My First Million - Derek From More Plates More Dates: His +$100M Business Empire, Bryan Johnson & TRT

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

Episode 495: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) talk with Derek from More Plates More Dates (https://www.youtube.com/@MorePlatesMoreDates) about his origin story, +$100M business empire, investment portfolio, his thoughts on Bryan Johnson, how he sources his food and much more. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com/ — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (7:15) Why Pickup artists are often great entrepreneurs (12:50) Derek’s business empire (21:30) Degrees of difficulty with Derek’s businesses (28:00) What are Derek’s business goals? (39:25) Derek’s investment portfolio (43:45) The origin story of More Plates More Dates (52:00) How Derek became a health science expert (54:20) Thoughts on Bryan Johnson (1:00:25) Taking TRT and other supplements (1:06:15) Where Derek buys his food — Links: • More Plates More Dates Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/MorePlatesMoreDates • Derek's Twitter - https://twitter.com/Derek_Fitness • Gorilla Mind - https://gorillamind.com/ • Marek Health - https://marekhealth.com/ • Intelligent Elephant - https://intelligent.shop/ • Good Looking Loser - https://www.goodlookingloser.com/ • Chris's Twitter - https://twitter.com/goodlookinglosr • Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. — Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

I don't know what you're doing per month, but I would not be shocked if this was doing between six and eight million a month in revenue. Blink twice if I'm right. Yeah, you're, you guys are pretty, you know, on point with your ballpark. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel.

All right. What's up? We got Derek for more plays, more dates. here. Derek, I made a fatal mistake before this podcast. I don't know if you know this, but I was doing research last night.

I was like, okay, I got to be prepped. Got to be ready to go. I've been following you for a while, but I said, let me just make sure I button up here. And I go to your subreddit,

R slash more plates, more dates. To be clear, this is not like my subreddit. I didn't start. But I didn't realize this at the time. Okay. So I'm on this subreddit thinking it's your subreddit.

Think of these are, just polite civil, faithful fans. In fact, it says there's 163,000 faithfuls, that's how they call the members. It is a top 1% subreddit. So you're doing really well. And I say, hey,

I'm interviewing Derek's Marys coming on our pod. We're going to hang out. What should we talk about? And I said, you know, give me some ideas. Hoping that this, you know, I did this like, you know, let's see, time of post. It was like 1 a.m. And I go to sleep. And I wake up.

And I said, oh, let me just check that real quick. Maybe somebody had some really thoughtful questions. Here's the breakdown. 98% of them want to know how big your penis is. That's the number one comment by far. Everybody said the same exact thing. I don't know if that's an inside joke or you just have some really, really eager fans. And then the second was like, bro, you needed to know this is a trolling subreddit.

This is not a, this is not the serious subreddit of like people trying to have a real conversation. Like you didn't know what you were giving yourself into. And sure enough, I did not. The third comment was, bring a ruler. Yeah. They're very creative. I can imagine what kind of stuff you got.

Had an onslaught of for sure. There's a decent amount of trolling and, I don't know, just like shit posting that goes on there. But there is some insightful stuff. Like, I'm a moderator on it. I didn't start it, but I do check in time to time.

And I've been pretty shocked how much it's ramped up. Like, I don't know what a good subreddit is in size, but it seems like... This is a good one. This is very... Yeah, so, Derek, I've been watching you for years. I remember watching you when you were doing, like, I think a cottage cheese or some type of, like, protein intake video. And you look horrible because I believe you were an amateur or maybe even more serious than amateur bodybuilder. And you were, like, cutting.

And you looked just miserable when you're, like, really lean. But you have all these amazing videos where originally it started out as, like, is this celebrity taking steroids. But then it kind of like expanded beyond that to like you would actually do some really cool breakdowns about the science behind different fitness stuff. But then also life advice. And now you have like I think four different companies, Gorilla Mine, Merrick and a few others. And so we're interested in like definitely some fitness stuff, but also the fact that you're

running like I think three or four like pretty successful businesses. And what do you have now? 1.5 million subscribers, 1.8. Yeah, I think, let's see, 1.89. Yeah, so you've built like a pretty, like, what it appears to be, monster businesses, but you've done it like with some really high integrity, it feels like. And you've also, like, your video setup is like almost janky, although I feel like that's part of the schick. But so it's just like all about like just really high quality content that is well researched.

Yeah, it's almost, it's quite unintentional the jankiness because I just don't know what I'm doing. when it comes to, I don't know, videography and whatnot. So every time I try and spurs it up, it just, I fail miserably, so I just leave it the same. But I've heard a rumor. I've heard a rumor that you've gotten, you know, you clearly have gotten quite successful. I imagine your businesses are doing tens of millions in revenue.

I heard a rumor that you've moved to a really nice house. And between your first apartment when you started and your second better apartment and your third nice house, that you purposely make the background look exactly the same, to the point of you've even like took a wall from your first apartment into the third place. Is that true? Is this true? Because we've been saying this.

We've been spreading this rumor whether it's true or not. I heard a rumor from my mouth. Okay. I got to, I got to know first here told you that. I won't say. I won't say. One of your friends.

Oh, they fucked me over here. No, I'm just kidding. It's, it is not a green screen. I'll tell you that. So a lot of people wonder if it is a green screen.

It's not. It doesn't sound like a real wall. That did not sound like a real wall. It's a lot of people use it in their Zoom calls now, apparently, which is crazy. They've pulled the background out. But yeah, it's been the same background for a while. It may or may not be Asana. Some people, you know, that's the prevalent rumor as well.

But I think it's a secret that's going to live and die with the channel. You also have done a good job of, like, somewhat hiding your identity. I mean, you have to go, like, pretty deep in order to find, like, your full name. And you've done a good job of like kind of staying under the radar while also being incredibly popular. Yeah, yeah. It's, uh, I don't know. I don't know how I even managed to have the foresight to think of that at the time, but it just seemed like a reasonable idea given if you were ever going to become popular to avoid, I don't know, weirdos and stuff. With that said, there's also the, you know, question if you're going to be able to leave as much of a legacy without

your last name out there, but I don't know how much I believe in that anyway. So it seems like it's worked out to date. Yeah, I definitely think it has. Go ahead. You and your business partner both have funny, like, kind of names of your channels, your content channels. So yours is more plates, more dates, which is hilarious. And then his, I think, good-looking loser.com.

Yeah, yeah. He had like a men self-improvement blog from, he was an OG YouTuber before I ever was online. He started making content in 2009, I think. And that's actually how I found his stuff was through his YouTube channel where he talked about, um, you know, how to talk to women. And he had like videos of him going up to girls cold approaching. And I was, you know, baffled at the time. And I was just a teenager in university watching his stuff and was one of the first like 10 or 15 people who joined his online forum and then tracked and logged my, I don't know, trials and tribulations with fitness and chicks and all that kind of stuff, university.

