#30 - Reinventing the Energy Drink

LifeAid’s Aaron Hinde (@aaronhinde) stopped by to talk “vitamins that you’ll enjoy drinking.” He built a new beverage brand from zero to $100m+ in value, taking on the big boys like Red Bull, Monster etc.. He talks about coming up with the formula, and their distribution strategy thru CrossFit gyms. We also chat about his unique decision to live off the grid: chicken, solar & batteries and more. Got feedback? email us at [email protected] See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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

• 0:02Speaker 00

  We were at like a party and I'm handing out 5 HTP, milk thistle, B vitamins, because you know, we're up for basically two and a half days dancing and having a good time. You know, my business partner now, Orion and I started talking the day after taking all these supplements. He's like, hey, we thought we should package these supplements up. Instead of having to buy full bottles of each, we thought, well, let's put all these in a beverage.

• 0:23Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  Can we actually pull this off? So we go super thin because we burned through all our savings starting the company. And I mean, we're eating like mac and cheese and tuna every night. I've got two kids at the time. We're living in a 400 square foot trailer. We were doing like eight cases a month there. So we're like, shit, there's something here. We used to ring the bell in the office, you know, when we get a new gym. And it was like, oh, the first month, we got like 12 gyms. We were so stoked. The next month, we got 30. Then we got 50. Then we were hitting like 200 a month.

• 0:54Shaan Puri?

  Wow.

• 0:55Speaker 00

  Right? So it starts adding up quick. It went from 700 grand to 4 million in one year.

• 0:59Shaan Puri?

  So where do you think this goes? How big does this get?

• 1:02Speaker 00

  Over a billion.

• 1:06Shaan Puri?

  5 million is not enough. 10 million. 15 million. 20 million dollars.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  100 million dollars.

• 1:10Speaker 03

  Half a billion in revenue. 850 million dollars.

• 1:13Shaan Puri?

  One or two people in a bedroom actually the threats to these like giant multimillion dollar companies because you have creativity and you have nothing to lose. Add another zero to that price, buddy. Add two more zeros.

• 1:25Speaker 00

  My first million.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Every week, we sit down with self-made millionaires and ask them, how did you do it? I didn't start a podcast. I started my own personal business school and the teachers are the successful entrepreneurs behind the biggest brands and businesses that we find today. I wanted to know the real stories with all the details, like, how did you get your first 100 customers? What did it feel like when shit hit the fan? I ask them, how did you spend your money now that you're rich? And what would you do if you were starting over from scratch again today?

• 1:58Shaan Puri?

  If you're like me and you want to own your own business, instead of living a nine to five job, this is the podcast for you. The Hustle presents My First Million.

• 2:11Shaan Puri?

  So I just took a sip of LifeAid's new CBD drink. So I'm here with founder of LifeAid, Aaron Hind. LifeAid is a new sort of energy drink company. Do you like being called an energy drink?

• 2:23Speaker 00

  Functional beverage.

• 2:24Shaan Puri?

  That's less catchy.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  It's less catchy, but there's a lot of negativity associated with energy.

• 2:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's why I paused. I was like, I don't want to call it that. But basically, if you're like me-

• 2:32Speaker 00

  Clean energy would be a better description.

• 2:33Shaan Puri?

  Right, like, I don't want to drink Red Bulls and Monsters myself, right? Like, I'm not going to put that in my body. And so, LifeAid is like an alternative. So, founder, you're based out of Santa Cruz. You came up for the day. You got a party to go to tonight.

• 2:44Speaker 00

  We do.

• 2:45Shaan Puri?

  I appreciate you stopping by.

• 2:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, bro.

• 2:47Shaan Puri?

  Exciting company. You guys are doing 35 million in revenue, I think, this year, right about?

• 2:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, right.

• 2:52Shaan Puri?

  So that's, you know, got to be a $100 million company. Not many people have done that in the sort of beverage space. And so, we're going to learn-

• 2:58Speaker 00

  99% failure rate.

• 3:00Shaan Puri?

  Right, we're going to learn how you did it, a little bit about you, and what it takes to get something like this off the ground. Because I think, I get a couple of different types of guests, right? You get like the high-tech entrepreneur. And if you're not a programmer, you're not into software, those are sort of, it's just a different beast altogether.

• 3:13Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 3:14Shaan Puri?

  But this is something where like, you know, I remember in college when I saw Five Hour Energy and I was like, what's the backstory? How do you start one of these? And look, you frigging, you started one of these. You did it.

• 3:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:24Shaan Puri?

  Give me two things. I want you to first give me the generic backstory, which is, you know, I was just tired of my options and I wanted to make something better.

• 3:30Speaker 00

  Then you want the truth?

• 3:31Shaan Puri?

  And then I want the truth. Yeah, give me both. Give me both. They're both, they're probably related. I don't think they're opposite, but one has more depth.

