Barbell Shrugged - BUBS Naturals, Protein with a Purpose - Business of Fitness #72

Episode Date: September 9, 2019

Sean Lake is a co-founder of Bubs Naturals and lifelong friend to the great, late Glen “BUB” Doherty, and the BUBs Naturals front line in forging Glen’s legacy. Merging his career experience as a professional athlete, director of global marketing, and entrepreneur, Sean has personally curated the product, communal spirit, and charitable mission that defines the BUBS Naturals brand.    TJ Terrara is a co-founder and fellow adrenaline and fitness maniac. TJ and Sean connected while competing for bragging rights on the CrossFit floor. TJ’s eighteen plus years in online marketing, operations, and technology gave BUBS Naturals the firepower it needed to launch its direct to consumer model. TJ is the e-commerce mastermind that keeps BUBS’ sales and customer acquisition on the upward trajectory.       On today’s episode, Jason sits down with the co-founders of BUBS Naturals, Sean and TJ, to talk shop. On the surface Bubs looks like your go-to, all-natural supplement company (which it totally is), but, as you’ll learn on today’s show, is so much more than that. For any of you that have ever worked your way through the hero WOD, “Glen,” you too have paid tribute to the ‘why’ behind BUBS. It is clear that Sean and TJ are the epitome of grassroots business owners that are doing the right thing for the right reasons. The two take listeners through the beginnings of Bubs, their unlikely business choices, how they maintain a healthy business partnership, and what true customer service really is.     Minute Breakdown:  0 – 10: Hero WODs and the beginning of Bubs.   10 – 20: Breaking all business rules and doubling profit anyway.  20 – 30: Quality checking, digital marketing, and return on investment.   30 – 40: Connecting with your consumer and writing 6 figure checks.    Get your hands on Bubs Natural here: https://www.bubsnaturals.com/jason  Find Bubs Naturals on Instagram: @bubsnaturals  Make a difference at: www.glendohertyfoundation.org  Connect with Jason at @jasonkhalipa  Work with Jason and the NCFIT Collective Crew at https://www.ncfitcollective.fit  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Show notes: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bof-bubs ------------------------------------------------------------------------------► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

All right, everyone, and welcome back to the Business of Fitness podcast. I'm Jason Kalipa, and on today's episode, we have the founders of Bubz Naturals, TJ and Sean on the show. Now, I had heard of Bubz for a while. I enjoyed their products, their collagen, their MCT powder, but I wanted to sit down with them after listening to what their story was about how the company was founded and what the story and the why is behind it. I think it's super interesting. I can't wait for you guys to hear about it and how the name

Bubs came to be. Before we dive into the episode, just want to let you know, if you haven't checked out our partners over at Whoop, go ahead and check them out. They have this wrist strap that does an awesome job tracking your sleep, tracking your strain score, giving you an idea of your recovery for the next day, and ultimately just being a really cool device to get feedback on how you're doing. If you haven't checked it out, go to whoop.com, put in the code Jason, and get a nice discount there. Now, I hope everybody's having a great day. I hope you're rising the ties in your gym, whatever you're doing, and enjoy this episode. Let's go. Well, guys, we're here with Sean TJ over here at Bubz Naturals. And look, I got connected with your guys' product a long time ago, and I've been a fan for a long time. And as of recently,

we're starting up a new partnership that I'm really excited about, but I want to dive into your guys' business because it's a fascinating story, right? And I think really it starts with Sean and the kind of like the original concept. And then you guys came together and the business has been around for a little over a year now, right? You guys have seen exponential growth in an industry that's tough, you know, inventory and things like that. And so I'd love to dive into the business side. How'd you guys get started? Where does fitness come into play with CrossFit? And what's the backstory of Bubz Naturals? And what is Bubz Naturals? So tell us more. Yeah. I mean, this was, this is our wild little social experiment

is how we jokingly refer to it sometimes. But so Bub refers to Glenn Bub Doherty. So anyone in the audience out there who's ever done the hero wad, Glenn, you're familiar with, you know, with this story, with a big chunk of why we're here and what we do. So Glenn was my roommate. He's my oldest buddy from middle school. We grew up in Massachusetts together. We moved out to the mountains of Utahah together and then he joined the navy and became a navy seal did 10 years in the seals and i was off doing my snowboarding thing and action sports thing i moved to san diego for a job glenn stationed at team three glenn gets out of the navy buys a house in encinitas next thing you know we're two guys turning 40 and we're roommates again. We're both members at Mark Devine's gym over on Second Street, that classic seal fit gym.

