Transcription
Please do not spend more than $5,000 on your domain or your handle.
Yeah, I don't give a [ __ ] about your domain. There's no amount that's worth it.
Greg Leveki is the CEO and co-founder of Bloom Nutrition, one of the fastest growing DTOC brands of all time. But what's insane about Bloom is that they didn't scale on just Meta. They're one of the most innovative influencer marketing companies, pioneering the micro influencer wave, and have now evolved into a dominant retail force.
Within 24 hours, we did 1.36 million in sales. Oh, I am tripling down in a few things for 2026. I am That's really what put us on the map. That's what really helped us bootstrap Bloom to 180 million with no investors whatsoever. One of the most impressive things Bloom has done is they've consistently gone into saturated categories and every single time they win.
All right, we got Greg Levier here, CEO of the fastest growing wellness brand in the US right now. Greg, I just want to ask you one question to start off the episode because you have this piece of content where you talk about the difference between selling a product and building a brand. Yeah. Can you just wrap on that for a little bit?
All right. So, I come up from the generation of entrepreneurs where it was all performance marketing based, which is very much so for context of what performance marketing is, it's like just using meta ads or Facebook ads shown on Instagram, uh, Facebook, Tik Tok to just get someone to make an acquisition. And then you have all this data around your customer of like how to make sense of those dollars, right? And that was how every brand and still a ton of brands are getting launched and scaled through the last decade of e-commerce business.
Mari and I recognized early on because she was growing her platform and therefore her community and Mari's my wife and co-founder of Bloom how we can create something more special, more generational, a longer lifeline, a real culture and community around a product which was more than just an acquisition impulsive purchase done through a performance ad. So when you're building a brand, the difference is you are overd delivering so much value for free to your consumer. They're clicking follow on the Instagram page, whether it's figuratively or literally, you know, joining your community to where you are building a trust with them where every time they either buy your product or listen to some of the value that you're trying to contribute to their life, they know that it's something they can trust time and time over again, right? Right.
And so it goes back to like I mean should it even be like a brand on an animal like you think of like a cow like you gave them a brand and then you knew to treat that cow differently because it was like somebody else's cow. And I think about that all the time because if you go to like you go to like the logo one on Bloom can someone's walking through a Target store today and you're seeing all of these logos but if you see this Bloom logo you kind of have a good idea that you're going to get a better for you version or a reimagined version of what a wellness product could be. And I really didn't want to launch a quick cash grab product selling Facebook ad company. I wanted to create or we my wife and I wanted to create a brand that could live through you know shifts in culture and now coming up on over almost a decade. Right.
So that's what I would say the difference between selling a product and building a brand.
Well and and you guys were one of the original like super hot influencer le brands. So we Mari launched her page after a fitness transformation that she went through when we first started dating and call it 2017 and people definitely started to click follow and started to like you know really resonate with the lifestyle transformation content that she was putting out and it was incredible content. She's like a 10 out of 10 content creator. And what happened is we realized pretty early on like, wow, this this type of content is starting to get some traction. And maybe that just meant like a couple thousand followers at the time. But I said, okay, let's let's just run a little test. And this is me sitting in my dorm room in college in Philadelphia. Let's put like $100 in Facebook ads and just go say, "Please go follow Mari Llewellyn. You'll really love the content." And it worked. Like tons of people started to follow Mari off of this Facebook ad. And what's really cool about a Facebook ad is you can literally tell it exactly who you want to see that ad. So I can say,
especially back then,
then the targeting was crazy.
So it's literally called a lookalike audience, right? So I can say, let's say the 10,000 people that already followed Mari, go find people that look like this who is probably a female in America, you know, interested in changing their life, and go find people who look like this. And there's millions of people like that. And we were able to deploy these ads to them. Now, how do we pay for those ads? Eventually, as people were watching some of, you know, Mari's amazing content about transferring transforming her life, they said, "How can I also transform my life in a similar way?" So, Mari and I ran to Barnes & Noble, which was a bookstore. I don't even know if it's around anymore. You know, we had our student laptops and we cranked out a quick and really cool and and accurate to her life transformation guide using a nutrition guide, a workout working out with weights at the gym guide, and a working out at home with weights gym guide. And we would sell that for $9.99. The way they bought that was not through a Shopify store. They would DM us and say, "Hey, I'd love the guides." We would say, "Okay, you have the PayPal is $9.99." They'd send a PayPal and then I'd email or we would email them the product. We were cranking out these DMs at such a high velocity that we had keyboards attached to our iPhones. We'd get like computer keyboards that were Bluetooth and attach them to our iPhones. And we were just cranking out the DMs all day. And then going back to the overd delivering on value, if there was updates to the guides, they'd get them for free and they would get access to a free Facebook group that was private access to if you bought the product. There were a crazy community of like 100,000 people at its peak and just like-minded women. And we had moderators incredible. And then they also had access to Instagram pages that were private that we'd have to check if they actually bought the product to to get videos of each exercise. On top of that, if someone put in any energy or real commitment to buying the workout guide, cuz obviously you don't just get in shape buying a [ __ ] diet guide.
Yeah.
Mari would literally train them like oneon-one on an intimate level and help them get to their goal. And so what ended up happening is we had hundreds of people, hundreds of women who had lost anywhere from 20 to 100 pounds on top of like, you know, real life achievements. But, you know, that was cosmetically something that we could show and give real validity to. Yeah, real transformations. You know, you you understand a weight loss transformation within one second like how impressive that is, right? And we were able to show that as credibility on these products. And so we ended up building this massive community of what had become, you know, over a million followers. And people kept saying, "What supplements should I take with these guides?" And this is an era of where every especially female influencer or content creator at the time was just signing with supplement companies and using their affiliate codes. But Mari was Mari and I were both like very adamant that like we will not go that route. We will build something that we can you know take take along with us for decades a brand. And so when everyone was saying what supplements should I take with these guides, Mari didn't feel comfortable suggesting any supplements cuz she would walk into a GNC or vitamin shop or whatever it may be and let's just say pre-workout every pre-workout was like way too much caffeine for her anxiety. Had all these ingredients she couldn't pronounce. It was red and black and yellow and black and like highly matte and chrome. I love Chrome, but she doesn't like Chrome. There's like Fear F or what was that one? Force Factor like No, it was
Jack 3D, Super Pump.
Yeah. Yeah. Like very masculine stuff. All the [ __ ] that was on like T- Nation, dude. You know,
that's crazy. And it's funny. I'm not used to like making content with guys.
Yeah.
Like testosterone.
That's what it is.
And I'm not I'm not a forum member over there. And but but
you know the exact URL. It loads my Google. It's not Greg Lab from New York.
