Determined Society with Shawn French | Adversity & Mindset - From Losing Everything to Building Redcon1: The Inspiring Story of Aaron Singerman

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

ABOUT THIS EPISODE What does real determination actually cost? Aaron Singerman has a story that most people only know one chapter of. He grew up in New Orleans, survived Hurricane Katrina, became an intravenous heroin and cocaine addict, lost people he loved to violence and overdose, and found his way out through fitness and bodybuilding. He broke into the supplement industry with nothing but hustle — became editor-in-chief at RxMuscle, co-founded Blackstone Labs at a kitchen table, and then left to launch REDCON1 in 2016. Within four years, REDCON1 went from 5 employees to 150+, expanded to 80+ countries, and landed on shelves at Walmart, GNC, Vitamin Shoppe, Dick's Sporting Goods, and military base exchanges worldwide. Then came the federal indictment. A guilty plea. Fifty-four months sentenced. Eleven months served at FPC Pensacola. He wrote his memoir from a prison cell, came home to his three sons, walked back into REDCON1, and never stopped building. In this episode, Shawn French sits down with Aaron for one of the most raw and honest conversations The Determined Society has ever had. This isn't a highlight reel. It's the version of determination that doesn't look good on social media — the kind that costs you everything before it gives you anything back. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT WE COVER → Growing up in New Orleans and early lessons from his father's clothing store → Hurricane Katrina — what forced displacement and starting over really feels like → Falling into intravenous heroin and cocaine addiction and the losses that followed → How bodybuilding and fitness became the lifeline that changed everything → Breaking into bodybuilding media at RxMuscle under Dave Palumbo → Co-founding Blackstone Labs and where things went wrong → Launching REDCON1 — and the military mission behind the name → Building a global supplement empire from scratch, twice → The federal indictment, guilty plea, and what prison actually taught him → Writing his memoir behind bars and the mindset that kept him going → Fatherhood, legacy, and raising three boys while rebuilding everything → What real determination looks like when no one is watching ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CONNECT WITH AARON SINGERMAN 📖 Memoir — RedCon Rising: And Falling. And Rising Again. 🌐 Website: https://aaronsingerman.com 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aaronsingerman/ 👤 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aaron.singerman/ 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-singerman-b6a03a35 🏋️ REDCON1: https://www.redcon1.com ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CONNECT WITH SHAWN FRENCH 🔗 All links: https://ln.run/AMgIt If you have ever been knocked down, counted out, or forced to start over — this episode is proof that rock bottom is not the end of the story. Leave a review, share this episode with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a conversation with someone who refused to quit. — Shawn French The Determined Society The Determined Society is hosted by Shawn French — a show for people who refuse to quit. Every episode goes beyond the highlight reel to explore the real stories behind resilience, reinvention, and the relentless pursuit of a life built on your own terms. Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all others.. If this episode moved you, share it with someone who needs to hear it — and leave a review. It helps more than you know. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I started injecting cocaine, then I was, I fell off. Oh, you were injecting cocaine? Yeah, I was injecting cocaine. Wow. Injecting 20 to 100 times a day, you're probably not going to eat all lot. Aaron Singerman, the founder of Redcon won, the fastest growing supplement brand on the planet. I'm here with him now, and you are going to love this story. One day I walk into the office, I literally get kicked out. And PJ and the other shareholders said, like, you're out.

And I took a day to be sad. And the next day, I got together with that same group of people we fired. And I said, fuck them. let's go in, start another company and figure out what we're going to do. We had a million dollar a month within the first year of the business. In the second year of the business, we passed up Blackstone's best year. In the third year, we did more than they did in the entire history of Blackstone in that year. So we were doing nine figures in revenue by the time that I was actually indicted.

We were doing well over $100 million in revenue. With everything you've been through in your life, the drug addiction, death, loss, prison, divorce, after all of that, what is being determined to actually mean to you? It means... What does it take to be determined? I'm not talking about the Instagram version. I'm not talking about the motivational poster version. I'm talking the real version.

The version you live when you're deep down in the gutter and you've lost everything and you've gained it back and you've lost it again. Today, I'm with a man that has founded multiple multimillion dollar companies that has gone through so many journeys in his life where he's been down and he's gotten back up and built amazing things. sitting here with Aaron Singerman, the founder of Redcon One, the fastest growing supplement brand on the planet. We're talking 80 plus countries. We have them in Dick Sporting Goods, Walmart, GNC, in this massive HQ. I'm here with him now, and you are going to love this story. Welcome to the Determined Society. Thank you for having me, Sean. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Such a pleasure to meet you, man. I've been using your products for years. Thank you. That's very cool. That's the first thing you told me when we met, and that's always very nice to hear.

you know, it's very complimentary. Each one of the products are kind of like your children. Yes. You know, in a way. And I'm always very proud of them. Whenever anybody comes up and says, that's like somebody tells you, your daughter's pretty or your son's handsome or smart,

it's kind of the same kind of feeling on a little less level, but still very, very nice. Hey, you know what? I mean, the thing is, man, the supplement industry, you never know what you're getting sometimes. You know, fillers, if it's third-party tested,

what's actually in the product. And the thing that I love about your product, it's very transparent. Yes. You know, I can literally read what's in the, what's in the canister there for me, right? And for me, when I chose Redcom one, it was based on the ideology. I want to stick to Whole Foods as much as humanly possible, but I don't want to eat all day. And I know I need to supplement protein if I'm going to get the 200 grams of protein every day, right?

And so when I saw the MRE, and I saw it at the local GNC, I'm like, Whole Food protein. I'm like, I'm all in. Yes. I love it. Yeah, that's been a very successful product. I mean, all the products, you know, we've, we've had. We've came from the initial 13 products that we started almost exactly 10 years ago, we're like a week or so away from 10 year anniversary to the products of today,

which is went a lot more towards beverage. And it's been quite a journey. But that one I'm very proud of because it's different in the market of a lot of the sameness. In a very competitive space, we created something unique and a product that didn't exist before, which is really tough to do in our space. And then it's lasted the test of time. It's been around for seven years. And people are buying it at a very,

high rate, or it's still one of our, it is our, probably our number three product. So very exciting. I appreciate you saying that. Absolutely, total war number one. Total war is number one for years and years and years, but total war has dropped down a little bit where the Emery Light family has picked up a lot of the, so we have Emery bars, we have Emery powder drink that you did now. That's Emory Light that you like.

And then the Emery, the whole food product with the carbohydrate. So those three together, if you're looking at a product family, that's the number one product family. It's amazing, man. What you built here is incredible. And, you know, like I mentioned before, I mean, listen, everybody knows a chapter of your story. But I want the whole book, man. You know, I want the whole book.

I want to understand you. So let's go back to New Orleans. Your dad owned a clothing store. Your grandfather's were war veterans. Talk to me about what it was actually like growing up in the Singerman household. It was great. It was great. You know, it's funny because you don't know what you don't know.