And we both become instructors there. This is since 2008. Like that was our community was the seal fit crew. Rory McKernan, you know Rory. Rory was the head coach back then. Rory was a guy who taught me how to squat and then encouraged me to go get my level one and Glenn was right there coaching the whole time. And unfortunately, this story turns shitty because Glenn was one of the two Navy SEALs that was killed in 2012 in Benghazi, Libya. So big national story.

Anyone who's seen the movie 13 Hours or read the book, they're familiar with it. And Glenn was one of the two SEALs killed saving all the other American lives over there. And there was a big political stink about it. Well, I was also the executor of Glenn's estate and in charge of all of his legal affairs. We had done that for each other as best friends.

Like, hey, you get all my debt. Okay, cool, you get all my debt. Okay, cool. You get all my debt. It was a big joke, but my best friend died and he was my brother and he was my roommate. And all of a sudden there's this big national stage. So what his family and I decided to do after Glenn died was start a foundation. And the whole point of the foundation was to solve for one of the problems that Glenn could never solve for. And that is, how do you make a successful transition

out of active duty military life into civilian life? And Glenn struggled with that. He was maybe going to be a firefighter. He was maybe going to go to PA school. He was maybe going to be a pilot. He had all these ideas. And he'd gotten out of the Navy, gotten right away, went out and got his bachelor's degree. Like,

okay, I'm going to go do this. Self-improvement 101, boom, knock out the degree. Then it was, okay, well, I got to pay bills. So he started contracting and he was working with GRS, which is a part of the CIA doing security. And the pay was phenomenal. I mean, we're talking, you go from, you know, a $60,000 a year job as an active duty Navy SEAL to three times that doing contract work. I mean, it's hard to beat that. So he's home for a couple months, deployed for a couple months, home, gone.

And it tears up his home life. So he gets a divorce, moves into my house. You know, a couple years later, I end tears up his home life so he gets a divorce moves into my house you know a couple years later i end up getting a divorce i move into his house so it's like the the crews back together coaching crossfit at mark devine's gym yeah and you know but what glenn was trying to do that whole time was figure out what's next and i watched a lot of his teammates struggle with that hey they're retiring, they're getting out, whether they've done 10 years or 20 years of service, it's the what's next part. So his family and I decided the best way to kind of pay tribute to Glenn's legacy was to help other special operators make the successful transition out through scholarship, basically fill gaps in the GI Bill. And we launched it in early 2013,

really less than six months after the whole Benghazi attacks happened. And for five years, we were able to help almost everyone that came by and asked for money and applied for scholarships. We're like, great, we can help people. And these scholarships, just to be clear, when you say a scholarship, I think like school. Like, oh, I get a scholarship, I go to school. But you're referring to maybe something a little bit different. Well, it can help people. We need scholarships, just to be clear. When you say a scholarship, I think like school. Like, oh, I get a scholarship, I go to school. But you're referring to maybe something a little bit different.

Well, it can be both. So we would have guys come in and apply for an MBA. Like, hey, I'm going to go to Harvard and get an MBA, and I'm an active duty Navy SEAL. Sure. And I got the GI Bill is going to cover $40,000 of this. Well, the bill is $80,000. So we fill a little gap there. We close that gap.

And the Navy SEAL Foundation closes a gap. There's the Navy SEAL Family Foundation. They apply for scholarships and help around a variety of institutions and nonprofits that can help basically build it out so that their financial exposure isn't horrible. Right. And it could be trade school. Like you could come to me and say, hey, I'm Jason, I'm a ranger and I want to go to welding school.

And we can help with that. You know, it's a qualified application. It's as long as there's a, there's basically an end goal in mind. Right. And so you guys were growing this organization, you were growing this charity and then, and then basically, correct me if I'm wrong,

you started not to have enough funds to be able to support the amount of people that were coming in and you needed to find a way to be able to support the amount of people that were coming in. And you needed to find a way to generate more funds. Is that kind of what happened? Yeah. So in 2017, we had more applications for scholarships than we had funds to give. And all of a sudden, for the first time, we had to say no.

And, you know, we're sitting around. We're talking on one of our calls. And we're saying, okay, well, now we have to vet out these people. And we had to say no to over a dozen people. And I'm like, well, what do we do about this? And everyone's got a full-time job. Everyone's living their life, and they're looking at this going, well, we don't really know.

