The $600M Protein Bar Founder is Back Again | Peter Rahal Interview

today we have the creator of rx bar on the podcast this guy started in his mom's basement with five thousand dollars and built a protein bar that he sold five years later for six hundred million dollars and he tells us the story of rx bar his new protein bar and why he's doing it again and we got the brainstorm with what are four other ideas that he thinks somebody could start today trends opportunities white spaces in the market and how he thinks about them how he even created rx bar using the same process that he's gonna outline today so that's this episode with peter bah home i feel like i could rule where i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a less travel alright so here's how i wanna start this you created this this little bar the rx bar that you made i think in your mom's basement with you and your elementary school buddy you each kicked in five thousand dollars and five years later you sell it for six hundred million dollars which is amazing yeah and now you're back and you're doing this bar yeah the david bar which i've been eating pretty religiously alright let's talk a little bit about parts bar then david i wanna hear kind of this story so we've i think generally the story is out there so i wanna make you rehash too much of it could you give us like the cliff notes of the story and then i wanna i wanna hear about a couple of things you said that you read one article on ink and forwarded it to jared i wanna get latch onto to that but give us first just the cliff notes of rx yeah so the cliff notes you know in chicago two thousand ten eleven twelve at the time like there's an emerging tech scene group on was there and it's sort of like if you were doing some sort of information technology you're a loser there's no attention or love to like a food brand it was it was no status yeah i was just no status like and so we just wanted to yeah we wanted a good job we wanted an opportunity to be successful i had a background who is really helpful on the on the supply chain side and then jared like my total counterpart like very very level headed reliable organized like i'm more of like the creative tie by i'd say and i always like to trivial innovation because you know what as an entrepreneur i was like he have all these ideas and it was basically like i swear inc and i was like hey jared i just sent it to him and i was like ten thousand bucks we could do a bar and it was like some bad article you know like nothing nothing to it what what was the premise of the article what did what did it say it was sort of like an inspirational thing of like you can start a biz like very low cost ways to start a company basically and it said like the protein bar yeah nutrition bar it's like a wiki how article which like showed wide of low status thing to do right like anyone can do it you know and i always was in the bars and so we just started making you know to started we just started taking actions towards making it and right like where you starts every end up and the i was in a crossfit and so we saw get a distribution channel emerge it was very clear i was like i looked at the whole foods know the traditional food tail desk i had no idea how to get there and it was hyper competitive i was like how are we gonna compete whereas as crossfit emerge these gyms are popping up two thousand twelve thirteen no competition you were not allowed on the shelf if you work paleo so that that was like the perfect example that un competitive market a small market that was glowing like crazy that we could go build distribution in and and we can make the product at whole so just went for it and once you you know you burn the boats and just jump off the bridge and figure out a fly and you're so you're literally making bars in like your mom's basement type of thing yeah was we got we'd a five court the metric out a twenty court sort of vertical mixer and like we didn't how to form the products we need have figure out how to like form and package and and you said there's this really great article you're like you know it sounds cool we are we're in there or just like in the lab mixing these things together make and you're like it didn't feel cool it it it felt horrible like we people were making fun of us oh yeah like i i remember i think another thing you just can't care what people think and it's also a great test of who who actually cares about you and who's a good influence like you're the some of who you surround yourself with like you want your friends supporting you and say no you have to work on the weekends like not saying drag trying to drag you out i'll pull you down but yeah looking at i mean looking at from the outside looking at what we were jared and i were doing there's no way it was successful it was gonna be successful it was just some local local little thing were were you doing crossfit or you just literally saw it as a distribution channel i was doing across yeah i i got i got i was in the part the across the religion sorry so you take a box to your to your gym and you're like hey i made these yeah i just show but with tu and so there was like a little consumer insights like you what do you think and then built the relationship with the owner i'm like would love to sell some product here and of course they're good people and you know it starts there and then in the theory so it's like if it it's gonna be successful one cross shit why wouldn't you be successful across others and so what what did it taste good it so ie e rx x expires all the time by way i love them but like it the first time you open it up be you it looks different than a girl granola bar it'll it'll you have to get used to like it being me out of dates and it being dark what do they say at first to the dark bar and were they were they any good at first yeah it's so they're they're really good at first because they're were made to order so we never carried any inventory so everything is super fresh so that's certainly helped and there can a customer back then was all paleo people who were very super familiar with la so there was a familiarity to it that was helpful for the adoption and i i think we had this guy from fit aid come on they're the same thing at cross he he used cross as the initial distribution for same reason he's like i know how to get into retail yeah but i know this community i'm in this community and he what he what he realized was he gave him mini fridge he's like they didn't have a fridge already so he's like cool i'll i'll give you the fridge but then you like stock my stuff in there at the beginning and if you wanna switch it out later and put other stuff in there fine you get to keep the fridge but sure enough if they just like kept it going and he used crossfit to get to like i don't know twenty thirty million dollars a year in sales you know with cross as the main engine at they at i think at that time and save for us and then we we merchandise on top of his refrigerators so you go and you're so you like if this works at one it'll work at many than what you're just knocking on doors every day like what was your schedule what was your like like we wanted to get data on convenience stores grocery stores other places of distribution that are stated get understanding and so we we tested at all those other areas where we're more like normal markets where there's regular competition and the brand didn't work so like velocities that across their gym would be maybe eighty eighty bars a week whereas the the convenience store in the local grocery store was like one or four a week