We certainly didn't, I didn't grow up in a fluent household. My grandparents who started a lot of the business, my grandfather, Charlie, and started multiple businesses with his brothers, his two brothers. And before I was born, they were very, very successful. And my dad, when he finished school in Texas, he came home, started working for his dad. And unfortunately, that was kind of the beginning in the 80s of when the singular store owned by a single operator started to get harder and harder into the 90s. And then eventually, you know, when the Bina Republics of the world came into the malls,

single owners for like men's clothing stores, women's purses stores. They owned at one point a few drug stores. This is before Walgreens, CVS, you know, etc. came to town. And then once you started having these chains coming to the local malls and everything, it got tougher and tougher. So by the time my dad, by the time I was a teenager, the store started dropping off.

And then Hurricane Katrina happened. And obviously that was kind of the end of my dad's retail business. when my grandparents, my grandfather and his brothers passed away, it got harder by then. But it was a great childhood. I said all that to, if I reversed back, I felt like I had a really great childhood. I had very loving, supportive parents. My mom and dad were both great. I came from a very close Jewish family.

And I felt very supportive and loved. I have a little sister. And I really, when I look back on my life, all the troubles that have been through. I can't relate any of them to or connect. or correlate any of that with my folks other than the fact that my folks were very, very, very nice and completely oblivious.

They just didn't know. So like any of the trouble that I got into that either that befell me or that I caused on my own was never because they did something wrong or I felt some kind of whole or I wasn't loved or supported. I was all of those things.

They were very, very good parents. So growing up, I never had any childhood trauma or anything bad other than the typical stuff that every kid deals with. Sure. So I would say it was a 9 out of 10 childhood. They did the best that they could with what they had.

Amazing, dude. When I go back and look, I visited New Orleans recently with my girlfriend, and I showed her my home and where I came from, it looks like it's crazy because I drive around. I'm like, this place is a dump. I'm like, holy shit, this place is a dump. But to me, as a kid, I never thought that. I never knew that.

I never was around Rolls-Royce and Mercedes even was. Mercedes and New Orleans is a big deal, let alone a Rolls-Royce Ferrari. I didn't know people who had it. I didn't see it. I didn't want it. There was no internet, so I didn't know this is something that people have. I was like, it seems like we're doing pretty good.

So I never had any of that growing up and all good. It's really funny you say that because a couple of years ago for the summer, I took my wife and my three children to my hometown in Concord, California. And I was raving about this place, man. Aaron, I was like, fuck, this place is the most amazing thing that you've ever seen in your life. Wait until you see this place. And we rolled through on the way to my aunt's house and just this is where I went to school. this is where we used. I'm like, this place is a shithole.

Yeah. How long had it been since you visited? Man, I left California in 2007 or 2008. I had not been, I'd been back to California, but mostly L.A., if I'm doing shows or something like that, never to my hometown. And to your point, it's like you look at it and it's like, wow. It's hard to believe. But it's where we grew up. Sure. So I say it looks like a shithole, but it's still right here. Oh, yeah. You drive around and you remember everything. And New Orleans in general for me is a very special place. Not just because I grew up there, but because of the culture.

And, like, you know, being, it's obviously the most historic place in America. I believe, you know, there's sister cities like Charleston and other places that are historic. But New Orleans, you walk through the French Quarter and there's just no place like it. No. There's sure shit. No, there just isn't. So, like, it was a great place to grow up and I still feel very nostalgic for it. When I go back, it still feels like home.

Yeah, no. Awesome. You mentioned Hurricane Katrina, and as you know, I told you, I spent four years in Louisiana playing baseball at LSU. You just missed it almost, right? I just, I know, I missed it. Yeah. What year was that again? That was on 2005, August to 2005.

Yeah, so I missed it by two years. Yeah. And I remember where I was. I was at my friend Stephanie Carrasco in Sal's house. And I saw this on the TV and I just, my heart broke because I have a very close connection with Louisiana. It's everything to me. Sure. I love getting good supposed to think about the Baton Rouge in Louisiana.

Sure. And to see everybody displaced and thinking about all the refugees that got moved to Houston because they lost everything, you know, and you were one of those families that had to be moved. You know, you were a refugee. Sure. You know, you lost everything in New Orleans. How did that set you up, I mean, for later on in life? Because you've lost a lot in your life. How did it prepare you for the things that were going to come on in the future? You know, I don't know how it prepared me. I mean, at that time of my life, I was 25 years old in 2000. five and things weren't going particularly well at the time. So, like, things were going great. So what I remember is, is that, you know, I was there. I was waiting it out. So my parents had left. And I was like, you know what, I'm going to stick it out and wait. I've been through so many

hurricanes in my life. They really end up almost always being nothing. Yeah, sure. So I'm like, it's no big deal. I was a kid, I look forward to hurricanes because you get off school and we can play in the water. I was like, this is great. Why are we, why are, like, what's the fear? everybody's leaving and then Mirre Nagin at the time came on the TV and said if you have a car and you're not leaving I want to let people know you're going to die like people are going to die I do remember that he's like you people are going to die and I was like okay I've never heard that before and so I had the reason why full transparency the reason why I didn't want to leave is because at the time I was addicted to oxycottons and and I had no supply to buy oxycotton

in Houston. So I was like, I'm going to wait this out because if I leave, how I'm going to get super dope sick? I don't know what I'm going to do. So I was really reticent to leave and leave my supply of drugs. I mean, that's the reason. I didn't tell my parents that, but that's the truth. So I wanted to stay in my apartment so that I had my connection. So when he said you're going to die, I'm like, okay, like, time to roll. Yeah, I got to go. I had a car and thank God I had the forethought to fill up, somebody must have told me to do this, fill up a bunch of extra gas full of gas, you know, the red plastic ones, and I put them in the back of my, at the time, very old Ford Explorer.

I put them in the back, and I packed up and took off to Houston, and normally it's a four-hour drive. It took me about 20 hours due to the traffic, and the amount of cars that stalled out because they had no gas. And strictly because I had the gas tanks, I was able to, because all the gas stations were all out of gas. So it was like a war zone. And so I made it to Houston in 20 hours of driving.

And then I posted up initially at my parents' friends' house. And then I eventually got a FEMA apartment that they provided a FEMA motel room. And then eventually a female apartment. So I don't know. I think that, you know, if I learned anything, if I go back and learn anything, it's that, you know, people can be adaptable. I can be adaptable. Like bad things happen, you know, it seemed like what am I going to do?

And this has happened many times in life in different. circumstances on drugs, not on drugs, where it seems like the end of the world, and it's really not, you know, like there's always an opportunity to be resilient, to be determined and come back. And this happened to me many, many times my life, probably more times than I would like. Yeah, man. But it's all, it's like, you know, like Rocky says, it's getting up, right? Do you know, knocked down as a part of life. Yeah. I mean, you know, I appreciate your transparency and openness about your drug use and your addiction, because I think it tells a story, you know. Um, you know, um,

You know, but what spurred it on? I know there was a death of a good friend and then a violent death of a girlfriend. Is that what started the usage? No, I was doing it way before that. It started the usage was, I mean, like, I'm going to, I have to extrapolate out what started because I can't, like I said, and that's what I wanted to start with, by saying, I don't have any demons. I don't have, I wasn't molested by an uncle or some terrible thing.

It didn't befall me. Nobody was picked on or bullied as a kid. My parents loved me. You know, that's the important start to start to start. Sure. Because usually somebody that has my history has some kind of hole they're filling. Yeah, like a foster child. No one loved them or something like that.