And that was understandable, but it just didn't sit right with me. So that's happening. That's a very real problem that I'm trying to solve for. And right around the same time, my wife buys me a tub of collagen and she basically puts it on the table and says, I want you to start taking this. And I looked at her and I said,

Is that a sign your skin wasn't tight enough? Well, my wife's a little bit younger than I am. Okay. And she basically looked at me and she said, you're not getting any younger. I am. Oh, okay. And she basically looked at me and she said, you're not getting any younger. And I was like, okay. And my joints are older than achy from years of snowboarding and CrossFit

and running and all that stuff. So I was beat up and she knew it. And she said, just take this stuff. So I read the side of the labels and we were joking about me being old. And I started taking it. Do whatever she said. I followed the instructions.

And I started putting a scoop in my coffee every day. And about three weeks into it, my nails are growing like crazy. It's like I feel like I'm freaking Wolverine. And I'm like, okay, I've tried proteins, BCAAs, creatines. You name a supplement, I've tried it in training. But I've never noticed a physical change beyond like caffeine

gets you jittery so it was a very unique experience i was like okay this is different then about you know a week or two later i needed a haircut and i had just gotten a haircut so i was like okay two data points right from the side of the jar and the next one was my joints uh we flew cross country and whenever i fly cross country i'm a little crybaby getting off the plane. And my knees are sore and achy. And I get off the plane and I feel great. And I was like, wait a minute. What's going on here?

And again, looking at the side of the jar, the joint health. And now I dive into like, okay, what's in this stuff? And I realize how simple of an, you know, it's a single ingredient protein. It's just bovine hide collagen protein. I'm like, okay. And just to, to pause for a second, when you talk about collagen, for those who are unfamiliar with it now, I put collagen and MCT oil in my coffee every, or powder in my coffee every day. But to pause for a second, when you talk about what collagen is like in layman's term, what is it? It up what cowhide there you go perfect we are we're

literally talking about bovine i call it bovine hide it sounds a little fancy yeah it's a little fancy yeah it's it's literally cowhide so i was like okay someone's taking cowhide they're drying it they're basically what you do is you, you give it an enzyme bath. The enzymes boost the amino profile. It's already in the cow hide. And those amino acids that get that boost are what helps you like glycine, you know, helps produce synovial fluid in your knees. And like every amino acid, all the essential ones perform a different function for hair, skin, nails, gut health, uh, health, bone density, liver health. Like there's a myriad of healthy properties in proteins. And this is like, it was like a one

stop shop for everything that was bothering me. Right. And so you're taking this college and you're feeling better. And at the time I imagine, is that when you guys connected? So TJ, I mean, yeah. Is that when you guys started talking about, well about well hey there's a need to raise more money for this charity there's a product that i like did it just instantly just kind of fall on your guys's lap like that kind of and my voice is terrible so i'm gonna let lake do a lot of the talking on this thank laryngitis for this but i showed up to his house and he had the collagen on the table and And I was like, oh, you take that? That's really cool. Let's start a company. And it was like literally that easy. So napkin math, the thing out and go ahead. Yeah. I mean, literally he's, he comes over the house. He sees the tub of collagen. I start raving like I just did with you about how great

I feel taking it. And he's like, let's start a company. And we look at each other and start laughing. I'm like, well, what does it look like? And the first words out of our mouths, same exact time, we both look at each other and say, well, we got to do something cool for charity. And that was when I was like, bingo, here's the charity. We've got to help Glenn's foundation out. And I just started laughing. I'm like, Glenn's call sign in the Navy was Bub. So we're going to name the company as a tribute to Glenn, call it Bub's Naturals. Every ingredient that we have, every product we ever make is going to stand for self-improvement. That's the core of it. Because Glenn was the guy who

was always trying to improve himself mentally, physically, spiritually, you name it. He was always looking to one-up his game. And then the other thing Glenn always did was help others. So we defined what is doing something cool for charity as let's give 10% of every sale to Glenn's foundation. Just take it right away. Just give 10%. No company's doing that in any industry. We felt pretty confident that we were in some pretty uncharted territory. Then the challenge came to backfill in whether that was even sustainable. Yeah, the profitability for that. And so for you guys getting into that, I think it's really cool.

