Shattering Wellness Elitism: Gunnar Lovelace’s Mission to Make Healthy Food Affordable For Everyone

Who has time for ‘wellness'? I'm just trying to pay the bills. I would love to eat healthy, but I simply can't afford it. When it comes to great food – plant-based or otherwise — the common refrain is that its either too expensive, inconvenient or simply unavailable. Often it's all of the above. Although I often rebut several myths that swirl around these arguments, it’s undeniable that there is much truth in these assertions. Whole Foods has earned the moniker Whole Paycheck for a reason. If we want to truly redress our health care problems, we need to lay ruin to the elitism that so unfortunately undermines populist accessibility to optimal nutrition. In order to achieve this end, we must disrupt traditional supply chain methods. Combat special interests that entrench the status quo. Eliminate overpaid middle men. And leverage forward-thinking innovation to improve access, convenience and affordability to healthy food beyond the well healed for those who need it most — everyone. Gunnar Lovelace to the rescue. Yes, that is his real name. A life-long wellness advocate reared on a true-to-life commune by a single mom, Gunnar inherited his passion for health, yoga, mindfulness and expanded consciousness at birth — long before it became a zeitgeist thing. Gunnar and I go way back. Years before my personal transformation. I still vividly recall our initial meeting when he walked into my law office in 2000 to discuss representation of his venture of the moment, GoodLife – an early internet socially conscious Yelp. On his feet were sandals. In his hand? A large mason jar filled with a mysterious and murky green sludge. What is that? Who brings something like that to a meeting with a lawyer? My very first glimpse of what I did not know at the time would later become a staple of my life. Well ahead of its time, GoodLife fell victim to the dot-com bubble of the early aughts. But a long-lasting friendship survived. A serial entrepreneur, now Gunnar is back and on to something big — very big — as the founder and co-CEO of a new business that represents a seismic shift in affordable access to healthy food — Thrive Market. The digital love child of Costco and Whole Foods, Thrive is a direct to consumer, online shopping club platform that offers over 4,000 of best, healthiest, most popular natural and organic food brands in the world, but at a staggering 25-50% off typical retail prices, shipped anywhere in the United States for free. How do they do it? By eliminating all the aforementioned middle men — the brokers, slotting fees and pay-to-play that is endemic in the food industry — and passing that savings along to members. In addition, for every paid membership to Thrive ($60 / year), they give a free membership to a low income family, a teacher, or a military vet. Although founded less than two years ago, Thrive is growing incredibly fast. Beyond notable seed investors like Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra, this past summer they closed a $30M Series A round of venture funding led by Greycroft with participants like John Legend, Toby Maguire & Demi Moore. These funds are already hard at work fulfilling Thrive's mission statement, which is to make healthy living easy and affordable for every American family. Good news for everyone. Not your typical startup founder, Gunnar's keen business acumen inhabits the ethos of a yoga teacher. He's got a huge heart. He's one of the good guys. And I am super proud of what he is building. Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

  Eating well rarely falls apart because of one big failure. It's the daily question that wears you down. Like, what am I actually going to make tonight? What's in the fridge? And it's exactly why we built the Plant Power Meal Planner. It's a personalized, plant-based meal planning program that matches you with recipes based on your taste, your allergies, your cooking skills, and how much time you actually have. You build, through this program, a balanced, nutrient-dense plan for your entire household in a few minutes. Then it generates a grocery list for you with one click that plugs right into our delivery partners. All the recipes in the program are built by dietitians with culinary training. Plus, you get your own food coach to help you problem-solve along the way.

• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  The intersection of this incredible food crisis and the awakening of a conscious mainstream consumer that wants to vote with their dollars has created this huge movement now that is starting to work to address those needs.

• 1:19Rich Roll?

  That's Gennar Lovelace, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:37Rich Roll?

  What's happening, wellness warriors, fitness freaks, self-improvement enthusiasts, mindfulness devotees, nutrition junkies, positivity fanatics? Welcome one, welcome all. My name is Rich Roll. I'm an ultra-endurance athlete, bestselling author, I'm a husband, I'm a father of four kids and two dogs, and this is the podcast where I deep dive with the paradigm-shifting outliers, the big forward thinkers across all categories of positive seismic culture change. The goal? To help all of us unlock and unleash our best, most authentic selves. So today on the show is a really great conversation with my very good friend, Gennar Lovelace. We've known each other about 15 years.

• 2:18Rich Roll?

  Gennar is a lifelong wellness advocate and incredibly socially conscious serial entrepreneur. And more recently now, he is the founder and CEO of a company called Thrive Market. What is Thrive Market? Who is Gennar Lovelace? Is that even his real name? Well, more on all that in a second, but first.

• 2:46Rich Roll?

  All right, today's show, Gennar Lovelace. By the way, yes, that is his real name. Again, Gennar is a successful and very socially conscious serial entrepreneur. A guy who has had ongoing interests in everything from nonprofits to technology, fashion, and real estate over the years. And most recently, he is on to something big, really big, I think, as the founder and co-CEO of a new business called Thrive Market. Let's take a step back. When it comes to healthy eating, plant-based or otherwise, the common refrain is that it's too expensive, it's too inconvenient, healthy foods are unavailable where I live. And although I often counsel on the many myths that surround these arguments, it's

• 3:31Rich Roll?

  undeniable that there is much truth in these assertions. I mean, look, Whole Foods is called Whole Paycheck for a reason, right? And we do very much need to find better ways to provide healthy food in a convenient and affordable way for everybody. And that's where Thrive comes in. Thrive is basically like this crazy digital love child of Costco and Whole Foods. It's a direct-to-consumer online shopping club platform that offers all the 4,000 best, healthiest, most popular, natural, and organic food brands in the world. The kind of stuff typical of a high-end natural foods grocer, including tons of plant-based and vegan foods, of course, but at 25% to 50% off retail prices, shipped anywhere in the US.

• 4:16Rich Roll?

  For free, which is really amazing. Plus, for every paid member on the site, the company also sponsors a free membership for a low-income family, and I really like that. These guys are growing incredibly fast. Beyond some pretty amazing original investors, guys like Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra, this past summer, they closed a $30 million Series A round of VC funding led by Greycroft with participants like John Legend, Toby Maguire, and Demi Moore. And this funding is going to go a long way towards fulfilling their mission, which is to make healthy living easy and affordable for every American family, which is enormous, right? So I met Gennar about 15 years ago when I was a lawyer. I was his lawyer, in fact.

• 5:00Rich Roll?

  I represented an early internet venture he founded called Good Life, and we talk a little bit about that in the podcast. And Gennar and I have been good friends ever since. And I will say this, Gennar is not your typical startup founder. He's more like a yoga teacher, a yogi, I mean, the guy grew up on a commune, who happens to also have an incredibly keen business acumen. He has quite the expanded consciousness. Gennar has an enormous heart, and I'm so proud of what he's building. Not just excited to see him doing so well, because he truly is one of the good guys, but for what I think Thrive can do to truly change the socioeconomics of healthy eating for all of us.

• 5:44Rich Roll?

  Really quickly, what this is not. This is not a paid advertisement for Thrive. I just really like and appreciate what Gennar and his team are trying to do. And like I said, Gennar and I go way back, and I've been wanting to get him on the show for some time. What this is, is a great conversation about entrepreneurship, productivity, daily routines, social responsibility, conscious capitalism, the current state of health in America, and how we can collectively and together solve this problem of providing easy and affordable access to healthy food for everyone. I really love this guy. I think you will too. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Gennar Lovelace.

• 6:34Rich Roll?

  So good to see you, man.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  You too.

• 6:36Rich Roll?

  There are so many miles on the road in our relationship. You know what I mean? As I was like driving down here, I was reflecting back on like the first time that we met and how our lives have diverged and yet like a DNA strand keep wrapping upon each other.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  You're a high-flying lawyer, entertainment lawyer, and I was launching another startup that belly flopped.

• 7:02Rich Roll?

  Well, it's actually a really funny story. So I was practicing law. I had that little law firm with a couple of other guys. And I think the introduction was originally through Colin Houdon.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 7:16Rich Roll?

