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

Episode 639: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to Peter Rahal ( https://x.com/peterrahal ) about starting RXBAR with $10K and selling it for $600M, business ideas he would chase today, plus why he’s back with another bar. — Show Notes: (0:00) RX Bar's path to $600M (8:32) Branding to solve a problem (14:03) David Protein (16:22) Idea 1: Differentiated vasodilator (27:53) Idea 2: The coffee of sleep (32:28) Idea 3: Continuous Testosterone meter (36:58)Idea 4: New religion (42:03) Why do this again? (45:28) How to survive the first year after exiting (53:03) How big is David going to get? (56:18) Remote v in-office — Links: • RXBAR - https://www.rxbar.com/ • SCOTT & VICTOR - https://scottandvictor.com/ • David’s Protein - https://davidprotein.com/ • Lucy - https://lucy.co/ • Moonbrew - https://moonbrew.co/ • Levels - https://www.levels.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  Today we have the creator of RX Bar on the podcast. This guy started in his mom's basement with $5,000 and built a protein bar that he sold five years later for $600 million. And he tells us the story of RX Bar, his new protein bar, and why he's doing it again. And we got to 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 going to outline today? So that's this episode with Peter.

• 0:39Shaan Puri?

  All right. So here's how I want to 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 $5,000. And five years later, you sell it for $600 million, which is amazing. And now you're back and you're doing this bar.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01Shaan Puri?

  The David Bar, which I've been eating pretty religiously. All right, let's talk a little bit about RX Bar and then David. I want to hear kind of this story. So we, I think generally the story is out there. So I don't want to make you rehash too much of it. Could you give us like the Cliff Notes of the story? And then I want to, I want to hear about a couple of things. You said you read one article on Inc. and forwarded it to Jared. So I want to get a latch on to that, but give us first just the Cliff Notes of RX.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the Cliff Notes, um, you know, in Chicago, 2010, 11, 12 at the time, like there's emerging tech scene, Groupon was there. And it's sort of like, if you weren't doing some sort of information technology, you're a loser. There was no attention or love to like a food brand. It was, it was.

• 1:42Shaan Puri?

  No status.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was just like no status like. And so we just wanted, we wanted a good job. We wanted an opportunity to be successful. I had a background in food, which was really helpful on the, on the supply chain side. And then Jared's like my total counterpart, like very, very level headed, um, reliable, organized, like.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  I'm more of like the creative type, I'd say. And I always like to try to realize innovation because you know, as an entrepreneur, it's like you have all these ideas and it was basically like I just wrote an ink and I was like, hey, Jared, I just sent it to him and I was like 10,000 bucks, we can do a nutrition bar. And it was like some bad article, you know, like nothing, nothing to it.

• 2:20Shaan Puri?

  What, what was the premise of the article? What did, what did it say?

• 2:22Speaker 01

  It was sort of like an inspirational thing of like, you can start a business, like very low cost ways to start a company, basically.

• 2:29Sam Parr?

  And it said like a little protein bar?

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, nutrition bar.

• 2:32Shaan Puri?

  It's like a WikiHow article.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  It's like showed why it's a low status thing to do, right? Like anyone can do it, you know?

• 2:40Speaker 01

  And I always was into nutrition bars. And so we just started making, you know, it just started, we just started taking actions towards making it and right? Like where you start, never you end up. And I was in a CrossFit and so we saw a, a distribution channel emerge. It was very clear. I was like, I looked at Whole Foods and the traditional food retail, I had no idea how to get there. And it was hyper competitive. I was like, how are we going to compete? Whereas CrossFit emerged, these gyms are popping up 2012, 13, no competition. You were not allowed on the shelf if you worked paleo. So that, that was like the perfect example of an uncompetitive market, a small market that was growing like crazy that we could go build

• 3:26Speaker 01

  distribution in and, and we can make the product at home. So just went for it. And once you, you know, you burn the boats and just jump off the bridge and figure out how to fly.

• 3:40Shaan Puri?

  And you're, so you're literally making bars in like your mom's basement type of thing?

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, we got, we had a five quart, the inventory got a 20 quart sort of vertical mixer. And like, we didn't know how to form the products. We had to figure out how to like form and package and.

• 3:55Sam Parr?

  And you said, uh, there's this really great article. You're like, you know, it sounds cool. We are, we're in there just like in the lab, mixing these things together and making it. And you're like, it didn't feel cool. It, it felt horrible. Like we, people were making fun of us.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  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 sum of who you surround yourself with like You want your friends supporting you and saying no, you have to work on the weekends like not saying drag trying to drag you out, 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 going to be successful. It was just some local, local little thing.

• 4:37Shaan Puri?

  Were you doing CrossFit or you just literally saw it as a distribution channel?

• 4:41Speaker 01

  I was doing CrossFit. Yeah, I I got I got I was in the part of the CrossFit religion.

• 4:45Shaan Puri?

  So you take a box to your uh to your gym and you're like, hey, I made these.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just show up at Tupperware. And so there was like little consumer insights. I'm like, yeah, what do you think? And then built the relationship with the owner. I'm like, I'd 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's going to be successful, one CrossFit gym. Why wouldn't it be successful across others? And so

• 5:11Sam Parr?

  What what did it taste good? So I eat RX bars all the time, by the way, I love them. But like it, the first time you open it up, you it looks different than a granola bar. You have to get used to like it being made 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?

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so they're they're really good at first because they're made to order. So we never carried any inventory. So everything was super fresh. So that certainly helped. And the a customer back then was all paleo people who were very su- familiar with Larbar. So there was a familiarity to it that was um helpful for the adoption.