And then eventually we ended up actually working together, which is really cool. But yeah, he has not posted regularly in, I don't know, five plus years. But he is, yeah, good looking loser. That's the OG right there. And we're going to talk about the business side because it's unclear, but I believe you built a, nine figure business, over a hundred million dollar business, a collection of businesses off of your channel.

So we'll talk about the business stuff in a second, but I want to start with this kind of pickup thing because I just had Mark Manson on the podcast, the guy who wrote the subtle art of not giving a fuck. And so he, and he started also. Now he's like, kind of like all about,

you know, life advice and, you know, self-help and things, you know, he was one of the most popular self-help authors ever. He wrote a book with Will, Smith, he's like, super legit now.

But he started off in the pickup world. And he had this blog, he was named Entropy. And his blog was all about picking up, picking up women. And I've noticed a few of these backgrounds that seem to lead to these, like, there's a few backgrounds, like origin stories, like a superhero would have, that lead to interesting people. So I've noticed like elite gamers. So people are like hardcore gamers.

They tend to become, they can become really successful in the game of business afterwards if they so choose. or debate. Debate lends itself very well to people who end up being, you know, leaders and those types of people because they're, they think a certain way and they're able to articulate themselves. And now another one I'm noticing is pickup. And I'm curious if you think there's anything to that or am I just reading into it.

Is there, are there any life skills, core life skills that you really get from that? Yeah, it's weird. I was actually, I had lunch with Andrew Wilkinson a few weeks ago and he said the same thing about pickup. He thinks that a lot of people come from that world. And I don't know if it's just like a feeling, of inadequacy that drove you to the pickup stuff to begin with, which also translates to your weird drive in an entrepreneurial aspect that kind of takes you to this level. Most people simply won't feel reasonable or something they, I don't know, want to strive for. But I think there's

definite overlap there. And I don't know if it's like a emotionally healthy thing, always or a mentally healthy thing, but there's definite overlap where people are, I think, trying to optimize all areas of their life, whether it is social dynamics or what have you. And that obviously translates into business. Like for me, job interviews became infinitely easier after I learned how to walk up to attractive women. Because if you can walk up to an attractive, you know, 10 out of 10 and not get nervous, going into a job interview is just like, is butter.

Whereas before, it used to be super nervous, you know, you're in the waiting room, you know, being extremely, I don't know, overthinking the entire situation. And it's to you, anything that could be anxiety-inducing is just out of sight, out of mind. So for me, I think there is a huge overlap. Business presentations became so much easier, became more confident in rooms, meeting new people, whether it was talking to dudes or talking to chicks, didn't matter. And, yeah, I think there is still huge upside, not to be like a dirt bag, which equates to being an entrepreneur, I wouldn't suggest that, but there are certain social skills and,

I don't know, like, EQ you can gain from the pickup stuff that I think translates. Sean, you didn't study that stuff? I did, yeah. Yeah, because I read all the books. I bought some of the courses. I went to, like, an event before. Like, I was, like, really into that because it was rooted in a sense of, like, I feel inadequate and I want to meet women and, like, be liked. But it totally carries over to sales. You know, like the rule, there's like a three second, there's like a three second rule. It's like as soon as you see a woman that's like beautiful, you have three seconds to go talk to her or like there's, I mean, I used all of it.

I loved it. I wouldn't call myself an artist though. I don't think I made it to pick up artists. It's like a subway sandwich artist. Yeah. Are you sure about that? And half of those guys ended up like with horrible lives as they got older. Like they're like 50 years old and they're still doing this shit.

And it's like, dude, that's not cool. It's cool to be settled down actually. it's cool to have like a relationship. And so like the pickup artist community does a really good job of teaching young men how to be confident and meet a woman. But then half of them do a really bad job of saying, all right, now here's how you remain loyal and how you become a good partner and things like that. But they just get you to the interview or the first day, but they suck after that.

You know what I mean? It's like horrible on how to actually be a man and treat people respectfully. Yeah, I think one of the best takeaways from the pickup artist world is being able to review their lives from pre-success being losers essentially to peak success, having this incredible, you know, dating life with diversity and choice. And then what happens to them thereafter, the younger guys have the luxury and be able to watch the entire timeline and see did they end up somewhere that I would aspire to be. And why or why not? How do I avoid getting down that path? Because when I was, you know, coming up and learning about this stuff too, it was

even getting on a date was a task in itself and an achievement. If you were able to even muster up a dating life from scratch with women that were not introduced to you through your friend circles or whatever, being able to meet people cold was like the floodgates open in terms of opportunity. And thereafter, as long as you were sleeping with women, you thought you ended the game and you were good to go. But you don't realize thereafter there's a whole other element of how do you actually become happy, have successful relationships? relationships. No one taught you that stuff. So being able to see the I don't know, the before and after like the Neil Strausses of the world or whatever and what

happened to them, I think is pretty insightful. I want to ask you about some of your businesses and how you're actually managing all this because you have a lot going on. So there's gorilla mine, which it looks like that's pre-workout and creatine. You got to tell me what you'd name it, bro. I know you hate the name, right?

Yeah. What was this other one we had? We had this other one called, what was that one, Sean? It was called like deer killer or something. The deer antler spray. What? The deer other one? Bucked up. Well, my thing with you, Derek, it's like, I trust you. Like, I trust you a lot. And I buy what you say. Totally agree. It reminds me in the same form of like, you remember when we were younger, like, NO explode and that stuff. And I remember taking that and I was like, this is awesome. And also, like, this might be illegal. Like, it was like, like,

Like, it felt like Adderall. It feels like I got two hearts right now. This is awesome. I didn't know anything about it, but I'm like, I don't know if this is good. But when I think of your brand, I think like I, my values align with your values. But for some reason that I don't think the name. Okay, let's start with this. Objectively, this is working, right?

Like, I'm looking at the traffic. It looks like it's over a million visitors a month for an e-com store that's doing supplements, super high margin, high-repeer purchase. I don't know what you're doing per month, but I would not be shocked if this was doing between six and eight million a month in revenue. Blink twice if I'm right. Yeah, you're,

you guys are pretty on point with your ballparked. But what I will say is as far as the niche goes, and by the way, that's just like, I don't know if Amazon is equal to our Shopify, but we're starting to get into retail too. and the traffic numbers are oftentimes quite misleading. So I don't know what you guys used for that,

but I have started, I don't know if how much I read into those traffic statistics. Do you similar web or what do you? Yeah, this is, I was looking at similar web, but I have like layers. It's like you can go like quick look at traffic. Then it's like there's tools that will literally just tell you,

here's the sales at the store, but it doesn't know what your wholesale and retail might be. But you're like, all right, I know if they're Shopify is at this level. And I know that they're, have some retail distribution, you can get pretty close. Right. Yeah.