so what obviously we would just rather be in every cross gym on the country prior to any other distribution so we were just laser focused on putting the product where it's successful meeting the customer of the shop and the whole plan was like let's just get to scale through this this early adopter in this this this market and then let's figure out how to cross the chasm once we have some scale and we're commercially produced around the kitchen and so that was a plans like b bar of crossfit get some scale and then figure out across the chasm once we're close to that sorry i kinda triangulate bunch of articles and like your revenue was like something like two million dollars a year and then like seven million dollars and then like a hundred and sixty million dollars or something in like ridiculous like that with is that accurate and if and and if that is accurate i think that coincides with like the re brand making your re brand or your new labels the greatest value creation like to ever exist yeah best use of designers yeah yeah absolutely yeah basically it's like dot com and amazon's for three years and we'd like put her foot into some retailers in the current branding or the old branding didn't work so it's like didn't have product of market fit where we where we with our core early adopters whatever we started to go to like the mass market or not our corey was like doesn't ain't work so so basically we timed the rebranding with resell and so there was a year before the one sixty one that was thirty six and that was basically like getting into call it early adopters of re food retail so the we and these like public these regional ones that are really high quality and it once that works the larger ones adopted and so it was like thirty six and then the most the market at one sixty one so seven thirty six one sixty one that's insane well the most the same thing is actually like just way we were we used profitable sales to finance the growth like there wasn't a like a big equity check that came in that finance inventory so how does that work because that scaling is so crazy right even the prop even if you're super profitable at seven how do you buy inventory for thirty six did you have a really fast turnover or a line of credit apply credit personally guaranteed by your parents for four hundred thousand but we actually didn't dip into it which is funny so that's nice to gives you confidence and you started the business with ten g's ten grand yeah five thousand each yeah brutal and then so just profitable you know dot com they give you cash you ship product so you're you it's a cycles is much better and then my it goes back to like sales cures all right we talked a little bit about the re brand before but who who did that you did that you hired an agency to do that like what was the genius behind that re rebranding because this was this stood out to me you know from moment one and it sounds like i'm not alone that this helped like explode sales in outside of crossfit yeah so we we we hired a agency called scott and victor very talented brand strategist but i think something i wanna mention that's really really important that excited about people coming lot wanting do re brands all the time and they're so fixated on the agency that they think the agency comes in and does it but really the responsibility and accountability goes on the brand owner to articulate the problem to solve and to communicate it in a brief for the assignment for the creative to figure out how to solve the problem what is you right in that brief so so like the output of our design is very simple like we had a name problem r meant prescription and in the mass market but it en crossfit and met doing something of a high standard so in the language in the culture of crossfit doing something r it was language so if you did a workout the first at question you get is like did you do it r and so it had a different meaning in this this culture than it did the normal american culture so so that was a problem name problem and then it was very clear rx meant nothing and it wasn't an available name you remembered it which is nice but it was a source of confusion okay so you pull that through to the design it's the the logo and name is very small so we minimized it second we have when you formulate a product that's minimal ingredient and you could and like design the way it ours is you can claim anything gluten free soy free dairy free high protein right well list goes on none of that mattered when we sample it to people and the only thing matters is when i flip over the back it's a dark expert like what is it be like it's heating three egg two day six almonds for cashews so that back of label thing that i referenced earlier that was a value communication and second we're in the third point we're protein no man's land the market was at twenty we're at twelve grams of protein you're talking about yeah so we're kinda like for protein people they're were like it's not enough but if you just lead with egg whites so three egg whites is the first thing that's like our hi actually three egg whites and so that creates a lot of consumer surplus because when you go shopping at a cafe for breakfast and you get egg whites you get charged a premium so egg whites are associated with premium they're associated with quality and they're more expensive and so that was a great way to communicate sort of value and surplus so all these things are in the brief like name doesn't matter here's the only thing that matters we don't wanna be paleo position because that is a death trap it's a laziness trap and so all those factors are laid out in a brief and then the designer really extracts s sizes and pulls that out and they're not they're not just a designer they're like a brand strategist so it's very important for like any entrepreneur like it's not just you gotta do the work and actually design define the problems and then you bring in an agency you now you have this thing which i feel like you did an amazing job on the brand i think we talked about this on the pod like dude did you see the rs guy back he's got this new bar love the name love the branding right off the bat can i read out some of these words some the lines from his site sean copy writing on the site yeah it it's beautiful your new thing is a protein bar and the whole stick is that like quest which is like a leading protein bar is only twenty grams of protein but a hundred fifty calories you're roughly a hundred fifty calories in like twenty six or twenty seven grams of protein and so the copy you're writing the website's is beautiful it says the genius of a product is it has the protein of a meal but the calories of a snack we thank our predecessor in the protein industry but we'll take it from here meet david your protein bar ideal i saw the angel marble and carved it until i set them free all these these are all like instagram quotes are a copy of the website be beautiful protein is essential to maintaining your skin firm and out electricity and hair and scalp nail health it participate in privately every process of a cell in your body so you're explaining how important the protein is but then you have this one line where it's you like have this graph on your website where you say how many grams of protein per calorie and you include quest and luna i think at a couple others or laura bar something with that but then you even include cod which i thought is ridiculous because when i saw a that graph i was like wait you're telling me that david is even more protein dense per calorie than cod and so it's quite good oh here's the part