• 3:36Speaker 00

  Okay, no, I've never been asked that question. And so, I appreciate that because you're right. There are kind of two versions. I'd say the generic story is, you know, I was a sports chiropractor for 10 years, grew up in Santa Cruz. I met my business partner, Orion, at a CrossFit gym, CrossFit North Santa Cruz.

• 3:50Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 3:50Speaker 00

  He's a certified financial planner. We both were writing for the paper. Started hanging out. He's a very accomplished DJ. My wife and I love house music. And we both had two young kids. Our daughters are actually best friends, met in kindergarten. Our wives became friends. We started hanging out for a couple of years and brainstorming ideas. And, you know, we were both very frustrated with the lack of healthy beverages on the market, especially marketed to kids, you know, what our kids are going towards. You know, the kids weren't reaching back in 2011 for kombucha or coconut water, right? Reaching for monsters and Red Bulls. It's like I was offended. I'm like, I can't have my six year old reaching for this garbage because it's a bunch of shit. So it's really out of ignorance and passion. We started Life Aid. So that's more the corporate line, which is a hundred percent true.

• 4:30Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  The backstory.

• 4:32Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 4:33Speaker 00

  Is we were at like a pre compression, a pre burning man party called Three Degrees. I'd been part of the founding team for that, for, you know, helping throw it for several years. So I invited him and his wife. We had recently met and because, you know, I knew he'd enjoy the DJs, like 22 DJs. And we're, I'm handing out 5 HDP, milk thistle, B vitamins, because, you know, we're up for basically two and a half days dancing and having a good time.

• 4:57Shaan Puri?

  And what are those things you just said? I've never taken any of those.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  Okay. So they're all supplements. One's for serotonin. If you're having serotonin. One's good for the liver, one.

• 5:05Shaan Puri?

  So these are more like vitamins. These aren't party, these are all natural vitamins.

• 5:09Speaker 00

  These are all recovery stuff.

• 5:10Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, recovery stuff, right? And I had an eye drop business at the time called Iri Eyes Eye Drops. So I sold eye drops to stoners, basically.

• 5:17Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  And.

• 5:18Shaan Puri?

  That's the most Santa Cruz thing I've ever heard.

• 5:20Speaker 00

  Well, I heard, it was a good lesson in accurate thinking because stoners don't give a shit that their eyes are red. It actually, I actually got pretty good distribution. We, we turned the most units in novelty shops, not in head shops, which is interesting. But, you know, my business partner now, Orion and I started talking the day after taking all these supplements. He's like, hey, we thought we should package these supplements up instead of having to buy full bottles of each, put it on the counter in 7-Eleven and call it party pills. So anytime, you know, I have an idea or he has an idea or we bullshit a lot of ideas, but most of them were lame.

• 5:50Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 5:51Speaker 00

  So I remember my wife coming to me the next day. He's like, hey, that party pill thing, you should, you guys should look into that. So we started going down that road. We were going to create these party packs and we figured if, if supplements in pill form were the way to go. I'm old enough, if some of you out there might remember, Nodos was really big before Red Bull.

• 6:07Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 6:07Speaker 00

  Well, that doesn't exist anymore. Red Bull's, you know, multi billion dollar company. So we thought, well, let's put all these in a beverage.

• 6:14Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  So the beverage was called Raver Aid, which was a little racy. Our friends in the, in the scene said, no, you gotta tone it down. So we then called it Party Aid. And then one night on his birthday, you know, so we registered partyaid.com on his birthday. And then we're like, well, if we do party, we crossfit, let's do one for fitness called Fit Aid and we golf, let's do one Golf Aid. We even got boneraid.com for $12.

• 6:35Shaan Puri?

  You're just buying domains.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  We bought every 80 domain names in one night, anything within AID.

• 6:40Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  Okay, and uh.

• 6:41Shaan Puri?

  Boneraid, that was available. That's amazing.

• 6:43Speaker 00

  It's still available for the right price. We still own it, actually.

• 6:46Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  Um, and then it's just like internet, Google searching like, okay, what do we want to put in this? And you know, I had some background in nutrition, so I'm back ending the formulations. Um, we started researching flavor houses, researching who produces these cans.

• 6:59Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  You know, that's an interesting story in and of itself. It's like, we call the can manufacturer, Rexum at the time was the largest that, that fed the United States. West Coast sales rep gets on the phone, and again, you gotta realize 95% failure rate in beverage in the first year, 99% in the first five years.

• 7:14Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  They don't make it. So the guy quickly surmises, we don't know what we're talking about. He says, well, the minimum runs 204,000 units. Well, we didn't have that much money.

• 7:24Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  And we said, well, sometimes we heard that there's these things called silver bullets, which are just blank cans. These are all made to order. They're printed on, right?

• 7:31Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  When they make them, the whole can, the production print, there's silver bullets, which are blank cans. You go, ah, those are overruns. They barely happen. You know, that's not really a thing that's available. Thanks for playing because you're both broke dicks and you don't know what you're talking about. So stop wasting my time. Basically was the, the summary of the call. Hangs up. We're like, oh God, there goes our billion dollar idea, you know? Then we had this idea, well, hey, let's send them a nice handwritten thank you card. This is back in 2011 with a hundred dollar Roost Chris gift certificate in it. Said, thanks for your time. Let us know if anything becomes available. A week later, we get a phone call, hey, I got two pallets of silver bullets for you guys to buy.

