Episode 457: Jeff Byers: The Former NFL Player Exposing the $200 Billion Supplement Scam

Are you taking supplements that contain nothing but expensive powder? In this episode of the Habits and Hustle podcast, I sit down with Jeff Byers, co-founder and CEO of Momentous, who reveals the shocking truth about supplement quality. We explore how Jeff went from NFL offensive lineman to building a $100+ million supplement empire, why chocolate protein powder naturally contains lead, and the eye-opening moment when Momentous threw away an entire production run because it failed testing. We also discuss the "Momentous Three" foundation supplements and the real cost of third-party certifications that most brands avoid. Momentous is a premium supplement company doing over $100 million in annual revenue. A former USC football captain and NFL player for the Seahawks, Broncos, and Panthers, Jeff merged his sports performance background with rigorous scientific standards to create one of the most trusted supplement brands used by professional teams worldwide. What We Discuss: (04:47) Journey From Athlete to Founder (14:59) Lessons in Consistency and Leadership (20:47) Building a Strong Co-Founder Relationship (31:35) Navigating the Supplement Industry Noise (39:37) Challenges of Building a Supplement Company (53:15) The Importance of Supplement Selection (01:01:38) Merger of Human Performance Brands (01:10:49) Omega-3s and Fuel in Athletic Performance (01:21:48) Managing Inflammation and Sleep Support (01:28:22) Natural Testosterone Support and Hormones (01:37:04) Supplement Selection and Community Impact …and more! Thank you to our sponsors: Momentous: Shop this link https://www.livemomentous.com/?srsltid=AfmBOorDUIZz3psr1Qsq_n1yE8_6JTq_QUFabOO9lH65HDEXCIoJOPLj and use code Jen for 20% off Therasage: Head over to therasage.com http://therasage.com/ and use code Be Bold for 15% off TruNiagen: Head over to truniagen.com http://truniagen.com/ and use code HUSTLE20 to get $20 off any purchase over $100. Magic Mind: Head over to www http://www/.magicmind.com http://magicmind.com//jen and use code Jen at checkout. Bio.me: Link to daily prebiotic fiber here https://bio.me/?utm_source=Jennifer, code Jennifer20 for 20% off. David: Buy 4, get the 5th free at davidprotein.com/habitsandhustle http://davidprotein.com/habitsandhustle. Find more from Jen: Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagement Find more from Jeff Byers/Momentous: Website: https://www.livemomentous.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffbyersceo/

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hi guys, this is Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

• 0:06Jen Cohen?

  Before we dive into today's episode, I first want to thank our sponsor Therasage. Their Trillight panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body. It's a portable red light panel that I simply cannot live without. I literally bring it with me everywhere I go. And I personally use their red light therapy to help reduce inflammations in places in my body where honestly I have pain. You can use it on a sore back, stomach cramps, shoulder, ankle. Red light therapy is my go-to. Plus, it also has amazing anti-aging benefits, including reducing signs of fine lines and wrinkles on your face, which I also use it for.

• 0:49Jen Cohen?

  I personally use Therasage Trillight everywhere and all the time. It's small, it's affordable, it's portable, and it's really effective. Head over to therasage.com right now and use code BEBOULDED for 15% off. This code will work site-wide. Again, head over to therasage, T-H-E-R-A-S-A-G-E.com, and use code BEBOULDED for 15% off any of their products.

• 1:30Jen Cohen?

  Guys, we have Jeff Byers, who's on the podcast today. Jeff is the co-founder and CEO of Momentus, which is my favorite supplement line. And I'm not just saying that because he's sitting across from me. I'm saying this because they are, they are one of the top dogs for good reason. They are super, super diligent. They're very stringent on their certifications for their products. I trust them. I trust you. And so, we're going to have a whole conversation here on supplements, optimization, human performance, all the good stuff. So, anyway, Jeff, thanks for being on the show.

• 2:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, super excited.

• 2:05Jen Cohen?

  I mean, this is, this has been a long time coming. I think this has been like a year and a half or something that we're like, "Hey, why don't you come on the podcast?"

• 2:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:12Jen Cohen?

  And finally, well, here you are.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  You need the stars to align with scheduling and the craziness of his life.

• 2:18Jen Cohen?

  I know.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  I'm glad I'm here.

• 2:19Jen Cohen?

  Well, you don't live here. Like, you live here, you don't live here at all. But how often do you come to LA?

• 2:23Speaker 00

  A lot.

• 2:24Jen Cohen?

  A lot.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  But it's just like I've had a couple bigger gaps than I normally have.

• 2:28Jen Cohen?

  It's just, I wasn't a priority. It's okay. It's okay. I'm not, I'm not offended. I understand. You have a company to run, a big one. And it's grown. Like, how big is it now?

• 2:38Speaker 00

  Uh, we're, uh, we'll do a hundred plus million this year in revenue.

• 2:42Jen Cohen?

  Wow. Okay. We're going to get into all of this stuff because you guys are, I think, just doing everything right. I want, before we just kind of go into that, can you just kind of give like a backstory of who you are? How did you kind of get into the supplement space? Cause your story is pretty phenomenal, in my opinion. That's when we met, you told me your whole backstory. So can you just give my audience a little bit of like who you are and why you kind of are doing this?

• 3:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, first I never wanted to be a supplement company CEO. That was not my dream, was not on my bingo card, which is what all the cool kids are saying now. But like my background, I went to school at USC here in LA. But really uniquely, I was one of the top recruit high school athletes. Uh, I played football. I was a two-time captain during USC's heyday. I was an offensive lineman many, many pounds ago. But I had a really unique journey in college. My true freshman year, I started as a freshman on a national championship team. And the last game of the season, I just destroyed my hip. And I ended up having two hip surgeries post that. And was told I was never going to really play football again, or it was going to be a big struggle. And every athlete has some transition point in their career of like aha moment.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  And it's really hard, right? It's hard to transition out of athletics or elite military service, or whatever that may be. I just had that thrust on me when I was 19 and like started mentally planning um for it. So I missed my entire second year because of two hip surgeries. But I ended up getting in track to graduate undergrad in three years. Anyways, fought to come back. My third year, I had two back surgeries. Right? So I missed my second and third year because of injury. And I was just like, it, the hardest part about transitioning out of sport or military is you let sport define you. Right? Because it's everything to you. And you have to realize when you transition out of sport is like. The sport never defined me. It was a part of me. I defined me. I get to choose who I am.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  And that's a hard process. I got to do it when I was super young and it actually came back. Football came back to me. So I ended up playing my last three years at USC. I was a two-time captain. I got my masters in business.

• 4:48Jen Cohen?

  Well, that's also very unique, right? Like usually if you're an athlete, you're not, not to be like, not to like paint everybody with the same brush, but the fact that you got like an NBA from a very hard school.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:59Jen Cohen?

  Plus you were the athlete.

• 5:00Speaker 00

  But I would never have done it if I didn't get hurt, right? I had this, I had this aha moment, this inflection point in my life. That was like, football defines me, what I'm gonna do without it.

• 5:10Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  And then I was like, you know, I'm lucky, I'm very blessed to have a great family. My dad was like, nobody feels sorry for you. You're getting a free scholarship.

• 5:18Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  Right? To go to top, figure it out, right?

• 5:22Jen Cohen?

  I love that. My thought, your dad was also, he's also pretty, very successful. I don't remember what he does though.

• 5:27Speaker 00

  My, my dad's been in the meat industry most of his, the, the, most of his career. He's worked for Hormel and a company called JBS and he's retired, but like really successful leader has managed.

• 5:38Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 5:39Speaker 00

  Big, big companies, way big. Like it's so funny. Like everybody's go, oh, your dad must have great advice. I'm like, my dad managed like a hundred thousand people.

• 5:47Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  Right? And like an eighteen billion dollar P and L where I'm like, I'm rubbing pennies together.

• 5:53Jen Cohen?

  Right. But you still would think, that's so funny you say that because one of my, I would always, my question was gonna be like, you must have learned some type of leadership, like going into now being a CEO of a company that's by the way a hundred million dollars plus. Like, did you get any leadership?

• 6:08Speaker 00

  Yes. My dad's, my dad and Pete Carroll have been the most influential people in my lives.

• 6:13Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  Um, right. From a leadership, management, how you handle people, right? Vision and all of that. It's just, it's not always like, when I think about leadership and I think about what I saw from Pete Carroll as like one of the best NFL and college coaches of all time. It's not apples to apples to, to momentous.

• 6:30Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 6:30Speaker 00

  But there's so many similarities. Like you're in the same category, but it just, not everything applies. Like how you, how you manage athletes and hold them accountable is actually. Can't do that in a real workforce because a locker room culture, when you live, when you sleep together, eat together, play together, work together, you have different bonds and you can challenge people and have different conversations.

• 6:55Jen Cohen?

  For sure.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  More bluntly than you can with, you know, a director of sales or marketing or ops or whatever it is.

• 7:03Jen Cohen?

  Well, especially in today's time right now, right? It's become much more difficult to do, you gotta be much more mindful and PC.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  I think that's correct.

• 7:11Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  Which is hard for me at times.

• 7:13Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, I know, me too.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  So anyways, so I went to USC, graduated with my, got my MBA and had a really cool opportunity playing in the NFL. I played four years in NFL. I call it, I practiced for the Seahawks and, and the Broncos and then I played for the Panthers. I also practiced a lot for the Panthers, but I really got to start a handful of games for the Panthers and was a backup offensive lineman and it was a ton of fun. Like I, like many kids.

• 7:38Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Dreamt of being a professional, right? Whether you wanted to be a musician, an actor or an athlete, I dreamt it and I'm one of the very few and I realize how lucky I am to like have the ability because there is some genetics at play. Like, yes, you like, like I had to be six, four and three, 10, like.

• 7:57Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 7:58Speaker 00

  If I wasn't six, four or three, 10, I could have never have played in the NFL. If I was five foot, five, three, 10, I would never have played in the NFL. So I, I, lots of stars align.

• 8:08Jen Cohen?

  How much would you say is genetics versus work ethic and practice and all the other things?

• 8:14Speaker 00

  You have to be in the zone from a genetic standpoint. There's no, no shape or form. You can't get out of it.

• 8:21Jen Cohen?

  In any sport, right?

• 8:22Speaker 00

  Not in any sport. For like every position, for example, every position you have to be in, in a zone, right? Like you have to have you some unique characteristics.

• 8:32Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  There's a lot of people that fall into those unique characteristics, right? And then you have to be lucky enough to have grown up in a household or in an environment that allows you to play and succeed and that can fuel that passion. And then number two is you have to be lucky enough to not have major injuries or whatever, right? Like, I mean, if you back up like that household is about socioeconomics and it's about opportunity and it's about gear, it's about the right. Location, high school, all those things, right? Number three is like, you just don't get hurt in the wrong times. And the number four is like, if you do not work your ass off and you are not mentally tough, you will never be great. You will never make it to the NFL.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  You will likely never make it to a collegiate level because you get punched in the face, air quote, every single, single day. You get challenged, you get like, it is really, really hard. And you have to like, one of my favorite quotes from a coach is like, you have to learn to love to be uncomfortable because you suffer and you suffer and you suffer. And sports unique is because you have this really grueling, high pressure stakes that, right? A lot of people depend on you, but also like the fatigue and the injury rate is like, you just play hurt. You like, you just learn, like, you're like, pain, normal, right? And you just learn to go through things that most people can't imagine. So there, there's a lot of mindset and effort at play.

• 9:56Speaker 00

  And like, if you don't work hard, you're not getting there. There are some freaks, some massive freaks that, you know, might not have to work as hard as others, but they're very, very, very few far in between. And when you have like genetics, opportunity and hard work, all, and everything kind of goes right, that's the Hall of Famer.

• 10:18Jen Cohen?

  That's a hundred percent. You know, it's so, I'm so glad that you mentioned something because you don't hear that so often, which is such a big piece of it, which is the opportunity within your family. Because people are not taking sometimes into account, the gear is expensive, right? Having someone to like, take you from practice to practice, like getting there. Having like a supportive family, the socioeconomic piece to a lot of these athletes that I, that I know even, they were able to even like self-actualize to be who they are because they had a family that allowed them to do that.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  A hundred percent.

• 10:50Jen Cohen?

  You know, and people don't think about that. The other thing that you said was very interesting and I, when I found out, when I met you and you were like, I, I, someone was saying, oh yeah, he was a professional athlete, blah, blah, blah. Now he's the founder. You know, like, it didn't surprise me because like, you know, part of what I do is I I talk to some of the most successful, you know, CEOs, founders, people in the world. And what one thing, the through line that I always hear from people like on the show, off even much more even off the show is what they look for in an employee or someone to work with is somebody who played sports seriously, like played like D level sports or played like played something like you because you already are halfway there, which is like the mental mindset of, you know,

• 11:31Jen Cohen?

  a not just a team building and all that, but like grinding, practice, long hours, hard work, like consistency, like having to go on and on and on, like those things, like when you were an athlete like you were, it like you were, those are fundamental life skills that will serve you so well in profession.

