KHC 104 - Michael Brandt

Join us for a discussion with Michael Brandt, founder of Ketone IQ. Cam and Michael cover what ketones are and how they can benefit your performance and mental functions. Follow along: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cameronrhanes Twitter: https://twitter.com/cameronhanes Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/camhanes/ Website: https://www.cameronhanes.com Follow Michael: https://www.instagram.com/michaeldbrandt/ Thank you to our sponsors: Grizzly Coolers: https://www.grizzlycoolers.com/ use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% off GoHunt: https://gohunt.com/ use code CAM when you sign up for $50 towards the gear shop + 10% off the GoHunt store Montana Knife Company: https://www.montanaknifecompany.com/ Use code CAM for 10% off Sig Sauer: https://www.sigsauer.com/ use code CAM10 for 10% off optics MTN OPS Supplements: https://mtnops.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% off and Free Shipping Black Rifle Coffee: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% your first order Timestamps: 0:00:00 Where Ketone IQ Started & What Are Ketones? 0:04:56 Performance for SEALS, Rangers, and the Dept of Defense 0:07:17 The Science Behind Ketones 0:10:43 Ketones VS a KETO Diet 0:18:57 Ketones in Cycling & Combat Sports 0:23:51 Why Michael Chose Ketones 0:29:20 Investors, Production, & What’s Next 0:35:28 Ad Break 0:36:47 Ketones for Work VS Athletic Performance 0:39:40 Carbs & Salt 0:46:48 Michael’s College Experience - Changing Your Mindset 0:56:42 Being a Leader of Leaders 01:02:54 Michael’s Goals as a Leader 01:11:18 Constructive Criticism 01:13:48 Ketone’s Culture & Values 01:21:49 Good Notes: It’s Not Rocket Science 01:28:50 Keeping Yourself Accountable as a Boss 01:37:29 College at Stanford 01:45:41 The American High Education Crisis 01:55:28 Cam’s Parenting Method 02:02:15 Michael’s Parenting Advice: Us Against the Kids 02:11:46 Outro

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

• 0:15Cameron Hanes?

  This is Keep Hammer Collective with Michael Brandt. How are you?

• 0:18Speaker 01

  Good. Good to be here, Cam.

• 0:20Cameron Hanes?

  I can't believe we're making this happen. So, Michael, this is your brainchild here. We'll go on camera 12. Or no, is this camera 12?

• 0:31Cameron Hanes?

  Ketone IQ, tell me about this. And let's do a shot while we're

• 0:39Cameron Hanes?

  we're gonna open the show. The IQ, I need the IQ.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Cheers.

• 0:43Cameron Hanes?

  So is this gonna make me smarter?

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Your brain uses a lot of ketones.

• 0:50Cameron Hanes?

  Ah, that's one tastes good, too. That's a peach.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  We've been working on the formulation a lot.

• 0:54Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  It's come a long way.

• 0:56Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  In 2019, my co-founder Jeff, who you know.

• 0:59Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  And myself.

• 1:01Cameron Hanes?

  Great guy.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, one of my favorite people. We created the business and in 2019, we got a $6 million contract with the United States Department of Defense Special Operations Command to create a drinkable ketone as high-performance energy for physically and cognitively demanding missions.

• 1:18Cameron Hanes?

  Wait, so tell me, so you got a contract for $6 million. Did you have to pitch them on this? Or how did that work?

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, we for sure had to pitch. Gotta get a lot of different sign-offs, working with the DOD. It's a giant organization. So you gotta get different sign-offs from different, different parts of it, research groups, as well as the actual operator groups that are gonna be participating. We do a lot of work with the 10th Mountain Group in Colorado. And so there's a lot of, lot of sign-offs, a lot of, it takes a long time to work into the DOD. But luckily, they were interested and still are interested in, they call it human factors, where historically, a lot of the DOD funds go into

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Arms, going to radar systems, going to like hardware. And since the GWOT, a lot of investment has gone into human factors. It takes a million dollars to train a Navy SEAL or an Army Ranger. And so if you're able to extend or improve warfighter performance in a meaningful way, that's worth something. And not to mention just the human factors, like taking care of our guys.

• 2:21Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  And.

• 2:22Cameron Hanes?

  But, but they're probably interested. Well, yeah, keeping them around, performing at a high level for longer and better while they're doing it.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:31Cameron Hanes?

  Right. So is, so you made the pitch and then you had the data to show that this would. And what would it, how would it impact the soldier?

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had preliminary data already. Ketones aren't this totally magical thing that we invented. Your body already makes and uses ketones. And scientists have known that for a hundred years, that you can make your body make a lot of ketones. If you do a lot of endurance, so if you're running for a while, your body makes a lot of ketones. If you're fasting or you're starving, your body makes a lot of ketones. And you make it especially so that your brain can function when you're in these challenged states.

• 3:06Cameron Hanes?

  Compromised.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:08Cameron Hanes?

  Just tell me real quick, what is a ketone?

• 3:11Speaker 01

  A ketone is a source of energy. Your body usually makes it from fat. So you turn fat into ketones mainly to fuel your brain. Your brain can't use fat directly. You, you can use sugar in your brain, but the issue with, if you're doing a 20 mile, 30 mile, 240 mile run is you, you run out of carbohydrates. You run out of glucose. And ketones are this backup fuel that's actually more efficient than your body makes naturally in kind of a slow way, but it's, it's really efficient. So the basic science around ketones has been known for a while. People have been doing what's called a ketogenic diet where you can deliberately eat really low carbohydrates and force your body to make ketones and get all these benefits. But it's really hard to actually do that. And there's a lot of downsides to that diet.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  But the ketone molecule itself is really interesting. It's really powerful and your brain especially thrives off ketones. So this is initial insight that like, hey, like if ketones are so cool, why can't you go to the store and buy a shot of ketones? Why can't you just drink it if you're? You know, out on a 36 hour mission, there's only so much caffeine you can take before you have diminishing returns. Is there something with a better performance profile that you can have on top of, or instead of just adding more caffeine when you're in that kind of challenged state? So that was the initial premise and there was good science behind it. But you know, science is this active, living field. There's always more to do. We continue doing more. We just got a $800,000 follow on contract with the Navy Health Research

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Center to look at some specific applications of ketones and concussions and TBI. So the science continues to evolve, just like, you know, just like any area. We're still getting, you know, faster computer parts, faster car parts. Yeah. Science is this living, breathing thing.

• 4:54Cameron Hanes?

  So like, what did you show that would improve performance like for a SEAL or a Ranger or that the Department of Defense was interested in? What, like, if you said, so if it's a like double blind placebo study, what would people taking this do better than somebody not?

• 5:16Speaker 01

  And it was double blind placebo.

• 5:17Cameron Hanes?

  Was it?

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the challenging part of that, because especially if you've had, you know, more of the older vintages of ketone IQ is that it, it's always tasted crazy. We've made it taste a lot better.

• 5:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. This isn't bad right here.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  No, we made it come a long way.

• 5:30Cameron Hanes?

  But even the, I would joke around, it tastes like cat piss, but even, even that, I was used to it. And I started to like it. So it was just like, I think is the first one, you just don't know what to, what you are getting ready for. And so you take it and it's like, it's kind of unlike anything I've ever tasted before. But once I knew what it was, I'm like, this is, now it's like this triggering mechanism where I'm going to take this, it tastes like this, and I'm going to feel good.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, yeah. Tastes like it works. Like tastes like, and so that was actually a challenging part of the placebo controlled studies is we had to make a placebo that tasted crazy. Cause if you have something that tastes nice and something that tastes crazy, it's like, oh, the crazy one's probably the one that works. So we figured that out, did double blind placebo tests. And this, a couple of the specific markers that we were looking at was, one is hypoxia, the low oxygen environments. So if you had altitude or deep sea, there's, if you're in these contexts where you have less oxygen, ketones really shine because they turn into cellular energy. If, we don't have to go super deep on it, but.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  There's something called ATP, that's the energy currency of your cells. And you're able to create more ATP per unit of oxygen with ketones than you are with glucose, other metabolites.

• 6:46Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  And so that was a big indication that we showed ketones work really well for. That in hypoxia, ketones help with performance. And other area is cognitive efficiency, which is basically things like target practice. When you're in a tired state, people are more accurate.

• 7:02Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  In that double-blind placebo-controlled context.

• 7:06Cameron Hanes?

  Is that, was the altitude why the 10th Mountain Group was interested?

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 7:11Cameron Hanes?

  Specifically, okay.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 7:13Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, that's interesting because I'm, I'm like, what can make me better? You know, we're always looking for that little edge. And I, I don't know, I couldn't really explain why I felt better or why I felt more or quicker or, but whatever, I felt better taking it. And I don't really know why.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:34Cameron Hanes?

  So that's why I was so interested in like, what the hell is this stuff? And what does it do?

• 7:38Speaker 01

  It's really interesting, Cam, because as we're building out the brand, we could talk for three hours about the molecular chemistry, everything going on. I have a full-time research lead who has a PhD from Oxford in metabolism. We're doing a lot of deep science. We support a lot of other institutions, Johns Hopkins, UCSD. We have a dozen research projects that either we're driving or we're supporting the lead investigator on. But, but, but, I'm trying to make this like also really simple because my goal is to have ketones everywhere. And I don't think the average person wants to sit down for three hours and understand all the ins and outs. Like, when was the last time you read a manual before you had a cup of coffee or a glass of wine? Like, at a certain point, things just, they just work or they don't work.

• 8:22Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  So something I think a lot about as an entrepreneur is like these two pistons. One is like going deeper on the science, publishing papers, doing that PhD-level research, advancing the science, creating new knowledge, new understanding. But the other is almost like dumbing it down. Like, how do I, if it used to take five minutes to explain to someone, how do I have it take 30 seconds? How do I inspire someone to try it in? Zero seconds, just they saw John Jones took it before his flight. Like, how do I get into the like, quick, quicker pickup? Cause I mean, my whole, the reason I'm excited, there's a lot of ways to make money, right? In the world, the reason I'm, I got so zoomed in on, on ketones is that energy is the most important problem. Like, if you can help people have better energy, you know, do everything else in their lives.

• 9:08Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  And so that's the North Star for me. That's what gets me excited every day is to make something that's meaningfully different, that helps people, especially in these compromised days, whether it's hypoxia, or we see a lot with people who have different types of cognitive decline. Ketones really help rescue brain activity and just in everyday people. It seems like it just shakes the rust off the chain.

• 9:29Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  And so if I'm able to do that, and again, like, part of that is doing the deep, meaningful science research and part of it is just making it like, simple and chill and like, just crack a shot and take it and it'll work and.

• 9:42Cameron Hanes?

  It's nice to have that science backup though, because, you know, I mean, it's great to have both. I mean, and you've clearly done the science backup, but I know for me, like, I'll have my breakfast and then I have my vitamins or whatever, then this is like with my vitamins, so I do a ketone. And then, like when I did the Eugene marathon, I had a pretty good run. I took a ketone with me, took it at the half marathon mark. When I did an ultra, the one I won earlier, earlier this year, ketones were, so I'm like, I don't know, but it feels like I'm performing better than I have and I'm taking this and I haven't before.

• 10:22Cameron Hanes?

  So if that was my double blind or single blind study, it, it works for me. But I'm, you know, part of it is I trust what you're doing and I trust, you know, your process. So I didn't really have to get too deep into it, but I wanted to hear, hear on the podcast as we had a little time to talk. Super interesting, because I know I did try the keto diet, basically, and get to a fat adapted state to where I was burning fat instead of carbs. And that's what I tried to do for the last, I did Crazy Mountain 100. And I was trying to, to switch my body to fat adaption, basically, which is, I guess keto in some ways. So I've tried it before, but that, that's tough.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:07Cameron Hanes?

  It's tough being fat adapted.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  How'd you feel?

• 11:12Cameron Hanes?

  I didn't feel great.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of people feel run down. A lot of people, they'll feel, you know, sharp at times, but it's a really hard diet to adhere to because you don't have the pop like carbohydrates give you this more of a pop.

• 11:24Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  The fat system, the being fat adapted, a lot of ultra marathon, ultra distance athletes are into that because you do have to be fat adapted if you're going to go run 100, 200 miles. You, your body has these different energy systems. You want to be able to tap into both. And where ketones are really interesting is they let you fuel through this other pathway, through your fat pathway, that's complementary to your carbohydrate pathway, but you don't have to do the keto diet. You don't have to choose one door or the other. And a lot of it is the, the mental benefits. A lot of people, when they, they drink ketones, the way that ketones interact with your neurons is especially interesting. It's a fuel source for your whole body, but especially your brain has massive energy demand. And when

• 12:07Speaker 01

  you're pushing it hard on a, on a run, you get really tired mentally, like you lose focus. And that's where a lot of times things go wrong, whether it's like you trip and fall, you lose your focus, or you just lose that willpower, like that your brain has that central governor that like, a lot of times when you quit, it's not that your quad or calf quit on you, it's that your, your brain quit on you and you've lost that like oomph to, to keep going. And so if you're able to supply your brain with more substrate, more fuel, more energy, then all the other systems work better because your brain's just controlling all of it.

• 12:41Cameron Hanes?

  Is that the, where the IQ came in is because it was, it's like such a big input for the brain?

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:47Cameron Hanes?

  Having this. So when you were saying that, I was just trying to think. So on a normal diet, say, and maybe you don't know these, the answer to these questions, but I'm just going to ask it anyway. On a normal diet, we're so used to burning carbs for fuel. Like as everybody eats tons of carbs, right? Usually not enough protein. But on a normal diet where carbs are your fuel.

• 13:12Cameron Hanes?

  How much on a normal diet is fat used for fuel? Do you know?

• 13:17Speaker 01

  A lot of times people on the standard American diet are highly dependent on carbs or entirely.

• 13:23Cameron Hanes?

  A small, small portion. And then you go all the way back to a keto diet and then you're fat adapted. So you're burning not many carbs because you've, you've trained your body to burn fat instead.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:36Cameron Hanes?

  So if you're on a normal diet, does, does your product, the ketone IQ, make those fat cells more available for fuel? Or how does that work?

• 13:48Speaker 01

  What it does is it helps your body to be better at burning ketones. So it helps you initially, it gives you energy that's not from sugar, not from carbohydrates.

• 13:58Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  And you upregulate, you create more of the enzymes that allow your body to make ketones in general. So you're able to snap into that mode more. And what I don't recommend necessarily is keto diet for everyone. We really don't consider ourselves a keto diet company. I don't push keto diet. I don't do the keto diet personally. I think it's effective for some people if you're trying to aggressively lose weight, or you just really love the way it makes you feel, or

• 14:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  You're on doctor's orders to do a keto diet. But what's, what's really cool is the power of a ketone directly to be able to fuel you and not having to do this super restrictive diet. If you zoom out for a sec, that if you're training for an endurance event, 100 miler, you have these two systems. You have your fat system and you have your carbohydrate system.

• 14:51Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  The limitation of your carbohydrate system is it's small. You can only hold a couple thousand calories of carbohydrates on deck, like your glycogen stores. A lot of, you've heard of glycogen stores in your muscles and your liver.

• 15:04Cameron Hanes?

  That's why you do like spaghetti the night before a marathon because you want to fill up with carbs.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 15:11Cameron Hanes?

  And the glycogen stores.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, you fully load up your glycogen stores and then you burn through it pretty quickly. You just don't have more than a couple thousand calories of it. You can burn through it real easily, even in a marathon, you can burn through it.

• 15:23Cameron Hanes?

  So you say like, if you're, when you're running a marathon, how many calories an hour are you burning?