• 8:06Shaan Puri?

  Wow.

• 8:06Speaker 00

  That was the beginning of it. We filled.

• 8:08Shaan Puri?

  And was that a, I like that little life hack you did there. So most people wouldn't do that. What was the, what was the thinking, you know, to, to, to keep that lead warm when? I've been there before when people are like, look, you don't know what you're doing, you're way. You're way in over your head here. Look, I'm gonna help you out and just tell you no now, so you don't sort of go further down this road. But you didn't, you didn't take no for an answer. You didn't get a chip on your shoulder. You were like, no, let's, let's warm this guy up and see if, you know, something comes through.

• 8:33Speaker 00

  Well, reciprocity, anyone who's read like Cialdini's work, you know, reciprocity is such a powerful, powerful force, you know, it's undeniable. So we knew that if we, we were gonna stand out by sending him a handwritten note, and then the hundred dollar Roost Chris card, it's like, well, who doesn't like to go to Roost Chris?

• 8:48Shaan Puri?

  Right. Okay, so you get the silver bullets, and now you're in the game a little bit. You're like, okay.

• 8:54Speaker 00

  We're in the game.

• 8:55Shaan Puri?

  This idea is alive.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  The idea is alive. So we go down to the flavor house, barely make it there.

• 8:59Shaan Puri?

  What's a flavor house? Can I go to a flavor house? That sounds awesome.

• 9:01Speaker 00

  Anyone can. I mean, it's basically like a little food science lab.

• 9:05Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 9:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. So it's just like if you went into, you know, your, your college chemistry class, it's like everyone's in little white smocks, and they've got test tubes and scales and shit's getting mixed together.

• 9:16Shaan Puri?

  Great.

• 9:16Speaker 00

  And so we went down, I had everything formulated, the, the scientist looked at the formulation and said, wow, this is great, but if you don't want to use, you know, artificial sweeteners and, um, you know, this, you can't put this level of active ingredients in a drink. It's gonna cost too much, and you can't do it without artificial sweeteners, or your sugar level would be too high. We're like, okay, well, we'll go somewhere else then. So we literally started to turn around, walk out the door, and she's like, wait, wait, wait, let's give it a shot, because we were ignorant, and we were just uncompromising. Like, okay, we want to make the cleanest products on the market, so no sucralose, no aspartame, you know, loaded, no sugar, no artificial coloring.

• 9:51Shaan Puri?

  Why was that important to you? Because obviously, as a consumer, I appreciate that. Uh, but it seems like that was a part of your lifestyle. You weren't just doing it because you thought that's where the opportunity was. It was like a fun, it seems like it's a fundamental part of you. Uh, why was that the case?

• 10:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, look, Orion grew up on goat's milk in the Santa Cruz mountains. I live completely off the grid currently, you know, I, I live off the grid, I've got chicken and solar batteries, you know, it's, it's just a clean living.

• 10:15Shaan Puri?

  What does it mean to live off the grid? I don't even know anyone who lives off the grid.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  It means you're not connected to PG&E, so I have my own well, I have my own septic tank, and I create my own power.

• 10:25Shaan Puri?

  Holy shit.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, so when all these rolling blackouts and everything, I'm just kind of laughing.

• 10:28Shaan Puri?

  Right. And so you, you do that, does that take up like a massive amount of your time to maintain all of those sort of life utilities for yourself?

• 10:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's, it could be a full-time job just taking care of the property, which is eventually what I want to get to. But I'm balancing here now, taking care of the property. We, I had my chiropractic practice still because that's paying the bills. And you know, after we started getting a little bit of traction, so we bought this property. It was just a deer trail. I went through with my wife. We hiked down this deer trail. I had a little chainsaw. And I'm like, shit, I think you can see the ocean from here. And she climbed up this tree and we're like, yeah, we could see the ocean. So we had this idea, well, let's buy this property. It's off the grid. We're gonna, we have two kids at the time, two small kids, or one kid, we had the other kid there, actually. We're gonna move in on a little trailer, a little 400 square foot trailer. And we'll live in a trailer and then we'll build our treehouse on top because I'm a carer. I'm making good money. It's all referrals, you know, fairly easy practice. I'm only working like 26 hours a week. And so that

• 11:22Speaker 00

  was the plan. Well, then life aid comes along and we're doing this thing on the side. And after about a year, we started getting a little traction and my business partner and I were like, shit, we gotta sell our, our practices, burn the ships to the shore and go all in, right? It's time to do that. Like if this thing has some life to it, it has legs. So we both sell our practices and then the guy I sold it to, I sell him my, my, my golden goose and he kills it in six months, goes BK. So I literally have no income. Life aid's not paying me money. The practice is not now, now paying me no money.