• 11:52Speaker 00

  And you have to be coachable.

• 11:54Jen Cohen?

  And coachable.

• 11:55Speaker 00

  And that coachability in business, like

• 11:57Jen Cohen?

  That's a great point.

• 11:58Speaker 00

  Coachable curiosity is like, you have to be willing to seek discomfort and seek advice to go further. Right?

• 12:07Jen Cohen?

  That's so true.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  And it's hard to get outside. I mean, I do like sports, music, like, like the arts have some of that in there too, because like you can't be great at music if you aren't coachable. Right? If you're not curious on how do you push your limits? And there's a lot of times when it's like, I mean, some of my extended family are incredible musicians. Like, there's a lot of times you get to make a choice. Do I play an instrument? Do I practice? Or do I go hang out with my friends?

• 12:34Jen Cohen?

  A hundred percent.

• 12:35Speaker 00

  Right? And to make hard decisions on to be great, right? It's not fun. That's not fun. Right? Like, not fun in that moment, but when you think about where you could derive joy and what matters. Anyways, it's

• 12:49Jen Cohen?

  No, you're a hundred. No, that's a hundred percent. Like, life's choices, right? Like, if you want to be a great or a success, you have to be making those choices that like, it's not instant gratification. It's delayed gratification.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  Well, it's like that, like, that's so powerful because that's one of the things that I learned in sport is to be great at anything. Like, it's bone crushing consistency, right? It's like, what we did in the NFL was not crazy. But like, and how you got there was just like consistent approach, time after time after time. And when you do, consistency builds, and that's when greatness happens. Health is not a today thing. It's not a tomorrow thing. It's an everyday.

• 13:28Jen Cohen?

  Look at Tom Brady.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:30Jen Cohen?

  He was like, he wasn't even considered a great player.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:33Jen Cohen?

  Right? Like, but he was so committed and such a hard worker and so consistent and stayed on on path.

• 13:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:39Jen Cohen?

  And now look, you know.

• 13:40Speaker 00

  And he just did the same things, right? The boring mundane.

• 13:44Jen Cohen?

  The boring mundane.

• 13:45Speaker 00

  When I think about like, like, training as a professional athlete, like, you could do everything, but you did the most important things over and over and over and over again.

• 13:54Jen Cohen?

  Exactly.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  And that's how you got great. That's what health, that's what performance for life, that's with whatever you want to do. You want to be a great leader, do the same things over and over and over again, right? Show up for your team. You can't do it one day, do it every day.

• 14:07Jen Cohen?

  A hundred percent.

• 14:07Speaker 00

  Right? And over years and years, you become a great leader.

• 14:10Jen Cohen?

  Was that how, so, so did you take these types of like, number one skills that you, that you did? You fostered these by, by just doing the consistent, mundane, boring things and very, like, over and over again. But you also said that your dad and Pete, like, Pete Carroll, like, you learned a couple of things even by watching what they did. What was, what was a one takeaway from Pete Carroll that you take now into your business and from your dad?

• 14:37Speaker 00

  I would say from Pete, it's show up the same every day, right? Be, be predictable about how your energy is and how you show up to your team, right? And the thing that I saw from Pete is whether you win, lost, good, bad, Pete showed up the same. Really passionate, high energy, right? You never questioned if Pete loved what he was doing today. I guarantee you Pete had a lot of shit days where he had to change, right? And he had to be like, I get to choose how I show up. I'm gonna show up differently. So Pete, to me, really showed me the power of if you show up consistently and you show up with ability to galvanize and bring passion and purpose to what you do, people rally.

• 15:21Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 15:22Speaker 00

  But if you do it sometimes, people don't buy in, right? Like, I played for coaches that like, sometimes they have high energy, sometimes they MF you, and sometimes they do this, and sometimes they do that, and you're like, what am I gonna get? I don't know. It's really hard to perform for those people. But when you know this person truly cares, they're really passionate about what we're doing, they love it, they're in all the time. It's not like, are they in? Are they out? Are they pissed? Are they not pissed? Anyways, that was really powerful from Pete.

• 15:49Jen Cohen?

  Predictability.

• 15:50Speaker 00

  Predictability as a leader and as like, as the head coach. From my dad, I mean, I've learned, like, my dad is is really, really influential in me. Like, from my dad is like, people are your greatest asset, but also the hardest thing you do every day. Right? Because we're all humans, right? You have to make hard decisions, but you have to do them with compassion as well. Um, and I would say the other thing, like, my dad, like, so the people stuff I work a lot with my dad on. Um, like, because we're all really unique and crazy and weird in our own ways.

• 16:25Jen Cohen?

  Difficult.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  And difficult.

• 16:26Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 16:27Speaker 00

  But at the end of the day, like, every decision I make potentially has an impact on that person. And if I have an impact on that person, it probably has an impact on somebody else, somebody else.

• 16:36Jen Cohen?

  Right. The ripple effect.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  The ripple, and those things, you can't take them lightly, but you also have to make the right decisions. So the other thing with my dad is like, my dad's ability to just work, right? And like, effort, effort makes sense. And it's like, it's not a choice, right? Never a choice. It's like you always work hard. And that was like, I have a lot of stories about my dad. But like, I remember I was in seventh or eighth grade, and I was an offensive lineman in seventh or eighth grade, too. And I was, it's like Pee Wee football, and I was, you know, running down, and I kept like, making my block and looking back. Right? Because I was done. And he was like, you're never done.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  Like, you always go to the whistle blows, regardless if you did your job or not, right? And I like, like, that effort, that repeated effort of like, doesn't matter where the guy, the running back is behind you, doesn't matter, like, just go. Always bust your butt, always work. Whistle blows, take a break, figure out what you did right, figure out what you did wrong, do it again. Right? And those, those types of lessons are really unique to me because how do you relate them? How do I relate them to business? Like, a lot of things relate to business, like, uh, to me, it's just, they're. You just have to like, okay, like one of the examples I give of around like growth stage or entrepreneurship is like the ball always gets snapped. In football, the ball always gets snapped, doesn't wait for you, doesn't care about you, right? And it doesn't remember if

• 18:04Speaker 00

  you got beat the last play, or you had the best play in the world, the ball gets snapped. And so as a leader, you have to be ready to go at all times. You also have to have a really short memory, but you have to be able to learn from your past mistakes, because that's what the ball is going to get snapped. Time is moving forward. You're gonna have to make a decision, and you don't have time to think about it, because the ball gets snapped.

• 18:26Jen Cohen?

  Right. It's like a sense of urgency.

• 18:27Speaker 00

  See, it is a sense of urgency.

• 18:28Jen Cohen?

  It's a sense of urgency.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  But the short memory, like, you just like, you gotta forget it, like, how many, like, as a business leader, good and bad happens every single day. And I, I leave a conversation where I'm like, man, that did not go good, right? Literally, in like, three seconds, I have another meeting, then I have to show up differently too. And I can't worry about that being like, having a board member that wasn't happy.

• 18:53Jen Cohen?

  Mm hmm.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  Right?

• 18:55Jen Cohen?

  That's the worst part.

• 18:56Speaker 00

  Ball gets snapped.

• 18:56Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 18:57Speaker 00

  Clear and go, right? And like, that to me is like a really, like, it's such an easy one to one of like, business to sport, and

• 19:06Jen Cohen?

  Is that like compartmentalizing?

• 19:08Speaker 00

  However, it's compartmentalizing, it's just knowing that there's always another play. And the most important thing to do is win the next play.

• 19:14Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 19:14Speaker 00

  Because you can't control what happened in the past, but you have to learn, like, quickly analyze what happened, move on.

• 19:22Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 19:22Speaker 00

  Because, like, if you got beat, and that you let the same thing happen again, and again, and again.

• 19:27Jen Cohen?

  That's a good point.

• 19:28Speaker 00

  You lose your job as an athlete, right? You get fired. Same in business. If you, like, like, my board doesn't care if I make mistakes. What they don't want to see is mistakes be made the same over and over and over again. Mistakes are expected, right? Because we're trying to do it better than it's ever been done before in our business.

• 19:47Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 19:48Speaker 00

  And you get some right, you get some wrong. And I also have never done this before. And it's like, I'm trying to break the mold. And it's like, hey, we're okay. Make a mistake. But if you make a mistake, and you do it again, and do it again, or if you make a mistake, and be like, oh, my gosh, I made a mistake, what am I gonna do? And it's like, make another decision, move forward.

• 20:04Jen Cohen?

  And you have a partner as well, right?

• 20:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, I have a co-founder and like, This is, we're on year seven together, technically year 10. We worked at a biotech together for three years.

• 20:14Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 20:14Speaker 00

  And she is like, there is no chance that I, that Momentus is what it is and I am what I am without her. And we've had a really pretty tight relationship of like, we are equals, we'll always be equals from representation on the board, from equity, from compensation. We have different roles in the business, very different roles. She's the president, I'm the CEO. We call it the visionary integrator and she comes from a very different background than I do. We're both pros. She came from a McKinsey company.

• 20:43Jen Cohen?

  Oh, wow. So she's like super academic.

• 20:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:46Jen Cohen?

  Okay. She must be great with operations.

• 20:49Speaker 00

  She, she's a, she is like integrator versus visionary. Like I get to sell, I get to build, right? The stoke, lead the people. She's awesome at managing people, awesome at process, right? Strategy, I've yet to sit down with somebody who's better than strategy than her. And I've sat down with some really smart people.

• 21:06Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, she must be so smart.

• 21:08Speaker 00

  And like, she's also awesome at hiring, awesome at hiring because she's able to, I think McKinsey trains you to hire really well, but like how she interviews and pull people out, like I am a cultural hire, like,

• 21:20Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  Like I can, I can take that, but it's like, how do you get to technical skills and all like, just like masterful how she can un, unpeel people.

• 21:29Jen Cohen?

  That's amazing.

• 21:30Speaker 00

  And so what we've always said, like, we started the business based upon our principles. And like, anyways, we were at this biotech together. We weren't, we didn't work super closely together early on. And then what we realized is we really had similar values and we cared about things the same of like, we really were entrepreneurial. We wanted to like, this was, the biotech was a jumping off point for both of us. We cared about performance, but we cared about integrity deeply. We cared about like being inclusively, doing it the right way, no matter what. Like money would come later and we really, really believed in candor and conflict. Like coming from the NFL, it's like you never. Questioned where you sat at the end of the day. You know, if you had a good day or a bad day.

• 22:12Jen Cohen?

  Right, right.

• 22:13Speaker 00

  Because somebody told you. And if you didn't know yourself and like that amount of direct feedback and having conflict. And she came from McKinsey, which is a like a pro like it's like pro sports business.

• 22:28Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 22:28Speaker 00

  Where there's a lot of conflict and you never were confused. And so we've been able to turn candor and conflict into our greatest, like our, our greatest strength together because we come at problems so differently, like just the visionary integrator mindsets are different. How we operate, our personalities are opposite, but we always have the same goal in mind. And we come at problems very differently and we butt heads and we have some conflict and we speak candidly. And the next thing you know, my idea and her idea come together and it's a different idea. That's the best idea.

• 23:00Jen Cohen?

  That's great.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  People, it's really unique, but the one thing we've always like, we are able to like check your ego, right? Right? Like, hey, like, you know, and like go back, like, man, I didn't like how I showed up there. Like my ego got my way.

• 23:14Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 23:15Speaker 00

  That's really unique in founder relationships.

• 23:18Jen Cohen?

  And you call each other out basically and keep your, keep each other honest. I think is that the way to put it.

• 23:23Speaker 00

  Well, when people see it for the first time, their minds are blown. They're like, what's going on? And then like three seconds later, it's like, we're back on the whiteboard figuring out how to solve a problem.

• 23:32Jen Cohen?

  That's amazing.

• 23:33Speaker 00

  But it's because we've worked together for so long. And I would say it's also because like Erica's like one of my great friends, but we don't hang out. Like it's really weird.

• 23:42Jen Cohen?

  No, I get it. I get it.

• 23:44Speaker 00

  We work together like 60 hours a week and it's like, anyways, we had an offsite down in Southern Utah and her and I drove back together. And we're in the car for like five hours. It was like the first time in a really long time that we like, talked about non-business stuff for more than 10 minutes.

• 24:02Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 24:02Speaker 00

  Right, like this is just like.

• 24:04Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  Because when we're together, we're solving problems.

• 24:06Jen Cohen?

  Right, right, right.

• 24:07Speaker 00

  Team stuff, because there's always a problem. There's always a personnel. There's always a new hire. There's always some challenge.

