#801 The $1B Nutrition Drink Company w/ Chris Ashenden

Chris Ashenden is the Founder and CEO of Athletic Greens. They recently raised $100M and are currently valued at $1B. In this episode we discuss health, nutrition, daily routines and how Chris built a massive business before taking any outside investment capital. ======================= Mode, UK Fintech app, allows you to buy, earn and grow Bitcoin, all in one app. Not only is it a secure app to buy & hold Bitcoin, Mode allows you to pay & receive up to 10% Bitcoin Cashback from its growing list of online partner brands. Available on the App Store and Google Play. Download Mode at modeapp.com and set up your account to be in with the chance of winning ONE WHOLE Bitcoin. Offer ends Jan 31, 2022. Only available in the UK. ======================= My friends at Coin Cloud will give you $50 in FREE Bitcoin when you buy $200 or more at any of their 4,000+ machines. Use promo code POMP to get your free Bitcoin. For details or to find your nearest Coin Cloud machine, visit www. Coin. Cloud/Pomp Coin Cloud has been serving customers since 2014 and has established itself as the world's leading digital currency machine (DCM) operator. More than just a Bitcoin ATM, Coin Cloud machines make it easy to buy and sell Bitcoin and 30+ other digital assets with cash. To find your local ATM and get $50 in free Bitcoin, visit www. Coin. Cloud/Pomp ======================= Fundrise is largest direct-to-investor real estate investment platform out there, giving you the opportunity to achieve upside of an asset class previously reserved for institutions and high net worth individuals. That’s right, Fundrise is making high-end private market real estate investing accessible to everyone via an easy-to-use, automated platform. See for yourself how over 190,000 investors have built a better portfolio with private real estate. It takes just a few minutes to get started with as little as $10. Go to Fundrise.com/Pomp today and, for a limited time, get $10 when you place your first investment. That’s Fundrise.com/Pomp =======================

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Chris Ashenden is the founder and CEO of Athletic Greens. They recently just raised over $100 million and the business is now valued at over $1 billion. In this conversation, we talk about health, fitness, nutrition, and what it takes to build a billion-dollar nutrition company. Chris is a fantastic operator and entrepreneur, and I hope that you enjoy this conversation. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by Mode. Mode allows you to buy, earn, and grow Bitcoin all in one app. Not only is it a secure app

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  to buy and hold Bitcoin, Mode allows you to pay and receive up to 10% Bitcoin cash back from its growing list of online partner brands. Mode, the UK fintech app, is one of a kind. They're FCA-registered and are listed on the LSE in the UK and the OTCQB in the US. They choose to hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet. They are piloting a Bitcoin payroll product to pay UK employees in Bitcoin. Mode is giving away one whole Bitcoin to one of their customers. All you have to do is set up an account with Mode to be in a chance of winning. That's it. The opportunity ends January 31, 2022. Download Mode today on the App Store or the Google Play Store. It's only available in the UK,

• 1:26Anthony Pompliano?

  but if you're in the UK and you're not using Mode, you're wrong. Go download Mode today, where you can buy, earn, and grow Bitcoin. They're very Bitcoin-friendly. They'll Bitcoin on the balance sheet, and they're paying their UK employees in Bitcoin as well. Go download Mode today. This episode is brought to you by CoinCloud. Did you know you can buy and sell crypto with cash? I want to introduce you to CoinCloud. They are more than just a Bitcoin ATM company. CoinCloud is the world's leading digital currency machine operator. They've been around since 2014 and have thousands of machines across the country. You can buy and sell Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Cardano, and over 30 other digital assets. No connecting bank accounts, no long waits, and if you have questions, you can speak to a live, US-based customer support rep 24/7. I've had a lot of Bitcoin ATM companies reach out.

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  But CoinCloud is the only team I've found that does things right. They put together a special offer for listeners of this show. You can get $50 in free Bitcoin when you buy $200 or more at any CoinCloud machine and use promo code POMP. Find your local ATM at coin.clored/pomp. Again, that's coin.clored/pomp and use promo code POMP to get $50 of free Bitcoin when you buy $200 or more at any of their machines. Today's episode is brought to you by Fundrise. You all know I believe that the best investors both understand and seek out extreme asymmetry. Fundrise is here to help you do just that. It's the largest direct-to-investor real estate investment platform out there, giving you the opportunity to achieve upside of an asset class previously reserved for institutions and high net worth individuals.