• 5:52Shaan Puri?

  And I think we had this guy from Fit Aid come on. Uh, he did the same thing at Cross. He used CrossFit as the initial distribution for same reason. He's like, I don't 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 them mini fridges. 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 want to switch it out later and put other stuff in there, fine, you get to keep the fridge. But sure enough, 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, CrossFit is the main engine at the time.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  And same for us. And then we we merchandised on top of his refrigerators.

• 6:34Shaan Puri?

  So you go and you're so you're like if this works at one it'll work at many then what you're just knocking on doors every day like what was your schedule what was your life like?

• 6:41Speaker 01

  We wanted to get data on convenience stores grocery stores other places of distribution that are stated understanding and so we we tested at all those other areas where we're more like normal markets where there's very regular competition and the brand didn't work. So like velocities at a crosser gym would be maybe eighty eighty bars a week whereas the convenience store in a local grocery store was like one or four a week. So what obviously we would just rather be in every crosser gym around the country prior to any other distribution. So we were just laser focused on putting the product

• 7:22Speaker 01

  where it's successful and meeting the customer they shop. And the whole plan was like let's just get to scale through this this early adopter and 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 the plan to like beat the bar of CrossFit, get some scale and then figure out across the chasm. Once we're close to that size.

• 7:46Sam Parr?

  I kind of triangulated a 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 like ridiculous like that. Is that accurate? And if and and if that is accurate, I think that coincides with like the rebrand, making your rebrand or your new labels, the greatest value creation like to ever exist.

• 8:09Shaan Puri?

  Best use of designers.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, basically it's like dot com and Amazon for three years and we'd like put our foot into some retailers and the current branding or the old branding didn't work. So it was like didn't have product and market fit where we were we with our core early adopters wherever we started to go to like the mass market or not our core it was like this ain't working. So so basically we timed the rebranding with retail. 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 food retail. So Wegmans and these like Publix, these regional ones that are really high quality. And then once that works, the

• 8:52Speaker 01

  larger ones adopted. And so it was like thirty six and then the most of the market at one sixty one.

• 8:59Sam Parr?

  So seven thirty six, one sixty one. That's insane.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Well, the most insane thing is actually like just way we were, we use profitable sales to finance the growth. Like there wasn't like a big equity check that came in that financed inventory.

• 9:11Shaan Puri?

  So how does that work? Cause that scaling is so crazy, right? Even the, even if you're super profitable at seven, how do you buy inventory for thirty six? Did you have a really fast turnover or?

• 9:20Speaker 01

  A line of credit, line of 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 give you confidence.

• 9:31Sam Parr?

  And you started the business with ten Gs, ten grand, five thousand each.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's brutal. Um, and then so just profitable, you know, dot com, they give you cash. You ship products. So you're, it's a cycle is much better. Um, and then it goes back to like sales cures all, right?

• 9:50Shaan Puri?

  We talked a little bit about the rebrand before, but who, who did that? You did that? You hired an agency to do that? Like, what was the genius behind that rebrand? Cause 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.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we, we hired an agency called Scott Victor, very talented brand strategist. But I think something I want to mention that's really, really important that, cause I get a lot of people coming to you, wanting to do rebrands 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.

• 10:39Sam Parr?

  What did you write in that brief?

• 10:40Speaker 01

  So, so like the output of our design is very simple. Like we had a name problem. RX meant prescription in, in the mass market. But in CrossFit, it meant doing something of a high standard. So in the language, in the culture of CrossFit, doing something RX. It was the language. So if you did a workout, the first question you get is like, did you do it RX? 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 a valuable name. You remembered it, which was nice, but it was a source of confusion. Okay, so you pull that through to the design. It's the logo and name is very small.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  So we minimized it. Second, we have, when you formulate a product that's minimal ingredient and you could, and like, design the way ours is, you can claim anything gluten free, soy free, dairy free, high protein. Well, list goes on. None of that mattered when we sampled it to people. And the only thing mattered is when I flip over the back. It's eight darks, but like, what is it? And be like, it's like eating three egg whites, two dates, six almonds, four caches. So that back a label thing that I referenced earlier, that was a value communication. And second, we're in the third point, we're a protein no man's land. The market was at 20. We're at 12.

• 12:06Shaan Puri?

  Grams of protein you're talking about.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we're kind of like, for protein people, they're like, yeah, it's not enough. But if you just lead with egg whites. So if three egg whites is the first thing, that's like our hierarchies, actually three egg whites. And so that creates a lot of consumer surplus because when you go shopping in 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 want to be paleo position because that is a death trap. It's a laziness trap.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  And so all those factors are laid out in a brief and then the designer really extracts, synthesizes 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.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  And then you bring in an agency.

• 13:11Shaan Puri?

  You, um, 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. We're like, dude, did you see the RX guy? He's back. He's got this new bar. Love the name. Love the branding right off the bat.

• 13:24Sam Parr?

  Can I read out some of these, uh, what's some of the lines from his site, Sean?

• 13:28Shaan Puri?

  The copyrighting on the site. Yeah, dude.

• 13:29Sam Parr?

