 Welcome to Start Up to Storefront, presented by Aurobora. All right, welcome to the podcast. On today's show, we're talking to Jeff from Momentus. Thanks for joining the people who don't know. What does your company do? Yeah, you know, if we take a step back and we think about the supplement space, we are a supplement company, but we're trying to be the anti-supplement company. So if you think about what our category is, it's really messy, not a lot of transparency. There's a lack of trust and there's really no regulation. And so we've said, we can bring something really new to this and we can bring trust, transparency, expertise on it. So we really built this business with this idea. We can democratize high performance, bring what's happening at the most elite levels of performance, whether it's sport or business or science and bring that into the consumer's lens. And so we can do that through product, access and knowledge. And so how do you bring the access to the best knowledge in the world, right? How do you bring access to the best practitioners leading scientists and then how do you bring access to the best products is really what we're all about. For people who don't know. So full transparency on my side, obviously I cold plunge, you know that. And so, you know, the Joe Rogan's of the world, the Hueberman's of the world, these people, these are people that we watch, Wim Hof, all the things. And so I've been, I've been using this product momentous for probably the better part of like a year. And specifically the Tongat Ali, right? Tongat, yeah. And then the other one. Basically the testosterone ones. Tongat fidoja, yeah. Yeah. And the reason I started doing that is because at some point my wife and I were like, maybe we want to have kids, all this stuff. And so I was like, oh, let me just get my tea up. And we'll see if that, if that goes well. And the cold plunging is part of it, right? But when it comes to the supplement space, it's, it's a crazy thing when I think about sort of the journey, right? And so I think a while ago, if I were a supplement company, pre-podcast era, pre-YouTube, it's, it's this like, how are you going to do it? It's just marketing. Maybe you go to GNC, who knows what? And you're hoping some expert fills you in. Today, it's almost like, to your point about what you were saying before, if you bring in the trusted voices, it makes the buying simpler. And so it's almost like you don't have to have a brand per se immediately. You just have to have a vetted source. Source. Yeah. And then that becomes your buying journey. Super different. Super like not traditional business. Yeah, I would say the supplement sports nutrition category has really changed probably over the last three or four decades. And, you know, it went like super heavy bodybuilding and now it's incredibly mainstream wellness and optimization. And what we found is like supplementation is a cornerstone to optimization and wellness. And you have people like a lot of people you mentioned that are really in that category saying this is a pillar of optimization. But I will say the consumer behavior has shifted where it's like you used to go into a GNC or the vitamin shop or whatever. And you'd ask the 18 year old kid, like, what's awesome? And he's like, this shit gets you jacked, right? And you're like, I want that, right? That was me, 20 year old Jeff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I want this stuff. And and there wasn't a ton of hydroxy cut. Do the hydroxy. And no explode, you know, all sorts of crazy. All my friends in high school on hydroxy cut. And now it's really shifted. And because I would say it's become not so broy, bodybuilder, gym culture. And it's become life optimization, longevity, wellness, and all these other things that we're figuring out as as science catches up. But also it's like, I think society is also shifted of like, there's a part of society that's no longer thinking about things reactively. Oh, you could go on testosterone. But like, would you rather try something before you get on testosterone and the downstream implications of like getting on T? Yeah, like me. Yes. Right. Or it's like, oh, Omega three is like could I eat fish every day of the week? Probably, but that sucks, right? And we know how important high doses of high quality Omega threes are for brain health and overall wellness. And so it's like these things as society gets smarter, I think it's really changing. But also how people buy and listen and learn is very different because you have all of these people talking about how do you take care of yourself? Not after a diagnosis or is like, no, people like us are making conscious decisions on things that will affect us probably in 15, 20, 30 years. What made you want to start the company? Like what was your journey into the supplement space? Or what did you see? What opportunity? Maybe what led you here? Three years ago, I never wanted me to supplement company. I had this such negative connotation towards supplements. So my background, I played in, I played in NFL, went to SC was a two-time captain of the football team there. And in NFL, you have the best access to knowledge in NFL. By like cutting edge on everything. And you have all of the innovation. You have the experts that live there in the practice. So you have access to knowledge from practitioners. So like the dietitians, the strength coaches, and then you have access to these innovative people, like the scientist, the things that are doing like the really small things on the edge. And then you just get given the best things in the world. That's not like, oh, we're going to buy you something crappy. It's like, no, you're going to get the highest quality, most vetted, most trusted product or solution for that. It's not like you're not going to the local emergency room. If something happens, you're going to the best doctor in the world. And that's going to do an innovative new surgery. Like they vet that so easily. When I retired, there's this black hole, this chasm of like, I've been, been all about optimization in my life. And I was very narrowly focused where supplements are part of that 100% level. OK, supplements, nutrition. So like protein is a supplement. Right. Like you're supplementing something, but hydration mixes the supplement, right? Supplements have this massively dirty word. Like it is nasty. Like I feel like people think you're cheating some way. Cheating, but it's also just like because there's no regulation and there's no like, who do you trust? Who do you not trust? Like we have to change how people think about supplements