• 2:54Anthony Pompliano?

  That's right, Fundrise is making high-end, private market, real estate investing accessible to everyone via an easy-to-use automated platform. Its 1 million users already know that the investment with Fundrise is capable of producing strong appreciation returns and income generation, while helping to stabilize a diversified portfolio. That's more important now than ever in our inflationary environment. See for yourself how over 190,000 other investors have built a better portfolio with private real estate. It takes just a few minutes to get started with as little as $10. Go to fundrise.com/pomp today and for a limited time, you'll get $10 when you place your first investment. Again, that's fundrise.com/pomp. Go check it out and when you make your first investment, they'll give you $10 on top of it. Fundrise.com/pomp.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs POMP Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of POMP Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by POMP or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 4:02Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, we are going to bring on Chris from Athletic Greens. They got some big news that they announced, I think it was yesterday, and we got a lot to talk about. So, Chris, are you there? POMP, I'm here, mate. Thank you for having me. Dude, you've been absolutely killing it. All right, I want to jump right in. You guys just announced that you raised over $100 million. At a $1.2 billion valuation, what are you going to do with this money? Let's just start there. That's a lot of money and you guys haven't really raised that much capital previously. So what do you, what's the plan with the capital?

• 4:30Speaker 02

  So this is a follow on round after our first ever equity race that we announced July last year, which is more strategic in nature. This is about aligning ourselves with the right growth investors and growth partners to really step forward, to continue to innovate and really bring more and more value to our existing customer base. And then take that value globally as we begin to expand.

• 4:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And when you start to think about how big the business is today, I think a lot of people don't realize that you got to about $150 million in annual run rate without ever raising a dollar before you actually went out and talked to investors about kind of taking that external capital. How the hell do you do that? Right? Like, like I think your story is so incredible and people don't actually understand how you built this massive business with no outside capital.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  I think, I mean, you, you called this, I think, in one of your pinned Twitter tweets about build things people want. And what we did is we built something people really want. And we are, we are so committed to how we continue to iterate, improve and just how we do that. And in 10 years of AG1, we're on our 52nd iteration. It's really nine synergistic products and one 75 of the highest quality ingredients. Like we really work, really work to bring people that power of foundational nutrition. So at its core, it's customer experience and delivering for your customers, something that they want. They'll continue to use, it drives value for them, that they're happy to share an authentic recommendation about. And that was enough and far enough for us to grow and grow and grow.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  And we bootstrapped to over 150 million run rate and annualized revenue prior to deploying a dollar of external equity capital. And as you look at the sort of generational change, and I apologize, man, I just did some intervals before jumping on. So I'm in that post epoch phase right now where I can't stop sweating. So it's great to be here, but like we're in a generational phase right now. Where what people want is to take more ownership of their own health. And this is a huge generational shift. It's not going back in the box. It is a fundamental driver. People want to feel amazing. They want to have higher quality of life. They want to have better health. And not just live longer, but higher quality for longer. They want to be happy, healthy, have a spectacular life. And we are all about empowering that movement. So at the same time as our business has hit an inflection point

• 6:41Speaker 02

  around our ability to step into that demand, you know, we found a lot of appetite for investors to come and join us on this mission, to really step into the forefront of driving a very different approach to health and wellness. One, it takes active ownership of your own outcome. And ultimately, it's about giving people more of what they want, better and at bigger scale. And we had no shortage of spectacular investors who had interest. So our key investor, our lead investor, Alpha Wave Ventures, Alpha Wave Global is the name of the fund. Their principal there, a guy called Rick Gerson, he's living the space. He's been an AG1 customer since 2014. Every single person on our cap table is an AG1 customer. We wouldn't have it any other way. We want to build with them, for them, and it's very exciting.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  And the Alpha Wave Global team, they bring a very consumer global mindset. And they think about the world globally, the opportunity globally. They're very active in the US. They're also active globally. And they're very excited to help us build towards the mission. We also brought on a phenomenal investor and gentleman called Mark Baden is one of our other lead investors. And Mark Baden was the CEO and founder of Blue Nile,

• 7:47Speaker 02

  sorry, Blue Nile, CEO and founder of Zulily. And he was the chairman of Chewy when they went public. And with these folks, we bring a wealth of experience. We're really excited to help us really build, build and build into our mission. So we're at an inflection point as a business. I think, you know, there's a cliche, the mighty Amazon cliche, this is day one. But we're really at an inflection point and we're very excited about the value we can bring to our customers and a very different journey we can help empower for tens of millions of people around the world.