  It's beautiful. Your new thing is a protein bar and the whole shtick is that like Quest, which is like a leading, uh, protein bar is only 20 grams of protein, but 150 calories. You're roughly 150 calories and like 26 or 27 grams of protein. And so the copyrighting, the website's beautiful. It says, "The genius of our product is it has the protein of a meal, but the calories of a snack. We thank our predecessors in the protein industry, but we'll take it from here. Meet David, your protein bar, idealized. I saw the angel in marble and carved it until I set him free." All these, these are all like Instagram quotes or a copy of the website. Uh, be beautiful. Protein is essential to maintaining your skin's firmness and elasticity in hair and scalp and nail health. It participates in practically

• 14:11Sam Parr?

  every process of a cell in your body. So you're explaining how important the, um, protein is. But then you have this one line where it's, um, 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, and a couple of others, or Laura Bar, something like that. But then you even include COD, which I thought is ridiculous because when I saw 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, um, you know, we are a company that is here to make your bodies better. We're going to give you protein and it just so happens some of our products might be edible, but some in the future may not be.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  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 what gives us permission to go create and serve. Um, and, and that came from like my observation in the nutrition bar space is like, that's the most fundamental thing people want.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  So we want to deliver that in the best way possible.

• 15:17Shaan Puri?

  The thing that would be the most fun for us is if we got to sit down with the founder of RX Bar and just shoot the shit and brainstorm business ideas. And we asked you beforehand, we said, hey, this is what we like to do. Are you the kind of founder who your 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 kind of pitched the idea of what you see as a potential opportunity here. So idea one, vasodilator.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Yes. Okay. So I'm a big, 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 2003, four and five, I was in high school. This product called NO2 came to market and it just blew up the supplement industry in a good way.

• 16:11Shaan Puri?

  Pre-workout, right?

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like they're saying you got these like big pump.

• 16:14Sam Parr?

  Was that like NO explode?

• 16:16Speaker 01

  That turned into NO explode.

• 16:18Sam Parr?

  Me and Ari were just talking about it. She said she likes drinking pre-workout and I remember the days of taking that and it would like make me NO explode on my butt. Like it was like, it was like the worst. It was like cocaine, except it would make you like diarrhea.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so what happened is people started adding different features to it, but it has like having healthy blood flow is like really important. And if you look at the market today, it's like super, I call it like chains and gains, like screaming to not a sophisticated hobby. Like it's just for pure gains. And so I would say there's probably an opportunity to sort of commercialize something on just the broader benefits of a healthy blood flow. And, you know, it's like,

• 17:03Speaker 01

  For men, like ED is a huge one. Like I think the positioning of the market, I think they're all very, very, very bodybuilding oriented. And I think there's one for like pedestrians.

• 17:12Sam Parr?

  Did you remember the one, Sean, the deer one, the deer, it's like, it's like

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Bucked up. Yeah. Well, yeah, exactly. It's sort of like analogous to dick pills in, uh, gas stations.

• 17:25Sam Parr?

  Versus him.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, versus him. Yeah, exactly.

• 17:28Shaan Puri?

  There was a guy who came and spoke at one of Sam's conferences. He created, um, Sam, what's the guy's name? He created the method soap. And then he's created the Band-Aid brand and they created Ollie gummies or whatever, like vitamins.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:38Shaan Puri?

  Air frye. That's the guy. He's created three brands that are all like big in Target, different categories. And he talked about, he goes, what I, what I could do, I could just walk through a depart, uh, like a store, like a Target or a grocery store. It's like, what are you looking for? When you're walking through those aisles? He goes, I'm looking for a sea of sameness.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:55Shaan Puri?

  And anytime I see a category at a shelf where they're all positioning, they're all chasing the same target or they're all positioned the same way. So for example, he said Band-Aids, Band-Aids were all sort of boring, neutral, try to be the color of your skin, blah, blah. So they made a Band-Aid brand that was the opposite was like very loud. Badge of honor for, for a boo-boo, right? Or vitamins looked a certain way. They came in and tried to do it differently.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:15Shaan Puri?

  So do you have a similar sort of philosophy where you see, let's say, you know, these vasodilators, like they're all broed out and you're like, if I just reposition the same product, I would have a new audience?

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like I think Eric's strategy is very much design oriented, like differentiation through design and that's like looking for, um, I don't have a clear of a strategy. Um, I just really focus on differentiation and actually like determining how competitive a category is and how, how easily you can differentiate with what I call like valuable novelty.

• 18:54Sam Parr?

  Sorry. Does that mean that you actually want it to be the most competitive? So then, uh, being very different?

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, 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. But if you look at it, there's actually like three and then a long tail. And that's, as you show, you, you know, it's like, you want an uncompetitive market.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  And so like, where can you find an uncompetitive market in a competitive, like in a perceived competitive market, I'd say.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Cause like food leverage is like, it's too easy to, it's just the world's easy to make food, like relatively. So it's unavoidable. Like of course, everything's competitive.

• 19:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. It's like Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel talks 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 are 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 is 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's, it's not as competitive as it, as it looks on the surface.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, yeah, exactly. And it's just, it's a simple, like people will come to me, oh, protein bars are so, so competitive. And I always ask them, tell me, tell me about that. Like how, you know, you just ask a couple of questions. And, and it'll be interesting. They one can't even.

• 20:25Shaan Puri?

  What, what are those questions?

• 20:26Speaker 01

  What are the questions? Tell me, like, please explain more. Like, what do you, they're like, 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 referencing what they like, uh, who's good, who's not. And then second, a lot of times they're, they're not even consumers of a category. Which to me is the opportunity. It's like, all right, 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 like, how do you bring new people to the category? So yeah, just stuff like that. It's just funny.

• 21:06Shaan Puri?

