Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1775: Combatting the Detrimental Effects of Blue Light With David Roger

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin speak with David Roger, founder and CEO of Felix Gray, a company addressing the detrimental effect digital devices have on the eyes. Felix Gray LISTENS to their customers. (2:19) Combining function with fashion. The origin story of Felix Gray. (2:55) How Mind Pump was skeptical of their product early on. (9:04) Their mission to improve your relationship with technology. (10:48) You get what you pay for. (12:22) The process of blocking blue-light without changing the color of what you see. (14:30) How Felix Gray filters blue-light and doesn’t block it. (17:12) The evolution of the science behind blue-blocking glasses. (20:37) Where do they see the biggest room for growth in their market? (23:37) Better educate their customers through internal data. (27:16) The importance of being authentic first. (29:53) The four key buckets they look for white space to add value to their customers. (32:48) What gives him confidence in himself? (35:54) How finding their product-market fit early on put them on a path to success. (37:24) His current vision for himself, the company, and his leadership model. (40:14) Any unique personality traits from childhood that he uses in his current profession? (44:49) Where does the name ‘Felix Gray’ come from? (48:51) His favorite book and why. (49:51) Why does he go off the grid 1 week a year? (50:58) Why he is a BIG proponent of getting into a flow state. (55:28) The value of listening to where people are coming from. (57:09) Related Links/Products Mentioned March Promotion: Limited Time Power Bundle! MAPS Strong and MAPS Powerlift for the low price of $79.99 Visit Felix Gray for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! The Next Generation - Venture For America Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked Blue light has a dark side Mind Pump #985: Mark Mastrov- Fitness Industry Empire Builder, NBA Owner & Original Mind Pump Mentor Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life Mind Pump #1115: The Amazing Adventures Of Tommy Caldwell, Star Of Netflix’s The Dawn Wall Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Tommy Caldwell (@tommycaldwell)  Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, alright, in today's episode, we talked all about the science of blue light blocking technology, blue light blocking glasses, digital wellness, with the CEO of one of the leading companies in the space Felix Gray. We talked to David Roger and so he kind of talked to us about the science and why blocking blue light is beneficial for sleep and for eye health and the science behind their patented

pigment technology. Really great episode. If you value your sleep, you value your health, especially your eye health and your brain health, you're going to want to check out this episode. By the way, we work with Felix Gray, one of our sponsors. We love their products. If you want to get blue light blocking glasses that don't change the color of everything around you, that also are effective, head over to mindpumppartners.com and click on Felix Gray.

One more thing, we're running a sale right now on two maps workout programs. We've taken map strong and we've combined it with maps power lift. We call it the power bundle and we took the retail price from $300 all the way down to $79.99. Okay, so you get both programs for the one time price of $79.99. If you're interested, go check them out. Head over to mapsmarch.com. This is so nice.

I haven't done an in-person interview since COVID. So much really. Yeah, yeah. It's been like seven virtual ones. When you guys said in person, I was like, fuck yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, we are way better. We appreciate it,

because there's a lot of things you can't read and see and connect with. 100%. You also just get better to get to know ever, yeah, I'm with you. Yeah, I'm told, did you guys see a spike in sales? In fact, during this virtual,

the very beginning was like bonkers. Really? Yeah, because everyone just went immediately indoors, like wait, but I'm on Zoom for like 10 hours a day, plus all the time I'm supposed to do stuff. And then I'm watching Netflix at night. And so just like kind of one crazy. What made you guys decide to do glasses for kids?

Because that was a game changer for my kids. Because at the very time, they were at home, doing school all day long. On their iPads all day trying to get their work done. Yeah, I could see, I could notice a huge difference when I had them wear the glasses versus when they didn't. They were totally different. Yeah, I mean, basically just kept hearing from customers like, can we have this for our kids?

And we're like, we're gonna listen to our customers. So, I mean, it's the same technology, everything else. And it's like kids are in front of screens just as much as adults are half the time, especially with, you know, remote learning. Well, let's get into the origin story and how you got here. Because I know you have, you know, you come from parents of what, a doctor and a nurse. So I'm sure that you were supposed to go on that path, right? Was that the direction you were supposed to go?

You know, my dad did not want me to be a doctor. He wanted me to be a lawyer. He's like, classic like, don't do what I do, but do this other thing. Yeah. You're really going to argue it. Yeah, yeah. This is where you need to go. Have you seen my malpractice insurance?

You're up in like a New York Jewish household. You get good at arguing real fast. Yeah. So what brought you down this path then? So I actually went to school. I thought I was gonna be a lawyer and early on realized like I don't wanna do that. I wanted to build things and so got excited about that.

When I graduated from school in 2013, went to work for this fellowship program launched by Andrew Yang called Venge for America. Basically, it was like Teach for America, but applied to startups, right? So it's a nice segue, ease into, hey, how do you get into the startup community? It's not the easiest thing right out of college, generally because especially startups looking for people who know what they're doing. College kids generally don't know what they're doing. And so I got introduced to the old CEO of Zappos Tony Shay, who unfortunately passed away in 2020 or 2021,

but his project to revitalize downtown Las Vegas called Downtown Project. So basically, he put in 350 million of his own money into that project and it's where Zappos is based. But if you've ever been to downtown Vegas, especially back then, it was really, really CD. And it was just how do we build a ton of demand in that area? We were building restaurants and bars and all this cool stuff.

To get people excited about coming down there and ultimately wanting to live there. Except it was treated like a startup. And so we had no idea if these projects were going to make money or lose money. And my team was like, figure this out. You figure this out. So I'm 20, two years old, that is school. No idea what you're doing. Okay, sure.