because supplements are good. They're not bad. And I think a lot of people think, well, supplements are bad, right? But like vitamins are supplements. Minerals are supplements, right? Like there is just like the connotation on supplement has to go with bodybuilding or cheating or whatever. But supplements in elite sports are incredibly prevalent. And I've been on some type of supplement since I've probably been 16 in high school. And since like there was this path that was there and that might be protein or weight gainer or like omegas or creatine, whatever that may be. And the supplement as knowledge has progressed and has the investment into optimization of athletes have progressed, it continues to grow like vitamin D, omegas, all those things. I mean, they even test for your deficiencies, etc. But like protein is obviously just a massive one in almost all sports, but also in society when you think about it. So I got out of NFL and it was like, where do I go? Who do I trust? I no longer have access to the best people in the world around me or telling me what's like, if I say this is what's most important to me, what do I do? I have no idea, right? And then you don't know how far ahead do you think the NFL is or just the athletic community? I think a lot of really cool innovations happen in elite sports in elite performance, let me say elite performers, right? That could be sport, that could be military, that could be business, that could be actors, right? On on this where there is huge financial gain to be incrementally better, right? Because you're willing to take risks and you're willing to get out in front of science because you might be like, ooh, this looks compelling. And it's like, do no harm. But if it makes me one tenth of a percent better, if you are US Special Forces or in the NFL, or a musician or an actor, like where there's huge economic gains for being because the measurement of success is very small or the difference of success is very small in those things. And there's huge outcomes. So I left, I was like, I don't know. Like there was this black hole. This is like this chasm of like where it goes. Okay, you Google, you ask your friends. But one of the things I did as an athlete, I actually became really close with the performance staffs. You were into it. I liked it. Yeah, I got hurt really young in college. And it was like kind of my path of like, how do I stay in the NFL? It was getting friendly with the physical therapist, the strength coach, the sports med team, the dietitians and like, how do I suck all this information? So I was really passionate about it. Anyways, and when I retired, I had a long time standing job offer and finance. I realized instantly finance was on my jam. It didn't feel this void that I was looking for like as an elite athlete, like it just wasn't there. I transitioned into a biotech and I was employee number five there. And we had this really cool technology that we thought we could use outside of medicine and use it in sports. And that's really what sprung board what is now called Momentus. My co founder and I met at that company and we spun a technology out. In that technology, we had gotten really early good clinical data around what it did. It's incredibly nichey, but it thrust us at the forefront of five performance. We were working with US Special Forces Twitter France winners, super bowl champion teams with this super nichey product. But we saw this opportunity to create the next generation high performance company, like just like this access knowledge and products. We could fill that void because we were in places that very few people ever get. But we had this one nichey product. And this was it's called PR lotion. And it was in 2018 that we started the PR lotion and we really got in the supplement space about two years ago, a little over two years ago. We bought the Momentus brand. They were a smaller company and they were really focused in pro and college sports and they had of a protein line and started dabbling. But we basically saw a couple years into the business that PR lotion was not enough, not even close. Like it's it was nicheier than we ever thought. What was it? What was it? What was it? PR lotion delivers what's called sodium bicarbonate in the body through the skin bicarbonate buffers acid. So when you train really, really hard or you train really, really long, your body builds up a ton of acid, right? We commonly refer to as lactic acid, it's truly lactate and and acid hydrogen ions and hydrogen ions build up and are really bad, right? They ultimately require us to slow down recovery, take a break, or they build up over time and make our muscles less efficient. And so bicarb is really hard to take orally because it causes massive GI distress. But it's got 60 years of research on it being a performance aid because it helps regulate acid in the muscles. So when you think about, Oh, man, to France, winners marathon world record hold, like all these crazy people athletes are using it, right? When you can buffer more acid, you can make your muscle a little more efficient. It's it has some it can have some pretty big implications in both training and performance. And like, why was the military? Like all these people were interested in because it's this how do you use the top around the fridge? It's a topical. And it's not pretty, like it's kind of nasty and messy. And so like we always like, Oh, you know, the average consumer trains hard twice a week. And you're like, No, the average consumer doesn't train hard twice a week hard enough to go like to go into that where really matters. It's like, no elite athletes are trained hard enough two to four times a week to actually have a benefit of this product. And the average consumer trains hard enough once a month. And it just wasn't right. And therefore how do you create habitual loops with a consumer? It's still a it's a good product for us. It's it's in our portfolio, but doesn't really fit anymore. Sure. But we science is fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. And I get it. And it was partially funded by the Department of Defense. We want to want 20 million dollar contract around it to innovate and further clinically validate it. We've now done 10 clinical research projects around PR lotion, have some really cool data. We're still learning a ton. In the cycling community, I just remember when I was cycling for this like this 1000 mile bike ride, I was hitting that wall every, you know, like every other day. Yeah. And that's when I knew, okay, and it happened like around mile 80. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's like, All right, here it is. Yeah. Yeah. And again, yeah, go home, figure it out. Yeah. But that's interesting that there's a potential. Yeah. Yeah. So that that's what really sprung boarded. Then we were like, it wasn't enough like it wasn't enough to build a business. But we we knew that early on. But we actually people like, oh, you should go in the supplement category. You should go and we're like, I'm just like, no. Why would I want to do something that's really messy? There's not very much trust, not transparency. And it literally was like, well, it's so easy, right? Because there's no barriers to get into it. You and I could be like supplement company tomorrow out of our garage. We've interviewed some of those. Yeah. And I'm always like, give me the science and not to say they don't know it well. Yeah, they kind of don't know it well. The problem then the problem becomes, right? And so then it's like, how do you set up your supply chain, your sourcing, your manufacturing certifications, right? Is so, so important. But it's like, what also what does the science say and what is practical is very different than what this industry has done historically. And, you know, I look at the category and you have really, really great brands, right, that have built incredible products. I wouldn't I know if I call them great brands. They're great companies that have great products and great product quality. They're almost pharmaceutical esk, very stale and sterile. They're not connected to the consumer. And then you have like pure bro science. It's like, let's make fruity pebbles flavored X. And you're like, what's the sweetener system? How are we thinking about longevity? And what does this do actually to the consumer? Is it good or bad? Right? Is it in the right efficacious doses? And also what you learn is like, the manufacturing and the quality, because it's not FDA regulated category, you can say, Hey, we're third party tested that literally means you probably don't have rats in your facility or or it's like, Hey, here's a third party testing. It's like, great. You don't have lead. You don't have mercury. You don't have like the things that kill people aren't in it. And like, that's actually like, has to be done. And then it becomes like, okay, is what's in your product actually what's in it in the right doses? And is it the right doses for science? Right? Like, you could say, Hey, there's 20 grams of protein in there. And realistically, if you don't certify it post production, it actually could only have 16 grams per serving. Right? And so as a consumer, you'd be pretty pissed if that was the case. Or it had things in it that you didn't know. But I got a protein case. But what if all the science that you need 40 grams to be effective, right? To be efficacious. That's not the case for a story. But instead now you're getting 20. And it's like that, that doesn't match. And that's why I think there's a huge hesitation around supplements in the entire consumer space. But also there's just like, for anything to be awesome, you need bone crushing consistency. It's like that with supplementation with diet with exercise with lifestyle any of that. And you know, if you say, Hey, I'm going to work out for three days and you're like, good, right? It doesn't work, right? It's like, no, you won't need to create a lifestyle of fitness. If you want to be a physically fit person and reap those benefits long term, same thing with supplements, like, should you take 100 supplements? No. Probably if you took four, you have the most impact in your life. Right? And if you took those four consistently every single day, or if those four related back to what was most important to you right now, right? Oh, I'm really concerned about my testosterone levels, want to have a baby, or I have low T and low T has these X implications that I really don't feel like getting on testosterone, the TRT treatment when I'm 38, right? So anyways, had such great hesitancy to go in the space because I thought it was very unauthentic to our brand, right? We are science first cutting edge on one side and this becomes like muddled waters. Cool. We're just going to create another protein company, another protein. And we kept running up against this momentous brand. And they were really in pro and college sports. And it turns out they really wanted to pivot and make something special. But they were kind of running up, how do you differentiate in the consumer space, et cetera, and leverage some of like, we had crazy relationships. Like I got to know Andy Galpin, Dr. Huberman and all these people kind of pre pre this merger, we didn't have any supplements, we're just like doing cool things in their communities and like with the special forces. And it's like, how do we leverage what makes us special? And it turns out we needed a more commodity based product, a broader reach. We acquired the momentous brand in July of 21 and merged the two businesses. You raised a bunch of capital. We did we did a pure equity deal on it. We just raised a bunch of capital to consolidate the cap table. And so 21, the business that I found at Amp Human, it's an underlying entity, we weren't that different in size and we weren't that big either. And to raise a bunch of capital to make a purchase didn't make sense. It didn't make sense to me at the time, wish I would have done it, what I got a way better value, saved a bunch of headache, and would have allowed us to streamline. But Mer did an equity deal, merged two companies together, launched about 25 products post merger, and launched some really incredible partnerships that have really excelled us into the future. But why momentous is because they are in the places that we were at, right? And they were already trusted and they were built the protein specifically were built and formulated with the top practitioners, the top dietitians in pro and college sports. And it's like, OK, that has that story, right? And then how do we leverage that story on top of it and build more and more and build the best products and have a very curated portfolio and have a reason for why everything's in that portfolio? How do we source what is the potency or what is the dose, right, that science says. And so our entire portfolio, unlike a lot of companies in our space, I don't believe the smartest people live inside companies when it comes to what products should we have and how do you formulate it? Those people live in academic institutions. They live in pro and college sports and they're probably doing secret scroll shit in the government, right? Those are the smart cutting