  That's cool. So let's take this vasodilator thing for saying in the first 90 days of that, what would you be doing to figure this out? Like what do you, what do you actually go do to, to get these answers?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Oh, so first I'd figure out, I'd look at the literature and is it good or like just, so it's like two searches. One, what does the internet say? Like what is the reputation of it? What does culture say about it? And then two, what is the actual literature say? So like, what is the, what are the atias of the world? What has Huber been?

• 21:36Shaan Puri?

  Wayne Norton, what do they believe through syndicating the actual literature?

• 21:41Speaker 01

  So does that basically just mean like, uh, like is the perfect blend of that? Like a vasodilator is good. And then you also see like NO explode, looks way too bro-y and is lame or?

• 21:52Shaan Puri?

  Do you want yes, yes, on the culture? Or do you, why, why the two? What are you looking for as the perfect answer for those two?

• 21:57Speaker 01

  So on the cultural thing, is it? Second would be like a landscape, like what does the market look like? But before that, it was to say, is this a reputation that I can overcome? Is there some sort of stigma that is? It's good if it's, it's okay if it's contrarian, but is it, is it actually something so bad that I can't overcome it? Or like, what is reputation just general? Um, and then second would be like, or what's like this market map? Like, how do I define this market? And I, I don't, I, I, what, what I know, I probably just defined it as simply like bodybuilding oriented. There isn't actually a continuum of like, you know, natural people, bodybuilders, like that's like a natural opposing continuum.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  But, um, yeah, so just to study, a study of the market, uh, reputation of the market. And then most importantly, cause, cause if, if the market says this is bad, then it's, and but the literature says it's really, it has all these benefits. Then that's a contrarian thing of like, all right, people disagree with you, but then there's so, so it's, it's sort of triangulating those, those things.

• 23:05Shaan Puri?

  Sam, you invested in Lucy, right?

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:08Shaan Puri?

  So Lucy, the nicotine gum, our buddy John Coogan's involved with it. There's

• 23:13Speaker 01

  It's a, and now it's a, it's a pouch.

• 23:15Shaan Puri?

  Pouch, yeah. They, um, at the time, I think the sort of cultural stigma, this is pre Zen being really popular was, uh,

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:23Shaan Puri?

  nicotine equals bad, right? Aren't we supposed to be not having cigarettes bad, nicotine bad, blah, blah, blah. Science actually showed 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 was kind of, you know, just trying to get enough momentum culturally to get over the hump.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that, that's so like the Peter Thiel's approach to consumer is actually how you make money in this business. And there's plenty of examples like kombucha.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Protein bars are constantly this because no one thinks there's that there's things there's too many of them. Um, collagen was one. Um, nicotine's one.

• 24:03Sam Parr?

  You know, you know, another one that's happening right now, creatine. So, uh, creatine, the science is, 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 pros. Like, you know, and now we've made it cool or now like women are like, no, there's actually a lot of benefit here or normal average Joes. Like there's a lot of benefit here. The whole creatine movement, Sean, have you seen that right now?

• 24:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say 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.

• 24:36Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  So that's people are kind of disagreeing with you. So I, that's a generally like if you're asked 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 in culture that actually if you look at it from a first principles perspective, there's actually something there.

• 24:53Shaan Puri?

  So, uh, one more question before we 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 debater 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 kind of said this and I just don't have the actual judgment to be able to do it correctly.

• 25:16Sam Parr?

  Well, what's an example of an idea, Sean, of a product?

• 25:19Shaan Puri?

  Well, I actually want to ask you about the opposite, which is like, what are categories that you think you would like run away from? You're like, no, no, this is the type of thing I wouldn't go into for these reasons.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Fast, anything fast following.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Like following Liquid Death, following Ali Pop. You gotta, you gotta be the first one in the country controversial disagreeable thing. You can't, you know?

• 25:41Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Cause you're trying to win big. And I think I read something the other day, like a, in the AI category that Sequoia was talking about, they're like, if you just study all markets, the market leader, so number, whoever becomes number one of a new category will take something like 75% of all the profits, 50% 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.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  And I think you could be looking at history and this is why I think history is something I just like, think is so important in studying consumer, like. That would be true with, that would be true with kombucha, college in market, these sort of big breakthrough new markets that emerge, like the first one to do it well, takes all the profits.

• 26:22Shaan Puri?

  Are you, when you, when you say you're studying history, what does that mean? Like you're reading biographies, you're, you're looking at old financial statements? What are you doing?

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Uh, it's, it might, you know, be like, one, one would be looking through your phone at the old category. So like, what did, what did photos of the category look like in 2012? But 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 keeping that recollection of that. And I think it just isn't talked about when I see people starting consumer brands. It's kind of like, oh, here's today, here's the future. It's just such an important piece of like, in the equation of whether this is going to work or not. But yeah, I don't, there's no, there's no one writing books on this stuff and no one cares. So it's really, you have to just

• 27:08Shaan Puri?

  You have to piece together your own history.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, piece it together and yeah.

• 27:11Shaan Puri?

  All right, let's go to idea number two. I don't even know what this means. Night occasion in general. I don't know. Is that an idea? What is that?

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Okay. So again, I feel, I think you myself is like an anthropologist. So if you look at the morning occasion, uh, it is very fixed, right? It's all around coffee, waking you up, sunlight, sunlight observation is a new one. Thanks to, I think a consumer brand is a big change culture in that way. So circadian rhythm, um, taking supplements, maybe your morning pills, whatever rituals there are. The, the morning occasion is 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 has become very clear that's super important. And if you look at that, it to me, it's a wide open, like there isn't a coffee of the sleep occasion.

• 28:00Shaan Puri?

