The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Unlocking Gut Health: Good Bru’s Probiotic Revolution for Wellness with Gabe Dough

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

Unlocking Gut Health: Good Bru's Probiotic Revolution for Wellness with Gabe Dough Goodbru.com About the Guest(s): Gabe Dough is a co-founder of Good Bru, an innovative company focusing on gut health through its flagship prebiotic and probiotic product. With a background that includes a penchant for intellectual property and food entrepreneurship, Gabe has acquired patents and developed multiple consumer products, including some in the health and wellness sector. His journey reflects a committed interest in enhancing health outcomes through nutrition, focusing particularly on the gut microbiome. Episode Summary: Join host Chris Voss as he delves into the intricate world of gut health with Gabe Dough, co-founder of Good Bru. In this enlightening episode, Gabe shares insights into the foundational importance of a healthy gut microbiome, equating its significance to sleep and exercise. He details Good Brew's unique formulation—a probiotic designed to integrate seamlessly into daily routines, including coffee, to enhance gut health and overall well-being. Discover the science behind Good Bru's probiotic formulation and how it differentiates from others on the market. With a staggering 55% reorder rate, the product's effectiveness speaks to its value in gut health management. Gabe's discussion includes the transformative potential of Good Brew, its impact on protein utilization, and the diverse health benefits achieved through better gut health. Dive into Gabe's entrepreneurial journey, exploring lessons learned and strategies developed in creating and scaling a successful health-focused business. Key Takeaways: Good Bru offers a unique, coffee-compatible prebiotic and probiotic supplement, enhancing daily routines and contributing to improved gut health. A healthy gut microbiome is pivotal to well-being, affecting areas from mood and immunity to nutrient absorption and inflammation reduction. Gabe Dough shares his entrepreneurial experience, highlighting the challenges and triumphs of developing Good Bru and the importance of learning from both failures and successes. Good Bru's bacillus coagulans probiotic stands apart due to its ability to survive hot temperatures and its synergy with organic prebiotic fibers, providing comprehensive gut health benefits. Listeners are invited to explore Good Bru's offerings with special promotional deals, encouraging firsthand experience of their gut health benefits. Notable Quotes: "Your gut microbiome is as fundamental to your health as exercise and sleep." "Most of the soluble fiber products on the market are owned by Big Pharma and use cheap ingredients that we wouldn't naturally consume." "Good Bru is like a foundational gut health product… it's meant to enter the digestive system in a beneficial way." "Think of it like a garden—when your garden isn't growing properly, you don't throw more seeds on it; you assess and amend the soil." "Entrepreneurship is no joke… Elon Musk said it's like chewing on glass and staring into the abyss."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Cause you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain.

Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hey folks, it's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, that makes the picture. Welcome to the big show. As always, the Chris Foss Show is the family that loves you but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as the rest of the world. And we bring you the smartest people, the CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, the Pulitzer Prizers, all the people who come with their stories of life through

their journeys, what they've achieved and they help you be a better person and achieve more as well. But you have to listen to the whole damn podcast and learn some stuff. Maybe write some stuff down every now and then, the notes from the podcast, or you can find the show notes on thechrisvossshow.com. Go to goodreads.com, ForchessChrisvoss, linkedin.com, ForchessChrisvoss, Chris Voss 1 on the TikTok, and all those crazy places on the internet. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily

reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Voss Show. Some guests to the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today we have an amazing young man on the show. We're going to be talking with Gabe Doe. He is the co-founder of a company called Good Brew, or Good Brew, Good Bro. Brew. Brew, Good Brew. We've got a camera in front of my face here. Welcome to the show. How are you, Gabe?

I'm doing great, Chris. It's a pleasure to be on the show. Thanks for letting me come on and you do such a great job interviewing. Thank you. So I'm excited. We've done one or two interviews, evidently. Give us a 30,000 or rundown of what you guys do there at Good Brew. Yeah.

So Good Brew is a prebiotic, probiotic that's easy to put into your daily routine. It's something that you can put into your coffee. We have a 55% reorder rate and it's helping people with building a better gut microbiome with every cup of Joe. And why is that important to build a good gut biome? Well, your gut microbiome is fundamental to your health as exercise and sleep and other important things that we do. And we're discovering and learning more about the gut microbiome all the time.