edge people leverage them to say, no, this not that, right? And so our products, you know, we think about this as like one of the momentous standards like leverage the experts to build the products and help dictate what products should be in your portfolio, right? I'm not the smartest person. I joke around like I'm the knuckle-dragger. I was an offensive lineman in the NFL, right? I'm not the smartest person in the room, hardly ever, but I'm really good room to be in them. That's great. That's the smart. Yeah. I always want to be the worst tennis player on the court because it means I'm the one getting better, faster. Yeah, exactly. And so bringing all this together of what do we have in our portfolio? Why do we have it? We really leverage this kind of round table. Like we bring in the really smart people and then we bring like we bring in the like the crazy scientists are like, what do I see in the data? Then you bring in the practitioners like what's actually practical and needed for a high performer. And then you bring in our scope. Like what we get to do is bring it to life, bring the magic. And we have this momentous standard that we're building out about how do we source? How do we certify? Because we are very, very strict and stringent on how do we think about what we carry and why do we carry it? When it comes to like your customer journey, just like who where do you start? Like how what's who's your youngest customer? What are they buying? That's a great question. So our customer, I would say we were a very athlete focused brand. Momentous. So young. Momentous and amp. Like if I would say two years ago, we were athlete focused and really college athlete. No, when I say athletes, very endurance athlete focus was the brand endurance CrossFit esque ish. But I mean, a lot of our sales did like we were probably 50 60% pro and college sports sales at that time. And we're now much like 5% now. Right. So you've penetrated the market in a real way. Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. But we we transition like where we were focused on pro and college sports where we found a way to how do we evolve our customer, right? Away from being athlete focused. And so we call our customer like we call our customer Sam. They're the life optimizer, right? People who are making conscious decisions every day to make themselves a little bit better. Nothing to do with an athlete. Got it. A lot of our customers biohacker are athletes. Got it. Or they train with a purpose. But that's not where they are. You might be on your 30 of your optimization journey or you might be on day one. And you might really care about long term brain health. You might really care about, you know, 100 mile by crisis. Those are life optimizer. And so when we decided to stop talking to our customer as athletes and start talking to them from a psychographic perspective, it opened up the floodgates and it allowed us to have much deeper conversations. So now we can talk to the endurance athlete about long term brain health, which is actually a much more impactful thing for that human than it is. How many carbohydrates should you consume an hour? Yeah, your short term and long term. And so it was a really interesting shift. And what you see is because we haven't built the brand for a demo at demographics. We've built it for a psychographic that you see customers that are 18 put that in the investor pitch to 75. Yeah. But it's actually can be kind of hard from a marketing perspective, because like, how do you creatively show that? Right? How do you be fitness but not? How do you be sporty but not? How do we leverage that we sell into 29 of 32 NFL teams and not be like, Oh, we're a sports brand. Right? How like, so there's some elegant, elegant set that is needed here. But what makes us really special is that, right, we were born in the most elite places in the world. But what we believe is we can democratize that to the consumer, because we believe that people at their best people that are healthy, are happy and happy people make the world a better place, right? Happy, healthy people are what we need to be. If we had more of that, we would be pretty good. And that's been this massive shift. And I would say like, we skew mail. Part of that is because some of our partnerships skew mail their audiences. But we have this big shift to, right, female performance, female optimization that we're going into next year under the same umbrella under the same umbrella. Yeah, yeah, like momentous is for the life optimizer. Right. And it's not like, like, we don't want to have a sub brand here or there, like, you come to momentous, whether you're 18 or 60, like Argel, find the best products in the world to have access to the knowledge and why you should take these products, right? And to understand that the best minds in the world have helped build this right and give that access. So that's really, really critical for us. I know you guys have this bundle that people can buy. Tell people what's in the bundle and what there's so many things. It's the like, which one it's got all of it in it. So we got the omega threes, we got the we got the creatine. Yeah, no, so I think what's super interesting about our space and when you think about that's part of the challenge is like, you can go to some people say and we are kind of like that right now, like a catalog. Like I want to tell people like if you're 20 years old, do X, this is one of the three things you should be thinking about now if you're 30, if you're 40, so it's I don't think it's actually so how do you think about that's our that's our end point is because I think how do you really disrupt a space? First off, we have to create a standard that is better than everything else that's happening because there's no standard in our category. How do we create something that is so differentiated from efficacy testing to banned substance to science to all of that that people it takes away the trust and transparency issues. But then the biggest challenge is getting people into the right products at the right time is all that matters. And that is where we are headed. That is where we are investing and continuing to think how do we do that? Because like a huberman is amazing because he he can talk about a ton of things. But then you're like, well, man, huberman just talked about 30 supplements. Well, do I have $3,000 a month to spend on supplements? Yeah, exactly. Right. Or some people do some people do all of these crazy things. And it's like, no, like some people do like that number of people in 20 square miles is 10. Right. And we have a lot of people