• 15:27Speaker 01

  It's like 300, 500.

• 15:29Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, yeah. So, so if you say, it could be gone in. Six hours.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:35Cameron Hanes?

  You know, and then what?

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:37Cameron Hanes?

  Or wait, wait, no, no, six hours would, so that'd get you through a marathon.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:42Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, unless you're going slow, but it wouldn't get you through a hundred miler.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:45Cameron Hanes?

  Right, okay.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  It won't get you through a hundred miler. You, you need the ability to fuel off of this other system, your fat system, where even if you're a lean person, you have a hundred times more fat stored than carbohydrates. So fat is this long-term, larger amount of storage, a large amount of fuel. And so endurance athletes are really good at tapping into that. Endurance athletes are really good at turning fat into usable energy and metabolizing it, using it. And so a well-trained athlete, when they show up on race day, they're good at both. They have been doing so many runs, they have, they're really good at the fat adaptation, and they've also carb-loaded the last, you know, seventy-two hours and their glycogen's fully replete. So you want like both tanks all the way full.

• 16:29Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  And then usually during a race, you're also trying to eat a lot of carbs.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  And, you know, cutting edge of endurance nutrition right now, like David Roche, who won Leadville this year, he was having like hundred, hundred twenty grams of carbohydrates an hour. And you're trying to keep up with the amount of carbohydrate that you're burning.

• 16:49Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  It's hard to do so. So you need, have this other system, your fat system, that's always, that's also going. What's interesting about ketones is they go through that fat system, but they're immediately available. So you don't have this conversion from fat into ketones, which is kind of slow.

• 17:03Cameron Hanes?

  Gotcha.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  But you're able to basically go through that lane on the highway, that pathway that's complementary to carbohydrates, but you're able to do it quicker and more bioavailable than just fat. So it's not a like one-stop solution. Like you want this total metabolic flexibility, you want a carb-load, you want to be fat-adapted, and ketones give you this other additional fuel source on top.

• 17:28Cameron Hanes?

  I see.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  That especially your brain really likes that. Like your brain sometimes gets neglected. Like a lot of times people, athletes train every other part of their body, but your brain is, if you can say sharp, that can be the differentiator, that can be the willpower to squeeze it a little harder.

• 17:45Cameron Hanes?

  It's, it's a reason why like in a hundred miler or two hundred miler, they allow pacers, because you're not making great decisions. Once you get. To this point of exhaustion or so many miles into the race or you haven't slept. So then you can have a pacer. So you're not going off course. You're not, you know, making poor decisions. So it's like that. When you say that cognitive cognitive function that I get that because that's what that is. That's why pacers are allowed. And people do make terrible decisions at the end of races. So maybe, you know, this ketone IQ would help that. Yeah, I was, that's what kind of got me interested in a keto diet to start with

• 18:27Cameron Hanes?

  is because I thought, well, if I'm 10% body fat, I weigh 100 or 170, that's what 17 pounds of fuel. Right?

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:35Cameron Hanes?

  And where you said with carbs, you can only have a couple thousand calories. So I'm like, well, that's way more fuel, but it's not really available or not as efficient as carbs. So I like this idea of, yeah, you're going to train and you're going to get your body used to burning fat, some fat for fuel, mostly carbs, but also with the ketones added in. It's like, that's what it feels like. I mean, is that why the Tour de France guys were so interested in it?

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:01Cameron Hanes?

  I saw this year, a lot of those guys were using ketone IQ.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, the pro tour teams were real early in getting into they, we've been working with the pro tour teams since early days when we were working with, when we started working with the DOD. So 2018, 19, the pro tour team started using it because they're looking for every edge.

• 19:19Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Tour de France is gnarly. I don't have to tell you. It's a 23 days. You're racing for 21 of them. And it's a stage race, just for, for those that don't know that your, your timer starts on day one. And once you cross the finish line on day one, the timer ends. And it starts again the next day, next day. And that goes on for three weeks. And then whoever has the lowest cumulative time at the end wins. So the race is on every single day.

• 19:43Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  And it's brutal. I mean, you're. Racing one of those stages at like the pace of the guy all the way in the back would probably kill most people.

• 19:54Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, yeah. No, they're freaks.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  They're absolute freaks. And, and so in that world, especially because of the way that cycling works where you're staring at a computer and you're, you're seeing your watts, it's very quantitative, that it was just a very natural pickup for ketones. It registers really quickly. It's okay, this stuff is working.

• 20:11Cameron Hanes?

  They saw the benefits, just like it was very noticeable because of the numbers, the data showed benefits?

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:18Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Hmm. Yeah. Cause in other sports, right? You're playing football, soccer, basketball, stamina's a component, but there's a lot else going on. Cycling, running too, but especially in cycling, it's like A to B and you're staring at a freaking computer.

• 20:33Cameron Hanes?

  Measuring it the whole time.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:35Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Cause you know, we talked about this as we're running and doing things today, but you know, it would be nice in the running world to have that same kind of data, but because everybody's so different in running gait, running ability, what type of shape you're in, cardiovascular, how efficient you are, so many things go in. So it's really hard to, to look and say, if I run this pace, if I make, if I'm pushing this many watts, I can last for this long. You know what I mean? Cause with running, so many other factors come in.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:09Cameron Hanes?

  But, um, yeah, I mean, that's about as close as you could get to a human body performing and having a measurable showing that these are benefits is the, the bike, bike riders with watts and fatigue and, you know, I know they're checking lactic acid, so many biomarkers that they look at to make sure they're getting everything they can out of the racers. So if it's good enough for them, it seems like that's all the validation one should need. I mean, I don't know.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. It's been a good proof point to go into other sports. Early days. Cyclists picked it up and then it started getting into combat sports. Conor McGregor caught one of it, DM'd us. He started using, I think what it was, was that his S and C coach was working on cardio stamina for him and was looking at the literature, knew some European cycling teams and saw that ketones were really helpful. And so Conor McGregor hit us up and then we got connected in with Jake Paul and we've just been really pushing into combat sports more recently because I mean, that's a whole other endurance and cognitive sharpness in the later rounds.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  That's super, I mean, that could be the difference between getting knocked in the face or not. Like it's, it really matters. Any, it's a different, totally different sport, which is kind of funny to me because like, you know, I couldn't be more opposite, riding a bike versus.

• 22:33Cameron Hanes?

  Fighting.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Fighting. But they, what they have a lot in common is that the inches matter. Like if you're off, I mean, on a bike, you, if you're off by an inch, you could crash into something. You see these massive wrecks in the, in the pro peloton. Not to mention, I mean, you can also just lose the race by not being dialed. And in combat sports, the same thing. It's a game of inches. And so it's been cool to see the pickup there.

• 22:58Cameron Hanes?

  You think about like fight IQ, right? So if you're making good decisions in a fight or even a reaction time, you know, you can think like Connor was a big counterpuncher, like when he won the belt against Jose Aldo. He threw, Aldo threw a punch, Connor, just barely nicked Connor, then Connor came back with the big left actually. And so that, I mean, it was, it did, I think it, Aldo's punch did hit his nose. So you think, well, reaction time. If I was fighting and my reaction time and my performance and my money was on the line, I'd be taking one of these in between every round. I mean, right?

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:40Cameron Hanes?

  I would. Every round, I would be like, give me one of those ketones.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a cool area. I think a lot of times, you know, I talk about it a lot. I push a lot, but it's I always come back to the fact like, there's a lot of ways to make money, a lot of different types of businesses that the initial reason I picked this was I came in tops down into the space and looked at what's even interesting that, you know,

• 24:07Cameron Hanes?

  What space?

• 24:08Speaker 01

  The human performance.

• 24:09Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, that I was early tinkering on a lot of these sensors and continuous glucose monitors and footstep trackers and measuring my cadence when I run like a decade ago before everyone had

• 24:21Cameron Hanes?

  Was this because you were runner and you were interested in your own performance essentially?

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Totally. Yeah, I was interested in it personally and then just started looking at the literature and predicting that, you know, we're going to see more of this. We're going to see more sensors on and in the body that people are going to become more passionate about the biomarkers that drive their performance. And within that world, what's a lever that you could pull? Like, it would be great to invent protein powder, or caffeine, or electrolytes if that didn't already exist. But those already exist. And I came very tops down like, what should exist that doesn't already exist? And one of our early investors, do you know Mark Andreessen?

• 25:01Cameron Hanes?

  I know the name.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  He's on JRE recently. He's probably the number one Silicon Valley investor.

• 25:07Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Runs a shop called Andreessen Horowitz. They're early in Facebook, a lot of others, like prolific tech Coinbase, a lot of early tech stuff. They were one of our first investors, too, because he just liked our thesis around the human body is a platform for innovation. There's going to be something new. The next decade isn't going to look like the last decade, especially given all the sensors on in the body and the proliferation of sensors. Like, a decade ago, it was weird to count your footsteps. And now 50 million Americans have a Apple Watch, Whoop, or something like that. And in that world, people just care more about, hey, does this actually register? Like, I don't know what the hell an acai berry does, right? Like, people care about things that actually show up and register. Okay, this,

• 25:51Speaker 01

  this helps my wattage on the bike or in sports in general. This helps me to have better power output. Or this helps me, you know, get energy without interfering with my sleep score. The fact that you can measure these things very powerful. So.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  It's all to say, I came into the space tops down, like what could exist that shouldn't exist? If there was something cooler to work on, I would have gone and worked on it. I wasn't like born to do ketones per se. I think my passion came from human performance in general and then just looked under a bunch of different rocks of like, oh, is Ashwagandha interesting? Is this interesting? Like, what's actually interesting? What's the biggest needle mover? And that's where I kept coming back to ketones, which is, okay, there's something interesting here.

• 26:35Cameron Hanes?

  Did you, was anybody else studying it at the time?

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's, there's definitely scientists out there, there's research out there. Like, I'm definitely on the shoulders of giants. I don't want to take too much credit. What I've done, what my company's done is commercialized it. There's a lot of people tinkering around in the lab and doing some of the early science on it. DARPA was looking at it in the early 2000s, at this program called Operation Metabolic Dominance. So there's definitely science, definitely literature, and especially when you look at the broader literature around ketogenic diet and like making your body make its own ketones. There's definitely research around, that was kind of the inspiration input to me, which is like, why isn't someone fricking figure this out? Why doesn't someone scale this? And that, that takes work, right? It takes, okay, there's some interesting literature. Okay, let's see if we can get a DoD contract.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Okay, let's see if we can get some cool investors. Cool, Marc Andreessen, Andreessen Horowitz invested. Okay, let's spool up production. No one was really producing something, like, it's new, right? So, long story short, how we make it is a fermentation process, very like cutting edge fermentation, but you gotta find the right group to do that and convince them

• 27:44Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  to, you know, do that on their machines. And like, trust me, I'm gonna buy a lot of this, it's gonna be a huge hit because, check it, it's, it's one of those things, I was, the analogy I always think about is maybe kind of simple, is like throwing a party. Like, gotta get a DJ, then you gotta get a venue, and then you gotta get an audience. But in order to get an audience, you gotta tell them that the DJ is gonna come. In order to get the DJ, you gotta tell them you have an audience and a venue. It's like, you kind of tell three different, or you tell a handful of different stories

• 28:12Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  that like, once they all come true, the whole thing comes true.

• 28:17Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  But as a Entrepreneur, you gotta like, get the fire started somehow. You got, so it's like, for us, it's like, the early customer with the DOD, early production, early funding, and just like,

• 28:31Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Tell everyone it's happening. And like, okay, guys, I guess, okay, I guess it's happening. Like, I guess we're doing this.

• 28:36Cameron Hanes?

  This is exciting.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And no one had ever done that part. People had like, done some of the basic science, but no one had really like,

• 28:42Cameron Hanes?

  Well, you gotta hustle.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:44Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, you gotta hustle and you gotta have your, your sales pitch essentially, and you gotta have your research, because different, different, all those different aspects need, they want to hear different things, you know? The, the DJ wants to hear how much you're gonna pay him, right? How many people are gonna be there? And what type of music? The whoever wants to, the guests need to know who else is gonna be there, the big names. So, yeah, you're like, adjusting your pitch to each person, and it has to like, all come together to make it work. Yeah, that's super interesting.

• 29:19Cameron Hanes?

  But the, to ramp up the production, was that where the investors came in? And are you at production? Where you're satisfied with what, what you're selling now? Or what's the goal?

• 29:31Speaker 01

  Definitely the investor part helps with the production part, where a lot of times, there's a fixed cost. For us, there was a fixed cost to get it going. That you gotta ante up.

• 29:41Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  No one wants to

• 29:44Speaker 01

  make a small amount of anything. When it comes to manufacturing, it's like, all right, talking minimum hundreds of thousands, probably millions of dollars.

• 29:51Cameron Hanes?

  They want a big return.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:52Cameron Hanes?

  To get a big return, you need a lot of product.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. And like, in our case too, it's like, okay, we hired, our head of product has a master's degree in chemical engineering, and like, okay, she's not working for peanuts, right? Like, everyone, it takes,

• 30:05Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  It takes some dollars to get things even going to begin with. And, yeah, that's, I mean, I think a great reason to go and raise funds. I think a lot of businesses shouldn't raise money. Like, if you have a profitable archery shop, like, don't, don't raise money, don't like, just run your own business. But there's times where if you're really pushing new technology, and there's a certain kind of momentum that you gotta get going, get the ball rolling, to get production going, to get customers, to get. Like the whole flywheel moving and if bringing in outside funding, bringing in investors helps to kind of spark that off. And that's what we did. I think that that works for that type of business.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  And I feel what it was that you asked that, are we happy with the amount of product?

• 30:51Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  I'm never, I'm not happy till, you know, eight billion people know about key terms. I think, you know, my.

• 30:56Cameron Hanes?

  I was just, I was just curious on the trajectory. So when was, when did you start selling?

• 31:02Speaker 01

  In 2022, we really started. So prior to that, it was this like science fair project where we're working with special operations command and selling to elite cycling teams and it was super expensive. It was $30 a shot and some people were buying, but it wasn't like, we weren't in any stores. We weren't really a mainstream product in any type of way. We really basically turned the page. We figured out a way to make it at a much, in a much more efficient way. And we're able to bring down the price to four or five bucks a shot. And that I launched in 2022.

• 31:42Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  So it's really depending on when you start time. Like it's, we've been on market for less than three years, but there's this kind of prior R and D chapter to the business of several years before then.

• 31:53Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. It seems like, so three years, it seems like, man, the trajectory is good. I mean, it's probably not where you want to be, but I see a lot of people, I see a lot of traction on it. I see a lot of people talking about it or curious about it. So, I mean, it feels like that part's been a success.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  It's going well. It's funny as an entrepreneur, I'm never satisfied. It's a blessing and a curse. Like there's always, right? You know, my parents told me I gotta celebrate the wins more. It's like, there's always the next.

• 32:23Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  Like, okay, you make your first million. It's all right. Can we do 10? Like, can we do, cause.

• 32:28Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  You know, you're, you're hiring people, you're everything, like you're getting it all going. You have, there's a lot to do. What I'll say is that, yeah, it's come a really long way. And a lot of people know about it, and I still think we're still super early. One of my favorite books is the Gatorade book. It's called First and Thirst. It's by this guy Darren Revell, and he talks about the whole Gatorade story. And Gatorade got started with the Florida Gators in the 1960s. And the idea of electrolyte was really weird.