• 8:15Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about the product itself, I drink it every single day. And the reason why I do it is basically that there's no way in hell I'm getting all the nutrition that I need in terms of the, uh, the food that I eat on a daily basis. And so walk us through a little bit as to like, what does this do to my body, right? In terms of I go ahead, I drink, uh, the drink, uh, and what is that doing internally to me and why? Why is it important to drink it every single day?

• 8:39Speaker 02

  So if you consider we pioneered this principle of a foundational nutrition nutritional drink. And at its core, no one has the perfect diet. So you need to really work on nutrients you ingest and absorb. And that's both the type, the quality, the quantity of those nutrients. And they range from micronutrients to phytonutrients to specialized nutrients that can assist your body. Then no one has the perfect gut health. Years of beating it up, antibiotic use, not eating in accordance with our lifestyle, stress, all these things ultimately care your gut. So you want to do a lot to support your gut health, not just how your gut works to absorb the nutrients of both AG1 and other nutrients that you eat, but also the immune supporting effects of how you can modulate your entire immune system and nearly everything in your body by improving your gut health. So that's number two.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  And the third is let's face it, no one has a perfect lifestyle. So we want to give a lot of daily support, a lot of daily health love to your key bodily systems. And we want to make the power of this foundational approach as simple and as easy and as convenient as possible. So that's what we did. I do not believe there is another higher return on your health in 90 seconds a day than having an AG1 scoop, preferably in the morning, preferably on an empty stomach, although you can take it at any time of day. And thank you, by the way, for your custom and your support. Phenomenal. Love that we're helping to empower you on this journey. And I see you taking ownership over it all over the place, your sleep, your lifestyle, your approach. It's awesome, man. Thank you for shining that light and leading other people to come and do it too.

• 10:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I'm trying my best to actually not be a complete idiot about my health. So, you know, this is a key piece to it. Talk to me about as you build the company itself, right? So it's obviously a very big business today, but you've got some unique ideas around building the brand, about how to do distribution, right? Rather than just go exclusively sink money into Amazon or Google or Facebook type ads. How do you think about brand building and really kind of distribution in today's day and age in terms of social media, internet, etc.?

