Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 174 - Mike Matthews, Legion CEO: Supplement Shopping 101

Episode Date: March 16, 2022

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All right, Mike. Hey, how's it going, man? Good. Thanks for reciprocating. Thanks for having me back on your show. Absolutely, man. Anytime. So we're getting together to kind of talk a little bit about the ins and outs of the supplement industry. And as far as all of the people in my network, you're obviously- There's a wretched hive of scum and villainy. It really is. It really is. I've used that line in marketing just because I think it's fun.

It really is. It really is. I've used that line in marketing just because I think it's fun. I can't blame you. And anytime you can use the 79 Star Wars dialogue in your marketing, you're probably going to do pretty well. But this is a particularly fascinating component of the fitness space to me. Because if you look at the money and the dollars that are spent in the weight loss industry. Supplements dominates. It's, I think, by far a bigger driver or bigger absorber of money than gyms, personal trainers, you name it. Supplements takes the cake in terms of where a lot of these dollars are going.

And because it's such a profitable space, because it's very, I don't want to say easy to get into, it's hard to do well, but I think it's relatively easy if you have the capital to produce some of these things. People have had some pretty interesting experiences with supplements, supplement manufacturers, and we know it's a very profitable space. And it draws, like you said, scum and villainy all the time. And I think I want to start by just discussing, when you're looking for products, when you're looking for supplements, are there some big rock things as or big rock things you should be able to delineate when you're shopping for these things that maybe most consumers are completely unaware of? Yeah, yeah. There are different ways that we could attack that. Let's start with some of the bigger red flags that just make it easy to disqualify a company, right? So for example, if a company uses proprietary blends, big red flag, because what that means is for people listening, if you're not familiar with this, it's where you have a number of ingredients that are included in a

blend and it shows the weight of the blend, but not of the individual ingredients. Now, some cases there are blends where they do show the amounts for individual ingredients, and they're trying to just get a little bit of marketing pizzazz out of calling it like the muscle maximizer, meat grinder, matrix, whatever. Sure. Sure. I can think of them now. So many good ones.

But often, often they are not showing you how much is in each ingredient in the blend. They are only showing you, let's say the blend weighs two and a half grams. So there's two and a half grams of stuff in that blend. And there are 15 ingredients in it. To the uninitiated, to use a term that you used offline, that might look impressive. Like, hey, this is 15 different ingredients. I mean, it's got to do something, right? But what many people don't understand is that with how the labeling laws work, the proprietary blend is the ingredients appear by predominance or in predominance by weight, meaning that there is more of the first ingredient than the second, more of the second than the third. And there is no rule as to how much of that whole blend can be that first ingredient.

at a prop blend, which is usually denoted by an asterisk, and like you said, some ridiculous title, antioxidant longevity blend, muscle maximizing matrix, you can acknowledge the weight of the cumulative amount of ingredient, and then you might be able to delineate like, okay, it looks like it goes from A to Z, whatever A is, is the most, but you still have no idea how much that is. Correct. That first ingredient, which might be something inexpensive, it could be 95% of the blend. So let's say it's a two and a half gram blend and it has 15 ingredients. And the first ingredient, something inexpensive, let's say it's like taurine, just inexpensive amino acid. Oh, that's like two grams of it. And then the rest of the ingredients are pixie dusted to use a kind of an industry term. What does that mean for those who aren't aware? Because it's one of, I think,

the more dubious things we see specifically with how products are formulated and then how products are marketed. And I do think that this is something that once I learned that this is a common practice, it really saved me a tremendous amount of money. Yeah. I mean, this one is just playing on people's ignorance, not stupidity, just ignorance. I was an ignorant supplement consumer at one point. I know you were as well. We all were when we would go to GNC and, you know, go to, go to the, the, remember what was in, in the back under the lock cabinet. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, and you know, you had to get your protein powder and your pre-workout and your post workout, but then you also had to check out the, the, the latest testosterone booster or hormone booster or, uh, uh, yeah, anabolic primers, all these things. Right. And, um, so, so anyway, how the pixie dust, how, how pixie dusting works is it's just referring to a very small amount of the ingredient. And so what, what companies will do is they will choose ingredients. Sometimes it's ingredients that do have good science behind them, but you have to use enough. Like take beta alanine. If you look at the research in beta alanine, it makes sense to