in 20 square miles, right, like to do everything because it's not practical. And then it becomes like, okay, how do you prioritize the right behaviors, the right lifestyles? And then what are the couple products that I should be investing in that are really meaningful to me that create that. So I think about me. Right. And like my journey. I'm very goals driven person, like as an athlete, that's kind of who you are. And like, you always know where you want to go. And when I retired from the NFL, my goals called are you when you retire? That's a good question. How old was I? I was 29. When I left, right, like, I was dialed to be an athlete. Right. And athlete being a pro athlete is incredibly short term. Right. Like, you really don't think 10 years out, right? Like, you're like, how do I get bigger stronger faster? How do I play tomorrow better? Right. And therefore you make some sacrifices and being an athlete's not typically like being a the most elite athlete or most elite in that bucket is not good for long term health. And so when I retired, I'm like, well, now I really care about right being fit, right, playing with my kids or my future kids, long term brain health, all of these things. And I don't know where to go. Right. But like, so then I go back as like, what is the number one worry in my life? I hit my head for living now. It's offensive linemen. Long term brain health is what I care more about than anything. It's like my super passion project to and we've done some really cool advocacy work on Capitol Hill. We work with you, especially forces on it. Right. And we've worked within pro and college sports on long term brain health. And it turns out that there are some supplements that have really, really good clinical data around long term brain health. And they aren't revolutionary. Creatine monohydrate, omega threes and vitamin D. Like, who knew? Like, pretty inexpensive. And then you go and it's like, well, I care about long term brain health because I hit my head for a living. But it turns out 70% of the people I talked to are like, oh, yeah, my grandfather or my mother or this, they had Alzheimer's dementia, whatever it may be, or they just see what's coming down the pipe. And those are like omega threes and creatine are like the two things that almost every expert we work with are like every human being in the world should be on those baseline levels. All right, then I think, okay, well, what else is really important for brain health? Sleep. Well, it turns out sleep is important to everything, right? Contrary to what we thought 30 years ago, like the early bird doesn't get the worm, right? The late bird gets a lot more. Yeah, sleep is important. Sleep is important. But also guess what sleep is really important to long term brain health? Turns out your brain heals when you sleep. And like it clears, it's like all the toxins out, all those things. So I really focus on sleep. And is that the magnesium? That's yeah, we have a cool product. Yeah. So we have natural sleep stack. It's Mag3NH is proprietary former magnesium. We don't own its own by a company called MagTeen. It's Athenine and Appagenin. And basically, how do you downregulate at night and increase the quality of sleep? Not how do I sleep longer? How do I get knocked out better? Right? This is about increasing the quality of sleep and helping you get to sleep faster. So like just more efficient, more efficient. Exactly, right? Because at the end of the day, if I had more time to sleep, I would sleep more. I don't have any more time. Right? Like, and a lot of people like that, it's like, you know, in there, but there are some people that that really struggle to get enough sleep, though they might be shift workers or whatever that may be. But like most people have six to eight hours to dedicate to sleep. The problem is in that six to eight hours, they're either they don't fall asleep right away, or it's really an effective sleep. And so how do you make sure that window that you actually have is is good. A lot of it starts with behaviors and setting yourself up to win to sleep. But there's also some really awesome things you can do, awesome products, whether it's like an eight sleep or a right sleep supplements or those types of things that that you can drive really great benefit from. If that's where you're at, but you should probably like as a consumer, there's like 10 things that you should do to make your sleep better than before you start buying products, like you should just stop doing activities like drinking late drinking late caffeine later in the day, don't cold plunge before you try to sleep? I don't know if cold plunging or not is good or bad. Like for me, I I get hot and then I can't sleep. Yeah, I get super hot too. I just open the window. I live in Park City, Utah, and it's cold at night. And my wife yells at me. I was going to say my wife would kill me. She'd go to the guest room. Yeah. Yeah. When you open the window when it's 32 degrees outside and your wife wakes up and she's like, What are you doing? You're like, I was hot. She's like, What are you having? Hot flashes? You know, I'm like, and you're like, Yeah, I'm hot. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. I'm confused. So there's just so many behavioral changes or just like setting your bedroom environment up to be successful. Like, like you think about blue lights and bright lights and how our body stimulates that there's there's just so many behavioral things. Or when you eat, it turns out the timing of when you consume a big meal is actually really important to how you think about sleeping. Or like, Hey, maybe I'm doing something a little salty, right to help me retain water while I'm sleeping so I don't have to wake up to pee. Like there's all these interesting things that you can do that don't cost very much. And, you know, like, there's a ton of great resources out there. Like, if you want to go really take a deep dive into sleep, because sleep waterfalls to everything we do in our life, go find Huberman's podcast on sleep. It's fantastic and fascinating because it talks about behaviors, zero cost things that you can do. And then it talks about other things that are impactful that you can spend money on if you so choose. Or if you're at that, is human like one of the best in the world? Or are there other people that just don't have a podcast? He comes across as certainly data driven. Huberman is incredibly data driven, right? He's never really trying to give you an opinion. He's trying to tell you the data. I've been super lucky to know Andrew and get to know him and be friend friendly