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Great question. So at its core, brand is what do people feel about you, your business, your products? And we've realized a long time ago, and I think a lot of people get this wrong. We don't refer to the business model as direct to the customer or direct to the consumer. I think that's really missing the true power of this whole approach. We've always called it direct with the customer. We want to build a two-way relationship with our customers. I thoroughly believe that this is the real power of our model. We get to form a direct relationship. You get to speak to them, ask them how we can better serve, where can we do better? Um, how can we ultimately grow with them and empower them on this journey? They get to give us insights, feedback and become part of the journey of helping us build a be a better, more beautiful business, a business for the future. And it's a spectacular thing.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  And in that sort of the two-way D W C approach that we have, we're going to be reluctant to step out of that in a hurry. When we have so much sort of desire to always try to control and do the best of that relationship. Now, what we've realized is if you consider how cluttered the world is, how cluttered the internet is, that a long time ago, the, the real key for business success is almost going back to the core of sort of how humans really function. We want to step forward. We want to interface with brands, people, humans that we trust. Um, and when we look to how we step into new habits, make new investments in our health, um, or step into new products that we want to purchase, we look really hard for an authentic, trusted recommendation.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  So our whole business is built on trust, quality and building that authentic recommendation. And there are many, many times that we'll work with partners, um, in any format who could have done significant financial, uh, lifting for our business. We turned away because we didn't feel it, it lived up to the authenticity that we're trying to build and improve. So we've taken both a continuous improvement approach to our core product and how we drive innovation back to our customer. We're taking a continuous improvement and innovation approach to how we go to market as well, which is really about building on an authentic recommendation. I think the days of someone watching, uh, someone they admire, take a Lewis Hamilton, who's becoming a cultural phenomenon, well-deserved as a spectacular athlete driver. And I think he's a great force for good.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  They don't want to see someone like Lewis being paid to chug down some drink or have it on the side of his car. When they know that he doesn't really live that, it's not authentic, it's not how he lives his life. We believe that there's more power and more truth and more value to the customer. And the authenticity of, hey, Lewis, what are you doing every day? What, what are the habits that you take to invest in your health every day? Where's that truth, where's that authenticity? And that, that recommendation becomes far more powerful in terms of building a brand, building a business. Then kind of the quote unquote old way. So we're excited to step into how we innovate around that. We're very excited for how we can continue to think about ways we can bring both our partners, our creators, our thought leaders, our amazing ambassadors.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  And most importantly, our phenomenal AG customers along on the journey with us. And that's when you start to look at where does some of the future go around web three? What are some of the possibilities? How do you really start to think differently about the way businesses interact with their customers? And most importantly, how customers think about how they are interacting with the various offline and online businesses, brands, communities, products that they're engaging with. And I really think web three is ultimately about the perception of ownership and participation. And things that were formerly largely offline, but are now online. And I think it is also going to be a growing part of the future of brand building. And we're really excited to build a generational brand, to build AG one as that daily foundation nutritional health drink.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  That an entire generation and everyone you love, everyone whose health you care about is just so encouraged and empowered to take. And people are taking action for their own health on a very different spectacular life journey. I think just like on this show, you encourage so much of the audience to continue to improve, to continue to think better, to step outside their comfort zone around learning, taking action. We're the same, we're on the same journey, but our focus is on investing in their own health.

• 14:30Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about kind of the brand, right? I don't know how much of it you personally think it's driven by you. When I think of Athletic Greens, and we've talked in the past, and as I've gotten to know you, I absolutely think the culture and a lot of this is driven by you. And kind of what you stand for, your pursuit of improving yourself and it kind of goes down through. The organization and then ultimately to customers as well. And I think that's what makes it so powerful is that the customers and ultimately you and your team have a very kind of close alignment in terms of what they're trying to accomplish and you guys are empowering them to do that. Talk to us about what you do on a daily basis in terms of what is your diet? How does your daily routine look like? What is your workout regimen look like? What do you personally do?

• 15:10Speaker 02

  So I really love having the first couple of hours of each day to myself. I like to invest in myself in that time. You know, we've built this business fully remote, fully distributed from day one, which gives you location freedom, which can be a thing of beauty. But you also just kind of have to watch ultimately what that means for your time zones. I enjoy having the space to have that first two hours of my day. And it generally works something like this. I have an in like, I can directly correlate my personal happiness on an inversely proportional basis to two things. How long it takes me from the time I wake up to the time that I am outdoors with natural light in my eyes? And my total time on any format of cell phone or social media. So my morning is basically wake.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  I don't have an alarm. I have a backstop alarm. I almost never hit it. I try to get it outdoor to get natural blue light exposure and some movement in my eyes. If it's inclement weather. I try to get next to a bright window and just do some movement. I pound a ton of water and then it's AG1 time for me. And like a lot of people, I practice some form of time restricted feeding and intermittent fasting on days when I feel well rested. On days where I feel beaten up, like I'm training, pushing a little bit too hard, I typically try to get a, a big, high protein dense meal early in the day. But on most other days, I look for some form of intermittent fasting. I take AG1 relatively close to waking up, typically inside the first hour. And then it's just coffee and water until my first full meal of the day, which can kick off anywhere between 10:30 and 12:30 each day.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  I try to look for four wake sessions a week, of which three are pretty intense and one is more mobility. And I try to get a walk in every day. Now, last year, despite being the most spectacular year for how I grew as a business person, how I grew in the sense we could make impact. And incredible humans I got to interface with, I, and I'm willing to be vulnerable here on your show. I stepped away from the degree to which I owned my own health and how, how disciplined I was and how non-negotiable I was on baking and not how I ate. And not how I slept so much, but on my movement. And so over the course of last year, and particularly towards the end of the last year, there were a lot of things. We're coming to a head, the financing, um, you know, really building up our team and recruiting, which is very exciting.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Getting our team on board and trying to empower them to really start to make a difference. Thinking on how and where we can improve and step into our customers' journey and life journey even more is very exciting. But slowly and steadily, I let slip the degree at which was non-negotiable, the degree at which I truly had mastery of how much movement I was baking into my day. So this year has been all about, that goes in non-negotiable. I'm really just determined not to step out of time zone. That makes it really hard. It's something I did for a significant time last year and it was just really, I found it really tough to get that timing much later than that. It's just the way I work. I've seen other people work very different formats. And then from a food perspective, I really focus on whole natural foods. I make sure that I'm getting adequate protein.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  I'm an omnivore. I support people on any range of the spectrum from all and vegan right through to carnivores who like to add a bit more nutrient variety density to their diet, some form of nutritional insurance. I'm really sort of in that place in my life where it's ultimately what works best for you. I, I work on my sleep. I find if, like a lot of entrepreneurs, that if something wakes me up anytime after about two AM, the brain is off running and it's pretty much done. So I try to make sure I'm in a really quiet place with perfect lighting. And like I'm really breaking in that sleep hygiene. And if I can get those things right, then the one piece that starts to shift is how I'm focusing on both