Like, leading the team yourself. It's like, you just have to be resourceful, right? So Google your way to victory and I end up building all these models in Excel, financial models in Excel. And I just started to absolutely kill me. I'm like, what is going on? I'm looking around and half the people I know are complaining about the same stuff, right? My eyes are exhausted that day. I'm getting this nagging headache in the afternoon. My vision might get a little bit blurry. So I start talking to up Thomas Tristan off the monitor. I'm like, what is going on here? Why am I and so many people I know complain about similar issues? And many of them are saying,

look, a lot of this has to do with what screens produce blue light and glare. And if you could filter blue light, which is high in G light that comes off of any screen today, and glare, which is typical of any screen as well, if you could filter blue light, eliminate glare, you can create this more comfortable experience. And so I'm like, okay, cool, that sounds great. I wanna buy a pair, except that at the time, it was either, which is still true today, these clear lenses that don't really work very well,

or these yellow lenses that in these hunting goggly type frames that you put them on, you look like one of the X-Men. That's why I remember from the 80s. Yeah, they have those commercials with these big, ugly orange glasses. Yeah, 100%. I'm like, all right, look, I wear a T-shirt or button down to work. I'm not wearing a suit, but I still care

about the way that I look. And I think that it's important. And so when we were creating Phil X-Grey, it was this idea of how do you combine function with fashion, right? So how do you create something that your eyes are gonna feel good, but you're gonna feel good and confident

what you're wearing at the same time. And so we ended up building this proprietary way of filtering blue light. It is 15 times more effective than other clear lenses, and that's how it's in just really beautiful frames. So, you know, that was kind of how it all got rolling, and we had no idea if this was going to work, right? No one even knew what blood was at the time.

Yeah, what year is this? What year are we in? We're talking about this. Yeah, so join this, you know, Tony's thing in 2013 by 2015, I had left to go start this by 2016 way of the first product in our hands. And so instead of just launching, and this is when direct consumer are a lot of different brands were launching, they're raising tons of money,

pre-revenue, and we thought, okay, we can do this ourselves. In my co-founder and I, Chris and myself, we're like, look we're two smart guys, we could kind of raise a bunch of money too. And people just laughed us out of the room. They're like, you're not going to change behavior, right? You're not going to sell glasses to people who, especially at the time, we were just selling non-prescription, right?

So now we sell prescription, we sell readers, we have a kids line. We have a lot of different stuff, but at the time it was just people who either had 2020 vision like myself or who, you know, were contacts. And people just, they're like, that's not going to happen. So we said, okay, well, we still think this can be real. There's enough people we know that are complaining about these issues. So we started going all around New York and working with companies like Uber and Barclays and LinkedIn.

And we would go into their offices and we'd offer them a 50 pair trial period for their employees. Just a free thing to do, right? And their culture, HR teams are super happy because we handled the whole thing. They didn't have to do anything and they got to offer a perk to employees.

And at the end, those employees could either purchase out of their own pocket or they could return them. And we didn't even, the website, those employees could either purchase out of their own pocket or they could return them. We didn't even have the website fully launched and everything. We'd actually be carrying duffel bags around the subway with IWARE just going in and out. We saw about one and three people were buying at the end of those two weeks and they

loved it. What was funny is, then we would come back to the office on Monday and we'd have emails Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday from a bunch of people who had returned them saying, hey, can you actually come back to the office? I'm wearing, I'm now doing my work without these and I'm noticing how much worse my eyes are

than they were when I was with them. So that was my experience was when I first used them, I couldn't really tell until I didn't use them. I think that's what happens to a lot of people. It's subtle enough of a difference that you're like, oh, is this helping? Is this not helping? And then it's not until you stop using them consistently

that all of a sudden that you notice. Yeah, I don't know if you know our story, but we were super skeptical of any blue light blocking anything, early days. In fact, we made fun of the orange and yellow glasses and you know, we said it was like the cool. Yeah, because it was in the biohacking sort of space and they were into everything that looked ridiculous. Yeah, they were cool about it. And then and then we met you guys and we wore them, then we were sold because we could tell a big difference. Well, I also, I read a book in 2017 or early 2018

by Adam Alter, and I talked about on the podcast much time called Irresistible. And the book is basically about just the addictive properties of tech and like what's happened in the last decade. So, and at that time, I had a different kid that was working for us that was helping me look for like partnerships in companies. And that said, like I knew that where we are heading with the addiction to tech that probably wasn't going to change.

I think it was just going to get more and more and a younger, younger age. And there has to be some unintended consequences of us being glued to screens all day long. So I was like, there's gotta be something that is gonna be in the future coming out to help combat that someone. And that was blue light blocking glasses, and it was you guys who were kind of, and that was still, I know pretty early for you guys,

but you were some of the first websites and stuff that popped up in social media, I saw you back then, and that's what made us head towards you guys was, well, you guys looked like you were leading the way in the space. It's funny you mentioned that. So, you know, we really did pioneer the new wave of blu-like glasses.

But for us, you know, at our core, we never start to come in and start an Iowa company, right? We started because we were dealing with these issues. And so when you're talking about the negative effects of digital devices, that is the larger mission I feel is great at this point, right? So we are in the midst of our transition from a direct consumer blue eyed glasses brand where we basically sold all through our site our blue eyed glasses products to now being an omnichannel digital wellness brand. And what that means is one, we're starting to launch with different partners, right?

So we're about to launch a diffuse product line with Target at the end of March. We're launching in 500 Best Buy stores, you know, later in the summer, but digital wellness test is even more important. It's this idea of at the end of the day, we want to improve your relationship with technology, right? We know that, yes, it's great to take time off from your screens. You know, I'm a big proponent of that. As I mentioned, you guys, I was living in a yurt in Kyrgyz Dan for a week off the grid. Like that stuff is really important. We definitely advocate for that. But we also recognize that you can't do that every day, right? You have a job

that requires screen use. You know, might be in a long distance relationship and you want to FaceTime, you know, you're significant other, you want to watch a basketball game at night or, you know, a Netflix show or whatever that might mean. And so to say, hey, let's not be in front of screens is not really going to work. It's saying, okay, what are the ways that we can improve that relationship with our technology because we are going to use it? Now, we kind of glossed over a bit about the trials and the process of you actually trying to develop a better lens.