The amount of research that's coming out related to the gut microbiome, it's overwhelming. I try to keep up with it. And it's just something that we're going to see more and more of through the future. And people are going to be turning more and more to the gut microbiome as solutions to health issues. It affects everything from your gut brain access. So 90% of the serotonin is produced in the gut, not in the brain. It has been related to dementia other mood and depression. It's important to mineral utilization and mineral uptake and vitamin production. So your gut microbiome actually does things that our bodies

do not do. We've evolved with this gut microbiome for so long that we're actually dependent on it for our health and well-being. It produces enzymes that are necessary for breaking down certain health and well-being. It produces enzymes that are necessary for breaking down certain nutrition. And with Good Brew, for example, the probiotic that's in Good Brew, just as one of many, many things that it's been shown to do, it's backed by over 45 published research papers, is to increase protein utilization by 20%, which is huge. And that's huge for everybody. It's huge for people who may be on a low protein diet. It's huge for people who may be on a low protein diet. It's huge for people who are older and have muscle wasting. As we get older, we have less ability to uptake nutrients and proteins, one of those nutrients

that we have trouble uptaking. So it's really related to aging and healthy aging. It's also related to athletes and the people who have the muscle recovery. So that's extremely important. And then your immune system, 70% of your immune systems in the gut and that's related to the gut microbiome. So the large part of the immune system is housed within the gut, the gut lining, the digestive tract, and then the microbes do a lot to support that environment, particularly the mucosal lining. So the mucosal lining of the gut has everything to do with

inflammation and also immune functions. One of the things that happens in the modern world is we've lost a lot of the diversity in our gut microbiome because of generations of antibiotic use, but also because of preservatives and pesticides in our food has really diminished the gut health of people. And so one of the things that happens with a lot of people in the Western world, and over 50% of adults have some sort of significant gut health issue that they're dealing with every day, is that gut mucosal lining breaks down and then what happens is the things that are supposed to stay in the gut get outside of the gut, things that are supposed to stay outside of the gut get into

the gut, and this triggers a cascade of inflammation. So a lot of these autoimmune diseases are related to that. And then we had a testimonial just not too long ago from a lady who was taking it. She has lupus. And it was interesting because she had lupus and she was using the product and it was helping her in whatever way it was helping her. But it was just like a day later, I read a research paper and it was about lupus and how lupus is now there's a leading theory on lupus is triggered by gut health. And so basically, inflammation that starts in the gut that then travels through, you know, I think it's the liver with lupus, I can't

remember, and then that triggers an inflammatory response within the organs that are the source of lupus. So all these things are, and we can talk more and more about protein utilization, these sorts of things. And I also should mention Chris, just in my email to you, you know, I also can help with your audience on a few things related to food entrepreneurship. I have a long history in that. I have a few patents, and we've done trademarks, and of course, we bootstrapped this thing, you know, I built the website, I did the labels, you know, the branding and all that. So, we bootstrap this thing. I built the website. I did the labels, the branding and all that. So we get later into the program if you want to ask also some questions that might be of some value to the listeners.

And I'll also just mention, as I mentioned earlier, I'm at a shop here on Roanoke Island, the first English settlement. The Reiki twins have allowed me to come here to do this show and they carry our product and they sell our product and they sell a lot of tea. So I also explain why this works in hot beverages where other probiotics do not. Pete Can you explain the advent of that and how that works? Kind of, not only that, why it works in hot products and you don't have to freeze it and

stuff, but what makes the product pretty unique from maybe other competitors in the market? Right. So there's two, I guess, primary things there that makes it unique in the way that you're asking. One is that we supply an organic prebiotic fiber. So prebiotic means that it feeds the gut microbiome. And obviously being a solubleble fiber There's just basic benefits to having the right amount of fiber in your diet in addition to it being a prebiotic And then there's this term synbiotic in which you feed It's like kind of feeding the nutrients to the to the to the plants or the in your garden so the prebiotic feeds the the microbes and that's a and that's a Synbiotic what they call sin by not's a symbiotic, what they call symbiotic, not symbiotic, but symbiotic.

And so the fact that our product provides a good source of organic soluble fiber in and of itself is different than most other probiotic products that are on the market because A, most of them are in tablet form, so they don't provide enough soluble fiber to really support the microbes that they're trying to support. And B, you can put this into a regular routine, which feeds the probiotic bacillus coagulans. Now, bacillus coagulans and another family of microbes in the bacillus family, there's one called bacillus subtilis and some others, these probiotics are found in nature traditionally, and they're transitory and meaning that they're meant to come into our diet through food sources

and survive in that manner and survive through the acidic environment of the stomach, and getting to the lower intestines and germinate where they need to germinate. That's where you want the probiotics and the gut microbiome to proliferate is in your lower digestive system. And the way they do that is they're spore-forming microbes. And so, as a spore, they can live in all sorts of environments that your typical microbe that doesn't have a protein encapsulation around it could. And so, some of these bacillus microbes they found in like amber, you know, insects and things like that going back like millions

and millions of years and in salt mines and stuff like that. These other probiotics that are sold a lot in pill form or capsule form on the market, A, they don't come with the fibers that support them, but B, they're probiotics that mainly get into our gut ecosystem at birth. get into our gut ecosystem at birth. We inherit that from our mother during birth and during nursing. And in fact, it's a really fantastic thing. I mean, actually, when a mother starts to nurse her child, there's actually a chemical signaling that goes on in the body that actually sends some of these microbes to the breast and so that the child gets that through the breast milk. Now think about how essential that is.