• 24:14Jen Cohen?

  Totally.

• 24:15Speaker 00

  And so it's like, you know, like, her husband's a big mountain skier and travels the world. And like, I've got three boys and like, you know, like, what is Buffy me up to? What is so so is doing? It's like, we just like, talked and I was like, holy cow, like, we haven't talked about our personal lives this much in a really long time. And it was like, really kind of nice.

• 24:31Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:32Speaker 00

  But unless we are trapped in a car with me driving, right? And no soul service, because we're in Southern Utah, like, she would have been working, I would have been working, you know, it's like, we sit on airplanes together all the time and we just work.

• 24:44Jen Cohen?

  I just work.

• 24:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:45Jen Cohen?

  Well, yeah, but it works though, right? Because you guys like yin and yang, right?

• 24:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, a hundred percent.

• 24:50Jen Cohen?

  You guys have like different skill sets.

• 24:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:53Jen Cohen?

  So, okay, so then, yeah, now you're at the biotech and now you guys, how did you guys say, okay, now I'm going to start a supplement company that has like really, like, at the highest level in terms of quality and like, how did that happen?

• 25:07Speaker 00

  So I never, Eric and I never dreamt of being supplement company.

• 25:11Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 25:11Speaker 00

  Founders, CEOs, whatever we are. In 2018, we spun out of this biotech and we spun a technology out of it. So we spent three years together to biotech and the way the biotech was developing was a transdermal drug delivery technology. So how do you get drugs through the skin? And one of the reasons why they brought me on as employee four was because they had an idea to use it in sport.

• 25:33Jen Cohen?

  Oh.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  Right, and deliver non-drugs through the skin.

• 25:36Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 25:36Speaker 00

  And that was really interesting.

• 25:37Jen Cohen?

  Was it like patches and stuff?

• 25:39Speaker 00

  No, it's like a lotion cream.

• 25:41Jen Cohen?

  Oh, okay.

• 25:42Speaker 00

  Anyways, in early 2018, they were starting phase two clinical trials on a couple of medical products. And we had this really cool product that was starting to get a little traction. We had early data on, but we were working with two France champions, marathon world record holders, the Department of Defense, pro football teams. So we, the biotech development technology was able to deliver sodium bicarbonate. Bicarbonate, sodium bicarbonate is baking soda, but bicarbonate is a buffer, which means helps control acidity. And in our bodies, when we train really, really hard or really, really long, you produce acid, hydrogen ions. So lactic acid is what we typically refer to it as. When those hydrogen ions build up, build up in your muscle, it's your limiting factor to go harder

• 26:25Speaker 00

  or to go longer, right? Cause our body's natural ability to buffer is, is not there. So anyways, by being able to change and regulate the pH of the muscle, you can actually push a little harder and push a little longer, right? Which has really awesome sport implications, like and really awesome special forces implications and all these other things.

• 26:43Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 26:44Speaker 00

  Right? So it got really crazy traction in those spaces. But we were at this biotech that was starting FDA clinical trials, phase two to like, not the same consumer, like we were like a consumer biotech. We had this cool product. We were doing clinical research. We were like running and gunning, working with the craziest places I could ever imagine, you know, from my past life. And the biotech was like, we're going to clinical trials, like totally two different mentalities and Eric and the, and so the biotech started to slow down.

• 27:14Jen Cohen?

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:16Speaker 00

  In the right ways, how it normally does. And I was doing this really cool passion project in here within the biotech. And Erica was like, I wanna let, like, I wanna help you with this. Like this is fast and this is fun. And, but we were at this crossroads. What do we do with this, this product? This like unique application of it. I was like, well, can't live within the biotech because we're starting to like, building inventory does not relate to a biotech company.

• 27:45Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 27:45Speaker 00

  Right? That's pre-commercial. That's in phase two clinical trials or a marketing team or any of that. Can't really sell it because we, we, we didn't have enough sales traction or enough data. And I was like, maybe we spin it out. And so Eric and I basically just negotiated with our employers, we were, she was employee two, I was employee four, to spin out that, the rights to that technology and create a company around it. So in the middle of 2018, we started the underlying entity behind Momentus, which is called Amp Human. And what's super cool with that is we didn't, we wanted to supplement the company, right? Like that's why we've, are in the unique place that we're in. And we wanted to create, you know, like the first pitch deck was like, The next great high-performance company was literally what was like

• 28:28Jen Cohen?

  So that was kind of the, that was what you wanted to do. You wanted to create the next best high-performance.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  Performance company.

• 28:33Jen Cohen?

  Like who? Like, give me an example of who you were looking at to emulate, if you had to pick one.

• 28:38Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 28:39Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 28:39Speaker 00

  Right? Sounded really cool.

• 28:41Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, it just sounded good.

• 28:42Speaker 00

  Right? But what we were doing with PR lotion had never been done before, right? And we were doing clinical research and we were in all these unique places. And what, what I saw at the time was like, we have all this crazy access. We're doing something really unique. What if we brought other technologies in?

• 28:59Jen Cohen?

  Oh, okay.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  Other products in because we have the access, right? And then we could bring them to the consumer space and like, think high-performance in consumer, which was really interesting. Didn't know what the hell I was doing or I was talking about, other than we had a really cool product. And it thrust us into these unique places. And so we always, but from day one, we knew that AMP Human, AMP HP was not just this one product. We thought the product was going to be really big. Turns out it's incredibly niche because how you work out and how I work out, maybe once or twice a month, maybe? Do we work out hard enough or long enough where PR lotion can actually have an impact? And it's not really pretty. It's kind of nasty. Like you gotta be hardcore.

• 29:46Speaker 00

  And it's still a product in our portfolio.

• 29:47Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 29:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:48Jen Cohen?

  Like Navy SEALs use it or?

• 29:50Speaker 00

  We had some really cool traction in some of those unique places. And so our, our first funding was from venture capital and the Department of Defense. So we won a $1.6 million innovation contract with the DOD through Special Forces.

• 30:04Jen Cohen?

  For that, for that one product?

• 30:05Speaker 00

  For that product.

• 30:06Jen Cohen?

  And then what happened?

• 30:08Speaker 00

  We did a lot more clinical research and we, like, it helped get us going, right? And we, and the product built ultimately into about a $3 million SKU, a $3 million product. But throughout that time, we tried to like acquire new technologies or like, where else do we go? But we had this scientific advisory board because PR lotion was doing something really unique. We had like the best sports scientists and all these crazy people involved of like, oh, what if we could do X? What if we could do Y? What if we could do Z? But that really high-performance space is so.

• 30:42Speaker 00

  Out of reach for most people of what we learned.

• 30:45Jen Cohen?

  So then what was like, so then you thought, okay, let me just be more for the people, right?

• 30:49Speaker 00

  Well, well, my board was like, you should go do sports nutrition. And I was like, hell, no.

• 30:56Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 30:57Speaker 00

  Yo, I fought it. We fought it so hard. I remember sitting in a board meeting, we had a board meeting in San Francisco. And they're like, it was like, on the like roadmap of what's possible is like 50th supplements. Right? And they're like, well, what about this? This is awesome. Like, this is fast, big market. I was like, we are a consumer biotech company. We do clinical research. We're funded by the federal government. I am not launching a protein, like never, right? Like, and, and part of it, like, I go back and ultimately I had a mentor friend challenge me. And like, made me realize the board is right. But it was this, the industry is so messy, so dirty, unregulated. My ego said, you don't want to be a supplement company. You don't look up to anybody.

• 31:42Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 00

  I want to be that person. I wanted like, I wanted to be a different, I wanted to be a disruptor, a different, like, like do it better than it's ever been done before. Like, I wanted to challenge and all that. And like, what I saw in supplements was marketing, marketing, marketing, not brands that I loved. And not great products, right?

• 32:01Jen Cohen?

  That's the scary thing, actually, that people don't recognize. Like, a lot of the brands that do the best is because they have really good branding and really good marketing. But their actual products are really terrible.

• 32:13Speaker 00

  It's not built on the fundamental base of quality.

• 32:16Jen Cohen?

  No.

• 32:16Speaker 00

  Or doing what's right for the customer, the consumer. And so for me, I just like, I use a lot of supplements and sports nutrition. Like, I probably had a million dollars purchased for me or on my behalf over my sports career. Like, you just do like, since high school, I've been taking protein shakes and weight gainer and creatine and you name it, right? Like,

• 32:36Jen Cohen?

  What brands were you using back then?

• 32:37Speaker 00

  Back in the day, metrics.

• 32:39Jen Cohen?

  Metrics, right?

• 32:40Speaker 00

  I mean, like, there wasn't many. I'm trying to think of like, what was the weight gainer I used to take? Oh, man, it was bad. But like, there's just so many things out, out there. It's like, You know, Gatorade's a supplement, like it's sports nutrition.

• 32:54Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, I guess so.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  Why? Like, it's not used like that anymore. It's now be like, which is part of its problem. And if like, we can get into that whole.

• 33:02Jen Cohen?

  No, it's a whole, it is a whole thing.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  But, uh, I realized, right, that there are really, really high quality. There, there are companies that make high quality products, super high quality products. They aren't brands, they're companies. Like when I think of a brand, a brand inspires you, they motivate you. You put a hat on of that brand.

• 33:23Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 33:23Speaker 00

  Right? Because you feel something for them. The really great product companies felt like Amgen or Pfizer.

• 33:31Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 33:31Speaker 00

  It felt, it felt.

• 33:32Jen Cohen?

  Clinical.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  So far removed.

• 33:35Jen Cohen?

  Totally.

• 33:35Speaker 00

  That they weren't here for my, to help me be better. But those are the companies I used because those are the companies that got recommended to me when I was in the NFL.

• 33:44Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 33:45Speaker 00

  Because of the quality, but I didn't like, it's not a brand, it's not like, it's like a brand evokes an emotional response.

• 33:52Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 33:53Speaker 00

  Right? And like, yeah, that, like, they might have a brand name, but they're not really a brand.

• 33:58Jen Cohen?

  So you wanted to like, do it better than anybody else?

• 34:01Speaker 00

  So I wanted to bring quality and brand together.

• 34:05Jen Cohen?

  Hmm.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  Right? And I wanted to do it differently because ultimately I don't believe supplements are the fix. Like our company doesn't like, so when I look at the market, it's so noisy. Like, what do I take? Why do I take it? How do I take it? All that BS. And then it's like, is it actually good? Right? Don't know. And are, are they helping me?

• 34:30Jen Cohen?

  That's the problem. Nobody really knows.

• 34:32Speaker 00

  And so it's like this, there's a quality. So how do we build the best, highest quality products we can? How do we bring knowledge and help educate people and be their partner on their, their journey for performance?

• 34:43Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  For life, not performance for just sport, performance for life. And then how do we actually create a really, really highly curated product portfolio? That gets people in the right products at the right time, but also. Not have the wrong products in there. And so like, that's super important to me. Like the curated portfolio, the knowledge and the quality all together create a really differentiated brand that can create and drive impact.

• 35:12Jen Cohen?

  Well, how do you even know when, because you just said it, it's such a noisy space. Like the supplement space is a trillion dollar industry now.

• 35:22Speaker 00

  Two hundred billion.

• 35:23Jen Cohen?

  And it's getting bigger by the day. I mean, and you know, if you're watching social media, every second video is about a product, you know, like a supplement of some kind. People don't know what to take.

• 35:37Speaker 00

  Or why.

• 35:38Jen Cohen?

  And or why. And the other major is if it's even a quality supplement. That's the problem.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  I think you're exactly right. We're bombarded with noise, right? Like, everybody's got something. Why? Because there's no barriers to entry in our category. You and I could start a supplement company tomorrow.

• 35:55Jen Cohen?

  Now, I know. And we could put like baking soda in it.

• 35:58Speaker 00

  Do whatever you want.

• 35:58Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 35:59Speaker 00

  You can do whatever you want, right? Which is scary. So the like, this is part of why I didn't want to be a supplement company. Anyway, so we started to think about building it ourselves. Once I realized like, oh, there's opportunity here to do it better than it's been done before.

• 36:13Jen Cohen?

  What was your first product?

• 36:15Speaker 00

  Well, we started building a protein powder. We started building a hydration product, a fuel product, and a recovery product. We started building that.

• 36:23Jen Cohen?

  Right. And that was what? What was it? The hydration one was, what was it called?

• 36:26Speaker 00

  It was called Hydrate. We don't have it.

• 36:28Jen Cohen?

  You don't have it anymore.

• 36:29Speaker 00

  And so we'll get, we'll get, this will get fun. What I realized was it was really easy to build a supplement company.