that i love you say you know we are a company that is here to make your bodies better we're gonna give you protein and it just so happens some of our products might be edible but some in the future may not be we focus on making we we build tools to help you increase muscle and decrease fat and so that can come in i think that's our that's our mission so whether that's food beverage or apparel or that's how what gives us permission to go create and serve and and that came from like my observation in the nutrition park space is like that's the most fundamental thing people want so we wanna deliver that in the best way possible the thing that would be the most fun for us is if we got to sit down with the founder of our part and just shoot the shit brainstorm business ideas we asked you beforehand we said hey is what we like to do are you the kind of founder you know brain never turns off you're always seeing you know opportunities that somebody could go do and you sent us a little list so let's start with that list and i think the fun way to do this is i'll just read the name of the thing you wrote you didn't give us any details and you kinda pitch the idea of what you see is a potential opportunity here so idea one vas yes okay so i'm a bin i i i think history is really important to study in business like i think it doesn't get enough credit to like look for the patterns in history and in two so for this one in two thousand three four and five i was in high school this product called o two came to market and it just blew up this supplement industry in a good way pretty right yeah i was like they saying you got these like big pump is that like o explode that turned in o explode me and ari were just talking about it she said she like str a pre workout and i remember the days of taking that and it would like make me explode out my butt like it was like the it was like the worst it was like cocaine except it would make you like diarrhea yeah what happened is people started adding different features to it but it has like having the healthy blood like really important and if you look at the the market today it's like super i call it like chains and gains like screaming to not a sophisticated off it like it's just for pure gains and so i i would say there's probably an opportunity to sort of commercial something on just the whole broader benefits of healthy blood flow and you know like men like eds is a huge one like i think the positioning of the market i think they're all very very very body building oriented and i think there's ones for like pedestrians did you remember the one sean the d one the be it's like it's like a fucked up yeah well yeah exactly it's sort of like it analogous guess to dick pills in gas stations versus him he he yeah versus him yeah exactly there was a guy who came and spoke at one of sam's ko that he created sam what's the guy's name created the method soap and then he's created the band aid brand and they created ollie gum or whatever all vitamins yeah nevermind that's the guy he's created three brands that are all like big and target different ollie and he talked about he goes what i what i could do i could just walk through a depart like a store like a target or a grocery store he it's like what are you looking for when you're walking through those aisle he goes i'm looking for a c of same ness yeah and anytime i see a category shelf where they're all positioning or they're all chasing the same target or they're all positioned the same way so for example you said band aids band aids were all sort of boring neutral try to be the color of your skin blah blah well also they made a band aid brand that was the opposite was like very loud badge of honor or for for a abu boot right or vitamins looked a certain way they came in try to do it differently yeah so do you have a similar sort of philosophy where you see let's say you know these vas vas like they're all bro out and you're like if i just reposition the same product i would have a new audience yeah like i think air eric strategy is very much design oriented like differentiation through design and that's like looking for i don't have a clear of a strategy i just really focus on differentiation and actually like how determining how competitive a category is and how how easily you can diff differentiate with what i call like valuable novelty so does that mean that you actually want to be the most competitive so then being very different yeah what stands up yeah so it's like you want it to be perceived as very competitive but then when you actually apply some rigor look at it it's actually not that competitive like the protein bar market is perfect example of that like barrier entry is pretty low lots of noise on the surface extremely competitive a lot if you look at it there's actually like three and then a long tail and that's as you show you know it's like you wanted it an un competitive market and so like working can you find an un competitive market in about like in a perceived competitive market as i'd say because like leverage is like it's too easy to it's just the low easy to make food like relatively so it's a no unavoidable like course everything's competitive yeah it's like peter t peter t talked about for the best investments are ones that seem like bad investments what are actually good investments and the things that seem like good investments but actually our good investments the returns aren't even there so you need that sort of you need to be counter consensus meaning you need to find something that looks one way but it's actually another so you're saying looks super competitive but when you sort of break it down you realize actually there's a pretty big opportunity that it's yeah it's not as competitive as as it looks on the surface yeah i mean yeah exactly that and i just assume it's as simple as like people will come to me oh protein bars are so so competitive and always ask her to tell me and tell me about that like how you know you just ask a couple questions and and it was be interesting they one can't eat what what are those questions what the you tell me like please explain more like what do you i got they just can't explain the competitors they can only they're only they're only referencing the volume of the category like the volume of brands but they're not necessarily actually what referencing what they like who's good who's not and then second a lot of times are they're not even consumers of the category which to me is the opportunity it's like alright well why aren't you the consumer in the category it's some dissatisfaction with taste or texture usually or price or some something else and so that's the opportunity actually is it's like how do you bring new people to the category so yeah just stuff like that it's just funny that's cool so let's take this visa dial thing for saying in the first ninety days of that what would you be doing to figure this out like what do will you actually go do to to get these answers oh so first i'd figure out i'd look at those literature and is it good or like just so i it's like two searches one what does the internet say like put what is the reputation of it what does culture say about it and then two what does the actual literature say so like what is what what are it tiers of the world what does if you way ignoring what do they believe through through s the actual literature i just had basically just mean like like is the perfect blend of that like a a vas dial is good and then you also see like i know explode looks way too bro and is lame or do you want yes yes on the culture or do you what why