And so, and so we launched we launched Bloom. And so, call it July 2018, we started to really test out some pre-workout formulas. It was it they were killer formulas. They had like beetroot powder for blood flow, natural caffeine, natural ingredients, like everything for focus. It was very much neutropic based and a way lower amount of caffeine than everything else on the market. But what was crazy is like, you know, just reflecting back on on the original versions of this product that looks so silly now is like the the flavor image on the front of the pre-workout was let's say it was the panina colada flavor. Mari and I went and bought all the ingredients, put the ingredients in a photo box and took we didn't like know about shutter sale. We didn't know anything and trying to find a [ __ ] coconut in Boulder, Colorado in November to get a coconut photo. It was crazy. And so but
Colorado snow on the ground and that's what like an entire day would be in the early stages of this business like now that would be you know one second air whatever but
anyway so then we design we launched in 2019 January resolution season with three pre-workouts and they they sold pretty damn well out of the gate. Like I'm not going to say they sold out in one day but like they sold pretty well out of the gate. We felt like we had a proof of concept and then what really started to happen is people tried it. So people tried it, they started to post about it and it kind of started to get its own its own virality moment of Bloom as its own brand outside of just Mari. And first of all, thank god we realized not to call it Mari supplement line and have like that key man risk of having it attached to Mari, but we called it Bloom which was very much around like women transforming their life and blooming into their best self. And what's also funny is like the the Bloom logo at the time was just this beat. M. So like literally just the bee was the logo which is still on like the top of the bottle of a lot of our grains and whatnot. And obviously now for people not watching it's a full it's a full word mark that says Bloom. But we started to see Google traffic, Instagram traffic, Amazon traffic, the B brand.
They're like, "Yo, you're you're kidding me, right?" So So we had to like very quickly pivot the the brand and make or pivot the logo and make sure everyone because they would show it in the videos, right? when they when it was going viral on itself like, "Oh, people are discovering this brand without discovering it from Mari and they just see this bee and our idiot asses didn't put the whole word balloon anywhere on the bottle."
So, like just like those early stages of just like obvious mistakes that looking back now, I would have never made
it's kind of like the founder story.
It's the founder story. I think this thing was so silly, but the product was good inside of the bottle. And uh that ended up becoming full recovery powder line, a full protein powder line, and then eventually we launched this greens powder. And the greens powder was really what put us on the map. That's what really helped us bootstrap Bloom to 180 million with no investors whatsoever.
Right.
And or or scale Bloom, sorry, to 180 million, but it was bootstrapped. And the greens powder was we launched this greens powder. Mario was looking for an easier way to get our fruits and vegetables in and get some gut health going. That was very much like on our minds then. And we fly to Puerto Rico for one of our first vacations together. And it was the vacation I was going to propose to her on and and I did and but she wasn't on her phone much but she was she was posting a lot. So I wasn't even like really checking Shopify and
I proposed to Mari. She posts that that photo was like the most viral photo we've ever posted. And she's posting all throughout the trip about how we're like eating good, we're drinking good, and like she's waking up the next day feeling fine. And like this greens powder is just like leading the way of like helping her digest everything and feeling great. And then we come back from the trip and we check everything and the greens is sold out
and we're like, "Oh shit." Like,
and was this early on for the greens powder or have
the initial initial order of greens? initial order of greens, but like it wasn't that hot out of the gate.
So, it wasn't you guys weren't coming into it thinking this was going to be a hero skew. It was just like anything we've ever done thinking this will be the hero.
Yeah, for sure. In fact, every time I think something's going to be the hero skew, it is the worst selling version of whatever we made. So, like yeah, the pina colada that we spent the whole day was it got discontinued in 3 months. Or like the cherry lime energy drink I thought was going to be like the ultra uh you know face of the brand, the worst seller like or juicy orange. No one wants juicy orange. And I'm like, what the hell? Yo, who doesn't want orange juice?
Um, so,
so the blue and green started to really take off. And then we basically, you know, we ordered, call it
a million dollars sold worth of product. When we got back to New York, that took three months to make. And when we restocked that, we're headed to our office in Brooklyn. It's the first time we had a co-working space. We finally had like, you know, one or two part-time consultants working with us. But Mari and I were the only full-time employees of Bloom at the time. And
what year is this?
This is this is late 2019 probably. And we restock the Greens with everything we have. We deploy the email, we deploy the text message marketing, whatever it may be. And within 24 hours, we did 1.36 million in sales. So, that was our first million-dollar day, which was just like a a ridiculous installment for us that I that I don't think I like realized what even then I like didn't know what that we had something here. I mean, that's just crazy.
Yeah. I couldn't really fathom what was going on. And we were just in like, you know, a small apartment in Brooklyn at the time, like we weren't really living like that. And what I did with that money or what we did with that money was we just bought $1.36 million of Morgmmed Immediately threw it back in. We just kept on doubling down until Bloom became what it was today. But just another like fun brand story going back to the inception of Bloom. I remember we were about to launch the product. We're in Q4 2018 and everything was made. All the POS were placed. All the invoices were were paid and Amazon launched their supplement line. It was called OWN, like own nutrition or some [ __ ]
And I came from a town in Westchester, New York, where they were a little like anti- big corp, right? like Starbucks is closing all the cafes,
farmers markets.
Amazon's ruining every small business. Walmart's ruining every small business. And so when Amazon launched this supplement line and we had already put all of our money into the company we were about to launch in two months, I was like, Mari, like we're [ __ ]
Yeah.
Like th this we how are we going to compete with like the Amazon
with Jeff, bro?
With Jeff's about to drop.
Yeah. Like it's over. Like that was a fun attempt. Like the panina colada shoot was really great. [ __ ] sending people to space.
Sending people to space, right? But that brand is not around anymore. It completely flopped.
Long story short, Amazon's now one of our best friends and we're like, you know, a top five seller in several categories on Amazon. But that was like the day that I really understood the difference between brand and like how brands can represent different strengths. Like it's not a general quilt over the world of like this is a reputable brand. If Bloom released an electric car tomorrow, it wouldn't sell. But if we released a different version of an energy drink tomorrow, it would sell. You get what I'm saying? So when Amazon released this nutrition company and I just assumed I did know the power of brand because Amazon was [ __ ] Amazon, I realized after it flopped and we actually beat it that that was like the day I really started to understand how brands can mean different things in different categories. And I think that's so key going back to that viral video that you made about like selling a uh selling a product versus building a brand because especially now with how much content we're able to put out and you and you guys were putting out then we attach our values and our identities to like the brands, right? like me carrying this around symbol
you know a female carrying this around is telling the world things about me without having to say
for sure
me cut taking
whatever I don't even know remember the name of the Amazon own
like there's no visual there's no representation there's no attachment to that brand and so like if the price if they're only competing on price difference of maybe like a dollar or two
I'm going with the one that I've been you know that I feel attached to I feel like I'm part of community.
No, there's a reason private labels are half the price when you go into even like a Target or
And yet they're still not the dominant seller in the category.
They're not. It's And so there Amazon has a brand as a marketplace, not as a product creator. Correct. Right.
Yeah.
Although I have heard the story that when Amazon Basics batteries came out, Dorell got [ __ ]
Yeah.
Certain categories probably lend themselves a little bit.
Certain categories have no attachment.
Right. Like loyal to Doracell.
Exactly.
Sorry Dell. Yeah, I think what you're describing, if if I were to have a takeaway from it, is just an a great story, right? At the end of the day, like you had a great story. You and Mari's relationship, the transformation, and then everything that kind of led to these products that you have now have live or your best sellers,
but something you also did really effectively was amplify that story. And you know, you've talked about bringing your influencer marketing inhouse. And I think you guys were I mean definitely one of the first and most successful Tik Tok influencer brands. I'd love to just hear like your framework for how you built that brought it in house.