How do you even approach that? I know too, isn't there one company in Italy, Laxodica that sort of dominates a lot of the frame space as well. And just can you paint the picture of what that all looks like getting into the eyewear sort of business? Yeah, it's a great question. So I came, I had no experience and did not have any family background

or anything in the area. So it really just became hustling and networking and just meeting one person, that knew another person, that knew another person that knew another person and selling the mission, selling the vision and really just, you know, following up with people, being a good person, being a kind person, being appreciative of their time and showing those traits and so that meant that with one good conversation someone introduced me to another person and that and up

leading us to our lens supplier and we developed a proprietary lens with them. So we realize that, hey, these guys are the best in the business, but what they're doing isn't totally what we think the market should need and we worked with them on a new formula. And essentially, that is what allows us to be this clear lens, like what I'm wearing right now,

looks like a normal pair of glasses. But it's filtering 30% of blue light, where most blue light is created. It's filtering 90% of the highest energy wavelengths. It's also filtering a really high percentage of where most screens are producing blue light. If you look at other clear products, they're also going to filter that high range. But where most blue light is produced is a little bit further down in the spectrum. You usually need color in order to filter that level. And so those other products,

they're only filtered like two to three percent of blue light. And so you'll see a lot of customers saying, hey, I found Felix Gray because I tried two other pairs. I didn't really love him, but my eyes were killing me. I was looking for a solution. I finally pulled the trigger on the more expensive product and really as you get what you pay for. Yeah, was that a tough process because I guess, I don't know, for lack of a better term, dumb tech would be, you look at something through a different color. So red lenses, obviously,

you're going to block everything but red light, orange, everything but, you know, orange or whatever goes through orange. But clear, that's really tough our eye that can filter blue light But it exists so small that it's not really going to do anything for us without extra support And so we synthesize that pigment Put it into the lens and then added a few other properties that turn that that property is still a little bit yellow But it's not as yellow as like in yellow or orange is what you would normally see from a really good blue light lens.

And so what we did is we then had a couple other properties that turned that yellow back into clear. So you still have that pigment in there that's filtered in blue light, but then have a couple other things to make it so the lens appears clear. Oh, really interesting. Now, how does this differ than the,

you know, how I can change the screen on my phone, that'll reduce or stop blue light or on my computer screen? Yeah, so that's totally a misnomer. So like night shift, I think is what you're afraid to. Yeah. So that's really good about changing the contrast of your screen, right? So if you're, you know, everyone knows you're you're up at night and then you look at your phone and it's that white light, you know, hitting and it's the contrast is a lot with a dark room and it's annoying to your eyes. That's going to be annoying and so basically what night shift is doing is changing the temperature or screen. But if you think about blue light, I mean, anything that is going to have white light in it essentially has to have RGB, it has to have red, green, and blue. So unless your screen is completely red and black, you have to have blue light.

So you're not going to affect that at all. And then just as importantly, people know it as blue light glasses, but a really effective pair of blue light glasses also needs to be able to eliminate glare. That's another important aspect. When you get that distracting glow, you're able, basically, it's the light coming in from a variety of different areas into your eye. And so an anti-glare and anti-reflective coating is going to take all that light and it's going to put it into one part of your, it's going to enter the lens and then it's

going to essentially, the angles that all converge, and so the light enters your eye at one focal point. And so that's gonna be a lot more comfortable for your eye too. So. Now something that was interesting to me was, as we dived in deep, where I did in the science of this, is that there's actually some benefit to blue light as well, right?

It's wakefulness properties. So maybe you can explain the difference between day blue, you know, blue light blocking glasses and night blue light blocking glasses because I notice a difference. If I were the night ones during the day, I get sleepy. So maybe explain that a little bit. Yeah, so blue light, essentially it is one of the things

that helps with our circadian rhythm. So when we were like cavemen, cave women, you think about it, okay, you get out of your cave, now the sun's come up, okay, you go about your day trying not to get killed by some animal. And then maybe you hunt something, you gather something, and then you go back to your cave, it's dark. Melton starts to be secreted because there's an absence of blue light, you go to sleep, sun rises, same thing happens again. What's important with what we do is that we filter blue light. We don't block blue light. So our clear lens is something that's still going to allow blue light into your eye.

It's important. It's monitoring, it's helping managers circadian rhythm. It's not going to block it fully. We actually have a sleep product that's specially designed to filter even more blue light. And that's what improves melton secretion by two times. So like, are clear lens some people wear it at night and they really see an improvement? But we really recommend is, hey, where are your clear lenses during the day?

And then where are amber lenses for sleep at night? Because that's gonna be more helpful. Yeah, I do that like two hours before bed. Is that how you guys recommend it? I do it like four hours, but I also have like, I go to bed at one in the morning usually. That's like my time to like get stuff done, you know, or, you know. Now, I know, I know we have studies that show

the difference in melatonin production from doing this, and it's pretty significant. Do we see any other hormones being affected? I would assume growth hormone because melatonin and growth hormone are somewhat related. I think that anything that, I can't speak to that so directly, but I will say that anything that is gonna be affected

by melatonin and any other hormones are surely then gonna be affected, right? Because if your melatonin isn't being secreted because you've essentially brought the sunlight indoors with your digital devices, then you want a melatonin flowing through your body and that's gonna affect other hormones at the same time. So here's something interesting.

This is not, and I do, I wanna disclaimer here, I haven't seen any studies on this, but this is just my own experience. So we've been working with a company that has these continual glucose monitors. And we haven't yet talked about them because we were testing out the product. But nonetheless, what it allows you to do

is see what your glucose levels look like throughout the day, and then you can adjust your nutrition, white rice affects me more than oatmeal or vice versa or whatever. And I noticed a difference in my glucose from wearing blue light blocking glasses versus not. And I asked the nutritionist that's associated

with the glucometer and she said melatonin production actually has an effect on glucose. So very, very interesting. So I'm interested to see further science in some of this stuff and seeing how it affects chronic disease, for example, because we know that poor sleep is connected to higher rates of diabetes, dementia, low testosterone and men, fertility issues, I mean, you name it. So I'm sure we're going to see in the future, how much does the more things? How much research is being done right now, and blue light blocking? I mean, what has been like the evolution of that? So blue light essentially at this point, a Harvard study came out in 2009

that really opened the doors to, hey, blue light spreads his military inscription. At this time, that's become really common fact. The most research that's being done right now and is in are there long-term negative effects associated with blue light? And so that is, you're seeing an increase in age-related macular degeneration.

So, the macular is part of the retina. If that generates, essentially leads to blindness. And so, there is an increase in that. And some models show within stem cells and animal cell models that an overexposure of blue light can harm the retina and essentially deteriorate it, deteriorate the macula. Others say that, hey, that overexposure is more than you're going to get from screens. So, we're still in the early days, but I kind of liken it to the fact that for hundreds of years, we had no idea if smoking was bad for us or not.

And then there was about 50 years where the cigarette companies were just kind of saying, no, it's not bad for you, but we all kind of knew it was bad for us. We're in the really, really early days of this, right? We're the first generation that's in front of devices all day every day, dealing with this stuff. And so I think it's going to take a while to really figure that out. But what I will say is, and we have customers that reach out about this all the time, it's not bad to wear a pair of blu-like glasses. There's no harm associated.