Or you don't feel good about yourself. You don't have any confidence. I had of all that stuff. I had all those pieces. That's why I think that I can draw it all back to you. As a teenager, I was really into bodybuilding. So from the time I was 13, everybody would be dropped off after school at their house from the bus. Or they'd go to sports and then would get picked up and dropped off by the parents to the house, whatever.

I would go to the French rear of spa, which was the gym. So from the time I was 13, whether I was doing something in sports, or I was getting dropped off by the bus, I would get dropped up at the gym. At the time I was 13, every single day. And I loved it. Now, I wanted to be like Arnold, and I read every book on it. I was obsessed with it. And so by the time I was 16, I started taking anabolic steroids.

I ordered them from Europe on the Internet. This is before people were even using the Internet. So this is in 1996. You're a pioneer. Well, I was addicted to it. I was a pioneer, a little bit of a steroid pioneer. So I was addicted to the internet before I was addicted to bodybuilding. I was addicted to the computers.

So from the time I was 10 to the time I was 13 when I discovered bodybuilding, I was all about internet relay chad, you know, bulletin boards, computer programming. But for my barmeats, all I wanted was an Apple computer. It was the thing. Well, that's like a simple thing. That's all I wanted, but it was $8,000. So it wasn't that simple. But I wanted the best Apple computer.

So I was super into it. And then when I discovered bodybuilding, some of that, session, which I definitely have, shifted from computers towards bodybuilding. And then how do you be the best of bodybuilding? As soon as I realized that all these guys were taking steroids that I looked up to, the Ronnie Coleman, Sean Ray, Kevin Livroney, Doreen Yates, that I followed. I'm like, oh, they're all on steroids. I need to get steroids. Yeah. So I used the internet to find steroids from Europe. I paid with it with Western Union, and I got them shipped to my house. And I, myself and two other friends, took the Sustanon

Ready Jax with the humongous needle which I didn't know. It comes with a 20 gauge needle which is a huge like harpoon and we went to his spearfishing bro he went to his bathroom and I was the first one to go

and I stuck it in my butt I was shaking and sweating I stuck in my butt and injected it and I pulled out blood literally shot out because it was such a big hole shot out

and the other two guys like I'm not doing it I'm not doing it because the hell you are and yeah that's right and I think that that that level being able to do that as a teenager, and I don't like to say steroids or a gateway drug necessarily, but I think for me, being able to do that to achieve a result kind of lends

to the fact that you would do other things. So even though it's not directly, they're not directly correlated, but then later on, around 18 years old, there became a drug that got really popular in bodybuilding called Nubane, which was a narcotic antagonist. So it's not really a narcotic and they give it to women who are pregnant if they don't want to give the pregnant woman a pain, a narcotic pain medicine. It got popular in bodybuilding where people were saying, if you take this, you can go past the pain threshold. Oh, Lord.

You'll train harder. So dangerous. And I was like, yeah, it was ridiculous. And I was like, I need that. Yeah, exactly. So I went to Mexico. I got that. And I started taking it as injectable pain cover.

And so even though it's nowhere near as strong as an oxycodon or something like that, it's just like that ability to do that and that level of extreme that I have. That's for sure that I have. Like I said, I definitely can be. very, when I want to do something, I just do it. I figure out a way to do it at a ton. And so, even when it's bad. And so back then, you know, that was focused on bodybuilding and what goes around

bodybuilding is, unfortunately, steroids and drug use. And so that's, that's, if I tie it back, long answer to the question is I think that the steroids in trying to find a pharmaceutical edge also can make you have the ability to go, well, if this makes me feel better, if I feel more excited or I'm more energy or whatever, then it's doing the same thing. Big muscles, big energy, big whatever, you know. Yeah, then like those types of things where you just, it's a slow fade, right? It's like, okay, the steroids, which I mean, I think every athlete and I think every man that,

I mean, I'm on HRT. It's the same thing, right? It's kind of like one of those things where it becomes such a normal thing to stick yourself and, okay, now there's an injectable painkiller, right? Okay, let me go do that now. It opens the gate for, I mean, there's a teenager. Absolutely. Absolutely. Your brain is not fully formed until you're 25.

25, yeah. So you have all those years for you to kind of like open that gateway to try other things. Yeah. And there was other types of usage, right? There was heroin and- I did everything. Yeah. Only things I didn't do was crack because I felt like crack was, I was like that.

So beneath me. I'm not doing that. That in Crystal Meth, because Crystal Meth, the people that I saw that did it, they acted so weird and then they looked bad and I was too vain. I was like, I'm not going to ruin myself. Yeah. because the people that I saw physically do it, they didn't look good. No, no, they shrink up pretty quickly.

You shrink up? I was probably the most jacked heroin addict because I was still 240 and eating my meals. Are you serious? Yeah, going to the gym. That's discipline, man. Yeah, no matter what, except when I started doing cocaine, I started injecting cocaine, then I was, I fell off. Oh, you were injecting cocaine. Yeah, I was injecting cocaine.

Wow. Yeah. So the injecting cocaine, and if you're doing that, you know, injecting 20 to 100 times a day, you're probably not going to eat a whole lot. No, you're not. You're not going to the gym, it all falls apart. That was the only time in my adult life that I didn't go to the gym and train at least four days a week was because you just can't focus on anything else. What was the time frame in that period for you?

That was in Houston. That was why I got to Houston. A year or two years? That entire time period in Houston, I was there a total of almost three years, two and a half years before I moved away. I met my future wife, future ex-wife, direct wife. We all have one of those, right? Yes, yes, yeah. So once I got on much stable or footing while I was in Houston,

I met a different girl, not my ex-wife. Amy, who helped me get off everything. I had an ex-girlfriend, another girlfriend, die in front, or die. I had a friend die in front of me, and then like you mentioned earlier, I had a friend die in front of me. And then that ex-girlfriend that was with me, that period of time, which is a whole crazy story. She ended up dying, and I was like, okay, I need to like, this is like, I'm on a path

where I'm either going to be one of these people that die, where I'm going to get off of it. And at the time, I decided using that same level of intensity and dedication that I used to go find drugs or to, you know, whatever, I used that to find my passion and pursue the world of bodybuilding in the media sense, instead of the competitive bodybuilding sense. You were chief and editor for RX. Was it RX? Yeah, so RX muscle. Well, I started off having nothing where I was, my parents were helping me pay for the apartment once I got off drugs.