why the what are you looking for as the perfect answer for those two so on the cultural thing is it second would be like a a landscape like what does the market look like but before that i was to say is this a reputation that i can overcome is there some sort of stigma mode that is it's good if it's it's okay it's concurrent but is it is actually something so bad that i can't overcome it or like what is a just general but then second would be like or what's like this market map like how do i define this market and i prop i don't i i what what what i know i'd probably just fight it as simply like body building oriented there isn't actually a continuum of like you know natural people body like that's like a natural opposing continuum but yeah so just to study a study the market reputation of the market and then most importantly because because if if the market says this is bad then that it's and but the literature says it's really has all these benefits then that's a sure thing of like alright people disagree with you but then theirs so so it's it's sort of tri those those things sam you invested in lucy right yeah so lucy the neck nicotine gum our buddy john k involved with it there's now it's a it's a pouch pouch yeah they at the time i think the sort of cultural stigma this is pre zen being really popular was yeah nicotine equals bad right aren't we supposed to be not having cigarettes bad nicotine bad blah blah blah science actually show that there were some i guess some benefits and then what they did was they were like cool can we overcome this and it took actually many years but the business is now exploding but you know for years it it was kind of you know just trying to get enough movement of culturally to get over the home yeah and then and that that's so like the pure teal approach to consumer is actually how you make money in this business and there's plenty examples like kombucha protein bars or costly this because no one thinks there's there's thinks there's too many of them collagen was one nicotine one you know you know another one that's happening right now cr so cr the science it's it's one of the most studied supplements of all time it's like there's so many benefits but for years it was like this is only for football high school bros like you know and now we've made it cool or not like women are like no there's actually a lot of benefit here or normal average joe's like there's a lot of benefit here the whole creativity movement sean have you seen that right now yeah definitely yeah i saying like the way you figure out is just ask your friends like hey what do you think of this and it's like oh it's it's sort of that's and that's like cultural reputation right so and that's people are kinda disagreeing with you so i that's say generally i if you ever ask what my pattern is for sort of consumer investing it's really that like what is something on the fringes or what is something people disagree with or is it culture that actually if you look at it from a first principles perspective there's actually something there so we'll one more question if we move move to the next idea which is i'm a smart guy i can almost talk myself into anything or talk myself out of anything i have a very good debate in my own head and so what you're giving examples of is maybe things that are misunderstood or it looks competitive but actually it's not i can almost see myself justifying anything under that umbrella yeah hey peter kinda said this and i just don't have the actual judgment to be able to do it correctly well what's an example of an idea sean of a product well i actually i wanna ask you about the opposite which is like what are categories that you think you would like run away from you're like no this is the type of thing i wouldn't go into for these reasons fast anything fast following like following liquid death following ali pop you gotta you gotta be the first one in the controversial disagreeable thing you you know yeah because you're trying to win big and i think i read something the other day like a in the ai category the sequoia was talking about there like if you just study all markets the market leader so number whoever becomes number one of a new category will take something like seventy five percent of all the profits fifty percent of all the revenues and whatever it's just like the the spoils really do go to the winner if you're trying to win the biggest yeah and i i think you could you look at the history and this is why i think the history of something i just like think it's so important in studying consumer like that that would be true with that would that that would be true with kombucha collagen market these sort of big breakthrough new markets that emerge like the first one to to do it well takes all the problems are you when you when you say you're studying history to what what does that mean like you're reading biographies you're you're looking at old financial statements what are you doing it's it might you know it'd be like what one would be looking through your phone at the old category so like what it what are photos of the category look like in two thousand twelve but it for me it's my own just experience going through it and remembering you know the different trends the different new products that you know and just for keeping that a recollection of that and i think it just isn't talks about when i see people starting consumer ads it kinda like here's today here's the future it's just such an important piece of like in the equation of whether this is gonna work or not mh but yeah i don't there's another there's no ring books on this stuff it no one cares so it's really you have to just have to piece together the your together and yeah alright let's go to idea number i don't even know what this means night occasion in general i don't know is that an idea of what is that okay so again i i feel i to do myself as like i hand apologize so if you look at the morning occasion it is very fixed right it's all around coffee waking up sunlight sunlight observation is a new one thanks to i think a humor is a big change culture that way so circadian rhythm taking supplements maybe your morning pills whatever rituals there are the the morning occasions kind of like clear in terms of like what products or services are there and so sleep hygiene and the sleep occasion is something that become very clear that's super important and if you look at that to me it's a wide open like there isn't a coffee of the sleep occasion at night you have what like magnesium maybe or something like that right like one maybe cad product yeah no one's owning it right now you brush your teeth right so there's like colgate gates got it you got but like there is a huge opportunity to sort of e brand for that occasion there's some obstacles obviously but to me that's like the if i'm an entrepreneur i'm really studying that that's a strange insight to have what made you get to that conclusion you just gotta think about everything's occasion based right like the best example is like champagne dominates a celebration occasion that's a outside of that it it's a terrible problem right or for like for rx bar it's like i'm driving somewhere i want i'm going to a gas station and i wanna get something healthy yeah like rx four was obviously on the go it was a bigger occasion but to be honest it was egg it was because of the egg whites there are some signals it was breakfast it was sort of like a great fast breakfast when i think about like everyone's talking about sleep do you have eight sleep you all these brands kind of getting there but on the