So as far as the branding around it, I do agree in the health niche when it comes to trusted dietary supplements for, I don't know, let's just say a multivitamin or a B complex or a lipid support product. Those kinds of things, I am totally on the same page that even I wouldn't necessarily have the highest trust factor in a company called a. Gorilla Mind or a bucked up or whatever. When it comes to things that are meant to get you cognitively dialed in, though, and things that are meant to be hardcore pre-workouts and vasodilate the shit out of you,

all this kind of stuff, that is where the more edgy branding, I think, for example, the same way you wouldn't trust a guerrilla mind, be complex and you would go with a Thorne. You probably would go with a guerrilla mode pre-workout over Thorne's pre-workout. Probably, I think most people would. Depends who's buying. Like, I'm like a 30-something yuppie guy who doesn't, I like, I want to look good naked and I want to live a long time.

And there's like a balance of like what, you know, am I putting like bro shit in my body or my thinking, do you know what I mean? But then like your other one, Merrick Health, I'm on that website. I invested in this company called Hone.

I think Sean maybe did too. I think you, in my opinion, the branding of Merrick is like beautiful. I think that's beautifully done. So Merrick Health does like hormone optimization. or hormone replacement therapy, you do a bunch of thyroid stuff.

I think that branding is phenomenal. And I would guess that this company will be more valuable than Gorilla Mine because I would imagine it's a subscription. And it's probably what, like $300 a month on average per customer? Yeah, and the telemed, especially in high level preventative medicine, diagnostic space, you are,

it's a lot more premium for sure. And the margins are superior, but it's also contingent on the level of service. and that's where we differentiate ourselves. There's a lot of telemedicine pop-up clinics now and hormone replacement therapy, you know, spots to go to and we try to steer away from that moniker. We are kind of like, I don't know,

it's a broad spectrum preventative medicine whereby you can trust that you're not going to just get thrown on a cookie cutter script of testosterone and astrosol and get kicked out of the door. We pride ourselves on the services. and the doctor oversight and the quality of care. And the providers especially are highly educated and are vetted by me and my team specifically. So it's, I would say more than $300 a month for sure in general.

But that is definitely the way of the future in terms of what I am most passionate about. And yeah, you're definitely right that it's, I would say at least objectively right now, perhaps more valuable than Borillomide. Are you, who are you, how big is your team now? And who do you have helping you run each of these companies? Because that's a, it's fairly complex, I imagine. Yeah, maybe breaking down like your core team that's like not assigned to any one of these companies.

And then like, what does a core team look like first? And then how do the sub companies look? Yeah. So fortunately, from an operational and back end standpoint, I live in Canada, by the way. The companies were based in the U.S. So for me, being on site is essentially impossible. So I have my business partner, Chris, good looking loser, is in Idaho where Derrilla Mind HQ is stationed. And he's the one who built out the team in person for warehouse fulfillment.

We will both be ones who vet out the high level C-suite guys. But a lot of the more, I don't know, like hands-on tasks are going to be fulfilled through teams there that I have. have minimal oversight or interaction with. I'm more of the marketing and C-suite level stuff and retail a bit now. But that is, in terms of the team and number of people, I think there's like 50 to 100 in each company, but I don't actually know, to be honest. But as far as oversight from Gorilla, that typically, that's essentially how it works as we have Chris and Boise, me and Canada, I oversee all things marketing, content, product

formulation, manufacturing, supply chain. He oversees everything, hands-on, fulfillment, warehouse, distribution, legal accounting. And there's sub teams within that that we oversee essentially. And we have financial controller. We have like a guy who oversees retail, et cetera, et cetera. But that is kind of how the org chart would delineate out. And then on the Merrick health side, my business part. He doesn't have an online presence, but he's somebody who I met through the industry myself years ago,

and he's exceptionally well-versed in how to operate a team and build out the infrastructure and get the licensing and everything necessary to be above board and stay on top of all the compliance stuff, because in the telemedicine space, it's, you know, quite a bit goes into making sure you're doing it the right way because there are a lot of clinics that get spun up and essentially are just, illegally prescribing steroids, essentially. That is literally why they exist, more or less. And a lot of compounding pharmacies, despite being legitimate compounding pharmacies, are not above board either.

They will prescribe underground lab level drugs that are not even pharmaceutical grade. It's wild stuff. So he oversees essentially everything when it comes to the team, the, I will help vet out the providers and high-level talent. and C-suite guys and whatnot, and I'm also heavily involved in marketing, similar to Gorilla, but he is,

without my partners, none of this would be possible. And then is Intelligent Shop, like, Ron, is that the third one? Is that the third major one? Are those two significantly? Yeah.

Oh, I would say those two are definitely bigger than intelligent, but intelligent has probably the best profit margin, I would say. but that company is me and Chris as well. It's crazy is that like you're going, you're like doing more challenging problems. So like I have no idea how challenging a supplement company is, but let's just say that that's like a two or three out of ten.

And then Merrick Health would be like a six or seven out of ten or even higher because you're like actually starting to do with like regulation. And then I know that you, I think you said it here and you said it on videos, you're thinking about doing a compound pharmacy, which like for, which sounds like the hardest. And like I don't know too much about it,

but does that basically mean like you're actually getting the commodities from whoever you're getting and you have to make sure they're safe and that you're handling them safely. And I guess compounding means you're combining and shipping them out to the AmeriHealth of the world. Is that right? Yeah. So for example,

when you get prescribed your testosterone, for example, from a clinic like Ameri Health or maybe own, I'm not sure how they operate, But in general, they will fill a prescription through a pharmacy like an M-power or a fill-in-the-blank compounding pharmacy that is also having their own markup on medication is the ones receiving the act of drugs and creating a finished product for you to prescribe. And just logically, any time you can try and get more of the supply chain to control the margin, that's going to be beneficial, I would imagine. At which point it becomes a logical and worthwhile use of your time, though, is to be determined.

Because similar to the manufacturing side on dietary supplements, although there's different levels of quality control and oversight, you know, you still have to be GMP certified and, you know, have a certain, level of oversight in your facility and is the bandwidth allocated to doing that, taking away from what your bread and butter is on the private labeling or marketing side of things depends on the person, I guess, because some companies kill it just being manufacturers and not even having a company that they sell stuff through. Empowers the guys that a lot of people go to, I believe, right? How big do you think that business is?

100 million plus, probably. What could that be worth? What would a multiple in that business be? I don't even know what those would sell for. Is that considered just a manufacturing business? Well, it's tough because they definitely have some level of trust factor that other pharmacies don't have for even for me. If I was to get a compounded testosterone from Empower versus from some rinky dink compounding

pharmacy, I would 100% trust in power more than fill in the blank, even though they have supposedly, you know, same levels of quality control, rigor, licensing, et cetera. There is pretty significant variability sometimes in the compounding world plus minus on certain drugs even. As shocking as that sounds, what you see on the label, even in the pharmaceutical world, is not always what you're getting in compounding. That just seems like such an intimidating business to go down the path. Yeah, fortunately for me, and it's something that it's actually wild because guerrilla mine is probably the thing that has the highest level of difficulty for me because I'm intimately involved. in product formulation, whereas on the telemed side, fortunately, there is no need for me to, I don't sit there making medication formulations. You have a preset, you know, testosterone

concentration or fill in the blank drug. I don't control all that or need any creativity or insight into what goes into that because it's a very tightly regulated thing. Whereas in the supplement world, people will just look at our label and rip us off often. So I am often, the guy who has to be creative, come up with innovative ideas, and I don't want something to come out with my name on it that I don't have significant, you know,

personal time investment into that formula that goes out. So, you know, for me, the guerrilla mind formulation and product rollout side of things is the most time consuming. So I would say guerrillas like six or seven out of ten, and Merrick is,

you know, like a two out of ten for me. Oh, interesting. Yeah. We had Doug DeMorrow on. Do you know who Doug DeMorrow is? He's a car YouTuber. Yeah, yeah.