It was $500 a month in the middle of the most shitty neighborhood in Houston, Texas. And once I got off of everything, I decided that I had to pay my bill, so I became a personal trainer. But I transitioned from that into focusing all of my free time and all of my energy and all my focus, into trying to get into the world of bodybuilding. Because I realized I looked around and I said, you know, obviously, honestly, at the time, I think I was 27, 27-year-old, 6-foot-2 Jewish guy, I'm not going to be the next Arnold or Ronnie Coleman, right? It's just not going to happen. And if that was even possible, which it probably never was,

I would need to have been dedicated from the time I was a teenager and never give a knob, never having this other stuff. And even then, it's probably incredibly, incredibly unlikely, genetically. but there were a lot of people in bodybuilding surrounding the competitive space. So I thought I could write articles, you know, I could do podcasts, I could do media, I can interview people, I can speak well. I thought I could get in here in some form and fashion, even if it doesn't mean being on stage. So I focused all of this crazy intensity into trying to figure out how to do that. So what I did was I wrote articles and I would send them to muscle, I send them to everywhere,

from muscle and fitness, muscle and fitness hers. At the time, there was Flex Magazine, there was muscular development. So I sent them to everybody. Free articles, I would write them, and I would send them, this is for free, put it in your magazine,

give me a chance. And then I would write to every podcast host because there was only a few at the time. And I'd write to each one of them and ask them, you know, or try to interact with them to get them to notice me. And then one of the bigger things they did was on the bulletin boards

that were popular at the time, like muscular development, get big, there's a whole slew of them. I would be the only guy using my real name. So everybody else would put a picture of whatever they want, you know, a girl with her titty's out and call themselves Big Swole 69. I was Aaron Sanger with my own headshot.

And I posted, I'm not exaggerating, tens of thousands of times. Wow. Trying to get a notice by somebody. And eventually I did. And that led from one thing to another. I was contributing feature writer for Muscle Mag. I traveled all over the world from India to all over the place, doing articles for them. Some of them are on the walls in here in the conference room.

And through doing that, I got all kinds of other opportunities, and I just chased every opportunity with everything I had. And was able to create a life where I was able to pay my bills and travel the world for free and cover the world of bodybuilding, which was a dream from true. You know what I'll tell you, first and foremost, is a lot of people, most people, right, not us. Yeah.

would stop, right? I'm not being noticed. This is obviously not my path. But the discipline, man, the determination to continue in your process to continue with the reachouts. And then one day someone notices you, you record over 300 plus podcast, right?

And then you're covering bodybuilding. When you were doing all that with bodybuilding, what did that teach you about entrepreneurship, branding, and people? Well, the one thing I can tell you that taught me for sure, which was, well, first off, the don't give up is huge, right? I tell the kids, try your hardest, don't give up, right?

Those are two of the senior rules that we talk about every night. I go over what were the rules. And so these two of the rules being those two, that's an incredibly important thing is, you know, that it's going to be hard. And it was not easy to get noticed. I wrote tens of thousands of posts. I wrote hundreds of articles. I wrote hundreds of emails. I put a lot of time in to get to a place where I was considered an authority.

in the world of bodybuilding. And it happened in a relatively short time. In five years, I went from literally nobody to the main, one of the main faces and voices in the world that I loved, paying my bills, not making a fortune by any means, but paying all my bills, saving a little money,

and doing it in the thing I love, I think that the big thing that there's a few lessons that taught me, of course, don't give up try your hardest. People will notice if you're a try your artist. Even if you're McDonald's pushing the broom, if you work your ass off, If somebody's going to notice, you're going to become a system manager, if you kick ass as a system manager, somebody's going to notice to make you manager.

It just keeps happening. You do that. You get a franchise. Yeah, before you know it, before you know it, you get a franchise. I mean, it sounds hard, and yeah, it will take a long time. But I guarantee you, whether in here, I notice. When somebody here longer or working harder or producing more results, they get noticed. So that's part of life.

I worked my ass off. When I covered the world of body building, I would shoot the video myself. I would set up the interview, just like these cameras. and I would interview the competitors. I would rush back to our room to edit the video, to upload the video as fast as I could onto the site, to tag it, to put it onto the webpage, and then to share it on all of our various social media

that existed at the time. And other people that did the same thing as me for flex and for a bunch of different outlets, muscular vellum at the time, they would say, please slow down. They'd be like, what are you doing? You're making us look bad. I'm not slow it down.

I'm like, sorry. So they hated me. They didn't like, well, this guy's all by himself. Because you remind him that they're not doing it. No, no, they don't like, because what happened is I would beat them getting the product up. And so everybody else at the other magazines, like, why is this guy beating you every time? But that was noticed. It was noticed by everybody. It wasn't just noticed by people in the media space. It was by the judges. It was noticed by the athletes. It was noticed by the sponsors.

It was noticed by, and I was able to make a lot of money in connections by working the hardest, by visibly working artists. The other thing is that by going to all these places, I met everybody. So the amount of connections that I was able to build by going to all these places and people seeing that I'm working my ass off and then introducing myself being kind, being nice, being caring person, trying to help people out. And then, you know, being, you know, if I can be, being collaborative and trying to be helpful whatever I can.

So that was really big. Meeting people was big. And being places, I tell people a lot, you can't substitute. I know now it's a virtual world. But you can't substitute meeting somebody, looking in the eye, shaking their hand, and making an impression. If I meet somebody in a Zoom, man,

I can't tell you if I'm going to remember them or not, you know. That's the thing, Aaron. And that's why I love, because I used to do this show virtually. And it was fine. It was what I could afford at the time. It was something that, it was just a natural progression, right?

And then when I was able to get in person, like sitting here with you, if we did a virtual interview, we wouldn't have the connection we have right now. We got to go an amazing tour of your HQ, your warehouse, everything, every single operational thing you have going on in here, we now have connected,

because of that. And when you don't get in the room, I'm talking about people in general. So people watching and listening, take big notice on this. You have to get in the damn room. Yeah, I agree. It is a virtual world.

But if you continue to think it's virtual and not get, you know, heart to heart with somebody face-to-face, you're going to lose. Yeah, I can tell you firsthand with Redcon 1, when we have a new manufacturer or a new partner, I make a point to fly out there

and see the facility, meet the people, and it goes a long way because I often will have to call them and tell them, hey, I need this to be moved up in line. I'm desperate to run this. I might need to pay them late. Whatever happens, you know, I want a discount because I'm buying so much.

Yeah. You know, it's very difficult to call somebody to ask them a favor if you have no relationship. Exactly. If you're text messaging them and you have no relationship and I text them, hey, we just ran out of Emery Light, Vanilla. I needed to be run not two weeks and you're going to be like, sorry. Yeah.

No relationship. No, you don't even know you. Yeah. So it's, it's, everything is a relationship business and don't think that you can substitute a text message for a for in-person visit. 100% man. I mean, even a phone call to you sometimes. I know people are busy. Phone call is definitely better than a text message in email. There's no question. Absolutely. You know, and sometimes like someone will call me and I'm not able to get back

to them right away. But when I do, I say, thanks for the call. Yeah. Thank you for actually calling and making this personal because we want to hide behind our text message and our DMs and our emails. And that doesn't get anything done, man. Doesn't have a needle. I agree. You know, everything you've done, man. So, you know, you're in Houston and then eventually, you started Blackstone Labs with your best friend at the time, PJ Braun. You know, take us back at that kitchen table, man. So, reversing a little bit back from there, at the time, through Arx Muscle, I had made a lot of business relationships.

And at the time back, like when, I guess when that started happening, the impetus behind that was I had gotten my ex-wife now, Darylle pregnant. We got pregnant with Asher, who is my 13-year-old boy now. and when we got pregnant, I realized she was a personal trainer, a corporate trainer at the, kind of like a big call center. She'd train the C-level people. That's cool. She was making $5,000 a month-ish. I was making probably $6,500, $6,000 a month somewhere around there, not a whole lot of

money. We were living in a rental house and we're making all the bills. We're saving a little money or good life. But as soon as she got pregnant, I was like, oh, shit, like I can't make $6 grand a month and live in Boka and have a son, it's impossible, you know. Even then, now it's really impossible. Yeah, now good luck. Yeah.