put it into a pre-workout or citrulline makes sense to put it in a pre-workout. And the key though, is if you look at the literature, you need to have about three to four grams of beta alanine per day. You need to have about six to eight grams of citrulline per day, um, to see any benefits. Now, if, if a supplement company used one 10th of, of those amounts, you are not going to see any benefits. You might think you are benefiting from it, right? Just a placebo effect. Maybe even it's maybe has a lot of stimulants like caffeine, plus a few others. And those are inexpensive ingredients, right? And so what then the supplement companies, what these marketers are doing is they're just playing on people's awareness of beta-allyn.

Oh, I've heard about beta-allyn. That's a good ingredient. Oh, I've heard about citrulline. That's a good ingredient. But they're hoping that these people don't understand how much should be in the products. And the reason to do that is obvious. If you're unethical, if you're a criminally minded person, it's just an easy way to reduce your cost of goods while still retaining a lot of the marketing sizzle, so to speak.

Sure. And I've noticed most of these more expensive ingredients tend to be the star of the pixie dusting show. You will often see expensive to source ingredients highlighted as being in a product. Citrulline is a great example. I know it's not cheap. And so people say, citrulline for massive pumps. And then on the back, citrulline is in a two and a half gram prop blend. And you know, right off the bat, not only is that prop blend not big enough to include an efficacious dose of citrulline, it probably doesn't have an efficacious dose of any one of these ingredients. And so that's a question that comes up a lot is how do I know that I'm getting the right dosage of whatever

supplement it may be, whether it's a component of my pre-workout, like I want my six grams of citrulline, I want my 3.2 grams of beta alanine. I don't know how much magnesium I need though, or I don't know how much zinc I need. How can somebody who's uninitiated go about educating themselves on the efficacious dose of a supplement? Because so many people are looking for supplements that can help with certain things. They're just entirely unaware what forms or what dosages are optimal or ideal. Are there ways in which people can do this research without, you know, running the risk of taking too much or taking an ineffective dosage of something? Examine.com is a great resource for this. They have in-depth explanations of basically, I mean, any supplement that even stuff that I'll come across where I'm like, that's new to me. I'll go, oh, examine already has a page on it.

They're a great resource for that. And they've done a lot of work to make it more user-friendly. And they've done a lot of work to make it more user-friendly. Several years ago, it was more for academics. It was more for people who could sort through a lot of jargon and technical details. And you still find all that on examine, but they've done a lot of work to make it more accessible to laymen, which is smart. I think that was a smart move. lot of work to make it more accessible to layman, which is smart. I think that was a smart move. And so that would be my best recommendation is it's an easy way to learn the range of clinically effective dosages. I actually totally agree with that. That's usually where I start.

If I hear somebody who is a thought leader or somebody who I think is relatively intelligent talking about a supplement, I'll use Fidoja Agrestis as an example, which I've heard many people communicating recently as an interesting way you can modulate your testosterone. So I was like, okay, I've tried tribulus, I've tried diaspartic acid, I've tried every natural testosterone booster known to man, but I've never in my life heard of Fidoja. And I'm like, I went straight to examine. I typed in Fidoja. And what do you know? They have every single human trial on Fidoja, all the rodent trials. They even have it easy for you, the layman, or just wherever you're at on your supplement education journey. You can see the actual robustness of the literature based on these small little bars

that are not too different from the bars on your cell phone. So if there's a lot of robust literature, you'll have more bars and it will say like, this is a very highly correlated with XYZ. Or if there's like one rodent model, you'll have like one tiny bar and it'll be like, eh, not so sure. So it's pretty easy to parse through before you go and put anything into your body, whether or not this is something you should put in your body. And there's always, like you said, some pretty good dosage instructions there as to what's been shown to work in humans. And I think it's probably a nice little segue to talking about manufacturing practices for safety, segue to talking about manufacturing practices for safety, specifically like testing, whether that's third-party testing, independent lab testing, things like Labdoor that people might

be familiar with. Should people be looking for products that are tested, certified, or have some type of... Somebody else has checked that these are legit. Is that as important as it seems? Yeah, absolutely. Before we talk about that, let me just share another big red flag that's real easy. And that is, if a company sells a certain type of product, I think you shouldn't buy anything from them. And if I didn't have a supplement company, if I was just a consumer, this is how I'd be thinking. For example, branched chain amino acids, BCAAs. I get asked all the time. That is our number one most requested product. We get dozens of requests a week or people asking, why don't we sell BCAAs? It would be an easy way to make money. But the problem with BCAAs is if you are going to honestly represent the literature, there is no reason to take them.