• 18:48Speaker 02

  sun exposure, light exposure, and then humans. Like you have to have the interface and the community aspect with humans. So my, my simple tenets are basically, one, invest in your health. Two, invest in your key relationships and these are both your immediate familial ties. I love seeing you with your brothers, man. It's very cool. Your immediate family and also those humans are ultimately the closest to and you invest most time with. I think there are some great things you can do there, such as just ensuring that you have at least one, if not two social dinners every week with, with four or more people to get that stimulation and try to really prioritize time to make that human to human connection happen. And the third, and what I'm most proud of on my own business. Journey and where I'm building for the future is to invest your time with purpose and meaning.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  And I think those things are all about some format of self-actualization and marching up Maslow hierarchy of needs. But once you take care of the basics, you're at some point looking at personal growth, contribution and self-actualization. I feel both grateful and really proud of the impact we're making in the world and how we can empower other humans to live a spectacular life. And that's the one that gives me the goosebumps when I meet AG1 customers, mate. And that's the one that really gets me excited every day. So all of those things kind of layer into my approach to health and happiness, which I think have both physiological and psychological levers that you can pull. You want to pull them all.

• 20:08Anthony Pompliano?

  I completely agree. JoJo, what questions you guys got? Hey, Chris, thanks for coming on. So my question is really around fundraising and stuff. So you guys started, you started the company in 2010. You only recently raised money a decade later after bootstrapping the business to $150 million in revenue. Can you just talk through, and I understand this could be a question that the whole podcast is spent on, but like, what did you learn during that time period that was so valuable?

• 20:32Speaker 02

  Customer. So if you look at the key pieces and bootstrapping and a desire to bootstrap is a forcing function of innovation and it's a forcing function of prioritization. That means we limited our geos. We really wanted, we know that we have a really powerful daily nutritional habit. We wanted that habit to be as easy for our customers as possible to layer in. So it mapped very well to a subscription-first business model. And we really looked at the big three levers that we can innovate. And if you think about our superstar Kat Cole, who joined recently as president and COO, who's literally my co-CEO and everything by name, and she is literally one of the most spectacular business leaders I have ever met. And I want to thank Pom because I discovered Kat, listening to her on Pomp's podcast. But if you consider

• 21:16Speaker 02

  the big three levers that you've got, you have your customer experience and our business model, right? You have your customer experience. It is the single most important thing. Ultimately, you have to build things that people want. They have to want to continue to be there. They have to love how they feel. You have to be really working on both that customer experience, how they feel, the value you're driving to them, the utility and the efficacy of what you're building for them. And that innovation there is continual, it will never stop. We're proud to always disrupt our own approach to doing that consistently. Like literally, iteration fifty-three is rolling out on AG one at some point this year. And we're building a spectacular team of humans who just assess on how else can we drive value. The second big area is business model innovation. And I think this is the area