  Who has stayed in our lives and I'll get into that more in a second as well. But you, Colin, and Jared Kraus, and Compton Rambada, who's also been huge in my life, were starting this little internet company called Good Life.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 7:32Rich Roll?

  Right? And it was a little bit ahead of its time, I think. But what was the concept?

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, it was basically a socially conscious Yelp. So there just weren't enough of those businesses and enough of those people out there. But it was working to create a directory of the most conscious, eco-friendly businesses and services out there.

• 7:53Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. And so I kind of came on board as corporate legal counsel and we had lots of meetings.

• 8:01Rich Roll?

  I remember with everybody together.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  In your beautiful house.

• 8:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you guys came up to the house and there was a lot of big aspirations for this for this company that it didn't quite make it. But the interesting thing is that is that you guys all remained in my life. And I've had like hundreds and hundreds of clients, you know, most of which come and go, I don't stay in touch with them. But for some reason, like, you know, you guys are always have always been around, you know, like Compton goes on to be like really instrumental in my life and like my earliest nutrition mentor who like really taught me so much about how food works. And I mean, he was teaching me about the microbiome years, you know, now it's like zeitgeisty and everyone's talking about it.

• 8:45Rich Roll?

  But like in 2006 or whatever, when I first met him, he was all about it. And so he really helped change my life. And I remember that you would come to these Good Life meetings. With a mason jar with like some kind of green drink in it.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Green sludge.

• 9:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, green sludge and we would all make fun of you and like now everyone does that. But like, you know, that was still, I mean, it wasn't that long ago, but yet that was still kind of like a radical thing. So you were.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Eight years ago.

• 9:14Rich Roll?

  I know you were on the tip, like you were way ahead of the curve on that kind of thing. And the same way that Good Life was, I suppose.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Straight off the hippie commune.

• 9:23Rich Roll?

  I know, right? So, uh, and we're going to get into that too. And then Colin, uh, becomes this sort of tea master, tea entrepreneur, opens up this tea shop. He's the one who introduces us to Wuda, who's been on the podcast twice. And now he's a Chinese medicine doctor and he's our acupuncturist. So he's very much in our life and is very close with Julie and, and the boys too. Tyler goes and sees him all the time.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  It's beautiful.

• 9:49Rich Roll?

  I haven't seen Jared so much lately, but he started, um, what was that, uh?

• 9:53Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a barter.

• 9:55Rich Roll?

  A barter platform. Right. Trade ya, which is, is it doing well? I know it was doing really well a little while ago. I haven't checked it out recently.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  It's been up and down.

• 10:01Rich Roll?

  Has it?

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:07Rich Roll?

  But it is amazing that, uh, you know, everybody's been around and you are.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  I, I reflect back on Good Life and if I had that business now, uh, I mean, cause we were actually booking a hundred thousand dollars in sales pre-launch. I could have easily raised 10 or 20 million in this market with that business. But 2008 just wiped us out. That, the, the, the recession just totally took us out. So, but it's all good. It's all compost and learning experiences.

• 10:34Rich Roll?

  Of course, man. I mean, I, I would imagine you, you must look back on it with gratitude because it's a, it's an experience that just informs what you're doing now, which is extraordinary, right?

• 10:43Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 10:44Rich Roll?

  But let's bridge the gap between then and now. I mean, we're going to get into Good Life. I'm going to get into your hippie compound Ojai life as well. But as a serial entrepreneur, like after Good Life, like what did you then, you know, there's these years where I'm not quite, I mean, I would run into you occasionally. I saw you at Saul's wedding, you know, and stuff like that, but I wasn't really totally clued in as to what you've been up to.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Well, I, I've basically retrenched after 2000. And just focused on my jewelry business, love heels, which is, which has been great. It's been, you know, we have 200 employees in Bali. It's a fair trade, social enterprise business. We've planted over 2 million trees through the business. But it's, you know, it's been, it was just a retrenching, studying what happened, waiting for the market, thinking about what's next and, and just generally passionate about health and wellness. So, you know, trying to figure out how to enter back into the market and what was the, what was the real problem that I could address and solve.

• 11:42Rich Roll?

  And so were there a couple like fits and starts with other companies in the interim along the way or before thrive?

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Or? No, I mean, I, I basically just retransferred the jewelry business, grew it to, you know, a thousand stores. It's, you know,

• 11:57Rich Roll?

  That's a business that you run with your mom, right?

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. So my mom and I run it. She's, she's, you know, bohemian hippie artist that was, you know, making jewelry all over the world.

• 12:08Rich Roll?

  Your mom wasn't like a Wall Street executive?

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  So yeah, so it's, it's still running. It's a beautiful little business and just been really in general, you know, like, like all of us, you know, we want to apply our lives to something that has personal meaning and high impact. And, you know, your, your journey from a entertainment lawyer to where you are today as a thought leader is very much, you know, the hero's journey, right? And so we all, we all go through that in our own way. And that has a retrenching process. It has its dangers, it has its challenges.

• 12:45Rich Roll?

  The critical aspect of that whole hero's journey is having the dark night of the soul.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 12:49Rich Roll?

  So did you, I mean, did you have a dark night of the soul? I mean, what was your kind of moment?

• 12:54Speaker 01

  2009, January, when the economic crisis was in full force. I remember doing a trade show in New York and, you know, normally that I would book a couple hundred grand in three days in sales for, for my jewelry business. And it was like three grand in sales and the airport normally would be full of people. And there were, you know, like 90, 95% less people. And the people that were on the airplane were like wearing masks. It was just, it was very apocalyptic, the whole circumstance.

• 13:23Rich Roll?

  Do you foresee a bubble happening right now as an internet entrepreneur? It's pretty interesting. There was a, there's a pretty, Compelling article in the latest issue of Vanity Fair on the subject of whether we're on a bubble or not.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think there's

• 13:39Rich Roll?

  By Mick Bilton.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's definitely, there's definitely bubbles and there's businesses that are being capitalized at super high valuations that, you know, shouldn't be rationalized. I mean, the beauty of our business is that we're actually, we have real sales, real revenue, real assets. It's a real business. I mean, we're, we're in our 11th month in business on an 80 million revenue run rate. So it's, it's a, it's a

• 14:06Rich Roll?

  It's crazy. Yeah. I mean, it's the, the previous sort of catchphrase for it would have been that it really is a bricks and mortar business, but it's kind of more than that. It's, it falls into, in my mind, that category of business that's, that's, that's super successful online right now, which is really about, as much as anything else, it's about effective distribution, right? Whether it's Uber, like getting cars to go where they need to go. Yours is about getting healthy foods, you know, where they need to go at a price point that makes sense for people.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  It's a disintermediation, right? I mean, I think there's this incredible moment in the 21st century where we can use the internet to go direct to our audience, just the way that you are with your audience. You know, that's such an exciting opportunity where we're no longer at the service, that we're subservient to intermediaries and we can use the internet and all of the technologies that have emerged and new media to really have a direct conversation with the world at scale. And whatever the thing is that we're passionate about, if it's solving a real problem or it's addressing a real issue that people have a resonance around, it's going to scale very quickly.

• 15:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, some of my favorite companies that have come on board to be podcast sponsors are those disintermediary kind of disruptive businesses like Warby Parker or Casper or Harry's where they're just cutting out the middlemen and they're able to provide like the high quality product at a fraction of the price that you would find in the store because you're not dealing with all the nonsense.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah. And that's exactly Exactly what we're doing with health food. So it's, it's, it's cutting out all the, the middlemen and eliminating the retail markup and then passing that along to our members. And that's, you know, for us, I mean, the thing is it's such a direct extension of, you know, my personal experience, growing up on a hippie commune where we had, we ran a food co-op for the last thirty years.

• 16:01Rich Roll?

  Let's like, let's park it there though. And let's go back to, you know, life as young Gunnar in Ojai, running free on a farm. I mean, what does that look like?

• 16:10Speaker 01

  I mean, it sounds like.

• 16:11Rich Roll?

  I mean, you really did. I mean, people talk about like, oh, I had a hippie growing up experience, but like, you really did, right?

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. I mean, I.

• 16:20Rich Roll?

  I mean, were you homeschooled or like?