If you eat enough protein and, you know, maybe you could find some kind of outlier use cases. If somebody does a lot of fast exercise, I understand. Leucine, I would probably say, why don't you just buy leucine then? It's cheaper or better. Vegans. Yeah, sure. Vegans. Um, although I would rather see a vegan work on their diet to get enough high quality protein supplement with BCAAs. And if it was for the faster training, I would probably recommend HMB anyway, and not go with,

with the BCAAs. And so then what, what, what are we left with really is like tasty water. And that's not a, that's not a great pitch. I mean, some people might buy them. If that was, if that was my pitch, that's it. These things don't do anything. Really. If you eat enough protein, these three amino acids, you're going to get plenty of it from your protein, but it will make your water tasty. Yeah. Which is usually what it boils down to when you tell somebody like, you do realize you don't need that. Well, it helps me drink my water. Okay, then. It's expensive crystal light. Thank you very much. Exactly. And hey, if that's what somebody wants to do, then that's fine. But that's an example of a product that if a company is selling BCAAs,

what that means is they're either ignorant, they don't understand what I just said, and they haven't looked into the evidence of the supporting evidence for what I just said. Or they know that, but they don't care because they say, well, the market demands it and we're just fulfilling a demand. But I don't agree with that mentality. I think serving people's interests is educating them why they shouldn't buy BCAAs and they should spend that money on better food or better protein instead of just giving them what they want. And so there are quite a few products like that. Testosterone booster.

If a company sells, if they call it a testosterone booster, I would say don't buy anything from that company because there is nothing natural. I wish there were. I would sell it. We get asked all the time. I mean, if I were only in this for money, it would be in my interest to sell a testosterone booster. my interests to sell a testosterone booster, but, but there's nothing natural that I can really get behind, uh, there, you know, take, take the aspartic acid example of something that it looks like the best case scenario is a slight increase for maybe a couple of weeks and that's it. Not very exciting. And that's the case with, with, I mean, tribulus is just useless. We know that it does absolutely nothing. And there are a couple of interesting herbs out there that might be similar to diaspartic acid, but at least for my standards of what is a good product, I can't get there on a testosterone booster. Totally.

And just because something causes an elevation, it doesn't mean it's a significant elevation and it doesn't mean that your money's well spent. If it increases your testosterone 3%, even 10%, you're not going to notice it. I mean, when people take steroids, they're not looking to increase their testosterone 10%. They're looking to raise their testosterone to 1,600 nanograms per deciliter from 500, which is going to cause a difference. You can't get anywhere in the ballpark of that, taking every single possible herb and remedy from everything. You couldn't get anywhere near that. Exactly. So let's say you could accomplish 10% naturally and you could sustain that. I don't know how you would do that, but let's just say you could. Let's say there is something out there. There's not a lot of research on it yet, and it's going to, uh, it's going to pan out and that alone would raise

testosterone by 10%. And for, for as long as you're on it with no negative side effects, even that I would, because of this point, I wouldn't sell it because the, the, the effect size is significant, um, in, in that yes, 10%, or it's, it is a statistically significant effect size, 10%, but it's not a meaningful effect size because like you're saying, if you take somebody who has normal testosterone, let's say it's a guy and he's anywhere between five and 700 nanograms per deciliter, perfectly normal. You increase that by 10%. Nothing is going to change. Maybe, maybe if he is very in tune with his body, so to speak, I don't know, maybe he'll notice like a little bit more energy, but probably not. He probably wouldn't even notice that.