• 36:39Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 36:40Speaker 00

  Really hard to do it, right? Like, actually, like, from a money perspective, really expensive. Takes a lot of time from a sourcing perspective. And it's like, the industry's almost set up to not allow new brands to do quality and to do certifications because it's so cost prohibitive, right? To find those things out. Like, like example, like, we Use NSF certified for sport. It's the top, I believe it's the top certification that you can possibly get. Because it not only tests for all banned substances, AKA bad shit. It also does label claim accuracy, right? So everything that's on the label. If it says 20 grams of protein, it has to test within spec.

• 37:23Speaker 00

  If it says 40 milligrams of sodium, it has to have 40 milligrams sodium. If it doesn't, you fail, can't go to market. So number one, failure of productions happen in my business. And when they fail, they never go to market, right? That is one challenge. Like when you're a young company and you don't have product. It's real hard to make money and it's real hard to dumpster one. It's also really hard to tell a manufacturer, hey, if we fail, that's on you. You're going to eat it when you have no leg to stand on.

• 37:52Jen Cohen?

  Leverage.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  Number two is we pay per production run on NSF. And the cost doesn't matter if you're big, small. And when you're early on, you say, hey, we're doing a production run of a thousand units. And a thousand units back in the day was a lot of money for us.

• 38:08Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 38:09Speaker 00

  Right? And the cost NSF on a thousand versus 100,000 is the same. Put in perspective today.

• 38:16Jen Cohen?

  How much would it cost?

• 38:17Speaker 00

  Today, we spend, last year, we spent about 1.6% of our top line revenue, of our revenue, total revenue, on post-production certifications.

• 38:27Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 38:28Speaker 00

  And that number used to be double, triple, quadruple that. And that just takes straight out the bottom line. Cause guess what? If you don't, like, we could, we could have had a certification that cost us a hundred dollars.

• 38:41Jen Cohen?

  And that was most, how do you, so basically, most companies might have those certifications.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  There are great companies out there that certify, NSF certified for sport, Inform Sports is a great one, USP.

• 38:53Jen Cohen?

  Wait, wait, so the ones that people should be looking for is this NSF number one?

• 38:57Speaker 00

  To me, my belief is NSF certified for sport, right? And I hate the name, but it's the, because sport implies it's only for athletes. But it's the highest testing that NSF does.

• 39:11Speaker 00

  Because it's like every other test, you have to pass every other one of their qualifications to get certified for sport.

• 39:17Jen Cohen?

  Really? So that's the top.

• 39:19Speaker 00

  That is the top, in my, in my opinion. USP does a nice one where it does label claim accuracy on that, but it's not testing like NSF certified for sport is the only thing that professional teams can give their athletes. If it doesn't have that logo, they will not give it to their athletes because the risk of cross contamination is too high. Or what they say, what, what is on the label is not actually in it is also practical. Like, nobody wants to have a label that says 20 grams of something and have 12. That happens in our industry quite often.

• 39:51Jen Cohen?

  A lot, probably.

• 39:52Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 39:52Jen Cohen?

  And then, wait, so is there, so you're saying there's times when like you paid for this NSF certification, like for a run of a thousand? And did it, it came back and it wasn't accurate or wasn't good?

• 40:02Speaker 00

  And then we call it, we call it failing NSF. I mean, so there's lots of points that our standards are such that, that we can, like, you can fail inbound specs of ingredients where they don't meet potency or cleanliness, or they have too high of a heavy metal that won't fall in all, that don't fall into our specs. Like, our specs and our standards are super high. So, an example, we have a product called Brain Drive. It's a nootropic. We failed spec of it. And we could have gone like, no law against continuing to produce it, nothing, right? Because we failed spec, we are now going to go out of stock because the most recent production run doesn't meet our standards, right? And because of that, we, we just took it off the website.

• 40:44Speaker 00

  We have 14 days left to serve our subscribers of the, of the product that passed back the, the last production run. And now we have to start production all over. We have to source all new ingredients. We have to make sure they pass back. And we're going to be out of stock for two and a half, three months, which will cost our business a couple hundred thousand dollars, right? But we don't require, we do that because that's our standards. And we don't require, like, we don't tell those stories, but that's my goal, right? That's my goal is how do we tell those stories better? Because I believe, like, again, our industry is 200 million, 200 billion dollars.

• 41:19Jen Cohen?

  So are you saying that like most companies like they would come back? Let's just say some people, we don't know who, we're not mentioning names. And you don't, nobody really knows, right? It could be a brand that someone's using. And like, you know, a batch comes back and they failed whatever inspection. And most companies will maybe just be like, okay, anyway, we have like all these orders to fulfill. We're going to sell it anyway.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  There is no laws, no rules.

• 41:42Jen Cohen?

  Right, and it's not like you're going to die from it. It's not poison, it's just not giving you what you bought.

• 41:48Speaker 00

  What you expect, likely. I would also say not very many, like the amount of manufacturers that comply with NSF certification are pretty tight. Because their standards are so tight. NSF does audits of the facility. They require certain separation of ingredients and all these things. So cross contaminant, they require certain cleaning mechanisms.

• 42:07Jen Cohen?

  So some people won't even apply for it, yeah.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  I mean, most people don't even do it, right? Because A, it's expensive and from a manufacturing perspective, it's just another cost for them. And so I would say, people wouldn't even know, like our standards, a lot of people would never even know their products out of spec. Because they don't do the testing that we do, both inbound and post. And so, as an example, like NSF, like last, was it last year, 2023? We failed a production run of vitamin D, right? From NSF. It had, it was, it somewhere got cross contaminated, whether it was in the supply chain, whether it was in the warehouse. We don't know where it was. It failed NSF, right?

• 42:51Speaker 00

  And so that product completed in its packaging, waiting to clear quarantine. Forklifts go in, pick that packaging up, drop it in a dumpster. Because it failed NSF, it failed, it failed because it had banned substance, cross contamination.

• 43:08Jen Cohen?

  What did it have? What could it have been?

• 43:10Speaker 00

  Any anything like again, when you think about

• 43:13Jen Cohen?

  Give me an example, what could be

• 43:14Speaker 00

  Uh, DHEA is a banned substance, right? It's a

• 43:17Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  Like testosterone, growth hormone, etc.

• 43:20Jen Cohen?

  So what did it fail in?

• 43:21Speaker 00

  Like it failed in banned substances. I don't like one of the ingredients. It had enough amounts where we couldn't like NSF wouldn't pass it. Nothing to say you can't have that in your product. But we can't like we

• 43:32Jen Cohen?

  But they couldn't pass it because it was like the, the, the ingredient was, was bad. It was not enough. It was like, it could be anything.

• 43:39Speaker 00

  It was vitamin D. Vitamin D is vitamin D.

• 43:41Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 43:41Speaker 00

  Right? So somewhere along the supply chain, right?

• 43:46Jen Cohen?

  Something, something went awry.

• 43:47Speaker 00

  Something went awry, right?

• 43:49Jen Cohen?

  And you don't know what it is.

• 43:50Speaker 00

  We don't know what it is. Doesn't honestly, doesn't matter like, but what we did is like you put tighter parameters on the supply chain. Okay. You're not allowed to store our products next to anything on this list. You're not allowed to ship with anything on this list. You're not allowed.

• 44:04Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 44:04Speaker 00

  Right? Like, so we just like, we caught that and now like, guess what? But that there.

• 44:09Jen Cohen?

  How many product, how much of that like, did it cost you to throw that away?

• 44:13Speaker 00

  The only good thing is vitamin D is not stupid expensive. I don't know. Some, some dollars, some, some dollars with commas in them.

• 44:21Jen Cohen?

  And that happens often?

• 44:22Speaker 00

  We fail every once in a while.

• 44:24Jen Cohen?

  But it doesn't matter to the consumer because you're not going to be giving it to them anyway.

• 44:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, but that's the purpose, like.

• 44:29Jen Cohen?

  Yeah. Wow.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  You should fail, like in our industry, you should fail spec. And so then there's other things where it's corrective action. So like for like a protein, if we fall out of spec of the sodium on the protein, right? We've technically fail NSF. What's required for us to do is to change the label to like, if it says 40 grams, 40 milligrams of sodium and we had 60, we have to change the label to 60, right? And so it requires transparency, which is really important. Again, if we didn't do NSF certification post, we would, you would never know.

• 45:04Jen Cohen?

  Is this what is that? Cause you know, you're, you're known as like, you have third party.

• 45:09Speaker 00

  Third party certified.

• 45:10Jen Cohen?

  Third, third party certification.

• 45:12Speaker 00

  That is NSF.

• 45:12Jen Cohen?

  Is that NSF?

• 45:13Speaker 00

  That is NSF. So NSF is one, Inform Sports, another, USP is another, all really good, all have their differences. I've backed the boat up to NSF. It's also the most expensive with, which hurts my soul, but.

• 45:26Jen Cohen?

  Like how much more expensive?

• 45:27Speaker 00

  A lot.

• 45:28Jen Cohen?

  Like, give me an example.

• 45:29Speaker 00

  4X.

• 45:30Jen Cohen?

  Wow, that's a lot more for a company to spend. Wow.

• 45:33Speaker 00

  Which is right, but it's the most comprehensive and it. If you have standards, price doesn't matter.

• 45:39Jen Cohen?

  Okay, but listen, let me ask you. Thank you for saying that. Chocolate whey protein.

• 45:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 45:44Jen Cohen?

  Cause there's a lot of like, you know, controversy over chocolate having a lot more lead in it than vanilla. Is that true?

• 45:51Speaker 00

  Thousand percent.

• 45:52Jen Cohen?

  Why is that?

• 45:53Speaker 00

  Cause cocoa naturally has lead in it.

• 45:55Jen Cohen?

  So.

• 45:56Speaker 00

  It's just like plant protein has a lot more heavy metals than non-plant protein. Because when you take a bunch of plants and you consolidate them down, plants have heavy metals in them. Right? And it just naturally, it has more heavy metal.

• 46:10Jen Cohen?

  So then you should be very, very, very stringent on, I mean, people like a consumer like me. Who like chocolate, like to me, that's why I would use Momentous over another brand because automatically I know that chocolate probably has way more lead.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:25Jen Cohen?

  So you'd wanna have a company that you know would be stringent on their.

• 46:29Speaker 00

  A hundred percent.

• 46:30Jen Cohen?

  On their.

• 46:31Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. NSF, NSF, you have to fall below thresholds on all of, on all heavy metal testing, on all that. So it's like really important, but like essentially you think like any chocolate, anything with cocoa in it is gonna have heavy metals. It just is what it is, more than non-chocolate. And then plant proteins are always gonna have more heavy metals, just naturally, like unavoidable.

• 46:56Jen Cohen?

  So, cause I, I have your, I use your chocolate, your whey protein. Do you even have a plant protein?

• 47:01Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 47:01Jen Cohen?

  Oh, I didn't even know.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  We have a rice pea really, really, really good. Like we just redid it all and honestly, like it was a hard project to like make it better. It's really good.

• 47:13Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 47:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:13Jen Cohen?

  What is your hero product? Like what's the most popular product you guys have?

• 47:17Speaker 00

  That's a, that's a great question. Our hero, this is where our business is super unique. We have no product that makes up more than 10% of sales.

• 47:27Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 47:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. And what you see from our consumers is. Carts, right? We, we sell carts. And so like, if I would say like, this is one of the things that makes me most happy is we have, I have this philosophy called the momentous three. It's like the three most important products that have the most clinical research that have the biggest impact on performance today and performance tomorrow forever. Right? They're called moments three. It's creatine, omegas and protein. Top three SKUs.

• 47:56Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  Right? And it's like, they're not sexy. They really aren't. But over like, back to this bone crushing consistency. You consume enough protein, you're consistent with your omegas and you take creatine. What the science says is it's going to have long-term implications for lean muscle mass, long-term implications for brain health and connective tissue health and other functions. Like those things matter. Of, of all those products on the market, the only other product that has as much research as those things in our category is caffeine.

• 48:30Jen Cohen?

  Right. Like magnesium doesn't even have that much.

• 48:32Speaker 00

  Magnesium has great research.

• 48:34Jen Cohen?

  Not as much as creatine.

• 48:35Speaker 00

  No, but when you, but also when you back up, it's like, not everybody, like, a lot of people are deficient in magnesium. But you should get tested right before you just start randomly taking a magnesium.

• 48:46Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 48:46Speaker 00

  Have like, it's easy. It's easy to get tested. And like, I don't know. I also had to draw the line, like, how I got to the momentous three was everybody asked me, what should I take?

• 48:56Jen Cohen?

  And. Yes.

• 48:58Speaker 00

  And, uh, early days, I was like, this is what I take.

• 49:02Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 49:03Speaker 00

  And I was like, that's not right. That's not helping get people in the right products at the right time. And how, how did I figure out what I should take? I talked to really smart people and asked them. And they said, what are your challenges? What do you care about? What are you worried about? All of these things. That's how I got to my stack.