If nature has done that, there's no joke that these microbes are this important to our overall health and they've been dismissed for a long time. But in that form, those microbes are not generally intended to survive well through the food. We get them, they colonize the gut, and then we may get a sum through eating and food, but they're not coming in to colonize the gut. And so, when you put them in capsule form, they're also not meant to have a shelf life. So that's why you'll see these products that have 100 billion CFU. Well, part of the reason they're doing that is because a lot of them are dying on the shelf.

And then also they die when they hit the stomach acid and then they don't have the prebiotic with it. So Good Brew is like a foundational gut health product. If you're even taking some of these other probiotics or you're trying to eat foods that have probiotics in them, GoodBrew is only going to assist in that because it's meant to enter the digestive system the way that it does and it's meant to be translatory. It means it goes in, it germinates, it does its job, it produces a lot of enzymes and things that help to digest nutrients and uptake proteins and other minerals. So does the soluble fiber. But the other thing it does is it produces

lactic acid. And you've probably heard of lactobacillus. Lactobacillus is a family of important microbes that are probiotic. Some people try to take those in pill form, but one of the key things they do is they produce lactic acid. That lowers the pH of the gut, and that's the environment that a good gut microbiome wants to live in. It wants to live in a low pH environment. The bad microbes want to live in a high pH environment.

So what happens is, as with all of our modern stresses that we put on our gut, we start to incentivize an environment that allows bad microbes, it's called dysbiosis, to proliferate. And then the other good microbes, they're there, but they're sequestered. And so when you take good brew, rather than trying to take lactobacillus, which you can do if you want, but it's not going to survive in the way that bacillus coagulans does. The bacillus coagulans does that initial work for the lactobacillus,

and then that helps to create the gut environment that then promotes the lactobacillus and the acromansia and the bifidobacteria and those important microbes that you want. So it's assisting all that. Think of it like a garden. So if you plant your garden and you put the seeds in the garden and you get it ready for the spring and summer and it starts to grow and then things aren't going well, it's not growing properly, you don't go and then try to throw more seeds on it.

You go and see what nutrients does that garden need? Does that garden need water? Does that garden need fertilizer? Does that garden need a soil amendment? That's what the silice coagulants and the soluble fiber is doing. It's, A, doing a job of a probiotic, but it's also acting like the soil amendment for your garden. And it starts to go to work in like 24 hours. When it comes to digestion, there's people who need digestive relief from some specific issue like IBS or constipation, these things. We have a lot of folks who start to use Good Brew and people who have had problems for 20 years.

A nurse is one example. She started using Good Brew and she was like, for 20 years, I haven't been able to deal with whatever gut health issues she was having. And she said, it was like a week it was helping her and she would never stop using it again. And she actually had a shop as well. So she started carrying our product and selling the product. But you know, we hear that, but then there's the long term, the long game for gut health. And that's that consistent use. And that's, you know, the nice thing about being able to use it in coffee or hot tea, but you can also put it in anything else that you eat. You can put it in and stir it into water.

I've got a guy who just was telling me that he puts it in his, he's got like one of those soda maker things. He puts it in a soda maker and likes it. He puts it out. All right, great. He's like, it works. It works fine for him. So you can put it in a lot of different things. So it's sort of like the soil amendment. And just one more point about fiber. Most of the soluble fiber that's sold on the market, if you look at the big brands, they're owned by Big Pharma and they use everything. They try to get the cheapest thing on the market so that they get the best margin so they can buy up all the shelf space and all that kind of thing. And they mostly use wheat dextrin.

If you think about it, wheat dextrin, even though it's considered to be sold as gluten-free, it's made from wheat. And so to label it as gluten-free, you can be below 20 parts per million. But a lot of times in the fine print, they'll say not for people with celiac disease. So wheat dextrin is not a fiber that we would naturally... It's processed out of wheat and it's not something that our bodies would naturally experience for feeding the gut microbiome. But the big companies, the biggest fiber products on the market are sold as wheat dextrin under

these brands. Whereas inulin... So inulin is also a broad range of soluble fibers. And there's inulins that have been sort of manufactured by the food industry with their longer branch molecules that are meant to kind of act as food processing aids. But then there's the inulin that is mostly found in like fruits. And there is a shorter chain inulin and it's got just a mildly sweet taste to it. If you're using good brew, you might have noticed it's just mild.