And there's certainly, certainly not going to build muscle faster, lose fat faster, have a stronger sex drive. None of that. Yeah. There's a substantially better chance that anything you're noticing is placebo. Just speaking from my own lab panels, like I think six months ago, my testosterone, when I tested it was at 611. And then when I tested it two months ago, it was at like 657, which is not a 10% increase, but maybe like a 7% or 8% increase. I'm the exact same person. Exact same person. No difference in my training, no difference in my erectile quality, any of the stuff you would use as a gauge. And these supplements can't even promise you 10%. So it's great to highlight the difference between statistical significance and whether or

not that statistical significance is actually going to show up in the human body when you're taking the supplement. And does it deliver a bottom line benefit? Another example of something that I refuse to sell at this point, based on my understanding of the literature is a hydration supplement, an electrolyte slash hydration supplement, because it would appear after looking into it. And I was going into this, actually, I thought there was because I wasn't too familiar with the research until I started to think about, should I create one of these products? Very popular. But then, and I'll give a lot of credit to Ross Tucker for this in really looking at the details, it appears that these supplements are propped up by a lot of bullshit research paid for by Gatorade to help sell their stuff, their electrolyte hydration drinks.

Right. And so that's another example of a product that in my opinion, if a company sells a hydration supplement, I would not buy anything from them because they either don't know what they're doing or they don't care. And they're just in it for money. And I'm actually going to be, I'm going to be adding it probably, I want to add it to the store, um, uh, over at Legion and that is products we don't sell. So I can just make my case for why I don't sell BCAAs, why I don't sell a, uh, a testosterone booster or a growth hormone booster. Why I don't sell a hydration supplement. Why I don't sell collagen protein, why I don't sell MCT oil. I have a list of like 10 things that I just won't sell because it would go against my own personal integrity and principles, and it would go against the integrity and the principles of Legion. And I think that Legion is obviously in the minority. There's a few other good manufacturers out there, but most supplement manufacturers, or I shouldn't say just manufacturers, but brands as well, are predominantly interested in maximizing margins.

And that oftentimes comes at the cost of product quality. And we'd segued a little bit away from it. But I'd like to get back to just talking about product testing, product verification. What should people look for when selecting brands? Obviously, people are going to be drawn to brands in large part due to influencers, marketing, and advertising. And they should be equipped to be able to go like, okay, I trust this influencer because they make content I enjoy. And therefore, I'm going to buy the products that they take. They need to have that additional layer of like, I need to be able to qualify whether or not this company is good. And they know the red flags about pixie dusting. They probably know now some red

flags as to like, look, if they're manufacturing BCAAs and women-specific pre-workout, they're probably full of shit. But what about product quality and testing? Fruit and vegetable powders. I'll add that one. Yeah. I got my greens powder and my reds powder and my greens powder. I haven't eaten a fruit or vegetable in three months, but I take fruit and vegetable powders. It will help with my bloating. Okay. Sure it will. Yeah. So what are we really looking for with regards to testing and product quality? Are there different levels to this? What is the lowest level that you think is acceptable? practices, that is going to involve testing. And in some cases, it might be on site. In other cases, it might be with a third party lab. So a lot of that is going on. But a lot of companies,

they don't talk about it. And they don't share test results, for example. And I think that's a mistake. If you go over to Legion, if you go to any product page, um, somewhere, probably three quarters or so down the page, you'll see that you can view the certificate of analyses for all products. And so those are testing results and it's tested for what's in it and what's not in it. So I say there is eight grams of citrulline malate in my pre-workout. Here's a test to prove it that

was conducted in a third-party lab. And we update those tests as we test new batches. We also work with Labdoor. I like what Labdoor is doing. And so we are a Labdoor certified brand. And then there are even specific products that we have certified for sport in particular. And we're going to be doing more of that testing with Labdoor just as another layer of evidence, so to speak. And in marketing, it's a good idea to assume that whenever you make a claim, that you have to offer a preponderance of evidence to convince people of that. You should always assume that your prospects, your potential customers are very skeptical that to everything you say, they say, yeah, so what? Prove it. Right. And so that's two examples of ways that I prove it. And I would love to see more companies doing the same because some

companies actually, maybe they're not working with Labdoor, but they are not doing anything wrong. Maybe, well, in this sense, right? Let's say they're selling a BCAA and I don't think they should be, but their BCAAs do contain BCAAs, right? It's not just like multidextrin or something, which you can work with shady manufacturers that are willing to do stuff like that. Oh, yeah. And that is illegal, but until you get caught,

you can make a lot of money. And it happens all the time. It does. Oh, absolutely. All the time. I was just reading the other day that I won't name names, but there was like a, I don't want to say huge, but like a very popular supplement manufacturer where both of the owners of the company are now in prison for doing.