• 11:53Shaan Puri?

  He was supposed to continually pay you for some amount of time?

• 11:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So any entrepreneurs out there, take the cash upfront. Do not finance. So we go super thin, like super thin, because we burned through all our savings starting the company. And I mean, we're eating like mac and cheese and tuna every night, which is like a dollar meal for anyone out there who's totally broke, you know? We're like, got two kids at the time. We're living in a 400 square foot trailer off the grid, eating out of ice chests, like heating water up on the stove in the beginning before we got our solar panels to pour it in the bathtub for like two inches of hot water. Like, it was like Little House on the Prairie shit.

• 12:28Shaan Puri?

  And your wife is, she's, she's down for the cause or she's like, hey, we need to get back into like mainstream society?

• 12:34Speaker 00

  Oh, my wife, my wife was from the city here. So she was full city slicker. She had never done it. I'm like handing her chainsaws like, okay, Hedy, this is how you do it. Don't cut your arm off.

• 12:43Shaan Puri?

  She's my hero.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  She's a trooper. She is a trooper.

• 12:47Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so that sounds tough. That, how long was that period of like?

• 12:50Speaker 00

  So that lasted.

• 12:50Shaan Puri?

  I don't wanna call it rock bottom, but like definitely like a tougher time.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  Challenging, yeah, that lasted like six months and then we were starting to be able to draw a thousand dollars a month from, from life aid. And then it was like, oh, that was such a relief.

• 13:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  You know, cuz it's like a little bit of income coming in. And then it got to like three thousand a month. And then I was like, we were in heaven, like, oh, three grand a month. We can actually, you know, rent a movie once in a while. And then, you know, it just continued to grow and grow and grow from there. Unfortunately, we made our mistakes off Broadway and we're both ignorant to the industry, which I think helped us out quite a bit. I mean, we used like old school direct marketing to get our initial traction, not trying to go into, you know, every grocery store out there.

• 13:29Shaan Puri?

  Right, okay, so let's, let's rewind. You're back at the food scientist lab. She tells you this thing's not gonna taste good unless you add all the sweeteners cuz you have so much, uh, so much on the sort of supplement side.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:38Shaan Puri?

  Um, how did you guys resolve that? You guys almost walk out, she's like, wait.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, she said, no, no, wait. And we just went into the lab and started pounding it out. And our first rendition tasted horrible, horrible. But we kept working at it and as anything, you know, after a couple of years, now, now this is a first rendition.

• 13:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, this tastes good.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  It tastes great, right?

• 13:55Shaan Puri?

  I don't know if I'm, if it's coming on the microphone because I, I keep drinking this thing. It actually tastes good.

• 13:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So all of our drinks are great now, but I mean, it, uh, there's alternative sweeteners out there like monk fruit, which is all natural, zero calorie, you know, better forms of stevia. And I mean, the longer you stay in the game, it's just like anything, you learn.

• 14:11Shaan Puri?

  You figure it out.

• 14:12Speaker 00

  You figure it out, yeah.

• 14:13Shaan Puri?

  And so you guys kept working with the flavor house. You get the flavor to where after a few iterations, it's like palatable.

• 14:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 14:18Shaan Puri?

  And, um, how do you get the first hundred customers? You said something about direct marketing.

• 14:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:22Shaan Puri?

  What were you, where did you, how did you go from zero to your first kind of hundred or a thousand customers?

• 14:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, good question. So we started out just like every beverage company. It's like, oh, we wanna get in stores and that kind of thing. You know, that model was flawed because consumers in a grocery store, in a convenience store especially, for 30 seconds, they know exactly what kind of drink they want. You know, it's not a great place for trial. Maybe Whole Foods is okay for trial. So we started with our golf raid product and selling it in person.

• 14:47Shaan Puri?

  All right, let's take a second to talk about Howard Stern. That's right, Howard Stern, the king of audio. You see, I think he might be getting ripped off by Sirius XM. If he was to turn his show into a paid subscription product, he could nearly triple the 90 million he's making a year as a salary. And how would he do it? Supercast. That's right, Supercast is the sponsor for this week's episode. What Supercast does is build and maintain paid subscription audiences while allowing you to retain complete control over your content, your business, and your creative output. If you want to earn a media king's ransom, use Supercast. Visit Supercast.com for more. All right, back to the show.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  Right, so we were sampling in golf courses where people need it most. Drink one when you tee off one at the turn. We started getting traction there. We were able to raise a little bit of money. And then we started selling to fit a gym, to CrossFit gyms. Because we were in the CrossFit community from the very early days. And basically, we use direct mail. So you own a CrossFit gym.

• 15:46Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  I don't know you from Adam. I force upon you, I send you four cans of product.

• 15:51Shaan Puri?

  You have this drink here.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  I just sent it to you, right? Inside of it, it had a copy that we wrote that just said, "Hey, drink this ice cold after your next workout. Here's why it's so great. Here's why it's so good for you. And by the way, if you buy 10 cases from us, we'll give you a free refrigerator."