consumers like the food or beverage or supplement side there's all these like sleep packs things but the like the real opportunity is like how do you be the coffee of fucking sleep and that's where i would spend time you know coffee is the best drug it's the biggest drug so is there something like that there's a some branch working on it but that i think there's there's which pharmacy ones there's one called moon brew there's one called beam i use both of them one is melatonin and one doesn't that's the big controversial one melatonin is actually sort of you could have belt melatonin which actually something that could be contra people say bad for you it's habit for it's exogenous hormone but then there's also literature that's tying antioxidants too those are good but i me and my fiancee we find we find ourselves having this like this beverage at a small dose before bed and it's like a nice ritual yeah i think that's brilliant and actually the the hot basically like looking at moments and looking for for openings there's a chinese company i think it was maybe it was byte dance the company owns tiktok maybe was the one that owns wechat i'm not sure but they at their annual meeting i remember going and watching their annual meeting which is weird all mandarin and i don't speak mandarin but i'm sitting there trying to translate these slides because i was like i wanna learn from where other people are not learning from to try to see if there's any alpha there and one of the key interesting things was they their opening slide was all of the moments of the day like show a twenty four hour cycle broken into fifteen minute intervals and what they did was they were like we wanna have a product or an app for every moment of your day okay so i was like totally dominating philosophy insane american c you couldn't come out and say it but like obviously z probably feels the same way yeah yeah but they were like you're in line for coffee what's the in line coffee app like we need an app that is designed to be awesome for that moment okay now you have an hour embed scrolling at night what do we have for that's like the tiktok app where you're just gonna infinitely swipe and be amused and so seeing them think that way i was like oh wow and then that creates white spaces so you say oh you might think photos is a crowded category like it seemed like photos was dominated by facebook and instagram and snapchat came out i was like oh we'll use photos for messaging and instead of photos for memories and the way they the way they just looked at it with a different land suddenly photos was totally of a wide open multi billion dollar opportunity that you had to look at it in some other angle in order to see it yeah and i i was emphasize like the consumers all matters and so putting yourself and up going through that is the that it's where all starts in my view yeah like that do you also look for like product inspiration from other places like i know some people that do cp that they're like they travel a bunch or there they'll be like oh yeah in thailand they drink this what is this well oh if we just take this and now we wrap it in a new label that's like american friendly we might be able to have a product here so basically you you wanna consume as much information collect as many dots so you can connect the dots at some point and the best example is that is like i had to internship in belgium and we supplied innocent beverage which is a smoothie company and and their label they they would the innovative thing they did is they would and their ingredients statement would be like one apple one banana and half a lemon or a pinch of lemon and obviously i took i took that dot and connected it to rx bar which on the back of our label was two days three eggs six almonds for cashews etcetera but that insight was from just surely observing different markets and and different brands in different you're just like journal or to keep keep track of these or it's all your here yeah it's just a go alright let's finish up these ideas wanna ask you about the bar businesses alright so idea number three continuous testosterone monitor this is messy oh yeah yeah i think the the the the american male pairs so much about testosterone and i think i don't know if this is feasible maybe we do blood tests so and i actually like looked into this for like ten minutes but if you were have some way to measure testosterone or some broader hormones in a continuous way so like when you wake up be moderate like i i think there's a there's a lot of demand for that and i think the american male was love that sam or the american male what what are your t levels right now dude i wanna know by t twenty four seven are are you are you four hundred where you at is it higher than your math sat score was or that that's the test i don't even i what's the sat out i don't even know well do not get you don't get yours checked sean i've i i've never got i don't think maybe i got check once i don't think i've ever really i definitely am i'm not the the typical american male wait peter do you do you have you you get yours check yeah i do it quarterly do you have man by the way i i'm what's an investor or am an investor in that thing called levels which you can continue as glucose responder and like yeah yeah everyone has to figure this out and if you do figure out it's pretty awesome but do you have some something like because your friends with like i think peter t is one of your vessels because you're you're a young rich guy in the health space do you have some crazy brian johnson setup where you have someone measuring your night nighttime directions and all this crazy stuff no i i've so i've gone from like getting close to being obsessive about measuring everything to just now i'm like totally it's like so easier to do it my my routine is i'm currently off supplements right now i just wanna get a baseline of my blood markers i tested quarterly and then normally i take supplements an am and pm i think i think cultures is going that way is my there's my a prediction for twenty twenty five which is that i think everybody got that really inspired and sort of over analyzed everything through hub and brian johnson and i love those guys but i think the the average person is it's way too much work for way low way too little payoff and and we all kinda know the sort of core four or five things you should do and most people don't even do those and so without doing the basic fundamentals like none of the rest really matters the the the sort of fine tune and optimizing and so i think there's gonna be a giant retreat back to simple simplicity and basics for like health craze so for the list of brian johnson is like a a tech billionaire like the headline is he spends two million dollars a year on his health to live forever whatever he's got this thing called the rejuvenation olympics where you can get your blood work done and it ranks you like on his amongst tens of other thousands of of people to let you know like how good your blood work is and how long you're gonna live whatever there was this woman in the in the wall street journal she was like a substitute teacher and she's like she's like says her income she's like make like fifty thousand dollars a year and i just go for walks and i eat healthy if she was number one on on the list like brian johnson was like number six and and it was pretty funny that all these guides are dedicating their lives and all the resources go night that you need with the community yeah and i think it actually causes like you emotional regulation and not being stressed or anxious is