• 21:59Speaker 02

  where both, firstly on that first customer experience, I think people stop to do enough time to really think the problem they want to solve and how they want to solve it within for their customers. You have to do that first to ultimately drive a differentiated customer experience and build something that people want. Secondly, on the business innovation front, I think people really fail to stop and think, okay, how could we? How could we? How could we make it possible to have this much nutrition in ninety seconds a day? Like, how could we make it possible to bootstrap this business, potentially indefinitely, offer an authentic trusted recommendation? And when I first started, in fact, some of the early advisors I had could come from a lot of other businesses in the nutritional space.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  Basically said, look, you've fundamentally over-engineered a product. Your cost structure will never work. Um, people aren't super excited yet to pay for something this nutrient-dense with this much nutritional content at this quality. You either need to kind of dumb down your product or massively, massively increase your price. And I always thought about, uh, basically being in the reorder business, making people's lives better. And as long as you do that well, they will stick around and they'll ultimately grow your business. So firstly, the customer experience. Secondly, the business model innovation. And I love how innovative we are there and there's a lot more to come. The third to ultimately is how do you execute? And this is where I think some people go a little bit, uh, crazy too early. They haven't thought enough about ultimately what they're doing for and with their customer.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  They haven't thought enough about, uh, business model innovation and you want to be innovating on those the whole time. But at its core, you subsequently need to look at just how do you execute? So we're determined to build a business that's beautiful and is spectacular and future-forward and future-making. Sort of paving a groundwork around how we do business. But it also talks about how you execute and everything, both how we communicate with each other, how we With our customers, how we drive marketing, how we look to really, really shore up our supply chain, um, how we foster our R and D approach, which then feeds back forward into how we drive innovation back to the customer. How we're trying to make sure our top players are taking time to step away from the business to really brainstorm on where else and how else could we innovate? Where else and how else could we drive innovation back to our customer?

• 24:08Speaker 02

  And what else could we do that is different under that? How could we approach to build a beautiful, more spectacular business? So the short version of that, mate, is we learned to innovate around customer business model and how we execute. And what we've got now is our ability to really recruit a team and scale into being well ahead of that curve. Instead of always sort of bumping this kind of unusual line where you grow, you can build team. You grow, you can build team. Now we can get slightly ahead of it and grow. And if you take that thinking through and assuming we execute well, what it now means is we can begin to build our businesses at an inflection point. You're probably looking at this the other way. So we're at the beginning of what we believe to be a pretty exponential looking curve.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  And we're very excited that our growth is accelerating. We believe our ability to impact humanity is also accelerating. And it's a pretty cool place to be if you uh, if you like making impact.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  John. Chris, you talk about um, executing and growth, but what are you going to do with this raise that you just did? Is it marketing? Is it growing the team? Is it research on the product? Can you just discuss a little bit about that?

• 25:13Speaker 02

  There's a temptation to say we're putting it all on Bitcoin, mate, but uh,

• 25:19Speaker 02

  but no. So I mean, firstly, we've been innovating and doing a lot of R and D for ten years. And we can now accelerate some of the pieces we've been playing with and bring them to life uh, more rapidly, which is about driving superior customer experience, investing um, and driving more value back to the customer and in all sorts of different ways. Then we want to look at, okay, if you start to step into scale for our business, um, we're a physical product business. We have a seventy-five pipe body ingredients, the uh, need for us to shore up our supply chain and always stay ahead of the curve around just consistency of being just so, so disciplined around always being ahead of the curve on both quality and our demands to be able to. Existing customer base, those will take up a lot of the capital as well as the growth.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  So just stepping forward into scale and growth. And those are the big three buckets in terms of how we'll be looking to deploy the bulk of this capital.

• 26:12Speaker 03

  Chris, when you think about people, obviously Kat Cole is a huge hire for you all. For those that don't know, she used to run a $5 billion revenue business that included a ton of kind of consumer brands. And just one of the best operators I think I've ever interviewed on the podcast.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  What was that like in terms of going and recruiting her? She had her pick of pretty much working wherever she wanted, I think. How did you get her and what does that mean for the business?