• 32:57Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  To them, it wasn't because they were the visionaries and they were like, okay, you're sweating out things besides water. Let's replenish those other things, too. But early Gatorade tasted crazy. They were putting it in these like cans and it was like corroding, rusting through the cans. It had all these bugs. It it just didn't. It required a lot of explanation, crazy taste, all that. It took decades before they were doing like Michael Jordan primetime, you know, orange bucket of Gatorade at the sideline of the NFL games. It took years, decades. I do think that the timeline has accelerated now because of the internet and technology and stuff. But like, there still is that ramp up period. And I think that really in the last year, things have really ramped. Where we've gone from, you know, early days, early days was just R and D project. Then it was like, okay, cool.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  We're getting the kind of Ironman set, the like hardcore, hard cores. And now it's becoming like, you know, we're for sale and vitamin shop and sprouts. And we started working with John Jones. His team reached out to us and we've started working together and doing some cool partnership stuff, doing a lot of, he's really into the product and we made some fun videos together.

• 34:04Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  And so it's turning this page from like, okay, you're hardcore hardcore or you're like next ring out. John Jones is hardcore. I just mean that like, a lot of people that watch UFC, it's getting into this broader audience where it's not necessarily everyone's doing an Ironman or a marathon. It's a lot of just everyday people who want, they like the way that they feel when they drink ketone IQ. And they don't necessarily need to be training for an Ironman or listening to a whole Huberman lab about like ketones and metabolism.

• 34:30Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Going, going out from there.

• 34:33Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, just the mental acuity part. I mean, anybody who has a job going into a meeting, I could see them saying, I need to be at my best for this.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:41Cameron Hanes?

  You know, because you, that's where people, I just remember going to meetings and be like, there might be the director there, the general manager there. It's like, you want to say good shit, you know? You want to sound good because they're get that snapshot of time to judge you on. So I could see even for that, you know, it's not, it's not necessarily physical performance, but it's human performance, you know? And that's where. Really, that's where we all are expected to perform.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:10Cameron Hanes?

  At our highest level is we're getting paid to be there and to do it. So a lot of times the human performance aspect for most of Americans is a hobby, is like a passion type thing. But, but work, I mean, it seems like work is, they could always use something to be a little sharper.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  It's interesting, the role that athletics plays is this kind of analogy. Cause you're right, like very few people are paid to be an athlete.

• 35:35Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  One percent, probably not even one percent of people, like a fraction of a percent of people are professionally athletes. And then a lot of the other people who are athletic, it's just a, they're weekend warriors. They're doing it in the mornings and riding the bike, going for a long run on the weekend, that kind of stuff. And it's still this powerful analogy. We think about this a lot, like I still love athletes. Like I, I think for foreseeable future, we're going to be working with athletes, even though what you're saying is true, that people, you know, they, they can put two and two together and say, hey, if this works for my, you know, evening sessions rolling around on the mat at jujitsu, like, okay, I can take it also during the workday.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  I still like working with athletes and like letting people come to their own conclusion that, okay, I can work it. I can use this in like a conference room, but like,

• 36:27Speaker 01

  I like the, I guess the visuals, the culture, the like, there's something just raw about athleticism.

• 36:33Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  That inspires people. And then I think people can put two and two together that like, okay, if I'm sitting at my desk doing a PowerPoint, okay, I'll need energy for that too. I'll need something that keeps me switched on. But I guess the visual too of like, how are you going to make a cool piece of content around someone clicking on their computer?

• 36:48Cameron Hanes?

  That's tougher.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  I'd rather show someone doing archery, right? Like doing something physical.

• 36:52Cameron Hanes?

  I see, you know, as I said that, and as you were talking, I was thinking about too, that yeah, we're not all professional athletes for sure. Most Americans do athletics as, you know, like I said, a hobby or weekend work type stuff, but. When I was running 10 Ks and I wanted to break 40 minutes, which isn't, you're not going to the Olympics. You're not winning anything if you break 40 minutes in the 10 K, but it means a lot. It means a lot to that person. So could these, this help? Just a regular guy who wants to break 40 minutes in 10 K do that? Well, then it's important.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 37:28Cameron Hanes?

  We, we're all have our own PRs, our own little wins and our own little, we're at our different places in life. Yeah, we're not all going to the Olympics, but we all have benchmarks that we want to improve on. So if it's helping that, that's a win.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  That's how I feel. That's how I feel about a lot of things like,

• 37:43Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  like wearing the super shoes or getting a sauna or whatever, like getting those.

• 37:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, these incremental gains.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, that arguably, if you're not a professional athlete, that if you only have 10 hours a week to dedicate to it, that all those little gains probably matter more.

• 37:59Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  That if you really want to get as best as you can given that limited time. And if you have a full-time job as a lawyer, doctor, business owner, or whatever, that, that that's if you can afford it, getting the norma tech boots or whatever is probably a good investment. Yeah, yeah.

• 38:19Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Um, yeah, cause it's got me thinking too, cause the carbs per hour is a big deal this day. I mean, so what if we had one of these with carbs?

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:33Cameron Hanes?

  A bunch of carbs in it.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. That would be the killer stack, right?

• 38:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Cause this is not meant to replace carbs, meant to stack on top of it. So people are used to taking a gel, carb gel every 45 minutes or every three miles or whatever it is that you would have ketone IQ on top of it. It's the whole point is it goes to this additive complementary pathway. And so for us, yeah, like you're hitting on the button, which is, which is, should we make our own like super stack that has everything in it? For now, I'm playing Switzerland on it where like I'm friends with goo and Morton and, and everyone. And we just collaborate and it's all friendly because I really, I really want to build the brand. The way that Gatorade built a brand around electrolytes, I want everyone to know about ketones.

• 39:18Cameron Hanes?

  They just own that one lane.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:20Cameron Hanes?

  Gotcha.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  And it's always an option to do our own stack of ketones and carbs together. But what's, I don't want to give away too much on the roadmap, but what's more interesting to me is like, you know, working with other brands and letting them do a product that's powered by ketone IQ,

• 39:40Speaker 01

  where we're not directly competing against them. Like if we make our own, hey, this is our own proprietary ketones and carb thing, then all of a sudden we're competing head to head. It's, there's a little bit of kind of navigating, like I mainly want to be friends for as long as possible with all the other players in the space because I just think there's so much to do on ketones.

• 40:01Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  There's so much value to create for the world around ketones that I'd rather, just the little things like sharing a booth at a marathon expo or doing a giveaway on social media or just, I'd rather stay friendly with people. Yeah.

• 40:18Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, okay. That, I mean, that makes sense. Well, what's, what have you used? I mean, I, you probably don't want to alienate anybody, but like if you stack this with the carb, what carb do you take when you run?

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:32Cameron Hanes?

  Like what gel?

• 40:33Speaker 01

  I mix, I mix a few. I like Morton, I like goo, I like raw. Those are the main ones I use. I rotate through them. There's like different flavors I like. I'm not, you know, dogmatic, oh, I only use.

• 40:46Cameron Hanes?

  And do you track, do you try to get in a certain amount per hour?

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'll, I'll do 100 grams per hour. That's what I go for.

• 40:54Cameron Hanes?

  Gotcha.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  My stance on it is you should have as much as possible. Like if you're doing a marathon, doing anything longer than that, that you should basically max out, that like whatever you can take.

• 41:05Cameron Hanes?

  How do you keep your stomach stable?

• 41:09Speaker 01

  A lot of it is just picking the right carb.

• 41:12Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Like so, so sometimes people feel better with this flavor versus that flavor, this brand versus that. And then a lot of it's genetic, natural, or you can train to it too. A lot of people, you know, you get more of an iron stomach, the more

• 41:24Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  they have it. But basically, that is the, that is the exercise to fill in. It's kind of personal, like

• 41:30Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  which brand, and then doing it in training runs and just getting that, that iron stomach to, okay, yeah, what can I have? Do I need to find the perfect one and stay with that one? Or do I need to actually rotate and have five different varieties of different gels from different brands and figure out the way to like max? If, if what you're going for is a marathon PR, you're trying to win an ultra marathon, then like my advice is max out on carbs. And then on top of that, have ketone IQ because it's whatever you're able to take on carbs, like ketones is just this other, this other pocket, this other, this other pathway.

• 42:03Cameron Hanes?

  What do you do for salt?

• 42:05Speaker 01

  I, I think salt's huge. I almost, I like the salt tabs.

• 42:09Cameron Hanes?

  Like S caps or?

• 42:11Speaker 01

  I think the brand, the brand I use is

• 42:13Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I've seen those. Like they're on like a pink, are the, are the ones you, you take in a pink little bag or like kind of you rip the top off?

• 42:21Speaker 01

  And they're like, they're almost like Tums size or

• 42:23Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, right.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Altoid size. Yeah.

• 42:25Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, okay.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  I like those. I like to kind of chew, because I like to keep my water as water.

• 42:30Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Because sometimes I just want water. Then I like to be able to kind of chew on those salt tabs. That's personal.

• 42:36Cameron Hanes?

  Okay. Yeah. Because I know, and everybody's so different on that. A lot of people get their calories in with their water. You know, get some carbs in there. Like I think Tailwind.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:46Cameron Hanes?

  They might have carbs in their water, right?

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:49Cameron Hanes?

  In their, in their drink mix. But uh, yeah, it's interesting. Then I know like Courtney, she eats a lot of like mashed potatoes in a squeeze bag.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  All right.

• 43:00Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. And I don't know how, I can't, I don't know if they buy them like that or make them like that, but it's almost like baby food, food. And that's just how she can take in those carbs, you know, and it's good on her stomach.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. The Kenyans are really into, it's called ugali. It's like mashed up yams.

• 43:17Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  Uh, that's a big part. It's like with, mixed with honey or it might be a grain. Anyway, it's called ugali and it's, it's huge in East Africa. And yeah, it's basically like how How much carb can you get in mashed potato? That's, that's elite.

• 43:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah, I know. That's what, yeah. So I don't know if she's changed it up or not, but that is always the, the test in those long races is how can I keep taking calories in?

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 43:44Cameron Hanes?

  Cause once you are unable or your stomach won't allow it, or you're throwing up, race is gonna be tough.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  You're gonna have a bad time.

• 43:52Cameron Hanes?

  You gotta keep taking, but I never, you know, this carbs per hour thing and measuring it hasn't ever really been anything I knew of. It's always just, hey, you gotta make sure you're eating and drinking and taking salt, but there was never like in a, you know, number to it.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:08Cameron Hanes?

  So it's pretty new in the last couple of years, I think. I don't know.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's one of those things that's like kind of stress tested, like push it to its limits.

• 44:15Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  That, what were we talking about? Like, how do you get those, that extra marginal gain? It's like, well, what, yeah, what happens if in that part of the system, you just push it all the way?

• 44:25Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  And that's where I think there's a lot of gains left.

• 44:29Cameron Hanes?

  It's interesting. Yeah. Cause you think of somebody like, you know, we talked about the weekend warrior type guy. But then you talk like Cole Hocker, who, you know, set the Olympic record at 327 in the 1500. But what if he could get to take a second off? So for that guy could, or an athlete like that, could ketones give him that 1%?

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:51Cameron Hanes?

  You know what I mean?

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:52Cameron Hanes?

  You know, right before the race. I don't know that, he doesn't have a lot of gains to get.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:58Cameron Hanes?

  But one second is a lot in that venue.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. One second's a lot. Yeah. Big fans of, of team Silva, Cole's team. We did, done a lot of work with them. We're working, we did a lot of work with them around the Olympics too. Uh, they're great. Yeah. They're, they're studs for sure.

• 45:12Cameron Hanes?

  Oh yeah. He's the nicest, nicest young man ever and so talented. Geez.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Talented, humble, heart's in the right place.

• 45:21Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Great guy. Good shot with the bow.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:25Cameron Hanes?

  Um, yeah, so that that's, that's awesome. Um, I mean, for you growing up though, like, what'd you study in college?

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, in college, I studied computer science.

• 45:39Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  I came from a, uh, just regular family. I'm from Chicago, went to public school.

• 45:45Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Nothing too special fancy. I was fortunate enough to get into Stanford. That was a super interesting eye opening experience.

• 45:52Cameron Hanes?

  How did you get in there? Just good grades or like, does, isn't it hard to get in?

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:58Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, you need over a four point, right?

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You gotta have really good grades and then usually they're looking for some X factor.

• 46:03Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  And.

• 46:04Cameron Hanes?

  What was yours?

• 46:06Speaker 01

  A few, I was class president. I was, did extracurriculars. I was a big nerd.

• 46:11Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  And I, yeah, worked really hard. It was really, it was curious, I would say. Always curious. I did science fair. I went to international science fair. It sounds like I'm bragging. I, it's.

• 46:23Cameron Hanes?

  No, I, I wanna know because, I mean, I know my daughter was really good in school too. And it's like, if you have like even a four point two, you have a hard time getting into like a lot of good schools. I mean, it's just like, how can you even get better than a four point two? But well, you can, you can get a four point six somehow.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:41Cameron Hanes?

  But anyway, so that's why I was curious about it.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I, I was always a curious person and you know, just went for that extra inch. Like you just ask, like I just asked my principal if she'd write a recommendation and I, I think no one else asked.

• 46:56Cameron Hanes?

  Were you always outgoing as it?

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:59Cameron Hanes?

  Cause a lot of kids wouldn't do that because they're too whatever, self-conscious.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I started seeing it kind of as a,

• 47:10Speaker 01

  like the matrix or as a, as a game when I was in high school that.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  You're in control of how you show up in a lot of circumstances. You have certain, sure, baked in characteristics of your personality, but you can also try and it's more malleable than you think that if you wanna have good frame in a certain situation, that's something you can work on.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  And just seeing that at an early age and like, okay, you can, you can have better posture, you can speak more clearly, like you can, it's hard to develop a sense of humor, maybe, but like you could try, right? Like there's certain aspects that you can work on. And I think a lot of people have a set, okay, this is my personality. And I think I, I saw early on, I felt like in this matrix kind of moment where like, no, you can actually have this, you can grow and develop and get better at a lot of these aspects that a lot of people think are baked in. You can, you can be different. So I, I don't know if I was born outgoing. My parents aren't necessarily super outgoing, but I just put in sets and reps. Like I remember as a kid, I would just chat with the person next to me in line somewhere.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  And try to make it like fun and not in like a weird way, just like try to find something fun, relatable, like.

• 48:32Cameron Hanes?

  Why would you, when, how did you like think about like this just on your own? Or did somebody mention it to you?

• 48:38Speaker 01

  I just thought that it would be this source of infinite value if you're able to.

• 48:43Cameron Hanes?

  Like empowering.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you have that skill, like if you're able to spark up a conversation with any arbitrary person, there's some, if you think hard enough, there's some Venn diagram overlap between you and any other person. Like there's something.

• 48:58Cameron Hanes?

  Has it ever not worked?

• 48:59Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, cause it's, it's, yeah, sometimes people aren't in the mood. Or sometimes it's, you know, it's really hard to find what is that exact overlap.

• 49:08Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  But sometimes it's not so hard. Sometimes it's just like, hey, what's good here?

• 49:11Cameron Hanes?

  When, when has it worked? You got an example of like when it, like you're like, God, this is amazing.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I just like, if you're at a restaurant or in line somewhere, he's like, hey, what's good here?

• 49:22Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  A lot of times if someone's been here before, yeah, the ribs, like, it's like. And then you can make, people give signals like if they want to continue, if they're bored, they want to chit chat. Some people don't and you respect that, of course.

• 49:34Cameron Hanes?

  Cause most people wait to ask the waiter, what's good, which of course they can say everything's good. But yeah, okay. A consumer would be probably be more honest. But yeah, I'm just curious about, cause most, most young, especially high school are very self-conscious. As I mentioned that too. Or like people will say, I'm just not outgoing, or I just don't, you know, I just, I'm not a people person.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  I think that's a fixed mindset. It's like saying I can't bench press.