• 16:06Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 16:06Speaker 00

  And this is back in the day when CrossFit gyms maybe had water and they didn't even have a refrigerator. So it was a very appealing offer. It was basically doing what Red Bull did in bars, but we were doing it to CrossFit gyms.

• 16:15Shaan Puri?

  Right. And were you looking, did you go back and try to figure out the Red Bull playbook from their beginnings? Or did you not do that type of research?

• 16:24Speaker 00

  No, no, we definitely looked at their model and what made them so successful in street sampling and dominating the bar market and that type of thing. And applied some of that and then put our own twist on it.

• 16:33Shaan Puri?

  Right. And you guys, and did you tell the CrossFit gyms, like, "Look, we're in the community. We've been doing CrossFit for X amount of years."

• 16:39Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. We pulled on our CrossFit background. Our, you know, my background is a sports chiropractor and treating CrossFit HQ in Santa Cruz. That's how I got into CrossFit. We signed one of the-

• 16:49Shaan Puri?

  You're a fit guy. There's a podcast, so people can't see you, but you're a fit guy. It feels like, you know, if you made a product, I would sort of believe, okay, this guy lives a healthy lifestyle.

• 16:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think that's key, right? We got one of the athletes and influencers in the space that was influential to help kind of put a stamp of validity on it. And then we started a direct to consumer marketing, you know, we started building our Instagram following, marketing direct to consumer and basically creating irresistible offers, you know, like this is such a no brainer offer to, to come into the top of our funnel and we know our conversion rate. So just having confidence in your math and your funnel and knowing that you have a great product and great follow up. And we built out our customer service team as the very first team that we built out before any salespeople. We had robust customer service. What are the issues going on, you know, one on one with our customers? How can we over deliver constantly and just providing a ton of value?

• 17:39Shaan Puri?

  And did you have any mentors from that sort of CPG or food and beverage space?

• 17:44Speaker 00

  Not from CPG, more on the marketing side. You know, my, one of my really good friends and he's on our advisory board now, Ben Altadonna, who's a brilliant marketer. He, he basically told me in the early, early days, this is back when, when I was on the zero income train.

• 18:00Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  He's like, hey, there's this marketing group I'm a part of. It's a lot of sharp marketers. I think you'll learn a lot. It's 25 grand a year to join. I know you don't got the money, but I'll pay for it and just pay me back whenever you can.

• 18:11Shaan Puri?

  Wow.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  And no cop paperwork, no contract, nothing. He just paid for it. And then going to that, it was like.

• 18:17Shaan Puri?

  And these are in-person events?

• 18:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is in-person event. And then it was in Arizona and what I heard was we had three products on the market. We had Golf Aid, Fit Aid and Party Aid. So Party Aid is kind of our, you know, more burner community, 5-HTP drink, Fit Aid, CrossFit, Golf Aid, obviously golf. So we're doing events. I mean, you're, we're up in the city doing a fire festival or something, then we're changing clothes, going to a golf event with polo shirt on. And then, you know, changing into our Lulu gear and Rebox to go to a CrossFit event. I mean, it was just chaos. They each had separate websites, separate social, everything. And he's like, you gotta choose a single target market or else you're gonna burn yourself out. You're gonna run out of all your cash and get nowhere. No traction with any of the community. So even though Golf Aid was bringing in about 700 grand at the time,

• 19:00Speaker 00

  we looked at the, the trajectory, the sell in and the sell through of Fit Aid in the CrossFit market and said, you know what? They're doing better volumes. Our, we're, we're getting a, you know, greater adoption, quicker adoption. So we went all in on.

• 19:15Shaan Puri?

  The smaller one.

• 19:16Speaker 00

  On the smaller one. It went from 700 grand to 4 million in one year.

• 19:20Shaan Puri?

  And so what's a good, what's a good adoption rate? What's a good repurchase rate that you were, you guys were looking at and you're like, that's promising. This, even though it's small today, I believe these rates are like where we need to be.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, we were doing with some of our early gyms, we were doing like eight cases a month. They were eight 24 packs, so 16 cases, we pack in 12 packs now. But so, you know, 16 cases a month, which was really good volume. That's more volume than you do in a grocery store typically. So we're like, shit, there's something here. And then we started this direct marketing and forcing these four packs on somebody. And we used to ring the bell in the office, you know, when we get a new gym. And it was like, oh, the first month we got like 12 gyms. We were so stoked. The next month we got 30, then we got 50, then we were hitting like 200 a month.

• 20:03Shaan Puri?

  Wow.

• 20:03Speaker 00

  And these things are each like $2,500 a year in revenue.

• 20:06Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 20:07Speaker 00

  Right. It starts adding up quick.

• 20:08Shaan Puri?

  Yep. And so, and so you guys, you guys found that playbook that you start milking on the CrossFit side.

• 20:14Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 20:14Shaan Puri?

  And, and today you actually do have the multiple brands. So did you go sort of narrow and then go back out broad again? Or how did that happen?

