program with, you know, Kevin Hart and, you know, Houston Food Bank post Harvey where our members funded, you know, deliveries of food and the semi-truck and then we as co-founders match the donations personally. And it's just a beautiful example of this great virtuous cycle where, you know, our members donate a portion of their savings at checkout and our employees are excited because they see us really having a positive impact in a community that's really been affected by, you know, really negative circumstances. And it's just a rallying cry, you know, in the midst of, you know, it's hard to do what we do. It's a really complicated business and shipping thousands of products around nationally is a really difficult thing to do. And we're like, it's not even a low margin business. We operate the business as a zero margin business. And that's how we're able to make these products available at these prices. And so in the midst of all of those challenges, you know, when we as employees and as our members see it, the positive impact that we have in the world together, it's at a very personal level, it's very gratifying because, you know, I think that there's so much, there's so much political dysfunction out there. And I actually think we're more united than the media would have us think. And I think that at the end of the day, you know, we wanna be able to take care of our families and we wanna have a healthy, safe world to live in. And, you know, being able to do these types of things together around expanding access to healthy food really speaks to those issues in a way that appeals to our highest common good. Well, that's excellent. I mean, I think what you guys are doing is pretty awesome. It's right along the lines of what we, you know, when we first started our podcast, we talked a lot about the growth of this segment of the market and it's just, it's exploding. People are more informed. Well, we're a bunch of guys- I see organic food everywhere now. We're a bunch of guys that come from the bodybuilding background, right? And sports performance and for a long time, I mean, we've all been in this from 16 to 20 years plus in the industry and for so long, there's been this major division between, you know, performance and athletes and aesthetics and bodybuilding and then over here, way to the left is the hippie, crunchy, healthy, mindfulness people. And it's like, we're trying to tell people and we've been trying to tell people for a couple of years now that, you know, the melding of the two is happening. And if you don't figure it out and get on board, you're gonna see it happen right before your eyes. And there's a lot of companies like yourself that I love to see that are on that same path. That's excellent. So with the growth and of the demand of organic foods, are you guys finding any trouble being able to, like, get enough stock or finding enough retailers? I read an article not that long ago that the demand on organic foods in some areas was having us import organic foods from other countries. Are you guys seeing any of that? Are you looking ahead? Yeah, I think, yeah, it's tremendously complex because it's not like industrial or software-based business where you've got a widget that you can just, like, really control. We're talking about, you know, agricultural crops that are affected by drought and flooding and increased demand. So, yeah, there's all sorts of issues that arise. But, you know, I think, you know, not only do we sell the highest quality third-party brands, but, you know, we focus a lot as well on our own Thrive Market branded products. And, you know, what's been really fun about that is really thinking about how do we innovate the supply chain? So, you know, when we went out to make our own bone broth, we went to a really high-quality grass-fed jerky provider and were like, hey, can we use your whole animal that's gonna be wasted and make a really nutrient-dense, high-quality bone broth product that's grass-fed and it's better for the planet? And, you know, instead of wasting this, let's turn it into a really high-quality product or when we went and made, you know, our Fair Trade Organic Coffee, you know, we really looked at, you know, what are the labor conditions of conventional coffee and they're basically like slave labor. You know, you got the average Guatemalan pickers having to pick 100 pounds of coffee just to qualify for, you know, a $3 a day salary and 40% of pickers and Honduras are children. And so these are the types of stories where, you know, we went straight to a Peruvian farm and we've got, you know, really high-quality organic Fair Trade Coffee and in every single product that we do, every single brand, there's an amazing story behind it and we're able to use our direct-to-consumer relationship over the internet to tell those stories so that people understand, yes, they're saving time and money by buying with us, but every single purchasing decision is doing good for the world at the same time. Well, I'll tell you what, Gunnar, the boys and I are really excited to partner up with you guys. We're extremely picky about brands that we bring on and for over, what, a year and a half, almost two years we turned down sponsors and it was because of our message and we didn't want ever to cloud that at all. Yeah, I think it's, I mean, especially for people who really care about their health, I'm gonna buy these products anyway, I do, all the time. They do cost more, but obviously going through Thrive Market, I'm gonna save money, I'm gonna get the, and here's the other thing that's cool. We didn't even talk about this. You guys ship really fast. Like I ordered a product or I ordered some products and it was here in like a day or two. Is that, I mean, that's something you guys advertise, right? Yeah, yeah, so it's free shipping on all orders over $49, 95% of our orders are over in the free shipping threshold and a lot of people have concerns about packaging from ordering online through e-commerce and we're