  At night, you have what? Like magnesium, maybe or something like that, right? It's like one maybe cat product?

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, no one's owning it. Right now you brush your teeth, right? So there's like Colgate's got it. You got, but like, there is a huge opportunity to sort of be the brand for that occasion. There's some obstacles, obviously, but, um, to me, that's like the, if I'm an entrepreneur, I'm really studying that.

• 28:23Shaan Puri?

  That's a strange insight to have. What made you get to that conclusion?

• 28:27Speaker 01

  You've just got to think about, everything's occasion based, right? Like, the best example is like champagne dominates a celebration occasion. It's a, outside of that, it's a terrible problem, right?

• 28:37Sam Parr?

  Or for like, for RX Bar, it's like, I'm driving somewhere, I want, I'm going to a gas station and I want to get something healthy.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, like RX Bar was obviously on the go, it was a big occasion, but to be honest, it was egg, it was because of the egg whites, there were some signals, it was breakfast. It was sort of like a great fast breakfast, but I think about like, everyone's talking about sleep. You have eight sleep, you have 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 they're 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's the best drug, it's the biggest drug. So is there something like that? There's some brands working on it, but that, that, I think there's, there's.

• 29:22Sam Parr?

  Which promising ones?

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Uh, there's one called, um, uh, Moon Brew, there's one called Beam, I use both of them. One is melatonin, one doesn't, that's the big controversial one. And melatonin is actually sort of, you could have, melatonin is actually something that could be contrarian. People say it's bad for you, it's habit formate, it's exogenous hormone, but then there's also literature that's tied antioxidants to. Those are good, but I, me and my fiance, we find, we find ourselves having this, like this beverage at a small dose before bed and it's like a nice ritual.

• 29:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think that's brilliant, actually. The, uh, the, basically like looking at moments and looking for, for openings. There's a Chinese company, I think it was, maybe it was ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, maybe it was the one that owns WeChat, not sure, but they, uh, at their annual meeting, I remember going and watching their annual meeting, which was weird because it's all in Mandarin, I don't speak Mandarin, but I'm like sitting there trying to translate these slides. Cause I was like, I want to 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 so a 24 hour cycle, broken into 15 minute intervals. And what they did was they were like, we want to have a product or an app for every moment of your day.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  That's like totally dominating philosophy. That's insane.

• 30:43Shaan Puri?

  American companies, you couldn't come out and say it, but like, obviously, Zuck probably feels the same way.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:47Shaan Puri?

  Uh, but they were like, you're in line for coffee. What's the inline coffee app? Like, we need an app that is designed to be awesome for that moment. Okay, now you have an hour in bed scrolling at night. What do we have for that? That's like the TikTok app where you're just going to 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 then Snapchat came out, 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 lens, suddenly photos was totally of a wide open, multi-billion dollar opportunity that you had to look at it in some other angle, um, in order to see it.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I would just emphasize like the consumers all the mighters. And so putting yourself in a, that's the thing and going through that is the, it's where it all starts, in my view.

• 31:39Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I like that. Do you also look for like inspir- product inspiration from other places? Like, I know some people that do CPG that they're like, they travel a bunch or they'll be like, oh, yeah, in Thailand, they drink this. What is this? Well, 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.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  So basically, you want to consume as much information, collect as many dots, so you can connect the dots at some point. And the best example of that is like, I had an internship in Belgium. And we supplied Innocent Beverage, which is a smoothie company. And in their label, they, they would, the innovative thing they did is they would, um, and their greenest thing would be like, one apple, one banana, and half a lemon, 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, uh, two dates, three eggs, six almonds, four cashews, et cetera. But that insight was from just purely observing different markets and, and different brands, different.

• 32:39Shaan Puri?

  You're just like journaling or to keep, keep track of these or it's all just in your head?

• 32:42Speaker 01

  It's in the, yeah, it's just in the.

• 32:43Shaan Puri?

  All right, let's finish up these ideas. I want to ask you about the bar businesses. All right. So idea number three, continuous testosterone monitor. This is pretty fascinating.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  I think the the the American male cares so much about testosterone.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  And I think, I don't know if this is feasible. I mean, we do blood tests. So, and I actually like looked into this for like 10 minutes. But if you were to have some way to measure testosterone or some broader hormones in a continuous way. So like when you wake up in moderate, like, I think there's, there's a lot of demand for that. And I think the American male was love that.

• 33:28Shaan Puri?

  Sam, you're the American male. What, what are your T levels right now?

• 33:30Sam Parr?

  Dude, I want to know my T 24/7.

• 33:33Shaan Puri?

  Are you, are you 400? Where are you at? Is it higher than your math SAT score was? Or that's the test?

• 33:41Sam Parr?

  I don't even, I, what's the SAT out of? I don't even know. What, uh, do you not, you don't get yours checked, Sean?

• 33:47Shaan Puri?

  I've, I've never got, I don't think, maybe I got it checked once. I don't think I've ever really, I definitely am not the, the typical American male.

• 33:54Sam Parr?

  Wait, Peter, do you, do you have, you get yours checked?

• 33:56Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I do it quarterly.

• 33:58Sam Parr?

  Do you have, uh, man, by the way, I, I'm, was an investor or am an investor in that thing called Levels, which is a continuous glucose monitor. And like, uh, yeah, yeah, everyone has to figure this out. And if you do figure it out, it's pretty awesome. But do you have some like, because you're friends with like, uh, I think Peter Tia is one of your investors, 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 nighttime erections and all this crazy stuff?