So it was like I needed to pick up the pace. And so I felt for the first time, really, ever in my life, like pressure to perform for somebody other than me. And so as soon as she really got pregnant, I was like, okay, I need to start figuring out how to make money. And so I told Dave, who was the owner of RX muscle, I need to make money. He said, sell advertising. And so he said, I'll give you 10% of whatever money you bring in because it's, it's, it's not real estate, right? You know, if it's, we can make stuff up.

I would make up new packages and I would sell people on digital ads. Digital ads, there's no cost of goods, right? So 10% was a good deal for him, for sure. There's a good deal for me because it's extra income. The $6,500 a month, or $6,000 a month, you know, I could really supplement that quickly. So within a first few weeks, I was bringing in a few hundred thousand dollars a month in sales. because I was felt pressure. And because of that,

I started reaching out to all of the supplement company owners that I had met over the years and I have a reason to talk to them about business. And several of them ended up hiring me to help them with marketing. One of which was called Ironbag Labs and they gave me $4,000 a month

to be their marketing director. And so I started kind of piling up all these gigs. You know, at one point I was the marketing director of that. I was a marketing director of a med spa, testosterone placement therapy. one a orbit nutrition.com a few other ones this is all at one time yeah all at one time Jesus all at one time so I went from making six thousand dollars a month to making like

$40,000 a month within six months before the baby was born and all my wedding because we got married we got married right before the baby came so we were she was seven months pregnant in our wedding pictures which she did not love but we wanted to get married my parents and her parents both Jewish parents were like insistent yeah she wanted to wait till she had the baby and she looked good again, but they were like, you have to do it. So we did it, which was a fine thing. It was a good thing to do anyway. It was a nice wedding. Anyway, so at the wedding, the guy who owned Iron Mag Labs was there, and he told PJ and I that are coupon codes, because he had been paying B4 a month and PJ four grand a month, and I had

brought PJ on as our main athlete. I told him you have to hire this guy. Even though PJ certainly was not worth $4,000 a month at the time, I was like, this is my best friend. Yeah, of course. You got to bring him on. He just got to. fired from species, Dave Pumbo's company, who owned Arks Muscle also in a supplement company. He had fired him because he didn't think it was worth $1,000 a month. He definitely was worth more than that. But I told Robert, four grand a month is a steal. The guy brought him on.

And me and PJ went to work selling this guy's supplements. So at my wedding, he told me, I want to really thank you guys. You know, your guy's coupon code, because back at the time, this was all coupon codes. PJ 10 and Aaron 10% off. Yeah. Our coupon codes had generated $200,000 that month for him. That month. that month. And I was like, whoa. And like he told us, probably not realizing that my mind

immediately went to, what are we doing doing this for the sky. Yeah. You know, if we could make $200,000 a month on his website with 10% off on a high margin product, a capsule product. What can we do? What could we do? And so that was kind of the start where I told PJ right then and there, like, we got to start doing this on our own. And then an opportunity came. There was the designer steroid control act of 2012, which went to the house. And it was basically to make pro-hormones illegal. It was a list of pro-hormones they thought were going to become illegal. And Robert DiMaglabs, who made a bunch of products in this category, two specifically, one called SuperdmZ, one called Methadrylidrol Extreme.

These two products were going to be on the list. And there's a guy named Rick Collins, who was a lawyer, a nutraceutical dietary supplement lawyer amongst other things, who said death and taxes and this law are certainties. This is definitely going to happen. So Robert, Robert, this is, we had, we had not had Asher yet. It was like Asher was any day now. And Robert told me he's going to dispose of all this stuff because he wants to get ahead of the law. So it had passed the House. It had not passed the Senate.

And it hadn't been signed into law by President Obama. So I was like, huh. So I was like, you know, thinking about it, thinking about it. So I said, cold him, I said, how many bottles do you have? He has, 5,500 bottles of Subram Z. And I have 2,500 bottles, I think, of methyl. to control extreme. And I'm like, okay. And I was like, you know, would you be interested in giving them to me? If you give them to me, I will sell them, I'll figure out of way to sell them.

I'll give you all of the cost of goods back, send me the invoices. I'll pay you back for whatever they cost. And I'll split the profits with you, 33% you, 33% me, 33% PJ. Peanut buttered the whole thing. And say, give it to me. Give it to me. And that way you don't lose your money because if you destroy it, it's gone. You're destroying it. So we ended up taking these products. He shipped them to my rental house on St. Andrews here in Boca. And it was like piles of boxes. The UPS people were obviously angry because they piled it up in front of the door where you could not, like, it was like a wall. And we saw all of it. And obviously, you know, whatever it was, 7500 bottles, you don't think is that much until you see the boxes. And it's like 50 boxes that are like the size of half a human box. Yeah. Yeah. And they're piled up.

And so we bring them in. We created a website called superdmz.com. We started marketing. it using some digital marketing, which was very rudimentary at the time. Me and PJ's personal brands. And we ended up selling all of the products in about 60 days, which was way faster than we expected. And then something crazy happened. The end of the year happened. And that didn't go through the house and Obama did not sign into law. So we're like, whoa. It was like, so me and PJ made 80,000 bucks each. Robert made 80,000 bucks. And he made all all of his costs of goods back. So I had 80 grand in my pocket for the first time on my life. PJs 80 grand. We had a little other money saved up. Maybe I had 120 grand is

maybe PJ has a little less and we were like whoa and PG's like I'm gonna buy Mercedes. Like don't buy Mercedes. We need to put our money back. We have to re-up. We gotta get more. There's no way like if we'll never do this again. Like we'll never we're never gonna like generate that kind of money. There's so much demand for this product. Now the product's not illegal. So I went to Robert and said, listen, let me have the IP the super DMZ and the methyl draw extreme IP and we'll create a new company that you, so you still have Iron Mag Labs, you still own it, we'll create a new company, whatever new co is, you have to make it up, to sell these two products. And we'll keep selling

them until they become illegal, and before they become illegal, we'll discontinue. And Robert, so I said, you're completely passive, you don't have to do anything. You get 33%, you even have to put up the money for the new products. We'll put up all the money for the products. So you're making 33% of every dollar we make any profit. Here's giving your IP. Yeah, for here until perpetuity. So he goes, great. I'm in. So we started, we went to the kitchen table and went to SunBiz to register her name. And we kept thinking of names, thinking of names. And I said, let's just come up with two words like black and stone sounds hardcore.

And I never heard of like blackstone financially or that at the time. I didn't have any money to invest. So I was like, these are cool words. Because it didn't matter anyway. Because all we're doing is selling these two products. It wasn't going to be a brand. There's going to be selling products. Because these products are not going to be there forever anyway.

So we start selling the products. and the law doesn't get reintroduced. And we're like, holy shit, you know. And the product starts selling and we start making money. You know, it's like, it's very passive. So it once we start going, you know, it was like we're making, each making like $1,000 a day and then $2,000 a day and $3,000 a day. And we were at, I'll always remember this. We were at the Bahamas, me and PJ and his girlfriend at the time, my ex-wife.