I mean, why not? Why not? This is, I mean, I'll say it. It's, it's Redcon, uh, Redcon1. Yeah. And so, I mean, now, now they went It's Redcon1. Yeah. And so, I mean... Now, they went to jail for what they were doing previously, just to be specific. But yes, of course, you have to wonder what else they might have gotten up to. It doesn't select for these individuals, but like moths to a flame, if you want to make money and you don't necessarily want to jump through all these hoops, you can skirt the rules here.

And obviously, if you're going to prison for breaking the law, it's probably not beyond you to maybe fib a little bit when it comes to the supplements. And I remember the first time we ever talked, I was shocked. Like amino spiking. Maybe a little bit. I remember forever getting the MusclePharm combat powder whey from Costco and being like, fuck yeah, this is the shit. It's cookies and cream. It literally tastes like cookies and cream. And then I was like, oh, it tastes like cookies and cream because it's injected with trash amino acids and maltodextrin. And there's probably zero good quality, full structured proteins in here. And so brands have been doing this for a while. But one of the things that really shocked me when I was really learning about the ins and

outs of the industry, and it was the first time we ever got together and talked, was the discrepancy between margins on product sales from company to company. And it does cost you as a producer something to jump through all these hoops. How does this affect your bottom line as a business owner? And to me as a consumer of supplements, I appreciate if a business owner is willing to take a hit on their bottom line to make sure I get better, safer products that work. And I think a lot of people would probably agree with that. They just don't know the degree to which the spectrum of some people go all the way and they take huge hits and some people skip everything so they can maximize profits and they end up in jail. So what's the

variance here? What have you seen? Give me some examples, some extremes. I think it'd be interesting for people to know how it affects bottom lines. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. Yeah, let's just, um, let's, let's, let's, let's go P and L right. So, so cost of goods, like what it costs me to make my stuff is,

is currently, it's a little bit over 60% of revenue. Um so gross margin, so that's just the money that's left over to run the business. That's not net, that's just gross margin. When you take out simply the hard costs, it's probably 39% right now. And for people who are not familiar maybe with the finances of business, that's not very good. No, no. Not a lot of people would be knocking down your door to be like, how are you bringing home 39%? No, no. If it were the other way around, that's what would get business people excited. gross margins around 60%, or even, I mean, you'll find, I know of supplement companies that even competitors whose gross margins are, yeah, probably in the range of 55% to 65%.

And when you think about that number at scale- Makes a big of money. I mean, think of it at revenue of $50 million, for example, to have a 15% swing. And that goes straight to the bottom line. Now, you're adding millions and millions of dollars straight to the bottom line. And obviously, it would be an actual business mistake to take, let's say, to take my cost of goods to 80%. You actually can't run a business at that point. And the bare minimum that is acceptable if you are going to have a healthy business is probably about a 40% gross margin. And we wouldn't be able to make that work if we had to spend as much on advertising

as our competitors, which we don't. That's one of the reasons why I can do that. Or the business, it would be extremely unprofitable or just wouldn't really be able to grow. And then if you go to the bottom line, if a business is turning a 10% profit on revenue, that's okay. In the world of business, that's just okay. 15% is quite good. 20% plus is outstanding. 5% is bad. Anything less than 5% is like, what are you doing? And so currently Legion is in the range of 8% to 10% net margins. And so what I'm trying to do with the finances, it's a pretty lean company. There's only like 55 of us, half of them are so part or full-time about the other half are, are part-time. And we really try to squeeze as much result out of every dollar because I want to be able to spend, continue

spending what it takes to make great products. And, um, and I think that my standards of what are great products are not so unreasonably high that I'm actually just being dumb and running a dumb business. Uh, you know, I think overall, I think, um, some products are, are, there are competitors who have comparable products that you could, you could acknowledge, uh, that some other pre-workouts are pretty premium as well. Um, and then in some cases, you know, with our multivitamin, you'd be hard pressed, I think, to find a multivitamin that's as loaded as, as, as ours. Um, and our, our joint product, for example, is a really good formulation that's fairly expensive. And so that's just like kind of a broad overview of the finances.