He's awesome. He's cool. He, you know, built this thing up to like four or five million subscribers. Then he launched this thing, Cars and Bids, which he sold a portion of the business. And Cars and Bids could be a multi-hundred million dollar business, I think. I think it's awesome. And but like going to compare you to him, that would be like him starting to make like car parts. And I'm like, dude, Doug, why don't you just like make the best car marketplace ever?

I just like crush that. Because like if I think of like you, Derek launching, and I don't know much about the space. When I think about you launching like a pharmacy, I'm like, man, that seems like you're leveraging yourself pretty high. Like what if that fucks everything up?

Like as opposed to kick an ass at these other two things. I'm not dead set on it. So I imagine during, uh, I don't know, discovery from buying a company or just the process of flashing at all the details, I will probably uncover. that leaning into our bread and butter is probably more worthwhile.

So despite it being on my radar, similarly to the manufacturing side of supplements or energy drinks, it's probably not worth our time or money right now. So to be determined in the future. There's one reason why I imagine you should do it, which is it's pretty dope. Like, you know, like there's still like that component of like, this seems very challenging,

but like this would be sick if you could actually pull it off. You know what I mean? Like, there is that factor of, like, it is, it's, you know, entrepreneurship's art. And that's a cool challenge. Yeah. No, it's, and just being able to control everything, I think there's, you're not putting yourself in a position where you can get squeezed, whereas companies like Roman, they have their own pharmacies and there's a reason why, you know, they're not going to just private

label to hell and market the shit out of it. They're going to control the drugs. So, you know, to me, it seems like at scale, there is some inevitable. obstacle of trying to control that aspect of the business and not being subject to whatever the, you know, drug makers decide for you, but to be determined on that. Do you, like, what's your business goal? So like, you shifted your focus. You're like, okay, I went through this bodybuilder dating like number one priority.

They're like, all right, making money. Entrepreneurship became the main focus for like last period of time, last season. What's your business goal? because we've met a bunch of people that are like, some of them take this like, oh, shucks, I don't know, I'm just trying to,

you know, help people like type of attitude, which I rarely believe, to be honest. And then there's a lot of other people like, Rob Deirdick came on. And he's like, dude,

I was like, yeah, I was like a skateboard kid, then ended up doing this, this, I ended up on TV, still wasn't making any money. And I finally realized like,

oh, like in this last like five year period, I figured out like, okay, I need to go from rookie white belt to Black Belt and I made it my focus. I made it my goal and I said, I wanted to make a billion dollars and I decided,

all right, to do that, what do I need to do? I need to own my own production company instead of just being a talent. So now I'm the talent and the production company. And then I brought people in and I started investing. I own real estate. And he like,

and he was very articulate about it. And our audience loved it because they were like, dude, I had no idea. He actually kind of had that part of his brain, and had like intentionally set a goal and made a plan and started figuring it out. How would I describe it for you? What's your, you know, because you started off just doing this fun and the business

came up and about what's your goals and how did that come about? Yeah, I should probably revisit my goals because I don't really have a firm concrete objective. I do know from a value standpoint, I think Gorilla Mine and Merrick Health are billion-dollar companies in the future at some point. I do very much intend for them to get there and I strongly believe they will. I mean, that sounds like a good goal. I mean, if I was to put somebody on paper as a financial metric of sorts,

those would be, you know, two concrete ones I could say in my near, near-ish future I foresee as doable. And I want to make sure it happen. But I don't necessarily want to sell them either. It's just kind of a vanity metric or something that you're chasing, almost like a million subscribers on YouTube. once you get there, you know, it's the same old

the next day. Nothing changes other than your objective success and how you feel about yourself to some extent maybe and how people perceive you, but and maybe you have more flexibility and what you can do. But, you know,

that's kind of how I see it too is once the businesses, businesses get to a certain point, it's just going to be more of the same. Probably. I don't know. I can't imagine there's, like especially from the Merrick Health side of

things. It's a company that I'm so passionate about preventative medicine. If something is working, that is literally me being able to at scale, educate and import value about that. It's hard to see me deviating from it to be able to do what? That again? It doesn't really, I don't know, maybe I'll change my mindset as I get a bit older and I have kids or something. But right now, not really uh that that's kind of all i could say as far as a concrete goals on a piece of paper financially and also my path in terms of what i'm passionate about have you raised financing or funding for any of these businesses no never dude that's crazy because like all right you have 1.8 1.8 million subscribers 1.9 close to 2 million that's a lot but that's not a lot a lot you

know what i'm saying i mean that that's like if someone grinds for 10 years like you could get there What's crazy is that, I mean, that's just a huge number to have two multi-billion to, let's just even say, 100 million plus brands up the back of 1.9 million subscribers. That's a significant amount. You have to keep in mind to our influencer marketing is pretty dialed, especially on the guerrilla side. We have a lot of people who believe in what I'm doing and my passion and path forward to and trust me.

So they will also trust that I'm going to put them. the best spot to accrue the most value from whatever company they're partnering with and have mutually beneficial relationships as they develop their business careers too. So especially on Derrilla, there is no way we'd be anywhere near where we are. Well, I don't know what we'd actually be at, but a lot of our influencers behind us are huge needle movers, huge. I would say our combined following is like, I don't know, in the tens of millions, if not 100 million plus.

Is it contingent on you getting more popular, do you think? Or do you think that they've grown beyond that? Yeah, I think they're big enough. They can be their own thing. And I think fortunately for me, it has allowed me the flexibility to reel back on the content frequency a bit because I used to be very heavily output oriented, which I should be still.