fastidious about that. So we're 100% post-consumer recycled packaging. We're about to go zero waste from our distribution centers to landfill, meaning there will be no waste that goes from our DCs to a landfill site. And then we're working with an amazing conservation easement in Minnesota where we offset our carbon and we're just very, very careful about how we think about how do we deliver an incredible experience for our members and make them feel connected to something much larger than just making a purchase. That's awesome, man. You sound like an awesome guy. We like your company. We appreciate working with you guys. What was the, I know that you guys have like a no-brainer giveaway too. At the beginning it was a free trial plus you get $60. What was that? What was the, they get a $60 of free organic groceries at Thrive Market plus the free shipping and then a 30-day trial, is that right? Yeah, yeah. That's exactly right. So they'll get $60 of organic grocery credits over their first three orders and they get a free trial of 30 days that they can cancel whenever they want. And look, our members make back their $60 membership on their second purchase. The average American family is spending thousands of dollars a year on groceries. So being able to get organic groceries at the same price as conventional equivalents for the first time in history, it saves thousands of dollars for families. And the main way that we measure our success is can we sell the healthy alternative at the same price as a conventional equivalent? And the answer is most of the time, yes. We sell a cayenne bar with five grams of sugar for less than a candy bar. We sell 70 loads of non-toxic laundry detergent for less than a big box retailer selling 70 loads of laundry detergent that has hormone and endocrine disruptors. So when you become a member, you're able to save time and money for yourself and your family, but you also get to actively do good in the world at the same time. Excellent, man. Well, again, we're happy to be working with your brother. Yeah, I really appreciate the support and in this highly fragmented media economy, people like you that have built up these really authentic communities where people believe and trust in you. It's such an exciting phenomenon and we're really grateful for your support. Excellent, thank you. Right on, man. Cool. Cheers. We'll do official intro and stuff. Yeah, so Gunnar, we're gonna record an intro after we get off the phone with you and we'll intro everything. Is there anything you want us to mention in particular? No, I think just the offer and what an asshole I am. Yeah. Yeah, you sounded like it. Yeah, perfect. No, our audience is gonna love you guys, so perfect. How did you, who, do you guys actually, I'm sure with a company that big and you're a busy motherfucker, so I'm sure that you had somebody actually reach out or find us, did you guys actually have a team that's searching podcasts? Yeah, so we have a partnership team and I think either Josh or Sylvia probably reached out to somebody on your team. And yeah, we've, you know, I think it's just so, so exciting that, you know, in people don't trust their traditional media sources and so that means that, you know, channels like yours where you've got these really authentic relationships are so powerful and it's such a great way for us to, you know, get the work out. Well, you guys, your message aligns so much with our show. I'll tell you, I'll tell you what makes me, I love about seeing this is, you're talking about, you're a company, you're a large company, you're growing, you're obviously offering, you know, organic non-gmail products, but you're also, many of your selling points are, you know, you know, low to low waste or little waste. Yeah, considering the impact, environmentally. Environmental impact, you're looking at, you know, the workers that are producing the products, you're looking at that and it's all market driven. This is fucking awesome. Like nobody's telling you guys to do this, you're doing this because you believe in it, but also because people want that. This is showing a shift in the market, which I've been really observing. Transparency. It's freaking awesome. Cause I see this to being the future of everything. I really see this happening, you know. And look, we're in dire situation. I mean, like the, I watched this amazing documentary was most well researched documentary I'd seen on where we are in terms of our viability on the planet. I don't know if you guys have seen this documentary called 10 billion. It just shook me to the bone. And it's, you know, we've been so successful as a species because of the way we've been able to organize food and food production of food. But now that very same success is poised to take us down. And if we don't, we don't radically shift it. We're in serious trouble. Yeah. I think one of the biggest problems is food distribution. Cause you've got some places with so much food that they throw that throw it away. And then you've got other places don't have access to food cause it's bad distribution. But what we're seeing with e-commerce is they're solving problems like, I tell you what man, 10 years ago, if I said you could order stuff online or buy stuff through the mail and get it within a day, almost anywhere in the U S people would say, no, it's impossible. But now you're getting all these companies that are being able to do this. And it's just there, you guys are figuring things out with distribution. That's, uh, that's freaking amazing. Thank you for listening to mine pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at minepumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maps Anabolic, Maps Performance, and Maps Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee. And you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at minepumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing mine pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support. And until next time, this is Mine Pump.