probably more important been like ob about some other stuff so exactly alright let's do the most exciting idea you have on this list new religion talk to me i'm ready preach sort of i i religions i think it's a bad word it's like something to belong to that helps you guide morale he and ethics that can be a ritual or tradition that we all can like bond over until aligned on my my hypothesis is that there's no money to make in religion so no one joins no talent no good leader joins the church and therefore it hasn't been innovating at all and therefore so the economics are there for a priest and so therefore there's no innovation and there's a desperate need for innovation and then so and then second like no one wants to be jesus and someone has to be jesus that's why i think why we are where we are at right now so if someone wants to be jesus i think there's a real opportunity well have you guys ever gone to a bot no something like that dude it's the shit it's the best is the shit i love it it's like basically a friday meal where you don't use cell phones did he tell everyone how much you love each other yeah and like saturday i'm not working like forced and i just think that's my be obvious we want that why are you saying there's no money and i'm i these mega churches have the billion dollar run rates the priests are driving private flying private jets like the did they these have you seen joel o stand that smile that's a billion dollar smile right there so i think maybe it's like action the best business of all businesses and just sure i i'm pretty sure that the catholic church is the largest lando and in the whole world not not to reference peter till again but he talks about for mono monopoly he's like all the companies that talk about how how much of a monopoly they have how dominant they they are they're usually the most vulnerable and the ones that are super dominant always trying to downplay how dominant they are so i don't want anyone to to take aim at them you know for antitrust it's the same thing i think for money it's like the folks that are bragging about how much money to make are the drop shippers and then the people who are silent pretend it's not about the money have all the money and that's the the churches to get it's probably totally right so i mis misread this but maybe i should be a priest but i've thought about this a bunch of ways i think you can you could either un bundle it so you know one strategy for business un bundle so take things that come in a bundle so you get god and a higher power you're gonna get community and a rich a sunday ritual and then you're gonna get an operating philosophy for life and so that's the that's the current religion bundle and then did you see things like you know look at the nfl every sunday look at soul cycle look at these these things where it's like oh they're giving they have they have two other components but not the other three right but then there's tony robbins he'll maybe give you the operating philosophy without god and and for me for example that resonated it i was like cool i want this without the but i know i'd like to be in charge of it and not that's sort of say it's somebody else that that's deciding my fate and so i think some people have un this but it would be very interesting to see somebody actually trying to pull out a new bundle and i think i think you could really just like it's a first principle approach but like across the different domains of life like who's got it right like the buddhist of got stuff right the jews got stuff right sure zones got stuff right christianity too and just sort of built like sort of look at it from that perspective but bet you come up something great you actually have a it appears to be a fairly academic point of view when it comes to operating a business and i think that that's actually pretty cool because i think it's considered like cool to not care or like i'm just gonna file my gut which i tend to fall in that category but to hear you're kind of academic point of view i actually think it's pretty neat right too or you i wouldn't call it that but i i guess you just from you're yeah i mean i i just it's like i make terrible student but i study a lot what does that mean i i was literally a terrible student but i do like all i do is my time is studied yeah it's actually nice for me because i i kind of i do the same and then sometimes i meet people who are ten times more successful to me and they're like yeah i don't even think about all that stuff come like oh wait am i wasting my time but you're like oh yeah we looked at this it seemed like really good distribution or i really thought that you know for the for the design agency the inputs matters as much as the inputs will will dictate the outputs and so i was super clear on this whereas like i think a lot of successful entrepreneurs just sort of hand wave and i get the sense of it's not really as hand wavy as they think and it either they're downplay playing it or or they're kinda like michael jordan you're like how do you shoot a jump shot it's like i know i do it i don't really think too much but i like that you're able to articulate some of these things because at least for someone like me that resonates is because that's how i think so you know it's i would i would perhaps say like they're not as intros they're probably really not analyzing why they came up with what they came up and they're probably not they're just like i think a lot of entrepreneurs are all about like charging forward and moving forward i've always sort of like looking back and studying the the past of like why did this work was it a framework can i come up with a framework was it a pattern well let's do a little intros intersection on why do david because you've on one hand one way of looking at this is you've already beat this level of the video game you created a protein bar you won six hundred million dollars do you get the nice house in miami and it's all done right and of course you could go back and do it again but maybe like you should do a new thing that would be one argument we we we me and sam talk to there's two you know type one type two entrepreneurs type ones are always look for the variety the next new thing even though they're most equipped to actually go do the thing that they know really well they don't wanna do it and then there's other people we call speed this type two which which is now that they feel like they have a a new point of view a new mastery of the game they're really excited to go do is just in their blood and their dna they just wanna go back to the same space i don't know if it's as simple as that but why did you decide to do it again yeah so it was in process so i had an odd pete so that was a constraint but then i i wanted to actually prove to myself that i wasn't just a cp g entrepreneur that i could go do this in other sort industries so i actually i went to go explore different industries and try to like and i i i kinda like started and stopped in a lot of times what sorts of stuff give us a sense like synthetic biology i think is like fascinating that's a perfect example i was like this is sounds like science fiction biotech is incredible like if we can actually control biology like this would be an amazing thing so i started studying it and you anyway this is where other i like elon like a not a good influence like i was like he like i can blur anything and then very quickly it was like i can't fucking get learn this stuff like biology these people like spend their whole careers learning this and i was like i'm not that smart i can't learn new things and