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we ran a school off the property. But I mean, even, even prior to that, you know, I was, you know, born of two, two hippie children, two hippie parents that were, you know, unmarried, you know, had, had a love affair in Ibiza, Spain, you know, um, then, then immigrated here to the, to the US. Um, that relationship didn't last. And so then I ended up living here with my mom as a single mother for a number of years. And, and just the, just the, the impression that that left upon me, seeing her, you know, there were months at a time where we would just like live off of rice. I mean, it was like, you know, really humble times. So it sounds, sounds.

• 16:50Rich Roll?

  Were there a bunch of people living on this? Is it the same property that?

• 16:53Speaker 01

  This is even prior to us moving to, uh, so when I was like seven years old, uh, my mom met my stepfather. And so he was the one running this, uh, organic farm and this food co-op. And so they, they, they fell in love and we moved to this, this hippie commune, which was, you know, really very, very humble circumstance, uh, five acres, a stream. Uh, and we've, you know, over the last thirty years, we've, you know, planted 500 fruit trees and built, built, built the house and a main kitchen where everybody eats and lots of cabins and just kind of, you know, I've been through the whole gamut of that, that experience.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  But, you know, it sounds very idyllic, um, at some level, uh, on other levels.

• 17:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  I was a pretty traumatized little boy.

• 17:49Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of emotional turmoil. Well, there's that like romantic idea of, you know, the unicorns and rainbow idea of like growing up hippie with all these people around to sort of, you know, sub parent you. And then the reality of like. I just want to like, take a shower and go to the bathroom and like, eat like, a decent meal. You know what I mean?

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Right. And, and it got more idyllic later on. You know, probably that was mostly like-

• 18:14Rich Roll?

  After the trauma, it was fully lodged in your conscience.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. But, you know, I mean, it is, it is a, it was a real eye opener, just seeing the benefit of, you know, like, I have, you know, 50 aunts and uncles. You know, one taught me computer programming, one taught me bike riding, another taught me nonviolent communication. So there was, there was definitely a lot of really interesting educational exposure that emerged out of that type of, out of that type of-

• 18:42Rich Roll?

  And you never went to like, normal high school or anything like that?

• 18:45Speaker 01

  No, no, I did, I did. So we ran a school out of the property, up until junior high. And so then after that, I went to the public school, which was actually the, like, the most challenging year of my life, going from, you know, a school of like, 15 really sweet, like, sensitive people to a thousand people and, you know, last name Lovelace-

• 19:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  In, in a thousand person school that, you know, I was fat overweight kid with a last name Lovelace from the hippie commune. So it was like Lord of the Flies. That was, that was-

• 19:15Rich Roll?

  Not good.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Not, not, not a good, not, but it, it gave me a lot of compassion for people that don't fit in. So I, I work with that sense of compassion and empathy every day.

• 19:25Rich Roll?

  And so from there, did you, did you go to college after that? Or what, what was the next thing?

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So I, I actually ended up going to UC Santa Cruz, had a great adventure there.

• 19:36Rich Roll?

  Of course. There's no other college for you, right?

• 19:38Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 19:38Rich Roll?

  Where else are you gonna go?

• 19:39Speaker 01

  That's right. And, and, you know, three of the four years that I was there, you know, I was living in the woods in a treehouse on, on behind campus. So, so, you know, I had a really-

• 19:49Rich Roll?

  As much as you're trying to escape the commune, you're finding yourself creating your own version of that.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  I wasn't actually trying to escape. Those are your words.

• 19:56Rich Roll?

  All right. Yeah, you're right. You're right. You're right. I don't mean to project that on you.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  No, no, that's fine. I actually, I did, I did end up reacting to it later on. So I dropped out of school and, out of college and started my first software company and was really successful with that, quickly sold that business and- A year and then and then I ended up finding myself in a pretty dark circumstance in LA where like I was working for and serving people that really didn't have high values. And you know, that was, you know, that was, that was a really amazing experience. It was very informative. And, you know, I remember waking up one morning, you know, 25 years old, I was, you know, cheating on my girlfriend at the time. I was like in a very like terrible

• 20:43Speaker 01

  place in my life. And, and I just like this instant like recognition that I couldn't proceed with that life hit me with like this like total visceral force. And spontaneously after that, this unconditional love for George Bush and Dick Cheney like emerged. And I was like, whoa, because these guys have been like the epitome of evil for me up until this point in my life. And I realized that, you know, it's no wonder men do what they do, growing up in houses of fear, the way that, that, you know, we're, you know, power is trained and passed along from father to son, and the way that power and wealth concentrates at this point

• 21:24Speaker 01

  in our, in the evolution of our species. And, you know, we're, we're modeling behavior that is given to us. And so, you know, in a culture that rewards profit and greed above all else, you know, that's, it's no wonder that we end up doing what we do.

• 21:40Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Well, that's a pretty profound epiphany as a young man. And of course, there's no, you know, there's no reaction without the, the action that incites it, right? Everything is rooted in a reason that precedes it. And in the Buddhist idea of there's no, you know, there's no part without the whole and no whole without the part. But to be able to kind of have that, you know, realization, that's, that's a powerful thing.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was.

• 22:06Rich Roll?

  So how did that, did that empower you to immediately kind of change your circumstance?

• 22:09Speaker 01

  I immediately shut that company that I had running and And actually started my jewelry business with my mom. That was, that was really the beginning of that.

• 22:17Rich Roll?

  Love Heels, is that the genesis of the name Love Heels?

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Uh, I mean, it's partly, it was, it was definitely an interest in creating a brand and a business that was more than just an individual, but stood for an idea of a more holistic way of, you know, being in the world.

• 22:33Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. You know, the sun does not discriminate in where it shines.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 22:38Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 22:38Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 22:39Rich Roll?

  So, uh, all right, well, let's, let's, let's fast, we, we already went through kind of good life and all of that. So where does the kind of kernel of, of the idea for Thrive start to crop up? I mean, was this your idea or how did this whole thing come together?

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So I mean, I mean, as much as anything is our ideas, right? But we're all, we're all cumulative summation of everything that has come before us.

• 22:59Rich Roll?

  I just made that point, right?

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Right. We take possession of them as our personal identity, but uh,

• 23:04Rich Roll?

  Well, in an epigenetic sense, it goes back generations, right?

• 23:08Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 23:08Rich Roll?

  So we can't take credit for anything.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  But, but, uh, yeah. So I think actually what, what actually ended up happening is, um, we, I was organizing a group of people going to Burning Man. And we set up a bunch of wholesale accounts with the brands that I really love. And, and then when we, we, we went through that exercise and started to receive, understand the benefits of having wholesale access. And then coming back from that experience, I started running some shopping events with friends. I was like, hey, who wants to buy Health Force this, this week or whatever, whatever the brand was. And those shopping events were so oversubscribed and there was so much demand for it. And I'd, I'd always known that people were interested in being able to access healthy products for less.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  But the, the, the intensity of the demand was so extreme that it led me to, you know, try to think about how we could create a platform that harnessed that energy, facilitated that in a way that was really scalable. Um, and that, that really was the genesis. And at that point I started to apply myself with singular focus on, uh, Thrive Market, creating a scalable platform that, you know, really leveraged, uh, the best of a co-op model in a 21st century context that, you know, stripped out the hippiness, kept the heart and soul. But made healthy food available to everyone at lower prices.

• 24:28Rich Roll?

  Right. I sort of conceptualize it as, and tell me if this is fair or unfair. It's sort of, you know, Costco meets Whole Foods in a direct to consumer internet model, right?

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right on the commerce side, but we're investing heavily in media and content. So, so that's, that's, that's exactly the analog in terms of the online commerce component. But then the, the general thesis is that health and wellness is now a lifestyle trend. And it's like fashion and health and wellness is, is a fundamentally very scalable organizing principle that transcends ideology, whether you're liberal or conservative. Everybody wants to feel healthy. Everybody wants the same thing for their children. And, and there's a lot of education and information and questions around how to do it. There's no like one way of how to do it, but everybody wants to digest media and content

• 25:21Speaker 01

  like your podcast and like have a connection and understand and be guided through the process. And so we're, you know, simultaneously with the commerce, we're investing heavily into content and media.