• 34:23Speaker 01

  No, I've, so I've gone from like, getting close to be obsessive about measuring everything to just now I'm like, totally, it's like so easy to do it. My, my routine is, um, I'm currently off supplements right now. I just want to get a baseline of my blood markers. I test it quarterly. Um, and then normally I take, um, supplements in the AM and PM.

• 34:47Shaan Puri?

  I think, I think culture is going that way. This is my, this is my prediction for 2025, which is that I think everybody got really inspired and sort of overanalyzed everything through Huberman and Brian Johnson. I love those guys, but I think the, uh, The average person, it's way too much work for way too little payoff. And we all kind of 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 sort of fine tune optimizing. And so I think there's going to be a giant retreat back to simplicity and basics for like health craze.

• 35:23Sam Parr?

  So for the listener, Brian Johnson is like a tech billionaire who likes the headline is he spends $2 million 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 amongst tens of other thousands of people to let you know like how good your blood work is and how long you're going to live, whatever. There is this woman in the Wall Street Journal. She was like a substitute teacher and she's like, she's like says her income. She's like, I make like $50,000 a year and I just go for walks and I eat healthy. And she was number one on the list and like Brian Johnson was like number six. And it was pretty funny that all these guys are dedicating their lives and all the resources.

• 36:00Shaan Puri?

  Bingo night that you need for the community.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think it actually causes like emotional regulation and not being stressed or anxious is probably more important than like obsessing about some other stuff, so.

• 36:16Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. All right, let's do the most exciting idea you have on this list. New religion. Talk to me, I'm ready, preach.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Sort of religions, I think it's a bad word. It's like something to belong to that helps you guide morality and ethics that

• 36:34Speaker 01

  can be a ritual or tradition that we all can like bond over and feel aligned on. 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 aren't 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.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Have you guys ever gone to a Shabbat? No, something like that. Dude, it's the shit. It's the best. Shabbat is the shit. I love it. It's like basically a Friday meal where you don't use cell phones and you tell everyone how much you love each other. Yeah, and like Saturday, I'm not working, like forced. And I just think that's the obvious. We want that.

• 37:41Shaan Puri?

  Why are you saying there's no money? These mega churches have hundred million dollar run rates. The priests are driving private, flying private jets like they, they, they, have you seen Joel Osteen? That smile, that's a billion dollar smile right there.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  So I think maybe it's like actually the best business of all businesses. It's just.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  I'm pretty sure that the Catholic Church is the largest landowner in the whole world.

• 38:03Shaan Puri?

  Not, not to reference Peter Thiel again, but he talks about for monopolies. He's like all the companies that talk about how, how much of a monopoly they have, how dominant they have, they are, they're usually the most vulnerable and the ones that are super dominant always trying to downplay how dominant they are because they 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 they 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 churches.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  It's probably totally right. So I misread this, but maybe I should be a priest.

• 38:35Shaan Puri?

  Well, I've thought about this a bunch of ways. I think you can, you could either unbundle it. So, you know, one strategy for business is unbundle things. So take things that come in a bundle. So you get God and a higher power. You're going to get community and a rich, a Sunday ritual, and then you're going to get an operating philosophy for life. And so that's the, that's the current religion bundle. And then, then you see things like, you know, look at the NFL every Sunday. Look at SoulCycle. 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? Uh, but then there's Tony Robbins. He'll maybe give you the operating philosophy without God. And, and for me, for example, that resonated. I was like, cool. I want this without the, but I, you know, I'd like to be in charge of it and not, not sort of say it's somebody else that, that's deciding my fate.

• 39:17Shaan Puri?

  And so I think some people have unbundled this, but it would be very interesting to see somebody actually try to provide a new bundle.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  And I think, I think you could really just like, it's a first principles approach, but like, across the different domains of life, like who's got it right? Like the Buddhists have got stuff right. The Jews have got stuff right. Charism's got stuff right. Christianity too. And just sort of built like, sort of look at it from that perspective. I bet you'd come up with something great.

• 39:42Shaan Puri?

  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 follow my gut, which I tend to fall in that category. But to hear your kind of academic point of view, I actually think it's pretty neat.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  I wouldn't call it that, but I guess from what you're, yeah, I mean, I just, I'm like a terrible student, but I study a lot.

• 40:11Shaan Puri?

  What does that mean?

• 40:12Speaker 01

  I was like literally a terrible student, but I do, like all I do is my free time is study.

• 40:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's actually nice for me because I kind of, I do the same and then sometimes I meet people who are 10 times more successful than me. And they're like, yeah, I don't even think about all that stuff. I'm 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 matter as much as the inputs 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 that it's not really as hand wavy as they think. And it, either they're downplaying it or, or they're kind of like Michael Jordan. You're like, how do you shoot a jump shot? He's like, I don't know, I just 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, that resonates because that's how I think. So, you know, it's.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  I would, I would perhaps say like, they're not as introspective. They're probably 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'm always sort of like looking back and studying the past of like, why did this work? Was it a framework? Can I come up with a framework? Was it a pattern?

• 41:21Shaan Puri?

  Well, let's do a little introspection 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 $600 million, 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, me and Sam have talked about this before. There's two, you know, type one, type two entrepreneurs, type ones are always looking 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 want to do it. And then there's other people we call speedrunners, this type two, which is now that they feel like they have a new point of view, new mastery of the game. They're really excited to go do it. This is just in their blood. It's in their DNA. They just want to go back to the same space.

• 42:05Shaan Puri?

  I don't know if it's as simple as that, but why did you decide to do it again?