friends with him. Yeah. On it. I would say one of the things I respect most about Andrew is he's always quoting other people, right? Right. He's saying this paper said X. Yes. Right. And what makes Andrew so good is he's so good at breaking down information because he's not an expert in all of this. Like he's an expert in neuroscience and specifically right around around the eye and and light patterns and things like that. Like, but he loves and is incredibly passionate about optimization and wellness and health. There's not that many people that have the smarts and the communication skills that he has. Sure. He can digest it really well. He can digest it, but he spends probably 50, 60 hours in deep research on every single podcast talking to the best experts in the world on those things. Right. And he immerses himself and what he's done. So is he the smartest person on 95 percent of the topics he talks about? No. But what he is able to do is take that information and condense it. And also it's just opening up the door like you want to learn about something crazy like psychedelics. He did a great breakdown on psychedelics like like masterclass in it, right? And that's not because he's an expert in psychedelics. He's really smart. He's smarter than 99.99 percent of us on psychedelics, but it's because he went and talked to the smart people, read the research and digested it in a place like, oh, now I can actually like be smart enough about it to like form an opinion. Yeah. Right. Which I think is really valuable. Is he a spokesperson for the brand? How is he involved in the company? Yeah. So I've been super lucky to know Andrew and like our ecosystems have crossed. And so after we acquired the momentous brand, Andrew needed a gap. Like Andrew really believes that people can derive great benefit from things like supplements, but he didn't have somebody he wanted to partner with. Like he had a partner, but it wasn't they didn't want to build and think and they didn't have the same ethos. This is my story. I'm so my story. So we partner with Andrew. We launched that about a year and a half ago. And Andrew is a part of our scientific advisory board, along with other people like Andy Galpin and Stacy Sims and some people you've never heard of that are really, really smart. They just don't have a public face. Therefore, that's how we think and design our products. And Andrew leverages a lot of the same people we leverage to think about products. And why do why does he take? And so he was really passionate about this space. And him and I, we have very similar ecosystems. And it was like, OK, we have the highest standards. We were young and growing at the time and we wanted to build and continue to build. He was already steep. He just wasn't in the stratosphere yet. And so, yes, we partner with him and it's been like we have a great partnership with Andrew and we talk a lot about product and science and, you know, like the sponsorships ebb and flow. But I mean, he's been a big catalyst of our growth when I like he's the Michael Jordan of health and wellness and optimization. And like we were like Nike. How has your life changed personally? So since you started the company, maybe the supplements you take, like the feelings that you have about the industry, the challenges you see like and even personally, just taking these things and for your own family health, your health, how has that changed for you? That's a awesome question. So I would say I don't know if my life has changed, but I don't think it's because of what we are doing. I think me being able to live one of my big missions in life, which I've been lucky to have great people like how to find a way to make the world a better place. Like that mission has massively amplified. And like. I got to go brief Congress on traumatic brain injury and supplementation. Like I did a briefing on. Like would have never thought five years ago. That was ever in the deck of cards, right? And it's a space that I've always been passionate about. And, you know, like as an entrepreneur, you always go through really hard times and trials. And and to me, like this year, I've had there's some crazy times in this year. It's like, am I doing what I love? Yes. Am I the right person for the seat? Yes. Right. Is it right for my family? Yes. And it's like, those are the things that I keep asking myself of, like, as my pillars, right? Like, is it right for me? Am I doing good? Is this my calling? So I will say for me personally, like I found so much about long term brain health and then so passionate about it. And I've been able to spread that word to my friends from the NFL of like, dude, just take creatine. It literally costs 35 cents a day. It costs nothing. Yeah. It tastes like nothing, right? Add it to your water. Simple. If it does point zero one percent, amazing. If it does, like more than that, amazing, like do it because we hit our head for like so for me to be able to be passionate about that, I will say as an entrepreneur, like entrepreneurship is like a roller coaster. It's like you're stressed like a wooden roller coaster. Like you're strapped in, but you're like, you know, bouncing around and like, oh my, I'm going to get bruised. You never get thrown. You never get thrown. But you sometimes think it might go off the tracks, right? The goal is to never get thrown. And then you're like, oh, let's do this again another time, right? So that addiction, I have that addiction. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, I'm like, why? Why do I do this to myself? And so it's the way I tell people it's like, so when you look up adverse your first time, you're like, OK, you don't know anything. Yeah. Then you do it. Then you're like, then you do it again. Yeah. You're like, do I really want to do this again? And then you do it again. You know, the third time you're like, why am I keep? Why do I keep doing this to myself? Yeah. You know? And it's just like, why is what's the what's the thing that you like? What do you love about? I love it too. Yeah. I don't know. I haven't been able to pinpoint what it is. I don't know if it's just like, it's not so much the challenge or the problem solving. I think it's like the unexpectedness that might occur. And like the Capitol Hill thing is cool where it's like, you didn't see that coming, but it happened. That's kind of cool. Yeah. So is it do we do it because it's a different journey every time, despite it being the same roller coaster? That's actually super interesting. Like every chapter, I'm trying to figure this out. The whole thing's different. I feel like I've been on