But the trust factor is very high. And the success of the company stands, it has its own, I don't know, resume of credibility through what it's done, like being, I don't know, one of the top selling pre workouts on Amazon, for example, against companies I literally bought when I was 17 years old

and edging some of them out now. Like, that's wild to me. And those kind of things help us get into retail and help us do things from a global expansion standpoint that aren't contingent on me. Sure, it helps that I'm a face of the brand. And what I've done and you know that when you work with us, I'm going to be the one formulating,

your products too, for example, like when influencers work with us, if you're going to have a collaborative pre-workout that drops, knowing that I'm indirectly endorsing it and making it for you too is a huge plus, whereas most owners are not even faces of the brand and no one even knows who they are. So that kind of stuff, I think,

gives us the latitude and flexibility to grow moving forward outside of having this influencer treadmill where we're having to acquire new people to get exposure to then sell more. I think there is absolutely a diminishing returns point. And for us at this point, it's very global expansion oriented and retail, going heavier into retail on some of the products,

like the energy drinks and whatnot. But to be determined, so it's all a bit of an experiment, to be honest. I went and read your blog and prepped for this, and I read a bunch of the posts. And you said something you said, when I was 18, what were my priorities? You said, well, I wanted to make.

more money. I wanted to date hordes of gorgeous women. I want to have a killer physique, and I wanted to do well in school to set me up for my future. And you said, I had these four goals, and those all sounded totally worth pursuing. And they all sounded like things I should be

working on. I'm in school, so I should probably work on school. I'm kind of 18 to 21 years old. I should probably try to date women or work out. Make money. All of these things seemed like good ideas at the same time. And then you realized, I should go all in on one of these goals right now at the expense of the others. Why does you have that philosophy of go all in on one life goal versus try to have kind of

this balance or pursue all four? Yeah, it's tough because it's not like I would claim it to be the correct way to live your life, but I think a lot of people live, especially in the entrepreneurial world in stages. It's almost like seasons of your life. And there are certain seasons where you can complete certain things, prerequisites for the other. And I would say that when it comes to getting women, for example, when you were young, you do not need exorbitant amounts of funds.

You actually don't even need to have the ability to support somebody in a long-term relationship. If you're young, you can have a piece of crap car and live with your parents and still crush it with literally, like, objectively 10 out of 10 girls in your age bracket. And being able to kind of get that season of your life out of the way. develop those social skills, at least at the time when I was broke, too, I felt like was worth getting out of my way, so to speak, before I went down the road of entrepreneurship, which I knew would consume the majority of my free time and dating, especially large amounts of women when you're trying to kind of, I don't know, get your anxiety out of your system entirely

and become even used to this dynamic of being out with attractive women. It's not something that I feel you can juggle both simultaneously dating as a full-time job, honestly. Like, if you're single, you can definitely agree with what I'm saying, that it can be as consuming as a full-time job in itself. So for me, you know, trying to, and I also was way more hardcore about bodybuilding at the time. So I would actually dedicate blocks of time to cutting and bulking phases. And the cutting phases would be getting striking distance of stage ready condition, which is something that is super mentally sapping and demanding of your body and more extreme amounts of cardio, caloric restriction, et cetera.

And it's not trying to do everything at the same time. I feel like you'll just fail or do everything kind of half-ass, essentially. You will not get anything done with exceptional quality. So that was at least my thought process and logic at the time. And I would still probably agree with it, even though that blog is, I don't even remember the last time I wrote an article on that blog, it is super outdated, but it is something I would still resonate with, probably. I think people should be segregating things into seasons personally.

Yeah, I mean, we talk about seasons a lot. And I think, like, what's that quote, Sean, about the line and the cow, like, cows graze, lines, rest, and then pounce. And, like, oftentimes it's a little bit easier in business to be, like, the line instead of just, like, you know, instead of, like, a constant 40 hours a week, maybe, like, sprints is a little bit easier. And I was watching some of your videos. I remember there was one recently where I think you got back from Europe. You're in Europe and it sounded like you're with a girlfriend or a wife or something like that. So I assume you're in some type of a long relationship. Has building these companies been

a lot easier once you have more stability as opposed to dating? Yeah, dude, it's night and day. If I was single right now, I would get half as much work done probably. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, haven't And like I remember when I was building my first company, there was probably twice a week. I would lay on the floor. And I'm like, this isn't going to work. I feel miserable. Like I'm just going to quit. And like having a spouse or she was my fiance or girlfriend at the time to be like, no,

you got this. Like that is just like, it was like the greatest thing ever. That's what I knew. I'm like, dude, having a wife is so much better than. She's like also move out of the way. I'm trying to get to the kitchen. You're just laying on the floor. No, yeah.

I would, I, yeah, I totally agree with that sentiment for sure. You've got these, you know, you have the content machine running. You got the business machine running. Have you figured out what you want to do with your money? So do you, have you learned kind of like how to either spend it in ways that are interesting or invest it? How much time and effort have you put into that? What do you do with your money? I've learned what not to do with it, which is good.

What have you done? What have you done? So don't go with wealth management portfolio guys who will, even if it's with a big bank, because they get their management fees, even if they suck. And oftentimes they will make it sound like they're doing great things when objectively they're underperforming a basic index fund. So I would be very weary of that as a wealthy entrepreneur because a lot of those guys are the primary targets of those wealth management guys. And they will shockingly stay with them for years despite underperforming just objectively.

And then, you know, they just get, uh, get rinsed the entire time. Well, the management fees make the other guys rich. So I've learned not to do that the hard way. The thing that's tough is on the Canadian side, there is so much more complicated tax planning that goes into it. I've spent more time than I want to admit on figuring out how to not lose money than actually making money with my money. So it's tough. Yeah, like I'm still figuring, even figuring out how to put myself in the position most optimally

to make my money work for me. But oftentimes even knowing what side of the country I should be keeping it on, it's, it's been an ever learning process. And there are certain corporate structure things that. I've been very hesitant to pour money into, you know, insurance fund that down the line is going to build money interest free. And I can then read, I've been very careful to not dive into any of those before I fully understand them,

even though they could make me a lot of money. Because I know once you're into some of those things, you can't unravel them. So, you know, as a Canadian, it's a lot more complicated, unfortunately, than just dollar cost average into the index. So if you're, if your portfolio, you know, let's just say you're, you know, we'll do the pie chart thing without. So just percentages and not including your private businesses, where do you, where do you keep your money?

Is it mostly equities? Are you investing in other private companies? What are you doing with it? I do some angel investing, but it's very minor. Like, for example, media kits. You guys are familiar with Kieran. That's how we met. Like his company, for example, I invested in some stuff like that, but not very often. but primarily it was, you know, wealth management was overseeing a lot of it. And then I realized how not ideal that was and liquidated it all recently at a loss. But yeah, it's just sitting in bank accounts right now doing nothing. No shit.

Really? Yeah. Yeah. So I'm like all cash right now. I have a decent amount of crypto, but I always forget I have that until somebody asked me like, what is your portfolio comprised of? So I guess technically some crypto.

though. And then I guess it's the value of the businesses and whatever cash sits in those accounts. But yeah, it's mostly just just chilling, doing nothing useful. I remember you, I think you bought a Lamborghini or something like that. And you like made a video about like the hedonic or a hedonistic treadmill. And you're like, this is kind of bullshit. Is there any, what have you spent money on that you think is, that would make you happy and it was bullshit versus where you actually like, where do you like to spend money on and you're like, this actually makes me happy. That's tough, man, because I don't, other than that, I haven't really spent egregious amounts of money on anything that I would deem to be irresponsible that was outside of a business capacity.