So in the early days of Bloom we would again with overd delivering value there was a ton of like buy one get one type of in your checkout if you were buying two bottles of greens you could get electric mixers you could get mixer bottles. And I loved products that people would leave on their kitchen counter. Yeah,
because they put my they put our greens in the pantry,
but the mixer they'd use in their cappuccino. They'd use it all these things and we'd have our Bloom logo on there. So, I just thought that was like the best thing to give away was it's almost like giving away a quality tote bag, right? You walk around with it and you use it all the time even if it's not associated with your brand. So, one day one of these influencers that I'm just like, you know, looking through uh someone someone sent me the video and influencer was mixing another supplement with our Bloom mixer and they were like, I don't know what this mixer is. from some random influencer supplement company. Yeah. And I was like, random influencer supplement company? Because at the time,
dude, every in every every content creator or influencer who launched their own brand like
it was empty.
They'd have a little launch and then like it would never actually be this and then [ __ ]
Yeah. It wasn't like they were operators.
I mean, that's still happening too, right? Like a lot of these like electrolyte beverage. I mean, everyone's starting something. Everyone everyone's definitely starting something which is funny because that one was with Nestle. So you think that they'd not be able to pull it off but but u but
yeah so it was this era of content creators launching brands that you know kind of took off and then quickly crash landed and so there was a reputation of like influencer brands aren't real brands are really just buying like the Mari brand in this scenario. And so I got hyper obsessed with proving our validity. And I don't know if that just like also comes from me like always trying to prove myself on a toxic level, but I wanted to do it with Bloom. And so I realized early on like even when we ran one of our first ads that just said like a 100,000 bottles sold or sold out four times or restocked for the fifth time. Like these words of validity are so powerful in influence and create so much credibility that more credibility than you create with any other single word, right? Because if you say sold out, you can assume some mass group of people has bought every version of that rock, right? So,
but that also ended up becoming like we are the number one on Amazon. Like even today, I am constantly screaming from the rooftops like what our ranking is at Target, what our ranking is at Amazon, at Walmart, whatever it is. like we're the number five energy drink in 18 months at Walmart. And people know, oh, Walmart's like biggest marketplace ever. Um, social proof. That's real social proof. And so I got very obsessed with using social proof
as one of our main forms of brand building to let people know like, oh no, they're they're a real company. They're a real brand. They're actually reputable. And that was the same. I mean, I even sold into retailers using that tactic. him. I think too many companies that are launched in the last decade are too afraid to publicly admit that they're a business.
Yeah.
And that they are competing and that you don't need to be afraid to do that. You're not like some like like psycho angry capitalist if you just like admit that your business is using money or like is selling a certain number of units and you should be proud of that. And espec It was funny cuz especially Mari coming from like British culture that like it's way more reserved but we've have always like yelled from the rooftops when things sold out how many units we sold, how many tick how many views on Tik Tok we're getting every month. Like we're very proud of those stats.
And then how did you go about building that influencer army?
So the year was 20 late 2019 maybe early 2020. And one of our main like designers who lived in Boston at the time, probably wasn't a full-time employee, but he was like my the one guy that I kind of went to for all of our design stuff. He was in Boston. He wouldn't move from New York. I was like, "Well, then you're not a team player. You're off the [ __ ] team." And I was like, "Wait, now we have no team."
So, so like now it's just me and my wife. And I needed somebody who could join the team that I could give bank account passwords to that I trusted with my life from day one. And I didn't know anybody. We had no network in business whatsoever. Everyone we knew had like normal 9 to fives which is great. And so I called my best friend from high school who was my neighbor growing up. Uh you know we carpulled to school every day. We were on the same bus. Like we we're still best friends today and I'll get into that. But I called him. He was on Wall Street doing, you know, crazy bioteex sales at like telling me like, you know, thousands of phone calls a day. They're, you know, you've seen Wolf of Wall type of [ __ ]
And I don't know anything about that finance stuff, but he does. And I said, you know, they're like boiler room of sales calls and relationship management that like finance and Wall Street has like completely mastered. Can you can we kind and we came up with this idea together. Can we create that as an influencer outreach almost in-house outbound agency to build an influencer network for Bloom? And obviously we like understood and respected influencer marketing because the the nucleus of the whole brand was Mari and she was an influencer in herself or a content creator in herself. And then we could see like as people started even micros started to make content of the product how powerful that was. And that seems so obvious in 2026 but like
not back then. No back then. was even really a thing.
People weren't even taking content serious back then.
Exact. Definitely not. You were a total, you know, black sheep unicorn if you were doing that stuff.
And so that's what he did. He ended up quitting Wall Street, which was a huge, you know, on path to a seven figure salary, golden handcuffs, the whole thing. He quit Wall Street and ended up uh moving to LA very quickly with us to once COVID hit to go after the uh the influencer dream. and we built what I mean I would without a doubt I don't have a stout a stat for this but without a doubt the largest in-house influencer marketing um program that exists inside of a CPG company. So we're talking you know sometimes billions of views a month like several Super Bowl ads worth of views a month. It's all nourished or nurtured and and and communicated the relationships are all managed inhouse with our team in LA and Austin, Texas and some in Dallas. I think one of the things I read in an article that you discussed is you don't always work with like the big celebrity or or influencer, but you will if you need to gain awareness around something, but then you go back to the micro influencers if you want to then build like if they're driving the awareness now, you're going to build the trust with the micro influencers.
I mean, I'll break that down in a few ways. I think one of my favorite tactics that anyone can respect this is pretty logical is find someone on their comeup.
Yeah.
Right. Don't find someone when they're already at the peak of their fame and they're charging way too much than anyone.
Borderline sold out at that point.
They're kind of sold out. They've already monetized their page so much and like they're probably just looking for that grand check. Find someone who's on the comeup who, you know, were blessed because most people know what Bloom is now. They already pro we can easily find people who already love the
people want to represent it.
So, we just worked with with Jenna and Val from Dancing with the Stars who are like the hottest dancers on the scene right now. and uh and you know main players on this Dancing with the Star show and we made them the face of our Valentine's Day energy shoot and so that would be an example of taking like a macro influencer making them the face of the campaign and then getting thousands of micro influencers to to you know kind of ride that wave. What also happens when you get that super authoritative powerful influencer is they're an influencer of the influencers.
Yes. So they they set the trend and then medium influencers and micro influencers want to just be posting about what they're posting about, right? Like the amount of free content that Skiims gets just because people want to be him, right? Like that's the same idea. I guess that also boils down to how you have probably almost never seen a Bloom coupon code.
You have never seen an affiliate link. And there's two reasons for that. One is most of our business is in retail now. Yeah. So like for me to have attribution with a coupon code to a website that you know my website is 5% of our business now. Like it's a joke. So there's not really like an attribution like that. But I also was like I don't want this to become some commercial. I want to be integrated in your content. I want to almost be like product placement and just use it how you would use it. So we never deliver like an actual or at least a tight brief or script on exactly what we want you to say. We've found you and chose to work with you or asked to work with you because we [ __ ] with what you're making and what your message is. And we want you to help us rep or help. We want you to represent Bloom if you're willing to. And just integrating your content with what you think will get the most views or with what you think your community will want to see.