like what we call momentous has been like five different companies. Like we were we were like a biotech consumer company. Then we were like we went through this merger and then we were pre like leader. Now we're a leader. Anyways, so I look back and like when I got into finance and why it wasn't me. So I like entrepreneurship is not for everybody. Like being a CEO is not for everybody or being even an employee in a company like mine is definitely not for everybody. But for me, as a really, really elite athlete and what I realized when I left sport, what I loved was this incredibly high amount of accountability that comes with it and the dependence that people have on you and you have on them. Right. I love stress. There is a good way of putting it. You get in your stomach and you're like, man, right. And as a really elite athlete, it's stressful and it moves so fast. Entrepreneurship, early stage business or being executives move so fast. You have to make decisions. You have to think on the fly. The game does that too. And you get direct, immediate feedback. Yeah. Right. And as an elite athlete, I got MF'd in front of people on national TV. It's just this direct level of it. And for me, there's always been a scoreboard, right. And that scoreboard is incredibly impactful. What are the scoreboards today? Like, what are the metrics you look at today other than the obvious? So I think what's super unique about business versus sport, sport, you know what winning is. In business, you don't always like, you know the metrics, but metrics are all lagging. You know, like, as an athlete, it's more linear in my mind, a bit more than business. Very much. Yeah. And as an athlete, like, you know what good and bad is, like, you don't always know. And also, like, in business, you don't have to win more than you lose. And what do I mean by that? It's like in football, you know, if you go eight and eight, you ain't making playoffs. In business, you lose actually way more than you win, in my opinion, right. But the wins vastly outweigh 100 losses, right. It would be like it's like you could lose every play in practice, but win every single game, right. But you have 10 X amount of practices or 20 X amount of practices that you lost, but you win in those games. And and the thing I also love about entrepreneurship or building businesses is it's all team as an athlete. I didn't like you don't see that. I didn't realize like how much the the head coach GM did. When I say like team, it's not just the players. It's the equipment staff, the high performance staff, the coaching staff, the front office, right, because it take like all these different roles. Like and when I think about like a business, like as the GM, my job is not of this business or the CEO or GM in football or owner, right, is not just to make sure I have the best players. Those players need to have the right cleats. Like they need the field to be ready. They need the best coaches and they all play little different roles. And also it's really hard to do that. And people are complicated shit. And I've made so many mistakes, right? I've moved to slow with people. I've moved too fast with people. I've given people too much of a leash. I've given them too short of a leash. Yeah, that's the things you can be wrong about every day. Yeah, those things. And it's impossible to write about. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know. So I go back. So that's what I love. And I love the fact that I don't know always what's around the corner. And I love that my I love playing instincts. And it's like to be really good at business. You don't get to go linear either. Like you have to be like, A, D, you know, like M, Z. And you've got to kind of fill in those gaps and have some hypotheses. Absolutely. And you got to pivot and move. You've got to be patient to see what happens to you'll be surprised. You will be surprised. People will surprise you. So anyways, I would say that's that's really impactful. I have this other saying that from football is like that somebody told me the ball always gets snapped like time waits for nobody. Like you don't get to choose like you're not like, Oh, well, time out. Time out. I want to I want to hang out. Right. You don't get to make that as a player. Yeah. It's like the ball gets snapped and you're going to get beat. You're going to get embarrassed or you're going to win or it's going to be a draw. And like 20 seconds later, I got to put my hand down and go again, regardless. Right. And businesses like that. Like you don't get away like, man, that that sucked. It was super hard. I'm going to take like six days to just think about no, because time waits for nobody. And time is actually the biggest enemy in business in business or in growth business. Maybe not maybe not for GE, but like for the foreseeable future for me, time is our biggest enemy, right? Because time is the greatest resource we have. And somebody else is trying to do awesome things. Somebody else is trying to build better products. Somebody else is trying to do this. Consumers are finding another brand, right? Clinical research is moving forward. So the time is now you only get so many waves to come in to catch. So this ball always gets snap mentality for me. And it's like as an athlete, you got to learn from when you got beat, when you won all that, you got to digest it super fast. And then you got to play and then you got to react. And you got to take some of that and learn, but you can't take it all. And if you make the same mistake over and over again, you will fail. You will get cut. You will not be around. Same things in business, but you don't get eternity to think about it. It's like you just got to go react. And that to me, like it's so addicting. And I would say the next thing that I love about it is I'm really impact driven. And I believe there's this huge gap in society, right? There's a misunderstanding about what supplements are because there's a lack of trust and transparency. People actually don't know. People don't know what third party certification actually means or doesn't mean like I'll give you an example. Like we have like vitamin D, you'd be like, vitamin D is pretty simple. It's vitamin D vitamin D. We had a production run that got cross contaminated somewhere. And because we certify our entire production line from like the top two certification things that the only two things that pro and college sports can use, we found out we had banned substance in a vitamin D product. Literally vitamin D has one ingredient up to like as right. And it was either on a truck with something that was