So if you're treating this as an insurance policy, that's not bad to wear a pair of blu-like glasses. There's no harm associated. So, if you're treating this as an insurance policy, that's totally okay. There's no going to be harm coming from that. Yeah, the way I say it is, try it and see if you feel better. And the answer's typically yes. I do feel a lot better. And I think the last thing, which is the most subjective aspect, which is more difficult to do in a scientific study,

is around pain. Yeah. Because how do you judge someone's eye strain versus someone else's eye strain? Right? And so those things, a lot of times, we collect our own data. So we know, for instance, that 90 days after customers buy a pair of Felix Grace, whether they've returned them or not, we ask them, hey, did you experience symptoms related to digitalized strains? So I strain, I fatigue, dry eyes, blurry vision, headaches, did you experience these symptoms before wearing a field of scraing? And nine out of ten people say yes.

That matches up with the fact that when people first purchase nine out of ten people say yeah, I'm buying this because I'm dealing with these issues. And then as a follow up to that, we say, okay, if you're dealing with these issues, have you experienced a significant improvement from wearing Phil X-ray? Nine of 10 of which people say, yes, I've experienced a significant improvement. So we're kind of the same way, so we're like, hey, look, try it. If you don't like it, it's not for you. That's fine.

That's why we have a 30-day return policy for a reason. We want you to sit with the product. We want you to enjoy it. If you don't like it, it's not for you. That's fine. That's why we have a 30-day return policy for a reason. We want you to sit with the product, we want you to enjoy it. And if you don't, there's not going to be any questions, we're going to take it right back because we're so confident in the product that it works. What's the projected growth of the space in general of this kind of market? It's supposed to be 10% of the I wear market in the next five years What is it right now? About three percent of the I wear market. Oh wow. That's huge. So triple Yeah, it's size and the next how many years in the next five now do you agree with that or you think that's gonna grow even faster because I I feel like

The awareness of like okay one thing you said that was really important is you would have people try them, and then they would notice a difference. And I found that to be true with lots of different things that people just don't know because they don't know. So do you think that that's accurate? Do you think it's gonna be a faster growth than that? I think growing three times in five years over the whole market is still really fast. I think that it could definitely grow faster.

The area where it's gonna grow the fastest though is then gonna be, and what we're trying to work on right now is like we have a prescription line, right? And so it's the same lens, it's just offered in your prescription product. And you're already wearing glasses, so it could fit in that. Why would you not, if you're a glasses wear, then do that. And so now we're figuring out ways of saying,

hey, you might like your product frame, but you want that feel great lens in it. How do we do that? Yeah. Right. So that we're not tied to our frame constraints and saying, oh, I love the Nash frame. Even the Nash frame is great frame, or like the Harrow frame is great frame.

But you might like this or that, or this brand or that brand. But you know that, hey, I do require, like I am in front of a screen, like if you have my phone, my laptop, my monitor, my TV, like 10 hours a day, I would love to use the best product in class. So I think that that's where you're gonna see

even further growth. So are you, is that in the near future, where you're gonna be able to have a pair of paradas and have the feeling of great lenses in them? We're working through it. Oh wow. That could be huge. Now, what about the gamer market?

Have you guys looked at that? Because we had a friend of ours, Mark Massroff on the show. He's a founder of 24 Fitness, it's like a Godfather in the fitness space. But he's investing heavily in these like e-gaming sports spaces, which I had no idea there was big and is generated as much revenues they do, and they're projected to just explode. I think they're going to have a conventional sport. Yeah, they're going to be bigger than conventional sports.

It's crazy. Are you guys looking in that space as well? So we already work in that space a little bit less so than our primary bread and butter is definitely more on the professional side, but we definitely are getting further and further into the gaming side, especially because if you know, if you think about what a gamer, a typical gamer stereotype look like 30 years ago versus today, it's totally different, right? Like everyone games now, you know, back then it was very different. And so everyone games, and most of these people are live streaming this stuff, right?

And so they want to look good in the process too. So they want something that works, but they're also going to look good. FieldXcray makes a lot of sense. Do you got into that more? Are you guys like any influencers that are pushing FieldXcray right now in the stream inside? We've done some influencers that are gamers that push FieldXcray. I can't remember the ones off the top of my head because the marketing team tends to handle

that stuff. But we've done that at times you sponsor different, like actual eSports teams. So we've definitely gone into that space. It's still, again, like I'd say, it's definitely not like the bread and butter right now, but it's kind of the same value prop for someone who might be like a banker or a lawyer, you know, a startup guy, a tech person, you know, being in front of their screen all day for work and then going home and playing video games.

It's the same value prop. Dave, because in my opinion, much of this is driven by the science that's coming out to show the benefits that gets people open to even try them, are you guys funding studies yourselves to get more awareness around the benefits? So we're really adamant about, if we fund studies, it comes with a little bit of, hey, what was the real result gonna actually look like? So what we care about is one, we collect and do our studies on our own customer data.

So that's really important, right? So for instance, like I mentioned, like the nine attendants, we see significant improvement. And that's tens of thousands of data points from survey data at this point. And then there's a lot of other studies being done that kind of support that.

And we just, we know what the science is. And then when you see independent studies come out talking through these things, it becomes a lot more impactful than if it's the Felix Gray sponsored study. At the same time, then, we do a lot of our own research and data into our own lenses to making sure that that is really helpful. We do a lot of filtration curve analysis. We do a lot of side-by-side comparisons.

A lot of these lenses are coatings that are deflecting blue light, or they're putting in a die into the lens that's only filtering a certain percentage of blue light. So we do a lot of those studies, and we walk customers through a lot of that stuff in order to better educate them, because frankly, when we started, there's a lot of, let's be honest, there's definitely like a snake oil aspect to this product. For us, it's been really important as we've grown, and I think one of the reasons we have grown is because one of our credos is to build thoughtfully designed research back products.

We're not going to launch something if we don't think that it's going to be effective. We're not going to launch something if the research doesn't show, hey, this is accurate and this is why it's effective. Who are your biggest critics with what you guys do? I think that there are some optometrist and ophthalmologist that are still on the sidelines on this one, but so many people have come over. It's very different than us.

I just get so young, we're so early. It was so early and it's, it's five years ago, it was very different than it was today. You know, blue light is very well accepted in the mainstream. It is a term that many people know about. That's very different than it was when we were doing those trial off it.