• 25:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's cool. I like that idea very much. You know, it is, I mean, how do you, what do you attribute to the sort of explosion of this interest in this trend of, you know, intrigue around all things wellness? I mean, you know, it's not, it's not the purview of the hippie commune in Ohio anymore. This is a mainstream concept. It is very modern. It's confusing. You know, there's all kinds of craziness on the internet and it's easy to kind of go down some, you know, like black hole of nonsense, but I think that the level of, you know, average, modern family consumer interest in like living healthy, healthier

• 26:15Rich Roll?

  and getting good foods and all of that is unprecedented.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah. I mean, I think it's so exciting to me at that level. I've been looking for an organizing principle that can bring people together in a really powerful way that transcends the normal divisions. And so I feel like I get to be part of a conversation that is so. Powerful and so universal. I mean, we were at with one of our investors, Dr. Mark Hyman, who, you know, self identified, self identified Pegan.

• 26:41Rich Roll?

  The Pegan.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  He, we're at, we're at a saddleback church, which is the largest mega church in the country. With Pastor Rick Warren. He's designed a meal plan and a health plan with, with Dr. Mark Hyman and Daniel, Dr. Daniel Amen with, with Pastor Rick Warren. And, you know, I'm in the, in the congregation, it's being syndicated to hundreds of churches, thousands of people in the congregation live, and they're talking about the, the health plan. And it's like avocado, cacao pudding and quinoa and coconut oil is like the, like the center point of their, their dietary recommendations as like healthy fats. I almost fall out of the chair as I'm like, this is the conversation that we'd have in the hippie commune 10 years ago.

• 27:26Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. This is what's in your green sludge that you're bringing to the meeting back in the day.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  This is mainstream, you know, Christian conservative America having a conversation around avocado, cacao pudding and quinoa and coconut oil. And to your point, this is now a mainstream movement.

• 27:44Rich Roll?

  But why now? Like, what do you think, like, in kind of a meta, you know, perspective of, you know, culture?

• 27:50Speaker 01

  It's a food crisis, right? I mean, it's just the generally, I mean, I think, I think we're now faced with $100 billion a year spent on diabetes and obesity related illnesses. There's a real awakening among consumers of all types where they want to vote with their dollars. And of course, they want value for themselves and they're motivated by self-interest. But at the end of the day, all things being equal, they want to put their dollars towards something that actually speaks to their values in a really direct way. So the intersection of this incredible food crisis and the awakening of a conscious mainstream consumer that wants to vote with their dollars has created this huge movement now that is starting to work to address those needs.

• 28:30Rich Roll?

  Right. It's such an interesting time because there really are two Americas. Like you have, you know, the, you know, Rick Warren's, you know, massive church and people talking about healthy foods. You have people like you and I. Have this low-hoss movement, this massive, you know, interest in wellness. And yet, at the same time, there's another America where one out of every three people dies of a heart attack. Seventy percent of Americans are obese or overweight. You know, fifty percent of Americans are diabetic or prediabetic. And like, at some point, these two worlds have to wrestle with each other and we have to reconcile that.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  And they are, they are.

• 29:06Rich Roll?

  They are right now, that we're in that battle.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 29:09Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? And I think one of the impediments towards the wellness side winning is, has to do with socio-economic constraints. It's the common joke, like, it's not Whole Foods, it's Whole Paycheck. Like, who has the amount of money to go and spend what it takes to create cacao, chia seed, put it, you know, it's like, I can't afford these superfoods. Like, who can, you know, like, it's just easier to go to McDonald's and buy subsidized beef, get, you know, feed my family for four bucks.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  That's right. Well, you just hit on it, right? So it's, it's why do products with lots of chemicals and processing cost less than ones with no chemicals and processing?

• 29:44Rich Roll?

  It's subsidized.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  It's economies of scale and crony capitalism. So we've, we've, we're at the intersection of a very efficient industrial agricultural food ag system that is, you know, playing off of, you know, very entrenched political economic interests that, you know, basically, you're, you know, World War II holdovers of converting a World War II military economy into pesticides and corn subsidies, which have now, you know, arrived at this perfect moment of highly processed food that we've been sold over the last 20 years, that a low-fat, low-calorie diet of complex processed carbs is somehow good for us, which has given birth to the, you know, obesity explosion.

• 30:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and so, here you are, Thrive Market, here to provide a direct-to-consumer solution, right? So essentially, the idea is that anything that you would get at Whole Foods, you can get at Thrive, it's just mailed to you instead. And it's at, you know, a fraction of the price, I don't know, is there like a?

• 30:46Speaker 01

  It's twenty-five, twenty-five to fifty percent off on average, it's like thirty-four, thirty-four percent off of a normal health food retailer. Price.

• 30:54Rich Roll?

  And like Costco, it's like a membership model. Like you buy a membership.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's $60 a year for a membership to Thrive Market. It gives you access to the catalog of products. It's everyday sizes, so it's not 72 rolls of toilet paper. But for the first time, you can buy, you know, 70 loads of non-toxic laundry detergent for the same price that a big box shopping club is selling 70 loads of toxic laundry detergent with hormone and endocrine disruptors. And it's literally that, but that's specific.

• 31:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  So that's, to me, that's really exciting where we're, you know, we're, we're offering these products in the normal everyday sizes that people want them. So you're not having to deal with the storage issue. It's free shipping to people wherever they are nationally. They're able to access the products for the same price as conventional equivalents for the first time in history. And it's through a membership community. And then our, our part of our social mission is for every paid membership, we give a membership away to a family in need. So if you can't afford the membership, we want to find a way to get you one anyway.

• 31:51Rich Roll?

  Oh, cool. I like that. The save aspect of it, right?

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 31:55Rich Roll?

  And so from an entrepreneurial kind of businessman perspective, I mean, the model here, the sort of monetization profit model is you guys make money off the memberships and you're selling these products at, at their wholesale price. You're not really making money off.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  We break even.

• 32:10Rich Roll?

  You break even on that, right? So I got you. Yeah, it's great. It's amazing. Somebody didn't do this sooner. Well, you know. People have tried, right?

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Well, the thing is actually existing retailers in the health food space, and I'm not going to name names, were holding the market back. They were basically saying, if you sell to natural, they were basically saying to natural product brands, if you sell to a value channel, we'll pull you from the shelves. And what actually created the opening for us was Costco. Costco emerged as an alternative retail channel where it became, it became a fair rationale for the brands to be able to say, hey, I'm selling into a membership community so I can rationalize a different price than my normal existing retail.

• 32:51Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  And because natural products is the fastest growing segment of Costco's business.

• 32:56Rich Roll?

  I think that was the biggest organic retailer in the country.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  Well, Kroger, Kroger is actually now the biggest, but they're the biggest club retailer. And, and so, you know, friends of mine that, you know, now sell to Costco and the other obvious big ones, you know, they're getting 30 and 50 million dollar a year POs in aggregate from Costco, which is now equal to or greater than they would get from, say, a Whole Foods. And so when there's pressure put on them, they now have the lever to say, look, you know, you need my business as much as, you know, I need you. I'm getting more business from alternate channels and this is a different model selling into membership. And that created the opening for us. So that's really in the last two years.

• 33:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  We couldn't have started this business even three years ago.

• 33:39Rich Roll?

  Interesting, interesting. I mean, just as kind of a primer course on how all this stuff works, I think people would be very interested to, you know, kind of hear about the elementary steps of what is entailed. For example, if you're like a small food producer, let's say you have an organic cookie company, like you're new.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:57Rich Roll?

  And obviously the prize, the goal is like, oh, if we could just get on the shelf at Whole Foods. And, you know, just because you write a book doesn't mean that it ends up in Barnes and Noble, right? There's thousands of books that get, that get written every year. Just because you have a food product doesn't mean that it finds its way onto the shelves at a place like Whole Foods. In fact, there's a whole like sort of, you know, auction bidding process that goes into that. And my understanding from being kind of arms length away from it is that, you know, when you're a player like Whole Foods, you have, you hold all the cards, you have all the leverage and you can compel a small producer like that to say, wow, we like it, you know, but, you know, it's got to be at this price. And it's a price that, that the food manufacturer is not, is, not only are they not going to

• 34:42Rich Roll?

  make any money off it, they'll probably lose money off it. But it's so prestigious, it's sort of like an ad buy. It's like having a billboard to say, I'm in Whole Foods. They'll do that deal anyway, even though they're losing money. And as a consumer, you see their product on the shelf and you think, oh, well, they must be doing very well. But the, the economic reality of that is quite often very, very different.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's really rare that you get an entrepreneur that has the ability to create a really unique product. Product and actually raise the five or 10 million dollars that you need to break through that initial painful phase.