i'm never gonna start a business where i have to pick up the phone to fix the problem like if i can't don't have the competency to fix the problem or understand it i'm that's like a position i'll never wanna be in that was a bit of like self awareness call it a humbling moment and i spent some time that i came back and then when my not compete came up i was like oh my god i see it like i i i i couldn't help but see like a vision of something to do and so i was like hey what i'm okay i'm okay with just being go type two and i'm okay once i die just says like nose protein bar you know like watch what i thought part on my gravestone that that's okay like and it and it goes back to like self awareness like you gotta do what you're good at and like one thing i've learned is like i got an the older i'm thirty eight like i i do find it harder to learn new things like i'm the later adopter why do it get is like i see a huge opportunity to bring to grow the market to delight customers and it's fun are you call the shots are you in the ceo and are you like a very hands on ceo or are you doing it are you chairman no i'm i'm i'm i'm on i'm the ceo and i'm in the office every day i'm man manufacturing right now i already have one away when you you have a four month old kid it sounds like you're gonna you you're gotta get married soon you know a lot of people in your position imagine you have roughly in the ballpark of nine figures liquid that's enough money for many generations so you have a new kid where you could be at home with them why do you even give a shit about starting this new thing i think the idle minds a devil's playground but you've had an idle mine no for the past few years yeah but i still made myself busy but that it was idle it's it was idle relative to to now yes i i just think it's dangerous like i need to produce i need to make stuff i need stress i need to be challenged i need risk i'm a way better man with responsibility and then second i i wanna make sure my son sees daddy working working hard i need to be a role model for him i need to be in the office i need to be sacrificing and then like a fundamental level like as a human i'm just i'm not happy if i don't i'm not like risk on i don't have responsibility so that does that mean you're you're kinda of bummed out or like for for the past few years yeah i just unfulfilled like i i was just like and like being investor sucks i like yeah did it's sucks it's pretty boring in it oh like the only good thing about it is your you can like you have more freedom of time in responsibility but that's a great thing about it and i just don't actually like that have you ever seen this reddit post by the this guy jake who started movement watches no they were one of the early d brands they made a watch brand like got really big off of instagram and he wrote this thing on reddit which i think you would never expect this guy to be right they they sold for i think a hundred million dollars you would never expect him just be lurking random like beginner threads about entrepreneurship and he wrote a thread that says i sold my company for millions and i'm lost more than ever thirty one years old he says a pretty opening thing i sold my company movement for a lot of money i thought all my problems would be solved it made my life really cushion and comfortable i optimized for being as stress as possible i play video games what want i wake up when i want have really no got bet if i don't want to i also thought this was the dream and i'd be happy forever until i wasn't and i realized i'm in this incredibly unique situation i wanna share something and then i i'll just fast forward there's a bunch of stuff you talked about i've been separated for the company for two years i'm thirty one single i never have to work again i'm i'm also lone than ever and deeply depressed i really believe that we need purpose on our lives to be happy for some of that's raising a family others it's their career blah blah blah and then he goes to the bottom and he just says we can plan and analyze forever but here's the lessons but there are lessons that are unknown until you start moving forward you cannot live without struggle and pain we either choose our struggle and pain or it will find us through depression and loneliness i thought that was really powerful yeah that's about what he wrote and you at might point my he actually came back you have to work he said he don't have to work like you have just not for money it wasn't for money that you had to it was for yourself yeah yeah it's just like you need to produce i wanna bring up this article that you that got written about you it was on medium you know what i'm talking about yeah it was like a super sensational terrible yeah i'm great and she was just projecting i thought that was gonna be the case so i told sean was gonna pick it up and he goes he's this is what he's probably gonna say it sean nailed the prediction but for the anyone who's talking about he's thinking about or or the the article i'm describing it's basically the head it's beautiful photos but it's kinda like they kinda paint this article as the lost young rich guy who doesn't know what the hell he's doing in life it is unhappy and like the photos are like you like looking off to the distance but there was what pretty amazing the tip for founders anytime so do watch your article at you and they wanna just take photos looking longing out the window they're about to fuck you that's what you're trying to do it just don't take the photo and don't do the article the paragraph goes so so peter bon a foley furnished house for nineteen million dollars in may he was this time between here and chicago he chose miami because there's no income taxes he has a ferrari at ave vanessa best parts in the driveway a house keeper who comes daily keeps the seven bedroom spot list the most are usually empty like this little jab right there it's right wow like and then she basically says this looks like a place that tick the box requesting the newly rich bachelor package and this setup fell straight from the sky just like constant jazz doing it and first of all i did it crazy that you probably spent the the whole day with this woman and you and you probably became friendly with her and that she just kinda like yeah and like she she couldn't like i'm very introverted and i love be it alone and i never once said i was unhappy it's more than like she was projecting which she would be like she's i couldn't imagine living you're alone and i'm like just fucking great like it was just like it's was like it just shows you can't trust media like what the story it was supposed to be about my process for finding my next business but it was a it was still a good article like there were some cool insights of like what what what a little bit about your background story and and the photos or are dope one of the things sam and i like to talk about when we both told our companies we were like the days you know there's like this whole process of like the the journey of this thing and i knew i gonna sell that's kind of a stressful time you and this just kinda like relief when you sell at least i was for me and him it's like more than what you think should be just exuberance was actually just relief that the process actually like finished and it was it was successful and like your employees are all at a good spot like everything worked out but then there's like you know that that post exit right figure out what you wanna do see you know go to the atm you print out the balance the first time you're like holy shit this is cool do you have