So from a mission perspective, right? Your mission is to obviously raise money for this organization, to pay homage to your friend, which, you know, I think very few people would argue against those things. But from a partnership perspective, for those listening who own gyms, who are looking to get into the gym business, maybe looking to get into any offshoot of the gym business, kind of like this is in a sense.

When you guys created this partnership, I imagine it hasn't just been smooth sailing the last 16, 19 months. What's rule number one, TJ? Never run out of inventory. Never run out of inventory is rule number one. I'd say rule number two is don't have too much inventory. Is that, has that not been a problem for you guys? That has not been a problem yet. At one point, our gym had way too much inventory.

That's another story for another day. So let's talk about, I mean, for you guys, you guys come together, you come up with a concept, you know, were you guys friends for a long time before you guys started the company? Yeah. kind of a funny backstory to that I actually we had met on and off for I mean the better part of 15 plus years Why used to go to the snowboard industry the ski industry trade shows in Vegas? And I would go to events because I used to work for Burton snowboards. Oh, yeah, I worked at quick I got a birdie. I got a birdie There you go, and I would be there and he would be there except he was a shop kid

So he was there as a buyer for a snowboard shop in Michigan and I was there as a team manager For Burton and he'd be like, hey, did you go to that one concert that one year and I'm like, yeah, I was there He's like so was I this is literally 20 years running We've been in the same room at the same time so many times but we never weirdest thing but we never knew each other and so the universe brought you together at the gym well actually at seal fit at seal fit so so he went through one of the kokoro camps that mark divine puts on and i was instructing at that camp and one of our mutual friends had given me a heads up he said hey this kid tj is going to come through make sure he gets a good amount of special attention Oh special attention oh it was

it was the best attention so much love so much love so much love and so that was really how we got reacquainted was was at the gym going through the Kokoro experience and then we bumped into each other at a gym about a year and a half later and that was it it was like early 2016 and we just started working out together and you know just sharing ideas and work stuff and we both found that we had a fairly similar mindset when it came to approaching business not necessarily from taking chances but just a similar business worldview and so looking at that from a partnership

perspective did you guys sit down and write down like formal partnership agreement, formal mission, vision? Did you lay out a business plan? How did that look like? Not so much on the business plan side, but we approach the cap table structure very much, very upfront. Like, hey, if we're going to do this, what does it look like? We're 50-50 partners. Perfect. Roles and responsibilities kind of organically fell into place. I don't know a lot about the digital back end of the business. I've been more on the marketing, sports marketing side. The gap between us was on product and on the production side.

And so he was doing a lot of heavy lifting on the digital side. So I kind of inherited learning about product and building the margins together. So the business plan was really simple. It was, we kind of know what the roles and responsibilities are going to be. We'll share everything information wise in the middle. But what we're going to do is we're going to see how much money we have in our savings account. And that will be the start of the company. And so without knowing anything about collagen, we knew roughly what legal fees would be,

trademarking fees, a website, the necessary apps and things you need on the back end to set it up. And then it was, what does it cost to make collagen? And then what does the collagen landscape look like? Cause there's a lot of variance in collagen quality. And you guys all in so you guys put oh yeah all in literally the plan was just don't fail that's it like we went against every business school rule in the book i went

to business school every single went right out the window but there was there was a feel behind this that like when we sat down to talk about this the first time and it was like we both said we got to do something cool for charity it was like the most natural organic conversation in a 15 minute period where we literally walked out of the door being like we have the brand name we have a vision for this we have a mission for this we feel really really good about the category and and i feel really good about the quality there's no bs involved in this this is a great phenomenal feel great product and that's all we're ever going to do are genuine clean natural products okay cool how do we do this and that was the learning curve that was where it

was like i've never made a college and i don't know anything about this well yeah i'm looking at it and i'm thinking okay you guys both took a huge risk, started a new business, had never been entrepreneurs before this, right? Consultants. Consultants. I mean, that's a big, I mean, this is a big deal. And here we are, you know, 16, 19 months later and you guys have seen month over month growth every month. Yes. Yeah.