• 35:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  And it's not only Whole Foods that do it. All the major grocery, they play that same game. And so

• 35:18Rich Roll?

  There's a whole science to where on the shelf it is, how many in a row and all that kind of stuff.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  That's part of the, that's part of the, the intermediation, right? So you've got, you know, the manufacturer of the product and you've got the distributors and then you have the brokers and you have the slotting fees and then you have the retail games.

• 35:33Rich Roll?

  How many middlemen are there?

• 35:35Speaker 01

  All of that that just slices and kills the, the food manufacturer. And so you've got a product that, you know, they themselves want to see their products be accessible. They themselves feel raped by the current distribution retail paradigm. And so that's part of what has made our model work so well as we've got such deep partnerships with the brands because they share the mission of making their products accessible. They don't, they don't see that retail markup that's going to all the intermediation. And so what, what's exciting about a platform like Thrive is we can tell the story of those brands and their products in a really direct to consumer format, beautiful videos, great written content about their products, about their supply chain, what's unique, and then also pass all of

• 36:18Speaker 01

  that intermediate savings along to the member and while making more money for the brand themselves.

• 36:32Rich Roll?

  You know, I can't have this conversation without thinking about kind of the recent history surrounding Hampton Creek and Just Mail and what Josh Tetrick is building there. And, and, you know, kind of what happens when you are this maverick kind of upstart who's disrupting, you know, the kind of predominant paradigm that surrounds, you know, the food industry by offering this healthier product at a more affordable price. And that's all fine and in this sort of utopian idealistic world, but as soon as that starts to infringe upon the profit margins of Unilever, you know, that makes Heilman's Manage, then it's a different story. And then they start fighting back and it becomes very dark and, and, you know, all kinds of craziness is going.

• 37:16Rich Roll?

  Going on. So for those that are listening that aren't familiar, just Google Hampton Creek and you'll find out like kind of the story of this lawsuit. And I've talked about it before on the podcast. So my question really is, have you come up against any of that kind of, you know, predominant paradigm resistance? Like, hey, man, who do you think you are? Like, this is the way we do it. You know, we're Kroger, we're Safeway, or whatever. Like, you can't do what you're doing.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. And that's emerging where brands will call us that we're really excited in the beginning and they won't say names, but they say, hey, like, if I do this, like, we're, we're, we're, we're under pressure now from other retailers because the price that you're offering to your membership. And so, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we've had a little bit of fallout there. You know, we really try to keep a really aspirational focus to the business. I obviously come from like a hardcore activist background. So it's really easy for me to get all punk rock.

• 38:12Rich Roll?

  I want to get all punk rock. But, but I've got great co-founders that keep me in line

• 38:17Speaker 01

  on that. And, and really like keeping the eye on the prize. This is a mainstream movement.

• 38:21Rich Roll?

  And so Flunk in our love heals, remember?

• 38:23Speaker 01

  That's right. Love heals. The revolution. Exactly. So, you know, we're, we're really focused on positive solutions that really solve people's problems in a really scalable way versus getting into a reactive place. That said, we, you know, we'll take real stands on issues. We're the largest retailer today in the country that offers only GMO free foods. So, you know, we're, we're, we're taking real stands on specific areas. But we're very careful about how we do that in a way that doesn't alienate people and create extra conflict and friction in our business.

• 38:57Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, have you ever, have you ever met John Mackey or had any conversations with people at Whole Foods about what you're doing?

• 39:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, they're great people. I love, I love, you know, I think, I think they've really helped the movement in a really powerful way. They created standards, they created economies of scale. Like, I would not want someone to think that I think Whole Foods is evil. I think, you know, it's symptomatic of momentum of a business model that is Basically, under assault in general across the board.

• 39:24Rich Roll?

  The idea of just shopping in a store, a physical store.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Just the retail store, the expense that it requires, the distribution system that has emerged to create and support that, it's very, very hard for them to change their ship overnight. And which is, you know, you can see like, they're trying to create 365 now, which is a chain of curated, millennial-focused brands, a store, retail concept that's, you know, value channel, that's going to be very, very expensive and very, very difficult. The beauty of an internet model is the efficiency of capital for us is so high. You know, with the $30 million we just raised recently, we get such leverage off of it. We get such scale off of it right from day one.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  We're offering a solution from day one that reaches every American and doesn't take, you know, five years to build out 50 retail stores that is only still reaching 2% of the US population.

• 40:19Rich Roll?

  Right. So, I mean, one of the things that you share in common with John Mackey is this, you know, is this philosophy of conscious capitalism, right?

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 40:29Rich Roll?

  And he's certainly, you know, a pioneer of that idea. He wrote a whole book about it. And I know that you've spoken publicly, you know, you've given talks on this subject matter as well. And it's a, it's a subject that I've devoted quite a bit of thought to.

• 40:44Rich Roll?

  And by kind of way of contrast, I had Daniel Pinchback on that podcast a while ago. Do you know Daniel? I'm sure, of course you do, right?

• 40:52Speaker 01

  We've gone to Burning Man together.

• 40:54Rich Roll?

  Burning Man person, right? And, you know, Daniel, as you know, is sort of a brooding deep thinker.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Brilliant guy.

• 41:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, very, very smart, perhaps not as optimistic as you. And he was, he had a very interesting perspective on conscious capitalism, which is essentially, at its root, he's like, I think it's bullshit. Like, I don't, it's just, it's a marketing spin on capitalism that's designed to make people feel good about, you know, what they're purchasing. But in reality, if there wasn't a sort of profit motive built into it, it wouldn't exist at all. So I'm interested in your, especially since you know Daniel, like, what your sort of perspective on that idea would be.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  In terms of conscious capitalism being bullshit?

• 41:37Rich Roll?

  Well, just, just your philosophy of conscious capitalism and perhaps your retort to Daniel's perspective.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  I mean, I love Daniel, so I probably wouldn't get into retorting his perspective, but I think that. You know, look, fundamentally, the realization that I've had is instead of fighting against an obsolete system, the imperative that I can apply my God-given gifts and talents is to build a new model that is sexy and compelling, that solves real problems, that naturally attracts people, and naturally, in a very rapid fashion, makes the old model obsolete. And I think that-

• 42:16Rich Roll?

  Now you're just crazy talk.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  No, no, but that's actually very practical.

• 42:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm being ironic.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Oh, got you. Got you. You're playing the devil's advocate here. Look, I think, I think there's a lot of greenwashing out there, for sure. And it's a very delicate, I mean, like, I see that even in our own business, as we scale, and how do we message, and what's this? And like, that's, that's, that just happens, you know, as a business grows. But the fundamental movement of this huge emergence of conscious companies with ethical supply chains, offering healthy, natural, non-toxic products to consumers in a direct-to-consumer format, that is a paradigm shift that is going to ripple in such profound ways. And it's infecting the culture and the way that people think of the way they run their businesses,

• 43:04Speaker 01

  and the way they vote with their dollars. And, and the systemic effect of that is profound.

• 43:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, interesting. How does your, your spiritual cat, right? You just got back from Burning Man. By the way, how was Burning Man?

• 43:19Speaker 01

  It was great. I brought my dad, my girlfriend, my sister, my brother, four aunts and uncles. We were there for a cousin's wedding. It was a beautiful family affair.

• 43:27Rich Roll?

  That's so hilarious. How many times have you gone to Burning Man?

• 43:31Speaker 01

  I've gone like 12 times.

• 43:32Rich Roll?

  Have you?

• 43:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:34Rich Roll?

  I still haven't gone.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  We did very, we had six motorhomes, and we had a beautiful, organic food program. And it was great. It was very, very, very sweet, simple. It wasn't like lots of drugs and craziness. It was like babies and family and very healthy.

• 43:47Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Do you think Burning Man has been able to hold on to its kind of ethos?