• 50:03Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  It's like, well, that might be true right now, but hey, you can probably bench the bar.

• 50:08Cameron Hanes?

  We're pretty, we're a pretty amazing species.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:11Cameron Hanes?

  We can adapt to a lot of things.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:13Cameron Hanes?

  If you're not a big talker, hey, people have overcome a lot more than just being a little bit more vocal.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so seeing that that was an area that your personality, being outgoing is something that you can apply sets and reps to.

• 50:25Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  Was early inside. I don't think I'm the best at it. There's some people that are super duper smooth and silver tongue of a diplomat. Like some people are just mass, like major charisma. I don't think there's such a thing as a natural though. I think some people like, yeah, if your dad's a senator and you're in every conversation from a young, young age, you just got those sets and reps in early.

• 50:47Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  And it was brought along with you. The same way that you can, your son or daughter can have sets and reps running up the hill. And so seeing it as a growth mindset and yeah, we're all on our path. I'm still growing. I'm a 35, I'm a CEO and I've gotten a lot better since I started this whole thing. And there's still a lot of ground to cover. And I know guys like Evan Hafer, it's like CEO of a publicly traded company. It's like, okay, like I'm learning, like there's, but I never think about it as impossible. Like, okay, like I'm not there right now. I can't bench 300 pounds, but I like, you could get there. If that's something that you want to do, like if you want to be a public company, Fortune 100 CEO.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  It's been, it's been done before. People with less.

• 51:31Cameron Hanes?

  It's not impossible.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  It's not impossible. It's not this fixed thing. Oh, I'm not, I don't know how that works. I don't know if I have this. It's like you truly learn anything. Everything is plastic.

• 51:40Cameron Hanes?

  If you think about Evan, specifically CEO of Black Rifle Coffee, he was in the army. He's in the military. And so how does that prepare you to run a publicly traded company? You know what I mean? So whatever path he was interested in, or whatever think topics he was interested in, he applied what he knew, the skills he was developing in the military, got hired on, I think he worked for the CIA. And then now all of a sudden, they go public for 1.7 billion dollars.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  It's incredible.

• 52:11Cameron Hanes?

  It's like, how does that happen?

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:12Cameron Hanes?

  That just being, his military training didn't do that.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:17Cameron Hanes?

  That was just him, just hungry to learn.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  It helped him, right? In the sense that leader of men.

• 52:22Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Good communicator, good at, I think one of the best.

• 52:25Cameron Hanes?

  Skills.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, skills. One of the best things you can do as a leader, I've found, is

• 52:32Speaker 01

  hire other leaders and make it really clear, when a opportunity or problem comes up, make it really clear who needs, who in the squad needs to lead through it. And a lot of times, the best thing you can do is, as the head honcho, is actually tap yourself out and to say, hey, this problem here is an operations problem. I'm going to put in the guy with 15 years of supply chain experience. We're all going to listen to him. Okay, everyone, I'm the CEO. We're listening to this guy. Or hey, like, we have this opportunity over here. Okay, that's a content or a marketing opportunity. How about we listen to the guy who's been doing content for 20 years and has gone viral bajillion times? Like, we're, okay, everyone, we're going to go listen to this person.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  And I think, I mean, I've gotten a chance to hang out with Evan a few times, hear his story. I think he's really good at that kind of thing. Like, he surrounds himself with great leaders. And he's great at passing the ball where it needs to be on the field. And I think a lot, you know, I think a, you know, more novice take on what it means to be a CEO is that you're the decider on everything. You're the boss to tell everyone what to do. And it's, the best guys don't do that.

• 53:42Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  There's, there's a few decisions where you're actually the one, okay, like if it's really multifaceted or a company really hasn't seen that before, or, you know, you kind of know when it happens. Like, but you got to be honest. You got to be low ego. I'm like, okay, am I actually the expert or is?

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Is there someone on the team who's who's better at this than me? And a lot of times when you're the expert as the leader, it's a it's a flaw. It's like if you keep hitting that type of problem, like you got to hire someone who's really good at that type of problem.

• 54:12Cameron Hanes?

  Or you're not developing your staff.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 54:14Cameron Hanes?

  To the to the level they need to be. Yeah. Do you think it feels like a lot of CEOs would make that mistake, like trying to make every decision? Maybe not good. Maybe the not the ones who are successful, because if they're successful, they've obviously figured that out.

• 54:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. You got to always be hiring yourself out of the job. And it's scary because then it's you're like, oh, what do I do here now? Like, if you're spending all day, you know, running your warehouse and like your nights, weekends, you're doing this, and then all of a sudden, you hire someone to who's better than you at that. And you can feel like the this has happened to me a few times in my career, you just feel like the bottom drops out. You hire that person and the next day, you feel useless. You show up to where you're like, what do I do now? But that's actually what you want. Because then it's like, okay.

• 54:59Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  Like, let me let the let things settle. And then let me see where the next.

• 55:04Cameron Hanes?

  Challenge.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  The next challenge, next opportunity comes up. I think a lot of people, it's easy to get attached to the to the work. And I think it's really important as a leader to be always hiring yourself out of the job. And then sensitive to what's next. And then you go and do that for a little bit. And then I have this I have this motto at the company, which is like, I don't like doing anything one X. Whenever we're doing something kind of, you know, one X, say, we're doing like sampling at marathons, like, I'm always like, hey, guys, I want to zero X this or 10 X it. So meaning, I want either want to like, we're going to do sure, we can do it one X for a couple of months. But then we're either going to hire the best person in the world at this, or we're going to stop doing it. I don't I don't like doing it a little bit.

• 55:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  It's like a toe in the water. A toe in the water is to test the temperature of the water. And you're either getting in or you're getting out.

• 55:54Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  And I think one thing that makes leaders good is they're not afraid to put that toe in the water. They're not afraid to go like do it.

• 56:02Cameron Hanes?

  Take that first step.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it might be kind of shitty and duct taped together. And okay, I'm gonna I'm not the expert. I'm maybe I think, I think I'm like, pretty good at a lot of things, like jack of all trades. So I can kind of do a lot of things deuce. But once it starts to hit, the first thing I'm thinking is like, okay, who's actually the best in the world?

• 56:21Cameron Hanes?

  Take this to the next level.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:22Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  And I think, I think there's this curse actually of like, if you're too good as a leader, like there's, there's a certain archetype of leader that's almost the like, the like dumb dumb CEO who's like actually really effective because it's like, imagine like the, like it's a regular dude who's like super friendly and affable, well-connected, and they just are super humbled to the fact that

• 56:48Speaker 01

  they're not going to be the one to solve the thing, but they, they're gonna go and find that person. And I think there's this curse of if you're.

• 56:55Cameron Hanes?

  But they have to be confident.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  They have to be confident.

• 56:57Cameron Hanes?

  Because if they're not confident, they think everybody's taking their job or, or taking their power away. But if they're confident in their decisions and their own ability, then they're okay with delegating that.

• 57:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:09Cameron Hanes?

  Right?

• 57:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:09Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, I don't know.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  No, you're right. You, you gotta be, you gotta be confident in it. You gotta be.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  I do think it's rare to be able to,

• 57:20Speaker 01

  you know, speak all the different languages to really find, you gotta know what really good looks like.

• 57:24Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  That's the key thing. Like you gotta know what a great lawyer looks like, what a great chemist looks like, whatever your line of work is, right? You gotta know what greatness looks like in that area to be able to tap it in.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  You don't have to be it yourself. I think it's a, as I was saying earlier, it can be a curse. I think a lot of what gets businesses off the ground to begin with is a super talented leader who's really good at doing the actual work. And then at a certain point, that's a curse because like you actually need to hire someone else to do that because you gotta go, let that thing go, do something. And I think that's where a lot of businesses, you know, hit some ceiling and there's, there's that room to grow beyond it. When you hire the right other leaders, it's, it's about being a leader of leaders.

• 58:09Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  It's something I'm working on. I don't, I hope I'm not, like, I don't know everything here. This is on my path, kind of what I've been thinking about and

• 58:16Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  and, and learning on.

• 58:18Cameron Hanes?

  So, I mean, I've heard you reference a few different things. Like we talked about Shoe Dog. So I know you've, you know, Phil Knight, you've taken some things from that. You've mentioned Evan with Black Rifle. So do you try to take different things from different organizations? Or do you have a blueprint that you've developed that you're trying to follow? Or? How are you running your company now?

• 58:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I borrow something from everywhere. I like to steal like an artist. I do believe that the idea of leadership does not exist in this universal true way that there's not like this like textbook definition of, okay, this is what leadership looks like. You're gonna see very different leadership styles out there. The way Oprah Winfrey leads her media empire, very different from how Joe Rogan leads his media empire, right? And like, that's media. And you look at Calvin Klein versus Chanel, like fashion icons. They're leading their businesses in different ways. Everyone's gonna lead in a different way.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  And you gotta find your own way of doing it. There's no one way to do it. Like, some leaders are hyper disciplined. Every meeting starts at, you know, 59 past the hour. And if you're early is on time, on time is late. Everything is, I's are dotted, T's are crossed. Other leaders are, yeah, other leaders are more, you know, loose or creative or this or that. Like, there's a lot of different ways to lead. Steve Jobs, very different than Phil Knight, right? Like, you got a lot of different styles and so

• 59:54Speaker 01

  I think you gotta, you gotta steal the things that work for you. Like, try a lot of things out, see what feels right and amplify those. So, I mean, for me, I think a lot about

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  I like, I like Nike, I like Apple, I like

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  designing products. I like, I like the leaders who are

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  really good at making things really simple and beautiful and that everything else comes from there. If you can make a product that people just love, that ideally doesn't require a manual, that just brings you joy and is recognizable and is really simple, then all the other things around that can, you can, you can assemble the team. You can assemble the supply chain team, you can do the marketing around it, you can do all the things. But when you think about Nike or when you think about Apple, it's like, what's at the core of it? It's like, the leaders are just obsessed with, like, Phil Knight actually just wanted to make the best shoe. And everything else kind of emerged from there. I don't think he was like a supply chain savant. I think it was a shoe, like a shoe design savant, especially with Bowerman too, like that. I think they were obsessed with making the best shoe. And once that starts to take off, it's like you can kind of hire the other

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  functions that that need to exist to make the company thrive. But I, when I think about developing my own leadership styles, I'm not necessarily like, you know, finance wizard or this or that. But I think I, what I try to do a good job of is listening to people, having empathy, designing products that people really love and bring them joy, fine tuning the messaging, making the product really front and center. And then if that's really working, and then, then you can kind of build, hire out the different roles around there.

• 1:01:35Cameron Hanes?

  What, I mean, so you're not where you want to be, obviously, but you're on the path. What's been the biggest key to your success to get to where you're at right now in this journey?

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say I've

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  let go of who I was a few different times. I've changed a lot. I would say at the, at the highest level, it's just ability to

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  let go, like to sell your first hundred thousand dollars product takes a certain skill set to sell your first, your next million dollars, you gotta be almost a different person to sell your next 10 million. We sold tens of millions, we sold over $50 million of Ketone IQ, like each one of those rungs takes just, you just gotta move very differently. And so I would say at the highest level, it's the ability to kind of molt, to let go of who I was,

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  be able to put that person away and like reinvent and become a new person. And it's looked different each time that like, you know, in the early, early days, you gotta be hardworking and talented and relentless. And it's just you and your co-founder and maybe like a couple of part-time people and you're just like, Jamming it, willing it into being. And at a certain point, we've talked about this a little bit already. At a certain point, you got, that's like the exact opposite of what you gotta do. You gotta take your hands off the controller and you gotta, you gotta be really good at hiring people. You gotta be really good at connecting and having a good network around you so that when new opportunities rise at the business, you already know who, who's the best in the world at that to go and hire. So I spend a lot more of my time now is up and out connecting with people and learning how other businesses work and

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  meeting experts at different types of functions and thinking about where the puck is going in the next one, two, three years, talking to, you know, big companies and understanding how they think about innovation and, you know, there's a chance at some point we'd want to sell the company. Maybe we go public, maybe we sell the company and just keeping options open, understanding what, how big companies acquire. Like, what do they look for in companies that they end up buying and like, how do we, without being in a hurry to sell the company, like, how do we build the company in a way such that if we wanted that to be an option, that we know all the right people and we're speaking the same language and we've built the company in a way that it can plug into a

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  Pepsi or Pepsi owns Gatorade, that we could plug into a company like that or like Curd Dr. Pepper, one of these other big public beverage companies.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  So I was, yeah, I would say

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  I have been okay with

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  kind of putting my old self down and reinventing my next self. And it's happened every year or so.

• 1:04:26Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I mean, that just has me wondering how much of that reinvention is internal versus external? Would, would the people that you work with see the same you? But the change is inside. You're looking at things differently. You, you see things differently, but they see the same Michael.

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  It's interesting. That's a really good question, Cam, because it can, it's led to some interesting conversations because sometimes the relationship changes. Some people grow with you and they're right there alongside you and other people.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  They're maybe more the same and

• 1:05:07Cameron Hanes?

  And they say, would they say you've changed? We're not, I mean,

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  It might be, it well, it might be because maybe for instance, I in the past was more

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  in the details and in the work and more attentive and more caring. And then at a certain point, now, okay, we've hired X more people. We have X, Y more dollars coming into the business. We have more expectations, maybe added investors and like now my, the way I relate to people is more like, hey, I'm just going to say that what needs to happen. And you either hit it or you don't hit it. And I'm not in there to like mentor and coach and do the work with you in a way that I maybe I used to be. And that does lead to challenging conversations sometimes because it's, it's a different, it can be a different working relationship. And you gotta communicate about it. You know, I think fundamentally, most of these conversations,

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  they round up in a positive way where it's like, okay, let's all be that way. Like, let's all grow in that same way together.

• 1:06:09Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  The company's evolving. We're not this R and D project that maybe was the case in, you know, five, six years ago, we're, we're a lot bigger guns now. We're still very small, but like, you know, a lot bigger than we used to be. And the way we need to move is a little bit different. And so having those conversations with people, yeah, I do think I've, I've changed. And I think you gotta always be pinging, you gotta, you have, the one thing I think hasn't changed is just being honest, communicative, like full, transparent, like open heart, open kimono, like just honest. And if it's not working with someone, like, talk about it, like,

• 1:06:47Cameron Hanes?

  Are you good at that? Those, because you know, a lot of bosses per se aren't, well, not a lot of them, because if you're good, you're good at communicating. But how is that one of your strengths to be able to be, have honest dialogue with people? Even if it's hard?

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  I'd say so. That, yeah. And I think that's a good trait for leaders. I think again, like, especially as the business grows, I'm not necessarily the expert at all these different areas. But being able to communicate with people on what the business needs and how that relates to their function and how they're doing at it and how can I help you hit that goal? Like what resources do you need? I can't directly help you, but like, is it, do you need to hire a number two? Do you need to learn a new skill? Do you need to take time to do that? Do you need to take on less work? Do you need to redefine the goals in some way? Like, working with people, having those open conversations?

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say it feels natural to me, but I, as you asked the question, yeah, I would say something I'm good at. Yeah, like just keeping it real with people.

• 1:08:01Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:02Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I would, I mean, that's what it takes to be successful. It seems like guys who aren't, or leaders who aren't that, it's gonna be rough. It's gonna be rough to grow, you know?

• 1:08:13Speaker 01

  I think I'm always

• 1:08:14Cameron Hanes?

  You'll lose good people along the way.