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was in process. So I had a not compete. So that was a constraint, but then I wanted to actually prove to myself that I wasn't just a CPG entrepreneur, that I could go do this in other industries. And so I actually, I went to go explore different industries and try to like, and I kind of like started and stopped and a lot of times.

• 42:31Shaan Puri?

  What sorts of stuff? Give us a sense of.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  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 know, this is really like Elon's like a not a good influence. Like I was like, oh, he could, I can like learn anything. And then very quickly it was like, I can't fucking 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 going to start a business where I have to pick up the phone to fix a 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 want to be in.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  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 couldn't help but see like a vision of something to do. And so I was like, you know what? I'm okay. I'm okay with just being called a type two. And I'm okay. Once I die, it just says like. Nose protein bar, you know, like, watch what I'm going for. Am I gravestone? That's okay. Like, and it goes back to like self-awareness. Like, you gotta do what you're good at.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  And like, one thing I've learned is like, as I got older, I'm thirty eight now. Like, I do find it harder to learn new things. Like, I'm a later adopter. Why do it again is like, I see a huge opportunity to bring, to grow the market, to delight customers, and it's fun.

• 44:10Sam Parr?

  Are you calling the shots? Are you the CEO? And are you like a very hands-on CEO? Or are you doing it?

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Are you chairman? No, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm the CEO and I'm in the office every day. I'm in manufacturing right now.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  I only have one way.

• 44:31Sam Parr?

  When you, you have a four-month-old kid, it sounds like you're gonna, you're gonna get married soon. You know, a lot of people in your position, who I imagine you have roughly in the ballpark of nine figures liquid. That's enough money for many generations. 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?

• 44:51Speaker 01

  I think the idle mind's a devil's playground.

• 44:53Sam Parr?

  But you've had an idle mind, no, for the past few years?

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I still made myself busy. But, but it was idle, it was idle relative to now, yes. 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 want to make sure my son sees daddy working, working hard. I need to be a role model for him. I need to be in an office, I need to be sacrificing. And then like, at 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 was.

• 45:32Sam Parr?

  Does that mean you're, you're kind of bummed out or like for the past few years?

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just was unfulfilled. Like, I was just like, and being an investor sucks. I like,

• 45:42Sam Parr?

  It's pretty boring, isn't it?

• 45:44Speaker 01

  Well, the only good thing about it is you're, you can, like, you have more freedom of time and responsibility. Like, that's the great thing about it. And I just don't actually like that.

• 45:55Shaan Puri?

  Have you ever seen this Reddit post by the, this guy Jake, who started Movement Watches?

• 46:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 46:01Shaan Puri?

  They were one of the early D to C brands. They made a watch brand that got really big off of Instagram. And he wrote this thing on Reddit, which I think you would never expect this guy to be here, right? They sold it for, I think, a hundred million dollars. You would never expect him to 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 it pretty openly. I sold my company Movement for a lot of money. I thought all my problems would be solved. It made my life really cushy and comfortable. I optimized for being as stressed free as possible. I play video games when I want. I wake up when I want. I have really no reason to go to bed if I don't want to. I always 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 want to share some things. And then I'll just fast forward. There's a bunch of stuff. He talks about,

• 46:44Shaan Puri?

  I've been separated from the company for two years. I'm thirty one, single. I never have to work again. I'm also lonelier than ever and deeply depressed. I really believe that we need purpose in our lives to be happy. For some, 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, what he wrote.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  And you, and my point, my, to your example, like, you have to work. He said you don't have to work.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Like, you have to.

• 47:19Shaan Puri?

  Just not for money. It wasn't for money that you had to work. It was for yourself.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Just like, you need to produce.

• 47:24Sam Parr?

  I want to bring up this article that, uh, you, that got written about you. It was on Medium. You know what I'm talking about?

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like a super sensationalized. Terribly upgrade and she was just projecting.

• 47:38Sam Parr?

  I thought that was gonna be the case. I told Sean was gonna pick it up and he goes, he's, this is what he's probably gonna say. And Sean nailed the prediction, but for anyone who's talking about, who's thinking about, uh, 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 and is unhappy. And like the photos are like you like looking off to the distance, but there was one pretty amazing.

• 48:04Shaan Puri?

  Dude, just pro tip for founders. Anytime somebody wants your article about you and they want you to just take photos looking longingly at the window, they're about to fuck you. That's what they're trying to do. And just don't take the photo and don't do the article.

• 48:15Sam Parr?

  The paragraph goes, uh, uh, so, so Peter bought a fully furnished house for $19 million in May. He splits his time between here and Chicago. He chose Miami because there's no income taxes. He has a Ferrari and a Vespa parked in the driveway. A housekeeper who comes daily keeps the seven bedroom spotless, though most are usually empty. Like just little jabs right there.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 48:38Sam Parr?

  Like, and then she basically says, uh, this looks like a place that ticked a box requesting the newly rich bachelor package and this setup fell straight from the sky. Just like constant jabs. First of all, isn't 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.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's like, she, she couldn't, like, I'm very introverted and I love being alone. I never once said I was unhappy. It's more than like, she was projecting what she would be like. She's like, couldn't imagine living here alone. And I'm like, this is fucking great. Like. It was just like, it's like, it just shows you can't trust media. Like, the story was supposed to be about my process for finding my next business.

• 49:18Sam Parr?

  But it was, it was still a good article. Uh, like there were some cool insights of it's like, whatever, a little bit about your background story and, and the photos are dope.

• 49:28Shaan Puri?