any of those moments that you remember that was just memorable for you just like unique human life experiences that you had going through it that's the first question the second would be like you know your cousin or your brother was going through this or was about to do what would you kinda tell them would you advise them now that you've been through it yeah i would say that by going through the process that took me a while to like actually comprehend the money had you taken money out of the business before that no no so i went from basically like you know seventy five k a year or two like really crazy money so that process took me a while and in general like that's just like financial literacy it's just not i don't i don't i have a good instincts on it for some reason so it took me about a year to like realize what it was and then going through it like i just i i just i bet it's like i had kinda like low self esteem for being d i think so i didn't think i was great you know what i i i don't think i'm that special and then i didn't realize like you just can treat it you also were living in maybe not the most friendly or not the most miami is not the best place to be i think well you could say it's the best place to be for the newly rich or you can also say it's probably it could be a pretty bad place to live if you're newly rich and a young man who's single like it could be it could you could go you become a d dj pretty easily yeah yeah if you know it discipline it's a really dangerous place but it's actually a great place because there's a lot of high network people there that you actually can learn from the issue with miami is that there is no residue of the actual building it's just the outcome so you you don't see the office you don't see you don't hear the stories you just see the outcome and so it's a bunch of like it's yeah it's a byproduct of all that you don't see the process any any evidence of the process so that's what's dangerous spelled by any on wealth management and i would just define the different sort of options like you can go with goldman they're gonna feel they're gonna make you feel good like you know just go through sort of like how to manage this money because that's what you need to get you you immediately need to figure out what to do and how to do it and there's sort of like different categories and approaches based on your risk appetite or what you wanna do so that that's what i wanted to help with and i would help someone is like curious how you should think about it and here's like help them that waste their time alright i wanna ask you two questions first one's real simple how big can this be david as i'm seventy five percent away through this ball right now i would how big so the market i think it's like a say eight billion dollar tam the protein cell category the me to big exciting opportunity is to convert non protein bar people and bring them into the category so it so like just interviewing people they'll they'll often say i'm not a protein bar to so i want if we can achieve the mission of bringing converting as many non protein bar people into protein bar people that would be a huge i see a clear path to a billion in sales top line is that your threshold for success that's a good question enterprise value yeah i would say yeah i would wanna billion in top line what's that worth depending on gross and eb you put a three or five on it i love how you don't shy away we have a lot of people that come in this podcast that they want to win if they want to win big and they want money and they want they want things sorry we all want things and whenever sam will ask you a question like that of like does that would that be would would would i think less that be like not a success for you or something like that they're like always go back to like what they think they're supposed to say oh no no no this doesn't define me i'm as long as i wake up every day and my my wife pisses me on the cheek i'm good and i love that you don't give a fuck and you i see that in a bunch of quotes we have this quote section i just want you to react to some of these my favorite by the way don't trust a guy who celebrates his birthday yeah i but i not even understand it's kinda true if you talked about how most people don't really experience any adversity and you said quote most people are soft as baby shit expand on that yeah i didn't think each character shit i think it's like and you would a really high character usually is some trauma at it a trauma is relative and if you haven't gone through trauma it's fine but just if you're just self aware of it like that's the first step you do things now even though your life could be very comfortable we got a bunch of money you could you could make your life as comfortable as you want it do you do things now that kind of voluntarily make your life less comfortable than you otherwise could without sounding where a rich asshole like no i mean i'm truly that i i like the asshole of you feel free to sell later that he's like i have one butler not three i don't like so it's tough out there it's like door to the white nurse like that's such a like you know it's on so terrible no i mean so i think like the just being like physical exert and doing physically things hard is the easiest way to do adversity and that's why like you see a lot of people doing that and so that's easy but my company's have priority and the first thing to go is my health like it's my company my family my family's is probably more important now but like i'm not as more i'm not also my family's worth born zen my company and then me and so my health is the first thing if fucking can go is there is your new company in in person or remote what do you think yeah i made the biggest dude he's like have you been listening yeah i was hoping there was like i was i was hoping there was like a three percent chance my company we we we started it like kinda like right after for covid i've made such a mistake dude we did remote and it's like an irreversible thing yeah if you want a high performing company if you wanna win it's you obviously have to do it and it is like why worse fun so being the that's why i'm do dude i don't care about the winning it just fun it's fun to be around your like then become your friends oh and that's the thing is like my social bucket is fulfilled through my work colleagues like so i really socialize outside my work yeah i mean it's i'm i was in say boat you just you give someone a job behind you're hired i wanna be friends yeah yeah friends are the best friends friend my w two friends are awesome yeah yeah it's bud well dude peter i know we're a little over overtime so we'll we'll we'll let you go but you're awesome i really appreciate you coming on i think your stories dope i think you're very truthful and self aware and that's a pretty deadly combo it's something you know i think two virtue to strive for and i think you have a hardcore approach to this at a time where it is unpopular to be hardcore you almost have to apologize for like caring and trying and working and prioritize stuff i think there's a bunch of people who will listen to this that want that also and and we'll feel more empowered to do it in the same way that you were saying like you elon lets you think wait shit can i do anything right like it gives you permission to like you know to be a certain to be the way you wanna be and i think you've done that stay on the spot i appreciate you coming on thank you guys i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to from at all in and like a days off on a less travel never looking back