Yeah, that trust is huge. Yeah,
that's really huge.
Going back to finding people on the comeup, was there like some criteria you you would run through to be like they have the potential to be X? This is why so much of our team when we first launched in LA were under 25 year old women who also just loved Bloom and like were so in the influencer scene. Like I am not at all involved in that program. I have no idea who's hot enough on the comeup. Uh if they show me I'm like I've never heard of this person but I trust you. And so there's so much of uh entrepreneurship that people like want to put a formula attached to and like get get a or like you know expose how the the engine inside but it's like you just need to find people are so plugged into the culture and so plugged into to social media that just have that gut.
Yeah.
And they're like this I've been I've been personally watching this person for a few months. They're on brand for Bloom and their following is going like crazy. We need to work with them.
It's incredibly important to have chronically online individuals.
Totally, man. Dude, if you if you walked into my and if you walked into the Bloom headquarters like uh at our you know peak five years of the initial growth, everyone was on their iPhone.
Yeah.
Like he would have been like is anyone working?
Scouting.
Yeah, they're scouting. They're scouting.
We see your screen time. Uh fire.
Yeah. Yeah.
You and Bloom phones, you know, and then again with the keyboards on the phone like what's the whole operation?
Did y'all have any like super growth hacky things during that time frame like that that really rocket ship growth? Like what were some of the unique things you did? you know, some I would say that when something was working, we didn't like sit around and clap that it worked, right? We quadrupled down on something as fast as we could if we found that it worked. If a if a content creator had a video that did well, we didn't go around and high-five. We called that person right away and said, "Can you make five more videos as soon as possible?" Got it. You know, some fun growth hacks like if people like that that won't totally move the needle, but I, you know, might might might spark some ideas. Scouting with a VPN is always a fun idea, right? Like if you're in LA in Venice Beach, your algorithm will be the Venice Beach girl, no matter or or guy, whatever your content is, right? And I mean, [ __ ] even when I lived in LA, all the cars that I would look at on my for you PH were all like LA style cars, right?
And so if you if you have one room in one region of the country doing your scouting for influencers, put a VPN on there. Maybe that'll be your next sponsor for the show, guys. Uh, you know, I won't say the brand. And, uh, put a VPN on there and be like, "Yo, I'm in Miami."
Yeah.
I'm in I'm in Arkansas, whatever it is. And try to find some, uh, some people that you normally wouldn't find cuz, dude, that phone knows you. It knows where you are. And you need to kind of fool that algorithm to give you a fresh group of people
cuz there's so many people that are creating content that you will never find. I don't care what software you have or what you know your algorithm is is is actually tighter than you think.
Yeah.
Much tighter than you think. One thing that is drawing me to this though is you're probably very good at recruiting, right? If you if you have full trust and you have influencer team and like that's where the mo the majority of the money's going, then there's probably some best practices that you have around recruiting or even like bringing someone on and then firing them really quick potentially or bringing them on and and saying, "Hey, like I'm going to promote you extremely fast." walk me through how you recruit talent so that you maintain the culture that is honestly probably the same culture that you had like when it was it was scrappy and smaller etc.
Early on I was like adamant that I didn't want anyone brainwashed by corporate America and that's why the team was so young. I wanted people who were just fresh, understood social media and just and just wanted to really work hard on like this colonial movement that we were trying to do which was Bloom. And that was a very easy like within 30 days we really knew if you kind of fell into that category. Uh what also ended up happening was like people who were an intern five years ago are now like very high up making you know healthy six figures at Bloom. uh and they're they're you know they have options in the company like essentially they're Bloom shareholders and so we took very good care of everyone we still do and like we treated it as a partnership and we were we wanted them to feel like they were entrepreneurs within this business right so they were kind of building their own operations within Bloom I would say I definitely most of the people coming in did not had existing skill sets, but they had the willing and ability to learn and had the passion to go learn and truly believed in the brand that we were building. So, the interview was very much more about like, do they get what the [ __ ] going on in digital culture, right? Like, what are your favorite Instagram pages and why? What are your favorite on a personality and a brand level? Um, you know, what what products do you think are ripping in Target right now and why? Uh, where do you think the Bloom consumer is shopping and why? do they kind of like get the landscape and then we'd put them into trial. We would take a lot of interns who were on a three-month internship and renew them into a full-time job if they kind of went through the if they were good. So, we had 10 interns who was generally our scouting team for finding influencers. We could take, you know, the two best performers and make them a relationship manager influencer. You get what I'm saying?
Yeah. Of course. Um, it's I mean, dude, this is like a sales room 101 but uh, every new hire at least in the beginning I would try to be like intimately involved in their onboarding and try to like own that project with them. Keep in mind when you're a startup growing that fast it wasn't like anyone was getting replaced like they were the first person to ever have that role. So I didn't have anything to base it off of. Um, and then as the business grew and we just required to hire people who like had done this before on a supply chain level, on a finance level, on a uh retail relationship management level, that's when we could bring people in who were at, you know, the the CPG goats and say like all of the mistakes that you've already made, let's bring you over here so that we have the wisdom of a fif career, right? which is like now what my OR chart has become is everyone who reports to me and the president of Bloom's Leo is better than me. They do I am the worst person on the team like I am without a doubt I am worse at what each person does at their job they are experts in their vertical and that is the dream order chart right is and so now if they need to grow their team like they're in charge of what that team should look like and I go to them for advice and that's that's what a partnership looks like. That's what real talent acquisition looks like and that's what uh the dream work chart looks like.
That's that's awesome. I I think what's been really cool is like there's two stages of this company, right? There was the scrappy influencer brand and now retail behemoth, right? I mean, those are completely different identities.
Yeah. And so I'd love to kind of like switch gears a little bit into how y'all have like
I mean a launched several new products that have just smashed it, right? And get into kind of your product selection philosophy as well as I mean I know that every design on this can is very intentional. Yeah. You know, and so get into that a little bit and then also just what it's like to be 95% retail when you started as a DTOC brand, you know.
So we were we launched on Shopify.