• 20:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, so we went, you know, continued to go deep in with Fit Aid and we love CrossFit. We're still, you know, official recovery drink at the CrossFit Games, Spartan Race. We got, are heavy in that community as well. And then started really creating products around our lifestyle. You know, it's like, I'm really big into nootropics and, and brain health. So then we created Focus Aid, which is our nootropic drink. And, you know, we're traveling, we were traveling all the time, like 52 flights a couple of years ago, a few years ago now. You know, just constantly every weekend on the road. It's like, oh, we need immunity aid for our immune system when we're traveling. And just creating products that we would use ourselves and that we'd feel good about giving our kids.

• 20:56Shaan Puri?

  And so give a people, give the people a sense of the hustle it takes to get this going. Like you mentioned, you know, we're doing a golf event, quick, change clothes. You're at the, at the, you're in the city for a party, change clothes, you're going to this CrossFit gym. What was it like getting this thing off the ground? Tell me some more stories about like how, what it took to get the thing going on the hustle side.

• 21:16Speaker 00

  Well, you can see my hair. I was completely black hair 10 years ago and I'm fairly gray now.

• 21:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I got some grays on the side of here.

• 21:25Speaker 00

  I mean, what's it take? It takes resilience to a level that you can't even imagine. It takes checking your ego at the door, you know, in a very, very big way. I mean, there's so many things that can sink a company, right? It takes a hundred things all aligning to have success. It takes one thing to completely sink you.

• 21:45Shaan Puri?

  Did you guys ever face that sort of, oh shit, this might, this might, you know, this thing might fall through? Once you got a little bit of momentum, did you ever have like?

• 21:52Speaker 00

  Daily.

• 21:52Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 21:53Speaker 00

  Daily.

• 21:53Shaan Puri?

  What were some of the big disasters that came up?

• 21:55Speaker 00

  I mean, financial is a big, big one, you know, like having three grand, four grand in payroll due and having two grand in the bank account, like, oh shit, we're supposed to pay these people tomorrow. We only had a couple of employees, which was like, we literally don't have the money to pay them. You know, from hiring the wrong people out of desperation, like, oh, we really need to hire people. And then it just crushing culture and, you know, from building a culture, becoming a manager and a boss, when my biggest team was four people prior to this, and now we have 70, you know? It's just, there's, uh, to having blowout arguments with my business partner, but because we both felt so passionately, it could have been easy, like, F you, F you, we're done.

• 22:34Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  I mean, that could have happened a hundred times.

• 22:36Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 22:37Speaker 00

  You know, um, to, to, uh, having, you know, product not run on the line. One time they ran our product and it was under-carbonated, so we couldn't sell any of it. And that sucked up all our cash flow. Like, there's so many challenges, you know, as an entrepreneur, but that's also what makes it so fun.

• 22:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  You know, I mean, you're like constantly living on the edge, like, oh shit, you know, can we make, can we actually pull this off? And, you know, sometimes things just continue to align. And I have, you know, really deep faith that this company just was meant to be, because there's so many times we would have completely gone out of business and it's something just worked out at the last second.

• 23:12Shaan Puri?

  So you guys got from, you know, obviously the zero to one stage where you got this thing off the ground. You're starting to pay yourself through a grand a month or whatever. And, uh, at what point were you like, okay, this, this might be big?

• 23:21Speaker 00

  When we finally got our first PE round from like a very respectable, uh, private equity firm.

• 23:27Shaan Puri?

  Which was how far, how far into the business or where were you guys at at that time?

• 23:30Speaker 00

  Year, um, let me think, we were at year, between year and four and five, I believe. Yeah, we were doing about, I think we were doing like eight, nine million, something like that.

• 23:38Shaan Puri?

  And you approached them, they approached you?

• 23:40Speaker 00

  Uh, we were out kinda testing the waters, dipping our toes in. We got a, an introduction from a mutual friend. And they flew out to our office in, in Santa Cruz and we met, uh, met them and just like super cool guys, like all their money, long horizons. It was just a lot of alignment compared to a lot of the other companies we were meeting with. That was just more like turn and burn, like, okay, we got five years, seven years and you know, you gotta, you gotta execute in that time. These guys were like, hey, let's continue to grow something that's built to last, a durable brand here. And you approach business from a different perspective when you're like, okay, what's in the best long-term benefit for this community versus how do we maximize profits to flip this thing in two years?

• 24:19Shaan Puri?

  For sure. So, so where do you think this goes? How big does this get?

• 24:21Speaker 00

  Over a billion.

• 24:22Shaan Puri?

  And what, what does it take to get there?

• 24:23Speaker 00

  About two, 250 million in sales will, will put us over a billion. Um, what does that take? I mean, it's just continuing.

• 24:31Shaan Puri?

  Keep it on, keep it on.

• 24:31Speaker 00

  Keep on, keep it on. I mean, we're just continuing to execute, heads down, executing. Here's the thing, it doesn't matter what your anticipated exit is, or even if you're building a company, just the cash flow. As long as you execute, all doors remain open. I don't care if it's a recession, if the economy's booming, IPO, you're bought out, whatever, merger. Execute. You execute on key metrics and all doors remain open.