We don't really taste it in your coffee, but if you put some on your finger and tasted it, it would be just like slightly, almost no flavor, but slightly sweet. This is the type of soluble fiber that our gut microbiome has fed on for millions of years. has fed on for millions of years is humans and animals eating fruit. And then that soluble fiber, inulin, is an organic soluble fiber that the gut microbiome wants to feed on. And you get the benefits of the soluble fiber that fiber can do for, say, immediately things like helping with constipation and that sort of thing.

But then it's also acting as the prebiotic. So it's a superior form of fiber than what most people will find on the shelves at stores, and then it's also a probiotic that survives. And we use a billion CFUs, which is the amount of CFUs for this strain of bacillus coagulans to be able to make the claims that we're able to make. You'll see products that have bacillus coagulans in them, but it's just like a cursory amount so that they can kind of label it as having it, but it's not a billion CFUs.

And in order to make the claims based on the research, you need to have a billion CFUs per serving. And we offer it at a ridiculously good price because if we were to actually sell this in like a big box store and you were to combine a true organic fiber with a billion CFUs of bacillus coagulans, it would be much higher preserving than what we sell it for. So we pride ourselves in both making something that works, something that's usable in a daily routine and is also something that's affordable enough for people to use in a daily

routine. And people ask me about yogurt and stuff like that, sure, eat yogurt. But our yogurt in the Western world is pasteurized, it's full of sugar, and you're not getting what... The story behind yogurt is a great story. If you're on a farm and you're making your own yogurt, sure, you're probably good and you're using it every day, you're probably really doing a lot to assist your gut. The Sardinians in Greece, they make their own goat's cheese and their own yogurt, and they're eating that every day. But the Western yogurt, A, it's expensive. B, do you really eat it every day? But it's also very Westernized. It's full of sugar, and it's pasteurized, and it's sitting on a shelf. There's these great ideas, but do they really match up with reality and that sort of thing? Same thing with our crops.

I mean, they're all hit with pesticides and that sort of thing. So we need a lot of help in the Western world, right? We do, with all the shit we eat. But a couple points there. You sent us the product about a month ago and I've been using it. I gave one of the bottles to my mom. You know, I just put it in my protein shakes because I drink a lot of protein throughout the day.

I've actually found that drinking more protein is actually helping me. I was, I guess, too thin on my protein. But gut health is a real important thing. You know, we've had scientists on the show that have talked about, you know, the gut is your second brain, that biome that you talk about, they've linked brain swelling and, you know, feeling, you know, garbage to your gut. I mean, there's a direct line that goes right up to it. And so it's worked great for me so far.

I noticed on the, you've been talking about some of the different things that are in it. I notice it's billed as gluten-free, dexin-free, non-GMO, all-natural, plant-based, no sugar, no corn, non-dairy, and it's a non-wheat fiber. So I imagine it helps everybody in the, you know, the celiac gluten community and everything else. I imagine that's a great edge to have when it comes to natural eating. Sure, it is. And that's exactly right. All of these different groups of people that might be either trying to take probiotics

that really aren't working for them. I mean, Good Brew will work, but it also may support some of these other probiotics that they're trying to get. And then with these specific conditions, IBS, Celiac, those things that you were mentioning, Good Brew would be the ideal product for that kind of person as well because it is organic and because it doesn't contain additives, it doesn't contain processing aids. It's just two ingredients. And maybe in the future we'll have some product extensions. There's some other exciting things out there in the world of

gut health, but we've found this to be just the, this is what works, you know. You don't need to try and, there's people who are doing other products out there and they want it to try to, they say, oh wow, we can use it every day. So let's put this in there and let's put that in there. But are you really, you're really missing the point? Your gut microbiome does a lot of this. It produces a lot of your B vitamins are actually produced by the gut. So as people get older, one of the issues with getting older is low B vitamin levels, which is also part of what's related to dementia.

So the B vitamins are very essential to cellular metabolism. Cellular metabolism is important to things like iron uptake. That's important to brain health. Brain health is kind of like, they're kind of relating it to diabetics, to bencher Alzheimer's, to diabetes because it's looking like it's a condition of, it's probably somewhat genetic, but it's looking like it's a condition of cellular metabolism. So like the amyloid plaques, they're not really the root cause. They're more of a symptom. So everybody's supposed to have these kind of amyloid proteins in their brain. They're part of cleaning and processing the brain. But something happens where that cleaning process starts to not be able to keep up with itself.