Like, I will invent, you know, always go first class because of the convenience and just leg room. It's just like basic stuff, which is, um, and other than that, I don't really buy anything luxury other than groceries, which, you know, getting high quality food, I think is justified every single time. Yeah, I haven't really spent money on anything. I could think of off the top of my head. That was stupid. What was the origin story for the business? So what, what order did they come in and what triggered the thought of like, all right, I need to, I need to start this. Because I think you kind of, you're in an internet marketing affiliate game. When did you transition to like, I want to own my own businesses? Yeah.

Especially prior to influencer integrations when I first started affiliate marketing, it was still very SEO-driven, blog-heavy. There was not as much flat-rate paper integration type stuff happening, or at least I was not that aware of it if it was happening at scale. What were you selling? Oh, an array of things. Whatever I used personally, Amazon links to it, et cetera. So I was getting 5% commissions on shampoo that I would use for hair loss prevention.

And was that like beer money or that was like like wow, I'm making stupid money doing this somehow? Like how successful were you able to be doing that? Well, I guess success is definitely subjective. So at the time, I felt extremely. But, you know, in proportional terms, perhaps not now. But back then, that was the stuff that funds your ability to actually start your own businesses. So I would say in that sentiment, definitely successful. And I think the thing that helped me the most and what I typically recommend people to do as when they're wondering, what do I even get into as a product or service or what have you, it's organically integrating things that you already use and truly believe in.

Because if you just plug nonsense and you start to be an ad horror essentially where you just take whatever comes your way when it comes to integrations, even products you don't believe in or care about and you just become a robot, mindlessly reading scripts for, you know, dollars. You kind of get your credibility goes out the window and people don't listen to your product recommendations anymore. And for me, it was always how do I monetize stuff that I use anyways and would tell people for free, you should use this because I use it. So oftentimes that was taking piddly little affiliate commissions or none on products that I actually used and wanted people to also try to get results with. And that would include, but not limited to, you know, supplements, hair loss prevention products, sometimes random diet hack related things. I don't know.

It varied significantly, but across the board, it was basically what has an affiliate program that is a product I already use and I can get a commission for telling people something I would tell them anyways. And that is how I kind of built up my initial funds to then start some of the businesses

that replace the affiliate recommendations that I would have been making anyway. So it was kind of stemmed from just what are the things I'm most passionate about personally and promote them because I would anyways and then replace them eventually with things that I feel are higher quality and reflect exactly what I would want to see as a consumer in that niche. So that's kind of how I went down the rabbit hole of dietary supplements. I've always been a formulator. I've always dug very heavily into the chemistry and pharmacology side of things. it was just an eventual inevitability that I was going to get into it at some point. And once it became viable financially, that was kind of my segue into that.

And then air loss prevention products, I've been recommending certain things for years. And that was my segue into intelligent elephant, which is another company. And then telemedicine was, I was making content for years about preventative medicine and how to interpret diagnostics and blood work and hormone optimization and PEDs. Orgogenic AIDS, et cetera. And it was, that was such a no-brainer for me to get into, too. So across the board, that's kind of what I look for as the highest lever opportunities, at least how I kind of ended up starting those businesses to begin with and funding them.

We had our buddy Saeed on. And what he did was he had a high traffic blog that was helping people out with WordPress. He's like, oh, yeah, I recommend using this email pop up. And he would just basically see, oh, okay. you know, the highest, the things that people click on the most because they're looking for a solution are X. Maybe that's a business I should go into. So what he would do is he would just go buy that business or buy the number two player, improve it and then make it his recommendation. And he just went systematically.

It's almost like you've did that for the body. You were like, cool, I got this high traffic. And I give this ability to get a bunch of high traffic. I can start with affiliates and see what people click. What, you know, even if they have a crappy affiliate program, at least I know, that's a category that I know I can drive. a lot of customers to maybe I should be the supplier instead of the affiliate. Yeah, it's crazy how much stuff has evolved just in the past, I don't know, not even 10, like six or seven years too in terms of where people get their recommendations from.

Like SEO is so irrelevant now to where I shop and where most of our customers shop do. Back in the day, it was if you're top ranked on Google, maybe for some services, it absolutely is still relevant. But for certain products in e-commerce space and whatnot, it's like no one gives the shit at all. Whereas back in the day, it was all about how do I get top ranked on Google for buy fill in the blank or top three fill in the blank. And that was a lot of my affiliate stuff came through my blog articles back then and lesser YouTube, but now it's so heavily social media.

The New York Times had this article come out a few weeks ago and it was like, my guru is better than your guru or something like that. And it was about how, I mean, this has always been the case. but it's just there's more now and they're bigger about how audiences will attract well we'll go towards a certain like health and wellness person so like there's you there's huberman but then there's also um marxisson is that a same marks the the older guy who uh started a primal kitchen um and then there's like five or six or ten or 20 other ones and they actually but the the article was saying and this is true that they say different things like

not everyone agrees so there's like you know eat a lot of plants, but then there's like Carnivore MD, and then you, you know, you did your whole thing on the Liver King. Like, they don't, they oftentimes will say like different stuff, but you just get behind someone and you just do whatever they say. Like if you go, if you talk to Andrew Huberman, like the most common question he gets, and I'm sure you get this too, which is just tell me exactly what you do and I'm going to do the exact same thing. You know what I mean? But, and that's, on one hand, that's, on one hand, that's maybe dangerous because it doesn't always apply to each person. But on the other hand, it makes a great-ass business because it's just like whatever Derek says, I do and I buy.

And I think that you've had like videos where you're like my supplement company, like I'm not going to just make a ton of product because I have to make the quality good. But you guys are buying so much of it that we need like two weeks off in order to restock. You know what I mean? So it's like good for you as a business owner. Yeah, I think trust factor is everything nowadays especially because there is so. especially in the health niche, it is so hard to know who to trust because oftentimes the charlatans will get platformed too because they say outrageous things. You'll see them on big podcasts even sometimes just because they'll say something that seems so contradictory to what is accepted as scientific fact or whatever just to get a good hook, not even necessarily because they're the authority or foremost expert in a certain area. And it's super confusing for the layman who was just trying to, you know, learn something.

And then they hear 17 different versions of recommendations for something that should be basic. And yeah, trying to, even what I do too, and I think a lot of people should do when they're self-educating, is find a, you know, handful of people that through all evidence provided or have highest trust factor and knowledge simultaneously. because the two coupled are what are going to lead you to what I feel to be actual recommendations that are practical and valuable rather than just, you know, follow. It's wild how many, you know, bad educators there are out there for sure. And how did you become an expert? Like, you know, Huberman's like a professor at wherever. It's like a Stanford lab or something.

You know, you, when I first saw your thing, you're like, oh, I think I, was clicking some of the videos that were like, what is Cona McGregor taking or John Jones or whatever? And you're talking about the pulsing effects of picograms of whatever that John Jones got popped for. And I was like, how the hell would this guy know? It doesn't even seem like Usada even understands like what the hell is going on. Like, where is the literature of this? How would this random YouTuber know about any of this stuff?