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  I think you always, the goal, my, one of my goals as a leader is to say what's going on. It's George Washington crossing the Delaware. Like, it ain't pretty. It's cold as shit. Some of us might die. It's rough, but like saying, hey, this is the map. This is the, this is what we're gonna go and do and being honest and not, hey, we're gonna cross the Delaware. It's gonna be great, guys. I think, I think some leaders can be kind of overly candy coated and like turning to rah rah and like, I actually think that backfires in a major way. I think the best thing you can do as a leader is, is be honest. And to provide that true north, that guiding star, and that sometimes includes bad news. Sometimes that includes bad news about how, you know, to a specific person on how they're doing. Hey, we're crossing the Delaware.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  You need to work on your paddling.

• 1:09:03Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Like, on that side of the boat.

• 1:09:05Cameron Hanes?

  You're falling behind.

• 1:09:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're falling behind and like, that's just, that is. And being able to, to say that and I think at a certain point, you kind of build a reputation around you for people just know that you're a no bullshit person and, you know, no one likes being on the receiving end of it, but then, you know, if they have something to say about someone else, oh, the other side of the boat is too heavy or something, you know, then like, they appreciate having a leader who can say what's real to

• 1:09:33Cameron Hanes?

  Be honest.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  To that side of the boat. And I think it's good to, to build that brand. And I think about it like,

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  Be compassionate about it. It doesn't mean being like bullshitting people or hiding the hiding the truth or being nice for no reason. It just means being, I think the most compassionate thing you can do is be honest.

• 1:09:53Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Yeah. Honest feedback, even if if people don't want to hear it's like, yeah. Yeah. A lot of people don't want constructive criticism.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:10:03Cameron Hanes?

  Cause they feel like they're being whatever.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Well, that's, that's something that we look for a lot when we're hiring people and it's, it's a big part of our culture is ability to take feedback, be able to give feedback too. Like I always think it's weird. You know, it's, it's not a good sign if someone's not willing to, you know, give me feedback. If they're not willing to like challenge me, I try to be opening, open and welcoming of it. Like, you know, I don't know everything. Like I'm hiring people who are smarter than me in some way that expand the organization in some way. Like if there's a blind spot, like I, I need you. Part of the job is to come to me and, and tell me what we could be doing here. Like I, if I knew everything, I would, your job would be obsolete. Like I don't know everything. I'm looking for people to come in and really

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  help, help me guide the ship. And so it's a two-way thing. It's like give me feedback, be receptive to feedback. And yeah, it's not for everyone. And I don't mean that in a like overly judgmental way. It's just like, we have a certain culture and it's not for everyone and that's okay. Like there's other jobs that are going to be way easier, way more chill. Maybe not as ambitious and lucrative and all that stuff, but like you got, you kind of, I think about it like a professional sports team. Like we're here to perform at a really high level and win big together and do great things. And if you want a more like chillax lifestyle, like I have no moral judgment on that. Like

• 1:11:31Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  Maybe me out of, fresh out of college or me when I'm older, like maybe me in another lifetime, like that's a fine job. There's no, there's truly, I mean it in my heart. Like I have no judgment on that. It's just that the company that I'm running right now is not that. And so the best thing I can do is fly the flag and be really honest with people when they're interviewing or we're doing performance reviews. Like this is the culture and.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  If it's like it's got all these pluses and we're gonna go and do great things together and it's gonna make people's career and we're gonna accomplish great things. It's gonna be a lot of hard work, but we're the type of people that like carrying rocks up mountains, like all of us, like that's just in the culture. So if you're down for that, like, cool, we're gonna have a lot of fun.

• 1:12:17Cameron Hanes?

  Right, yeah.

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  And just flying that flag, I feel like as a leader, one of the best things I can do is just communicate like who we are and try to scare people away if it's not for them and try to attract the right people that that is for.

• 1:12:30Cameron Hanes?

  So the culture is just hard work, take no prisoners, do cool shit, make an impact.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:37Cameron Hanes?

  Is that the culture?

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, we actually have it written out, like we have our cultural tenants. Yeah, we.

• 1:12:43Cameron Hanes?

  What are they?

• 1:12:45Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, sorry, I put you on the spot.

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, this is good, this is good.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Our first one is play to win, because I think a lot of businesses kind of lost sight of that.

• 1:12:58Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  And they went to like, okay, the whole point is to, you know, optimize your employee happiness score or something, which we're not running a slave camp. Like, I want people to be happy, like, that is important.

• 1:13:11Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that's not the measurable, though.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  But that's like, we are also playing to win. I think about, you know, like Oregon Ducks, right? They're the number one football team in in college football right now, like, they're playing to win, right? Like, they like, winning is winning and you want good morale, that's a part of it. You want people to enjoy their time and have satisfaction of it, but like, the idea that, hey, like, there is an objective measure of how we're doing and like, some people just are better at making correct decisions. Like, smarter people are are smarter, hardworking people are harder working, like, that there is this, just like, pure play to win. We have a few other, we got eight of them.

• 1:13:50Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, yeah. This isn't like, like, when Tanner graduated Ranger School.

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Cameron Hanes?

  They had to say the Ranger creed.

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:59Cameron Hanes?

  You know, you gotta memorize that. So this isn't that.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:01Cameron Hanes?

  This isn't the Ranger creed.

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I mean, one of one of my other favorite ones is.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  Constructive feedback that, yeah, we were talking about it earlier, it's like, the ability to detach your ego and kind of pin the work up on the wall.

• 1:14:21Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  And we talk about the work and it's not an attack on you.

• 1:14:25Cameron Hanes?

  Take the emotion away from it?

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  That's a, that's a big part of our culture.

• 1:14:33Speaker 01

  I'm really big on, it's quality, quality of communication is another one that.

• 1:14:37Cameron Hanes?

  How, what do you mean quality?

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  That I just expect people to be really good at written communication, verbal communication, that the ability to, and I actually, I mean, as it's written is actually

• 1:14:54Speaker 01

  that written communication is the spine of the business. So you can have conversations, you can have phone calls, face to face, you can brainstorm, whiteboard, but like what, what's actually going on at the business is what's like written down. Our quarterly goals and then how we judge those quarterly goals, it's all written down. There's a big project, there should be a document about it, like a memo, it's something to define what's, what success looks like, what the different roles are, who's responsible for what, that everything else is a means to an end, like a conversation, a phone call, a whiteboard, like that's all great, that's important.

• 1:15:30Cameron Hanes?

  It's all built off the written communication?

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:32Cameron Hanes?

  The game plan?

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:15:34Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  And so I think there's some opinionatedness inside of that, which is that this written communication is the spine, like if we're gonna go on a big trip and do a lot of stuff, like there better be a document for it, it can't just be like Lucy Goose phone calls or this person knows

• 1:15:48Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:48Speaker 01

  half of what's going on, this person knows another half, this, it's like the, the way to get everyone on the same page, well, there needs to

• 1:15:55Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  be a page.

• 1:15:56Cameron Hanes?

  Page, yeah.

• 1:15:56Speaker 01

  There needs to be an action.

• 1:15:57Cameron Hanes?

  I would always hate when I had issues, like when I was superintendent, and they'd say, well, I called him and talked to him. I'm like. I want to fucking read it.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:06Cameron Hanes?

  I want to read what, what you guys talked about.

• 1:16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:08Cameron Hanes?

  I want to, I want to see it because verbal on a phone call is who knows what.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:13Cameron Hanes?

  You never know what, what was said or what wasn't said, but so I, I definitely get that. So who comes up with, who writes this document? Is this you?

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:22Cameron Hanes?

  Or you, are you tasking people with this?

• 1:16:25Speaker 01

  Oh, for given projects?

• 1:16:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I try to not be the one writing it. To, back to what I was saying earlier, that usually there's someone better than me at the given role. So if we're switching manufacturing facilities, then a head of supply chain needs to run that. And I'm going to be a stakeholder, very opinionated, and I always reserve the right to override if it doesn't smell right to me. But basically, the whole reason that I have a higher head of supply chain is to run that process. If there's a big content project, our head of content will run it. If there's a big new product development, we're updating our formula, we're launching new stuff, like our head of product will run that.

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  So I try, I think one of the best things I can do as a leader is to identify the work that needs to be done. And then nominate the leader who needs to lead that.

• 1:17:20Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  And then I'm really big on ownership, like that's, that's another one of our core values.

• 1:17:26Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that'd be a good one.

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that a dog of, what's the saying, a dog with two owners dies of starvation.

• 1:17:32Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  That I don't, I hate it when two people own something.

• 1:17:35Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:17:36Speaker 01

  Is I don't know who, I, who, who, who do I give a back rub to when this thing?

• 1:17:42Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

  Knocks it out of the park, or who do I deliver feedback to? Who does?

• 1:17:45Cameron Hanes?

  HR is going to talk about your back rub.

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  Who do, who do I give a, a, you know?

• 1:17:53Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  Promotion to, bonus to when the, when the thing goes well, or who, you know, who do we give critical feedback to? That when it's two, it's just the Spider-Man meme, everyone pointing at everyone. So ownership is really important and I, I can't, we're at a scale, I can't own everything. And the amount of work that's going on, there just needs to be different owners. So one of the things I find myself often doing is as a leader is.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  Seeing opportunities that come up or problems that come up that don't have owners. And a lot of times, there's this, you can, you can, I can see these telltale signs where a lot of people are spending a lot of calories thinking about this thing, but no one's fully owning it. It's a lot of meetings. It's a lot of, this person has, knows kind of two thirds of what's going on. This other person knows a quarter of what's going on. Like, there's no one person who's really like, driving it, deciding it, and putting their stake in the ground and say, hey, here's what's needs to happen. It's just a lot of people kind of nibbling at the problem. And no one really driving it. And that's where I'll come in and say, okay, like, we gotta cut this out. Like, this person,

• 1:18:58Speaker 01

  you're the expert at this. You're running it. We're all gonna give you our feedback, let you know our thoughts. But I need, you gotta write the document. I'm holding you to account for a high-quality solution here.

• 1:19:08Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  You run it. And I think that's one of the best things I can do as a leader is to, when there are those jump balls where no one's doing it. A lot of things in the business are really obvious. Like, the finance guy owns closing the books every month.

• 1:19:22Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  But there's, when you're growing really quickly, there's always these new frontiers, these new things that come up. That's like, ah, who owns that? Does that? I don't know. We gotta, we wanna do something cool inside of our, we're, we're doing a lot with Vitamin Shoppe right now. We wanna do some cool stuff inside of the store. Does a marketing team own that? Or does the sales team own that?

• 1:19:41Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  Well, you guys gotta talk, but like, at the end of the day, I want the marketing team to own that. That's the person's gotta document it and really drive it, and then collect feedback from other people. And, but at the end of the day, who am I holding accountable? Who's getting the back rub slash bonus or whatever? Who's getting the, or who's getting the critique on it? That, yeah, to your question, like, do I write every document? No. I try to really empower other people.

• 1:20:09Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. And I think, I mean, some people... I mean, I don't know, I can't speak for for your business, but some people like being the person who just chimes in on everything. They don't really, they can't really, they're not accountable to it, but they got big opinions on it. And then you say, okay, well, why don't you run this? And they don't want to do that either, you know, but so the opposite of that is have you had people new in the organization that have just, you just can tell that, God, this, this guy or this girl is capable of so much.

• 1:20:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:43Cameron Hanes?

  What, what do they do to catch your attention? As a whatever that maybe they're not a senior.

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:50Cameron Hanes?

  Employee yet, but you're like.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:52Cameron Hanes?

  This person has a future. What do you see in somebody like that?

• 1:20:55Speaker 01

  You want to know what it is, Cam? It's that they take really good notes.

• 1:20:59Cameron Hanes?

  Oh.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  Out of meetings and they share them. That's something that a junior person can do on day one. Is if they're in a meeting, like what went down, what was decided, who's owning what coming out of here? To me, that's a signal that this person gives a damn.

• 1:21:15Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:21:15Speaker 01

  And that they are just seeing clearly in their attentive and inside of that too, right? A lot of times there's within a meeting, there's a lot of mini jump balls, there's things that are discussed, oh, we should really do that. It's like, yo, is that happening or not happening? Like, oh, we should, like.

• 1:21:30Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:21:31Speaker 01

  It's like, is that happening? Are you owning that? Are you owning that?

• 1:21:35Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  Oh, you're busy. Okay, it's not happening. Okay, like, let's really define what the outputs are here. So it's this, it's this.

• 1:21:43Cameron Hanes?

  You know, a lot of great things are brought up that kind of don't make it out of the meeting. And then you're thinking about it later going, God, didn't we talk about that?

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:52Cameron Hanes?

  And so, yeah, to your point.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, we talked about it, but you know.

• 1:21:56Cameron Hanes?

  Nothing ever happened.

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:57Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  And so that's where I think taking really good notes is this like sneaky way in that if I was junior in an organization, that would be my method to climb, you know, one of the parts is like.

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  Volunteering to be the note taker. And then making sure that all the items discussed have an owner and a next steps and that that's shared.

• 1:22:22Cameron Hanes?

  Is like the minutes of the meeting?

• 1:22:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, you could say that. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:22:27Cameron Hanes?

  And then who, then you got action items.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  I care more about the action items. I don't care like, okay, in minute forty seven, we discussed.

• 1:22:34Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  Apples and bananas. It's like, I care more like, okay, we're going all in on apples and Alice owns it. And like, that's done. Cause when I see someone doing that, it's like, okay, this person has like, executive function, like they understand how to organize a team and how to assign ownership and they already get a lot of the good stuff. And they care and they already have a lot of the good ingredients. So to your question, like, okay, if someone's junior, how do I kind of spot? If they're gonna excel, that's a big one is are they able to?

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  Take good notes in a meeting. It sounds so simple, but it's one of those things like.

• 1:23:17Cameron Hanes?

  Usually it is a simple things. It's communicating, it's the notes, it's showing up. It's, I mean, it usually is a simple things.

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Cause I think, I mean, you see a lot of people, like, I think you call it, like, a lot of people who they're real good at strategy, they're chiming in on this or that. I'm allergic to that, man. Like someone who has just like a lot of opinions across different areas of the business, like I appreciate it, but like, what are you doing? Like, what are you like, what are you like, what's your name next to?

• 1:23:46Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  And then, and then once your name is next, I actually want to hear more about what you have to say about everything else. But there's no person at the company who's just like sprinkling strategic thoughts around the rest of the company like, that's my job. Like, I mean, I even I own specific threads of execution, like. That's not a real job. I don't know, just being a strategy sprinkler, chimer inner. It's not a real job.

• 1:24:10Cameron Hanes?

  No, it's true. That's, that's true. I, uh, you know, my son who went to work where I worked on the construction crew is low as you can get. It's as low as you can get. And I, I told him, I said, just take notes, have a little notepad, little jobs that you guys didn't quite finish. Maybe it needed loam with some grass seed on it, or they had to dig up and water line or service or something like that. Just make a note of it. So then when somebody asks, hey, do we got anything to catch up on? You have your notepad. Nobody told you to do it. It's not your job necessarily, but it's, it's no different than, like, I would see somebody, um, they'd go to the job and you'd

• 1:24:51Cameron Hanes?

  see two guys show up. One guy gets right in the middle. How can that, one guy stands back, waits for somebody to tell him what to do. The guy who gets right in the middle to see if they can help, that guy I got, he's got my attention.

• 1:25:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:03Cameron Hanes?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:04Cameron Hanes?

  Of course, he doesn't have to. Nobody told him to do anything. Nobody told the guy standing back what to do, but you just see that hunger to be like, I wanna, I wanna be an asset.