Yeah. Then after call it a year, we said every I see the search traffic for the B brand on Amazon. Some people are looking for us and we're missing that and we're not there for them. And we have always said that wellness needs to be accessible for everybody where whether that's the price point or it's like literally they can find the product and if people are shopping on Amazon, I want to be on Amazon. So, we launched on Amazon and we said, if we're going to play this whole like algorithm SEO game of what winning on algorithm is or what winning on Amazon is, I'm not just going to win by like paying the most so that we show up as the top search. We're going to win by using our existing community. So, we used all of the direct to consumer marketing tactics, whether that was influencer, email, text message, our Instagram organic following, and we said, "Now go buy us on Amazon." And what ended up happening is we quickly became at least on a growth level percentage-wise the fastest growing brand on Amazon. And it made our algorithm power on Amazon just like so bulletproof. Like we we we had a nine figure Amazon operation with just the greens powder at one point at least on a run rate level at like we we had $16 million Amazon. Um, so that's when we first kind of said, okay, that's when I really recognized performance marketing had its limits because all all performance marketing, at least if you're talking meta and paid Tik Tok, needs a pixel on Shopify to optimize for. And the second you have leakage on that pixel, your ads are going to slowly get worse. So whenever I see a brand today launch on Amazon who or a 100% DTOC brand launch on Amazon or launch at Target, they might have success out of the gate, but if the DNA of that brand success is performance marketing, they're not going to be able to bring that over to an omni channel operation. What Bloom has done is we have mastered digital marketing for an omni channel community or omni channel customer. And that's why we've had to do it with ways where there's not a pixel, there's not there's not an affiliate link, there's not a coupon code because they're able to buy it. And now $80,000 in the United States. So we launched on Amazon. We run all of our normal marketing playbook, but we said if we're going to play on Amazon, we're going to, you know, try to win Amazon. And we did. We ran like we had a hell of a run for 18 to 24 months as Amazon being our number one channel. And then we took that data and we said, "Hey, Target, if you look at Amazon as a barometer for US demand, which everyone should, and we're number one on Amazon, you should really take this greens powder. We think it will crush for you." And they said, "Oh, no. The superfoods trend is over." Like, we don't, we just tried all these superfoods. They're all on, you know, half off. Like, the superfood trend is over. I was like, "This is not a superfood. It's a gut health product. Like, you you don't understand digital. Like, it's all over TikTok. Please just trust us. Anyway, we we we get the launch in Target and we ran the same exact playbook. We told our whole community to go now buy at Target and we became the highest velocity or the fastest selling product in the history of OTC or over-the-counter Target >> stores which includes like the Flazes of the world, the protein powders of the world. And uh I'm sure we still hold that record of the fastest selling supplement in the history of OTC. And yeah, we basically ran that whole playbook through 2023 for our nutrition line. And then now was bootstrapped to 180 million a year. We decided it was time to diversify our portfolio out of just OTC wellness products or I should say OTC supplement products. We really wanted to enter beverage and I had no experience in beverage. We had a real brand at this point that that you know that customers expected the best from and I started to call around for strategic partners to make a beverage with. And the issue with traditional strategic partners which really just means like private equity companies um is private equity companies like are partnering with you to sell you later for having higher. It's >> a little bit misaligned incentives. It's a misaligned incentive and at the time there was no market of acquisitions happening for beverage companies. So like the idea of like Alani selling to Celsius or Poppy selling to Pepsi like that was not happening five years ago or or or even three years ago. So they were like no we don't invest in beverage companies and no one's going to want this like very diverse platform brand of products. People want a greens company, a colostrum company, an energy drink company, but they don't want one that does it all because they don't have the efficiencies for that whole platform, right? And so everyone was like basically kick rocks except two people. And one of those people was Dos Cunningham, who owns Neutrabolt, which owns C4 Pre-workout, which if you go back to the Bloom story, was like the yellow and black pre-workout that we like intentionally became the antithesis of, right, which was funny. And this is like kind of how he pitched him. And
Yeah,
and we were and he was like, "Listen, I took this pre-workout company and I was able to make it an energy drink company." And we, you know, I had partnership with Cure Dr. Pepper. He was a family man. He was the CEO of Neutriable for 23 years. Like frankly, a mentor of what I was looking to work with as a 28-year-old at the time. And he said, "I'd love to be your strategic partner in the in this beverage game." And the thing about a partnership or an investment is like it is the most expensive transaction that you will ever
do in your career because, even though you're not going to notice it in your bank account, they are you are literally taking a slice or sometimes chopping half of your business off and giving it to somebody. So all of that enterprise value, net worth that you ever associated with yourself, just you're just it's just gone. So it is the most expensive transaction that you will ever do in business and you have to take it very seriously.
And in this scenario, it was less about the enterprise value of the transaction and more about the actual partnership that was going to happen to eventually. It only took us 6 months to create an energy drink together. And we launched this energy drink together in uh June, July 2024, in Target, exclusively in Target. It ripped off the shelves and then Cur Dr. Pepper called, like the Dr. Pepper and was like, "We want this on our trucks." So, we launched on our trucks in January 2025, exactly a year ago or 13 months ago. And we've quickly just kind of scaled into 70,000 doors.
"How, how many cans?"
"Oh, in 25, in 25. I mean, today, January 30th, 2026, we got to be over a quarter billion."
"It's like, it's like a disgusting number."
"Disgusting."
"Yeah, man. I mean, I think I think it, it's possible. It will definitely be over half a million cans a day in 2026."
"Wow."
"Like, and so the manufacturing supply chain is just like a total [ __ ]."
"Yeah."
"You know, masterclass. These guys over at Neutribolt handle all of that, uh, supply chain and manufacturing, thank God. Which again, like going to partnerships, I think the best way to give yourself a strategic edge in the in the competitive landscape that is CPG today is like focus on what you love and what you're passionate about and try to talent acquis, talent acquire or or or outsource internally to, you know, the the things that you suck at or that you don't enjoy because if you enjoy something and you're passionate about it, like you will be a better competitor always. So with this partnership, we were basically able to outsource all of the crazy stressful headache of logistics to NeutraBolt and CUR Dr. Pepper and focus on what we're really [ __ ] good at, which is building community and brand and the product itself."
"Yeah."
"And then when you launch this, you, I'm guessing it's like same playbook again, right? Go into the community to say, 'Hey, we're on shelves.' And what is that playbook though? Like, what is it tactically, you know, going to the influencers or creators and getting them to say or do or create?"
"So, with a retail specific launch, we, I, I would think that we're one of the first ones to do this on the market. We very much send influencers or sent influencers into the retail doors and we said, either go do your full day of shopping or go shopping with me or your hauls. Go to your hauls of Target and show other products. I don't care if you show another energy drink. If anything, show a hotter energy drink and make that association with that hot brand, right? So, go to a haul at Target, go show our beautiful display that, you know, we made sure was part of the partnership with Target that our product would be on a beautiful display, which if you've been to a Target in the last few four years, you've probably seen a beautiful Bloom display because we would call those displays a studio for our content creators. And so they could go in and make their, you know, Instagram Reel, Instagram Story, TikTok, Snapchat, whatever it is, with that as the background. And then everyone can recognize a Target store's aisles, right? Like they, or or they would say where they were. And, uh, yeah, we would basically use the digital influencer, uh, content creator playbook to bring to to funnel digital traffic into the Target stores, whether they were already going to Target, yeah, and just wanted to pick it up on their Saturday run or whether they, uh, made a special trip or Instacarted, whatever it may be, because they saw that that TikTok. Um, you know, other ways to kind of bring like that credible validity into the Target or or mass retail shelves. Like a lot of our supplements still had a photo of Mari on the label, right? Like to kind of bring that like, 'Oh, a human made this.' And not only did a human make this, like this product for women is made by women, right? So it's not like, you know, made by Proctor and Gamble or something like that. And they're telling you it's for women, right? This is made by women for women. It's from a team here in America. It's made in America. That's a 95% female company. Like, it's made for you. Um, so, yeah, that's that's that's pretty much the retail playbook."