Since the very beginning, it's been double digit growth or just a tick of well we're trying to prove a social this was really what we call the social experiment right if we give 10 to charity will anyone care right now there's some baselines behind that that we had to solve for i wasn't going to put glenn's name on the jar of collagen unless it was the absolute best collagen on the market, bar none. And so we started buying every single brand that was out there. We're just dumping money out of our checking account to buy all this collagen. Well, I was going to ask you that. So you're getting ready for this business. You're not in the supplement industry, which maybe it works in

your favor because you're not tainted by whatever happens. And so you're starting a company with no background in the supplements, already giving up 10 points on your margin, so you're starting a company with no background in the supplements, already giving up 10 points on your margin, and you're doing it with a partner that you had never done business before, and you got rid of all your savings. I mean, on paper, I mean, Harvard Review would look at this

and they'd be pretty... So yeah, high fives to you guys. So let's back up though, right? I mean, I just listed all the things that most professors would be like, hey, this is a- Oh yeah. It's all a red flag. All a red flag. But let's stop for a second and just ask the question, what did you do to put you guys in a position to be successful? Because

what were those first initial steps? I mean, you guys are likable guys. You have a mission. However, there's a lot of likable people that have a mission who don't achieve month over month growth the way you guys have. So what have you guys done to position the product and the marketing to grow the way you have been? I mean, I'll start with my part and then I think you can go to his. It was learning the product, right? Remember what I said about putting the absolute best collagen on the market. Well, there's some table stakes in that, in learning a raw material. And they are grass-fed, pasture-raised, they are non-GMO. It's getting all those statements out of the way. But then it really comes down to usability. Flavor, solubility.

You put collagen in your coffee every morning. My guess is that you've tried a couple different brands and you put a scoop in of some of them and they clump and they goo and they don't dissolve. They don't dissipate well in liquid. And then other ones, they kind of taste like a little bit of a cow and that's not a good taste. Cow hide's not, no one likes cow hide. No, no, no.

I like it when I don't taste it. So it was, how do you find something that is truly unflavored? I mean, the best in class in terms of flavor and solubility. So did you just reach out to a bunch of different companies? Every one of them.

So, okay, so I like having specific takeaways for people to understand. So how many companies did you reach out to? 12. 12 companies that you found for collagen? Yeah. We started with brands and then we went to third party suppliers, like the actual suppliers on the back end. And then the way we ended up solving for this was going to a natural products trade show in Las Vegas in like June

and walking the halls. And we're walking the halls trying to find anyone who had a sign saying they were selling collagen. And we really got this roadmap out. And the trade show had an app and we were just triangulating whoever was selling gelatin and collagen and going to them and grabbing samples and a price sheet

and then we took it all back to test it all well on our way out the door of this trade show i see this giant map from this huge booth and on it is a little red dot right next to where my old hometown was and so i'm like that's really weird let's go walk up and say hi because we're on our way to the and on it is a little red dot right next to where my old hometown was. And so I'm like, that's really weird. Let's go walk up and say hi because we're on our way to the airport. And we literally roll up around the corner, and I say hi to these people, and it turns out they sell collagen. I'm like, no way. I said, well, hey, look it.

If you want to earn our business, you have to be as good as brand as A, B, and C. And the sales lady looked at me, and she winks, and she says, you're going to love our quality. And then I told her about our mission, given 10% military charity, and they're an Iowa-based company. So they're very, very patriotic. And they said, they started laughing. They're like, we like you guys. You're crazy, but we like you. And they agreed to work with us after we vetted them and tested them. And it turns out they were the absolute best for flavor, best in solubility. They were grass fed.

They were past rage. They were everything we needed to see. It's like we got really lucky, but we also tested all of them against each other. Well, I mean, on that note, I mean, I wonder how much of that is luck versus putting yourself in that position. Because I look at it, you reach out to 12 different companies, companies right you're backing up the source to where those people originally get it from not just them but where's the original source then you put yourself in a position to be successful by going to this natural foods event in vegas right or you know yeah vegas vegas and so

you know i take that as guys who are trying to do their due diligence and you happen to stumble on you know a good opportunity yeah but if it wasn't that one, maybe you would have found that same person a couple of months later, but that's really, that's a really interesting. So now the, the, the college in the source, where is it coming from? Brazil. A hundred percent. Yep. And it comes from Brazil and then it goes to Iowa and then comes and then it gets distributed from there. Yeah. It's so it's a, it's a company that has offices, you know,

all around the world and their US core base is out of Iowa. So we work with their office, but because we have a bigger manufacturing facility, a co-packer in the US, they'll ship it from Brazil directly to them. But we manage all the billing and relationship and all the certificates of analysis all come through Iowa. So we vet the product that way. And so then how important is it to have third party, like third party unbiased testing on some of these products? I mean, what are you guys looking for when you were looking for these products and which ones you're going to source and then how you're going to do it?