• 49:18Jen Cohen?

  What is your stack?

• 49:19Speaker 00

  Well, let's get in there. Not, not right now. Like, let's, let's sit down this path.

• 49:22Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 49:22Speaker 00

  Because we're on the momentous three and it's important to me.

• 49:24Jen Cohen?

  Okay. But you'll tell me.

• 49:25Speaker 00

  I will. I will thousand percent would tell you. So I went and I asked all these people, anybody came up and talked to you? That was, uh, performance driven, right? Meaning like they care about health, fitness, like they're training. They're not like, just like, I need to get healthy.

• 49:41Jen Cohen?

  Right, right, right.

• 49:42Speaker 00

  What are the, what are the, uh, I said.

• 49:44Jen Cohen?

  Performance.

• 49:45Speaker 00

  What, I call it performance for life, right? Like, like, how do you do the things you love for longer, right? Over really long periods of time, right? Like me in 20 years, I'm going to have the same mindset, performance. I want to be able to do things I love for longer. So I'd say, what are the, what are the top five things you give people? What are the top five supplements you recommend people? Supplements or sports nutrition or however you want to take it. Everybody always had three of the same in the top five. And really, most of them had the other two the same as well. Every single one of them said protein, omegas and creatine. And I was like, why? They're like tens, 10 plus thousand papers, clinically public papers. They have really good short term and long term evidence, zero cross read activity.

• 50:28Speaker 00

  And they're really actually hard to get from your daily diet. You can, like if you eat salmon every day, you're pretty good on omega threes, right? Protein, you can also get from your diet. And even like some of these people are like, well, protein is not a supplement. Protein is just protein. Like that's a macro.

• 50:44Jen Cohen?

  That's what I was gonna say to you.

• 50:46Speaker 00

  It doesn't classify in that category. Anyways, I've gone down that rabbit hole with people of like.

• 50:49Jen Cohen?

  I was gonna say.

• 50:50Speaker 00

  You gotta give me three, you gotta give me three. I have to get three things that we, we do. And so those are the three. Magnesium was in there and vit D was in there.

• 50:57Jen Cohen?

  What was the last one?

• 50:59Speaker 00

  Vit, vitamin D.

• 50:59Jen Cohen?

  Oh, vitamin D.

• 51:00Speaker 00

  It's like, I believe three is a powerful number. Tell somebody three, master that and then add on, right? Figure out what your use case is. You have connective tissue health? Are you worried about brain health? Are you worried about focus and or stress or cortisol hormone? Then you start winding down, right? Down the list of like what's important. But like, if you haven't built your foundation and you don't continue to carry for your foundation, which I consider this is the momentous three, you can't build a strong house or a strong anything on top of it.

• 51:34Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 51:34Speaker 00

  Right? It all starts with the building blocks, right? Like if you're taking, right? If you're really worried about connective tissue health and you want to take collagen for connective tissue health, but you're not hitting your protein goals, it actually doesn't really matter. Hit your protein goals and then add on top, right? Cause protein is a fundamental building block of every, of everything in our body. Collagen has really cool implications for connective tissue health. But again, if you're not like, if you're hitting your protein goals, protein turns into collagen peptides.

• 52:07Jen Cohen?

  Well, I was gonna ask you about collagen peptides because there's a lot of, again, there's a lot of back and forth about this supplement, right? Because some people say that you can't really get collagen from a supplement. You have to, you know, it's, it's really hard to, what is your, cause you do so much research. What is the research that you guys found on taking like a collagen supplement?

• 52:29Speaker 00

  Collagen has incredible implications around connective tissue health, joints, ligaments, tendons. Not if you take it for three weeks, not if you take it for a month. It's like three months minimum.

• 52:42Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 52:43Speaker 00

  Right, on it. Consistent, right? So collagen peptides is essentially, like, a peptide is just a string of amino acids, right? Protein is a massive string of amino acids.

• 52:55Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 52:55Speaker 00

  I mean, collagen is a protein, but, right, it like our skin, hair, nails, joints, ligaments, tendons.

• 53:04Jen Cohen?

  All things, yeah.

• 53:05Speaker 00

  Major collagen, right? And as we age, our ability, right, to naturally produce collagen actually declines in our body. So it makes sense that you would supplement it if you have connective tissue health injuries or questions, or if you're doing something that has massive connect, like if you're a triathlete and you're doing arm and triathletes, you probably should be taking collagen because you're putting a ton, a ton of wear and tear on your body. So I'll go back. Collagen has good research on it.

• 53:31Jen Cohen?

  It does.

• 53:31Speaker 00

  Is it like protein research? Is it like collagen, is it like creatine research? No, but it has, if you're thinking about connective tissue health and that is a challenge for you as a human, collagen's a pretty good option.

• 53:43Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 53:43Speaker 00

  Right, on there. But you gotta take it consistently. And then there's some really unique things out there. It has to have vitamin C in it. Doesn't have vitamin C in it, not really effective.

• 53:55Jen Cohen?

  Really? Why?

• 53:56Speaker 00

  Um, vitamin C is a cofactor. My science guy's gonna crush me. It basically helps, uh, it helps get it to the right places.

• 54:06Jen Cohen?

  Vitamin C does.

• 54:06Speaker 00

  Vitamin C does. So you have to have it with vitamin C. You have to take out for your joint, for your connective tissue health, you have to take it before you load your body. So pre-workout is the like optimal time because our joints, tendons, tendons and ligaments don't have a ton of blood flow, except for when we're training, right? So even if you're going for a walk, like you need to take, you need to have collagen on before that so it can get delivered because you need to increase blood flow to deliver the nutrients. And number three is there's some data that says collagen and caffeine don't go too well together.

• 54:35Jen Cohen?

  Really? Because I drink coffee in the morning.

• 54:38Speaker 00

  With your collagen.

• 54:40Jen Cohen?

  Is that not a good thing?

• 54:41Speaker 00

  Opt, uh, so optimal would be always have it with vitamin C. Take it 60 minutes before you load, workout, train, whatever it is, whatever you would call, we want to call it, and never take it with caffeine. Worst thing to do is not take it at all. So if you want to take it with caffeine, if you want to take it post-workout, if you want it like, it's better than not taking it, but to maximize it, there are some tricks.

• 55:05Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 55:05Speaker 00

  Right, like that, that, right, the literature points to.

• 55:09Jen Cohen?

  Do you make a vitamin C, like a liposomal vitamin C?

• 55:12Speaker 00

  No, but we have vitamin C in both our collagen products.

• 55:14Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, because you actually, you put the vitamin C in the collagen peptides.

• 55:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:18Jen Cohen?

  Which is unique, I think, which is.

• 55:21Speaker 00

  Most people don't.

• 55:21Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, most people don't.

• 55:23Speaker 00

  There are a lot of people that do, but like a lot of people that don't.

• 55:25Jen Cohen?

  A lot of people, right, that's the whole point, right, like, but this is, the reason why I wanted to even have you on this podcast is to kind of give people the awareness, like, make them cognizant of the fact that they should be checking their supplements, but what, what, like, what supplements they're using if they're, because not just for the efficacy, but for the, like, over, like, all these things we're talking about, like, the certifications, like, that could be, people could be buying air and they have no idea.

• 55:48Speaker 00

  No idea.

• 55:49Jen Cohen?

  Right?

• 55:49Speaker 00

  No idea.

• 55:49Jen Cohen?

  Which is really scary.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, so we actually never finished the story about Momentus, how we got to Momentus. So we started, we started building it ourselves. This is, I love flowing like this. We started building it ourselves, and I realized it's really easy, but really hard. And then I was like, we're gonna be so disingenuous to our ecosystem, like, of military, of pro and college sports, like, if we just launch another me-too protein brand.

• 56:14Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, right.

• 56:15Speaker 00

  Right, and everything that I've done in my philosophy was be at the forefront of high performance, be at the forefront of high performance, which means do it better than it's ever been done before, work with the best, only have the best products, right? Be a challenger and know what you know and know what you don't know. Anyways, so we're like, starting to produce these products, like, getting down that, and I'm just like, we're, we're doing this wrong, we're doing this wrong. And uh, there's this brand Momentous and they were built in NFL and MLB locker rooms by the top dietitians and they're of like, let's build the best sports nutrition brand that we all wish we had, all these dietitians. And they built it with this guy, Matt Wan, who's

• 56:55Speaker 00

  awesome entrepreneur, right? And like, built, built a really cool business. But like, like my business, Amp Human, Momentous was kind of stuck in this elite performance space. And both brands were struggling to get out. Like, they were trying to build a really good sports nutrition brand. I was trying to build a high-performance company, right? And we had these, both these really unique ecosystems. And I knew one of the board members at Momentous. And I was like, hey, we're gonna go in the space. Got any recommendations? He's like, dude, you should buy us. And I was like, okay, right? And it was like, then I started thinking, it's like, they've, they've figured out sourcing, they've figured out manufacturing, they've figured

• 57:40Speaker 00

  out certifications, and they already sell and are trusted by all of our customers for PR lotion. This is a pretty authentic fit. They have a huge TAM, right? We are disruptors. And we have this like crazy network, like, people want to work, work with us because we're doing it so differently. Like, that was part of the draw. And so what if we smash the two together? Could we create a human performance company, which is a shift from high performance? So, the goal became, how do you democratize high performance and turn it into human performance? Because high performance is what happens in the NFL. Human performance is what you and I do every day. We're forming a human. Anyway, so.

• 58:21Jen Cohen?

  No, it's, I, I, I didn't even think about that. You're right. Like, high performance to human performance, because we're doing something very different than like, the NFL.

• 58:29Speaker 00

  And when you seek high performance, it's really interesting. High performers sacrifice health. As a football player, to be great at football.

• 58:39Jen Cohen?

  True, well.

• 58:40Speaker 00

  Right? To be, honestly, to be really great at anything, like, to be a great executive, you have to sacrifice things.

• 58:49Speaker 00

  That are really good for you long term. You just do. Like that's to be great, you have to, there's a cost. There's a session cost, right? To be great. Anyway, so.

• 59:00Jen Cohen?

  You know what though? That is so true. Like I, I wanted to think, like, think about that because people automatically assume like if you think high performance, that they're like hitting every stride perfectly because they're a high performer. But the truth is, if you really think about it, to be a high performer, you are sacrificing a lot of things like sleep, eat, eating like because you don't have like.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, I hit my head for a living. Guess what? I know that's terrible.

• 59:26Jen Cohen?

  Exactly. To be the, the best football player, you're going to have to do some really bad things.

• 59:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 59:32Jen Cohen?

  To yourself.

• 59:32Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 59:33Jen Cohen?

  So that's interesting how you went from the high performance to the human performance. So different, but so accurate.

• 59:38Speaker 00

  But it's how do you democratize the best things that are happening here? And bringing them to consumer. So anyways, we smashed these two companies together. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, still in my life, most challenging. I went through crazy investor dynamics and board dynamics of like, we did an all equity deal, right? Two different companies, two different cultures, and it was really hard.

• 59:58Jen Cohen?

  How much did you raise?

• 59:59Speaker 00

  We didn't raise, we did all equity deal.

• 1:00:01Jen Cohen?

  All equity.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  All equity. So we just like all their shareholders got shares in my business.

• 1:00:06Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 1:00:07Speaker 00

  And it was pretty close to a merger of equals. Like, and that was, that was part of the challenge too, is like, everybody like, oh, our way was the best. No, our way was the best. And I'm like, both ways are bullshit. We're doing something different, right? Like it took me about nine months to like, actually me, for me and Erica to be like, hey, we're, we're trying to blend two companies.

• 1:00:28Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Speaker 00

  Together into cultures and all this. And it's like bullshit, put a stake in the ground, we get to make the decision. And that was part of our challenge was like, because we let it like, young leaders in the business, like we like had really great boards on both sides and powerful people involved and we let the tail wag us a little.

• 1:00:47Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:48Speaker 00

  And therefore they're like, no, this is how it should be done. No, this is how it should be done. And ultimately at like nine months, Eric and I were like, we're doing it our way now. This is the way like, if you try to blend two cultures, you have no culture. If you try to be two things, you have nothing, right? It's like, this is the way forward. And it's like, it, it, it was hard as a leader to realize like, how I'd done it before didn't matter. How they want to do it doesn't matter, right? Be definitive in what you do. Because that's ultimately what matters. People crave direction. I don't need to please everybody. What I'm doing is not for everybody. My team and my culture, Erica and my team and my culture is not for everybody. And that's okay. Right?

• 1:01:28Jen Cohen?

  That's so true.

• 1:01:29Speaker 00

  It's hard to realize that. Right? And it's also really hard when you take two companies and merge them together. And you're really small still to be like, how can we live without a person? Do we like, we really need that person. That person's good, right?