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I know, I know Daniel's pretty, pretty upset about that too. I just read it, read an article from him about that this year.

• 43:57Rich Roll?

  That was another thing that he-

• 43:58Speaker 01

  He was, he was lambasting. I actually am, I, I, I play with all the people that he's critical of. I became really good friends with the, you know, management of Burning Man. I, I, you know, I, I work in the same circles of a lot of the top tech entrepreneurs. There's an awakening happening. People with- A lot of money and resources and access are wanting to apply those resources in conscious ways. Sure, there's a lot of like glitz and frill that goes along with that at times, but the fundamental thing that people are waking up to in that community is that they're here to serve something else than their own self motive. And it's not pure profit. There is actually a real generous spirit moving through and people are asking the

• 44:40Speaker 01

  hard question of how do I apply the incredible resources that I have available to me to something better and greater that facilitates community and facilitates a sustainable future?

• 44:51Rich Roll?

  It's real, right? Like, I feel like that really is real.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  It's real.

• 44:54Rich Roll?

  And I feel like that that is the defining characteristic of the generation below us, right? Like, it's easy to throw darts at millennials. Oh, they're entitled, they're lazy. But I really do feel that they have an appreciation for giving back and their priorities are much more kind of morally aligned than the way in which or the culture in which I was raised. And I find that to be very inspiring and optimistic. And I don't think that it's lip service. I really do feel that there is that sensitivity to a greater good that is like runs through the central nervous system of most young people

• 45:39Rich Roll?

  that I come across. Now, you know, I'm in the wellness community and I seek out young people to be on the podcast. So it's like, I'm finding

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Self-selecting.

• 45:46Rich Roll?

  I'm not finding like the neckbeard guy in his mom's, you know, basement, playing, you know, video games all day or what have you. So perhaps it's a tainted, you know, value set or whatever. But I feel it in the air and I feel it in the culture. And I think when you see people like yourself and other business leaders, particularly, you know, kind of thought leaders in the tech world, who make a point of going to Burning Man to have this kind of, you know, Vulcan mind meld experience, like that says something.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  It's powerful.

• 46:16Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? Like, the Vanderbilts and the Murdochs were not like sort of getting together under those kinds of circumstances. They were doing it in cloistered, you know, mansions where nobody could see what they were doing. And God knows what was going on.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 46:29Rich Roll?

  I mean, this is a very different era.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and there's a real conversation about, in general, aside from Burning Man, there's a real conversation about how do we apply the resources we have towards creating a world that is sustainable and equitable for more people, more stakeholders. And I think the whole conversation around externalities is such a, such an important one because, you know, to Daniel's critique on the capital market is that it creates such specialization and abstraction from the supply chain that we don't see the toxins from, the color dyes that go into the river in this, from the sweatshop labor in Southeast Asia that are poisoning children. We don't see that.

• 47:10Rich Roll?

  And we not only do we not see it, we're purposely deflected away. You know, there's all sorts of smoke and mirrors to prevent us from being able to see it, even if we want to.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not that cynical about it. I don't actually, there's definitely smoke and mirrors that happens, but I don't think it's actually that. I don't think there's that much central power. I think people are basically fundamentally playing to their own self-interest and that collides into a macroeconomic system where we're just abstracted from what's happening on the other side of the world where our products are being produced.

• 47:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but I think it is, it's pretty dark in certain respects, like whether you, you know, whether it's, you know, the factory where your iPhone is made, or, you know, the pig farm where your bacon is made, like, these are, these are dire desperate situations that, you know, we just don't even want to look at, right? And when you look at sort of the politicization, you were talking about greenwashing, like, look what's happening to simply organic certification, like, because these big food companies are so powerful, it's been watered down because they know that they can make more money and charge more if they get that certification. So it doesn't quite mean what it used to mean. And, you know, I'm sure that you see that kind of thing happening all the time.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I wouldn't dismiss the darkness there. There's a lot of, I mean, we're in the midst of the sixth largest extinction in the history of the planet. So there's a lot going on here.

• 48:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah. At the same time, and kind of getting back to the, you know, the optimistic vein of all of this, and specifically with respect to millennials, there is a demand. And for transparency that is unprecedented, right? It's it's expected, you know, and a company that's not willing to be transparent in terms of its, you know, sort of chain of title over its product line and manufacturing and distribution, et cetera, just ain't going to cut it anymore.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Well, I think I think for me, money is energy. It's literally that simple. Like, we think of money as this monolithic thing. It's literally energy. It's just a currency of exchange. And so the question is, who's behind the money and what are they motivated by? And if so, somebody is motivated by fear and greed, which is the traditional human software paradigm that has been running us for a long time. It's going to be more of the same. If we're motivated by a sense of service and willingness to contribute our lives to something greater than our own self-interest, then the the money and the concentration of that wealth is going to be put to great effect.

• 49:26Rich Roll?

  So young people have an upgraded operating system. We just have to download the

• 49:30Speaker 01

  I think we're in the midst of upgrading our operating system in general.

• 49:35Rich Roll?

  But it's a little tweaky and buggy right now?

• 49:37Speaker 01

  Very tweaky and buggy.

• 49:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So, I mean, what does the future hold, Gunnar? Look into that Ojai crystal ball and tell me where this is all leading.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Well, I think we're clearly at a crossroads. I mean, we're we're we're at a place in our species where there's more than 7 billion of us on the planet. And that that explosion in our population from, you know, over the last 200,000 years, I mean, you know, World War II, there were 2 billion of us on the planet. And so in the last three and a half generations, three generations, we've gone from 2 billion to more than 7 billion. And that has been facilitated by the agricultural revolution. It would not have happened without the industrialization and scaling of agriculture. And so the production of food and distribution of food is absolutely primary to why we've been so successful as a species.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  But it's also now primary to the challenges that we face as a species. And so it's absolutely incumbent upon us to envision a world where we produce food that is good for the planet and good for our bodies and is affordable for everybody. And if we can do that, we will pass a world along that is regenerative, it is sustainable, and it is equitable. It will, that will cut across so many different supply chains. If we don't do that, we're going to pass along more extreme versions of what we're seeing with intense, you know, climate change, disease, war, you know, that this, somebody was pointing out, one of our investors was pointing out the other day that the Syrian war is the first climate change war.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  It is, it is intense drought that drove the rural agricultural community in Syria into the cities. The cities could no longer provide the services and then, and then ISIS came, came along because there was disruption in the services that would be provided.

• 51:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I hadn't thought of it.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  And we now have 11 million people in Syria that are on the move because of the first climate change war. And so that's a really interesting reframe on that circumstance. And so we're, we're, you know, we, we all see it. We all feel it. We look, read the news, the sense of desperation. I think a lot of ways that's why we feel like millennials and young people are apathetic is there really is, there is a sense of hopelessness out there and how do people, how do people engage? You know, Barack Obama for, you know, sold the country on a very aspirational message. And in matter of fact, the actual result of that has been very, very diluted.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  And there's so many instances of, of these great things that have been sold to people that tap into that sense of hopefulness and aspiration and possibility. And then the actual result of them is very watered down.

• 52:17Rich Roll?

  Right. And when it doesn't play out, you're like, well, if Barack couldn't get it done, like it ain't happening.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:22Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? So it's easy to just sort of like say, forget about it.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 52:26Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? I love that monologue that you just gave. It was amazing. That's why I gave you a copy of Cowspiracy because it's completely on that tip. You know, by 2100, they're predicting that, that, that population could swell to 11 billion.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 52:42Rich Roll?

  It's like our current paradigm for feeding the planet is broken. It's wasteful. It's unsustainable. And it's killing the planet. And you, look at any category from ocean pollution to land use, to water use, to Amazon destruction, to species. Extinction to, you know, the, the, the algal blooms and I mean, it's just ridiculous across the board and we just cannot continue to, you know, walk through this crisis with blinders on. We're at the tipping point, if not beyond it. And, you know, the truth is, is that we can solve this problem using the entrepreneurial ingenuity that people like you are leveraging. So it's exciting.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  You're part of that. I actually-

• 53:22Rich Roll?

  But it's one person at a time.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 53:24Rich Roll?