  One of the things Sam and I like to talk about when we both sold our companies, we were like. The day you, you know, there's like this whole process of like the, the journey of this, the thing. And then you're like, gonna sell. That's kind of a stressful time and it's just kind of like relief when you sell, at least that was how it 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? Figuring out what you want to 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 were just memorable for you? Just like unique human life experiences that you had going through it? That's the first question.

• 50:08Shaan Puri?

  The second would be like, you know, if your cousin or your brother was going through this or was about to do it, what would you kind of tell them? What would you advise them now that you've been through it?

• 50:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say by going through the process, it took me a while to like, actually comprehend the money.

• 50:24Shaan Puri?

  Had you taken money out of the business before that?

• 50:26Speaker 01

  No, no. So I went from basically like, you know,

• 50:31Speaker 01

  75 K a year to, it's 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 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,

• 50:54Speaker 01

  I just, I just, I maybe it's like, I have kind of like low self-esteem for being dyslexic, I think. So I didn't think I was great, you know what I mean? I just don't think I'm that special. And then I didn't realize like, you just get treated differently.

• 51:06Sam Parr?

  You also were living in, uh, maybe not the most friendly or, um, 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 could 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 gen pretty easily.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. If you're able to have 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 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 remnants of the process. And so that's what's dangerous about Miami on wealth management. And I would just define the different sort of options, like you can go with Goldman. They're going to feel you, they're going to make you feel good, like, you know, just go through sort of like how to manage this money.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  That 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 want to do. So that, that's what I wanted to help with, and I would help someone is like, here's how you should think about it. And here's like helping not waste their time.

• 52:25Shaan Puri?

  All right, I want to ask you two questions. First one is real simple. How big can this be, David, as I'm 75% of the way through this bar right now?

• 52:32Speaker 01

  I would, how big, so the market, I think it's like a, say eight billion dollar TAM, the protein subcategory. To me, the biggest exciting opportunity is to convert non-protein bar people and bring them into the category. So, so like just interviewing people, they'll, they'll often say, I'm not a protein bar consumer. 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.

• 53:04Sam Parr?

  Is that your threshold for success?

• 53:06Speaker 01

  That's a good question.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Enterprise value, yeah, I would say, yeah, I would want a billion in top line.

• 53:16Sam Parr?

  What's that worth?

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Depending on growth and EBITDA, you put a three or five on it.

• 53:22Shaan Puri?

  I love how you don't shy away. We have a lot of people that come on this podcast that they want to win and they want to win big and they want money and they want, they want things, right? We all want things and whenever Sam will ask a question like that of like, does that, would that be, would, would anything less than that be like not a success for you? Or something like that, they'll like always go back to like what they think they're supposed to say.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 53:46Shaan Puri?

  No, no, no, this doesn't define me. You know, I'm, as long as I wake up every day and my, my wife kisses me on the cheek, I'm good. And I love that you don't give a fuck. And I see that in a bunch of your quotes. We have this quote section, I just want you to react to some of these.

• 54:02Shaan Puri?

  My favorite, by the way, don't trust a guy who celebrates his birthday.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. True, but I'm not a dad, but it's kind of true.

• 54:12Shaan Puri?

  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.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just think it's character shit. I think it's like, and you have a really high character, usually there's some trauma in it. The 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.

• 54:36Shaan Puri?

  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?

• 54:48Speaker 01

  Um, without sounding like a rich asshole, like, no, I mean, I'm.

• 54:55Sam Parr?

  I, I like the rich asshole asshole version of you. Feel free to sound like that.

• 55:02Shaan Puri?

  He's like, I have one butler, not three now. It's tough out there.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  It's like, oh, I don't have a nightmare. It's like, that's such a, like, you know, it sounds so terrible. No, I mean, so I think like the, just being like physical exertion 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 a priority and the first thing to go is my health. Like it's my company, my family, my family's probably more important now. But like, I'm not as more, I'm not, my family's more important than my company and then me. And so my health is the first thing to fucking go.

• 55:41Sam Parr?

  Is your, um, is your new company in, um, in person or remote?

• 55:46Speaker 01

  What do you think?

• 55:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I made the biggest mistake, dude.

• 55:50Shaan Puri?

  He's like, have you been listening?

• 55:52Sam Parr?

  I was hoping there was like, I was hoping there was like a 3% chance. My company, we, we, we started it like, kind of like right after COVID. I've made such a mistake, dude. We did remote and it's like an irreversible thing.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you want a high performing company, if you want to win, it's, you obviously have to do it. And it's, it is like, my work's fun. So be in the office.

• 56:12Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Well, that's why I'm doing it. I don't care about the winning. It just is fun. It's fun to be around your, like to become your friends.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Oh, and that's the thing is like my social. Bucket is fulfilled through my work colleagues. Like, so I don't really socialize outside of my work.

• 56:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, I was in the same boat. You just, you give someone a job, you're hired. Want to be friends?

• 56:33Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, my paid friends are the best friends. I found my W2 friends are awesome.

• 56:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 56:43Shaan Puri?

  Well, dude, Peter, I know we're a little over time, so we'll, we'll, we'll let you go. But you're awesome. I really appreciate you coming on. I think your story's 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 virtues 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 prioritizing stuff. I think there's a bunch of people who will listen to this that want that also and will feel more empowered to do it. In the same way that you were saying, like Elon lets you think, wait, shit, can I do anything? Right? Like it gives you permission to like, you know, to be a, to be the way you want to be. And I think you've done that today on this pod, so I appreciate you coming on.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Thank you, guys.