• 26:39Speaker 02

  I mean, Kat's a phenomenal human, phenomenal story. And literally, like I said earlier, just the most spectacular business leader I've ever met. So I heard her on your show last year.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  A lovely gentleman called Sahil Bloom met Kat, said, I know how much she would love to meet Kat. I'm happy to make the connection if you're both interested. That happened, connected with Kat. Phenomenal connection, just so smart, so impassioned, so excited to bring her phenomenal talents to really empower humanity in all sorts of different fronts and build something spectacular. And she joined as my advisor and a mentor. And she was really instrumental in helping me grow as a leader and a CEO and a business leader and a communicator. From where I was to sort of further down the path of ultimately where I needed to be and needed to be. And I like to say that she took me from about 2.5% of where I needed to be to 5% of where I needed to be.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  Through the course of last year and the bar is high there. I mean, if Kat's somewhere in the 80s, 90s, easy, probably mid-high 90s. And just sort of realizing through that process, what would it be like to work together? And my original thinking was actually like, we're still too early as a business. And then we started talking more. And I just realized, one, there's an opportunity for us here to fundamentally change the world as it relates to how people take ownership of their own health. And not just empower that movement, but really drive it and help people step into it. And this is life changing for tens of millions of people. When people start taking ownership of their own health through nutrition, through any sort of gateway that they step into, other things start to cascade. They tend to make better eating decisions, they tend to move more.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  They tend to make better buying decisions for their family and food. They look after their sleep and it starts to cascade. And at some point, people enter, okay, I'm doing great things with my health. How do I start to have a more spectacular life journey? Which literally leads to, I want to invest my time on the key relationships, which leads to happiness. Now I want to invest my time in something that drives purpose and meaning, which tends to lead to personal growth and contribution. So I'm very keen to empower this, this movement. I think Kat realizes just how much value she can add to this business. She's not, she loves a challenge. I think her story there and sort of how her decision tree ultimately baked out will be hers to share in detail. But I realized I need the best of the best to do what we're trying to do. And Kat is the best of the best.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  So to your point on how did it feel to recruit Kat? Absolutely, mate. It was my priority for months. And literally the first thing I worked on, on Mondays for an extended period of time. Cause I put the, if you remember the Eisenhower matrix on urgent and important. To always try to get ahead of that, my first half of each Monday is on the important, not urgent. And in actual fact, to many degrees, I think getting someone like Kat was ultimately urgent. The difference she's made in two months, the speed of her onboarding, the power of her thinking, of her leadership, of her communication. It's phenomenal and it's game changing. And I'm so excited to be building with her in this business and building with the whole AG team. When team AG is strong and we're getting stronger and it's a very fun, dynamic place to work. So feeling good, my friend.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  And thank you for asking. And again, thank you for putting the phenomenal, the one and only Kat Cole on my radar. In fact, when I used to have my one-on-one advisory sessions with her, I'd always open the call with Kat Cole, the one and only. And yeah, she's special, mate. She's amazing. I love it. I love seeing good people, working with good people.

• 30:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Where can we send people to find you on the internet or find out more about Athletic Greens? If they want to learn more about the product, where do we send them?

• 30:16Speaker 02

  So for Athletic Greens, athleticgreens.com, we would love to have you, would love you to come try, would love you to see the power of foundational nutrition. I'd love to see you layering that habit 60, 90 days. Don't sit there and go, this is literally the best 90 seconds of investment in my health every day. Very happy to give you money back and thank you for trying. I don't know that'll be the case. I'd love to have you and help empower you on that health journey, wherever you are. You're a little bit of athlete looking for that next medal, we've got your back. You're just getting off the couch and taking ownership of your health for the first time. We've got your back too. And we have, we have the full spectrum of range of customers with AG1. Now for myself personally, Chris Ashenden on Twitter and Chris Ashenden on Instagram. And thank you again, my friend, for having me on your show.

• 31:02Anthony Pompliano?

  You are, you're a legend. So very many people come on here and who built a huge, massive, sustainable, scalable business without taking any outside capital and then also have the ability to, to transition and say, hey, now's the time for capital and here's what I'm going to go do with it to make the business even bigger. So keep up the great work. We're super excited to be big supporters. We love working with you guys and, and keep it up and we'll have you back as you guys make more progress.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Thanks, mate. Thanks again for having me on and thank you so much for the support. I love having you on the journey. Cheers.

• 31:31Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. See you later, Chris.