  Like, you know what I mean? Like this podcast is me giving out the flyer at, at Santa Cruz. It's the only thing that I can do.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Well, but the thing is, it's different, right? It's 500 people that, that, that protest in Santa Cruz. It's 100,000 people here, right? The scale now, that because you're, because you've got a resonant message, people are attracted to it and they can reach it now through the internet. I think even, you know, in parallel to conscious capitalism is actually a much more fundamental piece, which is personal empowerment and personal transformation. If we're ruled by fear and self doubt and self limiting beliefs, we will never be able to express ourselves to our full potential. And to me, that is the fundamental software upgrade that we have to go through as a species. We have obsolete biological technology that is based upon fight or flight response. And that's been a very

• 54:13Speaker 01

  successful evolutionary technology that has gotten us to where we are. But unless we can rapidly shift that orientation and our awareness and our consciousness and how we make decisions, we're going to, we're not going to be able to make the critical jump that we have to make.

• 54:28Rich Roll?

  But you're optimistic?

• 54:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:30Rich Roll?

  That we're going to be able to do it?

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's an awakening happening on all fronts. Definitely. I mean, I'm an optimistic human being. So like, I, I've never seen the way through any-

• 54:38Rich Roll?

  Love heals, man.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  I've never seen the way through any, any solution that I've tried to apply myself towards. But I, you know, I, I move personally from a place of like, at the end of the day, even if it's all going to turn into a crazy madhouse, I would rather live in a world where I feel a sense of hopefulness.

• 54:56Rich Roll?

  You take it to the grave, like wishing-

• 54:58Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm going to take it to the grave.

• 54:59Rich Roll?

  Towards the best. Yeah.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 55:08Rich Roll?

  So what's a day in your life look like right now? It's gotta be pretty crazy.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 55:12Rich Roll?

  I mean, you know, how many employees do you guys have?

• 55:14Speaker 01

  We're at 250 employees. The fastest growing e-commerce.

• 55:17Rich Roll?

  You just opened some giant warehouse somewhere too, right? Like, lay it out. Like, what is this whole, what is the infrastructure and kind of a day in the life of Gnar Lovelace look like? It doesn't look like what it looked like on the organic farm up in Ohio anymore.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  No, we have two big distribution centers now, east coast, west coast. We're shipping, you know, two days to 90% of the US population. That's been just getting that.

• 55:43Rich Roll?

  So you ship everywhere in the continental US?

• 55:45Speaker 01

  Everywhere.

• 55:45Rich Roll?

  Alaska and Hawaii?

• 55:46Speaker 01

  No, it's just continental US right now. So it's, it's really for us, it's been about implementing low carbon, fast shipping to our membership community so that we can reach 90% of the US population cost effectively. So that's on the infrastructure side. You know, on terms of the like, the actual build out of the business, you know, the key to any business organizational success is great people. So, you know, I brought in three other amazing co-founders. We have an amazing leadership community in the company. Everybody who's in the company is passionate about health and wellness and is giving themselves to excellence, passion, goodness. And so, you know, yes, it's super intense. I, you know, I'm working 16 hours a day, six or seven days a week.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  I'll have 15 meetings a day. I'm sprinting from, you know, one meeting to another. That isn't all that sustainable long-term.

• 56:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  But I love what I'm doing and I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to be able to apply my life in that direction.

• 56:45Rich Roll?

  Right. So how do you maintain your kind of mindfulness in the midst of, you know, the sort of the eye of this chaotic storm?

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Well, I view, you know, I view business as a form of creative yoga. So, so for me, it's like, I'm in a meeting. I just sit up, I, you know, make sure I'm trying to get good posture. I'm staying mindful of my breath, trying to eat a low sugar diet, trying to get enough sleep, making sure I get... You know, four or five times a week, a really vigorous sweat because otherwise I turn into an asshole. Like, just like really basic guardrails that like provide a foundation of support.

• 57:24Rich Roll?

  Right. So there's no like, do you have a morning routine? Do you have a meditation practice that you lock in? Like, what is the, you know, do you bring your green smoothie to the office? Like, what are the tactile kind of like takeaways for somebody who's listening? Like, because you're an interesting, you're, you're, you're an interesting conundrum in the sense that you don't quite fit that, like the typical Silicon Valley, you know, like, technology entrepreneur. Like, you're coming from this holistic wellness perspective, and it's the merging of these two worlds. So I'm interested in, you know, kind of like the actual, like, you know, brass tacks of what that looks like and how you practice that.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. So sleep, getting enough sleep is front, front and center. I can do anything else, meditation and lots of exercise. If I'm not getting enough sleep, I just totally implode. So like I, because I have so much on my mind, I really try to take care of myself right before I go to bed. I have a, I have an unwind, you know, sequence that I run through. Like, I roll around on my back for 20 or 30 minutes and just bring my energy down. It's a very meditative place. I'll take, you know, I'll take Mag Calm right before I go to bed.

• 58:32Rich Roll?

  Magnesium.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, just a lot of magnesium.

• 58:34Rich Roll?

  That's a staple in our house.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  That just brings me right down. And so getting enough sleep is absolutely primary for me in this kind of place of super high intensity. And then, you know, really low sugar diet, like a low sugar diet, lots of probiotics. I take probiotics probably four to eight times a day. And for me, that supercharges my immune system. People get sick around me all the time, and I don't get sick. Very, very, very rarely. And that's because I'm taking a lot of items.

• 59:02Rich Roll?

  What kind of probiotics?

• 59:03Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I like temperature-stable probiotics as I'm on the move. So, you know, Dr. Hiro's is a great one. It's a lot of efficacy. So I, we sell that on Thrive. I love it.

• 59:16Rich Roll?

  Right. You have no, you had no shortage of access to healthy food products with what you do, right?

• 59:21Speaker 01

  Totally, totally. But, you know, it's still, it's like, it doesn't matter what you put in your body if you're in an unstable place. And we all have our different parameters of what that is. Sleep is the critical thing for me. So, you know, sleep and a low sugar diet with lots of probiotics, that, that powers me through the day.

• 59:37Rich Roll?

  And what's next? Like, what's the big, the kind of problem that you're trying to solve right now to get to the next level?

• 59:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think, I think the, so a couple of the challenges. One is, you know, we see, our mission is to make healthy living accessible to everybody. We see access as a function of price, geography, and education. And so we've got a really strong core offering around price and geography. We're shipping healthy products for less anywhere nationally. But we're still not doing what we can do on the education side. And that's really the investment in content. You know, we just shot a 20-part video series on healthy hacks on a budget and just demystifying health. Like, how do you read a label? How do carbs turn into sugar? Why you should care about toxic ingredients in your cleaning supplies? Creating short-form content, video content, written content, that's given away with the membership?

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  It's all about healthy habit formation. So if we can help a family that's buying processed toxic food at a local convenience store, understand that they can access the natural alternative to that for the same price for the first time in history, and couple that with educational material, and we give them a roadmap to be able to make their first two or three purchases, we have a real impact of changing their life and impacting their children's lives in a very, very real way.

• 1:00:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the education is huge. You know, in our cookbook, The Plant Power Way, you know, the idea behind it was to introduce mainstream, modern, American families to the idea of eating plant-based and to demystify it in many ways and, and, and sort of position it and present it as a modern, accessible, and kind of aspirational way of living. And we tried to use, you know, ingredients that you could find no matter where you live, but there are certain things that are like, okay, but if you want to get more exotic and you want to get into the cacao powder and the chia seeds and, you know, the ground flaxseed and the hemp seeds and all that kind of stuff, that, look, if you're living in Venice, California, that's like, you know, on the tip of everybody's tongue. But if

• 1:01:38Rich Roll?

  you're in the breadbasket of America, people have never heard of that stuff. It's brand new. And, and, and you'll get pushback. People will say, well, you know, I don't, you know, I can't get that stuff where I'm like... It's 2015. If you did a Google search, you could find a place that would ship it to you in a day and a half. Like, that excuse doesn't hold water anymore.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:00Rich Roll?

  You can't hang your hat on like, "Well, I would do that, but, you know, I live here and I can't get that." Like, you can't, like, forget about Thrive Market. Even if Thrive Market didn't exist, I'm sure you could find a place to ship you whatever

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:11Rich Roll?