• 24:53Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I get a lot of questions, I'm sure you do too, which is like, you know, how do I raise money? How do you sell? And it's like, well, if you wanna raise money, build a great company. People will wanna give you money. If you wanna sell, build a great company. People will wanna buy your company. And so that is the most foolproof way to do it. You can still sometimes sort of like raise money even if you have a bad company or sell, even if you don't have, don't have great prospects. But if you wanna know the best strategy, it's to build a really damn good company and then everybody wants to get involved. It's, you know, you have a great time hiring people and so on and so forth.

• 25:20Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 25:21Shaan Puri?

  And so, um, so you've, you've, uh, you've, you've grown this thing now and how do the big competitors respond? I mean, has, have you seen a change from the sort of Red Bulls of the world where they look at this and they say, this is a, a competitive threat? Have they turned their attention yet?

• 25:36Speaker 00

  Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, they're not dumb. They see their numbers, you know, uh, which are much bigger than our numbers. But even, you know, little 1% shift in their numbers is, is a big number. So, I mean, we flew out. Uh, Nestle had us out the other day to give a presentation on, on food is medicine. Like all the big companies are paying attention. They're, they're, most of them aren't good at, uh, you know, Creating their own better for you, you know, in-house. They just, for whatever reason, they can't do it. But they've been on acquisitions, you know, they'll take minority share in different companies. And so I like it because it's changing the trajectory. And as long as we continue to change the health trajectory in this company in a positive direction, then over time, the expectations change. And then people are just healthier.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  Like, the fact that diabetes rates are higher than they've ever been in the history of this country is ridiculous.

• 26:25Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 26:25Speaker 00

  You know, it's ridiculous. So, and not just that, it's everything, you know, like, health is not improving. So, the current model's broken. A big part of that is, you know, food and beverage. We've been poisoning people with sugar and artificial ingredients for, you know, 100 years now.

• 26:38Shaan Puri?

  How do you build that trust, right? Because, I'll be honest with you, when I first looked up the company, I was like, okay, it's a drink company. I've seen so many of these that are either, just straight up, they're bad for you, or they say they're good for you, but they're actually bad for you. They just changed the profile, and it's like, it's no sugar, okay? But it's something else instead.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 26:56Shaan Puri?

  Like, I know in the gaming community, because I'm at Twitch right now, the gaming community has G Fuel, which is like, some, you know, bullshit to me, right? Like, so, so how do you build that trust? Or, or am I just Mr. Skeptical, and everybody else is like, kind of down, you know, everybody else sort of buys in right away?

• 27:13Speaker 00

  You should be skeptical.

• 27:14Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 27:14Speaker 00

  Skeptical, and more and more people are. It's like, 65% of people now read labels prior to making a new purchase, which is great. I love label readers. I love nutritionists, I love doctors, you know, I love people in the know. Because they're looking at this can, and they're going, okay, let me see the sugar content. Oh, let me see that, oh, there must be two servings per container. Like, companies like to play that non-transparent bullshit. Oh, they're gonna use some artificial sweeteners like sucralose or aspartame, or how much added caffeine is in here? And then they buy it, and they call it right in, and they're like, hey, TrustPilot review, like, I'm a so-and-so, and this product is actually really damn clean, and delivers, like, it tastes great, like, you know, these guys are legit.

• 27:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's great. And what do you do, business-wise now? So, we were talking on our way in, you said, you know, once you're, your quote was, once you're a made man, it becomes easier to make money, right? Because... As you taste some success and you get a reputation, now opportunities, deals, different things start coming to you. Talk a little bit about that, that phenomenon and what you're doing, how you're, how you're thinking about approaching that.

• 28:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, one, we continually work with young entrepreneurs all the time. They're reaching out with, you know, mainly CPGs, but have some idea or some stage of growth. Cause you know, that always comes back full circle. So we're working, you know, with companies, we're making some small investments in, in other companies, just personally, uh, that we see traction. But my point before we started was, once you've had that successful checkout, you have that reputation. You've been there, done that, you've kind of, you know, taken all the, the jabs and bruises and gotten beaten up and come out the other side. You have the knowledge, you have the reputation and you got a little bit of money, hopefully a little money in your pocket. Then you can really go, okay, what, you know, what can I do now? I, now I can take 10 entrepreneurs, 10 different businesses that are all in a space that I truly believe in.

• 29:02Speaker 00

  And that all showing signs of life and, and increasing velocities and doing well on the shelf. And give them each, you know, a half million bucks or a million bucks and let them run with it. And then be, you know, sit back and be more of a mentor, a coach, advisory board, board of directors, that type of thing. And I think that's where real wealth, as I, as I observe it, that's where real wealth is created.

• 29:20Shaan Puri?

  And what, what has been a, a splurge that you've done now that, you know, cause you went from mac and cheese and tuna.