And so how a lot of these businesses run is you have a couple of products that you spend some money on that get you a lot of your new customers, right? And anybody in the game knows that your pre-workout and your protein powders are going to get you a lot of new customers, right? Some companies, they rely heavily on fruit and vegetable powders. Sometimes that's the one. It seems like those have a lot of female influencers who really push these and it's, am I bloating? And, um, and then, and then also it's, you know, a lot of people who just don't want to eat vegetables. And so they buy into the sales pitch that totally, if you just take one scoop of this a day, you're getting 24 servings of

vegetables, you know what I mean? And, um, so, so what you do is if, if you want to do it the way that many people do it is you spend some money on a protein powder, make sure it tastes really good. Make sure that whoever you're going after, you are ideally exceeding their expectations of the protein powder. You spend money on your pre-workout, and there are quite a few pre-workouts out there that are not cheap, but they're also not good formulations. I know that these companies are actually spending a fair amount on these products, but they are these kitchen sink formulations that more ingredients are not always better because we have the dosing that we already talked about, but there also sometimes are instances where there are potentially negative interactions between ingredients like caffeine and creatine. There's an ongoing discussion around that, but I would say, I mean, I had on my podcast, one of the top creatine researchers in the world. It was a great episode.

Oh, thanks. Yeah. His position, I mean, you heard it was like, yeah, there might be an effect here, probably best to separate these things. Sure. And there are other examples of that where it doesn't make sense to have ingredient B when you have ingredient A. And so anyway, you have a couple of products that get you, let's say 80% of your new customers. And then, and then what you do is you have all the rest of the stuff to drive profit. So you're okay sacrificing your profit on acquiring customers. And then you sell them. A lot of times it's pills of any kind because powders have to be flavored. They have to be sweetened. Like in, in, in my case, because I use all natural ingredients, I spend $3, $4 a bottle

just on the flavor systems in some cases. And if I were to go to artificial ingredients, I could literally reduce that to probably 50 cents per bottle. And think about that. That's straight to the bottom line. And at scale- That's a huge amount of money. We sell a lot of protein powder. We sell a lot of pre-workout. I mean, Legion will do probably about 35 million in sales this year. So just extrapolate numbers. You know what I mean? It's a lot. As far as the flavors go, this is something I've always been curious about.

It seems like every manufacturer starts with like fruit punch and chocolate. Is this because certain flavors are substantially either cheaper to manufacture or easier to get right? And then some are just really challenging. Like how does that, how does the flavor selection process work? Cause it seems like most brands start somewhere in the neighborhood of fruit punch and blue raspberry for the pre-workouts vanilla and chocolate for the protein. Is it just because those are so popular or is it like a production thing? Yeah. Yeah. It's a good question. It's a bit of both. One is popularity, especially with new customers. And you think about it as a consumer, if you can step into a, be a customer for a minute. If you're going to try out a brand, um, you're probably

going to want to choose something that you've liked previously. There's something that's like a safe choice. Okay. Fruit punch is a safe choice. It's hard to not, yeah, it's hard to not like a fruit punch if it's done well. Right. It's just kind of a berry drink. Um, same thing with a chocolate or a, or a vanilla, you kind of know what you're getting more so than let's say a cinnamon cereal or a fruity cereal, protein powder, or even a chocolate peanut butter. There are many different ways to do chocolate peanut butter. Some people like more chocolate. Some people like more peanut butter. Sometimes the peanut butter just isn't right, especially if it's artificial. It could be done well, but in some cases it has a kind of a, just a chemically taste,