banned, right? On the same production line stored in the same warehouse. Who knows that product goes into the dumpster for us. And it's only because we certify it and our certifications we can't carry without that and our reputation is too important. However, there's two that pro and college sports trust to certify products. Everything else is kind of garbage, right? Because they don't test those things. It's like, well, great, it doesn't have heavy metals in it, but it doesn't say what is actually in it or is it or is there other things that aren't in it that maybe aren't heavy metals or like those things. So there's like this huge lack. So like to me, that's what we can do. Like we can create this standard that is so different and then get people in the right products. We talk a little bit about what was passionate about me, but like as I age, things change, right? And my priorities change too. So therefore you need to change and evolve products. And so like I think about sleep. I think about cognitive function. And then I just think about what is my like foundational stuff? And obviously, like I run and I'm a founder of a supplement nutrition company. Like I have access. Like if I didn't have access to things, like I would say protein, collagen, sleep and omega Zin and creatine would be my stack. Would be my stack. But Fidoja Tonga are super interesting. I take them daily, right? But if I had limited resources, that wouldn't be Tonga Fidoja because it's not that's not the most critical for me, right? If I had different economic means or whatever, yeah, I'd go down that way. And then like I would say like our cognitive, like if you if you are really looking for a new tropic, new tropic and like cognitive performance, right? We have some great products there, but that's not number one. Like daily cognitive performance is not my number one thing, right? And so you got to pick what's important to you. And we have like a sensual amino acid, like an EA really, really well designed. But I don't need it, right? Because I don't fast. I don't have any problem consuming a ton of protein. And I'll consume protein right by this. Like that's I'm not like a calorie restricted restricted person. So like or I'm not vegetarian or injured. So there's like no need for me to take it. Now, some people live and die by it because they are calorie restricted, AKA fasting or they're vegetarian or they're vegan, right? And they need different ways to get right their essential amino acid. So I just thought it, I don't know why I was on the plane the other week and I saw like the Wolf of Wall Street and I was like, is there a world where you create the Wolf of Wall Street? But instead of the drugs that they're using in the movie, they're taking like momentous supplements to fine tune performance. Yeah, in that time. Isn't that funny? I think that's what people are doing. People try to do it. Yeah, right? And we're trying to all get an edge. But again, there's no magic bullet, right? And like I would say like caffeine is so unique because it's one of the few things you can feel right away, right? It's just like, hey, if you want to get super fit, you can't do it three days. You got to like you want to get super fit. It's going to take a long time and you want to stay super fit. It's going to take long. That is what supplementation or like proper eating or anything a life's out. You can't do it once and be done like, oh, I want to live a healthier, happier life. It is bone crushing consistency. And that's why I say, pick a couple of things that are really important to you. Right? Like if long term brain health is really important to you, boom, go with that. If gym performance is really important to you, go to that. Right? If hormone support is a gap in your world, go to that. If immune health, like there's all these things like and then as you master that, then try to add something else and then try to add something else in. And then like, but we also, we just not all of us have economic needs to do whatever we want. So pick what's important and stick to it and like don't vary all the time. Because stay disciplined is the name and like creating routines is so important. And so, hey, maybe the Wolf of Wall Street could take 30 different things and customize, but the fact of the matter is probably four of them. It's like the 80 for 20 rule. These are the most impactful for for you or me. The rest of this is kind of noise and rounding error. What's next up for the company? So here we are at the end of the year, 2024 is coming. What exciting things are for me? It is really this big leaning into the momentous standard, right? And crystallizing and defining it, continuing to do more clinical research on the things that we're most passionate about that I believe can create the biggest difference for the consumer. And then it's all customer journey. How do we deliver on our mission to democratize high performance through a customer journey? Because to your point, like, man, what would you tell the 20 year old or the 30 year old or the 40 year old to use? That's our opportunity. That is the opportunity. That is the opportunity. Get people into the right products at the right time. Like digestible no pun. Yeah, purely. Oh, this is it done. And I don't like maybe AI plays a role in that. Maybe maybe a human plays a role in that, or maybe it's just really, really powerful flows and a cleaner website. I don't know. I have a lot of ideas and my team has a lot of ideas. But that's where we're marching. Like ultimately, like again, our customer, we call them Sam, a life optimizer. How do we better serve Sam, right? Because if we better serve Sam, right? Whether that's with better content just around how do you sleep better? Sand supplements, or right? It's getting people in the right supplements or it's getting people out of the wrong supplements. Pretty impactful. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Yeah, I appreciate it. I'm a fan. Love it. Appreciate it. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, share with your friends, your family or anyone you might think might benefit from the conversation we've had today. And if you haven't already, please take a moment to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. We'd greatly appreciate it. Your feedback helps us improve and reach more people who can benefit from our discussions. The best way to stay connected with us and get the latest updates on future episodes is through our social media channels. You can find us at Startup and Storefront. We'll be back next Tuesday with another great episode. See you then.