• 1:01:44Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 1:01:44Speaker 00

  Right? It's like, we only have 11 spots on the team. And if you lose one, that's almost 10%. Like, do we have, now we're in a different place where it's like, you can make decisions like that because you're, we have 55, 60 people now.

• 1:01:56Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:57Speaker 00

  Right? Anyways, so.

• 1:01:59Jen Cohen?

  No, I love that. That's actually a good story.

• 1:02:00Speaker 00

  We acquired this brand, right? And that's how we became Momentous. Well, we originally wanted to keep our original name, Amp Human.

• 1:02:08Jen Cohen?

  Amp Human?

• 1:02:09Speaker 00

  Turns out, we had some reg, uh, some trademark challenges. Mountain Dew owns the trademark for Amp.

• 1:02:15Jen Cohen?

  Oh, really?

• 1:02:15Speaker 00

  And like all energy drinks, sports drinks, all of that category. And then GNC had a product line called Amped. Amp, like, comma D.

• 1:02:24Jen Cohen?

  Oh, really?

• 1:02:25Speaker 00

  And it was like, well, we don't get to be Amp Human anymore. We are now Momentous. And it was 100% the right move. I'm glad Trademark Attorney forced our hand because we probably would have made the wrong decision.

• 1:02:38Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 1:02:38Speaker 00

  Because Momentous is aspirational, means something, right? Like, it's, it can be built upon. It was like Amp Human was just a stupid name that I picked, that I, right? Whatever. So, we smashed those two companies together. You know, basically post that, we're about a $5 million combined business. Before that, it was like 3 million and 2 million. And we were that same size for about 12 months afterwards. And then we just, uh, what, what we did was important.

• 1:03:12Jen Cohen?

  Let me share my daily routine game changer with you. It's the Momentous 3. I've been using their protein, their creatine, and omega-3 combo for months now, and the results are undeniable. These nutrients are key for long-term health and performance, but hard to get enough of through diet alone. The Creapure Creatine boosts both physical and your mental performance. The grass-fed whey tastes great with no weird aftertaste, and their omega-3 is a must for recovery. Since adding these, my energy, my recovery, and my overall well-being has really improved. So if you want better performance, this is the way to go.

• 1:03:54Jen Cohen?

  Visit livemomentous.com and use my code JEN for 35% off your first subscription. That's livemomentous.com code JEN for 35% off your first subscription. Trust me, you'll be happy you did.

• 1:04:21Jen Cohen?

  What was the first product, though?

• 1:04:23Speaker 00

  Oh, the first product.

• 1:04:24Jen Cohen?

  You said the hyd-

• 1:04:24Speaker 00

  The first product that Amp Human was building. So Momentous had protein, they had plant and whey, they had collagen, they had creatine, they had just launched an omega, a brain drive, and a product called the Elite Sleep.

• 1:04:39Jen Cohen?

  But you also had, so the hydrate product.

• 1:04:42Speaker 00

  So Amp Human was working on three products before we bought them.

• 1:04:48Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 1:04:49Speaker 00

  And all three of those products were too far in production when we made the acquisition. So we had a recovery product.

• 1:04:56Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 1:04:57Speaker 00

  That we never launched.

• 1:04:58Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, you didn't like that one?

• 1:04:59Speaker 00

  Uh, well, they just had a better product.

• 1:05:02Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 1:05:03Speaker 00

  The Momentous brand had a better product.

• 1:05:04Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, good, okay. You're very honest, like, very, like, self-aware. It's like you have no shame about saying these things, which is so great for transparency, right? Because people.

• 1:05:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's hard. I learned as an athlete, if you can't be open with yourself on like how you did, it's really hard to grow.

• 1:05:22Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:22Speaker 00

  Right? Anyways, thank you for saying that. So we had, we had this recovery where there is one human being that uses recovery in this world, amp human recovery. I've got three things left of the entire production run. I've, over the last four years, I've been using the entire production run because I'm just like, there's nothing wrong with it. We spent a lot of money on it, write it off the books, all consume it.

• 1:05:47Jen Cohen?

  Okay, so what is it you said?

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  It's recovery. So it's recovery that I'm almost done with. I never have to use again. On it. And it's just like protein and carbs. It's a good product, but it's not a great product.

• 1:05:57Jen Cohen?

  So you're just gonna keep on using it yet?

• 1:05:58Speaker 00

  I'm almost done. I'm almost done. I'm like three months away from never having to, never having to do it again.

• 1:06:03Jen Cohen?

  Consume it again.

• 1:06:03Speaker 00

  And it's on like this, just disgusting looking packaging. It's like.

• 1:06:07Jen Cohen?

  That's hilarious.

• 1:06:09Speaker 00

  On it. So, and people on the team are like, I was like, didn't let it pay for that. I paid for it. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's not our consumer product.

• 1:06:17Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 1:06:17Speaker 00

  Right? So then we had a hydrate product, which was just electrolytes, like, so.

• 1:06:22Jen Cohen?

  Kind of like, what's that thing?

• 1:06:25Speaker 00

  Liquid ID, the element, all of those things. So a non-sugar, a non-sugar, and then we had a fuel, which is an intro workout, carbohydrate and electrolytes. We still have fuel. Fuel's only one.

• 1:06:37Jen Cohen?

  But why not the electrolyte? That's like super popular right now.

• 1:06:39Speaker 00

  It, we, it's coming. We're relaunching.

• 1:06:42Jen Cohen?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:06:43Speaker 00

  So we had hydrate and we had fuel. And part of the challenge that we had when we put the two businesses together is we had working capital challenges. We had like. SKU management, team and all of that. And we just had to like make some decisions. And it was like hydrate sales were whatever. They weren't great. They weren't bad. It was like easy kill.

• 1:07:04Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:05Speaker 00

  Right? Like, so we just did one production run and just moved on on that. And now we're in product development again to build a similar product, but better. But fuel, the fuel product is the same product we launched with.

• 1:07:18Jen Cohen?

  And that one was what?

• 1:07:19Speaker 00

  Fuel is carbohydrates and electrolytes.

• 1:07:21Jen Cohen?

  And electrolytes.

• 1:07:21Speaker 00

  So think of it, uh, so we designed hydrate to be everyday hydration.

• 1:07:26Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:27Speaker 00

  Or 60 minutes or less of exercise. So if you're training for 60 minutes or less, likelihood is you're not burning through your glycogen stores. And when you, when, but when you train for 60 minutes or more, your glycogen stores get depleted and you have to replenish those with glucose, sugar, right? And so for 60 minute plus long bouts of exercise, hiking, you name it. You need to onboard carbohydrates, just no normal endurance athletes, et cetera. If you don't, you end up bonking or you have to be keto adapted, which means you can convert, right? Fat and protein into glycogen pretty effectively.

• 1:08:08Jen Cohen?

  Right. Those are all come, those are like still there and you're now doing this hydrate again.

• 1:08:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. So fuel, fuel is there. Fuel is one of our best kept secrets in the portfolio, one of our top sellers in pro and college sports. Like it's really cool.

• 1:08:21Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 1:08:21Speaker 00

  Um, it's really well designed. It, it, think of it as like Gatorade that's designed with today's science.

• 1:08:28Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, really. Okay. But wait, but let's go back to your stack. I want to know what, cause you don't take a lot of stuff.

• 1:08:36Speaker 00

  I don't take a ton of stuff. I am religious, religious about the momentous three. And there's a big reason why. Two things in the momentous three, omegas and creatine are very tied to brain health. So if I take a step back and say, okay, what I've done and where am I going? I'm really concerned about brain health. I just.

• 1:08:55Jen Cohen?

  Because of your background.

• 1:08:56Speaker 00

  Because of my background, right? And family history. Right in there. So like, I played a contact sport. I had thousands upon thousands upon thousands of micro concussive hits, sub concussive events. And, right, I have a family history of dementia Alzheimer's. So I need to stack the deck as much as I can. Creatine omegas have awesome data around long-term brain health. Awesome.

• 1:09:19Jen Cohen?

  Does it matter where you're getting your omega-3 source from? Because to me, that's very important, too. And that's why, to me, there's certain things that you have to be diligent on the brand that you use.

• 1:09:29Speaker 00

  So protein, so protein's super interesting. It's like, protein is kind of protein. There are different levels of protein, etc. But it's a fundamental macro. And like, if you're buying 20 grams of whey protein, you're getting 20, roughly 20 grams of protein. Omega threes, right? The difference in the category is as wide as the Grand Canyon and as deep as the Grand Canyon. It is insane.

• 1:09:50Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:50Speaker 00

  Right? So number one is about one and a half grams of EPA, DHA, which are the two omega-3s that matter, is about the clinically efficacious dose a day, which is a lot of omega-3s, which is a lot of that, right? Now, fish oil, I'm not saying fish oil, because fish oil is not the same as omega-3. Fish oil does have omega-3 in it, but you can buy a fish oil that has very little omega-3 in it, that has a lot of grams of fish oil, which is just oil from fish. And then where you source omega-3s from, what types of fish you get it from matter, fish carry heavy metals. So what do you want? Super low on the, on the food chain. Also, how you process it, right? Like, high heat kills a lot of stuff. Not so good, right? Like, our capsules are kind

• 1:10:32Speaker 00

  of amberish. Why? Because if they're clear and opaque, it allows for oxidation, right? Which means they can go fancy, right? Like, so there's all these things in, in fish oil. There are some really great omega-3 companies out there. Really great. I'll put our omega-3 up with, against any omega-3 that's on the market. We've decided to be great. We know, we know what port in Norway it comes from.

• 1:10:57Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 1:10:57Speaker 00

  We like, we know exactly what port it comes from, like, like fish.

• 1:11:02Jen Cohen?

  Do you have high EPA and DHA in them?

• 1:11:04Speaker 00

  Yep, we have eight hundred milligrams of both in one serving. So in two capsules, we have one point six grams of omega threes.

• 1:11:13Jen Cohen?

  Which is good.

• 1:11:13Speaker 00

  One point six gram capsule.

• 1:11:16Jen Cohen?

  So listen, that's interesting. So people who are listening to this, so if you're buying a fish oil, you have to make sure you have the right, you have a high DHA and an EPA.

• 1:11:25Speaker 00

  EPA, yeah.

• 1:11:26Jen Cohen?

  And because otherwise it could just be oil from a fish.

• 1:11:29Speaker 00

  Fish.

• 1:11:29Jen Cohen?

  Which, which does nothing for you, right? So that's interesting. And so.

• 1:11:33Speaker 00

  A lot of things you'll say, oh, you'll see fish oil, one point five grams. You'll see omega threes, right? Five hundred milligrams. You'll say, see DHA, or you know, you say omegas because there's omega sixes and omega threes. And like, because like you could have the third omega three.

• 1:11:51Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:51Speaker 00

  Right?

• 1:11:52Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:52Speaker 00

  Which you don't, we don't need.

• 1:11:53Jen Cohen?

  We don't need.

• 1:11:53Speaker 00

  Um, right on there. So like it's.

• 1:11:56Jen Cohen?

  Super important.

• 1:11:56Speaker 00

  Wild west and always sourced from small fish. Always sourced from small sardines, mackerels, right? Like the bigger fish, the problem. And if they don't say where it's sourced from, you should ask.

• 1:12:09Jen Cohen?

  How about algae? I heard that's also a very good source.

• 1:12:12Speaker 00

  Algae is super interesting. So we are launching a vegan omega three.

• 1:12:15Jen Cohen?

  You are.

• 1:12:16Speaker 00

  It's really expensive for the record and it's hard to get. Uh, so we're launching the most DHA EPA potent omega vegan omega three that's on the market.

• 1:12:26Jen Cohen?

  When does that come out?

• 1:12:27Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, end of June.

• 1:12:30Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 1:12:31Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:12:31Jen Cohen?

  Okay, because why is that more expensive than doing it the fish way?

• 1:12:36Speaker 00

  Uh.

• 1:12:37Jen Cohen?

  Like the non-vegan way?

• 1:12:38Speaker 00

  Omega threes from fish, like it's a byproduct.

• 1:12:41Jen Cohen?

  It's easy to get.

• 1:12:42Speaker 00

  Right? It's not that hard.

• 1:12:43Jen Cohen?

  Algae you gotta like take, you gotta extract it and.

• 1:12:45Speaker 00

  And there's not a big market for like, like when you think about like collagen, collagen is a byproduct of meat processing, right? Tons of it, right? And when you can get a byproduct that like. In a huge market, like readily accessible demand, whereas like algae, you gotta grow the algae, it's gotta be a special type of algae, you gotta like, how you process it, it's just different, right? On there. So like manufacturing and demand is low. Like if demand is, if supply is really high and demand is really high, like, right? Or if supply is really ready, like you can get things for cheap, like omega threes, right? Quality matters, but you can get them fair. But like a vegan omega to like, meet the standards we had of like EPA and DHA and the combo of one to one, like was hard.