And that day, we're at the Bahamas. And we made $5,000 each that day at the Bahamas. Wow. And I was like, this is fucking crazy. That's nuts, David. So we're in the Bahamas, making $5,000 a day, and we're not doing anything. Mm-hmm. And it's not illegal.

And it's not illegal. It's not illegal. And so we started adding products. So we made a pre-workout product and other products, and we kept adding on it before you know it. It became a brand. And the first year, we did like a million something in that first calendar year. And then we did three, and then we did eight. and then we did in 20, 19, and then I was gone.

So where did you go wrong? With me and PJ? Or just, no, the whole thing. Nothing went wrong. The indictment. So none of that happened when I was there. I left the business in 2016 in right in the beginning of 2016. We had a big partnership dispute, huge fight.

I ended up leaving the business. I sold my shares of the business. So I was completely out in 2016. I started Redcon in May of 2016, hence the 10-year anniversary coming up now. And so I was completely out. When the FDA rated Blackstone in March of 2017, I had been gone for a year. So I never thought really, like, I never seriously considered the fact that I could even be in trouble. Because in 2017, I'm long gone.

I don't own the shares. I have nothing to do with it. I didn't know what it was about. So I left Blackstone because me and PJ weren't getting along at all. And our investor who was there at the time in Blackstone didn't get along me either. And they thought it would be better if I were to leave and PJ were to run things. And obviously now, looking back, that wasn't the right move for the investor or for PJ or really anybody but me. Yeah.

It worked out good for me. Nobody else did it work out good for. I mean, thank God it worked out exactly the way it did. It's funny. So that's a great example of where anybody else would say you got knocked down, right? Or, you know, like life was tough. I was making, you know, $300,000 a month in this business. It's insane.

A high margin business. I'm only 1,33%. I'm making a lot of money. And I was having a great time. And I was on a great time with PJ. We were having a lot of fights at the time. But, like, it seemed like everything was going great. And then one day I walk into the office, I literally get kicked out.

And PJ and the other shareholder said, like, you're out. And it was a whole drama ensued with this. eventually I was able to stay on because they couldn't kick me out. I got lawyers involved. I owned 50% of the voting rights. So I had half the board seats. So this investor, when he came on, he had no board seats. He had no voting rights.

So it was really 50-50. So we were deadlocked. PG wanted me out. I wanted to stay in. They had to get rid of me. They'd buy me out, essentially. So it ended up working out wonderfully because even though when I left that day, the office, after being kicked out, I, like, couldn't believe, like, I was, like, in shell

shock that this could happen. that they would want me out. Like, I'm doing everything. I'm the brains of the operation. You want me to be out of the... And you brought him there. I mean, you literally... I brought him there.

You see what I'm saying? No, I did. I involved him in the business. That's, you know, like, ultimately, it is what it is. But so at the moment, you can imagine feeling devastated, calling my ex-wife,

my wife at the time, and her being like, this is impossible. How could this happen? People are crying. My father-in-law, my assistant, my nanny's husband,

anybody associated directly with me, P.J. that day, all these people walk out. They're like, what happened to my job or my career or whatever? I know. And I took a day to be sad. I probably drank too much. And the next day, I got together with that same group of people we fired.

And I said, fuck them. Let's go and start another company and figure out what we're going to do. And that was the beginning of Redcon. We quickly started Redcon one. And if it wasn't for PJ kicking me out, I would never have started Redcom. I would have stayed at Blackstone. I would have been there when the feds came. I would have not created a successful business,

much, much more successful than Blackstone ever was. We had a million dollar a month within the first year of the business. We passed up, in the second year of the business, we passed up Blackstone's best year. In the third year of the business, we've more than doubled their total revenue of their best year. In the third year of business, we did more than they did in the entire history of Blackstone in that year.

So, and significantly more. So we were doing nine figures in revenue. by the time that I was actually indicted. We were doing well over $100 million in revenue. The year was indicted. And if I wouldn't have been kicked out of Blackstone, which seemed like a horrible thing, I wouldn't have had the Red Con success,

all the money along the way, because Blackstone nose-dived after that, after the indictment, really after the FDA raid, it nosedived. So this thing that on the outward, anybody looking out in, from the outside would say, wow, this is really bad.

His life, he's fucked. But because I got immediately back up and started focusing on creating additional successes as opposed to focusing on how fucked up it was that I got kicked out of the business like saying like I brought this fucking guy in and like I'm so sad and how did this happen to me I didn't even think about it. You handled it like a winner not a victim no I wasn't a victim I immediately started other company the company immediately started winning and because of that before I before I went to prison I closed a private equity deal which is you I know it's in the beginning of the

chapter of the book I signed so I made generational wealth but because PJ kicked me out of the business Instead of being there, like literally in spite of it, I guess you can say, being kicked out. I figured out a way to create generational wealth for my family and my kids in a period of time where most people would have been devastated because of leaving the business, but also getting indicted by the federal government, the impending potential prison sentence, and all the bad things that happened along the way. Yeah. That's why when I opened up the show talking about not the Instagram version, not the motivational poster version, the real version of determination, most people would have taken a breath.

Most people would have lost momentum. And a lot of other people would have sat there and blamed external forces for the shortcoming or the adverse moments they're about to have. You looked at it and like, this is the best thing that's happened. Because of this, I have generational wealth. That is a special quality. Yes. Very.

Yeah, I've heard that before. That it's almost like, it's almost like I don't really have the ability to, feel sorry for myself or look back at things when they happened and like dwell on them. I'm able to move past things very, very quickly. Which, you know, I've also been told that that could be a negative by people, but it's served me very well. Yeah.

You know, I'm talking about relationships with anything, you know, when things go south and I can't see a way out, I can't figure out a way to repair it. Yeah. You know, then I'd move on. And then I don't look back. I don't get sad about the past. I can reminisce every once in a while, like now, we're reminiscing.

But I really don't go and, like, feel sorry for myself. You know, I think it's a special, that's another special quality, right? Because it's something that I've had to work through my whole life. When I was younger, I did get the victim mentality. But now I look at, okay, this thing happened. What's the reason? How, what is this doing for me instead of, why me? Right.

Why me? Right, of course. I lost this massive deal. Oh, my God. What's going to happen? What's going to happen is something better is going to. to come along. Yep.

If you believe it. Yeah, absolutely. And I can look back to two months ago thinking, oh, wow, this, this, this is bad. And then where I'm at right now, thank God that didn't happen. Mm-hmm. Because I caught that in like five different lies. That's not a partnership you want. So, you know, I think what people need to understand is no matter how bad it gets,

no matter what you're going through, it's focus on potentially what is this doing for me instead to me and then find a way to move forward. every single day with just a little bit. I agree. You know what I mean? You know, you were sentenced to 52 months. Long ass time. You served 11 months, right?

In Pensacola. Yes. And the first thing you did when you came out of those gates in Pensacola, you took a video with your kids. Yes. How many about that moment, man? Well, you know, you sit in there.

So first off, I went to, unfortunately, this was during COVID time. Even though it wasn't during COVID time, it was like completely past COVID time. It's fucking crazy. I was not COVID time anymore. I mean, was it ever COVID time? I know it's a good question.