What in particular are you looking for? Because I imagine they're all saying they're all, you know, non-GMO, non-this, non-that. I mean, what are you, what? Cause I imagine they're all saying they're all, you know, non GMO, non this, non that. I mean, what are you, what specifically like, um, make sure it's not placebo and it's actually, you know what I mean? What are you guys looking for in that sense? So you get a breakdown of that amino acid profile that I was talking about. You test for heavy metals like prop 65 testing. Um, you test for antimicrobials and you're testing against everything that is truly in it and the things that are missing from it. And what's in it is of course, just pure bovine hide collagen peptides. And then what's missing from it are the heavy metals and the microbials and all the stuff you don't want in there. So you're always testing against those two.

Then every manufacturer has to have a certificate that is going to make a claim on it, that they are pasture raised, that they are non-GMO statements for the feed or for the cattle themselves. So you're looking for all those things before you would ever even consider doing business with them. And not everyone has them. And then it's country of origin. Where are the cows coming from? What's the, what's the traceability to, to the raw material. And there's a lot of cows that come out of Korea. There's a lot of cows that come out of China and nothing against Korean or Chinese cows, but that's not what I wanted to put in our product. That's not bubs to me. Whereas Brazil has, you know, they have this agrarian grass pasture system for cattle and it's a lot cleaner.

And you can tell like what's going on. Like, hey, they're not spraying insecticides all over these pastures. They are literally roaming these giant acres of, you know, grassland. So have you had a chance to go visit these different sites, Lily? Not yet. Budgets. So when we started the company it was like how much money do you have how much do I have in our

savings account we vetted the idea with family and friends I literally went to Glenn's teammates TJ went to his family I went to my family and we said hey are we crazy and the response back that I got his family was all on board the response I got back from Glenn's teammates Glenn's family like everyone that's core to his community was Glenn would kick your ass if you don't do this so it was overwhelmingly like take the leap right which I honestly expected a little pushback we didn't really get it and so then it was how much can we afford to go to market with? So back to the business plan, the first goal was to buy one pallet. One pallet of material yields approximately 1,000 jars.

So we went to market with 1,000 jars of collagen. That paid for the website, the legal, the tubs, the lids, the label wrap, the scoop on the inside. Oh, so you can't buy like 100 and just test it. You have to really dive in. We had to commit to spending, you know, $40,000, $50,000. Just in collagen. Just to launch the experiment. And the funny thing is we were by far, by a magnitude of probably 8 to 10x, the smallest client that these people have.

Right. Most people place POs in the millions of dollars and we're going, Hey, can we just buy a little bit to try? Right. Just buy a little bit to try. And they were like, yeah, sure. Worked out. And so what have you guys done on the marketing side? Because you guys were able to source a good product. You guys were able to, you know, obviously bite the bullet and order it, which has worked out well. It sounds to me like unlike other businesses where people have to really do a deep analysis, hey, is it a good time in my life? Is it this? Is that? You guys kind of felt more drawn to this for a number of different reasons that are normally outside the traditional factors of business. But from a marketing perspective, I know you guys have done more digital marketing. So I'd like to ask you,

have you guys seen an ROI from digital marketing? And do you think, what have you learned from that, from a Facebook, Instagram ads? What drives a return? What doesn't? I'm curious for gym owners who are interested in playing. Holy cow. I can spit about this for hours. Digital marketing is great if you have somebody that knows what they're doing with it. You can't just get any kid off the street,

any college kid from San Diego State and expect him to hit home runs right off the bat. I've been in the business for 20 years plus. So my background has been purely digital marketing for a lot of other companies, consulting as Sean said. But a couple of KPIs and key metrics you want to measure depending on your goals.

If you're selling a product, you probably want to concentrate on your return on ad spend, your ROAS. Meaning if I'm spending a dollar, am I making two, three, five, $30 every single time over and over again? Um, and how would you determine, how do you quantify that? So all of that's quantified through Google analytics and Facebook pixels. So you're able to track all your interactions with your sites, your purchases, your conversion metrics and everything like that through any type of basic free analytics platform.