  Kind of weird ingredient that you're looking for. Amazon, everything has it. So now there's Thrive Market that makes it even easier and, and more affordable, because that's the other argument, "Well, it's too expensive. I can't do it." To be able to do that, like, really dilutes and takes all of the kind of energy that surrounds those, those rationales that are so common, uh, that, that crop up around, like, "Why I can't access a healthier lifestyle."

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, and there's a lot of different demographic segments. Like, there's this whole population of Americans that are on food stamps, right? And so, we're, we're in conversations with the White House and the USDA to be the first to accept food stamps online early next year.

• 1:02:48Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow, that would be cool.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  You cannot use food stamps today online. How crazy is that?

• 1:02:53Rich Roll?

  That is crazy.

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  You drive across Los Angeles and you see five fast food joints that now say, "Accepting food stamps and EBT." It's insane, right? So, that's, that's a major initiative that we're working on.

• 1:03:05Rich Roll?

  Wow, I didn't even know that.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  It's incredible. People just like, so that's a whole community that just, no matter how affordable it is, they're on food stamps. If they can't use their food stamps to buy natural, non-toxic products for the first time as conventional equivalents, it's just, they're never gonna get at it.

• 1:03:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're further entrenching the socio-economic problem and making it worse.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's, it's, it's, you know, you look at different demographic segments, you know, what's so, so tragic and sad about the current situation is that you've got, you know, very, very low-income communities that are overfed and undernourished. And, you know, you look at obesity and diabetes, it's really heavily concentrated at the lower levels of our economic demographic groups. And it's, it's because processed food is so cheap and the amount of calories you get per dollar is so, so high that, you know, it's just-

• 1:03:55Rich Roll?

  It's impossible to say no to.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:03:56Rich Roll?

  When you're on that kind of a budget. So, yeah, I have great empathy for people that are- Stuck in that situation.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you know, so I think, you know, to to your point where to your question like what's next? You know, we're we're building our core business and that's scaling really, really passionately. The same time, I'm personally very, very interested in making sure that we can really provide inroads into communities that are just not going to be able to be part of that no matter what. And so we're having a lot of really powerful conversations with like foundations that, you know, like the Robin Wood Johnson Foundation just put half a billion dollars into food issues. So we have a model that we're creating where we can raise money from foundations that provides the first three purchases to a family, coupled with educational material that we develop together, coupled with the free membership that we give away to families in need.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  And we have an opportunity to really support healthy habit formation at scale to a whole segment of the US population that just would never be part of this conversation otherwise.

• 1:04:55Rich Roll?

  Right, I feel like part of your challenge is to be able to effectively, you know, communicate with and penetrate that lower socioeconomic community because, you know, as we're, you know, on the west side of LA, like we all know what's going on at Silicon Beach and like we know, oh, Thrive Market, they're happening. You know, that's what's going on right now. People in that community or in that upper, kind of the upper, you know, financial echelon, like we're aware of what you're doing. But is, you know, the bus driver, does he know what Thrive Market is? Like, how are you going to get the message out to the people that actually can benefit the most from the service that you're offering?

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly right. So I think what's really exciting to me is, you know, there's this huge community of influencers that are emerging that care about this issue. And so we've been very, very thoughtful about how we capitalize the business. We didn't take passive institutional investors. Every single investor that we have in the company is strategic and actually passionately engaged, is interested in this and is working with us on it. And so we have literally. 150 influencers as investors in the company. And that was one-

• 1:06:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you have some really, I mean, all the people are all people you've heard of.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  They're great people. So they're working with us to build content that speaks to their audiences at scale through social media in a way that's super high impact, but very low cost. And so when we think about the, you know, the emerging consumer behavior, it's social proof. Right? So if you've got an influencer that you look up to and they're sharing authentically about what it is that they're passionate about and being able to access healthy food for less through this new platform, it's going to resonate to that community that identifies with that influencer. And that's an extremely high impact, low cost way of scaling into a lot of different demographic groups. And so we're working with, you know, the bloggers and, and then we're working with A-list actors and then we're working with A-list sports

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  stars. And each of those people speak to communities in a different way.

• 1:06:54Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  And so our job is to be really intelligent about creating content that is authentic to them and speaks to those audiences in a way that's actually going to help them understand that this is an available solution for them.

• 1:07:06Rich Roll?

  All right, man. I love it. Our time is up.

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  Really appreciate it. I just so much appreciation for you.

• 1:07:14Rich Roll?

  I love you, buddy. I'm so proud of you and so excited to see this whole thing just exploding around you like a giant mushroom cloud of awesome.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  We're gonna find a lot of ways to work together and really, really grateful for your audience that is organizing around this conversation and just the way that you made a shift in your own life from a very traditional, high-powered entertainment lawyer to-

• 1:07:34Rich Roll?

  Not so high-powered.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Some, some, some, to a much greater platform that you're creating. So really-

• 1:07:40Rich Roll?

  It feels good, man. You knew me, you knew me before the transition, right? So you can attest to the, the difference and the change. And it's just been amazing to kind of, you know, observe this arc in your own life and to see what you, you're building, you have built and continue to build that's helping millions of people.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  Well, we're gonna be, we're gonna be friends and allies for the rest of our lives.

• 1:07:59Rich Roll?

  It's all good, man. I love it. Absolutely. So-

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  Have a beautiful day.

• 1:08:02Rich Roll?

  Big love. Love heals. And I look forward to, dude, we gotta do this more. Like, will you come back on the show?

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:08:10Rich Roll?

  I feel like you could be my co-host once in a while.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm, I'm, I love this, dude.

• 1:08:13Rich Roll?

  Like, there's a good energy here. You know what I mean?

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  Good rapport here. Totally.

• 1:08:16Rich Roll?

  All right, so for people that are listening and they're digging on Gennar and want to learn more, the best place to go is ThriveMarket.com. That's it. And you're on Facebook and Twitter and all the local places. So Gennar Lovelace, Google him, you'll find him. And anything else coming out that you want to point people to? That's it. Do what you love. All right. Awesome, man. Peace. See you later. Plants.

• 1:08:45Rich Roll?

  Hey, did you guys like that? I liked that. I think Gennar's super cool. I can't wait to see where he takes Thrive and his mission. Don't forget to check out the show notes at RichRoll.com for additional articles, background, and other materials and resources related to today's conversation. Again, I put a ton of time into compiling these, so make a point to check them out. Read up, learn more. Take your knowledge base and your podcast experience beyond the earbuds. And while we're at it, have you guys subscribed to my newsletter yet? Come on, people. No spam, just good stuff. Weekly podcast updates, product offers, and I'm going to start sharing exclusive content there. Helpful information, all oriented around the wisdom of my guests, and the books,

• 1:09:26Rich Roll?

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• 1:10:11Rich Roll?

  banner ad is right there on the main podcast page. It doesn't cost you anything extra. You just click there, it takes you to Amazon, buy whatever you're going to buy. Amazon kicks us. Some loose commission change from their end. And it's just a great, simple, free way to support the mission. And it really does help us out a lot. So thanks so much to everybody who has made a habit of that. If you're in LA, or your travels take you to this part of the world, be sure to check out Joy Cafe. It's our organic, plant-based, and gluten-free eatery in the Westlake Village area of Los Angeles. You'll often find me eating there. Mostly lunchtime, three or four days a week. I'm also partnered with The Karma Baker, which is a vegan and gluten-free bakery, also in Westlake Village. And as I always say, the podcast is a great way to kind of serve the global community

• 1:10:56Rich Roll?

  with my message, but it's also important to serve the local community. And that's what these businesses are about, and it feels really good. So it'd be great if you were to check them out. For all your plant power needs, go to richroll.com. Check out our new cookbook and lifestyle guide, The Plant Power Way. Also, my book, Finding Ultra. We've got signed copies of both of those. We've got Julie's guided meditation program. We have 100% organic cotton garments. We've got Plant Power Tech tees, all kinds of good stuff. Basically, a lotta awesome to help you take your health and your life to the next level. Richroll.com. Thanks for supporting the show. Thanks for telling a friend. Thanks for sharing it on social media. Thanks for using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. And I will see you guys back here in a couple of days. Make it great.

• 1:11:41Rich Roll?

  Peace. Plants.