But I mean, this was definitely not COVID time. Nobody was scared of COVID. The guards weren't scared. None of the prisoners were scared anymore. We wore these masks that you hung down off your face. And it was like ridiculous. But because of that, it made my time much, much harder. So when I initially went to, when I got sentenced, I went to county jail for two weeks, which was terrible.

And then I went from county jail to the Miami holding federal holding facility for almost 100 days. And you were locked down in a lot. down in a cell for 23 hours out of the day. It was 8 by 10? Yes, very small. With one other man, thank God I had a very nice guy in the cell with me for most of the time. And it was very, I was very, like, difficult in comparison to the rest of my time and difficult compared to most people that have to do minimum security camp time.

Usually you don't have to do this. Most people are able to turn themselves into the camp where you just walk in. It's almost like you're checking into a hotel, but you don't have any bags. You know, you want people like, will or they walk in, like walk up to the, they walk through the security and walk up and like hey turn myself in they're usually not that happy but they're turning myself in and then i'm here they bring them in to intake and then they sit them there for the next 10 hours why they do the intake because they're slow as shit anything related to prison is they're on prison time which is slow slow slow they do not care

they'll get any more money for speeding up so they're going to go as slowly as possible and as inefficiently as possible so um i went through a process of going through that and then being shackled up and put into a school bus essentially and driven 15 hours to Tallahassee and then spending the night in Tallahassee and then taking another bus and going to Pensacola. So when I got to Pensacola it was like it was like freedom almost because that that was so bad. The other part was so horrible and being shackled was horrible shackled to another man you can't get up. I mean it's bad. That was a really bad part. And then I got to Pensacola and the first thing they do after intake is they go, have you been

vaccinated and I'm like, no. And they're like, you've got to go to quarantine. I was like, oh my God, this is my fourth quarantine. Because every time they would quarantine you for 14 days. So I went, I feel like I'm in freedom. I'm seeing people walking around. I saw there's a weight pile. You know, that's the reason I went to go to Pensacola or requested to go to Pensacola. And when I got there, I was so excited to be able to walk around and stuff, get commissary. And then they put us in the holding facility for 14 more days, which was like, I'm so close, so close. That's a long time, man.

Yeah, so by the time that I was getting out, I had been in the drug program for months and months and months. The drug program called ARDAP, the residential drug and alcohol treatment program was absolutely horrible. It was the most ridiculous thing I've ever been. It made the whole thing so much worse. And I have a bunch of prisoners, prison guys that work here for me now that I met in that's cool. I have like a, I should have introduced you downstairs in the warehouse for some of them. Lance, I don't remember if you remember Evan, who I introduced. who works for, he was in the office with the neon lights.

Yes. That guy, he was in prison for six years. He runs the first class fulfillment center. Okay. He's the warehouse. And I found a lot of great guys there, a lot of great guys. But in that drug program, man, they just beat you down. And the whole idea of it isn't, they don't even talk about drugs and alcohol.

They talk about, um, behavioral changes, altering your behavior by basically beating you down and whatever self-confidence you have. It's like a art of war almost. It was horrible. It was a horrible experience. but every morning I would sit in the chapel when we do our morning meetings. I would look out the window because you could see people coming and going. Because I would see the gates and I would be like, one of these days I'm going to walk out

of those gates. My three boys are going to be there. And they came and it was amazing. It happened very quickly. It was like, you know, I found I was getting out. And then like a few days later they were there. And I'm wearing my gray sweatpants and sweatshirt and like a, anonymous, you know, whatever it was, like Adidas shoes that they sell at the commissary.

And it's funny, my friends were there, like, didn't even recognize me because, like, it's like, are you smaller? No, I was fatter, but I was, I was, too, I was too, I was too 50. I trained every day and I was on a strict diet the whole time, but I was fatter and I was very, very hairy. Oh, really? Because I never shaved anything, right? Yeah.

My face, but everything else is like full. Yeah, the manscape, bro. Oh, my God. Well, in prison here probably. You can do, yeah. No, no, I'm not, no, I'm saying when you got home. Yes, always. Not manscape in prison.

No, no, you don't mean. That's a bad thing to do. It's a bad idea. Yes, bad idea. Don't do that shit. No, it's funny because the people that would manscape in prison, it's like I would see him shaving their arms and stuff. I'm like probably a bad idea.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. But, yeah, so that, uh, looking out the window, I would imagine that. So having it happen was unbelievable and the kids coming up and, you know, and crying and being excited and they had signs and stuff. It was, it was really, it was unbelievable. The whole thing was unbelievable. Man.

It was great. I know how I feel when I come home from a shoot and I'm gone two days. Oh, yeah. And I walk through the door, my seven-year-old that we've talked about a lot. My nine-year-old, they'll run to me. Oh, yeah. I mean, full-on sprint. Like, I've been gone for, you know, 17 months.

So you can imagine how they're big. Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine, you know, I don't even want to put my mind there, but I can appreciate it. That was the toughest part. Yeah, I bet. I bet, man. Not having family, you know, I'm not. I had a lot of visitors. So I had the good fortune of owning a private jet at the time.

Okay. So they would get on my plane from the Boca Airport, and I had visitors every weekend. Unfortunately, my ex-wife and my kids did not often come, even though I tried to make it. So there was no reason for them not to be able to come, but they didn't come as much as I would have liked. They came only a few times when I was there.

A few times seeing your three boys. Yeah, it was shodding. That's very shoddy. So, but when they picked me up, we went and got, I mean, literally, you got to imagine the incredible, juxtaposition of one minute you're in prison, you know, eating your canned tuna, or really it's a packet, packets of tuna, and microwaving your white rice and like, you know, living with, you know, in my cell I had six other guys and in a little dorm room. And then literally within

15 minutes from them picking up, we're on a private jet eating caviar wearing, they wanted, because I know I love caviar, they brought it. I'm putting on my watch, I'm putting my clothes back on. It's weird. You're in the plane, literally being like, you know, having a vodka, being like, I didn't, like, where did that go? You go to like a different dimension. Like it was like such a crazy thing to literally be in prison. And 15 minutes later, you're on your plane taking off, flying over it, changing your clothes, having a vodka, eating caviar, chips in caviar. And all your friends are on the plane and your kids. And it's like, what? What's what happened? Like, holy fucking shit. That's a massive paradigm shift. It was unbelievable. Most people when they get out of prison, you know, they get their 40 bucks or whatever. Oh, no, it's bad. It's bad.

When I got my commissary card named Shannon Alford, who works for me to this day, when I got my commissary court, he had $2,100 on the credit card, I gave it to him. I was like, here you go, man. It's like, you need more than me, you know? And he actually works for me to this day. That's badass. He moved down here right after and lived at the gym for a while, worked for me at the gym. and has figured out life, you know,

and it's very difficult for most of these guys. I'm a very, very unusual story to get picked up by two Suburans full of your friends to bring you to the private jet and fly home to the Rolls Royce. It doesn't exist. Yeah, it doesn't exist. I mean, I've never been on a private jet.