You know, when we were doing those trials in those companies, no, a new up light was, like they didn't know what Phil X-ray was, they didn't know what blue light was. They just knew that this was helping. I imagine that there has to be some percentage of people are just stoked that they have a reason to wear glasses now, right?

They don't accessorize. It's hilarious to say that. They don't have an excuse for it. That's the 10%. So when we first asked customers, we say, why did you buy Phil X Gray? And we give a bunch of different reasons. And nine and a 10 of them are buying for some

or multiple reasons related to digital eye strain, right? That again, that eye strain, that eye fatigue, dry eyes, blurry vision headaches. But fashion is like 10% of people are like, I'm buying for fashion reasons. That's okay. That's totally cool. But the overwhelming majority of people are buying it for the lens first and then the frame second, right? I think if we had a terrible looking frame selection, they're never going to check out from Felix Gray, but they're coming

for the lens first and then they're leaving with the whole package and that's why they really have. Now, did you predict that? Did you see that happening? I mean, I know you're an NBA fan And I know that like you know just like in the last decade that became like a popular thing We're like NBA players would be wearing these like you're thinking style first We're clear clear glasses, you know, we were definitely thinking no one is I mean, it's kind of the same thing I wouldn't have started Felix Gray if there was a really effective and nice looking pair of blue eyed glasses, right? They were hunting goggly looking stuff

and there were these lenses that didn't work. It was like, all right, something's kind of got to be in between. And, but yeah, you're right. Like, you know, Russell Westbrook, classic example, wearing those, you know, glasses that are, you know, fake. Yeah. It definitely was something that I think was a tailwind Westbrook, classic example, wearing those glasses that are fake.

It definitely was something that I think was a tailwind for us, but I think the larger tailwind was the fact that everyone's just in front of screens so much time and they're kind of blown, their brain's out a little bit saying, hey, this is killing me. Has there been any sort of influential player, for instance, or just like celebrity or somebody who's really sort of, you know, brought Felix Gray's even more in the forefront. So we've had some, like, Bre Larson is aware of Felix Gray, the actress. When we work with, when we're trying to figure out celebrity type things, so it's really important for us to be authentic about it.

So we still haven't done that celebrity endorsement because, all right, you're an actor, you're acting. You know, and then you're attending. You're not like me, you're not like, you know, and so we want it to be authentic. So I think maybe down the line, maybe really cool to be work with a well-known director who does finish

with their film and then they're in post-production for the next year in front of a screen all day every day. We're as function with it, not just, hey, look at me. Exactly, but if it's not going to be authentic, then it's not going to feel right and consumers aren't stupid, they're going to look at this and say, why does Timothy Salome need to wear a pair of Philx craze, just acting on a big screen all day. We'll get Spielberg. What's been the biggest challenge with the company?

I think that one of the biggest things for us has been, we've created a really good product. And so a lot of people will buy a pair of Philx craze. They love their pair of Philx craze. But the reason to come back and buy a second pair is not the most important, right? Because now they have that pair. Maybe they buy another one for, they buy one for their office, they buy one for work. We have a lot of reader customers, readers, customers, where are they all over the house? Or they might be a dad or a mom that buys for their kids. But you

have plenty of, I'm 25, 28 year olds, you know, living by themselves or through mates in a house, they buy that one pair and they're done. And so I think that, you know, we then said, okay, how do we address that in an authentic way to the brand? And that is a really important aspect to being a digital wellness brand because it means that our product line gets to go beyond just eyewear. So we launched a supplement back in August, specifically designed really for potential long-term effects of eye health. So it has lutein and ziazanthin and zinc and vitamin C and E, all things that are found in aides and other really well-known studies that are supposed to support your macular health. We're launching eye drops later this year, specifically designed with the fact that a lot of dry eye is related to reduced

blink rate. So we can't fully solve that with a pair of glasses, and so we can continue to solve that with a pair of eye drops at the same time. So I think that's really exciting for us because we look at digital wellness and improving that relationship between us and our technology. We kind of look at four key buckets. We look at our eyes, which we clearly do a lot of already. That's either, you know, short-term, comfort or long-term health. We look at sleep, which we've talked a lot about. We also look about your ergonomics and the fact that you're sitting generally at a desk all day.

That's affecting your wrist, your neck, your back, things like that. And then we think of, again, you're just your general energy and productivity. A lot of people are using this as a workplace productivity tool. And so how do we look at those for buckets and where are the white spaces within those categories that we can add value to customers? And so I think the longer term vision becomes really exciting because then you can start telling a larger, more important story to customers beyond just blue eyed glasses, but it's this idea of,

hey, just like 20 years ago, where, and you look at 20 years ago versus now and the amount of care we have for the food we put in our bodies and type of exercise we get, the type of sleep we get. Well then we sit in front of our, you know, desks for 10 hours a day, you know, sit on the couch watching some TV. We know that's not good for us. And so how do we apply that same level of health and wellness to that part of our day,

which is such an overwhelming amount of time? And we think of that those four key buckets around your eyes, your sleep, your aerodynamics, your energy as areas that we can really help customers with. Now, David, statistically speaking, most startups fail and founders. What gives you confidence in yourself? So, I mean, we've been doing this for a while. I would say that most startups fail. They definitely fail generally early on rather than later on, though.

They certainly do fail later on as well. I think humility is really important. I recognize that this is still something that is newer. It's a newer market. It's still a younger company. And you need to approach that with, hey, it's not an, I can't fail attitude. It's a, hey, I can fail.

And here's all the things I'm gonna do to avoid failing. And I think that that is something that, if you have, you're more likely to be successful. And it just provides a lot of fight in you. When something, you know, starts go up and down 100%. And it's really easy when you're down to be like, oh, the sucks. Like, you know, I don't want to do this anymore. Oh, there's no way out. That's, you know, if I've ever thought like that, immediately, I'm like, that is a bad attitude to have. Like, of course, those thoughts can enter into your mind, but you can't let them, you know, stay there and see if they're you have to say,

okay, what are the ways that we got to approach this challenge with excitement and say, okay, how do you how do you solve for this? And that has allowed us to, you know, continue to grow and continue to become, you know, the brand that we are today. Was there a turning point or a very pivotal moment in the business where you kind of was like, okay, we definitely have something here or you knew that it was going to be successful? Frankly early on, it happened. I think we found product market fit earlier than a lot of companies necessarily do. So after these tri-on programs, one of the groups, actually, that tried the product was a business insider team that writes about new products.