"I think I've never heard somebody talk about the actual space within the retail spot being seen as a studio for people to then make their content."
"Yeah. And so if other retailers called and they, they realized because what happens is if I, if if our content gets somebody to enter any retailer, let's call it a Walgreens, it's a mutual win."
"It's a mutual win because they're going in there and they're going to buy other stuff."
"Yeah. And so if we can create a a compromise where, and you know, normally this is a transaction, right? Where you are going to put our product on a premier red carpet display, then you will get the unlock to our in-house influencer marketing agency that is a proprietary system only we have."
"Yeah."
"And, uh, yeah, we would send all the, I mean, if you go to a lot of retailers, especially at Walgreens right now, they have a hell of a display for us. If you send an influencer into that store, ask them to go make content in that store, it's a giant billboard."
"Yeah."
"It's a giant billboard. And I think that the the toughest part again for a digital entrepreneur is you have going into retail is you normally have all this real estate on your landing page, on your website, even on your Amazon listing, but once you get into a normal, a 7-Eleven fridge, this is all you've got."
"Yeah."
"And so all of this needs to make the sale, which means it needs to be recognizable from the TikTok. So like we made sure that this was like the perfect digital brand that would work in retail. It's recognizable from 50 feet away. All the cans look similar enough, but you can still recognize when a new one comes out. And, uh, like you were saying before, it's that status symbol. It's that accessory that they can leave the 7-Eleven with and, you know, have that brand association with when they leave the store."
"I think something to note about your packaging though, if you look at most, and this isn't to knock C4, but like I'm not walking into a public, like I wouldn't be here with a C4 because of how bold it is and like the colors, etc. And fitness is kind of going into a more luxury, cleaner aesthetic."
"Yeah, like a cleaner aesthetic, more minimalistic. And you guys nailed that. We're like, you know, I'll walk down the street with this. Doesn't matter if I know it's made or the the"
"But you love horror filming obviously."
"But I saw you taking your pics outside of the Fair Market. Um, I saw it all. We see the bag right next to you."
"Dude, dude, no, this is it's an accessory."
"But you get what I'm saying? Like, it, you really did it in a way where I'mma walk around with this. Like, I'm going to, I'm not, I'm not just going to chug this in my car and then go do the thing. Like, it's walking with me."
"I have so many assumptions in my head because you're wearing a whip band right now."
"You know what I'm saying? Like, I can tell so much about you or your watch that you're wearing or whatever it is. Like, that's all that style is. You're just expressing yourself. It's, yeah, exactly. And, uh, you know, I, I would like to think that someone can feel like they're projecting something positive and and and that they appreciate wellness and it's also in, if you know, you know."
"Yeah, I think so."
"I think that's really huge in just overall the CPG landscape right now. It's like people want to be early, want to have cool status, people's like they want to signal properly that they like get it, you know?"
"And then obviously a year ago, we also launched our better for you soda, right?"
"So that was the same exact playbook. So when I say we've rinsed and repeated and slightly refined the same exact playbook for for six years, like to a T, I mean that's kind of the leverage of building a brand."
"Yeah."
"Is you have this ability to product expand, you know?"
"Yeah."
"Where every single time you're going to roll out the same playbook, get all these eyeballs on it, and then immediately pretty much sell out, have built-in."
"Yeah."
"And then like an example of a fine-tuning of that community collaboration would be when we launched the energy drink, it was because people asked us to make an energy drink. When we launched the soda, they said, 'Please make a soda.' And then we would launch in real life events in Soho, New York, let's say, or for the Valentine's Day skew that just launched. All new products coming out. We have tested samples in in real life events, blind taste tested, six different shots and they rank their favorite one. We don't even tell them what the flavor is."
"I saw you, I saw that in the article where you were doing it with a thousand people and then it was like email surveys to then get this."
"So our again, in-house events team, obviously they outsource some of the work, but our in-house events team is is totally out of control. We have doubled down on doing less bigger events. Yeah. Or sorry, fewer bigger events and less small events all the time. You know what I'm saying? So like more tentpole moments throughout the year and we throw huge [ __ ] parties. We invite the whole community. The one in Soho had over a thousand people attend. It was over 48 hours and we got so much data and the cool thing about in real life data is there's something called like Suzie studies and like all"
"Suzie studies?"
"Yeah. All these like weird data that like uh stage gain and product development teams like to look at, which is like, if I were to make a protein powder, do you want it to have 20 grams of protein, 25 grams of protein, or 30 grams of protein? Dude, most people are going to see that and just pick the highest number."
"Yeah."
"Right. But like they need to go taste that product and like you need to ask them in a casual setting. Maybe they even added tequila and they're telling you actually how they feel matter to you."
"Yeah. And they might be like, 'Nah, 30 is going to bulk me up.' That's actually kind of weird and or I won't, I don't. All I care is that it has protein. I don't care how much is actually in there. So, you got to be really careful when you're doing these consumer post-purchase surveys. 'Where did you hear of us?' 'I don't know. [ __ ] Google.' But like it was actually the homie next door."
"Yeah."
"And so I'm a big fan of collecting data at these in real life events and our team has put the last couple events. I mean, we make so much content about it. We're not holding back any secrets. Like go check out that content and see what we we've been up to. The in real life events have been huge. And I used to be super anti the cans and hands method, but I realized if you in, if you incorporate that to data collection and giving value to your community for free, aka a fun time, it's it's a win-win-win."
"So after scaling to almost 500 million a year in sales, like power rank these things that you think are most important for marketing at a big business like that for a big omni-channel business. I and tripling down in a few things for 2026."
"I am not a fan of TV."
"Yeah."
"At all. I've never been a fan. I've spent millions on it. Like, I'm not a fan of it."
"This is brought to you by Tatari."
"Yeah. Yeah."
"I'm not. I'll just give like three hot takes."
"Yeah. What do you think?"
"So, three hot takes that I'm going into 2026 with that I'm committing to for all of 2026. And you know, I'm basing this off of experience and millions of dollars lost or won. I am not doing any TV marketing. I am not, unless a Super Bowl ad comes up real, I might jump on that. But I'm not doing any TV marketing. I'm not going to try to win Amazon on Amazon. You win Amazon, on Instagram, on Facebook, on TikTok with your, you know, field marketing, whatever it is, but it's not on Amazon. You're not going to outspend Nestle on Amazon. I hate to break it to everybody."
"Then third would be these big corporate megalodons of the Walmarts, Target, 7-Elevens of the world. They need you just as much as you need them. And there is a very synergistic relationship that the anti-capitalists of America, not I don't have any political views, do not want to embrace. But when you walk in there as a young digital forward entrepreneur, you are embraced and they will roll out the red carpets for brands that many of us watching this are probably trying to incept. And, uh, they are not things to be afraid of. And there's a lot more to building a business than just direct to consumer."
"M. Yeah, that's three hot takes, right?"
"It's good."
"No, it's good."
"She's trying to tee up a clip."
"So, tell me this story about not being able to get Bloom.com."
"First of all, another hot take. I don't give a [ __ ] about your domain."
"No."
"Um,"
"Cuz wouldn't wasn't the owner like non-cooperative or something?"