• 1:25:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:15Cameron Hanes?

  And, uh, so your note, your note taking to me, it's a different environment because it's not construction, but it's, it's the same because they're wanting to make a difference. They're taking notes, they're keeping track, they're like being helpful and, um,

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  Like, anyone could do it, right? You're not asking for like some crazy

• 1:25:34Cameron Hanes?

  No.

• 1:25:35Speaker 01

  thing. It's, anyone could do it and it shows what you're saying that you want to be an asset, that you're trying and that goes so far.

• 1:25:43Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:43Speaker 01

  I think a lot of problems are not rocket science, even when you think about rocket science. A lot of the pieces are like, you break into, into parts. Like we were talking about with archery and I went out for my first time today. My brain's still spinning on everything.

• 1:25:57Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  And what you're saying is like, it kind of stacks. Once you got your 10,000 hours in, like the stuff that I'm really chewing through in my.

• 1:26:07Cameron Hanes?

  Right now, you're, you're thinking about all the little things. Pretty soon that'll be subconscious.

• 1:26:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:11Cameron Hanes?

  After however many reps.

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  Right. So if I watch you go and bow hunt, to me, that looks like absolute mastery, genius. Like, wow, you're playing six dimensional chess with the, you've got a live animal, you're out in the wilderness. I don't even know how it really, how to bow work. I don't think I loaded the arrow the same way twice. Could be in a row, like, okay, like you're, you're clearly there, but then each component piece of that is like pretty solvable.

• 1:26:36Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:26:36Speaker 01

  And I think that's true across a lot of domains where the component pieces are solvable that like,

• 1:26:45Speaker 01

  you, brain surgery, really fricking hard, but like, you know, it's hard because it's 15 years of training. But like each day of the training, if that's something that you really wanted to do, it's like, read this page of the textbook, make sure you understand it, show up on the test, like, say what you knew, like, do, like, learn this technique, learn this, this, like, every piece of it is understandable in principle. I, I really do believe that you can learn almost anything by, you know, breaking it up into small enough chunks.

• 1:27:13Cameron Hanes?

  Bite size, yeah.

• 1:27:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think, well, okay, what makes a person like naturally smart is I think that they can like chew through more bites faster. Or like bigger bites. Oh, I can just read that page once and I can get it. We've all met that person who's just like, boop, like boom, got it. Other people, I, I might have to read it three times, like, but

• 1:27:32Speaker 01

  at the end of the day, I think you can be really smart by

• 1:27:41Speaker 01

  just having the attitude that it's all bite sized chunks and being honest with yourself about the size of the bite that you can take off and just taking it piece by piece by piece.

• 1:27:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:49Speaker 01

  That you can be good at, you'd be great at guitar, right? Like, why, why couldn't you be great at guitar?

• 1:27:55Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  I don't know if you're great at guitar. I wouldn't surprise me if you were great at guitar.

• 1:27:58Cameron Hanes?

  No, I'm not. I'm good at one thing, bow hunting.

• 1:28:02Cameron Hanes?

  Um, yeah, cuz I it's so simple, like, and I would just tell like the guys at work, it's like, just give me eight hours, fucking work eight hours, that's all. I'm not asking for too much. I want you to be productive for eight hours and be the example. So all the shit you're bitching about, are you, how are you, are you the example then? So are you doing it perfect? That if you're doing it perfect, perfect, you're the example. Give me eight hours of the example. And that's, it it sounds so simple, but there's a lot of little parts to that, a little bite sized chunks that you have to navigate through. But yeah, it's, it's, I think we over complicate things.

• 1:28:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Another thing that you reminded me of with that one, too, is you gotta be the example yourself, too.

• 1:28:48Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:48Speaker 01

  That it's really important. I I try to think about what I would do without the title, like constantly, that like, yeah, there's this world where people have to listen to me cuz I'm the boss.

• 1:29:01Cameron Hanes?

  Right. But there's, there's the leader by title and there's the leader by action.

• 1:29:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:29:06Cameron Hanes?

  And we've all seen that person who, yeah, this guy isn't the boss, but everybody listens to him.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:29:12Cameron Hanes?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:29:13Speaker 01

  That's the person you wanna make the boss, by the way.

• 1:29:14Cameron Hanes?

  Exactly.

• 1:29:15Speaker 01

  That if someone feels like they need the title in order to be effective in your org, it's, they're thinking about it backwards. Like, I wanna, I want the people who are effective at driving change. And then, okay, yeah, like you.

• 1:29:26Cameron Hanes?

  They gotta respect you, they gotta trust you, regardless what your title is.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:29:30Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  And I think it's an important check I try to do on myself, which is, yeah, would people listen to me if I, if they didn't have to? Like, am I actually delivering it in a logical, inspiring way that's painting the opportunity of what's possible, that's the right direction for the company and for this person's career and the way that they play into it? That, you know, if I was an alien from outer space, presenting it in this way, you didn't have to listen to me, but would you still? That is, is the communication, is the thoughtfulness, is that all there? I know it's, I know there's always that, like, oh, I'm the CEO, co-founder card, like, you gotta, like, Trump card, you gotta do it. But I think if your style of leadership, like, you can't play that card too much. People are gonna tell

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  you to go after yourself. Like, there's a lot, like, especially with the team that we have, like, everyone's super talented. Everyone could get a million other jobs tomorrow. It's like, you can't retain the best people by, like, bossing them around. You gotta constantly.

• 1:30:27Speaker 01

  I, again, this exercise has worked for me is like, strip away your own title or authority and be effective just on your, on the own merits of what's coming out of your mouth versus like, uh, cause I told you so.

• 1:30:39Cameron Hanes?

  Right. Have you had to, I mean, have you had to learn that? Or did you naturally have that, that do you think in you that you could be objective and step back? And be like, are they, are they listening to me on, on my merits? Or how did you develop that?

• 1:30:56Speaker 01

  You know what's funny Cam is I, I think I had that part more naturally. And the part that was less natural was listen to me because I'm the boss.

• 1:31:03Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  I actually think I started more collaborative and like, let's do this together. And like, let's, you know, I'll voice our opinions and decide what we want to do.

• 1:31:15Cameron Hanes?

  Cause some people will be like, some people, if you say, what do you think? Some people will be like, fuck, I don't know. You're the, you're the boss. You tell me. You know what I mean?

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:26Cameron Hanes?

  I don't know if you got people like that, but there's some people who, because if they make a decision, then all of a sudden they're responsible for it.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:33Cameron Hanes?

  You know, and yeah, I don't know.

• 1:31:35Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I mean, you, you want people who want to make decisions too. Like you want people who, who are empowered and feel like they have some authority, that they're given a goal set and they have some discretion on how they want to achieve that, that especially if they're thinking about it all day. And you as a leader might be thinking about it with a fraction of your brain.

• 1:31:56Cameron Hanes?

  Five minutes.

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. So if you go in and tell them, eh, like, do it this way, it's like, I, I, I think with the right type of person, you're actually better off at least trying to listen to them. That if they're smart, capable, have subject matter expertise, they're thinking about this problem all day. Like I like to at least hear them out first.

• 1:32:16Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:17Speaker 01

  Like be the leader that speaks last. Like, okay, what do you think? How should we go about this before I interject with what my idea is? I try to not rush in with like, oh, he's got to be this way. So what do you think? Like, here's the problem. Are we aligned on what the problem is or what the opportunity is? What do you think we should do about it? And then yeah, if it's the right person, like they should be expanding your capabilities. But I know what you mean. I think they're, you know, I think people also want a leader who leads. Like you can't, you can't always be in that mode of like, what do you want to do? Or playing Socrates? I think, I think there's, there's a mix of it that certain problems are like tractable. Okay, this is, this applies inside of here. This is a supply chain problem or a packaging problem

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  or a marketing problem, but the whole picture needs to all come together. And that's, that is the job of the leader. You can't ask, you can ask for input, but like,

• 1:33:09Cameron Hanes?

  That's the key. Then you can't, you can't empower these people to make decisions. And then if it doesn't work, ideally you browbeat them because then obviously they're not going to chime in again. Or the next time. So yeah, it's like, you, you want people to feel listened to. And then also if you decide as a CEO to like, yeah, I appreciate what you said, but I think I'm going to do this is to not make them feel stupid for their idea. If you decide not to do it. So it's like, there's so many different layers to like, and fucking everybody's different. Everybody's got this different personality that takes feedback differently. Or criticism differently or whatever. So that's, it's a tough job for sure.

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think you gotta be okay just taking a lot of egg on your own face. Like you gotta be okay with apologizing when you did, if you stepped on someone's flower bed, you know, like if you, if you rub someone the wrong way, I think.

• 1:34:10Speaker 01

  Cause at the end of the day, everyone knows that you're leading the damn thing. So you don't need to like,

• 1:34:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Keep reminding them.

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think it's better to have humility and be the first to apologize or the first to address if something feels like rough or off or anything like that.

• 1:34:29Cameron Hanes?

  So my attitude of never saying sorry is not good.

• 1:34:32Speaker 01

  Look, there's different ways to lead.

• 1:34:35Cameron Hanes?

  They'll take that as weakness.

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  No, I think, look, I, I think there is something to that as well. I didn't, you know, it's what I was saying earlier. I think everyone has their own style.

• 1:34:46Cameron Hanes?

  Some people, you say you're sorry, they, then they double down on it and be like, yeah, you, whatever. So.

• 1:34:53Speaker 01

  I think it depends. I think it's like, I think you gotta be, okay. I think it's fair. I think you gotta be careful what you apologize for. I think it's like, if someone's feelings were hurt, but it's because.

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  They made a mistake and you've corrected them on it. It's there's nothing to apologize for.

• 1:35:08Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:35:09Speaker 01

  So it's it's a matter of, okay, what do I apologize for is, you know, I got I got two kids at home. I'm running a lot. I'm sometimes sleep deprived or cranky or whatever. Something happens and I just like rail on someone and

• 1:35:24Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:25Speaker 01

  I can tell that there's a cloud hanging over their head for a day or two and like.

• 1:35:29Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  All right. Like, let me just, look.

• 1:35:32Cameron Hanes?

  Make this right.

• 1:35:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, let me make this right. I know I was, you know, in a weird state. I try, you know, I try to be really aware of my energy and try to have my conversations when I'm in a right mental spot. But, you know, if I if I know I was tripping, like, right? Like, sometimes you're in a weird spot.

• 1:35:50Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  I gotta.

• 1:35:51Cameron Hanes?

  We're humans.

• 1:35:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think and I think it does go a long way to let people know that you know that you like did the wrong thing. But I think it's it's different from

• 1:36:04Speaker 01

  what we were saying earlier. Like, I don't think you should just apologize easily either.

• 1:36:08Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, carte blanche. Um, okay, I was like, just kept thinking about this. So when you were in high school, you had these things you wanted to work on and you had your, you said your principal wrote a letter to Stanford?

• 1:36:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:22Cameron Hanes?

  Is that what? And so you just said, could you help whatever? What was the discussion?

• 1:36:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that I'd done a lot of interesting things above and beyond school.

• 1:36:31Cameron Hanes?

  National Honor Society.

• 1:36:32Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:36:33Cameron Hanes?

  All the stuff like that.

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I just asked her, because, well, I got in her head as far as like, it reflects well on the school. If someone goes to Stanford or Ivy League.

• 1:36:45Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:36:45Speaker 01

  And our school didn't have a ton of those, like, you know, kid here or there. It wasn't like a feeder school to.

• 1:36:52Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:36:53Speaker 01

  And so I kind of got in her head. I was like, hey, I think we got a shot. I was like, we got on the same side of the table together. Like, I think we can do this.

• 1:36:59Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  And I'd done enough stuff above and beyond the school work and whatnot that I thought she could put, help put together a good pitch. And she was game. And it was like, yeah, cool. Like, I think. There's, yeah, an interesting story. Okay, this guy's got like class president vibe and I got almost perfect on my ACT. I got like a 35. Like, I was like, okay, I have some dynamism. I'm like

• 1:37:25Cameron Hanes?

  valedictorian?

• 1:37:26Speaker 01

  I actually wasn't. I was, my grades was probably my weakest. I had good grades, but I was like, you know, I wasn't top of the class. I was good at test scores. I was good at a lot of extracurriculars. My grades, I just got into it with a couple of my teachers. I just thought like my high school chemistry teacher was not a cool person. I had a hard time. Anyway, but I did a lot. My grades are good enough, I guess. And then I did enough of these extracurriculars that were, you know, some of them, they were technical, some of them were more like EQ, like just being, being a people person type of thing, the class president stuff. And I was four year varsity on soccer. I had this like,

• 1:38:11Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, good mix of stuff.

• 1:38:13Speaker 01

  Good mix of stuff. And I just like really pushed it through, campaigned it through, tried to, I just kind of was like, what's the game here?

• 1:38:20Cameron Hanes?

  The principal, then did anybody else write anything for you?

• 1:38:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I got a couple of other teachers. I think I was part of the app. I think the principal thing was like above and beyond. And then I got a couple of other applications in or I think you had to get a couple of teacher recommendations. I don't know if that's still a thing. You had to, and I think my teachers, I don't know. I did little things like I was, I remember, this makes you sound like such a nerd. It's half my life ago, honestly. But it's like little things like everyone else asked their teacher for a recommendation like the day before it was due, the week before it was due. Like, I remember I came in on the first day of school and like whenever school started August, and I was like, ready. I was like, all right, Mr. Lessick, science teacher, like I want you to write. And like, no one was coming to him then. So like, he spent a week or two on my,

• 1:39:06Cameron Hanes?

  Beat the rush.

• 1:39:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I beat the rush. And little things like that, that like, is it,

• 1:39:11Cameron Hanes?

  Was it always Stanford or?

• 1:39:13Speaker 01

  That was my top dream.

• 1:39:15Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:39:15Speaker 01

  For sure, because I always knew I wanted to do something technical. And I also knew I wanted to do it inside of a, like, not just an engineering school. I didn't necessarily want to go to an MIT or Caltech. Because I liked the other stuff, too. I like the, Yeah, just other types of people. I didn't want to just be around engineers all day. But I knew I wanted to go into engineering. So Stanford's the best. It's engineering, but then it also has a lot else good stuff going on. And the entrepreneurship side too, just that Silicon Valley, it's got a lot going on. Like there's a lot of just energy coming out of there. Even back then, it was like Google and.

• 1:39:54Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, a lot of connection, networking potential, right? And you thought about that as a, as a high school kid?

• 1:40:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I've evolved and learned a lot as well along the way. But just knowing that, yeah, it's a entrepreneurship center. It feels really creative, good place to, to come up with ideas and build companies off of those ideas. That the, you know, Ivy Leagues have their own vibe to them that feels more like, kind of, you know, finals club and you're like, who's who? And it's more like this high society kind of thing, which is, you know, all well and good in its own way. But it was, it felt like less enterprising, less entrepreneurial and more like, okay, you're getting into the old boys' club if you go to like Yale or something. You're getting into this skull and bones or something like, that's its own game.

• 1:40:46Speaker 01

  I don't want to knock it. It's just for my, for me, for my personality. I like the kind of inventiveness, entrepreneurialness. Wanted to go check out California and all that stuff. And yeah, it was interesting. I think Silicon Valley is a really interesting place. It's, it's a lot of, I would say, American dynamism, American innovation comes out of there. And it's, you know, it's been, it's been interesting, you know?

• 1:41:11Speaker 01

  I think it's shifted a lot, right? Like Elon and Tesla moved to Texas. And you've got, I think Silicon Valley in some ways has like spread out. But I do think, I believe in American dynamism and I do think America should continue to lead in technology. And that, especially then, like when I went there, you know, 15 years ago, that.