And they loved it. And they kept them being like, we want to write about this, we want to write about this. We're like, we're not ready yet. You guys write about this, who knows what happens. And finally, I actually was at lunch with, if you guys know, do you guys know the pasta company, Bonza? You guys would love them.

They're like chickpea pasta. So much more. How have you ever looked at me when you said pasta? Yeah. It's definitely pasta guy. So I was having lunch with the founder there, who's a friend through this venture for American network. And Chris, my co-founder, I was like,

you gotta come back. Cause the article I just dropped and sales were just spiking. And all of a sudden, within like two weeks, we were sold out of stock. And we, you know, then said, okay, like we have something. How do we continue to scale this? And then as we started to scale, we continue to see success as we got stock back in the door. And so those were some of the things that were, we found that product market fit really early, which was pretty promising. Scariest moment.

Scariest moment. There's been a few, I remember one time earlier on, we didn't do our inventory modeling the right way. And so we weren't expecting that the packages couldn't be reused the same rate as other things. So we're really keen about, okay, we don't want to just throw away stuff, we don't want to waste stuff.

And so when people return something like a pair of glasses, we actually now have a facility in Ohio that will do full QC on it. And if it's not up to standard, you know, we'll actually donate it, but if it is up to standard, we can reuse it, right? Because we don't want it to go to waste from both a green aspect and also from a financial aspect.

And so, the customer is still going to be really happy with the product because it's fully QC, and it's 100%. But earlier on, for packaging, you can't do that. You're going to have to, unfortunately unfortunately throw away most of that packaging. And so we had like no boxes for like three weeks and we couldn't ship them to the product. We had all these frames and, you know, we had all these glasses sitting there,

sales rolling through, and we had to explain to a lot of customers, hey, your order's gonna be delayed because of a packaging issue. Yeah. That was definitely one that sucked. Actually, it was headed to a basketball game that night I was going to play basketball. And my VP op's calling me and it's like, we have a problem.

I was like, I'm going to come back to the office. This might be a tough question to ask, but do you have like a long term strategy for yourself with the company like when you would want to sell or exit or company goes public or do you, is that anything? Or even start a new company? Anyone else to run? Like what's your vision? So right now, I mean, my, like when you would want to sell or exit or company goes public, or is that anything? Or even start a new company?

You're talking about someone else to run. Like, what's your vision? So right now, I mean, from my position, I still think I'm learning a lot. I'm having a lot of fun. I think what's awesome of being CEO is you get to constantly be improving yourself every day and focusing on, you know,

how to become a better leader, how to become a better listener. And so I'm really confident in staying in that role and continuing this really exciting time again to becoming this digital wellness brand and growing beyond the really strong reputation we've built in the blue-and-glossest space. I think that in terms of M&A and all those things, we're a first and foremost focused on building an awesome company. All that stuff will come when it comes.

If we build a great company that customers love, that a P&L looks good at the same time, that all will work itself out, but right now we're just really focused on telling this story on digital illness that we don't think any brand is telling. And we think it's a really important one to be told. Yeah, that's a big risk because you go in from blue light blocking glasses to now, it sounds like you want to be one of the, at the forefront of educating people on just wellness in the digital space.

What about your style of leadership? But do you try and model your leadership around somebody else that's inspired you or? So I'll answer both questions. So the first thing, so can you repeat the question? Yeah, no problem. No, a big risk because you're selling blue light blocking glasses, they're fashionable, they worked, are good.

And now you're like, we want to be the leaders in this kind of digital wellness space, which there really aren't that many leaders or none that I can fake of. So I think maybe it's just like Hutzpah, but we have the confidence because we also pioneered the blue eyed glasses space when no one knew what that was.

And we were educating on that as well. And I think actually when you phrase it as, hey, let's improve the relationship we have with our technology, kind of clicks for a lot of people. People start nodding along the same way that it used to be when we would say, hey, are your eyes killing you from being in front of screen all day?

And it would click as well. But this is a more aspirational mission, I think, than just being at the blood glass level. Even though, look, what we do with blood glasses is incredibly important. And we're not giving that up by any means. We just think we're telling a larger story. And then in terms of leadership, you know, I look to a lot of

different people that I know personally and their leadership styles, I looked our own, you know, the own people at the company and, you know, their leadership styles because I love about what someone does with their team or someone does with their team. And then in terms of great CEOs, I think the CEO of Microsoft, Sotin and Adela is incredibly underrated,

particularly his idea of, I mean, when he took over, Microsoft for 20 years was really, really political. They were, and because they were really political, and there's a lot of infighting and a lot of me, me, me, there was a lot of stagnation in their growth. They had all this opportunity, a huge platform, and they weren't able to capitalize on all of it. He came in and really preached this idea of growth mindset.

It's this idea of what I kind of mentioned earlier, which is you have a challenge, be excited about that challenge, right? And it's this idea of, okay, there's a problem. Let's not treat it as it's a problem we're going to fail, but this is a challenge that we get to solve. And let me not just solve it by myself, but let me solve it with other people. And at a big company like theirs, that then changes their incentive structures in terms of, hey, you're now evaluating in terms of not what your specifically

necessarily your output is providing, but also how your team's output is and how you're helping other teams. And so that type of thinking kind of transformed Microsoft and I have friends inside Microsoft that have talked about it. And now you look at, you know, their stock price, you know, since he's taken over, it's gone through the roof, right? Because they had all this opportunity and they just weren't capitalizing on it. And I think he is just a really thoughtful, seems like a great listener first type of person, which is naturally what I'm not like, but what I strive to be. And he's just like a really good inspiration. I have kind of a random question.

Before the podcast started, we were kind of talking about like how all these commercials and how jingles and cartoons, all these things that, you know, I paid attention to, for some reason now is relevant in my job. Like I can talk about these things, I had no idea this would have any kind of relevance with what I do now.