"We don't have the handle at Bloom. We don't have the domain Bloom.com. I, uh, first of all, I don't know where you got this take from, but"
"I thought I read that somewhere."
"No, no, I definitely have. No, I that's definitely something that I was passionate about at one point."
"Yeah."
"The Bloom handle, I think they just wanted some ridiculous amount of money, which, you know, it's all relative, I guess. And then for the domain, I don't remember, but like damn, if you're launching a business in 2026, please do not spend more than $5,000 on your domain or your handle."
"Yeah."
"Nothing would be worth it. There's no, there's no amount that's worth it."
"Yeah."
"I thought I thought there was like a juicy story about the owner of it being like, 'You can't have it.' And you were like, 'Fuck that.'"
"I mean, I definitely like reached out to the owners of these things and tried to get it."
"Yeah."
"But, uh,"
"And for some reason failed."
"Yeah. You know, that's that's a story in books. I don't know. Yeah. I have to remember that one."
"The one thing I'm curious about is when you think about product expansion, like why did you want to get in from powder to then energy drink and then even launching Bloom Pop? Like, when do you think is the right moment to say, 'Okay, we're going to enter this category and and start executing?'"
"One of the genesis inspirations of us entering Amazon from Shopify and then to retail was us just trying to take on a net larger challenge, right? And the supplement business, or in our case, it was really mostly the grains business at the time. It could only get so big, right? And we felt like we, we basically got it to almost as big as it could be. Uh, and I feel confident now that that was actually the right decision. And we wanted to go after, we felt like we, we really had a handle on digital culture and how to scale a brand. And our biggest bottleneck to getting to let's say a half a billion number was actually just the size of market that we were going after. And so when we asked our community what types of products they would want from us or would they be interested in these types of products from us, it narrow, we asked that question in a way where they were only able to tell us large TAMs, large total addressable markets that we could go after. So obviously, um, energy drink is is an 11-figure, maybe. I don't know, like, you know, over $10 billion market size."
"Uh, now has it always been that way or is it like explosively grown in the last like decade?"
"It has not stopped, man. Caffeine's crazy. Like, America loves their caffeine. It's definitely, it's definitely become more and more a mainstream product every year. Um, you know, we're definitely seeing the prebiotic soda market. We'll see how much past two billion it gets as a total market. You know, Poppy Ali, Papa Us. Basically, no one else is playing in it."
"And when you think about product packaging, like the idea that I see an energy drink go into a soda can, yeah, or a soda go into a slim can like this, and I'm just like, why are you fixing what's not broken?"
"Like, there is like DNA that we inherited when we were born that a soda goes into a soda and a beer is drinking out of a Corona bottle. Like, you know what I mean? Like when I drink a rainwater out of a Corona bottle, like the glass throws me off there, dude. I'm like, am I drinking a beer hole right now? Like, this is a vibe."
"Catch a buzz for something. Wait."
"But like, so the the vessel that you put the product in is like, don't try to reinvent the wheel. And I'm obsessed with that with Bloom. Is Bloom's job is not to reinvent a totally new beverage. Bloom's job is to take an energy drink and make it more wellness. Take a soda and make it more wellness. Make a greens and make it more wellness. And to me, what wellness is is accessible, whether it's price and actually available. It, but also accessible means taste. It needs to taste really [ __ ] good because no one wants to take a product that tastes like [ __ ]. And, uh, and if, if you try, like I don't want to have to educate somebody on what this product is. That is just a marketing forest fire, right? If I need to, if I'm creating some, I mean, you know, insert totally new type of beverage with all of these functionalities, I don't want to have to spend money explaining to them what this product is."
"I am second to the race or in this case, like, you know, 50th to the race energy and it's been a pleasure because greens, we were like, it was just us and Athletic Greens and we had to create the demand. We had to, it's almost create the market and educate the market. And so even if a female or a male, cuz we get both now, maybe they know what Red Bull is. Maybe they've never had one, but they see people drinking Red Bull and they know exactly."
"Everyone knows what an energy drink is."
"Exactly."
"It's got like 100% awareness for sure."
"So when people were like, 'You're crazy going into the saturated market.' I was like, 'I'm only looking for saturated market.'"
"Yeah. Like I want people to know what product I made. Like I'm not trying, like, you know,"
"You don't have to explain it. It's already complex."
"Yeah. I don't need to explain to anyone that this is just a better for you and just outcompete."
"You could almost look at like Ketone IQ right now."
"They're creating a category."
"They're creating a category and therefore they have to spend so much money on educating people on that category and why it works, how it works, etc."
"That was kind of the greens game I played for quite a while and it's an expensive game."
"It was cheaper when you played it then."
"Now it's even more expensive. You know what I'm saying? Like he has to compete with everybody that now is going to make content."
"Yeah."
"It's a different game. I am a huge fan of entering saturated spaces. I'm a huge fan and and because what also happens is rising tide lifts all shifts. So if someone is not an energy drink drinker but they become one because of Celsius and then they try a Bloom and I know they'll convert to Bloom, then I just won."
"What were some of those places that you wanted to win in the saturated market? Like, was it taste? Was it brand?"
"Taste has always been a non-negotiable. Taste has always been a non-negotiable. If you ask the designers on my team, if I ask them, 'Why do you think we're winning?' They go, 'Cuz we take lame [ __ ] and make it cute.'"
"Yeah."
"Like if you take like, uh, you know, that generic looking energy drink that we've all seen even our parents drink at this point. It's like, how can we make that fun, cute, and and you know, and fruity or whatever it may be?"
"How do you think someone like Celsius got so big while with with not being cute?"
"I think because they, you know, there's something really crazy about the fat loss, appetite suppression."
"Yeah. Like I think that they just rode that wave and then like slowly stop talking about like Celsius is like burn fat."
"You know what I mean?"
"And so I think they just rode that moon like like the Hydroxycut wave. You know what I'm saying? Like kind of piggyback off of I'm drinking Celsius, so I'm getting energy, but I'm also burning, toning up my midsection."
"Yeah. Which is funny cuz like we have a Ligonol and green tea extract and Luchi Luchi, uh, extract in here, which is like all like metabolism boosting and stuff, but I don't think I don't think people even like really associate energy drinks with with metabolism increases."
"No, definitely not."
"Yeah."
"I didn't even know coffee was like an appetite suppressor until someone was like,"
"Dude, it's funny. Like there's a couple problems that basically everyone feels like they could be better at, right? I feel like I could sleep better. I feel I could be happier. I feel I could have more energy. I, you know what I mean? I feel like I get in a little better shape. Like the universal truths. I like that there's a few universal truths that and I mean a greens powder does not address a lot of universal truths, but an energy drink."
"You have to, you have to, you almost have to like trick people into it addressing their universal truth. It's like fix your gut health, you will become healthier. It's like second order benefits versus like that just immediate like more energy."
"Yeah."
"More energy."
"No, that's that's why"
"Simple."
"Simplicity scales. Yeah. All day long."
"It does. Yeah."
"Yeah. You got to hit him with a hard-hitten question."
"Oh, we got, you got to touch the hard-hitten question."
"He wants to know what the PJ budget is."