• 1:41:33Speaker 01

  Silicon Valley was this like very inventive place and like, you know, just good capitalism, like good people, like creating something from nothing and creating value for society and making a lot of personal wealth from doing that. And that like, that just felt like something really like American and something really concentrated there in particular.

• 1:41:55Cameron Hanes?

  Okay. Cause I mean, so, I mean, this path now has changed because you said computer science is where you went to Stanford, right? So it's, that's not really what you're doing. It's, did the entrepreneurial spirit you mentioned, is that the connections that happened at Stanford? Or did you still continue on with computer science? Is that what you got your degree in?

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I studied computer science and then this interesting path because I started seeing, I started getting into like this new frontiers of technology around like wearables and sensors and like all these things have computers inside of them. All your Oura rings and Apple watches and seeing that, okay, the smartphone was this platform that gave rise to all of this innovation and that this next wave is all of these wearables, sensors on in our bodies. And it was a jump. I think, you know, computer science was super interesting. I think it's fascinating, all this stuff going on inside of AI. I just took the jump. I just thought, human body is a platform for innovation is super interesting. And I don't

• 1:43:02Speaker 01

  know, just like, don't put yourself in a box. I learned a lot of good fundamentals in undergrad. And then I'm just curious about a lot of things and I don't think you should, you necessarily need to be like limited in what you did in undergrad for four years.

• 1:43:16Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:43:17Speaker 01

  But I think I got good, just brass tacks, ability to, you know, chug through information and design systems and think, think through things. And then looking at nutrition and... Building the, starting building the billing box there and spotting key tones. I, yeah, I basically just pivoted into nutrition and human performance. And then at this point, it's just like hired the subject matter experts on the component pieces inside of there. So it's, yeah, it's been an interesting path for sure.

• 1:43:51Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:52Cameron Hanes?

  No, it's, yeah, I just, I didn't know the, your, the history of your path, essentially. I just know you where you are now.

• 1:43:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:59Cameron Hanes?

  So that's why I'm just, you know, and knowing I have, you know, kids in college, I was just curious how you went about that. I was trying to get my daughter to apply to these different schools too. And Stanford was one of them, just because it's a West Coast. It's not, it's not Ivy League, but it's a great school on the West Coast. And anyway, she didn't do it, so.

• 1:44:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:18Cameron Hanes?

  Didn't matter.

• 1:44:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's interesting too, because I think that, you know, there's good and, and bad too, right? There's, I think, some really great things, but I think, I think American higher education is going through a transformation or a, maybe you could call it a crisis right now, where just dealing with a lot of, I think, cultural issues. And I think we're figuring out our way. I think that, you know, look at American college campuses and you see a lot of, you know, certain type of politics, a certain type of like thinking to a point where it's like, I think it's gotten, again, I went to college 15 years ago. I think it's gotten a lot worse since then, where it's like, you really are, are constrained to like a certain type of thinking.

• 1:45:05Speaker 01

  And I don't think that's what school's supposed to be about. I think you're, you're supposed to go to school to have a forum for different vantage points. And I think that.

• 1:45:21Speaker 01

  That's what's special about America and free speech and freedom of expression and and we need to make sure that we don't lose that.

• 1:45:29Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, the the term people use with colleges is indoctrination nowadays. And like, parents are worried that their kids are going to go get indoctrinated into this this certain mindset or this certain political sphere, essentially. And so that's where and now, and I don't know, I mean, I don't know if this is what you're talking about too, but so on the on the opposite opposite side of that is like young people are having success without going to college.

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:59Cameron Hanes?

  You know, because there's, as you mentioned a couple of times, there's a million different ways to make money.

• 1:46:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:03Cameron Hanes?

  You know, so do they need that college path? If they're smart, can they make their own way? And now it's like you see these kids making, I mean, Logan Paul, Jake Paul.

• 1:46:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:15Cameron Hanes?

  I don't they I don't think they went to college, did they?

• 1:46:17Speaker 01

  I don't think so, no.

• 1:46:18Cameron Hanes?

  But they're doing pretty good.

• 1:46:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:20Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, they're outliers, essentially.

• 1:46:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:23Cameron Hanes?

  But still.

• 1:46:24Speaker 01

  I think on the average, the idea of going to college probably not good for for people. I think it going to a place where you can dedicate time and attention to learning, be really focused. Like, when was the last time you read through a full textbook or did like dedicated semester long study?

• 1:46:41Cameron Hanes?

  The next time would be the first time.

• 1:46:42Speaker 01

  There we go. Yeah. So there's something special about it. In like, in in theory, right? Like, there's something, there is something special about it. I think for the average person, you can really get ahead.

• 1:46:53Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  I do think that

• 1:46:56Speaker 01

  we need to be careful about things like

• 1:47:05Speaker 01

  student loans where

• 1:47:09Speaker 01

  I want to say this carefully because I do think that there's a lot of different types of thinking that are required in society. But if you incentivize too much of a type of degree that like doesn't can't get a job or that requires student loan forgiveness. If you get an engineering degree like

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  Sure, it's nice to get your student loans forgiven, but like if you've got an engineering degree, you're probably gonna get a good job and pay them off in a few years.

• 1:47:35Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:47:36Speaker 01

  So a lot of times when we're talking about student loan forgiveness, because someone got a degree that like wasn't super useful for society, and maybe that's not something we should like.

• 1:47:49Cameron Hanes?

  Incentivize?

• 1:47:49Speaker 01

  Incentivize society where I think it's one thing if, you know, if you, if that's a decision that you want to do, or you come from money and your parents want to cover it, or you're actually just okay with going down that route, then sure, but I think it's not necessarily good. I don't know, like, every year in China, they graduate more engineers than the entire American workforce. And so I think we need to be careful about the incentive structure that we set up in society. I think that at the end of the day, the jobs that people need, the jobs that society needs, I think the system generally corrects for

• 1:48:32Speaker 01

  that. I think the system generally works where, hey, if we need more, more engineers, if we need more airline pilots, whatever, that like, that those jobs will be created, and then people will be incentivized to go towards those jobs, and people will take the education path that leads them to that job. And I think we need to be careful about like putting too much finger on the scale of like, oh, this random degree in anthropology. Like, I don't want, I want to be careful to not knock it, because like, if you really want to go get a degree in anthropology, like, I'm not gonna

• 1:49:07Cameron Hanes?

  There's a chance.

• 1:49:07Speaker 01

  Knock it, but like, I don't think

• 1:49:09Cameron Hanes?

  You're not gonna make enough money to pay off that student loan.

• 1:49:12Speaker 01

  Yes. And if that's okay with you, if your parents are ballin', or if you're fine with that, or whatever, like, please do it. Like, I don't want to be saying that shouldn't exist, but I think it's a tough spot for the government to be like financing that for free.

• 1:49:26Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, there's some jobs where you, you know, you realize that these people got this degree, maybe even a master's degree, and they're, I, it's kind of a crazy example, but, and they're working at Starbucks, because there's no demand for their degree.

• 1:49:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:42Cameron Hanes?

  And how are they ever gonna pay back that student loan?

• 1:49:45Speaker 01

  I think one of the things that the, that vocational schools are, do well, or that you were saying, like, not even going to college, is that there's this kind of Honesty that, okay, I need to develop myself into a person that can contribute to society. I need a job. I need to be like good at some craft in order to contribute to society or a company or

• 1:50:05Speaker 01

  in one way or another, you're competing, you're contributing to society in some way and that's why you're earning a paycheck. I think that there's aspects of American higher education that have lost sight of that.

• 1:50:15Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:50:15Speaker 01

  That like this degree

• 1:50:20Speaker 01

  doesn't need to lead anywhere. And I think that's a disservice because I think, I think people should think about that before. It's crazy that as an 18 year old, you can sign up for like $200,000 of debt. Like what else, like if I'm 18, can I get a $200,000 loan to start a business?

• 1:50:35Cameron Hanes?

  But the colleges are like, yeah, good to go. Great. Here you are.

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  I think, I think it's a racket, honestly. Put on a little bit of a tinfoil hat. I think that it's a, I think there's some conspiracies inside of there where, yeah, who exactly is incentivizing that loan and who's profiting off of it? It's not necessarily helpful to the person taking out the loan. And it's not necessarily helpful to society.

• 1:51:07Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. You know, if I think about it too, I can just think about Truitt. He graduated from Oregon, the School of Journalism, Advertising. I think a minor in Political Science, which you know, is probably an easy one to get. What are you going to do with that? But um, he's now he's quit his job that he was doing advertising for, and now he's just influencer. And he said, like, because I just did a podcast with him when he was here for Thanksgiving, just because he's, you know, going, chasing greatness. But uh, he said, his job now,

• 1:51:44Cameron Hanes?

  how does that help society? You know, it's not like he's a firefighter or a cop or a working at the hospital type thing.

• 1:51:54Cameron Hanes?

  Is his job, he's making more money than he did at his job that his degree was for.

• 1:51:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:00Cameron Hanes?

  But what is he doing?

• 1:52:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:02Cameron Hanes?

  And so then you, then you're like, well, is inspiring people worthwhile?

• 1:52:08Speaker 01

  I think so. I think there's a role for art and entertainment and inspiring people. I think that's real. If everyone was a coal miner.

• 1:52:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:17Speaker 01

  You know, like if everyone was just a lumberjack.

• 1:52:21Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:22Speaker 01

  Would it, would it be any fun? Like, I do think there's a role, like a great chef, a great artist. You can argue at the margins as being an Instagram influencer, a artist, but I would say it's in the bucket of like, yeah, if you're meaningfully inspiring people, then what's really the difference between that and, you know, writing a popular newspaper column 25 years ago or.

• 1:52:45Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:52:45Speaker 01

  Other.

• 1:52:46Cameron Hanes?

  Good point.

• 1:52:46Speaker 01

  Other forms of art and entertainment. So yeah, I think there is a role for that type of, of spot and site. As long, I'm, I think the key factor is that he's good at it and is able to generate a living, that people actually like the product, so to speak, that he's delivering to the world. Yeah.

• 1:53:05Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. And I think that what I brought up, I believe, is that, you know, a lot of people are taking shots at this generation that being soft and weak and, you know, especially young men. And so he's the opposite of that, essentially. So that's useful. That's because if he can inspire other young men to chase greatness, so to speak, maybe it won't be in running marathons in jeans, but maybe their chasing greatness is something else that's, that's impacting society. And so him being that, this beacon that young men could look to and be like, I need to be more dedicated.

• 1:53:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:42Cameron Hanes?

  To whatever is life. That's useful.

• 1:53:44Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:53:45Cameron Hanes?

  That's impacting the world in a positive way. So, yeah, you can look at anything and just, you know, pick out this, this one path that maybe isn't that noble or whatever, but let's not ignore the other paths.

• 1:53:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:58Cameron Hanes?

  You know, where you're having this influence.

• 1:54:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I think.

• 1:54:04Speaker 01

  I think he's doing alright.

• 1:54:05Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I mean, of course, you know, I'm always gonna be biased to my kids.

• 1:54:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I'm curious for you, like, what's, what's advice that you would give to a young parent? I'm a young parent, I got a almost three-year-old, I got a newborn. You seem like your kids are crushing it, you got, you got, one of your sons is a, was a Ranger. We were just talking about Truitt, it sounds like your daughter's absolute whiz, crushing it at UFO in math. Like, how, what'd you do? What advice would you give to your, okay, what's, what's something you think you did well? What's something you think you didn't do well?

• 1:54:39Cameron Hanes?

  I, um, I did, I pushed my kids hard, definitely, the boys especially, Taryn, my daughter, you're all, as a dad, it's like you have a different, if I raised my voice at her, she would cry, right? I did nothing but raise my voice to the boys, so, uh, I was like, I think that I did well on emphasizing being physical and performance with the boys. And with Taryn, not as much, but more the intellectual, I, I could just see that who, the strengths and weaknesses of each of them.

• 1:55:19Cameron Hanes?

  You know, the boys, we were always very tough, sports, we were playing basketball all the time against each other, we were, I was telling them, you know, you don't have to be the best in the world, be your best, give your best effort. And I just always emphasized that life is competition. If you guys are gonna be anything, you're gonna have to compete and you're gonna have to win. Otherwise, I don't know what you're gonna accomplish, because that's life, that's how it works, that's how, that's how men rise up, is by winning, and that's just how it goes. With Taryn, it was just like, okay, let's be smart, let's do, dedicate and be the best student and, um,

• 1:56:04Cameron Hanes?

  read and it was just so different, so, um.

• 1:56:09Cameron Hanes?

  If I looked back on it now, it would be like, I probably shouldn't have put all the eggs in the basket on the boys on performance, you know, because I just emphasized, I said, yeah, hey, you need to get good grades. And that was about it. Or if they got a bad grade or, you know, neither one of them were like Taren in school, but probably that was my fault. But I would be like, what the fuck is going on? A C? You know, so that was about my, I, I could have done better at that. I could have done, because who's to say that being the most physically gifted person, what does that mean? Maybe that doesn't mean that much. Maybe it just meant a lot to me, and I should have been more on the intellectual side. So,

• 1:56:51Cameron Hanes?

  yeah, I mean, I don't know, I just think that just reminding them that, you know, they're gonna have to compete to get anything worthwhile in life. I think that was useful.

• 1:57:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:03Cameron Hanes?

  They hated it at times, but.

• 1:57:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I think that that message is watered down a lot in the recent generation, in the last couple of decades. I feel like it's a lot of.

• 1:57:17Cameron Hanes?

  Well, everyone's a winner.

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:19Cameron Hanes?

  Kind of like in this, and not everybody's a winner. And I would say, one thing I did say too, is like, we'd go to the movies, and we're standing in line, and I would tell them, I said, look around here. I said, look around. I said, this is average. I said, we're not average. And if you look like these people, you're at this, you failed. I said, we have to be better than this. We're, you need to be better. Because if you, people compare themselves to average all the time. I'm like, I don't want to fucking compare myself to that. I want to compare myself to the best.

• 1:57:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:51Cameron Hanes?

  So that mindset is, I think, important.

• 1:57:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Why do you think we've gotten to this spot where, you know, participation awards and everyone's good for showing up and?

• 1:58:03Cameron Hanes?

  Probably just because everybody wants to win. So if they can't win at the highest level, they lower the level.

• 1:58:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:10Cameron Hanes?

  To feel like they won.

• 1:58:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:11Cameron Hanes?

  I don't know. I'm not sure.

• 1:58:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, it's interesting. I mean, you can't have a society where everyone's a winner, just by definition. Like, there's gonna be an average.

• 1:58:19Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:58:20Speaker 01

  But I think if you have more people trying to exceed their capabilities, and like lifting the average up, that would be a good thing. Like, you're always gonna have an, not everyone can actually win everything, but.

• 1:58:35Speaker 01

  I do think the drive to win, the drive to be really good, at least like something.

• 1:58:41Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:58:41Speaker 01

  And that like excellence is excellence. I feel like we've lost it and yeah, it's I think we're turning. I feel like there's actually a tide shift and we're like coming back to it.

• 1:58:54Cameron Hanes?

  I I hope. I mean,

• 1:58:57Cameron Hanes?

  you you mentioned what I didn't do. Well, I thought, and this was a big one for me is Tanner, my oldest. He had, he was a deputy here who worked at the jail. It was a good job, making good money corrections officers. It's like, you know, it's important. People need to do that. And he quit that job to join the army to be a ranger. And then I, and he he just said, I thought, did I screw this up? Because I was like, it's okay to have this regular good job. We need that job. But he was like, no, I have more to offer this world. Then I was like, is that my fault? Because what if he would have said, I had more to offer this world, went to be a ranger, got deployed and was killed?