Um, largely through years of self-education, but also through educating myself through experts and being, I feel I'm very good at extrapolating out and determining what is valuable information and then assimilating it into my own consolidated framework. That's one of my strong, uh, strong suits. I've taken years. I've been researching like a maniac since I was, I don't know, like 10, 10 plus years at this point. So for me, I don't necessarily claim to be an expert. Oftentimes people will, you know, label me as such. But, you know, I'm just a guy who's a nerd and learns a lot of shit. And it's been, it's been good to date. But yeah, a lot of this stuff is available, though, too. It's just hard to translate into layman's terms, like somebody who's in the lab

determining if an assay is going to be implementable for the USADA and the future to catch people doing fill in the blank. The USADA, I don't know, spokespeople don't necessarily understand the chemistry and the science. They're not going to go out and go into elaborate detail about why you could still get away with microdosing, for example. Like that kind of, nor is it beneficial for them to assert publicly that it's possible to do such. So a lot of this stuff is just swept under the rug and no one talks about it because

they either don't understand it or it's not very, I don't know, readily circuit. So, but it's all publicly available. It's just a matter of being able to dissect it. So, you know, that's kind of been it. What do you think of the, the, uh, the sort of the tech, tech, uh, testosterone movement that's going on. So you got Bezos, retires, gets jacked. You got Zuck becoming an MMA fighter.

You have, um, who else is, who else is doing it? There's a couple of, Brian Johnson, uh, have this. Elon's on semi glute side. So he's at least trying to get ripped, not necessarily sauce to the gills, but he's trying to get, you know, lean. They'll lose weight. Yeah. What do you think of, who's doing it right?

Who's doing it wrong? What do you see in the tech, tech bodies? I think it's good that guys are prioritizing muscle mass and quality of life and whatnot over just, you know, existing. So I think it's an overall good thing to have, I don't know, be pursuing kind of the masculine type, I don't know, past. but I don't necessarily know who's doing it wrong or right because they're not very outspoken about their protocols and what about Brian Johnson because he's meticulous about like, you know,

publishing what he's doing? What's your take on what he's doing? That guy, it's tough because I do see the value in what he's doing, but I think a lot of it is totally contradictory. Like, for example, the guy will calorie deprive the hell at himself to the point of having hormone suppression, but then a supplement with testosterone. own. It's like, dude, make up your mind. Which one is going to be conducive to longevity versus not? Because you're kind of just correcting what you screwed yourself up for to begin with. It's like, why is your body trying to fight back against you just to manually administer something to correct your deficiency self-induced from literal nutrient deprivation?

Like, there's clearly some sort of, I don't know, contradictory actions in this protocol, in my opinion, but overall, I think it's interesting, for sure, seeing what he thinks is impactful versus not. But as he starts to roll out some of the products and services related to his stuff, you start to wonder, you know, how much of it is just, you know, noble intentions versus, you know, the entrepreneurial, you know, aspect of it, which is fine. But it's like, do not, if it goes down that road where he goes heavy into selling, I really hope he is very candid about, his desire to monetize and not make it seem like this noble thing entirely because it's certainly not your private label olive oil like other people could have got it you could have

just recommended a good company you didn't have to go do it yourself necessarily you know you use some other companies up until a certain point why not just talk about them and give them the business there's there's some sort of monetary incentive there which is fine um i think a lot of the stuff he does is way overkill and i think it's kind of hard to track anything with any relative of certainty when there's a billion different variables. And I also think he puts way too much credence into certain trackers like the age clocks. Those are complete bullshit essentially. And I don't think it's of great utility to be tracking those meticulously as if that's

reflective of exactly what's going on. And why are the age clocks bullshit? That I would need to dig into more, but a lot of it is based on your current, what is going on in your body in this current snapshot of time and then trying to reflect, okay, your velocity of aging equals this because you had a transient like better blood sugar or fill in the blank biomarker, you could just as easily screw up your blood work and make it look like you're way older than you are in a matter of days. So it's like obviously your chronological, biological age didn't shift that much in a matter of days, but just based on your current health

status in your blood, in your body right now, you can make it look like your plus minus 20 years. So to actually take that and make it assert that, oh, this is, it equals I'm this young now. It's like, no, maybe your current snapshot in time reflects something that looks like that, but it is not indicative that that is your overall health status. So I would have to do, I probably should do a video on it at some point, but it's most credible people that I trust think it's bullshit personally. I test all of them. So I've done

inside, I think inside tracker or insight tracker and then true diagnostics. I've done all of them. It's messed up because I know in my head that this is theory and that it's like I know it's a gimmick

but it's so fun. You know what I mean? They come out the same, Sam, when you try across multiple services? Yeah, those two came out the same, which was basically like my blood work is great and I think they give you actually a number. So they're like, you're 34 biologically, you're 23 chronologically. Or what is it? Chronologically, you're 34.

Biologically, you're 23. So it said I was great. And then they have this other score where they look at is it the math thing? Hang on. Hang on. You're 23 biologically? Yeah. Like according to this shit.

It's so, which is like a false sense of. I know Derek just said it's bullshit, but I'm not going to lie. Kind of admire you for that. But that's my thing is I see that. I'm like, oh, sick, I'm doing everything great,

but I'm like, I'm pretty sore though. Like, I don't know, like, I don't know if I'm doing everything perfectly. And what's it called? What they look at?

Is it the methane or? Methalation. Methalation. They look at that. And they're like, oh, you're kicking ass. Your rate of aging is super low.

So I'm like, sick. Like, I'm not going to change anything. But that's not exactly the reality because I don't always feel great. You know what I'm saying? I also go.

went on a kick. I've tested everything. So I've tested the semi-glutide. I've tested TRT. I don't do any of that now. And then I use an astrazol, which is like, in my opinion, the worst thing ever. I fucking hate that. It made me feel miserable. I've tried clomid. Now I don't do anything. But I've gone through, I've tried it all

because I like experimenting with all these stuff. And then I like doing the blood work. It's like an addicting thing. It's like someone who's obsessed with different gadgets. You know what I'm saying? Why did you come off of TRT? Because I would, so I got like strong. So I wanted to do it because I was really low for years, like 1.30. And I was like, all right, let's get this right and figure out what's going on.

And so I did it. And I got low body fat. I got strong. I was hitting like record squat and bench numbers. And then I was like, all right, well, let's try without it. Let's just see what happens if I don't take it. And I still felt great. And so I was like, well, you know, if I don't have to take it and my testosterone level actually

went down. But I still felt wonderful and I was still lifting wonderfully and my body felt great. So I was like, let's just try. not doing it for a while. How long ago did you come off? Last summer, a year. Okay. What's your test now?

Dude, it dropped. It was 800, and then it went to 400, 420. You said it was like 130 or something before you started TRT though, right? Yeah, and I was 26% body fat, and I felt miserable. I was also running my company, and I was stressed, and I didn't get, and for a year, I tried eating healthy and lifting, and I just didn't get it right. And then I sold my company, so I got financial security. I was pretty ripped.