just not very good. So that's one reason why. And then on the production side of things, you're either working with the manufacturer on the flavoring. may have a team some manufacturers do in-house other manufacturers they outsource to flavor labs and regardless usually the team you're working with they have a lot of experience doing a fruit punch totally they might even have it especially with artificial ingredients they they'll have it probably just dialed in. They'll just be able to take whatever you have and very quickly give you something that tastes really good because they've done this fruit punch 600 times now. Totally. And they've continued to tweak it and they've made it really good. Whereas if you want something

more unique that they don't have a lot of experience or any experience with, a good team will figure it out, but it's going to take them some time to figure it out. And chances are, if they're able to continue to iterate on it, it will get better. So here's another interesting question. These are kind of, I feel like we've covered so many of the fundamentals. Now I just have like a few quick fun questions for you about how these things are produced. And this is mostly about supply chain, where products are sourced bottom line when it comes to producing supplements? Like, did you notice a big change in the cost of certain products in the last two years? And how does that affect where you get them? Yeah. Unfortunately, the price of everything has gone up. Creatine in particular, soaring. Interesting. Wow. That, okay. That's fascinating to me because creatine has

always been something that I just looked at as incredibly cheap and easy to get your hands on. It is not anymore. It is not anymore. Is it a little bit of supply and demand, but also, okay. So people want it more and it's harder to bake. And that's particularly since COVID because I'm guessing that a lot of the world's creatine comes from China and all the problems they've been having over there and shutting down ports and so on. And so that's an example of an ingredient that is very expensive now. Whey protein. Whey protein has continued to get more and more expensive. That I have noticed inadvertently just

through looking at different protein prices. I noticed a five pound tub of a particular grass fed whey protein was in the $90 range to the point where I was like, holy smokes. I remember when five pounds of whey was 49 bucks. Yep. Yep. Those days are gone forever. What I'm hearing on the inside, so to speak, is that over the course of, well, this was before what's going on over in Europe, but let's say that that deescalates or it just kind of turns into some sort of Cold War Part 2. I don't know. Cold War 2.0. Yeah. What I was hearing, um, at least a couple of months ago is that we should see prices on some things come down from their COVID highs, but not go, not go back to pre COVID that everything is more expensive now, more or less permanently. Um, so we will find a new settling point, so to speak. Um, but, but, but that, that has gone up and particularly the protein, unfortunately, the whey protein that I use has gone up even particularly the protein, unfortunately, the whey protein that I

use has gone up even more than, uh, than the average for, for whey protein, because I use a very specific material that comes from Ireland and there isn't a huge market for it. Um, ironically, I I'm probably one of the bigger buyers of it in the world, I think, because it's quite expensive to use, but it's so good. I just don't want to use anything else because I know that even if I were to choose something, I mean, if the price doubled from where it's at right now, I guess I would have to. There is a point where the economics don't work for anybody anymore, There is a point where the economics don't work for anybody anymore. But fortunately, that has not happened. And our whey protein powder in particular gets probably the most five-star reviews out of any of our products.

People really, really like it. And especially when they compare it to other all-natural whey protein powders, then they really appreciate how good it is. The mouthfeel, the taste. It is good. I've taken pretty much every protein there is. And it's good. It's thick. It tastes kind of like a milkshake. And the macros are stupid good with not a lot of additives, which is really hard to do. And half of that is the material. If I switch to another material, even if it's also a top tier, it might be a little bit less money only because of like, let's say it's produced in the United States. So it's a little bit cheaper to get into the manufacturer than it is to get it from Ireland. And if I were to do that, then I know that a lot of people would be disappointed

because it wouldn't be quite as good. It still could be good, but people would notice. Yeah, they would, they would, I would have to, I would have to just openly announce and I have to explain to people, this is the change and this is why. And if I can go back to that stuff, I will, But for now, I'm going to have to use this stuff. But it would be, again, it still would be a top tier premium whey. But when I was originally testing out different whey for that product, so I tried stuff from the United States.

So these were all, you could say, tier one whey protein powders, expensive. I tried stuff from the United States. I tried stuff from New Zealand. I believe I tried the stuff from Ireland and I might be forgetting one or two others. And when it was me and just a couple of people at the time, when we tasted the Irish stuff, we were like, this is it. I don't even, I don't need to try anymore. We're going with this because I've had enough protein powders over the years. And to understand that this is pretty unique. I mean, even the creaminess and then you look at it, you're like zero grams of fat and it has a creaminess like you're- Full fat dairy almost.