• 1:59:41Cameron Hanes?

  Would I, I mean, and that happens, you know, so it was it me putting in his head that a regular job wasn't good enough? That, I don't know. So I was like, I had to, you know, and I was like, I think I he I screwed up. It's okay to to to have a regular job. It's okay to just go to work and come home and have a family and raise your family and pay your bills. That's okay. But by then it was too late because he had already signed up.

• 2:00:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:11Cameron Hanes?

  But I was, so that was like it. I don't know. Most of the time as being a parent, I I feel like I didn't know what the fuck I was doing.

• 2:00:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:19Cameron Hanes?

  And I didn't know, I thought I was too hard and on him and I was pushing him too too much. And now everybody says, oh, you must have done great. But I'm like, I didn't feel like I did. I didn't know what I was doing. I was young and I was an, you know, idiot.

• 2:00:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:34Cameron Hanes?

  But also, my wife has helped because you have to have that balance to get the dad is generally the disciplinarian and that's just kind of how it works, but you have to have that other side too.

• 2:00:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:47Cameron Hanes?

  So luckily Trace was around to give them love. I mean, they knew I loved them, but they probably wondered sometimes.

• 2:00:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that balance, that teamwork. One thing I, my wife and always, my wife and I always remind each other is that it's us versus the kids.

• 2:01:04Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:05Speaker 01

  That, yeah, that when it gets weird, like it started with us.

• 2:01:08Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 2:01:09Speaker 01

  And, you know, our daughter's just crazy and sometimes, you know, we're just stressed and

• 2:01:14Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:15Speaker 01

  sleep deprived and this and that. It's like, we're not going to let these kids.

• 2:01:18Cameron Hanes?

  Win.

• 2:01:19Speaker 01

  Win. We're not going to let them come between us, drive a wedge between us. Like if we're being short with each other, right?

• 2:01:23Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:01:25Speaker 01

  Like that, no, like we are going to join forces against our, our kids.

• 2:01:32Cameron Hanes?

  Is it?

• 2:01:33Speaker 01

  And we're going to, we're going to stay solid. Like we're not going to let them split us apart in a way.

• 2:01:38Cameron Hanes?

  With a goal of raising good kids.

• 2:01:39Speaker 01

  For, oh, yeah.

• 2:01:40Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I mean is that, is that, yeah, we want to raise great kids. It's a matter of that when, you know, we're stretched all the way thin and if we're arguing with each other, because you know, trying to pack the car and go somewhere and it's, it's just easy to snap off between me and my wife. And then it's just that kind of, okay, let's regain our footing and it's like, it's us versus the kids. Like, let's make sure we're good. And if we're good, okay, then we have something to provide for the kids. Like we, we gotta be, okay, we're, we're tripping, like we're, we're sleep deprived or rushed or short tempered or whatever. Like, let's make sure we're good. And then, okay, let's, you know, yeah, maybe our toddler's being irrational and needs to

• 2:02:24Speaker 01

  change her shoes every five minutes, can't decide what shoes she wants to leave the house in, but like, that's no reason for us to

• 2:02:31Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:31Speaker 01

  To, you know.

• 2:02:32Cameron Hanes?

  Cause if you're snapping at each other, you're probably going to be short with the kids too.

• 2:02:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:36Cameron Hanes?

  And then it's just a shit show.

• 2:02:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I can't, can't have that, man.

• 2:02:40Cameron Hanes?

  I see.

• 2:02:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:02:42Cameron Hanes?

  That's a good approach. You're definitely smarter than me, so whatever you're saying, I'm sure makes more sense.

• 2:02:47Speaker 01

  I'm learning, man. I think it's, it's a, it's a lot of fun. I can say I've learned a lot in the last. Couple of years, learn a lot about just composure because kids really match to your energy. They're not verbal, really. I mean, my almost three year old, yeah, she knows some words, but you can't have like a logical conversation with her. So a lot of it is setting and pacing that if, if she's freaking out, we need to calm down the situation. Like, I gotta be calm. You can't calm a crying baby unless you're truly calm. You gotta set the pace and set the tone for the whole family. And that's something I've really

• 2:03:31Speaker 01

  learned. Like, I can't freak out. It doesn't matter how stressed I am, or I got this phone call to make, this email to send, or this is blowing up, or whatever. It's like, within the context of the family, if, if I gotta be the even keel guy, okay, let's drop in and be there. Let's, let's really be present. Let's be that way. Let's set the pace for the family. Because no one else is. And if you, if you don't occupy that role, it's just chaos.

• 2:03:58Cameron Hanes?

  Right. And I think you mentioned you can't have a, a discussion with your daughter, but that body language is, it's no different than, I don't want to say dogs and animals are the same, but a dog can pick up with somebody stressed out, or if you're hunting, like I, animals can pick up your body language because that's how they communicate. Well, a baby or a toddler, because they can't explain their position, you know, like an adult can, it is, they're picking up body language. And so, yeah, that being that, that leader and that strong and that, no matter what happens, we're gonna be okay. That's so important. Because kids need that. Families need that.

• 2:04:38Speaker 01

  And a lot, a lot of times, the toddler's freaking out, like, they actually just want to feel safe. And telling them, hey, we're not going to do that. We're going to do it this way because I'm keeping you safe. And yeah, you're not going to get your exact way right now. Maybe next time, maybe not. But we're going to do it this way because I'm in charge and we're gonna, this is the way. We got a program for the day, or I'm gonna keep you safe here. I think another thing I've learned too, is also being okay with some of the silly shit. Like, I've looked at a lot of ants crawling around on the sidewalk in the last couple of years, Cam, compared to, you know, the last couple of decades. And because sometimes it's okay, I think, you know. I don't have the energy to drive every single minute of my toddler's life.

• 2:05:22Speaker 01

  So like, I can't, not everything can be a fight. Not every, like, if we're in a hurry to get out of the house, okay. We're gonna drive to Outcome. But sometimes like, I don't know, she wants to flick the light on and off in the car before she gets off. Sometimes I think about, I'm like, alright, cool. You know what? Let's flip it on and off 20 times. Like, let's go, like, let's, like, cause part of me also just kind of gets it. I was that kid, like.

• 2:05:47Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:47Speaker 01

  She's not trying to cause trouble. It's just literally, I don't know, it's kind of fun to flick the little.

• 2:05:51Cameron Hanes?

  Entertaining.

• 2:05:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:05:52Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, just what kids do.

• 2:05:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and being able to let her.

• 2:05:57Cameron Hanes?

  Express herself.

• 2:05:58Speaker 01

  Express herself, be a kid, play around in the world. Like, it is pretty cool. I remember that feeling, yeah, you flick the light switch and that light bulb goes on.

• 2:06:05Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:06:07Speaker 01

  Let her enjoy it. Like, if she's doing that instead of playing some stupid game on the phone, like. Sure, like, like, let's do that. And so not always being in full disciplinary, like, being that way when it, when it's needed, but trying to.

• 2:06:22Speaker 01

  Do I, do I always have to say no to every little silly thing? Like, some of the silly stuff?

• 2:06:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:27Speaker 01

  No, let's roll with it.

• 2:06:29Cameron Hanes?

  See, you are smarter.

• 2:06:30Speaker 01

  Dude, I'm.

• 2:06:31Cameron Hanes?

  I wouldn't have done that.

• 2:06:32Speaker 01

  I feel like I'm kind of bragging my, on a couple of things, a couple of tricks in my sleeve, but I'm mainly figuring it all out, dude. I don't know anything.

• 2:06:41Cameron Hanes?

  I think, I think no new parent has all the answers. I mean, and if people act like they do, I just don't think they're being honest.

• 2:06:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:50Cameron Hanes?

  It's so, it's hard raising a human perfectly. It's just because we're not perfect, so how the hell could we do it perfect? You know, and there's, we're emotional sometimes, we're stressed sometimes, and yeah, we just do the best we can.

• 2:07:08Cameron Hanes?

  But yeah, there's nothing, there's nothing more rewarding than feeling like you've raised good people, good, good humans. I mean, that is, that's everything.

• 2:07:20Speaker 01

  I bet. I mean, I'm, I'm early, but it seems like it.

• 2:07:22Cameron Hanes?

  No, I'm sure your kids are gonna be great.

• 2:07:25Speaker 01

  And I, you know, I appreciate the advice. I always try to get advice whenever I can because I think we've lost a lot of that with the, you know, nuclear family, two parents and the kids live in a house. It's like, we've lost the village, we've lost the, the communal, like, you know, in the old days, it was a bunch of families lived together and the kids kind of cross pollinated and

• 2:07:45Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:46Speaker 01

  you had more of that, you know, you're living on the same block as your cousins and your street, as your, as your brother, sister, everyone, and like, you're learning a lot. So when you're, by the time you're having a kid, it's like, well, your cousin had a kid last year and your brother had a kid two years ago and like, and you all live together and you know, you know how it goes.

• 2:08:06Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:07Speaker 01

  And that kind of tribal wisdom, I think we've lost a lot of that. To now is just, okay, a couple of parents in a, you know, you got, your first kid pops out and you're like, what the hell? I, I've never held a baby before. I'm just watching YouTube videos, trying to figure this out.

• 2:08:22Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:23Speaker 01

  And so I'm always very humbled of the fact that we've lost, I've lost some of the context that used to exist. And so I'm always trying to like, learn, draw from other people around me who I feel like are doing it well. Like, okay, what, what did you do? What, like, give me a tip? Give me a trick.

• 2:08:40Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:41Speaker 01

  Because I think in the old days, there, when there was no YouTube, no Googling of everything, somehow, somehow people figured it all out. And I think actually people were less clueless back then. Like, it was just more of a

• 2:08:54Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:54Speaker 01

  more of that tribal wisdom. Like, you're just around it more.

• 2:08:59Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. I mean, and I think you asked my wife something, I don't know what, but she just said that the boys saw me doing it. So I think that, that the lead by example adage that I used earlier, I do, I do think, cause there's that whole thing where do as I say, not as I do, you know? I mean, I

• 2:09:18Speaker 01

  It's tough.

• 2:09:19Cameron Hanes?

  I just think that you have to be the example. And so I would always just Just do what I do. Frickin' work, work every day. And I wasn't asking them to do something I wasn't. So I think that's, that's where you're gonna excel also because you're a hard worker, you're dedicated,

• 2:09:39Cameron Hanes?

  you're eager to learn, humble, and it's like, that's all gonna be reflected in your kids. And so I think your kids are gonna be amazing.

• 2:09:49Speaker 01

  I hope so, man. I appreciate that.

• 2:09:51Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, no, I have no doubt, no doubt. I mean, I don't know. It's a, yeah. There's nothing more rewarding, for sure, than being a parent.

• 2:10:01Speaker 01

  It's fun. Oh, it's, I will say it's interesting. It's not always fun.

• 2:10:06Cameron Hanes?

  It'll be more fun. It'll be more fun when they get older and they can share in some of the stuff you do.

• 2:10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Like going on, going on a run with my kids, like right now.

• 2:10:15Cameron Hanes?

  They'll hate that, but.

• 2:10:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:18Cameron Hanes?

  Just kidding, just kidding. Your kids might love it. Uh, yeah, it's a, I don't know. It's pretty crazy. But you know what? Here's what I do know. You know what this is? This is your new boat.

• 2:10:33Speaker 01

  Beautiful.

• 2:10:33Cameron Hanes?

  Can you believe this?

• 2:10:34Speaker 01

  I, I've been looking forward to this for quite some time.

• 2:10:38Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Well, we got to run. I wish I could have run better today, having leg issues, but we got, I think we still had a good time on the mountain.

• 2:10:47Speaker 01

  We're not, twice. I mean, you're pretty good for whatever you're saying.

• 2:10:51Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. But, uh, what I love most about what I do here with lift, run, shoot, and just having outliers like yourself here is, um, sharing my life. And, you know, I, I got to share the lift, run, shoot, the bow rack with you, shooting arrows, lifting weights, uh, hitting the mound, carrying the rock. And it's just like, that means so much to me. It's like, that you were. You're busy. You made yourself available to come in and have a taste of what I do and that I can't tell you how much that means to me.

• 2:11:22Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 2:11:23Cameron Hanes?

  You, I mean, this experience just nourishes my soul and it's just like, I can't, that might sound cliche, but this is what gets me through just this days like this that I love. I just love sharing it.

• 2:11:37Speaker 01

  Likewise, brother. It's cool. The lifestyle that you've built, the groove that you're in and that you invite people into it. It's amazing. I'm thrilled to be here. It's cool. I've been binge watching a bunch of these. I've been thinking about that rock. I was like, oh, what's it?

• 2:11:53Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Oh, you did great. I still can't believe you didn't set it down because people have said, had big goals, like they're never doing this, never doing that. Can you get it up in this time? And it just doesn't happen because it's so fucking hard and I don't blame them because if I had never done it before, I'd be like, what? I just need to get this rock off my shoulder. But you never set it down. And it's like, I think that willpower, that thing that we talked about, we wish we could measure whatever you have. It's like, it's, it's unique and it's not what everybody has because that rock is over half your body weight. And it's just like, you're a fucking beast. So.

• 2:12:26Speaker 01

  I hope, I hope it is, becomes a normal thing for people to do. I think there's one takeaway. It's yeah, I'm not a freak of nature. I'm a 135 pounds soaking wet. I, I run a lot. I lift a good amount and yeah, I just didn't want to take no for an answer.

• 2:12:43Cameron Hanes?

  No.

• 2:12:43Speaker 01

  And yeah, I think you can go a lot with just supergluing that switch to on and just, just going and.

• 2:12:52Cameron Hanes?

  Definitely.

• 2:12:52Speaker 01

  Really, you know, things get, a lot of times things get hard, but they don't get harder. I would say carrying the rock, it got to a point where it was very hard, nine out of 10, but it didn't go beyond that.

• 2:13:04Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 2:13:04Speaker 01

  Like it was just hard. And it's like, okay, if I get, if it's hard, okay, can I do one more step? Yeah. Can I do 10 more steps?

• 2:13:09Cameron Hanes?

  You said, if you've made it halfway, you can make it all the way.

• 2:13:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's that feeling. It's like when you, someone throws you a football and like you got, you got a finger on it. You probably could have gotten a few fingers. You probably could have gotten a hand. Like if you can touch the ball.

• 2:13:22Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:22Speaker 01

  You could catch the ball. If you can do half of the thing, you can, as soon as I'm at 51%, I'm like, okay, there's only 49%. Like I've already done.

• 2:13:30Cameron Hanes?

  All downhill from here.

• 2:13:31Speaker 01

  It's all downhill from here.

• 2:13:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:33Speaker 01

  So like, let's, let's squeeze it, squeeze it all the way out. So anyway. I've been thrilled to be here. It's been a great day. Won't forget it.

• 2:13:42Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, me neither. And you know, aside from just what I've gained from you personally, thank you. Ketone has been a part of the show, sponsor of the show, and I'm excited to talk about it just to educate more people on the benefits of it. Because again, I take them every day, love it, and it just, it just means a lot to me that together we're in this, in my little part of the world in this show that we're helping celebrate something new that could help people perform at a higher level, and I thank you for that.

• 2:14:12Speaker 01

  Thank you. Yeah. Thrilled by what you're doing and happy to be doing our small part to help support all the good stuff coming out of here.

• 2:14:18Cameron Hanes?

  All right, brother. Thank you.

• 2:14:19Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:14:20Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, guys. Keep hammering.