• 29:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:26Shaan Puri?

  To now, you know, you guys doing well.

• 29:29Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 29:30Shaan Puri?

  Where have you sort of, how have you been able to celebrate that? What, what's your use of this money? Cause I, I, the last podcast I did, the guy had a great, uh, phrase, it's not rocket science, but he just said, you know, I just view money as a tool to enable a better quality of life. And so how are you using money as a tool for you to have a, you know, more interesting, more adventurous, more fun?

• 29:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, the first part, uh, is, uh, when we were able to take a couple of chips off the table, which wasn't a ton of money, but I was $246,000 in student debt loans. And I paid them all off in one stroke of the key. And it was, it was the biggest weight lifted to my chest. Like I don't know the government or anything. It felt so good to be debt free.

• 30:05Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 30:06Speaker 00

  And then, you know, as we were able to save up a little bit of money, I had on my vision board that I look at every day when I brush my teeth, you know, on the mirror there. It was like, um, spend a month or more in Hawaii. So. Um, for the last two years now, I was able to go in on it, just a little condo in Poipu in the south shore of Kuwait with a couple of friends. And we bought a condo, beautiful little two bedroom, close to the beach. And now we're doing, you know, at least a month a year in Kuwait.

• 30:31Shaan Puri?

  That's amazing. I love that. I, I um, tried to do a similar thing myself where I said to my wife, I said, let's spend one month out of every year. Just living somewhere else. And so we did Buenos Aires, um, the first, the first year. We had a baby this year, so I don't know if we're gonna be able to, to pull it off necessarily, but uh, but I highly recommend that. And in fact, uh, it does, the, the easy excuse is like, I'm too busy or, you know, my work won't let me do it or whatever. And I'd say, uh, if you think you want to do that, you should be, just go for it. Just go ask and say, hey, I want to work out of this other country. Uh, I'll work. I'm not necessarily taking, you know, full month off, but um, I want to go experience something, something else. And it's a.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  Buenos Aires on my shortlist for sure. That and Croatia.

• 31:10Shaan Puri?

  That's amazing. And so what, what about, um, you strike me as somebody who is, uh, like the, when you said you lived off the grid and you, you know, you're into nootropics and all this stuff. I think you have, uh, you're thinking for yourself, right? So you have a sort of, that's, those are contrarian things right now. Those not like, society's not spoon feeding those to you. I was asked this question, uh, not long ago, and it's a kind of a hard question. So you could take a second to think about it, but the question was this. It's like a dinner party conversation, which is if you, um, if you could change three things and, and we could do one, two or three, whatever you want. If you could change three things about the way that society works, so things that societal norms today.

• 31:44Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 31:45Shaan Puri?

  But that, you know, don't fit your worldview. What three would you change? If you could snap your finger and then society sort of changes in that way, what would you change?

• 31:53Speaker 00

  I'd eliminate all, uh, television. So TV gone, like CNBC, Fox News, CNN, it's all BS. Like it drives me insane. I haven't had TV in my house for 17 years. I don't miss a thing.

• 32:05Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 32:06Speaker 00

  You know, so I'd get rid of it. TV gone. I would have public funding for, uh, for politicians. As long as they got a certain amount of signatures, there'd be, here's your, whatever, a hundred grand, million dollars, whatever it is. You can't spend a penny more than that. Everything has to be accounted for. Go. Put everybody on a level playing field.

• 32:23Shaan Puri?

  Take, take the special interest and money out of politics.

• 32:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then third, I would, you know, all these artificial ingredients that, you know, are in food and beverage, you know, those need to go bye bye. And it's like, we don't put lead in our paint anymore. We don't have asbestos in our ceilings. Like, it's just a matter of time when we look back at this era and go, well, no wonder, you know, cancer rates are high and diabetes and all these chronic diseases and Alzheimer's on the upswing. Look at what we were doing to our bodies. So I think there's those aha things that are out there right now that we need to just get past. Oh, and a fourth thing, I would eliminate single-use plastic. Big on that. Like, it's gotta go. It's gotta go. Come on.

• 33:00Shaan Puri?

  This is awesome. So, give me a, as we sort of sign off, how should people who are listening to this, who are like, you know what, this guy's awesome. I want to get in touch with him. I want to send him, you know, my business that I'm working on, have him take a look. Or I want to ask a question. I just want to say thanks. How should people get ahold of you? Where should they follow you? And who are you looking for to reach out to you? Like, because a lot of people are going to listen to this. And so, who should reach out to you?

• 33:23Speaker 00

  I think my specialty, our specialty is CPG. So, you know, I could give some things on team building and stuff with people in tech, but if anyone's really looking into consumer packaged goods, you know, feel free to reach out to me. It's basically my name, A A R O N Hind, H I N D E. Mainly on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, or, you know, go to our website, lifeaidbevco.com. You can check us out.

• 33:44Shaan Puri?

  All right. Brother, thank you for coming in. This is awesome. And thank you for the drink. I loved it.