And if you kind of look back, in terms of high school college, just like your own childhood experience, is there any unique traits, personality traits, any kind of skills and things you never would have thought you're using now in your job? Oh, that's a good one. I think that I was on, so I played sports,

but I also was a little bit of an nerd, so I was on the debate team and things like that. And I actually think that stuff has been incredibly important, because as a leader, one of the most important things is to communicate. And so I didn't realize how affect, look, I'm not arguing necessarily, I'm not debating everyone all day, that would be exhausting, but it's important to communicate really concisely, coherently and aspirationally. And I think I learned

some of those things from things like debate camp. And my father who's like not a sports guy at all, like kind of hate sports. And he would force me to go to like debate camp during the summer. I'd be like, I want to play baseball. I want to play basketball. Like, no, you have to go to like the debate camp. And like that sucked at the time. Yeah, it was awful. Awful, like I, but I do think it helped, you know, in terms of me and my ability to communicate,

which I think is one of the, you know, one of those things that I didn't think was gonna be important. And here I am being like, all right, I guess like thanks dad, just a little bit, but with the nice play basketball, yeah. In my opinion, one of the most underrated skills is actually learning how to debate effectively

in public versus what a lot of people do and you said you went to school to be a lawyer so I'm sure they talk about this as well which is I'm just trying to argue rather than I'm trying to change people's minds. Yeah and I think that what is that one of the things I'm really happy that you know wasn't a lawyer is because you don't have to change the other side's minds in a law room, right? You have to change the jury's mind. Here you have to change someone in business. You have to change someone else's mind, which means you have to approach it first from an empathetic point of view.

You're trying to understand where they are coming from and then try to explain where you're coming from. And I think that is really effective and that means means becoming a good listener and things like that, whereas if you're a lawyer, you don't really have to worry about those things. My wife actually talks about all the time, she's like, I'm so happy you weren't a lawyer. So you'd be such an ass.

Now, how do the parents feel? I mean, that you started to go that direction, and then you take a ride. They had to feel it first, and they had to feel now. Well then you take a ride. How did they feel at first? And how did they feel now? Yeah. Well, you know, moms are always going to be supportive and moms are the best. And my mom was always supportive the whole way.

My dad was definitely a little bit more skeptical. Because he's still now. I mean, where's he at now? You know, my dad is, I think he's, he's, he's really proud. I know, I think he kind of looks at me. He's like, I wouldn't have been able to do that and my son's doing that and that's really cool. So that's cool.

Yeah. So in debate, Camp, did you have to learn how to argue both sides of an argument? Not only both sides, but there's different styles of debate and like you have to learn these different formats. So you must get so annoyed. Metals for winning or what? I definitely want to, I never got any metal. Oh, I got trophies though, yeah. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed.

I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed.

I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed.

I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so annoyed. I get so posting from a basement, you know, anonymous, six, nine, six, nine, it's argued, you know, versus the other guy, it's like, it's so frustrating. Did you come up with the name Felix Ray, by the way, and what does that, what does that mean? Yeah, yeah.

So we name all the frames after scientists and mathematicians. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, which is really cool. Like, I'm learning the hero that's named after Guillermo Har a hero who is a Mexican astronomer. And so Felix comes from a Kurt Vonnegut book, Cats Cradle. And in it, there's a character named Felix Honaker. It's basically in that book, like the Litter equivalent Einstein.

And so that's where Felix comes from. Couldn't do anything with Honaker obviously, because that's like an impossible name to pronounce, Felix has that spelled. And then we, in our branding, you'll see a lot of times Alice will pop up. And the reason that we chose Alice is, okay, a lot of people are gonna be using this at work.

So, Alice are intelligent, wise, agacious, and so we chose Alice. Of course, when we first launched and we had Alice, people are like, oh, you chose Alice because Alice have good vision. And we're like, oh yeah, definitely, definitely. That's just totally for two like, oh yeah, definitely. That's just, just, totally for to it is. Yeah, totally.

You just, you just, you just gained 10 points in my book. Any, any other favorite books that you'd like to read? Um, so I think one of my favorite books is this book called Barbarian Days, which is the skies. It's a, it's, the sky who wrote for the New Yorker for quite some time and it's his memoir on His life and surfing and he kind of traveled the world in like the 90s Backpacking in these surf spots before anyone knew what they were Living in these random islands in the the you know in the you know near the Philippines and things like that

and You know Portugal is like like this big surfing area now. He was surfing that area before anyone knew what it was. And it's this really cool balance of society and societal pressures and wanting to be successful and wanting to kind of do something in that world. And more than money or anything really just have an impact. And then kind of living this visceral existence in nature. And I definitely am one of those people

who I'm always kind of trying to find that balance. And I thought that book was really good. Okay, so now going to go stand a year for a week makes perfect sense. Yeah, tell me about that. What that first of all, again, talk about where you went, why did you do that? And that must have been rough.

So ever, so that was actually nicer than some of the other things I've done. So, really, yeah. So talk about this one first. I'm here, the other crazy stuff. So I think it's really important. I try one week out of the year to be completely off the grid. Not like go on vacation and I'm

not looking my phone. It's like no, I have no access to anything. You must be married. I am married. And I've been with my wife for, well, we got married in September, but we've been together for 11 years. So I guess that's probably, it sounds appealing. It's just kidding. I hope she does that. She does and she doesn't joking. So, yes, so I think that's really important. So, I try and go and I try and I'm a big skier. And so, I try and use skiing as a way of adventurous travel and to experience a culture that I never would experience

before either, right? And so, this year had kind of a Motley crew. I have about 20 people I know that would do these crazy trips. So I'll send out a mass text as I'm planning the next thing. Who's down? So I have this Motley crew,

from people from a few different places. And we went out to Kurgistan, which is kind of near like Mongolia. It's like, it's west of, a little bit west in South Mongolia. And it's just country of just like 90% mountains. And the mountains are the snow is really incredible. Also where you can get kidnapped from.

Also where you can get kidnapped from. And like Tommy called well. And so we got there and we stayed in the year for a week and basically we had two guides which was nice because when you don't know snowpack conditions and things like that, avalanches are a big concern. Actually like a ton of avalanches you could see as we were climbing up different stuff.

Oh wow, so you could see them. Yeah, I mean like I've done like avi courses and things and you know all your gear and you're ready for that stuff. But yeah, I mean it I've done like Abby courses and things, and you have all your gear, and so you're ready for that stuff. But yeah, I mean, it's pretty cool. So you kind of use these skis, and then you can unclick from your heels. So you can actually, and then you put this thing on the bottom of your skis,

called skins, and that allows them to be sticky, and so you can walk up instead of, and then you take them off and you can ski down. And so you're going on these things where you might go on a mission to this peak. That's a seven hour hike up between, you do that. And then finally, it gets to be rocky on the summit. And you have to do a scramble for, you know, call a thousand feet or something.