Yeah. Like you're mixing it with maybe a skim milk, maybe even a whole milk. Yeah. It's pretty remarkable mixed in water. Okay, last question for you, but before I cut you loose, are there any supplements that have piqued your fancy, that you're interested in, that you think have a potentially bright future that maybe not a lot of people have heard of? One or two that have piqued your interest? Yeah, I think that some of the emerging research on probiotics, certain strains of probiotics is interesting and we're working on a probiotic supplement.

And I can't take credit for a lot of the deep dive. There are a couple of smart PhDs and in one case, a professor who's helping work on it. Because a year or two ago, the general state of the evidence on probiotics was meh, unless you have GI issues and maybe, but for everybody else, nah. You probably poop them out. Might not even stick in there. Yeah, exactly. And so that's why I never sold a probiotic because I was like, oh, that's unfortunate because there's a big market there. But it, it, it would appear that I can't produce something that I can get behind and sell to people who don't have major issues. And that's, you know, that, that, that, that doesn't work if it's only for people who have really bad GI issues. However, however, with, with, uh, and, and we probably can credit the, the emerging

field of just the microbiome and gut research for helping push the probiotic research. Uh, cause there's a lot of money going into the gut research and some of that has made it into the probiotic space. Sure. And, and so, so now we know that, um, in, in the case of certain strains that they're actually, you can make a case for supplementing. Now supplements are of course, supplementary. I don't think we need to say that, not that, not to say that any of us quote unquote need a probiotic. Uh, however, if we have the budget and we are so inclined, it does appear that certain strains can improve upon a

healthy gut, which is pretty cool. Um, similar to that's one of the things I really like about my joint supplement is it's not just for people with bad joints. Um, a couple of the ingredients in there, which, uh, this is, this is a segue to the next ingredient that people have heard of, but I would not be surprised if it's going to become much more popular. And that is curcumin, which is found in curry, in the pigment for people listening, not familiar with it. And we know that it's been for years now, it's been known as something that can reduce inflammation in the body in many different ways and in, in, in some unique mechanistic ways. Um, but the downstream effects of that are becoming more and more robust. We're like the

list of, of potential benefits for curcumin continues to grow as scientists study its use in treating disease, in preventing disease. And so that's one that, again, many people have probably heard of, but I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes a more common supplement over the next couple of years, depending on how this research gets out there. But I do see more and more talk about it. And so I think that's pretty cool. I totally agree. I think probiotics is probably the one I'm watching the most closely. And I'm pretty fascinated to see how just our general understanding of the microbiome, the intestinal microbiome shifts, how those products are formulated. But exciting stuff, man. I want to thank you for

coming on. I think we're going to save a lot of people a lot of money and a lot of problems. And again, there's not a ton of people in the supplement manufacturing space who operate with any integrity, but I've always felt like you were probably the guy who does it the best. And I want to thank you for your time. And guys, if you have not yet checked out Legion, you can go over to Legion.com. You can check out using the promo code Danny. I wish I had Legion.com. Sorry. Oh, you can go over to Legion.com. You can check out using the promo code Danny. I wish I had Legion.com. Sorry. Oh, it's LegionAthletics.com.

Yeah. Unfortunately, Legion.com, I tried to buy it, but it's owned by a large software company. Oh, that's tough. And a couple of months ago, they weren't using it for anything. It just forwarded to their homepage. So I thought, hey, maybe there's an in here. And so I contacted a domain broker and we thought maybe 150K would get them interested. Didn't even get a reply for that. And so I've learned since then that big companies like that,

if I were offering 10 times that amount, maybe I would get a reply. So unfortunately for now, I'm at legionathletics.com or, or by legion.com. B-U-I legion.com is a shorter, simpler. There you guys go. That's where you can find this stuff. Muscle for life is the podcast. Muscle for life fitness is your Instagram. I'll plug all this down in the show

notes again. Hey, Mike, thanks for coming on. It was nice catching up. Yes. Thanks again.