And so they think maybe then these amyloid plaques start to build up, whereas they're supposed to do a positive job, they start to then do a negative job because they're not getting cleaned out. They're not picking up what they're supposed to, the waste they're supposed to be picking up and carrying it away, it's getting left there. And that's a condition of cellular metabolism,

just like diabetes is a condition of cellular metabolism, just like many, many, many things are a condition of cellular metabolism. So like many, many, many things are a condition of cellular metabolism. So those B vitamins that the gut microbiome produces is a direct connection to that. Also short chain fatty acids. Short chain fatty acids, a particularly important one is butyrate. That is produced by the gut microbiome. We get a little bit of it from our food also.

It's called butyrate because of the word butter, and's where it was butyrate was first isolated was from butter. But the gut microbiome produces that short chain fatty acid and some others on its own and produces the majority of it. That provides the 80% or 90% of the energy source for the lower intestine, the cells of the lower intestines. So if you're not getting these short chain fatty acids, the lower intestines tries to start to use other sources of energy. And that's where you start to get like carcinoma and that sort of thing is from the damage

that it does to the cells. But then that also goes back to the brain. That cellular metabolism is also all throughout our know, all throughout our body, all health issues can be somewhat related back to gut health. You know, it's not necessarily they're all directly caused by that, but the ability for the body to process and fight and maintain itself certainly is related back to the gut. And it's becoming more and more evident all the time, you know. Pete So, tell us about your entrepreneurial journey for wannabe entrepreneurs out there the gut and it's becoming more and more evident all the time. Yeah.

So tell us about your entrepreneurial journey for wannabe entrepreneurs out there, wannabe inspired for entrepreneurism. You've tried so different iterations or at least one different iteration of this. Tell us about kind of your journey through life. Yeah. Let me tell you a little bit about that because I think it could be helpful to people and it's a struggle, man. I'll tell you what, entrepreneurship, you know, I used to go to these events, this VC company used to put on these talks, and I'd love to go to these talks, and they would get all these different entrepreneurs that would come in and tell the stories and what not. And this one guy, he was a serial entrepreneur, extremely successful, but man, he was the most

honest guy. He would sit up there, you know, and everybody's telling these beautiful stories about entrepreneurship. He'd be like, don't do it. It is not a joke. You know, or like Elon Musk would say, you know, starting a company is trying to do a startup is like what chewing on glass and looking into the abyss or something like that, you know. So years ago, I was working at, I was at a grad, I was a graduate student and I was working in the Office of Technology Transfer. It's like the patent office in a university. I have a couple of patents. And so, you know, that was, I was working in there because I have this experience around intellectual property and whatnot. And I like to, anyhow, we were talking about a researcher at the university that was

doing, looking at multiple sclerosis. And this topic came up and everybody was talking about the research. And one guy said, you know, in Africa, they hardly have any MS. And there's this theory that the reason they don't have MS is because of their gut microbiome and parasites and things like that that are exposed to that we're not exposed to or don't have in the Western world. And that was like in the mid-2000s or something. And I was like, man, that's BS. But it stuck with me. That was just my first response to it, because probiotics and stuff weren't really being talked about at that point much at all.

But it stuck with me. And then a few years later, I was at the Institute. My patents were in a seafood processing technology. And I was at the Institute of Food Technologists show in Chicago. It was a great trade show to go to. I was there because of the seafood work, but I came across this guy who was this guy from Mexico and at the time they were trying to get agave syrup onto the market. So agave syrup can be made from the process. The tequila makers are using agave to make tequila, but they obviously want to try to do something with the rest of their crop. And so anyhow, they were trying to get agave syrup on the

market at that time. And he had that. But then in the back behind him, he had these bags of white powder. This is a guy from Mexico, bags of white powder. He doesn't know anything. He's not displaying them or anything. But white powder. He doesn't know, he's not displaying them or anything. But I was like, what is that stuff? And he starts to tell me, he's like, this is inulin. He's like, nobody knows what to do with it. He said, and he had one inkjet printer piece of paper printed out on some research that some university down in Mexico had done. And it was like, I mean, literally, it was like an inkjet printer thing. It wasn't no beautiful marketing piece. But I looked at it and I was like, that's really super interesting because I was going

back to, now I'd had a few years of process, this idea about the MS story. I said, that's super interesting. I was like, that's the kind of thing that could really turn into something. That stuck with me. Then at that same time, another company was coming out with this strain of bacillus coagulans, and they were talking about how it could be used in heat, like in baking and stuff like that. And then I dawned on them, I was like, man, this is it. If this gut health thing is really what science is starting to say that it is, I could put these together in some way and make it usable in coffee. It just hit me like that, you know?