So that's really cool. I've done stuff in like winter camping in Yellowstone, lived on a boat in Norway for a week, like sailing into the fjords and skiing up, going up and skiing down them. So was this what you're doing with all our investment money? Yeah, no, no, no. Once a week, once a year, once a year, once a year.

Once a year, once a year. This is where all the funding is going. No, no, no. Once a year, the nice thing is, he hangs up on my pump, book the trip. Yeah. Yeah, yeah's all the funding is Let's see if the nice thing is he hangs up on my pump book to trip Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, the the nice thing is one is like the team is so awesome and so commenting to that and I'm a really big front of everyone being able to take off some time to you know You work in a startup where you're working 12 hours date

Yeah, you're gonna burn out if you never have an opportunity to just kind of turn off the plug. And so it's really important, we have an unlimited vacation policy at FG. And a lot of times, that works against the company because the founders are, they're never taking a vacation off and so everyone kinda looks at us,

well how can I take a vacation off? What we found is is like if you at the top are like hey, this is okay It's okay to take off that week You're gonna come back so much more fresh so much more productive and also you're gonna you're gonna want to stay here for longer Right the most expensive thing is retaining talent. Yep, you're right Totally if you're gonna stay longer like that is all good business for us anyway. It not only does it build a better culture, but it's good business in the long run. It's going to show up on your PNL just to say away. It's going to show up in the conversations you have day to day with people.

It's really cool for the team to support me when I get to go off the grid for a week, just like it's really cool when you get to support other people when they get to go off. It's just sort of, I think it's a really nice aspect of the field. What's the personal value you get out of doing these trips? Like, why do you, why do you end? I mean, it sounds fun. I could see all people who are into adventure

could put in joy, but you must do it for other reasons besides that. I think I'm a really big proponent of getting into flow states. And so I think that when I'm skiing, I'm in a flow state. Definitely when I'm skiing down or I'm skiing down, let me sketchy, I'm in a flow state. But I also find I get into a flow state on the way up. Like everything kind of turns off. I'm not thinking about a lot of stuff.

My body's working really hard. So your mind's not going to be running a mile a minute minute run a ton of different stuff. You can't So you know a lot of people you call it skinning a lot of people talk a lot on the skin track I'm really quiet. I'm just kind of in my own zone And I think that when you're in your own zone like that for several days in a row or a week in a row You just come out with a lot of you're just a lot of energy a lot of clarity Even if you don't realize all the stuff that's going on in the background like it's kind of going on and a row, you just come out with a lot of, you're just a lot of energy, a lot of clarity. Even if you don't realize all the stuff

that's going on in the background, like it's kinda going on, but it's not in the forefront. So that's really important. And then I think I'm a big believer in type A fun. So there's type A and type B. Type B is, go on a vacation, you've got a my tie, a cocktail, you sit by a B, treat a book, that's awesome.

But I'm a big problem and sometimes also, not going on a vacation, but going on that adventure, going on that trip. And doing that type A fund where, okay, I did, I am exhausted and I am, you know, breathing heavily. And I am malnourished at this point because it's seven hours and I'm trying to continue to feed myself.

You get to the top and you ski down and you look at the pictures two weeks later. Like, that's really rewarding. Yeah. Were there any big surprises or even like mistakes looking back at the journey in the business that you think you may like, for example, I get asked a question like this whole time

and it blew all of our minds. How impactful our email list was and we thought that when we first started, you know, seven, eight years ago, that, oh, it's moving away from email. Everything is now moving to, you know, Instagram and Facebook. And as long as we focus there,

we're not too worried about that. And that couldn't, that was probably one of the biggest mistakes we ever made. And it is a big portion of our revenue stream now. Whether things like that, that when you, when you first started, you thought, oh, this wouldn't be a big deal or that's totally surprised you.

That's a good question. I think from a leadership standpoint, I definitely think, you know, I started this, I was 25, right? And I definitely don't think I was the best listener. And so I think I've had to learn a lot about how to listen and understand from where other people are coming from. I don't think you can, I can't point like a direct line to how that negatively affected,

but it definitely did, right? I think things took longer to happen because instead of that debate where you're kind of listening to the other side and it's in a respectful discourse which we now talk a lot about, how can you disagree with someone but do so in a respectful discourse, which we now talk a lot about. How can you disagree with someone, but do so in a respectful way, look out at the end day for Philx Gray. I think a lot of people are, if you don't do that the right way,

people get, you know, trenched in into their own opinions and things take longer than they should. Who is it in your business that's challenging your vision? Like do you have somebody who is... Hey everyone's challenging the vision in all times. Not in terms of like the general direction, but then how do you have somebody who is... Hey, everyone's challenging the vision in all times, not in terms of like the general direction, but then how do you execute on that?

What, how does that manifest itself? And that is good, right? Like, I want, I don't have all the answers, and I don't ever want to be the one to look to for all the answers, because I'm just one person, right? So when we think about, you know, a new product line, for instance, and we were thinking about something related

to like a topical for relief around like neck pain, back pain, stuff like that related to sitting and posture. And the product we were looking at, I'm like, this is pretty interesting. And I got a lot of pushback from my chief brand officer and she thought that it was a little bit too derivative. She thought that there was other things out of the market and she thought that it was a little bit too derivative. She thought that there was other things on the market and she was right. And now we're working on potentially

something different instead that I think is going to be a lot more exciting. And so it's really important, I think, to get pushed back on everything that I say because as long as you're doing it from a respectful standpoint, as long as you're doing it from, hey, if it looks great, it's best interest in mind. I'm going to be open to that. Yeah, I feel like as a leader, if you don't get any of that, you don't know what to trust because then either people are afraid to tell you what their opinion is and they're just agreeing with you because you're the boss.

So you're kind of sitting around. So then you become like Putin. So then you become like Putin. You literally read my mind. You really read my mind. Oh, this has been excellent, David. We appreciate your company. We appreciate what you guys do.

One of the reasons why we actually put our money where our mouth is invested in the company. We don't just work as a sponsor. So thanks for- It's been awesome to be on this journey with you guys. And it's even cooler to see this next step as we like become closer together and it's just been great to be- And thanks for taking the leap into fitness. A lot of people in that space don't realize

that the fitness and health space is the perfect place to start digital wellness, so I appreciate that. For sure, I mean, you guys are focused on improving yourselves all day every day, right? Just like we are. And I think so, it just makes a lot of sense. Perfect, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at Mind Pump Media.com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps and a ballad, maps for performance, and maps aesthetic.

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