"Oh, no. All right. So, this guy back there, dude, this is what's [ __ ] up because"
"So, I want to talk about that and then also we need to talk a little about this."
"We can, we can talk some some some some luxuries."
"Um, I'm, we're super blessed to to be able to"
"No, we're, we're, we're in like minute, like 67. You don't got to be humble."
"Yeah. This is literally just like the real OG."
"All right. This is for the real OG's. Like, I, I, I, I don't take any for this, any of this for granted. I, um, you know, when I had the son or my wife first got pregnant, I was like, I can't believe in if I can turn a four-day work trip into a two-day work trip, I'm going to basically pay any amount of money to do that. And it's also like with the size that Bloom is today, let's let's just say hypothetically, we're doing a million a day. If I miss a day in the office, I'm doing a disservice to our entire team. So, and then the best case scenario is like a lot of our team members who I do travel with, I can have a meeting with them on the plane."
"Super cool."
"Uh, transparently, I pay for that personally."
"Wow."
"I don't put that through the business. Like, we're a profitable business and we hold our b, our business P&L to like a very high, um, you know, precedent or or standard. And, uh, yeah, I, I pay for that personally for now. Taking that off the purse is crazy."
"That's crazy. It's a lot."
"But, uh,"
"You know, it's, it's definitely a six-figure budget."
"Yeah."
"A week. No, I'm"
"Like, no, no, no. Like, low key."
"It is. It is. It is."
"Yeah."
"When people say they're kidding right after like that, it it means it's true."
"No, it's, uh, yeah, it's been, it's been a, it's been a hell of a, a hell of a run. I, I'm, I'm 30 and so, you know, the, I think most of the transactions are public, but the, the net, the, the personal burn rate can become something that you can't even fathom right once you're trying to optimize for efficiency and having an actual life, being a savage entrepreneur and, you know, all the biohacking [ __ ] and like, you know, you want to go travel and stay inspired and keep all those, uh, fires burning. So, yeah, the burn rate can get atrocious."
"Yeah. Yeah. Do you ever worry about lifestyle creep or"
"Uh, like moneywise, dude, I don't"
"Just don't give a [ __ ]."
"I don't want to say I don't respect money."
"Yeah."
"But I didn't get into this business for money."
"It's just a byproduct."
"It's, it's a byproduct of what we've built here and it's, I'm just playing this game and I love this game. If you look at the Greg who was 21 and try to compare him to the Greg now who's 30 and I was obviously broke when I was 21. Um, dude, I still am just obsessed with Mari. Obsessed with my best friend, Leo. Obsessed with my dog and obsessed with food and then like all these things are just kind of sprinkled fun things on top. So if they went away, like the things that I care about would, would still be there."
"Yeah. It's also like, dude, I used to growing up in New York, you'd go to a car show and it'd be like the 75-year-old homie with the Corvette and he'd be, you know, I'd be like, so you had to wait till you were 75. Like this whole concept of delayed gratification like kind of like really [ __ ] me up. My dad who who had a had a had a killer, you know, he's a huge inspiration of mine, killer finance run, he retired during COVID and so he retired at home, like didn't have a, uh, you know, an at office kind of farewell and he was like such a proponent at least how he led through example of delayed gratification and I don't know if he meant to rub this off on me, but I have not been inspired to embrace into gratification."
"Well, it's often you see your parents do something and you realize that's not something you want. And, yeah, man, I want to have it fun now. I want to drive the lame car when I'm 80. I currently daily a Mari like all the cars are over 800 horsepower. All the [ __ ]."
"So, uh,"
"Now pink, you show up for sure."
"You got to enjoy. You got to enjoy."
"That's awesome, dude. That's so sick."
"What's, what, uh, what's your favorite piece right now on the wrist?"
"So, it's funny. My favorite piece, my favorite timepiece is probably my, uh, Patek Aquanaut. The green one that you had on us. Yeah. The issue with that is the internet doesn't love it. Like they don't, no one really cares what it is. So I daily that all the time. Like Mari and I have a date night tomorrow night. I'll 100% rock that. I wear that to the office most days cuz like no people don't know what it is in the best way. In the best way. I mean, I would even wear that like in New York City streets type of vibe on the subway."
"Yeah."
"Um,"
"Cuz no one knows what it is."
"But, yeah, this is kind of like, you know, my"
"That's AP."
"This is the AP. It's yellow gold. Most APs are are rose gold. I don't wear rose gold. It just looks weird on me. And this is obviously the skele, or not obviously, but it's the skeleton too. So, pretty special edition yellow gold AP. Uh, I've got the homies at Time Piece Trading. Shout out to Sean. He's working on a green face, uh, Patek Nautilus for me right now, which is like great. There's like [ __ ] five of these. And I'm like, but it's green, bro. Like everything green. All my cars are green. Like everything's got to be green. So, uh, but I probably won't ever, if I had a watch that I never traded in, it'd be my John Mayer. John Mayer, which is the green face."
"You seen the John Mayer AP, too, with the blue face?"
"Dude. With the blue face. Oh. Oh, like his edition."
"Time piece had that."
"That shit's crazy. Time had that one."
"Like that will probably be like the watch that like I give my son type vibe. Like I'll keep that forever."
"Real casual."
"Yeah. Well, but I'm not going to. He's going to have to buy one first. He's not going to know that he's getting that. Once he gets his first Rolex that he buys, I'll be like, 'All right, here's all your [ __ ].'"
"So, he's got to get the first one."
"That's awesome, bro."
"Yeah."
"Oh, yeah, dude. But this shit's fun. And dude, honestly, I've made money on all of them. That's the most [ __ ] appreciating asset."
"Dude, if you play, uh, you or your girl's handbag game, right? Your watch game, right? Your car game, right? You know, like, you know, Mari will always have a 2025 Range Rover or whatever the [ __ ] the year is. That will always lose money like nothing you've ever seen. But, you know, if you buy your, if you buy your sports cars, right? If you buy, you know, your watch game, right? If you know she wants a Birkin bag or whatever it is, what she buys. She's the rich, she's richer than me. But the, uh, dude, they all go up in value. It's [ __ ] crazy."
"Yeah. The luxury market is only going to continue to appreciate."
"But it's not, it, it's going to appreciate, but people don't appreciate that. Like, they're like, 'Okay, this Chanel bag is $8,000. This this Gucci bag is $2,000. The Gucci bag is going to be worth $500 in a year. The Chanel bag is going to be worth $9,000 in a year.' So, like, you got to, you got to play right."
"100%. And, uh, shout out to my wealth management team just throwing their computer right now."
"Yeah."
"But yeah. Oh yeah."
"Oh yeah."
"Cool guys."
"That was incredible, man. I mean,"
"You riffed."
"Yeah."
"We riffed. That was awesome. Um, tell them where to find you."
"Dude, I'm Greg Labs Life. Damn. I need, you know, I try to get the Greg handle. There's a homie on Instagram. You got to get the Greg, bro."
"Let's transact. But Greg Labs Life on Instagram. Hopefully, we'll launch this YouTube soon. But, uh, I just love participating in the culture. So, thanks for having me."
"Yeah, of course, man. Of course. Well, all right. We'll catch you all next week. Peace."
"Dope."