Pete Yeah. Brian But the problem was, is that, you know, like the idea wasn't fully formed. And so, I'm looking at this agave syrup, blah, blah, blah. I went after that same year later, I went on a trip to Africa and I met Steve Chappell, who became my business partner in this. Steve was, both of us were over there on this trip to Africa and he was looking at a gold project. And so, I would start talking about all the great resources in Africa that maybe we could bring back to the United States. And there was this plant called Kinkaliba.

Kinkaliba is a word that's almost synonymous with health in some parts of Africa. And it's this, you can get it now, but it's not sold in mass quantities, but you can now find it if you like go on Amazon and look for Kinkaliba. But anyhow, I've got some of that and I studied it. And it's a super high in these epicatacans, which is what the main like health benefit of tea and chocolate or some of the main benefits

is these epicatacans. And tea and dark chocolate are like the only things you really find that are really high in epicadacans. But this Kinkaliba, when we re-studied it and we went to the lab with it, it was higher in epicadacans than either of those. And I said, wow, let's try to do something with this. And that's when I started thinking about something,

things that could be used in drinks. And so we went back, but we couldn't, it was too difficult. We went back to, I was like, Steve, but I've been looking at this probiotic thing. I think it's kind of fits the same market we're talking about with the Kinkaliba, et cetera, et cetera. So we tried to make this wonderful tasting mixture of the probiotic, the fiber and syrup. And so that you could put this stuff in your coffee, but you could, the agave syrup, we called it agave shot, had really cool logo on it. Man, that stuff

was so hard to make. We had barrels of it, half made. It was crazy. We traveled around. I was sending it and we spent a ton of money. We just hung it up. And so Steve started doing his thing and I was doing the seafood thing. A couple of years went by. We were like, let's simplify this and just do it as a powder, take the syrup out of it. But there was this other product on the market that was a B vitamin product and we're going to have that as a third ingredient. And I'm glad we didn't do that because now the way the research has gone, that is a great product, I think, that there's B vitamins, but it didn't need to be a Good Brew.

But the problem that we ran into was it was patented and we had an agreement with the company to use it in Good Brew. And then they had a change of management and strategy and they're like, we're not going to sell this ingredient to people anymore. We're just going to sell it. So we're like, oh man, throw that. And then when the pandemic hit, we were like, let's just simplify it. Let's do as much of it as we can ourselves to take all these variables out of it.

And so we got it just really simplified. And fortunately, that's what works the best really. And now we have it as Good Brew. And obviously, there was some logistical things during the times of the pandemic and all of that. But it's been about a year now where we're really seeing the steady growth. We found that the way to really market it is like this. It's like talking to an audience directly or going to an event and talking to the audience. Then people start to use the product. They like the product.

And then they reorder the product. And then we can organically grow it. Because now we're kind of getting a cash flow situation where we can grow it. And that gets to the deal that we're running, too. Because we're doing this kind of this crowdfund thing. We did one back in the fall where we'll give a free small out

today with the order of large at a 15% discount and that's on the web page. But that's kind of this cash flow. That's sort of a business strategy that has worked. And I encourage other people to try as much as you can to find those things that work and replicate them because it'll help you so much to be able to do and fund your business as much as possible organically. They always say, Chris, I know you're an entrepreneur, and they always say, we learn from our mistakes, but you know what's better than learning from your mistakes? It's learning from your successes. No, learning from everything.

Learning process. Yeah, learn from what works and then replicate what works and scale what works. And it might be the smallest little thing. You struggle and you struggle. But when you see one little bit of success, try to identify why that was successful. If you take $100, it doesn't seem like much. But I tell you, as a startup, making any money at all is a really important thing because it teaches you something that you can then maybe possibly replicate.

And it doesn't take long. If you take 100 bucks and you can replicate that 10 times up, that's a thousand. 10 times from that's 10,000, 10 times from that's 100,000. That's how these companies start at zero and become billion dollar companies. Yeah. It all starts with that widget. That's right. That widget. Yeah, exactly. Make that widget profitable. And you bring up a good point, learning from your mistakes and also

learning from your successes. It reminds me of something that we used to joke about decades ago when I tried golfing and thought it might be a thing for me. And I was like, let's try the hobby of golfing. All I did was learn to swirmer and want to destroy golf clubs. I realized that wasn't for golfing. But one of the things we used to always say, if you did something right, like you hit the putt and it went in, someone taught me this line. They go, now, oh, you got, you got that in. Now remember what you did wrong. Remember what you did right. Was it, was it remember what you did right? No, it was remember what you did wrong because basically you're always

fucking up all the time and you finally did something right. So obviously you did something wrong. That's the opposite of what you normally do, if that makes any sense. It's kind of a funny joke. Remember what you did wrong then? Yep. Yep. You hit it right, remember what you did wrong because you're doing it right. You're doing it right. Yeah. You don't want to get good at it. And that got true because I moved to Vegas and was spending half my time down there from Utah. And I went to, who's the famous golfer, probably the number one famous golfer ever,