• 1:13:26Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:26Speaker 00

  We had like, had to work pretty hard with manufacturing on that.

• 1:13:29Jen Cohen?

  What about beef tallow? That's another big.

• 1:13:31Speaker 00

  Beef tallow is like another interesting one.

• 1:13:33Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:33Speaker 00

  It's just, yeah.

• 1:13:34Jen Cohen?

  It's very popular right now. I'm hearing a lot about beef tallow. People are sending me a lot of stuff with beef tallow.

• 1:13:39Speaker 00

  Should be fat.

• 1:13:40Jen Cohen?

  It's just beef fat, right?

• 1:13:42Speaker 00

  I mean, at the end of the day, like you fat, natural fat sources from animals, from whatever, are better than synthetic fat sources.

• 1:13:50Jen Cohen?

  Yes.

• 1:13:51Speaker 00

  Always. And the more you have to process a fat, probably not better, not for you, maybe slightly worse, right? Like, there's a lot of talk about seed oils, and I don't have a stance on that. I just like, hey, you should be eating more whole foods, less processed foods, which means less seed oils. Like, all of it builds up. But also, you know what? Sugar is not great if you're sedentary, but like, having carbohydrates is not the devil if you train hard.

• 1:14:16Jen Cohen?

  Right. I think it's a lot about common sense and not extreme, right?

• 1:14:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:21Jen Cohen?

  Like even the fact that here you are, you're a founder of a major supplement company, and you're like, listen, take your creatine and take your omega three and your protein, which I think is still a macronutrient, but nevertheless, and you'll be good.

• 1:14:33Speaker 00

  It is a nutrient.

• 1:14:34Jen Cohen?

  Like, it's a nutrient. But I'm saying, like, you're not, like, all these other products are as a great supplement, like it's a great add-on.

• 1:14:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:42Jen Cohen?

  But if you don't have the foundation, who cares? So then go back to your stack.

• 1:14:46Speaker 00

  My stack. So I have that. I'm pretty consistent on collagen, because I played pro football. I'm a big man and I like to push myself on that. And then.

• 1:14:55Jen Cohen?

  How do you do it? In your shake? Like the?

• 1:14:57Speaker 00

  We have a collagen shot that's really easy that I just take before I work out. I train mostly in the morning, right? You just like, it's like a little gel shot, and you just hit it. Which is super cool. We actually won a government innovation contract, an $800,000 contract to help develop that product. And we have another cool product that we're working on that was part of that grant, which is cool. Anyways, in that realm of like connective tissue health.

• 1:15:18Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 1:15:19Speaker 00

  I am very religious about turmeric. And some people will be like, oh, no turmeric. But inflammation is real in my life, right? Again.

• 1:15:30Jen Cohen?

  Right, so you're taking turmeric for your inflammation?

• 1:15:32Speaker 00

  For my inflammation.

• 1:15:33Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:34Speaker 00

  And it's super interesting. You talk to some of like the pro sports dietitians.

• 1:15:37Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:38Speaker 00

  And they're like, oh, we, we won't use turmeric. Do you know why?

• 1:15:40Jen Cohen?

  Why?

• 1:15:41Speaker 00

  Cause it's too good. Because inflammation, the inflammation response is really important when you think about adaptation. Right? And, and so when you train really hard, if you don't like, you create inflammation response in your muscles.

• 1:15:53Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:53Speaker 00

  And that inflammation response is what ultimately is creating the adaptation for your, for your muscles to build back stronger and faster.

• 1:15:59Jen Cohen?

  Interesting.

• 1:16:00Speaker 00

  And so they don't give their athletes turmeric unless they're injured or have some challenge. Right? For me, I don't give two shits about adaptation. Right? Like, I'm not trying to run faster. I'm not trying to get stronger. I actually would like to get less strong. Uh, right? Like, it's like.

• 1:16:14Jen Cohen?

  You wanna be less strong?

• 1:16:15Speaker 00

  I, if I lift weights, I just get like.

• 1:16:17Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:18Speaker 00

  Part of me being a genetic mutant.

• 1:16:20Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, you are, you're huge.

• 1:16:21Speaker 00

  I just lift a little bit of weights and I'm just like.

• 1:16:24Jen Cohen?

  It's true.

• 1:16:24Speaker 00

  Right? Like, it's what made me able to be a great NFL player. It's like, hey, let's start squatting a little bit. And it's like, Jeff, you don't fit in your pants anymore. You've been squatting for three weeks. I'm like, I, it's my problem. It's like, it's my curse, right? Like, anyways.

• 1:16:39Jen Cohen?

  I love that, so funny.

• 1:16:40Speaker 00

  So, I, I, that's why I take turmeric. Inflammation and management of inflammation is, is super important to me.

• 1:16:47Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 1:16:47Speaker 00

  I take a multivitamin and I do that because I'm on the road a ton and it's a very comprehensive multivitamin. That is, is powerful to me.

• 1:16:55Jen Cohen?

  I take the multivitamin too. And I, I wasn't sure why, because there's so much, again, controversy over like, do you need a multivitamin? Blah, blah, blah.

• 1:17:04Speaker 00

  I think you need to be careful on multivitamins. Because at the end of the day, the right amount of things matter in.

• 1:17:13Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 1:17:13Speaker 00

  Right?

• 1:17:14Jen Cohen?

  And get your blood tested.

• 1:17:15Speaker 00

  Blood tested, but also like, if it's a compressed capsule, really hard to digest. Right? Like, we have our, it's, our multi is a four caps or like, it's not small. It's four big caps. And why? To get the right doses of the things that we cared about in it. It had to be four capsules and we didn't want to do a compressed tablet because the efficacy on compressed tablets are lower, et cetera. Or a gummy that does, has nothing in it. So it's like, we just made the Rolls Royce of a multivitamin. Right?

• 1:17:44Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 1:17:44Speaker 00

  Right? And a multivitamin to me. Right. I travel a ton. Like it just is my, it's my cover my basis. Like I would not recommend it. Like a lot of people take multivitamin, but like it's not where I would start. I'm pretty, pretty, I'm very religious about Vit D. Cause I always test low.

• 1:18:03Jen Cohen?

  Really? Talk about that. I wanted to talk to you about like hormones and testosterone and all these things.

• 1:18:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:10Jen Cohen?

  Is that product, isn't that the product that you like, isn't that that product?

• 1:18:14Speaker 00

  Vitamin D.

• 1:18:14Jen Cohen?

  Oh, vitamin D.

• 1:18:16Speaker 00

  Vit D. Yeah.

• 1:18:17Jen Cohen?

  Oh, okay. Cause you have another product, vitamin D. Of course, everybody always takes vitamin D is like, like, kind of like become like the, like it's very.

• 1:18:25Speaker 00

  A lot of people are deficient.

• 1:18:27Jen Cohen?

  Everyone's deficient and they kind of feel like everyone now just takes vitamin D. But now to access, like if now when I got my blood tested.

• 1:18:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:35Jen Cohen?

  I'm now too high in vitamin D. But you call it.

• 1:18:38Speaker 00

  Vit D. I just call it Vit D.

• 1:18:39Jen Cohen?

  Okay. That's why I'm like, what are you talking about?

• 1:18:42Speaker 00

  You're good.

• 1:18:42Jen Cohen?

  But, but now, but, but the problem is a lot of people are taking it too much now.

• 1:18:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, a hundred percent. Right. Because you can take a lot. Like it's easy to take 20,000 micrograms.

• 1:18:52Jen Cohen?

  I think even if you're taking 5,000 a day.

• 1:18:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:54Jen Cohen?

  It was just, I think the bait, like the.

• 1:18:56Speaker 00

  Is like the, is like the.

• 1:18:58Jen Cohen?

  Yeah. If you're taking that every single day for a very long period of time, you could.

• 1:19:03Speaker 00

  Test, right? That's again, like you can just test for it. It's not that hard.

• 1:19:07Jen Cohen?

  Test every single, that's why it's important because people are now taking, like even people said I was, I was low in vitamin B. So I started taking vitamin B and now I'm too low in vi, and now I'm too high in vitamin B. It's very important to be very.

• 1:19:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:19Jen Cohen?

  On top of getting your blood tested because then you could be taking too much of something, which is also hazardous.

• 1:19:25Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. So always like, that's the thing with a lot of these other things, you should just test.

• 1:19:30Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:31Speaker 00

  Right? Like Vit D, magnesium, like most people are deficient in magnesium, but it's easy to test for it. Again, like it's not that like.

• 1:19:38Jen Cohen?

  You take magnesium too.

• 1:19:39Speaker 00

  I don't, I don't take magnesium very often. So, and then it's then, then I go into like, what do I take occasionally? Our sleep pack I take when I travel.

• 1:19:49Jen Cohen?

  Why?

• 1:19:50Speaker 00

  Cause I sleep really good at home. I don't have any challenges sleeping.

• 1:19:53Jen Cohen?

  But when you travel, you sleep badly.

• 1:19:54Speaker 00

  Different, different environments. I also, I also, when I travel, I don't have the same environment that sets me up to be successful.

• 1:20:03Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, I know. I get it.

• 1:20:04Speaker 00

  Right. I got it. Like.

• 1:20:05Jen Cohen?

  I think a lot of people are like that.

• 1:20:06Speaker 00

  When I travel, like, like last night, slept in hotel. I worked to the second I went to, that I started to go to sleep, like, which was like nine thirty, which is not optimal. When I'm at home, like, I get to talk to my wife and we get to relax. We get to sauna. We get to do whatever we want.

• 1:20:21Jen Cohen?

  Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:22Speaker 00

  It's like much more of a process and a routine and like, you have like, the same place I worked for the last three hours is three feet from my bed.

• 1:20:30Jen Cohen?

  I know.

• 1:20:30Speaker 00

  But it's so, so it's like, okay, I need to help down regulate, which is what sleep pack does. And I need to increase the quality of sleep. L-theanine, apigenin and mag three and eight. And so L-theanine and apigenin, apigenin is just like, it's what's in, found in chamomile tea or grapefruit. And it helps you down regulate, right? Same with L-theanine, down regulate, found in tea as well. To like, how do you like, like, everything we do upregulates us. Work, TV, screens, upreg- like, how do we down regulate so that we can get, get to sleep and have higher quality of sleep? The magnesium three and eight is one of the only, it is only form of magnesium that can cross the blood brain barrier.

• 1:21:10Speaker 00

  And magnesium can help, right? Increase your quality of sleep, but also just at night, a lot of really cool things happen to your brain, right? And having magnesium on board appears to be very beneficial with that. So I take that when I travel.

• 1:21:24Jen Cohen?

  And it works?

• 1:21:25Speaker 00

  It works. And I take, uh, when I, when I jump time zones, so not when I come to LA, when I'm going to like New York or something. Or I take our product called Elite Sleep. Elite Sleep was designed in correlation with an MLB team that helped them jump time zones. And so Elite Sleep has melatonin in it and tart cherry. And I'm not like, I, I do not believe melatonin should be taken regularly. I think it should be taken very frequently.

• 1:21:51Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:52Speaker 00

  Melatonin helps you. Reset your circadian rhythm, right? And so when you jump a time zone or multiple time zones.

• 1:22:01Jen Cohen?

  That's good for that.

• 1:22:02Speaker 00

  Like, that's what, that's what it's built for. That's what our body naturally does. And so it helps switch that time zone so that you can get on that.

• 1:22:09Jen Cohen?

  How long do you take it for?

• 1:22:10Speaker 00

  Oh, I, I, if I'm like going to New York and I'm in New York Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I take it Tuesday night and Wednesday night.

• 1:22:18Jen Cohen?

  Oh, you do? You take, okay.

• 1:22:19Speaker 00

  And then I like, but if.

• 1:22:21Jen Cohen?

  Could your body get adapted to these things? Like sleep, the sleep one or?

• 1:22:24Speaker 00

  Sleep pack, no. That's what's really cool about sleep pack and, and why it is what it is, is it's all natural, non habit forming, like it, like people have an impact on it. Melatonin, a thousand percent is habit forming.

• 1:22:38Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm not a big melatonin person.

• 1:22:40Speaker 00

  The more you take it, the more you need, right? And then it becomes really hard because melatonin is just a hormone in our body, essentially. And then you need it and your body stops producing it, right? It's like, so, eh, like, so I take that body. I also take our adaptogens, Rhodiola and Ashwagandha.

• 1:22:59Jen Cohen?

  I love Rhodiola. It's like, kind of like a, it's kind of like the Adderall that's natural, isn't it? That's kind of like a natural Adderall.

• 1:23:07Speaker 00

  Helps you regulate cortisol and stress essentially.

• 1:23:10Jen Cohen?

  Oh, I also think it gets you focused.