So the platforms that you're pushing marketing on actually kick you back those numbers. So you know if you're successful or not. Right. So if you're doing Facebook ads as a gym, for example, you should be able to see that metric. You know, it's going to be hard getting people come through the door. But if you're a gym that sells products online, you can definitely do it. Getting people through the door, you can definitely add metrics, measurable metrics for offline conversions based on people coming through the door. You can quantify that. It's just a little bit harder,

but it's possible to do. Right. Versus e-commerce. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so what other type of things, I mean, being in the digital space for as many years as you're in, are there any tips, any things that you think about? I mean, because I know there's different algorithms and different things that social media uses. Anything that you do in particular you find really helpful for your business? Yeah, I think, I mean, this is kind of blanket statement for everybody is like, understand the platform that you're advertising on and what the goals of that platform are. For instance, Facebook and Instagram are community based. They want people interacting all the time.

So if you have a solid ad that comes out where people are sharing it, liking it, commenting on it, it looks native in feed. You're going to have 10 times more success than you will just punching a product out there saying 50% by now like you want to have the community built into your ad sets as well uh yeah yeah yeah i'm in full agreement so when someone sees on their feed it looks organic right yeah yeah and so okay so looking at that from a social metric uh i mean that's been one of the major factors that's allowed you guys to grow right has been your digital marketing side yeah absolutely so you dial in the product side with the collagen you get into the digital marketing side? Yeah, absolutely. So you dial in the product side with the collagen. You get into the digital marketing side.

Now, your next product line, you start to incorporate an MCT oil. When did you know it was the appropriate time to add in a new SKU? Because I imagine if you're just trying to find the financials to buy your first pallet of collagen, how did you know when it was the right time to add an MCT oil?

MCT powder. Funny, I would like to say- We shook the magic eight ball and it said. It started now. Yeah. It's not that far from the truth. So the goal was buy 1,000 tubs and then use the money from the 1,000 tubs to buy 2,000 tubs. Turn two to four, four to eight, eight to 16. That was literally the simplicity of this under no fixed timeline because we didn't know what we didn't know. We didn't know about sales velocity. We didn't know about ramping up on Amazon and our website. We just didn't know how well this mission of ours

was gonna be received. We knew we had the quality down. We felt 100% about that, but the other parts were unknowns. When we got to Christmas of our first year, it's going right into early 2018. So December, January, we ran out of product. We literally hit a spike in sales over the holidays. We didn't forecast for it because we've never done forecasting. And all of a sudden we sold 2X, 3X every day for a week and blew out

of our inventory. So we bridged the gap, we were very, very lucky with a nimble co-packer, and we'd already started a process of reordering. So fast forward a couple months, it happens again. And the reason that one happened is because we ran a very informal ad on Instagram, Facebook, and it spiked. Like there was a massive rise on that, like it went through the roof.

And again, ran out of product. So right after that we said, okay, we're a one trick pony. And now we know we can sell. Now we've got customer information and we've got a returning customer because collagen isn't the kind of thing you buy once you buy it every month or you buy it every couple of months. Like it's a, it's a lifestyle product for, for, for wellness. So, and you're tracking those emails and then you could do like drip campaigns against them to get them to come back to your site. That's something you guys think about a lot, right? That's something that we definitely implement a lot currently. How much value do you think an email list plays compared to social media? Um, God, email is great. At the end of the day, it's not the platform that you're pushing the

messaging on. It's how much you give a shit about your customer and your audience. Do you love them? Do you interact with them? Are you best friends with those people? And you, you see a lot of people, influencers like yourself and gym owners like yourself that are out there. They're just pushing the message and it's just like, come to our gym, but they don't give a shit. You'll get 400 comments on an Instagram post and you'll see the individual doesn't say one thing to any of those people. And you'll get somebody who's really good. That's interacting with every single one of the people that's commenting in the post. Those are the people that are successful. People inherently only want three things. They want to

be seen. They want to be right. And they want to be heard. If you can do any one of those things to any individual in your audience, you win win and having authenticity behind it 10x is that and that's it we actually give a shit about our people we really do and we answer every customer service email that comes through is one of the two of us or TJ's mom literally he's mom I love that I amMom.com. So TJ hired his mom. You guys hired your mom. Now, so you added in MCT powder to the lineup. We wanted to.

What is MCT? Oh, yeah. So MCT stands for medium chain triglycerides. It's just a fancy word for coconut oil. Right. You're just taking coconut oil, virgin pressed coconut oil. And that just means it's like cold pressed. And you spray it into's like cold pressed. And you spray

it into tapioca starch. So you get a clean root vegetable tapioca that has no nutritional value, but it's a great sponge. So oil just soaks right into it. And the byproduct of those two interacting is they have a really creamy texture, as you know from drinking in your coffee. So most of the time when people drink coconut oil, they make a bulletproof coffee. It tastes really greasy and oily, right? It can negatively affect like the taste of that coffee that you want to enjoy. Especially if you don't blend it and you try and spoon it, it just sits at the top. Yeah. Yeah. It's a mess and it'll settle poorly. Well, the powder really blends and dissipates well. And so your coffee tastes amazing. So we were playing around with the TJ.