not Tiger Woods, but- Jack Nicholson. Jack Nicholson. So Jack Nicholson has school for golfing down there. So my owner paid Jack Nicholson a bunch of money to teach me how to play golf. And that was basically what the whole episode was. That's actually what made me, it actually made me quit golf. And so I basically had to learn that this, everything I had learned about golf up until that point was worthless, useless, and I had bad habits that of doing what I thought was right, but was completely wrong. You know, during the training for the golfing, I just, everything had to get thrown away and started new. And I'm like,

I'm not going to start a new, I'm not going to. So I always remember what you did wrong. That's right. That's right. Hey, I was doing, yeah, I started like, I do all kinds. I went through like everybody, I went through all kinds of, I went through a divorce and terrible divorce and all that sort of thing. And so I've learned a lot.

I started doing things like the Wim Hof method, you know, the cold water, the breathing, that stuff really is important. I mean, it really, really is learned a lot. I started doing things like the Wim Hof method, the cold water, the breathing. That stuff really is important. I mean, it's important for everybody and it's really important for entrepreneurs because there's so much stress and we won't get into the details. I think if you ever read James Altucher, I love James Altucher, but he really wrote about the problems that he had had in life as an entrepreneur, like the real problems, the things that you go through mentally and all of that sort of thing. And, you know, that really, you know, he, you know, he really digs into,

into that kind of thing. But he, when I was reading a lot of what he was writing, it hit me at the same time in my life where I was looking for, you know, how to, you know, work through some of these things and the recently I actually played around with some self hypnosis and that's super cool too. To hypnotize yourself. Do you hold a watch in front of yourself and swing it back and forth? You're feeling very tired.

No, no, you don't have to do that. There's a pretty easy technique to do it, but you do have the kind of, you like, first you think this is not going to work, but once you actually do it, it's wow, you can do it. Yeah. Who snaps you out of the hypnosis? That's the thing about hypnosis. I'd never been hypnotized before, but until, so I didn't really know what it was like. But you're pretty

aware of everything. So, it's just like you allow yourself, it's, hypnosis is sort of like it's a, it's a combination of the relaxation that you get in meditation or sleep with a hyper-focused awareness. So, you're aware of what's going on. So that's kind of the trick is you do have, you can speak to yourself, you know, and say, okay, you kind of like just depending on what you're doing, you just kind of know that you're, it's time to end it. And then, yeah, yeah. Yeah. We went through all of that, went through doing things right, right, wrong. And you talked a little bit about golf and how you had been kind of joking about doing things the wrong way. Remember what you did right.

You know, instead of what, instead of what you did right. So it's important to learn about what you've done from your, your successes and try and grow organically as an entrepreneur is trying to do a thing, replicate what, what works and that'll help you, you know, a lot. That said, you know, I'm sure with Good Good Brew as we grow and as we're getting this repeat business, we will have to look at other ways to fund the company. Pete Slauson This should be interesting then. So, awesome sauce. As we go out, give people a final pitch out. I think you had an offer of a discount and dot coms where they can

find you on the interwebs. Absolutely. It's good Bruce spelled B R U. So G O O D B R U dot com, B R U dot com. And we have a 10% discount. If you use the promo code Chris boss, and we also have a crowd fund special where you can have one, one receive one free small unit for pre-ordering a large. We'll send the larges out, we'll start production as done. We're trying to target 200 orders from that.

So there's a special, it's pre-discounted at 15%. You get a free small and a discounted large when you pre-order that. Or if you just want to order anything off of the normally priced stuff you can use Chris Voss and get 10% off and in the future you know we'll leave that Chris Voss discount available. Like I said we have a 50% reorder rate so you know if you do the pre-order and then you reorder again you can continue you can just use the Chris Voss discount and get 10% off in the future. Thank you thank you you. We really appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah. I would really appreciate you having me on and I'm glad you're using the

product and you're enjoying the product yourself. Definitely. And people take care of your gut biome, but you put in your mouth is everything when it comes to your diet, your gut. You know, I mean, I, mean, I'm like anybody. I go do the McDonald's or the Del Taco every now and then, and then spend the next 24 hours in the fetal position. If you put garbage in your gut, you're putting antibiotics as another thing that kills gut health.