I was pretty strong. I got married and my relationship was awesome and I just felt happy. And I ate well. I ate all natural foods and I just felt dialed in. And then I just went off of it. And my testosterone dropped, but I didn't feel horrible. Interesting. Well, yeah, if you don't need it, you know, probably better to wait if you don't want to be it.

How old are you? Are you on it right now? Um, yeah, but it's for me more so because when I was younger, I did a lot of hardcore bodybuilding stuff and shut down my system. And now with what I know now, I could probably restore natural function similar to what you did, but it would be a lot more aggressive of a recovery phase and more arduous. And putting myself through that right now isn't necessarily top of mind. So it's kind of just been a stay on it right now and optimize everything around it. But they have a. Yeah, that's kind of how I ended up on it. There's a few of the things that I really like, though. What's it called? Is it BP 157? Like some of these peptides that, like, for example, if I strain my Achilles and as I get

older, I'm like not my injuries aren't healing, which is like the most depressing thing about age is that you just like heal slower or like, and you get hurt easier. Oh, you're 23. What do you mean? Well, that's why those tests are, that's what I'm saying. Those tests are bullshit. They like say that you're young. I'm like, I don't know, man.

My shoulder freaking hurts and it's been hurting for a month. and like I've been really interested in some of those recovery drugs or peptides or whatever you want to call them. What do you think about those? I think they can be useful for sure as long as their context specific and not overuse because a lot of them are pro. For example, BPC is increases something called VEGF expression and it's pro angiogenic meaning it will literally create. It can induce blood flow that essentially was not present. So you could also have a pro carcinogenic type proliferative effect with cancer cell development if you have existing cancer cells that could be exacerbated.

So I think some athletes use it preventatively a bit too much. But in the context where you actually have an injury, there's a little blood flow to it. You can actually have a use case for it. I think it's super high utility, very valuable product. From my very amateur point of view, I think that. like the semi-glutide and metformin and some of these other what's it called a g lb limiter or you know um am i using the phrasing correctly g lp1 agonist yeah like these things that like limit uh blood spikes or blood sugar spikes um those seem really fascinating like they even

seem fascinating to the point of like i think they can help cure or help alcoholics not become alcohol or uh you know get off alcohol like it like there's some like weird things about these drugs that they can do other things and what they are intended to do. And that's super fascinating to me at the moment. But I know that you were, I think you were on semi-glutide. I don't know if you are anymore. Yeah, I've tested most of the GLP-1 agonists for appetite suppression. And yeah, they definitely are.

Of the available appetite suppressants in the pharmaceutical world, they're probably the best overall, like, mechanism and how they work. Because previous to that, it was people just abusing the hell out of Adderall and fentramine and crazy stimulants to shut down their appetite, but it also screws up their heart, their brain. I wouldn't say that semi-glutide or some of these drugs are risk-free, though, and they certainly have question marks around their long-term use, especially in children who are developing.

But, yeah, the way they... I think they have, like a children's dose now, don't they? Yeah, yeah, I think so. They do? There's like an Ozempic juniors. Yeah, which is fucked up, right? It's just, I would want the answer to be just eat less, but... Yeah, the thing, though, is, is... Are those children ever going to become optimal without it?

And then is the ROI worth it? And you could easily assert that those fat kids that would have been fat kids, regardless or better off by taking it. For sure. Yeah. So I wouldn't say, well, generally, that's the answer for anybody who's overweight, of course, because there are certainly ways to educate and help people get on the right path that don't involve drugs.

And I've seen plenty of people do great that were formerly very fat and then end up down a different life path and are leaning around and have amazing lifestyles and get into a habit and cement it into their everyday life. But now some kids are, I don't know, just might need it for all we know. You did you did this good thing. I mentioned your Europe video. And the interesting thing to me was actually that you said that you weren't training that hard. And you, I think you like indulged in bread and food. You live like a tourist, you know, you ate a lot. But you're like, I didn't, I felt great because, A, I was walking a ton.

And I don't remember if you said this or if I read this from somewhere else, another person's experience, but you're like, the groceries and food just seemed higher quality, whether that's like involves like regulation around the FDA and like certain chemicals are or aren't allowed. Are you buying most of your, you said you spend a lot of groceries and you get high, quality stuff? Are you buying most of your foods from popular grocery stores or do you go to, do you buy online from niche providers or are you going, what are you doing for that?

I go to a butcher for bison, liver and things of that nature, mostly my meats, but a lot of the other stuff is local grocery. In Canada, there's not a lot of flexibility, unfortunately, on quality of or just availability of some of the foods that you might otherwise buy at higher-end places in the States. So as much as I'd love to have, if I could, the highest level of everything, it's sourcing is a huge issue in Canada as absurd as it sounds like sourcing for like basic foods. So yeah, it's when I can, I get, you know, the best available. But like, for example, bison I think is the leanest, most nutrient dense red meat essentially that you could get. And I will buy a ton of that, even though it's, you know, three times more expensive than extra lean ground beef at the grocery store.

So that's one example. We talked about this company. I don't remember, Sean, if you said Huberman helped. get it going or was a was a affiliate or something good we or whatever yeah man that thing was cool like i i ordered a bunch of stuff like the but i have no idea if i'm getting sold in the marketing or not but like the story behind it like they got me bought in like they got me so bought into it no i was at peter rottia's place a couple weeks ago and i had the venison sticks or whatever that they sell and pretty damn good um and yeah i trust him and his recommendation so i would imagine it's

on the up and up and everything's probably pretty top tier. Yeah, man, that story, like, totally got me bought in. I thought it was a cool business. And I've been watching some of your videos, and it's made me nervous about just, like, my food and, like, the quality of food. And, like, whole foods for the longest time was, like, the gold standard. And now I'm like, no, man, that still might even be shit. Like, it's to the point where I want to start raising my own animals, you know what I mean? Oh, yeah.

It's tough because it's a lot of people will swear off supplements and say buy whole foods, but then other people will say the whole foods or the soil is depleted of nutrients. So then you should supplement. But then there's trying to know what you're doing can be quite arduous and sketchy. Even when you're trying to optimize, even when you have the financial means, it's trying to even figure out what to spend your money on can be overwhelming at times for sure. Well, we appreciate you coming on, man. I've been a big fan of years for years.

I know Sean has too. I think what's going to happen is like in the next four or four, five years. There's going to be, you might have an exit or there's going to be some type of article that reveals how big your empire is. And I think that I think a lot of people are going to be surprised at some of the outcomes that you have, you know, the fact that you, I believe that you can build multiple billion plus or nine figure companies off the back of this audience. And I think it's going to be really cool when that story finally comes out. Oh, we'll see where it goes. I appreciate you guys having me on and being so patient as I get

back into content here because I know you guys have been trying to, Kieran has been trying to get me on for a while, so I'm glad we were able to make it happen. Yeah, shout out to him. Thanks, Karen. We appreciate that. Yeah, right on. All right. That's it. That's the pod.