• 1:23:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's, that's part of it, right? But I use it as when I'm in crazy heavy training blocks.

• 1:23:20Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:20Speaker 00

  Or when I'm in really, really stressful times. Cause it helps, it helps you in those moments.

• 1:23:26Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:27Speaker 00

  Um, and so like, that, that's how I use adaptogens. I probably use five times a month. I use that stack.

• 1:23:34Jen Cohen?

  Right. So you're not, oh, really? So you're not using it every single day?

• 1:23:37Speaker 00

  I personally don't like, cause I don't, uh, I don't find I need it every day.

• 1:23:40Jen Cohen?

  Right. The ones you take every day is the creatine, the omegas.

• 1:23:44Speaker 00

  Right, protein. I mean, I take like.

• 1:23:46Jen Cohen?

  And collagen.

• 1:23:46Speaker 00

  Five scoops of protein, collagen, multivitamin.

• 1:23:50Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, vitamin D, you call it vit D.

• 1:23:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:53Jen Cohen?

  Okay, can we talk about the whole testosterone thing for a second and hormones?

• 1:23:57Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:23:58Jen Cohen?

  Because you had a product, I thought, that was like, like a natural.

• 1:24:03Speaker 00

  We have Tongkat Ali.

• 1:24:04Jen Cohen?

  That's right, I can never pronounce it.

• 1:24:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, nobody can.

• 1:24:06Jen Cohen?

  What's it called?

• 1:24:07Speaker 00

  Tongkat Ali, it's T O N G K A T, and it has like six words posted that like it's a root of a of an herb, plant, shrub.

• 1:24:19Jen Cohen?

  And does it work?

• 1:24:20Speaker 00

  The data suggests it does from a testosterone perspective, like it has really cool implications around testosterone. And for us, we built that product with Dr. Huberman, but hormones and testosterone is plays such an important role. And testosterone levels are a real challenge. And when we think about our product philosophy is like the eighty twenty rule, let's have the twenty percent that drives eighty percent of the value. And if people are thinking about, oh, I need to help my hormones, my testosterone levels. How do you give them something that's not testosterone replacement therapy?

• 1:24:55Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:55Speaker 00

  TRT or whatever.

• 1:24:56Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 1:24:57Speaker 00

  Okay, there's a herb that's been around for a long time, tested, there's not a crap ton of research on it. But there's enough to say, hey, this has some cool testosterone implications and people will use it, see cool testosterone results. But again, it's still progressing. We had another product on the market called Fidoja, right? That had early data around testosterone, but the data stopped progressing. And we pulled it from the market last year because it wasn't up to our snuff in terms of efficacy.

• 1:25:29Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 1:25:29Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:25:30Jen Cohen?

  So the testosterone, like the reason why I'm asking about hormones is because we talk about a lot on this podcast and off the podcast with my friends. And there's been such an incline in people who have been, who are now taking testosterone, very young, like in their like thirties. And once you're on that train, you're on that.

• 1:25:48Speaker 00

  You're on that train.

• 1:25:49Jen Cohen?

  You know? And so what's other, I mean, yes, we all know like, oh, you lift heavy weights and you do this. It helps, you know, boost your testosterone, but not that much. Let's be honest.

• 1:25:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:00Jen Cohen?

  It's not gonna like get you from a, like as a man, it's not gonna get you from 200 to 800.

• 1:26:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:05Jen Cohen?

  Not happening. But so like, would you say if they started taking like this natural testosterone, it would be helpful? Or what are other things that you've seen in the market that?

• 1:26:14Speaker 00

  There's a lot of hormone crap out there.

• 1:26:18Jen Cohen?

  That's exact, and it's the biggest market right now.

• 1:26:20Speaker 00

  Really big. And it's really, it's, you know, hormones was a tough one for me to go in because it's not something I naturally see. I'm naturally super low in T.

• 1:26:29Jen Cohen?

  Oh.

• 1:26:29Speaker 00

  Partially has to do with brain injury.

• 1:26:31Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 1:26:32Speaker 00

  Yep. So.

• 1:26:33Jen Cohen?

  There's a, there's a correlation to your brain health?

• 1:26:35Speaker 00

  So the, uh, right, a lot of guys in the NFL are low in T because of brain injury. The brain controls everything.

• 1:26:42Jen Cohen?

  Everything. Yeah.

• 1:26:43Speaker 00

  Like, not, it's not shock. Like when you kind of, anyways.

• 1:26:46Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, I guess that's true. So I guess the, the, the, because your brain is in control and everything.

• 1:26:51Speaker 00

  And testosterone is like the main hormone in males, right?

• 1:26:53Jen Cohen?

  It's really interesting because as a football player, you would never think that these guys would be low in testosterone, but they are.

• 1:26:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, they are. A lot of guys get prescribed T.

• 1:27:02Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:02Speaker 00

  Right? Um, on there. Anyway, so to me, nothing like, for Doja, a lot of people believe, do a lot of great things for testosterone. The clinical data that we've seen.

• 1:27:16Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:17Speaker 00

  To me, does not warrant it to be in our product portfolio, which means it does not have a big enough impact.

• 1:27:21Jen Cohen?

  An impact, okay.

• 1:27:22Speaker 00

  Right? To do it. Currently Tonga Ali does, right? There are 20 other things that you could do. Zinc is really good for hormone health.

• 1:27:29Jen Cohen?

  Oh.

• 1:27:30Speaker 00

  Right? On there. But anyway, so there's like a lot. Zinc, yep. Zinc has a lot of implications around testosterone, men and women.

• 1:27:37Jen Cohen?

  Oh, interesting. Okay.

• 1:27:38Speaker 00

  On there. So I believe a lot of hormone health has to do with lifestyle.

• 1:27:45Speaker 00

  Behaviors diet, right? Like you gotta stack them in the right, but like a hundred percent should be thinking about natural things before you go to DRT. DRT should be like the very, very last.

• 1:27:57Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, a hundred percent.

• 1:27:58Speaker 00

  Right? And that's to me is like, so I have low T like I'm like, I'm not ready to get in that train.

• 1:28:04Jen Cohen?

  Good. Don't get on that.

• 1:28:05Speaker 00

  I used to take it.

• 1:28:06Jen Cohen?

  How old are you?

• 1:28:07Speaker 00

  Uh, I turned forty this year.

• 1:28:08Jen Cohen?

  Oh, yeah, you're still young.

• 1:28:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm still just a babe.

• 1:28:10Jen Cohen?

  Yeah. Don't be taking it at forty, please.

• 1:28:13Speaker 00

  Um, if I, if I, my stack normally includes Tongat. I'm so, I get to test on myself.

• 1:28:20Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:21Speaker 00

  Right? I do blood work almost every three months.

• 1:28:24Jen Cohen?

  Good for you.

• 1:28:25Speaker 00

  I can, right? Like, because we know the companies that do that, right? And everybody like, I'm just like constantly, let's add something that's remove something like what's happening.

• 1:28:34Jen Cohen?

  Right. So you're on top of it, which is so good.

• 1:28:36Speaker 00

  Which is, it's cool. It's fun. Like it's part of the perk of running a high performance company.

• 1:28:40Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:28:41Speaker 00

  Company.

• 1:28:42Jen Cohen?

  So what did you see your numbers go from?

• 1:28:44Speaker 00

  So I, I was on it. I saw my numbers go up, but I changed a lot. So what I'm testing is keeping a lot of things similar. All I did was remove Tongat and I, my next test should be next month and I want to see what my T numbers look like.

• 1:29:00Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 1:29:01Speaker 00

  Right? And then, right? Cause I like during that time when I started taking it, I saw my numbers increase, but a lot changed. Like I was in a crazy stressful time in my life.

• 1:29:11Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 1:29:11Speaker 00

  I wasn't training as much as I wanted to and all that when I started taking it. So like, I started from like being like not doing anything right to like, I just like made a big shift and a lot of things changed in my life at the right time to allow me to focus on the things that I know drive testosterone. And so I'm like, okay, what, like I made a significant jump, like a big jump.

• 1:29:33Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:34Speaker 00

  Right? So I'm like, okay, let's take a step back. Let's pull it out.

• 1:29:36Jen Cohen?

  And see what happens.

• 1:29:37Speaker 00

  And see what happens and then let's add it back in because not also a lot of the things, not everything works for everybody. Right? Our bodies process things different.

• 1:29:46Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:46Speaker 00

  We have different like, and we're all little ends of ones for the most part. And there's also like, you could have started taking Tongat and everything else went south.

• 1:29:56Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:57Speaker 00

  And it's like, well, you maintained and it's like, well, you should have fallen or you like could have taken Tongat and it went up and you did everything right. And it was nothing had to do with Tongkat, right? Like,

• 1:30:07Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, I totally agree. I think it's not like a, it's not a one, like not everything's fit, like one size fits all. Right? By the way, you're like moving around, but I am too, because we've been sitting here for like over two hours. It's so uncomfortable. Like, I mean, because it's like you sit so long, you're like, oh, my God, my legs fall, fall asleep. And, um, okay, so we're going to wrap this. So Jeff, thank you for being on the show, by the way. Like, I love your story about Momentus, and I'm not just saying this because you're here, but I do. I really love your products. I think that they are so high quality. You do everything right, your company, you guys do. And like I said, I just wanted the people to be mindful of like what they're getting because supplements are so massively.

• 1:30:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:47Jen Cohen?

  Popular. And so if they don't want to buy Momentus and they think it's not great, that's, you know, they're, they're crazy. But, but,

• 1:30:54Speaker 00

  There's other great brands.

• 1:30:55Jen Cohen?

  There's other great brands, but I'm just saying, of course, I'm just saying like, you know what? Just make sure that these, these, like what you're using is actually getting what you're, what you're buying.

• 1:31:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:04Jen Cohen?

  And that they're doing safe things. I think that's the biggest thing, right?

• 1:31:07Speaker 00

  Yep, a hundred percent. And so for me, like, if you don't know why you take something, you shouldn't take it.

• 1:31:13Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:31:14Speaker 00

  Right? And the process that like when people come in, I'm like, write down the most important things for you.

• 1:31:21Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, so true.

• 1:31:22Speaker 00

  If you can't point to what you're taking and doing to those things, then you should probably stop doing those things.

• 1:31:29Jen Cohen?

  Totally.

• 1:31:30Speaker 00

  And you should reassess like, like, hey, if I like, go back to the basics, go back to the foundation and master those. It's so important. So anyways, like, and most of us, like, I get the luxury to take creatine, omegas, protein, as much protein as I want. Collagen, all these things. It's because I have like, if I had a hundred bucks to spend a month or 200 bucks to spend a month on this category, I wouldn't, I would rethink what I do, right? I also could take everything.

• 1:32:00Jen Cohen?

  And you don't though.

• 1:32:01Speaker 00

  And I don't because A, it's not sustainable. Like if I try to take everything, I'll take nothing. Like we'd be like, ah, whatever.

• 1:32:09Jen Cohen?

  I think those people are taking like handfuls. I look at Brian Johnson, he's taking like seventy five pills every hour on the hour. And it's just like, you know, he wants to live to a hundred and seventy five or whatever. I mean, watch him drop dead at like at sixty. I mean, I'm just saying that is, you know, but I think you can only do so much. Like, these are all supplemental to your daily habits.

• 1:32:30Speaker 00

  You have to be happy. You like, you're like, like, you can't change your life around supplements or whatever. Like, the whole, like, the whole goal of living a long, healthy life is to be happy, right? Have more joy and have a bigger impact in the world. If all you do is like meticulously counting pills on the minute, right? Like, oh, I can't go out and have fun with my friends every once in a while because it's, I need to be in bed by nine o'clock. And it's like, well, guess what? Like, a third of the equation, it's like, you know, fitness, fitness and sleep, diet and supplements, and then there's this community piece.

• 1:33:10Jen Cohen?

  Huge. That's the biggest piece. And they've, and like, all the research has shown that community piece, having friends, will keep you alive way longer than any supplement on the planet.

• 1:33:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:33:21Jen Cohen?

  And so if you're not taking care of the most, that to me is the most basic fundamental.

• 1:33:25Speaker 00

  That's why we exist achievements.

• 1:33:26Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, but people don't.

• 1:33:27Speaker 00

  To be community beings, right? We overlook it. So it's like, if you're doing, you have to do fitness. Like, for me, what I love about fitness is I can make it community.

• 1:33:36Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, you could. You can work out with your friends. You can do activities. That's how, the way, and that's how the world is changing now. Like, it used to be like, right? Like, they're doing all these like things, like run clubs. It's like an easy one, but like, they're doing these things where like you're doing activity, like fitness activities or becoming like the running mans of the world and all the things, but no, but thank you. And I.

• 1:33:57Speaker 00

  You're very welcome.

• 1:33:58Jen Cohen?

  And, um, well, everyone go by momentous. Bye.