I'm sure there's some prescription drugs that are probably toxic for gut health. You really need to be mindful of your gut health. And as you age, it really becomes an important factor as well. So that's the plug I'll give it. But I like how there's a lot of natural stuff going on with your product. It doesn't have all that goop and crap and sugar. I recently had run out of the product that I buy for protein and I needed some some protein but the problem is I'm lactose intolerant So that that's probably another good cell right there. I'm lactose intolerant take your product

I don't have any issues and probably shouldn't because I don't think there's milk and if it's still you know there's a plug but so I recently bought a product that was a protein product and I was taking I was saying it was sugary. It was like putting a pound of sugar in my freaking mouth. What the hell is in this crap? It was sucralose. I started noticing that there was a drink I was drinking on my way to the gym. There was kind of a soda and you know, pump up pre-energy workout and it was making me sick of the gym. I would get to the gym and be like, ah man, I don't even feel like working out. It was sucralose. Yeah, that's sucralose.

Your body's not meant to really break it down. Dude, it's 600 times sweeter than sugar. Who needs 600 times sweeter than sugar? Like sugar's awesome. Yeah, that's, yeah, you know, and then, you know, the facts, you're taking protein. Think about it. The, the bacillus coagulans is shown in multiple studies, increased protein utilization by 20%.

And they've done that both in the studies using plant proteins and using whey protein. You know, you think about it, people are spending a lot of money to get, to pay for protein supplements but they're not maximizing the protein utilization. And what's happening there is the microbes, this is important because peptides and amino acids are critical to our health. But it's the microbes that break those proteins down into the peptides and amino acids. Some enzymes that the stomach and the digestive system produces also, but it's largely the gut microbiome that produces the enzymes that do that.

And those peptides are critical to all functions of the body, both of course in terms of muscle growth but in everything. The immune system is mostly based around different types of proteins and peptides, peptides just being a smaller protein molecule and amino acids being the smallest. That's what the gut microbiome is doing. The bacillus valulans are shown to increase this protein utilization by 20%. It's kind of like you get 20% more out of the protein that you are taking. Yes, and the gut microbiome is also very important to trying to regulate the way we uptake sugar.

And so the gut breaks a lot of that sugar down. The microbes break a lot of that sugar down, the microbes break a lot of that sugar down in ways that turn it into other things, other useful things, but also slows down, especially with the fiber, slows down the rate at which it enters our bloodstream. And then also, as healthy as gut mucosal lining in itself helps to contain that as well. As you start getting your gut muc your coastal lining starts breaking down over time and age and stress, then those things more readily just flow out into our bodies, you know, bloodstream and they don't get processed through the liver or the kidneys as they should.

So it works in many different factors in that way. And again, like good brew, you know, it's useful in coffee because the bacillus vagulans can do that, or tea, or your shakes, or those kinds of things, where other probiotics are not that easy to put into your daily routine. Pete Slauson Sign it, check it out folks, pick it up wherever fine products are sold. Is it on Amazon yet, or they need to – I think you're still doing, you're doing a crowdfunding. Do you want to get a plugin for the crowdfunding? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Order a small from us at goodbrewsvillebru.com and today we'll send the small out and we'll send for a 15% discount on a pre-ordered large. So when you pre-order

the large at a 15% discount, we'll send the small out today. It's a 15 serving. Actually, I've got, they sell it here in this store, the Reiki Twins in Mantio, North Carolina. So if you're up in Rhode Island or Mantio, North Carolina, stop by and see the Reiki Twins. But they sell our product here. This is a small, you'll get this, you'll get this small, it's 15 servings for free. We'll send it out now. And then you pre-order the 75 serving and we'll send that out once they get produced.

And like I said, we're trying to shoot for 200 on this crowd fund. And that helps us out a ton. And we have so many people, helps them with immediate gut issues, constipation, IBS, things like that. And then of course, people maintaining their health over a longer period of time, the protein utilization, all the other, the immune health, you know, we were able to actually stay on our label because the research behind this supports immune function,

supports digestive health, supports protein utilization, in addition to a lot of other things that it does. And also oral health is highly related to your gut microbiome. And I was just speaking with one of the owners here, the Reiki Twins, and they used the product and she was mentioning that as well. She's like, you know, she noticed that it's helped her teeth and gums and their skin. There's a lot of connection between the skin and the gut microbiome and inflammation. They're all tied together.

Thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it, Gabe. Yeah. Thanks, Chris. It's a pleasure being on and I've enjoyed watching and listening to some of your podcasts. You do a great job. Thank you, sir. I really appreciate it. And you did a great job as a guest and as an entrepreneur. Thanks for sharing your entrepreneur journey and hopefully inspiring other entrepreneurs as well.

Yeah, maybe we can get back on there sometime in the future and give you an update. All right, folks, be sure to refer the show to your family, friends and relatives. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, Facebook.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, and all those crazy places. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. Thank you.

We're out. Gabe.