We've both been tinkering around with bulletproof coffees for years. And we just never found one that tasted great. And so when we started the experiment, we're like, hey, this is a logical extension. Cognitive function, great natural energy source. Again, all natural ingredient so where collagen is your great protein this is your great energy so they're kind of going around in this like natural supplement sphere of like these two things complement each other really well and again i feel like we got really lucky we tried maybe eight different providers. And they were all made with different powders,

cornstarch, glucose syrup, like all these different ones. And they all tasted like crap. And then we landed on the supplier that we went to work with. They had all the right certificates, same as last time. Again, a friendly introduction from a friend.

And we tasted it and we gave it out to all of our friends to try. And everyone agreed universally, like, this is the stuff. And so we're like, okay, this will be product number two. We got energy over here. We have our protein over here. And these two things complement each other really well. And we're now in the coconut business and the collagen business.

And then we took the collagen and we diversified by introducing a smaller size, the 10 ounce bag, and a single serving packet. And we needed that because when we were only one product, we kept getting these rushes on it and running out. If we have four SKUs, we can spread the customer out a little bit.

And that was important. So do you see your average price? I mean, obviously by adding more SKUs, I imagine you see your average customer it's like like acquisition how much they're paying on your site per time go has gone up I imagine absolutely because most people are adding two products so have you seen that by adding additional SKUs obviously it's made a huge impact on the business yeah yeah and you've diversified out sure just collagen so I mean as far as a business is concerned you guys really did it like kind of

against the grain right you guys started a product that you weren't experts in you learned a lot about it but you knew a lot about digital marketing but you have a product that backs it up right and you guys seem to be good vibes i mean like i mean has there been something that through this experience you wish you had done differently so every day. Every day there's something I wish we did differently. But at the same time, personally, and I'm not going to speak for Sean on this, I'm incredibly excited and grateful to work on this business every day. It comes from a place of pulling instead of pushing. There's no fear motivation of like, holy shit, we're not going to make a paycheck or we're not going to be able to pay this vendor. There's always some sort of greater pull to the business.

And I think that's what glues this thing together so much because we're never at each other's throats in that aspect of like, oh, you didn't pay this vendor, you didn't do anything because there's something way bigger of helping somebody else out there. And have you guys been able to see, so I mean, do you know how much you guys have raised so far? Yeah, yeah, actually we just went over $70,000.

Okay. So the 10% rule for our first year landed just over $47,000. And then we just wrote the Q4 check, which was like $22,000. And then right on the heels of that, we're already tracking upwards to beat that. So you'll be at six figures pretty soon. Is there any part of you that looks at that six-figure check and wish maybe it wasn't leaving the company? No. Yeah. I mean, that's the right thing for the right reason. It all works out. Yeah. That was a whole spark, man. It's like, we write those checks. I get giddy. I'm like, we get to do it again. Yeah. And you're supporting

a lot of people and you're helping a lot of people out. And I think it's only going to grow exponentially. Well, guys, I like to keep these relatively short. I do think I just I get excited when I'm around people like you, because it makes me realize there's a lot of people doing things because they because they love it and for the right reasons. And it's nice to see them be successful. So I want to thank you for what you're doing. I'm obviously a huge fan. If people want to know more about your product, and I think there's going to be a new landing page that we could we could send people to, right? Yep.

Yep. So where should we send them to? Let's go to bubsnaturals.com slash Jason. Okay. That's it. And is there going to be something special we could offer them? There is, but they're going to have to go to that page to find out. I need to go to that page to find out what it is too.

Well, guys, so Bub's website slash Jason. Anything else on social media? Just Bub's Naturals? Everything is Bubz Naturals. So at Bubz Naturals for our Instagram. That's kind of our main home. We do a little bit of stuff on Facebook and then kind of spread it out from there. But those are those are jams.

And then Bubz Naturals dot com for our website. Perfect. Well, guys, hope everybody has a phenomenal day. And thank you again for being here. Thank you. Appreciate it. Cheers.