Well, there you go. There you go. Never. It's, it was, it's, you can imagine how surreal it would be to go from prison to that, and then landing and everybody being there. And then, I mean, on the flip side, you know, you get out and everything is happy,

that same day, I went home back to my house with my kids, my ex-wife, and my wife did not get on the plane to pick me up. And when I got home, she immediately left me with the kids and went to a dance contest in Miami that she'd been planning on doing. So, like, I was like, oh, we're getting divorced. Oh, so you weren't divorced. No, no, I wasn't divorced. I knew I knew. Oh, yeah. I was like, oh, yeah.

When she didn't show up? She didn't show up with the kids to pick me up. She didn't show up. And when I got home, she immediately left. Who brought the kids? All my friends. All my friends. That's awesome.

That's awesome. Yeah. So, you know, there's ups and down. So, like, even when you think you're up, you're down a little bit. But it was hard. Honestly, being out of prison, it was hard. Like, a lot of people were concerned about me because I ended up not going back into the house with the kids immediately.

I went into a rental house that we had in seven bridges. It's a nice neighborhood. It's a little bit out west. And the house was rented for two years. So when I moved in, it was empty. And, like, people came over because I did, like, a party. in the new house. Get welcome home people party

and I had like 100 people at the house and catered and bartenders. And people are like looking around this house and they're like, you're gonna stay here? It's a 9,000 square foot house with nothing. Like a couch, a TV, no pictures, no nothing. Small rental. It was our house that we were renting

to other people, but it's a big empty house. Imagine a house that big with nothing on the wall, with no furniture except a bed in the bedroom, a TV in the bedroom, a couch and a TV. That's it. I mean, this is a big house to have nothing. Yeah, no shit. And people are like, bro, you're going to be alright here?

Because honestly, it would be better to be elsewhere other than there. I ended up moving right thereafter. And I moved to Marlago, where I got a bungalow at Marlago on the beach for a month. Because I was like, I'd rather be in a small hotel room. I'm more used to that at this point. On the beach with people around, as opposed to a big house. Whenever I'd get my kids, which ended up being half the time, I would bring them to the big house. And I got the beds in there.

and they had fun still at the big house and a big pool and they liked it. And then when they were going, I'd go to Marlago and stay at the club there. That's awesome. Yeah, it was cool. What's really impressive, you're in prison. Yeah. Red Con 1, still going.

And exploding. I mean, you know, again, we mentioned it, you know, five employees to 150, 300% year-over-year growth. What did that teach you about this company and your leadership in the sense that it still grew when you were gone? You know, it slowed down.

lot. I will tell you. I'll slow down a lot when I was gone. I had Eric Cart, who you met when we did the tour, who ran the company when I was gone. I would tell you that it is, it was not, we didn't plan it out well. Like, if I were to do it again, hopefully I'll never ever ever a million years to again. I'll never have a million years to again. Because I know you now that I'm going to be sad. You're gone. No, no, I'm not going anywhere. I don't do anything. So with Eric and with the team here, I didn't have a succession plan. So I never believed I was going to go to prison. So like, until the very act, I really didn't believe that because my intention was always to go to trial and to win because I had all the proof that I believed would be exculpatory enough to get a jury to realize I didn't do anything

because you have to have intent. So it's one of the things intent is required. It's going to mens rea. You have to have this. Intent is required to rate law. So for example, let's say I put a kilo cocaine in your bag in the airport and they stop you and you had no idea. You can prove you didn't put it in the bag. You weren't with the bag. That's why they ask you with the bag the bag the whole time, right? But you prove that I put it in your in your bag and you didn't know, then you can't be culpable for it. You didn't do anything wrong. So I felt like I had enough proof. I mean, I knew that I didn't do it on purpose. I knew that we didn't sell the pro-hormones that were on the list on purpose. There was no question about it in my mind. And so I spent

$6 million dollars on a legal defense. I had everybody, I had the best lawyers in order. Six million. Six million. I had Alan Dershowitz working on the case. I had some of the most famous lawyers in the world working on my case. I was a case of first impression where nobody in history of America had ever been arrested for this charge because it was the designer story control act of 2014 that passed. So on that list, there were 25 compounds. The two that we continued to sell were not on the list. We discontinued all the ones that were on the list. So we did a lot of things to make sure that we weren't doing anything legal. What was the crime? The crime was that a prosecutor from the DOJ was referred to the case by the

FDA and they wanted to get somebody. And there was many, many, many other people. people selling the same supplements, but they chose us. And so we got a very, very long sentence for selling pro hormones. At the time of trial, at the time of sentencing, there was nobody that came for victims. There was no victims to be heard. There was nobody hurt where they said, like, hey, I was hurt. I was killed. My family, it was like a fentanyl case. Of course. It was a muscle building case. Yeah, exactly. So the hope was that all these people that had gotten indicted for actual antibiotic steroids, there was a police. officer, one of the cases we showed, police officer who sold and made his own

antibiotic steroids in his house, sold them to people at the gym. He's a police officer and he used and he used a go fund me or not go fund me. What's the for donations? I forget now. That's a go fund me. Go fund me. So he did a go fund me so he could launder the money through his go fund me. So the people at that his gym would pay the go fund me he would give him the steroids and that way he thought he was cleaning the money. He got indicted. He went serve 18 months in prison. Wow. So I I wanted to we showed all this to the judge, and the judge gets to make his decision, and they usually follow the point system.

And I had enough points based on the amount of dollars and everything else that he gave me right in the normal. He didn't go above, didn't make an upward departure or a downward departure. We were really hoping he would make a downward departure. I paid my entire fine for everybody. 2.9 million, yeah, 2.9 million, which was everybody. I paid everybody's fine in cash so that I could be done with it because I was told by the lawyers that I would be better served in terms of sentencing to basically pay everything for everybody because he'll go, well, he's already paid his fine. He's already paid the fee for everybody.

So it doesn't make sense to penalize him if there's not victims and the fee has already been paid. So that was my thought process. Those are the lawyers thought process. It did not work. It didn't help me at all. It didn't help you at all. It didn't help me at all. It hurt me $3 million. $2.9 million. But you know what, man? You didn't start 52 months. You stood 11. No. No. It was, look, I, in this particular scenario, it could have been much, much worse.

Sure. Could be much worse. Sure, man. Well, look, you've obviously are doing very, very well, and it's great to see. I got one more question for you. With everything you've been through in your life, the drug addiction, death, loss, prison, divorce. So many things. We all have, right?

We all deal with a lot of adversity. After all of that, what is being determined to actually mean to you? It means believing in yourself and believing in your path and your goals. I think that one of the things that has helped me is being sometimes irrationally self-confident, and rationally an irrational belief of myself where I always feel like I'm going to, I'm going to get through it and it'll work out all right, somehow or another it will. And I think that could be very easily defined as determination, you know. I love it, man.

Dude, thank you so much for coming on, dude. Oh, my pleasure. I really enjoy talking to you, getting to know you going on the tour. And just to start of a really good friendship, man. Absolutely. Thank you so much. For you guys, take your butts to Redcon 1. Search the internet.

Get your supplements. Total War pre-workout. Get the MRE light. It's whole food protein. That's the only thing I touch. So do that. Redcom 1 is a place to go for all your supplement needs. And until next time, guys, stay determined.